"Fraction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for twenty-five cents in paper. I immediately established the fact, that there are no fellow-citizens in Nantucket of foreign descent. "For," said I, "if you offered that obsolete fraction of a dollar to the turbulent hackmen of our cities, you would meet with offensive demonstrations of contempt." I seized the opportunity to add, apropos of the ways of that class of persons: "Theoretically, I am a thorough democrat; but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... Church as an old acquaintance... What I can't understand in you is your extraordinary blindness now to your old logic. Is it peculiar to you, or is it common to woman? Is a woman a thinking unit at all, or a fraction always wanting its integer? How you argued that marriage was only a clumsy contract—which it is—how you showed all the objections to it—all the absurdities! If two and two made four when we were happy together, surely they make ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... coincidence on so vast a scale, but in the real existence of the object. That a thousand lies told by as many several and unconnected individuals should all be one and the same, is a possibility expressible only by a fraction that is already, to all intents and purposes, equal ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... with it in her hand left the autumn-coloured field and entered the little wood where the cedars grew dark and close, with the bare, red earth beneath. At the end of the aisle of trees could be seen the bright-hued garden and a fraction of blue heaven. Holding the branch of ironweed before her, Jacqueline passed through the wood toward the light of sky and flowers, and came at the edge of the open space upon a large old tree, twisted like one of those which Dante saw. As she stepped beneath the dark and ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... not define how she was affected by this fact, but she regarded the fact as tremendously romantic, and its effect on her was profound. And George saw in it no significance! She was disconcerted. She felt a tremor; it was as though the entire King's Road had quivered for a fraction of a second and then, feigning nonchalance, resumed ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... electric impulse transmission. telex - a communication service involving teletypewriters connected by wire through automatic exchanges. tropospheric scatter - a form of microwave radio transmission in which the troposphere is used to scatter and reflect a fraction of the incident radio waves back to earth; powerful, highly directional antennas are used to transmit and receive the microwave signals; reliable over-the-horizon communications are realized for distances up to 600 miles in a single hop; additional hops can extend ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... blow, and instead of returning it, he kicked out with his left foot. His aim was true and Robard's revolver fell to the floor with a clatter. Chester pounced on it, beating the Austrian by the fraction of a second. A moment later the Austrian struck him a heavy blow on the ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes
... that this earth belongs to them,—to the human race alone. It does not,—no more than the United States belong to Rhode Island. Human life is not a ten-thousand-millionth of the life on the planet, nor the race of men more than an infinitesimal fraction of the creatures which it nourishes. A swarm of summer flies on a field of clover, or the grasshoppers in a patch of stubble, outnumber the men that have lived since Adam. And yet we assume the dignity of lords and masters of the globe! Is not this a flagrant delusion of self-conceit? Let ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... read very little. The average of time devoted to them by Englishmen cannot (even though one assess Mr. Frank Harris at eight hours per diem, and Mr. Sidney Lee at twenty-four) tot up to more than a small fraction of a second in a lifetime reckoned by the Psalmist's limit. When I dub Whistler an immortal writer, I do but mean that so long as there are a few people interested in the subtler ramifications of English prose as an art-form, so long will there be a few constantly-recurring ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... to these questions will make it possible to understand the application of this process to any work. In a great many places the use of the arc is cutting the cost of welding to a very small fraction of what it would be by any other method, so that the importance of this method ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... sit down until Bennett had twice ordered him to do so, and then he deposited himself in a nearby chair, in as uncomfortable a position as he could devise, allowing only the smallest fraction of his body to be supported as a mark of deference. He remained uncovered, and from time to time nervously saluted. But suddenly he remembered the object ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... many writers, must be given a high place among the causes of war, and a considerable fraction of the literature of the late war is devoted to the problem of discovering, in the field of abstract thought, the influences that led to the great conflict. Nietzsche, especially, seems to have been held responsible for the European conflagration. ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... of the outpost will depend upon many circumstances, such as the size of the whole command, the nearness of the enemy, the nature of the ground, etc. A suitable strength for an outpost may vary from a very small fraction to one-third of the whole force. However, in practice it seldom exceeds one-sixth of the whole force—as a rule, if it be greater, the efficiency of the troops will be impaired. For a single company in bivouac a few sentinels and patrols will suffice; ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... standard solution of silver nitrate (made by weighing out the crystals) is convenient or necessary if many titrations of this nature are to be made. In the absence of such a solution the liability of passing the end-point is lessened by setting aside a small fraction of the silver solution, to be added near the close ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... submarine and Blinks acted the part of a first-class battleship. Jinks would pop his periscope out of the water, take a look at Blinks merely for the fraction of a second, and then, like a flash, would dive under water again and start firing his torpedoes. He ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... but for the fraction of a second, had she stopped to read the placard setting forth this odious law, had she only reflected, then she would even now have turned back, and fled from that gruesome box of infamies, as she would from a dangerous and noisome ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... bulk of the plane loomed off to the right of the tiny ship, the great metal hull, visible now, rising in awesome might. They were too near; they shot away to a greater distance—then again that ghostly beam reached out—and for just a fraction of a second it touched ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... the law of conservation, that law most enduring, and most inexorable? According to the decrees of that law, whatever is received by the earth from the sun, an equivalent for the same must again be returned from the earth to the sun, to the uttermost fraction.[2] Such being the conditions, how may this retro-acting process that all analogy and the profoundest scientific axiom prove to be in constant operation—how, I ask, may this retro-acting process be explained? What equivalent may the earth give back as compensation for such enormous benefits, ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... chamber was brightly lit, with torches in brackets along the walls that gave off, by a small fraction, more light than smoke. In one corner the rack itself stood, and there were other tools of the trade scattered around ...
— Wizard • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)
... told you," whispered the steam consolingly; "but, between you and me and the cloud I last came from, it was bound to happen sooner or later. You had to give a fraction, and you've given without knowing it. ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... . . queer boy! What is there in it? There's nothing to understand in it. Learn the rules, and that's all. . . . To divide a fraction by a fraction you must multiply the numerator of the first fraction by the denominator of the second, and that will be the numerator of the quotient. . . . In this case, the numerator of the first ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... preserving the Leroys from the pitfalls and ruin he had dug for them. All the forged bills were promptly burnt, and there remained only those real amounts that Adrien had signed, and which, all put together, only amounted to but a minute fraction of the supposed sums ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... toiled only one hour or other larger fraction of a working day had no contract as to amount of wages; they entered the vineyard and laboured without a bargain. They did not know what wages they would be paid with, but they knew what master they were working for; they were prepared to accept whatever he might be ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... "To the last fraction of a sixpence," says Mr. Polonius, bowing, and looking at the jewel. "It's a wonderful piece of goods, certainly," said he; "though the diamond's a neat little bit, certainly. Do, my Lady, look at it. The thing is of Irish manufacture, bears the ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... complete. Was it in the swift flash of the fringed eyes, in the sensuous attractiveness of a certain swarthy, golden, mantling shade of colour which harmonized so well with the bright clearness of the eyes, with the smooth serenity of the brow? He could not determine; yet in that brief fraction of a moment, as he looked, he was uneasily conscious of a certain magnetic thrill communicating itself even ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... with any ascetic feeling. It was more like a holiday spree as the result of discovering the schoolmaster Life with his cane to be a myth, and thereby being able to shake myself free from the petty rules of his school. If, on waking one fine morning we were to find gravitation reduced to only a fraction of itself, would we still demurely walk along the high road? Would we not rather skip over many-storied houses for a change, or on encountering the monument take a flying jump, rather than trouble to walk round it? That was why, with the weight of ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... a moment?" inquir'd Sir Deakin, without looking up, but rubbing the nutmeg calmly up and down the grater: "a fraction too much, and the ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... his love. But then, although he said nothing, any fool of a woman could have seen it as clear as daylight. And she had been planted there like a stuck pig all the time—her ipsissima verba (O Diana distinction of lover's fancy!) and when common sense came to her aid, she just missed him by the fraction of a second.... Yet, after all, my modern Diana—or Andrew's, if you prefer it—had her own modern mode of telling an elderly outsider about her love affairs—the mode of the subaltern from whom is dragged the story of his Victoria Cross. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... put on a speaking countenance of admiration for the cleverness alluded to, in the midst of which Reuben returned. The operation was then satisfactorily performed; when Michael arose and stretched his head to the extremest fraction of height that his body would allow of, to re-straighten his back and shoulders—thrusting out his arms and twisting his features to a mass of wrinkles to emphasize the relief aquired. A quart or two of the beverage was then brought to table, at which all the new arrivals reseated ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... confederates from pursuing him. Xerxes no sooner heard this, but, being very much terrified, he proceeded to retreat out of Greece with all speed. The prudence of Themistocles and Aristides in this was afterwards more fully understood at the battle of Plataea, where Mardonius, with a very small fraction of the forces of Xerxes, put the Greeks ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of the great telescopes of the world, photographing the spectrum of a star, and measuring it with the greatest care, provided a tool of wonderful efficiency. The motion, which sometimes amounts to several hundreds of miles a second could thus be measured to within a fraction of a mile. The discovery that the motion was variable, owing to the star's revolving around a great dark planet sometimes larger than the star, added greatly not only to the interest of these researches, but also to the labor involved. Instead of a single measure for each ...
— The Future of Astronomy • Edward C. Pickering
... moss-grown, mouth-filling, mouth-made, muddy-mettled, momentary-swift, maid-pale. From this list, which is nearly complete, it is evident that such compounds as may be multiplied at will form but a small fraction of the words that are used once ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... towards the door, and drew a pistol. But he was just a fraction of a second too late; "crack" came Stokoe's cudgel and the pistol flew out of his hand, exploding harmlessly as it fell, and before he could draw another he was at Stokoe's mercy. There was no choice for the man; Stokoe took away all his arms, and then compelled him to set to and put back everything ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... talk to you and take some of my time with you away from me." Her eyes sparkled into his for the merest fraction of a second, and she laughed half mockingly. Then she dropped his lapel and they proceeded. She did not put the white rose in her ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... Vall," he said. "It is, roughly, what Dr. Nentrov suggested—each of the intervals between the designations is a very minute but very exact fraction of the difference between lesser designation and the ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... under the circumstances, was apparent, although the limitation as to amount looked like the application of a standard of measurement to that which could not be measured. The legal-tender notes, when "stocked" preparatory to their equal division, amounted to a fraction less than ten per cent. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... hospital for incurable forgottenhoods—is better than any course of philosophy to the young author. Let him reckon how many of the ten thousand or so names here recorded he has ever heard of before, let him make this myriad the denominator of a fraction to which the dozen perennial fames shall be the numerator, and he will find that his dividend of a chance at escaping speedy extinction is not worth making himself unhappy about. Should some statistician ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... come out and faced danger and endured terror, solely and exclusively for Irene's sake. The image of her sister rose clearly before her mind in all its bright charm, undimmed by any jealous grudge which, indeed, ever since her passion had held her in its toils had never for the smallest fraction of a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... joke or some compliment to Clementina about the cap which grew momently heavier under the sovereigns and half sovereigns, half crowns and half dollars, shillings, quarters, greenbacks and every fraction of English and American silver; and the actor who had given the imitations, made bold, as he said, to ask his lordship if the audience might not hope, before they dispersed, for something more from Miss Claxon. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... richer sound, and perhaps resolved itself into round numbers, in Scots money; but as it is, there is no more to be said against it than that, as a debt in some way due to the Lord Banff, the exact English book-keeper had entered it down to its fraction. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... leaned back in his chair and stretched luxuriously. He loosened his safety belt and got up. He stepped carefully past the column between the right- and left-hand pilot seats. That column contained a fraction of the innumerable dials and controls the pilots of a modern multi-engine plane have to watch and handle. The co-pilot went to the coffeepot and flipped a switch. Joe fidgeted again on his improvised seat. Again he wished that he could be riding in back with the crates. But it ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... that, however it may be transformed or dissipated, no fraction of energy is ever lost, that the amount of force, as of matter, in the universe, under all mutation remains ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... point on which you ask a few remarks is in relation to the early spread of Christianity. Mr. Newman makes easy work of this great problem. He says, "Before Constantine, Christians were but a small fraction of the empire ..... In fact, it was the Christian soldiers in Constanline's army who conquered the empire ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... other raw materials - grew more than 8%. Imports also were up 8% as demand for food and other consumer goods surged. Russian trade with other former Soviet republics continued to decline. At the same time, Russia paid only a fraction of the roughly $20 billion in debt that came due in 1994, and by the end of the year, Russia's hard currency foreign debt had risen to nearly $100 billion. Moscow reached agreement to restructure debts with ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... just so far behind and unable to gain the fraction of a second which would enable me to find out who was fleeing from me in such haste—maddening to be rewarded with no more than a procession ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... specially skilled labor; in any works some hand may be told off to conduct the process as occasion requires; and as a very large proportion of the fatty matter is recovered, the soap-bill is reduced to a very small fraction of the amount which would be paid were recovery not practiced. And lastly, the streams are not polluted; the only waste is a little sulphate of soda, which can hardly be regarded as a nuisance, inasmuch as it is a not unfrequent constituent ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... the highest tribute possible to the wisdom and virtue of General Lee; for, as a general rule, law was degraded; officers, whether justly or unjustly, were constantly the subject of complaint and discord, and jealousy prevailed in camp and in the Senate-chamber. There was a fraction of our people represented by an unavailing minority in Congress, who either felt, or professed to feel, a jealousy whose theory was just, but whose application, at such a time, was unsound. They wished to give as little power as possible ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... of the rifle smashing up. It struck the man under the chin and there was a sharp cracking sound as his jawbone snapped. For a fraction of a second there was an expression of stupefied amazement on his face then his eyes glazed and he slumped to the ground with ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... death in the face many a time, but never while you live will you be so near touching the old sport as you were a few minutes ago. Why I have interfered to save you these three times blessed if I know! Many a man's bones have been picked by the coyotes in these hills for a fraction of the provocation you have given me, not to speak of Little Thunder, who is properly thirsting for your blood. But take advice from me," here he leaned over towards Cameron and touched him on the shoulder, while his voice ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... an instant left O'Grady's huge, naked back. Between his knees lay his .303 rifle. He had figured on the fraction of time it would take him to drop his paddle, pick up the gun, and fire. This was his second point in ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... the soul's temperature by the thermometer of public deed or word. Yet the great sun himself, when he pours his noonday beams upon some vast hyaline boulder, rent from the eternal ice-quarries, and floating toward the tropics, never warms it a fraction above the thirty-two degrees of Fahrenheit that marked the moment when the first drop trickled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... quarter of an hour of experimentation we found that by standing exactly in a certain position, one on each side and paddling with one hand, it was possible to keep fairly level. If either of us shifted his foot a fraction of an inch the ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... before last I had a bad dream," says Tita solemnly, turning her head a little to one side, and giving him a slight glance that lasts for the tiniest fraction of a second. ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... a strait—then we submit that a prima facie case for woman's right to vote has already been made out. To declare that a voice in the government is the right of all, and then give it to less than half, and that to the fraction to which the theorist himself happens to belong, is to renounce even the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... is so abundantly demonstrating today,—the things that we see are but a very small fraction of the things that are. The real, vital forces at work in our own lives and in the world about us are not seen by the ordinary physical eye. Yet they are the causes of which all things we see are merely the effects. Thoughts are forces; like builds ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... numbers on which I insist. No doubt as large an army could be raised in other quarters; but these citizen armies have this defect—they include men who are already advanced in years, with others whose beards are scarcely grown. Again, it is only a fraction of the citizens who attend to bodily training in a state, whereas with me no one takes mercenary service who is not as capable of ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... know thou this: one who is steeped in woe Cares not for evil chances; not the state Of the most loathsome beast, nor yet the wood Of sword-leaved plants, nor even hell's dread stream, Could add the smallest fraction to the pain I have already borne. My son is dead! Who then will make atonement for my sins? Yet listen to my words, beloved one, If I have offered sacrifice, and paid Due reverence to the saints; if I have given Alms to the needy—may we meet again Hereafter, ...
— Mârkandeya Purâna, Books VII., VIII. • Rev. B. Hale Wortham
... true, there was a narrow erection which might pass as a bridge, if one wished to pay a compliment. It was of stone, and came to a steep point at the apex, like a "card tent" when two cards receive support from one another. It was the question of a fraction of an inch, if the Gloria were to squeeze over; but between the danger of a jam and the danger of a burst cylinder, I decided to risk playing ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... For the fraction of a second there was a pause; but, short as it was, the Irishman felt the sweat start. "The day of such as you ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... empyrean of thought, starry with wonder, and constellate with investigation; at one time obfuscated in the abysm-born vapours of doubt; at another, radiant with the sun-fires of faith made perfect by fruition; it can amaze no considerative fraction of humanity, that the explorer of the indefinite, the searcher into the not-to-be-defined, should, at dreary intervals, invent dim, plastic riddles of his own identity, and hesitate at the awful shrine of that dread interrogatory alternative—reality, or dream? This deeply pondering, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... served the king. All holders of land, however, had to serve in the national levy and to help in maintaining the bridges and primitive fortifications. But there were endless degrees of inequality in wealth; some now owned but a fraction of what had been the normal share of a household in the land; others held many shares, and the possession of five shares became the dividing line between the class from which the servants of the king were chosen and the rest ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... through the other, the next instant flowing the opposite way, then the first way again, and so on. This kind of current is called alternating current (a. c.), because the current alternates, coming in the upper wire and out of the lower for a fraction of a second; then coming in the lower and out of the upper for the next fraction of a second; then coming in the upper again and out of the lower for a fraction of a second; and so on, back and forth, all the time. For heating and lighting, this alternating current is ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... many inches above the footboard, and Gora, glancing at her, reflected that she was as beautiful as ever in spite of her loss of flesh and color. Any one would be with eyes that were like stars when they looked at you and a Murillo madonna's when she lifted them the fraction of an inch. Astute as she was she had never penetrated below the surface of Alexina, nor suspected the use she made of those pliable orbs. Alexina had such an abundance of surface it occurred to few people that she might be ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... mill pond above. He never would have been able to discover just what the shadows were if one of them had not paused a moment while halfway to the top of the falling water. It poised itself for one brief instant, as a humming-bird poises over a flower, but during that fraction of time the little boy was able to see that what he thought was a shadow was really a fish going from the water below to the mill pond above. The child could hardly believe his eyes, and for a little while it seemed that ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... that they constitute only a small part of each individual. The doctrine of heredity may seem to take out of our hands the conduct of our own lives, but it is the idea, not the fact, which is really terrible to us. For what we have received from our ancestors is only a fraction of what we are, or may become. The knowledge that drunkenness or insanity has been prevalent in a family may be the best safeguard against their recurrence in a future generation. The parent will be most awake to the vices or diseases in ...
— The Republic • Plato
... back of his neck. Some warning, certainly, was flashed to that mysterious sixth sense which the people of the wild, man or beast, seem sometimes to be endowed with. He wheeled like lightning, his revolver seeming to leap up from his belt with the same motion. But in the same fraction of a second that his eyes met Henderson's they met the white flame-spurt of Henderson's rifle—and ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... claim, to have the same institutions as every other part rests on a confusion of ideas, and is a false deduction from democratic principles. It is founded on the feeling which has caused half the errors of democracy, that a fraction of a nation has a right to speak with the authority of the whole, and that the right of each portion of the people to make its wishes heard involves the right to have them granted. This delusion has once and again made Paris the ruler of France, and the Parisian mob the master of ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... it carefully, judging it to the fraction of an inch. He stood poised and tense on the gayly decorated platform, himself a fine picture of physical young manhood. The band was blaring ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... brief mention should be made of the global effects resulting from disruption of economic activities and communications. Since 1970, an increasing fraction of the human race has been losing the battle for self-sufficiency in food, and must rely on heavy imports. A major disruption of agriculture and transportation in the grain-exporting and manufacturing countries could ...
— Worldwide Effects of Nuclear War: Some Perspectives • United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
... Such churches—and schools—and villages! All the little boys patterns—and all the little girls saints. Everybody singing in choirs—and belonging to confraternities—and carrying banners. 'By the pricking of my thumbs' when I see a Newbury I feel that a mere fraction divides me from the criminal class. And I tell you, I've heard a story about that estate"—the odd figure paused beside the tea-table and rapped it vigorously for emphasis—"that's worse than any other villainy I've yet come across. You know what I ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... only a small fraction of the time while threading the winding trail through the woods, so that hurrying was utterly out of the question. Thunder had been heard several additional times, and it seemed to be coming closer, if its increasing rumble counted ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... proportion of population in Great Britain, as compared with that of Ireland, only exceeded two to one by an insignificant fraction.] ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... the poor or to those of the same limited resources as himself his attitude was one of watchful anxiety; he seemed to be haunted by a besetting fear lest some fraction of a shilling or franc, or whatever the prevailing coinage might be, should be diverted from his pocket or service into that of a hard-up companion. A two-franc cigar would be cheerfully offered to a wealthy patron, on ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... are on the basis of percentage amounts, or nutrients in 100 pounds of food. By moving the decimal point two places to the left, the figures will represent the nutrients in one pound, and if this is multiplied by the number of pounds or fraction of a pound used, the quantity of nutrients is secured. For example, suppose bread contains 9.5 per cent of protein and 56 per cent of carbohydrates, 1 pound would contain 0.095 pound of protein, 0.56 pound of carbohydrates; and 0.5 of a pound would contain approximately 0.05 ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... snip, snippet; snick[obs3], snack, snatch, slip, scrag[obs3]; chip, chipping; shiver, sliver, driblet, clipping, paring, shaving, hair. nutshell; thimbleful, spoonful, handful, capful, mouthful; fragment; fraction &c. (part) 51; drop in the ocean. animalcule &c. 193. trifle &c. (unimportant thing) 643; mere nothing, next to nothing; hardly anything; just enough to swear by; the shadow of a shade. finiteness, finite quantity. V. be small &c. adj.; lie in a nutshell. diminish &c. (decrease) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... have been nearly three thousand years after the date of the execution of the carving, the column was only eight feet high, and was still in process of formation, which gives a rate of growth of a foot to a thousand years, or an inch and a fraction to a century. This we knew because, as we were standing by it, we heard a drop of ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... fraction of an hour you choose. The idea of the sand glass was not entirely new, because some form of running sand had long before been used in the Far East. But the sand glass as we know it was new to the European world, and you cannot ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... an elderly man started to cross the road, and on the sound of the horn stood stock still, with resentful defiance on his weather-beaten face. McKeogh jammed on the brakes. The car halted. But the infinitesimal fraction of a second before it came to a dead stop the wing over the near front wheel touched the elderly person and down he went on the ground. I leaped from the car, to be instantly surrounded by an infuriated ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... the instructor, "if they can make it four, and four's not good enough if they can make it five. It's when they can't cut the time down by another split fraction of a second that I'll be calling them good enough. They won't be blessing me for it now, but come the ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... agents for the steamer on the Pacific side. I naturally supposed that those who offered their money first for those tickets could buy them. The price was $300 for the first cabin, and $150 for the second, from Panama to San Francisco; but a fraction of the passengers had a ticket for ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... still, he was not omnipotent. Wilkes, that epitome of all manner of ugliness, often boasted that he was only an hour behind the handsomest man that ever existed, so far as regarded his position with the fair. Rip was but twenty-five minutes and a fraction. In ten minutes he would talk the generality of women into a good opinion of themselves—an easy matter, some may think, for the ladies have one ready made; but it is a different thing from having it and daring to own it. In ten minutes he would make his listener, by some act or word, avow ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Bethany, was dispelled, and vanished before bright sunshine, at the cry, "Lazarus, come forth!" But it is not always thus; and though it would be so more frequently if we waited more patiently upon God and considered His ways, yet, at best, but a small fraction of our life is understood here. Moreover, our own history is so interlaced with the history of others, that what is more properly theirs, in some degree is ours also. Can Moses, for instance, yet fully ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... noteworthy work done by the older men of the place and of hopes that one might find a way to get a little working power one's self. One longed to be a doer of the word, not a hearer only, a creator of his own infinitesimal fraction of the product, bound in God's name to produce when ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... the weeds he might easily have escaped notice. He was, too, extremely wary. The slightest motion was enough to send him instantly under the arch; his cover was but a foot distant, and a trout shoots twelve inches in a fraction of time. ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... necessary when there was a threat of war; and it accounts also for the difficulty which was always experienced in raising the men. This difficulty was even greater than we are apt to suppose, for the Merchant Service has never been able to give the navy more than a fraction of the total number of men needed, and the machinery for raising extra men has, until this war, always been of ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... Confusion at the Passover Festival.—While it is admittedly impossible that even a reasonably large fraction of the Jewish people could be present at the annual Passover gatherings at Jerusalem, and in consequence provision was made for local observance of the feast, the usual attendance at the temple celebration in the days of Jesus was undoubtedly enormous. Josephus calls the Passover throngs "an ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... thousand things as good have seen the light!" Look how the swarms arise From every clod before thy eyes! Are thine the only hopes that fade and fall When to the centre of its action One purpose draws each separate fraction, And nothing but effects are left at all? Aha, thy faith! what is thy faith? The sleep that waits on coming death— A blind delirious swoon that follows pain. "True to thy nature!"—well! right well! But what that nature is thou canst not tell— It has a thousand voices in thy brain. Danced ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... here at one great, general party, and remembered the china, although her party-call, like all her others, had been a failure. Mrs. Marchbanks received a good many people in a grand, occasional, wholesale civility, to whom she would not sacrifice any fraction of her private hours. ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... you see," explained the draughtsman; "but here are my points, Gilly. One: your house lies quite inland, with four sides to defend: the river and marsh give Rudie's but two and a fraction. Boats? Not hardly: we'd soon stop that, as you'll see, if they dare. Anyhow,—point two,—your house is all hillocks behind, and shops roundabout: here's just one low ridge, and the rest clear field. Third: the Portuguese built a well ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... carpenters or 500 masons, you would have succeeded?" "Certainly," she said, and then she told me of 200 bricklayers who had the year before been on strike and gained every point with their employers. "What could have made the difference? Their 200 were but a fraction of that trade, while your 500 absolutely controlled yours." Finally she said, "It was because the editors ridiculed and denounced us." "Did they ridicule and denounce the bricklayers?" "No." "What did they say about you?" "Why, that our wages were good enough ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... of invisible lien as well as outward degradation Clark's Field had struggled until 1898, and the ultimate doom was not far off. John thought so and struggled less to preserve his inheritance. What he owned of the Field was a diminishing fraction, long since negligible, were it not for the marvelous increase in all real-estate values, due to the growth of population in these parts and the activity of the country. It was rumored about the Square that Clark's Field would shortly be sold for taxes, and a tax title, poor as that ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... chivalrous days of Europe, Knights formed numerically but a small fraction of the population, but, as Emerson says—"In English Literature half the drama and all the novels, from Sir Philip Sidney to Sir Walter Scott, paint this figure (gentleman)." Write in place of Sidney and Scott, Chikamatsu and Bakin, and ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... hard, but so regularly that the dog felt but a fraction of the weight of the loaded raft. But what it felt was ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... more remarkable in a market in the country than the way in which the people will not undersell each other, even refusing to part with goods a fraction lower than the price which they consider fair.* It may be that the Jesuits would have done better to endeavour to equip their neophytes more fully, so as to take their place in the battle of the world. It may be that the simple, ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... What a negligible fraction of my few pages would this one lazy day of mine occupy! But then, will not this peaceful day, on the desolate sands by the placid river, leave nevertheless a distinct little gold mark even upon the scroll of my eternal ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... annually seek and leave our ports, a large proportion meet their doom, and, despite all our lighthouses, beacons, and buoys, lay their timbers and cargoes in fragments, on our shores. This is a significant fact, for if those lost ships be—as they are—a mere fraction of our commerce, how great must be the fleet, how vast the wealth, that our lighthouses guide safely into port every year? If all our coast-lights were to be extinguished for only a single night, the loss of property ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... and falling on a wide roof of new slates—the only object the small window commanded—imparted a more striking paleness. But underneath the door, communicating with the next room of the suite, gleamed an infinitesimally small, yet very powerful, fraction of contrast—a very thin line of ruddy light, showing that the sun beamed strongly into this room adjoining. The line of radiance was the only cheering ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... Such odds and ends! I cannot congratulate you upon your kindred, for I do not get on at all with these patchwork combinations, that are one-third man and the other two-thirds a vulgar fraction of bull or hawk or goat or serpent or ape or jackal or what not. Priapos is the only male myth who comes here in anything like the semblance of a complete human being: and I had infinitely rather he stayed away, because even I who am Jurgen cannot ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... with the narrow shoulders so desirable and so rarely found, with just the right number of hairs at the end of his tail, the forelegs properly feathered, the feet and ankles strong, the right amount of leather in his ear to the fraction of an inch,—a dog, in short, of beauty, ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... of blows in the space of two minutes as had Trooper Matthewson. His arms had worked like the piston rods of an express engine—as fast and as untiringly. He had taken the Gorilla by surprise, had rushed him, and had never given him a fraction of time in which to attack. Beneath the rain of sledge-hammer blows the Gorilla had shrunk, guarding for dear life. Driven into a corner, he cowered down, crouched beneath his raised arms, and allowed his face to sink forward. Like a whirling piece of machinery Dam's ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... not," assented Villiers promptly. "No poet, and indeed no author whatsoever, who lays claim to a fraction of conscience, writes for money ONLY. Those with whom money is the first consideration debase their Art into a coarse huckstering trade, and are no better than contentious bakers and cheesemongers, who jostle each other in a vulgar struggle as to ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... It was only in consequence of conditions resembling these that the London County Council was enabled to continue for so long its service of Thames steamboats, in spite of the fact that the labour thus employed failed to reproduce, by the functions which it performed for the public, more than a fraction of capital which was necessarily consumed in its maintenance. Had labour been thus misdirected by any private capitalist, his misdirection of it would have soon been checked by his loss of the means of continuing it; but the County Council, with the purse ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... little surety of being myself, that I doubt my own honesty in drawing my pension, and feel absolved from gratitude to those who are kind to a being who is uncertain of being enough himself to be conscientiously responsible. It is needless to add, that I am not a happy fraction of a man; and that I am eager for the day when I shall rejoin the lost members of my corporeal family in another ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... of petit mal, in which the patient drops suddenly to the floor with loss of consciousness, and quite as suddenly rises again in full possession of his faculties. I have watched such cases for hours, and always with increasing marvel. The loss of consciousness is complete, and often lasts but a fraction of a second. How account for such phenomenon! If consciousness were a diffused attribute of the whole brain, what spasm of blood-vessels or other physical process familiar to us could act and be adjusted with such speed? If, however, ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... under which labour was exercised—the serf, secure in his position, and burdened only with regular dues, which were but a fraction of his produce; the freeholder, a man independent save for money dues, which were more of a tax than a rent; the Guild, in which well-divided capital worked co-operatively for craft production, for transport and for commerce—all three between them were making for a society which should be ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... relapse, and then the old round is gone all over again, as regularly as the white and red lights and the darkness reappear in a revolving lighthouse lantern, or the figures recur in a circulating decimal fraction. That sad phrase which begins this lesson, 'The children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord,' is repeated at the beginning of each new record of apostacy, on which duly follow, as outlined here, the oppression by the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... agricultural lands will thereby be increased. Of this large area about 25,000,000 acres are occupied and assessed, including farm lands and town and city sites. It will be seen, therefore, that only a small fraction of the province has, as yet, been occupied. Practically all the occupied area lies south of a line drawn through Montreal, Ottawa, and Sault Ste Marie, and it forms part of the great productive zone of ...
— History of Farming in Ontario • C. C. James
... know in various pleasant ways that they had not forgotten it. The tables were adorned with flowers. Gifts of pretty and pleasing objects were displayed on a side table. A great green wreath, which must have cost the parent oak a large fraction of its foliage, was an object of special admiration. Baskets of flowers which had half unpeopled greenhouses, large bouquets of roses, fragrant bunches of pinks, and many beautiful blossoms I am not botanist enough to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... into his own hands as booty, is not to be accounted for by his eloquent words. His speech was but a tithe of his power, and wrought its spell only when personality had first created a sympathetic atmosphere. Only a fraction of a great man's character can manifest itself in speech; for the character is inexpressibly finer and larger than his words. The narrative of Washington's exploits is the smallest part of his work. Sheer weight of personality alone can account for him. Happy the man of moral energy ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... must be consecrated to something impersonal—that is the aim of tragedy: he must forget the terrible anxiety which death and time tend to create in him; for at any moment of his life, at any fraction of time in the whole of his span of years, something sacred may cross his path which will amply compensate him for all his struggles and privations. This means having a sense for the tragic. And if all mankind must perish some day—and who could question this! —it has been given its ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... with the whistle already half-way to his lips, paused and glanced at his watch. There was a fraction of a moment left. He stepped to a carriage ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... overlooks, while the brown creeper, with his long, slender, curved bill, takes what both the nuthatch and the woodpecker miss. Working together, it seems as if they must make a pretty clean sweep. But the trees are numerous and large, and the birds are few. Only a mere fraction of tree surface is searched over at any one time. In large forests probably only a mere fraction of the trees ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... a little selling of some stock in London, for instance, might have exactly the opposite effect in New York. With the wires continually hot between the two markets and a number of experts on the watch for the chance to make a fraction, quotations here and abroad can hardly get very far apart, at least in the active issues, but occasionally, it does happen that the arbitrageur is able to take advantage of a substantial difference. Always without risk, ...
— Elements of Foreign Exchange - A Foreign Exchange Primer • Franklin Escher
... lets off drop and sphere, and produces the flash. The stage of the phenomenon that is thus revealed having been sufficiently studied by repetition of the experiment as often as may be necessary, he lowers the plate D a fraction of an inch and thus obtains a later stage. Not only is any desired stage of the phenomenon thus easily brought under examination, but the apparatus also affords the means of measuring the time interval between any two ...
— The Splash of a Drop • A. M. Worthington
... many tricks in elephant-dealers as in horse-jockeys, and of many animals brought, but few were purchased. Government limits the price to about 75 pounds, and the height to the shoulder must not be under seven feet, which, incredible as it appears, may be estimated within a fraction as being three times the circumference of the forefoot. The pedigree is closely inquired into, the hoofs are examined for cracks, the teeth for age, and many other ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... only seen a fraction of our underground palaces, but I thought we would take a turn in the loft first and see what it is like. Follow me." We went out into the kitchen, and then up some steps fastened in the wall, and through the trap-door to the loft. With the help of a little electric ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... as to what to look for," said Petrelli, somewhat less bitingly. "The poison might be present in microscopic amounts. Do you know how much botulin toxin it takes to kill a man? A fraction ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett
... was simplicity itself. The black boiler tubes were shielded in such a way that so long as the aim was dead center on the sun they received no energy; but let the orientation shift by a fraction of a degree, and one of these blackened surfaces would begin to receive reflected energy from the mirror behind it; the liquid nitrogen within would boil, and escape under pressure through a jet in such manner as to re-orient the position to the center ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... a warning. It was voiced to freeze her poor victims in a paralysis of terror for the tiny fraction of an instant which would suffice for her mighty claws to sink into their soft flesh and hold them beyond hope ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... field.... I don't know. Let an electronic brain figure it out some time.... Anyway, now I'm being dragged along in the orbit of the moonlet—how about that? Yes, sir, I'm circling down closer and closer to the moonlet.... No, don't worry, sir. It was a weak gravity pull, only a fraction of an Earth-g. So I'm drifting down gently as a cloud.... Stand by for my landing on ...
— Shipwreck in the Sky • Eando Binder
... at him. She held strong theoretical views as to the stupidity of the male, but circumstances had seldom before allowed her to put them to the test. Behold them more than justified; for Ian was far above the average in intelligence. He, for a fraction of a minute, paused, deliberately closing the shutter of his mind against an unpleasant search-light that shot back on the experiences ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... moved back to let Barney pass. The eyes of the two men met for a fraction of a second. Tom's lips framed silently one word. In that time a message was ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... the ice-coated head in an instant. He looked up at Mollie Gillespie, who had been only a fraction of a second ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... represented special cases. There was, of course, little Mr. Spillikins, with his vacuous face and football hair, who was there, as everybody knew, on account of Dulphemia; and there was old Judge Longerstill, who sat leaning on a gold-headed stick with his head sideways, trying to hear some fraction of what was being said. He came to the gathering in the hope that it would prove a likely place for seconding a vote of thanks and saying a few words—half an hour's talk, perhaps—on the constitution of the United ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... are in the same condition. It is estimated that a crow needs at least half a pound of meat per day, but it is evident that for weeks and months during the winter and spring they must subsist on a mere fraction of that amount. I have no doubt that a crow or hawk, when in his fall condition, would live two weeks without a morsel of food passing his beak; a domestic fowl will do as much. One January I unwittingly shut a hen under the door of an outbuilding, where not a particle of food could be obtained, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... capillary portion is about 4 or 5 cm. long and only forms a small fraction of the entire length of the pipette (Fig. 13, c), will also ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... does not miss at two yards. I was never nearer my end than in that fraction of time while the weapon came up to the aim. It was scarcely a second, but it was enough for Colin. The dog had kept my side, and had stood docilely by me while Laputa spoke. The truth is, he must have been as tired as I was. As the Kaffirs approached to ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... my feet again. I was shaking. I wanted to talk but I couldn't. I grabbed the leading edge of the wing to stop from falling. The whole body of the plane gave a fraction of an inch and then resisted my leaning weight with lazy ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... old argument; if woman be allowed to have an immortal soul, she must have as the employment of life, an understanding to improve. And when, to render the present state more complete, though every thing proves it to be but a fraction of a mighty sum, she is incited by present gratification to forget her grand destination. Nature is counteracted, or she was born only to procreate and rot. Or, granting brutes, of every description, a soul, though not a reasonable ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... particular thing once said in words is so definite and memorable, that it makes us forget the absence of the many which remain unexpressed; like a bright window in a distant view, which dazzles and confuses our sight of its surroundings. There are not words enough in all Shakespeare to express the merest fraction of a man's experience in an hour. The speed of the eyesight and the hearing, and the continual industry of the mind, produce, in ten minutes, what it would require a laborious volume to shadow ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... purchase from France of the vast territory known as Louisiana, which included the state now bearing that name, and the wide, untrodden, wilderness west of the Mississippi, paying for it the sum of fifteen million dollars—a rate of a fraction of a cent an acre. The purchase aroused the bitterest opposition, but Jefferson seems to have had a clearer vision than most men of what the future of America was to be. He served for two terms, refusing a third nomination which he was besought to accept, and retiring to private life on ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... appear behind the glass panel of the street door—the face of a man who had evidently stolen quietly into the entry between the evergreen shrubs and wished to take a surreptitious peep into the interior of the little restaurant. It was there, clearly seen through the glass, but for one fraction of a second—then it was withdrawn as swiftly as it had come and the panel of glass was blank again. But in that flash of time ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... contained in the grain of powder operated on is carried successively to the billionth, trillionth, quadrillionth, quintillionth, and very often much higher fractional divisions. A dose of any of these medicines is a minute fraction of a drop, obtained by moistening with them one or more little globules of sugar, of which Hahnemann says it takes about two ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Bethel,) having already discharged one volley, was loading for another, the order was given to cease firing, and the flag of truce which terminated in our surrender was sent in. Twenty-three thousand men were surrendered by Gen. Lee, of which number only a fraction over 8,000 were ...
— Lee's Last Campaign • John C. Gorman
... tried to move it by their combined weight. The stone did not give the fraction of the ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton |
