"Fewest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Cephalus as a very tolerable portion of existence is characteristic, not only of him, but of Greek feeling generally, and contrasts with the exaggeration of Cicero in the De Senectute. The evening of life is described by Plato in the most expressive manner, yet with the fewest possible touches. As Cicero remarks (Ep. ad Attic.), the aged Cephalus would have been out of place in the discussion which follows, and which he could neither have understood nor taken part in without a violation of dramatic propriety ...
— The Republic • Plato
... told her, in the fewest words, that it was their little friend he came to see; and what he had to announce to their little friend. At which astounding intelligence, Flora clasped her hands, fell into a tremble, and shed tears of sympathy and pleasure, like the good-natured ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... the state, seeing that so many are prepared to go to the rescue? 89. And I think it far easier to resist your wrongs than to defend the conduct of these men. But they say that Eratosthenes did the fewest evils of the Thirty, and, on this account, they demand that he shall be saved; but because, of (all) other Greeks, he has done you the most wrongs, they do not think he ought to perish. 90. Now therefore you will show what opinion you hold in regard to these matters; if you convict him, it ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... spoke: "This," he said, "is how I see the matter; if fight we must, let us make preparation to sell our lives dearly, but if we desire to cross with the greatest ease, the point to consider is, how we may get the fewest wounds and throw away the smallest number of good men. Well then, that part of the mountain 11 which is visible stretches nearly seven miles. Where are the men posted to intercept us? except at the road itself, they are nowhere to ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... it." And the same philosopher reports, that Polyeuctus, the Sphettian, one of the Athenian politicians about that time, was wont to say that Demosthenes was the greatest orator, but Phocion the ablest, as he expressed the most sense in the fewest words. And, indeed, it is related, that Demosthenes himself, as often as Phocion stood up to plead against him, would say to his acquaintance, "Here comes the knife to my speech." Yet it does not appear whether he had this feeling for his powers ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... the discovery and development of mineral resources requires a free field for individual initiative, and that the fewest possible obstacles are to be put in the way of private ownership. Governments have not as a rule been greatly interested nor particularly successful in exploration. Therefore, in framing laws of ownership, concessions have been made to encourage private initiative in exploration ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... are no footlights, nothing theatrical; only the Great Tragedy wrought out as a living reality. I think of all the scenes; the one that made the deepest impression upon me was the one in which there were the fewest actors and least acting. That was the Garden of Gethsemane. So intense was the agony of spirit, that it seemed as if I myself should cry out if the disciples had not gone away and left the Saviour alone to ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... were left little else than their families and their bodies. The families were disposed of. It is a known observation, that those who have the fewest of all other worldly enjoyments are the most tenderly attached to their children and wives. The most tender of parents sold their children at market. The most fondly jealous of husbands sold their wives. The tyranny of Mr. Hastings extinguished every sentiment of father, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... purchaser cutting them off with a bolo. The price is from 20 to 30 centavos per hundred, depending upon their size, softness, thickness, and imperfections. The longest, thinnest, darkest green leaves, with the fewest imperfections, are considered the best and cost the most. In Cavinti, where the leaves are imported from Luisiana and Majayjay, the price of the best leaves is 50 centavos per hundred. The estimates of the number of leaves yielded by a plant in a year differ considerably. By ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller
... art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... set his love upon you, not choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... your approval. In doing so they are to bear in mind that taxes which tend to penalize or repress industry and enterprise are to be avoided; that provisions for taxation should be simple, so that they may be understood by the people; that they should affect the fewest practicable subjects of taxation which will serve for the general distribution ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... were long to tell all those valiant deeds. For for Phylakidas am I come, O Muse, a dispenser of thy triumphal songs, and for Pytheas, and for Euthymenes[9]; therefore in Argive fashion my tale shall be of fewest words. ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... will say the fewest possible number of words. It was a church such as there are, I think, thousands in England—low, incommodious, kept with difficulty in repair, too often pervious to the wet, and yet strangely picturesque, and correct too, according ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... into our account of the human mind, but it has been true of the nations of the west. Yet the recognition of this law did not prevent the writer from occasionally falling into some of the old canting commonplaces about people being happiest who have fewest wants. As if, on the contrary, that action which he describes as the true element of man, were not directly connected with the incessant multiplication of wants. We may take this, however, as a casual lapse into the common form of moralists of ascetic ages. In ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... we all! To be the best, Is but the fewest faults to have:— Look thou then to thyself, and leave the rest To God, thy conscience, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the chancery, I put my bar in the keyhole, but finding immediately that I could not break it open, I resolved on making a hole in the door. I took care to choose the side where the wood had fewest knots, and working with all speed I struck as hard and as cleaving strokes as I was able. The monk, who helped me as well as he could with the punch I had taken from the desk, trembled at the echoing clamour of my pike which ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... upon the powerful reaction which had been brought about, and exultingly informed his Lordship that of the four candidates who had contested the constituency of Lennox and Addington Mr. Bidwell had polled the fewest votes. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... as may be consistent with necessary condensation and, frequently, elimination. It should be a consecutive, lively narrative, with the necessary elucidating explanations incorporated in the text and with the fewest and briefest possible footnotes, while it should contain no critical or mythological digressions.... What we want in telling it to the young, is to take the epic just as it is, condensing and expurgating, but not ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... associated with hair, as the story of Samson bears witness. Ammon found among Baden conscripts (L'Anthropologie, 1896, p. 285) that when the men were divided into classes according to the amount of hair on body, the first class, with least hair, have the smallest circumference of testicle, the fewest number of men with glans penis uncovered, the largest number of infantile voices, the largest proportion of blue eyes and fair hair, the smallest average height, weight, and chest circumference, while in all these respects the men with hairy bodies were at the other extreme. It has been known ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... mean to live in the meantime?" Mr. Low, who was an energetic man, had assumed almost an angry tone of voice. Phineas for awhile sat silent;—not that he felt himself to be without words for a reply, but that he was thinking in what fewest words he might best convey his ideas. "You have a very modest allowance from your father, on which you have never been able to keep yourself free ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... account, though father was always glad to see them; and I remember how he took each one of our baskets, as we came into the kitchen, looked into it, and turned over and counted the fishes it contained. My brother Fred generally had the most, and I had the fewest: but it seems that even for other things than fishes I never had a taking way about me. Father was very fond of them, for mother had a way of frying their little thin bodies into a nice brown crisp, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... nothing for pity and love, And thrice happy are they that hath no need them to prove. God he knows the world is grown to such a stay, That men must use Fraud and Dissimulation too, or beg by the way. Therefore I'll do as the most doth; the fewest shall laugh me to scorn, And be a fellow amongst good fellows to hold ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... account, therefore, which has been given, you yourself may perceive the difference; which if it were to be pronounced of every one singly, I should affirm Tiberius to have excelled them all in virtue; that young Agis had been guilty of the fewest misdeeds; and that in action and boldness Caius came ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... aid of the great expense Great Britain has put herself to on their account. No tax appears to me so easy and equitable as a stamp duty. It will fall only upon property, will be collected by the fewest officers, and will be equally spread over America and the West Indies.... It does not require any number of officers vested with extraordinary powers of entering houses, or extend a sort of influence which I never wished to increase. The colonists now have it in their power, ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... granite of his nature. Between them there was a brotherhood that beat down the antagonism of race, and was stronger than the instinctive hate of the oppressed for all who came under the abhorred standard of the usurpers. He liked the Arabs, and they liked him; a grave courtesy, a preference for the fewest words and least demonstration possible, a marked opinion that silence was golden, and that speech was at best only silver-washed metal, an instinctive dread of all discovery of emotion, and a limitless power of resisting and suppressing ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... labor under the delusion that a claim is strong in proportion to the extent of its array of elements. The exact opposite is the truth, and that claim is the strongest which recites the fewest number of elements. It is the duty of the inventor to analyze his invention and know what is and what is not essential to its realization. It is the duty of the patent solicitor to sift out the essential ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... probably under 50,000, but how much it is impossible to estimate. It is a heterogeneous mixture of all the nations and religions of the East—Turks, Arabs, Persians, Indians, Armenians, Chaldaeans and Jews. Of the latter there are about 1900, engaged in trade and commerce. Fewest in number are the Turks, comprising only the officials. Most numerous are the Arabs, chiefly Shi'ites. The wealthiest and most influential personage in the capital and the vilayet is the nakib, or marshal of the nobility (i.e. descendants of the family of the prophet, who ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... dangerous affectation of the monotone, or solemn sameness of pronunciation, which to my ear is insupportable; for of all faults that so frequently pass upon the vulgar, that of flatness will have the fewest admirers. That this is an error of ancient standing seems evident by what Hamlet says, in his instructions to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... as is his usual manner, embraces in the fewest possible words the mightiest things, that he may incite the reader to the most diligent consideration of the works of God. Of the pain and righteous grief of the parents at the murder of Abel by his brother we have spoken before. I see no reason why we should not believe ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... was this extraordinary man of whom half the world was talking while the fewest, even in his own home city, ever saw him. Fewer still knew him well. It suited his temper and native modesty, as it did the state of his bodily health, to keep himself secluded. His motto was: "bene vixit qui bene latuit—he has lived well ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... 375 pages more than 7500 synonyms. It has been the study of the author to give every definition or distinction in the fewest possible words consistent with clearness of statement, and this not merely for economy of space, but because such condensed statements are most easily apprehended ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... and select a plank of cedar having the fewest knots and the straightest grain. Saw or split a piece out of it six feet long, two inches wide, and about an inch thick. Plane it straight and roughen its two-inch surface with a file. Obtain a strip of white straight-grained hickory six feet long, two inches wide, ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... have we yet arrived at the form which will spare most room, and use fewest materials. No; and to get farther we must apply the general principle to our wall, which is equally true in morals and mathematics, that the strength of materials, or of men, or of minds, is always most available when it is applied as closely ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... moufful den," added Tallow Dick. "De way I looks at it, dey ain't no use handin' out sense to a nigger ef he ain't got no place to put it. 'Sides, dese things offen-times turns out fur de best; orphants leaves de fewest mourners. Good-by, Red Hoss, an' kindly give my reguards to any frien's of mine dat you meets up wid on 'yother side ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... great deal of it, for the editor had condensed everything into the fewest words possible, and more than once Murray's eyes opened wider or his mouth puckered up as if for a whistle. The world had been moving fast while he ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... rivals were the two greatest monarchs of continental Europe, Francis I of France and Charles V of Spain. Henry, Francis, and Charles were all young, all ambitious, and all exceedingly capable men. Henry had the fewest subjects, Charles by far the most. Francis had a compact kingdom well situated for a great European land power. Henry had one equally well situated for a great European sea power. Charles ruled vast dominions scattered ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... Finally, when he had put the string around his papers, he pushed them over to one side and looked over to me, and a smile came over his worn face. He said: "I am a very busy man and have only a few minutes to spare. Now tell me in the fewest words what it is you want." I began to tell him, and mentioned the case, and he said: "I have heard all about it and you do not need to say any more. Mr. Stanton was talking to me only a few days ago about that. You can go to the hotel and rest assured that the President never did sign ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... entered the drawing-room slowly. She put her hand timidly into Mr. Patterson's, then sat down, very prim and uncomfortable, with her legs dangling from the edge of the chair and answered his questions in a shy undertone and the fewest possible words. Mr. Patterson was hardly less embarrassed ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... I had been accustomed to consider pious and virtuous, and whom I had expected to find in a high place in Heaven, rather than there below, and yet of those very persons the Elect could recall the fewest deeds that had been done from purely generous motives. An act was mentioned of this one or that, which on the surface seemed good, sometimes even great,—but there on high the springs of human actions ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... all the other slave States, whose servile population was relatively larger than that of Maryland, were below her in the rate of profit. The law extends to counties, those having comparatively fewest slaves increasing far more rapidly in wealth and population. This, then, is the formula as to the rate of profit on capital. First, the free States; next the States and counties of the same State having the fewest relative ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... enemy with their fleets, and that the viceroy should act as superior officer if he came in person. From this, they took occasion to oppose Silva, and said that he was not obeying your Majesty's orders. They reminded him that he did not have sailors, because while the fewest number of sailors necessary for ten galleys amounted to fifty, he did not have twelve effective ones, because they ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... Again, "All manner of inconveniences could not be avoided because of the imperfection of matter and the nature of motion. That state of things were therefore preferable which was attained with the fewest and the least inconveniences." Then follows a kind of menace, "And who but a very rash, indiscreet person will affirm that God has not made choice of this?"—when every one must perceive that the bare propounding of the question ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... her listening friend: every one who had anything to give—it was true they were the fewest—made the sharpest possible bargain for it, got at least its value in return. The strangest thing, furthermore, was that this might be, in cases, a happy understanding. The worker in one connection was the worked in another; it was as broad as it was long—with ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... of men, we shall not err, if we regard it as a moral barometer indicating and permanently marking the rise or fall of a nation's life. To study a people's language will be to study them, and to study them at best advantage; there, where they present themselves to us under fewest disguises, most nearly as they are. Too many have had a hand in the language as it now is, and in bringing it to the shape in which we find it, it is too entirely the collective work of a whole people, ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... two her frigidity was something wonderful, as she found him inclined to make attempts to cultivate her acquaintance; but she thoroughly succeeded in repelling him. He left off trying to talk to her; and one day when they were obliged to go in to dinner together, only exchanged the fewest and most formal of words with her, and positively neglected ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... happily agreed, In name of both, great Shakspeare thus decreed:— 1080 If manly sense, if Nature link'd with Art; If thorough knowledge of the human heart; If powers of acting vast and unconfined; If fewest faults with greatest beauties join'd; If strong expression, and strange powers which lie Within the magic circle of the eye; If feelings which few hearts like his can know, And which no face so well as his can show, Deserve ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... they not most prosperous who commit the fewest errors in respect either of themselves or of ...
— Eryxias • An Imitator of Plato
... Summing up in fewest words what many scarce could tell, I know of none in strength and act like him. And having won the prize in all the fivefold forms of race which the umpires had proclaimed, he then was hailed, proclaimed an Argive, ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... you should have by your side some one akin to you. His instructions were that in no circumstances was I to offer any remark upon the proceedings. Indeed, I am not allowed to speak unless in answer to a question directly put to me, and then in the fewest possible words." ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... say the most sensible thing in the clearest terms, and in the fewest possible words. His supreme respect for his hearers won their like ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... dictionaries are arranged will serve to convey a correct notion of the nature of this extraordinary language. All the two hundred and twelve roots or keys are drawn fair and distinct on the head of the page, beginning with the most simple, or that which contains the fewest number of lines or points, and proceeding to the most complicated; and on the margins of the page are marked the numeral characters one, two, three, &c. which signify, that the root or key at the top will be found ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... did. I was, I trust, gentle with her. I disengaged myself without abruptness and led her to a seat. I said nothing—but when she was more at ease within herself, I knelt before her, kissed her hand respectfully, and left her. It was, I am sure, a case where fewest words were best. I believe that she was weeping; I ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... Lancashire, Somersetshire, Yorkshire, may revel in their patois without raising a doubtful feeling or a smile, but the brogue of Ireland does the work at once, and the unhappy being from whom it issues slinks back into himself degraded, as he hears the certain laugh which answers his fewest words, and the almost certain refusal to admit him within the pale of his class in England. Hence St. Giles's as it was—the purlieu of Westminster, as it is—the Irish labourer's refuge in England, is often the lowest point, because ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers
... sufficient for all the purposes of rational enjoyment. Both were aware that wealth is a relative thing, and that the positively rich are not those who have the largest possessions but those who have the fewest vain or selfish desires to gratify. From these they were happily exempt. Both possessed too many resources in their own minds to require the stimulus of spending money to rouse them into enjoyment, or give ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... of his addresses to students, said: "You have chosen one of the noblest, the most important, and the most interesting of professions, but also the most arduous and the most self-denying, involving the largest sacrifices and the fewest rewards. He who is not prepared to find in its cultivation and exercise his chief recompense, has mistaken his calling and should retrace ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... history of the ritual of purification and that of the conception of purity throughout antiquity (Evolution of Religion, London, 1905, pp. 88-192), but unfortunately he has not taken Egypt into account where the primitive forms have been maintained with perhaps the fewest alterations. ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... has a criminal record of 833.1 to the million, while the South Atlantic division, including the states of the Southern Atlantic coast shows a record of 831.7. The Western division has an average of 1300. The section that has the fewest Negroes has the highest average, and the states that have the largest quota of blacks show the lowest criminal rates. If we compare state with state the same interesting results are revealed. The criminal record of New York ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... could not disguise, the little party of horse countermarch, in order to descend the glen. Her feelings did not escape Bolton: "I forgive you, dame," he said, "for being suspicious that an English falcon was hovering over your Scottish moor-brood. But fear not—those who have fewest children have fewest cares; nor does a wise man covet those of another household. Adieu, dame; when the black-eyed rogue is able to drive a foray from England, teach him to spare women and children, for the sake ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... man never had; 'Tis sad That 'mongst all earthly friends the fewest Unfaithful ones should thus be clad In canine lowliness; yet truest They, be their ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... will, true or false sense of duty, indolence or exhaustion, of accidents which no mortal could have foreseen. In short, he is the victim of a hundred thousand impressions, of which the most have an intimidating, the fewest an encouraging tendency. By long experience in War, the tact is acquired of readily appreciating the value of these incidents; high courage and stability of character stand proof against them, as the rock resists the beating of the waves. He who would yield ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... of the fewest and simplest words that can be found in the compass of the language, to express the thing meant: these few words being also arranged in the most straightforward and intelligible way; allowing inversion only when the subject can be made ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... it was a good deal for a lad to say, at that age, and with Bob's upbringing and popularity, even though he said it rather scornfully in the fewest words. The scorn was really for himself, and I could well understand it. Nay, I was glad to have something to forgive in the beginning, I with my unforgivable mission, and would have laughed the matter off without another word if Bob had ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... again, and to see things about me, as things really were. Looking towards the sand-hills, I saw the men-servants from out-of-doors, and the fisherman, named Yolland, all running down to us together; and all, having taken the alarm, calling out to know if the girl had been found. In the fewest words, the Sergeant showed them the evidence of the footmarks, and told them that a fatal accident must have happened to her. He then picked out the fisherman from the rest, and put a question to him, turning about again towards ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... liberty which the story-teller takes with his readers, and those of us have the fewest readers who make the most digressions; hence the little old-fashioned civility of apologising for them. The one I have just made seemed necessary to explain why Sister Giovanna was able to go to her patient directly from Severi's rooms, and to take up her work with as much quiet efficiency ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... them,' I said, as I put it aside. Somehow I felt a sudden reluctance at the thought of seeing those two letters in the hands and under the eyes of an inveterate joker like Dave. 'I'm no wiser in the matter of address, however.' And then I told him the purport of the letters in the fewest words possible. ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... and stood as straight as a ramrod, looking very red indeed. In three minutes more he was brought face to face with the commander-in-chief of the armies of the United States, and he felt as if he had been surrounded and compelled to surrender. Captain Hamilton reported the matter in the fewest words possible, but all the while the general had been watching Ned, looking right through him, and in a moment Ned found himself feeling perfectly easy. If General Scott had been his uncle, he could not have spoken to him in a kinder ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... his 1,000 also. There would be no risk of a seat being left vacant through two candidates of the same party sharing a quota between them—an unwritten law would soon come to be recognised—that the one with fewest votes should give place to the other. And, with candidates of two opposite parties, this difficulty could not arise at all; one or the other could always be returned by the surplus votes ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... for one moment, resolved to make a clean breast of it all, and this she did with the fewest possible words. ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... thoughts than to limit myself to opening up Northern literature to Europe. Thus it came about that when the time in my life arrived that I felt compelled to settle outside Denmark I chose for my place of residence Berlin, the city with which I had fewest points in common, and where I could consequently learn most and ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... author keeping himself out of sight as much as possible. His characters appear, speak their parts and vanish with no explanatory words from him except the occasional stage direction limited to the fewest possible words. There is no description, except when the actors give an account of something that does not occur upon the stage. There is little of narration, except to explain what does not appear upon the scene or to give clearness to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... smoothest run, deep are the fords; The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move; The firmest faith is in the fewest words; The turtles cannot sing, and yet they love; True hearts have eyes and ears, no tongues to speak; They hear, and see, and sigh, and ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... mighty pleased with Jane's coming to us again. Up, and away goes Alce, our cooke-mayde, a good servant, whom we loved and did well by her, and she an excellent servant, but would not bear being told of any faulte in the fewest and kindest words and would go away of her owne accord, after having given her mistresse warning fickly for a quarter of a yeare together. So we shall take another girle and make little Jane our cook, at least, make a trial of it. Up, and after much ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... order that his attention may not be diverted from public affairs by his own cravings for useless luxuries. God alone is entirely without wants, and we approach nearest to the divine ideal when we can reduce our wants to the fewest possible. Just as a healthy man requires neither excess of clothing or of food, so a man's life and that of his family, if properly regulated, can be maintained at a trifling cost. His income, however, must exactly tally with his requirements; for we cannot call that man contented who ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... their own fire gladdened them at length, and when the last step was taken, Sylvia sat down with an inward conviction she never could get up again. Warwick told their mishap in the fewest possible words, while Mark, in a spasm of brotherly solicitude, goaded the fire to a roar that his sister's feet might be dried, administered a cordial as a preventive against cold, and prescribed her hammock the instant supper was done. She went away ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... the torsion index is to be adjusted so as to bring 0 deg. upon it to the index. This state of the instrument was adopted as that which gave the most direct expression of the experimental results, and in the form having fewest variable errors; the angular distance of 30 deg. being always retained as the standard distance to which the balls were in every case to be brought, and the whole of the torsion being read off at once on the graduated circle above. Under these circumstances ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... physico-chemical processes, but into more complex organic processes dependent upon the fundamental properties of living matter. The aim of Entwicklungsmechanik is defined by Roux to be the reduction of developmental events to the fewest and simplest Wirkungsweisen, or causal processes.[483] Two classes of causal processes may be distinguished, as "complex components" and "simple components" of development. The latter are directly explicable by the laws of physics and chemistry; the former, ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... for a moment at my feet, though at a loss to know how I could be calm amid so many exciting smells. I promised him as he lay there that he should never be compelled to learn any but the fewest facts necessary to make him as harmless as he was happy; chiefly not to bark at old ladies and babies, no matter how threatening their aspect, as they passed our house. A few things he had already ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... owe to thee of balmy breath, some gentle hours when life had fewest charms. And we are grateful for all this, to say nothing of your cider and ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... had the advantage of the amour. It was their enemy whom he forsook, and she might have forsaken him if he had not got the start of her. She had already forgotten her vows to her Sichaeus, and varium et nutabile semper femina is the sharpest satire in the fewest words that ever was made on womankind; for both the adjectives are neuter, and animal must be understood to make them grammar. Virgil does well to put those words into the mouth of Mercury. If a god had not spoken them, neither ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... leave much to arbitrary power; but where they be many, they leave more, the laws in this case, according to Justinian and the best lawyers, being as litigious as the suitors. Solon made few, Lycurgus fewer, laws; and commonwealths have the fewest at this day ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... all men, cannot but take delight in doing good even to his enemies. God, who giveth all things to all men, can receive nothing from any; and those among men, who do the most good, and receive the fewest returns, do most resemble their Creator: for which reason, St Paul delivereth it as a saying of our Saviour, that "it is more blessed to give than to receive." By this rule, what must become of those things which the world valueth as the greatest blessings, riches, power, and the like, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... of the Central Market is Francis Goodwin, Esq., and it is but justice to say, that it is highly creditable to his taste and skill. The front is of the Grecian order, and perhaps the largest piece of masonry in the county of York, with the fewest observable joints. It is expected to ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... applicable. I say the truest, that in which the notes most closely and faithfully express the meaning of the words, or the character of intended emotion; again, the simplest, that in which the meaning and melody are attained with the fewest and most significant notes possible; and, finally, the usefullest, that music which makes the best words most beautiful, which enchants them in our memories each with its own glory of sound, and which applies them closest to the heart at the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... maritime powers are at strife, the one that has the fewest ships must always avoid doubtful engagements; it must run only those risks necessary for carrying out its missions, avoid action by manoeuvring, or at worst, if forced to engage, assure itself of favorable conditions. The attitude to be taken should depend radically upon the power of your opponent. ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... to state, first, that the prolificness of a given number of marriages will, all other circumstances being the same, vary in proportion to the condensation of the population, so that that prolificness shall be greatest where the numbers on an equal space are the fewest, and, on the contrary, the smallest where ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... give rise to such beauty. And is not the creation of the seed of a violet or rose something infinitely grander than the decking of a flowerless plant with newly created roses? The attainment of the highest and most diversified beauty and utility with the fewest and simplest means is always the sign of what we call in man "creative" genius. Is not the same true of God? I think you all feel the ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... artistic and mental difficulties here in Vienna, and afterwards in Rome, it may be well in fewest words to indicate the perplexed state of things in Germany generally—a wide theme on which volumes have been written. We have to consider that Europe had suffered under the throes of the great French Revolution, and that then followed the galling despotism ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... must propose to every lady before the evening is over. The ladies use every effort they can to prevent them from "coming to the point." The man making the most offers receives the prize. The lady receiving the fewest declarations ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... is called upon us: and that we are the seed which the Lord hath blessed. Deut. 28. 10 Esay. 61. 9. There is no people but will strive to excell in something: what can we excell in if not in holinesse? If we look to number, we are the fewest; If to strength, we are the weakest; If to wealth and riches, we are the poorest of all the people of God throughout the whole world, we cannot excell (nor so much as equall) other people in these things; and if we come short in grace and holiness ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... told us, very frankly his manner of writing; he confessed that what he first committed to paper seldom could be printed without variation or correction, even to a single line: he copied everything over, he said, himself, and three transcribings were the fewest he could ever make do; but, generally, nothing went from him to the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... Depend upon it, it is as true as Nature is true, that, if you force them out of the religion of habit, education, or opinion, it is not to yours they will ever go. Shaken in their minds, they will go to that where the dogmas are fewest,—where they are the most uncertain,—where they lead them the least to a consideration of what they have abandoned. They will go to that uniformly democratic system to whose first movements they owed their emancipation. I recommend you seriously to turn this in your mind. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... signal-shot among the Nations; intimating that they were, one and all, to go battling. Which they did, with a witness; making a terrible thing of it, over all the world, for above seven years to come. Foolish Nations; doomed to settle their jarring accounts in that terrible manner! Nay, the fewest of them had any accounts, except imaginary ones, to settle there at all; and they went into the adventure GRATIS, spurred on by spectralities of the sick brain, by phantasms of hope, phantasms of terror; and had, strictly speaking, no ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... me, an only child, by his second marriage with my mother, an only child too. Such a complication of only children, all tending to one family, is singular enough, and looks like fatality almost." He then adds, characteristically, "But the fiercest animals have the fewest numbers in their litters, as lions, tigers, and even elephants, which ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... endeavour to do this in the fewest possible words, and to be more especially brief where I have to pass again over ground which I have previously traversed in dealing with ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... surface, highly cultivated, traversed by excellent roads, running in straight lines from one town to another. I must, however, own that I have seldom traversed a more uninteresting country. But as the reign of a prince, which affords the fewest incidents for the commemoration of the historian, is thought to be often the most fortunate for the interests of his subjects, so a country, which is passed over in silence by the tourist, as devoid of those natural beauties, which fix his attention, ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... unnecessary deliberation. Allen, wishing to arrange an appointment with Dan for luncheon the next day, waited for him to come into the aisle. Dan had not the slightest idea of introducing his charge to Allen or to any one else, and he stepped in front of her to get rid of his friend with the fewest words possible. But Marian so disposed herself at his elbow that he could ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... becomes useful to inquire whether so many JUST causes of war are likely to be given by UNITED AMERICA as by DISUNITED America; for if it should turn out that United America will probably give the fewest, then it will follow that in this respect the Union tends most to preserve the people in a state of peace with other nations. The JUST causes of war, for the most part, arise either from violation of treaties or from direct violence. America has already ...
— The Federalist Papers
... was warmly supported by Piatt, was my competitor. Schenck and I always maintained friendly relations. He served his district long and faithfully in the House of Representatives, was a brilliant debater, had the power of condensing a statement or argument in the fewest possible words, and uttering them with effective force. Next to Mr. Corwin, and in some respects superior to him, Schenck was ranked as the ablest Member of the House of Representatives from Ohio during his period of active life, from ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... construction of the human vocal organs. Scarcely is moderate and natural compass of tone still permitted, even in a song. In every age the song-composer had been allowed to construct his melodies out of the fewest possible tones. While the elder Bach in his arias often chases the human voice in the most ruthless manner from one extreme to the other, his sons and pupils in their little German songs confine themselves to the most modest compass. Most of the later composers proceeded in the same way ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... is told in the fewest words. What more was there to tell? The two ends, as it were, of a buried chain, appear above ground. Cause and effect were brought together. Rather, here was no chain of many links, as in physical phenomena, but here was the life-giving word, and there was the dead man living again. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... spiritual. That crown he had missed, even as did the multitude of mankind. Only to the elect is it granted—the few chosen, where all are called. To some it falls as if by the pure grace of Heaven, meeting them as they walk in the common way. Some, the fewest, attain it by merit of patient hope, climbing resolute until, on the heights of noble life, a face shines before them, the face of one who ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... to be found in Venetia and fewest in Contarini Fleming. This beautiful romance is by far the best of Disraeli's early books, and that in which his methods at this period can be most favourably studied. A curious shadow of Disraeli himself is thrown over it all; it cannot be styled ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... disproportionate to their number, size, and beauty, but by no means disproportionate to their value as being the only record, scant as it is, we possess of what has been deemed an early South African civilization. I will describe in the fewest words such of these buildings as I saw, leaving the reader of archaeological tastes to find fuller details in the well-known book of that enterprising explorer, the late Mr. Theodore Bent. Some short account ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce |
