"Compute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... classes on both sides. Centuries will not repair that waste of creative ability in either section. France, after the lapse of more than two hundred years, is still suffering from the loss of her Huguenots. It is impossible to compute what American literature has lost as a result of this war, not only from the double waste involved in turning the energies of men to destruction and subsequently to the necessary repairs, but also from the sacrifice of life ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... Patrolman Willis were, self-evidently, the only human beings on a planet some nine thousand miles in diameter. It was easy to compute that the nearest other humans would be at least some thousands of thousands of millions of miles away—so far away that distance had no meaning. This planet was something over nine-tenth rolling sea, but there were a few tens of thousands of square miles of solid ground in the ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Brantome; Quintilian and Petronius I had left with Mr. Grainger, who had promised to send them to a publisher, a friend of his, and in my pocket was my uncle George's legacy,—namely, ten guineas in gold. And, as I walked, I began to compute how long such a sum might be made to last a man. By practising the strictest economy, I thought I might manage well enough on two shillings a day, and this left me some hundred odd days in which to find some means of livelihood, and if a man could not suit himself ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... different given points in the Cannongate, so that when the gentleman saunters down to the Abbey of Holyrood-house, in order to think on ancient days, on King James the Fifth, and on Queen Mary, they may compute its altitude above the street, according to the rules ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... is an attractive sight, to view the number of gray-headed patriarchs living at the same time. Only a little ciphering is required to do it. If you compute carefully the years of our first parent, Adam, you will see that he lived over fifty years with Lamech, Noah's father. Accordingly, Adam saw all his descendants down to the ninth generation, having an almost infinite number of sons and daughters. These, however, Moses does not enumerate, being ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... war. Who should have pre-supposed their acquaintance with the maxim of the great and godlike Gustavus Adolphus, that a flag of truce should be half a messenger half a spy?—And, having finished burnishing his arms, he sate down patiently to compute how much half a dollar per diem would amount to at the end of a six-months' campaign; and, when he had settled that problem, proceeded to the more abstruse calculations necessary for drawing up a brigade of two thousand men on the principle ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... nor write, add nor subtract, and while he knew the value of coins, he was unable to compute them. Wolf knew this and, unprincipled as he was, he not only defied all law in smuggling, but he had from the first defied all justice, and cheated his partner in the division of profit. As the Indian was never present when either ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... an immense amount of misinformation is circulated because of superficial observation. Enthusiasts discovering individual trees which have made prodigious growth, or even fairly extensive stands on fertile soil with heavy rainfall, will compute sawlog yields at 40 or 50 years which are much too optimistic for general application. Others, remembering some stand they have seen in unfavorable localities, or noting shade-suppressed trees which will not be paralleled after the virgin ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... that you keep all your men as near home as possible. We do hereby further direct that you cut away all trees, hedges, bushes, &c., or any other cover for an enemy; and lay all level and open round the factory, further than cannon shot, which we compute to be a mile; in order to hinder the enemy from attacking you unawares, and from being sheltered from the factory's guns. But you are to keep up, and repair, your palisadoes, for your defence." ... "You are to fire point blank upon any ship, sloop, or vessel that shall come near the factory, ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... we compute, towards three in the afternoon. Indignant National Guards may dine for once from their haversack: dined or undined, they march with one heart. Paris flings up her windows, claps hands, as the Avengers, with their shrilling drums and ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... for the country; that to carry her thither against her inclination, would as effectually rob him of his happiness and repose, as if he was transported to hell; that if he consented to let her stay, he needed only to compute what it would cost him in equipage, table, clothes, and gaming-money, to maintain her in London according to her caprices; and then to cast up how long his ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the sum of all these reminiscences, in all the minds now assembled in a numerous school, could be conjectured! But if one in a hundred of these recollections, if one in a thousand, shall be efficacious, who can compute the amount of the good resulting from the instruction which shall have so enforced and fixed these ideas that they shall inevitably be thus recollected? And is it altogether out of reason to hope that the desired ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... as nine holes, filled with white or green alabaster—a most barbarous custom, which they follow in order, as they say, to make themselves appear ferocious.... They are a people of great longevity, for we met with many who had descendants of the fourth degree. Not knowing how to compute time, and counting neither days, months, nor years—excepting in so far as they count the lunar months—when they wanted to signify to us any particular duration of time, they did it by showing us a stone for each moon; and, computing in this manner, we discovered ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... the copies of your reports on the rescue of the men on the disabled STS-52. It is fortunate that the Lunar radar stations could compute their orbit. ...
— The Man Who Hated Mars • Gordon Randall Garrett
... strong to break open the prisons and forcibly deprive justice of its victims. Troops at last were brought into the town and order restored. But this trifling occurrence had for a moment withdrawn the veil which had hitherto concealed the strength of the Protestant party, and allowed the minister to compute their prodigious numbers. In Tournay alone five thousand at one time had been seen attending the sermons, and not many less in Valenciennes. What might not be expected from the northern provinces, where liberty was greater, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... very slight wound will cause a soldier to seek a furlough. He naturally thinks that after the marches, danger, and dread of battle, a little blood drawn entitles him to at least a thirty days' furlough. It became a custom in the army for a man to compute the length of his furlough by the extent of his wound. The very least was thirty days, so when a soldier was asked the nature of his wound he would reply, "only a thirty days'," or "got this time a sixty days;" while with an arm or foot ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... Or longitude,) where the great luminary Aloof the vulgar constellations thick, That from his lordly eye keep distance due, Dispenses light from far; they, as they move Their starry dance in numbers that compute Days, months, and years, towards his all-cheering lamp Turn swift their various motions, or are turned By his magnetick beam, that gently warms The universe, and to each inward part With gentle penetration, though unseen, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... most severe winter weather experienced for twenty years we are able to compute approximately our loss of feathered life. It is seventy-five per cent of the quail throughout the irrigated district, and about twenty per cent of meadow-larks. In the rough cedar-covered sections south of the Arkansas ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... me to the lower city. Like a poor starveling I wander in the haunts of wealth where the buildings are piled to forty stories, and I spin out the ciphers in my brain in an endeavor to compute the amount that is laid up inside. Also, lest I become discontented with my poverty, I note the strain and worry of the faces that I meet. There is a story of Tolstoi in which a man is whispered by his god that he may possess such land as he can circle in a day. Until that time he had ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... the danger of loss or injury that may be incurred in the transport of merchandise to these parts it is unnecessary to compute the ordinary dangers to which the merchant is more or less liable in all quarters of the world; but two distinct drawbacks to commercial enterprise at present exist in these countries, which are peculiar to them, these are the prevalence of piracy, and the constant occurrence of political ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... whose properties we wish to study. We take the utmost pains to exclude all causes capable of composition with the given cause; or, if forced to let in any such causes, we take care to make them such that we can compute and allow for their influence, so that the effect of the given cause may, after the subduction of those other effects, be apparent ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... and drawing the horse in splendid trappings, very gloriously accoutred, they scarce refrain in a literal sense from worshipping the very beast. What shall I say of such as cry up and maintain the cheat of pardons and indulgences? that by these compute the time of each soul's residence in purgatory, and assign them a longer or shorter continuance, according as they purchase more or fewer of these paltry pardons, and saleable exemptions? Or what can be said bad enough of others, who pretend that by the force of such magical charms, or by the fumbling ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... manners of Mr. Mudge. He had a coarse hard face, while his head was surmounted by a shock of red hair, which to all appearance had suffered little interference from the comb for a time which the observer would scarcely venture to compute. There was such an utter absence of refinement about the man, that Paul, who had been accustomed to the gentle manners of his father, was repelled by the contrast ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... substantial commodities—food and clothing. Minus the attributes which qualify him for a high rank, man is a being with a buried talent, only a unit in the great world around him. Plus these attributes, no system of mathematics can compute his worth. ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... other virtue was oppressed by luxury and despotism. If, in the consideration of their armies, we pass from their discipline to their numbers, we shall not find it easy to define them with any tolerable accuracy. We may compute, however, that the legion, which was itself a body of six thousand eight hundred and thirty-one Romans, might, with its attendant auxiliaries, amount to about twelve thousand five hundred men. The peace establishment of Hadrian and his successors ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... exact levies, were, for the most part, the cowardly and effeminate; as if the only lesson of suffering of which they were ignorant was how to die for their country. Yet how inconsiderable would the number of invaders appear did the Britons but compute their own forces! From considerations like these, Germany had thrown off the yoke, [71] though a river [72] and not the ocean was its barrier. The welfare of their country, their wives, and their parents called them to arms, ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... Heavenly message? He did not feel, like Mahomet, because he saw into those internal Splendours, that he specially was the "Prophet of God:" and was he not greater than Mahomet in that? Greater; and also, if we compute strictly, as we did in Dante's case, more successful. It was intrinsically an error that notion of Mahomet's, of his supreme Prophethood; and has come down to us inextricably involved in error to this day; dragging along with it such a coil of fables, impurities, intolerances, as makes ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... value of wheat did you compute the rent which the tenant paid you under the lease, of which only one year has run?—I made no particular computation for that; I have been in the habit of making valuations of my own farms; I have generally taken it at 12s.; I could ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... Annecy had been incredibly blue, this lake was incredibly green. No weekly penny paper in England, even in its fattest holiday number, would have room enough to compute the vast number of emeralds which must have been melted to give that vivid tint to the sparkling water. It was as easy to see the inhabitants of the lake having their luncheon at the bottom, on tables exquisitely decorated with coloured pebbles, as it is to look in through ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... enactment of the legislature directs a certain act to be done "within two months after Easter" in 1850, under a penalty for non-performance. I have no difficulty in finding that two calendar months are meant, but am puzzled how to compute when they should commence. I should be much obliged by being informed when Easter ends? that question set at rest, the other part is easily ...
— Notes & Queries,No. 31., Saturday, June 1, 1850 • Various
... he laughs so frequently, but because he laughs so seldom. Let us go to Rome, the Eternal City, sitting on her Seven Hills, remembering as we go along that the currency has changed and we no longer compute sums of money in the franc but in the lira. I regret the latter word is not pronounced as spelled—it would give me a chance to say that the common coin of Italy is a lira, and that nearly everybody in ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... pound of carbon in ten thousand pounds of ordinary country air. Now, there are one hundred and sixty square rods in an acre, and since there are twelve inches in a foot and sixteen and one-half feet in a rod, it is easy to compute that there are nearly a hundred million pounds of air on an acre, and that the carbon in this amounts to only five tons. A three-ton crop of corn or hay contains one and one-fourth tons of the element carbon; so that the total amount of the carbon in the air over an ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... the greater accuracy of Spanheim, Reland, and Lowman, we are inclined to compute the Hebrew territory at about fifteen millions of acres; assuming, with these writers, that the true boundaries of the Promised Land were, Mount Libanus on the north, the Wilderness of Arabia on the south, and the Syrian Desert on the east. On ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... compute the value of the mother to the child. It is the mother who loves, because she has suffered. And this seems to be the great law of love. Not a triumph in art, literature, or jurisprudence—from the story of Homer to the odes of Horace, from the times of Bacon and ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... of Port Jackson was now undertaken, in order to compute the number of canoes, and inhabitants, which it might contain: sixty-seven canoes, and 147 people were counted. No estimate, however, of even tolerable accuracy, can be drawn from so imperfect a datum; though it was perhaps the best in ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... my mind or my body inactive. I would not undertake to compute the number of miles I travelled on foot that day in going from place to place—from consular office to ambassadorial headquarters, always to find each place densely thronged with assemblages of my harassed and frenzied fellow ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... brain does, you see," Leibowitz said, "is control the mechanism that steers the car. But it takes real power to steer—a great deal more than it does to compute ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... impracticable to proceed much further, on account of the severity of the climate, and the want of game, I returned by the same route by which I had set out; and reducing my whole travels westward to days journeys, I compute that they would have employed {290} me thirty-six moons; but on account of my frequent delays, it was five years before I returned to my relations among ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... intents and purposes, without giving one single reason for it; all the proof presented here is a night meeting. Please see the quotation from the British Quarterly Review. But let us look at it the way in which we compute time: I think it will be fair to premise, that about midnight was the middle of Paul's meeting; at any rate there is but one midnight to a twenty-four hour day. We say that Sunday, the first day of the week, does not ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign - 1847 edition • Joseph Bates
... and glory. A large, liberal, and prospective view of the interests of states passes with them for romance; and the principles that recommend it, for the wanderings of a disordered imagination. The calculators compute them out of their senses. The jesters and buffoons shame them out of everything grand and elevated. Littleness in object and in means, to them appears soundness and sobriety. They think there is nothing worth pursuit, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... of returning to Nukuheva, unless assured of our vessel's departure, never once entered my mind, and indeed it was questionable whether we could have succeeded in reaching it, divided as we were from the bay by a distance we could not compute, and perplexed too in our remembrance of localities by our recent wanderings. Besides, it was unendurable the thought of retracing our steps and rendering all our ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... the day, Using no other exercise But which I practise with mine eyes: By which wet glasses I find out How lazily time creeps about To one that mourns: this, only this, My exercise and business is: So I compute the weary hours With ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... the purified souls, after thousands of years perhaps, passed into their old bodies. Hence it was the great object of the Egyptians to preserve their mortal bodies after death, and thus arose the custom of embalming them. It is difficult to compute the number of mummies that have been found in Egypt. If a man was wealthy, it cost his family as much as one thousand dollars to embalm his body suitably to his rank. The embalmed bodies of kings were preserved in marble sarcophagi, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... plain, lying apparently far below, but in reality rising in a sharp ascent toward the snow-capped mountains looking down silently through their gauze of blue-purple afternoon mist. At distances which even his trained eye would not attempt to compute lay little round lakes like silver coins on the surface of the prairie; here and there were dark green bluffs of spruce; to the right a ribbon of river, blue-green save where the rapids churned it white, and along its edge a fringe of leafy cottonwoods; at vast intervals square ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... as unquestionable, as absolutely settled and universally accepted, as the order of movement of the heavenly bodies, which we compute backward to the days of the observatories on the plains of Shinar, and on the faith of which we regulate the movements of war and trade by ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to settle the exact place of, as well as to compute the varied influences wielded by, a great original genius. Every such mind borrows so much from his age and from the past, as well as communicates so much from his own native stores, that it is difficult to determine whether he be more the creature ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... you want with old Jane? From old Mausa time you can get my age—you can 'pute it up. (compute) I was 95 June before this last June gone. I got a son 70 what lives in the country—he pay my rent. I dunno how many children I had; my son July Ladson lives here with me—he gone out now. One son is gone off somewhere in the world; he's married ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... it over, he could unquestionably have seen many advantages for Marcia in the affair,—perhaps more than for himself. But to do him justice he did not formulate these now, or in any wise explicitly recognize the favors he was bestowing. At twenty-six one does not naturally compute them in musing upon the girl to whom one is just betrothed; and Bartley's mind was a confusion of pleasure. He liked so well to think how fond of him Marcia was, that it did not occur to him then to question whether he were as fond of her. It is possible that as he drowsed, ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... latter imparted it to his confidents there; and it was agreed, that some trusty persons in every ward and parish about London should make a list of all the inhabitants, and by guessing at their several affections, compute the strength of that party which opposed an accommodation, and that which ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... "natural cost" of which does not much exceed two hundred dollars. Fifteen hundred dollars for a grand piano is also rather startling. But how much tax, does the reader suppose, is paid upon a fifteen-hundred-dollar grand? It is difficult to compute it; but it does not fall much below two hundred dollars. The five per cent manufacturer's tax, which is paid upon the price of the finished instrument, has also to be paid upon various parts, such as the wire; and upon the imported articles there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... 2850 millions of miles, and the sun as seen by them is not larger than Venus appears to us when an evening star. And although this planet is so distant that it can only be seen with large telescopes, they can not only compute its distance and size, but also the mass of matter of which it is composed. But you will find all this thrown into the shade by the way in which it was discovered. As I may be telling you what you know already, I will ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... money,' iii. 19; 'Perhaps the money might be found, and he was sure that his wife was gone,' iv. 319; 'There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money,' ii. 323; 'You must compute what you give for ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... Martin declares he "could collect immediately among the emigrants from the Highlands of Scotland, who were settled here, and immoveably attached to His Majesty and His Government, that I am assured by the best authority I may compute at 3000 effective men," and begs permission "to raise a Battalion of a Thousand Highlanders here," and "I would most humbly beg leave to recommend Mr. Allen McDonald of Kingsborough to be Major, and Captain Alexd. McLeod of the Marines now on half pay to be first Captain, who besides ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... All the power of higher learning he still held supreme. But by days of hard work in the college halls, and nights of meditation out in the silent sanctuary spaces of the prairies round about him, he had been learning how to compute the needs of men as the angel with the golden reed computed the walls and gates of the New Jerusalem—according to the measure of ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... post road ran from northern New England to Savannah, closely hugging the seacoast for the greater part of the way. Some of the milestones set by Franklin to enable the postmasters to compute the postage, which was fixed according to distance, are still standing. Crossroads connected some of the larger communities away from the seacoast with the main road, but when Franklin died, after serving also as Postmaster General of the United States, there were ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... portfolio, to carry about a few poems or sentences which would otherwise be transcribed and circulated; and always we are waiting when somebody shall come and make it good. But I took it, as I said, and it took me, and a great deal of good time, to a small purpose. I am ashamed to compute how many hours and days these chores consume for me. I had it fully in my heart to write at large leisure in noble mornings opened by prayer or by readings of Plato or whomsoever else is dearest to the Morning Muse, a chapter on Poetry, for which all readings, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... going entirely out," he informed her with elaborate deliberation, "it is computed by those enthusiasts who have bought our product—and subsequently returned it to us and got their money back—they compute that a motor car must maintain a speed of twenty-five miles an hour, or else there won't be any light at all. To make the illumination bright enough to be noticed by an approaching automobile, they state the speed must be more than thirty miles an hour. At thirty-five, ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... hundred twenty-kopek pieces to those who have no food; and this will be not a little, not so much because the hungry will have food, but because the directors and enumerators will conduct themselves in a humane manner towards a hundred poor people. How are we to compute the possible results which will accrue to the balance of public morality from the fact that, instead of the sentiments of irritation, anger, and envy which we arouse by reckoning the hungry, we shall awaken in a hundred instances a sentiment ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... the several capitals too low, is not material. On whatever principle any of the calculations were made up, none of them found the debt to differ from the recital of the act, which asserted that the sums claimed were "very large." The last head of these debts the Directors compute at 2,465,680l. sterling. Of the existence of this debt the Directors heard nothing until 1776, and they say, that, "although they had repeatedly written to the Nabob of Arcot, and to their servants, respecting the debt, yet they had never been able to trace ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... we have the concurrence of holy angels, as seen by John in vision, with all the redeemed in acts of solemn worship offered directly to the Lamb.—"Many angels," how many? Some divines have actually attempted, by arithmetical rules, to compute the number! Such employment may amuse, but it cannot edify. The definite here mentioned for indefinite numbers, may be easily computed; (as in Dan. vii. 10; Ps. lxviii. 17;) but still we would labor in vain "to find out the account;" ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... Rupert Brooke! Here is certainly a very wide interval, separated, artist and subject, by the greatest divergence of power, and one may be even amazed at the contrast involved. He is surely, James, in all his elaborateness, trying to square the rose and compute the lily, algebraical advances upon a most simple thesis. Brooke—a nature so obvious, which had no measure at all for what the sum had done to him, and for all that about him, or for those stellar ecstasies which held him ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... at vast cost to the gold industry because they rose as a man? Suppose you, that the silversmiths, gold-gilders, pearl and ivory and filigree workers should secretly band themselves together, hast thou knowledge to compute the loss to ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... one may have but a single octave; of the other, eight, or a hundred, or a thousand. The life of Job is an apt illustration. No one has been able to sound the depths of his suffering, nor has any one been able to measure the heights of his exaltation. We may not readily compute the octaves in such a ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... fraction of Heywood's actual work is comprised in these twenty-six plays we cannot even conjecturally compute; we only know that they amount to less than an eighth part of the plays written wholly or mainly by his indefatigable hand, and that they are altogether outweighed in volume, though decidedly not in value, by the existing mass of his undramatic ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in this black nullity—he never could compute it—moments, doubtless, but it seemed hours, tried to the utmost the nerve of the entrapped trader, albeit inured by twenty years' experience to the capricious temper of the Cherokee Indians. He felt he could better endure the suspense could he only see his antagonist, identify him, and thus ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... unequal with respect to each other. For as the points, which enter into the composition of any line or surface, whether perceived by the sight or touch, are so minute and so confounded with each other, that it is utterly impossible for the mind to compute their number, such a computation will Never afford us a standard by which we may judge of proportions. No one will ever be able to determine by an exact numeration, that an inch has fewer points than a foot, or a foot fewer than an ell or any greater measure: for which reason ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... creature, or acknowledge also his common interest to be common right. And if reason be nothing else but interest, and the interest of mankind be the right interest, then the reason of mankind must be right reason. Now compute well; for if the interest of popular government come the nearest to the interest of mankind, then the reason of popular government must come the nearest ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... no foresight of these things. There had been no attempt anywhere even to compute the probable dislocations this flood of inexpensive energy would produce in human affairs. The world in these days was not really governed at all, in the sense in which government came to be understood in subsequent years. Government was a treaty, ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... flaws in the character of the early founders of this land; but with them all, our colonial history is one that stirs the blood and quickens the pulse of him who reads. It is the land of the free school, the free press, and the free pulpit. It is impossible to compute the power of this trio. The free schools, open to rich and poor, bind together the people in educational bonds, and in the common memories of the recitation-room and the playground; and how strong they are, you, reader, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... makers—consists essentially of a kind of three-legged stool, with an additional leg placed at the centre of the circle circumscribing the other three. This central leg is in reality a fine screw with a very large head graduated on the edge, so that it is easy to compute the fractions of a turn given to the screw. The instrument is first placed on a flat plate, and the central screw turned till its end just touches the plate, a state of affairs which is very sharply discernible by the slight rocking which it enables the instrument ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... even try to compute the number of these infusoria. You won't pull it off, because if I'm not mistaken, certain navigators have cruised through milk seas for ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... prodigiously increased, by the negligence and corruption of those who had been managers of the revenue; that the late m[iniste]rs, like careless men, who run out their fortunes, were so far from any thoughts of payment, as they had not the courage to state or compute them. The Parliament found that thirty-five millions had never been accounted for; and that the debt on the navy, wholly unprovided for, amounted to nine millions.[13] The late chancellor of the exchequer, suitable to his transcendent genius for public affairs, proposed a fund to be security ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... own. But he never had known such a hurry made before, or such a special interest shown about the letting of any tenement, of perhaps tenfold the value. However, he said, like a sensible man (and therefore to himself only), that the ways of women are beyond compute, and must be suitably ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... one seeks More comprehensive scale, th' arithmic mounts By the Asankya, which is the tale Of all the drops that in ten thousand years Would fall on all the worlds by daily rain; Thence unto Maha Kalpas, by the which The Gods compute their future and ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us; He knows each chord, its various tone, Each spring, its various bias: Then at the balance, let's be mute, We never can adjust it; What's done we partly may compute, But know not ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... publication. In this case, the renewal filing period is computed from the year date in the copyright notice. For example, a work published January 20, 1975, contains a copyright notice reading "Copyright 1974 by Anderson Homes." Compute the 28-year original term from the ...
— Supplementary Copyright Statutes • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... when there was certainly not a fifth part of that number; who that compares this with the North America of 1853, its twenty-two millions of European origin, and its thirty-one States, will venture to assign limits to our growth; will dare to compute the time-table of our railway progress, or lift so much as a corner of the curtain that hides the crowded ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... hundred thousand livres. He has other city properties, houses in Paris, estates here and there, running not into the hundreds of thousands, but into the millions of livres in actual value. Among these are some of the estates of the greatest nobles of France. Their value is more than any man can compute. Is this not something? Moreover, there goes with it all the dignity of the most stupendous personal success ever made by a single man since the world began. 'Tis all yours, Lady Catharine. And unless you share it, it has no value to my brother. I know myself that ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... eliminates them. One of the best authorities on the requirements of sextant observations in rude land travel, the Astronomer Royal of Cape Town, says to this effect:—"Do not observe the altitude of the star in taking lunars, but compute it. The labour requisite for that observation is better bestowed in taking a large number of distances." So much delicacy of hand and of eyesight is requisite in taking lunars that shall give results reliable to seven or eight miles, and so small an exertion or flurry spoils that ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... the battery required, estimate as nearly as possible how many lamps, motors, and heaters, etc., will be used. Compute the watts (volts X amperes), required by each. Estimate how long each appliance will be used each day, and thus obtain the total watt hours used per day. Multiply this by 7 to get the watt hours per week. The total watt hours required in one week should not be equal to more than twice the watt hour ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... Rufus Choate: "To form and uphold a state, it is not enough that our judgments should believe it to be useful; the better part of our affections should feel it to be lovely. It is not enough that our arithmetic should compute its value and find it high; our hearts should hold it priceless—above all things rich and rare—dearer than health and beauty, brighter than all the order of the stars." In contemplating those mysterious dispensations of Providence by which the light which broke upon this continent ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... Hungary an annual pension of seven thousand crowns of gold. The exact income of the State, however, from the monopoly of salt, or from the various imposts and duties levied upon merchandise, it is now difficult to know, and it is impossible to compute accurately the value or extent of Venetian commerce at any one time. It reached the acme of its prosperity under Tommaso Mocenigo, who was Doge from 1414 to 1423. There were then three thousand and three hundred vessels of the mercantile marine, giving employment to thirty-three ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... automatic measuring machine; this machine recorded the dimensions of the skins on a dial and was a wonderfully intricate contrivance. Try as he would Peter was unable to fathom how it could so quickly and exactly compute a problem that it would have taken him a long ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... a doctrinaire, her observations on "Romanism" (which she dubbed "an abyss of superstition and moral pollution") might have fallen from the lips of a hot-gospeller of to-day. "Who," she asked her hearers, "shall compute the stupefying and brutalizing effects of such religion? Who will dare tell me that this terrible Church does not lie upon the bosom of the present time like a vast, unwieldy, and offensive corpse? America does not yet recognise ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... principle in practice, the cylinder requires to be larger than usual, or the piston faster than usual, in the proportion in which the expansion is carried out. Every one who is acquainted with simple arithmetic, can compute the terminal pressure of steam in a cylinder, when he knows the initial pressure and the point at which the steam is cut off; and he can also find, by the same process, any pressure intermediate between the first and the ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... to all this, the British government clothed and fed and housed the Loyalists until they were able to provide for themselves. There were those in Nova Scotia who were receiving rations as late as 1792. What all this must have cost the government during the years following 1783 it is difficult to compute. Including the cost of surveys, official salaries, the building of saw-mills and grist-mills, and such things, the figures must have run up to several millions ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... of the strong array of commentators who claim that the Jubilees were to be held every fifty years as we moderns should compute it, there can be no doubt but that they followed each other at the same interval as every seventh sabbatic year; in other words, that they were held every 49 years. This is confirmed by an astronomical consideration. Forty-nine years make a ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... tails. Napier's invention of logarithms at once attracted Kepler's attention. He must have regretted that the discovery was not made early enough to save him a vast amount of labour in computations, but he managed to find time to compute some logarithm tables for himself, though he does not seem to have understood quite what Napier had done, and though with his usual honesty he gave full credit to the Scottish ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... with a dense jungle, and the shores choked up with mangroves. There was only one solitary hut on the island near the beach, which was used as a resting place for boats trading up the river. At that time there was a slave factory in full occupation at Bance Island. It would be very difficult to compute the expense, and almost impossible for persons who are not practically acquainted with African mangroves and jungle, to estimate the exertion and perseverance which must have been necessary to bring this place to its present state of improvement. ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... Woodburn, if you care to," Lucilla said, with a careless little toss of her head. "Yon will find the date of my birth there in papa's handwriting, from which your knowledge of arithmetic will enable you to compute my present age." ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... If we compute Dryden's share in the theatre at L300 annually, which is lower than it was rated by the actors in their petition;[31] if we make, at the same time, some allowance for those presents which authors of that time received ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... room. Radway had confidence in him because he lived in the same shanty with him. This one fact a good deal explains Radway's character. The scaler's duty at present was to measure the diameter of the logs in each skidway, and so compute the number of board feet. At the office he tended van, kept the ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... are "scaled," that is measured in order to compute the number of board feet in them, Fig. 9. The scaler generally has an assistant, for logs in large piles must be measured at both ends in order to determine which is the top, the body of the log being out of sight. When measured each end of the ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... friends, in the tone and air of conversation, in the mere magnetism of the parlor or the street! How much to strengthen or to weaken us; to clear or to cloud our moral atmosphere; to make us fresh and decisive, or to slowly sap our virtue! But it is a more solemn task to compute the influences that proceed from us, and to discover how, unknown to ourselves, we are swaying the circles of other lives. Why, the mightiest forces go silently. You do not see the gases that compose the vital air. You do not feel the aroma that steals ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... common in English words, is now transmitted by a short jet which makes a dot; T, another common letter, by a long jet, making a dash; and Q, a rare letter, by the group dash, dash, dot, dash. Vail tried to compute the relative frequency of all the letters in order to arrange his alphabet; but a happy idea enabled him to save his time. He went to the office of the local newspaper, and found the result he wanted in the type-cases of ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... Fort for provisions—Don Gaspar's beautiful chestnut refused to be a pack-horse on any terms. We took the opportunity of sending our accumulations of gold dust to Talbot for safekeeping. I do not know just how much my companions forwarded. Of course I could compute their shares; but had no means of telling just what deductions to allow for the delights of Hangman's Gulch. For Talbot I laid aside as his share of our entire product of four hundred and eighty-six ounces a total of one hundred and ten ounces. This included ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... everywhere. In point of fact we were north-west, so that they should have turned"—his thumbs began to turn and his voice to take on the Talmudic sing-song—"south-east. I told them it was easy in each city to compute the exact turning, by corners ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... to be the finest structure of the kind in the world, and for an observatory built by Charles II. on the summit of a hill, called Flamstead Hill, from the great astronomer of that name, who was here the first astronomer Royal: and we compute the longitude from the meridian of this place. It is also a place of great resort at holiday time, for being so near London. The Lads and Lasses move off in groups to Greenwich fair, and the amusements at those times are of so varying a kind ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... of young and old, or to be impressed with the fact that the influence of the natural scenes around them, of the trees and plants and flowers, of the pure air and bright skies, is a humanizing and elevating one? It is difficult to compute the value of such an influence in dollars and cents, or to measure it by any scale that the market acknowledges; but it is, nevertheless, a real, substantial, and potent one. If our large cities are the pride and boast of the republic, they also ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... rose-tinted down. Then the blue, black, and brown clouds change quickly to purple, pink, and red by turns, and the opaline sky itself forms a background for the dissolving community of interlacing filaments of priceless filigree, till in time too full of interest to compute by measure, the whole heavens are aflame with a riotous orgy of color, a prodigality of shifting scene, making one think of the descriptions essayed by the ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... drurr, than any of his court (drurr is a measure about the fourteenth part of an inch). The animosities between these two parties run so high that they will neither eat nor drink, nor talk with each other. We compute the Tramecksan, or high heels, to exceed us in number; but the power is wholly on our side. We apprehend his imperial highness, the heir to the crown, to have some tendency toward the high heels; at least we can plainly discover one ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... no complex problems, made no brilliant discoveries. But his habit of analysis enriched the world beyond power to compute. He taught men to think and separate truth from error. He was not popular, for he did not adapt himself to the many. His business was to teach teachers—he conducted a Normal School, and taught teachers how to teach. Coleridge ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... practice of life. Reason, the prized reality, the Law, is apprehended, now and then, for a serene and profound moment, amidst the hubbub of cares and works which have no direct bearing on it;—is then lost, for months or years, and again found, for an interval, to be lost again. If we compute it in time, we may, in fifty years, have half a dozen reasonable hours. But what are these cares and works the better? A method in the world we do not see, but this parallelism of great and little, which never react on each other, nor discover the smallest tendency to converge. Experiences, fortunes, ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... although everybody said he was the homeliest young man in the region, yet more village girls went to their front doors to see him than if he had been a showman coming to town to do feats of magic. He was not unintelligent either, and could play on the violin, compute accounts equal to the best country book-keeper, and as he was of religious turn, although attached to no particular denomination, the meeting-houses on every side, hardly excepting the Quakers themselves, delighted to see him drive up on Sundays and tell an anecdote ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... organism, or portion of an organism, all the particles of which are at one moment pulled together and the next moment hurled apart—the moments of this computation being, of course, myriads of years as we human pygmies compute time. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... thirty- four degrees, which at 17-1/2 leagues to the degree, gives only 575 Portuguese leagues, or 680 geographical leagues of twenty to the degree. Thus miserably erroneous are the estimated distances in old navigators, who could only compute by the dead reckoning, or ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... North America was confirmed by Experience; for then a Maintenance might be contrived by other Means very easily, there being spare Land enough to be appropriated for a Barony. And one skilled in Political Arithmetick may readily compute what a handsom Income this would amount to with Care ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... year—x is the same as the year (x 1) B.C.; or, in other words, the year of Christ's birth is, for certain astronomical exactitude purposes, interpolated between the years 1 B.C. and A.D. 1, as we vulgarly compute them: that is to say, the eclipses of the sun recorded 2,400 years ago by Confucius, from notes and annals preserved in his native state's archives as far back as 700 B.C., are found to be almost without exception fairly correct, with a uniform "error" ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... the blasphemers. Nor did he forgive us. Hoka came and went with us daily; but, alone I believe of all the countryside, neither Toma nor his wife set foot on board the Casco. The temptation resisted it is hard for a European to compute. The flying city of Laputa moored for a fortnight in St. James's Park affords but a pale figure of the Casco anchored before Anaho; for the Londoner has still his change of pleasures, but the Marquesan passes to his grave through an ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ships could always destroy two, and four ships three. In the space-fight ahead, there would be at least ten Mekinese ships to every one from Kandar. The sally of Kandar's fleet would not be a rush into battle, but an advance into annihilation. "What we need," said Bors desperately, "is a means to compute courses for our missiles so they'll hit, and that the enemy can't counter-compute—so that his missiles can't compute how to change course in order to ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... for pretence," she replied lightly; and I found myself comparing her voice with her figure, her figure with her face, and vainly endeavouring to compute her age. Frankly, she was bewildering—this lovely girl who seemed so wholly a woman ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... mathematics work in Indianapolis is extremely concrete. Prices and descriptions of materials are supplied, and the children are asked to compute given problems involving the buying of meats, groceries, and other household articles; the cost of heating and lighting the home; the cost of home furnishing; the construction of buildings; cost-keeping in various factories; ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... to walk the woods unmolested. It was a FIASCO, but to me it does not seem laughable; even those who joined in the laughter at the moment would be insensibly affected by this quaint instance of a good man's horror for injustice. We may compute the worth of that one night's imprisonment as outweighing half a hundred voters at some subsequent election: and if Thoreau had possessed as great a power of persuasion as (let us say) Falstaff, if he had counted a party however small, if his example had been followed ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... differences, or idiosyncrasies, are, and how important they are, because, while the likenesses furnish the background, it is the differences that are most often actually utilized by management. These must be determined in order to compute and set the proper individual task for the given man from standard data of the standard, or ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... of the sheriff in the tax collection process always was a difficult one. The procedure for financing the county, initially, was for the justices simply to compile lists of their expenses and the freeholders of the county, compute how much was needed from each freeholder to cover the cost of government, and direct the sheriff to collect it. When the sheriff made his return to the court he was entitled to deduct a percentage as his commission.[56] However, revenue was often ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton
... I can measure the sun, and compute the distances of the planets; I can calculate their periodical movements, and even ascertain the laws by which they perform their sublime revolutions; but with regard to their construction, to the beings ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... he was acquainted. "The dispute," said he, "is not only respecting the day, but also respecting the manner of fasting. For some think that they ought to fast only one day, some two, some more days; some compute their day as consisting of forty hours night and day; [634:1] and this diversity existing among those that observe it, is not a matter that has just sprung up in our times, but long ago among those before ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen |
