"Fraction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pin-making. It took twenty different workmen to make a pin, beginning with drawing the wire and ending with sticking in the paper. Each expert, skilled in one small performance only, was reduced to a minute fraction of a fraction of humanity. If the complaint was legitimate in Scaliger's time, it was better founded half a century ago when Mr. Emerson found cause for it. It has still more serious significance to-day, when in every profession, in every branch of human knowledge, ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... and prayer now are that the coming fraction of the century, whether it be small or large, may witness nothing less worthy in my life than has the half just closed—that no word or act of mine may lessen its weight in the scale of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... cake, of which a portion was already sliced. The vicar, at Adela's invitation, accepted a piece of the cake; having eaten this, he accepted another; then yet another. His absence had come back upon him, and he talked he continued to eat portions of the cake, till but a small fraction of the original structure remained on the dish. Alfred, keenly observant of what was going on, pursed his lips from time to time and looked at his mother with exaggerated gravity, leading her eyes to the vanishing cake. Even Adela could not but remark the reverend gentleman's abnormal appetite, ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... the free use of the forest, etc., form a pretty exact instrument with which to measure the triumphant advance of the aristocratic or the democratic spirit. In the year 1848 many a vast tract of forest was sacrificed in order to purchase therewith a small fraction of popularity. Every revolution does harm to the forest, but, provided it does not wish to strangle itself, it leaves ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... sea does not give up everything, nor all at once, some wreckage sinking, or perishing, or floating upon the water a long time before finding a well- concealed hiding-place upon some unfrequented shore, so the past yields but a fraction of its records, and that fraction slowly and grudgingly. So far this book has been a gathering of the flotsam of a past age: odd relics and scattered records, a sign here and a hint there; often unrelated, sometimes contradictory. ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... really, Mrs. Norris. This is Thursday night, you see, and I'm going around to the Club." Then as his hostess disappeared up the stairs, he hurried into his overcoat and, indulging in only a small fraction of his usual recessional with the Dean, he ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... a hundred and fifty thousand people in that city, even if their faces were the faces of lizards and they had four arms and quartz-speckled skins. What fraction of them were now alive, he could not guess. He had to remind himself that they were the people who had burned Eric Blount and Hendrik Lemoyne alive; that two of the three bombs that had contributed to that column of boiling smoke had been made in Keegark, by Keegarkans, and ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... fraction, but my hair was turning grey Before they called the drivers up and dragged the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... found that a sphere of 12 feet diameter would have a surface of 452 square feet, within a trifling fraction. Therefore 452 square feet of eel-skins would be required to cover it. In other words, that quantity would be required ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... one hour or other larger fraction of a working day had no contract as to amount of wages; they entered the vineyard and laboured without a bargain. They did not know what wages they would be paid with, but they knew what master they ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... a time, no matter how short, the fraction of a minute, when if I'd only had the sense, if I ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... feet. In certain localities, beds or narrow seams of pure felspathic clay and layers of vegetable matter occur in it, probably wholly due to local causes. An analysis of that near Dorjiling gives about 30 per cent. of alumina, the rest being silica, and a fraction of oxide of iron. Lime is wholly unknown as a constituent of the soil, and only occasionally seen as a stalactitic deposit ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... that what we see and hear is only the smallest fraction of what is. I know she lives quite out of this. She talks to you; but it's all make-believe. It's all a 'parlour game.' She's not really with you; only pitting her outside wits against yours and enjoying the fooling. She's living on inside, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... carried still higher by inblowing winds, which rise in turn and continue the process, often extending the storm over vast areas. The force of these movements is measured partly by the force of latent heat set free, and partly by the mechanical power of the rain-fall, a very small fraction of which constitutes the water-power of all our rivers. Such a fruitful source of disturbance, generated by so slight an accident as the upward movement of the saturated air, expanded by its own agency to so great an extent, so sudden ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... party, Chaumette, Freron, Westerman, Auduoin, Huguenin, Momoro, Couthon, Billaud-Varennes,[3204] and others still more tainted and brutal, who preach the purest Jacobin doctrine. "They announce openly[3205] that laws no longer exist; that since the people are sovereign, every one is master; that each fraction of the nation can take such measures as suit it, in the name of the country's safety; that they have the right to tax corn, to seize it in the laborer's fields, to cut off the heads of the farmers who refuse to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... now our second man quietly opened the door of his pen a fraction. Doubtless he looked out. Then he closed it as quietly again. You ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... before Phil got to him, the downward stroke of the whip caught the latter across the head and shoulders. He staggered for the fraction of a second, then closed with his adversary, catching the right arm that held the whip and, turning it smartly over his shoulder in a trick Jim Langford had taught him, had Brenchfield groaning with the pain of the strain on his ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... invasion of 43 A.D. under Aulus Plautius, say to some while after the famous letter of Honorius, calling home the legions). You may safely put it at four hundred years, and then count six hundred as the space before the Normans arrive—a thousand years altogether, or but a fraction—one short generation—less than the interval of time that separates us from King Alfred. In the great Cathedral of Winchester (where sleep, by the way, two gentle writers specially beloved, Isaak Walton and Jane Austen) above the choir-screen to the south, you ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... a binding and releasing him. It is in these falls that the leather heel bindings so often prove better than a rigid toe binding. The leather will ease a little or slip and allow the foot to turn a fraction of an inch so that the strain is not maintained long enough to cause ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... of Syracuse—or he might land on the northern coast of Sicily, march across the island, and fight his way into the city through the unwalled interval. In either case, the enterprise seemed desperate enough. By a very moderate exertion on the part of Nicias, employing only a fraction of the immense force at his disposal, Gylippus might have been destroyed, before he had time to become dangerous. But Nicias was lulled into a fatal confidence. He had heard of the mission of Gylippus, but made no attempt to oppose ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... the guests outwards as deftly as they had drawn them in, and she could not be with him long. It had been arranged that they should motor to Shrewsbury, whence he would go north, and she back to London with the Warringtons. For a fraction of time she was happy. Then her ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... They make no nests, but merely scrape so as to form a shallow hole to deposit their eggs. The consequence of their always resorting to the same spot is that, from the voidings of the birds and the remains of fish brought to feed the young, a deposit is made over the whole surface, a fraction of an inch every year, which by degrees increases until it is sometimes twenty or thirty feet deep, if not more, and the lower portion becomes almost as hard as rock. The deposit is termed guano, and has, from time immemorial, been used by the Peruvians and Chilians ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... apart from the Frau Graefin's admirable management, ran with military precision, and no one dared to be the fraction of a minute late for meals or social engagements. They attended the theater, the opera, court functions, dinners, balls, on stated nights, and unless the Kaiser took a whim and altered a date, there was no deviation ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... darling! Such odds and ends! I cannot congratulate you upon your kindred, for I do not get on at all with these patchwork combinations, that are one-third man and the other two-thirds a vulgar fraction of bull or hawk or goat or serpent or ape or jackal or what not. Priapos is the only male myth who comes here in anything like the semblance of a complete human being: and I had infinitely rather he stayed away, because even I who am Jurgen ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... hand unless a tremendous effort was to be put forward by the British Empire. He saw almost at a glance that our military system such as it was, and as previously devised with a view to war conditions, provided what represented numerically no more than an insignificant fraction of the host which would ultimately be needed to give us victory. He furthermore—and it is well to insist upon this thus early, in view of fabrications which have been put about on the subject of munitions—clearly discerned the need for a huge expansion in the country's powers of output ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... a wooden marquee, projecting over the entrance to a shipping room, made a black strip along the feebly lighted pavement. As he entered the patch of darkness the shape of a man materialised out of the void and barred his way, and in that same fraction of a second something shiny and hard was thrust against Mr. Leary's daunted bosom, and in a low forceful rumble a voice commanded him as follows: "Put up your mitts—and ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... be worse than useless to my country. It would aid her foes, and, much as she needs men, she needs money even more. So I stay here, and put my income, as fast as I get it, to the national use. You know what my income is. I'll show you my expenses'; and he showed me the merest fraction—less than I spend myself, I began to expostulate on his endurance of suspicion and blame for what might be so nobly explained, but he would only say, 'Oh, it would sound quixotic and sentimental; and, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... involved and doubtful property, Charles laid heavy responsibilities on his shoulders. The actual price of fifty thousand gold florins paid to Sigismund was a mere fraction of the pecuniary obligations incurred, while the weight of care was difficult to gauge. He succeeded to princes weak, frivolous, prodigal, whose misrule had long been a curse to the land. The incursions of the Swiss, the repeated descents ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... one Amalaric, his legitimate heir and the grandson of Theodoric, but still a child, the other a young man, but of illegitimate birth, named Gesalic. This latter was, on the death of his father, proclaimed king by some fraction of the Visigothic people. Had Gesalic shown courage and skill in winning back the lost inheritance of his father, Theodoric, whose own descent was not legitimate according to strict church law, would not, perhaps, have interfered with ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... that year), was fixed, irrespective of the number of pieces of paper contained in a letter, as follows: For a letter not exceeding half an ounce in weight, carried under three hundred miles, 5 cents; over three hundred miles, 10 cents, and an additional rate for every additional half ounce or fraction of half an ounce. Drop letters and printed circulars were by the same Act, to be charged 2 cents each. This was considered by the Post-office Department as an average deduction of 53 per cent. from ...
— The Postal Service of the United States in Connection with the Local History of Buffalo • Nathan Kelsey Hall
... hesitated, it was only for a fraction of a second. When he answered, it was to say: "If I were going up-stairs to put a noose around my own neck, it would be simpler and easier than the thing I've got to do. As to your one condition—dad, I'll be with ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... suddenly threw up his hands, and striking one of them to his temples sank in an inert heap to the deck, and at the same instant a sickening blow fell upon my head, the whole scene whirled confusedly before my eyes for the fraction of an instant, and for a time ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... must be a spice of dogmatism in it when we begin laying down laws about the future; for how do we know that there are not phases of nature coming upon us of which we have formed no conception? After all, a few seconds are a longer fraction of a day than an average life is of the period during which we know that the world has been in existence. But if a man lived only for a few seconds of daylight, his son the same, and his son the same, what would their united experiences after a hundred generations tell them of the phenomenon ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... to hear. Straight as an arrow, bulking large upon a little gray mare, he moved not the fraction of an inch with the question. Whereupon the little man, after muttering something further ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... to the bagged or barrelled sugar ready for the market. The final product from both cane and beet is practically the same. Pure sugar is pure sugar, whatever its source. In the commercial production, on large scale, there remains a small fraction of molasses or other harmless substances, indistinguishable by sight, taste, or smell. With that fraction removed and an absolute 100 per cent. secured, there would be no way by which the particular origin could be ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... Keane immediately added it to the other twenty lacs contained in the treaty. The Ameers say they will pay half the whole sum demanded here, and the remaining half on our arrival at Shikarpoor. This Sir J. Keane has refused, and told them he will not leave this or Hydrabad till he gets every fraction. ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... in a subdued sort of a shriek; she sprang up from her chair, and stood for the fraction of a second with her hands raised and her fists clinched. Simpson, puzzled, amazed, and a little scared at last, had barely time to notice the position before it dissolved. The child, frightened, screamed from ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... representatives of an imperial army supporting themselves in this way; dark, lazy fellows in uniform, lounging about with old boots, and suspenders hanging all over them, crying out the merits of their wares in stentorian voices, thus, as it were, patriotically relieving the national treasury of a small fraction of its burden. They have much the appearance, in the crowd, of raisins in ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... men here within a week, and a week after that you would be smashed. Don't you realize that there are thousands of millions of men in the galaxy—and to every one of them you would be animals. You know nothing about what you would face. Your puny hundreds couldn't even stand against a fraction of the power Alexander could mount against you. Have you seen a Burkholtz blaster work? Have you seen remote-control antipersonnel missiles? Have you push-pull projectors, atomic warheads? All of these weapons Alexander can command. ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... and for a fraction of a second stern and side tubes "fought" each other, making the boat yaw wildly, then it straightened out ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... up!" howled the excited little man, growing still worse, as the colonel seemed to shrink and falter. "Why, I can lick you in a fraction of no time! You've been making lots of fighting talk, and now it's my turn. Get up and put up ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... the outlaw jumped to meet those of the cattleman. For a fraction of a second he was caught off his guard. Then the film of wary craftiness ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... with a short report by me of some trifling experiments which I have been trying on the power of seeds to withstand sea water. I do not know whether it has struck you, but it has me, that it would be advisable for botanists to give in WHOLE NUMBERS, as well as in the lowest fraction, the proportional numbers of the families, thus I make out from your Manual that of the INDIGENOUS plants the proportion of the Umbelliferae are 36/1798 1/49; for, without one knows the WHOLE numbers, one cannot judge how really close the numbers of the plants of the ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... bond of common brotherhood; but your individualism—what it is that makes you you—withdraws itself naturally, involuntarily, inevitably, into the background,—the dim distance which their eyes cannot penetrate. But, from the fraction which you do project, they construct another you, call it by your name, and pass it around for the real, the actual you. You bristle with jest and laughter and wild whims, to keep them at a distance; and they fancy this to be your every-day ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... already half-way to his lips, paused and glanced at his watch. There was a fraction of a moment left. He stepped to a carriage ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... For just a fraction of a second the two women knew that Leland was hesitating, for an instant they waited fearfully, for what he might do. Then he took the hand proffered him, his lips twitched into a hard, forced smile and ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... McGinnis was not smiling, but neither had he lost his temper. His vigilance had doubled and his whole frame seemed to be of steel springs. Blow after blow came crashing straight for him, but the alert Irishman evaded them by the merest fraction of an inch. Two fearful swings from Peavey Jo followed each other in rapid succession, both of which McGinnis avoided by stepping inside them, his right arm apparently swinging idly by his side. Then suddenly, at a third swing, he ran in to meet it, stooped ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... put her hand in the fire to serve this wonderful being who royally distributed gifts, and live ones at that, and only hesitated for the barest fraction of a second before, her face suffused with crimson, she walked ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... two cups of coffee or tea, without milk or sugar, but sweetened with a fraction of a grain of saccharin. Three ounces of toasted or ordinary white bread or six ounces of brown bread; enough butter may be used to make the bread palatable, not more than one ounce. Sliced raw tomatoes with vinegar, or cooked tomatoes ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... there were residents of that neighborhood who could recall the young midshipman as he was at Neif's school; a lad short of stature and not very handsome in face, but who bore himself very erect because, as he often declared, he could not afford to lose a fraction of one of his scanty inches. There was, and still is, near the spot where he went to school a tavern called the Seven Stars, which has been a public house since the time of the Revolution, and which had sheltered Howe and Cornwallis ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... destroys our admiration of persons whom we esteemed highly at a distance. Thirdly, that a circle of clever fellows, who meet together to dine and have a good time, have signed a constitutional compact to glorify themselves and put down him and the fraction of the human race not belonging to their number. Fourthly, that it is an outrage that he is not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... five millions; those of Africa may number two hundred millions. I have outgrown, long since, the boundaries of North America, and with them have also outgrown the boundaries of their claims. I, therefore, cannot consent to sacrifice the prospects of two hundred millions, that a fraction of five millions may be benefitted, especially since the measures adopted for the many must necessarily benefit ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... witch or the fairy character walks into the scene and takes her proper position in it, and then starting the camera again, the result on the screen being that the supernatural figure stands, in the fraction of a second, where nothing of the kind appeared before. Today, stop-camera work is used very seldom—as a rule only to obtain ludicrously sudden and unexpected effects in certain types of "slap-stick" comedy. A far more artistic effect, when it is desired to introduce visitors from other worlds, ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... moment he was nothing but a mere hotel proprietor with an awkward affair on his hands. For a fraction of a second he wished he had never bought ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... ensued. Cards, chips, and money were swept as by magic from the board. A dozen dog-eared and filthy magazines and newspapers were snatched from a hiding place beneath the table, and in the fraction of a second the room was transformed from a gambling place to ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... say unhesitatingly that the effect largely depends upon the natural temperament of the individual. As a general rule, the great specialist is a wise, kindly, humble, delightful man. He perceives that though he has spent his whole life upon a subject or a fraction of a subject, he knows hardly anything about it compared to what there is to know. The track of knowledge glimmers far ahead of him, rising and falling like a road over solitary downs. He knows that it will not be given to him ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... drink all we wanted of the wine served in the tavern in the vault to the left of the entrance stair, underneath the seats of our section, and to return to our seats, refreshed like the rest of that fraction of the spectators which went out and came back, most of them sitting tight in their seats, unwilling to miss any of the tight-rope- walking, jugglers' tricks, fancy riding and rest of the diversions which ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... Saddoc cried again. There are Sicarii who kill men in the daytime, mingling themselves among the multitude with daggers hidden in their garments, their mission being to stab those that disobey the law in any fraction. We're Essenes, and have not sent blood offerings to the Temple. Open not the door. Sicarii or Zealots travel in search of heretics through the cities of Samaria and Judea. Open not the door! Men are ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... life goes on more or less behind screens—a screen of leaves or of grass, or of vines, or of tree-trunks, and only the alert and sympathetic eye penetrates it. The keenest of us see only a mere fraction of it. If one saw one tenth of the significant happenings that take place on his few acres of orchard, lawn, and vineyard in the course of the season, or even of a single week, what a harvest he would have! The drama of wild life is played ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... time I had also begun to think that the old writers called Fathers deserved but a small fraction of the reverence which is awarded to them. I had been strongly urged to read Chrysostom's work on the Priesthood, by one who regarded it as a suitable preparation for Holy Orders; and I did read it. But I not only thought it inflated, and without moral depth, but ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... . . queer boy! What is there in it? There's nothing to understand in it. Learn the rules, and that's all. . . . To divide a fraction by a fraction you must multiply the numerator of the first fraction by the denominator of the second, and that will be the numerator of the quotient. . . . In this case, the numerator of the ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... France. Comparing the two capitals, the average mortality of London is about one-fifth less than that of Paris. What may appear a more singular statement, the proportion of deaths in London, a vast and luxurious metropolis, differs only by a small fraction from that of the whole of France; and is considerably less than the average of those Mediterranean shores which are especially frequented by invalids for the sake of health. In Italy, the proportion ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... part. The special views that it picks out and registers, depend entirely upon the relation between its movement and the rhythm or movement of other aspects of the flux. It is obvious that there are a variety of rhythms or tensions of duration. For example, in what is the fraction of a second of our own duration, hundreds of millions of vibrations, which it would need thousands of our years to count, are taking place successively in matter, and giving us the sensation of light. It is therefore clear that there is a great difference between the rhythm ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... Dozier entered, jerked his head squarely to one side, and found himself gazing into the muzzle of a revolver. The astonishment and the swift hardening of his face had begun and ended in a fraction ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... is concerned, there are great differences among even normal people in all classes. For comparison with the above group, we may take 63 cases of mentally normal delinquents, all of whom had been offered the full 7 suggestions. The median error of this group was two. Lower than the fraction thus obtained was the result on only 4 of the present cases. We have been interested to see that with some of the pathological liars there is no great suggestibility. The person is willing to deal in his own inventions, but ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... around, still keeping his place. He looked down. And upturned to him in agonised appeal was the face of little Emily. They stared at each other for what seemed a long, long time. It was really only the fraction of a second. Then Jo put one great arm firmly around Emily's waist and swung her around in front of him. His great bulk protected her. Emily was clinging to his hand. She was breathing rapidly, as if she had been running. Her eyes were straining up ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... townspeople under the pressure of a local lord of the manor strong enough to set the law at defiance, or a compromise may have been effected between him and those in temporary enjoyment of the benefit. These, as we have observed, sometimes consisted of no more than a fraction of the inhabitants, and, as the population increased, this would be a diminishing fraction, with the result that outsiders would be apathetic regarding the fate of the common. Where there was a special qualification, ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... encouragement he had received was that Sunday in the country, when for the fraction of a second she had let him hold her hand. Since then he had written her five letters and received but one brief note in reply. Her silence, however, did not depress him. She had told him she hated to write letters, a sentiment he fully shared. Only in this case ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... 5,000 to 11,000 tons displacement and five or six smaller vessels; and the armament of this squadron numbered more than one hundred guns of all calibers, from the sixteen inch rifle down to the seven inch rifle, besides several smaller guns. But this fleet represented only a small fraction of England's naval power. During some recent evolutions she turned out thirty-six heavy ironclads and forty smaller vessels and torpedo boats. The crews of these vessels numbered nearly 19,000 officers and men, or about three times the entire number ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... heard this than, being very much terrified, he proceeded to retreat out of Greece with all speed. The prudence of Themistocles and Aristides in this was afterward more fully understood at the battle of Plataea, where Mardonius, with a very small fraction of the forces of Xerxes, put the Greeks ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... quaint nose—all in all quite a figure for Chicago at the time. She had, furthermore, a curious look of current wisdom in her eyes, an air of saucy insolence which aroused Cowperwood's sense of mastery, his desire to dominate. To the look of provocation and defiance which she flung him for the fraction of a second he returned a curiously leonine glare which went over her like a dash of cold water. It was not a hard look, however, merely urgent and full of meaning. She was the vagrom-minded wife of a ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... one of the greatest organists and clavier players of his time. Of his compositions comparatively little was known. At his death his MS. works were divided amongst his sons, and many of them have been lost; only a small fraction of his greater works was recovered when, after the lapse of nearly a century, the verdict of his neglectful posterity was reversed by the modern upholders of polyphonic art. Even now some important works ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... save weight at the expense of comfort, but all possible saving would amount to but a mere fraction of one's loads. Supposing it were a grim struggle for existence and we were forced to drop everything but the barest necessities, the total saving on this three ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... crossed his mind like a flash of lightning. He did not lose his head—Bobby never lost his head in an emergency. He thought of everything. He feared there was not time to reload, but it was the only thing to do. As he ran he drew two shells, loaded with ball, from his pocket. For the fraction of a minute he halted, "broke" his gun, dropped the shells into place, snapped the gun back and threw it to his shoulder, but in the brief interval that had elapsed the bear and Jimmy had so far gained upon ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... was stunned. The first thing he thought of was his mother; but his call sounded hollow and unnatural and there was no response. He had been out-generaled, vanquished and insulted by a skunk, a creature but a fraction his size, and the realization of it hurt. His good opinion of himself fell, and he needed sympathy and encouragement as he had never needed them before. But they were not forthcoming. He was alone in the world and must fight his way or perish. In sheer distress he sat upright ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... even in the Episcopal Communion, which is the most conservative body outside the Catholic Church, there is the ritualistic, or high church, and the low church. Nay, if you question closely the individual members composing any one fraction of these denominations, you will not rarely find them giving a contradictory view ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... highway. Into this bounding receptacle Bellamy interjected his head, his pistol arm, and his pistol; and since his own horse was travelling still faster than the chaise, he must withdraw all of them again in the inside of the fraction of a minute. He did so, but he left the charge of the pistol behind him—whether by design or accident I shall never know, and I dare say he has forgotten! Probably he had only meant to threaten, in hopes ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The old Korean system of taxation being arbitrary, the only way to escape a raid by the tax-gatherer was to appear not to have anything worth raiding, and with the coinage confined usually to the copper "cash" (each "cash" worth a small fraction of a cent), it was difficult for a man to have much money without everybody knowing it. If a man had much he needed a warehouse to store it in. Mrs. Bishop in her book, already referred to, speaks of a time when it took 3200 "cash" to equal a ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... interest. Has the action of running water or the sea formed this deep ravine? was a question which often arose in my mind and generally was answered by finding a bed of recent shells at the bottom. I have not sufficient arguments, but I do not believe that more than a small fraction of the height of the Andes has been formed within the Tertiary period. The conclusion of my excursion was very unfortunate, I became unwell and could hardly reach this place. I have been in bed for the last month, but am now rapidly getting well. I had hoped during this time ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... eyebrows the fraction of an inch, meaning to say he didn't know but at the same time didn't object ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... area code for "900" lines and in 2000, from the lease of its ".tv" Internet domain name. Royalties from these new technology sources could increase substantially over the next decade. With merchandise exports only a fraction of merchandise imports, continued reliance must be placed on fishing and telecommunications license fees, remittances from overseas workers, official transfers, and investment income ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... search continued. At intervals and at widely separated points dull explosions took place on the bed of the river, creating smooth, round hillocks that lasted for the fraction of a second and then dissolved into swift-spreading wavelets, stained a dirty yellow by the upheaval of sand and mud, and went racing in ruffles to the banks which they tenderly licked before they died. White-bellied fish, killed by the shock ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... mysteriously, was none other than the fugitive himself. He did not care if they did; in truth, he rather hoped they would. He could imagine their mortification and disappointment, and since they had gone to dwell with strangers and fight their own people, it was only a fraction ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the wheat, which should be only just cracked, so as to skin well. To attain this end, first, the surfaces of the stones must be level, and the grooves must be exactly right; and, secondly, the upper stone must be hung at the exact distance above the other to the smallest fraction of an inch. The upper millstone is now sometimes balanced with lead, which Tibbald said was not the ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... functions of life; for these, like those of the engine, are based upon the oxidation of the fuel. The oxygen is derived from the air in the simplest manner. During its circulation the blood is brought for a fraction of a second into practical contact with air. This occurs in the lungs, where there are great numbers of air cells, in the walls of which the blood-vessels are distributed in great profusion. While ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... and capital and the disruption of trade and transport. The majority of the population continues to suffer from insufficient food, clothing, housing, and medical care. Inflation remains a serious problem throughout the country. International aid can deal with only a fraction of the humanitarian problem, let alone promote economic development. The economic situation did not improve in 1998-99, as internal civil strife continued, hampering both domestic economic policies and international aid efforts. Numerical data are likely to be either unavailable ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... injector, which passes the water on, at a pressure of 70 lbs. to the square inch, to a second injector operated by high-pressure steam coming direct from the boiler, which increases its velocity sufficiently to overcome the boiler pressure. In this case only a fraction of the weight of high-pressure steam is required to inject a given weight of water, as compared with that used in a ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... is best for myself to 'strike while the iron is hot,' I sit down at once to send you a check. The signal mercy of the Lord enables me to make my offering of dollars instead of cents, and has put so many benefits already into the fraction of the current year that it may be reckoned as a complete year. How small an acknowledgment does even a dollar seem for a year of life, with all its escapes from peril and all its experience of good! What a refreshing addition to the resources of the church would result if each professing ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889 • Various
... still pointed at the man. He didn't stop his powers entirely; he merely throttled them down so that only a tiny fraction of the neural energy at his command came into play. The energy that came from the tip of his finger made no noise and cast no light. It was not ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the seed-box, but before she does so she has to deposit on the stigma the ball of pollen. From this the pollen-tubes grow down and the pollen-nucleus of a tube fertilises the egg-cell in an ovule, so that the possible seeds become real seeds, for it is only a fraction of them that the Yucca Moth has destroyed by using them as cradles for her eggs. Now it is plain that the Yucca Moth has no individual experience of Yucca flowers, yet she secures the continuance ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... more northerly, and the 'Sunbeam' fetched Bombay under sail. Having given a general description of the weather, the records of the log-book may be summarised as follows:—Distance under sail, 4,046 knots; distance under steam, 2,830 knots; the average speed in each case being within a fraction ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... be arid. It ought to be the most interesting subject upon earth, the story of ourselves, of our forefathers, of the human race, the events which made us what we are, and wherein, if Weismann's views hold the field, some microscopic fraction of this very body which for the instant we chance to inhabit may have borne a part. But unfortunately the power of accumulating knowledge and that of imparting it are two very different things, and the uninspired historian becomes merely the dignified compiler of an enlarged ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had been hovering on the outskirts of this duel, inclined her head the fraction of an inch, but Alice put out her ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... She is a healthy, full-blown young woman, smartly—and unsuitably—attired in the very latest fashion of Kensington High Street. She wears large artificial pearls round her neck, and wafts a strong odour of lily of the valley perfume. Never for the fraction of a second did it occur to me to offer to relieve her of any of her duties; but she cast a pale-blue eye at me, and wove her own little schemes. One afternoon, as I was tucking the coverings round Baby Margaret's feet, ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and discourse subtle nothings with him about the immortality of the soul, and the exact number of pints of pure homogeneous essence that went to the making of the universe, and the claims of rhetoric to be called a shadow of a fraction of statecraft, or a fourth part of flattery. He takes a curious pleasure in refinements of this kind; it tickles his vanity most deliciously to be told that not every man can see so far into the ideal as he. Evidently he expects me to ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... stock still for the fraction of a second. Then he pulled out his whistle and blew loudly and insistently. Before the shrill call had died away, he was striding towards the passage, ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... all this in, of course, in a fraction of the time it takes to write it, and also the fact that old Roger looked ten years younger than when I had last seen him. He had always been a steady, responsible fellow, you see, one of the men people put things on, and not particularly youthful for his age: ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... empty honours. His sailors remained unpaid; by a system of wholesale fraud they received but an insignificant fraction of the prize-money due to them; for the Portuguese faction were still predominant in the Brazilian ministry, and Lord Cochrane was so openly insulted that he felt his position untenable. He remained, however, for a year longer in the service, in order ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... by the faintest scratching sound when he dealt. In this manipulation it would be necessary, also, to shave the edges of some of the pasteboards a trifle, so that, when the deck was forced firmly against one side of the box, there would be exposed a fraction of the small figure in the left-hand corner of the concealed cards. Long practice in the art of jugglery lends such proficiency as to baffle discovery and rob the game of its uncertainty as surely as the player is robbed of his money. It is, of course, vital that the confederate case-keeper ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... Private Hargreaves had been written in an excess of patriotism, she made her feel the ban of her displeasure. She received her coldly when she brought her home letters to be stamped, stopped her exeat, and did not remit a fraction of her imposition. She considered she had gauged Marjorie's character—that thoughtless impulsiveness was one of her gravest faults, and that it would be well to teach her a lesson which she would remember for some time. Marjorie's hot spirits chafed against her punishment. ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... nature and dimensions of the wood elements but also by their arrangement. It is greatest in straight-grained specimens with thick-walled fibres. Cross grain of any kind materially reduces the tensile strength of wood, since the tensile strength at right angles to the grain is only a small fraction of ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... little Mr. Spillikins, with his vacuous face and football hair, who was there, as everybody knew, on account of Dulphemia; and there was old Judge Longerstill, who sat leaning on a gold-headed stick with his head sideways, trying to hear some fraction of what was being said. He came to the gathering in the hope that it would prove a likely place for seconding a vote of thanks and saying a few words—half an hour's talk, perhaps—on the constitution of the United States. Failing that, he felt sure that at least someone would call him "this eminent ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... sunlight as it spun to the ground. Then I knew what had blinded me at that crucial moment of the fight, and how Sarkoja had found a way to kill me without herself delivering the final thrust. Another thing I saw, too, which almost lost my life for me then and there, for it took my mind for the fraction of an instant entirely from my antagonist; for, as Dejah Thoris struck the tiny mirror from her hand, Sarkoja, her face livid with hatred and baffled rage, whipped out her dagger and aimed a terrific blow at Dejah Thoris; and then Sola, our dear and faithful Sola, sprang ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... embittered Liberals, Legitimists, Orleanists, Bonapartists, and Clericals had never before been seen. It mattered little, however, at that time. The sole object was to kill the Republic; and the Republic was at the point of death. Only a fraction of the people—a thousand workmen at most, out of the ten thousand souls in the town—still saluted the tree of liberty planted in the middle of the square ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... hope to see good and valuable servants of the Government in the military branch and in the civil branch turned out by this and similar educational institutions; but, if the conditions are healthy, those Government servants, civil or military, will never be more than a small fraction of the graduates, and the prime end and prime object of an educational institution should be to turn out men who will be able to shift for themselves, to help themselves, and to help others, fully independent of all matters ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... of it in gifts of supernatural power. And this vast number is but a selection; the editors chose only out of the mass before them what was most noteworthy and trustworthy, and what was of catholic rather than of national interest. It is no more than a fraction of that singular mythology which for so many ages delighted the Christian world, which is still held in external reverence among the Romanists, and of which the modern historians, provoked by its feeble supernaturalism, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... particular instances he has pointed out I have no means of learning. And it is probably wholly impossible on this side of the Atlantic, and even in most of the public libraries of Europe, to find anything more than a small fraction of the innumerable obscure publications which the neglect of grocers and trunkmakers has spared to be ransacked by the all-devouring genius of Homoeopathy. I have endeavored to verify such passages as my own library afforded me the means of doing. For some I have looked in vain, ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... think if they sit at the piano and 'practise' a certain number of hours daily, it is sufficient. A small portion of that time, if used with intense concentration, will accomplish more. One player will take hours to learn a page or a passage which another will master in a fraction of the time. What is the difference? It may be said one has greater intelligence than the other. The greater the intelligence, the stronger ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... evolving machinery which will by-and-by throw itself fatally out of work. When, in the Bank of England, I see a wondrously delicate machine for testing sovereigns, a shrewd implacable little steel Rhadamanthus that, once the coins are delivered up to it, lifts and balances each in turn for the fraction of an instant, finds it wanting or sufficient, and dismisses it to right or left with rigorous justice; when I am told of micrometers and thermopiles and tasimeters which deal physically with the invisible, the impalpable, and the unimaginable; of cunning wires and wheels and pointing ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... maximum elevation of the arch, on the supposition of its composing a part of the bank, was 43 miles. At Perryville, the bank and streamers had disappeared at 10 o'clock. At Ottawa, the arch or bow disappeared at 10 h. 5 m., differing only the fraction of a minute from the time at Perryville; but, the bank was still visible, but low and faint, the greatest altitude having been over 30d. To show the rapid fluctuations in width and position of this bow, we will add a few of the minutes taken at the time with great ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... gold plays a small part only in actual business. It is a regulator of business rather than an active instrument for the transaction of business. It is not an exaggeration to say that the use of gold in business is limited to a small fraction of one per cent of the aggregate transactions in countries where gold ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... fraction, member, section, component, fragment, particle, segment, constituent, ingredient, piece, share, division, instalment, portion, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... its gravity field.... I don't know. Let an electronic brain figure it out some time.... Anyway, now I'm being dragged along in the orbit of the moonlet—how about that? Yes, sir, I'm circling down closer and closer to the moonlet.... No, don't worry, sir. It was a weak gravity pull, only a fraction of an Earth-g. So I'm drifting down gently as a cloud.... Stand by for my landing on ...
— Shipwreck in the Sky • Eando Binder
... sure your mother does." The fork shook in her fingers and then dropped upon the plate. She looked up in confusion. Cable's eyes were bent upon her intently and she had never seen so queer a light in them. Scarcely more than the fraction of a second passed before he lowered his gaze, but the mysterious telegraphy of the mind had shot the message of comprehension from one to the other. He saw with horror that the girl at least suspected the true ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... worked—it had worked before—but Hopalong was there to win, and without the momentary hesitation of the suspicious fighter he followed the retreat and his hard hand flashed in over the captain's guard a fraction of a second sooner than that surprised gentleman anticipated. The ferocious frown gave way to placid peace and the captain reclined at the feet of the battered victor, who stood waiting for him to get up and fight. The captain lay without a sign of movement and as Hopalong wondered, ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... the disaffection that exists in India to-day," he replied, "is due to the encouragement and financial assistance which it has received from people here in this country, although only a fraction of the natives of India have ever heard of us. Much of the money devoted to the cause of revolution and anarchy in India is contributed by worthy people who innocently believe that their subscriptions are destined ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... in the rigidity of the enforcement of the law may account in some measure for this disparity. Let us then take the city of Washington, one-third of whose population are Negroes, and compare its police reports with those of Boston, whose Negro element is a negligible fraction. It will be conceded, I think, that the enforcement of law in both cities is rigid. The major of police for the District of Columbia, in his last report remarks: "Those familiar with the conduct of police affairs in this country generally contend that there is a ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... after ten minutes' charging with an intensity of 12,000 volts per centimetre, is not more than 4 parts in 10,000 of the original charge. In making this measurement the discharge occupied a fraction of a second. The electric strength for a homogeneous plate of crystalline sulphur is not less than 33,000 volts per centimetre, and probably a good deal more. If the sulphur is contaminated with up to 3 per cent of the amorphous variety, as is the case if it is cooled fairly ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... nation might wish to constitute itself a body politic: and that the end of that constitution, is the general good of each individual, who is to enter into that social compact. How then dares a mere fraction of the great Portuguese nation, without waiting for the conclusion of this solemn national compact, attack the general good of the principal part of the same, and such is the vast and rich kingdom of Brazil; dividing it into miserable fragments, ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... was an outcurve it seemed certain to pass over the center of the plate, and it would not do to let it pass. It was speedy, and the batter was forced to make up his mind in a fraction of a second. ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... he would to bolster his grit, Captain Jack Benson found himself in a fearful plight. At first, he could only stare, with terror-dilated eyes, at that candle—ever burning just a slight fraction shorter! ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... were left in the whole of South America he would persist in carrying on the contest against Chile to the last drop of blood. When he finished that mad tirade his wife's long white hand was raised, and she just caressed his knee with the tips of her fingers for a fraction of a second. ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... doing so, Suetonius. I could hardly pardon men who have so withstood us, but, upon the other hand, I should grieve to commence my rule by an act of severity; besides, I hope through them to persuade the others—for, as you told me in your letter, it is but a fraction of these outlaws that you have subdued —to lay down their arms. It is well, indeed, that you have taken their chief, and that he, as I hear, has partly been brought up among ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... Parisian world, or rather, that imperceptible fraction of the world of Paris which goes every fine, sunny day to the Champs Elysees, to see and be seen, will understand that the presence of Mdlle. de Cardoville on that brilliant promenade was an ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... bear—the excitement of being with people of like nature with themselves; and if they fail in this, their mind sinks by its own weight, and they fall into a grievous lethargy.[1] Such people, it may be said, possess only a small fraction of humanity in themselves; and it requires a great many of them put together to make up a fair amount of it,—to attain any degree of consciousness as men. A man, in the full sense of the word,—a man par excellence—does not represent a fraction, ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... said, "you've done it. I had it on the tip of my tongue, and now it has gone back for ever into the limbo of forgotten things, and all because you couldn't keep silent for the least little fraction of a second." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... Forgetful for the fraction of an instant of the gracious role she was essaying, Joan flashed Marjorie a contemptuous glance. It said more plainly than words: ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester |
