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Majority   Listen
noun
Majority  n.  (pl. majorities)  
1.
The quality or condition of being major or greater; superiority. Specifically:
(a)
The military rank of a major.
(b)
The condition of being of full age, or authorized by law to manage one's own affairs.
2.
The greater number; more than half; as, a majority of mankind; a majority of the votes cast.
3.
Ancestors; ancestry. (Obs.)
4.
The amount or number by which one aggregate exceeds all other aggregates with which it is contrasted; especially, the number by which the votes for a successful candidate exceed those for all other candidates; as, he is elected by a majority of five hundred votes. See Plurality.
To go over to the majority or To join the majority, to die.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Majority" Quotes from Famous Books



... not yet a good subject for the mischief-maker to work upon, though, like a majority of the crew, he was dissatisfied with the change in the programme. Going to sea meant strict discipline; and after making up their minds to have a good time on shore, it was not pleasant to think of hard work and hard study for ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... and slaveholders acted as a restraint upon any tendency toward oligarchy which the gentry might have entertained. The small farmers were in the majority and they had the right to vote. The percentage of white males who voted in the 18th Century elections was quite high. True, the colonial voters elected only the burgesses, but that single choice was an important guarantee ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education

... serviceable to mankind in his single strength; which was difficult to do well and possible to do better every year; which called for scrupulous thought on the part of all who practised it, and hence became a perpetual education to their nobler natures; and which, pay it as you please, in the large majority of the best cases will still be underpaid. For surely, at this time of day in the nineteenth century, there is nothing that an honest man should fear more timorously than getting and spending more than ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson

... The majority of the passengers, excepting a few Frenchmen and other foreigners, were heartily glad to be at home again, after sojourns of various lengths on the Continent. Two, in particular, could scarcely restrain their impatience as ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... which was swarming with men in strange uniforms. There were a few Graustark officers, but the majority of the buzzing conversationalists were dressed in a ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... called into action in cases when all the worst passions of our nature—our hatred and revenge, and our self-interest—are set in motion. Consider the mischief which might be constantly done on a grand scale in society, if the vast majority of attorneys and solicitors were not honorable, and able men! Conceive them, for a moment, disposed everywhere to stir up litigation, by availing themselves of their perfect acquaintance with almost all men's circumstances—artfully ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... usual courteous greetings in the street or in the college quadrangle. From this time the history of Oxford, for forty years, is mixed up with the history of Laud. The divisions of Roundhead and of Cavalier have begun. The majority of the undergraduates are on the side of Laud; and the Court, the citizens, and many of the elder members of the University, are ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang

... the grand incentive to endeavor afforded by the fact that the high places in the nation are open only to the highest class men, and that rank in the army constitutes the only mode of social distinction for the vast majority who are not aspirants in art, literature, and the professions, various incitements of a minor, but perhaps equally effective, sort are provided in the form of special privileges and immunities in the way of discipline, which the superior class men enjoy. These, ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... self-satisfaction of having been employed to so gratifying an end. We like too the spirit of acquaintanceship which these prefacings, meetings, and greetings tend to keep up, although there may be persons who impatiently turn over a preface as the majority of an audience at the theatre rise to leave as soon as the last scene of ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various

... cannot shut our eyes to the fact that in the majority of wars the side with the positive object has acted generally on the offensive and the other generally on the defensive. Unpractical therefore as the distinction seems to be, it is impossible to dismiss it without inquiring why this was so, and it is in this ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... intellectual grounds. It seems plain that schemers would choose more sequestered quarters to arrange their plans, that politicians would not gather here in company to discuss anything save formalities, where the sharp-eared may hear, and it would scarcely be justified on the score of thirst, for the majority of those who frequent these more gorgeous places have no craving for liquor. Nevertheless, the fact that here men gather, here chatter, here love to pass and rub elbows, must be explained upon some ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... the intuition transcends the intelligence in its grasp of beauty and truth, we may attain to the higher insight it has to offer only if the things of the spirit become known to the intellect - a point in Bergson's philosophy which the majority of his readers overlook. 'We have,' he says, 'to engender the categories of our thought; it is not enough that we determine what these are.' Bergson is preeminently the prophet of the higher space concept. We had done better to ...
— The Fourth Dimensional Reaches of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition • Cora Lenore Williams

... her skirts. She has tried to be a good mother, but she has let the cares and plans for her children draw her away from God, and we see her dragged from the narrow way by those whom she ought to have helped along it. Believe me, it is not open, notorious evil-doers who form the majority on the broad road to destruction. It is not the murderer, the thief, the drunkard, the adulterer, the unbeliever, who crowd that down-hill road. They are there with the rest, but they are outnumbered by those whom the world calls very respectable. Amid that crowd of all ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton

... oppression and peculation elsewhere. But these principles of Mr. Hastings tend entirely to destroy the character and functions of a council, and to vest them in one of the dissentient members. The law has placed the sense of the whole in the majority; and it is not a thing to be suffered, that any of the members should privately raise money for the avowed purpose of defeating that sense, or for promoting designs that are contrary to it: a more alarming assumption of power in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... restrictive law laid upon him. And he became so vile that the Lord was compelled to drown them like so many rats. Beautiful and inspiring though our present circumstances and surroundings are, yet they could never change the hearts of the majority of ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... This officer had no duty distinct from that of the Councillors, other than to preside at their meetings and to cast a double or deciding vote in case of deadlock.[7] He was to serve but one year and if at any time his administration proved unsatisfactory to his colleagues, they could, by a majority vote, depose him. In like manner, any Councillor that had become obnoxious could be expelled without specific charges and without trial.[8] These unwise provisions led naturally to disorder and strife, and added much to the ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... saying that M. Venezelos has gained a big majority in the Greek Election. Also, that the King of Greece is dying, and that, therefore, the Greek Army can't join us until he has ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... ere yet I had reaped the harvest of "oats" somewhat wildly sown, I resided in one of our principal western cities, and, like most juveniles within sight of the threshold of their majority, harbored a decided predilection for the stage. Not a coach and four, as is sometimes understood by that expression, but that still more lumbering vehicle, the theatre, which hurries down the rough road of life a load of passengers quite as promiscuous and impatient. The odor of the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... a new heap of Cromwell Letters;—which have been a huge embarrassment to me; for they are highly unimportant for most part, and do not tend to alter or materially modify anything. Some Fifty or Sixty new Letters in all (many of them from Printed Books that had escaped me) the great majority, with others yet that may come in future time, I determine to print simply as an Appendix; but several too, I think about twenty in all, are to be fitted into the Text, chiefly in the early part of the First Volume, as tending ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... this fact upon the dramatist is very potent. First of all, as I have said, it forces him to deal chiefly in action with passion for its motive. And this necessity accounts for the preponderance of female characters over male in the large majority of the greatest modern plays. Notice Nora Helmer, Mrs. Alving, Hedda Gabler; notice Magda and Camille; notice Mrs. Tanqueray, Mrs. Ebbsmith, Iris, and Letty,—to cite only a few examples. Furthermore, since women are by nature comparatively inattentive, the femininity of the modern theatre ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

... discounts itself. Whatever the faults of our paper-money, it claims a prominent place among the illustrations of the close of the century, for it is the only currency save copper and Mr. Memminger's designs in blue that a majority of American youth have ever seen. Should these young inquirers wish to unearth the money of their fathers, they can find the eagles among other medals of antiquity in the Mint department of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... much or too little covering in bed or when up." And all this in health; and then she quotes a passage from a lecture on sudden deaths in infancy, to show the importance of careful nursing of children:—"In the great majority of instances, when death suddenly befalls the infant or young child, it is an accident; it is not a necessary, inevitable result of any disease. That which is known to injure children most seriously is foul air; keeping the rooms where they sleep closely ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... the right hemisphere, it proceeded for four-tenths of an inch outwards, and then extended downwards, as far as the lower margin of the outer surface of the hemisphere. The imperfect definition of this fissure in the majority of human brains, as compared with its remarkable distinctness in the brain of most Quadrumana, is owing to the presence, in the former, of certain superficial, well marked, secondary convolutions which bridge it over ...
— Note on the Resemblances and Differences in the Structure and the Development of Brain in Man and the Apes • Thomas Henry Huxley

... between their wives and the priesthood. In spite of this, and in spite of excommunication with which he threatened them, many kept their wives secretly, the rest contented themselves with concubines. Besides, the majority of the bishops, who lived after the same manner, tolerated for bribes infractions of the rule by the lower and higher clergy. The Council of Paris, in 1212, forbade them to receive money, proceeding ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... English, manoeuvre with prudence, take advantage of a temporary separation, and, in short, seize the most favourable opportunities and situations. This advice was approved by many of the council, and above all by M. du Portail, chief of the engineers, and a very distinguished officer. The majority were, however, in favour of Lee; but M. de Lafayette spoke again to the general on this subject in the evening, and was seconded by Hamilton, and by Greene, who had been lately named quarter-master in place of Mifflin. Several of the general officers changed ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... tall, certainly," said Sir Chetwynd, surveying his paunch, which lolled comfortably, and as it were by itself, in front of him, like a kind of waistcoated air-balloon. "I grant you they are tall. That is, the majority of them are. But I have seen short men among them. The Khedive is not taller than I am. And the Egyptian face is very deceptive. The features are often fine,— occasionally classic,—but intelligent ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... admirably for this purpose, and the size may be taken from the broach by means of the calipers. In fitting our pivots, we can not be too exact; and as yet no instrument has been placed upon the market for this purpose which is moderate in price and yet thoroughly reliable. The majority of watchmakers use what is termed the pivot-gauge, a neat little instrument which accompanies the Jacot lathe, and which may be obtained from any material house. This tool, which is shown in Fig. 11, is, however, open to one objection in the measurement of pivots, and that is that it may ...
— A Treatise on Staff Making and Pivoting • Eugene E. Hall

... any writer clever enough to follow the formula. Some day the critic is going to take enough time off to write a book of poetic recipes, and already he has his subject so well blocked out that he is sure his book will contain the fundamental ingredients of a great majority of the amateur poems now appearing. The poem under consideration belongs to the "glad" recipe, an off-shoot of the Pollyanna school of fiction, and true to type it contains its quota of "glad" ingredients such as "cheer," "merry song," "troubles," and "sorrows," ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... delightful home for rats, and many of my race had thought so, for the number of us on board certainly trebled that of the sailors. The majority of our brethren in the vessel were ship rats, whose appearance so much resembled my own that terms of friendship were at once established between us. The brown rats kept together in quite a separate part of the ship,— a wise precaution ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.

... States (FLS): established to achieve black majority rule in South Africa; has since gone out of existence; members included Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... with less dignity, the Fenian scare. With the close of the American War a steady backward stream of Americanized Irishmen had set in, and a belief that war between England and America was rapidly approaching had become an article of fervent faith with a large majority in Ireland. The Fenian plan of operation was a two-headed one. There was to be a rising in Ireland, and there was to be a raid into Canada across the American frontier. Little formidable as either project seems ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... the election of 1902 Mrs. Worthington had a majority in the council, and one Saturday night the hitching-racks were taken down by the street commissioner. And within a week the town was on the verge of civil war, for the farmers of the county rose as one man and demanded the blood of the offenders. ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... plundering expedition up the Rhine. After a succession of battles he was overcome by the Franks, but—and now we enter a legendary region once more—not until a gigantic nephew of Hygelac had performed heroic feats of valor, and had saved the remnants of the host by a marvelous feat of swimming. The majority of scholars now hold that these historical events and personages were celebrated in the epic; but some still assert that the events which gave a foundation for Beowulf occurred wholly on English soil, where the poem itself ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... we find no unmeaning gallant fribbling, but the solemn language of one who had death and judgment before his face. He conducts the inquiry with great care, as becomes a subject of such universal interest: and the great majority of Christians remain to this day his disciples. The Society of Friends is an exception, as to females being admitted to the ministry; while the Wesleyan Methodists have gained a most beneficial influence, by embracing, to the full extent, Bunyan's notions of rendering available the tender zeal, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... This does not mean that, in consequence of the efforts of the natural will, God may not withhold from anyone the first grace of vocation. In this sense the axiom would be Semipelagian, and has been rejected by a majority of the Schoolmen. It is said of Molina that he tried to render it acceptable by the hypothesis that God bound Himself by a contract with Christ to give His grace to all men who would make good use ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... remarked Zeke emphatically. "Not by a large majority. Guess Chicago's some flat, ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham

... The majority of people who visit the up-to-date hotels of the Adirondacks, which their wily proprietors call camps, may think they see the wild and are living in it. But for them it is only a big picnic-ground through which they rush with unseeing eyes and whose cloisters they invade with ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard

... was intended to give the Parliamentary Vote to a little over one million women had passed its Second reading on July 12, 1910, by a majority of 110 votes; in spite of the bitter opposition of the Premier, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Home Secretary, the President of the Board of Trade, and the Secretary for the Colonies. The Premier's arguments against it were, firstly, that ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... regarding unconscious cerebration, which have been put forward by men of science, but none of these propositions can, by any process of reasonable expansion or modification, be made to fit my case. Hysteria, to the multiform and manifold categories of which, medical experts are wont to refer the majority of the abnormal experiences encountered by them, is plainly inadequate to explain or account for mine. The singular coherence and sustained dramatic unity observable in these dreams, as well as the ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... deputy United States marshals, primarily process-servers and not at all fitted in the majority of cases for any sort of detective work. Their appointment is often dictated and their action often hampered by political considerations. The liquor interest is very strong and knows how to bring pressure to bear against a marshal who is offensively active. They are responsible only to the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... He wondered what the elegant Anway had in common with all the poor and humble people who were bound on the excursion. Many of them obviously did not even possess any Sunday clothes to put on for the trip. There is, surely, no greater degree of poverty. Children were very largely in the majority, pale, great-eyed, little spindle-shanks. All had red tickets in their hands. If, as it seemed, this was a charitable excursion, Anway must be one ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... camp in consequence. The King's name, however, was sullied, for very few of those who surrendered ever regained their liberty. They were sent prisoners to Manila, where a few were pardoned, others were executed, and the majority became galley-slaves. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... The majority of the birds which are common in the Eastern Himalayas are also abundant in the western part of the range, and have in consequence been described already. In order to avoid repetition this chapter has been put into the form ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar

... clubs, reading papers, going about a world in which all the organization, all the possibility of the organization I dream of is tacitly denied. I don't know if it seems an extraordinary confession of weakness to you, but that steady refusal of the majority of my Committee to come into co-operation with me has beaten me—or at any rate has come very near to beating me. Most of them you know are such able men. You can FEEL their knowledge and commonsense. They, and everybody about me, seemed ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... produced a chorus of protests from the cruiser officers and a hearty agreement from the line-of-battleship men, who seemed to be in the majority in the circle which had gathered round. From the flushed faces and angry glances it was evident that the question was one upon which there was strong feeling ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... observer can detect a parallel between the relation of Cooper to America and that of Scott to Scotland. Scott was as hearty a Scotchman as Cooper an American: but Scott was a Tory in politics and an Episcopalian in religion; and the majority of Scotchmen are Whigs in politics and Presbyterians in religion. In Scott, as in Cooper, the elements of passion and sympathy were so strong that he could not be neutral or silent on the great questions of his time and place. Thus, while the Scotch are proud ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... quarters were strange to them, and there was more or less noise throughout the school building, a bunch of scholars coming in on a late train and not getting settled down until after midnight. There was also something of horseplay, although the majority of the cadets were too tired from their journeys to be ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield

... interested motives intervene; but when they do, the result is jobbery more unblushing and audacious than the worst corruption which can well take place in a public office under a government of publicity. It is not necessary that the interested bias should extend to the majority of the assembly. In any particular case it is of ten enough that it affects two or three of their number. Those two or three will have a greater interest in misleading the body than any other of its members are likely to have in putting ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... are preeminently creatures of the land and the air. This is shown not only by the possession of wings by a vast majority of the class, but by the mode of breathing to which reference has already been made (p. 2), a system of branching air-tubes carrying atmospheric air with its combustion-supporting oxygen to all the insect's tissues. The air gains access to these ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter

... may imagine, a model of 'singableness' (if I may say so); but it is not sufficiently church music to my taste. His solitary fugue is clumsy. The criticisms on the work are very various. Some agree with me; but the majority delight in the captivating Italian phrases, which I admire too, but which I cannot think ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... to a memorandum of Mr. Gladstone's, from a number approaching 120 in the corn law crisis of 1846, were reduced at once by the election of 1847 to less than half. This number, added to the liberal force, gave free trade a very large majority: added to the protectionists it just turned the balance in their favour. So long as Sir Robert Peel lived (down to June 1850) the entire body never voted with the protectionists. From the first a distinction ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... Mr. Morton with some emphasis on the pronoun, 'would never be in the majority. When I said "ladies of a certain stamp," I by no means intended to say that the ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... foundation, an extravagance never before dreamed of by an islander; some to bring sand in gourd-shells upon their heads, or laboriously gathered in the folds of bark-cloth aprons; some to bring lime from the coral reefs twenty feet under water; whilst the majority hurried to the forest belt, miles away on the mountain side, to fell the straightest and tallest trees. Then 50 or 100 men, (for in that day horses and oxen were known only as wild beasts of the wilderness,) attached hawsers ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... from giving any encouragement, people were much surprised that he had the assurance to ask to be employed and trusted again. The majority dismissed him coldly and curtly. A few mongrel natures, true to themselves, gave a snarling refusal. Then there were jovial spirits who must have their jest, even though the sensitive subject of it was tortured thereby—men who enjoyed quizzing Haldane before sending him on, as much as the old ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... renders them necessary, but makes the act of the majority binding upon the whole. In a free trade, an effectual combination cannot be established but by the unanimous consent of every single trader, and it cannot last longer than every single trader continues of the same mind. The majority of a corporation can enact a bye-law, with ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... current on the rice plantations and Sea Islands, are also current on the cotton plantations. Indeed, this has been abundantly verified in the correspondence of those who kindly consented to aid the author in his efforts to secure stories told by the negroes on the seacoast. The great majority of legends and stories collected and forwarded by these generous collaborators had already been collected among the negroes on the cotton plantations and uplands of Georgia and other Southern States. This will account for the comparatively ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris

... extremities can only be made sound by producing a healthy action in the central Government, and the history of the present day fully establishes the fact that an increase in the value of the stocks of this Government will in a great majority of instances be attended by an increase in the value of the stocks of the States. It should therefore be a matter of general congratulation that amidst all the embarrassments arising from surrounding circumstances the credit of the Government should have been so fully restored that ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler • John Tyler

... Ministerial majority had disappeared in this fashion, when happy thought occurred to JOHN DILLON. Hotly moved that SAUNDERSON "be no longer heard." Considering he had not been heard for fully five minutes, this joke excellent. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various

... by the majority of surgeons at about three weeks to a month. Within that period no excessive exertion should be undergone by the patient. A certain amount of quiet exercise, however, is beneficial, facilitating the healing of the wounds, and accustoming the animal to the altered ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... she has little sympathy with our vapid sentiment, can be taught that a canary is a privileged nuisance, immune from molestation. The bird's shrill notes jar her sensitive nerves. She abhors noise, and a canary's pipe is the most piercing and persistent of noises, welcome to that large majority of mankind which prefers sound of any kind to silence. Moreover, a cage presents just the degree of hindrance to tempt a cat's agility. That Puss habitually refrains from ridding the household of canaries is proof of her innate reasonableness, of her readiness to submit her finer judgment ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... the thinnest kind of treble as they hastened along. It was almost amusing to gauge their speed. Some had already travelled so far that with a flop which raises a little cloud of dust they dropped exhausted at your feet. The ricochets are in the majority, for with the vast number of intervening walls and trees and the sloping Chinese roofs which pen us in on all sides, the nickel, iron and lead of Mannlicher and Mauser rifles and Tower muskets are soon converted into mere discordant humming-birds, whose greatest inconvenience is their sound. Never ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... before the Court which met at the entrance of the Temple area. In the event of their failing to decide, they appealed to the Court which met at the entrance to the ante-court. Failure in this Court was followed by an appeal to the Supreme Court of 71, where the matter was finally disposed of by a majority of votes. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... some unassuming little inhabitant of the isthmian jungles. This creature is shown in profile in Fig. 65, a, and front views are given in b and c. Innumerable examples, embracing most of the more important animals of Chiriqui, could be given, but in a majority of cases identification is difficult or impossible, as there has been little or no effort to reproduce nature with fidelity. But the chief interest surrounding these figures is not found in the variety of creatures shown or in the character of the delineation, but in ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes

... gone over to the majority, despatched by that street accident, and if the old man had known nothing of the young man's courses, he had had it in his power to make him well-to-do. But he had paid his debts once at least, and had more than once had occasion to grieve ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... "None of them are to blame for the war." "Who then?" they asked. "Backslidden, professing Christians," I said. Then they asked if I thought America would get into it, and I answered, "Most assuredly." However the majority of them said no, and they also said that our American boys would never leave American soil to fight. I told them that our boys would not only go to Europe to fight, but to almost all the Islands of the sea. Then they asked how long I thought the war was going to last, and ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag

... Sir Francis volunteered in a further note, "as that of the majority of his French confreres, you will find it in the artistic sketches of the men and women in La Boheme" "His guardian angel, humanly and socially, was ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood

... as the creed of Christianity. Think (he used to say) of a being who would make a Hell—who would create the human race with the infallible foreknowledge, and therefore with the intention, that the great majority of them were to be consigned to horrible and everlasting torment. The time, I believe, is drawing near when this dreadful conception of an object of worship will be no longer identified with Christianity; and when all persons, with any sense of moral ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... at the enormous difficulty which the six hundred and eleven missionaries, of the China Inland Mission, raise up against themselves, the majority of whom are presumably in agreement with the teaching of their director, Dr. Hudson Taylor. They tell the Chinese inquirer that his unconverted father, who never heard the Gospel, has, like Confucius, perished eternally. But the chief of all virtues in China is filial piety; the strongest ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... Lawson to be the wild and passionate weakling. Duane seemed to see also how during all the years of association this strong man had upheld the weak one. But that time had gone for ever, both in intent on Longstreth's part and in possibility. Lawson, like the great majority of evil and unrestrained men on the border, had reached a point where influence was futile. Reason had degenerated. He ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey

... experience he now felt to be impending. His time of life was peculiarly favourable for the growth of a master passion, one which, as the old saying has it, might make or mar him. The feverish struggles of early youth had landed him in a position somewhat better than that attained by the majority of his contemporaries. He had reached a breathing-place, where he could pause with a sense of deeds accomplished and of possible ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... dynamo which excites its own field. The majority of dynamos are of this construction. Others, especially alternating current machines, are separately excited, the field magnets being supplied with current from a ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... adults in Bird City that had arrived at years of indiscretion; and the majority of 'em required from three to twenty drinks a day to make life endurable. The Blue Snake was the only place where they could get 'em till the flood subsided. It was beautiful and simple as all truly great ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry

... since the season's opening a week before. Not more than a dozen loyal devotees to the sports of the open air lounged about the big clubhouse. Three or four rangy young women in sweaters and jackets strove bravely to dispel the gloom of the night as it settled down upon the growling masculine majority. The club steward hovered near, anxiously directing the movements of a silent and as yet undrilled corps of servants who flitted from group to group with decanters and checks, taking and mistaking orders with the usual abandon. A huge fireplace threw ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon

... them were acquainted with the secrets of the symbolical mythology they introduced. Nor, if they were so, is it likely that they would have communicated to a strange and a barbarous population the profound and latent mysteries shrouded from the great majority of Egyptians themselves. Thus, whatever the Egyptian colonizers might have imported of a typical religion, the abstruser meaning would become, either at once or gradually, lost. Nor can we—until the recent age of sophists ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to any Portuguese who promises to pay the combined taxes of all the huts. He also engages to cut new roads, to keep those already made in repair, and to furnish a sufficient number of police to maintain order. The lessees of these holdings have given rise to many and terrible scandals. In the majority of cases, the lessee, once out of reach of all authority and of public opinion, and wielding the power of life and death, becomes a tyrant and task-master over his district, taxing the natives to five and ten times the amount which each is supposed to furnish, and treating them virtually ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis

... majority echoed the exclamation. All but four staggered to their feet, and tottered off in various directions; some to pretend to look out at the window, and some to the wardrobes, where ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various

... had, and is open to the inroads of the tribes of The Desert. The population is very mixed, and consists of Fullans, who are the dominant caste, Touaricks, Negroes, and Moors and Arabs from different oases of Sahara, as also from the Northern Coast of Africa. The majority of the Moors are Maroquines. The Government is absolute, and now in the delegated possession of a Marabout named Mokhtar, and the national religion Mahometan. There do not appear to be any Pagans or idolatrous Africans now resident in Timbuctoo, but some half century ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... encumber it by trivial circumstances: we ought to say all that is necessary, and not a word more. We ought likewise to say one thing at once; and that concluded to begin another. We certainly write to be understood, and should therefore never write in a language that is unknown to a majority of our readers. The rule will apply as well to the living languages as to the dead, and its infringement is but in general a display of the author's vanity. Epithets, unless they increase the strength of thought or elucidate the argument, ought not to be admitted. Of similes, metaphors, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... of animals or plants, is contradicted by the facts. If that doctrine were true, there would be no lower order of animals after so many millions of years of growth. All would have been large and of a high order like others. Since we find a majority of all animal species less in size than the fly, there has been little growth in most species, and in many, none at all. The amoebae, one celled animals, smaller than a small pin-head, have existed unchanged since life began. ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams

... 'silent majority' in a electronic forum; one who posts occasionally or not at all but is known to read the group's postings regularly. This term is not pejorative and indeed is casually used reflexively: "Oh, I'm ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... sloping upward somewhat from the dungeon, formed a very shallow natural amphitheater, so that the majority could see as well ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... the opinion of the majority she cared about—it was the respect of the one; the respect she had ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... a boy whose brother has come under the influence of this teacher; a professor in Bryn Mawr combats Christianity for a session and then puts to his class the question whether or not there is a God, and is happy to find that a majority of the class vote that there is no God; a professor in a Christian college writes a book in which the virgin birth of Christ is disputed; one professor declares that life is merely a by-product and will ultimately be produced in the laboratory; ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant

... there; others ignored the very existence of Sambir; a good many did not think it worth their while to run the risk of Lingard's enmity for the doubtful advantage of trade with a comparatively unknown settlement. The great majority were undesirable or untrustworthy. And Babalatchi mentioned regretfully the men he had known in his young days: wealthy, resolute, courageous, reckless, ready for any enterprise! But why lament the past and speak about the dead? There is one man—living—great—not ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... we have yet to find the "mental science" teacher who will undertake to prove this by herself taking liberal doses of aconite and strychnine. The illnesses of children are explained by the hypothesis of hereditary fear. The majority of the teachers of this new faith are women, many of whom, no doubt, are sincere in their belief; but it may be safely stated that the men engaged as the so-called physicians of the new practice are, with few exceptions, unprincipled quacks, who have gone into the business ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus

... Those of the first class can no more form an idea of the strength of the impulse in other women, than the blind can of colors. They therefore often err in their judgments. The third class comprises the vast majority of women, in whom the sexual appetite is as moderate ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... remained inactive and refused to engage the enemy, which by this time had recovered from the check caused by the death of Zumalacarregui, and was making considerable progress, resigned and left the field for the time open to his adversaries, though he possessed an immense majority in the cortes, and had the voice of the nation, at least the liberal part of it, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... half earlier, but, at the last moment, his enemies intervened. The war minister, Saint Germain, was agreeable to the king, and he wished to keep him. "But what can I do?" he wrote; "his enemies are bent on his dismissal, and I must yield to the majority." Maurepas, at his death, left a paper on which were the names of four men whom he entreated his master not to employ. Lewis bestowed the highest offices upon them all. He regarded England with the aversion with which Chatham, and at that time even Fox, looked upon France, and ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... but it was part of her duty, and she did it with a smile that brought success. In after years she became a wonderful woman, but in those early days she held the secret that made her wonderful. She walked with God. When the cadets had leisure time, the majority would engage in innocent chat of one kind and another; but you would find Kate a little withdrawn from the others, with her Bible. Yet there was nothing censorious about her. She was quick with a smile and an answer to any remark from the other cadets; but there she was, already her life was hid ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter

... women are encouraged, every year, to enroll in schools where they will spend time and money preparing themselves for professions already overcrowded and for which a large majority of them have no natural aptitudes. A prominent physician tells us that of the forty-eight who were graduated from medical school with him, he considers only three safe to consult upon medical subjects. Indeed, so great is the need and so increasingly ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... case of conflicting testimony, what is stated by the majority (of the witnesses) must be credited; if the numbers be equal, then those of the witnesses who are of distinguished qualities[157] must be credited; if again, these are in contradiction, then the most distinguished shall ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya

... frolicked gaily thru the evening. In Mr. Belasco's production of the 'Darling of the Gods,' the accompanying music was almost incessant, but so subdued, so artfully modulated, so delicately adjusted to the action, that perhaps a majority of the audience was wholly unconscious of the three Japanese themes which had been insisted upon again and again. To evoke the atmosphere of Japan as soon as possible, Mr. Belasco also had a special curtain designed for the play, which co-operated with the exotic music to bring ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... Consciousness that all the World know they know better: To this is always added something mischievous to themselves or others. I have heard of some very merry Fellows, among whom the Frolick was started, and passed by a great Majority, that every Man should immediately draw a Tooth; after which they have gone in a Body and smoaked a Cobler. The same Company, at another Night, has each Man burned his Cravat; and one perhaps, whose Estate would ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... identical and to explain why and how they differ. A person of extensive reading and study, with a fine natural sense of language, will often find all that he wants in the mere list, which recalls to his memory the appropriate word. But for the vast majority there is needed some work that compares or contrasts synonymous words, explains their differences of meaning or usage, and shows in what connections one or the other may be most fitly used. This is the purpose of ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... resolved by the government at Rome to repair to a certain extent the city of the Jews, and to establish in it a regular colony of Greeks and Latins. At this crisis appeared the notorious Barcochab, whose name, denoting the "son of a star," made him be instantly hailed by a large majority of the nation as that predicted light which was to arise out of Jacob in the latter days. Recommended by Akiba, one of the most popular of the Rabbim, to the confidence of Israel, this impostor soon saw himself at the head of a powerful army; ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... case and properly speaking, a real necessity. Unless those who advance the present argument are the victims of some mental aberration, it is overwhelmingly improbable that their minds should differ in a fundamental and important attribute from the minds of the vast majority of their species. Or, to continue the above quotation, "They may fairly be asked to consider, whether it is not more likely that they are mistaken as to the origin of an impression in their minds, than that others are ignorant of the very existence of an impression in theirs." No doubt it ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... That is nature's way of accommodation with war's environment. To feel things much would literally be maddening. To brood about danger, to apprehend or anticipate or philosophise may imperil 'nerve.' Rather the majority of men carry on, callously, almost gaily, with mental and spiritual faculties if possible inactive. I have met an entirely devout lover of music (since killed in action) who told me that he didn't miss ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot

... intimate friends, and enjoying each other's society, they probably considered these the pleasantest evenings of their lives. They talked on every subject, especially of what interested and amused Parisians. Their conversation was, as in the majority of salons elsewhere, a verbal rehash of what they had read ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... observation, and to take out the multiplier, from the mean of this and of the temperature at the upper station. As, however, 330 feet is a near approach to what I have shown (Appendix I.) to be the mean equivalent of 1 degree for all elevations between 6000 and 18,000 feet; and as the majority of my observations were taken between these elevations, it results that the mean of all the multipliers employed in Sikkim for forty-four observations amounts to 65.1 degrees Fahrenheit, using the Calcutta and upper station observations, and 65.3 degrees on ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... the students' feelings, advised Hyacinth to become a member of the Theological Debating Society. The election to membership, he said, was a mere form, and nobody was ever excluded. Hyacinth sent his name to the secretary, and was blackbeaned by an overwhelming majority of the members. Shortly afterwards the Lord-lieutenant paid a visit to the college, and the students seized the chance of displaying their loyalty to the Throne and Constitution. They assembled outside the library, which the representative of Queen Victoria ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... or four years times were very hard in Virginia, and Mrs. Wingfield had to draw upon her savings to keep up the house in its former state; while the great majority of the planters were utterly ruined. The negroes, however, for the most part remained steadily working on the estate. A few wandered away, but their places were easily filled; for the majority of the freed slaves very ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... should aim at imitating that which is good and noble and Christlike in their characters. It is a great privilege to be permitted to come in contact with living men of the type of Gordon, but that privilege is only for the few. As the great majority of our fellow-creatures are denied it, the next best thing for them is to be able to read about these heroes, and thus endeavour to catch their spirit. Some are inclined to sneer at biographies, and to say that, ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... thousand-mile gauntlet. There are slaves in Illinois—it has never been declared a free state—but these are held almost exclusively in the more southern counties. North of the river the settlers are largely from New England, and the majority of them hate slavery and are ready to assist any runaway ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... strong, declining, if the strikes were put down, to support the Government. And with the Finance Act coming on the question was whether to accept an increasing deficit in the revenue or a declining majority in the Legislature. This could be read vaguely between the lines of the report presented by the Minister of the Interior. But all this time not one word was said about the coming constitutional crisis which was in everybody's mind. That had been thoroughly ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... legislation. But a bill must pass both Houses and then receive Imperial Sanction in order to become a law; and failing in this, cannot come up again during the same session. Thus hedged about and thus constituted, it is obvious that a conservative majority was permanently secured and ways provided to block any anti-imperial or revolutionary legislation in the Duma. And when it is added that matters concerning finance and treasonable offences were almost entirely ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... a Republic, in which the majority govern," answered Cimon. "And the majority here tell us how we are to act. Hark to the shouts of our men, as they are opening way for their ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... actual needs of disabled veterans require the expenditure of much money, then unquestionably a majority of the taxpayers of the country will favor spending it. Despite the insistent demand for economy in Washington that is arising from every part of the country, no member of House or Senate will have occasion to fear that he is running counter ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... words, the particular swinishness of a crowd is permanently resident in the majority of its members—in all those members, that is, who are naturally ignorant and vicious—perhaps 95 per cent. All studies of mob psychology are defective in that they underestimate this viciousness. They ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken



Words linked to "Majority" :   bulk, maturity, election, eld, majority opinion, relative quantity, figure, majority rule, majority operation, major, minority, adulthood, legal age, absolute majority



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