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Minority   Listen
noun
Minority  n.  (pl. minorities)  
1.
The state of being a minor, or under age.
2.
State of being less or small. (Obs.)
3.
The smaller number; opposed to majority; as, the minority must be ruled by the majority.
4.
Those members of a legislature that belong to the political party which is in the minority in that institution; as, the bill will pass even if the minority are strongly opposed.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Minority" Quotes from Famous Books



... then set to work arguing over the information which I had given, and became so absorbed in their own contention that I believe there were times when they forgot my presence. Everything, after due discussion, was decided between them by vote, the one who found himself in the minority always submitting, though sometimes with a very bad grace. Indeed, on one occasion Lanc, who usually differed from the others, threatened to refer the matter to the general vote of the whole crew. There ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... are the last people with whom she would be safe. An order may go forth from that nebulous and distant Impersonality, the British Government, to the effect that a certain child is not to be dedicated to gods during her minority. But far away in their villages the people smile at a simplicity which can imagine that commands can eventually affect purposes. They may delay the fulfilment of such purpose; but India ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... guardian (who with all her sweetness of disposition could be authoritative when she liked) put a stop to the project by saying that she refused her consent to any plan involving absence from England before the expiration of my minority. She had the usual English idea that Paris is a more immoral place than London. Perhaps it may be, but great capitals such as Paris, London, and Vienna have this in common, that you may be moral in them, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... harem, the royal youth could discover the importance of exercising the vigor of his mind and body; and, by his personal merit, deserved a throne, on which he had been seated, while he was yet unconscious of the duties and temptations of absolute power. His minority was exposed to the almost inevitable calamities of domestic discord; his capital was surprised and plundered by Thair, a powerful king of Yemen, or Arabia; and the majesty of the royal family was degraded ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... in the house a shrill little cry, arresting his thought, and controverting it without a syllable. Nay, fruitless his life could not be, if his child grew up. Only the chosen few, the infinitesimal minority of mankind, leave spiritual offspring, or set their single mark upon the earth; the multitude are but parents of a new generation, live but to perpetuate the race. It is the will of nature, the common lot. And if indeed it lay within his power to shape a ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... there such trickery practised with reference to the brides as at Moscow." The innovations of Peter the Great broke through the oriental seclusion of the terem, as the women's apartments were called. During the minority of Ivan IV. the regency was committed to the care of his mother Elena, and was at best but a stormy period. When I van came to the throne the country was not even yet free from the incursions of the Tartars. In Hakluyt's voyages we have a curious account of one of these devastations ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... objects of his decided disapprobation; resembling, in this particular, all the great and good men who have ever existed, who have invariably maintained this opinion so long as they have been in the minority. ...
— English Satires • Various

... the minority of any proprietor his guardian shall have power to constitute and appoint ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... than to have an intelligent, or failing that, even a silent and patient human listener. He distinguished himself to all that ever heard him as at least the most surprising talker extant in this world,—and to some small minority, by no means to ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... hostess, that she was deliberately striving to see them as men who had a perfect right to fascinate a woman of her age and loveliness. Well, it had happened before. Elderly men of charm and character had won and kept women fully thirty years their junior. Possibly she belonged to that distinguished minority who refused to be enslaved by the Ancient Idea, that iron code devised by fore-thinking men when Earth was young and scantily peopled. . . . Still—why this curious eagerness, this—it was indecipherable . . . no doubt his lively imagination was playing ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... leader of the House of Representatives, by the members of the House in 1919. Mann was elected a Representative from Illinois in 1897, and he remained a member of Congress until his death in 1922. In 1912 he became minority leader. In addition to the Mann Act, his name is associated with other important legislation of the period such as the Pure Food and Drugs Act and the ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor

... accompanied his father in a successful assault upon Fort Frontenac; at twenty-six, in the colonial legislature, he became the rival of Philip Schuyler in the leadership and influence that enabled a patriotic minority to resist the aggressions of Great Britain; at thirty-six, holding a seat in the Second Continental Congress, he voted for the Declaration of Independence, and commanded a brigade of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... persons of altogether inadequate imagination, the people who never seem to learn thoroughly, or hear distinctly, or think clearly. (I believe if everyone is to be carefully educated they would be considerably in the minority in the world, but it is quite possible that will not be the reader's opinion. It is clearly a matter of an arbitrary line.) They are the stupid people, the incompetent people, the formal, imitative people, the people who, in any properly organised State, should, as a class, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... need to ask?' She eyed me defiantly. 'I respected father's wishes when I was in my minority. I traveled and studied and did all the tiresome things he commanded me to do—as long as he had the right to command. But when I became my own mistress I—took my full freedom. He made his life to suit himself; I intend to make mine to suit myself. I'm sorry I ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... are the most generally diffused in a fossil state, and may be called the medals principally employed by nature in recording the chronology of past events. In the Upper Miocene rocks (No. 5 of the table, p. 135) we begin to find a considerable number, although still a minority, of recent species, intermixed with some fossils common to the preceding, or Eocene, epoch. We then arrive at the Pliocene strata, in which species now contemporary with man begin to preponderate, and in the newest of which nine-tenths of the ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... minority, Miss Watson must have succeeded at once to six thousand a year on completing her twenty-first year; and she also inherited a Chancery-suit, which sort of property is now (1853) rather at a discount in public estimation; but let the reader assure himself that even ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviki Internationalists, it was decided to base the presidium upon proportionality. Several Mensheviki leaped to their feet protesting. A bearded soldier shouted at them, "Remember what you did to us Bolsheviki when we were the minority!" Result-14 Bolsheviki, 7 Socialist Revolutionaries, 3 Mensheviki and 1 Internationalist (Gorky's group). Hendelmann, for the right and centre Socialist Revolutionaries, said that they refused to take part in the presidium; the same from Kintchuk, for the Mensheviki; and from ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... very good average; very good indeed. As long as it averages as well as that, I think we can feel very well satisfied. Even in these days, when people growl so much and the newspapers are so out of patience, there is still a very respectable minority of honest ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... series of events had transpired in Leinster, going to show that its aspiring barons had been seized with the madness which precedes destruction. William, Earl Marshal and Protector of England during the minority of Henry III., had married Isabella, the daughter of Strongbow and granddaughter of Dermid, through whom he assumed the title of Lord of Leinster. He procured the office of Earl Marshal of Ireland—originally conferred on the first de Lacy—for his own nephew, and thus converted the de Lacys ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... after the burial of his sister Congressman Mallard took part in a debate on a matter of war-tax legislation upon the floor of the House. As usual he voiced the sentiments of a minority of one, his vote being the only vote cast in the negative on the passage of the measure. His speech was quite brief. To his colleagues, listening in dead silence without sign of dissent or approval, it ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... slavery, but the Right of Secession, since that was the irritating point d'honneur, and, what was more, the real first cause of injury which at first presented itself. Mr. Lincoln had cause to know that in the beginning, even in the South itself, secession was only the work of a turbulent minority. 'To have yielded would have been to have written himself down before the world as incompetent—nay, as a traitor to the cause which he had just sworn to defend.' In short, we were misunderstood—painfully so—and it is not a matter of indifference to learn that at last there is a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... soon in concentrating his power; for Henry IV, flushed with his recent victory over the Saxons, had called at Goslar a diet of the princes of the empire, under the pretext of deciding, in their presence, the fate of their Saxon prisoners. Only a small minority of the princes obeyed the summons; but the real object of the king became evident when he made them swear to exalt, upon his own death, Conrad his son, a minor, to the throne. In the meantime, the news of the nomination of Hidolph, as successor to the sainted Anno, ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... upholding the right of the minority, had brought Louis XVI. to acknowledge the National Convention, and saved the people. Things were rendered legitimate by the end towards which they were directed. A dictatorship is sometimes indispensable. Long live tyranny, provided that the tyrant ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... a mistake, however, in assuming that those who think as I do are such a miserable minority. The whole essence of our thought is independence and individual judgment; so that we don't get welded into single bodies as the churches do, and have no opportunity of testing our own strength. There are, no doubt, all shades of opinion among us; but if you merely ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... appeared. These works may still be consulted for the 17th century, the period upon which Cheruel concentrated all his scientific activity. He edited successively the Journal d'Olivier Lefevre d'Ormesson(1860-1862), interesting for the history of the parlement of Paris during the minority of Louis XIV.; Lettres du cardinal Mazarin pendant son ministere (6 vols., 1870-1891), continued by the vicomte G. d'Avenel; and Memoires du duc de Saint-Simon, published for the first time according ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... Another theory of the source of oil has had some supporters, although they are much in the minority. This is the so-called "inorganic" theory, that oil comes from magmas and volcanic exhalations. In support of this theory attention is called to the fact that igneous rocks and the gases associated with them frequently ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... had ruled the nation. But now, when the center of power within the section passed from the weakening hands of Virginia to those of South Carolina, the aggressive leader of the Cotton Kingdom, the south found itself a minority section in the Union. When it realized this, it denied the right of the majority to rule, and proceeded to elaborate a system of minority rights as a protection against the forces of national development, believing that these forces threatened the foundations of the ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... came, started and brightened, and her eyes looked a soft protest; but it was a minority protest and gave way, and her face after all told him he might do what he liked. He gave her a reassuring smile, and went back to the orchard, presently returning with Reuben and Sam,—the one wearing a face of unqualified pleasure, the other of almost as unqualified ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... our age tends to the civilized habit of mind, as displayed in a love for intellectual things? Was there ever a time which saw the literature of knowledge and of the emotions so widely distributed? Does not the minority of the truly intelligent exercise a vast and profound influence? Does it not in truth lead the way, however slowly and irregularly the multitude ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... the storming of the Temple, but they were in the minority. All along, the crowd had been more inclined for private revenge than for martial deeds of valour; the Bastille had been taken by daylight; the effort might not have been so successful on a pitch-black night such as this, when one could ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... On account of the cancer of slavery and the resulting doctrine of State Rights. Nationality and liberty, the opposite view. The former was the party of action, and, therefore, though in a minority, it was bolder and more determined. But the shell of materialism dropped from the North, and it was aroused with electric energy when Sumter was fired on; there was no passion, only such fervid resolve to preserve our nation as the world never before saw. ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger

... first place, a minority President. Jackson's popular vote was probably larger; his electoral vote was certainly so; and the vote in the House of Representatives was at the last moment swung to Adams only by certain unexpected and more or less accidental developments. By thus receiving ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... been most profusely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age. To the eyes of some it has been represented by the venal suffrages of a few of the satellites of power; to others by the votes of a timid or an interested minority; and some have even discovered it in the silence of a people, on the supposition that the fact of submission established the right ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... six windows on the ground floor are topped with round arches, and coming up the drive the house seems a perfect square. But this regularity of structure has on the east side been somewhat interfered with by a projection of some thirty or forty feet—a billiard room, in fine, which during John's minority Mrs Norton had thought proper to add. But she had lived to rue her experiment, for to this young man, with his fretful craving for beauty and exactness of proportion, it is an ever present source of complaint; and he had once in a half humorous, half serious way, gone so far as to ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... in history by his title of the Earl of Hertford at first, and afterward by that of Duke of Somerset. The youngest was called Sir Thomas Seymour. They were both made members of the government which was to administer the affairs of state during young Edward's minority. They were not, however, satisfied with any moderate degree of power. Being brothers of Jane Seymour, who was Edward's mother, they were his uncles, of course, and the oldest one soon succeeded in causing himself to be appointed protector. ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... impossible for me to do justice to the animated manner in which he delivered this discourse. It produced great effect upon the majority of his hearers; but there was a powerful minority it still more strongly influenced against him; and they continued to interrupt him with ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat

... engaged to Sissy Langton. Her father had left her at least eight hundred pounds a year, besides which there were all the accumulations of a long minority and this legacy. Mr. Hardwicke thought that the united incomes would be more than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... communion with him, and often to renew the sense of his love and grace, that would grow slack in our hearts, if our needs did not every day stir up fresh longing, and his returns by this means are so much the more refreshing. There is a time of children's minority when they stand in need of continual supplies from their parents, or tutors, because they are not entered in possession of their inheritance; and while they are in this state, there is nothing more beseeming them, than in all their wants to address to their father, and ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... suburban bridges, and those over large rivers, where great concentration of weight is possible. Class B denotes highway bridges in manufacturing districts having well-ballasted roads. Class C refers to ordinary country-road bridges, where travel is less frequent and lighter. A minority of the committee modified the table above by making the loads a little larger. The whole committee agreed in making the load per square foot less as the span is greater, which is, of course, correct. ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose

... and contradictory statements, according to the society they have found there; if you believe the one, nothing goes on there as it should be: if you believe the other, nothing goes on as it should not. Virtue, however, and decency are at least in the minority everywhere, and under some sort of a cloud or disadvantage; and this being the case, it is so much gain whenever an Herodes Atticus is found, to throw the influence of wealth and station on the side even of a decorous philosophy. A consular man, and the heir of an ample ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... his own shock enough to grate: "Well, we sure haven't. If that thing goes off, the gamma burst will kick up so many minority carriers in the transistors that the p-type crystals will act n-type, and the n-type act p-type, for a whole couple of microseconds. Every one of 'em will flip simultaneously! The computers' memory and program data systems will be ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson

... made the sale to Mallison it left Wood a minority stockholder, which position he did not fancy. He tried to sell out to Mallison. These men had a mutual dislike for each other and Wood after repeated efforts found they could not ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell

... that he is born to entertain the meaning of the world. Already we are inclined to reckon genius a mere faculty of saying, not of knowing, since it opens a common experience in every example. Minority and obligation to other eyes will cease. We have outgrown many a Magnus Apollo of childhood; his beauty is no longer beautiful, his gold is tinsel, we can dig better for ourselves. Therefore we can draw no line that will stand between poets and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... and out of the room by means of a windlass, so that the company was served without any intervention of domestics. But the place was shut up by Barbara, Aurelius XV's widow, a severe and devout Princess of the House of Bolkum and Regent of the Duchy during her son's glorious minority, and after the death of her husband, cut off in the pride ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... man, asked if it held out any chance for a job; and a red-headed masculine person of foreign design rose to inquire whether the bathing would be compulsory. A preliminary vote was overwhelmingly in favour of the five-dollar dues, though a small minority thought it should be free; a group of four persons believed they should draw ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... once kicked open the door of the House of Representatives when Speaker Reed had all doors locked to prevent the minority from leaving the floor and thus escaping a vote, was noted for his indifference to forms and rules. Speaker Reed, annoyed by members bringing lighted cigars upon the floor of the House just before opening time, had signs conspicuously ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... He had done his best. The hereditary dictatorship of a united world had spoken. No democratic minority had ever raised its head here. The society of Mureess was stratified in a way ancient India never thought of being, down to refuse collectors of a thousand generations of dishonorable standing. Ancient Japan ...
— Join Our Gang? • Sterling E. Lanier

... doubt you know of it and have been shocked by it, and perhaps on account of it have a little misjudged San Juan. We are not all cutthroats here, by any manner of means; I think I might almost say that the rough element is in the minority. We are in a state of transition, like all other frontier settlements. The railroad, though it doesn't come closer than the little tank station where you took the stage this morning, has touched our lives out here. A railroad brings civilizing influences; but the ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory

... to have it better done, For I'm no poet, nor a poet's son, But a mechanic, guided by no rule, But what I gained in a grammar school In my minority.' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... quick murmur of protest at this. The parson exchanged glances with the deacon and saw that they were hopelessly in the minority. ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... connection of the British Government with it in an official despatch, it is desirable to quote the language itself:—[42] "But this Government wishes to go further. Even in regard to those Uitlanders who are British subjects it is a small minority which, under the pretext of imaginary grievances, promotes a secret propaganda of race hatred, and uses the Republic as a basis for fomenting a revolutionary movement against this Government. Ministers of Her Majesty have so trenchantly expressed the truth about this minority that this Government ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz

... brought into general action in this country. The custom is either to cast across, with a tendency downwards, and to work the fly slightly as it swings round, or to cast down and work back. Three or two flies are used. Minnow fishers are in a minority, and fly-fishing is reckoned the correct method by the angler. Dr. Henshall had had so many "records" that he could not remember offhand his best with fly; but his heaviest bag—and he did not confess it with any ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... or plot to it, and never any action. If you should ever use any of these writers, I shall give up Science Fiction altogether. Please, Mr. Editor, continue to run Astounding Stories yourself, and don't heed the request of a minority who want dead authors to write dead ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... had sent down a large crowd of rooters with the team, and while, of course, they were in the minority, they were chock full of enthusiasm, and prepared to make up in noise what they lacked ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport

... regard to the connection between these widely divergent forms of disease. Their nature as blood-diseases carries with it the fact that they are preeminently persistent through many generations, so that today there is but a minority of human beings in whom all tendency towards them is missing. So predisposition advances with the continuity of environment, the one point at which, at least in the case of the so-called white plague, or tuberculosis, an effort against it has ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... law (which had been imposed by France) just before his death, in 1833, and revived the old Spanish law of succession. His eldest daughter, then three years old, was proclaimed Queen, by the name of Isabella II., and her mother guardian during her minority, which would end at the age of fourteen. Don Carlos, the king's eldest brother, immediately set up the standard of rebellion, supported by the absolutist aristocracy, the monks, and a great part of the clergy. The liberals rallied to the Queen. The Queen Regent did not, ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... have endeavoured to answer in my discourse of Mr. Badman; and therefore I have drawn him forth in his featours and actions from his Childhood to his Gray hairs. Here therefore thou hast him lively set forth as in Cutts; both as to the minority, flower, and seniority of his Age, together with those actions of his life, that he was most capable of doing, in, and under those present circumstances of time, place, strength; and the opportunities that did ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan

... power by the fall election in 1852. Their heads were turned by their success. They did not quite dare to repeal the law providing for a Constitutional Convention, but they undertook to repeal so much of it as required that the choice of delegates should be by secret ballot. The minority resisted this repeal with all their might. They alleged with great reason that it was not decent for the Legislature to repeal a provision which the people has expressly approved. But their resistance was in vain, and after a ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... property in the older sections where wills and deeds were not always drawn with clarity and skill. Old second or third mortgages, presumably paid, for which satisfactions were never recorded; tax liens that have not been cleared; or possible interests of minority heirs under a will dating back a generation or more; are some of the most common causes for imperfect titles. But if one is patient and the seller is willing to cooperate, such clouds can ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... of temporal power tends rather to strengthen than to weaken a great religious organization. There is no inclination in any part of the world to persecute Mohammedans, or interfere in any way with their faith. Only a very small minority of them are under the government of the Sultan, and those who are not enjoy as much religious liberty as those who are. This is not from fear of the Sultan, but it is in accord with the spirit ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... does not increase rapidly enough; at Seville, it should be two or three minutes, instead of "some seconds" in length. A more fatal objection, however, is that, if the explanation were correct, every earthquake-shock should consist of two parts, and this is only the case with a small minority. ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison

... thing as harmony of action is possible, and it has been found best to give a bare majority in the House of Representatives (but not in the Senate) the power to take final action upon a question without allowing of any discussion. In ordinary societies more regard should be paid to the rights of the minority, and a two-thirds vote be required, as in this Manual [Sec. 39], for sustaining an objection to the introduction of a question, or for adopting a motion for the Previous Question, or for adopting an order closing or limiting debate. In this respect the policy of the Pocket Manual ...
— Robert's Rules of Order - Pocket Manual of Rules Of Order For Deliberative Assemblies • Henry M. Robert

... attempts to desert in time of War ... death or such other punishment as the court martial may direct ... any other time any punishment except death." Essential features are: (1) An intent not to return. (2) An overt act of separation from duty. Drunkenness tends to show absence of the intent. Minority is no defense. Enlistment while in desertion does not remove the ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... whole tedious process, beginning with an account of the political obligations of the judge and district attorney, proceeding to a consideration of the habits of mind of each of the twelve jurymen, and ending with a summary of the majority and minority opinions of the court of appeals, and a discussion of the motives, ideals, traditions, prejudices, sympathies and chicaneries behind them, each and severally. When Cowperwood goes into the market, his operations are set forth in their ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... "Yes, it is very complete," he said; "almost too complete. But I am always in a minority when I discuss the question, so we will drop it, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... with John, and wrote of the satisfaction felt by her Uncle Henry and his friends in regard to the Dred Scott decision. She had been wise enough to take her Uncle Charles's advice and to hold her Republican tongue, as he with a minority in ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... was the last one called, because he had, during the discussion of the question, strongly opposed the proposition for abandonment, and it was naturally supposed that when he found himself in so hopeless a minority he would surrender. When his name was called, he made no answer until some one said to him: 'Stark, won't you vote?' Stark, during all this proceeding of calling the roll, had stood apart from his companions with bowed head and folded arms. When he was thus directly appealed to, he answered ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan

... hosts a peculiar one. To him, to a very large extent, Americans were all alike middle-class, dissenting Philistines; and so far as appears on the surface, Mr. Barnum's desire to "belong to the minority" pleased him as much as any other sign of approval conferred ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... small commonwealth were in the main of Italian blood. Some slight connection with the motherland they still maintained in the relations of commerce, and by the education of their professional men at Italian schools. While a small minority supported themselves as tradesmen or seafarers, the mass of the population was dependent for a livelihood upon agriculture. As a nation they had long ceased to follow the course of general European development. They had been successively the subjects of Greece, Rome, and the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... blind to this self-evident truth; and, to make matters worse, there was a split in their party, some of them being disposed to throw off the Bourbon yoke altogether; a natural desire, but as it was only felt by a minority, it added to the general confusion. Then came, as it was sure to come, the cry for separation from Sicily. The Sicilians wanted back the violated constitution obtained for them by the English in 1812, and would have ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... a foolish marriage; it might happen to anyone. The test of character is not whether one has or has not made a foolish marriage; the test comes after the foolish marriage has been made. What a triumph then to turn that failure into a success, as the statesman turns a minority into a majority! ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various

... votes are not given only to thinking men; and consequently a body of members has appeared in the House, energetic and now well trained, who have resolved by the clamour of their voices to put an end to the British power of governing the country. These members are but a minority among those whom Ireland sends to Parliament; but they have learned what a minority can effect by unbridled audacity. England is still writhing in her attempt to invent some mode of controlling them. But long before any such ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope

... courtesy apologises 'that a man of base estate and condition dare enterprise to admonish a Princess so honourable, endued with wisdom and graces singular.' Those whom Knox represented were a small minority of Scotchmen; but that did not prevent him demanding of the Regent far more than mere neutrality or 'indifferency' between the contending parties. He demands of her the reform of both religion and the church. He admits that 'your Grace's power ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes

... Chinese Exclusion Act of a few years ago. Eventually, the Chinese in Australia will be shut out from all occupations, and expelled or excluded from the country. A good many intelligent Australians deprecate the hostility to the Chinese, but when it comes to voting, this class of citizens is in the minority. ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox

... the room, a whispered earnest consultation took place, every one re-urging his former arguments. The conceders carried the day, but only by a majority of one. The minority haughtily and audibly expressed their dissent from the measures to be adopted, even after the delegates re-entered the room; their words and looks did not pass unheeded by the quick-eyed operatives; their names were registered ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... that it would never answer. They said, "If we put a hoe into the water, or the smallest bit of iron, it sinks immediately. How then can such a mass of iron float? it must go to the bottom." The minority answered that this might be true with them, but white men had medicine for everything. "They could even make a woman, all except the speaking; look at that one on the figure- head of the vessel." The unbelievers were astonished, and could hardly believe their eyes, when they saw the ship ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... interested in his main business: the promotion of freedom for creative activities in a democracy of the normals, he is bound to be beaten by the majority consisting of subnormals. There is nothing left for him but to cater to the minority of careerists, the one-eighth of the electorate representing superior intelligence. The intelligence tests employed in the War showed that and also that forty-five per cent of the examined, or about one half the total population, had a mental capacity, or natural ability that ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... numerically a lean minority even in the South, but their mastery over their fellow-citizens was absolute. Nor was there any mystery about it. As the owners of four million slaves, on an average worth not far from five hundred dollars each, they formed the greatest industrial combination—what at this time we would call ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... alarms capital, diminishes legitimate enterprise, and so decreases the demand both for products and for labor; that the only persons to be helped by it are the rich who have large debts to pay. This pamphlet was signed "A Friend of the People," and was received with great applause by the thoughtful minority in the Assembly. Du Pont de Nemours, who had stood by Necker in the debate on the first issue of assignats, arose, avowed the pamphlet to be his, and said sturdily that he had always voted against the emission of irredeemable paper and always ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White

... causes must ever exhibit a great difference in the amount of the population of its various sections, calling for a great diversity in the employments of the people, that the legislation of the majority might not always justly regard the rights and interests of the minority, and that acts of this character might be passed under an express grant by the words of the Constitution, and therefore not within the competency of the judiciary to declare void; that however enlightened and patriotic ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... add that I am prepared to take such measures as may seem to my legal advisers best to protect my interests. I am assured that the funds of one corporation will not be permitted by the courts to be donated to the bolstering up of another, over the protest of a minority stockholder. You may confidently assume that this advice will be tested to the utmost before the acts now threatened are permitted to be ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... period. When Violet came of age—on her twenty-fifth birthday—the estates were to be passed over to her in toto; but there was not a word in the Squire's will as to the income arising during her minority. Nor had the Squire made any provision in the event of his daughter's marriage. If Violet were to marry to-morrow, she would go to her husband penniless. He would not touch a sixpence of her fortune until she was ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon

... The hen-brained—a small minority—misbehaved as usual whenever the opportunity came to do the wrong thing; the meanest and most contemptible partisanship since the shameful era of the carpet bagger prevailed in a section of the Republic where the ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... men meet and talk over a difficulty, there is a probability of men's understanding each other's motives, and thus preserving charity. If one-twentieth part of a diocese insists upon certain observances which nineteen-twentieths repudiate, it seems clear that the very small minority is put out of court. Yet how often the small minority contains more salt than ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and Italy made progress toward resolving a bilateral issue dating from World War II over property and ethnic minority rights; progress with Slovenia on discussions of adjustments to land boundary, but problems remain in defining maritime boundary in Gulf of Piran; Croatia and Yugoslavia are negotiating the status of the strategically important ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... letter only I received from Cuthbert, denouncing grandmother's treachery, and announcing his father's rage and threats to disinherit and disown him if he did not repudiate the marriage, which he stated was invalid on account of his son's minority. He wrote that he would be compelled for the present to accede to his father's wishes, since for nearly two years at least he was wholly dependent on his bounty; but assured me that on the day when he could claim his inheritance from his mother he would acknowledge his marriage at all hazards, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... attacking his duchy. From 1424 until 1426 the citizens of Orleans purchased peace by money payments.[470] The Godons, not being in a position to take the field, were all the more ready to enter into such agreements. During the minority of their half English and half French King, the Duke of Gloucester, the brother and deputy of the Regent, and his uncle, the Bishop of Winchester, Chancellor of the Kingdom, were tearing out each other's hair, and their disputes were ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... not able to step outside merely because the gates are thrown down, nor to efface the brands on their souls by putting off the yellow badges. The isolation imposed from without will have come to seem the law of their being. But a minority will pass, by units, into the larger, freer, stranger life amid the execrations of an ever-dwindling majority. For better or for worse, or for both, the Ghetto will be gradually abandoned, till at last it becomes ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... was born to him, the sovereignty passed from the king to the infant, in whose name, and during whose minority only, the father continued to ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... on the canal is making most satisfactory progress. The type of the canal as a lock canal was fixed by Congress after a full consideration of the conflicting reports of the majority and minority of the consulting board, and after the recommendation of the War Department and the Executive upon those reports. Recent suggestion that something had occurred on the Isthmus to make the lock type of the canal less feasible than it was supposed ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... brilliancy. Anson, too, reminds one somewhat of that old Western pioneer, Davy Crockett, inasmuch as his practical motto is, 'When you know you're right, go ahead.' This latter trait was conspicuously shown in the year of the players' revolt in 1890, when, almost alone as a minority man, he stood by the National League in its greatest hour of need, in opposition to the desertion of hundreds of his confreres in the League ranks. In these prominent characteristics, we say, Anson stands as the most unique player known ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... then, of a partial sterility of crosses appearing in one part of the area occupied by the two forms, will be—that the great majority of the individuals will there consist of the two pure forms only, while in the remaining part these will be in a minority,—which is the same as saying that the new physiological variety of the two forms will be better suited to the conditions of existence than the remaining portion ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... refute the charge that Maryland was only a retreat for Romanists, removed the governor and appointed instead one who was a Protestant and a firm supporter of Parliament. The council was also changed so as to place the Catholics in the minority. The oath of the new governor restrained him from molesting any person, especially if of the Roman Catholic persuasion, on account of religious profession. The way was thus opened for the Act of Toleration passed in 1649. This law, after specifying certain speeches ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... a quick-firing gun, but he was plainly the sort of man who is either mad or right. The mass of the crowd was Nationalist, and already in threatening uproar; and a minority of equally angry Intellectuals, led by Armagnac and Brun, only made the ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... there is amongst the people of the Mother Country a minority, now ceasing to be small, which takes a quickening interest in the Colonies. It no longer consists merely of would-be investors, or emigrants who want to inquire into the resources, industries, and ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... to whom to turn for sympathy, and so the old cross had to be taken up again and carried day after day. Some of the girls sided sensibly with Nellie, and tried to make school-life pleasant to her; but they were unfortunately in the minority, and often got snubbed and censured by the ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... from their source on their turbid way. His expressions are often grotesque, but rarely offensive. Both writers are essentially ascetic,—though the one swallows Mirabeau, and the other says that Jane Eyre should have accepted Eochester and "left the world in a minority." But Emerson is never coarse, which Carlyle occasionally is; and Carlyle is never flippant, as Emerson often is. In condemning the hurry and noise of mobs the American keeps his temper, and insists on justice without vindictiveness: ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... palpable, and deliberate usurpation of power, by a determined majority, wielding the general government beyond the limits of its delegated powers, as calls upon the States which compose the suffering minority, in their sovereign capacity, to exercise the powers which, as sovereigns, necessarily devolve upon them, when their compact ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... followed by two of his fellow railroad men, flannel-clad and still perspiring from their afternoon's cricket. Against bare legs a cricket bat is a highly dissuasive argument. The Britons swung low and hard for the ancient right of the breed to break into a row wherever white men are in the minority against other races. The downhill wing of the mob being much the weakest, opened up for them with little resistance, leaving them a free path to the cavalryman, to whose side Perkins, with staff ready brandished, had advanced from ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... good singers at the opera-houses, and that one had to go to London and Paris to find them. To-day few of them can be found even in London and Paris; and, indeed, I could easily show, by giving lists of the famous singers of the past and present, that the Italians constitute a small minority as compared with the German, French, and Scandinavian singers of the first rank. The custom so long followed by singers of all nationalities of adopting Italian stage names has confused the public on the ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... Some white Republicans believed that the men by whom these declarations were made were honest and sincere,—and it may be that some of them were,—but it appears not to have occurred to them that if the votes of the colored men were suppressed the minority white vote, unaided and unprotected, would be powerless to prevent the application of methods which would nullify any organized effort on their part. In other words, nothing short of an effective national law, to protect the weak against the strong and the minority of the whites against ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch

... allies wherewith to form their new popular estate. Any estate of the Commons modelled on any equitable principle, either of property or population, must have been fatal to the Whigs; they, therefore, very dexterously adopted a small minority of the nation, consisting of the sectarians, and inaugurating them as the people with a vast and bewildering train of hocus-pocus ceremonies, invested the Dissenters with political power. By this ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... as a State shall choose to keep a portion of her people in this subordinate condition, she shall enjoy only this limited degree of representation. To us, it appears to be a concession made to freedom, and not to slavery. There is no obligation, unless self-imposed, to admit any but a minority of her whites to the enjoyment of political power, aristocracy being, in truth, more closely assimilated to republicanism than democracy. Republicanism means the sovereignty of public THINGS instead of that ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper

... peace-makers. But the minority were out for a division and insisted on taking it. Resulted in leave being given by majority of four to one, a conclusion hailed with renewed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various

... inadequate performance. If, therefore, you wish to send me to Berlin as your plenipotentiary, I am at your disposal, and give you my word that the whole world, with the exception of envious and inimical persons, who will be reduced to a small minority, shall be content. But before I consent to this it is absolutely necessary that Herr von Hiilsen should give me an invitation to Berlin black on white, and also invest me with the powers which my responsibility ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... principal advisers attached to the sun-goddess's grandchild when he first descended on earth. It is a remarkable evidence of the persistence of certain ideas, that up to the year 1868 the nominal prime-minister of the Mikado, after he came of age, and the regent during his minority, if he had succeeded young to the throne, always belonged to this tribe, which changed its name from Nakatomi to Fujiwara in the seventh century, and was subsequently split up into the Five Setsuke or governing families. At the end of each section the priests all responded 'O!' which ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... afforded them a pretext, although, indeed, a groundless one, for asserting that there was either collusion or compulsion, whilst in reality there was complete liberty. The two Fathers who voted, nay, constituting a minority of two, acted according to their right, and it was not questioned. These Fathers were Monsignor Louis Riccio, Bishop of Casazzio, in the kingdom of Naples, and the Right Rev, Edward Fitzgerald, Bishop of Petricola (Little Rock, Arkansas), in the United ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... depend upon its exertion, full, sustained, and disinterested?" Sandwich, despite the coldness with which he had received Rodney's application,—going so far as to refuse to support it actively,—was apparently in a minority among his colleagues in believing that they could. He declared in the House of Lords that, "When it was first proposed in the Council to employ Sir George, I, who knew him from a very young man, declared that Rodney once afloat would do his duty." Naval officers will recognize ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east; they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it' (Amos 8:9-12). In those days Eli's sons were become varlets (1 Sam 2:12-15). Indeed there was here and there a little child, like Samuel in his minority, that now and then would speak most goodly things. But 'the word of the Lord was precious in those days, there was no open vision' (1 Sam 3:1). This is that which David in the Spirit of prophecy complaineth of, saying, 'They know not, neither will ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... all practical purposes. In the long run this usually results in a federated church finally affiliating with the denomination which is preferred by the large majority of its membership and which is least objectionable to the minority. ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson

... over-trimmed—quite a horror of finery. I must put on a few ornaments now, because it is expected of me. A bride, you know, must appear like a bride, but my natural taste is all for simplicity; a simple style of dress is so infinitely preferable to finery. But I am quite in the minority, I believe; few people seem to value simplicity of dress,—show and finery are every thing. I have some notion of putting such a trimming as this to my white and silver poplin. Do you think ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... and they were seen walking together by many people, to which Mr. Crayon was not averse, and in an hour three or four local correspondents were sending eastward vivid despatches stating that Mr. Crayon, the representative of the conservative and dissatisfied minority in the party, was in Boise in close conference with "King" Plummer, the political ruler of the mountains. And the burden of all these despatches was fast-coming evil ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... the townspeople recovered from the shock which the sudden death had caused. Administration was granted to the widow conjointly with Squire Clamp, the lawyer, and the latter was appointed guardian for Mildred during her minority. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... loss to the whigs of this seat, the Douglas democrats were in a minority. Lincoln had a plurality but not a majority. The balance of power was held by five anti-Nebraska democrats, who would not under any circumstances vote for Lincoln or any other whig. Their candidate ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham



Words linked to "Minority" :   figure, majority, eld, nonage, age, legal status, minority leader, number, social group, minor



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