"Hinge on" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... involved, in building up the sentiments of a fiction on such a foundation of animal instinct. I find, on recollection, however, that Miss Lee, in one of her Canterbury Tales, has made the love of her plot hinge on a very similar incident. Surely she must have been under the influence of some of the German monstrosities that were so much in vogue, about the time she wrote, for even Juvenal would scarcely have imagined anything worse, as the subject ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... he cared more about a screw-hole in the hinge on his probation work than all their Midsummer Eve outings, and if he only worked away now, it would be finished by the end ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... irregular, but all, with hardly an exception, Irish. His and Tyrconnell's recent supplies had sufficed to renew the clothing and equipment of the greater part of the number, but the whole contents of the army chest, the golden hinge on which war moves, was estimated in the beginning of May to afford to each soldier only "a penny a day for three weeks." He had under him some of the best officers that France could spare, or Ireland produce, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... portion of the real article. It would supply no basis on which a system of agrarian reform could be founded, as it would be impossible to leave the determination of a local question, which is a unit in its dangers and its difficulties, to four different Legislatures; above all, the hinge on which the question turns—the sufficiency of the security for the British taxpayer—could not be afforded by provincial resources. Indeed, no alternative for the Land Bill of 1886 has been suggested which does not err in one of the following points: either it pledges English credit ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... Colliery disaster was the hinge on which the door of my fate was hung. I wrote an unspeakably bad novel which had that disaster for its central incident, and it was published from Saturday to Saturday in the Morning News, to the great detriment of that journal; and so long as the story ran, angry ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... may be traced by a chain of reasoning—slight, yet conclusive—to this dearly prized luxury. The hackneyed saying that time is money, or money's worth, has more truth in it than most of the fallacies which are supposed to regulate our conduct. The most important events of our lives often hinge on moments. A moment to stifle passion, to summon reflection, to plunge into the past and bring up a buried memory, to consider results, is often of the utmost consequence, and this valued moment the pinch of snuff insures, when, without it, delay would be simply embarrassment. The pinch ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... striking particularities of the Marquesas. It rests upon no authority; it is in no sense, like "Rahero," a native story; but a patchwork of details of manners and the impressions of a traveller. It may seem strange, when the scene is laid upon these profligate islands, to make the story hinge on love. But love is not less known in the Marquesas than elsewhere; nor is there any cause of suicide ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that hurried ceremony, Donald strolled about the little yard, looking over the neglected garden and marking for future attention various matters such as a broken hinge on the gate, some palings off the fence and the crying necessity for paint on the little white house, for he was striving mightily to shut out all thought of his past life and concentrate on matters that had to do with the future. Presently he ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... whatever be the legislation: legislation for them is secondary, because they are assured in their own strength. But four millions of black men, just freed, and as yet unprovided with any of these tools,—the fate of the nation may hinge on a single ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... as large as sugar hogsheads, we could not be so furnished, and we must either have movable eyes or see only in one direction. Accordingly, the Contriver of the eye has hung it with a hinge. Now there are various kinds of hinges, moving in one direction, and the Maker of the eye might have made a hinge on which the eye would move up and down, or he might have given us a hinge that would bend right and left, in which case we should have been able merely to squint a little in two directions. But to enable one to see in every direction, there is only one kind of hinge that would answer the purpose—the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... one breach of moral obligation to a second, to a third, and to all, the transition is easy, necessary and rapid. From negligence of the duties we owe to God, the passage is short to contempt for those we owe to men. The Sabbath, in the judgment of reason and of revelation, is the great hinge on which all these duties are turned. When the ordinances of this holy day are forsaken and forgotten, the whole system of moral obligation must of course be also forgotten; the great, substantial and permanent good, of which religion is the only source, is effectually destroyed; the political ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 3: New-England Sunday - Gleanings Chiefly From Old Newspapers Of Boston And Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... and police. They desire to hear the platform. It is the hinge on which liberty hangs. It is the ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern |
