"Arithmetic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... try again; you will understand me better when I have made some preliminary remarks. You are aware that students of geometry, arithmetic, and the kindred sciences assume the odd and the even and the figures and three kinds of angles and the like in their several branches of science; these are their hypotheses, which they and every body are supposed to know, and therefore they do not deign to give any account of them ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Abbie Lindsay, and A.G. Mertin. They did n't paas you by grades then. I got through the fourth reader. If you got through, they would go back and carry you through again. They had the old Blue Back Speller. I got ready for the fifth reader but I quit. I had just begun to cipher, in arithmetic, but I had to quit because they could n't spare me out of the field. In fact they put me into the field when I was eight years old, but I managed to go to school until I was about twelve years old or something like that. I never got a year's schooling ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... the Anglo-Saxon; "you, sir, are another; but all our arithmetic will not make us more than two; and in this place, it is probable that a whistle from the Caesar, or a scream from Agelastes, would bring a thousand to match us, if we were as bold as Bevis of Hampton.—Stand still and keep quiet. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... pleasant things they hear about you? Mrs. H. B. DonNELL called at the school again yesterday and told me she thought it HER duty to inform me that Mrs. Harmon Andrew didn't approve of my reading fairy tales to the children, and that Mr. Rogerson thought Prillie wasn't coming on fast enough in arithmetic. If Prillie would spend less time making eyes at the boys over her slate she might do better. I feel quite sure that Jack Gillis works her class sums for her, though I've never been able to catch ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... which irregularities human life would not present to mortals, looking into futurity, the abyss of impenetrable darkness which it is the pleasure of the Creator it should offer to them. Were everything to happen in the ordinary train of events, the future would be subject to the rules of arithmetic, like the chances of gaming. But extraordinary events and wonderful runs of luck defy the calculations of mankind and throw ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... little instruction. Abigail says of herself, in one of her letters:—"I never was sent to any school. Female education, in the best families, went no further than writing and arithmetic; in some few and rare instances, music and dancing. It was fashionable to ridicule female learning." But the household was bookish. Her mother knew the "British Poets" and all the literature of Queen Anne's Augustan age. Her beloved grandmother Quincy, at ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... gentle pat and kind word, and at length laid itself down under Floribel's empty seat, looking about with such mournful eyes, that the children said, "Poor fellow! I am sure it would rather be Floribel, and have the hardest arithmetic lesson to learn, than be only a little scampering dog. Would it not, doggy?" and the dog bobbed its head up and down, as much as to say, "Yes, I am sure ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... besides Greek, that I learnt as a lesson in this part of my childhood, was arithmetic: this also my father taught me: it was the task of the evenings, and I well remember its disagreeableness. But the lessons were only a part of the daily instruction I received. Much of it consisted in the ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... my subject and thesis," I replied,—"that in house-furnishing there is nothing so economical as beauty; and I will make it good against all comers, not by figures of rhetoric, but by figures of arithmetic. I am going to be very matter-of-fact and commonplace in my details, and keep ever in view the addition table. I will instance a case which has occurred under my ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of a mechanic succedaneum to the labour of negroes is not visionary, but thought practicable. Oh! how I wish I understood sugar ploughs, and could marry them! Alas! I understand nothing useful. My head is as un-mechanic as it is un-arithmetic, un-geometric, un-metaphysic, uncommercial; but will not some one of those superior heads to whom you have talked on my indigested hint reduce it to practicability'! How a feasible scheme would stun those who call humanity romantic, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... A. M., recitations and instruction of the whole company, under direction of both officers, in Manuel du Sapeur, together with lectures and recitations on field fortifications. From 11 A. M. until 12:30 P. M., [infantry drill]. From 2 P. M. until 4 P. M., recitations in arithmetic and practice in writing. Each officer has a section in arithmetic, and gives a general superintendence to a section in writing. Instruction in writing ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... piece of manual labor agreeable to him, as building a boat or a fence, planting, grafting, surveying, or other short work, to any long engagements. With his hardy habits and few wants, his skill in wood-craft, and his powerful arithmetic, he was very competent to live in any part of the world. It would cost him less time to supply his wants than another. He was ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... quarter million dollars at four and a half per cent reduced to pounds, shillings, and pence. It was bootless. His brain, trained by long years of high living and plain thinking, had become too subtle, too refined an instrument for arithmetic... ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... homes. Their library was the books of the Old Testament. They learned much of its teachings. They read the stories of Joseph, Samuel and David. At six they went to the village school, taught by a Rabbi. Some attention was paid to arithmetic, the history of their nation, and natural history. But, as at their homes, the chief study was the Scriptures. They were taught especially about One—"Of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write." ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... questioned me in regard to my knowledge of book-keeping and arithmetic, and wanted to know if I understood board measure, and could read lumber marks. I told him I had been a carpenter, and knew all about lumber. I could keep a set of books by double entry, and thought I was competent to perform all sorts ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... sister of the angels never lived, except in the imagination of the poet. It seems a pure allegory, or, rather, an exercise in arithmetic or a theme of astrology. Dante, who was a good doctor of Bologna and had many moons in his head, under his pointed cap—Dante believed in the virtue of numbers. That inflamed mathematician dreamed of figures, and his Beatrice is the flower ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... this occasion to speak to you in the English tongue. I have now got nine pupils to instruct, and nine pupils are a great many for one person to teach. Your mother, however, has promised that the master from the village shall come up to instruct you all in arithmetic, and your French master and your music master will, of course, attend here as usual. I trust, therefore, that by more attention on the part of my pupils I may be able to continue the heavy task which I have undertaken. ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... being left to the tender mercies of Mrs. Nipson?' Now did you ever hear any thing so droll in your life?" went on Rose, folding up her letter. "Just think of those two things coming together the same day! It's like a sum in arithmetic, with an answer which 'proves' the ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... Away flew several venerable dames who had awaited our arrival, and in about an hour returned, bringing with them twenty-one scions of Siamese royalty, to be initiated into the mysteries of reading, writing, and arithmetic, after the European, and especially ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... but where's the harm of that? who's a right to call a man to account that's clear of the world? Not that I mean to boast, nor nothing like it, but, as I said before; five times five is fifteen; [Footnote: I hardly know whether the authoress has here forgotten her arithmetic, or intentionally suffered Mr Hobson to forget his, from the effects of champagne.—Ed.]—that's ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... to say that "the account of the flood is a very precious tradition full of valuable teaching," and is, he doubts not, a record of some great event that actually occurred; "but," he continues, "I confess that until Bishop Colenso brought his arithmetic to bear upon it and some other portions of Old Testament history, I was quite [why "quite?"] under the impression that the common sense of Christians abstained from criticising this ancient record by the canons applicable ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... to teach those who come to us in moccasins and blankets, arithmetic, algebra, the elements of geometry, physical geography, natural philosophy and mental science. It means much to give them an industrial training that shall show them how to live rightly, and enable them to do it. But above all, in all and through all, is the gospel of Christ, ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... over the lessons of the term in the summer holidays. Darya Alexandrovna, who had been studying Latin with her son in Moscow before, had made it a rule on coming to the Levins' to go over with him, at least once a day, the most difficult lessons of Latin and arithmetic. Levin had offered to take her place, but the mother, having once overheard Levin's lesson, and noticing that it was not given exactly as the teacher in Moscow had given it, said resolutely, though with much embarrassment ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... brilliant trait of light was the exhibition of what are called 'Christmas pieces;' things unknown in aristocratic seminaries, but constantly used at the comparatively humble academy which supplied the best knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic to be attained in that ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... the entrance door, stood two cells not occupied. The last of these I had chosen for my study, a la Monte Cristo. The sheriff's son had lent me a dozen of Opie Reid's novels, a history of the Civil War from the Southern viewpoint, an arithmetic, and an algebra. Here all day long I studied and wrote assiduously. And it was here I went to sit on my stool and write the letter to the owner of the warehouse ... a ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... are not at all well off, and Jack helps them. Besides, I wouldn't get the thing in a sneaking way; and besides, Bill could no more make a mull in construing out of carelessness than I could a false note—it's against nature. I can't beat him, except in arithmetic. My birthday comes at such an unlucky time. I should get another year if I'd only been born in July instead of June! I might be second, for Shapcote is only dogged by his father; but that's no good for the exhibition: and then there's an ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... qui condunt legem." Pontelli's Faith, Hope, and Charity are on the pier near the Chapel of S. Ranier, three half-length figures of women. The seated figures of the liberal arts on the side panelling of the church are Il Francione's, women with symbols, arithmetic, grammar, geometry, astrology, logic, and music. The great seat in the nave is the work of Giovanni Battista del Cervelliera. In the centre is a large round-headed panel with the Adoration of the Magi; at each side are three lower seats with ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... had drawn from the writings of the Fathers. But he was far from confining himself to theology. In treatises compiled as textbooks for his scholars, Baeda threw together all that the world had then accumulated in astronomy and meteorology, in physics and music, in philosophy, grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, medicine. But the encyclopaedic character of his researches left him in heart a simple Englishman. He loved his own English tongue, he was skilled in English song, his last work was a translation into English of the Gospel ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... comfortable consciousness that I could not reasonably be expected to be doing anything else—to be studying or improving my mind, for instance—always gave a joyous liberty to my fancy. I once thought it necessary to employ this interval in doing sums in arithmetic,—in which useful study I was and still am lamentably deficient,—but after one or two attempts at peripatetic computation, I gave it up. I am satisfied that much enjoyment is lost to the world by this nervous anxiety to improve our leisure moments, ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... ranged seven sacred and seven profane sciences, each with its chief representative. Thus Rhetoric and Cicero, Civil Law and Justinian, Speculative Theology and the Areopagite, Practical Theology and Peter Lombard, Geometry and Euclid, Arithmetic and Abraham, are grouped together. It will be seen that the whole learning of the Middle Age—its philosophy as well as its divinity—is here combined as in a figured abstract, for the wise to comment on and for the simple ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... boy at school who could write the words in his copy-book best who received the praise of the teacher; it was the boy who could write the largest number of words in a given time. The acid test in arithmetic was not the mastery of the method, but the number of minutes required to work out an example. If a boy abbreviated the month January to "Jan." and the word Company to "Co." he received a hundred per cent mark, as did the boy who spelled out the words and who could not make the teacher ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... his pupils how to play upon the harp, and how to cure diseases, and how to use the sword and shield, together with various other branches of education in which the lads of those days used to be instructed instead of writing and arithmetic. ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... was unused; but she resented to the last degree the astonishment that her ignorance on all sorts of subjects excited both in the nuns who taught her, and in the other children in the class, and which was expressed with sufficient distinctness. "Never studied geography, nor history, nor arithmetic!" cries Soeur Ursule, who superintended the school; "not know the principal cities in Europe, nor the kings of France, nor even your multiplication table!" These speeches, with strongly implied notes of admiration after each sentence, and illustrated by the expression ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... frenzy collapsing. "As I was about to say, wimmen is like arithmetic; there ain't a easy sum in ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... his only book. Once, while Cis was still attending school, he had shared her speller and her arithmetic, and made them forever his own (though he did not realize it yet) by the simple method of photographing each on his brain—page by page. And it was lucky that he did; for when Cis's brief schooldays came to an end, Big Tom took the two textbooks out with him one morning ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... that it is startlingly ignorant of those special things which it is supposed to invoke and keep inviolate. The things that workmen invoke may be uglier, more acrid, more sordid; but they know all about them. They know enough arithmetic to know that prices have risen; the kind Levantine gentleman is always there to make them fully understand the meaning of an interest sum; and the landlord will define Rent as rigidly as Ricardo. The doctors can always tell them the Latin for an empty stomach; ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... attend to your arithmetic, to occupy yourself in surveying, measuring, and making yourself acquainted with every particular relative to the land of Newstead, and you will write to me one letter every week, that I may know how you ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... astrology and to alchemy also sheltered astronomy and the germs of chemistry. Whether for this, or for some better reason, the founders of the schools of the Middle Ages included astronomy, along with geometry, arithmetic, and music, as one of the four branches of advanced education; and, in this respect, it is only just to them to observe that they were far in advance of those who sit in their seats. The school men considered no one to be properly educated unless he were acquainted with, at any ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... the question of the army as if it were something as remote and patient as a problem in sidereal arithmetic. Some asked for volunteers and some for universal service and some for neither. The National Guard was a bone of contention, and when the hour struck it was the only ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... teaser he is, I assure 'ee. Our parson, who's not altogether without sense o' week days, said one afternoon, "If cunning can be found in the multiplication table at all, Chickerel, 'tis in connection with that sum." Well, Berta was so clever in arithmetic that she was asked to teach summing at Miss Courtley's, and there she got to like foreign tongues more than ciphering, and at last she hated ciphering, and took to books entirely. Mother and we were very proud of her at that time: not that we be stuck-up people ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... make up your mind to do any thing and fail? There's an old proverb that says, "Where there's a will there's a way;" and this is true. Resolution and energy, patience and perseverance, will achieve nearly every thing you set about. Try it. Try it when you have hard lessons to do, puzzling examples in arithmetic to solve, that long stint in sewing to do, that distasteful music to practice, those bad habits to conquer. Try it faithfully, and when you grow up, you'll be able to say, from your own experience, "Where there's a will there's ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society
... harder than I thought it would be," said Nat. "Some wear different feathers in spring and fall, a lot more pairs are different to begin with, and the young ones are mixed up at first. It's worse than arithmetic"—and ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... States General. Instead of amending the law, the king considered abstentions as favourable votes and ignored all opposition, so that the new Constitution was passed, in spite of a strong adverse majority. This singular procedure was called, at the time, "Dutch arithmetic." ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... enlisted, and belonged to the first military company that went to Porto Rico. In 1898 he entered Lombard College; after his Freshman year, he tried to enter West Point, succeeding in every test—physical and mental—except that of arithmetic; there he has my hearty sympathy, for in arithmetic I was always slow but not sure. He returned to Lombard, and took the regular course for the next three years, paying his way by hard work. His literary ambition had already been awakened, and he attained distinction among his mates. Since ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... help Debby, Paul, and I get on very well with the aid of an arithmetic." And she pointed to a small school book which she had ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... great help with arithmetic. The boy who was second in the Oxford Local always did it. He gave me two. The examiner said to him, 'Are you eating peppermints?' ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... it betrays, and in its scheme to combine public and private capital that the wealthy men of the country should, in their own interests, be compelled to support the government, reads like an easy example in arithmetic to-day; but a hundred and twenty years ago it was so bold and advanced that Morris dared to adopt several of its suggestions in part only, and founded the bank of Pennsylvania on the greater plan, by way of ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... papers of Political Arithmetic, both in yours and Mr. Cooper's pamphlets, are the most precious gifts that can be made to us; for we are running navigation-mad, and commerce-mad, and Navy-mad, which is worst of all. How desirable it is that you should pursue that ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... country, at that period, even primary instruction was very deficient. It remained so for a long time. As late as 1838 reading, writing, and arithmetic only were taught in the best public schools of Spain. The other branches of knowledge, such as geography, history, physics, chemistry, natural history, could be studied in a few ecclesiastical educational establishments.[77] ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... said, "I can't give you my consent all at once. I must have time to turn round and think about it; you must have time too. But if——" here he paused and did a short sum of mental arithmetic. "Yes," he went on, "if in two months from now you find me still upon the throne—and I'm sure I don't know that you will with the way things are going and all the worry I've had—but if you do, and are still of the same mind about it, then you ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... chance was huddling up against the stove; besides, he liked to read, and would rather have staid in all day with a book of fairy tales than shared the gayest romp they could have suggested. This afternoon Joe had made so many mistakes in his arithmetic examples that he was obliged to stay late, and do them over; but he was sorely annoyed and tempted at hearing the shouts and cries of joy with which the boys saluted each other as they escaped from the school-room, ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... sentiment, which is a mode of consciousness at a discount just now with the new generation of analysts who are throwing everything into their crucibles. Now we must not claim too much for sentiment. It does not go a great way in deciding questions of arithmetic, or algebra, or geometry. Two and two will undoubtedly make four, irrespective of the emotions or other idiosyncrasies of the calculator; and the three angles of a triangle insist on being equal to two right angles, in the face of the most ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... "accounts," my Friend, I find them clear as day, verifiable to the uttermost farthing. You are a good man to conquer your horror of arithmetic; and, like hydrophobic Peter of Russia making himself a sailor, become an Accountant for my sake. But now will you forgive me if I never do verify this same account, or look at it more in this world except as a memento of affection, its arithmetical ciphers so many hierograms, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... reading-desk. You needn't look quite so much at Hetty Sorrel then. When I've made up my mind that I can't afford to buy a tempting dog, I take no notice of him, because if he took a strong fancy to me and looked lovingly at me, the struggle between arithmetic and inclination might become unpleasantly severe. I pique myself on my wisdom there, Arthur, and as an old fellow to whom wisdom had become cheap, I bestow ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... got no pep," says the wife. "They's many a more ambitious man than he is with a tomb around him! He's been keepin' books for twenty dollars a week since the discovery of arithmetic, and he ain't got a raise since they blowed up the Maine. He's afraid to ask for more money for fear the boss will find out he's on the pay roll and fire him. They's one ounce more brains in a billiard ball than they is in his ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... rose, by the force of his genius, to be the counsellor of kings and states. His wisdom was in demand far and wide, and on the most important occasions. The pithy apologues which fell from his lips, which, like the rules of arithmetic, solved the difficult problems of human conduct constantly presented to him, were remembered when the speeches that contained them were forgotten. He seems to have written nothing himself; but it was not long before the gems which he scattered began ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... at his university—the inhabitants of Redcross did not, as a rule, pretend to be judges in such matters. What they did know, because it had oozed out some time before, was that Cyril Carey, though a banker's son, was lamentably weak in arithmetic, and his handwriting would have been held a ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... thatch roofs with the leaves, of the cocoa-nut palm. 14. Richelieu exiled the mother, oppressed the wife, degraded the brother, and banished the confessor, of the king. 15. James and John study and recite grammar and arithmetic. ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... arithmetic, grammar—both Greek and Latin—reading, and repetition of the chief Latin poets. There was also a good deal of recitation and of theme-writing on all kinds of trite historical subjects. The arithmetic ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... are mere child's work; the latter not quite so easily acquired, but equally indispensable, and of it you ought to have a thorough knowledge before you attempt to study even the grammar of your own language. Arithmetic is soon learned; it is not a thing that requires much natural talent; it is not a thing that loads the memory or puzzles the mind; and it is a thing of every-day utility. Therefore, this is, to a certain extent, an absolute necessary; an indispensable acquisition. Every man ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... was more than half play; that in the domestic subjects had an engrossing interest of its own. He proposed, first, the necessary discipline in the means for acquiring knowledge, the tools for employing it, that is to say, reading, writing, and arithmetic. After that, he believed that a certain amount of knowledge, of intellectual discipline, and of artistic training should be conveyed in the elementary schools, and for these purposes he proposed to teach some rudiments of physical ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... not here refer to the fact that all quantities, as such, are subject to the rules of arithmetic and algebra, and are therefore capable of being submitted to those dry calculations which represent, to so many minds, their only ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... almost written unscrupulous, use of their opportunities, such doctrines as his were little likely to commend themselves to the privileged, cultured and educated classes. Prior to the Reformation, education, at least the knowledge of reading, writing and arithmetic, was undoubtedly more widely diffused amongst the masses of the people than it was subsequently—at all events, till very recent times. From the Restoration to within our own times, education, even the knowledge of reading, was as a very general rule only within the reach ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... experiences in school. When he should have been studying his history and arithmetic lessons he busied himself with writing rhymes. Later in life he was very sorry that he had not persevered in his regular school work. There were some things in school, however, that he did exceptionally ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... Alexeyevna's—that curious friend of hers; and to this questionable house Aglaya Ivanovna is to proceed for a friendly chat with Nastasia Philipovna, and for the settlement of several problems. They are going to play at arithmetic—didn't you know about ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... regard of families for their servants. This genuine domesticity is strikingly displayed in the island of Ragusa, on the coast of Dalmatia: for there they provide for the happiness of the humble friends of the house. Boys, at an early age, are received into families, educated in writing, reading, and arithmetic. Some only quit their abode, in which they were almost born, when tempted by the stirring spirit of maritime enterprise. They form a race of men who are much sought after for servants; and the term applied to them of "Men of the Gulf," ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... that in nature there is a centripetal as well as a centrifugal force, a regulator as well as a spring, a law of attraction as well as of repulsion. The way to the West is the way also to the East; the north pole of the magnet cannot be divided from the south pole; two minus signs make a plus in Arithmetic and Algebra. Again, we may liken the successive layers of thought to the deposits of geological strata which were once fluid and are now solid, which were at one time uppermost in the series and are now hidden in the earth; or to the successive ...
— Sophist • Plato
... likeness is unmistakable. Skimpole's most elaborate jests about "pounds" are hardly an exaggeration of the man who gravely and more than once tells us that his difficulties and irregularities with money came from a congenital incapacity to appreciate arithmetic, and who admits that Shelley (whose affairs he knew very well) once gave him no less than fourteen hundred pounds (that is to say some sixteen months of Shelley's income at his wealthiest) to clear him, and that he was not cleared, though apparently he gave Shelley ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Freda got in her arithmetic. But Rowland seemed to open a new rule, farther on in Butler than addition and substraction. In short, she found herself lost in the maze of fractions, and could not extricate herself. When she jumped up from her easy-chair, she was trying to reduce the following ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... differences been found to apply generally in the various grades of our schools—it has been found to have significant bearing upon achievements in particular subjects. For all too long a time we have held a boy in grade four until he mastered what we have called his grade four arithmetic, spelling, geography, grammar, history, etc. As a matter of fact, many a boy who is a fourth-grader in grammar may be only a second-grader in arithmetic—a girl, for whom fourth grade arithmetic ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... sublime egoists, inimitable reasoners who have never given way to despair or made a mistake in arithmetic, if this ever happens to you, at the hour of your ruin you will remember Abelard when he lost Heloise. For he loved her more than you love your horses, your money or your mistresses; for he lost in losing her more than your prince Satan would ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... his reach, not only because it is his special literary form and his nature craves it, but because it is one of the most vital of the textbooks offered to him in the school of life. In ultimate importance it outranks the arithmetic, the grammar, the geography, the manuals of science; for without the aid of the imagination none of ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... other, and all their pent-up merriment of the morning was relieving itself in song and shout and laughter. There was nothing to check the flow of frolic. Not a thought of schoolbooks came out with them into the sunshine. Latin, arithmetic, grammar—all were locked up for an hour in the dingy schoolroom. The teacher might be a noun if he wished, and a proper one at that, but THEY meant to enjoy themselves. As long as the skating was as perfect as this, it made no difference whether ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... it—he began talking in a very nasty way—he has a nasty way when he likes. 'Look here, Mrs. Woolstan,' he said, 'Leonard doesn't seem to me to be doing well at all. I asked him one or two questions in simple arithmetic, and he couldn't answer.' 'Well,' I said, 'for one thing Len isn't well, and it isn't the right time to examine a boy; and then arithmetic isn't his subject; he hasn't that kind of mind.' But he wouldn't listen, and the next thing he said was still nastier. ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... in inventing fly-traps, making whirligigs, or drawing pictures on his slate. He had an accurate eye, and could draw admirably. Philip could get his lessons also if he chose to apply himself, but it was a great deal easier to have some one work out the problems in arithmetic than to ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... an old blue back speller and taught myself how to read and write with what I picked up here and there from people I watched. That's one way a man never fails to learn—watching people. That's the only way our forefathers had to learn. I learned arithmetic the same way. I never considered I was much at figuring but I took a contract from a man who had all kinds of education and that man said I could do arithmetic better than ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... while still a child, he was put to work as soon as he was big enough to be of any use, and received practically no education, although he managed to teach himself to read and write. He earned a few pennies by watering horses for travelers, and with this money purchased a spelling-book and arithmetic. ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... listenin'. He's just standin' there, with a dazed, stunned look in his eyes like he'd just been missed by an express train. But his lips are movin'. I got the idea. He was doin' mental arithmetic—twenty-five times ninety-three. And he was gettin' a picture of a thousand dollar income lyin' flat ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... evolution and civilization, not, in any way worth mentioning, a cause, he will be apt to reflect as well upon how many men, all told, have ever heard of his existence or who besides his grandchildren will remember him a generation hence. He will probably wish that arithmetic had never been invented. Or if he be one of the great of earth, he is only one after all, and, if he be in danger of bursting from inflation, he can be grateful for a timely reminder that there are several millions on the globe who have never heard of him, and a few ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... more public position were the chief inducements to a man of Mr. Bridges' temperament, in which ambition and patriotism formed so prominent a part. Latin, however, was not Mr. Bridges' forte; he excelled rather in the higher branches of arithmetic and the abstruse sciences. His attainments, however, in the dead languages were beyond those of most of his contemporaries, as the letter he sent to the Master and Seniors will abundantly prove. It was chiefly owing to the great reverence for genius ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... ALGEBRA, a universal arithmetic of Arabian origin or Arabian transmission, in which symbols are employed to denote operations, and letters to represent number ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... water. I only hope he'll wipe his fins when he comes in. The last rainy day he dripped all over the room. I was 'most drowned before we finished. But it was mean and sneaky of Win to go up to the Manor this morning. He might have known that I wanted help with my arithmetic." ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... respectable street, where all the houses were exactly alike, and where businessmen of moderate means begot and reared large families of children, all of whom went to Sabbath school and learned the shorter catechism, and were interested in arithmetic; all of whom were as exactly alike as their homes, and of a piece with the monotony in which they lived. Paul never went up Cordelia Street without a shudder of loathing. His home was next to the house of the Cumberland minister. He approached it tonight with the nerveless ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... famous schools of astronomy and medicine, and here in the tenth and eleventh centuries the Arabians were the teachers of the world. Students came to them from France and other parts of Europe; and their progress, especially in arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, was marvellous. The poetry of the Arabs is rhymed like ours, and is always the poetry of passion and love; but it is in their prose works, the Arabian tales of the Thousand and One Nights, that they have become most famous. Their richness of fancy in these prose tales is ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... That arithmetic is the basest of all mental activities is proved by the fact that it is the only one that can be accomplished by means of a machine. Take, for instance, the reckoning machines that are so commonly used in England at the present time, and solely ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... at an academy at Frankfort on the Oder. His first step into the business of life was as a clerk in the mercantile house of Buch, at Hamburg, where he soon made himself master of accounts and bookkeeping, and acquired that perfect command of arithmetic, and habit of bringing every thing, where it is possible, to the test of figures, by which his political and scientific writings are so pre-eminently distinguished. But his disposition was too strongly bent on scientific and physical pursuits, to admit of his remaining long in the comparatively ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... diligence and zeal, and the subsequent result was perfect; within six weeks he became an example of diligence and perseverance, and soon got promoted. The second case was that of a young idiot. He was incapable of intellectual culture, and could not be taught reading or arithmetic. Dr. Liebeault submitted him to many hypnotic sittings, making a very great effort to rouse his attention, though he seemed to have no capacity for being instructed. Finally he succeeded so well that after two ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... severest kind quickly set in, when for every mistake, everything short of perfection, the taws was promptly applied. We had to get three lessons every day in Latin, three in French, and as many in English, besides spelling, history, arithmetic, and geography. Word lessons in particular, the wouldst-couldst-shouldst-have-loved kind, were kept up, with much warlike thrashing, until I had committed the whole of the French, Latin, and English grammars to memory, and in connection with reading-lessons we were called on to recite parts of them ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... conventional, and half-acquiesced-in, method of showing exuberance of spirit, just before the Christmas holidays. In most of the schools the teaching was necessarily of the simplest, for the only books might be a Testament, a primer, a spelling book, and a small arithmetic. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... but here, in my person, you have the best barber in Bagdad, an experienced physician, a profound chemist, an infallible astrologer, a finished grammarian, a complete orator, a subtle logician, a mathematician perfectly well versed in geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and all the refinements of algebra; an historian fully master of the histories of all the kingdoms of the universe. Besides, I understand all parts of philosophy. I have all our sacred traditions by heart. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... long delayed; the dark star may be drawn in comet-like circuit about thousands of other stellar masses, and be hurtled on thousands of diverse parabolic or elliptical orbits, before it chances to collide—but that matters not: "billions are the units in the arithmetic of eternity," and sooner or later, we can hardly doubt, a collision must occur. Then without question the mutual impact must shatter both colliding bodies into vapor, or vapor combined with meteoric fragments; in short, into a veritable nebula, the matrix of future ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... understand by university education at present. In illustration of this Dr. Dreyer tells us how, in the University of Wittenberg, one of the professors, in his opening address, was accustomed to point out that even the processes of multiplication and division in arithmetic might be learned by any student who possessed the ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... the Rebellion, restored the Union, vindicated the Constitution, hung the arch-traitors, and saw peace in all our borders. This was our campaign—on paper. But war is something more than a sum in arithmetic. A campaign cannot be decided by the rule of three. No finite power can control every contingency, and have all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... of Tiarabou, the strength of which we never learnt. Nor could I ever learn the number of men necessary to man this fleet; and whenever I asked the question, the answer was Warou, warou, warou te Tata, that is, many, many, many, men; as if the number far exceeded their arithmetic. If we allow forty men to each war-canoe, and four to each of the others, which is thought a moderate computation, the number will amount to nine thousand. An astonishing number to be raised in four districts; and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... It requires but little arithmetic to figure out that the people of Brief do not see the sun rise very often. When it does appear in the morning sky, all the public signals blow and the people appear in one or another of their places of worship. This beautiful custom has been in practice for over three thousand years. ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... not this admission settle at once the contention of those who see no value at all in a carefully-controlled environment? If this child is born without mathematical ability, what is the use of drumming arithmetic into his head; or, if he is born with musical genius, why should we bother about teaching him music?—he will "take" to ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... and rum is made, to the credit as well as profit of the attorney, and by which the merchant is benefited, as the consignments are augmented; but six per cent. interest on the principal, six per cent. on that interest by compound arithmetic become principal, six per cent. commissions, with the contingent charges for labour, improvements, stores, etc., absorb the whole produce, and the planter daily sinks under an accumulating debt, till he ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... twelve-and-nine he already had in hand, as though it was a peculiar twelve-and-nine, that might consent for once to make nineteen shillings, the sum required, when added to Aunt M'riar's contribution; but he was obliged to yield to the inflexible nature of Arithmetic. "Sixpence short, I make it," said he. Then to the young man whose employer was like Mont Blanc:—"You'll have to fetch it round again to-morrow, any time after two o'clock." This was, however, rendered unnecessary by the appearance of Mr. Jerry, who was able to contribute the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... given, no accounts of the country by travellers were ever read, no good maps ever given us, nothing but the horrid stream of unintelligible place names to be learnt." The only subjects in which he considered that he gained some valuable grounding at school were Latin, arithmetic, and writing. ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... has been a quarter of a million. Of Morse's Geography and Atlas (50 cents) the sale is said to be no less than 70,000 per annum. Of Abbott's histories the sale is said to have already been more than 400,000, while of Emerson's Arithmetic and Reader it counts almost by millions. Of Mitchell's several geographies it ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... even of enjoying the present, was struggling visibly through the cold fog that environed him. Reason has, after all, so little to do with our moods. The weather, the scene, the stomach, how pleasantly they deal with facts—how they supersede philosophy, and even arithmetic, and teach us how much of ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... stood a gate of marble white, Westward right such another opposite. And, shortly to conclude, such a place Was never on earth made in so little space, For in the land there was no craftes-man, That geometry or arsmetrike* can**, *arithmetic **knew Nor pourtrayor*, nor carver of images, *portrait painter That Theseus ne gave him meat and wages The theatre to make and to devise. And for to do his rite and sacrifice He eastward hath upon the gate above, In worship of Venus, goddess of love, *Done make* an altar ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Your Arithmetic only can trip If to count your own charms you endeavor; And Eloquence glows on your lip When you swear that you'll ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... President Thwing, "occupies itself with description (geometry, space, arithmetic, time, science, the world of nature). Later education with comparison and relations." If one asks, "Why not both together? Why learn facts at one time and their relations at another? Is it not the most vital possible way to learn facts to learn them in their relations?"—the answer ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... lovely pen and pencil case; it's quite soft, we must have it soft so that it shan't make a row when it falls down during lesson time. I think it cost 7 crowns or 1.70 crowns, I don't know exactly. To-day lessons went on until 12, first German, then arithmetic, then religion for Catholics, and then we came away. Hella waited for me, for the ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... reject a conscientious Roman Catholic who avows that all his teaching is centred on the doctrine of his Church. It would be illiberal to reject the same man for the specific purpose of teaching arithmetic, if he avowed that he had no intention of using his position for the purpose of religious propagandism. For the former purpose the divergence of religious opinion is an inherent disqualification. It negates the object propounded, ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... of study in the universities was divided into what was known as the trivium and the quadrivium. The trivium embraced Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric; the quadrivium, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music. These constituted the seven liberal arts. Greek, Hebrew, and the physical sciences received but little attention. Medicine had not yet freed itself from the influence of magic and astrology, and alchemy ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... actually freeing its citizens by that process. It is only by a misuse of words or a failure to grasp ideas that I can maintain that an ignorant savage is more free than an educated man. It is true that I am, in a sense, "free" to think that two and two make five, if I have not learned arithmetic; on the other hand, when I learn that they make four I rise into that higher and more real liberty which a knowledge of arithmetic bestows. I am more effective, not less so; I am more free to exercise my powers and use the forces of the world in which I live, and not less free, when I have submitted ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... since you're pathetic, And so the reason you shall hear: Th' affair was one of arithmetic— A matter of so much a year. His father left five thousand good Of pounds per annum, as you know, And you possessed, I understood, Of yearly thousands ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... not till he espied a Daboll's Arithmetic in Hal's studio that he became interested in the belongings of that house, albeit Hal and Mary had shown him the statuary they so much prized. He looked at the statuettes ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... non-conformity is a greater scandal than the scandal of conformity; and so he would make us gain little by our argument of scandal. He is bold to object,(430) "Where one is offended with our practice of kneeling, twenty, I may say ten thousand, are offended with your refusal." O adventurous arithmetic! O huge hyperbole! O desultorious declamation! O roving rethoric! ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... needed to keep every minute of hired labor and team-work effectively employed; and when we come finally to the items of low markets and bad debts,—we shall see how far these and similar drawbacks have undone our arithmetic, and how often our well-contrived balance must be taken into the footings of the other ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... be absurd to tell a young child most of the facts, just as it would be absurd to try to teach him the whole arithmetic in one school term. He could not understand, and, particularly in the case of the former subject, he would be harmed instead of helped. Just how and when to unfold the matter to his comprehension will be carefully considered as these pages progress. ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... "There is nothing the matter with me, nor likely to be, for I am tough as shoe leather; only sometimes my temper gets knobby, because all the children I can find to teach are grown-up babies of thirty and forty, who prefer flirting to arithmetic, and have to be continually snubbed in order to keep them in their places. The stupid creatures ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... hope; whose sanguine notions never go by induction, but by leaps; who never calculate the difficulties, but only see the thing complete and rounded in imagination;—men with plenty of poetry, and no arithmetic; whose theories work miracles, but whose attempts are failures. It is pleasant, sometimes, to meet with people like these, who, clothed in the scantiest garments, and with only a crust upon their tables, at the least touch of suggestion, mount into ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... exact sciences. "Applied to the mensuration of human fecundity," he tells us, "the most fallacious of all things is geometrical demonstration;" and he again informs us that those "act an irrational and irrelevant part who affect to measure the mighty depth of God's mercies by their arithmetic, and to demonstrate, by their geometrical ratios, that it is inadequate to receive and contain the efflux of that fountain of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... like to leave her in such evident difficulties, and said, with a smile, 'Your budget? Are you good at arithmetic?' ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exerted to one-half of their capability." I thoroughly agree that inability to concentrate is one of the chief symptoms of the mental machine being out of condition. "Esperance's" suggested cure is rather drastic. She says: "Perhaps one of the best cures for mental sedentariness is arithmetic, for there is nothing else which requires greater power of concentration." Perhaps arithmetic might be an effective cure, but it is not a practical cure, because no one, or scarcely any one, would practise it. I cannot imagine the plain ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... course, yet built I know around a nucleus of strange truth. It was"—his tone was half whimsical, half apologetic—"it was that this jeweled world was ridden by some mathematical god, driving it through space, noting occasionally with amused tolerance the very bad arithmetic of another Deity the reverse of mathematical—a more or less haphazard Deity, the god, in fact, of us and the things ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... question in arithmetic," said Uncle Braun. "I am sure that any one of you can solve it. If one such vessel could carry thirty thousand hundredweight, how many horses would it take to draw that burden if two horses could draw fifty hundredweight, and how many wagons and drivers if ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... workingman who is successful in commercial life, impresses his family and neighbors quite as does the prominent city man when he comes back to dazzle his native town. The children of the working people learn many useful things in the public schools, but the commercial arithmetic, and many other studies, are founded on the tacit assumption that a boy rises in life by getting away from manual labor,—that every promising boy goes into business or a profession. The children destined for factory life are furnished with what would be most useful ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... subject has a definite number, it follows that all books on any subject must stand together. The tables show the order in which subjects follow one another. Thus 512 Algebra precedes 513 Geometry, and follows 511 Arithmetic. ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... the Greek dynasties are finally expressed in the kinghoods of Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus, who judge infallibly, and divide arithmetically. But the dynasty of the Gothic king is in equity and compassion, and his arithmetic is ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... Such a process may answer in sculpture, because there a quantity of rough-hewing occurs, which can no more be improved by committing it to a Phidias, than a common shop-bill could be improved in its arithmetic by Sir Isaac Newton. But in literature such arrangements are degrading; and, above all, in a work which was but too much exposed already to the presumption of being a mere effort of mechanic skill, or (as Curll said to the House of Lords)" a knack; "it was deliberately helping forward ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... I was a favourite with my schoolfellows, who frequently did my compositions for me. I did not care for any studies, except geography and drawing. Arithmetic drove me wild, spelling plagued my life out, and I thoroughly despised the piano. I was very timid, and quite lost my ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt |
