"Unknown quantity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was far more concerned about himself and the business of his mission than he was for the women in his charge. He was much afraid, however, of the horseman's visible gun. He was not at all a person of courage, and the man before him presented such an unknown quantity that he found himself more or less helpless. At most he could merely ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... say?" If we say "Tom," or "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 ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... (1815); Aetas argentea cossae (1819); Ueber Tradition und Schrift, Logos und Kabbala (1829), besides the one mentioned above. The word coss in the above titles was a German name for algebra, from the Italian cosa (thing), the name for the unknown quantity. It appears in English in the early name for algebra, "the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... political troubles and takes on fully Western civilization, while the other nations may tend to ally themselves with the one or the other of these great world powers. Of course, China is the X—the unknown quantity—in the world's future. Should its immense population become civilized and absorb Western ideas, this would certainly bring into the theater of the world's political evolution a new and ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... undertaken the task of editing, has asked me to narrow his personal introduction to such limits as is consistent with the courtesy due to my readers, if haply I find any. He prefers, as his pseudonym implies, to remain an unknown quantity. I need only explain that he is an officer employed in one of the small States of the Malay Peninsula, which are (very much) under the protection of the Colonial Government of the Straits Settlements. The latter, with careful ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
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