All 19 Uses
crucial
in
The Remains of the Day
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- Only then did it strike me that there was indeed a role that a further staff member could crucially play here; that it was, in fact, this very shortage that had been at the heart of all my recent troubles.†
Chpt Prol.
- It was made clear, furthermore, that the Society did not regard the houses of businessmen or the 'newly rich' as 'distinguished', and in my opinion this piece of out-dated thinking crucially undermined any serious authority the Society may have achieved to arbitrate on standards in our profession.†
Chpt 1e -
- In the end, it was revealed in a brief letter to A Quarterly that in the view of the Society — and I will try and quote accurately from memory — 'the most crucial criterion is that the applicant be possessed of a dignity in keeping with his position.†
Chpt 1e -crucial = very important
- And let me now posit this: 'dignity' has to do crucially with a butler's ability not to abandon the professional being he inhabits.†
Chpt 1e -
- But should it be that anyone ever wished to posit that I have attained at least a little of that crucial quality of 'dignity' in the course of my career, such a person may wish to be directed towards that conference of March 1923 as representing the moment when I first demonstrated I might have a capacity for such a quality.†
Chpt 2m -crucial = very important
- It was one of those events which at a crucial stage in one's development arrive to challenge and stretch one to the limit of one's ability and beyond, so that thereafter one has new standards by which to judge oneself.†
Chpt 2m - *
- He and Sir David accordingly set upon this final crucial lap of their preparations and to witness the unswerving determination with which they persevered in the face of repeated frustrations was a humbling experience; countless letters and telegrams were dispatched and his lordship himself made three separate trips to Paris within the space of two months.†
Chpt 2m -
- It was this realization, along with the fact that he was in M. Dupont's room, presumably addressing this most crucial personage, that caused me to stop my hand from knocking, and continue to listen instead.†
Chpt 2m -
- I have no wish, let me make clear, to retract any of my ideas on 'dignity' and its crucial link with 'greatness'.†
Chpt 2a -
- But I can vouch there was a crucial distinction in attitude, reflected not only in the sorts of things you would hear fellow professionals express to each other, but in the way many of the most able persons of our generation chose to leave one position for another.†
Chpt 2a -
- Rather, debates are conducted, and crucial decisions arrived at, in the privacy and calm of the great houses of this country.†
Chpt 2a -
- This shift was, I believe, like so many other major shifts around this period, a generational matter; it was during these years that our generation of butlers 'came of age', and figures like Mr Marshall, in particular, played a crucial part in making silver-polishing so central.†
Chpt 3m -
- In thinking about this recently, it seems possible that that odd incident the evening Miss Kenton came into my pantry uninvited may have marked a crucial turning point.†
Chpt 3e -
- The butler's pantry, as far as I am concerned, is a crucial office, the heart of the house's operations; not unlike a general's headquarters during a battle, and it is imperative that all things in it are ordered — and left ordered — in precisely the way I wish them to be.†
Chpt 3e -
- You will appreciate then that in the event of Miss Kenton bursting in at a time when I had presumed, not unreasonably, that I was to be alone, it came to be a crucial matter of principle, a matter indeed of dignity, that I did not appear in anything less than my full and proper role.†
Chpt 3e -
- Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one's life; but of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had.†
Chpt 3e -
- I very much wanted his help on the question presently vexing many of us, and which we all realize is crucial to how we should shape our foreign policy.†
Chpt 3e -
- Good God, man, something very crucial is going on in this house.†
Chpt 4a -
- During the last three years alone, his lordship has been crucially instrumental in establishing links between Berlin and over sixty of the most influential citizens of this country.†
Chpt 4a -
Definitions:
-
(1)
(crucial) very important or necessary -- often because it determines how something else will turn out
- (2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)