"Fewest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... store, with a ring of keys on his finger. His icy response to my respectful greeting revived certain memories connected with the Chinese boundary man, and Warrigal Alf's bullocks, as related in last chapter. In the fewest words possible, Bert informed me that Mr. Smythe was in Melbourne, and would n't be back for another week. If I chose to leave the K form with himself, it would be filled up and posted to our Central Office immediately on Mr. Smythe's return. Which would ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... and love, And thrice happy are they that hath no need them to prove. God he knows the world is grown to such a stay, That men must use Fraud and Dissimulation too, or beg by the way. Therefore I'll do as the most doth; the fewest shall laugh me to scorn, And be a fellow amongst good fellows to hold by St Luke's ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... by going down the southern declivity, which seemed to offer the fewest difficulties, but had not proceeded a hundred yards before (as we had anticipated from appearances on the hilltop) our progress was entirely arrested by a branch of the gorge in which our companions had perished. We now passed along the edge of this for about a quarter of a mile, when ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... but told his story in the fewest words possible. They were all tremendously excited, and followed the two adventurers eagerly as they led the way along the shores of ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... the points in their order as they come. You are going to be married; you state to whom, you add that I am the lady's guardian; you give the name and address of my lawyer in Edinburgh; you write your instructions plainly in the fewest words, and leave details to your legal adviser; you refer the lawyers to each other; you request that the draft settlements be prepared as speedily as possible, and you give your address at this house. There are the heads. Can't you do it now? Oh, the ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... which truth is expressed in the fewest possible words, in words which are inevitable, in words which could not be changed without weakening the meaning or throwing discord into the melody. To choose the right word and to discard all others, this is the chief factor in good writing. To learn good poetry by heart is to acquire help ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... comment upon the irregularity of the output of fiction from month to month. May brought forth the greatest number of good stories, as November reaped the fewest. They wish, also, to register notice of the continued flexibility of the short story form. "The Judgment of Vulcan," at one extreme, in some thirteen thousand words none the less relates a short story; ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... the fewest words. My sister awoke next morning with a headache. She had always been a martyr to headaches, but this one, like many another, seemed to be unusually severe. Nevertheless she rose and lit my mother's fire and brought up her breakfast, and ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... in men of strong sense and good understandings: cunning is often to be met with in brutes themselves, and in persons who are but the fewest removes from them. In short, cunning is only the mimic of discretion, and may pass upon weak men, in the same manner as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, and ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... correct for girls to suggest a walk, ride, hint a wish to dance or row, or tacitly invite a tete-a-tete. Let those who wish such favors ask for them. The girl who shows herself most anxious for young men's attentions generally receives fewest. Despite "the woman's movement," man still insists on his ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... up the old man's eye, Surprise or anger seemed to hold him dumb, My mother clasped his hand with sob and sigh, But to full hearts the fewest words will come ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... story, told by her in the fewest of words. And then he asked her as to her hopes for the future. But though she cared, as it seemed, but little for the past, for the future she cared less. "'Deed, thin, an' I don't jist know." She would say no more than ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... mean to live in the meantime?" Mr. Low, who was an energetic man, had assumed almost an angry tone of voice. Phineas for awhile sat silent;—not that he felt himself to be without words for a reply, but that he was thinking in what fewest words he might best convey his ideas. "You have a very modest allowance from your father, on which you have never been able to keep yourself free from debt," continued ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... very frankly his manner of writing; he confessed that what he first committed to paper seldom could be printed without variation or correction, even to a single line: he copied everything over, he said, himself, and three transcribings were the fewest he could ever make do; but, generally, nothing went from him to the press under ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... they were, one and all, to go battling. Which they did, with a witness; making a terrible thing of it, over all the world, for above seven years to come. Foolish Nations; doomed to settle their jarring accounts in that terrible manner! Nay, the fewest of them had any accounts, except imaginary ones, to settle there at all; and they went into the adventure GRATIS, spurred on by spectralities of the sick brain, by phantasms of hope, phantasms of terror; and had, strictly speaking, no ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... would, he could not break through the reserve that now surrounded Dexie like a mantle. She welcomed him with the fewest possible words when he called on Mr. Sherwood, and she seemed so cool and stiff that he felt chilled to the heart. It was seldom, indeed, that she addressed a remark to him during an evening. Yet there were times when, suddenly turning his eyes in her direction, ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... at once, in the fewest words, as his way was when it came to business. He was interested in a big "deal" which involved the purchase of a piece of real estate held by a number of wrangling heirs. The real-estate broker with whom ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... are we all! To be the best, Is but the fewest faults to have:— Look thou then to thyself, and leave the rest To God, thy ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and others. The Chicago Academy of Sciences has a fine collection of eggs. Many persons imagine that these institutions engage in cruel slaughter of birds in order to collect eggs and nests. This, of course, is not true, only the fewest number being taken, and with the exclusive object of placing before the people, not for their amusement but rather for their instruction, specimens of birds and animals which shall serve for their identification in forest ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... day is a round of adventures. His jolly pictorial narrative, reflecting every glint of October sunshine and patch of russet shade, tends to confirm us afresh in the faith that the painter's life is the best life, the life that misses fewest impressions. ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... votes to B and 6,000 to C; while D, being hopeless of success, would naturally let C have his 1,000 also. There would be no risk of a seat being left vacant through two candidates of the same party sharing a quota between them—an unwritten law would soon come to be recognised—that the one with fewest votes should give place to the other. And, with candidates of two opposite parties, this difficulty could not arise at all; one or the other could always be returned by the surplus votes of ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... 5. Have fewest wants: the book, however good, Thou shouldst not purchase, let it go unbought; And fashion's vests by thee be all unworn. Soon luxuries become necessities, But self-denying thrift more joy affords Than all the pleasures of extravagance. A cottage, free from ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... countermarch, in order to descend the glen. Her feelings did not escape Bolton: "I forgive you, dame," he said, "for being suspicious that an English falcon was hovering over your Scottish moor-brood. But fear not—those who have fewest children have fewest cares; nor does a wise man covet those of another household. Adieu, dame; when the black-eyed rogue is able to drive a foray from England, teach him to spare women and children, for ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... comparatively small number of trees in most of the Piedmont and Mountain counties, and several counties in the lower Coastal Plain. Orangeburg County, with the largest number, had 27,528. Pickens County, with the fewest trees, had 801. The total for the state was reported as ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... euphemism—"the sun has shone too strongly," find in Mr. Keene a merciless satirist of their "pleasant vices." Like Leech, he has also a remarkable power of indicating a landscape background with the fewest possible touches. His book- illustrations have been .mainly confined to magazines and novels. Those in "Once a Week" to a "Good Fight," the tale subsequently elaborated by Charles Reade into the "Cloister and the Hearth," present some good specimens of his earlier work. One of these, ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... fewest possible words, and in a good loud voice which produced sudden silence, he asked God to give His blessing with the food provided, and to send His Holy Spirit into the hearts of all present, so that they might be made to hunger and thirst ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... twenty-one. In Hungary sixteen out of every million deaths are due to lightning; in the United States as a whole, ten; in Germany, six; in England, four; in France and Sweden, three, and in Belgium, two. The greatest number of deaths by lightning are on the plains, the fewest in the cities." ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... careful watching he kept his fire from going entirely out, and managed to keep himself dry by picking out the spots where the leaks were fewest in which to stand. ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... had of vigorous and queenly to adorn her, rich with the spoils of victories not all bought with battle-axe and sword, stately with a pride that had won its just and inalienable majesty from elastic centuries of progress and culture, History, the muse to whom fewest songs were sung, yet whose march was music's sublimest voice, trembled upon the brink of the Dark Ages, and leaped, in her armor, into the abyss of ignorance before her. A poetry the purest, an art the noblest, a religion deeply symbolical, a ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... not yet retired when he arrived at the farmhouse, and, stopping only sufficiently long to tell in fewest possible words of what had happened, Seth ran back to help Gladys care for the invalid, for he was feverishly eager to have ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis
... reasons, in what fewest words I can use I will endeavor to show that they come to nothing. The tariff—and a monstrous tariff it then was—was the ground put forward by South Carolina for secession when General Jackson was President and Mr. Calhoun was the hero of the South. Calhoun bound himself and his State to ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... companion of Mr. Speaker Papineau." He descanted upon the powerful reaction which had been brought about, and exultingly informed his Lordship that of the four candidates who had contested the constituency of Lennox and Addington Mr. Bidwell had polled the fewest votes. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... a 'machine,' and drove out to Little Kirkton. There, we told our tale in the fewest words possible to the obliging and good-natured U.P. minister. He looked, as the station-master had said, 'soft-hearted'; but he dashed our hopes to the ground at once by telling us candidly that unless we had had our residence in Scotland for twenty-one days immediately ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... natures, allied themselves to the latter class. There was thus in Scotland a deep, dark gulf between the religious and the poetical or beautiful, which has not yet been completely bridged over. The consequence is, that the elder Scottish songs, of all songs, contain the fewest references to the Divine Being. The name of God is never mentioned unless in the caricatures of the Covenanters; and a foreigner, taking up a book of Scottish songs written since the Reformation, and judging of the religion of the Scotch from them alone, would be prone to suppose ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... I will say the fewest possible number of words. It was a church such as there are, I think, thousands in England—low, incommodious, kept with difficulty in repair, too often pervious to the wet, and yet strangely picturesque, and correct too, according ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... most entirely human of the fine arts, and has the fewest 'analoga' in nature. Its first delightfulness is simple accordance with the ear; but it is an associated thing, and recalls the deep emotions of the past with an intellectual sense of proportion. Every human feeling is greater and larger than the exciting cause,—a proof, I think, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... fewest and rudest—little more than small palisaded hamlets, built of frame or log, poised near the water of the river James. The genius of the land was for the plantation rather than the town. The fair and large brick or frame planter's house of a later time had ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... underestimate of the sacredness of human life was one; but that was the fault of his age. His frequent workings by intrigue was another; but that also was a vile method accepted by his age. The fair questions, then, are: did he not commit the fewest and smallest wrongs possible in beating back those many and great wrongs? Wrong has often a quick, spasmodic force, but was there not in his arm a steady growing force, which could only be a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... little farther? and allow that this extreme is more pardonable than its opposite error? I mean that dangerous affectation of the monotone, or solemn sameness of pronunciation, which to my ear is insupportable; for of all faults that so frequently pass upon the vulgar, that of flatness will have the fewest admirers. That this is an error of ancient standing seems evident by what Hamlet says, in his instructions ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... painted it, with red lips and crimson drops of blood and draping of richest purple. And he chose that Christian symbol solely because, out of all the subjects offered by Master Tobias, it presented fewest difficulties in the matter of draperies—greatest stumbling block to all novices. So it was finished, and became the pride of his life,—but not for what it was; only for that it was the work of his own ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... while, usually, he only asked in the fewest words for fresh funds for the gratification ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... stripling orators. Our minds and bodies being ravaged with age, Posidon should protect us, yet we have no other support than a staff. When standing before the judge, we can scarcely stammer forth the fewest words, and of justice we see but its barest shadow, whereas the accuser, desirous of conciliating the younger men, overwhelms us with his ready rhetoric; he drags us before the judge, presses us with questions, lays traps ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... assaulting with effect the entrenchments of Conservatism, he was taken in flank by the moderate reformers. Mill had denounced the Whigs as half-hearted and even treacherous allies, who dallied with Radicalism to conceal their nefarious design of obtaining political mastery with the fewest concessions possible. He relied upon universal education to qualify the masses for the possession of an extensive franchise, and upon enlightened self-interest to guarantee their proper use of it. Macaulay rejoined, in the Edinburgh Review, that the masses ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... always with strangers, entered the drawing-room slowly. She put her hand timidly into Mr. Patterson's, then sat down, very prim and uncomfortable, with her legs dangling from the edge of the chair and answered his questions in a shy undertone and the fewest possible words. Mr. Patterson was hardly less ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... not the prime movers in the agitations which concern them. An examination of the tables of the last census will demonstrate that they do not attach much importance to political rights. It will be found that the free people of color are most numerous in some of those States which accord them the fewest political privileges; and in those States which have granted them the right of suffrage they seem to see but few attractions. In Maryland there were, in 1860, 83,942 free people of color; in Pennsylvania, 56,949; in Ohio, 36,673. In neither of those States were ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... is the seventh, where Baldr has built for himself a hall, in that land, in which I know exists the fewest crimes. ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... proficiency was she likely to bring with her, when she was not quite fifteen [6] at the time she wedded me, and during the whole prior period of her life had been most carefully brought up [7] to see and hear as little as possible, and to ask [8] the fewest questions? or do you not think one should be satisfied, if at marriage her whole experience consisted in knowing how to take the wool and make a dress, and seeing how her mother's handmaidens had their daily spinning-tasks assigned them? For (he added), as regards control of appetite and self-indulgence, ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... in with the intention of at once saying what he had to say, and getting it over in the fewest words. But he had not reckoned fully either with his own nature or with woman's instinct. Nor had he allowed—being, for all his learning, perhaps because of it, singularly unable to gauge the effects of simple actions—for the proprietary relations he had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... distrustful look, and plunged downhill into the scrub. The girl made a careless sign to the others to lay Nat on his litter, and, turning, led the way up the rocky front of the summit, presenting her back to me, choosing the path which offered fewest impediments to the litter-bearers ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... in the fewest possible words, that Rachel Verinder had nothing but a life-interest in the property. Her mother's excellent sense, and my long experience, had combined to relieve her of all responsibility, and to guard her from all danger of becoming the victim in the future of some needy and unscrupulous ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... which qualify it for its mission as the representative of barbaric fury and degradation, and the type, in human form, of that chaotic element of self-annihilation, which nature has kindly restricted to the fewest number of the lowest orders of animated being.[4] The inhabitants of Southern and Central Africa, from whence our slaves are drawn, the Feejeean, the Caffrarian, the New-Zealander, and the Hottentot, are stamped by nature with the unmistakable character of unmitigated barbarism, and absolute ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... though possibly many such Histories may have been written in former Ages, yet few have scaped the Injury of Time, so as to be handed safe to us. 'Twas many Ages possibly before Writing was known, then known to a few, and made use of by fewer, and fewest employed it to this purpose. Add to this, that such as were written, remain'd for the most part Imprison'd in the Cells of some Library or Study, accessible to a small number of Mankind, and regarded by a less, which after perished with the Place or the Decay of their own Substance. ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... the analysis of development, not directly into simple physico-chemical processes, but into more complex organic processes dependent upon the fundamental properties of living matter. The aim of Entwicklungsmechanik is defined by Roux to be the reduction of developmental events to the fewest and simplest Wirkungsweisen, or causal processes.[483] Two classes of causal processes may be distinguished, as "complex components" and "simple components" of development. The latter are directly explicable by the laws of physics and chemistry; the former, while in essence physico-chemical, ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... are inseparable from our existence, all the others are, more or less, fictitious, and increase with our knowledge and habits; it is, therefore, evident that the nation that is the highest above others feels the fewest wants; or, in other words, feels no wants. She knows nothing that she does not possess, and therefore may be said to want nothing; or which is the same thing, not knowing what she does want, she makes no effort to ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... as I haue named to you but onely foure words for an example, so may ye find out by diligent obseruation foure hundred if ye will. But of all your words bissillables the most part naturally do make the foot Iambus, many the Trocheus, fewer the Spondeus, fewest of all the Pirrichius, because in him the sharpe accent (if ye follow the rules of your accent as we haue presupposed) doth make a litle oddes: and ye shall find verses made all of monosillables, and do very well, but lightly they be Iambickes, bycause ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... be brief and to the point. The best letter states clearly all the facts in the fewest words. Brevity is not inconsistent with a long letter, as so much may need to be said as to require a long letter, but all repetitions, lengthy statements and multiplication of words should be avoided. Use short sentences, and make every word mean something. Short sentences are more forcible, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... came, With temper heard, with judgment weigh'd each claim; And, in their sentence happily agreed, In name of both, great Shakspeare thus decreed:— 1080 If manly sense, if Nature link'd with Art; If thorough knowledge of the human heart; If powers of acting vast and unconfined; If fewest faults with greatest beauties join'd; If strong expression, and strange powers which lie Within the magic circle of the eye; If feelings which few hearts like his can know, And which no face so well as his can show, Deserve the preference—Garrick! ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... presented a new problem to the painters, and were made the subject of prolonged study and much consultation before a brush was permitted to touch them, the point apparently being to help the discolorations express themselves with the fewest possible touches. ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... moments,—such tenfold attention on the part of one's eyes, ears, understanding, and feeling, such acute activity in apprehending without any productive reaction, is far too exhausting!—Only the very fewest behave in this way: how is it then that so many are affected? Because most people are only intermittingly attentive, and are inattentive for sometimes whole passages at a stretch; because they bestow their undivided attention now upon the music, later upon the drama, and anon upon ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... have failed to have been struck with the simplicity of the opening. Still, calm, and most majestic, it tells us everything which is necessary to be known in the fewest possible words. The history of Job was probably a tradition in the East; his name, like that of Priam in Greece, the symbol of fallen greatness, and his misfortunes the problem of philosophers. In keeping with ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... a lumber yard and select a plank of cedar having the fewest knots and the straightest grain. Saw or split a piece out of it six feet long, two inches wide, and about an inch thick. Plane it straight and roughen its two-inch surface with a file. Obtain a strip of white straight-grained hickory six feet long, two inches ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... believe it will have a good effect upon our literature for some time to come; and then, perhaps, the public may recover its patience again. For certainly it is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them. Generally, also, a downright fact may be told in a plain way; and we want downright ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... single picture of moderate size. He had a light, brilliant touch, his color was exquisite, and his arrangement of his subjects was very picturesque. His chief fault was a resemblance in his heads, and for this reason those pictures with the fewest figures are ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... crown he had missed, even as did the multitude of mankind. Only to the elect is it granted—the few chosen, where all are called. To some it falls as if by the pure grace of Heaven, meeting them as they walk in the common way. Some, the fewest, attain it by merit of patient hope, climbing resolute until, on the heights of noble life, a face shines before them, the face of ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... American turbulent states—and, incidentally, the American ideals of government. The audiences see it, approve it, applaud it. The newspaper editorial writers never quite go the length—it involves a denial of the divine right of the British Empire; at least they fear so. The fewest possible Englishmen really understand our governmental aims and ideals. I have delivered unnumbered and innumerable little speeches, directly or indirectly, about them; and they seem to like them. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... Central Market is Francis Goodwin, Esq., and it is but justice to say, that it is highly creditable to his taste and skill. The front is of the Grecian order, and perhaps the largest piece of masonry in the county of York, with the fewest observable joints. It is expected to prove ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... fewest words are the most satisfactory," he said, "so I wish to inform you, Mr. Steingall, that Lord Valletort and Count Vassilan intend to sail for Europe by to-morrow's steamer. They have empowered me to offer to pay the passage money to France of the ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... explain, for her listening friend: every one who had anything to give—it was true they were the fewest—made the sharpest possible bargain for it, got at least its value in return. The strangest thing, furthermore, was that this might be, in cases, a happy understanding. The worker in one connection ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... French that he might have been as great an author as he was a soldier. His letters and dispatches from the seat of war remind one of Caesar's. He wrote like a man who sees into the heart of things and goes straight to the point with the fewest words which will express exactly what he wishes to say. In this he was like Wolfe, and like many another great soldier whose quick eye, cool head and warm heart, all working together in the service ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... so much better yourself, yet you see that even you did not know how nobly he tried to undo the wrong he had done you; and now I think I know why he kept it to himself. It is fearfully late—or early—I seem to have been writing all night—and I will explain the matter in the fewest words. I promised Mr. Raffles that I would write to you, Harry, and see you if I could. Well, I did write, and I did mean to see you, but I never had an answer to what I wrote. It was only one line, and I have long known ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... days and criticised each other's productions. Correctness was their chief object, and they seemed to have little idea of the difference between poetical and prosaic expressions. Every fault was marked, and he who had fewest received the prize, and was allowed to take apprentices in the art. At the expiration of his poetical apprenticeship the young poet was admitted to the corporation ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... text with the fewest possible notes. Whoever wants to know what Shakespeare wrote must refer to Collier's ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.01 • Various
... thirty days, and that we had threatening trouble with either Germany, France, Great Britain, or Russia. There is not one of these, except Great Britain, that could afford to send over here twenty-five battleships, which would be the very fewest needed, seeing the distance of their operations from home; while Great Britain, relying wholly on her navy for the integrity of her empire, equally cannot afford the hostility of a nation having twenty battleships, and with whom her points of difference are as inconsequential ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... produced in arousing a storm of criticism, the book of the year is undoubtedly "The Christian," by Hall Caine. Not only the book of the year, perhaps, but of more years than one cares to count, for of books worth reading or remembering, there has been the fewest number within these latter days. And it must be conceded, in the beginning, that Hall Caine has written a book—a live book—and that no one will dissect it without finding blood on ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... extraordinary man of whom half the world was talking while the fewest, even in his own home city, ever saw him. Fewer still knew him well. It suited his temper and native modesty, as it did the state of his bodily health, to keep himself secluded. His motto was: "bene vixit qui bene latuit—he has lived ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... the fewest and simplest words that can be found in the compass of the language, to express the thing meant: these few words being also arranged in the most straightforward and intelligible way; allowing inversion only when the subject can be made primary without ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... charge the Irish with laziness, because we seldom find them employed; but then we don't consider they have nothing to do. Sir William Temple, in his excellent remarks on the United Provinces, inquires why Holland, which has the fewest and worst ports and commodities of any nation in Europe, should abound in trade, and Ireland, which has the most and best of both, should have none? This great man attributes this surprising accident to the natural aversion man has for labour; who will not be persuaded to toil and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... air.' She went up stairs again. How short seemed the time till she descended! how I longed for further respite! 'Hannah!' I said at length when we were fairly moving upon the road, 'Hannah! I am too sure you have nothing good to tell. But now tell me the worst, and let that be in the fewest words possible.' ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the fewest words in which that message could be delivered? I mean—should she say, You are to endow the Hallowell Institute, or Brother, you are to give—Sign the new will?" With satisfaction the girl gave a sharp shake of her head, and nodded ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... word passed round, "that Colonel Dalrymple had yielded, and that the Lieutenant-Governor only held out." This circumstance was communicated to Hutchinson, and he says, "It now lay upon me to choose that side which had the fewest and least difficulties; and I weighed and compared them as well as the time I had for them would permit. I knew it was most regular for me to leave this matter entire to the commanding officer. I was sensible the troops were designed to be, upon occasion, employed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... settled; and Miss Lambart was busy for an hour collecting provisions, arranging that fresh provisions should be brought to the path to the knoll every morning and preparing and packing the fewest possible number of garments she ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... to us, delineates love, except by an expression or two as regards the passion of Clytemnestra for Aegisthus [29]. It was emblematic of a new state of society when Euripides created the Phaedra and the Medea. His plots are worked out by the simplest and the fewest positions. But he had evidently his own theory of art, and studied with care such stage effects as appeared to him most striking and impressive. Thus, in the burlesque contest between Aeschylus and Euripides, in the comedy of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the piers. In the Forth bridge stability is obtained partly by the great excess of dead over live load, partly by the great width of the river piers. The majority of bridges not of great span have girders with parallel booms. This involves the fewest difficulties of workmanship and perhaps permits the closest approximation of actual to theoretical dimensions of the parts. In spans over 200 ft. it is economical to have one horizontal boom and one polygonal (approximately parabolic) boom. The hog-backed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... reports, that Polyeuctus, the Sphettian, one of the Athenian politicians about that time, was wont to say that Demosthenes was the greatest orator, but Phocion the ablest, as he expressed the most sense in the fewest words. And, indeed, it is related, that Demosthenes himself, as often as Phocion stood up to plead against him, would say to his acquaintance, "Here comes the knife to my speech." Yet it does not appear whether ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... they are sewed together, is pressed hard upon one side more than the other, the child bends from the side most painful, and thus occasions a curvature of the spine. To counteract this effect such stays, as have fewest hard parts, and especially such as can be daily or weekly turned, are preferable ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... is at all possible to grant to any one the remission of all penalties whatsoever, it is certain that this remission can be granted only to the most perfect, that is, to the very fewest. ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... among people of little education. It is the people with fewest ideas that cling to them most tenaciously. Scholars and scientists and business men who have learned to employ scientific methods are constantly watching for something new. They welcome new discoveries and new ideas, but the man in the backwoods of ignorance has a fence around the limits of his mind ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... hone. Modern science has much enlarged the colour list. There is thus the greater temptation offered to make endless varieties. It has been remarked in language, that the best writers have the most brief vocabulary—so it may be, that the best colourists will have the fewest colours. The rule has been verified in the old masters of the best time. Cennino Cennini, who always begins from the beginning, recommends drawing with the pen—his pen, for that also he tells you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... lies in laughter!" exclaimed the critic Carlyle. "It is the cipher-key wherewith we decipher the whole man. Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies the cold glitter, as of ice; the fewest are able to laugh what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snicker from the throat outward, or at least produce some whiffing, husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool. Of none such ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... kind of Instinct, that only looks out after our immediate Interest and Welfare. Discretion is only found in Men of strong Sense and good Understandings: Cunning is often to be met with in Brutes themselves, and in Persons who are but the fewest Removes from them. In short Cunning is only the Mimick of Discretion, and may pass upon weak Men, in the same manner as Vivacity is often mistaken for Wit, and ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... sleeps, sups. The little man passed the flat of his hand, in the dusk, over the two benches, chose the one which had fewest asperities of surface, tossed his bag and flageolet upon the other, pulled off his boots, folded his cape to make a pillow, and stretched himself at length. In less than ten minutes he ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was a good deal for a lad to say, at that age, and with Bob's upbringing and popularity, even though he said it rather scornfully in the fewest words. The scorn was really for himself, and I could well understand it. Nay, I was glad to have something to forgive in the beginning, I with my unforgivable mission, and would have laughed the matter off without another word if ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... authorized to make such changes subject to your approval. In doing so they are to bear in mind that taxes which tend to penalize or repress industry and enterprise are to be avoided; that provisions for taxation should be simple, so that they may be understood by the people; that they should affect the fewest practicable subjects of taxation which will serve for the general distribution ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... things. Of Lil's silken, lacy lingerie; of her social activities; of what she termed her wastefulness. Lil wore the fewest possible undergarments, according to the fashion of the day, and she worried, good-naturedly, about additional plumpness that was the result of leisure and of rich food. She was addicted to afternoon parties at the ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... the point of unity, is one which requires the passage of the least time and presents the fewest separate incidents. It is the relation of a single isolated incident, which occupies only the time required to tell it. "The Ambitious Guest" impresses the reader as a single incident and would seem to approach this perfection, but a careful analysis of it resolves it into a number of minor ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... the heads of the people in it, so that soldiers, ruffians, and slaves brought them in; but it does not seem that—as in the other two proscriptions—there was random murder, and many bribed their assassins and escaped from Italy. Octavianus had marked the fewest and tried to save Cicero, but Antonius insisted on his death. On hearing that he was in the fatal roll, Cicero had left Rome with his brother, and slowly travelled towards the coast from one country house to another till he came to Antium, whence he meant to sail ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... maritime powers are at strife, the one that has the fewest ships must always avoid doubtful engagements; it must run only those risks necessary for carrying out its missions, avoid action by manoeuvring, or at worst, if forced to engage, assure itself of ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... the human mind, but it has been true of the nations of the west. Yet the recognition of this law did not prevent the writer from occasionally falling into some of the old canting commonplaces about people being happiest who have fewest wants. As if, on the contrary, that action which he describes as the true element of man, were not directly connected with the incessant multiplication of wants. We may take this, however, as a casual lapse into the common form of moralists of ascetic ages. In substance the System of Nature ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... accounted his worthiest. In fact, it was one of the literary passions of the time I speak of, and it shared my devotion for the novels of Tourguenief and (shall I own it?) the romances of Cherbuliez. After all, it is best to be honest, and if it is not best, it is at least easiest; it involves the fewest embarrassing consequences; and if I confess the spell that the Revenge of Joseph Noirel cast upon me for a time, perhaps I shall be able to whisper the reader behind my hand that I have never yet read the "AEneid" of Virgil; the "Georgics," yes; but the "AEneid," no. Some time, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... unnecessary deliberation. Allen, wishing to arrange an appointment with Dan for luncheon the next day, waited for him to come into the aisle. Dan had not the slightest idea of introducing his charge to Allen or to any one else, and he stepped in front of her to get rid of his friend with the fewest words possible. But Marian so disposed herself at his elbow that he could not ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... has been given, you yourself may perceive the difference; which if it were to be pronounced of every one singly, I should affirm Tiberius to have excelled them all in virtue; that young Agis had been guilty of the fewest misdeeds; and that in action and boldness Caius came far ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... in letter, Hood is nevertheless a little less extreme than his prototypes. Where they loaded, he does not find it needful to overload, which is the ready and almost the inevitable resource of revivalists, all but the fewest: on the contrary, he alleviates ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... side of the great cask, seed pearls, pearls of fair size, and here and there great almond-shaped ones, while fewest of all were the softly rounded perfectly shaped gems, running from the size of goodly peas to here and there that of small marbles, lustrous, soft, and of that delicate creamy tint that made them appear like solidified drops of molten ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... Penton may have had a rambling head; but unless I have thumbed the bloom off his narrative in my attempt to summarise it, the reader will allow that he knew how to write. He gives us the whole scene in the fewest possible touches: he wastes no words in describing the personages in his small comedy—comic idyll I had rather call it, for after a fashion it reminds me of the immortal chatter between Gorgo and Praxinoe in the fifteenth idyll of Theocritus. There the ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bad of you. It is out of my power to help admiring things which are utterly beyond me to describe, and a dinner of such cooking may enlarge the tongue, after all the fine things it has been rolling in. But business is my motto, in the fewest words that may be. You know what I want; you will keep it to yourself, otherwise other people might demand the money. Through very simple channels you will find out whether the fellow thing to this can be found here or elsewhere; ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Mean troops will not win, no matter how they are armed. If the matter were investigated, it would probably be found that the regiments which won most distinction, in the late war on this continent, on both sides, fired the fewest number ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... rivals were the two greatest monarchs of continental Europe, Francis I of France and Charles V of Spain. Henry, Francis, and Charles were all young, all ambitious, and all exceedingly capable men. Henry had the fewest subjects, Charles by far the most. Francis had a compact kingdom well situated for a great European land power. Henry had one equally well situated for a great European sea power. Charles ruled vast dominions scattered over both the New World and the Old. The destinies of mankind turned mostly on ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... examples. The reader can now see for himself what the main object of the hokku poetry is, and what it achieved. Its object was some universalized emotion derived from a natural fact. Its achievement was the expression of that emotion in the fewest possible terms. It is therefore necessary, if poetry in the English tongue is ever to attain again to the vitality and strength of its beginnings, that we sit once more at the feet of the Orient and learn from it how little words can express, how sparingly they should ...
— Japanese Prints • John Gould Fletcher
... and illiberal joke to compare medicine to war, on the ground that the votaries of both seek to destroy life. It is, however, not far from the truth to say that they are alike in this; that they are both preeminently liable to mistakes, and that in both he is most successful who makes the fewest. ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... fewest villages and only one little town, Williamsburg, its capital. The population is scattered and every family lives on its own tobacco plantation. The Chesapeake and its affluents reach every where and the Colonists bring ...
— Achenwall's Observations on North America • Gottfried Achenwall
... proved," I should not have been the least surprised. And yet the style of his writing was often remarkable for its perfect clarity and perfect avoidance of anything in the shape of ambiguity. He could say what he wanted to say in the fewest number of words and in a way in which the most ingenious person could not twist into meaning something which they were not intended to mean. He was indeed a super-draftsman. But that is a gift which every man of letters who is worthy ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey |
