"Fewest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chiefly to an autointoxication, good and sufficient reason for the administration of alum can be shown based upon its known physiological action. It is the most powerful intestinal astringent that I know of and has the fewest disadvantages. I have not noted constipation following its use nor diarrhea, nor a stopping of peristalsis, nor indigestion, and in any case its action lasts at most only a few hours, and if it did all these, it could not much matter. Quitman says, that it constricts the capillaries. ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... of the fact that the common law of England prevails in every State but two in this Union, except where the legislature has enacted special laws annulling it. I am ashamed that not one of the States yet has blotted from its statute books the old law of marriage, which, summed up in the fewest words possible, is in effect "husband and wife are one, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... will observe, that the pure and unaffected emotions produced by parental affection, are similar among all the human species, whether civilized or savage. The natives of the Island we were then visiting, may be ranked with those that have made the fewest approaches towards the refined improvements of enlightened nations, yet the ground work of humanity was discovered to be the same; and the solicitude of a fond father for a beloved child, was manifested in a manner which would not disgrace those who move in the ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... Mr. Swiveller's 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 ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... know that the name of the Lord is called upon us: and that we are the seed which the Lord hath blessed. Deut. 28. 10 Esay. 61. 9. There is no people but will strive to excell in something: what can we excell in if not in holinesse? If we look to number, we are the fewest; If to strength, we are the weakest; If to wealth and riches, we are the poorest of all the people of God throughout the whole world, we cannot excell (nor so much as equall) other people in these things; ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... likely to produce a life-like playlet if you are not forever groping among strange terms, which make you conscious all the time that you are dealing with unreality. Therefore choose the simplest directions, expressed in the fewest possible words, to indicate the effects you have carefully thought out: Never forget that reality and simplicity go ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... attitude always suppose a better state of things than other men are acquainted with, and he will be the last man to be disappointed as the ages revolve. A true friend of man, almost the only friend of human progress. He is perhaps the sanest man and has the fewest crotchets of any I chance to know,—the same yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow. Ah, such discourse as we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I have spoken of,—we three; it expanded and racked my little home;"—to say nothing of the universe, ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... to listen to the fortune-tellers, and among them, no doubt, was that old hag, Canidia, immortalized in the huge joke of his comic resentment. He goes home to sup on lupins and fritters and leeks,—or says so,—though his stomach abhorred garlic; and his three slaves—the fewest a man could have—wait on him as he lies before the clean white marble table, leaning on his elbow. He does not forget the household gods, and pours a few drops upon the cement floor in libation to them, out of the little earthen saucer filled from the slim-necked bottle of ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... 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 mimic of discretion, and may pass upon weak men, in the same manner as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... 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 one who ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... the struggle of a comparatively few women to secure a clause for equal suffrage in the State constitution, when it was revised in 1894, told in the fewest ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... the berries, however, she found some that were not ripe in Peggy's pail. Diana and Alice had both of them picked slowly, but carefully. Christopher had almost as many as Peggy, but his had to be gone over, and some unripe ones taken out. Clara had the fewest and poorest of all. She was not used to applying herself, and very soon she said she was tired and that the sun made her head ache; so Miss Rand said she could go into the little hut and rest. But this did not suit her, for she liked to ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White
... All the documents on an epoch or an event cannot usually be published, a selection must be made, and in it will necessarily appear the turn of mind of him who makes it. Let us admit that all that can be found is published; but alas, the most unusual movements have generally the fewest documents. Take, for instance, the religious history of the Middle Ages: it is already a pretty delicate task to collect official documents, such as bulls, briefs, conciliary canons, monastic constitutions, etc., but do these documents contain all the life of the Church? Much ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... poor man's need. These fellows will do nothing for pity 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 ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... itself 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 to great rules of architecture. It was built with a nave ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... character of the times. For we see that in what they do some men act impulsively, others warily and with caution. And because, from inability to preserve the just mean, they in both of these ways overstep the true limit, they commit mistakes in one direction or the other. He, however, will make fewest mistakes, and may expect to prosper most, who, while following the course to which nature inclines him, finds, as I have said, his method of acting in accordance with the times in ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... In the 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 for Jesus, the Bread and Water of Life. Then the poor people ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... their adversary's morale, or by creating false impressions, they induced him to make a false step, and to place himself in a position which made it easy for them to attain their object. The greatest general has been defined as "he who makes the fewest mistakes;" but "he who compels his adversary to make the most mistakes" is a definition of equal force; and it may even be questioned whether the general whose imagination is unequal to the stratagems which bring mistakes about is worthy of the name. He may be a trustworthy subordinate, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... And as our English is a composition of the dead and living tongues, there is required a perfect knowledge, not only of the Greek and Latin, but of the Old German, French, and Italian, and to help all these, a conversation with those authors of our own who have written with the fewest faults in prose and verse. But how barbarously we yet write and speak your Lordship knows, and I am sufficiently sensible in my own English.[27] For I am often put to a stand in considering whether what I write be the idiom of the tongue, or ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... strength of bath should be adhered to so far as possible because its effectiveness against ticks will effect eradication in the least time and with fewest dippings. But if time is not pressing it is sometimes best to begin with a lower strength, say 0.14 or 0.15 per cent, and gradually work up to full strength as the cattle become accustomed to the treatment. This is certainly a wise method for the individual ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... Pecans are grown in every county, although there is a 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 ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... In the fewest words possible Fred explained how the capture had been made, and Joe actually leaped for joy when ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... divorce between herself and her own sex was from the first complete. She not only did not seek to please, but she made no attempt to conceal her aversion from the society of women, and her preference for those forms of entertainment where they were found in fewest numbers. Balls were, therefore, never much to her taste; at the dinner-table she was freer, but it was on the racecourse that she reigned supreme. From the box-seat of a drag the white hands were waved, the ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... of the pathetic look on Rufus's face, the anger, pleasure, or playfulness of the mill cats. Perhaps none of us know what might be forced, against our natural indolence, from the fallow ground of our capabilities in many lines. The spirit of a popular subject in the fewest possible strokes was what Jan had to aim at for his daily bread, under peril of bodily harm hour after hour, for day after day, and his hand gained a cunning it might never otherwise have learned, and could ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... and I should always find that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind, but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay, they were not subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses, either of body or mind, as those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and extravagances ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... 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 ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... by the hands of the enchanter into little dry crumbling leaves! He is a Parisian. He never exaggerates, is never violent: he treats things with the most provoking sang froid; and expresses his contempt by the most indirect hints, and in the fewest words, as if he hardly thought them worth even his contempt. He retains complete possession of himself and of his subject. He does not effect his purpose by the eagerness of his blows, but by the delicacy of his tact. The poisoned wound he inflicted was so fine, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... the great kloof between the two vleis yonder—the Heer Marais knows the place—when the wild geese flight over an hour before sunset, and that he who brings down six of them in the fewest shots ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 well who has kept himself ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... 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 ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... guilty of more crimes, Alexander had perhaps the fewest good qualities of any of the family of the Lagidaa. During his idle reign of twenty years, in which the crimes ought in fairness to be laid chiefly to his mother, he was wholly given up to the lowest and worst of pleasures, by which ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... 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
... encouragement, and have gone about the work exactly after the same fashion. The length of her novel had been her first question. It must be in three volumes, and each volume must have three hundred pages. But what fewest number of words might be supposed sufficient to fill a page? The money offered was too trifling to allow of very liberal measure on her part. She had to live, and if possible to write another novel,—and, as she hoped, upon better terms,—when ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... first. Nay, he assumes, as his foundations, ideas which, if we embrace the doctrines of his first volume, can exist no where but in the vibrations of the ethereal medium common to the nerves and to the atmosphere. Indeed the whole of the second volume is, with the fewest possible exceptions, independent of his peculiar system. So true is it, that the faith, which saves and sanctifies, is a collective energy, a total act of the whole moral being; that its living sensorium is in the heart; ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... nights two hours sleep was the most I could get, for the pains were incessant. I read in ... the Kansas City Post last Spring about Dr. Brinkley's Goat-Gland operation, and decided to try it right away. I was in such misery I would have tried anything. Now I want to tell you, in the fewest words, that the amazing truth is that I have not had a twinge of pain of any kind at all since the operation, and have only a memory of my former suffering. This is a marvelous thing. I have the feeling of a youth. Whenever you want to hear from me I will write again and tell you what changes have ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... writings is his power of vivid description, his ability to make us see things. Nor does he make us wait while he gives us page-long descriptions; he suggests pictures to us with a few words. It may be safely said of descriptions, when they are part of a story, that those which are given in the fewest words, if those few words are the right ones, are most effective. Stevenson fully grasped this fact, and that is the reason he is able to bring all his scenes before us so vividly, without ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of the kingdom? If ye did but examine one day how it is spent, ye might pass a judgment upon your whole life. Do ye seek that first which is fewest times in your thoughts, and least in your affections, and hath least of your time bestowed on it? Alas, do not flatter yourselves. That ye seek first which is often in your mind, which uses to stir up your joy or grief, or ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... with those who died unjustly, while many will undertake the funeral of those who destroyed the state, seeing that so many are prepared to go to the rescue? 89. And I think it far easier to resist your wrongs than to defend the conduct of these men. But they say that Eratosthenes did the fewest evils of the Thirty, and, on this account, they demand that he shall be saved; but because, of (all) other Greeks, he has done you the most wrongs, they do not think he ought to perish. 90. Now therefore you will show what opinion you hold in regard to these matters; if you convict ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... is accurately at 30 deg., and finally the graduated arc belonging to the torsion index is to be adjusted so as to bring 0 deg. upon it to the index. This state of the instrument was adopted as that which gave the most direct expression of the experimental results, and in the form having fewest variable errors; the angular distance of 30 deg. being always retained as the standard distance to which the balls were in every case to be brought, and the whole of the torsion being read off at once on ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... Central 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. But ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... them its boast: A Saint, it said, within that forest dwelt, A Saint that helped their people. Saint she was, And therefore wrought for heaven her holy deeds; Immortal stand they on the heavenly roll; Yet fewest acts suffice for heavenly crown; And two of hers had consequence on earth, Like water circles widening limitless, For man still helpful. Hourly acts of hers, Interior acts invisible to men, Perchance were worthier. ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... 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," ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... true critic in the perusal of a book is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones {89}. ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... wars, that it is religious. But that we do say; for it is to win and keep the unity of a country for the great purposes of mankind, a place where souls can have their chances to work, with the largest freedom and under the fewest disabilities, at the divine image stamped upon them,—to get here the tools, both temporal and spiritual, with which to strike poverty and misery out of those glorious traces, and to chisel deep and fresh the handwriting where God ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... seems to me," said Cyrus, "what we ought most to consider in this matter is the endeavour to make the fewest possible persons unhappy, and to prevent a combat between two gentlemen of such gallantry, that to whichever side victory inclines, we should have cause to regret the vanquished. For although Menecrate is inconstant and a little capricious, he has, for all that, both wits and a heart. We ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... known to the people, and the 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... 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 ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... 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 was the worked in another; it was as broad as it was long—with the wheels of the system, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... smoothest run, deep are the fords; The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move; The firmest faith is in the fewest words; The turtles cannot sing, and yet they love; True hearts have eyes and ears, no tongues to speak; They hear, and see, and sigh, and ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... the same side hide it again, and the second player on the guessing side tries his luck at discovering its whereabouts. A score is decided on before the game begins, and the winning side is that which make the fewest number of wrong guesses. ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... lightning; in Missouri, 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 ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... 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
... well Lost, 1678, a tragedy, founded upon the story of Antony and Cleopatra, he tells us, "is the only play which he wrote for himself:" the rest were given to the people. It is, by universal consent, accounted the work in which he has admitted the fewest improprieties of style or character; but it has one fault equal to many, though rather moral than critical, that, by admitting the romantick omnipotence of love, he has recommended as laudable, and worthy of imitation, that conduct which, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... and hearts of men, we shall not err, if we regard it as a moral barometer indicating and permanently marking the rise or fall of a nation's life. To study a people's language will be to study them, and to study them at best advantage; there, where they present themselves to us under fewest disguises, most nearly as they are. Too many have had a hand in the language as it now is, and in bringing it to the shape in which we find it, it is too entirely the collective work of a whole people, the result of the united contributions of all, it obeys too immutable ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... prison statistics for December, January, and February—the three most inclement months, the three months when expenses are greatest and work scarcest—should be the highest in the whole year. As a matter of fact, it is during these three months that there are fewest people in prison. According to an excellent return, issued for the first time by the Prison Commissioners in their thirteenth report, it appears that there was a considerably smaller number of prisoners in the local prisons of England and Wales in the winter months—December, ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... seem invidious, were I to show here how small is the sum total of the work accomplished even by the great exceptional men, whose names are known throughout the civilized world. But I may at least be permitted to speak of my own efforts, and to sum up in the fewest words the result of my life's work. I have devoted my whole life to the study of Nature, and yet a single sentence may express all that I have done. I have shown that there is a correspondence between the succession of Fishes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... indignation of the rest. With the loftiest perception of the rights of man, they turned him out of that employment (for the one "sacred principle of labour" is to play), and he, understanding now the nature, of democracy, perceived that of all the many short-cuts to starvation, the one with the fewest elbows to it ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... difficulties 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 ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... of these confidences on his part. I know perfectly well that he is only making his little financial statements in order to persuade me that he is comfortably circumstanced, steady, fond of home, comparatively independent—or, to put the matter in the fewest words possible, able to marry. Quod erat demonstrandum,—as the ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... rank in us nothing higher than character, and if character on the man side can be achieved only out of right choice translated in its kindred action—then it must follow that the power to choose the right is the power to choose the wrong. Which means in the fewest words, that sin, and all the ills and suffering that proceed out of its selfishness, are the issue of this possibility of fatal choosing. If it be asked: "Why the possibility at all?" I answer that without ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... appearance, examined before the Mayor of Bradford at the court-house there, only one man could sign his name, and that indifferently.' Mr. Nelson has clearly shown in statistics of crime in England and Wales from 1834 to 1844, that crime is invariably the most prevalent in those districts where the fewest numbers in proportion to the population can read and write. Is it not indeed beginning at the wrong end to try and reform men, after they have become criminals? Yet you cannot begin, with children, from want of schools. Poverty is the ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... have by your side some one akin to you. His instructions were that in no circumstances was I to offer any remark upon the proceedings. Indeed, I am not allowed to speak unless in answer to a question directly put to me, and then in the fewest possible words." ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... leader, and he must be the best that the country, perhaps even the world, can produce. The required man is not to be found without careful inquiry; in many branches he may be unattainable for years. When such is the case, wait patiently till he appears. Prudence requires that the fewest possible risks would be taken, and that no leader should be chosen except one of tried experience and world-wide reputation. Yet we should not leave wholly out of sight the success of the Johns Hopkins University in selecting, at its very foundation, young men who were to prove themselves the ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... spoke: "This," he said, "is how I see the matter; if fight we must, let us make preparation to sell our lives dearly, but if we desire to cross with the greatest ease, the point to consider is, how we may get the fewest wounds and throw away the smallest number of good men. Well then, that part of the mountain 11 which is visible stretches nearly seven miles. Where are the men posted to intercept us? except at the road itself, they are nowhere to be seen. It is much better to ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... 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 ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... the very interesting and remarkable generalisations which (thanks especially to Mr. W. H. Wesley's skilful review of many of the photographic results) are now gradually unfolding themselves to astronomers. To put the matter in the fewest possible words there seems little or no doubt that according as spots on the Sun are abundant or scarce so the Corona when visible during an eclipse varies in appearance from one period of eleven years to another like period. Or, to put it in another way, given the date ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... ease, nevertheless made a suitable reply in the fewest possible words, and the etalage being thus at an end, the noblemen, headed by their Ambassador, slowly retired, myself forming the tail of the procession. Inwardly I deeply sympathised with the French workman who thus unexpectedly found himself confronted by so much magnificence. He cast one ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... study certain features of Japanese pictorial art, we notice that a leading characteristic is that of simplicity. The greatest results are secured with the fewest possible strokes. This general feature is in part due to the character of the instrument used, the "fude," "brush." This same brush answers for writing. It admits of strong, bold outlines; and a large brush allows the exhibition ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... to see a fellow what can make out with the fewest tools. Tools are good enough for mechanics; a bit an' a bar'll do for a man. Ever ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... to thee of balmy breath, some gentle hours when life had fewest charms. And we are grateful for all this, to say nothing of your cider and ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... suppose to be a just summary of our American principles, and I have on this occasion sought to express them in the plainest and in the fewest words. The summary may not be entirely exact, but I hope it may be sufficiently so to make manifest to the rising generation among ourselves, and to those elsewhere who may choose to inquire into the nature of our ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... most perfect text with the fewest possible notes. Whoever wants to know what Shakespeare wrote must ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.01 • Various
... educating the mind; a third because he has set his heart on a fellowship; a fourth, because he is intensely ambitious, and looks on a good degree as the stepping-stone to literary or political honours. The fewest perhaps pursue learning for her own sake, and study out of a simple eagerness to know what may be known, as the best means of cultivating their intellectual powers for the attainment of at least a personal solution of those great problems, the existence of ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... the 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 how to make, had no slit. O days of Perryian innovation! It was very well, a vast improvement, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... undertake to describe. It adjoins both dining-room and kitchen. John says she never does anything in getting dinner but just sit down in an easy-chair and turn a crank. That's one of John's stories, but she certainly will prepare a meal the quickest and with the fewest steps of any person I ever knew. The funniest thing about it is, that I've known eight people at work in the room all at once without being in each other's way one bit. But that's no closer than ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... underwent several transfers, but little change, becoming at length the property of Lemuel Wells, who held it a long time and, dying in 1842, left it to his nephew. The town of Yonkers grew up around it, and on May 1, 1868, purchased it for municipal use. The fewest possible alterations were made in it. These are mainly in the north wing, the part added by the second lord of the manor in 1745. On the first floor, the partition between dining-room and kitchen was removed, and the whole space made into a court-room. On the second floor, the ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... audience; jubilant the Opposition, faintly resisting the Ministerialists. GLADSTONE had no copy-book before him, only the merest skeleton of notes. These, with what seemed to the intently-listening audience the fewest, simplest touches, he informed and inflamed with flesh and blood. Spoke for an hour and forty minutes—a marvellous feat for any man, a miracle of mental and physical force for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... best rose-bush, after all, is not that which has the fewest thorns, but that which bears ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... two 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 favorable conditions. The attitude to be taken should depend radically upon ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... wish to be taken, even by the chance traveling companions of a few hours, for other than an English or American girl, I resolved to speak fewest possible words to any one on the journey; and when the conductor came for my ticket, I repressed the desire to ask him to tell me when my own station would be reached, and merely shook my head at the news agents who ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... strengthen the magnates and the high ecclesiastics in their desire to bring about the restoration of Hungary's old frontiers. As the frontiers are now drawn there dwell—and this could not be prevented—a number of Magyars in each of the three neighbouring States (the fewest being in Yugoslavia), just as the present Hungary includes a Czech-Slovak, Roumanian and Yugoslav population.[71] But the Great Powers agree that if this frontier is to be changed at all, every precaution should be taken against having ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... glass-parchment, polished it on the list-wheel; in the end 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 hands. Had it been an offering ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... occasions when the simplest and fewest words surpass in effect all the wealth of rhetorical amplification. An example may be seen in the passage which has been a favourite illustration from the days of Longinus to our own. "God said: Let there be light! and there was light." This is a conception ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... thought it by much a greater and worse disgrace than if Kjartan had even killed a man or two of them. The sons of Osvif were the wildest over this matter, but Bolli quieted them rather. Gudrun was the fewest-spoken on the matter, yet men gathered from her words that it was uncertain whether any one took it as sorely to heart as she did. Full enmity now grows up between the men of Laugar and the Herdholtings. As the winter wore on Hrefna gave birth to a child, a boy, and ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... matter of course that there, in that strange, silent city in the dazzling sunlight, the fewest possible words were to be spoken. Some new, mute inner sense appeared to make meanings clear. ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... said Pedgift Senior when they were alone. "And don't forget that time's money. Out with it, whatever it is, at the quickest possible rate, and in the fewest ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... with law-suits, delivered over to the scorn of 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 ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... masters, and never once relax the authority they exercise on those around them. Nino has always commanded me, as he seems to command everybody else, in the fewest words possible. But he is so true and honest and brave that all who know him love him; and that is more than can be said for most artists. As he sat in his chair, hesitating what question to ask first, or waiting for me to speak, I thought that ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... therefore, which 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 ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... occurred, he found himself setting down phrases that told of nothing but a mad passion. The thought of her cold face when she should read the lines arrested his hand, and he threw down the pen impatiently, and returned to his meditations for a while. What he wanted to do was to tell her in the fewest possible words that he was alive and well. What else should he tell her? The statement would allay any anxiety she might feel, and his absence would doubtless be a relief to her. The thought was bitter, but he knew that nothing exasperates a woman like the constant presence of a man she has ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... fewest words what many scarce could tell, I know of none in strength and act like him. And having won the prize in all the fivefold forms of race which the umpires had proclaimed, he then was hailed, proclaimed an Argive, and his name Orestes, the son of mighty Agamemnon, who ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... those he loveth; and therefore surely a good Christian, who obeys our Saviour's command of loving all men, cannot but take delight in doing good even to his enemies. God, who giveth all things to all men, can receive nothing from any; and those among men, who do the most good, and receive the fewest returns, do most resemble their Creator: for which reason, St Paul delivereth it as a saying of our Saviour, that "it is more blessed to give than to receive." By this rule, what must become of those things which the world valueth as the greatest blessings, riches, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... I work to attain in any gag is brevity. I never use an ornamental word, I use the shortest word I can and I tell a gag in the fewest words possible. If you can cut out one word from any of my gags and not destroy it, I'll give you five dollars, and it'll be worth fifty to me to lose it. "You can kill the whole point of a gag by merely an unnecessary ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... 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 ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... 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 without ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... was a letter; while, usually, he only asked in the fewest words for fresh funds for the gratification ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... In the fewest possible words the Wanderer told her all that had occurred up to the moment of her coming, not omitting the detail of the ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... lies in the pure Saxon English in which they are written, which render them models of the English speech, plain but never vulgar, homely but never coarse, and still less unclean, full of imagery but never obscure, always intelligible, always forcible, going straight to the point in the fewest and simplest words; "powerful and picturesque," writes Hallam, "from concise simplicity." Bunyan's style is recommended by Lord Macaulay as an invaluable study to every person who wishes to gain a wide command over his mother tongue. Its vocabulary ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... from its different circumstances and situations. And though we must endeavour to render all our principles as universal as possible, by tracing up our experiments to the utmost, and explaining all effects from the simplest and fewest causes, it is still certain we cannot go beyond experience; and any hypothesis, that pretends to discover the ultimate original qualities of human nature, ought at first to be rejected as ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... 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, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... where they be many, they leave more, the laws in this case, according to Justinian and the best lawyers, being as litigious as the suitors. Solon made few, Lycurgus fewer, laws; and commonwealths have the fewest at this day ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... 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 conscience, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... be true, a priori, that the domain of invention, and that of labor, can be extended only to the injury of one another, it would follow that the fewest workmen would be employed in countries (Lancashire, for instance) where there is the most machinery. And if it be, on the contrary, proved, that machinery and manual labor coexist to a greater extent ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... every side. Those who had been placed to guard the passage of the wood, when they saw fires on the tops of the mountains, and some over their own heads, concluding that they were surrounded, abandoned their post; making for the tops of the mountains in the direction in which the fewest fires blazed, as being the safest course; however they fell in with some oxen which had strayed from their herds. At first, when they beheld them at a distance, they stood fixed in amazement at the miracle, as it appeared to them, of creatures breathing ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... 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 ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... Egypt was that which was subject to the fewest changes, because Ptolemy, who was established there as governor, at the death of Alexander, retained the possession of it ever after, and left it to his posterity: we shall, therefore, consider this prince as the basis ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... imperfections, fewer are to be found in Venetia and fewest in Contarini Fleming. This beautiful romance is by far the best of Disraeli's early books, and that in which his methods at this period can be most favourably studied. A curious shadow of Disraeli himself is thrown over it all; it cannot be styled in any direct ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... used to talk much error, in my judgment, of the supreme value to the intellect of studying FORM. This word was to include the 'accidence' of language with the fewest possible words; algebra with the least possible arithmetic ... Logic without real proposition.... Now, in my belief, and that of De Morgan and the late Professor Boole, nothing so ruins the mind as to accustom it to think that ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... thus:—Lay it on a table or bed, the inside downward, and unroll the collar. Double each sleeve once, making the crease at the elbow, and laying them so as to make the fewest wrinkles, and parallel with the skirts. Turn the fronts over the back and sleeves, and then turn up the skirts, making all ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... 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 ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... felt a sudden reluctance at the thought of seeing those two letters in the hands and under the eyes of an inveterate joker like Dave. 'I'm no wiser in the matter of address, however.' And then I told him the purport of the letters in the fewest words possible. ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... it behind him. He must have a catholicity, a power to see with a free and disengaged look every object. Yet is this private interest and self so overcharged, that, if a man seeks a companion who can look at objects for their own sake, and without affection or self-reference, he will find the fewest who will give him that satisfaction; whilst most men are afflicted with a coldness, an incuriosity, as soon as any object does not connect with their self-love. Though they talk of the object before them, they are thinking of themselves, and their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... cavalry. However, when the morning came for re-enlistment the troops were called out in line of regiments and a call made by the Colonel to all who were willing to enlist for the war to step two paces to the front. All, with the very fewest exceptions, stepped proudly to the front. Of course, none were permitted to leave his company for the cavalry, as that branch of the service was yet filled to its full quota, its ranks had in no discernable degree been depleted by the casualties of war. It seemed ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... work, with a dead certainty of better sport in the afternoon, since they had marked two untouched bevies, thirty-five birds at least, beside some ten or twelve more stragglers into the alder brakes, which Harry knew to hold— moreover, thirty woodcock, as he said, at the fewest. ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... ships in numbers not to be borne up against, but Sigmund the King, and Eylimi, set up their banners, and the horns blew up to battle; but King Sigmund let blow the horn his father erst had had, and cheered on his men to the fight, but his army was far the fewest. ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... last 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 in ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... State in this Union, except where the Legislature has enacted special laws annulling it. And I am ashamed that not one State has yet blotted from its statute books the old common law of marriage, by which Blackstone, summed up in the fewest words possible, is made to say, "husband and wife are one, and that ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... question of practical lighting, it is very certain that the best electric lamp will be the one that is most simple and requires the fewest mechanical parts. It is to such simplicity that is due all the success of the Jablochkoff candle and the Reynier-Werdermann lamp. Yet, in the former of these lamps, it is to be regretted that the somewhat ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... 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 ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... could derive from that event, I cannot possibly discern. Depend upon it, it is as true as Nature is true, that, if you force them out of the religion of habit, education, or opinion, it is not to yours they will ever go. Shaken in their minds, they will go to that where the dogmas are fewest,—where they are the most uncertain,—where they lead them the least to a consideration of what they have abandoned. They will go to that uniformly democratic system to whose first movements they owed their emancipation. I recommend you seriously to turn this ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... PROVOKE or INVITE them. If this remark be just, it becomes useful to inquire whether so many JUST causes of war are likely to be given by UNITED AMERICA as by DISUNITED America; for if it should turn out that United America will probably give the fewest, then it will follow that in this respect the Union tends most to preserve the people in a state of peace with other nations. The JUST causes of war, for the most part, arise either from violation of treaties or from direct violence. America has already formed treaties with no less than six foreign ...
— The Federalist Papers
... 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 that, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the C scale. Thus, successive division and multiplication is continued until all the factors have been used. The order in which the factors are taken does not affect the result. With a little practice you will learn to take them in the order which will require the fewest settings. The following ...
— Instruction for Using a Slide Rule • W. Stanley
... never had; 'Tis sad That 'mongst all earthly friends the fewest Unfaithful ones should thus be clad In canine lowliness; yet truest They, be their ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... 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 privilege of taking ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... reached an extreme which is contrary to the very construction of the human vocal organs. Scarcely is moderate and natural compass of tone still permitted, even in a song. In every age the song-composer had been allowed to construct his melodies out of the fewest possible tones. While the elder Bach in his arias often chases the human voice in the most ruthless manner from one extreme to the other, his sons and pupils in their little German songs confine themselves ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... from 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 ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... 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 ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... 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 of rounds. ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... as she vanished laughing up the staircase, he followed Mr. Skale into the library, his thoughts tearing wildly to and fro, swelling with delight and pride, thrilling with the wonder of what was yet to come. There, with fewest possible sentences, the clergyman announced that he now accepted him and would, therefore, carry out the promise with regard to the bequeathal of his property to him in the event of any untoward circumstances ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... deal of it, for the editor had condensed everything into the fewest words possible, and more than once Murray's eyes opened wider or his mouth puckered up as if for a whistle. The world had been moving fast while he had been ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard |
