"Fraction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... only the merest fraction of time elapsed before the uninjured survivors were gathered on the poop-deck. Forward of them, where a moment previous had been the main-deck, was a huge mass looming up in the darkness like some ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... Israel, in whose name I have conquered, and in whose name I shall rule; but thou art a learned doctor, thou canst inform us. I have heard no mandate to yield my glorious empire for my meanest province. I am Lord of Asia, so would I have my long posterity. Our people are but a remnant, a feeble fraction of the teeming millions that own my sway. What I hold I can defend; but my children may not inherit the spirit of their sire. The Moslemin will recognise their rule with readier hearts, when they remember that a daughter of their caliphs gave them life. You see I too ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... the destroyer of all-destroying Time itself; He that conveys the libations poured on the sacred fire unto those for whom they are intended; (or, He that bears the universe, placing it on only a minute fraction of His body); He that has no beginning; (or, He that has no fixed habitation) He that upholds the Earth in space (in the form of Sesha, or, rescues her in the form of the mighty boar or supports her as a subtil pervader) (CCXXVII—CCXXXV); He that is exceedingly inclined to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... was gone from the older boy's eyes, his mouth set in controlled anger. "I am not goin' to do anything of the kind, Boyd Barrett." He spoke the words slowly, in an even tone, with a fraction of pause between each. Men of the command had once or twice heard young Rennie speak that way. Although difficult to know well, he had the general reputation of being easy to get along with. But a few times he had erupted into action as might a spring uncoiling from tight pressure, and that ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... was to write. The first article was to be an exhortation to the Conservative side of the Unionist Party not to be led into thinking that they were necessarily a minority in the country and that they could not expect any but a minute fraction of working-men to be on their side. With all the daring of twenty-six I set out to teach the Conservative party their business. This is how I began my article which appeared on the ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... be required in good English, clear and definite, like the questions. Pupils who say, "An improper fraction is 'where' the numerator is greater than the denominator"; "A compound sentence is 'when' it has two or more independent clauses," should be led to restate their answers in ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... exhibited;—what could they want with us? what offence had we committed? Their business was with the innkeeper; he had omitted to fix a lantern at his door! He hated the French like a true Corsican. He would not pay even decent respect to the officers, his guests, and boasted of starving them to the last fraction his contract for the mess allowed; while nothing was good ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... nevertheless in spite of her inattention, plying and moulding somewhere deep below her thrilling joy. The thought was, that she must not show Keith that she loved him, because while she knew—she felt sure—that He loved her, she must not be the smallest fraction of time before him in confession. She was too proud for that. He would tell her that he loved her; and the spell would be broken. Her shyness would be gone; her bravado immediately unnecessary. But until then she must beware. ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... destroy German war industries which maintain the German armies and air forces; and to shoot the German Luftwaffe out of the air. As a result, German production has been whittled down continuously, and the German fighter forces now have only a fraction of ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... ascribe this to an indifference to appearances; but the multitude, more accurately imputed it to parsimony. When the very soul gets to be absorbed in the process of rolling gold over and over, in order to make it accumulate, the spirit grudges the withdrawal of the smallest fraction from the gainful pursuit; and here lies the secret of the disdain of appearances that is so generally to be met with in this description of persons. Beyond this air of negligence, however, the dwelling ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... also begun to think that the old writers called Fathers deserved but a small fraction of the reverence which is awarded to them. I had been strongly urged to read Chrysostom's work on the Priesthood, by one who regarded it as a suitable preparation for Holy Orders; and I did read it. But I not only thought it inflated, and without ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... exclusive alliance between two powers is often the same thing as a declaration of war against a third. Rockland was soon split into a triumphant minority, invited to Mrs. Sprowle's party, and a great majority, uninvited, of which the fraction just on the border line between recognized "gentility" and the level of the ungloved masses was in an active state of ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... known, and well known, that by hypnotic suggestion the pulse can be made to fall to the lowest number of beatings consistent with life, and that the temperature of the body can be commanded beforehand to stand at a certain degree and fraction of a degree at a certain hour, high or low, as may be desired. Let those who do not believe read the accounts of what is done from day to day in the great European seats of learning, accounts of which ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... no mistaking the admiration in Allison's eyes and Rose turned hers away. He sat with his back to the dining-room door and she, across from him, faced it squarely. For the merest fraction of a second Isabel, in a pink silk negligee, stood in the doorway, then vanished, as noiselessly as she had come. Her eyes were full of mysterious meaning that Rose was ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... Louis Riel convicted of high treason was allowed to be carried into execution.' Scarcely were the words out of his mouth before Sir Hector Langevin rose, anticipating Blake, the leader of the Opposition, by a fraction of a second, and moved the 'previous question,' {133} thus shutting off all amendments, and compelling a vote to be taken on the resolution as it stood. The Opposition had naturally counted upon having an opportunity to present an amendment so framed as to censure ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... of the earth. Moreover, during the thousands of years during which astronomers have been making observations absolutely no retardation has been detected in the motions of the earth or of any of the heavenly bodies, even to the smallest fraction ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... circulates and must circulate in endless vortices; creating, swallowing—itself.'[9] Again, on the other side, he sets his face just as firmly against the excessive pretensions and unwarranted certitudes of the physicist. 'The course of Nature's phases on this our little fraction of a Planet is partially known to us: but who knows what deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident may have become familiar; but does ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... fraction of a second Rose looked helplessly at Edmund, and then held out a little bunch of ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... concerning whom we can only predicate that they have dark skins, and that they come from Africa. The analysis of their several origins, and their distribution amongst the separate branches of the African family, would be one of the most difficult feats in minute ethnology; and this would be but a fraction of the investigation. When the several countries which supplied the several victims of the slave-trade had been ascertained, the complicated question of intermixture would stand over; and there we ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... vigils; the rapidity with which he wrote such noble poems, at once betokened the exuberant riches of his mind and the prompt command which he enjoyed of them. Still all that he had done seemed but a fraction of his appointed task: a bold imagination was carrying him forward into distant untouched fields of thought and poetry, where triumphs yet more glorious were to be gained. Schemes of new writings, new kinds of writing, were budding in his fancy; he was yet, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... held out an immediate remedy for the pressing needs of suffering Jewry. The conviction also gradually gained ground that, even under the most favorable of circumstances, Palestine could only harbor a fraction of the Jewish, people, and that the vast bulk of Jews would still remain in the lands of the Diaspora. Zionists who were looking reality in the face could not accept the view of the extremists, who were ready to save a small portion of the Jewish people at the cost of abandoning ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... just at the hour of sunset, a shot was fired at me from a neighbouring clump of trees, only missing me I think by the fraction of an inch. I realized that the peril was real, and was one against ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... between them as the rays from the two tubes met and absorbed each other. He shifted, to get out of the line and blast the creature he had too hastily reckoned as dead. But he was not quick enough. A fraction before ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... Slaves of this District, and greatly below their real worth, their value runs up to the enormous sum of $1,200,000,000; and if to that we add the cost of deportation and colonization, at $100 each, which is but a fraction more than is actually paid—by the Maryland Colonization Society, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... time, but with no fraction of a minute to spare. We could hear the pad-pad-pad of the light-footed runners close upon us, following now by the noise we made; and on our left the air was trembling to the thunder of the mounted men coming at a ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... is no longer bent upon using the machine, nor the surgeon estimating the advantages of the operation. Each of these highly practical persons has switched off his practicality, if but for an imperceptible fraction of time and in the very middle of a practical estimation or even of practice itself. The machine or operation, the skill, the inventiveness, the fitness for its purposes, are being considered apart from action, and advantage, means and time, to-day ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... delivery dates continued to slip. They also overpriced the product ridiculously; they believed they were competing with the KL10 and VAX 8600 and failed to reckon with the likes of Sun Microsystems and other hungry startups building workstations with power comparable to the KL10 at a fraction of the price. By the time SC shipped the first SC-30M to Stanford in late 1985, most customers had already made the traumatic decision to abandon the PDP-10, usually for VMS or Unix boxes. Most of the Mars computers built ended ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... traceable to a common law. It seemed to me that the arrangement in a succession first of females and then of males did not account for everything. There must be something more. And I was right: that arrangement in series is only a tiny fraction of the reality, which is remarkable in a very different way. This is what I am ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... that we see it right. I am quite certain the most unpleasant things may be such gifts. I should be glad enough to part with this asthma of mine, if it pleased God it should depart from me; but would I yield a fraction of what it has brought me, for the best lungs in England? I ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... the hotel. He marched resolutely up to the desk and roused the sleeping clerk, who swung round the register. The unknown without hesitance inscribed his name, which was John Hawksley. But he hesitated the fraction of a second before adding his place ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... get up!" howled the excited little man, growing still worse, as the colonel seemed to shrink and falter. "Why, I can lick you in a fraction of no time! You've been making lots of fighting talk, and now it's my turn. Get up ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... alone; the eccentricity of the orbit produces another effect, namely, that when it is at a minimum the difference between the temperatures of the two hemispheres is small, and as the eccentricity increases, so does the difference. At the present time the eccentricity is represented by the fraction .016. But about 300,000 years ago the eccentricity would have been as great as .26 to .57. The result, it is explained, would have been not a uniform heat or cold, but extremes of both; there would probably have been ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... benefit to the common man. The other items indicated above, it is plain on the least reflection, are matters of slight if any material consequence to him. The common man—that is ninety-nine and a fraction in one hundred of the nation's common men—has no dealings with aliens in foreign parts, as capitalist, trader, missionary or wayfaring man, and has no occasion for security of person or property under circumstances that raise any remotest question of the national prowess or the national prestige; ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... took place at the beginning of this or towards the middle or the end of the Tertiary period. However, this much is certain: the development of civilisation falls in the anthropozoic age, and this is merely an insignificant fraction of the vast period of the whole history of life. When we remember this, it seems ridiculous to restrict the word "history" to the civilised period. If we divide into a hundred equal parts the whole period of the history of life, from the spontaneous ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... the slope, and the shoulder of the cutting hid it from Melchard the fraction of a second before his next shot ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... an' suppers, to say nothin' o' breakfasts, an' mess-mates an' chums an' friends, crammed and jammed into one enormous mass temptation, would indooce him to delay his return to that old lady for the smallest fraction of an hour?" No, Jim Slagg was not at the table, but the household cat was under it, and the demoralising attentions that creature received on that occasion went far to undo the careful training of ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... frequently at the Kurston mansion, and became a great favorite, and finally the friend and confidant of its master. Gradually, as month after month passed, the business of the Kurston estate came into his hands, and he could have told, to the fraction of a dollar, the exact sum for ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... with a load of hay; accordingly the tackle was brought, the rope was adjusted to a log, and five of the drivers, standing on the river-bank, attempted to drag it from its intrenched position. It refused to yield the fraction of an inch. Rufus and Stephen joined the five men, and the augmented crew of seven were putting all their strength on the rope when a cry went up from the watchers on the bridge. The "dog" had loosened suddenly, and the men were flung violently to the ground. For a second they were stunned both ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... toward the material world's progress. Honest labor is the key that unlocks the door of happiness. One of the silliest notions that a young man can get into his head is the idea that the world owes him a living. It does not owe you the fraction of a red cent, young man. What have you done for the world that put it under obligation to you? When did the world become indebted to you? Who cared for you in the years of helpless infancy? Who built the schoolhouse where you got ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... sensation that he knew was death though he had no name for it, and his immature defenses sprang into action, tried in vain to block the memory, to thrust Death back into its Pandora's Box. He impeded the flood by an infinitesimal fraction of a second, and then full awareness came and with it an understanding of the terrible thing that had happened, the thing ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... and powerful enemy; but he was grievously deceived in imagining that this aristocracy, in withstanding his colossal ambition, had not the British nation at its back. The electoral body, indeed, to which they owed their parliamentary majority, was but a fraction of the population, and the public opinion which supported them may seem but the voice of a privileged class in these days of household suffrage. But there is little reason to doubt that, if household suffrage had then prevailed, their foreign policy would have received a democratic ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... we can go to Mars or Mercury or anywhere we want to with this thing. It doesn't seem to have any particular limits. It handles perfectly. You can move it a fraction of an inch as easily as a hundred miles. And it's fast. Almost instantaneous. Not quite, for even with our acceleration within time, there is ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... host in the apartment in which we had supped. Wherever you employ a force of any sort, to carry a point of real importance, reject all nice calculations of economy. Better to be a thousand per cent, over the mark, than the smallest fraction of a unit under ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... that unhappy institution were being wound up. Considering the fact that the stockholders had been assessed dollar for dollar of their holdings, and that, even with this assessment added to the assets, the depositors would get back only a fraction of their money, Vaniman could scarcely marvel at the hard looks and the muttered words he met up with on ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... that chemical action is the source of electricity, what an infinitely small fraction of that which is active do we obtain and employ in our voltaic batteries! Zinc and platina wires one-eighteenth of an inch in diameter and about half an inch long, dipped into dilute sulphuric acid, so weak that it is not ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... 