"Denominator" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ways you can sell your timber. You can either measure your trees and sell on a volume basis, or you can mark certain trees and state to several buyers, "I have marked 25 trees for sale. What is your best offer for them?" Each buyer looks at the same trees, and you have a common denominator for comparing the fairness ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... After the stage of despair comes the period of consolation. We soon find that we are not so much worse off than most of our neighbors as we supposed. The fractional value of the wisest shows a small numerator divided by an infinite denominator of knowledge. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... moderation, of compromise and unfinished thought, who claimed the right of taxing, but refused to employ it. When he urged the differences in every situation and every problem, and shrank from the common denominator and the underlying principle, he fell into step with his friends. As an Irishman, who had married into an Irish Catholic family, it was desirable that he should adopt no theories in America which ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... of course, that these men are afraid of bombast and Scott was not. A man will not reach eloquence if he is afraid of bombast, just as a man will not jump a hedge if he is afraid of a ditch. As the object of all eloquence is to find the least common denominator of men's souls, to fall just within the natural comprehension, it cannot obviously have any chance with a literary ambition which aims at falling just outside it. It is quite right to invent subtle analyses ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... be required in good English, clear and definite, like the questions. Pupils who say, "An improper fraction is 'where' the numerator is greater than the denominator"; "A compound sentence is 'when' it has two or more independent clauses," should be led to restate their answers in ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... principle of strict, homely justice. I found there was no quality of such universal appeal as this one of justice. Whether dealing with Italians, Russians, Portuguese, Poles, Irish or Irish-Americans you could always get below their national peculiarities if you reached this common denominator. However browbeaten, however slavish, they had been in their former lives this spark seemed always alive. However cocky or anarchistic they might feel in their new freedom you could pull them up with a sharp turn by an appeal to their sense ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... Massachusetts, have been given to the public since his death, which happened in 1862. No one has lived so close to nature, and written of it so intimately, as Thoreau. His life was a lesson in economy and a sermon on Emerson's text, "Lessen your denominator." He wished to reduce existence ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... and the other feller marked themselfs 125 percent and when the other teecher added the marks up he found sumthing was rong. so he spent a weak adding and substrackting and multipliing and dividing and reduceing to the leest common denominator and invirtin the diviser and perceeding as in multiplication and finding the leest common multipel of and xtracking the squair root of and at last he maid up his mind that there was a ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... 12/4, or 11/2" etc. Indeed, I was at first at a loss as to what form of expression I should use here—so as not to come into collision with those already resorted to, thus giving rise to confusion. At first I thought it might be more convenient to let her rap out the denominator with her right paw and the numerator with her left—but I soon came to see that even with 3/16, this method could no longer be maintained. At length I let her simply rap out the numerator—then I would ask for the denominator, and let her rap this, so that in the case of ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... will be observed that the odd fingers (Nos. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9) contain the letter D, and the even fingers (Nos. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10) contain the letter N. The D indicates that the values of these fingers relate to the denominator, the N that they relate to the numerator. The summation of the numerical values of the whorl type patterns, if any, appearing in fingers 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, plus one, is the denominator of the primary. The summation of the values of the whorls, if any, in fingers 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, plus one, is the numerator ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... abstract ideas, the Anglo-Saxon element, as in passages from Herbert Spencer, may fall as low as sixty per cent. It is interesting to estimate the percentage of Anglo-Saxon or Latin in an author. This may easily be done by counting the number of words in a given passage for the denominator, and the number of Anglo-Saxon or Latin words for the numerator of a common fraction, which may then ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... the foundation stones upon which we must build the temple of education now in the process of reconstruction. Otherwise the work will be narrow, illiberal, spasmodic, and sporadic. It must be possible to arrive at a common denominator of the concepts of society, citizenship, and civilization as pertaining to all nations; it must be possible to contrive a composite of all these concepts to which all nations will subscribe; and it must be possible to discover ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... much of my time, and which I can do with my left hand. But the great point, after all, is to make your wants simple; to live like an Arab, content with a few dates and a swallow from the gourd. 'Lessen your denominator.' It's easier than raising your numerator, and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... was misleading, for it penetrated no further than the first negative step. The "Everlasting Yea" was, after all, only a deeper "No!" only Entsagung, renunciation: "the fraction of life can be increased in value not so much by increasing your numerator as by lessening your denominator." Blessed alone is he that expecteth nothing. The holy of holies, where man hears whispered the mystery of life, is "the sanctuary of sorrow." "What Act of Legislature was there that thou shouldst be Happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to be ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... is the Sala del Senato, and here again we find a blend of heaven and Venice, with Doges as a common denominator. A "Descent from the Cross" (by Tintoretto) is witnessed by Doge Pietro Lando and Doge Marcantonio Trevisan; and the same hand gives us Pietro Loredan imploring the aid of the Virgin. In the centre ceiling painting Tintoretto depicts ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... treasure I had expected to dig up with Cookie's spoon. It was touching to see the universal faith in the trivial nature of my employments, to know that every one imagined themselves to be seriously occupied, while I was merely a girl—there is no common denominator for the qualifying adjective—who roamed about idly with a dog, and that no one dreamed that we had thus come to be potentially among the richest dogs and girls in ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... answered, lazily shutting his eyes. "The earth is the planet on which we live, and is about twenty-five thousand miles round; a decimal fraction is one whose denominator is ten, one hundred, one thousand, or and so ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... my demi-official letter. The whole is most disappointing. Here is Cox and here are his men, absolutely wasted and frightfully keen to come. There are the Dardanelles short-handed; there is the New Zealand Division short of a Brigade. If surplus and deficit had the same common denominator, say "K." or "G.S." they would wipe themselves out to the instant simplification of the problem. As it is, they are kept on ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton |
