climax quotes

What we want is a story that starts with an earthquake and works its way up to a climax.

- Sam(uel) originally  Schmuel Gelbfisz Goldwyn
Quoted in Leslie Halliwell Halliwell's Filmgoer's and Video Viewer's Companion (9th edn,1989).

   I have got the North Pole out of my system after twenty- three years of effort, hard work, disappointments, hardships, privations, more or less suffering, and some risks† The work is the finish, the cap and climax of nearly four hundred years of effort, loss of life, and expenditure of fortunes by the civilized nations of the world, and it has been accomplished in a way that is thoroughly American. I am content.

- Robert Edwin Peary
  Diary entry, Apr. Quoted inTheNorth Pole (published1910).

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows. In the great hour of destiny they stand, Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows. Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives. Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.

- Siegfried Louvain Sassoon
  'Dreamers'.