moving spirit

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moving spirit (plural moving spirits)

1. Someone who provides significant impetus or guidance in a given venture, movement, enterprise etc.
   • 1932, Duff Cooper, Talleyrand, Folio Society, published 2010, page 106:

     At the beginning of the year 1804 the most formidable conspiracy which had yet threatened the government and the life of Napoleon was discovered. […] Georges Cadoudal, the Breton peasant, who was the very soul of the royalist party, was the moving spirit.

   • 1999, Sigmund Freud, translated by Joyce Crick, The Interpretation of Dreams, Oxford, published 2008, page 163:

     We had formed a conspiracy against an unpopular and ignorant teacher. Its moving spirit [translating Seele] was a fellow-student who seems since then to have taken Henry VIII of England as his model.

   • 2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 131:

     Pompadour was the moving spirit in the elegant refurbishment of most of the royal residences, and in the development of a number of minor residences such as Crécy, Bellevue and the Trianon, in all of which she indulged the king's penchant for intimacy and privacy.

   • 2005 June 11, Tony Russell, The Guardian:

     A couple of years later, he met Timothy Duffy, who was the moving spirit behind the Music Maker Relief Foundation.