"Compute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... errors mercilessly, and also eliminates them. One of the best authorities on the requirements of sextant observations in rude land travel, the Astronomer Royal of Cape Town, says to this effect:—"Do not observe the altitude of the star in taking lunars, but compute it. The labour requisite for that observation is better bestowed in taking a large number of distances." So much delicacy of hand and of eyesight is requisite in taking lunars that shall give results reliable to seven or eight miles, and so small an exertion or flurry spoils that delicacy, that ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... weather experienced for twenty years we are able to compute approximately our loss of feathered life. It is seventy-five per cent of the quail throughout the irrigated district, and about twenty per cent of meadow-larks. In the rough cedar-covered sections south of the Arkansas River, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... If we compute Dryden's share in the theatre at L300 annually, which is lower than it was rated by the actors in their petition;[31] if we make, at the same time, some allowance for those presents which authors of that time received upon presenting dedications, or occasional ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... they were hundreds of English miles away, perhaps more. But if they succeeded in reaching them, they would be saved, as mountains are seldom waterless. How much time that would consume was something he could not compute for it all depended upon the height of the mountains. Lofty peaks in such transparent atmosphere as that of Africa can be seen at an immeasurable distance; so it was necessary to find water before that time. Otherwise destruction ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the rising of the solstitial sun and its Sothic messenger. To these observers it must finally have been apparent that the shifting of the seasons was at the rate of one day in four years; this known, it required no great mathematical skill to compute that this shifting would finally effect a complete circuit of the calendar, so that after (4 X 365 ) 1460 years the first day of the calendar year would again coincide with the heliacal rising ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... oxen. Further, when property was stolen, the legal penalty was a compensation to the person injured. But when a man was stolen, no property compensation was offered. To tender money as an equivalent, would have been to repeat the outrage with intolerable aggravations. Compute the value of a MAN in money! Throw dust into the scale against immortality! The law recoiled from such supreme insult and impiety. To have permitted the man-thief to expiate his crime by restoring double, would have been making the repetition of crime ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... number of observations of occultations were observed during the winter of 1915. An occultation is really the eclipse of a star by the moon. A number of such eclipses occur monthly, and are tabulated in the "Nautical Almanac." From the data given there it is possible to compute the Greenwich time at which the phenomenon ought to occur for an observer situated at any place on the earth, provided his position is known within a few miles, which will always be the case. The time of disappearance of the star ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... closed by paying the King of Hungary an annual pension of seven thousand crowns of gold. The exact income of the State, however, from the monopoly of salt, or from the various imposts and duties levied upon merchandise, it is now difficult to know, and it is impossible to compute accurately the value or extent of Venetian commerce at any one time. It reached the acme of its prosperity under Tommaso Mocenigo, who was Doge from 1414 to 1423. There were then three thousand and three hundred vessels ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... lead or its oxide; nor is the color of blue vitriol a mixture of the colors of sulphuric acid and copper. This explains why mechanics is a deductive or demonstrative science, and chemistry not. In the one, we can compute the effects of combinations of causes, whether real or hypothetical, from the laws which we know to govern those causes when acting separately, because they continue to observe the same laws when in combination which they observe when ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... prosperity of France in ten years to such a degree that figures can hardly compute it. He has rebuilt Paris and has partly rebuilt every city in the state. He condemns a whole street at a time, assesses the damages, pays them, and rebuilds superbly. Then speculators buy up the ground and sell, but the original owner is given the first choice by the government at a stated price ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... accurately to compute the measurement of drains of any dimensions likely to be adopted, a table and explanations, found in the Report of the Board of Health, already quoted, are given below. The dimensions, or contents of any drain, are found by multiplying together the ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... attractive in the appearance or manners of Mr. Mudge. He had a coarse hard face, while his head was surmounted by a shock of red hair, which to all appearance had suffered little interference from the comb for a time which the observer would scarcely venture to compute. There was such an utter absence of refinement about the man, that Paul, who had been accustomed to the gentle manners of his father, was repelled by the contrast ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... Dartmouth, under date of June 30, 1775, Martin declares he "could collect immediately among the emigrants from the Highlands of Scotland, who were settled here, and immoveably attached to His Majesty and His Government, that I am assured by the best authority I may compute at 3000 effective men," and begs permission "to raise a Battalion of a Thousand Highlanders here," and "I would most humbly beg leave to recommend Mr. Allen McDonald of Kingsborough to be Major, and Captain Alexd. ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... heart, 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us; He knows each chord, its various tone, Each spring, its various bias: Then at the balance, let's be mute, We never can adjust it; What's done we partly may compute, But know not ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... another has not smiled! Oft, with a disappointed man, The first who cares to win him can; For, after love's heroic strain, Which tired the heart and brought no gain. He feels consoled, relieved, and eased To meet with her who can be pleased To proffer kindness, amid compute His acquiescence for pursuit; Who troubles not his lonely mood; And asks for love mere gratitude. Ah, desperate folly! Yet, we know, Who wed through love wed mostly so. At least, my Son, when wed you do, See that the ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... astonishment, A fierce vindictive scribble of red Quick flame across, as if one said (The angry scribe of Judgment) "There— Burn it!" And straight I was aware That the whole ribwork round, minute Cloud touching cloud beyond compute, Was tinted, each with its own spot Of burning at the core, till clot Jammed against clot, and spilt its fire Over all heaven, which 'gan suspire As fanned to measure equable,— Just so great conflagrations kill Night overhead, and rise and sink, Reflected. Now the fire ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... purposes, without giving one single reason for it; all the proof presented here is a night meeting. Please see the quotation from the British Quarterly Review. But let us look at it the way in which we compute time: I think it will be fair to premise, that about midnight was the middle of Paul's meeting; at any rate there is but one midnight to a twenty-four hour day. We say that Sunday, the first day of the week, does not commence until 12 o'clock Saturday night. Then it is very clear, ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign - 1847 edition • Joseph Bates
... the finished skins in an automatic measuring machine; this machine recorded the dimensions of the skins on a dial and was a wonderfully intricate contrivance. Try as he would Peter was unable to fathom how it could so quickly and exactly compute a problem that it would have taken him a ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... side of the formation to the other. These figures didn't mean a great deal, however, since the altitude at which the formation of lights was flying was unknown. If you assumed that the objects were flying at an altitude of 10,000 feet you could easily compute that they were traveling about 3,600 miles per hour, or five to six times the speed of sound. The formation would have been about 1,750 feet wide. If each light was a separate object it could have been in the neighborhood of 100 feet in diameter. These ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... biscuit, some vile coffee, some salt butter, and one delicious fish called a "latchet." With a boldness worthy of the Victoria Cross, Lewis set himself to broil that fish over the sulphurous fire. He cannot, of course, compute the number of falls which he had; he only knows that he imbued his very being with molten butter and fishy flavours. But he contrived to make a kind of passable mess (of the fish as well as of his clothing), ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... compute the waste and loss, the obstruction of every sort, that was produced in the Manchester region by Peterloo alone! Some thirteen unarmed men and women cut down,—the number of the slain and maimed ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... wilderness, and when we realized that this was but a section, and a small section at that, of a Dominion stretching thousands of miles between us and the Pacific, and how many thousand miles on the line North to South we could not compute, we began to get a glimmer of the immensity and potentiality of the ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... teaching in matters of health. Teachers can easily compute what their community loses from tuberculosis. The totals will for some time prove a convincing argument for cleanliness of air, of body, and of building wherever the community is responsible for air, building, and body. The annual ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... in a populous Oriental town we may compute the inhabitants at nearly, if not quite, a hundred per acre. This allows a considerable space for streets, open squares, and gardens, since it assigns but one individual to every space of fifty square yards. According to such a mode of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... are determinable relatively to the distance between them. The period of their orbital motion is known, being identical with the complete period of the variability of their light, and an easy application of Kepler's law of periodic times enables us to compute the sum of the masses of the two stars divided by the cube of the distance between their centres. Now the sizes of the bodies being known, the mean density of the whole system may be calculated. In every case that density has been found to be much less than the ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... acquaintance with the maxim of the great and godlike Gustavus Adolphus, that a flag of truce should be half a messenger half a spy?—And, having finished burnishing his arms, he sate down patiently to compute how much half a dollar per diem would amount to at the end of a six-months' campaign; and, when he had settled that problem, proceeded to the more abstruse calculations necessary for drawing up a brigade of two ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... he hath read for him in his church), that is poor and a debauched man, that the College have hired for 20s. to have some of the blood of a sheep let into his body; and it is to be done on Saturday next. They purpose to let in about twelve ounces; which, they compute, is what will be let in in a minute's time by a watch. On this occasion Dr. Whistler told a pretty story related by Muffett, a good author, of Dr. Cayus that built Caius College; that being very old, and living only at that time upon woman's milk, he, while he fed upon the milk of an angry fretful ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... Cohen (Hebrew), Coletti (Italian) and D'Artagnan (French) and McGregor (Scotch) and Olsen (Scandinavian) and McCarthy (Irish) and Winslow (of old America) travel together through the parasangs of the "Anabasis," or together follow Caesar into Gaul, or together compute a solar parallax, or build an arch, or do any one of a thousand things that have no national boundaries or racial characteristics. This is an extreme but not an unheard-of assembling of elements which the State has the task of assimilating ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... knew that the boy would soon be gone, just as those who light a candle in the evening know that the light, burning fast, will soon flicker out in the deep socket. One of our scientists foretells the time when, by the higher mathematics, it will be possible to compute how many brain cells must be torn down to earn a given sum of money; how much vital force each Sir William Jones must give in exchange for one of his forty languages and dialects; what percentage ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Shakespeare, everyway an unconscious man, was conscious of no Heavenly message? He did not feel, like Mahomet, because he saw into those internal Splendours, that he specially was the 'Prophet of God': and was he not greater than Mahomet in that? Greater; and also, if we compute strictly, as we did in Dante's case, more successful. It was intrinsically an error that notion of Mahomet's, of his supreme Prophethood; and has come down to us inextricably involved in error to this day; dragging along with it such a coil of fables, impurities, intolerances, as ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... brain does, you see," Leibowitz said, "is control the mechanism that steers the car. But it takes real power to steer—a great deal more than it does to compute the steering." ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... widespread are recorded in history than that which covered not only the East but part of the West with the Mohammedan religion and dominion. Mohammed was born either in the year 569 or 570 of the Christian era, and died A.D. 652. The year of the Hegira, the era from which Mohammedans compute their chronology, is A.D. 622, and within little more than a century from this era the Prophet was acknowledged, and the suzerainty of the Caliph recognised eastwards, in Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Persia, and in India as far as to the Ganges; and westwards along ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... enwrapping the handle first in canvas and then in a strip of a blanket taken from one of the forecastle bunks. It was terribly back-breaking work—this steady toil at the pumps, and when midday arrived and I knocked off to get a meridian altitude of the sun, wherefrom to compute our latitude, I was pretty well exhausted; but I had my reward in the discovery that I had reduced the depth of water in the hold by nearly eight inches—thus showing that, after all, the quantity of water ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... his years, which were Fifty-nine last April. The "Three-score and ten years," the Psalmist's limit, which probably was often in Oliver's thoughts and in those of others there, might have been anticipated for him: Ten Years more of Life;—which, we may compute, would have given another History to all the Centuries of England. But it was not to be so, it was to be otherwise. Oliver's health, as we might observe, was but uncertain in late times; often "indisposed" the spring before last. His course of life had not been ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... While it doesn't stand to reason that they could find out much in seventy days, still they may have had a set-up of instruments on their detectors that would have enabled them to analyze our fields and thus compute the structure of the secondary projector we used there. If so, it wouldn't take them long to find out enough to give us plenty of grief—but I don't really believe that they knew enough. I don't quite know ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... and Patrolman Willis were, self-evidently, the only human beings on a planet some nine thousand miles in diameter. It was easy to compute that the nearest other humans would be at least some thousands of thousands of millions of miles away—so far away that distance had no meaning. This planet was something over nine-tenth rolling sea, but there were a ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... many advantages for Marcia in the affair,—perhaps more than for himself. But to do him justice he did not formulate these now, or in any wise explicitly recognize the favors he was bestowing. At twenty-six one does not naturally compute them in musing upon the girl to whom one is just betrothed; and Bartley's mind was a confusion of pleasure. He liked so well to think how fond of him Marcia was, that it did not occur to him then to question whether he were as fond of her. It is possible that as he drowsed, at last, there floated ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... my neglected physics lessons and compute the pressure that far down. I couldn't. But I knew it must be an appalling total of tons to the square inch. What possible arrangement could they have brought in which to make that ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... return from that to the children for refreshment and for spiritual illumination. In the purity of their eyes, in the liquid sweetness of their voices, in their adorable grace and caprice, there was a healing force beyond her power to compute. ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... Every engineer has to know the materials with which he has to work and the natural laws of these materials, as discovered by observation and experiment and formulated by mathematics and mechanics; else he can not calculate the forces at his disposal; he can not compute the resistance of his materials; he can not determine the capacity and requirements of his power plant; in short, he can not make the most profitable use of his resources. Lately in all industries and particularly during the late World War, which was itself a gigantic industrial process, ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... scene of the story that we are digesting for you is changed. Miss Plynlimmon has gone to London. You will be gratified to learn that she has fallen heir to a fortune of 100,000 pounds, which we are happy to compute for you at $486,666 and 66 cents less exchange. On Miss Plynlimmon's arrival at Charing Cross Station, she is overwhelmed with that strange feeling of isolation felt in the surging crowds of a modern city. We therefore enclose a timetable showing the arrival ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... not on your list before, perhaps. —Alas, friend, here's the agent . . . is 't the name? The captain, or whoever's master here— 120 You see him screw his face up; what's his cry Ere you set foot on shipboard? "Six feet square!" If you won't understand what six feet mean, Compute and purchase stores accordingly— And if, in pique because he overhauls Your Jerome, piano, bath, you come on board Bare—why, you cut a figure at the first While sympathetic landsmen see you off; Not afterward, when long ere half seas over, You peep up ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... has other city properties, houses in Paris, estates here and there, running not into the hundreds of thousands, but into the millions of livres in actual value. Among these are some of the estates of the greatest nobles of France. Their value is more than any man can compute. Is this not something? Moreover, there goes with it all the dignity of the most stupendous personal success ever made by a single man since the world began. 'Tis all yours, Lady Catharine. And unless you share it, it has no value to my brother. I know myself ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... represent the actual loss to society, nor can we compute the gain from a single case cured and returned to normal life and usefulness. Inebriety is sapping the foundation of our Government, both State and National, and unless we can provide means adequate to check it, we shall leave a legacy of physical, ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... girl educated at court, was a terrible piece of furniture for the country; that to carry her thither against her inclination, would as effectually rob him of his happiness and repose, as if he was transported to hell; that if he consented to let her stay, he needed only to compute what it would cost him in equipage, table, clothes, and gaming-money, to maintain her in London according to her caprices; and then to cast up how long his fifteen thousand a-year ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of the Emperor's great kindness, the two astronomers resolved to compute a new set of astronomical tables, and in honour of his Majesty they were to be called the 'Rudolphine Tables.' This project pleased the Emperor, who promised to defray the expense of their publication. Logomontanus, Tycho's chief assistant, had entrusted ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... days when such as she called Antony away from his wife, and Caesar from his classical selfishness; when on many an Eastern throne such beauty as this stirred to murmurous glory armies beyond compute, and clashed the cymbals of prodigious conquests. She lay upon the altar-cushions of the church, like young Isaac upon his father's altar, and where the mourners knelt to pray for God's reconcilement, the cruelty of their law flashed over her ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... logs are "scaled," that is measured in order to compute the number of board feet in them, Fig. 9. The scaler generally has an assistant, for logs in large piles must be measured at both ends in order to determine which is the top, the body of the log being out of sight. ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... ran from northern New England to Savannah, closely hugging the seacoast for the greater part of the way. Some of the milestones set by Franklin to enable the postmasters to compute the postage, which was fixed according to distance, are still standing. Crossroads connected some of the larger communities away from the seacoast with the main road, but when Franklin died, after serving also as Postmaster ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... after thousands of years perhaps, passed into their old bodies. Hence it was the great object of the Egyptians to preserve their mortal bodies after death, and thus arose the custom of embalming them. It is difficult to compute the number of mummies that have been found in Egypt. If a man was wealthy, it cost his family as much as one thousand dollars to embalm his body suitably to his rank. The embalmed bodies of kings were preserved in marble sarcophagi, and hidden in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... considerable Improvements, in our poor Country, which gave me Reason to say, she was on the mending Hand; and I have not nam'd all, for the very encrease of our Numbers of late Years, is a vast Addition to our Strength, Credit, and Figure, as a Nation. I think the Dealers in Political Arithmetick, compute that every Nation, unwasted by Famines, Wars, or Plagues, doubles the Quantity of its People in 250 Years; but I have seen Computations, that between our early Marriages, the Breedyness of our People, the Importations of our Neighbours, the Mildness of our Climate, ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... the light from going entirely out," he informed her with elaborate deliberation, "it is computed by those enthusiasts who have bought our product—and subsequently returned it to us and got their money back—they compute that a motor car must maintain a speed of twenty-five miles an hour, or else there won't be any light at all. To make the illumination bright enough to be noticed by an approaching automobile, they state the speed must be more than thirty miles an hour. At thirty-five, ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... the retros and retard us to the speed of what we're chasing," he said. "That will equalize our orbits very nearly. Get busy on that scope if you're up to it. I'll compute my retro." ...
— The Trouble with Telstar • John Berryman
... regular studies of his college, but read enormous numbers of Greek, Latin, and English books, as his taste or whim suggested. He knew no one; he hardly knew his own tutor. "For the first two years of my residence in Oxford," he says, "I compute that I did not utter one hundred words." After leaving Oxford, he lived for about twenty years in the Lake country; and there he became acquainted with Wordsworth, Hartley Coleridge (the son of S. T. Coleridge), and John Wilson (afterwards known as Professor Wilson, and also as the "Christopher ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... been a terrible, half-legendary figure. One felt that same quiet strength as the tawny haired man talked to Barry now; his voice was a smooth, deep current. But as for Barry himself, Gregg could not compute the factors which entered into the man. By all outward seeming that slender, half-timid figure was not a tithe of the force which either of the others represented, but out of the past Gregg's memory gathered more and more details, clear and clearer, of the wolf-dog, the black stallion, ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... going to the East-Indies in quest of wealth;—JOHNSON. 'A man had better have ten thousand pounds at the end of ten years passed in England, than twenty thousand pounds at the end of ten years passed in India, because you must compute what you give for money; and a man who has lived ten years in India, has given up ten years of social comfort and all those advantages which arise from living in England. The ingenious Mr. Brown, distinguished by the name of Capability Brown[1213], told me, that he was once at the seat of Lord ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... three days, Roswell Gardiner supposed himself to be about the latitude of Cape Henry, and some thirty or forty leagues from the land. It was much easier to compute the last, than the first of these material facts. Of course, he had no observations. The sun had not been visible since the storm commenced, and nearly half the time, during the last day, the two vessels were shut in from one another, by mists and a small rain. ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... not by form or feature I compute my prize. Geraldine's mind, not her beauty, is the magnet of my love. The graces are the fugitive handmaids of youth, and dress their charge with flowers as fleeting as they are fair; but the virtues faithfully o'erwatch the couch of age, and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... compute the altitude of a church steeple, a lofty chimney, or any similar object, from the length of its shadow. The simplest and the most accurate process is to measure at noon the number of feet from the base of the object to the end of the shadow. The elevation of ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... truth of this law of deflection, we find ourselves able to explain all the phenomena of centrifugal force, and to compute its ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... practice, the cylinder requires to be larger than usual, or the piston faster than usual, in the proportion in which the expansion is carried out. Every one who is acquainted with simple arithmetic, can compute the terminal pressure of steam in a cylinder, when he knows the initial pressure and the point at which the steam is cut off; and he can also find, by the same process, any pressure intermediate between the first and the last. By setting down these pressures ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... banks of the Guadalete with a formidable army, which most historians compute at one hundred thousand cavalry; although Ibnu Khaldun makes it amount to forty thousand men only. Roderic brought all his treasures and military stores in carts: he himself came in a litter placed between two mules, having over his head an awning richly set with pearls, rubies, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... other notable comet, which I remember waking my children after midnight to see; but compared with that of 1858, whether in size or in splendor, it was literally as moonlight unto sunlight, or, in impression, as water unto wine. As the astronomers compute the period of return for the earlier at two thousand years, more or less, we of that generation were truly singular in our opportunity of viewing this, among the very few "most magnificent of modern times." The tail, broadening towards the end, with a curve like ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... world possibilities of fame and usefulness so bright or so important as Colonel Ephraim Elmer Ellsworth, who was killed at Alexandria, Virginia, on May 24, 1861—the first conspicuous victim of the war. The world can never compute, can hardly even guess, what was lost in his untimely end. He was killed by the first gun he ever heard fired in strife; and his friends, who believe him to have had in him the making of a great soldier, have nothing to support their opinion but the impression made upon ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... shall criticdom decide the boundaries of the Actual and the Ideal? Who shall compute the expenditure of literal heartache that builds up the popularly successful Desdemonas, Camilles, and Marie Stuarts; the scalding tears that gradually crystallize into the classic repose essential to the severe simplicity of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Loyalists until they were able to provide for themselves. There were those in Nova Scotia who were receiving rations as late as 1792. What all this must have cost the government during the years following 1783 it is difficult to compute. Including the cost of surveys, official salaries, the building of saw-mills and grist-mills, and such things, the figures must have run up ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... different nations learn to respect each other as they find that their differences are the effect of social and local custom, not founded upon good reasons. I trust that the industrial commission will enable the world to compute the value of all productions by the same standard, to measure by the same yard or meter, and weigh ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... thousand. It is astonishing what a very slight wound will cause a soldier to seek a furlough. He naturally thinks that after the marches, danger, and dread of battle, a little blood drawn entitles him to at least a thirty days' furlough. It became a custom in the army for a man to compute the length of his furlough by the extent of his wound. The very least was thirty days, so when a soldier was asked the nature of his wound he would reply, "only a thirty days'," or "got this time a sixty days;" while with an arm or ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... arms during the Olympic games. Among these is Aristotle the philosopher, who alleges for proof an Olympic quoit, on which was preserved the inscription of Lycurgus's name. But others who, with Eratosthenes and Apollodorus, compute the time by the succession of the Spartan kings, place him much earlier than the first Olympiad. Timaeus, however, supposes that, as there were two Lycurguses in Sparta at different times, the actions of both are ascribed ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... scale, th' arithmic mounts By the Asankya, which is the tale Of all the drops that in ten thousand years Would fall on all the worlds by daily rain; Thence unto Maha Kalpas, by the which The Gods compute their future and ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... advantages this error and this slight madness has, thus compute: the poet's mind is not easily covetous; fond of verses, he studies this alone; he laughs at losses, flights of slaves, fires; he contrives no fraud against his partner, or his young ward; he lives on husks, and brown bread; though dastardly and unfit for war, he is useful at home, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... long time to Anahuac. They grew to supremacy in part probably by the arrival of new immigrants, but chiefly by conquest of the small states into which the country was divided. They could learn from their more cultivated neighbors to reform their calendar, compute time with greater accuracy, and make important improvements in other respects. They must also have modified their religious system to some extent, for it does not appear that they had adopted the worship of Kukulcan (whose name they transformed into Quetzalcohuatl) before they came to Mexico. ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... It is difficult to compute the value of the mother to the child. It is the mother who loves, because she has suffered. And this seems to be the great law of love. Not a triumph in art, literature, or jurisprudence—from the story of Homer to the odes of Horace, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... element and the relative decline of the native element is a mere coincidence, it is one of the most astonishing in human history. The actuarial degree of improbability as to a coincidence so close, over a range so vast, I will not undertake to compute. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... of this patronage. Antipholus saved the Duke's life in the wars 'long since,' V. 1. 161, 191. His 'long experience' of his wife's 'wisdom' and her 'years' are mentioned, III. 1. 89, 90. But Shakespeare probably did not compute the result of his own figures with any ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... of chemical elements are made, hidden from the eye of the microscope. Substances are dissolved and new combinations made, atoms are numbered, counted and combined with mathematical precision, and with an intelligence difficult for man to compute. No law could do this. Only a Being who has sufficient power and intelligence is equal to it. Law has no power, nor intelligence. Water is composed of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, combined with absolute precision everywhere. All chemical reactions require ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... very remote when it will be understood that for complete initiation as an efficient citizen of one of the new great complex world-wide states that are now developing, it is as necessary to be able to compute, to think in averages and maxima and minima, as it is now to be able to read and write. This development of mathematical teaching is only another aspect of the necessity that is bringing the teaching of ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... walk the woods unmolested. It was a FIASCO, but to me it does not seem laughable; even those who joined in the laughter at the moment would be insensibly affected by this quaint instance of a good man's horror for injustice. We may compute the worth of that one night's imprisonment as outweighing half a hundred voters at some subsequent election: and if Thoreau had possessed as great a power of persuasion as (let us say) Falstaff, if he had counted a party however small, if his example had been followed ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... say of such as cry up and maintain the cheat of pardons and indulgences? that by these compute the time of each soul's residence in purgatory, and assign them a longer or shorter continuance according as they purchase more or fewer of these paltry pardons? By this easy way of purchasing pardons, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... of spiritual living. Their hoary dictums suffice for this day and land. Not outmoded, not unsophisticated against the guiles of materialism, the disciplinary precepts mold India still. By millenniums-more than embarrassed scholars care to compute!-the skeptic Time has validated Vedic worth. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... "astronomical" dates, that is, the astronomical year—x is the same as the year (x 1) B.C.; or, in other words, the year of Christ's birth is, for certain astronomical exactitude purposes, interpolated between the years 1 B.C. and A.D. 1, as we vulgarly compute them: that is to say, the eclipses of the sun recorded 2,400 years ago by Confucius, from notes and annals preserved in his native state's archives as far back as 700 B.C., are found to be almost without exception fairly correct, with a uniform "error" of about one month, despite ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... near as I can compute, in the heart of China, about thirty degrees north of the line, for we were returned from Nankin. I had indeed a mind to see the city of Pekin, which I had heard so much of, and Father Simon importuned me daily to do it. At length his time of going away being set, and ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... handy-man to Sir John Penalune of Penalune, squire of Polpeor, hitched his horse's bridle on the staple by the doctor's front door—it would be hard to compute how many farmers, husbands, riding down at dead of night with news of wives in labour, had tethered their horses to that well-worn staple—and was conducted by ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of the strong array of commentators who claim that the Jubilees were to be held every fifty years as we moderns should compute it, there can be no doubt but that they followed each other at the same interval as every seventh sabbatic year; in other words, that they were held every 49 years. This is confirmed by an astronomical consideration. Forty-nine ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... produced within a nation in a given year. A nation's GDP at offical exchange rates (OER) is the home-currency-denominated annual GDP figure divided by the bilateral average US exchange rate with that country in that year. The measure is simple to compute and gives a precise measure of the value of output. Many economists prefer this measure when gauging the economic power an economy maintains vis-a-vis its neighbors, judging that an exchange rate captures the purchasing power a nation enjoys in the international marketplace. ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... to say, that after hanging four minutes (as the spectators were pleased to compute it,—a man that is being strangled, I know from experience, has altogether a different measure of time from his friends who are breathing leisurely about him,—I suppose the minutes lengthen as time approaches eternity, in the same manner as the miles get longer as you travel northward),—after ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... been made, the remainder of the crop may be harvested, and the grain from this known as general crop from hand-selected seed of the first, second, third year, etc. If the value per acre is required, the plots should be made of a certain size easy to compute, such as one rod square or one rod by two rods. (10-1/2 ft. by 21 ft. is about 1/200 acre.) Samples of each crop should be kept in uniform bottles and labelled; for example—"From selected heads of 1911". ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... we determine objects to be equal or unequal with respect to each other. For as the points, which enter into the composition of any line or surface, whether perceived by the sight or touch, are so minute and so confounded with each other, that it is utterly impossible for the mind to compute their number, such a computation will Never afford us a standard by which we may judge of proportions. No one will ever be able to determine by an exact numeration, that an inch has fewer points than a foot, or a ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... with the same letter; we see the shapes of eggs, globes, wings, and hatchets cut out by the ancient Greeks by the measure of their verses, making them longer or shorter, to represent such or such a figure. Of this nature was his employment who made it his business to compute into how many several orders the letters of the alphabet might be transposed, and found out that incredible number mentioned in Plutarch. I am mightily pleased ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the dissimulation itself, I drew from this peculiarity also of my own mind a fresh reinforcement of my other motives for sequestering myself; and, for the first two years of my residence in Oxford, I compute that I did not utter ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... all followed your boys' example, insects would soon have the better of us. They are far worse than the birds. I've seen it stated on good authority that a fledgling robin eats forty per cent more than its own weight every twenty-four hours, and I suppose it would be almost impossible to compute the number of noxious worms and moths destroyed by a family of robins in one season. They earn their ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... which he was acquainted. "The dispute," said he, "is not only respecting the day, but also respecting the manner of fasting. For some think that they ought to fast only one day, some two, some more days; some compute their day as consisting of forty hours night and day; [634:1] and this diversity existing among those that observe it, is not a matter that has just sprung up in our times, but long ago among those before us." [634:2] When Cyprian refused to admit the lapsed to ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... the windows of the great, he had gazed long at these creations. They were suspended on a wire across the window in various lengths, from little ones to sizes too awesome to compute. On one occasion so long had he stood motionless, so deep the trance of his contemplation, that the winter cold had cruelly bitten his ears and toes. He had not supposed that these things were for mere vulgar ownership. He ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... Seckendorf, puckered into dangerous anxieties, but summoning all his cunning, has at length, after six weeks' hesitation, to open it, as if casually, in some favorable hour, to his Prussian Majesty. December 5th, 1732, as we compute;—a kind of epoch in his Majesty's life. Prussian Majesty stares wide-eyed; the breath as if struck out of him; repeats, "Julich and Berg absolutely secured, say you? But—hm, na!"—and has not yet taken in the unspeakable ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... bring back day if it were dark; And, if I tell you all my thought, Though I comprehend it not, In those unfathomable orbs Every function he absorbs; Doth eat, and drink, and fish, and shoot, And write, and reason, and compute, And ride, and run, and have, and hold, And whine, and flatter, and regret, And kiss, and couple, and beget, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... bad to worse, and though the tropical weather was not conducive to heartiness of appetite the dishes on our tables were distressing. To attempt to compute the countless creature comforts missing at this stage of our sorrows would be ridiculous; nor do I propose inflicting on the reader a reiteration of what remained to keep body and soul together. Discussion on the Column and ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... rapid worker can do enough to insure pay for her time. Only the girl with a keen sense of taste can properly judge results and devise successful combinations. Only a business woman can buy to advantage and compute ratios of expense and return. This combination, of course, is not to be ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... imported to Ireland is valued at thirty thousand pounds, and the tea (including coffee and chocolate) at five times that sum. The lace, silks, calicoes, and all other unnecessary ornaments for women, including English cloths and stuffs, added to the former articles, make up (to compute grossly), ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... Eastern, Presbyterian and Jacobite clergy, &c." This is like a general pardon, with such exceptions as make it useless, if we compute it, &c. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... find the stars in Hercules gradually spreading from each other. Hercules's brawny limbs grow brawnier every century. There can be but one cause: we are approaching that quarter of the heavens. (See [Symbol], Fig. 72.) We are even [Page 227] able to compute the velocity of our approach; it is four miles a second. The stars in the opposite quarter of the heavens in Argo ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... no means. I am enrolling volunteers here in Hispaniola, and I am raising a corps of negroes. I compute that when this is done we shall have a force of a ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... from chill draughts or from close and cold association with the stones of architectural construction, and became a luxury of the eye, a source of bewilderment to the fancy and a lively intoxication to those who—irrespective of class, or of century—love to compute display ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... poet. "What is man, that his welfare be considered?" questions Cabell, paraphrasing Scripture, "an ape who chatters to himself of kinship with the archangels while filthily he digs for groundnuts.... Yet do I perceive that this same man is a maimed god.... He is under penalty condemned to compute eternity with false weights and to estimate infinity with a yardstick—and he very ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... few more years of effective life, did it not behoove me to pause and see, if I could, in what direction I was going?—to "stop, look and listen"?—to take account of stock?—to form an idea of just what I was worth physically, mentally and morally?—to compute my assets and liabilities?—to find out for myself by a calm and dispassionate examination whether or not I was spiritually a bankrupt? That was the hideous thought which like a deathmask suddenly leered ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... rationally, the machine had a slight edge, since it had a perfect memory and could compute faster than Mike could. But it would not, could not learn how to bluff. As soon as Mike started bluffing, the robot went into ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... can measure the sun, and compute the distances of the planets; I can calculate their periodical movements, and even ascertain the laws by which they perform their sublime revolutions; but with regard to their construction, to the beings which inhabit them, their condition and ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... of these merchant still and Corsair sell A large supply, and most of those most fair. Reckoning one slain a-day, you thus may well Compute what wives and maids have perished there. But if compassion in your bosom dwell, Nor you to Love an utter rebel are, Be you contented with this band to wend, United ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... had no sure method to compute time by—when he was already verging on old age, he was one of a company of nine men, living a kind of roving life in the very part of Guayana through which we were now travelling; the others, much younger than ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... of loss or injury that may be incurred in the transport of merchandise to these parts it is unnecessary to compute the ordinary dangers to which the merchant is more or less liable in all quarters of the world; but two distinct drawbacks to commercial enterprise at present exist in these countries, which are peculiar to them, these are the prevalence of piracy, and the constant occurrence ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... problems established, arithmetic is further developed along special lines of trade to meet the demands of the business world. The trained worker should not only be skilled in the manipulation of tools and materials, but she should be able to compute her own problems, such as estimates for garments, how to cut materials economically, the cost of one garment or article as related to the cost of many of the same kind, the prices, and similar trade questions. The ability to ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... strong to break open the prisons and forcibly deprive justice of its victims. Troops at last were brought into the town and order restored. But this trifling occurrence had for a moment withdrawn the veil which had hitherto concealed the strength of the Protestant party, and allowed the minister to compute their prodigious numbers. In Tournay alone five thousand at one time had been seen attending the sermons, and not many less in Valenciennes. What might not be expected from the northern provinces, where liberty was greater, and the seat of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Beauty or Taste as a parallel case, where there may be an operation of the intellect to compute proportions, but where the elegance or beauty must arise in the region of feeling. Thus, while reason conveys the knowledge of truth and falsehood, sentiment or emotion must give beauty and ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... may allow, with a smile, that it was ultimately devoted to the benefit of mankind. I sincerely regret the more valuable libraries, which have been involved in the ruin of the Roman empire; but, when I seriously compute the lapse of ages, the waste of ignorance, and the calamities of war, our treasures, rather than our losses, are the object of my surprise. Many curious and interesting facts are buried in oblivion: the three great historians of Rome have been transmitted ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... But I would make this man a sufficient answer, which is this: Thou sayest not well, if thou thinkest that a man who is good for anything at all ought to compute the hazard of life or death, and should not rather look to this only in all that he does, whether he is doing what is just or unjust, and the works of a ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... were from the more cultured and intellectual classes on both sides. Centuries will not repair that waste of creative ability in either section. France, after the lapse of more than two hundred years, is still suffering from the loss of her Huguenots. It is impossible to compute what American literature has lost as a result of this war, not only from the double waste involved in turning the energies of men to destruction and subsequently to the necessary repairs, but also from the sacrifice of ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... whites down—exclude them from all situations of power and trust. You all know that, in my opinion, they ought every one to have been done with some time ago. As that was not effected, the next best, policy is to let them die out. One may compute pretty well the time that this will take. If nothing better remains for them here than to live upon their estates, without a chance of distinction, or of employment in public affairs, they will grow tired of the colony; the next generation, ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... lifted his head and felt for his handkerchief. "Yes, it's quite possible! I believe I have shed a tear or two. The first in how many years, Pauline? Ah—that I could not, would not wish to compute, but ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... of a single connoisseur, has thus the additional interest of unity. Mesdag's own paintings are mostly of the sea—a grey sea with a few fishing boats, very true, very quiet and simple. How many times he and James Maris painted Scheveningen's shore probably no one could compute. His best-known work is probably the poster advertising the Harwich and Hook-of-Holland route, in which the two ports are joined by a chain crossing a grey sea—best known, because every one has seen this picture: it is at ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas |
