"Fewness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... replaced and partly allied themselves with a rich, powerful and long-established aristocracy; that they did in truth separate the State into fragments; but that they touched very little the main social fabric, and only at most hastened the elements of change. He perpetually insists on the fewness of the invaders who settled, and he believes that the Western race, welded almost into one people by the vast political action of Rome, was, in bulk, but little affected ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... a secondary proof of this in the fewness of those fine descriptive strokes and subtle indirect touches of colour or sound which arise with incessant spontaneity, where a mastering passion for nature steeps the mind in vigilant, accurate, yet half-unconscious, observation. It is ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... tomb come in such convenient numbers that their weight, though it possibly made the guardians of the shrine, yet breaks the tottering faith of the candid reader. But some are more robust, and for them there is a lively total which makes Giraldus's lament for the fewness of miracles in his day seem rather ungrateful. "Four quinsies"—well, strong emotion will do much for quinsies. "One slow oozing"—the disease being doubtful, we need not dispute the remedy. "Three paralytics"—in the name of Lourdes, let them pass. "Three withered, ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... the close of the last century, at least 50,000 Tamilians had been baptized in connection with this Protestant effort. When we bear in mind the fewness of the agents, and the very limited tract of country which they occupied, it is a matter of considerable astonishment that so many converts were every year baptized in the various missions. In Tranquebar alone, in nineteen ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... conditions; the hampering of the enemy by his crowded masses; the slaughter amongst his officers early in the fight, which deprived their men of leadership; above all, the dense mist which obscured from him the fewness of his opponents. If Canrobert with his fresh troops had followed in pursuit, the Russian's retreat must have been turned into a rout and his artillery captured; if on the following day he had assaulted ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... fewness of the survivors at that time would have made them all the more desirous of seeing one another; but then the means of travelling either by land or sea had been almost entirely lost, as I may say, with the loss of the arts, and there was ...
— Laws • Plato
... again. After they had come to life seven times they were full-grown men; but the eighth time Kanyu killed them they remained dead. Bontoc went for their bodies, and told Kanyu that, because they killed the children of Lu-ma'-wig, their children would always be dying — and to-day Bontoc points to the fewness of the houses which make up Kanyu. The bodies were buried close to Bontoc on the west and northwest; scarcely were they interred when trees began to grow upon and about the graves — they were the transformed bodies of Lu-ma'-wig's children. The Igorot never cut trees ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... the army after the loss of Casilinum, at the earnest request of all, brought in a bill upon the subject. When Spurius Carvilius, after having lamented in a long speech not only the scantiness of the senate, but the fewness of citizens who were eligible into that body, with the design of making up the numbers of the senate and uniting more closely the Romans and the Latin confederacy, declared that he strongly advised that the freedom of the state should be conferred upon two senators from each of the Latin states, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... also assisted in promoting the expedition to the Arctic Regions which was commanded by Sir John Franklin. We were informed that his favourite saying was: "A man's riches consist not so much in his possessions as in the fewness of his wants"—a saying we were ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... since each Single Pile of Silk is Black by reason of its Texture, in what Position soever you Look upon it; But that the Greater Blackness of one of these Tuffts seems to proceed from the Greater Paucity of Beams Reflected from it, and that from the Fewness of those Parts of a Surface that Reflect Beams, and the Multitude of those Shaded Parts that Reflect none. And I remember, that I have oftentimes observ'd, that the Position of Particular Bodies far greater than Piles of Silk in reference ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... conference, and plotted to kill the Spaniards. The majority of those who took part in this have been imprisoned, and proceedings are being instituted against them. I think that this will cause us but little trouble. This boldness is caused by the natives noticing the fewness of Spanish troops in the islands and the few reenforcements sent from Nueva Espana. It is necessary that your Majesty should order that there be less negligence in ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... attend the funeral of a distant relation, whom, if they had chanced to meet him, they neither liked nor respected. But there was a show of carriages from all the big houses within a radius of nine miles, which more than made up for the fewness of the guests. Also, there was a crowd of middle- and lower-class spectators who considered the funeral of a murdered nobleman a spectacle indeed worth attending. It was composed of women, children, old men, and a few ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... regard to the inhabitants of oceanic islands, namely, the fewness of the species, with a large proportion consisting of endemic forms—the members of certain groups, but not those of other groups in the same class, having been modified—the absence of certain whole orders, as of batrachians ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... Cienfuegos—and afford a rallying-point to the smaller ships, if driven in by the appearance of Cervera's division. The main fleet—three armored ships—on the north was thus used, although the blockade, from the fewness of available cruisers, was not at first extended beyond Cardenas. On the south a similar body—the Flying Squadron—should from the first have been stationed before Cienfuegos; for each division, as has been said, could with military propriety have been risked singly against Cervera's ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... preaching in a barn, and showing the fewness of those that should be saved, there stood one of the learned to take advantage of his words; and having done preaching, the schoolman said to him, You are a deceiver, a person of no charity, and therefore not fit to preach; for he that in effect condemneth ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... in Rogers' day, and higher far, I doubt not, than in ours. What I refuse to believe is that the wearing of powder has caused among footmen an ever-increasing mortality. Powder was forced on them by their employers because of the French Revolution, but their subsequent fewness is traceable rather to certain ideas forced by that Revolution on their employers. The Nobility had begun to feel that it had better be just a little less noble than heretofore. When the news of the fall of the Bastille ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... for we find that from the landing of a few hundred of Gipsies from France in 1514, down to the commencement of the eighteenth century, the number had increased to something like 15,000. The number who had been hung, died in prison, suffered starvation, and the fewness of those who were Christians, and gone to heaven, during the period of over 250 years, and prior to the noble efforts of Raper, Sir Joseph Banks, Hoyland, Crabb, Borrow, and others, is fearful to contemplate. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... consider that after the epoch of codes the distinction between stationary and progressive societies begins to make itself felt. It is only with the progressive that we are concerned, and nothing is more remarkable than their extreme fewness. In spite of overwhelming evidence, it is most difficult for a citizen of western Europe to bring thoroughly home to himself the truth that the civilisation which surrounds him is a rare exception in the history of the world. The tone of thought common among us, all our hopes, ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... The fewness and the comparative simplicity of the instincts in the higher animals are remarkable in contrast with those of the lower animals. Cuvier maintained that instinct and intelligence stand in an inverse ratio to each other; and some ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... framed by nature as to be able to keep his inconveniences separate from his resentments; though indeed if the sum of these latter had at the most always been small, that was doubtless in some degree a consequence of the fewness of the former. His greatest inconvenience, he would have admitted, had he analyzed, was in finding it so taken for granted that, as he had money, he had force. It pressed upon him hard, and all round, assuredly, this ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James |
