"Unknown quantity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been ordered in the jovial saint's honour, but nobody could tell how many candles it ought to hold since no one knew how many years he numbered. But Dorene solved the difficulty by saying, "Let X equal the unknown quantity, and just make a big X across the cake with ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... conclusion, however, was that the affair was, simply, X-traordinary and in-X-plicable. Even the town mathematician confessed that he could make nothing of so dark a problem. X, every. body knew, was an unknown quantity; but in this case (as he properly observed), there was an ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... downward, and, though Hawthorne never fell into this error, he approaches closely to it in "Fanshawe." There is some dark secret between the two villains of the piece, which he leaves to the reader as an exercise for the imagination. This is a characteristic of all his longer stories. There is an unknown quantity, an insoluble point, in them, ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... he really hoped that if any sort of trouble did come it would come along while he and Andy were holding the post of guards. He had a little fear that Spider Sexton might not be depended on, no matter what his good intentions, while Tom Betts was an unknown quantity. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... appeared in 1557, and it is in this work that the modern sign of equality first appears in print. The word "Cosike" is an adjective that was used for a long time in Germany as equivalent to algebraic, being derived from the Italian cosa, which stood for the unknown quantity. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... Regular Army was a veteran establishment of professional soldiers; the National Guard a volunteer organization of local origin maintained primarily for the preservation of domestic order in the several States, with an emergency duty toward the national defense; the National Army an unknown quantity, made up of men to be selected arbitrarily by tests and rules as yet to be formulated, unorganized, untrained, existing only in theory and, therefore, problematical as to its spirit and the length of time necessary to ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... Crucifixion has not much to do with the world's attitude toward the Jew; that the reasons for it are older than that event, as suggested by Egypt's experience and by Rome's regret for having persecuted an unknown quantity called a Christian, under the mistaken impression that she was merely persecuting a Jew. Merely a Jew—a skinned eel who was used to it, presumably. I am persuaded that in Russia, Austria, and Germany nine-tenths of the hostility to the Jew comes from the average Christian's ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is not something unreal and vague, some unknown quantity which may be measured out to us disproportionately, or which perchance, since God is good, we may altogether evade. The consequences are already marked within the structure of the soul. So to speak, they are physiological. The thing affected by our indifference or by our indulgence is ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... elected. He was warned not to take this office, and word was sent to him by the bands of hard-riding outlaws of that region that if he attempted to serve any processes on them he would be killed. He paid no attention to this, and, as he was still an unknown quantity in the country, which was new and thinly settled, he seemed sure to be killed. He won the absolute confidence of the governor, who told him to go ahead, not to stand on technicalities, but to break up the gang that had been rendering life and property unsafe for years and making ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... more in everything," said Kate, whose curiosity was rather piqued by the evasiveness, though she made no sign, "because everything stands for something. It is like the x in algebra, and interesting as the unknown quantity." ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... duplicity or evasion of the Oriental; delicately in proportion to his great ability, yet it was there—though in less degree than in any Arab he had ever known. It was the more dangerous because so subtle. It held surprise —it was an unknown quantity. The most that Dicky could do was to feel subtly before him a certain cloud of the unexpected. He was not sure that he deceived Abdalla by his simple manner, yet that made little difference. The Oriental would think not less of him for dissimulation, but rather ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... undetermined, and hidden from our view. We are not fitted to live in a world where a b always equals c, and there is nothing more to follow. The interest of life's equation arrives with the appearance of x, the unknown quantity. A settled, unchangeable, clearly foreseeable order of things does not suit our constitution. It tends to melancholy and a fatty heart. Creatures of habit we are undoubtedly; but it is one of our most fixed habits to be fond of variety. The man who is ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... amount of money lost may not have been great, but it had the irritating feature of being an unknown quantity and the additional vague risk of making all his winter work fruitless. It is useless to set traps if some one else is to follow around and rob them. So that night he told his wife the whole story. Discuss it as they would, there ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... operations of nature there is at least one unknown quantity; to find the exact value of this unknown factor is not so easy. The wool of the sheep, the fur of the animals, the feathers of the fowls, the husks of the maize, why are they thicker some seasons than others; what is the value of the unknown ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... an acute observer, and had large acquaintance with the world in which he lived, and its inhabitants. He was in the main, however, an unknown quantity to himself. ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... the great intertribal highway of southern Arizona, followed the Gila River, destined afterwards to be traversed by the wandering trappers, by the weary gold-seeker bound for California, and finally, for a considerable distance, by the steam locomotive. But it was an unknown quantity at the time of Alarcon's visit, so far as white men were concerned. Farther up, Alarcon met with another man who understood his interpreter, and this man said he had been to Cibola, or Cevola,* as Alarcon writes it, and that it was ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... place of those marvelous talents, that personality, which showed us, in Delsarte himself, the heights to which a dramatic singer may attain. What surprises and subjugates us in these privileged persons is the secret of nature; it is not to be written down, not to be demonstrated; this unknown quantity, this mystery, reveals itself at its own time by flashes, and with different degrees of intensity during the career of the same artist. Some have thought to explain the prodigy by that superior instinct ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... cars was delightful, past a succession of elegant houses and beautifully laid out grounds, until she began to feel she had reached a new world where care was an unknown quantity. ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... herd of Indians, consisting of about a dozen men and squaws, with an unknown quantity of papooses,—the last naked as the day they were born,—crowded into the room to stare at us. It was the most amusing thing in the world to see them finger my gloves, whip, and hat, in their intense curiosity. One of them had caught the following line of a song, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... representing to us, from a far distance, the whole mountain-range of a nation, completely lost beyond the horizon of history. When we speak of the Vedic hymns as representing the religion, the thoughts and customs of India three thousand years ago, we cannot mean by India more than some unknown quantity of which the poets of the Veda are the only spokesmen left. When we now speak of India, we think of 250 millions, a sixth part of the whole human race, peopling the vast peninsula from the Himalayan mountains between the arms of the Indus and ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... graves, or nursed in secret to recovery. Many, too, perished at Blackfriars Bridge, or were hideously consumed in the flames that rose from the burning of Langdale's distilleries. But if the number of those who suffered remains an unknown quantity, it is not difficult to approximate to the destructive power of the disturbances. The cost of the whole bad business has been estimated at at least 180,000 pounds. To that amount an imbecile insanity ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... whatever useless charms and talismans they wore, stood for the unknown quantity in spiritual life. A magician is a man who lays hold on the unseen for the mere joy of it, who steals, if necessary, the holy bread and the sacred fire. He is often of the remnant of an ostracized and disestablished priesthood. He is a free-lance in the soul-world, ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... years. I early read Wordsworth, and Emerson and Tennyson and Whitman, and Saint-Pierre's "Studies of Nature," as I have before told you. But the previous question is, why the nature poets and nature books appealed to me. One cannot corner this unknown quantity. I suppose I was simply made that way—the love of nature was born in me. I suppose Emerson influenced me most, beginning when I was about nineteen; I had read Pope and Thomson and Young and parts of Shakespeare before that, but they did not kindle this ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... through her as she thought of this her great adventure, of this her freedom for at least a short while, and of the unknown quantity she was mixing into her portion of daily bread which, up to this moment, had consisted of the plainest, wholesomest, most uninteresting bun-loaf, not even resembling that extremely dull and unappetising cake ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... for the girl, who bravely struggled to be cheerful, in spite of her own private grief, for his mother's sake. He felt as if high principle and noble precept ought to perform an immediate work. But they do not, for there is always the unknown quantity of individual experience and feeling, which offer a tacit resistance, the amount incalculable by another, to all good counsel and high decree. But the bond between the Mentor and his Telemachus strengthened every day. He endeavoured to lead her out of morbid thought into interest ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... senator. Wherever we went, even to the largest chateaux, where the family went to Paris for the season, the talk was almost entirely confined to France and French interests. Books, politics, music, people, nothing existed apparently au-dela des frontieres. America was an unknown quantity. It was strange to see intelligent people living in the world so curiously indifferent as to what went on in other countries. At first I used to talk a little about America and Rome, where I had lived many years and at such an interesting time—the ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... her employer, Esther decided that she could live at close quarters with him for a year and know him no better than she did now. At the end of a week she regarded him as an unknown quantity. A man of one idea, extraordinarily concentrated, methodical, abstracted, without friends, no outside interests whatever. That is all she could gather. Silent, yet hardly secretive, he merely gave her the impression that he had nothing he wished to impart. He was not curious ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... Let x be the unknown quantity; a, the horses; b, the sheep; then per simple equations x, plus a, plus b, minus tods, plus sheepskins, equal one thousand—then minus sheep, plus horses, minus wool, plus tods, equal one million. Lastly, horses plus ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... "Dick," or "Harry," says "so and so," "Tom" is no better authority than "Dick," nor are both together much better than "Harry." But if we say, indefinitely, "They say" "so and so," there is a mysterious potency in the unknown quantity which leads, if not to universal belief, at least ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... variety names it is pretty safe to assume that the trees are as represented. If recognized variety names are omitted the trees may safely be considered to be seedlings and that they will produce a wholly unknown quantity, no matter how alluring the advertising. Of course, this is not intended to discourage the planting of new varieties offered by nurseries of known reputation for integrity, nor of such strains as the Crath Carpathian walnut importations, from ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... good thing you do. Cream is an unknown quantity in this room. We did have some Eagle Brand, but Ruth spread the last of it on her ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... advanced. So he decided, and Julia slept peacefully on, her head dropping lower and lower, till finally it reached his shoulder. But he did not move; he left it resting there, and waited, thinking of nothing perhaps, or anything; or perhaps of that unknown quantity, the natural man, which has a way of stirring sometimes even in the most civilised, at night time. So he sat and watched for ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... the unexpected. Most women desire to meet a man who is possessed of a distinctive individuality, who lends continual interest to them by his departure from the trite and commonplace. What Stephen might say or do was an entirely unknown quantity until it had actually taken place, and this attracted her on the instant, whether she was conscious of it or not. His manner, too, was affable, and gave him an air at once pleasing and good-natured. He never flattered, yet said most agreeable things, putting one perfectly ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... Lent; no meat, fish, eggs, or milk, no exception for Sundays, no food till after twelve at noon, and no intercourse with the hareem. The only comfort is lots of arrak, and what a Copt can carry decently is an unknown quantity; one seldom sees them drunk, but they imbibe awful quantities. They offer me wine and arrak always, and can't think why I don't drink it. I believe they suspect my Christianity in consequence of my preference for Nile water. As to that, though, they scorn all heretics, i.e., all Christians but ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... mountain of noise and of flesh moved under the little finger of that frail despot. Viewed on its dwarfed and grotesque side, this was that grand and universal thing, the adoration of mind by matter; for certain ugly features have a cause in the very depths of eternal beauty. There was an unknown quantity about Thenardier; hence the absolute empire of the man over that woman. At certain moments she beheld him like a lighted candle; at others she felt him ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... others the condition spoken of as local shock in a former chapter had been marked. In a third series obvious individual nerve lesions were co-existent with those to the vessels. Beyond this a fourth nervous element of unknown quantity, the effect of the form of injury on the vaso-motor nerves accompanying the great vessels, must be ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... algebraic formula. Here we are in a wood, some distance from our main camp. Messages, bearing a warning either in jest or in earnest, have come floating down from a point which may be within the enemy's country. One of the facts is x and the other is y, but what they amount to is an unknown quantity. Hence we are left in doubt, and when you're in doubt it's best to ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... dashed out of the house a few minutes later, Rosemary was with them. Mrs. Willis had explained that her eldest daughter could help her more by "looking after" the impetuous Shirley and that unknown quantity, Sarah, than by remaining in the house to open ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... had different ideas in regard to the peasant girl. To the prelate a woman was an unknown quantity, and he frowned. The statesman, who had once been young, knew a deal ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... appearance of James left unexplained. If some one other than those mentioned on his penciled memoranda had killed Cunningham, it must have been between half-past nine and twenty minutes to ten. The X he had written in there was the only possible unknown quantity. By the use of hard work and common sense he had eliminated the rest of the time so far as ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... published a set of 'Pastorals' which had attracted some attention. He was already known to the literary set of London coffeehouses as a young man of keen wit and high promise, but to the reading public at large he was as yet an unknown quantity. With the appearance of the 'Essay', Pope not only sprang at once into the full light of publicity, but seized almost undisputed that position as the first of living English poets which he was to retain unchallenged till his ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... hidden terms of an equation—was it any farther for the people of East Elgin to walk to hear him preach than for him to walk to minister to the people of East Elgin, which he did quite once a week, and if so, how much? Mrs Forsyth, or whoever it was, might eliminate the unknown quantity. It cannot be said that Dr Drummond discouraged the project; he simply did not mention it and as it was known to have been communicated to him this represented effectively the policy of the closed door. He found himself even oftener ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... rushing car was faster now than would have been altogether comfortable had they been on a road they knew perfectly. Here, with a curve just ahead that was an unknown quantity, there was real danger in the sheer speed of the machine. Heavy as the car was, it lurched and swayed from side to side. And simply to shut off the power would not have been enough. Moreover, that was something both of them would have feared to do. The slightest mischance, ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... for the easygoing spirit that marked the times! The long, pitiless, hot sun-days were not inspirers of extraordinary energy. Yankee thrift was as pigmy play to these owners of bursting coffers. The hurry and bustle of our Northern neighbors was an unknown quantity in their economy. It is to the forcible wresting from the South of their inherited institutions, of the machinery which made their social order possible, that the land of Dixie owes the prosperity and thrift of to-day. Evil was done and good came therefrom. ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... late. Charlie had not outgrown the instinct of rushing to his mother with his troubles; and he was despairingly telling the report he had heard of a direful catastrophe, fatal to an unknown quantity of passengers, while she, strong and composed because he gave way, was trying to sift his intelligence. No sooner did he hear from Anne that Julius was going to the station, than he started up to accompany him—the best thing he could do in his present ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... an individual has. A man who rushes into a burning building to save a life, wearing nothing but street clothes, has courage. A man who does the same thing when he's wearing a nullotherm suit is an unknown quantity. There is no way of knowing, from that action alone, whether he ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... not much to be said. Sculpture is represented by an occasional statue brought from England. Architecture in its higher form is an unknown quantity. Painting is beginning to struggle towards the light, chiefly in the form of water-colour drawings. Political satire finds expression in cartoons, for the most part of that crude sort which depicts ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... little brick houses here seem to be an unknown quantity to even some of the oldest inhabitants and nearest neighbors. In number 3021, long ago, lived Horatio Berry, the brother of Philip Taylor Berry. In number 3025, the quaint locks on the doors all have on them a small, round brass seal, bearing the coat-of-arms of Great ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... in the following proportion; let Ac equal acting length of fork, and x the unknown quantity; 28:10.25 :: Ac:x; the answer will be the theoretical impulse radius. Having found the required radius we plant one jaw of our measuring instrument on the point of intersection of c c with k A or m A and locate the other jaw on the line of centers; we thus obtain A' the balance ...
— An Analysis of the Lever Escapement • H. R. Playtner
... potentialities for work, which were obviously still an unknown quantity, and the conference ended in my sending him to a firm of real-estate brokers who were looking out for a partner with a little money to invest. Halidon had a few thousands of his own, which he decided to embark ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... justly inferred that the average white man does not understand the black man, and that he is still an unknown quantity to many of the white people of the country, even to those who profess to know him best. Admitting this, then, it is but natural that much of their deliberation and many of their conclusions should be wide of the mark. The negro does not censure the white man ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... professional quartet has for the musical community is the fact that it gives a large circle a measure of acquaintance with the mode of thought and style of composers whose symphonic and larger works are often an unknown quantity. This applies to Debussy, Reger, the modern Russians, Bloch and others. When we played the Stravinsky pieces here, for instance, his Petrouschka and Firebird had not ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... billion kWh; note - exports an unknown quantity to Georgia; includes exports to Nagorno-Karabakh ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... Aisse and Mlle. de Lespinasse, both of whom felt an irresistible need of loving; they proclaimed their love and not only showed themselves to be capable of loving and of intense suffering, but proved themselves worthy of love which, in its highest form, they felt to be an unknown quantity at that time. Their love became a constant inspiration, a model of devotion, almost a transfiguration of passion. These women were products of the time; they had to be, to compensate for the general sterility and barrenness, to equalize the inequalities, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... up as he puts back the crock) And I have found one in the continuity of my sleeve. In this trade my clothes are becoming as uncertain as an unknown quantity in algebra. ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... together had been terrific; and she was still feeling it, though an hour had passed. She was feeling that, now her situation was upon her, she was alone. Mrs. Herrick could only be near her, not with her, and Kerr was still an unknown quantity—except that he ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... wit. "But I never yet found an X. Y. who would advance me the L. s.; and, therefore, I shall not be more respectful to X. Y. than to any other unknown quantity." ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... smiled faintly; and, seating myself, I drew towards me a paper filled with Squills's memoranda, and said, "Now to find the unknown quantity. What on earth is this? 'Supposed value of books, L750.' Oh, father! this is impossible. I was prepared for anything but that. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in the solution of equations. The distinction between algebraical and arithmetical reasoning then lies mainly in the fact that the former is in a more condensed form than the latter; an unknown quantity being represented by a special symbol, and other symbols being used as a kind of shorthand for verbal expressions. This form of algebra was extensively studied in ancient Egypt; but, in accordance with the practical tendency of the Egyptian mind, the study consisted largely in the treatment ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... turned on her reading lamp, upon whose shade wanton fauns and nymphs sported, piled her pillows high and left her, the scales were about going down on the side in which was placed "The Purple Slipper," Mr. Dennis Farraday—and Miss Patricia Adair, who at that time was the unknown quantity which Fate often throws in ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... He had hands of steel and velvet, and fear was an unknown quantity to him. Ann watched the ensuing tussle between man and beast with unequivocal admiration. The mare, a big raking bay, with black points and a white blaze, sulkily obeyed her rider's curbing hands upon the bridle whilst they rode through the lanes, but when they emerged upon the wide, ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... button," he marshalled against the thoroughly prepared military power of Germany an army ill-organized, ill-supplied, without proper reserves, and led by commanders of appalling incapacity. Maps and plans were bad; strategy was an unknown quantity; no study had been made of the use of the railway in war; almost everything except courage was lacking, and courage without leadership was hopeless against the thoroughly drilled and supplied German army and the science of Yon ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... what ails me," he muttered, as he turned away. He felt as he had when puzzling over the unknown quantity in an algebraic equation. It was not until he was sitting in meeting, looking forward at Lucina's fair profile, cut in clear curves like a lily, that the solution ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Mendelssohn acquired by his unaided efforts. With the desultory assistance of a Dr. Kisch, a Jewish physician, he learnt Latin from a book picked up at a second-hand book stall. General culture was at that time an unknown quantity in the possibilities of Berlin Jewish life. The schoolmasters, who were not permitted to stay in the city more than three years, were for the most part Poles. One Pole, Israel Moses, a fine thinker and mathematician, banished from his native town, Samosz, on account of his ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... telepath was pretty much of an unknown quantity. But that, Malone told himself with elation, was exactly what he was looking for. Could a sane telepath do what an insane one couldn't—and project thoughts, ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... David to Jenison Hall came, by curious coincidence, at a most opportune time. He had decided to leave the Springs within a day or two, cutting short his proposed stay of a month almost at its beginning. The advent of Roberta Grand, heretofore an unknown quantity, brought with it new and unpleasant complications. Her revelations disturbed him, her attitude angered and disgusted him. It was from this girl, so amazingly like her father, that he would have fled in any event. His nature revolted against the possibility of constant ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... the so-called hieratic character. At first sight it appears to be in perfect preservation, being entirely free from the cracks and decay which mar many fine manuscripts of far later date; but an examination of the contents shows that an unknown quantity has been torn off from the commencement. Originally the roll contained at least two books, of which we have the latter part of one and the whole of the other. Between these there is a blank space of some ...
— The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni - The Oldest Books in the World • Battiscombe G. Gunn
... account of what she or her 'dearest' friends are pleased to call 'age,' shows that she is destitute of spiritual self-control. The Soul is always young, and its own radiation can preserve the youth of the Body in which it dwells. Age and decrepitude come to those with whom the Soul is 'an unknown quantity.' The Soul is the only barrier against the forces of disintegration which break down effete substances in preparation for the change which humanity calls 'Death.' If the barrier is not strong enough, the enemy takes the city. These ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... Young men were an unknown quantity to Lesley. She could not remember that she had ever spoken to a man so young and so good-looking before! Captain Henry Duchesne was tall, well-made, well-dressed: he was very dark in complexion, and had a rather heavy jaw; but his dark eyes were pleasant and honest, and he had a very attractive ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... I received only led to greater despondence. My predecessor here, it seemed, had been an officer of a veteran battalion, with a wife, and that amount of children which is algebraically expressed by an X (meaning an unknown quantity). He, good man, in his two years' sojourn here, had been much more solicitous about his own affairs, than making acquaintance with his neighbours; and at last, the few persons who had been in the habit of calling on ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... their gallop, Miss Erroll had very little to say. Selwyn, too, was silent and absent-minded. The girl glanced furtively at him from time to time, not at all enlightened. Man, naturally, was to her an unknown quantity. In fact she had no reason to suspect him of being anything more intricate than the platitudinous dance or dinner partner in black and white, or any frock-coated entity in the afternoon, or any flannelled individual ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... which unites the stories in this book is like that. It is the sign of the unknown quantity, the sense of mystery and strangeness, that runs ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... of remaining longer in the city. There are so many things that may happen in a crowd, and especially if our friend Balencourt formed part of that unknown quantity. There is always a chance of a chimney-pot tumbling about one's ears or of being run down by some reckless chauffeur. And who is to know the truth? Accidents will happen; they are wilful things and insist upon keeping ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... position and his cook, his vanity in his own smart appearance! It would be difficult to find words adequate for the scorn with which the Archdeacon regarded that elegant little man. Then Byle, the Precentor. He was, to some extent, an unknown quantity. His chief characteristic perhaps was his hatred of quarrels—he would say or do anything if only he might not be drawn into a "row." "Peace at any price" was his motto, and this, of course, as with the famous Vicar of Bray, involved ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... Northern white man does not know him after many years of close observation, neither does the Southern white man, for all the years gone by in which the Negro has lived in his midst. The observations of both in fact only leave the Negro largely an unknown quantity to either. I have claimed heretofore that there is a life that the white man knows nothing of. It is found in the hovel as well as in the cultured home, in the school and the church. It is a life ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... they might generally admit, a very shifting one—a measure which has no linear unit; it is to employ, as mathematicians say, a variable as if it were a constant quantity; or, rather, it is to attempt to find the value of an unknown quantity by another equally unknown. ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... "Name the good pictures that have been rejected; where can I see them? I want to see these masterpieces," etc. The reactionary has generally the best of the argument. It is difficult to name the pictures that have been refused; they are the unknown quantity. Moreover, the pictures that are usually refused are tentative efforts, and not mature work. But this year the opponents of the Academy are able to cite some very substantial facts in support of their position, a portrait by our most promising portrait-painter and a landscape by the ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... after an unknown amount—an unknown quantity of doubloons. And perhaps we are fated never to know the amount of the pirate's hoard," and she laughed again. Then, suddenly, she clutched his arm more tightly as they paced the deck together, crying under her ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... outbreak of the World War in August, 1914, the Australian as a soldier was an unknown quantity. It is quite true that in the previous campaigns in the Soudan and in South Africa, Australia had been represented, and that a sprinkling of native-born Australians had taken service in the Imperial armies. The performances of these pioneers of Australia ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... so much territory in northern Mexico encouraged General Escobedo and other Liberal leaders to such a degree that they collected a considerable army of their followers at Comargo, Mier, and other points. At the same time that unknown quantity, Cortinas, suspended his free-booting for the nonce, and stoutly harassing Matamoras, succeeded in keeping its Imperial garrison within the fortifications. Thus countenanced and stimulated, and largely supplied with arms and ammunition, which we left at convenient ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan
... as Valentine the night before, and as Faust he more than justified Henry's belief in him. After that he never looked back. He had come to the Lyceum for the first time in 1882, an unknown quantity from a stock company in Glasgow, to play Caleb Decie in "The Two Roses." He then left us for a time, returned for "Faust," and remained in the Lyceum Company for some years, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... eleven. No Arthur, not even the old woman about. He wondered very much. He approached the house, and finding nobody coming at his knock, opened the door and went in. Something wrong. He knew that at once. The air was stifling, horrible, with an unknown quantity in it, it seemed to him. He threw open the front room door. Veuve Peter Ross was in her bed, ill, and of small-pox. He could tell her that, for certain. He rushed up-stairs and found Clarges on ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... them? Had they been able to hold their own between the enemy and the coast? What had happened to the Philippines and to Hawaii? Where was the fleet? None of these questions could be answered, simply because all telegraphic connection was cut off. The strength of the enemy was an absolutely unknown quantity, unless one cared to rely on the figures found in the ordinary military statistics, which had probably been doctored by the Japanese. Was this the Japanese army at all? Was it an invading force? Could such a force have pushed so far to the ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... represented an unknown quantity. In any event it had to be created. Meanwhile, it must rely upon its own resources, sustained by the courage of the venture, by the integrity of its convictions and aims, and by faith in the future of the city, ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... large measure) an artificial life. In his barbaric state man obeyed the calls of nature without regard to time or place, and it is safe to assert that under those conditions an obstructed colon was an unknown quantity. But in deference to the demands of civilized life we disregard Nature's calls and defer the response until a convenient opportunity presents itself, and for this violation of natural ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... of Richmond occasionally gave away a dog to intimate friends, such as the Dowager Lady Wharncliffe, Lady Dorothy Nevill, and others, but in those days the Pekinese was practically an unknown quantity, and it can therefore be more readily understood what interest was aroused about eleven years ago by the appearance of a small dog, similar in size, colour, and general type to those so carefully cherished at Goodwood. This proved to be none other than the since well-known sire Ah Cum, owned ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... perturbed at this wanton attack upon the humanity of another world, but since the earth was such an unknown quantity, and the fact of its being inhabited at all was problematical, interest in the affair soon lagged. The government of the Light Country concerned ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... longer you can rub it. If it leaves a gummy or sticky feeling, do not use; but if it rubs away thin and oily, it is probably good. Of course the oiliest of oils are animal fats, good lard, and genuine sperm; but they work down very thin and run away, and genuine sperm oil is almost an unknown quantity. Lard can be obtained at every farmhouse, and may be ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... (and the etcetera represents an unknown quantity), has changed somewhat like the rest, for a few years have thinned the short-cropped though once curly locks above his knotted forehead, besides sprinkling them with grey. But in other respects he has not fallen off—nay he has ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... amount of solatium due to his wounded feelings in an action on the passage in the Confessions. To have indicated even the street would have been enough. Because there could surely be but one such Grecian in Greek Street, or but one that realized the other conditions of the unknown quantity. There was also a separate danger not absolutely so laughable as it sounds. Me there was little chance that the attorney should meet; but my book he might easily have met (supposing always that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... Eddie was a lad well schooled in inequity such as the wilderness fosters in sturdy fashion. Wide spaces give room for great virtues and great wickedness. Bud felt that he was betting large odds on an unknown quantity. He was placing himself literally in the hands of an acknowledged Catrocker, because of the clean gaze of a pair of eyes, the fine curve ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower |