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 ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... drawer in his desk and drew forth a package of papers that were carefully tied with a piece of ribbon. Even the knot was exact and the loop on one side did not vary from that on the other by the smallest fraction. In his impatience Will noticed even this detail, but it was ignored in a moment when the professor slowly and with care examined the headlines of the papers and at last drew forth one which he placed on the ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... unquestionable discoveries of modern science. Long before a human being had appeared upon earth, millions of individuals—nay, more, thousands of species and even genera—had died; those which remain with us are an insignificant fraction of the vast hosts ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... For just the fraction of a moment longer she was frightened and puzzled by Lewis's dumfounded mien; then her mind harked back for the clue and got it. No one had to tell her that the game was up so far as Lewis was concerned. She knew it. Her face suddenly crinkled up with mirth. With a peal ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... bystander and become a subscriber to the 'Property Defence League;' and though it is notorious that he never read any book all through, and never could be got to believe that anybody else ever did, he would, I think, read a larger fraction of Mr. Spencer's pamphlet, 'Man versus the State,' than of any other 'recent work in circulation.' The state of the Strand, when two vestries are at work upon it, would, I am sure, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... Tara, who slipped beneath my hide a murderous blade. Another fraction of an inch, O-Tar, and I-Gos' ancient and wrinkled covering were even now in some apprentice tanner's hands, ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... they was all thumbs," he grimaced, holding up his hand and squinting at it with the fraction of sight remaining ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... reached the sixth, I should find that it had made two circuits of the stem (passed twice around it) and had passed over five spaces between buds. This is the leaf-arrangement or phyllotaxy of the apple-tree, expressed by the fraction 2/5. The space between two buds is two-fifths of a diameter, and two circuits (ten-fifths) must be passed before a bud comes over the one from which we started. The 2/5 leaf-arrangement obtains on cherry, peach, apricot, pear, raspberry ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... bulge somewhere along its length. The nervous system is made up of millions of these little cells packed together in various combinations and distributed throughout the body. Some of the neurones are as long as three feet; others measure but a fraction of an ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... on the functions of life; for these, like those of the engine, are based upon the oxidation of the fuel. The oxygen is derived from the air in the simplest manner. During its circulation the blood is brought for a fraction of a second into practical contact with air. This occurs in the lungs, where there are great numbers of air cells, in the walls of which the blood-vessels are distributed in great profusion. While the blood is in these vessels it is not indeed in actual contact with the air, but is ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... truth is that these observations of mine, though they are all true, do not tell more than a small fraction of the interesting things that wild animals do continually in their native state, when they are not frightened by dogs and hunters, or when we are not blinded by our preconceived notions in watching them. I have no doubt ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... launch's prow, he looks upon a kaleidoscope of color which he will remember all his life; for, to the gorgeous disarray of the broken image of the cliffs is added the magic tint of this deep-dyed water, every wavelet of which, at its crest, seems touched for the fraction of a second with a flash of indigo; the whole dancing, sparkling, shimmering in a glory which words cannot convey; and on the other side, and far astern, the subsiding waves calming back to normal in a flare of ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... an immense sum of money to the native population. The destruction of cattle by tigers is really enormous, and, I believe, far exceeding that reported to Government, and it is so mainly because the tiger is only allowed to eat a fraction of what he kills, as the moment that news of a bullock being killed reaches the village, the low class natives at once proceed to the spot, drive away the tiger, and carry off the beef. And this is only prevented when an English sportsman is within reach, in which case the cattle ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... unless a tremendous effort was to be put forward by the British Empire. He saw almost at a glance that our military system such as it was, and as previously devised with a view to war conditions, provided what represented numerically no more than an insignificant fraction of the host which would ultimately be needed to give us victory. He furthermore—and it is well to insist upon this thus early, in view of fabrications which have been put about on the subject of munitions—clearly discerned ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... my career—my birth, perhaps, excepted—not one had given my poor father so profound a pleasure as this article in the Sunday Herald. What a fool, then, was I to be lamenting! when I had at last, and for once, and at the cost of only a few blushes, paid back a fraction of my debt of gratitude. So that, when I next met Pinkerton, I took things very lightly; my father was pleased, and thought the letter very clever, I told him; for my own part, I had no taste for publicity; thought the public had no concern with the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Chemistry has no miracle a fraction as wonderful as the patience and forgiveness of a mother for the exasperations of her son. There is not a thing which you ought to do, the telling of which to your mother will prevent your doing. And her counsel to you will be golden upon those purely personal matters ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... for conceit in the Fractions, every one of whom had something missing about him? Some of them, of course, lacked only an ear or a little finger; but numbers of them had only one leg or one arm, and many of them were much worse off! Why, at the farthest side of the Three-Times table Sara saw a Fraction who consisted entirely of ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... or to turn her head a fraction of an inch, and Weary's face sobered a little. It was the first time that inimitable "Tee-e-cher" of his had failed to bring the smile back into the eyes of Miss Satterly. He looked after her dubiously. Her shoulders were thrown well back and her feet pressed ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... and prayer now are that the coming fraction of the century, whether it be small or large, may witness nothing less worthy in my life than has the half just closed—that no word or act of mine may lessen its weight in the scale ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... personnel which immediately became 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 ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... For a fraction of a minute there was silence, while over the visage of the challenged there flashed, faded, recurred the expression we pay good dollars to watch playing upon the features of an accomplished actor; then the yellow streak beneath the bravado showed, and the menacing hand dropped to ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... was none other than the fugitive himself. He did not care if they did; in truth, he rather hoped they would. He could imagine their mortification and disappointment, and since they had gone to dwell with strangers and fight their own people, it was only a fraction of what ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... us back to the demand for motor-cars, and plainly enough, to people's judgment as to their utility. In some cases, the opposite phenomenon occurs. In the case of British coal, for instance, the average cost of production would be much lower than it is if the output were reduced to a fraction of its present volume, and if only the richer seams of the more fertile mines were worked. Once again, therefore it is difficult to measure the cost of production until we know the magnitude of the demand, which in a manner, which we have still to elucidate, ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... a long distance, until their number had diminished down to a fraction of what it was originally, and the survivors had all they could do in 'taking care of ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... positive correlations, which are the only kind involved in this problem. Correlations may also be negative, lying between 0 and -1; for instance, if we measured the correlation between a man's lack of appetite and the time that had elapsed since his last meal, we would have to express it by a negative fraction, the minus sign showing that the greater his satiety, the less would be the time since his repast. The best introduction to correlations is Elderton's ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... an infinitesimal fraction of a second, against the light of two flaring and guttering candles, through a blue, pungent, thin haze which made his eyes smart, he saw the man standing, as he had imagined him, with his back to the door, casting an enormous and distorted shadow upon ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... drink all we wanted of the wine served in the tavern in the vault to the left of the entrance stair, underneath the seats of our section, and to return to our seats, refreshed like the rest of that fraction of the spectators which went out and came back, most of them sitting tight in their seats, unwilling to miss any of the tight-rope- walking, jugglers' tricks, fancy riding and rest of the diversions which filled up the noon interval. Also the twelve afternoon races ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the 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
... 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 four now? I can't ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... infantile whistle that contrasts strongly with the loud, demoniac yell that makes a residence near a railway or a depot, in this country, so unbearable. The trains themselves move with wonderful smoothness and celerity, making a mere fraction of the racket made by our flying palaces as they go swaying and jolting over our hasty, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... in the bushes Dunn slipped out, as the big man vanished into the darkness down the road, and for the fraction of a second he seemed ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... Karl's Thor. I think there was some sort of a yearly fair in progress, for the great platz was filled with temporary booths: a circus had set itself up there, and there were innumerable side-shows and lottery-stands; and I believe that each little shanty and puppet-show had its band or fraction of a band, for there was never heard such a tooting and blowing and scraping, such a pounding and dinning and slang-whanging, since the day of stopping work on the Tower of Babel. The circus band confined itself mostly ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... scrape so as to form a shallow hole to deposit their eggs. The consequence of their always resorting to the same spot is that, from the voidings of the birds and the remains of fish brought to feed the young, a deposit is made over the whole surface, a fraction of an inch every year, which by degrees increases until it is sometimes twenty or thirty feet deep, if not more, and the lower portion becomes almost as hard as rock. The deposit is termed guano, and has, from time immemorial, been used by the Peruvians ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... trip, and concluded, as the best that could be done under the circumstances, to allow the bird to flutter a little longer before renewing the hunt. Meanwhile the thief grew more reckless, and the papers that came to Mr. Furay, though covering a fraction only of the depredations, located the thief on the lower end of the route, within fifty miles ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... desire to be observed, and—so to speak—live in the public eye. If she could be observed with admiration, so much the better, but given a choice between being disgraced or ignored, she would not have hesitated for the fraction of a moment. Better a hundred times to be scolded and denounced than to be passed by in silence as if one were a stick or a stone. So it happened that when Rowena treated her with stately indifference, Maud found it impossible to ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 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 side of ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes
... rapids; first, the Box Canyon, and, several miles below, the White Horse. The Box Canyon was adequately named. It was a box, a trap. Once in it, the only way out was through. On either side arose perpendicular walls of rock. The river narrowed to a fraction of its width and roared through this gloomy passage in a madness of motion that heaped the water in the center into a ridge fully eight feet higher than at the rocky sides. This ridge, in turn, was crested with stiff, upstanding waves that curled ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... in the House of Commons on February 25th, 1898, by Mr. Brodrick, who admitted that, in order to put 50,000 infantry into the field, it would be necessary to call out 28,000 reservists. In order to have artillery enough for a fraction of the army he asked for fifteen more batteries. He had to admit that the three battalions added in 1897 were not enough, and to ask for six more. The speech was an admission of all the contentions of the critics, though it began by ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... uniform duty of 2s. 1d. per lb. on all descriptions of tea was imposed, which, with the additional 5 per cent, imposed in 1840, made the total duty levied per lb. 2s. 2d. and a fraction. ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... she rose more willingly than at any time before. To reach the door she passed within a foot of the end of the couch, and watching over her shoulder at his hunched-up back she paused there for the smallest fraction of time. The damaged picture hat slid off on the floor with a soft little thud, but ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... find in these pages a description of this class of basilicas; that of S. Peter's alone would require several volumes. I have in my modest library not less than twenty-two volumes on the subject, an insignificant fraction of the Petrine literature. And what do we know about S. Peter's? Very little in comparison with the amount of knowledge that lies yet unpublished in the volumes of Grimaldi,[69] in the archives of the Vatican, in epigraphic, historical and diplomatic documents ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... was Sabathier.' She seemed to think intensely for the merest fraction of a moment, and turned. 'Honestly, though, I think he immensely exaggerated ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... made to imitate too soon, they acquire an erroneous pronunciation, which they afterward hear constantly from themselves actually or mentally, and believe that they hear from the teacher during the small fraction of a second that each sound lasts, and hence the habits of these ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord
... of 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. As the philosopher of the New Germany, as the ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... A small fraction of a minute at the most. Then it's all over. And all that is left is a charred stick that sticks in the mud, nobody knows where, nor cares. But look up yonder, the stars you could not see a moment ago for these ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... "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
... opened my pay envelope on her," said he, "but the week's wages was always gone by Thursday." Many men, however, who make a boast of turning over unbroken pay envelopes to their wives borrow back so much in daily advances that their net contribution is only a fraction of their wages. ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... as to say that he had known it was the Lusitania all the time; that he could always tell her by her funnels. Innes, who was seated in the stern and filling his position to the limit, acknowledged that for an instant—oh, the merest fraction of a second!—he had thought the steamer was the Ne'er-do-well, Berlin to Kansas City, but that he had seen his mistake almost instantly! By which time, the Priscilla, New York to Fall River, had passed out of sight, and Marvin, merely tipping the boat until the water ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... of a neighboring town. In looking over the list of the oldest men, dead or alive, within his circle of acquaintance, he finds a total of 67 men, from 73 to 93 years of age. Their average age is 78 and a fraction. Of these 67, 54 were smokers or chewers; 9 only, non-consumers of tobacco; and 4 were doubtful, or not ascertained. About nine-elevenths smoked or chewed. The compiler quaintly adds, "How much longer these men might have lived without tobacco, it ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... much of it as remained. Sometimes she debated whether she could not anticipate the end by speaking out at once, of her own free-will; but no, short as her time was, she could not afford to lose the smallest fraction ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... does." The fork shook in her fingers and then dropped upon the plate. She looked up in confusion. Cable's eyes were bent upon her intently and she had never seen so queer a light in them. Scarcely more than the fraction of a second passed before he lowered his gaze, but the mysterious telegraphy of the mind had shot the message of comprehension from one to the other. He saw with horror that the girl at least suspected the true situation. A moment later he arose abruptly and announced ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... own mammy won't know you from a hunk o' cheese. Just one more crack like that out o' you,' I says, 'and down comes yore meat-house,' I says. . . . Wall, I got started through the door again, and by hell, Lady, in spite o' my warnin' o' him, he comes at me again. So, . . ." Kayak Bill paused the fraction of a second; then his voice went on with its accustomed languor: "So I just whipped out my little old .45 ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... I had left them some hours previously. With the intention of showing myself to my wife, in order that she might be a witness to my appearance, I hastened to the room, where I thought it most likely I should find her, and was about to turn the handle of the door, when, for the fraction of a second, I saw nothing. Immediately afterwards there came a blank, and I was once again on the lonely moorland road, toiling along, fishing rod in hand, a couple of miles, at least, away from home. When I did arrive home, my wife met me in the hall, eager to tell me that ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... as the value of a common fraction, which results from dividing the numerator by the denominator. The numerator, in life, is What We Have. The denominator is What We Think We Ought to Have. Mankind may be divided into two classes: Fools and Wise. The fools are eternally trying to get happiness by ...
— 21 • Frank Crane
... to threaten to break down entirely, burst into tears, and disgrace things generally, if forced to sing before such an audience? Pride is the only lever that will move him the billionth fraction of an inch; and he would never risk the possibility of being publicly mortified by his ward's failure. He dreads humiliation of any kind, far more than cholera or Asiatic plague, or than even the eternal loss of that infinitesimal microscopic bit of flint, which he is pleased ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... 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! ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... torso like a vise but his legs were unsupported and weighed what seemed a thousand tons. He could feel them stretching. Somewhere a coil slipped a fraction. His arms were jerked suddenly upwards and Johnny knew a sensation he'd never believed possible. At the same time his leaden feet crashed down on the jet pedals. For a few, brief, blessed moments ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... at Victoria, and Dick sought tickets. For less than half the fraction of an instant it occurred to Maisie, comfortably settled by the waiting-room fire, that it was much more pleasant to send a man to the booking- office than to elbow one's own way through the crowd. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... dilution of the original millionth of a grain of medicine 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 hundred to weigh ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... slaving! If you were a man in business, like me, it would be another thing. I must slave at the desk to keep all round. See, Mr. Carver, see!—ever since the day you advised me to be as particular as yourself in keeping accounts to a farthing, I do, to a fraction, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... was equal to the task. They commenced their work by sending a ball so as to strike the earth immediately before her, and a few inches below the surface. The instant this was done, another fired his bullet directly after, with such skill that it varied but the fraction of an inch from following directly in its path. The force with which these balls were discharged was such that the twelfth one would most assuredly take ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... drawing forth a well-filled but much-worn leather wallet, and taking from one of its dingy compartments the amount of the purchase-money agreed upon, afforded the astonished magistrate a glimpse of additional wealth of which the amount paid seemed but a small fraction. ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... In the smallest fraction of a second Maudlin was sprawling on the ground, and Theodore was soundly kicking him. Jinnie sank down on the damp moss and began to cry weakly. Her face was scratched from the man's fingers, her head aching from the strenuous pulling of her hair. ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... wild life goes on more or less behind screens—a screen of leaves or of grass, or of vines, or of tree-trunks, and only the alert and sympathetic eye penetrates it. The keenest of us see only a mere fraction of it. If one saw one tenth of the significant happenings that take place on his few acres of orchard, lawn, and vineyard in the course of the season, or even of a single week, what a harvest he would have! ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... by the fraction of an inch, but saw the machine swerve and heard the soft thud of something falling. A second later the machine and rider had ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... sutler who desired to keep on the right side of those in authority. Why, then, could not the Secretary of War permit his wife to receive a douceur from one of those cormorants, who always grow rich, and who may without harm be made to lay down a fraction of their ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... it reached the front of the poop, against which it broke with terrific violence, smashing in the entire front of the structure, as I judged by the tremendous crashing of timber that instantly followed. Checked for the fraction of an instant by its impact with the poop, the sea piled itself up in a sort of wall, and then came surging and foaming along the deck toward me. I saw that it would inevitably sweep me off my feet, so, to avoid ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... "900" lines and in 2000, from the lease of its ".tv" Internet domain name. Royalties from these new technology sources could increase substantially over the next decade. With merchandise exports only a fraction of merchandise imports, continued reliance must be placed on fishing and telecommunications license fees, remittances from overseas workers, official transfers, and investment income from ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... But that fraction of a second brought him into another peril. The giant heaved up on his sound right leg and his sound left arm, and flung himself forward, two limbs dangling uselessly. With a hideously contorted face, Bull swung his left arm ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... which amounts to assuming the area to be equal to the product of the mean side shift of the hatchet by the length of the instrument; this, however, involves an error too big to be neglected, and, moreover, one that is not a constant fraction of the area ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... themselves in this way; dark, lazy fellows in uniform, lounging about with old boots, and suspenders hanging all over them, crying out the merits of their wares in stentorian voices, thus, as it were, patriotically relieving the national treasury of a small fraction of its burden. They have much the appearance, in the crowd, of ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... back to its work, and threw itself on that which stood first — its roads. The field was vast; altogether beyond its power to control offhand; and society dropped every thought of dealing with anything more than the single fraction called a railway system. This relatively small part of its task was still so big as to need the energies of a generation, for it required all the new machinery to be created — capital, banks, mines, furnaces, shops, power-houses, technical knowledge, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... 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 ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... down on to the floor from the high old bed and now stood before Miss Patricia, hesitating for the fraction of ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... thermostat may be conveniently maintained, are common in laboratory practice. The temperature of the experimental substance may or may not be the temperature of the standard. In such cases a bracketed fraction is appended to the specific gravity, of which the numerator and denominator are respectively the temperatures of the substance and of the standard; thus 1.093 (0/4) means that the ratio of the weight of a definite volume of a substance at 0 to the weight of the same volume ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... considered obsolete, but the spirit of cruelty and intolerance that dictated it is still alive. One has only to study the modern Jewish press to realize the persecution to which Jews are subjected from members of their own race should they infringe one fraction ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... outlets of navigable streams, which facilitate the concentration in them of a country's internal trade; but by their very accessibility they become a source of weakness in war, if not properly defended. The Dutch in 1667 found little difficulty in ascending the Thames and burning a large fraction of the English navy within sight of London; whereas a few years later the combined fleets of England and France, when attempting a landing in Holland, were foiled by the difficulties of the coast as much as by the valor of the Dutch fleet. In 1778 the harbor of ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... I am not suggesting that Bones was a fool. Far from it. Bones was wise—uncannily wise in some respects. His success was due, as to nine-tenths, to his native sense. His x supplied the other fraction. ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... itself from the social organism of which it is a corpuscle. If all the world were like herself, her lot would have been different. Affection would have been free; her yearnings for sympathy would have been filled to the full by Harvey Kynaston or some other. As it was, she had but that one little fraction of a man friend to solace her; to resign him altogether to another woman, leaving herself bankrupt of love, was indeed ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... something hard and cold and infinitely sad settled down over his face. It even looked as though he did not intend to recognize her, or perhaps wasn't sure whether she would recognize him. There was a moment's breathless suspense and the car slid just the fraction past the gate in the hedge, without a sign of stopping, only a lifting of a correct looking straw hat that somehow seemed a bit out of place in Sabbath Valley. But Lynn left no doubt in his mind whether she would recognize him. She ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... altitude, where perishable articles of food dry up and do not spoil by mould or putrefaction, the capital would be swept by pestilence annually, being underlaid by a soil reeking with pollution. As it is, typhoid fever prevails, and the average duration of life in the city is recorded at a fraction over twenty-six years! Lung and malarial diseases hold a very prominent place among the given causes of mortality. Owing to the proximity of the mountains, the rains sometimes assume the character of floods. A resident friend ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... and mind. Ali, son of Abed-din the Faithful, is charged instantly the great soul is departed on its way to Paradise to ride as the north wind flies, and give thee a record which Abed-din is to make on peril of his soul, abating not the fraction of a second. Thou wilt understand it, and the purpose ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... many millions in Lombard street, infinitely the greater proportion is held by bankers or others on short notice or on demand; that is to say, the owners could ask for it all any day they please: in a panic some of them do ask for some of it. If any large fraction of that money really was demanded, our banking system and our industrial system too would be ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... stock of second-hand furniture that he had resumed possession of when the unfortunate would-be purchasers failed to pay the instalments regularly. Other of the second-hand things had been purchased for a fraction of their real value at Sheriff's sales or from people whom misfortune or want of employment had reduced to the necessity of selling ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... darling! 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, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... construction on my words. I was alluding to Miss Sandus, as you 're perfectly well aware. Madame Torrebianca is n't seventy-four, nor anything near it. She's not twenty-four. Say about twenty-five and a fraction. With such hair too—and such frocks—and eyes. Oh, my dear!" He kissed his fingers, and wafted the kiss to the sky. "Eyes! Imagine twin ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland |
