make all the difference

Verb

make all the difference (third-person singular simple present makes all the difference, present participle making all the difference, simple past and past participle made all the difference)

1. (idiomatic) To be a crucial or deciding factor; to have a very significant effect (often a positive one).
   • We are all framed of the same mold, hewed out of the same Rocke, made as it were, of the same cloth, the sheares, as they say, onely going betweene; it is therefore onely the free loue and grace of God, which makes all the difference.1626, Robert Bolton, Some Generall Directions for a Comfortable Walking with God, London: Edmund Weaver, page 17
   • To assert the Superiority of the Human Spirit […] above that of other Animals upon this earth, has been the endeavour of many Persons, who […] have made their System more coherent than those who have endeavour’d to put Men and Beasts upon a level. Some of this last Party indeed acknowledge the...1734, Alexander Forbes, Essays Moral and Philosophical, London: J. Osborn & T. Longman, Part I, Chapter 12, p. 100