"Algebra" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... There remain, therefore, algebra and arithmetic as the only sciences, in which we can carry on a chain of reasoning to any degree of intricacy, and yet preserve a perfect exactness and certainty. We are possest of a precise standard, by which ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... the public has imperfect knowledge, public opinion is as likely to be erroneous as is the opinion of an individual equally uninformed. To hold otherwise is to hold that wisdom can be got by combining many ignorances. A man who knows nothing of algebra can not be assisted in the solution of an algebraic problem by calling in a neighbor who knows no more than himself, and the solution approved by the unanimous vote of ten million such men would count for nothing against that of a competent mathematician. To be entirely consistent, gentlemen ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... and the like, Professor Wogglebug had invented an assortment of Tablets of Learning. One of these tablets, eaten by a scholar after breakfast, would instantly enable him to understand arithmetic or algebra or any other branch of mathematics. Another tablet eaten after lunch gave a student a complete knowledge of geography. Another tablet made it possible for the eater to spell the most difficult words, and still another enabled him to write ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... like one of the Rules in Algebra?" my Lady enquired. ("Algebra too!" I thought with increasing wonder.) "I mean, if we consider thoughts as factors, may we not say that the Least Common Multiple of all the minds contains that of all the books; ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... mote-flecked beams upon the floor of what seemed to me my intolerably wearisome schoolroom—and working out a long algebraical equation on the blackboard. In one hand I was holding a ragged, long-suffering "Algebra" and in the other a small piece of chalk which had already besmeared my hands, my face, and the elbows of my jacket. Nicola, clad in an apron, and with his sleeves rolled up, was picking out the putty from the window-frames with a pair of nippers, and unfastening the screws. The ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... short intervals between the end of dinner and the afternoon start for the harvest-and hay-fields, accomplishing more without a teacher in a few scraps of time than in years in school before my mind was ready for such work. Then in succession I took up algebra, geometry, and trigonometry and made some little progress in each, and reviewed grammar. I was fond of reading, but father had brought only a few religious books from Scotland. Fortunately, several of our neighbors ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... ALGEBRA, a universal arithmetic of Arabian origin or Arabian transmission, in which symbols are employed to denote operations, and letters ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... school, I, with the other boys of the same standing, was put upon reading the first six books of Euclid, with the exception of the fifth; and also in algebra I learnt simple and quadratic equations; and this was for me unlucky, because I had a full twelvemonth's start of the freshmen of my year, and accordingly got into rather an idle way; reading nothing but classic authors according to my fancy, and Italian poetry. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... operations, was impossible; and the Roman system, by which the year 1888 would be written MDCCCLXXXVIII, was that in common use in Europe down to the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, and even much later in some places. Algebra, which was invented by the Hindoos, from whom also came the decimal notation, was not introduced into Europe till the thirteenth century, although the Greeks had some acquaintance with it; and it reached Western Europe from Italy only in the sixteenth ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... met the Academic board and come off with fair success, yet I knew so little of Algebra or any of the higher branches of mathematics that during my first six months at the Academy I was discouraged by many misgivings as to the future, for I speedily learned that at the January examination ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... far, you will have no difficulty with algebra. As to Latin, one of the girls wishes to take up that and I will put you in ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... only two sources of human vice—idleness and superstition, and only two virtues—activity and intelligence. He himself undertook his daughter's education, and to develop these two cardinal virtues in her gave her lessons in algebra and geometry till she was twenty, and arranged her life so that her whole time was occupied. He was himself always occupied: writing his memoirs, solving problems in higher mathematics, turning snuffboxes on a lathe, working in the garden, or superintending the building that was ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... should teach her. For instance, among the books he found a treatise on astronomy; it yielded a keen delight to both to identify a constellation and learn all sorts of wonderful things concerning it. But to work even the simplest problem required a knowledge of algebra, and Iris had never gone beyond decimals. So the stock of notebooks, instead of recording their experiences, became covered with symbols showing how x plus y equaled x ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... lost a little girl and boy. Three children living. He was from Illinois. She from Boston. Had an education (Boston Female High School,—Geometry, Algebra, a little Latin and Greek). Mother and father died. Came to Illinois alone, to teach school. Saw him—yes—a love match." ("Two souls," etc., etc.) "Married and emigrated to Kansas. Thence across the Plains to California. Always on the outskirts ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... I retorted, in an angry manner. "I am sick and tired of the way my Sex is always reproached as having nothing to do. If you consider French and music and Algebra and History and English composition nothing, as well as keeping house and having children and atending to social ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to keep up Latin and Greek and French and German, and Algebra and Geometry and Chemistry and Mechanics, ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... captain of artillery at Berne, Monsieur Louis Bonaparte; you have necessarily a smattering of algebra and geometry. Here are certain axioms of which you ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... Ella was a queen, a kindly queen, ever ready to help me out with my algebra. Everything she did seemed to me instinct with womanly grace. No doubt she read the worship in my eyes, but her attitude was that of an older sister. Cora, being nearer my own age, awed me not at all. On the contrary, we were more inclined to battle ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... in the following propositions (consider propositions always with your class as the audience): (1) "Physics, Chemistry, and Algebra Are Hard Studies." (2) "Only Useful Studies Should Be Taught in This School." (3) "All Women Should Be Allowed to Vote and Should Be Compelled by Law to Remove Their Hats in Church." (4) "Agricultural Conditions in Abyssinia Are Superior ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... is to make it a "subject" for examinations, running in a parallel track with Algebra and Geography, earning its measure of marks and submitted to the tests of non-Catholic examining bodies, to whom it speaks in another tongue than ours. It must be a very robust devotion to the word of ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... "First effects of algebra," replied Barbicane; "and now, to finish, we are going to prove the given number of these different expressions, that is, ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... I like to take account of possibilities. Don't you know mathematics are my hobby? Did you ever study algebra? I always have an eye on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... "Asiatic Researches," 1798; and in stating the rule for finding the planets which preside over the day, called Hor, he was the first to point out the coincidence between that expression and our name for the twenty-fourth part of the day. In one of the notes to his Dissertation on the Algebra of the Hindus he showed that this and other astrological terms were evidently borrowed by the Hindus from the Greeks, or other external sources; and in a manuscript note published for the first time by Sir E.Colebrooke, we ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... a good clap beside; then they retired to the shed to black their boots, after which Frank filled the woodboxes and Jack split kindlings, till the daily allowance was ready. Both went at their lessons for half an hour, Jack scowling over his algebra in the sofa corner, while Frank, with his elbows on and his legs round the little stand which held his books, seemed to be ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... argued at the north that they would be paying less than their equitable share. Consequently, at that time the north had been inclined to maintain that the slaves were population, while the south had preferred to regard them as chattels. Thus we see that in politics, as well as in algebra, it makes all the difference in the world whether you start with plus or with minus. On that occasion Madison had offered a successful compromise, in which a slave figured as three fifths of a freeman; ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... remembered how he acted as Antigone in the college play, and was "plastered" from the second act on. Mr. Vidal had no recollection of it, but wondered if there was any good book-store in town where he could buy his daughter an Algebra. He rose when he decently could and left us. As Mr. Sims ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... Barclay was to initiate a system of higher education in this farmhouse, she did not clearly see. Drawing was a simple thing enough; but how was she to propose teaching languages, or suggest algebra, or insist upon history? She must wait, and feel her way; and in the meantime she scattered books about her room, books chosen with some care, to act as baits; hoping so by and by to catch her fish. Meanwhile she made herself very agreeable in the family; and that without ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... may see one in mamma every day. Now you put one eye to this glass, and the half is better than the whole. With both, you see nothing; with one, you see better, fifty times better, than with both before. Don't talk of arithmetic after that. It is algebra now, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... popular error to which you allude, and which is none the less an error for its promulgation as truth. With an art worthy a better cause, for example, they have insinuated the term 'analysis' into application to algebra. The French are the originators of this particular deception; but if a term is of any importance, if words derive any value from applicability, then 'analysis' conveys 'algebra' about as much as, in Latin, 'ambitus' implies 'ambition,' ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... which is a mode of consciousness at a discount just now with the new generation of analysts who are throwing everything into their crucibles. Now we must not claim too much for sentiment. It does not go a great way in deciding questions of arithmetic, or algebra, or geometry. Two and two will undoubtedly make four, irrespective of the emotions or other idiosyncrasies of the calculator; and the three angles of a triangle insist on being equal to two right angles, in the face of the most impassioned rhetoric or the most inspired verse. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the invention of the cipher, which was felt to be so valuable as to be entitled to give its name to all the process of arithmetic?—"T.S.D." has given the querist his best clue in sending him to Mr. Strachey's Bija Ganita, and to Sir E. Colebrooke's Algebra of the Hindus, from the Sanscrit of Brahmegupta. Perhaps a few sentences may sufficiently point out where the difficulty lies. In the beginning of the sixth century, the celebrated Boethius described the present system as an invention ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... than the other; and has ever since remained in advance of it? No: and again we call M. Comte himself as witness. Fortunately for his argument he has said nothing respecting the early stages of the concrete and abstract divisions after their divergence from a common root; otherwise the advent of Algebra long after the Greek geometry had reached a high development, would have been an inconvenient fact for him to deal with. But passing over this, and limiting ourselves to his own statements, we find, at the ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... mathematics higher than elementary algebra and geometry is introduced; in the foot-notes and in the Appendix an occasional trigonometric formula appears, for the benefit of the very considerable number of high school students who understand such expressions. This fact should be particularly noted, for it is a special ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... mechanically moved to do so by his imperative voice and action, and slipped it into her algebra. When she turned to speak Jack was gone, and she walked on, flushed with excitement, her breath shortened and quickened. She had a fair share of woman's love of romance and of letters, and she hurried a little in order ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... higher form, but she always manages to catch me up. I make up my mind every term I'm going to win a double remove and leave her behind, yet somehow it never happens to come off. I'm much better at cricket and hockey than at French and algebra. But after all, it's rather convenient to have her in the same form: she's sure to remember what the lesson is when I forget, and I can borrow her books if I ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the morning with Latin and English and algebra and my two stupid girls. I don't know how Marion is ever going to get into college, or stay in after she gets there. And as for Florence, she is hopeless—but oh! such a little beauty. I don't suppose it matters in the least whether they are stupid ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... hesitated a moment—"a squaw. I can make my own clothes, and sew, and wash, and mend. I was taught for eight years to do these things at Holy Cross Mission. I can read and write English, and I know how to play the organ. Also I can do arithmetic and some algebra—a little. I shall be sold to the highest bidder, and to him I will make out a bill of sale of myself. I forgot to say that I can sing very well, and that I have never been sick in my life. I weigh one hundred ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... a mixed school. Children of all ages were there, from naughty little Johnnie Cole of five to Mary Burt and Hilton Le Moyne of seventeen and nineteen, who were in algebra and the sixth reader. It was well known by the rest of the children why Hilton Le Moyne lingered in the school this year all through May and June, instead of leaving in April, as usual, to help his uncle on the farm. It was "Teacher." He was in love with her, and always waited ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... ALGEBRA (from the Arab. af-jebr wa'l-muqabala, transposition and removal [of terms of an equation], the name of a treatise by Mahommed ben Musa al-Khwarizmi), a branch of mathematics which may be defined as the generalization and extension of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... teachers provided to instruct him. He is educated in the industrial arts on the one hand, and not only in the rudiments but in the liberal arts on the other. Beyond the three r's he is instructed in geography, grammar, and history; he is taught drawing, algebra and geometry, music and astronomy and receives lessons in physiology, botany, and entomology. Matrons wait on him while he is well, and physicians and nurses attend him when he is sick. A steam laundry does his washing, and ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... like the autumn—except the spring. And the spring is only good because it is the beginning of the summer. Just the same as the winter is best because the spring comes after it. As Roy Blakeley would have said, "You can do that by algebra." But there is nothing, either before or after, to make ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... answer of such a problem as this: a number together with its fifth part makes 21; what is the number? The process by which the Egyptian solved this problem seems very cumbersome to any one for whom a rudimentary knowledge of algebra makes it simple, yet the method which we employ differs only in that we are enabled, thanks to our hypothetical x, to make a short cut, and the essential fact must not be overlooked that the Egyptian reached a correct solution ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... for me not to pass. I suppose I could have passed easily enough four years ago. But after I got out of the Academy, I went to live with my aunt; and women, you know, don't keep up their interest in algebra and things. This winter when Aunt Mary died, in Toledo, ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... at. And that girl of all others! What illusions could he have about a girl who, hardly a year ago, had made a fool of herself over the fat young man stolidly eating terrapin across the table? If that was where romance and passion ended, it was better to take to district visiting or algebra! ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... because Leonardo was certainly the first writer on architecture who ever treated the subject at all. Here, as in all other cases Leonardo carefully avoids all abstract argument. His data are not derived from the principles of algebra, but from the laws of mechanics, and his method throughout ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... my love, let me make you blind; They have taught you to see Only a mean arithmetic on the face of things, A cunning algebra in the faces of men, And God like geometry Completing his circles, ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... inquiries as to their present attainments, Mr. Layton recommended a course of mathematics, beginning with algebra, history, and the French language. He gave the boys a list of the books they would ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... grade. The author is a professor of mathematics at Cambridge, but his honours are not vaunted in fine unintelligibilities: he writes of common things in a common way, and not, like Hudibras, who told the clock by algebra, or, like the lady in Dr. Young's Satires, who drank tea by stratagem. Would that all professors had written in the same vein. Then, learning would not have been so mixed up with the mysticism of the cell and the cloister, nor the evils of ignorance have so long ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... astronomy upon the globes, and their uses. He was a person very studious, laborious, of good apprehension, and had by his own industry obtained both in astrology, physick, arithmetick, astronomy, geometry and algebra, singular judgment: he would in astrology resolve horary questions very soundly; but was ever diffident of his own abilities: he was exquisitely skilful in the art of directions upon nativities, and had a good genius in performing judgment thereupon, but very unhappy ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... away almost as soon as he found himself in the schoolroom again. He found himself assigned to a class at one end of the room, where Mr. Tinkler presently introduced a new rule in Algebra to them, in such a manner as to procure for it a lasting unpopularity with all those who were not too much engaged in drawing duels and railway trains ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... days' experience with a girl had set me more problems than I ever found in arithmetic. This boy was a whole algebra, and they both belonged to my country where I thought rearing children was like growing flowers. Not only were things happening, I was learning new lessons faster than I really cared for. I asked him if Zura knew of ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... waited the publication of the replies, which I find do not embrace any one of the points to which I would call the attention of "E.V."—Diophantus of Alexandria, who flourished about 150 years after Christ, and who wrote thirteen books of algebra or arithmetic in the Greek language, is generally supposed to be the oldest writer on the subject that has come down to our time; but it was not from him that we received the knowledge of algebra in Europe. It appears ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.04.06 • Various
... side with these fanciful excursions into science, come more serious ones, as in the note on Algebra, which traces its progress since the year 1494, before which 'it had only arrived at the solution of problems of the second degree, inclusive.' A scrap of paper tells us that Casanova 'did not like regular towns.' 'I like,' ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... a most flagrant fallacy to suppose that modern ages have a monopoly of scientific discovery. The greatest discoveries are not those of modern ages. 'No one for a moment can pretend that printing is so great a discovery as writing, or algebra, or language. What are the most brilliant of our chemical discoveries compared with the invention of fire and the metals?' Hipparchus ranks with the Keplers and Newtons; and Copernicus was but the champion of Pythagoras. To say ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire, Youth are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished with pocket money, provided with all necessaries, instructed in all languages living and dead, mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry, the use of the globes, algebra, single-stick, if required, writing, arithmetic, fortification, and every other branch of classical literature. Terms twenty guineas per annum. No extras, no vacations, and diet unparalleled. Mr. Squeers is in town and attends daily, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... for more than a few minutes, as you are now listening to me. The outside sights and sounds would inevitably carry his attention off. And, for most people in middle life, the sort of intellectual effort required of the average schoolboy in mastering his Greek or Latin lesson, his algebra or physics, would be out of the question. The middle-aged citizen attends exclusively to the routine details of his business; and new truths, especially when they require involved trains of close reasoning, are no longer within the ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... Mr. Bright was unconscious of what was going on. He sat with his face more than half turned away from "Dodd," and was devoting all his energies to the elucidation of a problem that was particularly troublesome to the advanced class in algebra. He had no thought of the "order" of his school room. He was too busy trying to help the boys and girls who sat before him, to have time to trouble himself with the rest of the pupils, who were well able to care for themselves between recitations. This was his ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... the Greek and Latin grammars and attacks Latin prose or Latin verse. My teaching in this direction had been more than sketchy. The only schoolroom matter in which I had made any advance was mathematics. Euclid and algebra fascinated me. I felt for them exactly what I felt for poetry. Though I did not know till many years afterwards that when Pythagoras discovered the forty-seventh proposition he sacrificed a yoke of oxen, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... time in English literature, I think—the term Dramatic Lyric. This naturally appealed to Browning, and he gave the title in 1842 to his first published collection of short poems. At first blush "dramatic lyric" sounds like a contradiction in terms, like "non-mathematical algebra." Drama is the most objective branch of poetry, and the lyric the most subjective: but Browning was so intent upon the chronicling of all stages of life that he carried the methods of the drama into the lyric form, of which Meeting at Night may serve as an ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... from the lamp, his hands locked round his knee, doing nothing, and finding it most difficult. His father read the newspaper, his mother mended stockings, his little brother pored frowningly over his algebra. Presently Jack's nerves seemed to break. He sprang up impetuously, then, controlling himself, sat down again, and said: "Oh, it is brutal, this sitting around! I don't believe I can stand it much longer. I wish I were out in the wilds, or on the sea, ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... or foreshortened view, such a working hypothesis, as true and full knowledge might supersede; or it may mean this true and full knowledge itself, a synthetic survey of objects of experience in their experimental character. Algebra and language are theoretical in the first sense, as when a man believes in his luck; historical and scientific imagination are theoretical in the second sense, when they gather objects of experience together without distorting them. But it is only to the first sort of theory ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... his mind what marvel that it was well-nigh out of the question for Walter King to focus his attention on algebra, Latin, history, and physics. X Y seemed of very little consequence, and as for the Punic Wars they were so far away as to be hazy beyond any ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... Government? It is that the Legislative Councils should represent truly and effectively, with a reasonable approach to the balance of real social forces, the wishes and needs of the communities themselves. That is the object of the Government, and in face of a great problem of that kind, algebra, arithmetic, geometry, logic—none of these things will do your business for you. You have to look at it widely and away from those sciences, excellent in their place, but not of much service when you are solving awkward political ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... in search of other worlds; at the dame-school; first pleasures of song; learns threshing; is attacked by the ague; goes to Mr. Merrishaw's school; studies algebra; travels to Wisbeach; interview with Mr. Councillor Bellamy; fails in becoming a lawyer's clerk; promoted to be potboy at the 'Blue Bell;' growing love of nature; takes to reading fairy tales; first love; meets with Thomson's 'Seasons;' ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... scholars, male and female, from the infant learning the A B C's up to the young lady of eighteen and the boy of twenty, studying the highest branches taught—the three R's, "Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmetic." I never saw an algebra, or other mathematical work higher than the arithmetic, in Georgetown, until after I was appointed to West Point. I then bought a work on algebra in Cincinnati; but having no teacher ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... made no reply, but was out of the room almost before the words had reached the ears of her father and mother. Though she was only sixteen, and had as yet read nothing but Latin and Greek,—unless we are to count the twelve books of Euclid and Wood's Algebra, and sundry smaller exercises of the same description,—she understood, as well as any one then present, the reason why ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... however, had long been familiar with the classics, and had translated them into their own tongue. Not only did England gain its first knowledge of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle from Mohammedan teachers, but it also received from them the elements of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and astronomy. ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... scholars, and in her studies easily a leader. It acted as a spur to the boy, whose secret though ardent admiration had originally been the motive force that brought him to the academy. His pride was such that he was ashamed to have her surpass him, and for her to solve a problem in algebra that he ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... with great satisfaction that her father noticed her application and success in this arduous study. He considered it, like algebra, an excellent discipline for the mind—too often wanting in ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... form, and he had grown used to it. He had taught himself a language down here,—if only to know it by sight, and to have formed his own crude ideas of its pronunciation, could be called learning it. He had also worked at fractions and decimals, and tried a little algebra; but he was, and had been as a boy, a poor hand at figures. Was it necessary for him when on duty always to remain in that channel of damp air, and could he never rise into the sunshine from between those high stone walls? Why, that depended upon times and circumstances. Under some conditions there ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... proper inquiries have assured us that no more blood was shed than if the parties to the strife had been a Canadian and a Fenian. We will, therefore, drop the subject, and enter at once upon the flowery path of the first lesson in algebra." ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... James Merrishaw, and was allowed the run of his little library. His passion for learning rapidly developed itself, and he eagerly devoured every book that came in his way, his reading ranging from "Robinson Crusoe" to "Bonnycastle's Arithmetic" and "Ward's Algebra." He refers to this in later life when he thus ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... hard proposition to dope out. Good looks can not be analyzed in a lab or worked out by algebra, because, I'm telling you, the one that may look awful lucky to me may strike somebody else as being fairly punk. Providence framed it up that way so as to give more girls a chance to land somebody. Still, there is one kind that makes a hit ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... of the barricades of Paris. When the boys came to the obstacle, they made no difficulty of creeping under or jumping over it; but for the magisterial Mr Root, fully powdered; or the classical master, full of Greek; or the mathematical master, conscious of much Algebra, to creep under these desks, would have been infra dig, and for them to have leapt over was impossible. The younger assistants might certainly have performed the feat, but they would have been but scurvily treated for their trouble, on the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Algebra—elementary principles. Painful recollections of my boyhood and the binomial theorem rose in my mind as I let the leaves turn under my fingers. "What do you ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... years' duration. Courses were of two kinds, from which students could make a choice. One consisted of Mathematics, Logic, and Ethics; the other of Classics. In the former the First Year was devoted to the study of six books of Euclid, Algebra to the end of Quadratic Equations, and Trigonometry to the end of the solution of Plain Triangles. In the second year the course included a repetition of all the first year work, Analytic Geometry, Differential and Integral Calculus, and Logic, consisting of Fallacies, Induction and "a sketch of ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... 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 ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... as its own, whether before noon or after it. It will leave to the English Establishment its canonical hours, sacred to organ music and the Liturgy; but it will set apart by enactment no pedagogical hours, sacred to arithmetic or algebra, the construing of verbs, or the drawing of figures. If separate hours merely mean that the master is not to have all his classes up at once—here gabbling Latin or Greek, there discussing the primer or reciting from Scott's Collection, yonder repeating the multiplication table or running ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... handsomely." But he seemed even less conscious than Mrs. Westmore that each particular wrong could be traced back to a radical vice in the system. He appeared to think that every murmur of assent to her proposals passed the sponge, once for all, over the difficulty propounded: as though a problem in algebra should be solved by ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... the holly bush. For half an hour Marjorie toiled away. Copying poetry is monotonous, though perhaps not very exacting work; she hated writing, and her head ached. After a morning spent at Latin, algebra, and chemistry, it seemed intolerable to be obliged to remain in the schoolroom. She threw down her pen and stretched her arms wearily, then strolled to the open ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... man. Great men are eager to find an hour, and not to avoid losing a moment. 'What are you doing' said somebody once (as I heard the tradition) to the beautiful Lady Oxford as she sate in her open carriage on the race-ground—'Only a little algebra,' said she. People who do a little algebra on the race-ground are not likely to do much of anything with ever so many hours for meditation. Why, you must agree with me in all this, so I shall not be sententious any longer. Mending stockings is not exactly the sort of pastime I should choose—who ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Dey's principal Wife, Zoraide Khanum, is said to have boiled a large Gold Chronometer, made by Silvain of Paris, with Cream and Sweet Almonds. Yet does a remnant of their Ancestors' old skill in Arithmetic and Algebra linger among 'em; for whereas not One in Twenty Thousand can do an Equation (and Captain Blokes taught me, and I have since forgotten How), yet the Merchants are frequently very dexterous in Reckoning by Memory, and have also a singular method of Numeration, by putting their hands into ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... in the course of time the Arabs invaded Spain and forced upon the unwilling inhabitants of Europe such instrumentalities of higher civilization as arithmetic and algebra, soap and sugar. Later the Spaniards by an act of equally unwarranted and beneficent aggression carried the sugar cane to the Caribbean, where it thrived amazingly. The West Indies then became a rival of the East Indies as a treasure-house of tropical wealth and for several ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... offer of a free tea". So, on receipt—per the Dexter's fag referred to—of Trevor's invitation, he scratched one engagement (with his mathematical master—not wholly unconnected with the working-out of Examples 200 to 206 in Hall and Knight's Algebra), postponed another (with his friend and ally Moriarty, of Dexter's, who wished to box with him in the gymnasium), and made his way at a leisurely pace towards Donaldson's. He was feeling particularly pleased with himself today, for several reasons. He had begun the day well by scoring brilliantly ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... Relations. From the logical doctrine of serial order we seem to be able to deduce the whole arithmetic of integers, and from this it is easy to deduce further the arithmetic of fractions and the arithmetic or algebra of the 'real' and 'complex' numbers. As the logical principles of serial order enable us to deal with infinite as well as with finite series, it further follows that the Calculus and the Theory of Functions can now be built up without a single contradiction or breach of logic. The puzzles about ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... extract the square root of a number of not more than five places, determine the space through which a body falls in a given time, the circumference and areas of circles from their diameters, and solve many problems in mensuration: they practise also Mental Algebra, &c. In mental, no less than in written, Arithmetic, 'by assimilating the questions to those which actually occur in the transactions of life,' the pupil is made sensible that he is rising into the usefulness and respectability of real business. The imitative principle of man is thus made to blend ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... teaching them to his pupils that he learned first of all chemistry, inexpensively performing little elementary experiments before them, "with pipe-bowls for crucibles and aniseed flasks for retorts," and finally algebra, of which he knew not a word before he gave his first ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... a part of the rural high school curriculum, but the traditional courses in algebra and geometry do not meet the need. The ideal course would probably be a skillful combination of algebra, geometry, and trigonometry occupying the time of one or two years, and applied directly to the problems of mechanics, measurements, surveying, ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... precise numerical equivalent of the expression "Just one kiss" algebra has not yet been found quite able to grapple. It is believed, however, to ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... truth is itself a linguistic process, for thought is nothing but language denuded of its outward garb. The proper medium of scientific expression is therefore a generalized language that may be defined as a symbolic algebra of which all known languages are translations. One can adequately translate scientific literature because the original scientific expression is itself a translation. Literary expression is personal and concrete, but this does not mean that its significance is altogether ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... says the Pope, "is subtraction according to algebra, so here goes to make the rule good," says he, filling his tumbler wid the blessed stuff, and sitting down again at the table, for the anger didn't stay two minits on him, ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... on to awakening Europe. This man was Mo[h.]ammed the Son of Moses, from Khow[a]rezm, or, more after the manner of the Arab, Mo[h.]ammed ibn M[u]s[a] al-Khow[a]razm[i],[8] a man of great {5} learning and one to whom the world is much indebted for its present knowledge of algebra[9] and of arithmetic. Of him there will often be occasion to speak; and in the arithmetic which he wrote, and of which Adelhard of Bath[10] (c. 1130) may have made the translation or paraphrase,[11] ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... an enthusiast who should wish to demonstrate, what all loyal Americans believe in, the vast superiority of our form of railway-carriage. The cars proceed, in perfectly regular order, from raw material to completion with the progressive march of a quadratic equation in algebra. They seem to be arranged to demonstrate a theory. First the visitor sees lumber in stock, a million feet of it; then, across one end of a long room, the mere sketch or transparent diagram of a car; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... or hypothesis, based upon physical data is absolutely true, in the sense that a mathematical proposition is so; but, if its errors can become apparent only outside the limits of practicable observation, it may be just as usefully adopted for one of the symbols of that algebra by which we interpret nature, as if ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... And she began precisely with her old sentence—"With the fortune I brought your father, and with my lord's estate, I cawnt understand the meaning of all these pecuniary difficulties; and all that strange creature Sir Terence says is algebra to me, who speak English. And I am particularly sorry he was let in this morning—but he's such a brute that he does not think any thing of forcing one's door, and he tells my footman he does not mind not at home a pinch of snuff. Now what ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... if you are kind and patient he will be glad to have you help him; I shall make it a sort of favor to me on his part, to let you see to his lessons, now and then. It will be quite true, for I don't want you to touch your Latin or algebra till cool weather; teaching him will be play ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... wood and field, however, I knew nothing of any open-air study. Study was a thing of books. At school we were never taught to look elsewhere for knowledge. Reading and spelling, geography and grammar, arithmetic and algebra, geometry and trigonometry,—these were studied, of course, as also were Latin and Greek. But none of our lessons took us out of the school-room, unless it was astronomy, the study of which I had nearly ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... Passionless as algebra, the genius of Maurice was ready for the task. Strategic points of immense value, important cities and fortresses, vital river-courses and communications—which foreign tyranny had acquired during the tragic past with a patient iniquity almost without a parallel, and which patriotism had for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... certainly owes a large debt to the Saracens. They preserved and transmitted much that was valuable in the science of the Greeks and the Persians (see p. 472). They improved trigonometry and algebra, and from India they borrowed the decimal system of notation and introduced ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... upon nothing but reading and writing, with just a smattering of arithmetic by way of science. In our secondary schools they have insisted upon nothing but Greek and Latin, with about an equal leaven of algebra and geometry. This mediaeval fare (I am delighted that I can thus agree for once with Professor Ray Lankester) they have thrust down the throats of all the world indiscriminately; so much so that nowadays people seem hardly ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... about "virtual," or as it would be called nowadays constructive, representation of the colonies, likening them to Birmingham, Manchester, and other towns which sent no members to Parliament—as if problems in politics followed the rule of algebra, that negative quantities, multiplied, produce a positive quantity. But Franklin concerned himself little about this unreasonable reasoning, which indeed soon had an effect eminently disagreeable to the class of men who stupidly uttered ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... class in the day-school—there is one lower in the night-school—the arithmetical tables are mastered, and fractions introduced and developed with the use of liquid, dry, surface, and time measures; whereas in the Senior class algebra is studied through quadratics and plane geometry through the "area of polygons." That is to say, the lowest day-school class is about equivalent to a fourth grade in the North, and the Senior to the first or the second ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... was bald about the wickets, and we played without style and disputed with the umpire; and the teaching was chiefly in the hands of a lout of nineteen, who wore ready-made clothes and taught despicably. The head-master and proprietor taught us arithmetic, algebra, and Euclid, and to the older boys even trigonometry, himself; he had a strong mathematical bias, and I think now that by the standard of a British public school he ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... going too far, now in this direction and now in the opposite. Our common-school system now rejects sewing from the education of girls, which very properly used to occupy many hours daily in school a generation ago. The daughters of laborers and artisans are put through algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and the higher mathematics, to the entire neglect of that learning which belongs distinctively to woman. A girl cannot keep pace with her class if she gives any time to domestic ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... philosophy, mathematics, and medicine, and also on chiromancy. For his own follies and misfortunes he apologized, attributing them all to the influence of the stars. He has been described as a genuine philosopher and devotee of science, and his lasting reputation is chiefly due to his discoveries in algebra, in which art, wrote the historian, Henry Hallam, he ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... condition, but morality and education, feel the want of the elevating influence of the gospel. A seminary that commences operations by teaching the alphabet must advance far, and climb high, before its graduates will stand on a level with those whose pupils were familiar with elementary algebra when they entered; yet its course of study may be the best to secure the usefulness of its members in their own community. If ragged village girls, untutored and uncombed, studying aloud in school hours, and at recess leaping over the benches like wild goats, now ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... lodgings, and began by reading with the same tutor; a plan which promised well, because, in addition to what was his own by right, each had the benefit of the period of instruction paid for by the other. But two hours were much the same as one to Macaulay, in whose eyes algebra and geometry were so much additional material for lively and interminable argument. Thornton reluctantly broke through the arrangement, and eventually stood highest among the Trinity wranglers of his year; an elevation which he could hardly ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... at every instant, to keep the peace amongst them. It does not institute a magnificent auction of finance, where captivated provinces come to general ransom by bidding against each other, until you knock down the hammer, and determine a proportion of payments beyond all the powers of algebra to ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... things. The law of nature does not prescribe this or that particular distribution of goods, as neither does it join this man with that woman in marriage, nor insist on plaids rather than coats, nor set all boys to learn algebra, nor fix a ritual for divine worship; but it insists in the vague upon some worship, some education, some clothing, some marriage, and some distribution of goods, leaving the determination in each case to choice, custom, and positive law, human ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... this before you may begin to try to consciously "go out into the astral" as do the occultists. Be content to crawl before you may walk. Learn to add, multiply, subtract and divide, before you undertake the higher mathematics, algebra, geometry, etc., ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... day dawn and sunset, I come to renew the Seal. Ever study Algebra in college? Then look ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... A of old No. 13, with its algebra, logic, philosophy (heaven save the word!) and advanced grammar, unable to write a grammatical sentence. I had been taught spelling out of an expositor—a sort of pocket dictionary containing about fifteen hundred words. Most of these, with their definitions, parrotlike, I had learned ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... under the trees. Alexander Murray awoke to life at fifteen and acquired several languages in less than two years. Gifford was distraught for lack of reading, went to sea at thirteen, became a shoemaker, studying algebra late at night, was savagely unsociable, sunk into torpor from which he was roused to do splenetic and vexatious tricks, which alienated his friends. Rittenhouse at fourteen was a plowboy, covering the fences with figures, musing on infinite time and space. Benjamin Thompson ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... are not perfect. We have no absolutely perfect books on Grammar, Rhetoric, or Logic. Yet men learn those sciences readily enough when they study them heartily and diligently. We have no perfect systems of Arithmetic, Geometry, or Algebra; of Geography, Astronomy, or Geology; of Anatomy, Physiology, or Chemistry; of Botany, Natural History, or Physical Geography. Yet on all those subjects men gather an immense amount of knowledge, make a multitude of new discoveries, and arrive at a ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... befriended Hariot, the universal philosopher, as he has been called. Hariot has been credited with the invention of the system of notation in Algebra. He discovered the solar spots before, and the satellites of Jupiter almost simultaneously with, Galileo. Hariot, who numbered Bishops among his admirers, was accused by zealots of atheism, because his cosmogony was not ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... in a minute, Ester, only I've brought Florence Vane home with me, and I should not know what to do with her in the meantime. Besides, Mr. Hammond said he would show me about my algebra if I'd go out on the piazza ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... arithmetic, or combination of ideas or abstract thinking of any kind. Whether their skull indicates this by the modern principles of craniology, or not, I cannot say. But I am persuaded, that this susceptible and affectionate race have heads poorly adapted to reasoning and algebra. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... old fossil! If you send him a note you'll make him scratch all his hair off, and he has'nt got much. I would'nt send any of my letters to Mrs. Hall if I were you, you don't know how she is off for thatch, and it will take a power of thinking for any old lady unacquainted with Algebra to find out an unknown quantity. You might address them now to the Post Office, Ottawa, P.O. If I should go elsewhere I will leave instructions at the P.O. ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... none for us. It was as simple as algebra. Smoke attracted undue artillery attention—the Germans had artillery; we had not. They had fires; we ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... sure terno for the lottery. The wretched dupes added yet another feature of superstition to insure the success of this horrible device. They selected the head of their curate, who had recently died,—on the ground that, as he had studied algebra, he was a great cabalist, and any numbers from his head would be sure to draw ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... Those who can't learn, or won't learn, take care of themselves. Those who have a brain and use it are those that suffer! To hear that poor child blundering algebra in her sleep might be ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of ten years old, who are learning a little history, geography, and arithmetic, just in the Rule of Three and simple fractions, with perhaps a little Latin; of the Algebra and Euclid and Conic sections and higher Mathematics, and Latin and Greek verse and Hebrew and Philosophy, which they must some day confront, you will puzzle and paralyse their brains, and leave only a sense of misery and revolt and helplessness, ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... by geometric scale, Could take the size of pots of ale; Resolve, by sines and tangents straight, If bread or butter wanted weight, And wisely tell what hour o' th' day 125 The clock does strike by algebra. Beside, he was a shrewd PHILOSOPHER, And had read ev'ry text and gloss over; Whate'er the crabbed'st author hath, He understood b' implicit faith: 130 Whatever sceptic could inquire for, For ev'ry why he had a wherefore; Knew more than forty of ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... mark under it. Sylvia Courtney said that I hadn't used it in quite the ordinary sense. She thinks she knows, and very likely she does, though not quite as much as she imagines. Nobody can know everything; which is rather a comfort when it comes to algebra. I loath algebra and always did. Any right-minded person would, ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... the critters knew how to cipher, they would soon find out that a sum stated that way always eends in a naught. I never knew it to fail, and I defy any soul to cipher it so, as to make it come out any other way, either by Schoolmaster's Assistant or Algebra. When I was a boy, the Slickville bank broke, and an awful disorderment it made, that's a fact; nothin' else was talked of. Well, I studied it over a long time, but I couldn't make it out: so says I, 'Father, how came that 'ere bank to break? Warn't it well built? I thought that 'ere Quincy granite ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... he entered the Military College at Sandhurst, but remained there only two terms. By nature he was a studious chap, doing especially well in German and mathematics. So easily did he solve problems in algebra and geometry, that his ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... reported in "teachers' meeting" that Adelle Clark was as nearly defective as a child of her years could be and be "all right," and that the grades ought not to permit such pupils to graduate into the high school. Indeed, algebra, Caesar, and Greek history were as nearly senseless to Adelle Clark as they could be. They were entirely remote from her life, and nothing of imagination rose from within to give them meaning. She learned by rote, and she had a poor memory. It was much the same, however, with English ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... mathematics, including the first six and the eleventh and twelfth books of Euclid; and algebra as far as ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... night-schooling in America, and later a French night-teacher for a time, and, strange to say, an elocutionist from whom I learned how to declaim. I could read, write, and cipher, and had begun the study of algebra and of Latin. A letter written to my Uncle Lauder during the voyage, and since returned, shows that I was then a better penman than now. I had wrestled with English grammar, and knew as little of what it was designed to teach as children usually do. I had read little except ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... interpenetrating spheres of reality, which we can thus approach in alternation by using different conceptions and assuming different attitudes, just as mathematicians handle the same numerical and spatial facts by geometry, by analytical geometry, by algebra, by the calculus, or by quaternions, and each time come out right? On this view religion and science, each verified in its own way from hour to hour and from life to life, would be co-eternal. Primitive thought, with its belief in individualized ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... already; how to feed and tend them, and make them tame and friendly. She could not love them half so much if she were obliged to worry herself learning stupid names half a yard long, which no ordinary human creature understood! Latin—Algebra—Astronomy. She glanced round the table and beheld Mary and Agnes and Susan scribbling away with unruffled composure. No sign of alarm could be traced on their calm, bun-like countenances, the longest words flowed from their pens as if such a thing as ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... we had Colburn's Sequel as the arithmetic. From this I passed to algebra and geometry, and during the last two terms I studied Latin Grammar. My school-going days ended in February, 1835, a ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... underneath me because you can have more fun climbing over it, that's what I told her. That's why I believe in roofs. But I like trees better. I like trees better than anything except holidays. The thing I like worst of all is algebra. ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... been several times to different parts of the East Indies, and on more than one voyage have kept a reckoning out and home, assisted in taking lunar observations and those for determining the time and variation of the compass, and without knowing any more of algebra, fluxions, or conic sections, than a dog knows ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... merely to do the work which is assigned from day to day. A group of boys in a continuation school have little difficulty in mastering the habits which are required in order to handle the formal processes in arithmetic, or to apply the formula of algebra or trigonometry, if the application of these habitual responses to their everyday work has been made clear. Wherever we seek to secure an habitual response we should attempt to have children understand the use to which the given response is to be put, or, if this is not possible, to introduce ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... be employed in satire only as they are in algebra, in place of concrete and specified quantities. Moreover, it should be used as sparingly as the dissecting knife on the body of a living man. At the risk of forfeiting his life it ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... stand for ideas should, every time they are used, excite in the understanding the ideas they are made to stand for—in reading and discoursing, names being for the most part used as letters are in ALGEBRA, in which, though a particular quantity be marked by each letter, yet to proceed right it is not requisite that in every step each letter suggest to your thoughts that particular quantity it was appointed to ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... departments of chemistry, or to pursue them in their most interesting relations to the economy of Nature, ought to be well-grounded in elementary mathematics; he will oftener have to refer to arithmetic than algebra, and to algebra than to geometry. But all these sciences lend their aid to chemistry; arithmetic, in determining the proportions of analytical results and the relative weights of the elements of bodies; algebra, in ascertaining the laws of the ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... the best barber in Bagdad, an experienced physician, a profound chemist, an infallible astrologer, a finished grammarian, a complete orator, a subtle logician, a mathematician perfectly well versed in geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and all the refinements of algebra; an historian fully master of the histories of all the kingdoms of the universe. Besides, I understand all parts of philosophy. I have all our sacred traditions by heart. I am a poet, I am an architect; and what is it I am not? There is nothing in nature hidden from ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... mathematics, and extended the use and application of that science. They added to arithmetic the decimal system, and the Arabic numerals, which, however, are of Hindu origin; they simplified the trigonometry of the Greeks, and gave algebra more useful and general applications. Bagdad and Cordova had celebrated schools of astronomy, and observatories, and their astronomers made important discoveries; a great number of scientific words are evidently Arabic, such as algebra, alcohol, zenith, nadir, etc., and many of the inventions, which ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... that NEEDN'T be exceptional! It seems so strange that the best thing that school can give us is algebra and Caesar's Commentaries," Susan pursued thoughtfully. "When there's so MUCH else we don't know! Just to show you one thing, Billy,—when I first began to go to the Carrolls, I noticed that they never had to fuss with the building of a fire in the kitchen stove. When a meal was over, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... European scholars will probably smile at the statement that there is a hidden meaning in these words. Most readers will take the verses for nonsense. Reflection, however, has convinced me that yoga is not nonsense. One who has not studied the elements of Geometry or Algebra, cannot, however intelligent, hope to understand at once a Proposition of the Principia or the theorem of De Moivre. Failing to give the actual sense, I have contented myself with giving ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... however, a scholar who leaped avidly toward books. Painfully, reluctantly he trudged his way. Learning came hard—especially Latin, French, and history. To hold fast a French verb was for him a thousand times harder than to grip in his clutch a writhing eel; and as for algebra—well, the unknown quantity was the only ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett |
