1725, Daniel Defoe, Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business:The reason why I did not publish this book till the end of the last sessions of parliament was, because I did not care to interfere with more momentous affairs.
1831, James Fenimore Cooper, Homeward Bound, ch. 31:"It has been a momentous month, and I hope we shall all retain healthful recollections of it as long as we live."
1902, Joseph Conrad, The End of the Tether, ch. 3:What to the other parties was merely the sale of a ship was to him a momentous event involving a radically new view of existence.
2007 July 1, Richard Dawkins, "Inferior Design," New York Times (retrieved 19 Nov 2013)Natural selection is arguably the most momentous idea ever to occur to a human mind, because it — alone as far as we know — explains the elegant illusion of design that pervades the living kingdoms and explains, in passing, us.
