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Starting point   /stˈɑrtɪŋ pɔɪnt/   Listen
Starting point

noun
1.
Earliest limiting point.  Synonym: terminus a quo.






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"Starting point" Quotes from Famous Books



... IN FLYING Certain Conditions in Flying. Heat in Air. Motion When in Flight. Changing Atmosphere. "Ascending Currents." "Aspirate Currents." Outstretched Wings. The Starting Point. The Vital Part of the Machine. Studying the Action of the Machine. Elevating the Machine. How to Practice. The First Stage. Patience the Most Difficult Thing. The Second Stage. The Third Stage. Observations While in Flight. Flying in a Wind. First Trials in a Quiet Atmosphere. Making ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***

... there is no reason why we should postpone its application till we find ourselves in another world, and the best place and time to begin are Here and Now. The starting point is not in time or locality, but in the mode of Thought; and if we realize that this Point of Origination is Spirit's power to produce something out of nothing, and that it does this in accordance with the natural order of substance of the particular world in which it is working, then ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward

... home to the mind, without any comfortable illusive softenings of the stark reality, of what life really implies in its trenchant outlines. To do this with the more complete efficacy, he goes back to Montaigne and uses the scepticism of Montaigne as his starting point. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... purpose to develop an adequate idea of art, it might seem as if a definition were rather our goal than our starting point; yet we must identify the field of our investigations and mark it off from other regions; and this we can do only by means of a preliminary definition, which the rest of our study may ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... invoke "the power of the imagination" is merely to substitute a word where an explanation is needed. Fortunately, we do not need to penetrate into the inmost part of this mystery. It is enough for us to make sure of the facts, to prove that they have a representation as the starting point, and to show that the representation by itself is not enough. What more then is needed? Let us note first of all that these occurrences are rare. It is not within the power of everybody to acquire stigmata or to become cured of a paralysis pronounced incurable. This happens only ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... in the Lower Temple, with circulating library, piano and all the cheerful furnishings of a parlor in the home. To this bright room comes many a girl from her dreary boarding house to spend the evening in reading and social chat. It has been the cheery starting point in many a girl's life to ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... if, I say, I would seek the man possessing those rigid qualities of a moral nature which are a sure protection against doing aught that may degrade the councils of a nation, I would make this sandy cape my starting point, and draw from the upward growth of that stern energy to be found among those flourishing, energetic, and intelligent communities embraced within that circle which terminates at Cape Ann, and between the circling arms of which two capes heaves Boston Bay. But ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... at innovation on the point. One peculiarity of the American tongues is their singular power of extending the primitive signification of words by the addition of new syllables to the original term. Taking the verb for his starting point, the Indian is enabled, by prefixing, inserting, and adding syllables, to form at last some word which will not only express the action in question, but include at once, subject, object, time, place, and modifying ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... that we do not get far with this evidence alone. If it proves that the true starting point is to be found in folklore, it also proves that folklore alone is not capable of working through the problem. Anthropology must aid here, and I will suggest the lines on which it appears ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... break at a starting shot, head to the big tree which made an excellent landmark in the flat valley, rounding its patch of shade before returning to the starting point. Drew brought Shiloh, still prancing and playing with his bit, up beside Oro. The slim boy on the golden horse shot the Kentuckian a shoulder-side look and grinned, raising his quirt in salute as Drew nodded and ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... beginning can be shown, very desirable property may remain a long time on the market. If we canvass real estate thoroughly, we shall find that property sells first, and at the best prices, which has ever so humble a cottage on it, a starting point in which one may temporarily reside, and lay out his plans of future operations; for the construction of a country place is of all things one with which to make haste slowly. With those actively engaged in business, ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward

... reputed to have been organized by Karl Marx for the propaganda of international socialism. As a matter of fact, its starting point was the practical effort of British trade union leaders to organize the workingmen of the Continent and to prevent the importation of Continental strike-breakers. That Karl Marx wrote its Inaugural Address was merely incidental. It chanced that what he wrote was acceptable to the British unionists ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman

... forming an arch, the centre one of which is the keystone and those at the impost or starting point of the curve are ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... without loss of step or distance, both ran, in a direct line like arrows. But this was only an habitual variation of the dance,—and, ever in measure, quickly, as if they were gliding, they returned to their starting point. ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti

... held the ground they had won. At the height of the battle the Second Royal Sussex rushed into the fray in support of their hard-pressed comrades, but all to no purpose, for these as the others were forced back to the rear of their starting point with but a fraction of their forces remaining to report the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... Coleridge's letters available on a slim biographical thread and thus produce a work in which the poet would have been made to tell his own life. His beginning with the five Biographical Letters to Thomas Poole is a proof of this. He took these as his starting point; and, as far as he went, his "Life of Coleridge" thus constructed is the most reliable of all the early ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... Homewood is the natural starting point for Ellis Peak (8745 feet) as the trail practically leaves the Lake high-road at that point, and strikes directly upon the mountain slope. Hundreds make the trip on foot and it is by no means an arduous task, ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... enjoyed that first day's ride. Wampus did not drive fast, for there were places where he couldn't; yet by one o'clock they had reached Laguna, sixty miles from their starting point. There was an excellent railway hotel here, so they decided to spend the rest of the day and the night at Laguna and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne

... of the Flats consisted in the fact that it was the starting point of three telegraph lines to remote trading posts up North. Not many messages came therefrom, but the few that did come generally amounted to something worth while. Days and even weeks would pass without a single one being clicked to the Flats. Carey was debarred from talking over ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... to himself, the author ought to remark, that he had reasoned his way up to this starting point, before even the name of La Place had reached his ears. He makes the remark in order to disclaim any desire to appropriate that which belongs to another; as he may innocently speak of things hereafter, the idea of which ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... the real starting point, and the first "trick" in the journey was the crossing of Mohave River. The river was pretty sure to be deep—not with water but with sand. Whoever saw water in the channel, or "wash," of the Mohave? Perhaps the oldest settler may have seen it; at any rate he will so claim, for ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

... wrong, praise and blame, order and confusion, beauty and ugliness, and the like. However, this is not the place to deduce these misconceptions from the nature of the human mind: it will be sufficient here, if I assume as a starting point, what ought to be universally admitted, namely, that all men are born ignorant of the causes of things, that all have the desire to seek for what is useful to them, and that they are conscious of such desire. ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza

... observed: The witness is told, "Begin at this or that point.'' This deliverance is generally followed by a pause during which he obviously reviews and sets aside the part of his prepared speech dealing with the events preliminary to the required points. If, however, the setting of a starting point does not work and the witness says he must begin at the earlier stage, let him do so. Otherwise he tries so hard to begin according to request that, unable to go his own ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... ten years before), La Systeme de la nature was translated and reprinted frequently. The Samuel Wilkinson translation we have chosen to reprint was the most often reprinted or pirated version in English. A useful starting point for Holbach's work is Jerome Vercruysse, Bibliographie descriptive des ecrits du baron d'Holbach (Paris, 1971). The difficult subject of the essentially clandestine evolution of biblical criticism as an anti-Christian ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... bases has been indicated. The conviction accordingly forces itself upon us that, if we want to attack the problem of building up any of these important alkaloids artificially, we must turn to these bases as our starting point. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various

... patrimony, and it is especially on this question that different schools of Socialists are opposed to one another, some desiring authoritarian Communism, and others, like ourselves, declaring unreservedly in favour of anarchist Communism. In order to judge between these two, let us return once again to our starting point, the ...
— The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution - An Address Delivered in Paris • Pierre Kropotkin

... consisted of A.C. Gregory, F.T. Gregory, and H.C. Gregory, provided with four horses and seven weeks' provisions, the equipment being reduced to the least possible weight. The starting point was Mr. T.N. Yule's station, in the Toodyay district, sixty ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... intention, to paddle from Gibraltar to Ceuta, which is almost on a straight line across; but on account of the currents, that course was changed and Tarifa, the lowest land in Europe, was selected as the starting point, from which place he was confident he would be able to strike the African coast somewhere. Two gentlemen of Gibraltar agreed to accompany him and the Spanish felucca, San Augustine, was chartered for their accommodation, manned by a captain ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... trifle past seven o'clock Saturday morning when Bob Trotter drove up to Mr. Hooks's to take in Clara, she being the picnicker nearest his starting point. He did not know that she was a put off-er. She was just trimming a hat for the ride when Bob's wagon was announced. She hadn't begun her breakfast, though all the rest of the family had finished the meal, while the lunch which should have been basketed the previous night was ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... tickets, and another full fare ticket will be required for each additional passenger over 15. If chartered "per diem" cars are given up en route, chartering party must arrange for return to original starting point free, or pay amount of freight necessary for return thereto. Diagrams showing interior of these cars can be had of ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax

... were getting off from the starting line, in rotation of numbers and about two minutes apart. The course was ten miles (or thereabout) straightaway to the stake-boat, set far out in the lake—quite out of sight from the decks of the boats about the starting point—and turning that, to beat back. The wind was free, but not too strong. The out-and-return course would prove the boats themselves and ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe

... After a severe cannonade, lasting between two and three hours, they were repulsed; and the "Hermes," running aground, was set on fire by her captain to prevent her falling into the hands of the enemy. Mobile was thus preserved from becoming the starting point of the expedition, as suggested by Cochrane; and that this object underlay the attempt may be inferred from the finding of the Court Martial upon Captain Percy of the "Hermes," which decided that the attack was perfectly justified by the circumstances ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... lines of the property operated with the distances of the wells properly measured therefrom and checked from the section and quarter section lines, as will be necessary for an accurate survey. The map shall show all the engineer's notations of angles, distances, starting point, or corner stones, together with the numbers given the respective wells, giving a legend as to the manner in which various abandoned or producing wells, are designated. The original map shall be retained by the owner or his agent, and one copy filed with the industrial ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous

... point, there can be no room for chance or disorder. But it is possible to raise the question whether this universe of simplest matter and definitely operating energy, which forms our hypothetical starting point, may not itself be a product of evolution from a universe of such matter, in which the manifestations of energy were not definite—in which, for example, our laws of motion held good for some units and not for others, or for the same units at one time and not at another—and ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley

... in salubrious air. It does not take root on barricades, we know that now! It is immediately trodden under the foot of the conqueror, whoever he may be. Let us desire to establish it in our customs, let us be eager to consecrate it in our ideas. Let us give it for a starting point, patriotic charity, love! It is the part of a madman to think that one issues from a battle with respect for human rights. All civil war has brought forth and will bring ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... had contributed something very worthwhile. He would take something one had said and develop it till it shone and glowed, not from its own worth but from what he had made of it. Almost anything could thus become a starting point for a train of his best thought. And the style disliked by some in his writings was so completely the man himself that it was the same in conversation as in his books. He would approach a topic from every side throwing light ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... her story, and the riding and shooting and roping she had done that day to appease the clamorous, professional appetite of Robert Grant Burns, and would sit and stare, and think and think. Always her thoughts traveled in a wide circle and came back finally to the starting point: to free her father, and to give him back his home, she must have money. To have money, she must earn it; she must work for it. So then she would give a great sigh of relaxed nervous tension and ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower

... didn't find them," Neale said mildly. "Just the same, I see nothing else to do but to make Mrs. Kranz's store the starting point of the search. The whole neighborhood there should be searched. Start running circles around that corner of ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill

... tyranny, or rigid decorum, of archbishop Whitgift, and seizure made in 1586 of the copies surreptitiously printed. This long and singular poem is a kind of metrical chronicle, containing the remarkable events of English history from the flood,—the starting point of all chroniclers,—to the reign of queen Elizabeth. It is written in the common ballad measure, and in a style often creeping and prosaic, sometimes quaint and affected; but passages of beautiful simplicity and strokes of genuine pathos frequently ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... prior was his friend. But, with or without Juan Perez, Columbus as a seafaring man would naturally have been in Palos. It lies right in the middle of the coast, which has always been open to attack from Africa and has been the starting point for attack on Africa. It is in the way of trade for the same reason that it is in the way of war. What are now fishing villages were brisk little trading towns in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Palos ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... or depressing about the starting point, at the Motor Parkway. Before the busy row of repair pits throbbed and panted some of the cars, surrounded by their force of workers; in other camps the men stood, watch in hand, timing the machines already out. Reporters ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... of physical needs and of primary instinct, Condillac, Rousseau, Helvetius, and later, Condorcet, Volney, Sieyes, Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy. In vain do the latter assert that they are the followers of Bacon and reject (the theory of) innate ideas; with another starting point than the Cartesians they pursue the same path, and, as with the Cartesians, after borrowing a little, they leave experience behind them. In this vast moral and social world, they only remove the superficial bark from the human tree ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... commanded and Tom, although he thought boat racing a much overrated sport and resented its being preferred to baseball, felt a distinct thrill as they passed out upon the river bank and up to the starting point. Only the cold unseasonable wind which swept down the course, riffling the water and chilling every one to the bone, marred ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis

... walk up the Strand will bring you to the starting point, Charing Cross Embankment Station, where you can take the train again; but if you are fit and between the ages of forty-one and fifty, you can continue the walk till you reach the nearest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various

... part of four hale and hearty men still in the young prime are about to compete in the "double race." They come forward all rubbed with the glistening oil, and crouch at the starting point behind the red cord held by two attendants. The gymnasiarch stands watchfully by, swinging his cane to smite painfully whoever, in over eagerness, breaks away before the signal. All is ready; at his nod the rope falls. The four fly away together, pressing their elbows close ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... also points out,[Footnote: See p. 142.] Change cannot be the last word in our characterization of Reality. Pure Change is not only unthinkable—that perhaps Bergson would allow—but it is something which cannot be experienced. There must be points of reference—a starting point and an ending point at least. Pure Change, as is the way with "pure" anything, turns into its contradictory. Paradoxical though it may seem, it ends as static. It becomes the One and Indivisible. This, at least, was recognized by ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... remembered history for a few years back, even with the general memory of the man in the street, to anybody who had read the controversies about the war, Morocco brought not puzzle, but enlightenment. For had not Morocco been really the starting point of the Years of Crisis—those years intermittent in excitement, but constant in anxiety? Beaumaroy was to start tomorrow for Morocco—on the strength of the hieroglyphics! Perhaps he was to go on from Morocco to Libya; perhaps he ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony

... religious traditions, between the eighteenth and the fifteenth century before our era: then, six or eight hundred years later, there was a second emigration of Hindoo races, with traditions of architecture. With the Bible and the facts of geology as his starting point, he demonstrates the falsity of the Egyptian, Hindoo, Chinese, and Mexican chronologies. The six days of creation he takes as so many great epochs; the deluge he places at five ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... time, as these papers, representing a fortune, passed out of his keeping into those of a young maid but recently out of her teens. Sue watched him silently and placidly, just as she had done throughout this momentous interview, which was, of a truth, the starting point ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... south of the Zambesi, but to find it you must go at least a week's journey from the capital, to the remote corners that have not yet been converted into farms or mining settlements. North of the Zambesi, Rhodesia yet contains plenty of big game. The Victoria Falls station is a popular starting point for hunting expeditions headed northeast and northwest. In the northwest the game is yet quite in a state of nature. Unfortunately the Barotse natives of that region can procure from the Portuguese traders all the firearms and ammunition that they ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... position A3 by the time reading 4 is due. Although the remainder of the course of the float can be followed from B1 and A4, the instruments would be reading too much in the same line, so that B must move to B2 and then after reading 5 and 6 he should move to B3. As the float returns towards the starting point, A can remain in the position A4 while B goes to B4 and then moves back along the ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams

... thought on their part, they made their way to a mass of rocks and boulders, more extensive than any seen through the day. It was a hundred yards from their starting point. ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis

... a long time Casanova could find no way of re-entering the palace, except into the cell they had quitted. He was growing hopeless, when he saw a skylight, that he was sure was too far away from their starting point to belong to any of the cells. He made his way to it; it was barred with a fine iron grating that needed a file. And ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... decisive one. From the first the pressure of the armed force on Paris had acted as a powerful irritant; and in reducing the power of the King nothing seemed more important than to detach the army from its allegiance. The mutiny and desertion of July 1789 gave the assembly a good starting point; in the spring of 1790 the troops were placed under oath to obey the law and the King, and not to act against the citizens. This, however, was not decisive, for on the northeastern frontier, far from Paris, among the fortresses ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... force and contributing 43% of GDP, but most farms remain rain-fed and susceptible to drought. Chronic domestic instability, lagging reforms, adverse weather, and weak world agricultural prices - but, above all, the low starting point - ensure that much of the population will remain at or below the poverty line ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... far as the girl Haynes is concerned," Major Freeman replied. "But we have something to go upon; a starting point for a new line of inquiry. The person seen escaping must have lowered himself by a rope from that top window and a considerable length would be required. I have taken the liberty, Mr. Morriston, of setting a party of my men to search the grounds for the ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William

... sales. Straightway he began to build an edifice of figures, calculating what his literary labours would bring him in year by year, and feeling that he already had a fortune in his grasp. This was the starting point of those fantastic computations which he successively drew up for every book he wrote, computations that always played him false, but that he continued to make unweariedly to ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

... has the primary meaning of a conclusion. A decision (conclusion) is essential as a starting point for further procedure. Sound decision is the essential preliminary to wise planning ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College

... & T. Railroad, east on the 34th parallel to the Arkansas line, thence South to the Texas line, thence west with the Texas line (Red river) to the M. K. & T. Railroad, thence north with the M. K. & T. Railroad to Durant, the starting point; this Presbytery to be known as the Presbytery of Tuskaloosa, and to embrace the following churches now within its bounds: St. Paul, Oak Hill, Bethany, Forest, Beaver Dam, Hebron, Sandy Branch, New Hope, ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... of it. But to come back to my starting point. 'Tis time you broke these narrow bounds. India, now—what better sphere for a young man bent on making his way? Look at Clive, whom you admire—as stupid a boy as you could meet in a day's march. Why, I ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... his cowherdesses the starting point of the Sangita, a representation consisting of a mixture of song, music, and dancing. The Gitagovinda is concerned with Krishna, and the modern Yatras generally represent scenes from the ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta

... the Americans caused them to take too great chances, there might be one less plane return to its starting point that day; and the report would be brought in that the pilot had "met his fate in the ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach

... tradition: The earth had been formed but continued enveloped in total darkness, when a bear and a squirrel met on the shores of a lake; a dispute arose as to their respective powers, which they agreed to settle by running in opposite directions round the lake, and whichever arrived first at the starting point was to evince his superiority by some signal act of power. The squirrel beat, ran up a tree, and loudly demanded light which, instantly beaming forth, discovered a bird dispelling the gloom with its wings; the bird was afterwards recognised to be a ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... Arthur at a reasonable pace about half a mile over a narrow but level piece of turf that was on the top of the downs. Q.E.D. This done, these two patient creatures had to wind the struggling monster in, and go back again to the starting point. Before they had quite achieved this, two petticoats mounted the hill and moved toward them across the plateau. At sight of them David thrilled from head to foot, and Arthur cried, "Oh, bother!" an unjust ejaculation, since it was by his invitation they came. His alarms were verified. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... come back to the starting point, and in her eye there was the same fierce look which Helen had at ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... reasoning.[8] According to the third, all perceptions are relative, as the object is colored by the condition of the judge, and the influence of other things around it.[9] According to the fourth, it is impossible to escape from the regressus in infinitum by making a hypothesis the starting point, as the Dogmatics attempt to do.[10] And the fifth, or the circulus in probando, arises when that which should be the proof needs to be sustained by the thing ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick

... first step. You must be able to take up and lay down your mind as you do a tool, before it is of any use to consider the further progress of the Self in getting rid of its envelopes. Hence the mental body is taken as the starting point. Suppress thought. Quiet it. Still it. Now what is the ordinary condition of the mental body? As you look upon that body from a higher plane, you see constant changes of colours playing in it. You ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant

... circle of the barren acres which made up the island and returned to their starting point with scarcely a word having been spoken. Stubbs picked out a bit of log facing the ship and sat down. He waved his ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... ruined by smoke, time, and alterations in the place, for a great door lintel has been cut into the picture. Leonardo used the words of the Christ: "Verily, I say unto you that one of you shall betray me," as the starting point for this painting. It is after the utterance of these words that we see each of the disciples questioning horrified, frightened, anxious, listening, angered—all these emotions being expressed by the face or ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon

... him taken for granted," such as the teaching, religious or otherwise, received by him, and the general constitution of society as revealed to him by his own observation and the ways and conversation of his elders. These are the things which provide the child's life with its starting point, and these are determined by the facts of family tradition and parentage. It is, therefore, with a description of such family facts that the author of a memoir like the present ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... render effective assistance. It was for this purpose that he, with his comrades, went to Southern Illinois and Indiana with cavalry and infantry tactics and all the appliances for instructing others in military matters. The conspirators having failed at Chicago during the convention to make their starting point, having failed to make the great bonfire, which was to be the signal for thousands of others not quite so large, to burn up brightly from almost every hill-top in Ohio, Missouri, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois, it was necessary for their leaders to meet again, and determine upon a new ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer

... Ogilvy talks of building—which means, Shirley, that with Sequoia as his starting point, he is going to build a hundred and fifty miles north to connect with the main line of ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... phenomena and elements; and all inanimate objects, as well as plants, animals, and men, to belong to one great system of all-conscious and interrelated life, in which the degrees of relationship seem to be determined largely, if not wholly, by the degrees of resemblance. In this system of life the starting point is man, the most finished, yet the lowest organism; at least, the lowest because most dependent and least mysterious. In just so far as an organism, actual or imaginary, resembles his, is it believed to be related to him and correspondingly mortal; in just ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing

... very anxious, but as time went on and no untoward symptoms appeared, as David's sleep seemed to grow easier and more natural, Dick's thoughts wandered. They went to Elizabeth first, and then on and on from that starting point, through the years ahead. He saw the old house with Elizabeth waiting in it for his return; he saw both their lives united and flowing on together, with children, with small cares, with the routine of daily living, and behind it all the two ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... up,[38] and these forms seem simpler for dictation, are more readily grasped by the mind, and more fascinating to the imagination. They are the images of things both dear and familiar to him, and thus are particularly adapted to the beginning since the "starting point of the child's development is the heart and the emotions." It is easier for him to be an architect at first than an artist, though each will be comprehended in the other ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... industry. The system was not invented, but has developed and spread from small beginnings because the experience of centuries has proved it to be the best known system which is applicable to human industry. The starting point of all material prosperity has been the gradual development of government which suppresses violence and fraud, which enforces contracts, and which makes possible the rise of the institution of private property. The inception of the Industrial ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... sufficiently to enable Captain Stanley to move the vessel without risk to a safe anchorage inside, at a spot convenient for landing at all times to obtain the requisite observations for determining an astronomical position, and sufficiently central as a starting point for boat operations. This was effected on the 10th of November, when we anchored in 5 fathoms, mud, at three cables lengths distance from ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... densely-populated country that has had to recover from the ravages of war, the loss of financial support from the old Soviet Bloc, and the rigidities of a centrally-planned economy. Substantial progress was achieved from 1986 to 1996 in moving forward from an extremely low starting point - growth averaged around 9% per year from 1993 to 1997. The 1997 Asian financial crisis highlighted the problems in the Vietnamese economy, but rather than prompting reform, reaffirmed the government's belief that shifting to a market-oriented economy would lead to disaster. GDP growth ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... the theory of Pleasure. Aristotle now goes back to his starting point—the nature of the Good, and Happiness. He re-states his positions: That Happiness is an exercise or actuality [Greek: energeia], and not an acquirement or state (hexis), That it belongs to such exercises ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... while he called the normal heterosexual lover a dioning (from Dione). He regarded uranism, or homosexual love, as a congenital abnormality by which a female soul had become united with a male body—anima muliebris in corpore virili inclusa—and his theoretical speculations have formed the starting point for many similar speculations. His writings are remarkable in various respects, although, on account of the polemical warmth with which, as one pleading pro domo, he argued his cause, they had no marked influence on ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... of its unique position, the Pole Star is of very great service in the study of the constellations. It is a kind of centre around which to hang our celestial ideas—a starting point, so to speak, in ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... days of Quaternary man. With speech as the record, in tradition, of the experience of more than one generation; with writing as the record of that of any number of generations; the experience of the race, tested and corrected generation after generation, could be stored up and made the starting point for fresh progress. Having these perfectly natural factors of the evolutionary process in man before us, it seems unnecessary to go further ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... centre of seismal action is taken for the site of Sodom—hence the site of the destruction of Sodom and the starting point of earthquake are the same. The record of the destruction is, therefore, the record of some dreadful convulsion capable of stopping the Jordan, so as to form a lake there; and the only adequate cause in nature assigned by geologists for such a depression, is earthquake ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... own et non de l'aultruy, as Montaigne says. Don't think I mean to go through everything of yours bit by bit, down to the present moment. I only wish to mention the starting point, which is the important thing, because it shows that a man is born ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various

... outside Siena is a chef-d'oeuvre of Andrea Delia Robbia. From Asciano I visited Monte San Savino, Lucignano and Foiano and took photographs of some fine, unrecognized works of Andrea Delia Robbia. Another starting point was Montepulciano for a long drive to Radicofani, a weird Etruscan site, whose churches contained half a dozen unphotographed Delia Robbias, then to S. Fiora, whose monuments have a greater reputation than they deserve, to S. Antimo, a fine Cistercian ruin, ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various

... his horse, it was by this time pretty well worn out, and Michael intended to make it perform this stage only, and then to exchange it for a fresh one at Kolyvan. Kolyvan would be like a fresh starting point, for on leaving that town his journey would take a new form. So long as he traversed a devastated country the difficulties must be very great; but if, having avoided Tomsk, he could resume the road to Irkutsk across the province of Yeniseisk, which was not yet laid waste, ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... trouble likely to be encountered by a Library committee will lie in the selection of books to form the nucleus or starting point of the collection. Without repeating anything heretofore suggested, it may be said that great care should be taken to have books known to be excellent, both interesting in substance and attractive in style. To so apportion the moderate amount of money ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... words, or a heyduke has only to appear among them with a stick, or, at the most, a couple of gamekeepers with loaded muskets, and they scatter and fly in all directions like startled game. It is useless; they are a race of cowards. They are a mongrel set after all. Yet here must be our starting point. We must compel the folks here to tackle to the business—a petty village cannot take the initiative without some stimulus ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... one of the boxes not far from the starting point were three young men who were utterly overcome with amazement and consternation. One of them had a face that was drawn and pale, as if he had received a ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish

... receiving underground cable ends and connecting the separate wires of the cable to air-line wires. It is often mounted on a pole, which forms the starting point of the air-line ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... and the earth no goal But starting point of man ... To try man's foot, if it will creep or climb 'Mid obstacles in seeming, points that prove Advantage for who vaults from low to high And ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon

... be arrested, as you feared they would lead to European complications. I disclaimed any British lack of sympathy with Austria in the matter of her legitimate grievances against Servia, and pointed out that, whereas Austria seemed to be making these the starting point of her policy, His Majesty's Government were bound to look at the question primarily from the point of view of the maintenance of the peace of Europe. In this way the two ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History

... the harbor police. The thieves will not go out on a moonlight or even a bright starlight night. Nights when the darkness is so thick that it hides everything, or when the harbor is covered with a dense fog, are most favorable to them. Then, emerging from their starting point, they pull to the middle of the stream, where they lie-to long enough to ascertain if they are observed or followed. Then they pull swiftly to the point where the vessel they mean to rob is lying. Their oars are muffled, and their boat glides along noiselessly ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... disturbs evolution by pain, when it opposes this Law, by doing "evil." By modifying the direction of the Law, the Soul engenders beneficent or maleficent forces, which, after having played in the universe within the limit the law has imposed on them, return to their starting point—man. From that time, one understands that the balance of the scales in different individuals becomes unequal. These effects of the will influence to a noticeable degree the life during which they have originated; they are preserved in a latent condition after death, and appear again ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... the above diagram, into sustentative and non-sustentative. The sustentative factor has acquired particular prominence in the human species, since Malthus wrote his essay on population—that essay which both Darwin and Wallace confess was the starting point of ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... thinking over the situation and piecing together my clues, I decided that the next thing to be done was to trace up that transfer. If I could fasten that upon Gregory Hall, it would indeed be a starting point to work from. Although this seemed to eliminate Mrs. Purvis, who had already become a living entity in my mind, I still had haunting suspicions of Hall; and then, too, there was a possibility of collusion between these two. It might ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells

... for that. Looking carefully beneath us, we saw that fate had brought us back to our very starting point, and signals displayed in the neighborhood of New York indicated that we had already been recognized. There was nothing for us then but to drop down and explain ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss

... reflected upon it by the works of Weber's great successor at Dresden that disclosed in what those rights consisted. After that the critical voices of the world agreed in pronouncing "Euryanthe" to be the starting point of Wagner, and, as the latter's works grew in appreciation, "Euryanthe" shone with ever-growing refulgence. No opera was ever prepared at the Metropolitan with more patience, self-sacrifice, zeal, and affection than this, and the spontaneous, hearty, sincere approbation ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... that the children had passed over the creek some hours before dark the previous evening. This being the case, they might have travelled some miles farther before they were stopped by the storm and darkness. But no needless time was spent in surmises and conjecturing. A new starting point had been found, and from it the search was again renewed with ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... Bible, of which it forms the concluding book; and this no doubt points to the fact that it attained canonical distinction later than they. Nor is this unnatural. The book of Kings had brought the history down to the exile of Judah; and the natural desire to see the history carried from its new starting point in the return and restoration through post-exilic times is met by the book of Ezra-Nehemiah, to which there was no rival, whereas Chronicles had a rival in the existing and popular ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... mechanism. The first demand, accordingly, ought to be that we excite no one of these mutually reinforcing parts of the system, neither the organs nor the thoughts nor the feelings, as each one would heighten the activities of the others, and would thus become the starting point of an irrepressible demand for sexual satisfaction. The average boy or girl cannot give theoretical attention to the thoughts concerning sexuality without the whole mechanism for reinforcement automatically entering into action. We may instruct with the ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... from the starting point before she reached the first recession of the high bank, that afforded an opportunity to leave the stream, which she improved without delay, and after a laborious ascent of an inclined plane, more than a hundred yards in extent ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... and White Hills, all pretty well dug up; now we pass the Private Escort Station, and Little Bendigo. At the junction of Forest, Barker, and Campbell Creeks we find the Commissioners' quarters—this is nearly five miles from our starting point. We must now return to Adelaide Gully, and keep alongside Adelaide Creek, till we come to a high range of rocks, which we cross, and then find ourselves near the head-waters of Fryer's Creek. Following that stream towards the Loddon, we pass the interesting ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey

... and Lefever, surrounded by their followers, were crowding him as race touts crowd a favorite jockey with final words of admonition and advice. When the one target was satisfactorily adjusted, Laramie breaking away from everybody returned alone to the starting point. Dismounting, and taking his time to everything, he again tested his cinches, drew his gun from its holster and breaking it slipped a sixth cartridge into the cylinder. Dropping the gun back into place, he pulled his hat a little lower, glanced down the course and up toward ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... examination and record of what the patient said and did. Meyer had broken away from the sterile habit of making diagnoses in accordance with the set terms used to label symptoms; and his work and that of his assistants thus led to a collection of valuable material which could serve as a useful starting point for the keen clinical investigation of Hoch. Specifically, attention had already been fixed on the study of the so-called functional psychoses, comprising what are generally termed Dementia Praecox and Manic-Depressive ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch

... Inductive Method, like the Anticipative or Hypothetical, furnishes, in truth, only an assumption as a starting point for reasoning in the endeavor to establish other Facts than those already known. The verification of the Law or Principle assumed is, indeed, in the former Method, as complete as it can be, in the nature of the case, while in the latter it ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... get you to agree. And yet this is very much the position which Bergson takes up. Analysis and classification, he would admit, are the way to get more knowledge, of a kind; they enable us to describe situations and they are the starting point of all explanation and prediction. After analysis and classification you were able to say, "I have stumbled upon a dog," and having got so far you could then pass on to whatever general laws you knew of ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen

... also the removal of the capital from Nineveh to Kalhu, [Footnote: First mentioned as starting point of an expedition in 879, Ann. III. 1.] which indicates that to this year we are to attribute the majority of the building inscriptions. But, as they are all more or less identical with the closing section of the ...
— Assyrian Historiography • Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead

... journey early next morning (March 11th). At ten o'clock, the oars touched mud on each side, and it became impossible to proceed further. They had reached the head of the gulf, then a region of mangrove swamps and flat waters, but now covered by the wharves of Port Augusta, and within view of the starting point of the transcontinental railway. ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... heavy drain upon his already diminished resources. Here Burr, by his charm of manner and engaging conversation, soon won from the simple Irishman his heart and his remaining funds. He also made the island both a convenient rendezvous for his adherents in his ambitious schemes and a starting point for his own extended expeditions, which took him during the latter part of this year to Natchez, Nashville, St. Louis, Vincennes, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia, and ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... became once more the starting point of an important expedition, though La Salle, before sending the Griffin back, sailed in her as far as the Bay of Puans, where many of his furs were collected. He parted with this good ship in September. She ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... between the United States and Great Britain, depending chiefly on the course of rivers and highlands dividing the waters which flow into the Atlantic Ocean from those which flow into the St. Lawrence. It took twenty years to find out which river was the true St. Croix, that being the starting point. England then having made the extraordinary discovery that the Bay of Fundy is not a part of the Atlantic Ocean, forty years more were passed in the unsuccessful attempt to re-create the highlands which this strange theory had annihilated; and just as the two countries were on the verge of a war, ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett

... further. Seventy-five days later there comes another glad event, and two years ten months and twenty days later the complete cleansing of the temple. Each of these portions of time is measured from the same starting point. This would suggest a period of readjustment after the Antichrist is slain, running through almost three years. All these time notes are of a year of three hundred and sixty days, not our common calendar year of three hundred and sixty-five and a ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon

... nearly as Fred could judge, eight or nine miles from the starting point, and that this was the end of the journey could be told by the ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis

... Iceland, the starting point of the marvellous underground journey imagined in this volume, is invested at the present time with. a painful interest in consequence of the disastrous eruptions last Easter Day, which covered with lava and ashes the poor and scanty vegetation upon which four ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... Since there was no arable land adjoining Fort Charles at present-day Richmond, other inducements were made for its maintenance. These forts served as the first line of defense against possible attacks by the natives. Being the center of the varied activities of the frontier, they also were the starting point for expeditions against the Indians and became the center of ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.

... to go out and hide himself, the remainder then start to find him; he wins if he is not found, or if he can get back to the starting point within a given time without ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... determined, as we had used the most of our stores, to leave the river if possible and start for the settled districts. It was very vexatious to come to this resolution as the river was flowing almost in the direction of Burke's starting point on Cooper's Creek. We left Camp 44 at 9.50 a.m. and reached the place we had arranged to meet the blacks in about fourteen miles. It took us, travelling steadily exclusive of stoppages, five hours to reach it. The blacks were waiting for us and conducted us about half ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough

... and illustrated weeklies that are possessed with the second sight, and can hunt down the shrewdest criminals, without being bound to such petty things as clews, circumstantial evidence or witnesses. We American detectives can generally make 4 by putting 2 and 2 together, but we must have a starting point, and an old shirt or a pair of stockings, such as this robber threw away, may contain just what ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... and Step Hen began to believe they must be many miles from their starting point; at any rate he began to feel a little heavy-footed, though too proud to mention the fact to Thad. Besides, Step Hen had walked pretty good distances before, and believed that he must soon get ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... the consideration of evidence prior to ca. 1350, we may take Giovanni de Dondi as a starting point and trace a virtually unbroken lineage from his time to the present day. One may follow the spread of clocks through Europe, from large towns to small ones, from the richer cathedrals and abbeys to the less wealthy churches.[8] There is the transition from the tower clocks—showpieces ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price

... With this as a starting point President Wilson presently formulated an entirely new principle for dealing with Latin-American republics. There could be no permanent order in these turbulent countries and nothing approaching ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... a wireless rigged up there. The minute we round it on our return trip word will be flashed back to the starting point." ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham

... they could do. But somehow their hopes of reaching Long Island in the year of grace 1930 had grown exceedingly slim. Everything depended upon whether or not Tode had meant those figures to represent the course back to the starting point or not. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various



Words linked to "Starting point" :   first, commencement, outset, beginning, offset, starting time, terminus a quo, showtime, start, kickoff, get-go



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