"Ingenious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cast off for a cruise with these hardy young fresh-water navigators the reader will not ask to be "put ashore" until the home port has finally been made. Manliness and pluck are reflected on every page; the plots are ingenious, the action swift, and the interest always tense. There is neither a yawn in a paragraph nor a dull moment in a chapter in this stirring series. No boy or girl will willingly lay down a volume of it ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... "And what ingenious maneuvers they all propose to me! It seems to them that when they have thought of two or three contingencies" (he remembered the general plan sent him from Petersburg) "they have foreseen everything. But the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... while writing them. They are, in fact, full of confidences and confessions, some of which he could not have been very ambitious to see in print; such as his frequent appeals for "more ducats," during his student days, and his sophistically ingenious excuses for needing so much money, placed side by side with his frank admission that he had no talent for economy, and was very fond of cigars, wine, and especially travelling. In one of the most amusing of the letters, he advances twelve reasons why his mother should send ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... reasonably good game of marbles, or to have become tolerably expert in the art of mumbling the peg. Indeed, it seems that the young grand-prince was wholly insensible to the joys of these and the other excellent sports in which ordinary youths delight, and being of an ingenious turn of mind, he invented others better suited to his tastes and character. One of these pastimes—perhaps the first and simplest one devised by the youthful genius—consisted in the dropping of cats, dogs, and other domestic animals from the top of the palace to the pavement below, and sentimental ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... wonder a bit, now, if that isn't it exactly," said Fred, who was quite taken with the ingenious theory of his friend. "It seems to me that the best thing that we can do is to ride on as fast as ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... dime at a newsboy, got his /Express/, propped his back against the truck, and was at once rapt in the account of his Waterloo, as expanded by the ingenious press. ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... hundred and forty-four closely-written folio pages. There was in that gloomy office an edition of Camden's "Britannia," and, having borrowed from Mr. Green, a bookseller, Speight's "Chaucer," he compiled therefrom an ingenious glossary, for his own use, in two parts. "The first," Mr. Dix says, "contained old words, with the modern English—the second, the modern English, with the old words; this enabled him to turn modern English into old, as an ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... primitive quasi-history to explain the singular circumstance of the place having arisen on a site so unfavourable, and to connect at the same time the origin of Rome with the general metropolis of Latium. Such tales, which profess to be historical but are merely improvised explanations of no very ingenious character, it is the first duty of history to dismiss; but it may perhaps be allowed to go a step further, and after weighing the special relations of the locality to propose a positive conjecture not regarding ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... indeed, for taking fish, they are exceedingly ingenious; they make harpoons of cane, and point them with hard wood, which, in their hands, strike fish more effectually than those which are headed with iron can do in ours, setting aside the advantage of ours being fastened to a line, so that the fish is secured if the hook takes place, though it ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... innocent childhood, when we stole unlawful pennies to pay for admission to the charmed circle of equestrian delights, and in youthful purity of soul, and general dirtiness of face and hands, listened to the ingenious witticisms of the clown, while we cracked the peaceful peanut, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... but only for a short time. Marion never before in her life received two such letters. Both were anonymous. The first one that she opened aroused enough curiosity to "unsettle" her. She thought she knew whom it was from—those ingenious Boy Scouts of Spring Lake—perhaps it was written by cousin Clifford himself. It was just like him. He was a natural leader among boys, and often up to mischief of some sort. Marion was sure he was one of the prime movers of the Scout ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... and great observer," but of whom we know so little, was, as Mr. Weston, in his Catalogue of English Authors, informs us, "the most ingenious husbandman of the age he lived in: yet, so great was his modesty, that all his works seem to be posthumous, except the Paradise of Flora, which appeared in 1600, when it is probable he was living. He spent part ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... the gold-dust was stolen. Suggestion of thrift. Landlords to profit by trial, wherever held. Mock respect of the miners for the Squire. Elect a president at the trial. The Squire allowed to play at judge. Lay counsel for prosecution and defense. Ingenious defense of the accused. Verdict of guilty. Light sentence, on account of previous popularity and inoffensive conduct. Thirty-nine lashes, and to leave the river. Owner of gold-dust indemnified by transfer of thief's interest in a mine. A visit to Smith's Bar. ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... relating to the City of London, as views, maps, palaces, churches, coronations, funerals, mayoralties, habits, heads of all our famous men, drawn as well as painted, the most complete collection of anything of its kind. He was a man whose free and generous spirit appeared in his pen, and his ingenious ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... was to issue a currency of bank notes on a capital to be created to some extent out of Government stocks. Although this proposition was refused by a direct vote of the Convention, the object was afterwards in effect obtained by its ingenious advocates through a strained construction of the Constitution. The debts of the Revolution were funded at prices which formed no equivalent compared with the nominal amount of the stock, and under circumstances which exposed the motives of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... says Mr. Rogers is full of practical wisdom, and he is. It is intimated here that he is a very ingenious man, and he, is a very competent financier. Maybe he is now, but it was not always so. I know lots of private things in his life which people don't know, and I know how he started; and it was not a very good start. I could have done better myself. The first time he crossed the Atlantic he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with colors and combinations never seen before. Flemish fabrics are exported to all parts of Europe, to the East and West Indies, to Africa. The splendid tapestries, silks, linens, as well as the more homely and useful manufactures of the Netherlands, are prized throughout the world. Most ingenious, as they had already been described by the keen-eyed Caesar, in imitating the arts of other nations, the skillful artificers of the country at Louvain, Ghent, and other places, reproduce the shawls and silks of India with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... false entries of what he had received, or by false statements of what he had spent or had on hand. When his tricks were found out, the punishment which followed led to no reformation, the only effect being more ingenious devices of trickery and fraud. Like the Spartan lad, George Muller reckoned it no fault to steal, but only to have his ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... Some inlaid work and some kinds of porcelain will never be made again, just as there will never be another Raphael, nor Titian, nor Rembrandt, nor Van Eyck, nor Cranach. . . . Well, now! there are the Chinese; they are very ingenious, very clever; they make modern copies of their 'grand mandarin' porcelain, as it is called. But a pair of vases of genuine 'grand mandarin' vases of the largest size, are worth, six, eight, and ten thousand francs, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the center of general attention; but I stood bravely this cross-fire of curious and ironical glances, intrenched on the one hand behind a mountain of flowers that ornamented the center of the table, and on the other assisted in my defensive position by the ingenious kindness of my neighbor. Madame de Malouet is one of those rare old women whom superior strength of mind or great purity of soul has preserved against despair at the fatal hour of the fortieth year, and who have saved ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... to the marvelously ingenious system of word building, which enables anyone to derive from a dozen to one hundred and more words from every root, there being to this derivation no limit but that ...
— Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education • Richard Bartholdt and A. Christen
... acquaint the reader, that these verses were written for an ingenious young gentleman,[87] my friend, upon his translation of "The Critical History of the Old Testament," composed by the learned Father Simon: the verses, therefore, are addressed to the translator of that work, and the style of them is, what it ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... 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 to her kind, and from the pleasure that ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... that he wishes he could get another pony. I will tell him what a plenty there are, and propose that he should invent some way of catching one. That will be a poser for him; yet I'm sure that he'll try, for he is very ingenious. And now which way am I to turn to find my way home? I think it ought to be to the north; but which is north? For there is no sun out, and now I perceive it looks very like rain. I wonder how long I have been walking! I'm ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... future of the captain's widow was sadly uncertain, for every one was aware that Mrs. Lunn could now depend upon only a scant provision. She was much younger than her husband, having been a second wife, and she was thrifty and ingenious; but her outlook was acknowledged to be anything but cheerful. In truth, the honest grief that she displayed in the early days of her loss was sure to be better understood with the ancient proverb in mind, that a lean sorrow is ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Transformations of Insects, and another of their Architectural Labours. The present, in well-chosen continuity of a novel plan of illustrating the Animal economy, is devoted to "an examination of Birds in the exercise of their mechanical arts of constructing Nests." "This work," observes the ingenious Editor, "is the business of their lives—the duty which calls forth that wonderful ingenuity, which no experience can teach, and which no human skill can rival." The few introductory pages include a rapid sketch of the methods of classifying Birds ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... region was remarkable, and more remarkable still was the British engineering triumph of constructing a railway from the sea to so high an elevation. In one or two places there were iron bridges of great height and ingenious construction. You felt a curious sensation as you flew over those bridges on the tiny car, and you saw between the rails the chasm underneath you; nor did you feel extraordinarily comfortable when, hundreds ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the bobbing of the rush floats and the semicircular shape of the top line showed plainly enough that there were a good many fish there; and when Dave had secured the lines at the other end, removed the poles, and by ingenious manipulation drawn on the bottom line so as to raise the cord, it was not long before the net began to assume the shape of a huge bag, and one that was ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... northern hemisphere we passed a cluster of isles which Captain Cook distinguished by the name of Sandwich Islands, in honour of the Earl of Sandwich. They are not inferior in beauty to the Friendly Islands, nor are the inhabitants less ingenious or civilised. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... through the town, on a broad avenue that runs alongside the great Fraser River. Drawn up at the curb were many floats that were to take part in the trades' procession through the town to the exhibition grounds. Most of them were ingenious and attractive. There were telegraph stations on wagons, corn dealers' shops, and the like, while on the bonnet of one car was a doll nurse, busy beside a doll bed. Another automobile had turned itself into an aeroplane, while another had obliterated itself under ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... struggles towards it, with the millstones of Syrian theology and an outrageous mythology of incarnation and resurrection about its neck. When at last our present bench of bishops join the early fathers of the church in heaven there will be, I fear, a note of reproach in their greeting of the ingenious person who saddled them with OMNIPOTENS. Still more disastrous for them has been the virgin birth, with the terrible fascination of its detail for unpoetic minds. How rich is the literature of authoritative Christianity with decisions upon the continuing virginity ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... third objection, one, fortunately, which has nothing to do with geology. We can only state it here in brief terms. The chapter on hybridism is most ingenious, able, and instructive. If sterility of crosses is a special original arrangement to prevent the confusion of species by mingling, as is generally assumed, then, since varieties cross readily and their offspring is fertile inter se, there is a fundamental distinction between varieties and species. ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... An ingenious process of producing glass with an iced or crackled surface, suitable for many decorative purposes, has been invented in France by Bay. The product appears in the form of sheets or panes, one side of which is smooth or glossy, like common window glass, while the other is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... of the Exposition is good, but nothing to what is should and might have been, but we bring home nearly as many medals as we took things. We lead the world in machinery and in ingenious inventions, and some of our ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... of lighting is an important one in a room such as mine, and electricity offers a good deal of scope to the ingenious. Of this fact I have taken full advantage. I can manipulate the lighting of my room so that any particular spot is bathed in brilliancy, while the rest of the space remains in comparative gloom, and I arranged the lamps so that the ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... the only mythical conceptions which are to be found wrapped up in the various myths of schamir and the divining-rod. The persons who told these stories were not weaving ingenious allegories about thunder-storms; they were telling stories, or giving utterance to superstitions, of which the original meaning was forgotten. The old grannies who, along with a stoical indifference to the fate of quails and partridges, used to impress upon me the wickedness ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... insight in Andersen's story of the Nightingale—the immeasurable difference between the artificial bird and the real songster, whose melodious raptures somehow touched a chord in the listener which all the nicely-calculated trills and cadences of the ingenious mechanical toy failed to set in motion. In like manner we repeat that the power to determine his own course raises man to a plane incomparably higher than he could have occupied as an automaton. The same faculty of free choice which in its abuse makes the sinner, in ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... then the two West-End gentlemen hastened away from that truly plebeian part of the town! Under three different gas-lights did they stop, take out the newspaper, and spell over the advertisement; by which ingenious processes they at length succeeded in satisfying themselves that there was something in it—a fact of which, upon the old woman shutting the door in their faces, it may be recollected they had had grievous misgivings. They parted, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... knowledge and vse of our things, doe esteeme our trifles before things of greater value: Notwithstanding in their proper maner (considering the want of such means as we haue,) they seeme very ingenious. For although they haue no such tooles, nor any such crafts, Sciences and Artes as wee, yet in those things they doe, they shew excellence of wit. And by how much they vpon due consideration shall finde our maner of knowledges and crafts to exceede ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... first to arrive at the salon of the Casino. But as there was no side walk here, from whence they could take a bird's-eye view, and they could not keep a watch from the windows at night, these clever young ladies, as high-born as they were ingenious, hit upon a ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... grading into organisms which possess some of the characters of both classes or kingdoms (see PROTISTA). The actual boundaries between animals and plants are artificial; they are rather due to the ingenious analysis of the systematist than actually resident in objective nature. The most obvious distinction is that the animal cell-wall is either absent or composed of a nitrogenous material, whereas the plant cell-wall is composed of a carbohydrate material—cellulose. The ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... An ingenious man has taken the heavenly furlongs as mentioned in Revelation, and has calculated that there will be in heaven one hundred rooms sixteen feet square for each ascending soul, though this world should ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... ingenious, at any rate," admitted Jessie. "Ugh! They are still writhing. Are you sure they ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... transformed all these vulgar details into a fine Eclogue between the Thames and the New River, in which the former invited the latter to come to him, and offered her his bed, saying, "I am too old to please women, but I am rich enough to pay them"—an ingenious and gallant conceit to indicate how Sir Hugh Middleton had completed the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... more carefully and elegantly worked out story was of a young man who invented a theatre stall which economized space by ingenious contrivances which were all described. A friend of his invited twenty millionaires to meet him at dinner so that he might interest them in the invention. The young man convinced them completely by his demonstration of the saving in a theatre ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... had contrived an ingenious trap, or man spider web, for the catching of any human insect that might seek entrance at his window: the moment the invading body should reach a certain point, a number of lines would drop about him, in ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... cleaner, is perhaps the most ingenious of the many labor-saving devices used in the salmon fisheries. It is an awkward-looking, yet very effective contrivance of revolving knives and conveyors which seizes the fish whole and delivers it cleaned, clipped, cut, and ready ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... the German surgeons who used to operate at our hospital was particularly ingenious in inventing tortures for me; I used to have to help him in his operations, and he would recount to me with gusto how the English had retreated from Mons, how the Germans were getting nearer and nearer to ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... accepted freely. The plot, as plot is usually understood, can scarcely indeed be commended. But then plot was never his strong point. Later in life, and acting, as I have always surmised, under the influence of his friend, Mr. Wilkie Collins, he endeavoured to construct ingenious stories that turned on mysterious disappearances, and the substitution of one person for another, and murders real or suspected. All this was, to my mind, a mistake. Dickens had no real gift for the manufacture of these ingenious pieces of mechanism. He did not even many times succeed ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... connecting itself by a square landing to five of the six sides of the tower, requiring at each landing transversal corbels which are decorated with arabesque carvings without and within. This bewildering creation of ingenious and delicate details, of marvels which give speech to stones, can be compared only to the deeply worked and crowded carving of the Chinese ivories. Stone is made to look like lace-work. The flowers, the figures ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... part of the nineteenth century, and Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu (in his book Israel among the Nations) even more forcibly used it at the end of the same century, from the historical point of view. This ingenious French observer cites a suspicion that 'the sons of Jacob, as compared with the rest of the human race, represent a higher state of evolution' (p. 232). No modern Jew would make so preposterous a claim. But when the same writer sees in the Jew ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... unchanged, and it is only since the Conservative Party has definitely thrown in its lot as an opponent of Irish demands as formulated to-day that this method of reducing the force of their political opponents has begun to find favour amongst its members: Under the Bill of Mr. Gerald Balfour, by an ingenious arrangement of raising the limits of population under which boroughs and counties should no longer have separate representation, the scheme secured the transfer of twenty-two seats from ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... agreeable resources for amusement in his lonely evenings; for Sheridan's well-informed, animated, and bustling mind never suffered conversation to stagnate; and Mrs Sheridan was a most agreeable companion to an intellectual man. She was sensible, ingenious, unassuming, yet communicative. I recollect, with satisfaction, many pleasing hours which I passed with her {97} under the hospitable roof of her husband, who was to me a very kind friend. Her novel, entitled Memoirs of ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... commit a worse robbery upon yourself," cried Myrtilus. "I know you; nay, perhaps I see farther into your soul than you yourself. By ingenious fetters you force the mighty winged intellect to content itself within the narrow world of reality. But the time when you will yourself rend the bonds and find the divinity you have lost, will come, and then, with your mighty power once more free, you will outstrip ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... acid. The true Harpagons were always marked and exceptional characters; not so the worthy tax-payers, who, having once pinched from real necessity, retained even in the midst of their comfortable retirement, with their wallfruit and wine-bins, the habit of regarding life as an ingenious process of nibbling out one's livelihood without leaving any perceptible deficit, and who would have been as immediately prompted to give up a newly taxed luxury when they had had their clear five hundred a year, as when they had only five hundred pounds ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... and brought the colors with him, and that he and Jan painted pictures in the other windows, filling them with gorgeous hues, and pale, devout faces. The fancy, empty as it was, pleased him, and he planned how every window should be done, and told Abel, to whom the ingenious fancy seemed as marvellous as if the ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... may, of course, be urged that all I am affirming for women in this far back beginning is but a process of ingenious guessing. Such criticism is just. But I am speaking of conditions at a time when conjecture is necessary. I venture to say that my suggestions are in accord with what is likely to have happened. Moreover, many difficulties ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... of their proficiency in its use, it is enough to know to what degree of perfection they had raised it. Mr. Beauford, in his ingenious and learned treatise on the music of Ireland, as cultivated by its bards, creates genuine astonishment by the discoveries into which his ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... what do we want with captious judges in the bosom of a family? The scales of household polity are the scales of love, and he who holds them should be a sympathizing friend; ever ready to make allowance for failures, ingenious in contriving apologies, more lavish of counsels than rebukes, and less anxious to overwhelm a person with a sense of deficiency than to awaken in the bosom, a conscious power of doing better. One thing is certain: ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... was so malignant and ingenious a travesty of what had happened, that I was entirely at a loss to know what to say. The President, however, courteously intimated that though the case appeared to present a good many very unsatisfactory features, yet I was entirely at liberty to justify myself if I could, and, if not, to make ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the consistency of his character. Pitt was Mirabeau, with less impulse and more integrity. Mirabeau and Pitt became, and have ever continued to be, my favorite statesmen of modern days. Compared to them, I saw in Montesquieu only erudite, ingenious, and systematical dissertations; Fenelon seemed to me divine, but chimerical; Rousseau, more impassioned than inspired, greater by instinct than by truth; while Bossuet, with his golden eloquence and fawning soul, united, in his conduct and his language ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... great success in painting. The Englishman embodied in poetry his artistic expression of the beautiful. Many lyrics are merely examples of word painting. The Elizabethan poet often began his career by trying to show his skill with the ingenious and musical arrangement of words, where an Italian would have used color and ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... statesman as being for the most part fanciful and ineffectual. He will observe, first of all, that the only real check on democracy is the division into classes. The second of the three proposals, though ingenious, and receiving some light from the apathy to politics which is often shown by the higher classes in a democracy, would have little power in times of excitement and peril, when the precaution was ...
— Laws • Plato
... me, too, in the person of the young Scripture reader, whose conscience pricks him for the part he played. Surely I am punished, if ever woman were, for a too ingenious perversion of ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... which has also been published as "The Children of Captain Grant" and as "A Voyage Around the World," is perhaps most interesting in connection with the last of these titles. It is our author's first distinctly geographical romance. By an ingenious device he sets before the rescuers a search which compels their circumnavigation of the globe around a certain parallel of the southern hemisphere. Thus they cross in turn through South America, Australia and New Zealand, besides ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... this ingenious wire stretcher, he stapled his wire to post number one, carried the length past post number two, looped the chain around post number three, having the chain long enough so that he might tauten the wire ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... to trace it in all its changes. For my part, I know not from what principles such a controversy can be certainly determined. I shall therefore content my self with observing, that the decision of Trebonian seems to me pretty ingenious; that the cup belongs to the proprietor of the metal, because it can be brought back to its first form: But that the ship belongs to the author of its form for a contrary reason. But however ingenious this reason may seem, ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... Commons that has sate since the Revolution was a far more efficient check on misgovernment than his fifteen independent counsellors would have been. Yet, everything considered, it seems to us that his plan was the work of an observant, ingenious, and fertile mind. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... questions of interest and advantage. Even the inferior officers, and especially those who wish to attract notice in whatever is reputable, as the means of obtaining promotion, do not in general differ essentially from the common men. The ingenious midshipman who contrived so very dexterously to hook the poor savage's backside, would have had very little difficulty in bringing himself to act the sportsman as a hunter or shooter as well as a fisher. Indeed there seems much stronger evidence than mere imagination ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... said G., "is the Minister D—, who dares all things, those unbecoming as well as those becoming a man. The method of the theft was not less ingenious than bold. The document in question—a letter, to be frank—had been received by the personage robbed while alone in the royal boudoir. During its perusal she was suddenly interrupted by the entrance of the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... thing has occasionally been done. Instead of shipping the logs in vessels, enterprising and ingenious men built them into a solid ship, leaving a small space to serve as a cabin and a hold for provisions; then, erecting masts, they hoisted sail, and in this singular craft crossed the Atlantic. On arriving at port they broke up their raft-ship ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... cover of his scheme, which brought all the scenes out into peculiar relief and gave them a special intensity, he retailed a lot of amusing oddities, described comical persons and things, heaped up picturesque and piquant details, coined typical and witty proper names, and invented complicated and ingenious situations. He succeeded in producing irresistible effects, and the whole was ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... be seen an excellent example of the hypocaust—an ingenious contrivance, by means of which the rooms were heated with hot air, which passed ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... painted snail, the gilded fly Smooths his fine down, to charm thy curious eye; On twinkling fins my pearly nations play, Or win with sinuous train their trackless way; My plumy pairs, in gay embroidery dressed, Form with ingenious bill the pensile nest, To love's sweet notes attune the listening dell, And Echo sounds her ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... again, it might be concluded that his first wife had given him a disgust to marriage; but by taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by shewing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.' So ingenious a turn did he give to this delicate question. And yet, on another occasion, he owned that he once had almost asked a promise of Mrs. Johnson that she would not marry again, but had checked himself. Indeed, I cannot help thinking, that ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... war; and unless we tear the empire in pieces by aiding insurrections, they must beat us at last, and become masters in the Indian seas. We cannot contend against three hundred and eighty millions of ingenious, industrious, homogeneous men under a single monarch with compact country, splendid rivers and harbours, unsurpassed soil and climate—if once we drive them to learn the art of war from America, as Peter the Great learnt it from Europe. But I seem to be insanus inter sobrios, ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... in wet feet and quick changes by hasty fires to save numb toes. Now the air is dead under a smother of falling flakes that fluff up ankle deep, knee deep, till the sled plunges along behind, half buried, while the men wallow and invent ingenious oaths. Again the wind whirls it by in grotesque goblin shapes; wonderful storm beings, writhing, whipping, biting as they pass; erasing bank and mountain. Yet always there is that aching, steady tug of the shoulder-rope, stopping circulation till the arms depend numbly; and always the weary effort ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... the inspiration. They forget that a platitude is not turned into a profundity by being dressed up as a conundrum. Pithiness in him dwindles into tenuity in them; honest discontinuity in the master is made an excuse for finical incoherencies in the disciples; the quaint, ingenious, and unexpected collocations of the original degenerate in the imitators into a trick of unmeaning surprise and vapid antithesis; and his pregnant sententiousness set the fashion of a sententiousness that is not fertility but only hydropsy. This curious infection, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... of the difficulty was rendered unnecessary. A compromise, as usual, afforded a convenient escape to all parties, without disappointing any; and by an ingenious re-distribution of three or four regiments (devised by His Majesty himself), Taylor was provided for elsewhere, and Nugent obtained his lieutenant-colonelcy. There was great difficulty, nevertheless, in bringing His Majesty to this point. ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... Oh! if only one of them had not been missing at this meal! If the five prisoners who escaped from Richmond had been all there, under the piled-up rocks, before this clear, crackling fire on the dry sand, what thanksgiving must they have rendered to Heaven! But the most ingenious, the most learned, he who was their unquestioned chief, Cyrus Harding, was, alas! missing, and his body had not even obtained ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... him that his Andante, no matter how short its duration might be, would inevitably prove tedious if it was played in a vapid and inexpressive manner; whereas if the orchestra could be got to play the very pretty and ingenious theme, as I felt confident he meant it and as I now sang it to him, it would certainly please. Mr. Potter was touched; he agreed, and excused himself, saying that latterly he had not been in the habit of reckoning upon this sort of orchestral playing. In the ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... wound its way, Or, after proving its dominion there, How it hath speeded forth from thence amain— Whereof nowise the causes do men know, And think divinities are working there. Do thou, Calliope, ingenious Muse, Solace of mortals and delight of gods, Point out the course before me, as I race On to the white line of the utmost goal, That I may get with signal praise the crown, With thee ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... who I was informed hailed from County Cork, decided to fire a rocket, a thing he had never, it seems, done before in his life, and failing the usual rocket-stand, he bethought him of the novel and ingenious expedient of letting it off through the iron tube which formed the chimney of the galley or cooking-house on deck, thus hoping to make sure of successfully directing its flight upwards. In the confusion and darkness he did in his execution ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... have never been out of power since; the result you see. Food is now entirely brought from overseas, largely by submarine and air service, in tabloid form, and expanded to its original proportions on arrival by an ingenious process discovered by a German. The country is now used only as a subject for sentimental poets, and to fly over, or by ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... heat, affection, limb, nor beauty To make thy riches pleasant] [W: nor bounty] I am inclined to believe, that neither man nor woman will have much difficulty to tell how beauty makes riches pleasant. Surely this emendation, though it it elegant and ingenious, is not such as that an opportunity of inserting it should be purchased by declaring ignorance of what every one knows, by confessing insensibility to ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... closely to him for a long time, in the hope that he would impart his secret. He refused for a long time, but acceded, at last, on my earnest entreaty, and I found that it was nothing more than an ingenious trick. I did not fail to inform my friend, the Abbe, whom I had left at Toulouse, of all my adventures; and sent him, among other matters, a relation of the trick by which this gentleman pretended to turn lead into gold. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... of his strength and cunning in breaking into their strong camps. When valuable stores are left in the woods, they are put into special camps, called bear camps, where doors and roofs are fastened with chains and ingenious log locks to keep ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... our critical age, at a ballad in the style of the Border ballads. If he succeeds in producing nothing that will at once mark his work as modern, he will be more successful than any poet who has made the experiment, and more successful than the most ingenious modern forgers of gems, jewels, and terra-cottas. They seldom deceive experts, and, when they do, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... Muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... an ingenious way of remunerating several of his followers, by bestowing on them the hands of the rich widows of the cavaliers who had perished in the war. The inclinations of the ladies do not seem to have been always consulted in this politic arrangement. See Garci lasen, Com. Real., Parte ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... "The development of the neo-Hebraic idiom from the ancient Hebrew," a distinguished modern ethnographer justly says, "confirms, by linguistic evidence, the plasticity, the logical acumen, the comprehensive and at the same time versatile intellectuality of the Jewish race. By the ingenious compounding of words, by investing old expressions with new meanings, and adapting the material offered by alien or related languages to its own purposes, it has increased and enriched a comparatively meagre treasury ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... cubbyhole of all the items that had been packed into it for storage. It had been very ingenious, this miniature repair shop. The lathe was built in with strength-members of the walls as part of its structure. The drill press was recessed. The welding apparatus had its coils and condensers under the floor. The briefest of examinations ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... achievement and honor. Cain is never plain and lowly. He is always eminently clever, wise, holy and in every way vastly Abel's superior. In fact, he must in himself represent all desirable things, as his name indicates. And the same characteristic is manifest in his children, who are ingenious in the invention of every variety of art. Deplorable the fact that a man of Cain's qualifications, born of godly parents and signally honored of God, should display such hatred and inhumanity toward poor Abel merely because of God's ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... this light, merited death; and the gravest could incur no heavier penalty.10 Yet, in the infliction of their punishments, they showed no unnecessary cruelty; and the sufferings of the victim were not prolonged by the ingenious torments so frequent among ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... domination of the priest, who was the political boss of that district, persecuted the believers even more than their neighbors had done. They drove the believers about, beating them with their swords, forcing them to drink whisky and in many ingenious ways heaped indignities upon them. After the success of the great persecution in Bom Jardim, of which we will speak later, the priest organized a large force of men to destroy everything belonging to the Protestants ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... was being worked, ingenious machines were used in certain shafts of the Aberfoyle colliery, which in this respect was very well off; frames furnished with automatic lifts, working in wooden slides, oscillating ladders, called "man-engines," ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... to the calculations of those skilled in such prophecies; but, as they were all undoubtedly aware, persons of very expert intellects were known to enjoy a much shorter period of life than the gross and ordinary, and as Ling was clearly one of the former, by the fact of his contriving so ingenious a method of enriching himself, they might with reasonable foresight rely upon his departing when half the period had been attained; in that way seventy-five thousand taels would be restored to them, for every year represented ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... Way and The Stubbornness of Geraldine are two original American plays, ingenious and novel in their employment of pictorial devices. These plays are funds of delightful sentiment, unhackneyed, piquant humor, and ...
— Her Own Way - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... ascends? When the sweet hay-time comes on, and mowers are busy in the fields with their great scythes, it is sometimes a dangerous season for larks, who make their nests on the ground. Often the poor little nests must suffer; but only think how ingenious their owners are if they do. A mower once cut off the upper part of a lark's nest. The lark sitting in it was uninjured. The man was very sorry for what he had done; but there was no help for it—at least so he thought. The lark knew better, ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... predominance may therefore, by those who adopt it, be considered as much less costly than a mixed one. Does not this fact, then, deserve to be taken into consideration and compared—startlingly illustrative—to the ingenious calculation recently made by Lefevre in his examination of vegetarianism? One acre of land planted for the purpose of breeding cattle produces three times less living strength than an acre planted ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... the ears of his braves, 'revenge his death.' It is the voice of the good Manitou that whispered to the Great Oak, and he has saved his children from the Manitou's wrath and freed the spirit of War Eagle." This ingenious speech showed the cunning of some candidates for office even in those early times, and had the desired effect of winning the confidence of many of his dusky auditors. Long talks followed within the circle by the Chiefs, while preparations were being ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... The ingenious young rogue had been reading the book that very day, and in the drama of the "Midnight Alarm," played at Woodville, he had chosen for himself the part of Sylvester Sound. While his father went for a hammer and nails, to secure the window, Richard removed his telltale ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... something ingenious and simple about it, enhanced by a tone and air of profound conviction; and his voice has such fervor and warmth that he carries away ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... types of gas-meter are known as "wet" and "dry." The case of the wet meter is about hall-filled with water or other liquid, the level of which has to be maintained nearly constant. Several ingenious devices are in use for securing this constancy of level over a more or less extended period, but the necessity for occasional inspection and adjustment of the water-level, coupled with the stoppage of the passage of ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... turn. Sklent, to slant, to squint, to cheat. Skouth, scope. Skriech, a scream. Skriegh, to scream, to whinny. Skyrin, flaring. Skyte, squirt, lash. Slade, slid. Slae, the sloe. Slap, a breach in a fence; a gate. Slaw, slow. Slee, sly, ingenious. Sleekit, sleek, crafty. Slidd'ry, slippery. Sloken, to slake. Slypet, slipped. Sma', small. Smeddum, a powder. Smeek, smoke. Smiddy, smithy. Smoor'd, smothered. Smoutie, smutty. Smytrie, a small collection; ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... a very ingenious artist of Athens, who planned the Cretan labyrinth, invented carpentry and some of the tools used in the trade; but I don't know why his name was ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... Card.—This neat and very ingenious dial is attributed by Ozanam to a Jesuit Father, De Saint Rigaud, and probably dates from the early part of the 17th century. Ozanam says that it was sometimes called the capuchin, from some fancied resemblance to a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... speculative system,' the 'devout polytheist, whom fear, gratitude, and curiosity, adream, or an omen, asingular disorder, or a distant journey, perpetually disposed to multiply the articles of his belief, and to enlarge the list of his protectors;' the 'ingenious youth alike instructed in every school to reject and despise the religion of the multitude;' the philosophic class who 'look with indulgence on the errors of the vulgar, diligently practice the ceremonies of their fathers, and devoutly frequent the temples of their gods;' the 'magistrates ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... eye on the house) about two legs sitting on three legs looking at one leg, when in came four legs, and laid hold of one leg, and up got two legs, caught hold of three legs, and threw 'em at four legs, who ran away with one leg. For, although an ingenious Allegory relating to a butcher, a three- legged stool, a dog, and a leg of mutton, this narrative consumed time; and they were in great suspense. At last, however, little fair-haired Josephine made her curtsey amid great applause; and the Clown, left ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... the law which imprisoned for debt, he was constantly in the sheriff's hands, but always settling, by the most ingenious devices, the claim at the jail-door. It is told of him, that the sheriff on one occasion notified him that there was a ca. sa. in his hands, and that he did not want to arrest him. The sum was large, some two thousand dollars—Grymes had not a dollar. He paused a moment, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... their faith, so happily youthful, which so reveals their ingenious minds as their resultant annoyance. That resentment illuminates the essential fact for us in studying their mentality as social animals. They really did accept without question, with open and receptive mouths ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... cases that can be readily explained in the light of these theories. Authors believe, for example, that a whole series of fixation perversions must necessarily have had as their basis a congenital weakness of the sexual impulse. The statement seems to me untenable in this form, but it becomes ingenious if it refers to a constitutional weakness of one factor in the sexual impulse, namely, the genital zone, which later in the interests of propagation accepts as a function the sum of the individual sexual activities. ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... to Beausire, who kept it for some time, pretending to admire its ingenious construction, while he cleverly took the impression of it in wax. Then he gave it back, saying, "Keep it, M. Ducorneau; it is better in your hands than in mine. Let us now go ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... The explanatory matter is made clear by the use of simple language, by the elimination of unnecessary technical terms, and by the frequent introduction of illustrative sentences. The definitions are simple and precise. The exercises are abundant and peculiarly ingenious. A novel device for parsing and analysis permits these two subjects to be combined in one exercise ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison
... heavy blow befell the ingenious wanderer. Among his many arts and trades, he had some knowledge of engineering, or at any rate much boldness of it; which led him to conceive a brave idea concerning some tributary of the Po. The idea was sound and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... their disguises, ingenious contrivances, deceptions, and boldness in carrying out their object, would make an attractive chapter in itself. Often compelled to mingle with the mob, always obliged to conceal what they were about, not daring to raise a pole or handle a wire unless cautiously or secretly, they yet restored ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... shameful. indompt, wild, untamed, indomitable. invitable, unavoidable. inexorable, inexorable, unmovable. infecter, to pollute. infidle, faithless, infidel, heretic. inflexible, inflexible, unbending. infortun, unhappy, unfortunate. ingnieux, ingenious, skilful. ingrat, ungrateful. injure, f., wrong, insult, injury. innocent, innocent, pure. innombrable, innumerable. inou, unheard of. inqui-et, -te, anxious. inquiter, to make anxious. inquitude, f., anxiety. insens, senseless, foolish. ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... to go back to the wreck for further stores, and to bring away as many rafts of timber as they could obtain. The doctor said he must remain on shore to work at the still. For his assistants he chose Billy Blueblazes and Peter the black. Billy was not ingenious, but, as the doctor observed, "he could collect wood and blow ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... that Billy is getting old, and that he wishes he could get another pony. I will tell him what a plenty there are, and propose that he should invent some way of catching one. That will be a poser for him; yet I'm sure that he will try, for he is very ingenious. And now, which way am I to turn to find my way home? I think it ought to be to the north; but which is north? for there is no sun out, and now I perceive it looks very like rain. I wonder how long I have been walking! I am sure I don't know." Edward then hurried in a direction which he ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... winced David Pollard. "I know something about that, for a big percentage of my inventions have turned out to have more flaws than good points. But this is really ingenious, boys. Who has had the big share ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... easy to make a mistake in a numeral than in a letter; the context will enable one to correct the letter, while it will give him no clue as regards a numeral. On the subject of the alleged longevity of Irish Saints Anscombe has recently been elaborating in 'Eriu' a new and very ingenious theory. Somewhat unfortunately the author happens to be a rather frequent propounder of ingenious theories. His explanation is briefly—the use and confusion of different systems of chronology. He alleges that the original writers used what is called the Diocletian ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous
... of this, and of other novels of the same kind, that there is in them an unhealthy egotism; a Byronism of personal feelings; an ingenious invention of labyrinth meandering into the mazes of the mind and of the affections, in which there is always bewilderment, and the escape is rather lucky than foreseen. Such was not the mode adopted heretofore by more vigorous writers, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... customs, beliefs, or needs of a primitive time establish a rule or a formula. In the course of centuries the custom, belief, or necessity disappears, but the rule remains. The reason which gave rise to the rule has been forgotten, and ingenious minds set themselves to inquire how it is to be accounted for. Some ground of policy is thought of, which seems to explain it and to reconcile it with the present state of things; and then the rule adapts itself to the new reasons which ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... and M. D'Arbois regards this second group as also triplicates of one god, because their wives Fotla, Banba, and Eriu all bear names of Ireland itself, are personifications of the land, and thus may be "reduced to unity."[252] While this reasoning is ingenious, it should be remembered that we must not lay too much stress upon Irish divine genealogies, while each group of three may have been similar local gods associated at a later time as brothers. Their separate personality is suggested by the fact that the Tuatha De Danann are called after them ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... master—and Marianne's master is Adolphe Gochard, a horrid Parisian blackguard—who is so much her master that, after all, the real hero of the romance is Adolphe Gochard. Such is the secret philosophy of this brilliant and ingenious romance. ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... was not great, of course—fifty yards altogether, perhaps, along winding and doubling walks, for the Chinese are ingenious over making the most of a small garden, but it was long enough to keep us in an intense state of excitement, as from time to time we caught sight ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... world in the fall of 1932, as usual a "feature" topic in all the newspapers. The papers, instead of expressing heartfelt regret, continued their old sensational persecution. One paper did more—the San Francisco Intelligencer. John Hartwell, its editor, elaborated an ingenious theory that got around the confessions of the two criminals and went to show that Gluck was responsible, after all, for the murder of Irene Tackley. Hartwell died. And Sherbourne died too, while Policeman Phillipps was shot in the leg and discharged ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... put fifteen cents worth of stamps on each of those seven huge boxes of old clothes, and shipped that ton of second-hand rubbish, old boots and pantaloons and what not through the mails as registered matter! It was an ingenious thing and it had a genuine touch of humor about it, too. I think there is more real: talent among our public men of to-day than there was among those of old times—a far more fertile fancy, a much happier ingenuity. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... them, and very discerningly, notwithstanding your comparison. Now there is that 'Skeleton in Armor,' his last effusion, I believe, that you are all making such a work over—fine-sounding thing enough, I grant you, ingenious rhyme, and all that. But I know where the framework came from! Old Drayton furnished that in his 'Battle of Agincourt.'" Then in a clear, sonorous voice, he gave some specimens of each, so as to point ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... the union of the States is to be found in a total abstinence from the exercise of all doubtful powers on the part of the Federal Government rather than in attempts to assume them by a loose construction of the Constitution or an ingenious perversion of its words, I have endeavored to avoid recommending any measure which I had reason to apprehend would, in the opinion even of a considerable minority of my fellow-citizens, be regarded as trenching on the rights of the States or the provisions ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... reflected that his four comrades were probably lying at their ease in the oasis, and the thought brought a certain envy, though the envy contained no trace of malice. He wished that he was back with them, but the wish vanished in an instant, and he was his old self, ingenious, resourceful, resolute. ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of King Billy was not a big mind; it would no more have taken in an abstract idea than his gunyah would have accommodated a grand piano. He was as simple as sunlight, and to resolve his intellect into seven colours would want the most ingenious spectroscope. But he could make an inference from a positive fact, and, having made it, he did not allow more remote deductions to trouble his legitimate conclusion. He ceased to fear Mr. Colborn, and began to look upon the magistrate's property as if it were at least half ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... planned for himself and Gatewood was an ingenious one, cunningly contrived to discontent Gatewood with home fare and lure him by its seductive quality into frequent revisits to the club which was responsible for such ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... delusive system of quotas and requisitions? What substitute can there be imagined for this ignis fatuus in finance, but that of permitting the national government to raise its own revenues by the ordinary methods of taxation authorized in every well-ordered constitution of civil government? Ingenious men may declaim with plausibility on any subject; but no human ingenuity can point out any other expedient to rescue us from the inconveniences and embarrassments naturally resulting from defective supplies of the ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... being completely rifled, and the construction of the body, a frame of light, open wicker-work, revealed. Aunt Jane had had it made at the basketmaker's, while as to the head and covering, her own ingenious fingers had painted and fashioned them. Everybody had to look at everybody's presents, a lengthened operation, and then there was a splendid game at blindman's-buff in the hall, in which all the elders joined, except mamma, who had to go and ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not this ingenious twisting of the truth that caused the lawyer to become filled with sudden dismay and stop, but the savage hardening ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... seen many things of which the ingenious and very learned Dr. Woodward would say that they were "great ornaments to our ponds and ditches." But of this enough, and more than enough. Allow me to take this opportunity of expressing my satisfaction at ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... to their superstition and to their cupidity. To the devout believer she promised pardons as ample as those with which she had rewarded the deliverers of the Holy Sepulchre. To the rapacious and profligate she offered the plunder of fertile plains and wealthy cities. Unhappily, the ingenious and polished inhabitants of the Languedocian provinces were far better qualified to enrich and embellish their country than to defend it. Eminent in the arts of peace, unrivalled in the "gay science," elevated above ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the 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
... arrived at that state of society, when those faculties of the human mind which have beauty and elegance for their objects begin to unfold themselves. They were strangers to most of those wants and desires which are the parents of ingenious invention; and as they did not comprehend either the merit or utility of the Roman arts, they destroyed the monuments of them, with an industry not inferior to that with which their posterity have since studied to preserve or to recover them. The convulsions ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... when he has become interested in the personages of the novel, does not care to be button-holed by a digression. MARION CRAWFORD'S recipe for commencing an amorous duologue (early in Vol. III.), which is to lead up to a declaration of love, is deliciously ingenious. It begins with the gentleman taking a seat, and his first remark is upon the chair. Mr. CRAWFORD evidently remembers the old story of how the tenor who knew but one song, "In my Cottage near a Wood," used to introduce it into any scene of any Opera by the simple process ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... "How ingenious you are, Armand! You would even have me believe that, having decided to deny me, you did not, also, arrange how ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... 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 ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... This ingenious process, which, however, like many other good old customs, has fallen into disuse, must be explained to the non-nautical reader. It is nothing more nor less than sending a poor navigator on a voyage of discovery under the bottom of ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... on the soil of national conceit. That conceit is prodigious and universal. The Germans are past-masters in the art of self-glorification, and their pan-German literature is certainly not only bold but ingenious in this respect. Is any one great outside Germany? Very well, let us trace his German origin. It may be remote, it may be hidden by centuries of illusory nationality, but it must be there. France has her apostles of superiority. Their style is more flexible, their pretensions less clumsy, but they ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... though a warm admirer, and accepting the position of a disciple of M. Comte, is singularly free from his errors, makes the equally ingenious and just remark, that Political Economy corresponds in social science to the theory of the nutritive functions in biology, which M. Comte, with all good physiologists, thinks it not only permissible but a great ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... believe, from his own experience, that people belonging to the higher classes have generally a much keener appreciation of the construction which will be put upon their smallest actions, and are therefore far more ingenious in concealing their evil deeds than the common ruffian could possibly be. John Carvel would have said that it was impossible that a gentleman should murder his brother. Professor Cutter said it was not only possible, but, under certain ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... spring when the lilac bushes add their brilliant colour to the russet brown tiles and soft creams of the stone-work, there are pictures on every side. Looking in the cottages you may see, generally within a few feet of the door, one of those ingenious weaving machines that are worked with a treadle, and take up scarcely any space at all. If you ask permission, the cottagers have not the slightest objection to allowing you to watch them at their work, and when one sees how rapidly great ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... ingenious and plausible; every trifle becomes circumstantial evidence, and is received as conclusive proof both by the husband and wife. The dialogue is sprightly throughout, and the anxious desire of Sganarelle to kill ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere |
