"Invent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this objection, And prove myself; by topic clear No gelding, as you would infer. Loss of virility's averr'd To be the cause of loss of beard, 710 That does (like embryo in the womb) Abortive on the chin become. This first a woman did invent, In envy of man's ornament; SEMIRAMIS, of Babylon, 715 Who first of all cut men o' th' stone, To mar their beards, and lay foundation Of sow-geldering operation. Look on this beard, and tell me whether Eunuchs wear such, or geldings ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... of this paper; that it contains nothing new; that it only states grounds of proceeding, and presses topics of argument, which had often been stated and pressed before. But it was not the object of the Declaration to produce anything new. It was not to invent reasons for independence, but to state those which governed the congress. For great and sufficient causes it was proposed to declare independence; and the proper business of the paper to be drawn was to set forth those causes, and justify the authors of the measure, in ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... having expended so many fine phrases upon himself, was obliged to invent a new one for the French, and he calls them "wonderful people!" The coalesced ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... the sacrilegious miscreants! the hideous monsters! the villainous reptiles! Aye! punishment will overtake them; they shall rue this day! All Rome shall rue this day: her streets shall flow with blood and I'll invent such tortures for every man as will turn the firmament red with ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... ageing fast. My mind does not dwell on slaughter as it did when I was a boy. Why doesn't your husband invent something? He does nothing but tell ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... of his honesty, which he sacredly discharged. Since the war, he has faithfully adhered to and followed the fortunes of the Republican party, by the mandate of which he was emancipated; even though in doing so he has suffered all the evils which a hostile opponent can invent to plague and swerve him from what he considers the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... doubly surprised at your correspondent's error. That James Payn should have borrowed from me is already a strange conception. The author of LOST SIR MASSINGBERD and BY PROXY may be trusted to invent his own stories. The author of A GRAPE FROM A THORN knows enough, in his own right, of the humorous and ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... verse, which he afterwards clothes with all the sciences. To which the painter rejoins that he is governed by the same necessities in the science of painting, that is to say, invention and measure (fancy as regards the subject matter which he must invent, and measure as regards the matters painted), so that they may be in proportion, but that he does not make use of three sciences; on the contrary it is rather the other sciences that make use of painting, as, for instance, astrology, ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... are fools who say that wars cannot be prevented. War is the rough and savage tool of a world as yet too ignorant to invent and use any other. But here and there, in odd corners of the world, an ever-increasing number of men are recognizing it as a disease, due to ignorance, as possible to cure and wipe out, as any other of the ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... for the time being. When first he heard the adventures of the parrot who insisted on leaving his cage, and who enjoyed himself for a little while and then died of hunger and cold, he—and his sister with him—cried so bitterly that it was found necessary to invent a different ending, according to which the parrot was rescued just in time and brought back to his cage to live peacefully ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... admiration and surprise. Yet her situation was far from being either enviable or pleasant, though in the midst of a treasure-house of wealth that would have made an emperor the richest of his race. No solution that she could invent would at all solve the problem—no key of interpretation would fit these intricate movements. Here she stood, a prisoner perhaps, with the other treasures in the vault; and assuredly the miser, whosoever ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... in preserving nearly all she said to me, for Marian was never a chatterbox; yet her responses had, somehow, that long-sought tang it wasn't in me to invent for any imaginary young woman who must be, for the sake of my new novel, quite heels over head ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... Peck—Adam's wife was never known by any other title, just as the man's own surname had dropped into such disuse that few so much as knew what it was—had made an especial point of this, and Rufus had never managed to invent any suitable excuse for refusing. He never remained long after the meal was eaten. When all the other fisher-lads were walking the cliffs with their own particular lasses, Rufus was wont to trudge back to his hermitage and draw his mantle of solitude about him ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... came by this idea, whether, for example, he somewhere saw such a machine constructed by another, or whether he was so accurately taught the mechanical sciences, or is endowed with such force of genius, that he was able of himself to invent it, without having elsewhere seen anything like it; for all the ingenuity which is contained in the idea objectively only, or as it were in a picture, must exist at least in its first and chief cause, whatever ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes
... with their sides facing the street and their fronts facing the garden, or maybe you haven't noticed it yet, but you will. 'Pears to me our ancestors had some sense in their heads, even though they didn't invent telegraphs to send bad news in a hurry and railway cars to smash people to bits, and telephones to let strangers talk right into one's house just by ringing a bell. Not that I'd let one into Vernons. You may hunt high or low, ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... there had been no impressive series of new discoveries suggesting either an indefinite increase of knowledge or a growing mastery of the forces of nature. In the period in which their most brilliant minds were busied with the problems of the universe men might improve the building of ships, or invent new geometrical demonstrations, but their science did little or nothing to transform the conditions of life or to open any vista into the future. They were in the presence of no facts strong enough to counteract ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... went to Nordhausen, and had myself examined by the director of the gymnasium, to be received into that school. I then went home, but never told my father a word of all this deception, till the day before my departure, which obliged me to invent a whole chain of lies. He was then very angry; but at last, through my entreaties and persuasion, he gave way and allowed me to go. This was in the beginning of ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... Athenians see this as I tell you, and as I have reason to know are looking after their possessions at home, while persons here invent stories that neither are true nor ever will be. Nor is this the first time that I see these persons, when they cannot resort to deeds, trying by such stories and by others even more abominable to frighten your people and get into their hands the government: ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... had uninten- tionally disclosed, roused his thinking and invent- ive powers to study upon the best method of introducing the subject ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... indefinite. Notwithstanding the numerous elements which may be discerned in melody, and the labour implied in its analysis, it is the facile and spontaneous creation of man, at any rate in its simplest expression; uneducated people, ignorant of music, are able to invent very tolerable melodies, of which we have instances in popular and national songs, which are generated by the musical fancy of those unconscious of the laws of music. Melody has an independent existence, while harmony serves to accentuate its form, and conduces ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... about the Valley that is strictly inaccessible without artificial means, and its inaccessibility is expressed in severe terms. Nevertheless many a mountaineer, gazing admiringly, tried hard to invent a way to the top of its noble crown—all in vain, until in the year 1875, George Anderson, an indomitable Scotchman, undertook the adventure. The side facing Tenaya Canyon is an absolutely vertical precipice from the summit to a depth of about 1600 feet, and on the opposite ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... eyes and the eyes of friends. It was little more than a dog's turning of himself round and round before he lies down. He knew they were small things of which he boasted but he had no other, and scorned to invent: his great things, those in which he had shown himself a true and generous man, he looked on as matters of course, nor recognized anything in them worth thinking of. He was not a great man, but had elements of greatness; he had no vision of truth, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... represents the title of some book. Thus Ouida's "Under Two Flags" could be very easily represented. Young folks always enjoy "dressing up," and any hostess can either find directions for some form of fancy dress, or invent something new for herself. St. Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, May Day, the Fourth of July, Hallowe'en, have their traditional decorations, and games, and suggest their own refreshments. Elaborate refreshments have ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... creative labour. Those were happy evenings when, wholly lifted out of myself, I lived in a totally different world, and, like a god, directed the destinies of the persons who were my creatures. The love scenes between Bartja and Sappho I did not invent; they came to me. When, with brow damp with perspiration, I committed the first one to paper in a single evening, I found the next morning, to my surprise, that only a few touches were needed to convert it ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... his position when the need of a physician arose. What was so dissatisfying to him was that all this was the merest conjecture, that the lady whom he loved was a person whom he had been obliged to invent in order to explain the appearances that had so charmed him. He had not a shadow of proof ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... turn pale and begin all that fuss over again. What I'm suggesting is a perfectly reasonable thing. If I haven't got money I haven't got it. I can't invent it." ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... slightest use attempting a real work of imagination when people will come in and ask if I am lying on The Literary Supplement of The Times (as if it were likely), or the anti-aircraft gun that the children were playing with after lunch. For this reason I have had to invent an even better thing than the ordinary Chesterfield sofa, and since it will be, when made, the noblest piece of scientific upholstery in the world I will ask the printer to write the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... Granny—the words brought no recollection to his mind. All was absolute darkness. At last he was discharged, a friendless, tradeless, penniless man, without a past, and with very little to look to in the future. His very name was altered, for it had been necessary to invent one. John Huxford had passed away, and John Hardy took his place among mankind. Here was a strange outcome of a Spanish ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which I see is clearer. To see from earth to heaven, and see there standing, still a fixture, that old Jewish scheme! What right have you to hold up this obstacle to my understanding you, to your understanding me! You did not invent it; it was imposed on you. Examine your authority. Even Christ, we fear, had his scheme, his conformity to tradition, which slightly vitiates his teaching. He had not swallowed all formulas. He preached some mere doctrines. As ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... acquiring this habit of mind, this alertness and concentration, the start, as always, is more than half the battle. Schumann's good advice to young composers may be transferred to the listener: "Be sure that you invent a thoroughly vital theme; the rest will grow of itself from this." Likewise in listening to music, one should be sure to grasp the opening theme, the fundamental motive, in order to follow it intelligently and to enjoy its subsequent growth into the ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... thought you were one of my own girls. Dorothy," she continued on the same breath, to catch the servant before she left the room, "we shall want some more methylated spirits—unless the lamp itself is out of order. If one of you could invent a good spirit-lamp—" she sighed, looking generally down the table, and then began seeking among the china before her for two clean ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... will require a little money until you do. Now, look here, Florence: I don't want to injure you. I know I did long ago; I did it for my own benefit. I was cast penniless on the world, and I was forced to invent all kinds of subterfuges to make my way. I pity girls who are placed as I was placed. I have now managed to get into a comfortable nest. As I said before, I am in your nest. It suits me, and I do not mean to go out of it; but I pity you, and I should like to help you. Will you borrow ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... accompany the pot of baked pork and beans, but there were specimens of all the newly-made Thanksgiving pies filling every available space on the table. Diana set special value on herself as a pie artist, and she had taxed her ingenuity this year to invent new varieties, which were received with bursts of applause by the boys. These sat down to the table in democratic equality,—Biah Carter and Abner with all the sons of the family, old and young, each eager, ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the evil day, and cause the seat of violence to come near; 4. That lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall; 5. That chant to the sound of the viol, and invent to themselves instruments of musick, like David; 6. That drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the chief ointments: but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph. 7. Therefore now shall they go ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... in the course of a brilliant career of forty years we have never seen only six cans of peaches that were worth the powder to blast them open. A man that will invent a can opener that will split open one of these pale, sickly, hard hearted canned peaches, that swim around in a pint of slippery elm juice in a tin can, has got a fortune. And they have got to canning pumpkin, ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... the riddle of the painful earth doesn't vex them—they have no leisure; they don't fear the hour of sleep—they welcome it. It is the rich, who find time drag remorselessly on their hands, who have desperately to invent occupations and a whirl of amusements, who keep pursuing shadows they can never lay hold of, who are really in a piteous case; and I suppose you take credit to yourself, Linn, my boy, that you are one of the distractions that help them to lighten the ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... his natural efficiency of 1, got enough to eat most of the time, and no caveman went hungry all the time. Also, he lived a healthy, open-air life, loafed and rested himself, and found plenty of time in which to exercise his imagination and invent gods. That is to say, he did not have to work all his waking moments in order to get enough to eat. The child of the caveman (and this is true of the children of all savage peoples) had a childhood, and by that is meant a happy childhood of ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... he is free to work out when he is here in the middle of the ocean away from land. Be glad, Jean, that you learned to tell time properly, and that you live with people who are content to use the old method and do not set themselves up to invent a system that is a puzzle to every ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... is that you will see him, or some one else clothed with authority. You may be requested to state the nature of your business, in which case you will make the nature of your business as vague and enticing as possible. Possibly the editor, if he is timid, will invent the story that he is engaged; possibly he may really be engaged; in either case you will ask for an appointment, or wait; a personal interview is worth waiting for. If you are refused an appointment and also told that to wait would be useless, say that you will call to-morrow or the next ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... no! He knows about the Tube, of course, but Fredericks expects me to invent things. It wouldn't occur to him to talk to an outsider. He's been with ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz
... people alive in such cases is one of the refinements of cruelty that it was left for Christianity to invent." ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... be able to—to invent one of some sort," she said, and her tone was as colorless as the gray skies of an autumn nightfall. And then, with a childlike appeal in the wonderful eyes: "I think you will have to help me a little—out ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... I have been charged to invent fitting and appropriate lies to account for the ridiculous creature's abrupt departure. The man Transom is ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... the rope and the flesh with it, and taking care of him until he was well, they sent him forth to commence a life of austerities that was to render him famous. He adopted various styles of existence, but his miracles and piety attracted such crowds that he determined to invent a mode of life which would deliver him from the pressing multitudes. It is curious that he did not hide himself altogether if he really wished to escape notoriety; but, no, he would still be within the gaze of ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... regret that my father did not either uniformly keep to the true Erewhonian names, as in the cases of Senoj Nosnibor, Ydgrun, Thims, &c.—names which occur constantly in Erewhon—or else invariably invent a name, as he did whenever he considered the true name impossible. My poor mother's name, for example, was really Nna Haras, and Mahaina's Enaj Ysteb, which he dared not face. He, therefore, gave these characters the first names that euphony ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... worthy St. Michael, and prostrate the great St. Patrick in the dust. But this was not all. Mr. Jinks further desired to procure an adequate revenge upon his friend O'Brallaghan. To overwhelm with defeat and dismay the party to which his enemy belonged, was not enough—any common man could invent so plain a course as that. It was Mr. Jinks' boast, privately, and to himself be it understood, that he would arrange the details of an original and refined revenge—a revenge which should, in equal degree, break down the strength and spirit of his enemy, ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... must stop to tell you why this credit was necessary. The articles that I had manufactured had gone out of fashion in May: and I could not invent any thing new, partly because I no longer felt the same interest as before, knowing that I should soon go to a medical college; and partly because the articles then in fashion were cheaper when imported. We had to live for a little while on the money that we had laid up, until I procured a commission ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... estate. I can therefore show no attention to strangers, nor suppliants, nor to people who say that they are skilled artisans, but am all the time broken-hearted about Ulysses. They want me to marry again at once, and I have to invent stratagems in order to deceive them. In the first place heaven put it in my mind to set up a great tambour-frame in my room, and to begin working upon an enormous piece of fine needlework. Then I said to them, 'Sweethearts, Ulysses is indeed dead, still, ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... savages, one asks, Whence have they come? What could have tempted, or what change compelled, a tribe of men, to leave the fine regions of the north, to travel down the Cordillera or backbone of America, to invent and build canoes, which are not used by the tribes of Chile, Peru, and Brazil, and then to enter on one of the most inhospitable countries within the limits of the globe? Although such reflections must at first seize on the mind, yet we may feel sure that they are partly ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... if you would Invent some sort of appliance To dry "liquid air," on which we could Repose implicit reliance, Arranged to diminish this H{2}O, Which, as every schoolboy ought to know, The Germans call wasser, the French call eau, We ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 18, 1893 • Various
... myself if I think of you so much. What would life have without you in it? The sun would drop from my heavens. I see only by you! you have kissed me on the eyes. You are more to me than my own poor brain could ever have devised: had I started to invent Paradise, I could not have invented you. But perhaps you have invented me: I am something new to myself since I saw you first. God bless ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... West. The designs were made in water colors, and although in nearly every instance they were bold and striking, they were difficult to reproduce perfectly upon porcelain with hard mineral colors, and to accomplish this successfully it was necessary to invent new methods and to have recourse to peculiar mechanical appliances, but the effort was successful and the ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... figure down to anything as fine as ounces or even quarter-pounds on such a balancer. Yet my babies, I'm afraid, are not gaining as they ought. Poppsy is especially fretful of late. Why can't somebody invent children without colic, anyway? I have a feeling that I ought to run on low gear for a while. But that's a luxury ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... not enough to write passably, it is only enough when there are several, or even one, who will give their or his own peculiar contact with those agencies of the day, the hour, and the moment, who will find or invent a style best suited to themselves. Attempts at excessive individualism will never create true individualistic expression, no affected surprise in personal perversity of image or metaphor will make a real poet, or real poetry. There must be first and last ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... simply astound one by their wealth of blasphemous and obscene epithets which it was allowable for the exorcist to use in casting out devils. The Treasury of Exorcisms contains hundreds of pages packed with the vilest epithets which the worst imagination could invent for the purpose ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... therefore omit the Labour of Shepherds, if I could invent a Life more agreeable; but the latter must be form'd from a Man's Imagination, the former from Observation; and Virgil could draw that almost as well as Theocritus. I wonder the Writers of Pastoral should be so fond of showing their Shepherds Beating Their Ronts, or ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... a pose, monsieur. One must invent novelties, eh? when one is as good-looking as that. Besides, madame's reputation has not been of the best for some time. Monsieur possibly remembers the little affair last year in the Rue des Mathurins? Very well, it was she who extracted the hundred thousand ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... no good, and on his return he passed a black evening. With Mrs. Hopper, who came as usual to get dinner for him, he held little conversation; in a few days he would have to tell her what had befallen him, or invent some lie to account for the change in his arrangements, and this again tortured Will's nerves. In one sense of the word, no man was less pretentious; but his liberality of thought and behaviour consisted with a personal ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... Sensible folk settle their own problems, then look for more. Terra? One half of the globe is against the other half of the globe. Fighting one another tooth and nail, they still find time to invent and cross space to other planets and continue ...
— Instinct • George Oliver Smith
... observation and common sense have never been wanting at any period, and it is from those sources that such maxims and opinions arise. Any man who had travelled, first through Italy and Spain, and then through England and America, would be very likely to invent sumptuary laws, if he had never heard of such a thing before. In the application of sumptuary laws, as a device, for preventing decline, the traveller might, perhaps, be very whimsical; sometimes forbidding what would never be attempted; ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... getting proofs of the different states of his plates whilst etching them, incited my husband to invent a press for his own laboratory, that he might judge of his work in progress by taking proofs for himself whenever he liked. Considering the present state of our affairs I was not favorable to the ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... maliciously invent," he continued, "that I am the enemy of the repose and the liberty of the United Provinces, and that I was afraid lest they should acquire the freedom which had been offered them by their enemies, because I derived a profit from their war, and intended in time ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the ultimate issue be the judges of this matter, and shall they find Aristophanes any more impeccable than she does? (She now begins to put forth the rosy strength!) What is it that he has done? He did not invent comedy! Has he improved upon it? No, she declares. One of his aims is to discredit war. That was an aim of Euripides also; and has Aristophanes yet written anything like the glorious Song to Peace ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... but once he had the subject chosen, he could cope with nature single-handed, and make every stroke a triumph. Again, his absolute mastery in his art enabled him to express each and all of his different humours, and to pass smoothly and congruously from one to another. Many men invent a dialect for only one side of their nature - perhaps their pathos or their humour, or the delicacy of their senses - and, for lack of a medium, leave all the others unexpressed. You meet such an one, and find him in conversation full of thought, feeling, and experience, which ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... them up. You have sworn to do it, and you have broken your oaths. Of course, those who have done so look out for pretexts. Nobody expected them to do otherwise. I do not think I ever saw a perjurer, however bald and naked, who could not invent some pretext to palliate his crime, or who could not, for fifteen shillings, hire an Old Bailey lawyer to invent some for him. Yet this requirement of the Constitution is another one of the extreme demands of an ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... cheeks and lips glowed rosy-red, and her eyes were bright with happiness—the happiness of loving and being loved. It made her cousins so angry they could have killed her in their jealous spite, for it lacked but two weeks to the wedding now, and it seemed as if nothing that spite or malice could invent had any power to break off ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... tedious siege. Every method which love could suggest, or art invent, was adopted. I was sometimes ready to despair, under an idea that her resolution was unconquerable, her virtue impregnable. Indeed, I should have given over the pursuit long ago, but for the hopes of success I entertained from her parleying with me, and, ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... observation and imagination were centered upon oaths, until at last he was so fascinated that he became filled with an uncontrollable desire to swear. So he went out into a field, beyond hearing, and there delivered himself of all the oaths he had ever heard or could invent, and in as loud a voice as possible." After this he felt quite satisfied to ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... off-hand manner of answering; and when you have stated any pathological fact—right or wrong—stick to it; if they want a case for example, invent one, "that happened when you were an apprentice in the country." This assumed confidence will sometimes bother them. We knew a student who once swore at the Hall, that he gave opium in a case of concussion of the brain, and that the patient never required anything ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... ever hear that I have abused you and said bad things of you. It will have to be all in the day's work if I am not ultimately to give you away. I must take steps at once to keep her from seeing you. I shall have to invent some story; some new kind of dangerous disease, perhaps. I shall stay here and nurse you myself!' ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... insurance and establish a high-level commission on automation. If we have the brain power to invent these machines, we have the brain power to make certain that they are a boon and not a bane ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Lyndon B. Johnson • Lyndon B. Johnson
... and cross-grained enough to keep up the grudge for the rest of our lives. Let us, then, make the most of the accident that has led you here, and when you go home, you shall be the bearer of the most submissive message I can invent to my old friend, and there shall be no terms too humble for me ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... Ben Peeler won't never give me a raise so I can get married or nothing. I wish I knew that fellow back there so I could ask him what's up. They say he's smart. I suppose he wouldn't tell me nothing. I wish I was smart enough to invent something and maybe get rich. I wish I was the kind of fellow they say ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... Shall we never repent? I fear and I hope. I forsee all that will happen on this occasion. I shall incense my family in the highest degree. The generality of the world will blame my conduct, and the relations and friends of —— will invent a thousand stories of me; yet, 'tis possible, you may recompense everything to me. In this letter, which I am fond of, you promise me all that I wish. Since I writ so far, I received your Friday letter. I will be only yours, and I ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... the attitude of writing on a scroll." Death was a nonentity to the ancient artist. Could he exhibit what represents nothing? Could he animate into action what lies in a state of eternal tranquillity? Elegant images of repose and tender sorrow were all he could invent to indicate the state of death. Even the terms which different nations have bestowed on a burial-place are not associated with emotions of horror. The Greeks called a burying-ground by the soothing term of Coemeterion, or "the sleeping-place;" the Jews, who had no horrors ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... some day man will realize just what he is searching for and will invent a machine that will enable the child to project, just as a film throws an image on a screen, ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... Olybius, a ruler in the East who sought her hand in marriage. She refused to forsake the true religion, or to become his wife; and her refusal was fatal to her. The cruel monster put her to the most dreadful torments he could invent, and afterwards ordered her to be beheaded, about the year 275. St. Margaret has been worshipped by the Eastern and Western Churches, from her supposed power to assist females in childbirth. It is related that Satan, in the form of a dragon, swallowed her alive, but that she ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... His leaning lay in the line of aeronautics, and he was always trying to invent some sort of aeroplane that would discount all the efforts of such men as the Wright brothers. The dreadful fate of Darius Green and his famous flying machine had no terrors for Toby, though his chums were always warning him ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... greater vision, and he knew the gigantic character of the stakes for which men played. If the French triumphed here in America, then the old Bourbon monarchy, which Willet told him was so diseased and corrupt, would appear triumphant to all the world. It would invent new tyrannies, the cause of liberty and growth would be set back generations, and nobody would be trodden under the heel more than the French people themselves. Robert liked the French, and sometimes the thought occurred to him that ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... be consulted, run hand and eye over its edges and open the book—"at the very exact spot." He proposed to follow this business up with a quite Germanic thoroughness. "Presently," he said, "I must study the machinery by which the edges of books are cut. It is possible I may have to invent these also." This was the double-barrelled scheme of Herr Heinrich's career. And along it he was to go, and incidentally develop his large vague heart that was at ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... poor Rebecca, driven to the wall, had to avow the reasons lying behind the sacrifice of the sunshade, her aunt said, "Now see here, Rebecca, you're too big to be whipped, and I shall never whip you; but when you think you ain't punished enough, just tell me, and I'll make out to invent a little something more. I ain't so smart as some folks, but I can do that much; and whatever it is, it'll be something that won't punish the whole family, and make 'em drink ivory dust, wood chips, and pink ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... deal with, put it to the test, permitting his pupil himself to taste things, and of himself to discern and choose them, sometimes opening the way to him, and sometimes leaving him to open it for himself; that is, I would not have him alone to invent and speak, but that he should also hear his pupil speak in turn.... Let him make him put what he has learned into a hundred several forms, and accommodate it to so many several subjects, to see if he yet rightly comprehends it, and has made it his own.... 'Tis a sign of crudity and ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... posted for Northwick at Rimouski was addressed to the editor of the Boston Events, and was published with every advantage which scare-heading could invent. A young journalist newly promoted to the management was trying to give the counting-room proofs of his efficiency in the line of the Events' greatest successes, and he wasted no thrill that the sensation ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... had never existed it would have been necessary to invent him, the indescribable improbability of his career speaks so closely to the heart of every lover of literary truth. Who of his heroes is so fascinating to us as he himself? How imperiously, by his own noble example, he recalls us ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... to as sources without any justification in fact. Nor is it probable that Wauchier, who wrote on the continent, and who, if he be really Wauchier de Denain, was under the patronage of the Count of Flanders, would have gone out of his way to invent a ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... a short distance to the elder Entriken's farm, and, rather than invent a laborious explanation of the horse's absence all night, Gordon walked. Numberless excuses offered him plausible reason for his own delayed return home.—It was better to say nothing to Lettice of his actual intention; she was already ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... a more elaborate form of that anarchy which is the necessary condition of an heroic age. It does not deprive the poet of his old subjects, his family enmities, and his adventures of private war. Feudalism did not invent, neither did it take away, the virtue of loyalty that has so large a place in all true epic, along with its counterpart of defiance and rebellion, no less essential to the story. It intensified the poetical value of both motives, but they ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... distorted form." Kweiros nodded emphatically. "They will come to a full realization that there are advanced entities running around the cosmos, entities that have all kinds of mysterious powers. And they'll invent still more powers and characteristics—mostly bad." He spread his hands, then laid them on the desk in front ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... of tall trees covered with balls of wild cotton, as large as an orange, and, elsewhere, inextricable entanglements of gorgeously flowering creepers, such as the most vivid imagination would fail to invent or conceive. Behind one part of the scene the setting sun shone with intense light, turning all into dark forms, while in other parts the slanting rays fell upon masses of rich foliage, and ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... landlord wishes to distrain, after waiting seven years or so, he has to get a decree. The tenants know of it as soon as he, and they set sentinels. When the police are signalled the cattle are driven away and mixed with those of other farmers—every difficulty that Irish cleverness can invent is placed in the way. Then the landlord, whether or not successful in distraining, is boycotted, and the people reckon it a virtue to shoot him down on sight. Conviction is almost, if not quite, impossible, for even if you found a willing ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... times, some, trick, and cunning in this show of openness and candour; and they would at times bring back some very trifling article that had been given them, tendering it as a sort of expiation for the theft of another much more valuable. When a search was making, they would invent all sorts of lies to screen themselves, not caring on whom besides the imputation fell; and more than once they directed our people to the apartments of others who were innocent of the event in question. If they really knew the offender, they were generally ready enough ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... established. A new difficulty this, still more stubborn than the preceding; for if men stood in need of speech to learn to think, they must have stood in still greater need of the art of thinking to invent that of speaking; and though we could conceive how the sounds of the voice came to be taken for the conventional interpreters of our ideas we should not be the nearer knowing who could have been the interpreters of this convention for such ideas, as, in consequence ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... ballads, the barber's shops, the theatres are full of, were really and truly ladies of flesh and blood, and mistresses of those that glorify and have glorified them? Nothing of the kind; they only invent them for the most part to furnish a subject for their verses, and that they may pass for lovers, or for men valiant enough to be so; and so it suffices me to think and believe that the good Aldonza Lorenzo is fair and virtuous; and as to her pedigree it is very little matter, for no one will examine ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... day of the three temptations. The statement of those three questions was itself the miracle. If it were possible to imagine simply for the sake of argument that those three questions of the dread spirit had perished utterly from the books, and that we had to restore them and to invent them anew, and to do so had gathered together all the wise men of the earth—rulers, chief priests, learned men, philosophers, poets—and had set them the task to invent three questions, such as would not only fit the occasion, but express in ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Ireland can scarcely invent an order which a servant, labourer, or cottar dares to refuse to execute. Nothing satisfies him but an unlimited submission. Disrespect, or anything tending towards sauciness, he may punish with his cane or his horsewhip with ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... was the very man I had come to see; and here was a chance of getting speech with him and without the awkwardness of asking it through a servant, perhaps of having to invent an excuse for my visit. Without more ado, therefore, I made bold to lift the latch of the gate and step into ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... see another have as much as himself, and each one acquires as much as he can; the other may fare as best he can. And yet we pretend to be godly, know how to adorn ourselves most finely and conceal our rascality, resort to and invent adroit devices and deceitful artifices (such as now are daily most ingeniously contrived) as though they were derived from the law codes; yea, we even dare impertinently to refer to it, and boast of it, and will not have it called rascality, but shrewdness and caution. In this ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... the distinction, so often noted, between esoteric and popular Buddhism. Esoteric Buddhism was content to allow popular Buddhism a place and even to invent ways for the salvation of the ignorant multitudes who could not see the real nature of the self. Resort was had to the use of magic prayers and symbols and idols. These were bad enough, but they did not bear so hard on the development of personality ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... should, upon such knowledge and discipline, graft a study of Oriental designs, an eye for color, an independent fancy, and such minute precision of manual dexterity as seems the hardest thing of all for the Western to acquire. He will not have, like his great forerunners, to invent his material. Science does not repress, it invites and assists him. It offers him mineral colors and modes of graduating heat unknown to them. All the secrets of porcelain are open to him; and were they not, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... seductiveness of her wrists and hands, the finger nails stained with vermilion. He tried to imagine a woman like that, warm, no— burning, with life. It seemed to Lee the doll became animated in a whisper of cool silk, but he couldn't invent a place, a society, into which she fitted. Not Eastlake, certainly, nor New York ... perhaps Cuba. What a vanity of nonsense his thoughts had led him back into: Cytherea, a thing of wax, was on the over-mantel beyond the ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... have said, was going to experience what methods he could invent to torment, after having experienced his powers ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... clergyman said, in his sermon, 'I do not say with the Frenchman, if there were no God it would be well to invent one, but I say, if there were no future state of rewards and punishments, it would be better to believe in one.' Did he mean to say, 'Better to ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... in what you say," we agreed, "if you will allow us to be serious. They are here in our large, free air, without the parasites that kept them in bounds in their own original habitat. We must invent some sort of culture which shall be constructive and not destructive, and will supply the eventual good without the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... the better?" exclaimed Nanteuil. "For I must tell you that the person who did invent it ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... very cheerful and courageous in the setting-out of a child on a journey of speech with so small baggage and with so much confidence in the chances of the hedge. He goes free, a simple adventurer. Nor does he make any officious effort to invent anything strange or particularly expressive or descriptive. The child trusts genially to his hearer. A very young boy, excited by his first sight of sunflowers, was eager to describe them, and called them, without allowing himself to be checked for the trifle of a name, "summersets." ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... misadventures that befall us do we not invent? What is it that we do not lay the fault to right or wrong, that we may have something to quarrel with? Those beautiful tresses, young lady, you may so liberally tear off, are no way guilty, nor is it the whiteness of those delicate breasts you so unmercifully beat, that with ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... invent such schemes, alone could realize them; and the task was intrusted to him. For the next ten weeks no sort of preparation was neglected. The nearly empty chest of the Directory was swept clean; from that source the new commander ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... a loss, explained as follows:—"He had been a long time in practice at Metz, and as there are a great many English there he had ended by forgetting his French." This is just such a piece of childishness as the secondary personalities invent.[35] Dr Hodgson pointed out the absurdity of the explanation to Phinuit, and added, "As you are obliged to express your thoughts through the organism of the medium, and as she does not know French, it would be more plausible if you said that it would ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... deepest water. Afterwards they brought fire, and seemed willing to render any service in their power. Two of the officers suffered themselves to be conducted by the old man to a cave at some distance, but declined going in, though he invited them by all the signs he could invent. This was rather unfortunate, as the rain was falling very violently, and the cave was found next day sufficiently large to have sheltered the whole party. The old man certainly took great pains to make this understood, but the motive of ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... enough to run a grist-mill, &c. &c. I think the American genius is quicker, more wide-awake, more fertile than the British; I think that if our manufactures were as extensive and firmly established as the British, we should invent and improve machinery much faster than they do; but I do not wish to deny that this is ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... want subject to invent, While thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my verse Thine own sweet argument, too excellent For every vulgar paper to rehearse? O give thyself the thanks, if aught in me Worthy perusal stand against thy sight; For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee, When thou thyself dost ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... him, by those who recollect, that of Congreve's four comedies, two are concluded by a marriage in a mask, by a deception, which perhaps never happened, and which, whether likely or not, he did not invent. ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... idle as to talk about our want of a nutritive soil, of opportunity, of inspiration, and all the rest of it. The worthy part is to do something fine! There is no law in our glorious Constitution against that. Invent, create, achieve! No matter if you have to study fifty times as much as one of these! What else are you an artist for? Be you our Moses," I added, laughing, and laying my hand on his shoulder, "and lead us out of ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... somebody to hymn a son of George the Third for his double merit in having been born, and going to a ball. People who thus apply the fine arts in modern days are seldom artists; accordingly, this parasite could not invent a melody; so he coolly stole Aileen Aroon, soiled it by inserting sordid and incongruous jerks into the refrain, and called the stolen and adulterated article Robin Adair. An artisan of the same kidney was soon found to write words down to the degraded ditty: and, so strong is Flunkeyism, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... re-conduct wandering mortals back to nature; who is desirous to place them upon the road of experience; who is anxious that they should actively employ their reason. He is a thinker, who, having meditated upon matter, its energies, its properties, its modes of acting, hath no occasion to invent ideal powers, to recur to imaginary systems, in order to explain the phenomena of the universe—to develope the operations of nature; who needs not creatures of the imagination, which far from making him better understand nature, do no more than ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... unless somebody can invent something better. I hate races, where a fellow has nothing to do with himself when he can't afford to bet. I don't mean to take to cards for the next ten years. I have never been up in a balloon. Spooning is good fun, but it comes to an end so soon one way or ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... them off again! Surely, something less medieval, more ingenious, more modern than this could be devised—if symbolism is to be indulged in at all! Can you devise it, O sceptical one, revelling in disillusion? Can you invent a symbol more natural and graceful than the symbol of the Tree? Perhaps you would have a shop-counter, and shelves behind it, so as to instill early into the youthful mind that this is a planet of commerce! Perhaps you would abolish the doggerel of crackers, and substitute therefor extracts ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... His presumed later version (B), with Thetis, Zeus, and the false Dream, cannot be, or certainly has not been, brought by Mr. Leaf into congruous connection with Book XI., and it results in the fighting of the unarmed Agamemnon, which no poet could have been so careless as to invent. Agamemnon could not go into battle without helmet, shield, and spears (the other armour we need not dwell upon here), and Thersites could not have opened a debate when the Over-Lord had called ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... invent the tale of Othello; English genius could put it on the stage; but Nature alone reserves the power of throwing into a single glance an expression of jealousy grander and more complete than England and Italy together could imagine. This look, seen by Esther, made her clutch the Spaniard by the ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... self-expression—to the exaltation of the great god Whim. They had no training, they recognized no traditions, they spoke to no public. Each was to express, as he thought best, whatever he happened to feel or to think, and to invent, as he went along, the language in which he should express it. I think some of these men had the elements of genius in them and might have done good work; but their task was a heart-breaking and a hopeless one. An art cannot be improvised, and an artist ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... Biographer writes from personal Knowledge, and makes haste to gratify the publick Curiosity, there is Danger left his Interest, his Fear, his Gratitude, or his Tenderness, overpower his Fidelity, and tempt him to conceal, if not to invent. There are many who think it an Act of Piety to hide the Faults or Failings of their Friends, even when they can no longer suffer by their Detection; we therefore see whole Ranks of Characters adorned ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... polar bear lived next door, and spent his time splashing in and out of a pool of water, or sitting on a block of ice, panting, as if the mild spring day was blazing midsummer. He looked very unhappy, and I thought it a pity that they didn't invent a ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... that caused my Lady Lyndon to turn her eyes upon you. Make the people talk about you at Dublin. Be as splendid, and as brave, and as odd as possible. How I wish I were near you! You have no imagination to invent such a character as I would make for you—but why speak; have I not had enough of the world and ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was not a poet: he lacked all, or very nearly all, the faculties which are really poetical. To begin with the more gross and external ones, he had no instinct for, no pleasure in, metrical arrangements for their own sake; he did not think nor invent in verse, ideas did not come to him on the wave of metre; he thought out, he elaborately finished, every sentence in prose, and then translated that prose into verse, as he might have translated (and in some instances actually did translate) from a French version into an Italian ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... himself, of the last phase of Prussian kultur. Somewhere back in the history of Prussia its rulers had to invent and to create, and then kultur brought forth hard men; later, it became possible to copy, and then kultur brought forth mechanical perfection rather than creative perfection, systematized its theories of life and work, and brought ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... which permits evil, creates it in a great measure: in saying that men are things, it necessarily engenders more crimes, more acts of violence, more cowardly deeds, than the imagination of romancers will ever invent. When a class has neither the right to complain, nor to defend itself, nor to testify in law; when it cannot make its voice heard in any manner, we may be excused for not taking in earnest the idyls chanted on its felicity. We must be ignorant at once of the ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... to hear a word on the subject of my private affairs. Thus I am quite unfettered by any former assertions of my own; and I may tell any story I please—with the one drawback hinted at already in the shape of a restraint. Whatever I may invent in the way of pure fiction, I must preserve the character in which I have appeared at Thorpe Ambrose; for, with the notoriety that is attached to my other name, I have no other choice but to marry Midwinter in my maiden name ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... me, that of late the demand upon him for these articles is doubled, and sometimes tripled. I have, therefore, listed Dr. Samuel Johnson in some of my memorandums of the principal planters and favourers of the enclosures, under a name which I took the liberty to invent from the Greek, Papadendrion[299]. Lord Auchinleck and some few more are of the list. I am told that one gentleman in the shire of Aberdeen, viz. Sir Archibald Grant, has planted above fifty millions of trees on a piece of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... art as distinguished from nature; but art itself is natural to man. He is in some measure the artificer of his own frame, as well as of his fortune, and is destined, from the first age of his being, to invent and contrive. He applies the same talents to a variety of purposes, and acts nearly the same part in very different scenes. He would be always improving on his subject, and he carries this intention wherever he moves, through the streets of the populous city, or the wilds ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... reluctant even to admit the objection when stated to him. "I am afraid we must not be too particular about the possibility of personal references and applications: otherwise it is manifest that I never can write another book. I could not invent a story of any sort, it is quite plain, incapable of being twisted into some such nonsensical shape. It would be wholly impossible to turn one through half a dozen chapters." Of course he yielded, nevertheless; and much consideration ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... an ascetic nature as it has never been done in any other work of fiction. Newman himself has not written passages of deeper or purer mysticism, of more sincere spirituality. Balzac, in Seraphita, attempted something of the kind, but the result was never more than a tour de force. He could invent, he could describe, but George Sand felt; and as she felt, she composed, living with and loving with an understanding love all her creations. But it has to be remembered always that she repudiated all religious restraint, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... then, supposing that he possesses the requisite knowledge of life as it is lived to go on with, is to select or evolve from that knowledge the basic idea, plot or theme, which, skillfully displayed, will attract; and then to invent, plan, devise, and construct the trap wherein it is to be used to snare the sympathies, ...
— How to Write a Play - Letters from Augier, Banville, Dennery, Dumas, Gondinet, - Labiche, Legouve, Pailleron, Sardou, Zola • Various
... future that lies before them. Lest they should be too elated by such good tidings, they are, however, reminded that it will be necessary to retain the law relating to passes, which is, in the hands of a people like the Boers, about as unjust a regulation as a dominant race can invent for the oppression of a subject people, and had, in the old days of the Republic, been productive of much hardship. The statement winds up by assuring them that their "interests will never be forgotten or neglected by Her ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... falling upon the earth, thou liest baser than the base stone, worshipping not God but thine own dead and lifeless handiwork. Or rather, the idol hath no right to be called even dead, for how can that have died which never lived? Thou shouldest invent some new name worthy of such madness. Thy stone god is broken asunder; thy potsherd god shattered; thy brazen god rusteth; thy gold or silver god is melted down. Aye, and thy gods are sold, some for a paltry, others for a great price. Not their divinity but their material giveth them value. But ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... shoo up fra royal blood, Or some poor slave beyond the Flood, Mi blessing on the sooap an' sud Shoo did invent; Her name sall renk ameng the good, If ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... some apology to offer for the vice. Many of the signs which form his dialect have come to bear an arbitrary meaning, clearly understood both by his master and himself; yet when a new want arises he must either invent a new vehicle of meaning or wrest an old one to a different purpose; and this necessity frequently recurring must tend to lessen his idea of the sanctity of symbols. Meanwhile the dog is clear in his own conscience, and draws, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... attitude now. She called to Anna to help with the chase. And Anna came cheerfully as well as of necessity, for Max had crushed mulberries on her snowy kitchen table, in an endeavour to "invent cochineal," and it would take her hours ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... articles that will sell at sight. Something that everyone needs, and the poorest can afford. Invent simple things for the benefit of the masses, and your fortune is made. Some years back a one-armed soldier amassed a fortune from a single toy—a wooden ball attached to a rubber string. They cost scarcely ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... there alternately shivering and attempting to invent imperative engagements in town which he had just ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... Manhattoes"; but this was now decried as savage and heathenish, and as tending to keep up the memory of the pagan brood that originally possessed it. Many were the consultations held upon the subject without coming to a conclusion, for, though everybody condemned the old name, nobody could invent a new one. At length, when the council was almost in despair, a burgher, remarkable for the size and squareness of his head, proposed that they should call it New Amsterdam. The proposition took everybody by surprise; it was so striking, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... invent ingenious combinations to reach a good flier. Most of the great rapacious birds of rapid flight or with powerful talons are so well organised for the chase that they have no need of cunning. To see the prey, to seize it and devour it, are acts accomplished in a moment by the single fact ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... meant, my dear;" resumed the little man. "What I mean is to invent a religion that is new and novel, has something broad and attractive in it, and that people of a curious turn of mind would pay for enjoying. That's the kind of religion that pays, you see. And if we could put the church on its feet again with something of that kind. It's ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... of torture might devise? It is certainly difficult to believe that the accounts of the ceremony of initiation given in detail by men in different countries, all closely resembling each other, yet related in different phraseology, could be pure inventions. Had the victims been driven to invent they would surely have contradicted each other, have cried out in their agony that all kinds of wild and fantastic rites had taken place in order to satisfy the demands of their interlocutors. But no, each appears to be describing the same ceremony more or less completely, with characteristic ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... from England to assume official duties, you must take a larger view of your dignities than the clubs are accustomed to admit. For the sex that does not hunt jackals it is easier—you have only to be a little frivolous and Calcutta will invent for you the most side-shaking nickname, as in the case of three ladies known in a viceroyalty of happy legend as the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. I should be sorry to give the impression that Calcutta is therefore a place of gloom. The source of these ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... clapped. Sometimes they were too familiar with their kind of flirtation with death to clap. Then Florette and her partner would invent something a little more daring. They would learn to balance themselves on chairs tilted on two legs on the trapeze, or Florette would hang by only one hand, or she would support her partner by a strap held in her teeth. Sometimes Florette's risks were great enough ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... sufficiently under his control to allow him to invent a hurried pretext for leaving her. He had forgotten to buy some tobacco in a shop they had just passed, he said; he would go back for it now, she must walk on slowly and he would overtake her directly; and so he turned and left her ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... with the Hoe" began to be a back number when Arkwright invented the ark or the mule or whatever he did invent. The man with the wheel hoe is the man that is "It." A wheel hoe costs from $6 to $12, and will do the work of several men without breaking the heart or even the back of one of them. It has as many attachments as a summer girl and is equally versatile. It must be run between the rows ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... if I absolutely wished to quarrel with you, I should try and invent a falsehood, perhaps, and speak to you about a certain arbor, where you and that illustrious princess were together—I should speak also of certain gratifications, of certain kissings of the hand; and you who are so secret on all occasions, so ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the native which throws the gauntlet into the tyrant's face. Our very misfortune ensures our success—because then we had some something to lose, now we have nothing. We can only gain—for I defy the sophistry of despotism to invent anything of public or private oppression which is not already inflicted ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... is changed now. There was nobody at prayers; only the official beadles, and the supernumerary guides, who came for backsheesh. Faith hath degenerated. Accordingly they can't build these mosques, or invent these perfect forms, any more. Witness the tawdry incompleteness and vulgarity of the Pasha's new temple, and the woful failures among the ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... things for which Sophia would have cared less. The girl swore to herself angrily that she would not go, that no allurement would induce her to go. But she was in a net; she was in the meshes of family correctness. Do what she would, she could not invent a reason for not going. Certainly she could not tell her aunt that she merely did not want to go. She was capable of enormities, but not of that. And then began Aunt Harriet's intricate preparations for going. Aunt Harriet never did anything simply. And she could ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... golden-rods on Greenfield Hill! Scarce was the allotted period of rapture past half its term, scarce had she learned to phrase the tender words aloud that her heart beat and choked with, before Abner Dimock began to tire of his incumbrance, and to invent plans and excuses for absence; for he dared not openly declare as yet that he left his patient, innocent wife for such scenes of vice and reckless dissipation as she had not even ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... who built under Foscari, in 1424 (remember my date for the decline of Venice, 1418), was obliged to follow the principal forms of the older palace. But he had not the wit to invent new capitals in the same style; he therefore clumsily copied the old ones. The palace has seventeen main arches on the sea faade, eighteen on the Piazzetta side, which in all are of course carried by thirty-six pillars; and these pillars ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... neither speak nor eat; my mother looked at me with the most tender compassion. Every moment here brings me some new sorrow, and the bonmots of our little Matthias have lost all power to divert me. My father makes signs to him with his eyes that he may invent something witty, but it is all lost upon me. Music to a suffering body is but an importunate noise; and sallies of wit to a despairing soul have lost ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various |
