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Crux   Listen
noun
Crux  n.  (pl. E. cruxes, L. cruces)  Anything that is very puzzling or difficult to explain. "The perpetual crux of New Testament chronologists."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Crux" Quotes from Famous Books



... own consciousness, cannot be disproved. It is so simple a conception that a child may understand it; and it has probably been passed before the attention of every thinking man since Plato's time. The notion is in itself a mere philosophical catch or crux to which there is no answer. It may be true. The mystics made this doctrine useful. They were not content to doubt the independent existence of the external world. They imagined that this external world, the ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman

... part of my scheme. In that synopsis of the story obtained by the girls by some more or less mechanical means, the reputed death of a patient forms the crux of the tale. The idea occurred to me after reading a charge against a medical student some time ago in the Standard. The man wanted to get himself out of the way; he wanted to be considered as dead, in fact. By the artful use of albumen in ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... But the real crux of constitution builders had hitherto been in the relations of the Legislature to the Executive. How should the brain of the body politic, that is, the Legislature, be connected with the hand, that is, the Executive? Obviously, so argued all French political thinkers, the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... the machine—its engines—are the crux of man's mechanical wisdom and skill. Their marvelous reliability and intricacy are almost as awesome as the human anatomy. When both engines are going well, and synchronized to the same speed, the roar of the ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser

... you say of your journey interests me immensely. No doubt you propose going down the river as far as Missouri? The interest of the entire country is focused there to-day. Ah, yonder is the crux of all our compromise! Safe within the fold herself, that is to say above the fatal line of thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, her case is simply irresistible in interest to-day, both for ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough

... very nearly. You have heard of George's house in Essex? You must be familiar, at least, with the name of St. Crux?—What is there to start at, my dear? I am afraid you are hardly strong enough for ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... is the crux, my dear Livia," said Mrs. Sinclair. "I have a plan of my own, but I dare not breathe it, for I'm sure Mrs. Gradinger would call it 'anti-social,' ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters

... is certainly a 'crux.' The commentator, I think, displays considerable ingenuity in explaining it. The order of the words is Gatayushah tasya sahajatasya pancha saptamim navamim dasam prapnuvanti; tatah na bhavanti; sa na. The ten stages of a person's ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... will be granted, in the first place, that by physical training—whether in the form of gymnastics or games or what not—we desire to produce a healthier and more perfectly developed body. Some will add a stronger body, but as this term has two meanings constantly confused, it really contains the crux of the question. Stronger may mean stronger in the sense of resistance to disease or fatigue or strain of any kind, or it may mean stronger in the sense of the capacity to perform feats of strength. It being ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby

... is pictured a Tree of Life which is surrounded by winged spirits, bearing in their hands the pine cone, a symbol indicating life, and which is said to have the same significance as the crux-ansata, or cross, ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... For some ingenious and learned observations on the Tau or Crux Ansata see Classical ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport

... Lewis the Debonnaire, prohibited that method of trial, not because it was uncertain, but lest that sacred figure, says he, of the cross should be prostituted in common disputes and controversies [a]. [FN [z] LL. Frison. tit. 14. apud Lindenbrogium, p. 496. [a] Du Cange, in verb. CRUX.] ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... if it could be shown that the missing man ever left Hurst's house alive, or that he was wearing the scarab when he arrived there, things would look rather fishy for the Bellinghams—for, of course, the girl must have been in it if the father was. But there's the crux: there is no proof that the man ever did leave Hurst's house alive. And if he didn't—but there! as I said at first, whichever turning you take, you find that it ends in a ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... The crux of the whole undertaking lies in the correctness and adequacy of the translations. How difficult, if not impossible, a really satisfactory translation is, especially in lyric poetry, no one realizes more clearly than the editors. Their only comfort is that they have succeeded in obtaining ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... not live in the choppy sea kicked up in the Downs by a westerly gale. Folkstone market boats and Deal cutters had to be requisitioned for pressing in those waters. Their seaworthiness and speed made the Downs the crux of inward-bound ships, whose only means of escaping their attentions was to incur another danger by "going back ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... was blocked by the unwieldy forms of five buffaloes, in charge of a naked brown wisp of humanity four feet high, armed with a no more formidable weapon than a pine branch stripped of its needles. But the crux of the situation lay in the fact that, between the fourth and fifth buffaloes an Englishwoman, in a brown habit, mounted on a restive chestnut pony, was in imminent danger of slipping off the road to certain death among the rocks and boulders below. For the chestnut had succeeded in wrenching ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... ignorance, as "Shahr | baz" (i. 4), "Shahr | zad" (v. 309, vi. 106), and "Fawa | jadtu-h" so I found him (V. 104). Koranic quotations almost always lack vowel points, and are introduced without the usual ceremony. Poetry also, that crux of a skilful scribe, is carelessly treated, and often enough two sets of verse are thrown into one, the first rhyming in ur, and the second in ir (e.g. vol. v. 256). The rhyme-words also are repeated within unlawful limits (passim and vol. v. 308, 11. 6 and II). Verse is thrust ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... we reach the crux of the matter. One of the little known peculiarities of the day lies in the fact that Japan is the land of political inaction because there is no tradition of action save that which has been built up by the military and naval chiefs since the Chinese war of 1894-95. Having only visualized ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... problem, have merely evaded it—doubtless unwittingly. This, of course, is not the practice of Mr. Tylor, though even his great work is professedly much more concerned with the development of the idea of spirit and with the lower forms of animism than with the real crux—the evolution of the idea (always obscured by mythology) of a moral, uncreated, undying God among the lowest savages. This negligence of anthropologists has arisen from a single circumstance. They take it for granted that God is always (except where the word for God is applied to a living ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... Personally I shall not hesitate a moment to eat the hard bread of exile in your camp, but my people, weighed down by contributions, will write to me urging a change of policy upon me. I do not know what I shall do, nor whether all will remain sufficiently firm. The crux of the situation is Strassburg, for as long as it is not German, it will prevent South Germany from giving herself unreservedly to German unity and to a national German policy. As long as Strassburg is a sally-port for an ever ready army of from 100,000 to 150,000 men, Germany ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... "Est autem crux illa longitudinem habens palmae de auro purissimo mirabili opere fabricats, quae in modum techae clauditur et aperitur. Cernitur in ea quaedarn Dominicae crucis portio, (sicut saepe multorum miraculorum argumento probatum est). Salvatoris nostri ymaginem habens ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various

... give you a helping hand," said the Professor wistfully; "but one is so powerless. Each of us has to fight the real battle of life alone. Nobody can see with our eyes, or feel with our nerves. The crux of the difficulty each bears for himself. But friendship can help us to believe the struggle worth while; it can sustain our courage and it can offer sympathy in victory,—but ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... when he says: "It is a melancholy reflection, when one is going through the lists of aeroplane fatalities, to think how many might have been avoided. Really the crux of the situation in this connection, as it appears to me, is this: the first men who flew, having had all the drudgery and danger of pioneer work, were extremely careful in all they did; and this fact accounts for the comparatively large proportion of these ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton

... in the middle of the glen and he related to the seniors the things that he had seen and he asked to receive the Body of Christ and he gave his last instruction to the monks—to observe the Law of God and keep His commands. The place was by the cross called "Crux Migrationis," or the cross from which Mochuda departed to Glory. Having received the Body and Blood of Christ, having taught them divine doctrines, in the midst of holy choirs and of many brethren and monks to whom in turn he gave his blessing and the kiss of peace according ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous

... knowledge to its objects, and it might rather have been called "The problems which Moore and I have been agitating lately." Indeed, his philosophy is so little settled as yet that every new article and every fresh conversation revokes some of his former opinions, and places the crux of philosophical controversy at a new point. We are soon made aware that exact thinking and true thinking are not synonymous, but that one exact thought, in the same mind, may be the exact opposite of the next. This inconstancy, which after all does not go ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... In the letter Liszt speaks of "the meteoric and solar light which I have borrowed from the painting, and which at the Finale I have formed into one whole by the gradual working up of the Catholic choral 'Crux fidelis,' and the meteoric sparks blended therewith." He continues: "As I have already intimated to Kaulbach, in Munich, I was led by the musical demands of the material to give proportionately more place to the solar light of Christianity, personified in the Catholic choral ... than ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... ignore the subject on which lies the crux of the whole argument. That is, the danger of revolution which is rising on the horizon of all Europe and which, supported by England, is demonstrating a new mode of fighting. Five monarchs have been dethroned ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... determine and report upon the studies that would best serve the purpose of generating reverence, and another committee to select the studies that would most effectively stimulate and develop self-control, and so on through the list. It is here that we find the crux of the whole matter. Here the program collides with tradition and with stereotyped habits of thinking. Many superintendents and teachers will contend that such a problem is impossible of solution because no one has ever essayed such a task. No one, they argue, has ever determined what subjects will ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... for her. Nor was she any longer tormented by a sense of isolation. For, as she recognized, he stole nothing away which heretofore belonged to her. Rather did he add his own by no means inconsiderable self to the sum of her possessions.—And in that last fact she probably touched the real crux, the real strain, of the present, to her disintegrating, situation. For in him, and in his relation to her, a wonderful and very precious gift was bestowed upon her, namely another human life to love and live for.—Bestowed on her, moreover, without asking or choice of her own, arbitrarily, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... and reform; vested interests do tend to create abuses; but I must remind your Majesty that in the pushing of its reforms the Government has not been quite a free agent. In many respects we have been greatly hindered; that is still the crux of ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... discovered on Mount Calvary in 236 A.D. Constantine, in 306 A.D., adopted it as a standard in Labarum. Other nations have attached staves to eagles, dragons, fish, &c. as standards and therefore, construing "Crux ansata" literally, the ensign of Constantine might be formed by attaching a staff to the Divine Glory represented in the Egyptian paintings ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various

... patient, for the motive to emerge, for the beginning of that complication between her daughter and Richard Ayling, which they believed was to be the crux ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... in the public mind. After all this is the crux of the whole situation. The Republican candidate and the reactionaries now in control of the Republican party, promise you nothing whatsoever except a proposal which at is best will involve months and ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris

... the strange, shrivelled face. Instinct could help him much, but it could not interpret that parchment. He did not know whether his intended reply would alienate the Duke or not, but if it did, then he must bear it. He had come, as he thought, to the crux of this adventure. All in a moment he was recalled again to his real position. The practical facts of his life possessed him. He was standing between a garish dream and commonplace realities. Old feelings came back—the old life. The ingrain ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... give himself greater strength to bear this burden that M. d'Aigleroche afterwards married his victim's widow? For that, sir, is the crux of the question. What was the motive of that marriage? Was M. d'Aigleroche penniless? Was the woman he was taking as his second wife rich? Or were they both in love with each other and did M. d'Aigleroche plan with her ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... to the lady; I'm sure she's too good to ye: Till she lent you her help, you were in a fine twitter; You hit it, you say;—you're a delicate hitter. How could you forget so ungratefully a lass, And if you be my Phoebus, pray who was your Pallas? As for your new rebus, or riddle, or crux, I will either explain, or repay it by trucks; Though your lords, and your dogs, and your catches, methinks, Are harder than ever were put by the Sphinx. And thus I am fully revenged for your late tricks, Which is all at present from the DEAN ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... The whole crux in diagnosis lay in the attempt to separate the two latter classes, and, personally, I must own to having been no nearer a position of being able to form an opinion on this point, in the late than in the early stage ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... message to be delivered, the property man, dressed as a messenger boy, may hand in the message without a word. I have chosen this one monotonously often-seen example because it is suggestive of the crux of the problem—the final force of a playlet is affected little by what the character says when he delivers a vital message. All that matters is the message itself. The one thing to remember in reducing the number of characters to the lowest ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... "The crux of the matter would appear to be, sir, that Mr. Todd is obliged by the conditions under which the money is delivered into his possession to write Miss Rockmetteller long and detailed letters relating ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... in their love 'in the darkest shadow of adversity.' There was probably some courtly exaggeration, mingled with self-interest, in the gratitude expressed to Cecil. Already the relation of this cold-blooded statesman to the impulsive Raleigh becomes a crux to the biographers of the latter. Cecil's letters to his father from Devonshire on the matter of the Indian carracks in 1592 are incompatible with Raleigh's outspoken thanks to Cecil for the trial of his love when Raleigh was ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... head!" said Sara. "I suppose he thinks the crux of the matter is that seance with Freet. As if I'd do as coarse work as that! That's what I'd like, to be turned over to the authorities. Couldn't I tell a pretty story about the meeting with Freet up here? Freet actually thought ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow

... discovered in his study, engaged in the deepest meditation on a grammatical crux; and had received the news of his arrest with a blank horror and amazement very laughable in the eyes of Sir Piers. Master Aristoteles was pounding rhubarb with his sleeves turned up, and required some convincing that he was not wanted professionally. Father Warner was ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... contest in relative approximations to realness. Prof. Serviss thinks that what Schroeter saw was the "round" shadow of a mountain—in the region that had become lighted. He assumes that Schroeter never looked again to see whether the shadow could be attributed to a mountain. That's the crux: conceivably a mountain could cast a round—and that means detached—shadow, in the lighted part of the moon. Prof. Serviss could, of course, explain why he disregards the light in the first place—maybe it had always been there "in the first place." If he couldn't explain, he'd still ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... one morning an Indian came to request me to visit his master. I got into the carriage and set off, without informing myself of the name of the sick person. The carriage stopped before the door of one of the finest houses in the Faubourg of Santa-Crux. Having examined the patient, and conversed a few minutes with him, I went to the table to write a prescription; suddenly I heard the rustling of a silk dress; I turned round—the pen fell from my hand. ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere

... she was, my mother was afflicted with what might be called the worrying temperament; a disposition characteristic of that troublous time. My memory seems to fasten upon the matter of domestic labour as representing the crux and centre of my dear mother's grievances and topics of lament prior to my father's death. The subject may seem to border upon the ridiculous, as an influence upon one's general point of view; but at that time it was really more tragic than farcical, and ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... Romance tongues is perfectly simple and intelligible, except in the one crux of the question how it came into being, and what part "popular" poetry played in it. We find it, almost from the first, full-blown: and only minor refinements or improvements are introduced afterwards. With English prosody it is very different.[102] As has been ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... days! The blessing of the viaticum is unknown to them. Man is essentially an idolater,—that is, in bondage to his imagination,—for there is no more harm in the Greek word eidolon than in the Latin word imago. He wants a visible image to fix his thought, a scarabee or a crux ansata, or the modern symbols which are to our own time what these were to the ancient Egyptians. He wants a vicegerent of the Almighty to take his dying hand and bid him godspeed on his last journey. Who but such an immediate representative of the Divinity ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... superintendent of the brotherhood or society be human and magnetic, the church and the boy will sing its praises. If the scoutmaster is an out-of-door man and has a point of contact with the boy, the Boy Scouts will be the solution of all our difficulties. Here lies the crux of the whole matter. If boys are added to the church through any organization, it is not because of the method, but because of the worker of the method. The method counts because it is part of ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander

... phases tore his mind and kept him awake for hours, for the crux of the whole matter was that he was afraid that Ruth Macdonald was going to marry Lieutenant Wainwright, and he knew that it was not only for her sake, but for his also that he did not want this—that it was agony even ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill

... of amazing facility, a pianist who invariably preferred as his audience his own two ears. Arthur would have been a great dramatist or a great poet, if . . . If what? If what? Ah, that had been the crux of it all, of her doubt, of her hesitance. If he had fought for prizes coveted by mankind, if he had thrown aside his dreams and gone into the turmoil, if he had taken up a man's burden and carried it to success. Elsa, daughter ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath

... delicata pascuis 10 In urbem adulta lacte portat ubera: Meisque pinguis agnus ex ovilibus Gravem domum remittit aere dexteram: Tenerque, matre mugiente, vaccula Deum profundit ante templa sanguinem. 15 Proin', viator, hunc Deum vereberis, Manumque sorsum habebis hoc tibi expedit. Parata namque crux, sine arte mentula. Velim pol, inquis: at pol ecce, villicus Venit: valente cui revulsa brachio 20 Fit ista mentula ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... parody called genius, the spirit of the Englishman in repose. 'This spirit is the idle embodiment of all of us; by his weakness we shall fail, and by his enormous sanities we shall endure.' This is the crux of the matter which Chesterton brings out, that the weaknesses of Thackeray are his strength. He loved liberty, not because it meant restraint from law, but because he 'was a novelist'; he was open to all the influences ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... class of 1828 writes: "I well remember that my invitation to attend the meeting of the Med. Fac. Soc. was written in barbarous Latin, commencing 'Domine Crux,' and I think I passed so good an examination that I was made Professor longis extremitatibus, or Professor with long shanks. It was a society for purposes of mere fun and burlesque, meeting secretly, and always ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... means of equal efficiency. The crux of the whole matter will be in the statutes. I'll force on ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker

... Sobieski), Vulpecula et Anser (Fox and Goose), Cerberus, Camelopardus (Giraffe), and Monoceros (Unicorn); the last two were originally due to Jacobus Bartschius. In 1679 Augustine Royer introduced the most interesting of the constellations of the southern hemisphere, the Crux australis or Southern Cross. He also suggested Nubes major, Nubes minor, and Lilium, and re-named Canes venatici the river Jordan, and Vulpecula et Anser the river Tigris, but these innovations met with no approval. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... drawback as regards the bank: it is some 850 yards from the enemy's position and may be expected to be under an effective rifle fire. It is no doubt a good mark for the enemy, and, now we come to the crux of the whole matter; his artillery and infantry fire might not do us much damage so long as we remain behind the bank, but they might make it very unpleasant for us directly we try to leave this cover ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... Now, the whole crux and puzzle of mythology is, "Why, having attained (in whatever way) to a belief in an undying guardian, 'Master of Life,' did mankind set to work to evolve a chronique scandaleuse about HIM? And why is that chronique the elaborately absurd set of legends which we ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... having to travel alone at such a time, but in your place I would take any risk to be with my husband, if I loved him deeply. That is the crux of the matter. Later on, conditions may become still more difficult. Cable when you are leaving, and ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... pray you, and hear me! What I shall say is, in a manner, treason against our divinity, our lord Emperor, yet before now truth hath been found in treason. The crux of the whole matter lieth in the fact that we, Romans, lords paramount of Britain, have divided ourselves into two sects—religious, if you will; but when was not religion used for State purposes, or State purposes for religion? You cannot ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... full of chemicals and of criminal relics which had a way of wandering into unlikely positions, and of turning up in the butter-dish or in even less desirable places. But his papers were my great crux. He had a horror of destroying documents, especially those which were connected with his past cases, and yet it was only once in every year or two that he would muster energy to docket and arrange them; for, as I have mentioned somewhere in these ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... crepitumque plagarum audiebatur, nisi haec, Civis Romanus sum. Hac se commemoratione civitatis omnia verbera {15} depulsurum, cruciatum a corpore deiecturum arbitrabatur. Is non modo hoc non perfecit ut virgarum vim deprecaretur, sed cum imploraret saepius usurparetque nomen civitatis, crux, crux, inquam, ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... The crux of what followed was down in the engine-room. Two gongs, the signal to stop, were quickly followed by three, the signal to reverse. There was an ominous pause, then a crash, shaking us all off our feet. The engines labored. The vessel was shaken in every fiber. Our ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.

... either sweet-sounding or not sweet-sounding? Sound is a something which has no taste, and sweetness is a something which makes no noise. Now the very gist and crux of this whole question of Language consists in confounding or not confounding a case like this with mere Onomatopoieia, or the direct and simple imitation of one sound by another. All that Professor Mueller says against the Origin ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... position, overruling the guardianship of Canopus (in Argo), south-west of the same point. Lower still, toward the south, Achernar seemed to reserve his gracious prestige, whilst, across the invisible Pole, the beneficent constellations of Crux and Centaurus exhibited the very paralysis of hopelessness. Worst of all, Jupiter and Mars both held aloof, whilst ascendant Saturn mourned in the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... state of heightened suggestion in which the subject adopted an uncritical attitude, allowing him to accept suggestions and to take appropriate action. This is excellent as far as it goes, but it does not explain how suggestion works. This is the crux of the hypnotic dilemma and the answer is far from solved. Hypnotists are much like those who use electricity every day of their lives, but have no idea of the nature of electricity. It is enough for them to know it has been harnessed for ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers

... on the crux of them—their most critical point of all. "There!" said she. "Did you hear that? I knew we should ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... "you have not allowed me to come to the crux of my story. Which is: that you and I have one great object in common—to dispose of this Terry Hollis, for I take it for granted that if you were to get rid of him the people who criticize now would do nothing but cheer ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... up the pros and cons, getting on for one, as it was, it was high time to be retiring for the night. The crux was it was a bit risky to bring him home as eventualities might possibly ensue (somebody having a temper of her own sometimes) and spoil the hash altogether as on the night he misguidedly brought home ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... garden of a house named "The Folly" is a vaulted room the origin of which has never been satisfactorily explained. It is possibly part of the Ancient Hospital of St. Leonard. The open space at the higher end of the town is called "The Crouch" a name that is a corruption of "The Crux." The fine old Hardwicke House in Broad Street is dated 1603. At one time it was a lodging-house, but its fortunes have lately risen. Seaford House was once the temporary residence ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... Mr. Sanderson. That third party is the crux of the situation. I strongly suspect him of blackmail. If you would but name him, and allow me to lure him to these rooms, I possess a little private prison of my own into which I could thrust him, and I venture to say that before he had passed a ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... degenerated into brawl and debauch: what had been scrapes for the boy became scandals for the man; and he gathered a more and more unsavoury reputation until its like was not to be found outside a penitentiary. The crux of his career in his own country was reached during a midnight quarrel in Chicago when he shot a negro gambler. After that, the negro having recovered and the matter being somehow arranged so that the prosecution was dropped, Harman's wife left him, and the papers recorded ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... Local Education Authority alone has the right to prosecute, but——" He did not state his antithesis. They had come to the crux which Crashaw had wished to avoid. He had no influence with the committee of the L.E.A., and Challis's recommendation would have much weight. Crashaw intended that Victor Stott should attend school, but he had bungled his preliminaries; he had rested on his own authority, ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford

... consider the middle courses of dinner in which lies the crux of the difficulty to the aspirant who wishes to contrive such without recourse to the flesh-pots. This is where, too, we must find the answer to those half-curious wholly sceptical folks who ask us, "Whatever do you ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill

... the equator behind, I saw the Southern Cross for the first time on the voyage, its glittering crux, with the alpha and beta Centaur stars, signaling to me that I was beyond the dispensation of the cold and constant north star, and in the realm of ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... digamma, that crux of critics, that quicksand upon which even the acumen of Bentley was shipwrecked, seems to prove beyond a doubt, that the pronunciation of the Greek language had undergone a considerable change. Now it is certainly difficult ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... shelter can this refined, intelligent family find to-day for $400? Certainly nothing with modern conveniences. The lack of these is made up by women's work—hard, rough work. And that is the crux of the servant problem to-day. It is the reason why more families do not go into the country to live. The work required in an old house to bring living up to modern standards is too appalling to be ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards

... translated. In our translation, H.-So.'s glossary has been quite closely followed. This agrees substantially with B.'s translation (P. and B. XII. 87). R. translates: Thou needst not take care longer as to the consumption of my dead body. 'Lic' is also a crux here, as it may mean living ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin

... the crux. The Prince was terrified lest I should write to The Times and shatter his golden dreams of wealthy tourists. The whole Montenegrin Government trembled before the possibility of such a catastrophe. I promised cheerfully not to write to any paper at ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith

... was the crux of the whole matter! To look at him was to feel that whatever his faults they were not despicable ones. He was alive, so very much alive, and the look of him was that which an honest man should have. Had he proved his innocence and ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine

... the rock of Peter. There it stands at its zenith, in the permanent blaze of a perennial mid-day; there it sets the time for the Catholic world amid the ever-changing and conflicting problems of human history. Stat Crux dum volvitur orbis. ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... hint, that when facts continue undigested, it is because the sensations are as violent as hysterical females to block them from the understanding. His Robin Goodfellow instinct tried to be serviceable at a crux of his meditations, where Edith Averst's consumptive brothers waved faded hands at her chances of inheriting largely. Superb for the chances: but what of her offspring? And the other was a girl such as the lusty ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... heard that morning. He analysed that evidence with the acumen of the cute old lawyer that everybody knew him to be, and at last got to what the sharper intellects amongst his hearers felt, with him, to be the crux of the situation—was there jealousy of an appreciable nature between Wallingford and Wellesley in respect of Mrs. Saumarez? If there was—and he brushed aside, rather cavalierly, Wellesley's denial that it existed at the time ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... And I suppose that is the crux. But the ballot has never been seriously brought before any House in which I have sat. I hate it with so keen a private hatred, that I doubt whether I ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... The main crux of this passage is "fit quantity of | | syllables." Quantity in such a context suggests syllabic | | length; and one recalls the sonnet to Lawes— | | | | not to scan | | With Midas' ears, committing short and long. | | | | But, on the other hand, Mr. Robert ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... really learned little that was conclusive from Guy's somewhat incoherent account, he felt, in common with his young operative, that the crux of the matter lay here, to his hand, that from the lips of this old ex-convict would fall the magic word which would open to him the inner door of this mystery of mysteries—which would prove, as the golden key ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... has long been the great crux of botanical phylogeny, and until quite recently no light had been thrown upon the difficulty. The Angiosperms are the Flowering Plants, par excellence, and form, beyond comparison, the dominant sub-kingdom in ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... continued in a long chain or series." One may find a good deal of mystical writing on the nature and activity of this faculty, especially in German literature. The explanation of this element of organic unity in dreams is, it may be safely said, the crux in the science of dreams. That the laws of psychology help us to understand the sequences of dream-images, we have seen. What we have now to ask is whether these laws throw any light on the orderly grouping of the elements so ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... secret of longevity was the crux of all this turmoil—the lever by which Tarrano was raising himself. Scores of facts amid the tumultuous news of these hours showed us that. For months, throughout Venus, Tarrano had spread the insidious propaganda that he alone had the secret of immortality—that when he was made ruler, he ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... in passionate excitement). I beg you, ask me not! You did not ponder what the letter said. That he did me a wrong—and that's the crux— I cannot tell him that. And if you force me To give him answer in my present mood, By God, it's this ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... he droned emphatically. "That's not original with friend Mundson, of course; yet it is a theory that has not received sufficient investigation." He indicated another marked paragraph. "Read this thoughtfully, John. It's the crux of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... was always the crux of the night's ramble, though, before starting, her apprehensions of danger were not vivid enough to lead her to take a companion. Slipping along here covertly as Time, Bathsheba fancied she could hear footsteps entering ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... a short silence. Both men felt that the crux of the interview was at hand; and each, in his way, ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... in an irrelevant reverie. As he stood at the door of his editorial shop on Ludgate Hill and meditated on the non-existence of God, he silently absorbed a good deal of varied knowledge about the existence of men. He had come to know types by instinct and dilemmas with a glance; he saw the crux of the situation in the road, and what he saw ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... developed a habit of appearing when the decks were being scrubbed in the mornings, when he revelled in having the hose played upon him and in having his scaly back well scrubbed with a hard broom. He devoured a tame rabbit and two cats, but the crux came when he taught himself a trick of waiting until some unsuspecting person had his back turned, of making a sudden rush at his victim and capsizing him with a well-placed whisk of his horny tail, and then running in with a good-humoured ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling

... days, was working hard to discover the real crux in Buckner's affairs. His secret-service men supplied him with a detailed record of the man's history, and reported frequent interviews between him and Levy or Levy's agents. Gorham had even seen the lawyer himself, but gained only a deeper conviction that it was a case of blackmail for ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... Nelson attacked the little inefficient batteries of Santa Crux, in Teneriffe, with eight vessels carrying four hundred guns. But notwithstanding his great superiority in numbers, skill, and bravery, he was repelled with the loss of two hundred and fifty men, while the garrison received little or no damage. A single ball from the land battery, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... in pagan lands long before Christianity, as a representation of the male member, and also at the same time of the 'tree' on which the god (Attis or Adonis or Krishna or whoever it might be) was crucified; and the same symbol combined with the oval (or yoni) formed THE Crux Ansata {Ankh} of the old Egyptian ritual—a figure which is to-day sold in Cairo as a potent charm, and confessedly indicates the conjunction of the two sexes in one design. (2) MacLennan in The Fortnightly Review (Oct. 1869) quotes with approval the ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... be as frank in your expressions of regard for him as he is in his of regard for you. That is the crux of the whole matter. Be frank, be courageous! Let a man look freely into your heart, and thus encouraged he will open his to you. Then you will both have an opportunity to judge each other with reference to a life-long union. It is the only way; and remember what rests on you in this matter. The ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... curious collection of whale-oil chandeliers. On the left of the wall, parallel with the front, is the "Gentlemen's Entrance:" on the right is the "Ladies' Entrance." Between these doors are the inscriptions: "Laus Deo," "Crux mihianchora," "Magna veritas, et prevalebit." The auditorium occupies all the rest of the first story, but one could wish that the wall which divided it from the vestibule need not have spoiled one of the beautiful windows at either ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... the sixth, seventh, and eighth games are the crux of every close set. These games may mean 4-2 or 3-all, 5-2 or 4-3, the most vital advantage in the match, or 5-3 or 4-all, a matter of extreme moment to a tiring player. If ahead, you should strive to hold and increase your lead. If behind, your one hope of victory rests in cutting down the advantage ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D

... between individuals and contact between masses. The association between two isolated individual members of two races may be wholly different from contact between masses of the same race groups. The factor of numbers embraces, indeed, the very crux of the problems arising from contact between ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... "is the crux of the whole matter. It is the one great and settled goal towards which we who have understood have schemed and fought our way. With the British Navy destroyed, the Monroe Doctrine is not worth a sheet ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... emotions were frozen in her stare of suspense at the breach. Her heart seemed straining with the effort of the living, who heard nothing, thought nothing, in the crux of their effort. War's own mesmerism had made her forget Feller and everything except the gamble, the turn of the card, while the gray figures kept stumbling on over their fallen. Then her heart leaped, a cry in a gust of short breaths broke from her lips as the Browns ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... paused impressively. Carnes and Dr. Bird set forward in their chairs, for it was evident that the crux of the story was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... said Mr. Cunningham positively, "it was Lux upon Lux. And Pius IX his predecessor's motto was Crux upon Crux—that is, Cross upon Cross—to show the difference ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... He digresses here, and does not return to the subject till the 31st stanza, "What did I say?—that a small bird sings". The path gray heads abhor: this verse and the following stanza are, with most readers, the CRUX of the poem; "gray heads" must be understood with some restriction: many gray heads, not all, abhor —gray heads who went along through their flowery youth as if it had no limit, and without insuring, in Love's true season, the happiness ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... music. About 1685, Archangelo Corelli published his first collection of pieces for the violin, and in these are found what are practically about the first examples of a well-developed lyric melody, of the kind we now mean when we speak of "bel canto"—the type of melody made the very crux of the art of Italian singing. This impassioned, sustained, and expressive melody took with wonderful rapidity and was almost immediately adopted into opera, the ideal of which in the beginning had been that of an artistic ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews

... present a very interesting and valuable investigation is going on, led by some of our woman physicians, showing the evil result on the second generation of these industrial conditions.... These facts are of national importance and it is because right there is the crux of the entire situation that we women are working for the ballot, for the sake of protecting the womanhood and motherhood of our 6,000,000 working women, I think half of them under ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... placed upon it. The words of the treaty, moreover, were too vague and uncertain to express accurately the intention of the signers. Whether Negroes whom the British carried away could any longer be considered American property, seemed to be the crux of the situation. Although no definite settlement could be reached by the two nations, authorities of international law[52] give the case to Great Britain. One rule which was recognized by the foremost nations of the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... Disclosing the crux of his plot, his voice took on a jubilant tone. "Mist' Rosen, please, suh, lissen to me whut Ise revealin' to you. Dat blue bar'l of yourn is gwine ride f'um yere plum' to Memphis, Tennessee, in ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... Crucifixion, and cannot well be reconciled with that of the Incarnation." But, upon referring to Du Cange, s. v. Trabeatio, our correspondent will find that Du Cange regards it as the year of the Incarnation—"Trabeatio autem, non a trabe, qua Crux intelligi posset, sed a trabea togae species, deducitur"—quoting, as his authority for this interpretation, a sermon of St. Fulgentius on St. Stephen, in which he says, "Heri enim Rex noster ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.15 • Various

... was the author of a verse translation of Virgil (8vo, 1718 and 2 Vols., 12mo, 1737). Dryden, to whom he sent a MS. copy from Paris, states that whilst working on his own version he consulted this whenever a crux appeared in the Latin text. Lauderdale also wrote A Memorial on the Estate of Scotland (about 1690), printed in Hooke's Correspondence (Roxburghe Club), and there wrongly ascribed to the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... selfish and inconsiderate. That is generally the crux in married life. Fay has had an overshadowed life so far, but I shall find my chief happiness in changing all that. It will be my object to guard her from the slightest touch of pain in future. The masculine ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... the difficult passages that he goes to greater length to note and discuss explanation previously propounded. Take for example what he says on the words 'al mut Laben', the superscription of Psalm ix, which are a crux interpretum. At the same time the reader will observe how ancient are certain interpretations of modern exegetes. Rashi begins by refuting those who allege that David wrote this Psalm on the death of ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... down beside Drake, my mind wrestling with the mystery, but every sense alert for movement from the black. Glibly enough I had passed over Dick's questioning as to the consciousness of the Metal People; now I faced it knowing it to be the very crux of these incredible phenomena; admitting, too, that despite all my special pleading, about that point swirled in my own mind the thickest mists of uncertainty. That their sense of order was immensely beyond a man's ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... after that, but the situation galled him. He was no hypocrite, but there was no need of wounding Natalie unnecessarily. And that, after all, was the crux of the whole situation. Natalie. It was not Natalie's fault that he had found the woman of his heart too late. He had no thought of blame for her. In decency, there was only one thing to do. He could not play the lover to her, but ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... crux from which there could be no escape, as one of the three chief councillors, Mahmoud's-Nephew, must speak ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... cannot be summed up in a sentence. It may be described as the presentment of a point of view: but what point of view? There lies the crux of the question, and numberless critics have wrangled over the solution of it. The truth is, that the only complete description of the point of view is to be found—in the book itself; it is too wide and variegated for any other habitation. Yet, if it would be vain to attempt an accurate and exhaustive ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... In our own temperament? Ah! that is the crux of the whole matter. It was in his temperament that he found the force and inexhaustible riches to carry the matter through—but have we got such power at our disposal? It is doubtful. It is hard to even dream that we have. And yet—consider ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... entirely erroneous assumption that a mortgaged farm meant loss of economic independence, whereas it often happens that it is a step toward it. The fact is that we know very little concerning the ownership of these mortgages, which is the crux of the question. It is known that many of the insurance, banking, and trust companies have invested largely in farm mortgages. This is another phase of concentration which the critics of the theory ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... father's. My father laid him under obligations—my father lent him money when they were both young men. I am like one of the family at St. Crux; my room is always kept ready for me. Not that there's any family at the admiral's except his nephew, George Bartram. George is my cousin; I'm as intimate with George as my father was with the admiral; and I've been sharper than my father, for I haven't lent my friend any money. Lecount ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... opportunity—another element of luck—it follows logically that man is the sport of the gods. Hardy is unable, like other determinists, to escape the dilemma of free-will versus predestination, and that other crux, the imputation of personality to the workings of so-called natural laws. Indeed curiously, in his gigantic poem-cycle, "the Dynasts," the culmination of his life-work, he seems to hint at a plan of the ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... of the sound of it. 3. Guy Steele in his persona as 'The Great Quux', which is somewhat infamous for light verse and for the 'Crunchly' cartoons. 4. In some circles, quux is used as a punning opposite of 'crux'. "Ah, that's the quux of the matter!" implies that the point is *not* crucial (compare {tip of the ice-cube}). 5. quuxy: adj. Of ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10

... exercise of initiative is provided, not when young people are following some other person's plan and answering some other person's questions, but when they are obliged to conceive their own plans and their own questions. Here is the crux of the whole matter. Some other method, therefore, is desirable, and it is not difficult to find. After the making of the tile has been proposed, the teacher might simply ask, "How will you plan this piece of work?" leaving ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry



Words linked to "Crux" :   crux of the matter, Beta Crucis, Milky Way, alpha and omega, Milky Way System, Southern Cross, Crux Australis, point, constellation, Milky Way Galaxy, Alpha Crucis



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