"Unknown quantity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was far more concerned about himself and the business of his mission than he was for the women in his charge. He was much afraid, however, of the horseman's visible gun. He was not at all a person of courage, and the man before him presented such an unknown quantity that he found himself more or less helpless. At most he could merely ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... say?" If we say "Tom," or "Dick," or "Harry," says "so and so," "Tom" is no better authority than "Dick," nor are both together much better than "Harry." But if we say, indefinitely, "They say" "so and so," there is a mysterious potency in the unknown quantity which leads, if not to universal belief, at ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... (1815); Aetas argentea cossae (1819); Ueber Tradition und Schrift, Logos und Kabbala (1829), besides the one mentioned above. The word coss in the above titles was a German name for algebra, from the Italian cosa (thing), the name for the unknown quantity. It appears in English in the early name for algebra, "the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... political troubles and takes on fully Western civilization, while the other nations may tend to ally themselves with the one or the other of these great world powers. Of course, China is the X—the unknown quantity—in the world's future. Should its immense population become civilized and absorb Western ideas, this would certainly bring into the theater of the world's political evolution a new and ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... undertaken the task of editing, has asked me to narrow his personal introduction to such limits as is consistent with the courtesy due to my readers, if haply I find any. He prefers, as his pseudonym implies, to remain an unknown quantity. I need only explain that he is an officer employed in one of the small States of the Malay Peninsula, which are (very much) under the protection of the Colonial Government of the Straits Settlements. The latter, with careful ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... one may choose one's friends!" she had finally stated; and her husband allowed the subject to drop, not displeased at her repugnance to the doctor whom he marked dangerous to feminine susceptibility and an unknown quantity. ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... French school has much in common. One great cultural value the professional quartet has for the musical community is the fact that it gives a large circle a measure of acquaintance with the mode of thought and style of composers whose symphonic and larger works are often an unknown quantity. This applies to Debussy, Reger, the modern Russians, Bloch and others. When we played the Stravinsky pieces here, for instance, his Petrouschka and Firebird ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... He had hands of steel and velvet, and fear was an unknown quantity to him. Ann watched the ensuing tussle between man and beast with unequivocal admiration. The mare, a big raking bay, with black points and a white blaze, sulkily obeyed her rider's curbing hands upon the bridle whilst they rode through the ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... that as grundlich (deep, Sir, deep!); not the slowest of journeys in a Postwagen, for the slower the horses, the more cigars he can smoke before he reaches his journey's end. German ennui must be something as superlative as Barclay's treble X, which, we suppose, implies an extremely unknown quantity ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Bates had been respected by the well-to-do and loved by the humble; and Dale, out here, remained an unknown quantity. Anything of his fame as postmaster that had traveled along these two miles from Rodchurch did not help him. He was not liked. He felt it in the air, a dull inactive hostility, when talking to gentlefolks' coachmen ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... work that the modern sign of equality first appears in print. The word "Cosike" is an adjective that was used for a long time in Germany as equivalent to algebraic, being derived from the Italian cosa, which stood for the unknown quantity. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... or actress may produce with certain parts; but given the best possible representation of the piece, the precise temper of the particular audience who decides its fate on the first night of representation is always an unknown quantity in the calculation, and no technical experience ever seems to arrive at anything like even approximate certainty with regard to that. I felt perfectly sure of the success of "The Hunchback," but I think that was precisely because of my want of theatrical ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... would dawn with its uncertainties that might not be relieved until the referee had blown his whistle to signify that the time for the game had expired. Whose would be high score when that minute came around was an unknown quantity; and many a Chester lad would have given much to be able to lift the veil of the future just that far. But this was beyond their ken, and they could only possess their souls in patience while hoping ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... lack of happiness. The past was dead and gone; he could not alter jot or tittle of what had happened; he could only make the best of it. And so he ceased to brood over it, and gave himself up to the present. The future was a black, unknown quantity, but the present was his own. And he would cling to it—for who knew what the future held in store for him? In these days, he began to suspect that it was not in the nature of things for her always to remain satisfied with him; and, ever more daring, the horrid question reared its head: ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the premisses," he wrote, "I do not see any escape from Berkeley's conclusion, that the substance of matter is a metaphysical unknown quantity, of the existence of which there is no proof. What Berkeley does not seem to have so clearly perceived is that the non-existence of a substance of mind is equally arguable; and that the result of the impartial application of his reasonings is the reduction ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... tried hard; but as soon as he began to write down a b—c the square root of x, his mind wandered away to the rocks over the Black Scraw. For that root of x was so suggestive: x represented the unknown quantity, and the Black Scraw was the unknown quantity of which he wanted to get to the root; and, over and over again, when the tutor turned to him, it was to find the boy, pen in hand, but with the ink in it dried up, while he sat gazing straight before him at imaginary ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... What had happened to the Philippines and to Hawaii? Where was the fleet? None of these questions could be answered, simply because all telegraphic connection was cut off. The strength of the enemy was an absolutely unknown quantity, unless one cared to rely on the figures found in the ordinary military statistics, which had probably been doctored by the Japanese. Was this the Japanese army at all? Was it an invading force? Could such a force have pushed so far to the East in such a short space of time after landing? The press ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... of so much territory in northern Mexico encouraged General Escobedo and other Liberal leaders to such a degree that they collected a considerable army of their followers at Comargo, Mier, and other points. At the same time that unknown quantity, Cortinas, suspended his free-booting for the nonce, and stoutly harassing Matamoras, succeeded in keeping its Imperial garrison within the fortifications. Thus countenanced and stimulated, and largely supplied with arms and ammunition, which we left at convenient ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... less between the leaving of the Hulls and the appearance of James left unexplained. If some one other than those mentioned on his penciled memoranda had killed Cunningham, it must have been between half-past nine and twenty minutes to ten. The X he had written in there was the only possible unknown quantity. By the use of hard work and common sense he had eliminated the rest of the time so far as outsiders ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... three was the psalm-singer of the blockhouse. His name was Xerxes Alexander Anxley, and he was unceremoniously called by the community "X," and by Mivane "the unknown quantity," for he was something of an enigma, and his predilections provoked much speculation. He was a religionist of ascetic, extreme views,—a type rare in this region,—coming originally from the colony of ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... PUNCHINELLO, can you do those sums? I have tried them in every possible way. I have let X equal the unknown quantity, but I don't know Y. If you can solve the problems, will you send me the answers by the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... maybe," said the Squire shaking his head dubiously, "but it seems to me a very fanciful scheme. Horses are good enough for me. I shouldn't like to trust myself to an unknown quantity like steam, but time ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... to be deceived by flowery, but vague descriptions. If catalogues list nut trees by recognized variety names it is pretty safe to assume that the trees are as represented. If recognized variety names are omitted the trees may safely be considered to be seedlings and that they will produce a wholly unknown quantity, no matter how alluring the advertising. Of course, this is not intended to discourage the planting of new varieties offered by nurseries of known reputation for integrity, nor of such strains as the Crath Carpathian walnut ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... which this same lady attempted to destroy within an hour after the inquest were afterwards put together, and were found to contain a bitter denunciation of one of Mr. Leavenworth's nieces, by a gentleman we will call X in other words, an unknown quantity—makes out a dark case against you, especially as after investigations revealed the fact that a secret underlay the history of the Leavenworth family. That, unknown to the world at large, and Mr. Leavenworth in particular, a marriage ceremony had been ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... the spheroidal figure of the earth were sufficiently sensible not to be confounded with the errors of observation. It was accordingly necessary to find the general formula of perturbations of this nature, in order to be able, as in the case of the solar parallax, to eliminate the unknown quantity. ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... unconscious of the fact that the eyes of many of the students were fixed upon him with keen observation. The self-contained young professor was as much an unknown quantity as any he asked them to find in the recitation-room. They were baffled by the impersonal attitude he had brought from the university, where the individual counted for little, and were inclined to attribute it to a disposition to be severe in ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... irresistible need of loving; they proclaimed their love and not only showed themselves to be capable of loving and of intense suffering, but proved themselves worthy of love which, in its highest form, they felt to be an unknown quantity at that time. Their love became a constant inspiration, a model of devotion, almost a transfiguration of passion. These women were products of the time; they had to be, to compensate for the general sterility and barrenness, to equalize the inequalities, and to pay the ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... birthday cake had been ordered in the jovial saint's honour, but nobody could tell how many candles it ought to hold since no one knew how many years he numbered. But Dorene solved the difficulty by saying, "Let X equal the unknown quantity, and just make a big X across the cake with ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... "A very unknown quantity," said the lawyer, drily. "Still, the house can't run away, and I suppose will aways let for fifty ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... speaks of her drawing lessons, and how (thank God!) she had finished "that tedious, ugly picture" she had been so long about. This points to that terrible way of teaching Art, by accustoming its students to hideousness and vulgarity, till Art itself might become an unknown quantity. Mary also tells, what is more interesting, that she has finished the fourth chapter, a very long one, of her Frankenstein, which she thinks Shelley will like. She wishes for his return. On December 13 Mary receives a letter from Shelley, who is with Leigh Hunt. ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... the Mayor felt that Phil was easy and safe for him, although he did not like the intimacy that seemed to have sprung up so soon between Phil and Jim Langford, for Langford was a strange composite, capable of anything or nothing; clever; altogether an unknown quantity, but one well worth the ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... after an unknown amount—an unknown quantity of doubloons. And perhaps we are fated never to know the amount of the pirate's hoard," and she laughed again. Then, suddenly, she clutched his arm more tightly as they paced the deck together, crying under her breath: ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... purposed to see what could be done with the depreciated securities, intended that the expenses of his sojourn in the mountain province should be borne by the shareholders. He had acquired considerable facility in the art of managing them, but the owner of Carnaby was an unknown quantity and ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... tobacco and matches; for their kindness I gave the pretty lubras some tea and sugar. Our old Jimmy went up to them and shook hands, and they became great friends. These blacks could not comprehend where we could possibly have come from, Fowler's Bay being an unknown quantity to them. We had still a good day's stage before us to reach the Finniss, but at dusk we arrived, and were very kindly received and entertained by Mr. Coulthard, who was in charge. His father had ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... and the care with which he planned to impress each chief and native with his omnipotence and magic. This system of the application of political science as well as of military science, of course, was sound, save for a temperamental error: the lack of sufficient imagination to realize the unknown quantity of chance, the inevitable mistake of military scientists who are loath to admit the artist to their counsels, exemplified by men of genius, such as Napoleon and Leonardo da Vinci, who were ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... 17.1 per cent, of her upland, passed Italy in 1901 and China in 1910. Her exportation is now twice that of China. In production her total is thrice that of Italy. France is a long way behind Italy. The production of China is an unknown quantity. ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... is adapted to conditions variable, undetermined, and hidden from our view. We are not fitted to live in a world where a b always equals c, and there is nothing more to follow. The interest of life's equation arrives with the appearance of x, the unknown quantity. A settled, unchangeable, clearly foreseeable order of things does not suit our constitution. It tends to melancholy and a fatty heart. Creatures of habit we are undoubtedly; but it is one of our most fixed habits to be ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... opening of a sash; and presently after saw Miss Flora appear in a morning wrapper and come strolling hitherward between the borders, pausing and visiting her flowers—herself as fair. THERE was a friend; HERE, immediately beneath me, an unknown quantity— the gardener: how to communicate with the one and not attract the notice of the other? To make a noise was out of the question; I dared scarce to breathe. I held myself ready to make a gesture as soon as she should look, and she looked in every possible direction but ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert (Ills.) spoke on The Statesmanship of Women, citing illustrious examples in all parts of the world. Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.) gave a trenchant and humorous speech on The Unknown Quantity in Politics, showing the indirect influence of women which unfortunately is not accompanied with responsibility. She took up leading candidates and their records, criticising or commending; illustrated how in every department women are neglected and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... though Hawthorne never fell into this error, he approaches closely to it in "Fanshawe." There is some dark secret between the two villains of the piece, which he leaves to the reader as an exercise for the imagination. This is a characteristic of all his longer stories. There is an unknown quantity, an insoluble point, in them, ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... when propounded by Patrick Lovell, to whom physical fear was an unknown quantity. Had he lived in the days of the Terror, he would assuredly have taken his way to the guillotine with the same gay, debonair courage which enabled the nobles of France to throw down their cards and go to the scaffold ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... to Jenison Hall came, by curious coincidence, at a most opportune time. He had decided to leave the Springs within a day or two, cutting short his proposed stay of a month almost at its beginning. The advent of Roberta Grand, heretofore an unknown quantity, brought with it new and unpleasant complications. Her revelations disturbed him, her attitude angered and disgusted him. It was from this girl, so amazingly like her father, that he would have ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... came into Dorothy's eyes as she looked at him. Rest—such as she had never known, or felt the need of till now—and strength immeasurable, since it would multiply her own by an unknown quantity, stood within reach of her hand, but she might not put it out! And Evesham was dizzy with the struggle between ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... who belonged to a different world, whose education was, like other things about him, an unknown quantity. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... father smiled faintly; and, seating myself, I drew towards me a paper filled with Squills's memoranda, and said, "Now to find the unknown quantity. What on earth is this? 'Supposed value of books, L750.' Oh, father! this is impossible. I was prepared for anything but that. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... algebra consists in the solution of equations. The distinction between algebraical and arithmetical reasoning then lies mainly in the fact that the former is in a more condensed form than the latter; an unknown quantity being represented by a special symbol, and other symbols being used as a kind of shorthand for verbal expressions. This form of algebra was extensively studied in ancient Egypt; but, in accordance with the practical tendency ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... application of the merit system to appointments in the Philippines. Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Taft firmly supported that system, as has each succeeding governor-general up to, but not including, Mr. Harrison, who is as yet an unknown quantity. ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... 1.012 billion kWh; note - exports an unknown quantity to Georgia; includes exports to Nagorno-Karabakh region in ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... that, whatever happens. And keep your temper with me, too, because nothing is gained by losing it. I'm not saying a word against Mrs. Doria, but inasmuch as she is Mrs. Doria and inasmuch as Doria is as yet very much an unknown quantity to you and me, you must understand that I don't allow appearances to blind my eyes or control my actions. Now if a woman hints, or indicates, that she is unhappily married, then nothing is more natural than that a man like yourself, who entertains the tenderest ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... evasion of the Oriental; delicately in proportion to his great ability, yet it was there—though in less degree than in any Arab he had ever known. It was the more dangerous because so subtle. It held surprise —it was an unknown quantity. The most that Dicky could do was to feel subtly before him a certain cloud of the unexpected. He was not sure that he deceived Abdalla by his simple manner, yet that made little difference. The Oriental would think not ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... He is not an unknown quantity, as are children who have been left to gain varied and casual experiences by themselves, and who therefore differ in type and intellectual standard, not only according to their "natures," but especially according to the chances ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... pass away. The epoch of individuality was deemed near the goal; when low immense horizons were revealed; vast unknown lands in whose untrodden forests the principle of individuality was an insufficient guide. By the long and painful labors of that epoch the human unknown quantity had been disengaged from the various quantities of different nature by which it had been surrounded; but only to be left weak, isolated, and recoiling in terror from the solitude in which it stood. The political schools of the epoch ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... herd of Indians, consisting of about a dozen men and squaws, with an unknown quantity of papooses,—the last naked as the day they were born,—crowded into the room to stare at us. It was the most amusing thing in the world to see them finger my gloves, whip, and hat, in their intense curiosity. One of them had caught the following line of a song, "O, carry me back to old Martinez," ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... thing. This was the delightful part about them—on no occasion was there ever a halt for the consideration of ways and means. They wanted some particular amusement and—had it! Convention, from an English point of view, remained an unknown quantity.—Now those who decided to continue the feasting all got into ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... and she was still feeling it, though an hour had passed. She was feeling that, now her situation was upon her, she was alone. Mrs. Herrick could only be near her, not with her, and Kerr was still an unknown quantity—except ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... tourist or loafer come to put an unknown quantity in their smoothly working problem of a pleasant life in this Eden? The artist must have looked me over for indications of ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... particular becoming a series of views, which I connect together by "becoming in general." But of course I cannot stop there. What is not determinable is not representable: of "becoming in general" I have only a verbal knowledge. As the letter x designates a certain unknown quantity, whatever it may be, so my "becoming in general," always the same, symbolizes here a certain transition of which I have taken some snapshots; of the transition itself it teaches me nothing. Let me then concentrate myself wholly on the transition, and, between any two ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... not use; but if it rubs away thin and oily, it is probably good. Of course the oiliest of oils are animal fats, good lard, and genuine sperm; but they work down very thin and run away, and genuine sperm oil is almost an unknown quantity. Lard can be obtained at every farmhouse, and may be used, ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... Arizona, followed the Gila River, destined afterwards to be traversed by the wandering trappers, by the weary gold-seeker bound for California, and finally, for a considerable distance, by the steam locomotive. But it was an unknown quantity at the time of Alarcon's visit, so far as white men were concerned. Farther up, Alarcon met with another man who understood his interpreter, and this man said he had been to Cibola, or Cevola,* as Alarcon writes it, and that it was a month's journey, "by a path that ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... was delightful, past a succession of elegant houses and beautifully laid out grounds, until she began to feel she had reached a new world where care was an unknown quantity. ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... however, was that the affair was, simply, X-traordinary and in-X-plicable. Even the town mathematician confessed that he could make nothing of so dark a problem. X, every. body knew, was an unknown quantity; but in this case (as he properly observed), there was an unknown quantity ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... time springing something worth while. That was just why he and Dixon had been willing to make a final kick at Siebold's arbitrary rulings. And now here was Siebold himself, one of the surest batters in the team, facing the unknown quantity. ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... because he always knows, or thinks he knows, the value of x in the personal equation. Were it otherwise, that sense of conscious identity which alone makes life a serious thing and immortality a rational hope, would be impossible. It is with the means of finding out this unknown quantity—in other words, of penetrating to the man's motives or his understanding of them—that the biographer undertakes to supply us, and unless he succeed in this, his rummaging of old papers but raises a new cloud of ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... cried John, looking up at him, with his anger kindling, 'that if I do not bribe you to the extent of three hundred pounds, besides giving you an unknown quantity of stock, you will publish ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... but all the other Socialist parties except the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, a few Mensheviki Internationalists and the Social Democrat Internationalists, and even they undecided whether to stand by or not. With them, it is true, the workers and the soldier-masses-the peasants an unknown quantity-but after all the Bolsheviki were a political faction not rich in trained and ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... necessary to abandon the false view (adopted to gratify the "heroes") of the efficacy of the directions issued in wartime by commanders, in order to find this unknown quantity. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... missing to our little Arcadia. While at a word or look children flocked to me like friendly puppies in response to a call, to Silvia they were still an unknown quantity. ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... the patients were much shaken, and in others the condition spoken of as local shock in a former chapter had been marked. In a third series obvious individual nerve lesions were co-existent with those to the vessels. Beyond this a fourth nervous element of unknown quantity, the effect of the form of injury on the vaso-motor nerves accompanying the great vessels, must be ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... sleek native missionary was an unknown quantity in the Tokelaus and Kingsmills, and the local white trader answered all requirements. He was generally a rough character—a runaway from some Australian or American whaler, or a wandering Ishmael, who, for reasons of his own, preferred living among the intractable, ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... wonders of Lost Valley. Many a rider went by that way on the chance that he might catch its golden music adrift on the breeze, her father's men came up at night to hear its martial stir, its tenderness, for the voice was the girl, and Tharon was an unknown quantity, sometimes all melting sweetness, sometimes fire that flashed ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe |
