"Inventive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... continents, which favors the task of comparison in an extraordinary manner. Just as we have two trees alike in many ways, yet not the same, both elms, yet easily distinguishable, just so we have a complete flora and a fauna, which, parting from the same ideal, embody it with various modifications. Inventive power is the only quality of which the Creative Intelligence seems to be economical; just as with our largest human minds, that is the divinest of faculties, and the one that most exhausts the mind which exercises it. As the same patterns have very commonly ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... and the two years that followed her birth were black indeed for Sandy. His wife, he knew, had begun to hate him; in business his energies failed him, and his employers cooled towards him as he grew visibly less pushing and inventive. The little household got deeper and deeper into debt, and towards the end of the time Louise would sometimes spend the whole day away from home without a word of explanation. So great was his nervous terror—strong, broad fellow that he was—of ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... can I account for the whimsical subintelligiturs of our numerous harmonists—for the curiously inferred facts, the inventive circumstantial detail, the complemental and supplemental history which, in the utter silence of all historians and absence of all historical documents, they bring to light by mere force of logic? And all to do away some half score apparent discrepancies in the chronicles ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... millionaire owner can find no more relations to share with and begins to suspect his "friends" of having had a hand in bringing about the upheaval. And if the "plain" people never expect to enjoy the material results of the inventive wit of man as they are focused within its luxurious interior, they at least have some reason for being satisfied when they know that the profits will stay where they were made and help those who made them. This reference to hotels brings ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... check in order that it may not be tampered with and "raised" is something that has held the attentions and invited the inventive talents of many people, in and out of business. Even when the best of the chemical papers are used in the bank check the drawer of the paper may have not the slightest protection from "raising" at the hands ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... would maintain any standing among my contemporaries. But when the perpetual stimulus was removed, I soon fell back to the less strenuous methods of my own country. I had time, once more, for the calm reflection that is so unlike the urgent, forced, inventive thought of the American journalist. I was braced by that thirty months' experience, perhaps hardened a little, but by September my American life was fading into the background; I had begun to take ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... a communistic society which has been for some time in existence can fail to be struck with the amount of ingenuity, inventive skill, and business talent developed among men from whom, in the outer world, one would not expect such qualities. This is true, too, of the Oneida Communists. They contrived all the machinery they use for making ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... that any charges reflecting upon her character as a virtuous and godly lady, are infamous and false. You perceive, right worshipful sir, that I do not pretend to be ignorant of the accusations which inventive malice, hatched out of what cockatrice egg I know not, has brought against my suffering cousin, but I pronounce them, again, alike dastardly ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... authors of popular fiction have either failed altogether in the production of acceptable photoplays or have had almost as many rejections as, if not more than, the average novice in short-story writing. That there is much truth in this cannot be denied; but that a trained and inventive fiction writer—particularly a writer of plot- or action-stories—after having once learned the mechanics of photoplay construction, should fail of success in photoplay writing is, obviously, not at all necessary. ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... profit; and this because, in spite of the violated conscience of the nation, we refuse to give him protection for his property. Examine your Constitution; are slaves the only species of property there recognized as requiring peculiar protection? Sir, the inventive genius of our brethren of the North is a source of vast wealth to them and vast benefit to the nation. I saw a short time ago in one of the New York journals, that the estimated value of a few of the patents now before us in this Capital for renewal, was $40,000,000. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... power, Lord Byron possessed, beyond all question, the greatest degree of originality of any poet of this age. In this rare quality he has no parallel in any age. All other poets and inventive authors are measured in their excellence by the accuracy with which they fit sentiments appropriate not only to the characters they create, but to the situations in which they place them: the works of Lord Byron display the opposite to this, and with the ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... choosing natural elevations in the upper one. As clay was the only possible material in the one place, clay was still employed, notwithstanding the abundance of stone, in the other. Being devoid of any great inventive genius, the Assyrians found it easier to maintain and slightly modify a system with which they had been familiar in their original country than to devise a new one more adapted to ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... propensity Ormond was in the present instance guarded by affection and gratitude. Through all the folly of his kingship, he saw that Cornelius O'Shane was not a person to be despised. He was indeed a man of great natural powers, both of body and mind—of inventive genius, energy, and perseverance, which might have attained the greatest objects; though from insufficient knowledge, and self-sufficient perversity, they had wasted themselves on ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... not feel sure that the Lords of the Admiralty would take the same view of it that I did. Besides, the machine had only been tried as a model, and might not act perfectly when tested in actual warfare. But, of course, I knew that my inventive powers would readily overcome each weak point as it cropped ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... has 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 ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... meaning and derivation of Artemis, or Artamis, our author knows nothing (ii. 741). I say, 'even [Greek] ([Greek], bear) has occurred to inventive men.' Possibly I invented it myself, though not addicted to ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... treading of water—in this adjustment of key relationship, see the Recapitulation of the first movement of Brahms's Second Symphony. To secure unbroken continuity and to avoid vain repetitions[100] there is no portion of the Sonata-Form which has been more modified by the inventive genius of modern composers and by the tendency exemplified in the Symphonic Poem (to be explained in due season). The general validity of Restatement, as shown in the Recapitulation of the Sonata-Form, cannot be questioned; for that depends, as so often ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... anything that it behoves a wise man to know escape you? Don't you know all that a man should know, who is distinguished for his wisdom and inventive daring? ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... regular rather bourgeois gathering, the most brilliant talent and highest nobility flocked to them, regardless of rank or station, wealth or influence. Pellisson, the great master, the prince, the Apollo of her Saturdays, was a man of wonderfully inventive genius, and possessed in a higher degree than any of his contemporaries the art of inventing surprises for the society that lived on novelty. When, on account of his devotion to Fouquet, he was imprisoned in the ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... get the same pleasure out of house-hunting; they see an empty house and go and get the key in order to see over it. The chances of their ever living there are practically none, but the view gives a stimulus to their inventive activity: they plan out how they would furnish the rooms and fill the ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... The reason may be, that he is too old, too crippled, to be able to take the field in person, and too inflated by conceit to give the glory of the active command to any other man. Wrote to Charles Sumner in Boston to stir up some inventive Yankee to construct a wheelbarrow in which Scott could take the field ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... war we thought we could shoot people rapidly enough to satisfy our consciences, with single-loading rifles; but along came the inventive Yankee and produced revolvers and repeaters, and Gatling guns, and magazine guns—guns that carried a dozen shots at a time. I didn't wonder at the curiosity exhibited in this direction by a backwoods Virginian we captured one night. The first remark he made was, "I would like to see one of them ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... handy thing for suppers, teas, social calls, school lunch baskets, picnics—but where can you not use it to advantage and enjoyment? In this book Mrs. Rorer has given a lot of new, original recipes, with some very odd ones. She has drawn upon her wonderful knowledge and inventive faculty and the result is a ...
— Sandwiches • Sarah Tyson Heston Rorer
... to perceive that the interval which has wrought such revolutions in the earth" [involving great geological changes and mutations of climate] "as are recorded in the mammaliferous drift, shows man the same reasoning, tentative, and inventive mechanician, as clearly distinguished then from the highest orders of contemporary life of the Elephantine or Cave periods, as he is now from the most intelligent of the brute creation.... The oldest art-traces of the paleotechnic men of central France not only surpass those of many savage ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... matter of fact, in no account of the battle is he mentioned, save by name only, as having been present with his troop in Monmouth's army. The fiery and vindictive part assigned to him by Scott rests on the authority of the most amazing tissue of absurdities ever woven out of the inventive fancy of a ballad-monger.[34] He had no kinsman's death to avenge, and he was too good a soldier to directly disobey his chief's orders, however little they may have been ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... suppositions 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 ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... those men? "Ah, it will brush off every feminine grace, if woman goes to the polls." Why? "Because she must meet rude men there." Very well, so she must meet them in the street, and they do not hurt her; nor will I believe that there is not sufficient inventive power in the Yankee intellect to overcome this difficulty. I can conceive of a broader and more generous activity in politics. I can see her drawing out all the harshness and bitterness when she goes to the polls. These three points are all I intended ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... pit ye to the trouble; I'll just tak' it hame on the horse afore me." When, on leaving, he mounted, and the ham was put into a sack, but some difficulty was experienced in getting it to lie properly. His inventive genius soon cut the Gordian-knot. "I think, mistress, a cheese in the ither en' wad mak' a gran' balance." The hint was immediately acted on, and, like another John Gilpin, he moved away with ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... pond?—what do you say to foregoing the enjoyment of these sylvan delights, and spending the day in town? We should thus have an opportunity of observing to how great an extent explosives are used here, and you could then gauge your manufacture of the articles accordingly. Aha! I have it!" added the inventive lady, after a moment's reflection. "We'll take the line of cars running entirely around the city, and so we'll be sure of viewing all ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Duke wisely abstained from pressing his cause, or asking why she qualified her plans. At last he got away, after promising to do every conceivable and inconceivable thing which she should now or at any future time evolve from the depths of her inventive ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... Thornby happened immediately after this conversation took place; and it is not to be supposed that a man like my young but inventive father-in-law could forget, or fail in endeavouring to profit ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... different from those around them causes a multitude of silly things to be perpetuated in America; and yet we are children of the same parents! When profit is in view, we have but one soul and that is certainly inventive enough; but when money has been made, and is to be spent, we really do not seem to know how to set about it, except ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... that at a recent fancy-dress ball in Lahore a game was played on the lap of a lady who appeared as "chess," with the chess-men which had formed her head-dress. This Mussoorie ball, being the last of the season, was to excel all its predecessors in inventive variety. A padre's wife conceived the bright idea of appearing as Eve; and only abandoned the notion on finding that, no matter what species of thread she used, it tore the fig-leaves—a result which, besides causing her a disappointment, ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... 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 ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... been displayed. It was chiefly with railway enterprises, and this almost from their inception, and to an extent far beyond the rivalry of any other constructor, that Mr. Brassey was engaged; and the railway system, not only by its own immense demands on capital, labor and inventive skill, but still more by the stimulus and aid it has given to industrial enterprises of every kind, must be regarded as the main lever of a material progress that has outstripped the conceptions and possibilities of all previous ages. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... honour by no means very obtuse, must be regarded as one of the strange anomalies which so often surprise and perplex the student of human character. As a misdirected toe-nail, injured by pressure, sometimes turns round, and, re-entering the flesh, vexes it into a sore, it would seem as if that noble inventive faculty to which we owe the parable and the epic poem, were liable, when constrained by self-love, to similar misdirections; and certainly, when turned inwards upon its possessor, the moral character festers or grows callous ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... fat lips. It's a trick with your railway kings. "Well, young men are often more inventive than old ones," he answered, slowly. "Youth has ideas; middle age has experience. In a matter like this, my own belief is, the ideas count for most. Yes, if I were you, Tyrrel, I'd ask your friend ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... most thoroughly evoke this sense of the abiding childhood of the world are those which are really fresh, abrupt and inventive in any age; and if we were asked what was the best proof of this adventurous youth in the nineteenth century we should say, with all respect to its portentous sciences and philosophies, that it was to be found in the rhymes of Mr. Edward Lear and in the literature of ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... structure, and proportions, and only needing a few generations of use and habit to co-ordinate its complex functions. The naked and sensitive skin, by necessitating clothing and houses, would lead to the more rapid development of man's inventive and constructive faculties; and, by leading to a more refined feeling of personal modesty, may have influenced, to a considerable extent, his moral nature. The erect form of man, by freeing the hands from all locomotive uses, ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... formed ages on ages ago; they have all 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 ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... however was made of some bacon suspended to the rafters of the building that enclosed them, in one corner separated by a partition. As the famished men looked through the bars of a window and saw this tempting food, their eyes watered, and their inventive faculties were aroused. Hooks, strings and poles were brought into requisition, and in a short time most of the meat, by Yankee talent, was transferred from the rafters of the building to the stomachs ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... fitting funeral cortege could have been devised than the one which, on August 25, 1890, conveyed to Sweden, to their last resting-place, the remains of the great engineer, John Ericsson, whose inventive genius had clad the wooden navies of the world in armor of impenetrable iron and steel. Little had he dreamt when, in 1839, at the age of thirty-six (he was born at Vermland, Sweden, on July 31, 1803) he came to the United ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... be his altar of sacrifice. All he did would be for her approval. All there was of his money, his inventive skill, his command of men, should be hers. She should regulate every hour of his coming and going, and share all the plans and purposes ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... in what may be termed "Cartes de fantaisie," burlesque and satirical, not always designed, however, with due regard to the refinements of well-behaved communities. They are always spirited, and as specimens of inventive adaptation are worth notice. The example shown (Fig. 24) is from a pack of the year 1818, and is ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the purely practical part of science is admirably understood, and careful attention is paid to the theoretical portion which is immediately requisite to application. On this head the Americans always display a clear, free, original, and inventive power of mind. But hardly anyone in the United States devotes himself to the essentially theoretical and abstract portion of human knowledge. In this respect the Americans carry to excess a tendency which is, I think, discernible, though in a less ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... insensible to the merit of this scene, though he has supplied it by one far inferior, in which Ulysses is introduced, using gross flattery to the buffoon Thersites. In the latter part of the play, Dryden has successfully exerted his own inventive powers. The quarrelling scene between Hector and Troilus is very impressive, and no bad imitation of that betwixt Brutus and Cassius, with which Dryden seems to have been so much charmed, and which he has repeatedly striven to emulate. The parting ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... trade, Ford's genius might have invoked enthusiasm. Speed was the end to which all of the young engineer's inventive powers had been directed; and the pace was furious. On the leveled grade ahead of the track-laying train an army of sweating laborers marched and counter-marched like trained soldiers, placing the cross-ties in ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... France on the opposite side. Under the allied sovereigns, the royal authority was openly exercised to compel such expressions of sentiment as the courts of London and Paris desired; and the measures which were taken oblige us more than ever to regret the inventive efforts of Cranmer's genius. For, in fact, these manoeuvres, even if honestly executed, were all unrealities. The question at issue was one of domestic English politics, and the metamorphosis of it into ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... portions of the masque in which noble lords and ladies took their parts to create, by their gorgeous costumes and artistic grouping and evolutions, a sumptuous show. On the mechanical and scenic side Jonson had an inventive and ingenious partner in Inigo Jones, the royal architect, who more than any one man raised the standard of stage representation in the England of his day. Jonson continued active in the service of the court in the writing of masques and other entertainments far into ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... burgher elements, and as a further result was earnestly hoped to bring about the secession of the Transvaal from the Afrikaner Bond, and so reduce that dangerous confederacy to a somewhat negligible impotence. To discover other objects of a sinister sort lurking behind needs a more than inventive genius. A united Afrikaner Bond, persistent to carry out its fell project, definitely meant war sooner or later. Its first step in launching out to it was that notorious ultimatum, which was tantamount to snatching back the feigned offers of the ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... church lace any insignia desired can be introduced by a professional designer—an accomplishment that is usually beyond the inventive powers ...
— The Art of Modern Lace Making • The Butterick Publishing Co.
... extreme language, it might almost be called a monotonous and soporific mode of existence. Probably its chief advantage was the opportunity it afforded, or perhaps the necessity it enforced, of ceaseless industry. Certainly that industry bore fruit in Haydn's steady increase of inventive power as he went on composing. But he only took the prodigious leap from the second to the first rank of composers after he had been free for a time from his long slavery, and had been in England and been aroused and stimulated by new scenes, unfamiliar modes of ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... interviews. Slowly and steadily this young girl gained over him an ascendency which he felt hourly, and which was so strong that he did not even struggle against it. Her marvelous genius, so subtle, so delicate, yet so inventive and quick, amazed him. If he spoke of this, she attributed every thing to Langhetti. "Could you but see him," she would say, ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... an inventive brain. He drove up to the mill, selected a large, sound pine log about four feet in diameter and set old Davy Glinds, a brother of Hughy Glinds, to excavate a tub from it with an adze. In his younger days Davy Glinds had been a ship carpenter, and was skilled in the ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... he had been the pride of his family, as a youth, its hope of fame and fortune; he was clever, handsome, inventive, original, everything that society and his kind admired, but he criminally fooled them and their expectation, and they never forgave ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... intellectual perfection. It would mean a development of the mind to the point of genius in many directions. If we combine into one mind the attainments of the mathematical genius, the musical genius, the inventive genius, the statecraft genius, and so on until every line of intellectual activity is included, we then have only the perfect mental man. On the moral side we must add to that the combined qualities of the saints. ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... there is no alternative; and the British sailor is, with all his faults, an ingenious fellow, not altogether devoid of the inventive faculty, and possessed of a pretty turn for adaptation; give him but the idea and he will generally find the means to carry ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... qualifications of the following at college age: Thomas Edison, Michael Faraday, Nicholai Tesla, James Watt, Heinrich Hertz, Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, and Henry Ford. The admissibility of this group of the world's scientific and the inventive leaders is shown here." Baker pointed to a minute dab of red on ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... stories what is there to say, but that they are an unmixed blessing and delight? He is surely one of the most inventive of talents, discovering not only a new kind in humor and fancy, but accumulating an inexhaustible wealth of details in each fresh achievement, the least of which would be riches from another hand."—W. D. Howells, ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... 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 ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... extent of prevalent superstitions, the exaggerations incident to a state of general excitement, and the fertile inventive faculties of the accusing girls, there is much in the evidence that cannot easily be accounted for. In other cases than that of Westgate, we find the symptoms of that bewildered condition of the senses and imagination not at all surprising ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... pulled on the lever, Polly braced her absurd little back against the wall, and pushed upon it, with all her strength. At first nothing gave way. The combined strength exerted by the three brackets was not to be overcome by prying at the horizontal bar itself. It was then that Dohong's inventive genius rose to its climax. He decided to attack the brackets singly, and conquer them one by one. On examining the situation very critically, he found that each bracket consisted of a right- angled triangle of wrought iron, with its perpendicular side against the wall, its base ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... and it becomes, therefore, of infinite importance to establish an effective prison discipline. We look upon this simplification of our penal operations as an advantage; and we are by no means disposed to favour those inventive gentlemen who would devise new punishments, or revive old ones, for the purpose, it would seem, of having a variety of inflictions corresponding to the variety of offences. A well-regulated prison, where the severity of the taskwork, the nature of the diet, the duration and the strictness of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... dim light Swan's ugliness was apparent. He measured over six feet and was loose-jointed and ungainly; he had big flat feet, and big bony, capable hands; and his features, which were big and bony too, seemed in proportion to nothing but his general ungainliness. Swan was an inventive Yankee with no background and no tradition. He could not even claim the proverbial Connecticut farm. His people had been dreary commercials in a middle-sized New Hampshire town, and he had worked his way through college to fit himself for a scientific career. His memory of ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... dreamy, sensitive, inventive, and a liar. He and his brother Dick were together walking in the shabby High Street, and ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... for the provision of things necessary in domestic life, there developed itself, together with the group of inventive artists exercising these nobler functions, a vast body of craftsmen, and, literally, manufacturers, workers by hand, who associated themselves, as chance, tradition, or the accessibility of material ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... 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 too apparent ever ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... to the requirements of new conditions. In its details no less than in its general scope it exhibits the recognition by its builders of the essential characteristics of the best Gothic Art, and shows in the harmonized variety of its parts the inventive thought and the independent execution of many minds and hands presided over by a single will. Gothic architecture in its best development is the expression at once of law and of liberty. The exactest principles of proportion are combined ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... 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 was sufficiently ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... continued long in this contracted state, without scenes, without dresses, without an orchestra, the court displayed scenical and dramatic exhibitions with such costly magnificence, such inventive fancy, and such miraculous art, that we may doubt if the combined genius of Ben Jonson, Inigo Jones, and Lawes, or Ferobosco, at an era most favourable to the arts of imagination, has been equalled by the modern ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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 like ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... that the only way to get a first-class atrocity picture was to fake it. It was a big temptation, and a fine field for the exercise of their inventive genius. But on this issue the chorus of dissent was ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... 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 ah the poor ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... considered a heavy, phlegmatic sort of people, but on every point in which the art of ingeniously tormenting is in request, it must be admitted that they have taken the lead of much more vivacious and otherwise more inventive nations. ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... boast of a Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton, and many other illustrious poets, clearly indicating that the national character of Britons is not deficient in imagination; but we have not had one single masculine inventive genius of the kitchen. It is the probable result of our national antipathy to mysterious culinary compounds, that none of the bright minds of England have ventured into the region of scientific cookery. Even in the best houses, when I was a young man, the dinners were wonderfully ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... Scandinavian, Greek, and Georgian. We need not belittle the glory of the first trouveres who put into a language, then read and understood from one end of Europe to the other, fictions which, but for them, would have doubtless remained for ever unknown. It is however difficult to attribute to them an inventive faculty, such as would permit them to merit the title of creators. The numerous passages in which one feels that they do not fully understand the original which they imitate, and in which they attempt to give a natural significance to circumstances of which the mythological bearing ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... 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 ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... be on the look out for them, but your imagination will have to relate them to the rigorous conditions of your four bounding lines, and nature does not help you much here. But when variety in the forms is wanted, she is pre-eminent, and it is never advisable to waste inventive power ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... protection of man, you have most triumphantly subdued to his convenience. And it needs not the gift of prophecy to foresee, nor the spirit of personal flattery to declare, that the names of Franklin and Morse are destined to glide down the declivity of time together, the equals in the renown of inventive achievements, until the hand of History shall become palsied, and whatever pertains to humanity shall be lost in the general ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... father, with a solemn wink at the row of curious faces, "your inventive relative has ordered the automobile rebuilt, thinking he's wiser than the makers. He's having a furnace put in it, for one thing—it's a limousine, you know, and all enclosed in glass. Also it's as big as a barn, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... than to find him, and in three-quarters of an hour he was at the Luxembourg. I presented him to Bonaparte, who conversed with him a long time concerning the 18th Brumaire. When M. Moreau departed Bonaparte said to me, "You are right. That fool Sieyes is as inventive as a Cassandra. This proves that one should not be too ready to believe the reports of the wretches whom we are obliged to employ in the police." Afterwards he added, "Bourrienne, Moreau is a nice fellow: I am satisfied with him; I will do something ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Ye brave Irish lads, hark away to the crack, Assist me, I pray, in this woful attack; For sure I don't wrong you, you seldom are slack, When the ladies are calling, to blush and hang back; 60 For you're always polite and attentive, Still to amuse us inventive, And death is your only preventive: Your hands and your voices ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... contrariness, had refused to participate in the planning and devising of the work, thereby shutting herself off from that most fascinating pastime, house-building; leaving everything down to the minutest details to the imagination, ingenuity, and inventive genius of the Arab. For months she had listened to the monotonous chant of the men at work, the tap of hammer, swish of saw, and dull thud of machinery, and also to the grunting and grumbling of the camels who, in great caravans from every point of the compass, ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... thoroughfares, on great bridges, and frequented cross-roads, detective vigilance kept sleepless watch, and fancied in every approaching form, the doomed victims, who were at once to satisfy the angry gallows and its own excited avarice. Equally well assured were we that the most inventive and hazardous scrutiny would never track our footsteps to the dizzy height of Carn-Tuathail. One motive with us was to baffle all calculation on the part of our pursuers. When we found we were tracked ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... is even more urgent in India, and that fact is apparently being realised by the Indian Government itself. The inventive range of Lord Morley and his advisers does not, however, for the moment appear to extend much beyond the adaptation of the model of the English House of Lords to Indian conditions, and the organisation of an 'advisory Council of Notables';[71] with the possible result that we may be advised by the ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... pas . . . exhibits the inventive faculty of the New Zealanders better than any other of their works. . . . Their shape and size depended much on the nature of the ground and the strength of the tribe. They had double rows of fences on all unprotected sides; the inner fence, twenty ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... driving, and pulled ourselves together, and looked virtuous; and how the merry company suddenly and quietly evanished because they thought that their guests might be tired. I can give you no notion of the pure, irresponsible frolic of it—of the almost affectionate kindness, the gay and inventive hospitality that so delicately controlled the whole affair—any more than I can describe a certain quiet half-hour in the dusk just before we left, when the company gathered to say good-bye, while young couples walked in the street, and the glare of the never-extinguished ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... had, even at his then early age, a reputation for the high abilities which he afterwards developed, had already experience in various departments of literature, and had exercised his projective and inventive faculties in various ways. If his friends had heard nothing of him for a few months, they usually found that he had a new design in hand, which was, however, in many cases, of a more original than practical character. Mr. Henry Mayhew, as it appeared ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... alone; it is perfectly clear that by means of an image of the moon, taken by photography, we are able to fix many points on the lunar surface." [427] With telescopic and photographic lenses in skilled hands, and a wealth of inventive genius in fertile brains, we can afford to wait a long while before we close the ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... whose wealth, power, and protection, made it almost impossible for a poor freeman to find a market for his work, when it came into competition with that of the slaves of the rich. Slaves, however, are very seldom inventive; and all the most important improvements, either in machinery, or in the arrangement and distribution of work, which facilitate and abridge labour have been the discoveries of freemen. Should a slave propose any improvement of this ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... My heart sent a fervent prayer that this mechanical thing—the product of man's inventive genius through a thousand years—would have a last grasp of energy ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... drinks much less and works much more than the modern legend supposes. But it is quite true that he has not the horror of bodily outbreak, natural to the classes that contain ladies; and it is quite true that he never has that alert and inventive sort of industry natural to the classes from which men can climb into great wealth. He has grown, partly by necessity, but partly also by temper, accustomed to have dirty clothes and dirty hands normally and without discomfort. He regards cleanliness as a kind ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... planted, shot into a luxuriant beauty and symmetry, which nothing could check. The Church wisely gave up its opposition, and henceforth there was nothing to impede the progress of a product which spread and naturalized itself in England, France, and Germany. The inventive genius of Monteverde, Carissimi, Scarlatti (the friend and rival of Handel), Durante, and Leonardo Leo, perfected the forms of the opera nearly as we have them today. A line of brilliant composers in the school of Durante and Leo brings us down through Pergolesi, ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... he found, deeply interested in his explanation; she was careless of anything but the immediate present. Savina never mentioned William Grove. Animated by countless tender inventive expressions of her passion, she gave the impression of listening to the inflections of his voice rather than attending, considering, its meanings. She was more fully surrendered to the situation than he. The disorganized fragments of a hundred ideas and hints poured in rapid succession, back of ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... young man, in the opinion of competent judges, was endowed with remarkable abilities, 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... in those days, mad- houses built upon an approved system, for the special treatment of cases of this kind; mediaeval dungeons, an occasional application of the rack, and other gentle instruments of torture of an inventive age, were wonderfully efficacious in curing a man of his folly. Nor was there any special limit to the time during which the treatment lasted. And in case of a dangerous fit of folly, there were always a few faggots ready, or a sharpened axe, to put a finishing stroke ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... review, and to wonder whether he had seen General Triscoe and the Stollers there, and they met him with such confident inquiries that he would not undeceive them at once. He let them divine from his inventive answers that he had not gone to the manoeuvres, which put them in the best humor with themselves, and the girl said it was so cold and rough that she wished her father had not gone, either. The general appeared just before dinner and frankly avowed the same wish. He was rasping and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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 after their death ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... peculiar endowment of inventive genius as a divine gift, involving a special and defined responsibility, and considered himself called of God, as was Bezaleel, to that particular course of invention to which he devoted the chief part of his life. This he often ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... he taxed with a crime (in the opinion of some authors, I doubt, more heinous than any in morality) to wit, plagiarism, from the inventive and quaint-conceited ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... fear of contradiction—the knobbiest and scaliest member of the finny tribe. Sir, we tried to skin this animal and failed. Then we scraped him, and the moving question arose, What about fire? Luckily the landlady had left a lamp on the stairs. My inventive faculties were bestirred. The LAMP! No sooner said than the fish was placed on the fire-shovel, and we then took turns to move the shovel backwards and forwards over the lamp. Regardless of that woman's loud inquiries about ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... where life and death may be the result of their quick transit. This is generally considered a great hardship, the more so as there are only two passenger trains daily on the above railroads. But the inventive genius of a small German innkeeper at Lissa has hit upon a clever plan of circumventing the government regulations in a perfectly legitimate manner. He keeps a goat, which he hires out to persons wanting to proceed in a ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... same time the material interests of his country and the influence of his government. There can be no doubt but that Jacques Coeur was unscrupulous and frequently visionary as a man of business; but, at the same time, he was inventive, able, and bold, and, whilst pushing his own fortunes to the utmost, he contributed a great deal to develop, in the ways of peace, the commercial, industrial, diplomatic, and artistic enterprise of France. In his relations towards his king, Jacques Coeur was to Charles VII. a servant ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... procured with ease. In fact, the demand exceeds the supply sometimes, if I may judge from my own observations and from the pressing applications for these curiosities which I received from disappointed seekers. The finest of these black diamonds may generally be found in the inventive news columns of the London dailies and in ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... that would never do. Something else must be thought of; and being an inventive genius, he tried putting it in his trunk, but it scented his Sunday jacket and trousers, and the girls all turned up their noses at the odd perfume. So, driven to extremity, he in an evil hour decided, as many another has since done, that the remedy for his ills was ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... of human contrivance were reconciled to the formal rules and proportions of the Roman orders. The Renaissance palaces and civil buildings of the South and West of Europe are so full of ingenuity, and the irrepressible inventive power of the artist moves with so much freedom and grace among the stubborn lines of that revived architecture, that we cannot but regard the results with a sort of scholastic pride and pleasure. We cannot but ask ourselves, If the spirit of those architects could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... and instructions were sent to Massachusetts to release all her prisoners. With their arrival in England in February, 1690, the debate before the committee went on in a new and livelier fashion. Randolph renewed his complaints in every form known to his inventive mind; Andros presented his defense and was relieved of all charges of mal-administration; Mather and others contested every move of their opponents and sought to obtain as favorable terms as possible for Massachusetts; ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... year later [January 1st, 1755], remarked that "my friend Smollett . . . has certainly a talent for invention, though I think it flags a little in his last work." Lady Mary was both right and wrong. The inventive power which we commonly think of as Smollett's was the ability to work over his own experience into realistic fiction. Of this, Ferdinand Count Fathom shows comparatively little. It shows relatively little, too, of Smollett's ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... forms of expression, which are prescribed as models, in the book. For parsing is, in no degree, a work of invention; but wholly an exercise, an exertion of skill. It is, indeed, an exercise for all the powers of the mind, except the inventive faculty. Perception, judgement, reasoning, memory, and method, are indispensable to the performance. Nothing is to be guessed at, or devised, or uttered at random. If the learner can but rehearse the necessary definitions and rules, and perform ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... some form of inventive genius. Tom Swift is a bright, ingenious boy and his inventions and adventures make the most interesting ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... a very slight modification of several of Mr. Bessemer's inventions." Another half dozen patents appeared within two months, "so that it is apparent that Mr. Mushet's failure to make the public appreciate his theories has not injured his inventive faculties."[72] These patents include, besides variations on his "triple compound" theme, his important patent on the use of tungsten for cutting tools, later to be known as ...
— The Beginnings of Cheap Steel • Philip W. Bishop
... invidiously renewed by the London daily press, of surprise at the meagerness of our country's share in the Great Exhibition. Had any other young nation of Twenty Millions, located three to five thousand miles off, sent a collection so large and so creditable to its industrial proficiency and inventive power, it would have been warmly commended by these same journals; but it is deemed desirable to make an impression on the public mind of Europe adverse to American skill and attainment in the Arts, and ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... as it implies the possession of an inventive faculty, Sir William Jones has but little pretension. He borrows much; and what he takes he seldom makes hotter. Yet some portion of sweetness and elegance must ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... this book is a good one. The mechanic should receive his meed of appreciation. Our constructive heroes should not be forgotten, for the heroism of inventive labor has its own romance, and its results aid greatly the cause of human advancement. Most of the information embodied in this volume has heretofore existed only in the memories of the eminent mechanical engineers ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... expenditure. Much more is it a struggle in knowledge and invention. It is not the Power that has the most ships or the biggest ships that is going to win in a naval conflict. It is the Power that thinks quickest of what to do, is most resourceful and inventive. Eighty Dreadnoughts manned by dull men are only eighty targets for a quicker adversary. Well, is there any reason to suppose that our Navy is going to keep above the general national level in these things? Is the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... furnish building materials to the whole country. Thagaste was the great mart of woodland Numidia, the warehouse and the bazaar, where to this day the nomad comes to lay in a stock of provisions, and stares with childish delight at the fine things produced by the inventive talent of the workers ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... of Huguenot descent, who made for him a happy home during fifty-seven years.[1] He bought a house in Hempstead, expecting to remain there; and in the household, as in business, he gave rein to his ardent and versatile inventive faculty. One of his domestic contrivances rocked the cradle, fanned away the flies, and played a lullaby to the baby. He sold the patent in Connecticut to a Yankee peddler for a horse and wagon, and the peddler's stock, including a hurdy-gurdy. Another ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... in arts and crafts. All branches of the work, however, are alike in demanding a certain degree of artistic sense and deftness of manual touch. An accurate, observant eye is an absolute essential, and, for all but the lowest and most mechanical lines of work, imagination, originality, and an inventive habit of mind make the foundation of success. In some lines a fine sense of color values must underlie good work, in others the ability to draw easily. All work of this sort requires the ability to do careful, painstaking, and persevering work. Given this ability ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... now explained with 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 returned ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... be saved have been saved by the French, carefully, scientifically bandaged like wounded soldiers: and the Becketts talked eagerly of giving money—much money—to American societies that, with the British, are aiding France to make her fair land bloom again. Mother Beckett became quite inventive and excited, planning to start "instruction farms," with a fund in honour of Jim. Seeds and slips and tools and teachers should all be imported from California. Oh, it would be wonderful! And how thankful she and Father were that they ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... for order underlay that resourcefulness which impresses every reader of our history. Did the colonist need a tool? He learned to make it himself. Isolation from the mother country was a stimulus to the inventive imagination. Before long they were maintaining public order in the same ingenious fashion in which they kept house. Appeals to London took too much time. "We send a complaint this year," ran the saying, "the next year they send to inquire, the third year the ministry is changed." ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... women 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
... it was proposed that the inmates of the workhouse should be employed at making worsted and thread. Our fathers often tried their inventive faculties in the way of finding work for the inmates. A few years later it was proposed (August 26) to lighten the rates by erecting a ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... slept upon his interview with Ferris, and now sat in his laboratory, amidst the many witnesses of his inventive industry, with the model of the breech-loading cannon on the workbench before him. He had neatly mounted it on wheels, that its completeness might do him the greater credit with the consul when he should show it him, ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... once a time when people all mingled together and cultivated the valleys. Each one by doing his part made it lighter for all. But after many years a few schemers combined and by their inventive genius succeeded in erecting vast sliding curtains over the valleys. These curtains were supported from the tops of the ridges on each side and, by their manipulation, the operators could keep the sunlight from any particular part ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... "fables"! The writer then calmly informs us that the period at which they were "invented, extended probably from the tenth to the twelfth century." Certainly, the "inventors" were men of no ordinary talent, and deserve some commendation for their inventive faculties. But on this subject we shall say more hereafter. At last the writer arrives at the "first ages of Christianity." We hoped that here at least he might have granted us a history; but he writes: "The history of early Christianity in Ireland is obscure ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... present annually produced by it, ask ourselves what would happen if some duly qualified angel were to pick out and kill, or otherwise make away with, every man, who, in virtue of his assimilated scientific knowledge, his inventive gifts, his constructive and practical imagination, his energy, his initiative, and his natural powers of leadership, was better able to direct others than the other ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... accounts of King Arthur's European conquests—extending over nearly all Western Europe, from Iceland and Norway to Gaul and Italy—are still more the work of Geoffrey's inventive genius, though it is possible they may rest on early Celtic myths about the voyage of Arthur to Hades, as Professor Rhys suggests, or on late Breton traditions which mixed up Arthur with Charles ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... sleeping-cars are much indebted to Henry Bessemer, to whose inventive genius they owe the beautiful steel rails over which the cars glide so steadily. It was he who so simplified and cheapened the process of making steel that it ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... did so, for Rangar did his duty conscientiously. His explanations were long, careful, technical. Bonbright set his mind to the task and listened well. He was even interested, for there were interesting things to see, processes requiring skilled men, machines that had required inventive genius to devise. He began to be oppressed by the bigness of it. The plant was huge; it was enormously busy. The whole world seemed to need axles, preferably Foote axles, and to need ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... says these words of wisdom: 'If Zeus sends bad weather, mice and vermin, it is to stimulate the husbandman's energy, and call forth his inventive capacity.' Misfortune comes to ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... distant store and for the rest of the day, with the assistance of a mechanic, he was busy creating the newest recruit to the Royal Flying Corps. Tam was thorough and inventive. He must not only stuff the old suit with wood shavings and straw, but he must unstuff it again, so that he might thread a coil of pliable wire to give ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... walks recommended by the doctors, which might have become tedious had they been aimless. The prettiest or most remarkable of these plants were sketched or painted before being dried, to be used in the foregrounds of pictures. Gilbert's mind was also inventive; the reader may have remarked in the autobiography that he had made various models of double-boats, the principle of which he wished to see more generally adopted on account of their safety; but in 1869 it was not with boats that this faculty of invention was busy,—it ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... metamorphosed? Had the Levites a military organisation, and, divided into three companies, did they change places every week in the temple service? The commentators are inclined to call in to their aid such inventive assumptions, with which, however, they may go on for ever without attaining their end, for the error multiplies itself. As a specially striking instance of the manner in which the procedure of Chronicles avenges itself may be mentioned chapter xxiii. ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... owing to his successes and rapid progress, held a place of his own in the school. He was eighteen years old, and even at that early age the philosophical spirit, the concentrated ardour, the passionate love of truth, and the inventive sagacity which have since made his name celebrated were apparent to those who knew him. I refer to M. Berthelot, whose room was next to mine. From the day that we knew each other, we became fast friends. Our eagerness to learn was equally great, ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... usually inventive. Let me see. Look here, why couldn't you have his refused picture brought home just as all your friends have ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... a-hunting, had, in the act of leaping a fence, the misfortune to have one of the skirts of his coat torn off; upon which his lordship tore off the other, observing, that to have but one left was like a pig with one ear! Some inventive genius took the hint, and having made some of these half-coats, out of compliment to his lordship, gave them the ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... wits Are not at fault, his curious record fits Neatly as sequel to the tale we've heard; Not wholly wild the fancy, nor absurd That this our island hermit well might be That story's hero, fled from over sea. Come, Number Seven, we would not have you strain The fertile powers of that inventive brain. Read us 'The Exile's Secret'; there's enough Of dream-like fiction and fantastic stuff In the strange web of mystery that invests The lonely isle where sea ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... asked for Miss Alice Melville as soon as he entered, saying he 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 ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... poetical yield to the practical, when "cui bono?" is the lest question which challenges all comers. This change, if it be an actual one, may bring its losses as well as its gains. We are thankful for all the precious boons which inventive genius has brought to us—for telegraphs, and telephones, and photographic arts, for steam engines and electric motors, for power presses and sewing machines, for pain-killing chloroform, and the splendid achievements ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... A scheming drug-vender, (inventive genius,) an utterly untrustworthy and incompetent observer, (profound searcher of Nature,) a shallow dabbler in erudition, (sagacious scholar,) started the monstrous fiction (founded the immortal system) of Homoeopathy. I am very fair, you see,—you can help yourself ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... tool, and the manufacture of the living organ prove therefore to be but two species of the same genus, which, though widely differentiated, have descended as it were from one common filament of desire and inventive faculty. The greater or less complexity of the organs goes for very little. It is only a question of the amount of intelligence and voluntary self-adaptation which we must admit, and this must be settled rather by an appeal to what we find in organism, and ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... intervention of these excitements, have been awakened to the invention of the grosser sciences, and that application of analytical reasoning to the aberrations of society, which it is now attempted to exalt over the direct expression of the inventive ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... crowds of spectators who stood along the side of the road and laughed. But soon this business of tree-hawing grew tiresome and the Greeks thought dullness an evil only comparable to ugliness or sickness. They asked for something more entertaining. Then an inventive young poet from the village of Icaria in Attica hit upon a new idea which proved a tremendous success. He made one of the members of the goat-chorus step forward and engage in conversation with the leader of the musicians who marched at the head of the parade playing upon their pipes of Pan. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... was not a bit spoiled by all this flattery and homage. He worked all the harder; resolved to achieve yet greater triumphs in science than he had yet done. An opportunity soon arose to turn his knowledge and inventive powers to account in a very important way. For a long time the English public had every now and then been horrified by the terrible explosions which took place in the coal mines. These explosions resulted often in an appalling loss of human life. Their cause was ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... About a dozen years ago round playing cards were patented in America as a novelty, in ignorance of the fact that cards of that shape had probably been in common use in the East, centuries before the discovery of that great and inventive country! ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... 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 ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... 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 ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... aborigines, who without the aid of machinery make interesting weavings with only a bar upon which to suspend the warp threads while the human hand completes all the processes of manufacture. Modern man's inventive genius in the textile art has been expended upon perfecting the machinery, while primitive man's ingenuity has resulted in making a beautiful weaving ...
— Aboriginal American Weaving • Mary Lois Kissell
... else that will aid the hunter in taking the game at a disadvantage and destroying it. The big-game rifles are of the highest power, the longest range, the greatest accuracy and the best repeating mechanism that modern inventive genius can produce. It is said that in Wyoming the Maxim silencer is now being used. England has produced a weapon of a new type, called "the scatter rifle," which is intended for use on ducks. The best binoculars are used in ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday |
