All 16 Uses of
decisive
in
The Magic Mountain
- He was very serious—he had not spoken in a conversational tone, had refused to allow Hans Castorp any opportunity to pick up the thread or contradict him, and had lowered his voice decisively to mark the end of his statement.†
Chpt 5.1 *decisively = in a manner that settles a question once and for all
- He spoke of an unforeseen vexation, of misgivings that had proved justified, of the necessity, on good medical advice, of spending a part of the winter, and perhaps all of it, up here, since cases such as his own were often more stubborn than those that began more spectacularly and since the important thing, really, was to intervene decisively and so arrest his case's progress for good and all.†
Chpt 5.3
- The dressmaker admitted to a temperature equally as high, but declared the effect was just the opposite with her, that she felt quite excitable, nervous and restless inside, as if some special, decisive event were about to happen, which was not the case at ail, this being simply a physical excitation with no psychological basis.†
Chpt 3.2
- And so at the decisive moment I happened not to be where everyone else was, but had wandered backstage, as you put it, and as I'm walking down the corridor, I see them coming toward me, in lace shirts, a cross leading the way, a gold cross with little lanterns, one of them carrying it up front like the glockenspiel in a Turkish-style military band.†
Chpt 3.3
- Upon my word—it was an illusion," the Italian said with a decisive gesture of one hand.†
Chpt 3.4
- Then he slid his chair back in one decisive motion and left the room.†
Chpt 3.7
- Behrens had sent him a telegram—because they wanted to take more decisive action, a rib resection, to try it at least, although the chances for success were diminishing.†
Chpt 5.8
- Indeed, of late he seemed inclined to end the struggle with one decisive blow.†
Chpt 6.1
- But the trundling year definitely promised decisive changes very soon, for it had now been six weeks since the night of Mardi Gras, when Hans Castorp had borrowed a pencil from Frau Chauchat—and given it back to her, though only after first asking for some little memento, which he now carried in his pocket— a time twice as long as Hans Castorp had originally intended to stay up here.†
Chpt 6.1
- The point was a total cure, totality was the decisive factor, and Behrens had recently saddled him with another six months.†
Chpt 6.5
- But when he saw the calm, uncomprehending smile with which his nephew responded to his jokes, the way it perfectly mirrored this whole community's intact self-assurance, he took alarm; and fearing the loss of his business energies, he quickly concluded that he would have that decisive conversation with the director about his nephew at once—that very afternoon if at all possible—while he still had a spirit of his own and energies from the world below with which to attack, for he could feel those energies vanishing and the spirit of the place joining forces with his own good breeding in a dangerous alliance against them.†
Chpt 6.5
- The young man admitted quite openly to himself that such total failure, which he had seen coming, was of decisive importance for his relationship to the people down there.†
Chpt 6.5
- He was sitting alone on a bench in the park atop a little hill known as Margaret's Head, just west of town and with a view to the Ill River and the wide, serene Rhine valley—was sitting there lost in gloomy, bitter thought about his fate and his future, when a strolling member of the faculty of the Morning Star, the local boarding school run by the Society of Jesus, sat down next to him, laid his hat on the bench, crossed one leg over the other under his order's cassock, and after reading awhile in his breviary struck up a conversation, which soon turned very lively and proved decisive for Leo's further destiny.†
Chpt 6.6
- The decisive factor in the humanist's view of the world was that God and the Devil were two different persons or principles and that "life" was the bone of contention between them— very much after the medieval model, by the way.†
Chpt 6.6
- We can only be grateful to a man like Herr Settembrini for characterizing metaphysics as "evil" as he once did when speaking, with his usual pedagogic decisiveness, to the young man with whose fate we are concerned and whom on one occasion he very aptly called a "problem child of life " And we can best honor the memory of a young man, who though departed is still dear to us, by saying that the critical principle can and must have only one meaning, purpose, and goal: the idea of duty, the command given by life itself.†
Chpt 7.1 *
- But even given the inner state out of which all this had arisen, if Hans Castorp had guessed in what sense Leo Naphta would alter his intentions before the decisive moment, or in just that moment, he would not have allowed to happen what was about to happen.†
Chpt 7.9
Definitions:
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(1)
(decisive as in: a decisive defeat) determining an outcome; or ending question
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(2)
(decisive as in: a decisive decision maker) making quick decisions and sticking by them; or describing an action as firm or without hesitation