"Inventive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said the Judge, laying down his spectacles and newspaper at the same time. "Mr. Editor Peters and the gossips ought to be infinitely obliged to you for wounding yourself, and affording him an opportunity to display his inventive genius and the brilliancy of his imagination, and giving them something to talk about. Here, Anne, read the article aloud ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... surveyor, "but that in the circumstances it would come better so. I guess we'll squeeze him somehow on to the pay-roll of the Company. Heard all about the whole thing from some one. Who?—oh, General Jackson, how should I remember? Kind of religio-political crank, isn't he? Well, I've seen some inventive geniuses among the species, and while we're driving straight ahead we can find use for a man if he's honest and handy finicking round the chores. Still, that has nothing to do with what I'm coming to. We ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... freedom! It took the heart out of him for a moment. The confusion all about, the pall of dust, the roaring of the frightened lions which had escaped destruction, the shrill cries of the panic-stricken populace, who now looked upon the white Mem-sahib as the daughter of Shaitan, these dulled his inventive faculties for the nonce. Here was the confusion, properly planned, and he could not make use of it. Possibly, when no further explosion shook the air, the mob and the soldiers would return out of curiosity. And ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... genius, original, sagacious, and inventive, capable of discoveries in science no less than of improvements in the fine arts and the mechanic arts. He had a vast imagination, equal to the comprehension of the greatest objects, and capable of a cool and steady comprehension of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... ingenious and complete fiction that Mr. Lennox's inventive brain might have worked out would not have appeased Kate's fears so completely as the simple suggestion of a walk, and her face lit up with a glow of intelligence as she remembered how successfully she had herself made use of the ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... very well adapted by nature for raising sugar, for the reason that the cane has to be planted every year, and every third year the frost puts in an appearance just a little before the sugar. Now, while I think personally that the tariff on sugar has stimulated the inventive genius of the country to find other ways of producing that which is universally needed; and while I believe that it will not be long until we shall produce every pound of sugar that we consume, and produce it cheaper than we buy it now, I am satisfied that in time and at no distant day sugar ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Buchan hints that he kept a pedlar or beggarman—'a wight of Homer's craft'—travelling through Scotland to pick up ballads; and one of the two—probably Buchan—must have been possessed of powerful inventive faculties. Each of Buchan's ballads is tediously spun out to enormous and unnecessary length, and is filled with solecisms and inanities quite inconsistent with the spirit of the true ballad. But Buchan undoubtedly gained fresh material, however much he clothed it; and his ballads are now ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... what would happen to the "Engine Company" in case the water was not sent through the lines directly; and what he said should be done to the engineers included things that would have blanched the cheek of the most inventive Spanish ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... officials, and pending the inquest and the verdict of twelve good men and true, he declined to commit himself to an opinion. The result of this reticence was that the reporters had to fall back on their inventive faculties, and next morning published three theories, side by side, concerning the murder, so that the Beorminster Chronicle containing these suppositions proved to be as interesting as a police novel, and quite as unreliable. But ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... remain inventive machinists, acute money-changers, acutest peddlers; but the seed of the Muses has run out. No ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... with little attempt to achieve tones. No advantage was gained by having the lines white rather than black other than an engaging roughness in spots: the prints were simply whimsical excursions by an inventive artist. ...
— Why Bewick Succeeded - A Note in the History of Wood Engraving • Jacob Kainen
... mind of the inventive genius be a mystery that may not fully be explained, its product is within the grasp of the intelligent seeker. The aesthetic principles of musical construction rest on certain elementary laws governing both the human organism ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... changed from the man with whom I canoed and camped. He was too much a part of nature—too natural—to be separated from his mountains, trees and glaciers. Somewhere, I am sure, he is making other explorations, solving other natural problems, using that brilliant, inventive genius to good effect; and some time again I shall hear him unfold anew, with still clearer insight and more eloquent words, fresh secrets of ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... vastly increased their trade and fortunes. It might be thought, parenthetically, that Whitney himself should have made a surpassing fortune from an invention which brought millions of dollars to planters and traders. But his inventive ability and perseverance, at least in his creation of the cotton gin, brought him little more than a multitude of infringements upon his patent, refusals to pay him, and vexatious and expensive litigation to sustain his rights.[48] In despair, he turned, in 1808, to the manufacture ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... of these resources, which must have led to great improvements in their architecture, and almost entirely reserved the use of stone for ornamental purposes. This would tend to show, at all events, that the Assyrians were not distinguished for inventive genius. They had wandered northward from the lowlands, where they had dwelt for centuries as a portion of the Chaldean nation. When they separated from it and went off to found cities for themselves, they took with them certain arts and tricks of handicraft learned in the old home, and ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... talent. There are minds of a high class to which the world, in the latitude of its expressions, often ascribes genius, but which possess only a superior capacity for the application of other men's notions, unconnected with any unusual portion of the inventive faculty. ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... aboriginal, primitive, archetypal, primordial, pristine; creative, productive, inventive, ingenious. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... kind thought that suggested this; but I have no need of the help you so kindly offer. I own to being ambitious, but it is the want of brains more than money that hampers me at present. Yes," as Hugh looked up inquiringly, "I am of an inventive turn of mind, and if I can work out the problems that are hatching in my brain I will win fame as well as money. Your offer is none the less kind because I cannot accept it. I am sure it will give Dexie much pleasure to hear ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... woman now, Beauteous, majestic, in all elegant arts Accomplish'd, and with accents wing'd replied. Who passes thee in artifice well-framed And in imposture various, need shall find Of all his policy, although a God. Canst thou not cease, inventive as thou art And subtle, from the wiles which thou hast lov'd Since thou wast infant, and from tricks of speech 350 Delusive, even in thy native land? But come, dismiss we these ingenious shifts From our discourse, in which we both excel; For thou of all ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... the art of putting into words what you think or feel, in such a way as to make the best of it—presupposed, that what you think or feel is worth putting into printed words. There are men who, without being original or inventive, have still, through strong understanding and culture, much to say that will profit their contemporaries; men of a certain mental calibre, of talent, activity, will, cleverness, of verbal facility and of prominent ambition ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... this master, who next to Ruisdael, is confessedly at the head of landscape painters of the Dutch School, will be best appreciated by comparing him with his rival. In two most important qualities—fertility of inventive genius, and poetry of feeling—he is decidedly inferior: the range of his subjects being far narrower. His most frequent scenes are villages surrounded by trees, such as are frequently met with in the ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... they may be, they will always be colonial. What is colonial necessarily lacks originality. A country that borrows its language, its laws, and its religion, cannot have its inventive powers much developed. They got civilised very soon, but their civilisation ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... and thoroughness in all that he undertook, told powerfully in the formation of his character, not less than in the discipline of his intellect. His father had early implanted in him habits of mental activity, familiarized him with the laws of mechanics, and carefully trained and stimulated his inventive faculties, the first great fruits of which, as we have seen, were exhibited in the triumph of the "Rocket" at Rainhill. "I am fully conscious in my own mind," said the son at a meeting of the Mechanical ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... office, and must fabricate a plausible story to account for what he knew nothing about—a part that the greatest of sages would find it difficult to perform. The young, however, whom sages well may envy, seldom fail in lifting their inventive faculties to the level of their spirits, and two minutes of Hippias's angry complaints against the friend he serenely inquired ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... new method was provided for those who wished to learn foreign languages or to speak their own language more correctly. And the third of these speech-improving Bells, the inventor of the telephone, inherited the peculiar genius of his fathers, both inventive and rhetorical, to such a degree that as a boy he had constructed an artificial skull, from gutta-percha and India rubber, which, when enlivened by a blast of air from a hand-bellows, would actually pronounce several words in an almost ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... to his feet he exclaimed, 'Olivier, things can't go on in this way between us; the footing we are now on is getting unbearable. Chance has played into your hands the knowledge of a secret which has baffled the most inventive cunning of Desgrais and all his myrmidons. You have seen me at my midnight work, to which I am goaded by my evil destiny; no resistance is ever of any avail. And your evil destiny it was which led you to follow me, which wrapped you in an impenetrable veil and gave you ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... persisted. Most of our organs are as old as worms. All these are very old, older than the mountains, and yet I cannot doubt that they must last as long as man exists. Indeed, while Nature is wonderfully inventive of new structures, her conservatism in holding on to old ones is still more remarkable. In the ascending line of development she tries an experiment once exceedingly thorough, and then the question is solved for all time. For she ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... studies," he continues, "be such as give a direct play and exercise to the faculty of the judgment, then they are the true basis of education for the active and inventive powers, whether destined for a profession or any other use. Miscellaneous as the assemblage may appear, of history, eloquence, poetry, ethics, etc., blended together, they will all conspire in an union ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... right—eh, Connie? Bravo—that's grand!—Oh, you needn't tell me! I can imagine it's been a beastly piece of work, but anyway it's over now. You must go home and go to bed, and I'll account for you somehow to Louisa. My mind's becoming quite inventive to-night, I promise you.—There, get in—try to pull yourself together. Miss St. Quentin, upon my word, I don't know how to thank you. You've been magnificent, and put us under an everlasting obligation, Con and Decies, and my father and I.—Nice night, isn't it? ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... what Menzies will say—'Pelargoniums for the hall, Miss Percival, and some nice maidenhair.' He's not inventive, poor Menzies." ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... charming in these inexpensive costumes which did credit to her taste. Her ideas were imitated! As she had no standard of comparison, Dinah fell into the snares that surround the provincial woman. If a Parisian woman's hips are too narrow or too full, her inventive wit and the desire to please help to find some heroic remedy; if she has some defect, some ugly spot, or small disfigurement, she is capable of making it an adornment; this is often seen; but the provincial woman—never! If her waist is too short and her figure ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... these, and perhaps other occasions, Bonaparte displayed some of the frolic temper of youth, mixed with the inventive genius and the talent for commanding others by which he was distinguished in after time, his life at school was in general that of a recluse and severe student, acquiring by his judgment, and treasuring in his memory, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... was the housekeeper who looked after Tom and his father, and got their meals, when they consented to take enough time from their inventive work to eat. Another member of the household was Eradicate Sampson, a genial old colored man, who said he was named Eradicate because he used to eradicate the ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... the common dish. But all the natives ate them boiled—they say— Because the stranger taught no other way. At last the experiment by one was tried— Sagacious man!—of having his eggs fried. And, O! what boundless honors, for his pains, His fruitful and inventive fancy gains! Another, now, to have them baked devised— Most happy thought I—and still another, spiced. Who ever thought eggs were so delicate! Next, some one gave his friends an omelette. "Ah!" all exclaimed, "what an ingenious feat!" But scarce a year went by, an artiste ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the Negro's mind followed slavishly in the beaten path of imitation. He has demonstrated that he possesses also a high order of intellect by his inventive genius. The "lubricator" now being used on nearly all the railroad engines in the United States was invented by a colored man, Mr. E. McCoy, of Detroit, Michigan. Eugene Burkins, a Negro, was inventor of the Burkins' Automatic Machine Gun, concerning which Admiral ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... distinctive trait is invention, creation, imagination, originality—a trait which, in the literature of fiction, is positively worth all the rest. But the nature of the originality, so far as regards its manifestation in letters, is but imperfectly understood. The inventive or original mind as frequently displays itself in novelty of tone as in novelty of matter. Mr. Hawthorne is original in all points. It would be a matter of some difficulty to designate the best of these tales; we repeat that, without ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... sympathetic eye. "Oh, Daff, I'm so sorry for you; just at the time, too, when——" He dared not proceed, awed by Dill's protesting pathos. "Come, now," he ventured presently, "why shouldn't we let Ignace in on this? He's so inventive; he's so ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... posterity a valuable record of the political institutions and national customs of the peoples of his day in the Far East. He was not satisfied with doing this, but added to his narrative a number of on-dit more or less marvellous in character, which he collected from credulous or inventive persons with whom he came into contact, principally from mariners and from ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont
... "We just been talkin' over some of the wonderful ideas you been workin' on. I have a inventive twist in my brains myself and that lock you put together interests me very ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... groans. "That's so," says he. "Well then, why don't you find me a substitute? Suffering Cicero, has that inventive brain of yours gone ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... (Vernunft,) the purest that Kant ever criticized withal, is not the proper vital soul in man; is not the creative and productive faculty in intellect at all, but is merely the tool of that which, in philosophers no less than in poets, is the proper inventive power, IMAGINATION, as Wordsworth phrases it: Schlegel's word is fantasie. Remember that in more cases than academic dignities may be willing to admit, the heart (where a man has one) is the only safe guide, the only legitimate ruler of the head; and that a mere ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... what the Colonel said of his inventive faculties, General," he began. "A year ago the youngster with a squad of ten men walked into Sun Boy's camp of seventy-five warriors. Morgan had made quite a pet of a young Sioux, who was our prisoner for five months, and the boy had taught him a lot of the language, and assured him that ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... now—as at most times—of wandering about in my old wild way, to think. I could no more resist this on Sunday or yesterday than a man can dispense with food, or a horse can help himself from being driven. I hold my inventive capacity on the stern condition that it must master my whole life, often have complete possession of me, make its own demands upon me, and sometimes, for months together, put everything else away from me. If I had not known long ago that my ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... power and influence of the Republic have arisen to a height obvious to all mankind; respect for its authority was not more apparent at its ancient than it is at its present limits; new and inexhaustible sources of general prosperity have been opened; the effects of distance have been averted by the inventive genius of our people, developed and fostered by the spirit of our institutions; and the enlarged variety and amount of interests, productions, and pursuits have strengthened the chain of mutual dependence and formed a circ le of mutual benefits ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... has ages ago been pressed out of the free-will controversy, and that no new champion can do more than warm up stale arguments which every one has heard. This is a radical mistake. I know of no subject less worn out, or in which inventive genius has a better chance of breaking open new ground,—not, perhaps, of forcing a conclusion or of coercing assent, but of deepening our sense of what the issue between the two parties really is, of what the ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... published A Son of the Middle Border. His enthusiasms might be romantic but his imagination was not; it was indissolubly married to his memory of actual events. The formulas of his mountain romances, having been the inventions of a mind not essentially inventive, had been at best no more than sectional; the realities of his autobiography, taking him back again to Main-Travelled Roads and its cycle, were personal, lyrical, and consequently universal. All along, it now appeared, he had been at his best when he was most nearly ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... Superintendent Galloway, nodding his head at the innkeeper with a kind of ferocious banter. "You're really a first-class villain, upon my soul! But this precious story with which you've tried to bamboozle us is not complete. Would it be putting too much strain on your inventive faculties to ask you, while you are about it, to give us your version of how the money which was stolen from Mr. Glenthorpe came to be hidden in the pit in which you flung ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... vivacity of the comparison, and only remarking, with reference to the Newgate Calendar, that its compilers have usually been very inferior wits, in fact attorneys, it must be owned that great creative and inventive genius, the most brilliant gifts of bright fancy and happy expression, and a glorious imagination, well-nigh seeming as if it must be inspired, have too often been found most unsuitably lodged in ill-living and scandalous mortals. Though few things, even in ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... seen the beast at close range, and know how to appreciate us.... Vedrines is very friendly and has given me excellent advice. He has recommended me to his 'mecanos,' who are the real type of the clever Parisian, inventive, lively and good humored...." Next day he gives some details of his billet, and adds: "I have had a mitrailleuse support mounted on my machine, and now I am ready for the hunt.... Yesterday at five o'clock I ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... had grown to like this new comrade and to respect her. Of course she was only a girl, but she was immeasurably superior to Betty, for she rarely cried, was always merry, had a marvellous inventive genius and never failed of some new and wonderful scheme for enjoying life and escaping work. His big, generous heart experienced no jealousy, but only a great pride in her, when she usurped his place and ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... have foregone his daily tennis as his religious exercises,"—as if ball-playing were then the necessary pivot of a great man's day. Some such pivot of physical enjoyment we must have, for no other race in the world needs it so much. Through the immense inventive capacity of our people, mechanical avocations are becoming almost as sedentary and intellectual as the professions. Among Americans, all hand-work is constantly being transmuted into brain-work; the intellect gains, but the body suffers, and needs some other form of physical ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... the limit, recognizing the fact that in the grand game now going on for the stakes of the commercial supremacy of the world, she holds the best hand. She has the largest and most numerous seaports, the most enterprising and inventive people, and the most wealth with which to force to success all ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... herself an adept in one respect. She had never sewed much, but she had an inventive genius in dress, and, when she once took up her needle, ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... pride! He rear'd his turret by the ocean's side, Lofty, tho' little! that his sight might still Enjoy sweet intercourse with Eartham-hill; Where, while his heart with pure ambition glow'd, The filial artist plann'd his own abode; And by a telegraph, his skill design'd, Endearing mark of his inventive mind, He meant to hold, as mutual wants require, Constant communion with his absent sire: Fair purpose! furnishing much kind employ, And oft a subject of ideal joy To hearts, forbid by mercy to foresee, How soon the heaven-taught youth, by heaven's decree Must leave the favorite ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... the wearied inventor some skeleton puppet of buried ages, which resembles his great thought as a hut resembles a palace. On the contrary, I find in this strange frequency of anticipation among Indo-Germanic races, and in its premature failures, a vast proof of inventive vitality and of promise of great rising truths into all future ages. 'Steam power is nothing new,' say the advocates of the genius of the past. Hero of Alexandria invented a steam toy—as he who can read his Spiritalia published by the Jesuits in 1693 may learn for himself. But the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... man of real inventive genius," said the March Hare, anxious, apparently, to square himself ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... machines. Amongst his various speculations while at Willington, he tried to discover a means of Perpetual Motion. Although he failed, as so many others had done before him, the very efforts he made tended to whet his inventive faculties, and to call forth his dormant powers. He went so far as to construct the model of a machine for the purpose. It consisted of a wooden wheel, the periphery of which was furnished with glass tubes filled with quicksilver; as the wheel rotated, ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... key after disposing of the lads; and this was well, for Dick Haddon, fully appreciating the possibilities of the situation, was already plotting—plotting with every faculty of an active and inventive mind. ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... were suiting her just now. Something cool and critical in him was judging her all the time. Ten years hence, he made himself reflect, she would probably have no prettiness left. Whereas now, what with bloom and grace, what with small proportions and movements light as air, what with an inventive refinement in dress and personal adornment that never failed, all Letty Sewell's defects of feature or expression were easily lost in a general aspect which most men found dazzling and perturbing enough. Letty, at any rate within her own circle, had never ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... men of letters no more stringent argument has been produced than is founded upon the paucity of his published work. It has fairly been said that the springs of originality in the brain of a great inventive genius are bound to bubble up more continuously and in fuller volume than could be confined within the narrow bounds of the poetry of Gray. But the sterility of the age, the east wind of discouragement steadily blowing across the poet's ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... occasions on record when it might have seemed that he had not so known. The first of these was when he had abandoned an improving practice in Dublin to work as his father's partner in his native Cluhir, the second, when, preliminary to that return, he had married a lady, alleged, by inventive and disagreeable people, to have been his cook. The disagreeable people had also said disagreeable things as to the nature of the stress that had prompted the marriage. But it was now twenty years since ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... home. Now, off with ye. Th' ladies'll be wantin' somethin' t' quiet their nerves. Git on that horse, me frisky groom; hustle!" Warburton mechanically climbed into the saddle. It never occurred to him to parley, to say that he couldn't ride a horse. The inventive cells of his usually fertile brain lay passive. "Now," went on the officer, mounting his own nag, "will ye go quietly? If ye don't I'll plug ye in th' leg with a chunk o' lead. I ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... ordinary intelligence may, by determined resolution, push his way to power in many directions, and the one talent may become ten talents. But genius is not mere cleverness, however well directed and carefully developed. Genius is creative and inventive; it has insight, it has imagination, it "bodies forth the forms of things unknown," and "gives to airy nothings a local habitation and a name." Isaiah speaks of the inspiration of the inventor of the agricultural instrument: "His God doth instruct him aright, ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... bind up the wounds of the people, in which she had once delighted, was to her now a mere flimsy vulgarity. She had been shown other ideals—other ways—and her pulses were still swaying under the audacity—the virile inventive force of the showman. Everything she had once desired looked flat to her; everything she was not to have, glowed and shone. Poverty, adventure, passion, the joys of self-realisation—these she gave up. She would ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... there follow effects which have often been misinterpreted by moralists, and especially by theologians. The conscience itself becomes neuralgic, sometimes actually inflamed, so that the least touch is agony. Of all liars and false accusers, a sick conscience is the most inventive and indefatigable. The devoted daughter, wife, mother, whose life has been given to unselfish labors, who has filled a place which it seems to others only an angel would make good, reproaches herself with incompetence and neglect of duty. The humble ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Inventive genius has multiplied the power of a human arm and supplied the masses with comforts of which the rich did not dare to dream a few centuries ago. Science is ferreting out the hidden causes of disease and teaching us how to ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... dilemma, the inventive genius of Abram and Richard soon devised a safe-guard against the smoke. This safe-guard consisted in silk oil cloth shrouds, made large, with drawing strings, which, when pulled over their heads, might be drawn very tightly around ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... divisions. A more unfortunate circumstance, however, for the Parisians was the cutting off of all communication with the outer world, for the Germans had destroyed the telegraphs. But even this obstacle was overcome by the inventive genius of the French. By means of pigeon letter-carriers and air-balloons, they were always able to maintain a partial though one-sided and imperfect communication with the provinces, and the aerostatic art was developed and brought to perfection on this ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... little as possible of vegetable diet. Beef, and a little bread, (at the least sixty hours old,) compose the privileged bill of fare for his breakfast. But precisely it is, by the way, in relation to this earliest meal, that human folly has in one or two instances shown itself most ruinously inventive. The less variety there is at that meal, the more is the danger from any single luxury; and there is one, known by the name of 'muffins,' which has repeatedly manifested itself to be a plain and direct bounty upon suicide. Darwin, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... himself with few restraints. Foreigners used to describe him as a lean, hungry, nervous animal, gaunt, inquisitive, inventive, restless, and certain to shrivel into physical inferiority in his dry and highly oxygenated atmosphere. This apprehension is not well founded. It is quieted by his achievements the continent over, his virile enterprises, his endurance in war and in the most difficult ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... may be satisfied. Ages may elapse before an ideal may be realized. Numberless attempts must be made, the lessons of the successive failures must be learned. It is in the ability to draw the right inference from failure that inventive genius is seen. ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... ma'am," said the Virginian, more inventive, "I'll take them. Letters for Judge Henry's." He knew the judge's office was seventy miles ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... country and of the complicated organization of its many bureaucratic departments that only too often clogs the boldest Italian enterprise and raises an insurmountable barrier before creative and inventive genius compelling it to ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... to yield to their personal inventive action, historically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones, and the gradual, spontaneous class-organisation of the proletariat to the organisation of society specially contrived by these inventors. Future history resolves itself, in their eyes, into the propaganda ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... not killing time. He was deep in an inventive trance, with vengeance for the prize to be won, and for the means to the end, iron-works and pipe plants and forgings—especially the forging of one particular thunderbolt which should shatter the Farley fortunes beyond repair. When this bolt was finally hammered ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... as with the processes of nature, so it is with those offsprings of man's mind by which he has added permanently one more great feature to the world, and created a new power which is to act on mankind to the end. The mystery of the inventive and creative faculty, the subtle and incalculable combinations by which it was led to its work, and carried through it, are out of reach of investigating thought. Often the idea recurs of the precariousness of the result; by how little the world might ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... their ferocity. They hated peace, despised the arts, and had no literature but drinking and war-songs. They take an interest only in hunting and war, said Caesar; from their earliest infancy they endeavour to harden themselves physically.[28] They were not inventive; they learned with more difficulty than the Celts; they were violent and irrepressible. The little that is known of their customs and character points to fiery souls that may rise to great rapturous joys but have an underlayer ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Madame Beausoleil at her side to identify her and distinguish her from this flashing and vanishing apparition it would clear away a trying perplexity. Why not be bold and call upon them where they were dwelling? But where? Their names were not in the directory. Now, inventive ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... show that notwithstanding the frequency and the persistency of these misrepresentations, the facts are gradually coming to the front to prove that the Negro not only now but in the remote past exhibited considerable of the inventive genius which has been so instrumental in the development of our country. In the ordinary course of investigation along this particular line the official records of the U. S. Patent Office must necessarily be referred to in order to ascertain the number of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... Two great inventive geniuses we may see dimly through the abysses of the past, both of whom must have become in their time great chiefs, founders of mighty aristocracies—it may be, worshipped ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... it for fiction. I wish I had inventive power enough to write fiction anything like it. I have published novels, Mr Reardon, but my experience in that branch of literature was peculiar—as I may say it has been in most others to which I have applied myself. My first stories were written ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... and according to the rumor of the people had wonderful gifts, which were proved by the cures he had wrought with remedies of his own invention. His talents lay in the direction of scientific analysis and inventive combination of chemical powers. While under the pupilage of his grandfather, his progress had rapidly gone quite beyond his instructor's hope,—leaving him even to tremble at the audacity with which he overturned and invented theories, and to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... therefore, that sculptors have always thought of their work as simply one of mere imitation of nature, the divine. Yet in sculpture, as in the other arts, the imitative process is never slavish, but selective and inventive. For the body is interesting to the artist only in so far as it is beautiful, that is, so far as it has charm and exhibits the control of mind; some of its details and many of its attitudes, having no relation to either, are unfit ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... of all the stories. It came from Charley Crimmins. He was able to testify with conviction that the giant bull was no figment of Indian's imagination or lumberman's inventive humor. For it was he whose search ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... be unfair to expect from them much character of their own. To make the best provisions for the transmission of produce is their office, and the people who live there are such as are suited for this,—active, complaisant, inventive, business people. There are no provisions for the student or idler; to know what the place can give, you should be at work with the rest; the mere traveller will not find it profitable to loiter there ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... are inventive," she said, "take heed, when you find your ideal, it might easily happen, that she will treat you more ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... we read of a character who was satisfied with nothing, "even pudding would not content him," and this unconscionable fellow worried his family out of all heart with his new ways and ideas. He represents a progressive, inventive race. He was building a great house, but the days were too short; so, like Maui, he determined to catch the sun in nets and ropes; but the sun went on. At last he succeeded; he caught him. The good man then had time to finish his house, but the sun cried and cried "until the island of ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... honor to Robert. The conduct which his parents had ascribed to indifference really sprang from affection; he had neither obeyed the voice of ambition nor of avarice, nor even the nobler inspiration of inventive genius: his whole motive and single aim had been the happiness of Genevieve and Michael. The day for proving his gratitude had come, and he had ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... the Staff, and so it is among the junior commands, down to the semi-isolated posts where boy-Napoleons live on their own, through unbelievable adventures. They are inventive young devils, these veterans of 21, possessed of the single ideal—to kill—which they follow with men as single-minded as themselves. Battlefield tactics do not exist; when a whole nation goes to ground there can be none of the "victories" of the old ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... which are produced to account for this marvelous work as a production of the sculptor are certainly a great credit to the imaginative faculties or inventive genius of our people, but people of ordinary intelligence find it hard to believe that men of wonderful genius and skill inhabited our original forests for the purpose of producing gems of art and then burying them in the marshes, or that men of culture and ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... hair-dresser's shop in St. Martin's parish; the walls were hung round with Latin quotations, and he would frequently point out to his customers and acquaintances the several scenes in Roderick Random pertaining to himself, which had their origin, not in Smollett's inventive fancy, but in truth and reality. The meeting in a barber's shop at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the subsequent mistake at the inn, their arrival together in London, and the assistance they experienced from Strap's friend, are all facts. The barber left behind an annotated ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... incident is sufficient to prevent its having occurred in reality or to more than one inventive imagination. It must therefore have been brought to Europe from the East and adapted to local conditions at Dort and Swaffham. Prof. Cowell suggests that it was possibly adapted at the latter place to account for the effigy of the pedlar ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... camp life attached to each soldier by a hook. Marcy, who saw the humorous side at once, said to Davis: "It's no use to court-martial this man. The matter will be made public and the laugh will be upon us. Besides, a man who has the inventive genius that he has displayed, as well as the faculty of design, ill-directed though they be, is too valuable to the service to be trifled with." Derby therefore was not brought to grief, and in time Davis's anger ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... unquestioned belief accords to the history of man on our planet, could we suppose the average duration of life throughout equal to that of a generation now, there would have been time for 177 generations of working, planning, inventive men—of men desiring at each period the best they could conceive of, and framing the best schemes they were capable of to attain it. Here has been space for the slow rise and fall of nation after nation,—vast solitary tides heaving at long intervals the face of a wide, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... lace any insignia desired can be introduced by a professional designer—an accomplishment that is usually beyond the inventive powers of the ...
— The Art of Modern Lace Making • The Butterick Publishing Co.
... Shakspere's art and of Moliere's; and observe how they reveal these prentice playwrights at work, each seeking to display his cleverness and each satisfied when he had done this. In 'Love's Labor's Lost,' Shakspere is trying to amuse by inventive wit and youthful gaiety and ingenuity of device, just as Moliere in the 'Etourdi' is enjoying his own complicating of comic imbroglios, not yet having anything of importance to say on the stage, but practising against the time when he should want to say something. ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... men, and even animals, possess greater powers of mind, as well as of body, than they ever exert, unless compelled by dire necessity: and it would have been strange indeed if a heart so stanch, and a brain so inventive, as Little's, had let his darling die like a rat drowned in a hole, without some new and masterly attempt first ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... find upon what proposition already known the new one depends, and from all the consequences of this known principle select just the one required. According to this method the most exact reasoner, if not naturally inventive, must be at fault. And the result is that the teacher, instead of making us discover demonstrations, dictates them to us; instead of teaching us to reason, he reasons for us, and exercises only ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... this night Evander dies; and thou, detested fair! Thou shalt behold him, while inventive cruelty Pursues his wearied life through every nerve. I scorn all dull delay. This very night Shall sate my ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy
... delightful reading, because it combines such fantastic and inventive fables as surpass even the happiest efforts of our nonsense writers with a beautiful openness of mind which we see oftener in children than in sages,—which is, in fact, the seriousness of those who are truly ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... respecting the electro-magnet.... The volute modification of the helix to show the concentration of magnetism at its centre, adapted to the electric magnet, the modification since universally adopted in the construction of the electro-magnet, is justly due, I think, to the inventive mind of Prof. James Freeman Dana. Death, in striking him down at the threshold of his fame, not only extinguished a brilliant light in science—one which gave the highest promise of future distinction—but the suddenness of the stroke put to peril ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... all, swell with pride at our great achievements as a people; our free speech, free press, free schools, free church, and the rapid progress we have made in material wealth, trade, commerce and the inventive arts? And we do rejoice in the success, thus far, of our experiment of self-government. Our faith is firm and unwavering in the broad principles of human rights proclaimed in 1776, not only as abstract truths, but as the corner stones of a republic. Yet we cannot forget, even ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... had a letter from her sister and messages from the children for her, so that he would stay with Mrs. Phillips till she returned, and sat down before the window looking steadily out to catch the first sight of her. Not having her mother's inventive turn, she was at a loss how to get rid of him. Brandon must not see Mrs. Peck, and Elsie must be warned to say nothing about her to him. She sat in torture for some time, and at last in despair she asked him in an awkward embarrassed way to be good enough to go for ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... of invention in the land, we must travel, he says, like Joseph's brethren, far for food; we must visit the remote and rich ancients. But an inventive genius may safely stay at home: that, like the widow's cruise, is divinely replenished from within, and affords us a miraculous delight. He asks why it should seem altogether impossible, that heaven's latest ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... inventive genius are rarely of that type. They are more often unassuming and averse to anything like a personal combat. Such a man was Obed Hussey, inventor of the reaper. Honest and conscientious, enured to hard and unremitting toil, ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... partial diversions of eating and sleeping. The ocean grew monotonous, the vessel monotonous, the passengers monotonous, everything monotonous except that idea, and that grew and spread till its fibres filled every nook and cranny of the inventive brain that had taken it ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... its heavy, monotonous noise, and the brisk, lively tinkle of the muffin-bell, have something in them, but not much. They will bear dilating upon with the utmost license of inventive prose. All things are not alike conductors to the imagination. A learned Scotch professor found fault with an ingenious friend and arch-critic for cultivating a rookery on his grounds: the professor declared "he would as soon think of encouraging a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... social qualities, I have never seen a public man possessing talent with less administrative power, less clearness and steadiness in difficulty, and greater practical incapacity than General Rosecrans. He has inventive fertility and knowledge, but he has no strength of will and no concentration of purpose. His mind scatters. There is no system in the use of his busy days and restless nights, no courage against individuals in his composition, and with great love of command he is a feeble commander." ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... An inventive morning! After waking, and before I had finished dressing, I had devised a new and much neater form in which to work my Rules for Long Division, and also decided to bring out my "Games and Puzzles," and Part iii. of "Curiosa Mathematica," in Numbers, in paper covers, paged consecutively, ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... by paying more attention to science, by giving the students a free choice of studies, and by shortening the course when desired. But the mechanical idea in the new education seemed to be the attraction. The boys were seized with a passion for doing something with their hands, and their inventive faculties were quickened, increasing in a remarkable degree their interest in ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... Matthew's sick-room reads, after all, less like a skilful invention than a real occurrence. Inventive and realistic as John Bunyan is, there is surely something here that goes beyond even his genius. After making all allowance for Bunyan's unparalleled powers of creation and narration, I am inclined to think, the oftener ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... him the prime minister of Horus, son of Isis; a still more ancient tradition would identify him with the second king of the second dynasty, the immediate successor of the divine Horuses, and attributes to him a reign of 3226 years. He brought to the throne that inventive spirit and that creative power which had characterized him from the time when he was only a feudal deity. Astronomy, divination, magic, medicine, writing, drawing—in fine, all the arts and sciences emanated from him as from their first source. He had taught mankind the methodical observation ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... characteristics known to arise from traceable hereditary sources may be mentioned factors in musical ability, artistic composition, literary ability, mechanical skill, calculating ability, inventive ability, memory, ability to spell, fluency in conversation, aptness in languages, military talent, acquisitiveness, attention, story-telling, poetic ability; and, on the other hand, insanity, feeble-mindedness of many types, ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... the death of John Walter, of Bearwood, Berkshire, caused a great sensation. To that gentleman the Times newspaper owes its progressive power. His inventive genius, his business habits, dispatch, punctuality, and enterprise, raised the paper to the pitch of popularity it afterwards attained, and which it ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of the naval operations of the civil war is a record of wonderful energy and inventive skill in improvising and building war-vessels, vigilance and courage in handling them, and desperate bravery and dash displayed by officers and seamen in the great engagements in which vessels of either side took part. Yet of the immense body of literature dealing with the war, the greater ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... anything which introduces a characteristic element into the creation of the photoplay as against all other arts, it may be found in the undeniable fact that the photoplay always demands the cooeperation of two inventive personalities, the scenario writer and the producer. Some collaboration exists in other arts too. The opera demands the poet and the composer; and yet the text of the opera is a work of literature ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... in uncertainty and darkness. Oh Imogen, I may now behold thee for the last time. The moment we sally from this retreat, I may be discovered by that enemy from whom we have so much to fear. I may be confined to all the wantonness of inventive torture, and that beauteous form, and the smiles of that bewitching countenance may be torn from these longing eyes for ever. But here, my shepherdess, we are safe. We may here secure ourselves from sudden intrusion, and a thousand ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... authorities of Grenoble assembled at the residence of the Prefect. There each individual explained ably, but especially, said Fourier, with much detail, the difficulties which he perceived. As regards the means of vanquishing them, the authorities seemed to be much less inventive. Confidence in administrative eloquence was not yet worn out at that epoch; it was resolved accordingly to have recourse to proclamations. The commanding officer and the Prefect presented each a project. The assembly was discussing minutely the terms of them, when an officer of the gendarmes, ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... we have historical fiction at its very best, and Miss Johnston also at the highest point of her inventive, her pictorial and her ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... first in ballad form in the seventeenth century, and later in many chapbook versions in prose. Its plot takes the form of a succession of marvelous accidents by land and sea, limited only by the inventive ingenuity of the story-teller. "According to popular tradition Tom Thumb died at Lincoln. . . . There was a little blue flagstone in the pavement of the Minster which was shown as Tom Thumb's monument, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... said, "has lagged behind Europe, and must be driven up alongside of it. We are told that ours is a young country. That is all nonsense. Besides, we have no inventive power. Khomakof[A] himself admits that we have never invented so much as a mousetrap. Consequently we are obliged to imitate others, whether we ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... knowledge of men and books,—his naturally fine taste has been more refined by observation, both at home and abroad, than is usual in this busy country; and, though not himself a thinker, he follows with care and delight the flights of a rapid and inventive mind. He is one of those rare persons who, without being servile or vacillating, present on no side any barrier to the free action of another mind. Yes, he is really an agreeable companion. I do not remember ever to have been wearied or chilled in ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... mon cher ami, (The finger shield of industry) Th' inventive Gods, I deem, to Pallas gave What time the vain Arachne, madly brave, 30 Challeng'd the blue-eyed Virgin of the sky A duel in embroider'd work to try. And hence the thimbled Finger of grave Pallas To th' erring Needle's point was more than callous. But ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... improvement's hammer as it fell on the anvil of our possessions. Long lines of streets passed through the meadow-lands, and where, in less level places, rocks and stones were in the path, the power of inventive genius was applied and the victory gained. Some of our people felt it keenly. To father it was an advantage, but to Aunt Hildy, ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... departed. Of their brother Wang-li they took no farewell, inasmuch as he was absorbed in a chess problem. Before separating, they agreed to meet on the same spot after thirty years, with the treasure which they doubted not to have acquired by the exercise of their inventive faculties in foreign lands. They further covenanted that if either had missed his reward the other should share ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... ignorance of the interest taken in his proceedings, Vane trudged along till it seemed to him that it was time to climb up out of the lane by the steep sand bank, and this he did, but paused half-way without a scientific or inventive idea in his head, ready to prove himself as boyish as anyone of his years, for he had come upon a magnificent patch of brambles sending up in the hot autumn sunshine cone after cone of the blackest of blackberries such as made him drive his ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... in gulling the Saxon, and goes back to England, full of all sorts of horrors and crimes alleged to have been perpetrated by landlords, and takes it all as gospel, making no allowance for the great intelligence and inventive genius of his informers, and says, 'Oh! I went to the place, and saw it all.' And this he takes to represent the normal state of the whole of Ireland, and makes it a justification of the Plan ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... the back of his round, squat, busy head he had an inkling that some day he would even matters with some people. Meanwhile he was patient, good-humoured, amusing when given a chance, and, as the few people he knew found out, inventive and resourceful in suggesting new methods of time-killing to any wealthy and fashionable victim of ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... of how to direct energy for the universal good. It lays hold of a child and, out of his destructive instincts—the instinct to bang, and pull, and tear to pieces—it develops creative power, the inventive genius that lies hid within him. It takes the pure love of noise, and trains it to pitches, harmonies, intervals, and makes a musician of the boy who used to whack his spoon. It takes the alphabet and the early pothooks, and the boy by and by combines them ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... concentrate the whole of the French forces upon Vienna, and to frustrate everywhere the progress of the enemy. Large reinforcements had arrived from France. The emperor himself directed the preparations on the Danube, displaying in this work all the resources of his most inventive genius, and that faculty of usefully employing the talent of others which constitutes one of the most necessary elements of government. At the commencement of July all was at length ready—men, provisions, ammunition, and bridges. ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... orders for a toothpick-case for himself, and till its size, shape, and ornaments were determined, all of which, after examining and debating for a quarter of an hour over every toothpick-case in the shop, were finally arranged by his own inventive fancy, he had no leisure to bestow any other attention on the two ladies, than what was comprised in three or four very broad stares; a kind of notice which served to imprint on Elinor the remembrance of a person and face, of strong, natural, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... inventive power That stretched from zone to zone, And 'neath the pathless ocean wrought,— For these to all are known;— Nor of the love his liberal soul His native City bore, For she hath monuments of this Till memory ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... see, then, how this triumph in engineering has been secured. In her inventive moods Nature always hits on the simplest plan possible. In this case she adopted a ball-and-socket joint—the kind by which older astronomers mounted their telescopes. By such a joint the telescope becomes, just as the head is, a lever of ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... of the time the child was not only gay but patient, not fitfully, but steadily, resigned, sparing of requests, reluctant to be served, inventive of tender and pious little words that she had never used before. "You are exquisite to me, mother," she said, at receiving some ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... attractive than in the new Oxford of this date. The young mothers who wheeled their own perambulators in the Parks, who bathed and dressed and taught their children, whose house-books showed a spirited and inventive economy of which they were inordinately proud, who made their own gowns of Liberty stuff in scorn of the fashion, were at the same time excellent hostesses, keeping open house on Sundays for their husbands' undergraduate ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the facile play and classic grace of their pens, but his vigorous eloquence had the clear ring of our mother tongue. I will not say that he was so astute, so quick, so inventive as the one or another of them—that his mind was characterized by the vivacity of wit, the rich colorings of fancy, or daring flights of imagination. But with him thought and action like well-trained coursers kept abreast in the chariot race, ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... enabling those who are by nature specially qualified to undertake the higher branches of industrial work, to reach the position in which they may render that service to the community. If all our educational expenditure did nothing but pick one man of scientific or inventive genius, each year, from amidst the hewers of wood and drawers of water, and give him the chance of making the best of his inborn faculties, it would be a very good investment. If there is one such child among the hundreds of thousands of our annual increase, it would be worth ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... well as the tragic, transports his characters into an ideal element: not, however, into a world subjected to necessity, but one where the caprice of inventive wit rules without check or restraint, and where all the laws of reality are suspended. He is at liberty, therefore, to invent an action as arbitrary and fantastic as possible; it may even be unconnected and unreal, if only it be calculated to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... and pleased, and back of both amusement and pleasure was the old inventive, driving passion ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... with men, women and children whom his ingenuity had rescued from plights quite as seemingly hopeless as her own, and would not all the resources of that inventive brain be brought to bear upon this rescue which touched him nearer and more deeply than any which he had ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... tradition of a barbarous age, merely because it asserts the sacrifice of a young and beautiful heiress to the jealousy or the avarice of a stepmother. When this is granted, the story of the pie with all its horrors may safely be ascribed to the inventive genius of a minstrel. On the whole, Radcliffe is a place which, not only from its antiquity and splendour, but from the great families which have branched out from it, and the romantic tradition ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... of the great fishing-boat, that was to bring untold wealth to Kilronan. Meanwhile our faculties were not permitted to rust, for we had a glorious procession on the great Fete-Dieu, organized, of course, and carried on to complete success by the zeal and inventive piety of my young curate. My own timidity, and dread of offending Protestant susceptibilities—a timidity, I suppose, inherited from the penal days—would have limited that procession to the narrow confines of the chapel ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... unconscious or careless of the new bondage into which he had thus fallen, the courtiers and the people were alike less blind and less forbearing. With that light-heartedness which has enabled the French in all ages to find cause for mirth even in their misfortunes, some wag, less scrupulous than inventive, on one occasion, under cover of the darkness, affixed above the door leading to the rooms occupied by the brothers a painting which represented the adoration of the Magi, beneath which was printed in bold letters, "At the sign of the ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe |
