center of life, essence, inmost nature, inner reality, vital principle.
— from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget

Lockhart's River on leaving Artillery Lake becomes a wild torrent, falling several hundred feet in twenty miles, and is quite useless for navigation, so we had to make use of a chain of lakes, eight in number, lying to the south of the stream.
— from The Barren Ground of Northern Canada by Warburton Pike

G. Amesius saith, “That our Obedience, albeit it be not the principal and meritorious Cause of Life eternal , is nevertheless a Cause in some Respect, administering , helping, and advancing towards the Possession of the Life.” R. Baxter.
— from An Apology for the True Christian Divinity Being an explanation and vindication of the principles and doctrines of the people called Quakers by Robert Barclay

The conduct of Lady Eustace is notorious."
— from The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope

His manner, says Sir Henry Wotton, was so sweet and attractive, “in seeking what might be for the public or his own proper use, that if the Muses favoured him not, the Graces were his friends;” and Lord Clarendon remarks of Villiers, that “concerning the traits and endowments of his mind, if the consideration of learning extend itself not further than drudgery 22 in books, the Duke’s employment forbids us to suspect him of being any great scholar; but if a nimble and fluent expression and delivery of his mind (and his discourse was of all subjects) in a natural and proper dialect be considered, he was well lettered.”
— from The life and times of George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, Volume 1 (of 3) From original and authentic sources by Thomson, A. T., Mrs.

To him that understandeth them, the words of the baptismal covenant express all the essentials of christianity: {714} but to him that understands them not, the creed is necessary for the explication: and to him that understandeth not that, a catechism, or larger exposition, is necessary.
— from A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian Ecclesiastics by Richard Baxter