"Unknown quantity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... million kWh; note - exports an unknown quantity to Georgia; includes exports to Nagorno-Karabakh region ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... however, was that the affair was, simply, X-traordinary and in-X-plicable. Even the town mathematician confessed that he could make nothing of so dark a problem. X, every. body knew, was an unknown quantity; but in this case (as he properly observed), there was ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... equation. Were it otherwise, that sense of conscious identity which alone makes life a serious thing and immortality a rational hope, would be impossible. It is with the means of finding out this unknown quantity—in other words, of penetrating to the man's motives or his understanding of them—that the biographer undertakes to supply us, and unless he succeed in this, his rummaging of old papers but raises a new cloud of ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... for doing the unexpected. Most women desire to meet a man who is possessed of a distinctive individuality, who lends continual interest to them by his departure from the trite and commonplace. What Stephen might say or do was an entirely unknown quantity until it had actually taken place, and this attracted her on the instant, whether she was conscious of it or not. His manner, too, was affable, and gave him an air at once pleasing and good-natured. He never flattered, yet said most agreeable things, putting ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... that I make the comparison! Thy frugal oil, that burned with pure and lonely widow's flame at Cannon's Ferry window, the traveller hailed with comfort in his heart, and blessed the enterprise. But to compound the equation another unknown quantity of female force arose beside my mother's lamp. A certain young Cannon, distantly of our stock, must needs go see the world, and he returned with a fair demon of a bride, and settled, too, at Cannon's Ferry. He lived to see the wondrous serpent he had warmed in his arms, and died, they say, of the ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... the stories in this book is like that. It is the sign of the unknown quantity, the sense of mystery and strangeness, that runs through ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... see more in everything," said Kate, whose curiosity was rather piqued by the evasiveness, though she made no sign, "because everything stands for something. It is like the x in algebra, and interesting as the unknown quantity." ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... can you do those sums? I have tried them in every possible way. I have let X equal the unknown quantity, but I don't know Y. If you can solve the problems, will you send me the answers by the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... I like to take account of possibilities. Don't you know mathematics are my hobby? Did you ever study algebra? I always have an eye on the unknown quantity." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... hieroglyphic, or extract such a long speech from my father. I was well acquainted with his usual scratches and dots, and having a good memory, could put him right when he was puzzled with some misshapen x or z, representing some unknown quantity, like ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... whatever happens. And keep your temper with me, too, because nothing is gained by losing it. I'm not saying a word against Mrs. Doria, but inasmuch as she is Mrs. Doria and inasmuch as Doria is as yet very much an unknown quantity to you and me, you must understand that I don't allow appearances to blind my eyes or control my actions. Now if a woman hints, or indicates, that she is unhappily married, then nothing is more natural than that a man like yourself, who entertains ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... there is not much to be said. Sculpture is represented by an occasional statue brought from England. Architecture in its higher form is an unknown quantity. Painting is beginning to struggle towards the light, chiefly in the form of water-colour drawings. Political satire finds expression in cartoons, for the most part of that crude sort which depicts public men as horrific ogres and malformed monsters of appalling disproportions. Music, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... therefore, starts from the center of the Circle; from the crux of creation; and he finds the X, which is the hypothetical base of algebraical science—the unknown quantity of which sex is the symbol. Reasoning from effect back to cause and from cause forward to effect the mystic finds the equation complete, perfect, and likewise simple; but it is simple only after we have deciphered ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... harp. That voice of Tharon's was one of the wonders of Lost Valley. Many a rider went by that way on the chance that he might catch its golden music adrift on the breeze, her father's men came up at night to hear its martial stir, its tenderness, for the voice was the girl, and Tharon was an unknown quantity, sometimes all melting sweetness, sometimes fire that flashed ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... menacingly he went out of his way to meet them, the greater would be his advantage. If Matthews were another Hickok the situation would have been vastly different. If there were any real fighting men on Hardman's side Pan would recognize them in a single glance. He was an unknown quantity to them, that most irritating of newcomers to a wild place, the man with a name ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... afraid of history!" She had been sure of that. "Call it the bad part, if you like—yours certainly sticks out of you. What was it else," Maggie Verver had also said, "that made me originally think of you? It wasn't—as I should suppose you must have seen—what you call your unknown quantity, your particular self. It was the generations behind you, the follies and the crimes, the plunder and the waste—the wicked Pope, the monster most of all, whom so many of the volumes in your family library are all about. ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... said the wit. "But I never have found an X. Y. who would advance me the L. s.; and therefore I shall not be more respectful to X. Y. than to any other unknown quantity." ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... French school has much in common. One great cultural value the professional quartet has for the musical community is the fact that it gives a large circle a measure of acquaintance with the mode of thought and style of composers whose symphonic and larger works are often an unknown quantity. This applies to Debussy, Reger, the modern Russians, Bloch and others. When we played the Stravinsky pieces here, for instance, his Petrouschka and Firebird had not ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens |
