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Fewest   /fjˈuəst/   Listen
Fewest

adjective
1.
(superlative of 'few' used with count nouns and usually preceded by 'the') quantifier meaning the smallest in number.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Fewest" Quotes from Famous Books



... inner or 'theoretical' life, as he calls it, remote from the concerns of the City-State and almost, except for its excessive intellectuality, recalling the monastic ideal of the Middle Age. But this is only for the fewest. Nevertheless it involved the admission that behind the citizen remained the man, who might conceivably on occasion have his rights, that 'political science', as he says, 'does not make men', as Thucydides regarded ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... 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 of power so calm and simple that it needs ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... was held not to have his equal.[3] But of all the Latin historians, Tacitus had the greatest influence. 'There is no learning so proper for the direction of the life of man as Historie; there is no historie so well worth the reading as Tacitus. Hee hath written the most matter with best conceit in fewest words of any Historiographer ancient or moderne.'[4] This had been said at the beginning of the first English translation of Tacitus, and it was the view generally held when he came to be better known. He ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... won't 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

... 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 ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower

... South Carolina, has a black population forming about 90 per cent of the total, yet I was told last summer that but one case of rape had been known in the county, and that took place on the back edge of the county where there are fewest Negroes, and was committed by a non-resident black upon a non-resident white. Certain it is that in this county, which includes many islands, almost wholly inhabited by blacks, the white women have no fear of such assaults. This is also ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey

... the fewest words possible and then sat down to the bacon and eggs that Debbie had placed temptingly on the table. And cornbread! ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler

... her death, but was inexpressibly grieved to lose from out her life that sweet presence which had been an inspiration for thirty years, whose staunch support had never failed, even when friends were fewest and fortune at its lowest ebb. In times of greatest perplexity she could slip down to the Philadelphia home for sympathy and encouragement, and there was always a corner in the pocketbook from which a contribution came when it was most needed. If ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... "I am of opinion, that if it is necessary to fight, we ought to make our arrangements so as to fight with the greatest advantage; but that, if we propose to pass the mountains as easily as possible, we ought to consider how we may incur the fewest wounds and lose the fewest men. 11. The range of hills, as far as we see, extends more than sixty stadia in length; but the people nowhere seem to be watching us except along the line of road; and it is therefore better, ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon

... 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

... after it has once possessed them, the same causes that served for a foundation of good-will serve them for a foundation of mortal hatred. 'Tis, of all the diseases of the mind, that which the most things serve for aliment and the fewest for remedy: the virtue, health, merit, reputation of the husband are incendiaries of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... analysis of the recondite forms of feminine discourtesy. It is the ancient sage again pitilessly exposing the Lamia. It is Circe out-Circed. He details the degrees of offence—in young women, in women who are no longer classed as girls, in nearly all women, in women with the fewest social duties. Then the boundless Sahara of ill-manners opening before him, and with a certain zest of unsparing scrutiny, he treats of the behavior of women in the horse-cars, at the railway station buying tickets, at the post-office, where the rule is imperative, first come first ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis

... 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; ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... said, that leads to danger and ruin. However, farming makes the bravest men and the sturdiest soldiers, and of all sources of gain is the surest, the most natural, and the least invidious, and those who are busy with it have the fewest ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various

... The audience got together, attracted by Governor Gorges's name. There were a thousand people. Poor Gorges was late from Augusta. They became impatient. He came in direct from the train at last, really ignorant of the object of the meeting. He opened it in the fewest possible words, and said other gentlemen were present who would entertain them better than he. The audience were disappointed, but waited. The Governor, prompted by Isaacs, said, "The Honorable Mr. Delafield will address you." Delafield had forgotten the ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... such changes subject to your approval. In doing so they are to bear in mind that taxes which tend to penalize or repress industry and enterprise are to be avoided; that provisions for taxation should be simple, so that they may be understood by the people; that they should affect the fewest practicable subjects of taxation which will serve for the general distribution of ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley

... expression in his painting.[264] Michael Angelo was not framed by nature to fascinate like Lionardo or to charm like Raphael. His manners were severe and simple. When he spoke, his words were brief and pungent. When he wrote, whether in poetry or prose, he used the fewest phrases to express the most condensed meaning. When asked why he had not married, he replied that the wife he had—his art—cost him already too much trouble. He entertained few friends, and shunned society. Brooding over the sermons ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... compatriots have consequently fewer topics, even if they had equal talent, to converse on; so that the esprit styled, par excellence, l'esprit eminemment francais, is precisely that to which we can urge the fewest pretensions. ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... the centre of the evanescent mining excitement which was originally responsible for the building of the railroad, lies high-pitched among the shouldering spurs of the western boundary range. Seeking the route promising the fewest cuts and fills and the easiest grades, Chandler, the construction chief of the building company, had followed the south bank of the river to a point a short distance beyond the stream-fronting cliffs of the landmark hill known as Little Butte; and ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... water and clay were ground into mud, which was at first almost liquid. It grew thicker as it dried up, until perhaps another rainstorm reduced it once more to a liquid condition. In trying first one street and then another to see which offered the fewest obstacles to his passage, the wayfarer was reminded of the assurance given by a bright boy to a traveler who wanted to know the best road to a certain place: "Whichever road you take, before you get halfway there you'll wish you had taken t' other." By night swarms ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb

... without another word, but with a 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 ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and extract a motive power out of the greatest obstacles. Most begin to veer and tack as soon as the wind changes from aft, and as within the tropics it does not blow from all points of the compass, there are some harbors ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... of common sense I seemed to be called to be a missionary. Is the kingdom a harvest field? Then I thought it reasonable that I should seek to work where the work was most abundant and the workers fewest. Labourers say they are overtaxed at home; what then must be the case abroad, where there are wide stretching plains already white to harvest, with scarcely here and there a solitary reaper? To me the soul of an Indian seemed as precious as the soul of an Englishman, and the Gospel ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... a lumber yard and select a plank of cedar having the fewest knots and the straightest grain. Saw or split a piece out of it six feet long, two inches wide, and about an inch thick. Plane it straight and roughen its two-inch surface with a file. Obtain a strip of white straight-grained hickory ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... models for imitation I shall always choose nature as my pattern; in my appetites I will give her the preference; in my tastes she shall always be consulted; in my food I will always choose what most owes its charm to her, and what has passed through the fewest possible hands on its way to table. I will be on my guard against fraudulent shams; I will go out to meet pleasure. No cook shall grow rich on my gross and foolish greediness; he shall not poison me with fish which cost its weight in gold, my table shall not be decked with fetid ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... spots are visible on the sun, scientists agree that the climatic conditions on the earth are normal and even. When there are fewest spots on the sun we have extreme temperature and sudden changes. When we say that astronomers and geologists agree on this point, we must also admit that some astronomers are not quite satisfied that the fact ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 60, December 30, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... was assaulting with effect the entrenchments of Conservatism, he was taken in flank by the moderate reformers. Mill had denounced the Whigs as half-hearted and even treacherous allies, who dallied with Radicalism to conceal their nefarious design of obtaining political mastery with the fewest concessions possible. He relied upon universal education to qualify the masses for the possession of an extensive franchise, and upon enlightened self-interest to guarantee their proper use of it. Macaulay rejoined, in the Edinburgh Review, that the masses ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... must be a single 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

... 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 ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... (or directly the other players notice it) all other cards have to be laid there, too. The player who is last in laying them down is Pig. The game is played for as many rounds as you like, the player who was last the fewest times being the winner. The word Pig alters with each round. The last player to lay down his cards in the second round is not merely Pig, but Little Pig; in the third, Big Pig; in the fourth, Mother (or Father) Pig; in the fifth, Grandmother (or Grandfather) Pig; in the sixth, Ancestral ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... 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

... 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 to the most modest compass. Most of the later composers proceeded ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... 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 ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... In the fewest possible words the Wanderer told her all that had occurred up to the moment of her coming, not omitting the ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... appearance for life.—It imprisoned, as I may say, his lively spirits in himself, and turned the edge of them against his own peace; his extraordinary prosperity adding to his impatiency. Those, I believe, who want the fewest earthly blessings, most regret ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... 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

... of those who have possessed the fewest means of moral and spiritual improvement, will appear in judgment against multitudes who enjoy the greatest variety of religious advantages. These Arabian sages acted up to what they knew, and followed the light which ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... slip out of his latest phase with so little fuss. For the first two years of his service, while men of his class were gaining high promotions, he had served in the ranks. He had done it as a uselessly proud protest. In the ranks one did the real work, faced most of the danger and won the fewest decorations. He had loved the ranks for their quiet self-effacement and had preferred to be ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... we, as creatures, behaved ourselves; but now, the very ground of the Covenant of Grace is God's love, His mere love through Jesus Christ—"The LORD did not set His love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: but because the LORD loved you, and because He would keep the oath which He had sworn unto your fathers" (Deu 7:7,8). Again, "In His love and in His pity He redeemed them," "and the angel of His presence saved them," that is, Jesus Christ (Isa 63:9). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... pony may be purchased in Ayrshire,—though of all places in the world it seems to have the fewest of the comforts ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... once, in the fewest words, as his way was when it came to business. He was interested in a big "deal" which involved the purchase of a piece of real estate held by a number of wrangling heirs. The real-estate broker with whom Ralph Marvell was associated represented these heirs, but Moffatt had his ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... me observe it, 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 ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... 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 ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... even gloomier than that of the other gentlemen. In the fewest possible words, but with stinging emphasis, he told the Judge that the news was indeed too true; his wife and young family, yea, and even the household servants had, ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... the boat and do my best with my paddle to guide. I believe we can shoot the falls all right, but maybe we'll be swamped in the rapids below. But we're all good swimmers, and, if we do go over, every fellow must swim for the northern bank, where the Indians are fewest. Some one of us must manage to save his rifle and ammunition or we'd be lost, even if we happened to reach the land. Still, it's possible that we can keep afloat. ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Histories may have been written in former Ages, yet few have scaped the Injury of Time, so as to be handed safe to us. 'Twas many Ages possibly before Writing was known, then known to a few, and made use of by fewer, and fewest employed it to this purpose. Add to this, that such as were written, remain'd for the most part Imprison'd in the Cells of some Library or Study, accessible to a small number of Mankind, and regarded by a less, which after perished with the Place or the Decay of their own Substance. ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox

... she likely to bring with her, when she was not quite fifteen [6] at the time she wedded me, and during the whole prior period of her life had been most carefully brought up [7] to see and hear as little as possible, and to ask [8] the fewest questions? or do you not think one should be satisfied, if at marriage her whole experience consisted in knowing how to take the wool and make a dress, and seeing how her mother's handmaidens had their daily spinning-tasks ...
— The Economist • Xenophon

... have it in the fewest possible words," said I, answering him in his own tone. "I find, to my disgust and horror, that there is an unburied corpse in an outhouse attached to your convent. I believe that corpse to be the body of an English gentleman ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins

... Virginia has the fewest villages and only one little town, Williamsburg, its capital. The population is scattered and every family lives on its own tobacco plantation. The Chesapeake and its affluents reach every where and the Colonists bring their ...
— Achenwall's Observations on North America • Gottfried Achenwall

... been 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 his mind and body were alike ruined. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... many. His underestimate of the sacredness of human life was one; but that was the fault of his age. His frequent workings by intrigue was another; but that also was a vile method accepted by his age. The fair questions, then, are: did he not commit the fewest and smallest wrongs possible in beating back those many and great wrongs? Wrong has often a quick, spasmodic force, but was there not in his arm a steady growing force, which could only be a force ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... please all parties, you must disagree with some or other: you have only to choose (if you are determined to look to man) with which you will disagree. And, further, you may be sure that those who attempt to please all parties, please fewest; and that the best way to gain the world's good opinion (even if you were set upon this, which you must not be) is to show that you prefer the praise of God. Make up your mind to be occasionally misunderstood, and ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... formerly observed that in the years wherein most die fewest are born, and vice versa. The same may be further observed in males and females, viz., when fewest males are born then most die: for here the males died as twelve to eleven, which is above the mean proportion of fourteen to thirteen, but were born but as nineteen to ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty

... day Phil kept to himself, speaking to his companions only when speech could not be avoided, and then with the fewest possible words. That night, he left the company as soon as he had finished his supper, and went off somewhere alone, and Patches heard him finding his bed, long after the other members of the outfit were sound asleep. And the following ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... the small boats of the Caribs venture to navigate amid these raudales, or rapids of the Carony. Happily the river is often divided into several branches; and consequently that can be chosen which, according to the height of the waters, presents the fewest whirlpools and shoals. The great fall, celebrated for the picturesque beauty of its situation, is a little above the village of Aguacaqua, or Carony, which in my time had a population of seven hundred Indians. This cascade is said to be from ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt

... the leader deferentially but firmly, "when they make the least noise then they're most dangerous. Now I'm certain sure that they struck our trail not long after we left Big Bone Lick, an' in these woods the man that takes the fewest risks is the one that ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... and illiberal joke to compare medicine to war, on the ground that the votaries of both seek to destroy life. It is, however, not far from the truth to say that they are alike in this; that they are both preeminently liable to mistakes, and that in both he is most successful who makes the fewest. ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... Miss Lambart was busy for an hour collecting provisions, arranging that fresh provisions should be brought to the path to the knoll every morning and preparing and packing the fewest possible number of garments she would need ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson

... distempers of the body, to make a man live as long as his original frame was designed to last, with the least pain and fewest diseases, and without the loss of his senses, I think Pythagoras and Cornaro by far the two greatest men that ever were:—the first, by vegetable food and unfermented liquors; the latter, by the lightest and least ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... means a hard, cold, stern righteousness. It is truth without grace. Nothing can be made to seem more repulsive. One incident in Elijah's career furnishes the illustration here. Let us say such a thing very softly of such a mighty man of God, and say it in fewest words, and only to help. He was a man of marvellous faith, and prayer, and bold daring, in the midst of a very crooked and perverse generation. Israel was at its very lowest moral ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... by going down the southern declivity, which seemed to offer the fewest difficulties, but had not proceeded a hundred yards before (as we had anticipated from appearances on the hilltop) our progress was entirely arrested by a branch of the gorge in which our companions had perished. We now passed along the edge of this for about ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... becomes a 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 great and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various

... themselues seuerall endes. Some seeke authoritie and places of commandement, others experience by seeing of the worlde, the most part wordly and transitorie gaine, and that often times by dishonest and vnlawfull meanes, the fewest number the glorie of God and, the sauing of the soules of the poore and blinded infidels. (M353) Yet because diuers honest and well disposed persons were entred already into this your businesse, and that I ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt

... aside. Somehow I 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

... line from Constantinople to Smyrna. For this, two routes are thought of: one, the shortest, but most difficult, would run from Constantinople to the Dardanelles, Adramyti, and Smyrna; the other, the longest, but offering fewest difficulties, would pass from Constantinople by Muhalitch, Berliek-Hissar, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... with Dan for luncheon the next day, waited for him to come into the aisle. Dan had not the slightest idea of introducing his charge to Allen or to any one else, and he stepped in front of her to get rid of his friend with the fewest words possible. But Marian so disposed herself at his elbow that he could ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... that is a little too bad of you. It is out of my power to help admiring things which are utterly beyond me to describe, and a dinner of such cooking may enlarge the tongue, after all the fine things it has been rolling in. But business is my motto, in the fewest words that may be. You know what I want; you will keep it to yourself, otherwise other people might demand the money. Through very simple channels you will find out whether the fellow thing to this can be found here or elsewhere; ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... a recording telegraph, in which the movable needles indicated the message by marking dots and dashes with printer's ink on a ribbon of travelling paper, according to an artificial code in which the fewest signs were given to the commonest letters in the German language. With this apparatus the message was registered at the rate of six words a minute. The early experimenters, as we have seen, especially ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... makes a chain of open seasons for migratory birds and allows the continued destruction of such birds from the beginning of the first season to the close of the last. It is believed that better results will follow the adoption of the fewest possible number of zones and so regulating the seasons in each as to include the time when such species is in the best condition or at the maximum of abundance during the autumn. For this reason the country has been ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... is unclean, thenceforth, forever and ever." O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! What shall be the place of that man who has carried a corpse alone? Ahura Mazda answered: "It shall be the place on this earth wherein is least water and fewest plants, whereof the ground is the cleanest and the driest and the least passed through by flocks and herds, by the fire of Ahura Mazda, by the consecrated bundles of Baresma, and by the faithful." O Maker of the material ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... Regulations through each month and will always find something that he never knew or has forgotten. He will always consult it before going to drill. In explaining movements he will use blackboard diagrams in conferences. On the field he will take the fewest possible men and have movement executed by the numbers properly before the other men. Then have all the men go through the ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... exercise of federal government, state government, and local government, in your own town or city. Of which government do you observe the most signs? Of which do you observe the fewest signs? Of which government do the officers seem most sensitive to ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske

... the Central Market is Francis Goodwin, Esq., and it is but justice to say, that it is highly creditable to his taste and skill. The front is of the Grecian order, and perhaps the largest piece of masonry in the county of York, with the fewest observable joints. It is expected to prove ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various

... respectability of the nation. It was then necessary and right that there should be a coalition. To every possible coalition there were objections. But, of all possible coalitions, that to which there were the fewest objections was undoubtedly a coalition between Shelburne and Fox. It would have been generally applauded by the followers of both. It might have been made without any sacrifice of public principle on the part of either. Unhappily, recent bickerings had left in the mind ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... was a good deal for a lad to say, at that age, and with Bob's upbringing and popularity, even though he said it rather scornfully in the fewest words. The scorn was really for himself, and I could well understand it. Nay, I was glad to have something to forgive in the beginning, I with my unforgivable mission, and would have laughed the matter off without another word if Bob ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung

... which must decide what individuals are to survive and what to succumb occurs in the season when the means of subsistence are fewest, or enemies most numerous, or when the individuals are enfeebled by climate or other causes; and it is then that those varieties which have any, even the slightest, advantage over others come off victorious. ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... told us, very frankly his manner of writing; he confessed that what he first committed to paper seldom could be printed without variation or correction, even to a single line: he copied everything over, he said, himself, and three transcribings were the fewest he could ever make do; but, generally, nothing went from him to the press ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... World 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 ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... 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 ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden

... you please, but not for faction: For still the faction is the fewest number: So what they call the lawful government, Is now the faction; ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... level surface, highly cultivated, traversed by excellent roads, running in straight lines from one town to another. I must, however, own that I have seldom traversed a more uninteresting country. But as the reign of a prince, which affords the fewest incidents for the commemoration of the historian, is thought to be often the most fortunate for the interests of his subjects, so a country, which is passed over in silence by the tourist, as devoid of those natural beauties, which fix his attention, often contains the most land susceptible of ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard

... purgatory no penalty which, according to the canons, they would have had to pay in this life. 23. If it is at all possible to grant to any one the remission of all penalties whatsoever, it is certain that this remission can be granted only to the most perfect, that is, to the very fewest. ...
— Martin Luther's 95 Theses • Martin Luther

... have failed to have been struck with the simplicity of the opening. Still, calm, and most majestic, it tells us everything which is necessary to be known in the fewest possible words. The history of Job was probably a tradition in the East; his name, like that of Priam in Greece, the symbol of fallen greatness, and his misfortunes the problem of philosophers. In keeping with the current belief, he is described ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... words neither; any more than hypocritical ones. They are measured, resolute, and the fewest possible. He never wasted words, nor showed his mind, but when he meant ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... strangely blest With perfect bliss that glows, And he above all others lives the best, Who has the fewest woes! ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller

... intermediate. Also we assign the smallest body to fire, and the greatest to water, and the intermediate in size to air; and, again, the acutest body to fire, and the next in acuteness to air, and the third to water. Of all these elements, that which has the fewest bases must necessarily be the most moveable, for it must be the acutest and most penetrating in every way, and also the lightest as being composed of the smallest number of similar particles: and the second body has similar properties in a second degree, and the third body in the ...
— Timaeus • Plato

... size. He had a light, brilliant touch, his color was exquisite, and his arrangement of his subjects was very picturesque. His chief fault was a resemblance in his heads, and for this reason those pictures with the fewest figures are ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement

... the fewest and simplest words that can be found in the compass of the language, to express the thing meant: these few words being also arranged in the most straightforward and intelligible way; allowing inversion only when the subject can be made primary without obscurity: ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... book of the year is undoubtedly "The Christian," by Hall Caine. Not only the book of the year, perhaps, but of more years than one cares to count, for of books worth reading or remembering, there has been the fewest number within these latter days. And it must be conceded, in the beginning, that Hall Caine has written a book—a live book—and that no one will dissect it without finding blood on ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... as a 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 ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... people had followed the tradition of Jefferson that the best government is that which assumes the fewest functions and interferes least with the individual. Many honest men who meant to be good citizens felt that education belonged to the family or the church and could not see why the State should pay for teaching any more than for preaching, or for food, or clothing, ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson

... in some parts than in others; and that is why, as you have often noticed, certain parts of the skin are more sensitive than others. They are thickest, for instance, on the tips of our fingers and on our lips, and fewest over the back of the neck and shoulders, and across the lower part ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... unless rigidly fixed at the piers. In the Forth bridge stability is obtained partly by the great excess of dead over live load, partly by the great width of the river piers. The majority of bridges not of great span have girders with parallel booms. This involves the fewest difficulties of workmanship and perhaps permits the closest approximation of actual to theoretical dimensions of the parts. In spans over 200 ft. it is economical to have one horizontal boom and one polygonal (approximately parabolic) boom. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... he answered, "Above it." And the same philosopher reports, that Polyeuctus, the Sphettian, one of the Athenian politicians about that time, was wont to say that Demosthenes was the greatest orator, but Phocion the ablest, as he expressed the most sense in the fewest words. And, indeed, it is related, that Demosthenes himself, as often as Phocion stood up to plead against him, would say to his acquaintance, "Here comes the knife to my speech." Yet it does not appear whether he ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... 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 among rich nations than among savages, ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... GENERALLY ALLOWED breach of it anywhere, I say, is a proof that it is not innate. For example: let us take any of these rules, which, being the most obvious deductions of human reason, and conformable to the natural inclination of the greatest part of men, fewest people have had the impudence to deny or inconsideration to doubt of. If any can be thought to be naturally imprinted, none, I think, can have a fairer pretence to be innate than this: "Parents, preserve and cherish your children." When, therefore, you say ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke

... its definition—a definition that defines in the fewest possible words. In some dictionaries hundreds of words are not defined at all, referring the reader to some other source for the information he ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... nothing, made of 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. Humblest faith and prayer Are oft than miracle miraculous ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... rectitude I possessed; always making my engagements by the night, and thus limiting any possible loss I might sustain or inflict upon my employers, to my salary and their receipts, for one performance. I also reduced my written transactions to the very fewest and briefest communications possible, with my various theatrical correspondents, and have more than once had occasion to observe that precision, conciseness, and a rigid adherence to mere statements of terms, times, and purely indispensable details of business, were not the distinguishing ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... granted, so that men may live together in harmony, however diverse, or even openly contradictory their opinions may be. (59) We cannot doubt that such is the best system of government and open to the fewest objections, since it is the one most in harmony with human nature. (60) In a democracy (the most natural form of government, as we have shown in Chapter XVI.) everyone submits to the control of authority over his actions, but ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza

... in every 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 one is ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous

... fewest wants: the book, however good, Thou shouldst not purchase, let it go unbought; And fashion's vests by thee be all unworn. Soon luxuries become necessities, But self-denying thrift more joy affords Than all the pleasures of extravagance. A cottage, free from clamorous creditors, Is better than ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... wants which are inseparable from our existence, all the others are, more or less, fictitious, and increase with our knowledge and habits; it is, therefore, evident that the nation that is the highest above others feels the fewest wants; or, in other words, feels no wants. She knows nothing that she does not possess, and therefore may be said to want nothing; or which is the same thing, not knowing what she does want, she makes no ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... of the heavens and the earth? Laying down days and nights of joy before it and of beauty and wonder and peace, the scholar is always a scholar, i. e., he is always at home. To be cultured is to be so splendidly wrought of body and soul as to get the most joy out of the least and the fewest things. Wherever he happens to be,—whatever he happens to be without,—his culture is his being master. He may be naked before the universe, and it may be a pitiless universe or a gracious one, but he is always master, knowing how to live in it, knowing how to hunger and die in it, or, like Stevenson, ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... and I mighty pleased with Jane's coming to us again. Up, and away goes Alce, our cooke-mayde, a good servant, whom we loved and did well by her, and she an excellent servant, but would not bear being told of any faulte in the fewest and kindest words and would go away of her owne accord, after having given her mistresse warning fickly for a quarter of a yeare together. So we shall take another girle and make little Jane our cook, at least, make ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... history of 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 possible words, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... some little weight. Since expansion is a real attribute of the atmosphere which divides the waters above from the waters below,—and solidity is not,—it seems to me only fair, seeing that the force of the expression is thought doubtful, to assign to it the meaning which is open to fewest objections. ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... not the prime movers in the agitations which concern them. An examination of the tables of the last census will demonstrate that they do not attach much importance to political rights. It will be found that the free people of color are most numerous in some of those States which accord them the fewest political privileges; and in those States which have granted them the right of suffrage they seem to see but few attractions. In Maryland there were, in 1860, 83,942 free people of color; in Pennsylvania, 56,949; in Ohio, 36,673. In neither of those States were ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes



Words linked to "Fewest" :   most, superlative



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