Million

“ Yet it is only three days since Million and I went down to Chancery Lane together to interview the old lawyer person on the subject of her new riches. I shall never forget that interview. I shall never be able to forget the radiant little face of Million at the end of it all, when the kind old gentleman offered to advance her some of her own money "down on the nail," and did advance her five pounds in cash—five golden, gleaming, solid sovereigns! ”

“ As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,
For they are hungry men.
But different folk have different views;
I know a person small—
She keeps ten million serving-men,
Who get no rest at all!
She sends 'em abroad on her own affairs,
From the second she opens her eyes—
One million Hows, two million Wheres,
And seven million Whys! ”

“ A student in a library of a thousand volumes, an officer before his regiment of a thousand men upon parade, may have a pretty clear idea of the units as well as of the totals; but when we come to a thousand times a thousand, or a thousand times a million, all view of the units, for most men, probably for every man, is lost: the million for the grown man is in a great degree like the hundred for the child. ”

“ Five million people, awake or asleep, round one—five million, each of whom is as important to himself as I to me, stealing about like thoughts in the brain of this busy city, intent, alert, as are no other five million people in the world. ”

“ What is the use of a million when all that life holds dear is lost in the struggle to obtain it, and when, probably, our children will squander it, as do many sons of millionaires who have worked themselves to death. ”

“ There's nothing in the world I like better than to hear of such large numbers — millions, trillions — that gives one something to think about. — Upon my soul, that's quite a lot, a thousand million, more or less.
Leander
As the numbers increase, so human intelligence expands. ”

“ With my million safely achieved, I looked about me as a conqueror looks upon the conquered. A thousand dollars saved is the first step toward a competence; a million dollars achieved is the first step toward a Crœsus ”

“ What is a billion, or, rather, what conception can we form of such a quantity? We may say that a billion is a million of millions, and can easily represent it thus: 1,000,000,000,000. But a schoolboy's calculation will show how entirely the mind is incapable of conceiving such numbers. ”

“ Some of these great folks are really well-bred, some of them are only purse-proud and assuming,—but they form a class, and are named as above in the common speech.
It is in the nature of large fortunes to diminish rapidly, when subdivided and distributed. A million is the unit of wealth, now and here in America. ”

“ In spite of their criminal uselessness, of their social wrong-doing, in spite of all that they crush under the weight of their hideous million, this million none the less surrounds them with a halo of respectability, and almost of glory. ”

“ What is the legitimate of a million and a half of such humanity cooped into one space and boiling and seething with ten million different aims and passions? What part in the drama of the future is to be played by the 300,000 non-English speaking residents, many of whom are voters? ”

“ One million is a large number! "If you had a million shillings to count one by one, and did it as fast as you could for ten hours a day, it would take a fortnight; and the million shillings would weigh nearly five tons, or be a heavy load for a railway truck." ”

“ See now, not the mass of the people, for we all know that it is a proverb and a bitter jest to speak of the “down-trodden million.” We know that, down to our own time, a principle never had so fair a chance to pervade the mass of the people, but that we must solicit its illustration from select examples. ”

“ Three hundred and seventy-five thousand persons paid income-tax last year, under protest: they stand for the existence of perhaps a million souls, and this million is a handful floating more or less easily on the surface of the forty millions of the population. ”

“ James Williams sat a girl in a loose tan jacket and a straw hat adorned with grapes and roses. Only in dreams and milliners’ shops do we, alas! gather grapes and roses at one swipe. This girl gazed with large blue eyes, credulous, when the megaphone man roared his doctrine that millionaires were things about which we should be concerned. ”

“ We should feel dumbfounded if the new calculation were to be a matter of millions, but actually we are to imagine a magnification to the extent of billions. This sounds almost like a fable when expressed in words. But a million is related to a billion in about the same way as a fairly wide city street to the width of the Atlantic Ocean. Our Mont Blanc sinks to insignificance. In the above calculation it would have to be replaced by a mountain 50 million miles high. ”

“ How few people know what a million really is! It is very easy to talk of a million, but it is a tedious task to count it off: this makes a statement as to “millions” decidedly more conservative when the labor has been accomplished. After a thorough survey [Pg 312] of all these great areas of reproduction the following presentation of the actual number of seals massed upon St. Paul is a fair one:
The rookeries of St. ”

“ Suddenly her eyes rested on Rudyard Byng, and something in the rough power of the head arrested her attention, and the thought flashed through her mind: "How wonderful to have got so much at thirty-three! Three millions at thirty-three—and millions beget millions!"
... Power—millions meant power; millions made ready the stage for the display and use of every gift, gave the opportunity for the full occupation of all personal qualities, made a setting for the jewel of life and beauty, which reflected, intensified every ray of merit. ”

“ The first means that in a population of a million and a half, very nearly, if not quite, half a million persons were driven, or chose, to beg for food, or to accept it in charity at some period of the eight years, if not during the whole of it. ”

“ Now, by the largest computation (even before that grievous discouragement of agriculture, which has so much lessened our numbers) the souls in this kingdom are computed to be one million and a half; which, allowing six to a family, makes two hundred and fifty thousand families, and consequently two shillings to each family, will amount only to five and twenty thousand pounds; whereas this honest, liberal, hardwareman, Wood, would impose upon us above four times that sum. ”

“ Yes, I believe that it is even possible to serve society to such an extent as to earn a hundred million in the span of a human life, or an average of three million a year for thirty-three and one-third years. We have one man in this country who is said to be worth five hundred million. To earn five hundred million one must earn on an average fifteen million a year for thirty-three and one-third years. ”

“ It has not fared much otherwise with higher kinds of steam. The opinion of the million was the terror of the world, and it was attempted, either to dissipate it, by amusing nations, or to pile it over with strata of society, — a layer of soldiers ”

“ Eleven thousand two hundred millions; it will frighten none but a retail philanthropist. What is it but eight hundred millions for each of fourteen years? Now eight hundred millions—what is that, to average it, but one little dollar a head for the population of the planet? ”

“ Millions are asking them to-day. They will be asked by millions yet unborn. Is there an answer, a true and safe one for the millions who are eagerly and longingly seeking for it in all parts of the world to-day, and for the millions yet unborn who will as eagerly strive to find it as the years come and go? ”

“ When Americans talk about "a billion dollars" or a "billionaire" they think of a "billion" as one thousand millions. The word "billion" was originally used in France to denote a million of millions—or one million raised to the second power. ”

“ The twenty-five millions without the gates gazed at the hundred thousand within, and the more they gazed the louder and more bitter became their comment, the dimmer and the more tawdry did the glitter of it all appear to them, and the weaker and more half-hearted became the attitude of the one hundred thousand as they attempted by insolence and superciliousness to maintain the pose of their inherited superiority. ”

“ A thousand times have I tried to figure out in my mind what worlds of misery such a sum of millions might allay if issued by a government and intelligently distributed among a people—and do my readers know that never in the world's recorded history has any nation felt itself rich enough to devote thirty-six millions to the cause of charity—even in the midst of the most awful calamities of fire, flood, war, or pestilence? ”

“ Government ’ud hog the lot, but has hunted high and low and can’t find it. So the offer stands ten per cent. to any one who does—ten per cent. of fifty million—lowest reckoning, mind you!—five million pounds! Half for Monty—two and a half million. A million for Yerkes, a million for me, and a half a million for you all according to contract! ”

“ It would become the craze of the million but for a certain vagueness in its principles, a certain lack of appeal to direct energies. We will preach the cause. We will give the public something to buy. ”

“ He lived to see, instead of three men worth one hundred thousand each, three men, one of whom he was, whose united wealth would reach a million, besides many others with one hundred thousand down to ten thousand. ”

“ In fourteen years three hundred thousand-six hundred thousand in twenty-eight—twelve hundred thousand in forty-two—twenty-four hundred thousand in fifty-six—four million eight hundred thousand in seventy—nine million six hundred thousand in eighty-four—Why, in a hundred years it'll be twenty million! ”

“ There was a thoughtful frown on the face of the man who was the possessor of twenty million dollars. ”

“ The population of the United States, according to the last census returns, is about a hundred millions. Names in American directories invariably begin with Aarons and end with Zaccharia, and millionaires are marked with a star—thus *. In a town, or—as the puffed up merchant in stars and stripes would call it a city—of fifty thousand inhabitants you will find that the local directory stars quite twenty-five thousand as millionaires. ”

“ Million. This man, ragged, penniless, has the effrontery to tell the rich brewer to his face that he would have the public picture-galleries and museums of art opened on the Sabbath-day, and that he would shut the public-houses. Mr. Million can find no words to express his indignation. He can only say, stiffly and coldly,
'I have heard quite enough of your opinions, sir. ”

“ The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. ”

“ If he marries, and has children requiring as much more, he and his children will command two out of ten million and one parts. All the privation therefore, which his family entails on him, consists in the difference between one out of ten million, and one out of ten million and one parts. ”

“ The increase of such business throughout the State has been so large in the five years, from half a hundred thousand to nearly a quarter of a million dollars, that the chances are good it will reach the million list in the next five years. ”

“ According to the computation of philosophers, the population of the world may be reckoned in round numbers at just one thousand millions; of which number the annual mortality, at the low rate of three in a hundred, is thirty millions—and that without counting the extra million or two knocked on the head in the wars. ”

“ About nine hundred thousand were brought in the sixteenth century, three million in the seventeenth century, seven million in the eighteenth century, and another four million in the nineteenth century. ”

“ With his million to fall back upon, with no dread of poverty or pressing want, he turned his mind to the little things of business and work, and he earned something about every day, and averaged a good deal more than his expenses came to. ”

“ Just now we are thinking in millions. Suppose it's somewhere about the same thing. Anyhow Premier to-day announced with pardonable pride that we are spending a trifle under a million a day in the war forced upon mankind by the Man Forsworn. To meet necessities of case he asked for further Vote of Credit for 225 millions and an addition of a million men to Regular Army. ”

“ Under its beneficent operation we have grown almost twenty-fold. Thirteen States have become thirty-eight; three million have become fifty million; wealth and comfort and education and art have flourished in still larger proportion. ”

“ There were, perhaps, a hundred thousand; here are millions. These millions are Christians, but they are wretchedly clad and bent with labor. They are indeed stupid,—unkempt,—degraded,—often knavish,—but they love their country,—toil for her,—suffer for her. ”

“ And in all the infinity of great undertakings which engage the restless activities of our leaders of industry, capital is demanded, not in thousands, but in millions—not in millions, but in hundreds of millions. ”