"Genius" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... position, and was puzzled. His rival general was a genius in defense. He crossed the river, to the attack. Chief Joseph dodged him, crossed the river farther north, and circling southward cut his trail and his communications with Fort Lapwai; fell upon Captain S. G. Whipple's First Cavalry, which was in ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... man who enabled us to talk to long distances without a wire at all it would seem we owe a still greater debt. But who is this man around whose brow we should twine the laurel wreath, to the altar of whose genius we should carry frankincense ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... make the man thy theme, for shrewdness famed And genius versatile, who far and wide A Wand'rer, after Ilium overthrown, Discover'd various cities, and the mind And manners learn'd of men, in lands remote. He num'rous woes on Ocean toss'd, endured, Anxious ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... flower of the French nation refused to take the oath or give their adhesion to the new Government. Great statesmen and a few distinguished soldiers, with a splendid past behind them and with the prospect of an illustrious career before them; men of genius who in their professorial chairs had been the centres of the intellectual life of France; functionaries who had by laborious and persevering industry climbed the steps of their profession and depended for their livelihood on its emoluments, accepted poverty, ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... and yet we are our own providence and our own gods. The lower animals, whose immemorial reign preceded our own upon this planet, have transformed it by their genius and their courage. The insects have traced roads, excavated the soil, hollowed the trunks of trees and rocks, built dwellings, founded cities, metamorphosed the soil, the air, and the waters. The labour of the humblest of these, that of the madrepores, ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... The greatest happiness of the greatest number was a great original idea when enunciated by Bentham, which leavened a generation and has left its mark on thought and civilization in all succeeding times. His grasp of it had the intensity of genius. In the spirit of an ancient philosopher he would have denied that pleasures differed in kind, or that by happiness he meant anything but pleasure. He would perhaps have revolted us by his thoroughness. The 'guardianship of his doctrine' has passed into other hands; and now we seem to ...
— Philebus • Plato
... in ambition, those who had been detected in peculation, those whose selfishness or incapacity his honest eyes had spied out,—were all more, or less in league against him. Gates was the chief towards whom the malcontents turned. Mr. Gates was the only genius fit to conduct the war; and with a vaingloriousness, which he afterwards generously owned, he did not refuse the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... movements of the several corps of the Union army from the morning of April 3d to the surrender of Lee will stand as a lasting testimonial to Grant's military genius, ranking him with the great strategists of the world. Lee's officers were familiar with the roads; the inhabitants were their friends; his retreat was upon the shorter line, and he had a night's start. Generals Meade, Sheridan, Ord, and the corps ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... be unnoticed. My friend risked the happiness of his life, fearlessly, without calculation—and lost it. A day came when Rafaella Dannegianti was carried off by her parents, who shuddered at the thought of her stooping to a painter, even though he were a genius." ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... Brandon, delighted, "none whatever; indeed, one implies the other, though the other does not imply the one. I cannot express myself distinctly, you see, but you know what I mean. I am not at all a genius, and even this happiness cannot inspire me with fine language. But what can I DO for you?—there is where I hope to show my sense of what I owe ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... was one of these autumn afternoons, that, coming down from practising, with my music-books under my arm, I met Justine, the genius of the menage, cook and housekeeper in one, a shrewd woman, who had three objects in life,—to manage les betes, as she condescendingly termed the other servants, to please Madame, whom she adored, and to go to church every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... can well be imagined. His sturdy figure, thick white hair, and the ruddy complexion of his face, where the benevolence of the mouth attracted attention before the keenness of the eyes, suggested rather the country gentleman than the man of genius whose discoveries ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... soon bade farewell, and on St. Valentine's day, 1826, entered the University of Virginia, where Number 13, West Range, is still pointed out as the old-time abiding place of Virginia's greatest poet, whose genius has given rise to more acrimonious discussion than has ever gathered about the name of any other American man of letters. The real home of Poe at this time was the range of hills known as the Ragged Mountains, for it was among their peaks ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... to know what I have learnt during a year's experience in that country, where I have lived all the time in the company of public officials. Sir, it seems to me that the English people do not know that the entire genius of intellectual Germany is directed to a war against England. It dominates their thoughts and dreams, and the whole ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... opinion, I went on eating my dinner, when Auckland, who was sitting opposite to me, addressed my neighbour, 'Mr. Macaulay, will you drink a glass of wine?' I thought I should have dropped off my chair. It was MACAULAY, the man I had been so long most curious to see and to hear, whose genius, eloquence, astonishing knowledge, and diversified talents have excited my wonder and admiration for such a length of time, and here I had been sitting next to him, hearing him talk, and setting him down for a dull fellow. I felt as if he could ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... as such a husband ought to be regretted. I liked her exceedingly; there was so much heart, and so little constraint or affectation in all she said and did, or looked. There was a charming picture of Dr. Darwin in the room, in which his generous soul appeared and his penetrating benevolent genius. How unlike the wretched misanthropic print we have seen! While I am writing this at Loughborough, my father is a few miles off at Castle Donnington. I forgot to tell you that we spent a delightful day, or remnant of a day, on our return from ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... mind—the greatest of the century!" exclaimed Casanova. "To give him such a designation seems to me inadmissible, were it only because, for all his genius, he is an ungodly man—nay positively an atheist. No atheist can be a man ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... rather slowly and wearily, she thought, "although sometimes I am not certain that I understand these troubled times myself. Across the seas the Emperor Napoleon, a long-nosed, short-bodied man of infinite genius for setting the world by the ears, has been warring with England for the last ten years and more. He and the British, with their blockades and embargoes and Orders in Council have long been striving to ruin each other, yet have ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... Marker, quite unabashed, looks in to borrow the biggest last. The old cobbler Drejer stands modestly in a corner and says "Yes, yes!" to the other's remarks. Garibaldi has reached him his hand, and now he can go home to his gloomy shop and his dirty stock and his old man's solitude. The genius of the craft has touched him, and for the rest of his days has shed a light upon his wretched work of patching and repairing; he has exchanged a handshake with the man who made the cork-soled boots for the Emperor of Germany himself when he went out to fight the French. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... qualities in good writing appeal to inexperienced readers. I believe, however, that this skill in narration is De Quincey's most persistent quality,—the golden thread that unites all his most distinguished and most enduring work. And it is with him a part of his genius for style. Creative power of the kind that goes to the making of plots De Quincey had not; he has proved that forever by the mediocrity of Klosterheim. Give him Bergmann's account of the Tartar Migration, or the story of the Fighting Nun,— give him the matter,—and ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... drop of the vermilion in my Red Sea rise up in their faces and cover them with shame?" murmured Marcel, as he gazed at the painting. "When one thinks that it contains a good hundred crowns' worth of paint, and a million of genius, not to speak of the fair days of my youth, fast growing bald as my hat! But they shall never have the last word; until my dying breath I shall keep on sending them my painting. I want to have it engraved ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... that way viewed, its grandeur does not domineer upon you so. In profile, you plainly perceive that horizontal, semi-crescentic depression in the forehead's middle, which, in man, is Lavater's mark of genius. But how? Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale ever written a book, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his doing nothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Destiny, so amorous of surprises, of pathetic or cynical contrasts, had in this instance excelled herself. My obscure acquaintance, Maurice Cristich! The renowned Romanoff! Her name and acknowledged genius had been often in men's mouths of late, a certain luminous, scarcely sacred, glamour attaching to it, in an hundred idle stories, due perhaps as much to the wonder of her sorrowful beauty, as to any justification in knowledge, of her boundless extravagance, her magnificent fantasies, ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... critic. His article on Hogarth is a masterly specimen of acute and subtile criticism. Hazlitt says it ought to be read by every lover of Hogarth and English genius. His paper on "The Tragedies of Shakspeare, considered with Reference to their Fitness for Stage-Representation," is, in the opinion of good judges, the noblest criticism ever written. The brief, "matterful" notes to his Specimens ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... have left the men of merit to themselves! The period of the Restoration has the credit of being a liberal one; yet we should certainly not like to live now under a regime which warped such a genius as Cuvier, stifled with paltry compromises the keen mind of M. Cousin, and retarded the growth of criticism by half a century. The concessions which had to be made to the court, to society, and to ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... smirking genius, of a sudden, Extinguish life's taper, well pleas'd I'll hasten To Xenophon and Plato's musing shade And ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... especially when it is remembered that Hazlitt was a critic of painting, and himself a painter. He speaks almost as if realities passed direct into the verse of Crabbe; as if Scott's imagination in the novels were merely recollection and transcription of experience. Speaking of the difference between the genius of Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... securing it to the first, which I had taken the precaution to buoy before I put it into the boat. To bring the end back to the sloop was a smaller matter still, and I believe I chuckled above my sorrows when I found that in all the haphazard my judgment or my good genius had faithfully stood by me. The cable reached from the anchor in deep water to the sloop's windlass by just enough to secure a turn and no more. The anchor had been dropped at the right distance from the vessel. To heave all taut now and wait ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... perhaps, with the air full of cries from beyond the screen: 'Yes, yes.' 'We're waiting!' 'Mummy promised'—cut short by the nurse saying sharply, 'Not so much noise, Miss Sara.' But the presiding genius of the Tunbridge nursery opened the door a little wider and stood aside. Handsome compensation for her studied coldness was offered in the shrill shrieks of joy with which a little girl and a very small boy celebrated the lady's entrance. She, ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... getting Murray to reconsider the publication of the "Sketch Book," which he had previously declined, were never forgotten by Irving. It was during a critical period of his literary career, and the kindness of the Great Magician, in directing early attention to his genius, is still cherished by every reader of the "Sketch Book" from Manhattan to San Francisco. The hearty grasp of the Minstrel at the gateway of Abbotsford was in reality a warm handshake to a wider ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... the house in the usual way, from the landward side, the visitor finds himself in a large square hall occupying one corner of the building. This room discloses at a glance the type and the genius of Shirley. It begins at once to tell you all about itself; and when you know this old hall, you have the key to the mansion and to its story. It is truly a colonial "great hall." It tells you that by its goodly old-time ampleness, its high panelled ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... Dixie Land, has created a work that will live long in the traditions of the South and longer in the hearts of his readers. One has only to read "Ole Mistis," the first story in this collection, to feel the power of Mr. Moore's genius. It is at once the finest story of a horse race ever written, a powerful love story and most touchingly pathetic narrative of the faith and ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... his father was a basket-maker, and, being in such low circumstances, was unable to give his only son that education which his talents and genius demanded. He therefore bound him out to a shepherd, who sot him to watchin' swine on the banks of the Nile; and it was thar, sir, by a cornstalk and rush-light fire, a readin' the history of Robinson Crusoe, that first inspired in his youthful breast the seeds of sympathy and ambition. ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... when Joseph first assumed a military rank, he passed nearly four months with the army of England on the coast or in Brabant. On his return, all his visitors were gone, except a young poet of the name of Montaigne, who does not want genius, but who is rather too fond of the bottle. Joseph is considered the best gourmet or connoisseur in liquors and wines of this capital, and Montaigne found his Champagne and burgundy so excellent that he never once went to bed that he ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... quite clear what the Religious Difficulty in Ireland under Home Rule is. It is not a mere accident of the situation; it does not spring from any question of temper, or of prejudice, or of bigotry. The Religious Difficulty is created by the essential and fundamental genius of Romanism. Her whole ideal of life differs from the Protestant ideal. It is impossible to reconcile these two ideals. It is impossible to unite them in any amalgam that would not mean the destruction of both. ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... unskilled. infanta, f., infanta, a princess of the Spanish royal family. inferior, inferior; lower. infierno, m., hell, infernal regions. infortunado,-a, unfortunate. infortunio, m., misfortune. ingenieria, f., engineering. ingeniero, m., engineer. ingenio, m., genius, intelligence; industry; —— de azucar, sugar work, sugar plantation. ingenioso,-a, ingenious, skillful. Inglaterra, f., England. ingles,-esa, English. inhalar, to inhale. injusto,-a, unjust. inmediatamente, immediately. inmediato,-a, adjoining, next. inmenso,-a, ...
— A First Spanish Reader • Erwin W. Roessler and Alfred Remy
... when those of other musicians are apt to be frightfully morbid. A great deal of nonsense has been thought and written about the famous Malibran, because Alfred de Musset was moved to write of her as if she were a consumptive and devoured by the flame of genius. Malibran was a genius, but she was no more consumptive than Hercules. She died of internal injuries caused by a fall ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... than once had exhibited encouraging letters from the editors of McClure's, Scribner's, Harper's, and other magazines, was always worth listening to, for, as every one knows, she was the first, and, so far as revealed, the only literary genius ever created ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... money, which he bestowed with his usual large generosity, constitute the only form of help he gave. In a thousand nameless ways he ministered to the wants and relieved the difficulties of his humble fellow-passengers, who quickly came to look upon him as the good genius of the ship. As a matter of course, the whisper soon went round, "Who is he?" And when, in some inscrutable way, the truth leaked out, the poor people regarded him with a kind of awe. Some, indeed, criticised, and said he did not look much like a millionaire; but there were many in that motley crowd ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... the family archives, where they may still be for anything that I know. This piece of good luck promises to be hereditary; for all "my" compositions have the same amiable home-staying propensity. The truth is, my Father was not a first-rate genius; he was, however, a first-rate Christian, which is much better. I need not detain you with his character. In learning, goodheartedness, absentness of mind, and excessive ignorance of the world, he ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... the employment of their time for which the early public bodies of this state were so noted, to take into consideration the important instrument now submitted to them as a proper basis on which to erect the superstructure of a civil government, suited to the genius and necessities of an industrious and frugal people—a people who, though keenly jealous of their individual rights, and exceedingly restive under all foreign authority, had yet declared their willingness, and even their wish, to receive and obey a system of legal restraints, if it could ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... history of such works, in which genius seems to have pushed its achievements to a new limit. Their bursting out from nothing, and gradual evolution into substance and shape, cast on the mind a solemn influence. They come too near the fount of being to be followed up without our feeling the shadows which surround it. We cannot ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... 1535. His principal work, from which the above is quoted (cap. xx.), is entitled De Occulta Philosophia. That Socrates had an attendant spirit or demon from his youth up, whose suggestions he followed as an oracle, is known to us from the Theages of Plato. But of the nature of this genius, spirit, or voice, we have no certain indications from the ancients, though the subject has been much investigated in numerous writings, beginning with the monographs of Apulejus and Plutarch. The first (Apulejus), De Deo Socratis, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... the difficult task which lay before him. Wild and frivolous as he had shown himself in youth, all he needed was a great occasion to prove himself a great man. He was to develop into one of the ablest military leaders in all history, a man who, on a small scale, was to display a genius and achieve a success worthy of Caesar or Alexander or any of the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... left at home to indulge his schemes of army reform while the new man went to his post in the north, to quarrel with the aristocratic Caepio, who was now serving as proconsul in those regions, and to share in the crushing disaster which this dissension drew upon their heads. The search for genius had to be renewed at the close of this melancholy year.[1224] Another "new man" was found in Caius Flavius Fimbria, a product of the forensic activity of the age, a clever lawyer, a bitter and vehement speaker, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the German princes and princelings had tried to do in imitation and emulation of French splendor. In Potsdam the grandeur, was not a historical growth as at Versailles, but was the effect of family genius, in which there was often the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... comes but once a year Good protections against temptations; but the surest is cowardice Goody-goody puerilities and dreary moralities Habit of assimilating incredibilities Human pride is not worth while Hunger is the handmaid of genius If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank Inherited prejudices in favor of hoary ignorances It is easier to stay out than get out Man is the only animal that blushes—or needs to Meddling philanthropists Melt a brass ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Mark Twain • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... sacred emblems: as the crescent or emblem of the Moon-God, Sin; the four-rayed disk, the emblem of the Sun-God, Shamas; the six-rayed or eight-rayed disk, the emblem of Gula, the Sun-Goddess; the horned cap, perhaps the emblem of the king's guardian genius; and the double or triple bolt, which was the emblem of Vul, the god of the atmosphere. This sacred collar was a part of the king's civil and not merely of his sacerdotal dress; as appears from the fact that it was sometimes ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... hath a brilliant genius, And thou a plodding brain; On thee I think with pleasure, On him with doubt and pain." ("You see, good Ned," says Thomas, "What ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... recited the whole of the celebrated passage referred to, and concluded with defying the present age, bundle all its wits, Donne, Cowley, Waller, and the rest of them together, to produce a poet of a tenth part of the genius ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... Sergeant with great courtesy, invited him to come in. Lovat was a fine-looking tall man, and had something very insinuating in his manners and address. He lived in the fullness of hospitality, being more solicitous, according to the genius of the feudal times, to retain and multiply adherents than to accumulate wealth by the improvement of his estate. As scarcely any fortune, and certainly not his fortune, was adequate to the extent of his views, he was obliged to regulate his unbounded hospitality by rules of prudent economy. ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... only Englishman who could have rivalled La Rochefoucauld or La Bruyere was the Earl of Chesterfield, and he only could have done so from his very intimate connexion with France; but unfortunately his brilliant genius was spent in the impossible task of trying to refine a boorish young Briton, in ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... the genius of their leader showed. He was no longer Brigham Young, the preacher, but a father in Israel to his starving children. When prayers availed not for a miracle, his indomitable spirit saved them. Starvation was upon them ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... only universal classic, the classic of all mankind, of every age and country of time and eternity; more humble and simple than the primer of a child, more grand and magnificent than the epic and the oration, the ode and the dramas when genius, with his chariot of fire, and his horses of ire, ascends in whirlwind into the heaven of his own invention. It is the best classic the world has ever seen, the noblest that has ever honored and ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... this habit I have got of being troublesome flows from two excusable principles, gratitude and love. These inward counsellors—I know not how discreetly—persuaded me to this attempt and intrusion upon your name, which if your Lordship will vouchsafe to own as the genius to these papers, you will perfect my hopes, and place me at my full height. This was the aim, my Lord, and is the end of this work, which though but a pazzarello to the voluminose insani, yet as jessamine and the violet find room in the bank as well as roses and lilies, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... cared for table dainties; but I think if we had lived in a hut, and fed off wooden platters on potatoes and salt, our repast would have been fair and orderly, and our hut the neatest that a hut could be. For the mother of the family had in perfection almost the best genius a woman can have—the genius ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... fashionable in our present Conversation. And it is very remarkable, that notwithstanding we fall short at present of the Ancients in Poetry, Painting, Oratory, History, Architecture, and all the noble Arts and Sciences which depend more upon Genius than Experience, we exceed them as much in Doggerel, Humour, Burlesque, and all the trivial Arts of Ridicule. We meet with more Raillery among the Moderns, but more Good Sense among ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... same in politics as in business. Success in that sphere of life is achieved less by talent than by temper, less by genius than by character. If a man have not self-control, he will lack patience, be wanting in tact, and have neither the power of governing himself nor of managing others. When the quality most needed in a Prime Minister was the subject of conversation in the presence of Mr. Pitt, one ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... their minds lamed for life by examinations which only a thoroughly wooden head could go through with impunity; and if a king is patriotic and respectable (few kings are) he puts up statues to him and exalts him above Charlemagne and Henry the Fowler. And when he meets a man of genius, he instinctively insults him, starves him, and, if ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... disorder. It was she who at last took decisions into her hands when he was too jaded to do anything but generalize weakly, and settled upon the house in Pembury Road which became their London home. She got him to visit Hunstanton again for half a week while she and Miriam, who was the practical genius of the family, moved in and made the new home presentable. At the best it was barely presentable. There were many plain hardships. The girls had to share one of the chief bedrooms in common instead of their jolly little individual ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... young romantic girl has ripened into the thoughtful, prudent woman. I will not urge you for an answer now, my dear Miss Royal. Take as much time as you please to reflect upon it. Meanwhile, if you choose to devote your fine musical genius to the opera, I trust you will allow me to serve you in any way that a brother could under similar circumstances. If you prefer to be a concert-singer, my father had a cousin who married in England, where she has a good deal of influence in the musical ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... place of amusement and convenience, there is provender for philosophers or fools, stoics or epicureans; contemplation for genius of all denominations; and it embraces every species of science and of art, (having an especial eye to the important art of Cookery;) it encompasses all that is worthy of the sublimest faculties and capacities of the soul; it is the resort of all that is truly good and glorious on earth, the needy ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Peter-myself down on the East Side. I always believe in animals for Press-agent stunts. I've nearly always had good results. But with Her Nibs I'm handicapped. Shackled, so to speak. You might almost say my genius is stifled. Or ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... if we supposed that Oliver Twist had got by accident into an exceptionally bad workhouse, or that Mr. Dorrit was in the only debtors' prison that was not well managed. Dickens was making game, not of places, but of methods. He poured all his powerful genius into trying to make the people ashamed of the methods. But he seems only to have succeeded in making people proud of the places. In any case, the controversy is conducted in a truly extraordinary way. ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... The loyal Cedric then hastened in quest of his friend Athelstane, determined at every risk to himself to save the prince. But ere Cedric penetrated as far as the old hall in which he himself had been a prisoner, the inventive genius of Wamba had procured liberation ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... ever beset one unfortunate man, mine has been the most stupendous since I came home. The dinners I have had to eat, the places I have had to go to, the letters I have had to answer, the sea of business and of pleasure in which I have been plunged, not even the genius of an —— or the pen of a ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... comprehend her excellencies) I might at one time have been plunged into difficulties. But pert as the superlatively pert may think me, I thought not myself wiser, because I was older; nor for that poor reason qualified to prescribe to, much less to maltreat, a genius ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... possible I shou'd, this Devil haunts me so from room to room, like my evil Genius to prevent that Good; oh, for an opportunity of one kind Minute to return Acknowledgments for this kind Letter he ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... stories of unappreciated genius. In Washington, D. C., you will have pointed out to you a great elm, made historic by Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph. He could not make the successful people of his day give him a hearing, but he was so wrapped up in his invention that he used to sit under this tree ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... engagement for the following week with old van Manderpootz. It seems he'd transferred to N.Y.U. as head of the department of Newer Physics—that is, of Relativity. He deserved it; the old chap was a genius if ever there was one, and even now, eight years out of college, I remember more from his course than from half a dozen calculus, steam and gas, mechanics, and other hazards on the path to an engineer's education. So on Tuesday night I dropped in an hour or so late, to tell the truth, since ...
— The Worlds of If • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... probably afraid to let you know he'd been weak enough to yield to our blandishments. I had an idea you were living in a garret—the garret always seems to put a sort of hall-mark on genius. It's a very nice garret, too. I like mine ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... necessary. Such passages, however, are incapable of being so rendered. The translator must make his choice of, either taking the verses in a plain or a metaphorical sense. If he inclines towards the latter, he cannot possibly give a verbal version. The genius of the two tongues are ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... company of friendly and protecting spirits, encamped about the place of their former abode—above all others, the father, dead ten years before, of whom, remembering but a tall, grave figure above him in early childhood, Marius habitually thought as a genius a ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... and the gradual progress of knowledge, to adopt so much of our manners as tends to make them happier in themselves, and more useful members of the society to which they belong: if with our language, which they should by every means be induced to learn, they acquire the mild genius of our religion and laws, and that spirit of industry, enterprize, and commerce, to which we owe ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... "That's what I call genius," he observed, as he clapped the shutter tight and shot the bar into place. "I fancy they're ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... Kivy, Aranghy Tooker, etc., etc. My friend Shulitea (King George) sent him every day the choicest things from his own table. Though thus basking in the full sunshine of court favour, Aranghie, like a true genius, was not puffed up with pride by his success, for he condescended to come and take tea with me almost every evening. He was delighted with my drawings, particularly with a portrait I made of him. He copied so well, ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... teacher who, with his transcendent genius, has done more to create a school of English history than all who have gone before him, who, in fact, has made English history, not what it is, but what it will be, when his influence shall have permeated our literature, has spoken ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... strangely inattentive, and in desperation Cheon humbled himself and apologised handsomely for former scoffings. Not chance, he said, but genius! Never was there white woman like the missus! "Him savey all about," he assured the Maluka. "Him plenty savey gardin." Further, she was a woman in a thousand! A woman all China would bow down to! Worth ninety-one-hundred ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... that Colonel Mallett should spend every summer abroad with his wife to watch the incubation of Duane's Titianesque genius and Naida's unbelievable talent for music; and when the children came to bid good-bye to the Seagrave twins, they seized each other with frantic embraces, vowing lifelong fidelity. Alas! it is those who depart who forget first; and at the end of a ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... pass sentence on the state of learning, and the fine arts, in Vienna. I found, indeed, that it was fashionable to pay court to men of acknowledged talent and genius, and that to music and dancing the Viennese are just as much addicted as any other members of the Germanic family. But except from an evening spent at the theatre, I had no opportunity of determining how far they were ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... about great superiority of intellect, that winds into deep affections which a much more constant and even amiability of manners in lesser men, often fails to reach. Genius makes many enemies, but it makes sure friends—friends who forgive much, who endure long, who exact little; they partake of the character of disciples as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... no next floor. We're at the top of the house. No, no, you must invent some thumping lie. I can't think of one: you can, Julia. Exercise all your genius. I'll back you up. ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... I don't deny it. But no amount of ability, of genius if you will, absolves the follower of any art from the obligation of conducting himself ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... France,—and the contrast will appear sufficiently evident. There is hardly a branch of serious English literature in which Anglican clergy are not conspicuous. There is nothing in a false and superstitious creed incompatible with some forms of literature. It may easily ally itself with the genius of a poet or with great beauty of style either hortatory or narrative. But in the Church of England literary achievement is certainly not restricted to these forms. In the fields of physical science, in the fields of moral philosophy, metaphysics, social and ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... a little, old man who went about that mill, often saying, "I hain't got no book l'arnin' like the rest of you." He was the man who owned the mill. He had made it with his own genius out of nothing. He had become rich and honored. Every man in the mill ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... that a work of such force and genius, unique in Danish letters, should have been forgotten for three hundred years, and have survived only in an epitome and in exceedingly few manuscripts. The history of the book is worth recording. Doubtless ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... with an irresistible appreciation of the genius of her subtlety, and with that appreciation came a thrill of deeper understanding. He believed that he knew why she had left him so suddenly. It was because she had seen herself close to the danger-line. There were things which she ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... remained one of the people, rough almost to insolence, direct in speech, intolerant in his opinions, relying upon absolutely no one but himself; yet, with all this, of an astonishing degree of intelligence, and possessed of an executive ability little short of positive genius. He was a ferocious worker, allowing himself no pleasures, and exacting the same degree of energy from all his subordinates. He was widely hated, and as widely trusted. Every one spoke of his crusty temper and ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... year can scarcely be described as having a distinct existence as a branch of chemistry. Much valuable work, it is true, had already been done, especially by his two great predecessors, de Saussure and Boussingault; but it was, down to the year 1840, a science made up of isolated facts. Liebig's genius formed it into an important branch of chemistry, supplied the necessary connection between the facts, and by a series of brilliant generalisations formed the principles upon which all ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... knack, perhaps genius would be a better word, of writing in the easiest of colloquial English, without descending to the plane of the vulgar or commonplace. The very perfection of his work hinders the reader from perceiving at once how good ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... ability and the finer gift of personality to the selling of hats. Had she started life as a funeral director instead of a milliner, it is probable that she would have infused into the dreary business something of the living quality of genius. ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... always easy to get Watts-Dunton to talk of those he had known so intimately; but when he did so it was frankly and freely. Once when telling of some characteristic act of generosity on the part of that strangely composite being, half genius, half schoolboy, William Morris, he remarked, “Yes, Morris was a very dear friend of mine; but he had strange limitations. Swinburne had the utmost contempt for the narrowness of his outlook. It was incredible! Outside his own domain he was unintelligent in his ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... material nature under the inquisition of reason, and force from her, as by torture, unequivocal answers to prepared and preconceived questions—yet still they would not have been talked of or described as instances of luck, but as the natural results of his admitted genius and known skill. But should an accident have disclosed similar discoveries to a mechanic at Birmingham or Sheffield, and if the man should grow rich in consequence, and partly by the envy of his neighbors ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... hands—to draw one inappreciable gem from out of the carcanet of each of the two unrivalled masters of the poetry of our language. I was curious to see the effect to be produced by a close juxtaposition of these two exquisite specimens of the soul's light; of the revealment of its original genius; of the intense brilliancy of its Truth, falling as it does in one ray upon two objects so diverse in their character as the virgin love of the retired and comparatively humble but devoted Helena, and the married constancy of the Father ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... cathedral, but formerly deputy in the Spanish Cortes, and the most zealous supporter of the cause of independence. It is said that he owed the great influence which he had over men of a middling character, rather to his energetic, some say to his domineering disposition, than to genius; that he was clear-headed, active, dexterous, remarkable for discovering hidden springs and secret motives, and always keeping his subordinates zealously employed in his affairs. C—-n also visited the bishop, Seor Vasques, who obtained from Rome ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... light on to the lapping waters of the Canal, and out into the brown sand of the desert. The schoolmaster became instructive about the rapid silting up of the Canal with erosion and sand storms: he discussed the genius and patience of de Lesseps, and argued lengthily on the respective merits of patience and genius. Finally, Marcella told him she had a headache. He suggested that he could ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... the ranks of those we call Philosopher or Admiral,— Neither as LOCKE was, nor as BLAKE, Is that Great Genius for whose sake We keep ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... munificence may be relied on to save from destruction so interesting a relic. It certainly could not cost much to convey the building in sections to the mainland, and there, on some suitable spot, to re-erect it as a national tribute to the genius of its great architect." When the present lighthouse was built one of the chief difficulties was in getting the building materials to the spot. They were conveyed from Millbay in small sailing vessels, which often beat about for days before they ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... ordinary men, could have achieved it. I will not go the length of saying that what Newton did in a single life, might not have been done in successive steps by some of those who followed him, each singly inferior to him in genius. But even the least of those steps required a man of great intellectual superiority. Eminent men do not merely see the coming light from the hill-top, they mount on the hill-top and evoke it; and if no one had ever ascended thither, the light, in many cases, might never have ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... take the place of the king whose military genius and great conquests had won for him the title of "Great"? It is true that Alexander had a half-brother, named Ar-ri-dae'us, but he was weak-minded. The only other heir was an infant son, born ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... 1896 that the mechanical genius which characterised the two brothers was turned to the consideration of aeronautics. In that year they took up the problem thoroughly, studying all the aeronautical information then in print. Lilienthal's writings formed one basis for their studies, and the ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... exclaimed. "Don't you suppose that these regular theatre managers know genius when they ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... as to hesitate," said the Doctor impatiently. "It is the genius of your restless discontented nation to go blundering about the world like buffaloes in search of fresh pasture. You have founded already two or three grand new empires, and you are now going to form another; and men like ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... ourselves,' said my companion. 'Had Mr. TUSSAUD himself sworn that he was the modeller only yesterday we should have had no doubt, so indelibly, to the competent German eye, was the genius of LEONARDO stamped upon it. But we permitted the bust to be opened from the back, and true enough a piece of modern cloth was found within. That, however, as I say, could not affect the authenticity ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 28, 1914 • Various
... the Holy War is indeed an extraordinary book, manifesting a degree of genius, research, and spiritual knowledge, exceeding even that displayed in the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' To use the words of Mr. J. Montgomery, 'It is a work of that master intelligence, which was privileged to arouse kindred spirits from torpor and inactivity, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sixteenth-century portrait in the National Gallery: a sense or an illusion of being in the presence of a living person with whom I am engaged in a wordless conversation, and who is revealing his inmost soul to me. And it is only the work of a genius that can affect you in ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... Rhodian rosy with Euripides! . . . And here you stand with those warm golden eyes! Maybe, such eyes must strike conviction, turn One's nature bottom-upwards, show the base . . . Anyhow, I have followed happily The impulse, pledged my genius with effect, Since, come to ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... pleased me, and I was in hopes that I should spend a happy day, but my evil genius brought the Charpillon to mar the feast. She came into the room in high glee, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... were the confines of their little island and who sallied gaily forth to seek new worlds for their ambition and energy. Raleigh, Drake, Sir Martin Frobisher, Sir Humphry Gilbert, Sir Richard Grenville and John Smith were the scouts sent out by England's genius to discover the pathways along which she was to send her sons. Bold, fearless, untiring, cruel often, at other times kind and firm, they went into new seas and lands, seeking a Northwest Passage, or to "singe the beard of the King of Spain," or to find the legendary treasures of the ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... of William Shakespeare; and even if we are required to believe that some of his most important works are by another hand, his influence on the history of art is beyond question. Let us then follow Vasari a little further, and we shall find, at any rate, what is typical of the development of genius. ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... her head. "I'm afraid there's not much use in arguing with a person like that. If she once sees a truth, you know, she sees it for all time. But never mind; I'll do the best I can. I'll tell her you're an undiscovered mathematical genius; that it's latent, but if she'll examine you again she'll find it. That ought to appeal to her. Good-night. Go to sleep and don't worry; ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... silence of the noon-day fields, historic doubtless, but noon-day certainly. Something lives upon the warm stretches of the Appian Way, something that talks of the eternal and unchangeable, and yet has the pathos of the fragmentary and the lost. Perhaps it is the ghost of a genius that has failed of reincarnation, and inspires the weeds and the leaf-shadows instead. Thinking of it, one remembers only an almond tree in flower, that grew beside a ruined arch by the wayside—both quite alone in the sunlight—and perhaps of a meek, young, ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... connected with the essential comforts of life. There is no object on which the resources of the wealthy are more freely lavished, or which calls out more effectually the inventive talent of the artist. The painter and the sculptor may display their individual genius in creations of surpassing excellence, but it is the great monuments of architectural taste and magnificence that are stamped in a peculiar manner by the genius of the nation. The Greek, the Egyptian, the Saracen, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, And trips reproachful: "Was it, then, my praise, And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth; I claim of thee the promise of thy youth; Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase, The victim of thy genius, not its mate!" Life may be given in many ways, And loyalty to Truth be sealed As bravely in the closet as the field, So bountiful is Fate; But then to stand beside her, When craven churls deride her, To front a lie in arms and not to ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... M'Cord began to take the famous shoot trophies. Time came when this sort of thing was no longer a gamesome event, but a foregone conclusion. His rifle work was a revelation of genius—like the work of a prodigious young pianist or billiardist in the midst ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... was a day of pleasant surprises. I had already been very favourably impressed by the magnetic personalities of Major Brighten and Padre Newman; now I was ushered into the presence of another amiable military genius, Captain Andrews. I had not been in his presence two minutes before I congratulated myself on my good fortune in having "clicked" for so delightful a company commander as Captain Andrews. Though older and very ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... accredited for no more than three and a half millions out of pretty nearly twenty millions of white American citizens, on the other hand, against this English element, is set up an Irish (meaning a purely Hiberno-Celtic) element, amounting—oh, genius of blushing, whither hast thou fled?—to a total of eight millions. Anglo-Saxon blood, it seems, is in a miserable minority in the United States; whilst the German blood composes, we are told, a respectable nation of five millions; and the Irish-Celtic young noblemen, though somewhat at a loss for ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... little of Wordsworth's work in it, and the spirit of it, the air of mystery and the sense of brooding elemental forces with which its simplest lines are somehow invested, belongs to Coleridge alone, and to that strange genius of his, which only twice or thrice in his life—in "Christabel," "The Ancient Mariner," and "Kubla Khan"—produced poetry of inimitable, strange beauty ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Second Form received me, Where I displayed such genius rare, That they begged me to refrain, It was going to my brain. About five miles ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... known for unknown objects. But his soul was ever agitated, in commotion, and, even when he changed, it was through necessity rather than caprice. In order to escape once more from himself, from the allurements of the senses, from the effects of the enthusiasm which his personal beauty and his genius excited among women, he resolved to take refuge in an indissoluble tie, in a tie formed by duty, not love. Perhaps he might have found strength for perseverance in the beauty of the sacrifice. His soul was quite capable of it. But destiny pursued him in his choice, and rendered it impossible. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... I believe it was before—the Rose of Tisleton, we read Ellen Middleton, by Lady Georgiana Fullerton, grand-daughter of the famous Duchess-Beauty of Devonshire, and whatever faults that Duchess had she certainly had genius. Do you recollect her lines on William Tell? or do you know Coleridge's lines to her, ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... anti-rhetoric The rhythm of style Rhetoric of the minor key The value of my ideas Genius and admiration My literary and artistic inclinations My library On being a gentleman Giving offence Thirst for glory Elective antipathies To a member of ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... would have done, the urbanities of his new position. And what simplicity helped him to, favor would retain. Yet this man, so well bred, and so indisputably clever in his art (whatever might be the amount of his genius), had received so careless, or so homely an education when a boy, that he could hardly read. He pronounced also some of his words, in reading, with a puritanical barbarism, such as haive for have, as some people pronounce when they sing psalms. But this was perhaps an American custom. My mother, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... nonsense for your work. Sacrifice means success. You are bound to have it. I feel you are going to. Ah, you don't know how I sometimes long to be linked, really linked, to the striving, the abnegation, the patience, the triumph of a man of genius! People envy my silly little position, as they call it. And what is it worth? And yet I do know, I have an instinct, a flair, for the real thing. I'm ignorant. I can dare to acknowledge it to you. But I can tell what is good and bad, and sometimes ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... you know what giddiness is? Pray that she may not seize you, this mighty "Loreley" of the heights, this evil-genius from the land of the sylphides; she whizzes around her prey, and whirls it into the abyss. She sits on the narrow rocky path, close by the steep declivity, where no tree, no branch is found, where the wanderer ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... comedies, and the practice of putting both ancient and modern plays on the stage, continued without intermission; but they served only as occasions for display. The national genius turned elsewhere for living interest. When the opera and the pastoral fable came up, these attempts were at ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the country to resist foreign attack. The revolution which works these changes holds out no hope of reconciliation with Ireland. An attempt, in short, to impose on England and Scotland a constitution which they do not want, and which is quite unsuited to the historical traditions and to the genius of Great Britain, offers to Ireland a constitution which Ireland is certain to dislike, which has none of the real or imaginary charms of independence, and ensures none of the solid benefits to be hoped for from a genuine union ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... knew that the work in which I engaged is generally considered as drudgery for the blind, as the proper toil of artless industry; a task that requires neither the light of learning, nor the activity of genius, but maybe successfully performed without any higher quality than that of bearing burdens with dull patience, and beating the track of the alphabet with ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... heroic workers rested at its base—while startled kings and emperors gazed and marveled that from the rude touch of this handful cast on a bleak and unknown shore should have come the embodied genius of human government AND THE PERFECTED MODEL OF HUMAN LIBERTY! God bless the memory of those immortal workers, and prosper the fortunes of their living sons—and perpetuate the inspiration of ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the clerk, whose intervention was regarded with awe, proposed that the court should anticipate its arrival, dealing with the matter "proleptically," and the court saw in the very word another proof of the clerk's masterly official genius. It was he also—expressing the mind of the Presbytery—who proposed that the Court should send Carmichael as a commissioner to the General Assembly in the first year of his ministry, and took occasion to remark that Mr. Carmichael, according to "reliable information ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... exact originals of the old pictures in which Death is represented as mowing down mankind; the hoes, rakes, and shovels would be an ornament to any museum, but are entirely indescribable; and as for the wagons and harnesses—herein lies the superior genius of the Russians over all the races of earth, ancient or modern, for never were such wagons and such harnesses seen on any other part of the globe. To be accurate and methodical, each wagon has four wheels, and each wheel is roughly put together of rough wood, and then roughly ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... by others that the bald form in which Protestantism is for the most part presented abroad, is not conformable with the "genius" of the men of Celtic and Latin race. However this may be, it is too generally the case that where Frenchmen, like Italians and Spaniards, throw off Roman Catholicism, they do not stop at rejecting ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... foundations of society. Lord David was insulted even more than Viscount Hereford. He held his ground. Prince Devereux was the first, Lord David Dirry-Moir the second. It is sometimes more difficult to be second than first. It requires less genius, but more courage. The first, intoxicated by the novelty, may ignore the danger; the second sees the abyss, and rushes into it. Lord David flung himself into the abyss of no longer wearing a wig. Later on these lords found imitators. Following these two revolutionists, men found sufficient audacity ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... advance of civilization will advance the navy. Every new discovery and invention will directly or indirectly serve it. The navy, more than any other thing, will give opportunity for mechanism and to mechanism. Far beyond any possible imagination of to-day, it will become the highest expression of the Genius of Mechanism, and the ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... my talented antiquarian friend, W. H. Black, is elder and pastor. These places of worship are supported by an endowment. Bunyan's book does not appear to have been answered; indeed, it would require genius of no ordinary kind to controvert such ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... know that you were such an accomplished performer, Freddy," observed I; "you are quite an universal genius." ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... a disposition to neglect personal cleanliness was indicative of genius. But this opinion is grossly erroneous, and has well nigh ruined many a ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... election chiefly to his good offices, but partly to the fact that my book on Charlotte Bronte had found favour with the reading public. A great deal has been written since then about the Brontes. Some of our ablest literary critics have discussed their genius with a penetrating insight that has opened up for us the secrets of their wonderful laboratory, whilst industrious investigators have brought to light many facts which were unknown to Mrs. Gaskell at the time when she wrote her famous Memoir. A Bronte ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... eyes flashed whenever he raised his head thoughtfully, as he frequently did; and when music was born of his thoughts, a smile illuminated his otherwise plain face, and a wonderful light played about his magnificent forehead; the glory of that genius which ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... of military skill, and with a tenacity of purpose that often achieved success against tremendous odds. But, unlike the great general to whom, during the last few weeks of his life, it was his fortune to be opposed, he never gave any evidence of possessing an original military genius—such a genius as would seem to have been possessed by the youth who figures in the foregoing anecdote. His chivalrous bravery, his high-bred courtesy, and, more than all, his untimely death, have done much ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... hunting and trapping genius of Saginaw Bay—a man who dwelt in the woods summer and winter, and never trimmed his hair or wore any other covering on his head. Not a misanthrope, or taciturn, but friendly and talkative rather; liking best to live alone, but fond of tramping across the woods to gossip with neighbors; ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... Betty, at the end of the morning. "I've taught dozens and scores to skate, but never anybody like you. You've a genius ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... direction indicated by the author, encourages us to believe that this will continue until his predictions will have been fulfilled to the end. Clear-sighted, philosophical, appreciative of American genius and accomplishment, critical, yet charitable to tenderness, stigmatizing the fault, yet forgiving the offender, cheering our nation onward by words of encouragement, bravely spoken at the needed-moment, menacing Europe with ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... the idea he proceeded to carry it out with considerable finesse. An ordinary schemer would have been content to work with a savage hound. The use of artificial means to make the creature diabolical was a flash of genius upon his part. The dog he bought in London from Ross and Mangles, the dealers in Fulham Road. It was the strongest and most savage in their possession. He brought it down by the North Devon line and walked a great distance over the moor so as to get it home without exciting any remarks. ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... unsubdued and unvulgarized. Artlessness nowadays must be the result of the most exquisitely finished art; if not, it is apt to be insipid, if not positively squalid and fusty. The obvious uses of simple words have been exhausted; we cannot, save by infinite pains and the exercise of a happy genius, recover the old spontaneous air, the effect of an inevitable arrangement of the ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... of civilization being always to settle people one way or the other, the Mayor of Gatesboro' entertains a statesmanlike ambition to settle Gentleman Waife; no doubt a wise conception, and in accordance with the genius of the Nation. Every session of Parliament England is employed in settling folks, whether at home or at the Antipodes, who ignorantly object to be settled in her way; in short, "I'll settle them," has become a vulgar idiom, tantamount to a threat of uttermost extermination or smash; ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... von Ense, born in Berlin, of Jewish parentage; was a woman of "rare gifts, worth, and true genius, and equal to the highest thoughts of her century," and lived in intimate relation with all the intellectual lights of Germany at the time; worshipped at the shrine of Goethe, and was the foster-mother of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... country than we would otherwise. David Hume, Adam Smith, Burns, Scott—all these men were born and bred in Scotland so poor and so squalid that we should say we would not belong to it now. Nobody was asking us to belong to it. But these men, their roots were in a soil capable of sustaining their genius and of pouring into their works those things in the way of thought and feeling that delighted us now, and that were our pride ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... now my selfe, and newly wak'd, My not unwelcome dreames, just now off shak'd; Thrice o're my Lute, I scarce had run With nible finger neat division; Remembring Horace, Thee, my guide, When my high Genius through th'ayre doth ride; Now o're the scatt'red Islands, then O're Seas, with dry feet passing back again; Nothing that's mortall of mee, now I beare, and nought to my dull bulke ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... the greatest conquerors of the Middle Ages. He was a soldier of genius but he cannot be called a truly great man. His vast empire speedily fell to pieces after his death. Since his day there has been no leader like him in that ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... to him. Three gods proceed from him: Anou, the "lord of darkness," under the figure of a man with the head of a fish and the tail of an eagle; Bel, the "sovereign of spirits," represented as a king on the throne; Nouah, the "master of the visible world," under the form of a genius with four extended wings. Each has a feminine counterpart who symbolizes fruitfulness. Below these gods are the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets, for in the transparent atmosphere of Chaldea the stars shine with a brilliancy ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos |
