"Ingenious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Hull House is shown a very ingenious diagram, representing the development on the mechanical side of the process of spinning, one of the oldest of the arts. It consists of a strip of cardboard, about a yard long, marked off into centuries and decades. From 2000 B.C. ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... "His scheme is ingenious enough," I said, "and I believe it is quite true that there are a great many people in France who would be glad to see the Monarchy revived. They are a people, too, whom it is easy to catch on the top of a wave of sentiment. But, so far as I can see, ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 'What an ingenious little thing you are!' exclaimed the fairy; 'but, let us see—if you came home and found your cruel papa doing duty as the family hatstand, or strutting about as a ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... of an ingenious turn of mind, had contrived an affair which was supposed to look like a Roman chariot, and which was, therefore, a bit ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... I was studying a delightful book by Jean Mac, The Servants of the Stomach, and savoring its ingenious teachings, when Conseil ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... and interior conditions with which it is credited by the gossipy old Monk of St. Gall, the most entertaining, though hardly the most credible, writer of that period. All authors admit that the country of the Avars was defended by an ingenious and singular system of fortifications. The account we propose to give, the Monk of St. Gall declares that he wrote down from the words of an eye-witness, Adelbart by name, who took part in the expedition. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... for a method of discovering the longitude was offered to the world—to inventors and scientific men of all countries—without restriction of race, or nation, or language. As might naturally be expected, the prospect of obtaining it stimulated many ingenious men to make suggestions and contrive experiments; but for many years the successful construction of a marine time-keeper seemed almost hopeless. At length, to the surprise of every one, the prize was won by a village ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... her husband, Captain Ebenezer Smith, was with the army, was left alone with six small children in a hamlet among the hills of Berkshire, Massachusetts. Finding it difficult to eke out a subsistence from the sterile soil of their farm, and being quick and ingenious with her needle, she turned tailoress and made garments for her little ones, and for all the families in that region. She wrote her husband, telling him to be of good cheer, and not to give himself anxiety on his wife's or his children's account, adding ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... at least thought) that this situation would become serious when school time neared. He was anxious to know what time it was. You see, Joe was not a regular full-fledged scout and he could not tell time by the sun nor by forty-eleven other ingenious means known ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... and son-in-law, a very ingenious young man, came to visit me, upon whom I bestowed some knives and other things, such as I had left, which could not be much, as I had every now and then some great man or other to visit me, to all of whom I had to give something. The 27th, the three ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... was thought by some of us to have a hidden personal application, and to afford a fair opening for a lively rejoinder, if the Koh-i-noor had been so disposed. The little man uttered it with the distinct wooden calmness with which the ingenious Turk used to exclaim, E-chec! so that it must have been heard. The party supposed to be interested in the remark was, however, carrying a large knife-bladeful of something to his mouth just then, which, no doubt, interfered with the reply he ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... acknowledged my share in the disappearance of Master Tommy Simmons, which was that little boy's name. That, perhaps, may prove a difficult item of corroboration to explain away. They account for my appearance in rags with two bars of indisputable gold upon the Littlestone beach in various ingenious ways—it doesn't worry me what they think of me. They say I have strung all these things together to avoid being questioned too closely as to the source of my wealth. I would like to see the man who could invent a story that would hold together like this one. Well, they ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... history of ideas, all his life. Had he ever yet grasped the meaning of religion to the religious man? God and faith—what have these venerable ideas ever mattered to him personally, except as the subjects of the most ingenious analysis, the most delicate historical inductions? Not only sceptical to the core, but constitutionally indifferent, the squire had always found enough to make life amply worth living in the mere dissection of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fears, contentment, and wishes, within the narrow scope of momentary satisfaction, the great lesson of history is taught almost in vain. Whatever be its warnings, we rely on our good fortune; and we are ingenious in finding out some soothing pretext to lull down the dreadful admonitions of history. Man, in his private capacity, consoles the instinctive apprehension of his heart with the idea that his condition is different from what warningly ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... said about the recent death of little Benny Dodge, nor was Nellie's sickness mentioned. To all Dodge's questions concerning his family, ingenious replies were made. ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... a signore and rich. It is different. I am poor. I shall have many loves, first one and then another, but I shall never take a wife. My father wishes me to when I have finished the military service, but"—and he laughed at his own ingenious comparison—"I am like the Mago Africano when he was let out of the casket. I am free, and I will never let myself be stoppered-up ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... are such as never in the history of the world's most terrible campaign had to be endured before." The winter was exceptionally severe and men were invalided by the thousands, owing to frost-bites, despite ingenious precautions and the fact that their spells in the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... The author, apparently a Jew by birth and a philosopher of the Alexandrine school, has embraced a form of Christianity mixed up with the dogmas of his philosophy. For the purpose of attacking and overthrowing the false religious notions of his age, he invents an ingenious historic plot. Clement, a Roman citizen, who, as appears in the sequel, has been separated in early life from his father, mother, and two brothers, whom he supposes to be dead, is introduced as sending to James, who presides over the church at Jerusalem, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... was issued directing the removal of fences which inclosed the public domain. Many of these have been removed in obedience to such order, but much of the public land still remains within the lines of these unlawful fences. The ingenious methods resorted to in order to continue these trespasses and the hardihood of the pretenses by which in some cases such inclosures are justified are fully detailed in the report of the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... into execution at Paris by that ingenious artist, M. Caffieres, sculptor to Louis XVI., king of France, under the direction of Dr. Benjamin Franklin. The monument is of white marble, of the most beautiful simplicity and inexpressible elegance, with emblematical devices, and the following truly classical ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... ingenious publicity move, worthy of a theatrical press- agent, and it succeeded beyond the promoter's fondest expectations—too well, in fact, for it drove the Trust in desperation to an alliance with the S. R. ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... informed in regard to the matters between myself and Generals Van Dorn and Hindman. You spoke it in the way of a taunt, and as if the Department justified them and condemned me. You meant me so to understand it. You are a very ingenious person; inasmuch as you knew the exact contrary to be true. When I afterwards received the Secretary's letter, I remembered your remark, and did not doubt, and do not now doubt, that when you were substituted for Gen. Magruder, you received the same instructions that had been ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... studies can no more help believing that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side, than, if his hand had been thrust in the fire, he could help feeling heat. The remarks which follow are ingenious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... are made to note down their character and force. The sheet of paper on which the uncertain element, the wind, is bearing witness against itself, is fixed upon a frame moved by clock-work. Steady as the progress of time, this ingenious mechanism draws the paper under the suspended pencils. Thus each minute and each hour has its written record, without human help or inspection. Once a day only, an assistant comes to put a new blank ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... "and you can neither move it one way nor the other. It is an ingenious idea of mine, for which I may also apply for a patent ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... resumed, "enough to last three minutes, taking, say, sixteen pictures to the foot and running about one foot a second. You know that less than ten or eleven pictures a second affect the retina as separate, broken pictures. The use of this compact little motion camera was suggested to me by an ingenious but cumbersome invention recently offered to the police in Paris—the installation on the clock-towers in various streets of cinematograph apparatus directed by wireless. The motion camera as a detective ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... Dower, the Secretary for Native Affairs, he must 'sell his stock and go into service.' He must accept any conditions the white farmer chooses or the mine-owner gives, and an ingenious clause encourages the white farmer to exact unpaid service from the native tenants. In a word, the Native is a legal serf in his ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... prisoners, and we have a right to do so. Are not all prisoners at the disposal of their captors? and are we to blame, if we send delinquents to a far country? I have been told you do the same. If you want no more slaves from us, why cannot you be ingenious and tell the plain truth; saying that the slaves you have already purchased are sufficient for the country for which you bought them; or that the artists who used to make fine things, are all dead, without having taught anybody to make more? But for a parcel of men, with long ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... mechanic in a neighbouring parish. In his nineteenth year he published a volume of poems, which excited some attention, and led to his connexion with the newspaper press. He became a regular contributor to the Dumfries Courier, edited by the ingenious John M'Diarmid; and in 1825 and the following year conducted the Dumfries Magazine, in which appeared many interesting articles from his pen. In December 1826, he became editor of the Glasgow Free Press, which supported the liberal ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the many traditions that abound among the Indians. They have traditions to account for almost everything in nature. Some of them are interesting, ingenious; others are ridiculous and senseless. It is well-known, however, no matter how the bear lost his beautiful tail, if he ever had one, he is still very fond of fish, and often displays a great deal of ingenuity ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... rat* was remarkable for the ingenious fabric it raised to secure itself from the native dog or birds of prey. The structure consisted of a rick or stack of small branches, commonly worked around and interlaced with some small bush, the whole ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... "Most ingenious, but, you see, the trouble with that safe is that it was built to keep radium IN—not cracksmen OUT," remarked Kennedy, when Denison had rushed us from the train to take a look at the little safe in ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... business in the city with a distrust of everyone, not knowing whether I was not followed or whether those who sought my life were not plotting some other equally ingenious move whereby I might go innocently to my death. I endeavored to discover Olinto by every possible means during those stifling days that followed. The heat of London was, to me, more oppressive than the fiery sunshine of the old-world Tuscany, and everyone who could ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... too, who proved to be very ingenious in watching the seals so as to find suitable places, plenty of fish were caught, making a most agreeable addition ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... a sea captain of Clunie, Scotland, who amassed a fortune and lost an arm in the adventurous practice of privateering. Here he lived in manorial splendor, entertaining the most eminent personages of the day with munificent hospitality and employing himself with numerous ingenious inventions, notably a practical device for moving brick and stone houses intact. He wrote on moral philosophy, lectured on astronomy and published the first city directory in 1785, a unique volume giving the names in direct house-to-house sequence and having such ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... comfortable, broad-seated Empire chair I had given Judith as a birthday present years ago, the chair in which I had invariably sat. He did it with the manner of the master of the house, a most courteous gentleman. The situation was fantastic. Some ingenious devil must have conceived it by way of pandering to the after-dinner humour of the high gods. As I sat down I rubbed my eyes. Was this brown-whiskered, bald-headed clerical gentleman real? The rubbing of my eyes dispelled no hallucination. He ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... workroom fitted up with all sorts of mechanical tools. It was one of his greatest pleasures to occupy himself there as a relief from sitting at the easel, or while within doors from the inclemency of the weather. The walls and shelves of his workroom were crowded with a multitude of artistic and ingenious mechanical objects, nearly all of which were the production of his own hands. Many of them were associated with the most eventful incidents in his life. He only admitted his most intimate friends, or such as could understand and ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... moreover, by ingenious conjectures and envenomed deductions, Cinq-Mars poured into the willing ear of Monsieur; and while agents were despatched to Spain and Flanders to invite the co-operation of those sovereigns, the Grand Equerry continued his secret visits ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... writing in the Surrey Archaeological Collections, gives a long letter which Sir Thomas wrote to Queen Elizabeth in 1575, defending himself, among other things, for having taken to himself titles to which he had no right. His defence is ingenious:— ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... had been silent during the laughter and jollity, always such a feature of Happy-Thought Hall at Christmas-time, but now he contributed an ingenious puzzle to the ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... Cresseide' entitled 'The Testament of Cresseide,' and thirteen Fables, of which copies, in MS., are preserved in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. One of these, 'The Town and Country Mouse,' tells that old story with considerable spirit and humour. 'The Garment of Good Ladies' is an ingenious and beautiful strain, written in that quaint style of allegorising which continued popular as far down as the days of Cowley, and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... disordered majesty, in which he is placed before the reader's mind, was present to him from the first moment in which the Defence was conceived. What was still more interesting, he could see him, hear him, think with him, speak for him, and still inevitably condemn him. No such instance of always ingenious, and sometimes earnest pleading foredoomed to complete discomfiture, occurs in ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... a well-devised system in their road-building, running their paths in and out of underbrush in a truly ingenious manner 189 ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... Desperate attempts have been made to prove the innocence of fun, and the allowableness of wit and humor. Assuming or conceding that the jocose elements or capacities of human nature need apology and defence, very nice distinctions have been drawn, and very ingenious sophistry employed, to prove that the best of people may, within certain limits, crack jokes, or laugh at jokes cracked for them. These efforts to accommodate stern dogmas to that pleasant stubborn fact in man's constitution, his irresistible craving for play, and irresistible impulse to laugh at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... necessary to guard against their sly pilferings, as well as the more violent attempts of the numerous bands of robbers who infested the neighbourhood. They reached Kanipe, a straggling village, on the 13th of May. Here the women had fallen upon an ingenious plan to extort amber and beads. After many hours labour, they had drawn up all the water from the wells and carried it away. They were fairly baffled, however, by the travellers; for in the evening, one of the soldiers having, as if by accident, dropped ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... were there. Of the missing, Dunshie, as we know, was sunning his lonely soul in the society of his foes; two had lost themselves, and the remaining two had been captured by a reconnoitring patrol. Of the seven which strayed not, four had discovered the trip-cord; so it was evident that that ingenious contrivance extended along the whole line. Only M'Snape, however, had penetrated farther. The general report was that the position was closely guarded from ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... the joy of living, fun-loving, given to ingenious mischief for its own sake, with a disregard for pretty convention which is an unfailing source of ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... devised or conceived; possessed of intelligence, witty, ingenious (hence well conceited, etc.); disposed to joke; of opinion, ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... Heyst as highly incorrect. However, the impropriety of Schomberg's ingenious scheme was defeated by the circumstance that most of the women were no longer young, and that none of them had ever been beautiful. Their more or less worn checks were slightly rouged, but apart from that fact, which might have been simply a matter of routine, they did not seem to ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... be on board in due time, then left me to make arrangements for his journey to Vienna by the dawn. I hastened to a masquerade warehouse, where, with the help of an ingenious stagewright artificer, I disguised myself into a most thorough-paced-looking cut-throat, and then waited the return of my friend Beppo ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... other lands, and these were conquered in order that I might be found. But at last Alexander died, and his son died, and the sons of his son died, and the whole story was forgotten or disbelieved, and I was no longer in danger of living forever as an example of the ingenious cruelty of an ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... and dignity of those portions of the masque in which noble lords and ladies took their parts to create, by their gorgeous costumes and artistic grouping and evolutions, a sumptuous show. On the mechanical and scenic side Jonson had an inventive and ingenious partner in Inigo Jones, the royal architect, who more than any one man raised the standard of stage representation in the England of his day. Jonson continued active in the service of the court in the writing ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... promise with regard to the Lohengrin performance, and also my unalterable conviction that a conspiracy to interfere with the production of Tristan originally proposed had been the work of Devrient. As Devrient, by his ingenious attitude, had led the Grand Duke to believe in his profound and genuinely solicitous friendship for me, my communications obviously pained the Grand Duke a great deal. Still, he seemed eager to assume that the matter turned on artistic ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... the power now roaring and whizzing all over the world, and which would build every pyramid and every monument of Egypt now extant in twenty-four hours, is no toy. When I think of this, there is no ingenious trifle for amusement which does not inspire a droll awe. Possibly those walking dolls now performing their weary pilgrimages on level glass-pane floors in Broadway windows—gravely lifting those enormous gilded boots, which remind me of Miss ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that which is being performed at a distance from him, the intervention of a special conducting mechanism becomes indispensable, in order to establish instantaneous communication between him and the distant performers. Many attempts, more or less ingenious, have been made of this kind, the result of which has not everywhere answered expectations. That of Covent Garden Theatre, in London, moved by the conductor's foot, acts tolerably well. But the electric ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... There are very few characters and situations which lead to inevitable crashes. It is a thousand to one that a woman who thinks she ought not to marry a man, but loves him passionately, will, in fact, marry him. She will either discover an ingenious way out of her woods or else just shut her eyes and "go it blind," relying on his strength and feeling that it is really right to relinquish to him her sense of responsibility. In choosing a girl with nothing left her in the world but loyalty to a dead father ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... laboured respiration of the ardent Mr. Stobell, coupled with a word or two which had filtered through the window, that the ingenious Mr. Chalk was using him as a stalking-horse. From the fact that Mr. Stobell made no denial it was none the less evident, despite the growing blackness of his appearance, that he was a party to the arrangement. The captain began ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Bear,—how to weave Miss Dolly's charms into a verse on a buttered muffin. I shall not tire you with mine. Storer's deserved to win, and we whisper that Mrs. Calliope ruled it out through spite. 'When Phyllis eats,' so it began, and I vow 'twas devilish ingenious. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... add to its appearance without troubling the wearer; and it has the merit of lasting to look well longer than any other kind of cap whatever. In the lancers they should always preserve that national cap which tells us of the origin of this arm, and which is an ingenious and elegant adaptation of the strength of the helmet to the lightness of the shako; it is beautiful and graceful as the lance itself; we have nothing to say of it but what ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... a man really grand and noble in heart and intellect, has this advantage with women, that he is an idol ready-made to hand; and so that very painstaking and ingenious sex have less labor in getting him up, and can be ready to worship him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... preparation made for the meal which was so near at hand. Cook was frigid, Peggy desperate, but difficulty had the effect of stimulating her faculties, and she approached the offended dignitary in a manner at once so ingenious and so beguiling that her anger melted away like snow before ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... encouraging the destruction of the Lapwing "as an ungrateful bird, which came to Scotland to breed, and then returned to England to feed the enemy." Worms are their favourite food, but being unable to pierce the ground with their weak, short beaks they are ingenious enough to have recourse to the expedient of tapping on the earth with their bills. The earth-worm, who is very sensitive of danger, comes up in alarm from his quaking habitation, and is instantly pounced upon by ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... the far-famed island which the hero of the Odyssey has immortalized; for we really are inclined to think that the author has established the identity of the modern Theaki with the Ithaca of Homer. At all events, if it be an illusion, it is a very agreeable deception, and is effected by an ingenious interpretation of the passages in Homer that are supposed to be descriptive of the scenes which our traveller has visited. We shall extract some of these adaptations of the ancient picture to the modern scene, marking the points of resemblance ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... {kat' ouden einai lamprotetos}: Stein reads {kai} for {kat'}, thus making the whole chapter parenthetical, with {ou gar elegon} answered by {parameipsamenos on}, a conjecture which is ingenious but not quite convincing.] ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... drawing-rooms of her acquaintances, scattering her profuse enthusiasms, revolving in her intellectual round, the prisoner of her own perfections. To come into Edith's room had been to come into thrilling contact with reality; while Fanny Eliott was for ever putting you off with some ingenious refinement on it. Edith's personality had triumphed over death and time. Fanny Eliott, poor thing, still ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... audience vigilantly, and 'Mme. Montholon, vous dormez' was a frequent ejaculation in the course of reading. He was animated with all that he read, especially poetry, enthusiastic at beautiful passages, impatient of faults, and full of ingenious and lively remarks ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... fact against Losely, by the discovery in his possession of the L5 note, of which Mr. Gunston deposed to have taken the number, was certainly hard to get over; still an ingenious lawyer might have thrown doubt on Gunstun's testimony—a man confessedly so careless might have mistaken the number, &c. The lawyer went, with these hints for defence, to see Losely himself in prison; but Losely declined his help—became very angry—said that he would rather ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... shares knowledge of his plot against Gontharis, IV. xxvii. 10, 18; renders good service in the execution of the plot, IV. xxviii. 7-32; his ingenious protection for his arm, IV. xxviii. 10, ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... a tale told him once by a survivor of a trading ship Judd the Kite had destroyed. It wasn't a nice tale. The Kite, so the report ran, was diabolically ingenious with a long peeling knife, and could improvise with it for hours. Friday pursued the tack of thought, and then suddenly began to sweat in earnest. He recalled—horrible!—that Judd possessed a special ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... which Don Gonzalo Ronquillo had built was destroyed by fire. At first it seemed absurd to think that human habitations were to be built in that marsh, but the Sangleys, who are very industrious, and a most ingenious people, managed it so well that, in a place seemingly uninhabitable, they have built a Parian resembling the other, although much larger and higher. According to them it suits them better than the other, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... went her way more at ease, more nearly content again with herself and with her system of living. Indeed, as she was shown into the private office of the ingenious interpreter of the law, there was not a hint of any trouble beneath the bright mask of her ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... both cases is the same, although in the one it is not carried out to the same extent as it is in the other. And here we cannot help remarking, how extensive and important a field the working of this principle opens up to the ingenious toy-man. If a game, or games, can be invented, where the child must have his attention occupied with one object, while he is obliged to answer questions, or to make observations, or to detail facts, or in any other way to employ his speaking powers extemporaneously, (not repeating words by rote,) ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... carried on by himself with various partners in different parts of the country. His patent was eventually set aside as having been unfairly obtained, and the machines were soon generally manufactured and used. Improvements followed. An ingenious weaver named Samuel Crompton, perceiving that the roller spinning was more rapid but that the jennies would spin the finer thread, combined the two devices into one machine, known from its hybrid origin as the "mule." This was invented ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... type to deal with the reserve positions. The capture of the dumps referred to above revealed the truth of his statement. Two kinds of bombs were used, one containing H.E. and the other small pumice granules impregnated with phosgene. This was an ingenious attempt to produce a persistent but highly lethal gas by physical means, for hitherto the highly lethal gases had only been slightly persistent. The new projector had a calibre of 158 mm. and was termed the "Gaswerfer, 1918." The importance of this new ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... he grudged her the bread she ate. Justin especially excelled in wounding her. Since his mother had been dead, seeing her without a protector, he had brought all his evil instincts into play in trying to make the house intolerable to her. The most ingenious torture which he invented was to speak to Miette of her father. The poor girl, living away from the world, under the protection of her aunt, who had forbidden any one ever to mention the words "galleys" or "convict" before her, hardly understood ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... whose direction a large staff of scribes was perpetually at work, may be gathered from the well-known story that his bibliographical rival at Alexandria, exasperated by his activity and success, conceived the ingenious device of crippling his endeavours by forbidding the exportation of papyrus. Eumenes, however, says the chronicler, was equal to the occasion, and defeated the scheme by inventing parchment[19]. It is probable that Eumenes ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... receives at the time. But, if we show him practically how to ascertain the meaning himself, and bring him under the mental discipline which it requires, we give him a kind of key to unlock the meaning of other passages. By an ingenious mode of catechizing, children's minds may be led to perceive and understand almost any truth, much more distinctly and clearly than by any direct explanation which, a teacher can make. By catechizing, I do not mean the repeating of catechisms; but the calling out of their ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... was an ingenious person that objected, there might be a great fallacy in this experiment, and there ought not to be any stress put upon this to convict the parties, for the children might counterfeit this their distemper, and perceiving what was done to them they might in such manner ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... rose with growing prosperity. Visions of a title hovered in his brain, and being a man of resource, he hit upon an ingenious method of converting them into realities. Close to his house there was an extensive bil (marsh) peopled in season by swarms of wild-duck, teal and snipe. It was visited occasionally by Europeans ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... often been pierced by the trials of life. She has seen enough of real poverty and mortification, but never dreamed of such a thing as poverty and mortification self-imposed, by wearing upon her flesh a garment of sacking-cloth, or the ingenious invention of a bed so contrived as to deprive herself of wholesome sleep. Images and holy water occupy no place in her creed, though soap and water are almost too prominent. She did her good deeds from a sense of duty which she owed ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... the ingenious man of affairs, to whom the whole combination was due, was not a little disturbed to receive from the Caliph a note couched in ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... assumed on the spot the general direction of affairs. His first care was to conceal the incident from the public until he could arrange to make the succession secure for the young Akbar, to whom he sent expresses conveying details. By an ingenious stratagem he managed to conceal the death of the Emperor for seventeen days. Then, on the 10th of February, he repaired with the nobles to the great Mosque, and caused the prayer for the Emperor to be recited in the name of Akbar. His next act was to despatch the insignia of the ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... wonderfully ingenious speculation rests its claims for acceptance purely on the assertion that it and it alone explains the facts. It cannot be proved from any principle of reason. It assumes that there is a demonstrative science of Mathematics ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... valuable patents standing in their names—patents which have proved the basis of large fortunes to those who were competent to develop the wealth that was in them. How often, too, do we see capable and ingenious and skillful mechanics confined through life to a small shop, or to a subordinate position in a large shop, solely through their inability to manage the affairs of a larger business. On the other ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... better feelings of his heart. Abstractedly from all legal technicalities, there is no real difference between thus compelling the return of the enfranchised negro, and trepanning a free native of England by delusive hopes into perpetual slavery. The most ingenious casuist could not point out any essential distinction between the two cases. Our boasted liberty is the dream of imagination, and no longer the characteristic of our country, if its bulwarks can thus be thrown down by colonial special pleading. It would well become the character of ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... interrupted partly under extreme pressure of other occupation, and partly in very fear of being tempted to oppress the serenity of the general prospect, which I think these essays are eminently calculated to open before an ingenious reader, with the stormy chiaroscuro of my own preference and reprobation. I leave the work, therefore, absolutely Miss Owen's, with occasional note of remonstrance, but without retouch, though it must be distinctly understood that when I allow my ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... chateau proper over a drawbridge which spans an arm of the Loire, or rather, a moat which leads directly from the parent stream. On the opposite side are the bridge piers supporting five arches, the work of Diane when she was the fair chatelaine of the domain. This ingenious thought proved to be a most useful and artistic addition to the chateau. It formed a flagged promenade, lovely in itself, and led to the southern bank of the Cher, whence one got charming vistas of the turrets and roof-tops of the chateau through the trees and the leafy avenues ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... commonly called "facts." They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who does not know fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or two which they lead after them into decent company like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generalization, or pleasant fancy? I allow no "facts" at this table. What! Because bread is good and wholesome and necessary and nourishing, shall you thrust a crumb into my windpipe while ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... said defiantly, "but, of course, I accept your offer. There is nothing else for me to do in the face of the very ingenious story which you two have concocted ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... pressure of the good company; and by the time the architect, who led the procession in great pomp and glory, reached the middle, the whole gave way, and he—worthy, patriotic artist—was the first that got a ducking. They had forgot the middle bolt,—or rather this ingenious person had conceived that to be a clumsy-looking feature, which might safely be dispensed with, while he put some invisible gimcrack of his own to supply its place."[48] It is strange that Sir Walter did not see ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... of stories in the framework of a single narrative, it implies too much. For this notion, a familiar one in the East, had long been known to Western Europe by the numerous versions of the terribly ingenious story of the "Seven Wise Masters" (in the progress of which the unexpected never happens), as well as by similar collections of the same kind. And the special connexion of this device with a company of pilgrims might, as has been well remarked, ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... "Your simile is ingenious enough, if not poetical," said Walter; "but it does not hold good to the last. When a man falls, his discretion should preserve him; but he is often dragged in the mud ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... play much at that most ingenious game which we call chess, or else at draughts. They have likewise cards, but quite different from ours. Sometimes they are amused by cunning jugglers, or mountebanks, who allow themselves to be ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... with that of Kilmarnock. On this allegation, Mr. Ford, the Under-Sheriff, who was on the scaffold, observes, "the authors of these attacks being concealed are unworthy of other notice, since nothing is easier to an ingenious and unprejudiced mind, than to distinguish between the subject and the man: my Lord Kilmarnock was happily educated in right principles, which he deviated from, and repented; whereas, the great, though unhappy Balmerino, was unfortunate ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... rest; a band of buccaneers with carriages and yellow kid gloves; a close confederacy of men of extraordinary power, of amused and cool spectators of an artificial and petty world which they cursed with smiling lips; conscious as they were that they could make all things bend to their caprice, weave ingenious schemes of revenge, and live with the life in thirteen hearts, to say nothing of the unfailing pleasure of facing the world of men with a hidden misanthropy, a sense that they were armed against their kind, and could retire into themselves with one idea which the ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... indeed, few kinds of composition from which an author, however learned or ingenious, can hope a long continuance of fame. He who has carefully studied human nature, and can well describe it, may with most reason flatter his ambition. Bacon, among all his pretensions to the regard of posterity, seems to have pleased himself chiefly with his Essays, which come home to men's business ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... head and they all quickened their pace. The voice of the ingenious Mr. Foley calling piteously for his mother pursued them to the ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... gave us, accordingly, first, that affecting story of Calvin and Servetus, in which the latter figured to-day like a Christian Confessor and martyr, and the former as a diabolical persecutor; many moving incidents being introduced not found in history, and many ingenious inferences and suppositions tending to blacken the Reformer's character. Judging from the frequency of the deep groans, loud amens, and noisy hallelujahs of the congregation during the narrative, had Calvin suddenly thrust in ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... people," was most "astonishing to the grand jury!" But that any white person should confederate with slaves in such a wicked and cruel purpose was astounding beyond measure! And the grand jury was possessed of the same childlike faith in the ingenious narrative of the wily Mary. In their report to the judges, they set forth in strong terms their faith in the statements of the deponent, and required the presence of Peggy Carey. The extent of the delusion of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... imprison them, to deprive them of their sustenance, to beat them. When a citizen went to law, his adversary had the right to require that the former's slaves should be put to the torture to tell what they knew. Many Athenian orators commend this usage as an ingenious means for obtaining true testimony. "Torture," says the orator Isaeus, "is the surest means of proof; and so when you wish to clear up a contested question, you do not address yourselves to freemen, but, placing the slaves to the torture, you ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... abominably thirsty. Also he wanted to smoke. In addition to this, the small of his back tickled, and he more than suspected the cupboard of harboring mice. Not once nor twice but many hundred times he wished that the ingenious Webster had ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... ingenious, but not convincing. So you will please come to-morrow at four o'clock. I shall stay in ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a veil over the scene that occurred after Rebecca's return from school. You who read may be well advanced in years, you may be gifted in rhetoric, ingenious in argument; but even you might quail at the thought of explaining the tortuous mental processes that led you into throwing your beloved pink parasol into Miranda Sawyer's well. Perhaps you feel equal to discussing the efficacy of spiritual self-chastisement ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... tried—and how ingenious is self-deception—I tried to find arguments in support of my determination totally different from the reasons which governed me. I affected to fear climate, and to dread the effect of the tropics upon my health. It may do very well, thought I, for ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... staggered across the cave to that blue flame quivering so mysteriously. As I neared, the mystery vanished, for it was nothing more than one of those northern beds of combustibles—gas, tar, or coal—set burning by the ingenious pirates. [1] ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... penalty of forfeiture; as for calmly landing and shipping their goods without permits, this was now out of the question. Yet what could they do to circumvent these innovations? Nothing—but put every conceivable difficulty, large and small, ingenious and obvious, in the ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... howled at and hooted him; said he had every vice—was no general—was beaten at Waterloo—was a poltroon—moreover a poor illiterate creature, who could scarcely read or write; nay, a principal Radical paper said bodily he could not read, and devised an ingenious plan for teaching Wellington how to read. Now this was too bad; and the writer, being a lover of justice, frequently spoke up for Wellington, saying, that as for vice, he was not worse than his neighbours; that he was brave; that he won the fight at Waterloo, from a half-dead ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... diction of this opera, as it is somewhat improperly termed, being rather a dramatic poem, strongly indicate the taste of Charles the Second's reign, for what was ingenious, acute, and polished, in preference to the simplicity of the true sublime. The judgment of that age, as has been already noticed, is always to be referred rather to the head than to the heart; and a poem, written to please mere ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... but especially with the English, who have already entered upon and seized a great part thereof, it is necessary to speak of each claim in particular and somewhat at large. But because this matter has been treated upon by various ingenious minds in its length and breadth, and as those claims are so absurd as to require only a few reasons in answer to them, we will be as brief as ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... politely freed me from my present embarassment, he could not help rallying me upon the rustic appearance I made. He apologized for the ill fortune I had experienced, and promised to introduce me to a mistress beautiful as the day, and sprightly and ingenious as ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... with which this work concludes, and which treats of the distinctions between type and allegory, the reader will find, from the pen of one of our most eminent living writers, an ingenious attempt to explain the interior or typical meanings of ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... those only who have delicate appetites that can truly appreciate the talent of a cook; for they who devour soon lose the power of tasting. No symptom of that terrible malady, well named by the ingenious Grimod de la Reyniere remords d'estomac, but vulgarly called indigestion, follows my unusual indulgence in entrees and entremets, another delightful proof of the admirable ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... Oliver Lodge, offers an ingenious and interesting, though very technical explanation of this class of clairvoyant phenomena as follows: "Time is but a relative mode of regarding things; we progress through phenomena at a certain ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... boundless region of what is unknown. He establishes for his guide some fanciful theory of corpuscular attraction, of chemical agency, of mechanical powers, of stimuli, of irritability accumulated or exhausted, of depletion by the lancet, and repletion by mercury, or some other ingenious dream, which lets him into all nature's secrets at short hand. On the principle which he thus assumes, he forms his table of nosology, arrays his diseases into families, and extends his curative treatment, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... other; if the one goes the other must also. But need either go? Duhm's view is that both are from a later period, when there was no longer a native government in Judah, reverence for the monarchy was dead, and the common conscience of Jewry was not civic but ecclesiastical! This is ingenious, but far from convincing. There are no grounds either for denying these verses to Jeremiah, or for reading his advice to go forth to the Chaldeans as meant otherwise than for the ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... of course, in most circumstances much greater difficulty in getting at water than pond-frogs; and this is especially true in certain tropical or desert districts. Hence most of the frogs which inhabit such regions have had to find out or invent some ingenious plan for passing through the tadpole stage with a minimum of moisture. The devices they have hit upon are very curious. Some of them make use of the little pools collected at the bases of huge tropical leaf-stalks, like those of the banana plant; others dispense with the aid of water altogether, ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... endurance ye shall make your souls your own." If the origin of this saying were unknown, one could fancy much ingenious conjecture about it; but no one, I think, would attribute it to an English source. An Englishman's idea of self-realization is action. If he is to be truly himself he must be doing something; life for him means energy. ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... Covered by ingenious constructions of wood and thick hides, the besiegers advanced to the foot of the tower in comparative shelter from the burning streams which still poured, fast and seething, from the battlements; while, in the rear came showers of darts and cross-bolts ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... in lead, might be seen here in all the various stages of renovation and decay: some stuffed with clouts, parti-coloured and various; others, where the work of devastation had been more complete, were wholly darkened by brick-bats, coble-stones, and many other ingenious substitutes and expedients to keep ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... being attended with belief, make no impression upon the mind. Poets themselves, though liars by profession, always endeavour to give an air of truth to their fictions; and where that is totally neglected, their performances, however ingenious, will never be able to afford much pleasure. In short, we may observe, that even when ideas have no manner of influence on the will and passions, truth and reality are still requisite, in order to make ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... Dependance and Attendance, which call me so often to the Court-end of the Town, were insupportable, but for the Relief I find at AUSTIN's, your Ingenious and Grateful Disciple, who has adorn'd New Bond-street with your Graceful Effigies. Nor can he fail of Custom who has hung out a Sign so Alluring to all true Dumpling-Eaters. Many a time and oft have I gaz'd with Pleasure ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... seen the homespun yarn, whether linen or woollen, left in carefully knotted skeins after being spun and cleaned, bleached, or dyed. To prepare it for use on the loom a skein is placed on the swift, an ingenious machine, a revolving cylindrical frame made of strips of wood arranged on the principle of the lazy-tongs so the size can be increased or diminished at pleasure, and thus take on and hold firmly any sized skein of yarn. ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... in this style, neither grandeur of imagination nor profound sentiment, vivid characterization, delicate gradations, vigorous precision, a sportive grace, unlooked-for burlesque, nor variety of representation. But, amidst so many ingenious tricks, apologues, tales, portraits and dialogues, in earnest as well as when masquerading, his deportment throughout is irreproachable and his tone is perfect. If; as an author, he develops a paradox it is with almost English gravity. If he fully exposes ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... with myself, your urgent affabilitee, and ingenious capacitee, for mundaine affaires, I cannot but celebrate and extolle your magnificall dexteritee above all other; for how could you have adopted such illustrate, prerogative, and dominicall superioritee, if the fecunditee of your inginie had not been so fertile ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... who established himself in Boston about 1713. "At first," wrote Mr. Thomas, "he printed pamphlets for booksellers, small books for children and ballads" in Pudding Lane.[19-A] "He owned several negroes, one of which ... was an ingenious man and cut on wooden blocks all the pictures which decorated the ballads and small books for his master."[19-B] As corroborative of these statements Thomas also mentions Thomas Fleet, Sr., as "the putative compiler of Mother Goose Melodies, which he first published in 1719, ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... was not safe for females to be amongst, making the sandy hollows resound with their artificial shrieks and sobs; but it was all to no purpose. Their skirts were examined, and there were found boxes of cigars, packets of tobacco, and bottles of gin, all hooked in methodical order to an ingenious arrangement connected with the skirt. These ladies were proved to be on familiar terms with the red-capped gentlemen who were defrauding the Revenue, and not infrequently shooting down ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... what the state of knowledge in relation to them will be from year to year. In this condition of things, it has seemed to me to be very undignified for a Catholic to commit himself to the work of chasing what might turn out to be phantoms, and in behalf of some special objections, to be ingenious in devising a theory, which, before it was completed, might have to give place to some theory newer still, from the fact that those former objections had already come to nought under the uprising of others. It seemed to be a time of all others, in which Christians had a call ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... for. "What is it astonishes you so, Signor Professore," said he; "surely you were prepared to find that a murder had been done? I never had any doubt of it; and why not in that way as well as another? And a very ingenious mode of inflicting death in a quiet way it ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... different persons: a sharp dining-room boy furnished the knives with which the prisoners dug their way to liberty; Captain Thomas H. Hines planned and carried to a successful termination the daring and ingenious escape. Captain Hines fled with General Morgan; and every adventure which befell Calhoun in "The Flight to the South" actually befell Captain Hines. The Captain's marvellous story was published in the January number of "The Century," 1891, and to this narrative the ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... was so feeble, so completely incapable of reasoning justly, that she dared not listen to these ingenious arguments, for she was growing keenly conscientious, and feared that weakness might betray ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... various German states, especially those under ecclesiastical rule. One of several in my possession, which was published by the Elector Archbishop of Cologne in 1757 and stamped with the archbishop's seal, specifies and sanctions every form of ingenious cruelty which one human being can exercise upon another, and, opposite each of these cruelties, the price which the executioner was authorized to receive for administering it. Thus, for cutting off the right hand so much; for tearing out the tongue, so much; for tearing the flesh with hot pincers, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... Without being precisely a vampire, a ghoul, a fictitious man, a sort of Faust or Robin des Bois, he partook of the nature of all these anthropomorphic conceptions, according to those persons who were addicted to the fantastic. Occasionally some German would take for realities these ingenious jests of Parisian evil-speaking. The stranger was simply an old man. Some young men, who were accustomed to decide the future of Europe every morning in a few fashionable phrases, chose to see in the stranger some great criminal, the possessor of enormous wealth. Novelists described ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... the first five minutes, but that he happened to be unacquainted with what she wished to know; and so he told her. The landlady, by no means satisfied with this assurance, which she considered an ingenious evasion of the question, rejoined that he had his reasons of course. Heaven forbid that she should wish to pry into the affairs of her customers, which indeed were no business of hers, who had so many of her own. She had merely asked a civil question, and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens |
