"Algebraical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... first he was inclined to despise the teacher, setting little store by her beautiful face and fascinating smile, for on the very first day he discovered her woful mathematical inadequacy. Arithmetic was her despair. With algebraic formulae and Euclid's propositions her fine memory saved her. But with quick intuition she threw herself frankly upon the boy's generosity, and in the evenings together they, with Margaret's assistance, ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... conscience, the reason, the imagination and the senses. Without going so far as this, it is possible to see in these and in Hawthorne's other creations something typical and representative. He uses his characters like algebraic symbols to work {467} out certain problems with: they are rather more and yet rather less than flesh and blood individuals. The stories in Twice Told Tales and in the second collection, Mosses from an Old Manse, 1846, are more openly ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... conceptions of the universe of our experience. In the religion of the once-born the world is a sort of rectilineal or one-storied affair, whose accounts are kept in one denomination, whose parts have just the values which naturally they appear to have, and of which a simple algebraic sum of pluses and minuses will give the total worth. Happiness and religious peace consist in living on the plus side of the account. In the religion of the twice-born, on the other hand, the world ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... reminiscences, within ten columns; but till this experiment had been made, he never conceived the extent of his faculty. WOLF, the German metaphysician, relates of himself that he had, by the most persevering habit, in bed and amidst darkness, resolved his algebraic problems, and geometrically composed all his methods merely by the aid of his imagination and memory; and when in the daytime he verified the one and the other of these operations, he had always found them true. Unquestionably, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... by forty-nine, by seven times seven at the least, that we be not accused of extenuating so fatal an excitement; for it is competent to conceive one's self expanded into any unlimited number of bodies, seven sevens being the algebraic n, and if so, into their huge undefined aggregate; a giant's pains are throes indeed, a giant's pleasures indeed flood over. But, we may do harm to morality and truth, by falsely making much of a faint, fleeting, paltry, excitation. The brain waltzing intoxicated, the heart ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... apparent heat it was with unalterable fixedness of purpose. They were of a common race. The duke was determined that she should wed Doppelkinn; she was equally determined that she should not. The gentleman with the algebraic bump may figure this out to ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... items ought in strictness also to be calculated. Then sum up all the pleasures which stand to the credit side of the account; add the pains which are the debit items, or liabilities, on the other; then take their algebraic sum, and the balance of it on the side of pleasure will be the good tendency of the act upon the whole." (Dewey ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... spontaneous emotion. Ceasing to open his heart to that light from the Absolute, which ought to quicken it into bloom, it learns to dwell only in the sterile world of abstract formulas. If he could find algebraic signs for its expression, he would willingly believe in the immortality of the soul: the characters which he can never learn to comprehend, are precisely those in which dwell the intuitions of the infinite. He piques ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... the two students were diligently at work, Sarah in the role of preceptress, hearing Amanda's French verbs, or helping to discover the perplexing value of X in an algebraic equation. Only occasionally did the ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... first patch of green sod broke into view, steaming under the hot rays of the noonday sun. Abstractly considered, the thing seemed preposterous enough for the plot of a dime novel, while in the light of her sweet presence the development of his love seemed as logical as an algebraic problem. At all events, the result was in both cases equally inexorable. It was useless to argue that she was his inferior in culture and social accomplishments; she was still young and flexible, and displayed an aptness for seizing upon his ideas and assimilating them which was fairly ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... on the elements in sets of three. We may, in other words, take one set of observations upon the combined time of the three elements numbered 1, 2, 3; another set upon elements 2, 3, 4; another set upon elements, 3, 4, 1, and still another upon the set 4,1, 2. By algebraic equations we may solve the values of each of ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... those and other works of note He was not at all a "people's man," Though public, for the works he wrote Were not that sort the people can Admire or read; they were Mathematic The most part, some were Hydrostatic; But Algebraic, in the main, And full of a, b, c, and n— And other letters which perplex— The last was full of double x! In fact, such stuff as one may easily Imagine, didn't go down greasily, Nor calculated to produce Such heat as "cooks the public goose," And does it of so brown a hue Men wonder ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... made to present in the clearest light each subject discussed, and to give in matter and methods the best training in algebraic analysis at present attainable. ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... of mathematics are the calculations published by the weather-prophet of the Express. Arithmetic turns pale when she glances at them, and, striking her multiplication table with her algebraic knuckles, demands to know why the Express does not add a Cube-it to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... sphere and cylinder in an equally masterly manner, and with equal success. His position as a geometer is perhaps better understood from the assertion made respecting him by a modern mathematician, that he came as near to the discovery of the Differential Calculus as can be done without the aid of algebraic transformations. Among the special problems he treated of may be mentioned the quadrature of the circle, his determination of the ratio of the circumference to the diameter being between: 3.1428 and 3.1408, the true value, as is now known, being 3.1416 nearly. He also wrote on Conoids ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... be a brick. When the great calamities of life overtook their friends, these last were spoken of as being a good deal cut up. Nine-tenths of human existence were summed up in the single word, bore. These expressions come to be the algebraic symbols of minds which have grown too weak or indolent to discriminate. They are the blank checks of intellectual bankruptcy;—you may fill them up with what idea you like; it makes no difference, for there are no funds in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... mind. The girl must have had a surprising memory for sounds, for she could always repeat the words which I let fall in this way, without, of course, understanding in the least what they meant. I have often been amused at hearing her discharge a volley of chemical equations and algebraic symbols at old Madge, and then burst into a ringing laugh when the crone would shake her head, under the impression, no doubt, that she was being addressed ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... flashed back a moment to the shining isle, the green sward, the singing waves, the sunlight on the green jalousies, but strangely his mind could see nothing. He could no longer make a picture for himself. Symbols were barren algebraic formulae. Not enchanters' words. No light. No glamour. Only strange sounds reverberating in the gray caverns of his head.... Once in the dead past he could see the Isle of Pipers—no more! It wasn't his past that ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... through anguish, ending finally in the terror which deadens the will without intelligence succumbing, though sorely disturbed. Death, which the dramatists had so much abused, he had in some manner changed and made more poignant, by introducing an algebraic and superhuman element; but in truth, it was less the real agony of the dying person which he described and more the moral agony of the survivor, haunted at the death bed by monstrous hallucinations ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... and pen in hand he began what looked very much like algebraic formula: I followed with my eyes his trembling hands, I took count of every movement. Might not some unhoped-for result come of it? I trembled, too, very unnecessarily, since the true key was in my hands, and no other would open ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... admittance. Soon after a Boer patrol fired on our mounted infantry, who returned the compliment. That was the signal for the opening of hostilities. On this matter it may be urged that Boer reports differ from ours, but Boer veracity may be defined by the algebraic quantity x, and cannot be accepted. Lieutenant-Colonel Winsloe, of the 21st Regiment, who was commanding at a fort outside the village, signalled orders to Major Clarke to begin firing. This officer was fortified in the Landrost's office with a small force of some twenty soldiers and ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... the parabola once more, imagine it rolling on an indefinite straight line and ask what course does the focus of this curve follow. The answer comes: The focus of the parabola describes a 'catenary,' a line very simple in shape, but endowed with an algebraic symbol that has to resort to a kind of cabalistic number at variance with any sort of numeration, so much so that the unit refuses to express it, however much we subdivide the unit. It is called the number e. Its value ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... no less a person than M. Zola himself. Yet there is no discoverable trace of imitation in his book. He has simply taken a method which has been most successfully applied in the study of French life and applied it in studying American life, as one uses certain algebraic formulae to solve certain problems. It is perhaps the only truthful literary method of dealing with that part of society which environment and heredity hedge about like the walls of a prison. It is true that Mr. Norris ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... professor, his daughter, and why not his fair sister Jocasta, as well? We will take them a journey which shall much astonish the venerable Surd. He shall place Abscissa's digits in yours and bless you both with an algebraic formula. Jocasta shall contemplate with wonder the genius of Rivarol. But we have much to do. We must ship to St. Joseph the vast amount of material to be employed in the construction of the Tachypomp. We must engage a small army of workmen to effect that construction, for we are to ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... became a little Mr. Pound. How could it have been otherwise when day after day, books in hand, I walked down to his house to recite my lesson of Latin and Greek, and with him worked through the mysteries of algebraic calculation and studied the strange habits of the right line? He pressed me into his mould. Years went by. In the valley the Professor was forgotten, and to me Penelope was but a dim figure in the past. Even the memory of Rufus Blight ceased to awaken rancor, and I could contemplate with ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... acknowledged to be so in the examples given by the bending osier and the waving grain,—also by the few who have seen full drawings of all the forms. And the mathematician finds in it a new beauty, from its marvellous correspondence with the motions of a pendulum,—the algebraic expression of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... All arithmetical difficulties had confused and sickened him. But now he worked with indefatigable industry on an imaginary slate; put his postulate, counted probabilities, allowed for chances, added, deducted, multiplied, and unknowingly performed algebraic feats, till his brows were stiff with frowning, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the fire, with that look upon his face which I had seen only once or twice in our acquaintance—a look which I may call an absolute concatenation of inductive and deductive ratiocination—from which all that was human, tender, or sympathetic was absolutely discharged. He was simply an icy algebraic symbol! Indeed, his whole being was concentrated to that extent that his clothes fitted loosely, and his head was absolutely so much reduced in size by his mental compression that his hat tipped back from his forehead and literally hung on ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... passed slowly in his review, I saw in my mind's eye the algebraic equation of Snow, the equals sign, and the answer in ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... had first seen the beloved form of Ericson, a certain old mood began to revive in him. He had been working at quadratic equations all the morning; he had been foiled in the attempt to find the true algebraic statement of a very tough question involving various ratios; and, vexed with himself, he had risen to look out, as the only available zeitvertreib. It was one of those rainy days of spring which it needs ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... by what may be called Long Measure. League is a vague term, and, like x in an algebraic equation, stands for an unknown quantity. It may mean ten miles, more or less,—any distance, in fact, over five miles. The unit of measure, as fixed by law, is estamos aqui, (here we are,) which is a mile and a half; hay no masita (a little less than ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... end of the furrow, to address, as did Burns, lines to a field-mouse, or to listen to the song of the meadow-lark, than to learn the habits of the three dimensions then known, of points in motion, of lines in intersection, of surfaces in revolution, or to represent the unknown by algebraic instead of ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... this by his interpretation of the Book of Revelation; by labored calculations based upon arithmetical principles, and algebraic formulae until then unknown, but which appeared mystical and appalling from the fact that they were incomprehensible. The book was written in a style well calculated to perplex, astonish, or terrify the readers, especially those who were not well stocked with intelligence. It is therefore ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... and physics I can speak with more confidence. He is the author of the Cartesian system of algebraic or analytic geometry, which has been so powerful an engine of research, far easier to wield than the old synthetic geometry. Without it Newton could never have written the Principia, or made his greatest discoveries. He might indeed have invented ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... deepest, widest, and most certain of all facts,—that the Power which the universe manifests is utterly inscrutable." (p. 46). "The ultimate of ultimates is Force." "Matter and motion, as we know them, are differently conditioned manifestations of force." "If, to use an algebraic illustration, we represent Matter, Motion, and Force, by the symbols x, y, z; then we may ascertain the values of x and y in terms of z, but the value of z can never be found; z is the unknown quantity, ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... to designate quantities, lines, etc., in algebraic, geometrical, and similar matter, and in ...
— The Uses of Italic - A Primer of Information Regarding the Origin and Uses of Italic Letters • Frederick W. Hamilton
... boyhood. It carried me across Caesar's bridge, and through Virgil and Horace. I am indebted to it for a tolerable understanding of grammar, arithmetic, geography, and other occult sciences. It enlightened me not a little upon many algebraic processes, which, to speak truth, presented, otherwise, but slender claims to my consideration. It disciplined me into a uniform propriety of manners, and instilled into my bosom early rudiments of wisdom, and principles of virtue. In my maturer years, the contingencies ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... insupportable place. Laws without a lawgiver, matter without spirit is a gospel of dirt. All that is good, generous, wise, right ... who or what could by any possibility have given it to me, but One who first had it to give! This is not logic, it is axiom.... Poor "Comtism, ghastliest of algebraic specialities."... Canst thou by searching find out God? I am not surprised thou canst not, vain fool. If they do abolish God from their poor bewildered hearts, there will be seen such a world as ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... racing. [Talking of that, how annoying it is—or was—when one cared about things of great moment, to take up an evening newspaper's last edition and read in large type "Official Scratchings," with a silly algebraic formula underneath about horses being withdrawn from some race, when you thought it was a bear fight in the Cabinet.] Vivie gathered from her guide that to-day would be rather a special Derby, because it did not often happen that a King-Emperor was there to see ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... geometrically opposite facts—namely, two lines (or areas) which are opposite IN SPACE give ALWAYS a positive product—ever come into anybody's head till I was led to it in October, 1843, by trying to extend my old theory of algebraic couples, and of algebra as the science of pure time? As to my regarding geometrical addition of lines as equivalent to composition of motions (and as performed by the same rules), that is indeed essential in my theory but not peculiar to it; on the contrary, I am only one of ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... all the essential forms which can affect the organism. This is a universal algebraic formula, by which we can solve all organic problems. We apply it to the hand, to the shoulder, to the eyes, to the voice—in a word, to all the agents of oratorical language. For example, it suffices to know the eccentro-eccentric ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... the formula by which Stokes made his calculation. It is a relatively simple algebraic one, but need not be repeated here. For us it suffices that with the aid of this formula, by merely measuring the actual descent of the top of a vapor cloud, Professor Thompson was able to find the volume of the drops and thence the number of particles. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... the Observatory, where he now spends all his evenings, only coming home in the small hours, I took it upon myself to enter his room and examine his papers. I was terrified, madame, at finding a paper covered with algebraic calculations which, by their vast extent appeared to me to go beyond the ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... England had her beginning of landscape gardening. Later she saw the rise of Constable, Ruskin, and Turner, and their iridescent successors. Still to-day in England the average leading citizen matches word against word,—using them as algebraic formulas,—rather than picture against picture, when he arranges his thoughts under the eaves of his mind. To step into the Art world is to step out of the beaten path of British dreams. Shakespeare ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... me," he muttered, as he turned away. He felt as he had when puzzling over the unknown quantity in an algebraic equation. It was not until he was sitting in meeting, looking forward at Lucina's fair profile, cut in clear curves like a lily, that ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... occasion or a purpose; a superior court issues its mandate to an inferior court to send up its records. Statute is the recognized legal term for a specific law; enactment is the more vague and general expression. We speak of algebraic or chemical formulas, municipal ordinances, military orders, army regulations, ecclesiastical canons, the rules of a business house. Law is often used, also, for a recognized principle, whose violation is attended with injury or loss that acts like a penalty; ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... that the evidence presented to him is bewildering, indecisive, and obscure; and it may occur to him that the author is very like an individual who proposes to determine the value of two or three unknown quantities from one simple algebraic equation. His principal witness, Aristides, were he now living and brought up in presence of a jury, would find himself in rather an odd predicament. He is expected to settle the date of the death of Polycarp, and yet he knows nothing either of the pastor of Smyrna or of his tragic ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... algebraic problems Jose saw the working of a rule infinite in its adaptation. She knew not what the answers should be, yet she took up each problem with supreme confidence, knowing that she possessed and rightly understood ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Children Selected," "Speaking of Automobiles," "The Unusual Thing," "The High Cost of Learning," and "Wanted—A Funeral of Algebraic Phraseology;" also, some verse, "The Twentieth Regiment Knight" and "Back to God's Country" are magazine work that never came back. School Science & Mathematics, a magazine to which she contributes and of which she is an associate editor, gives hers as the only ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker
... Mannheim slide rule. Finally, in 1873, Captain Peaucellier gave his solution to the readers of the Nouvelles Annales. His reasoning, which has a distinct flavor of discovery by hindsight, was that since a linkage generates a curve that can be expressed algebraically, it must follow that any algebraic curve can be generated by a suitable linkage—it was only necessary to find the suitable linkage. He then gave a neat geometric proof, suggested by Mannheim, ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... law of which one of your chemists might perhaps give you the mathematical formula, and which the next century will no doubt express in a statement full of x, a, and b, mixed up with little algebraic signs, bars, and quirks that give me the colic; for the finest conceptions of mathematics do not add much to the sum ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... young Willard was seated between two brothers—Henry and Brayton Abbott by name—engaged in solving Algebraic problems, a whispered inquiry, regarding the lesson, passed from one to ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... disciples knit their brows O'er algebraic signs; They build their byres, they milk their cows On ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... High on a three-legged stool uncushioned, he Sits glowering through his goggles painfully, Nagging his brain with all a grinder's might Till one sounds on the drowsy ear of night. Like Sibyl's leaves the papers strew his floor Wrought-out examples, 'wrinkles' by the score, Conundrums algebraic, 'tips' on Conics And thorny 'props' remembered by mnemonics. Betweenwhiles as the slow time lagging goes, He takes the spectacles from off his nose, Removes the damper from his aching head, Pours out the coffee, cuts a slice of bread, Sips wistfully the liquid from his cup: ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... They juggled with figures, made precis of the reports of money markets, dissected and analysed the balance sheets of railway companies, decoded messages from London or from Paris, transcribed formulae as abstract, as remote from tangible things as the x and y of algebraic equations. These men all worked—the apologue of the quadratic equation held my mind—moving their symbols here and there, extracting roots, dissolving close-knit phrases into factors, cancelling, ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... now to our thesis. Some persons will immediately cry out, 'How CAN a reality resemble a feeling?' Here we find how wise we were to name the quality of the feeling by an algebraic letter Q. We flank the whole difficulty of resemblance between an inner state and an outward reality, by leaving it free to any one to postulate as the reality whatever sort of thing he thinks CAN resemble a feeling,—if ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... clearly, that it was impossible to effect the required solution by the geometrical mode of reasoning employed by Newton. The problem, as it presented itself to their minds, was to find algebraic expressions for the positions of the planets at any time. The latitude, longitude, and radius-vector of each planet are constantly varying, but they each have a determined value at each moment of time. ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... ingeniously explained as personifications respectively of the conscience, the reason, the imagination, and the senses. Without going so far as this, it is possible to see in these and in Hawthorne's other creations something typical and representative. He uses his characters like algebraic symbols to work out certain problems with; they are rather more and yet rather less than flesh and blood individuals. The stories in Twice-Told Tales and in the second collection, Mosses from an Old Manse, 1846, are more openly ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... philosopheme, preserved for us in the AEschylean Prometheus, stands midway betwixt both, yet is distinct in kind from either. With the Hebrew or purer Semitic, it assumes an X Y Z,—(I take these letters in their algebraic application)—an indeterminate 'Elohim', antecedent to the matter of the world, [Greek: hulae akosmos]—no less than to the [Greek: hulae kekosmaemenae.] In this point, likewise, the Greek accorded with the Semitic, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... highly prized by them, were carried to the greatest perfection their method would allow. They did not understand algebra, by the application of which to geometry modern mathematicians have climbed to greater heights than the ancients; but then it is all the more remarkable that without the aid of algebraic analysis they were able to solve such difficult problems as occupied the minds of Archimedes and Apollonius. No positive science can boast of such rapid development as geometry for two or three hundred years before Christ, and never ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... man composing it. He knew, in short, that Cyrus Browett as one of his congregation on a Sabbath morning would be a mere atom in the plastic cosmos below him; whereas Browett by himself, with the granite hardness of his crag-like face, his cool little green eyes—unemotional as two algebraic x's—would be a matter fearfully different. Even his white moustache, close-clipped as his own hedges, and guarding a stiff, chilled mouth, was a thing grimly repressed, telling that the man was quite invulnerable to his own vanity. A human Browett would have permitted that ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... rank, who will be much heard of afterwards; Commandant in Dingelfingen is a Brigadier du Chatelet, Marquis du Chatelet-Lamont; whom—after search (in the interest of some idle readers)—I discover to be no other than the Husband of a certain Algebraic Lady! Identity made out, mark what a pass he is at. Count Daun comes on in a tempest of furious fire; 'very heavy,' they say, from great guns and small; till close upon the place, when he summons Du Chatelet: 'No;' ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... man is the man who knows that he does not know. And this disposes of Number One and Number Two, leaving only Number Three for our consideration. It took, however, a good many years and a vast amount of study and writing for Kant to thus simplify. For years he toiled with algebraic formulas and syllogistic theorems before he concluded that the best wisdom of life lies in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... their eclipse. Everything is based on the focal plan, and on the rotation of the octagon drum, formed of eight wide simple lenses in range, having above and below it two series of dioptric rings; an algebraic gear, secured from the effects of the beating of winds and waves by glass a millimetre thick[6], yet sometimes broken by the sea-eagles, which dash themselves like great moths against these gigantic lanterns. The building which encloses and sustains this mechanism, and in which it ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... slightest occasion, about a promenade or the proper place to put a sofa. This logic is extremely simple, inasmuch as it consists in never expressing but one idea, that which contains the expression of their will. Like everything pertaining to female nature, this system may be resolved into two algebraic terms—Yes: no. There are also certain little movements of the head which mean so much that they may take ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... voluntary. The silent assumption is that by education and effort it can be made so. One may doubt whether in the sense required by Godwin's argument any human action ever is or can be absolutely "voluntary," rational or self-conscious. To attain it, we should have to reason naked in a desert with algebraic symbols. To use words is to think in step, and to beg our question. But Godwin is well aware that most men rarely reason. He is here framing an ideal, without realising its remoteness. The mischief of his faith in logic as a force, was that it led ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... inversely with the refractive index (the power of the lens remaining constant). The total aberration of two or more very thin lenses in contact, being the sum of the individual aberrations, can be zero. This is also possible if the lenses have the same algebraic sign. Of thin positive lenses with n1.5, four are necessary to correct spherical aberration of the third order. These systems, however, are not of great practical importance. In most cases, two thin lenses are combined, one of which has just so strong a positive aberration ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... exists. How much of his vast structure will bear the touch of time, how much is clay and how much brass, it were too curious to inquire. But his words, if dry, are always manly and honest; there dwells in his pages a spirit of highly abstract joy, plucked naked like an algebraic symbol but still joyful; and the reader will find there a caput mortuum[13] of piety, with little indeed of its loveliness, but with most of its essentials; and these two qualities make him a wholesome, as his intellectual vigour makes him a bracing, writer. I ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hour-glass: the mechanical arts had attained no slight degree of perfection. But passing over all ingenious mechanism, making no mention here of astronomical discoveries, some of them surprising enough, it is especially for the Algebraic analysis that we must thank the Moors. A strange fascination, doubtless, these crafty men found in the cabalistic characters and hidden processes of reasoning peculiar to this science. So they established it on a firm basis, solving ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... whom, but a few months before, had been only a matter of hearsay to her. Yet she had apparently taken him, as women will, for better, for worse, till death, as trustfully as if he and men generally were as knowable as A B C, instead of as unknown as the algebraic X. Only once had she faltered in her trust of him, and then but for a moment. How far had her love, and the sight of Peter's misery, led her blindly to renew that trust? And would it hold? She had seen how little people thought of that scurrilous article, ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... not activity or intelligence. And in our abstract speculations we should imagine all our conceptions as located in free Space. Our images of all sorts, down to our geometrical diagrams, and even our ciphers and algebraic symbols, should always be figured to ourselves as written in space, and not on paper or any other material substance. M. Comte adds that they should be conceived as green on a ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... furthermore writes: "Or, if one will, he may also betake himself in fancy to a still, green, dusky forest, and listen in profound solitude to the mysterious rustling and whispering of the foliage. What, indeed, despite the algebraic character of the tone-language, may not a lively fancy conjure out of, or, rather, into, this etude! But one thing is to be held fast: it is to be played in that Chopin-like whisper of which, among others, Mendelssohn also affirmed ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... poor indeed if it could not find a tongue for that meaning of the mind which is behind the meaning of the words. It has sometimes seemed to me that in England there was a growing tendency to curtail language into a mere convenience, and to defecate it of all emotion as thoroughly as algebraic signs. This has arisen, no doubt, in part from that healthy national contempt of humbug which is characteristic of Englishmen, in part from that sensitiveness to the ludicrous which makes them so shy of expressing feeling, but in part also, it is to be feared, from a growing ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... portion of mankind ever on the alert to see or hear some wonderful thing; whose minds are attuned to a marvellous key, and vibrate with extreme sensitiveness to the slightest touch; whose vital fluid is the air of romance, and whose algebraic symbol is a mark of exclamation! This sentiment, existing in some persons to a greater degree than in others, is often fostered by education and association, so as to become the all-engrossing passion. Children, of course, begin to wonder as soon as their eyes are opened upon the strange ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and habitually used a diction that we should be glad to buy back from desuetude at any cost. Those who look upon language only as anatomists of its structure, or who regard it as only a means of conveying abstract truth from mind to mind, as if it were so many algebraic formulae, are apt to overlook the fact that its being alive is all that gives it poetic value. We do not mean what is technically called a living language,—the contrivance, hollow as a speaking-trumpet, by which breathing and moving bipeds, even now, sailing o'er life's ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... family secret, but not of the immediate one which especially concerns us. Madame Duclos sent her daughter unattended to the museum, but she did not direct the shaft which killed her. That was the work of our friend X. Let us then make sure that we fit the right man to this algebraic symbol, and trust to her testimony ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... exam Mary goes, Smartly dressed in stunning clothes, Expert in algebraic rule, Best pupil-teacher of ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forms or values involving that step or expression are vitiated, and the results they seem to show substantially worthless. Now, every actually working mind, and at every stage, from schoolboy perplexities over algebraic signs, up to philosophic ventures in quest of one remove further of solid ground, in respect to the interrelations of physical forces, or the law of development of organized forms, finds itself in precisely the predicament of the mathematician: ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... studies of the modern languages and history, the endless practising of etudes and sonatas, the stooping wearily over some delicate embroidery, is less taxing to the nervous system than Latin and Greek, and the working out of algebraic problems? I am not prepared to say. But grant that a small part of the solution can be found in this difference, there are yet other and deeper causes at work. One of them is that the young German girl, while at school, ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... such a parochial view. The great bulk of them regard it with disfavour, first, because it smacks of peddling dealing; and, secondly, even if it were right they know that State aid means State interference, and State interference savours too much of working commerce on strictly algebraic lines, which only an executive with a wealthy, indulgent nation behind it could stand. The Chamber of Shipping last year vigorously declared against subsidies of this kind; and the way in which the proposal was strangled leaves small hope of ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... not algebraic. Although chemical equations are quantitative, it must be clearly understood that they are not algebraic. A glance ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... whether, in the nature of the mind, illustration and explanation must not of necessity proceed from the lower to the higher? or whether a boy is to be taught his addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, by the highest branches of algebraic analysis? Is there any better way of systematic teaching, than that of illustrating each new step, or having each new step illustrated to him by its identity in kind with the step the next below it? though it be the only ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... enraptured with it. It is a little singular that all this time you never showed any self-esteem; or spoke of getting into employment at some future day, among the learned. The pleasure of intellectual exercise in demonstrating or analyzing a geometrical problem, or solving an algebraic equation, seemed to be your only object. No Junior, Seignour or Sophomore class, with annual honors, was ever, I suppose, presented ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... AND DEFINITE.—Whatever attention centers upon stands out sharp and clear in consciousness. Whether it be a bit of memory, an "air-castle," a sensation from an aching tooth, the reasoning on an algebraic formula, a choice which we are making, the setting of an emotion—whatever be the object to which we are attending, that object is illumined and made to stand out from its fellows as the one prominent thing in the mind's eye while the ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... work. The closeness and brevity of his descriptions make it one of the dryest productions ever issued on geological science, scarcely omitting the work of Humboldt, in which he sought to represent the whole of geology by algebraic symbols. Percival's work actually demands, and would richly repay, a translation into the vernacular of descriptive geology,—the language and mode of illustration employed by Murchison and Hitchcock. In its present form, it is safe to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... man and man. He does not readily generalize or conceive of abstractions. He observes the qualities common to certain bodies without reasoning about the qualities themselves. With the aid of geometric figures and algebraic signs, he knows something of extension and quantity. Upon these figures and signs his senses rest their knowledge of the abstractions just named. He makes no attempt to learn the nature of things, but only such of their ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... threshold of the science or sciences for the use of which they were invented, being never heard on the lips, or employed in the writings, of any but the cultivators of these sciences, have no right to be properly called words at all. They are a kind of shorthand of the science, or algebraic notation; and will not find place in a dictionary of the language, constructed upon true principles, but rather in a technical dictionary apart by themselves. Of these, compelled by the advances of physical science, we have coined multitudes ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... writer's terms of argument in the sense—however unusual or mistaken—which he chooses they should bear, we may without further error follow his course of thought, it is as unkind as unprofitable to lose the use of his result in quarrel with its algebraic expression; and if the reader will understand by Lord Lindsay's general term "Spirit" the susceptibility of right moral emotion, and the entire subjection of the Will to Reason; and receive his term "Sense" as not including the perception ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Vondervotteimittiss has existed, from its origin, in precisely the same condition which it at present preserves. Of the date of this origin, however, I grieve that I can only speak with that species of indefinite definiteness which mathematicians are, at times, forced to put up with in certain algebraic formulae. The date, I may thus say, in regard to the remoteness of its antiquity, cannot be less than ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... researches on the secular variations of the eccentricities and inclinations of the planetary orbits depend upon the solution of an algebraic equation equal in degree to the number of planets whose mutual action is considered, and the coefficients of which involve the values of the masses of those bodies. It may be shown that if the roots of this equation be equal or imaginary, the corresponding element, ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... still consider it one of the most important books of the nineteenth century because of its power of changing the minds of those who read it, in spite of its unsound capitalist economics, its parade of quotations from books which the author had either not read or not understood, its affectation of algebraic formulas, and its general attempt to disguise a masterpiece of propagandist journalism and prophetic invective as a drily scientific treatise of the sort that used to impose on people in 1860, when ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... quantity, therefore, if rigorously analyzed, will indicate a priori the natural and impassable boundaries of the science; while a subsequent examination of the quantities called infinite in the mathematical sense, and of the algebraic symbol of infinity, will be seen to verify the results of this a ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... interest which it takes in the poorer classes, by its care for their welfare and the algebraic account it keeps of all their misery and needs, political economy had, of course, given to Henri Mauperin a colouring of Liberalism. It was not that he belonged to a very decided Opposition: his opinions were merely ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... accustomed to speak of them not as similar but the same. In order that a comparison may be effective either for ornament or for use, there must be, between the two acts or objects, a similarity in some points, and a dissimilarity in others. The comparison for moral or aesthetic purposes is like an algebraic equation in mathematical science; if the two sides are in all their features the same, or in all their features different, you may manipulate the signs till the sun go down, but you will obtain no useful result: it is only when they ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... them, however, in their character of things, and not of mere signs, is evident from the fact that our whole process of reasoning is carried on by predicating of them the properties of things. In resolving an algebraic equation, by what rules do we proceed? By applying at each step to a, b, and x, the proposition that equals added to equals make equals; that equals taken from equals leave equals; and other propositions founded on these two. These are not properties of language, or of signs as ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... him, and you never see anything but a policeman—an indivisible phenomenon of blue cloth, steel buttons, flesh resembling a face, and a helmet; "a stalwart guardian of the law"; to you little more human than an algebraic symbol: ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... Spencer I was next placed under the tuition of one of the minor canons of Ely. The Bishop of Ely - Dr. Allen - had been Lord Spencer's tutor, hence his elevation to the see. The Dean - Dr. Peacock, of algebraic and Trinity College fame - was good enough to promise 'to keep an eye' on me. Lord Spencer himself took me to Ely; and there I remained for two years. They were two very important years of my life. Having no fellow pupil to beguile me, I was the more industrious. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... showing that the laws of correct thinking can be expressed in algebraic notation, and, thus expressed, will be subject to all the mathematical laws of an algebra whose symbols bear the uniform value of unity or nought (1 or 0)—a limitation required by the fact that pure logic deals in notions of ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... real terms, I now ask, have accidents not expressed in their definitions? and when a real value is finally substituted for the result of an algebraic series of substituted definitions, do not all these accidents creep back? Beliefs have their objective 'content' or 'deliverance' as well as their truth, and truth has its implications as well as its workings. If any one believe that other men exist, it is both a content ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... small numeral in a mathematical formula. But let me see a child abused, and the red blood will rush to my head from rage. And when I look and look upon the labour of a moujik or a labourer, I am thrown into hysterics for shame at my algebraic calculations. There is—the devil take it!—there is something incongruous, altogether illogical, but which at this time is stronger than human reason. Take to-day, now ... Why do I feel at this minute as though I had ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... truth as the instrument through which the weak mind of man can most effectually read his Creator's works, will regard with especial interest all that can tend to facilitate the translation of its principles into explicit practical forms." So, for the moment turning away from algebraic formulae and abstruse calculations, wrote Ada, Lady Lovelace, in her twenty-eighth year. See "Translator's Notes," signed A. A. L., to A Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage, Esq., ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... corner awhile, trying his best to get something definite out of the great array of books he found on a low shelf. Looking up and seeing Mr. Fulton's eyes on him, a twinkle in their depths, he threw down the latest collection of algebraic formulas and ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... it will sustain any act of Congress which purports to be for the improvement of navigation whatever other purposes it may also embody; nor does the stream involved have to be one which is "navigable in its natural state." Such, at least, seems to be the algebraic sum of its holdings in Arizona v. California,[362] decided in 1931, and in the United States v. Appalachian Electric Power Co.,[363] decided in 1940. In the former the Court, speaking through Justice Brandeis, said that it was ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Pluton, used to rush on deck to watch her behaviour. M. Normand would give us a lecture on her lines and her displacement wave, or the degree of her rolling or her pitching. Mr. Barnes, a great big Englishman, said never a word, but pulled a slide-rule out of his pocket and mumbled algebraic formulae. The ship was commanded in first-rate style by a very efficient naval lieutenant, M. de Montaignac, who since that time has acted as Minister for ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... not properly attainable. Hereafter, in every age, some will be found to start afresh quixotically, through what wastes of words! in search of that true Substance, the One, the Absolute, which to the majority of acute people is after all but zero, and a mere algebraic symbol for nothingness. In themselves, by the way, such search may bring out fine intellectual qualities; and thus, in turn, be of service to those who can profit by the spectacle of an enthusiasm not meant for them; must nevertheless be admitted ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... to those blue-stockings, and I have met many such, who, as soon as you approach them, throw at your head the name of a poet like a bomb-shell, and exhibit the wealth of their arsenal by firing a philosophical cannon, or algebraic chain shot. ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... evident that in order to deposit copper from a normal solution of copper sulphate a minimum potential equal to the algebraic sum of the deposition-potentials of copper ions and sulphate ions must be applied, that is, 1.56 volts. The deposition of zinc from a solution of zinc sulphate would require 2.67 volts, but, since the deposition ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... the course of an existence, the rest of the sojourn upon earth being devoted to a sublimation of our thought. But always wise, sensible, sagacious, rational; always in wig and spectacles; always algebraic and mathematical; doctrinal and didactic; ever to sit like FRANKLIN'S portrait, with the index fixed upon 'causality;' one might as well be a petrified 'professor,' or a WILLIAM PENN bronzed upon a pedestal. There is nothing ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... Magazine, here Mr. Morris seems to us to be in complete accord, not merely with the spirit of Homer, but with the spirit of all early poetry. It is quite true that language is apt to degenerate into a system of almost algebraic symbols, and the modern city-man who takes a ticket for Blackfriars Bridge, naturally never thinks of the Dominican monks who once had their monastery by Thames-side, and after whom the spot is named. But in earlier times ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... strong case here, as {182} they would have also in regard to the liking for machinery. Still, the mathematical individual would not be convinced, for he would testify that numbers, etc., made a direct appeal to him. Numbers, geometric forms, and algebraic transformations are fascinating to him, and there is something beautiful, to his mind, in the relationships that are discovered. The same could be said of the liking for plant or animal life that appears in the "born ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... themselves there is not much to be said here; they are original, and some of them (e.g., No. 52) expressed in a style peculiarly the author's own. The subjects included in their range are Arithmetic, Algebra, Pure Geometry (Plane), Trigonometry, Algebraic Geometry, and Differential Calculus; and there is one Problem to which Mr. Dodgson says he "can proudly point," in "Transcendental Probabilities," which is here given: "A bag contains two counters, as to which nothing is known except ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... of bracket,' he remarked, smiling benevolently, 'which no algebraic process will remove. Let us hope it signifies that you and Buckland will work through life shoulder to shoulder in the field of geology. What did Professor ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... Although chemical equations are quantitative, it must be clearly understood that they are not algebraic. A ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... or with the gradual increase of information and intelligence the traditional may undergo slight modifications which scarcely rank as conscious departures from what has been passively accepted. The algebraic sum of such departures may, with the lapse of time, come to be by no means insignificant, yet no individual may have exercised in any considerable degree conscious reflection or shown in any large ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... of Errors. There are few intellects keen enough to extract all the humor from Shakespeare. For literal minds the full comprehension of even a slight display of his humor, such as the following dialogue affords, is better exercise than the solution of an algebraic problem. Dogberry, a constable in Much Ado About ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... nature. Instead of bringing in a verdict of guilty, they attempted reconciliation in various ways. Indian speculation invented or elaborated the theory of transmigration, in which the Karma or soul-character passed from individual to individual, the algebraic sums of happiness in the whole chain being proportional to merit. The Stoics were metaphysicians and imagined an immanent, omnipotent, and infinitely beneficent First Cause. Evil was incompatible with this, and so they held, against experience, that either it did not exist, or that ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... distinct nature, and to resist all further analysis) gives way before Mr. Ricardo's law, and is eliminated; an admirable simplification, which is equal in merit and use to any of the rules which have been devised, from time to time, for the resolution of algebraic equations. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... mathematician now living, and his personal worth is equal to his science. The object of his work is to reduce all the principles of mechanics to the single one of the equilibrium, and to give a simple formula applicable to them all. The subject is treated in the algebraic method, without diagrams to assist the conception. My present occupations not permitting me to read any thing which requires a long and undisturbed attention, I am not able to give you the character of this work from my own examination. It has been received with ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... experiments—which when Knighton and I repeated at his father's house, 9 Hanover Square, the baronet in future blew us up to the astonishment of the baronet in praesenti, his famous father. Also, I was a diligent student in the Algebraic class of Dr. Short, afterwards the good Bishop of St. Asaph; and I have before me now a memoria technica of mine in rhyme giving the nine chief rules of trigonometry, but not easily producible here as full of "sines and cosines, arcs, chords, tangents, and radii," though helpful to memory, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... I have to say upon vinous fermentation, by observing, that it furnishes us with the means of analysing sugar and every vegetable fermentable matter. We may consider the substances submitted to fermentation, and the products resulting from that operation, as forming an algebraic equation; and, by successively supposing each of the elements in this equation unknown, we can calculate their values in succession, and thus verify our experiments by calculation, and our calculation by experiment reciprocally. ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... Thus represented in algebraic formulae, it is easy to see that repetition of the materials designated a, or a and b together, is the source of unity in the period, and the third element introduced, here designated as c, has its only use in serving as variety. The normal dimensions for the ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... he lay down on an extension chair. Then, touching a knob, he established communication with the Central Concert Hall, whence our greatest maestros send out to subscribers their delightful successions of accords determined by recondite algebraic formulas. Night was approaching. Entranced by the harmony, forgetful of the hour, Smith did not notice that it was growing dark. It was quite dark when he was aroused by the sound of a door opening. "Who is there?" ...
— In the Year 2889 • Jules Verne and Michel Verne
... the balance, the weights on the right; count the divisions of the scale from the centre to right and left, marking the former and the latter -; thus -5 is the fifth division to the left. Then the position of rest is half the algebraic sum of two readings. For example, let the readings be 7 to the right and 3 to the left, then (7-3)/2 2. The mean division is the second division to the right. If the student will place himself in front ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... subject. They institute a rigorous comparison between shutting and not shutting. True, they are not taught to do so, any more than Frenchmen are taught to make gestures. It is in them. They are born with a natural proneness to consider, as if it were a question of algebraic quantities, whether the satisfaction they might impart by shutting the door would not be more than counterbalanced by the dissatisfaction that might accrue from distinctly and unmistakably shutting it. Still, it seems strange how any displeasure could be incurred by the performance ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... that I, Richard Scarsmere, who, when at school hated geography as bitterly as I did algebraic problems, should even now, while just out of my teens, be thus enabled to write down this record of a perilous journey through a land known only by name to geographers, a vast region wherein no stranger had ever before ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... handful of husks, or was it a banquet? Carolyn took it for the latter and lived on it for days. Little it mattered what or how much he had written: he had written, and of his own accord—as Carolyn made a point of from the first. There is an algebraic formula expressive of the truth that "1" is an infinitely greater number of times than "0." And a single small taper is infinitely greater in point of light and cheer than none at all. Carolyn's little world ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... their meaning slightly, or premises may be assumed or conclusions inferred with rather too much certainty or universality; the variation at each step may be unobserved, and yet at last the divergence becomes considerable. Hence the failure of attempts to apply arithmetical or algebraic formulae to logic. The imperfection, or rather the higher and more elastic nature of language, does not allow words to have the precision of numbers or of symbols. And this quality in language impairs the force of an ...
— The Republic • Plato |
