FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • More 'Originality' Quotes from Famous Books

... most strongly in his short stories; in his long novels the reader (or at least one reader) does get rather tired of everybody treating everybody else in a manner which in real life would be an impossible intellectual strain. But in his short studies there is the unanswerable thing called real originality; especially in the very shape and point of the tale. It may sound odd to compare him to Mr. Rudyard Kipling: but he is like Kipling and also like Wells in this practical sense: that no one ever wrote a story at all like the Mark of the Beast; no ...

— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... the same; 'steady as old Time,' as Mrs Gibson called him, with her usual originality; 'a rock of strength, under whose very shadow there is rest,' as Mrs. Hamley had once spoken of him. So the cause of Mrs. Gibson's altered manner lay not in him. Yet now he was sure of a welcome, let him come at any hour he would. He was playfully reproved ...

— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... associations, perpetuate the status of existing parties, be a stickler for creed, ceremonies, and stale opinions, and adhere to ancient orthodoxy in medicine and religion. The animal faculties, since they are staid and regular, are naturally antagonistic to genius, sensibility, and originality. Their mental tendencies have been fairly described and their physiological results may be ...

— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... man so tender as Drake ever was for the lives of his men and the safety of his ships, to attack such a place might well have appeared hopeless; but the originality of the amphibious corsair at once descried a hole which had escaped all the science of the Spanish martialists. Instead of entering by the Bocca Grande, with consummate skill and daring he piloted the whole fleet ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... fetters the expression of individuality in architecture. We can but weep over the senseless imitations of European buildings which one beholds in modern Japan. We marvel why, among the most progressive Western nations, architecture should be so devoid of originality, so replete with repetitions of obsolete styles. Perhaps we are passing through an age of democratisation in art, while awaiting the rise of some princely master who shall establish a new dynasty. Would that we loved the ancients ...

— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura

... wanted counsel how to get a valentine to her,—because it was too big to shove in a lamp-post, and she might catch him if he left it on the steps, rang the bell, and ran away. Daniel wrote his own valentine; but, despite its originality, that document gave him no such comfort as Billy got from twenty-five cents' worth of embossed paper, pink cupids, and doggerel. Finally, Billy announced to me that he had been to play with Jimmy, and got introduced to ...

— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... grieve over her hopeless lack of artistic talent and she had never attempted to caricature. Tims was thinking of a young fellow of a college who had lately died of brain disease. In the earlier stages of his insanity, it had been remarked that he had an originality which had not been his when in a normal state. What if her friend were developing the same terrible disease? If it were so, it was no use fussing, since there was no remedy. Still, she felt a desperate need to take some sort ...

— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... the French taste Mark Twain's pleasantry appeared macabre, his wit brutal, his temperament dry to excess. By some, indeed, his exaggerations were regarded as symptoms of mental alienation; and the originality of his verve did not succeed in giving a passport to the incoherence of his conceptions. "It has been said," remarked M. Forgues, with keen perception, "that an academician slumbers in the depths of every Frenchman; and it was this which prevented the success ...

— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... walked over to the Mount, where we found the Poet alone. One of the first things we heard from him was the death of one who had been, he said, his friend for more than thirty years. He then continued to speak of him; called him the most wonderful man that he had ever known—wonderful for the originality of his mind, and the power he possessed of throwing out in profusion grand central truths from which might be evolved the most comprehensive systems. Wordsworth, as a poet, regretted that German metaphysics had so much captivated ...

— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... exorbitant in its requirements!); for although I well know how hard it is for a man of genius with a seriously underrated subject to maintain serene and kindly relations with the men who underrate it, and who keep all the best places for less important subjects which they profess without originality and sometimes without much capacity for them, still, if he overwhelms them with wrath and disdain, he cannot expect them to heap ...

— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw

... to enjoy this hunt, Charles. I like to find originality in a felon. It varies the routine. At any rate, it is something new that you and I should be shadowed by the very people we are in pursuit of— O, I was nearly forgetting. Anything fresh in ...

— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... people like to make new discoveries and get credit therefore. Our valuable new discoveries in healing are very ancient. Though much that appears in these pages may seem strange and new to many, I claim no originality. My aim is to present workable, helpful facts in such a way that any person of average intelligence and will power can apply them, and to get the essentials of health within such a compass that no unreasonable amount of time need be employed ...

— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... but by simply following his own bent and selecting what appeals to him in anything and everything that comes within the range of his vision. The result is likely to be something very different from the violent exploits in peculiarity that have been masquerading as originality lately. Originality is more concerned with ...

— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... write poetry for the pleasure of writing it. They write poetry in order that they may be called poets. They aim at originality instead of sweeping boldly ahead and being content to be themselves ...

— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... that so large and diversified a show of Machinery could not be made up in the United States as is here presented in behalf of British Invention; yet I think a strictly American Fair might be got up which would evince more originality of creation or design. If I am wrong in this, I shall cheerfully say so when convinced of it. Many of these machines are very good of their kind without involving any novel principle or important adaptation. With regard to Flax-Dressing, ...

— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... rhythm is musical, flowing, and pure; her thoughts gentle and womanly; her diction refined; her form good; her powers of imitation great. What she wants now is more self-reliance, that she may write from the inner life of her own experience. Her poems lack originality. Let her not fear to dip her pen in her own heart, and sing to us the joys and sorrows of the poor. Burns were a better study for her than Moore; the Corn Law rhymer than Poe. With her talents and the cultivation she has acquired, her familiarity ...

— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... their drapery. The faces are strongly individualized and seem to be portraits. While these statues must be attributed to a period previous to the middle of the twelfth century, we see in them the originality of French genius struggling to break away from the fetters of ...

— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... by this series of handbooks is the recall of the designer and craftsman to a saner view of what constitutes originality by setting before them something of the experience of past times, when craft tradition was still living and the designer had a closer contact with the material in which his design was carried out than is usual ...

— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson

... modern, so great is the preponderance of those in Pali and Sanskrit, that the Singhalese can scarcely be said to possess a literature in their national dialect; and in the books they do possess, so utter is the dearth of invention or originality, that almost all which are not either ballads or compilations, are translations from one or other ...

— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... should not think on all subjects as she had been brought up to do, and the least originality struck her naturally as a sort of pose. But on account of his illness Mary allowed him a certain latitude, and when he said anything she did not approve of, instead of arguing the point, merely smiled indulgently and changed the subject. There was plenty of time before her, and when James became ...

— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... a strong and attractive individuality. English diplomacy presented many men of his type to the embassies in foreign countries. But to what class did Arabian belong? Even Dick Garstin was quite comprehensible, in spite of his extraordinary manners and almost violent originality. He was a Bohemian, with touches of genius, touches of vulgarity. There were others less than him, yet not wholly unlike him, men of the studios, of the painting schools, smelling as it were of Chelsea and the Quartier Latin. ...

— December Love • Robert Hichens

... to bring her to a proper sense of the accepted values in this affair, but my aunt's originality of outlook was never so invincible. "Men don't tell on one another in affairs of passion," I protested, ...

— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... had a seat at Captain Ascott's table, and I did not see anything of him at meal-times, but elsewhere I soon saw him a great deal. He appeared to seek my company. I was glad of this, for I found that he was an agreeable man, and had distinct originality of ideas, besides being possessed of very considerable culture. He also had that social aplomb so much a characteristic of the naval officer. Yet, man of the world as he was, he had a strain of asceticism ...

— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... for new uses. Our business was, like Old Mortality, to clear out and cut afresh inscriptions that had been made illegible by time and storm. At least this delivered him from the senseless vanity of originality and personal appropriation. We feel sure that if he found that a thought which he had believed to be new had been expressed in literature before, he would have been pleased and not mortified. No reflection of his own could give him half as much satisfaction ...

— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley

... Carolina, acted with boldness and originality. He divided his little army into two bodies, one of which cooeperated with Marion's partisans in the northeastern part of the state, and threatened Cornwallis's communications with the coast. The other body he sent under Morgan to the southwestward, ...

— The War of Independence • John Fiske

... Market street is one of the most entertaining main-traveled urban roads in the world. Newspaper offices in a cluster, store windows flooded with light, filled with advertising devices of the most amusing originality, cars, taxis, crowds, it has all the earmarks of the main street of any big American city, with the addition, at intervals, of the pretty "islands" so typical of the boulevards of Paris and with, last of all, a zip and a zest, a pep and a ...

— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin

... the Dominichin last post, as I suppose I had before, for I always was for buying it; it is one of the most engaging pictures I ever saw. I have no qualms about its originality; and even if Sir Robert should not like it when it comes, which is impossible, I think I would live upon a flitch of bacon and a bottle of ink, rather than not spare the money to buy it myself: so ...

— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... he said, and placing the attache-case over the collar-box, he snatched it up and the collar-box had disappeared inside! It was an old invention of thieves and possessed no originality. I wondered that Rayne's friends employed such a contrivance, which, of course, was useful when it became necessary that valuable ...

— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux

... Censorship was based on hypotheses. It was conceived that Almighty God had established St. Peter as a censor of public faith and morals, but it was not maintained that he was established as the censor of art and literature and life. There was thus originality in all these affairs. In a mediaeval town every house was different, in a mediaeval cathedral no two pillars were alike, and in the dress of a mediaeval crowd was captured the colours of the rainbow. With an odd result. ...

— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... those rabbits than you usually found in rabbits, so it may be said of Mr. Fechter's Hamlet, that there was more consistency about that Hamlet than you usually found in Hamlets. Its great and satisfying originality was in its possessing the merit of a distinctly conceived and executed idea. From the first appearance of the broken glass of fashion and mould of form, pale and worn with weeping for his father's death, and remotely suspicious of its cause, to his ...

— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens

... years before. And I confess that it was with not a little amusement that I employed this device, since I had then recently seen my 'Vignettes of Manhattan' criticized as being "photographic in method." Here again I had no reason to doubt the originality of my plot; and here once more was my confidence shattered, and I was forced to confess that fiction can never hope ...

— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews

... proceeded, sometimes seriously but for the most part whimsically, to outline his model republic, while Barbara worked and listened, sometimes with amusement, sometimes with a sense of being uplifted and thrilled by the man's plausible originality. Since she had but the vaguest recollection of history, and none whatever of economics, it was easy for the man to play the constructive statesman. Nor were his schemes always foolish and illogical, since the book of human nature had been always in his library, ...

— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... my father most about his pupils was the picturesqueness and originality of their language. He never wanted a literal repetition of bookish expressions, and particularly encouraged every one to speak "out of his own head." I remember how once he stopped a boy who was running into the ...

— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy

... plead his cause in his own words—and it must be conceded he does it well. "The plan of the History of the city of Milwaukee, which is herewith presented to the public," he says in his preface, "possesses the merit of originality. It is based upon the fact that in all older regions, a serious deficiency exists even in the most exhaustive histories which it is possible now to compile through the absence of personal and detailed records of pioneer men and deeds. The primary design of this work ...

— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... of trammels - Wild as the wild Bithynian camels, Wild as the wild sea-eagles—Bob His widowed dam contrives to rob, And thus with great originality Effectuates his personality. Thenceforth his terror-haunted flight He follows through the starry night; And with the early morning breeze, Behold him on the azure seas. The master of a trading dandy Hires Robin for a go of brandy; And all the happy hills of home ...

— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson

... worked every evening at something. One day there appeared in a scientific paper an article containing an account of certain discoveries of the greatest importance, signed by a name utterly unknown to scientific men. The article was followed by others, all of the greatest interest and originality. The man himself had little idea of the importance of his own discoveries. When his cottage was besieged by leaders in the world of science, he was amazed; he showed his simple laboratory to his visitors; he spoke of ...

— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant

... wealth, with our tools such as the mediaeval craftsman could never have dreamed of, and with the experience of twenty centuries to guide us we have made no advance during more than half a century. Our best architects acknowledge that until we get a new method of building, originality in architecture is an impossibility, mainly because all the existing styles of architecture have been worked out to their legitimate conclusion, and have been perfected under circumstances and conditions with which we have entirely broken; the originality in detail which pervades ...

— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... come, as if against the enemy who had caused his benefactress so much distress, he pronounced a formal and emphatic curse upon their whole race, "from the head-chief to the commoner, from the whisky-soaking warrior down to the pan-licking squall-a-baby," all of whom he anathematised with as much originality as fervour of expression; after which, he proceeded, with more sedateness, to resume his post at the head of the travellers, and conduct them onwards on ...

— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... only advantage spring can claim over her sister seasons is her novelty, the only reason she can offer for being the spoiled child of the poets is that nobody but the poets could keep on fancying that there was any longer the least originality in her novelty." ...

— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... something unusual and who would recognize its unusual and distinct differences would be the real discoverer, but unless he could prove the fact that he had called it to the attention of others in some manner he would have difficulty in complying with the patent law and making a proper showing of originality as required by that law. But he would also, in addition to being the discoverer, have to asexually reproduce it and this he might not be able to do on account of his lack of knowledge ...

— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... she has welded on California beauty, Paris dresses, Eastern culture, Europe trips, and wild Western originality, the queer, dreamy superstitions of the quarters, and the result is soul-shattering. And she is but ...

— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... authority, says of it: "We may save ourselves the trouble of giving any lengthened review of this book, for we recommend all who are in search of a fascinating novel to read it for themselves. They will find it well worth their while. There is a freshness and originality about it quite charming, and there is a certain nobleness in the treatment, both of sentiment and incident, which is not often found. We imagine that few can read it without deriving some comfort or profit from the quiet good sense and unobtrusive words ...

— Moods • Louisa May Alcott

... nor all the wit of the satirists, are likely to affect its vitality. Never did an idea go round civilisation so rapidly. Crinoline has already a heavier martyrology than many a creed. The world is used easily, if one can only hit on the proper method; and force of character, originality, of whatever kind, is always certain to make its mark. It is a diamond, and the world is its pane of glass. In a world so commonplace as this, the peculiar man even should be considered a blessing. Humorousness, eccentricity, the habit of looking at men and things from an odd angle, are valuable, ...

— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... foreheads, broad flat noses, rather small eyes, and very prominent cheek-bones. His reflections on the degraded state in which these women live, as subservient entirely to the arbitrary will and necessary purposes of their husbands, have not so much originality as force, but possess, however, enough of both to deserve a place here. "They commonly kept at a distance from the men, and seemed fearful of offending them by a look or gesture; they were the only persons in the family who had any employment, and several of them brought bundles ...

— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... dessert, this 'child of the wilderness' had more courage, discretion, and power of mind than many a woman of mature age nurtured in idleness and luxury, with minds carefully drilled and educated out of any originality or self-resource that nature may have endowed ...

— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... welcome to our table. Many of its articles evince marked ability and striking originality."—National Era, ...

— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various

... he was no wild radical altering for the mere pleasure of alteration, or in the mere search for originality, is evident from the length of time during which he abstained from publishing, or even composing works of pretension, and from the likeness which his early works possess to those of his predecessors. He began naturally with the forms which were in use in his days, ...

— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... doorway, an arch of flame flashed out the name of a great actress, whose closing performances in a play of unusual originality had been the theme of long articles in the Paris papers which Darrow had tossed into their compartment ...

— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... the oaks which are to compose its beams and stanchions. You take over all such supplies ready hewn, and choose by preference time- seasoned timber. Since Homer's prime a host of other great creative writers have recognised this axiom when they too began to build: and "originality" has by ordinary been, like chess and democracy, a Mecca ...

— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... we were safely landed at the Fondamenti nuovi, and went immediately to the Mendicanti, where they were performing the oratorio of Sisera. The composer, a young man, had displayed great fire and originality in this performance; and a knowledge of character seldom found in the most celebrated masters. The supplication of the thirsty chieftain, and Jael's insinuating arts and pious treachery, are admirably expressed; but the agitation and bodily slumbers which ...

— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... literature; he indulges in an elaborate criticism of Statius, and points out what a sudden fall that author makes at one place from extravagant bombast; he communicates the latest efforts of his muse, and tries, one regrets to say, to get more credit for precocity and originality than fairly belongs to him; he accidentally alludes to his dog that he may bring in a translation from the Odyssey, quote Plutarch, and introduce an anecdote which he has heard from Trumbull about Charles I.; he elaborately discusses Cromwell's classical translations, adduces ...

— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... games, we have, with characteristic originality, invented a lot of games of our own, and in these the boy takes endless delight, without bothering about their origin. On cricket, baseball, hand ball and other great games, many books have been written telling how to play "scientifically". ...

— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... be one, must be accepted. If it be a humiliation to American authors to own the traditions and standards established by these men, and thereby to enrol themselves in their immortal fellowship, why, then it must be owned that they have deliberately incurred that humiliation. One American of vivid originality tried to escape it, and with what result? Simply that Whitman holds a place of his own, somewhat like that of Blake one might say, in the literature of the English language, and has produced at least as much effect in England ...

— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... impression of Mr. Browning's genius than could any pedigree which more palpably connected him with the 'knightly' and 'squirely' families whose name he bore. It supplies the strong roots of English national life to which we instinctively refer it. Both the vivid originality of that genius and its healthy assimilative power stamp it as, in some sense, the product of virgin soil; and although the varied elements which entered into its growth were racial as well as cultural, and inherited as well as absorbed, ...

— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... Balzac was in his own way literary, and had written two or three pamphlets, one on his favourite subject—that of health. He seems to have been a man of much originality, many peculiarities, and much kindness of heart. He was evidently impulsive, like his celebrated son, and he certainly made a culpable mistake, and a cruel one for his family, when he rashly concluded that he would always remain a bachelor, ...

— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... the court martial was Tiburcio, and Tiburcio had in mind one golden goose to save and one meddling Gringo to lose. He riddled the foregoing evidence with refreshing originality. He testified to the brigand attack for possession of the marquise. Had he not found Don Anastasio stretched upon the ground? Had not the dauntless anciano, the self-same Don Anastasio, fallen in defence of the two French senoritas? ...

— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... gone to its farthest limit, when it failed to express his ideas or feelings, he forced it—the result was a new term, or a change in the ordinary meaning of words sprang forth from has pen. With this was joined a vigour and breadth of style, very pronounced, which makes up the originality of the works of Saint-Simon and contributes toward placing their author in the foremost rank ...

— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... The originality of Christ's moral teaching lies not so much in the novelty of His precepts as in the new relation in which He sets them, the deepening which He gives them, the motives on which He bases them, and the power which He communicates to keep them. Others before Him had pronounced ...

— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... towers; his great garden house with its vane; his fantastic dial in the fashion of a tall striped pole surmounted by a dragon;—these were the astonishment of visitors; and it was freely said that had not Mr. Buxton been exceedingly adroit he would have paid the penalty of his magnificence and originality by being forced to receive a royal visit—a favour that would have gone far to impoverish, if not to ruin him. The chancel of the parish-church overlooked the west end of his lime-avenue, while the east end of the garden terminated in a great ...

— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... we are far more likely to underrate the originality of the Greeks than to exaggerate it, and we do not always remember the very short time they took to lay down the lines scientific inquiry has followed ever ...

— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... is the life of our party, and I have never appreciated the young man so well. His originality of perception makes his conversation both lively and in- teresting, and as he talks, his wan and suffering countenance lights up with an intelligent animation. His father seems to become more devoted to him than ever, and I have seen ...

— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... His nature was too deep to remain satisfied with the mere impressions of the senses. The union of the world without with the world within gave him a view of the universe and of human life full of originality ...

— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones

... were previously as unsettled as his own. To escape the raillery with which he expected White would assail him on learning the change in his sentiments, Almond avoided his society; and when his friend offered to defend his opinions, if Henry would allow the divine originality of the Bible, he exclaimed, "Good God! you surely regard me in a worse light than I deserve." The discussion that followed, and the perusal of Scott's "Force of Truth," which Almond placed in his hands, induced him to direct his attention seriously to the subject; but an affecting ...

— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... flannel, well open at the neck, from which the bronzed column of the throat rose in austere dignity. A pair of Mr. Yellett's trousers, stuffed into high, cow-puncher's boots, that met the hem of a skirt coming barely to the knees, contributed to the originality of ...

— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... want to get any idea of the extraordinary originality which Morhange introduced into such surroundings, you who, after all, have a certain familiarity with the tropics, listen to this. It was exactly two hundred kilometers from here, in the vicinity of the Great Dune, in that horrible stretch of six days without water. ...

— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... width of the area from which information has been obtained, as well as the degree of similarity which appears in the folk-lore of different regions belonging to this wide territory. Here and there may be observed items showing a measure of originality; a new superstition may have arisen, or an ancient one been modified, according to the fancy of an individual, in consequence of defective memory, or in virtue of misapprehension. But on the whole such peculiarities make ...

— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various

... from the tyranny of the government, and probably from the effects of his long incarceration in a damp, unhealthy jail. It is the best and most scriptural guide that has ever appeared to aid us in the performance of relative duties: written with originality of thought and that peculiar and pious earnestness which ...

— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Gildon, whose books are forgotten under the dust of more than two centuries, in 1693 and 1694 denied that Shakspere's plays had any excellence, any wealth in profound sentences or truth to nature, any originality, force or beauty of diction; and placed him far below the ancients in all essential ...

— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith

... and proceeds to the door in the hope of catching something to make his mournful number complete. He happens upon Mr. Jonas Academy, an honest cracker, from Christ's parish, who visits the city on a little business. Jonas is a person of great originality, is enclosed in loosely-setting homespun, has a woe-begone countenance, and wears a large-brimmed felt hat. He is just the person to make the number complete, and is led in, unconscious of the object for which he finds himself a captive. Mr. Brien Moon now becomes ...

— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... this social independence and originality, the shrewd common-sense which we have so often heard ascribed to them. For if, by some fatal error, they should undertake a social rivalry, in kind, with the old world and all its splendid accessories of antiquity, wealth and hereditary refinement, the ...

— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis

... round arch there are hints of Gothic, and yet it is not a Gothic arch. Throughout the treatment there are echoes of the Spanish, and yet the treatment is not Spanish. The more one studies the conception and the workmanship the more striking it grows in originality and daring. Mullgardt has succeeded in putting into architecture the spirit that inspired Langdon Smith's poem 'Evolution,' beginning 'When you were a tadpole and I was a fish.' In the chaotic feeling that the court gives there is a subtle suggestiveness. The whole evolution of man ...

— The City of Domes • John D. Barry

... however, we were obliged to sit impatiently through a rambling discourse, given in a half-belligerent manner, on the deterioration of moral standards. Re-reading Clara's notes, I find that the subject matter is without originality and the diction inferior. But the lecture ceased abruptly, and the time for questions ...

— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... of Lyell than of any other man, both before and after my marriage. His mind was characterised, as it appeared to me, by clearness, caution, sound judgment, and a good deal of originality. When I made any remark to him on Geology, he never rested until he saw the whole case clearly, and often made me see it more clearly than I had done before. He would advance all possible objections to my suggestion, and even after these were exhausted would long remain dubious. ...

— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... (c. 1674—c. 1745), Italian musician, was born at Venice. He was a prolific composer of operas attracting contemporary attention for their originality, but is more remarkable as a composer of instrumental music, which greatly attracted the attention of Bach, who wrote at least two fugues on Albinoni's themes and constantly used his basses for harmony ...

— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... alone, others by written work, photographs, and industrial work, and a few by written work alone. In subject-matter and original thought, South Dakota's work compared favorably with that of other schools of like age and conditions, especially in simplicity and originality. ...

— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... life-school of the world, she there matriculated on her own account, and so, perhaps, saved her further faculty from destruction. For theoretical knowledge would have dulled the keenness of her insight probably, confused her point of view, and brought in accepted commonplaces to spoil the originality of her conclusions. It was from practical experience of life rather than from books that she learnt her work; she saw for herself before she came under the influence of other people's observations; and this was doubtless the secret of ...

— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... first extravagant story written under the form of a circumstantial narration of travels. It was the precursor of "The Voyage to the Moon," Baron Muenchausen, and various Utopias. We must therefore allow it the merit of originality, and it evinces talent, for mere exaggeration would not be entertaining. The intention was to ridicule the marvellous travellers' stories then current. Much of this history is merely florid, and we may compare it to a waving line, in which the fable is constantly undulating ...

— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... that tickled his master's tongue. He served the public faithfully, with a twisted, cynic smile behind his spectacles—for John Craik had a family to feed. He knew that Eve's work was only partially good—true woman's work that might cease to flow at any moment. But he detected the undeniable originality of it, and the public ...

— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... mean degree or order; his affections were of the truest and sincerest. . . . His poems are works of refinement rather than of passion; but yet they are inspired with genuine sentiment. They are no doubt extremely artificial in form; the weight of their author's reading somewhat depresses their originality; he can with difficulty escape from his books to himself; but yet there is in him a genuine poetical spirit. His poetry, however elaborated, is sincere and truthful. If the exterior is what Horace might have called over-filed and polished, the ...

— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... that I am unfit for my good post! It is very strange, though! However, one must not let it appear!' So he praised the stuff he did not see, and assured them of his delight in the beautiful colours and the originality of the design. 'It is absolutely charming!' he said to the Emperor. Everybody in the town was talking ...

— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... Nicholas Bolkonski and his daughter moved to Moscow. At that time enthusiasm for the Emperor Alexander's regime had weakened and a patriotic and anti-French tendency prevailed there, and this, together with his past and his intellect and his originality, at once made Prince Nicholas Bolkonski an object of particular respect to the Moscovites and the center of the Moscow opposition ...

— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... connected with one or other of the enterprises of those periods; and the author, to show how unprejudiced he is, and what original views he takes of subjects, must needs speak up for Popery, whenever he has occasion to mention it; though, with all his originality, when he brings his hero and the vagabonds with which he is concerned before a barricadoed house, belonging to the Whigs, he can make them get into it by no other method than that which Scott makes his rioters employ to get into the ...

— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... of the verses ascribed to him is contested. He was one of the creators of modern English prose; and his disquisitions have for two centuries ceased to be read. He and Bacon are coupled by Dugald Stewart as eminent beyond their age for their emancipation from the fetters of the Schoolmen, their originality, and the enlargement of their scientific conceptions; and a single phrase, 'the fundamental laws of human knowledge,' is the only philosophical idea connected with him. His name is entered, rightly, in the first rank of discoverers, navigators, ...

— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... coyotes, Brahma cattle, prickly pear, cottonwoods, Caddo Lake, the Brazos River, Santa Fe adobes, or other features of the land, let him bolster and put into perspective his own knowledge by reading what others have said on the matter. Knowledge fosters originality. Reading gives ideas. ...

— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... is almost superfluous to say that this book makes no pretension to originality of any kind. If it contributes towards restoring to Englishmen that precious heritage—the old language and literature of Iceland—which our miserably narrow scheme of education has hitherto defrauded them of, it will ...

— An Icelandic Primer - With Grammar, Notes, and Glossary • Henry Sweet

... pronounced all sects equal before the law. Would I excel in music, or yearn for military glory, the world has long since pronounced him a hero, and his flute was heard before I learned the violoncello. Oh, I hate him, I hate him, for his greatness is the rock upon which my originality is fated to split; and his shadow projects forever before me and my unborn deeds. He forces me to pass for a counterfeit of his true coin, and yet I feel that my individuality is as marked as his! He is the evil ...

— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... heavily. She had long since given up hoping that it might be the best, or even second best, or third. To be 'Commended' was an honour she had ceased to hope for. She had written and re-written, and altered and corrected, until all the freshness and originality were gone, and the whole was becoming stiff and stilted, and she was incapable of seeing whether she was ...

— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... any credit for originality, Mr. Dalton? How can one tell where one picks up ideas? They are like pebbles in our pathway; sometimes we never even see them, but carelessly scuff them aside as we walk. Then the sun of somebody's genius shines ...

— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... in the historical rolls; but no painter's name has been thus preserved. The fact that no greater progress was made is a proof of the discouraging influences that must have been around these artists, for it is not possible that none of them had imagination or originality: there must have been some whose souls were filled with poetic visions, for some of the Egyptian writings show that poetry existed in ancient Egypt. But of what use could imagination be to artists who were governed by the laws of a narrow priesthood, and hedged about by a superstitious religion ...

— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement

... Morgan overtook Joe Lynch, driving toward town with his customary load of bones. Morgan walked his horse beside Joe's wagon to chat with him, finding always a charm of originality and rather more than superficial thinking about the old fellow that was refreshing in the intellectual ...

— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... like many a great man before him, seemed not to be aware of how much credit he was entitled to for his invention, for he did not divulge to his companions the originality of his proceeding; he wished them to believe he was only proceeding in the commonplace manner, and had no ambition to be distinguished as the happy projector of ...

— Stories of Comedy • Various

... students the necessity of clear presentation of the Gospel. It is desirable that they should express the things which have gripped them in an individual way, not adopting a Western colouring but using to the full their Eastern knowledge: "Originality is like a fountain head; orthodoxy is too often only the unimpeachable ...

— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... principally characterized by the diversity of the styles of so many contemporary artists. The decadence of the arts immediately succeeded, the necessary consequence, when, instead of excellence, variety and originality became the end of the artist. The tendencies which are peculiar to this period gave birth sometimes to pictures which ministered to a low sensuality; sometimes to works which attracted by their effects of light, and also to ...

— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... a decrepit world, where nature takes a hundred years to move a foot of solid land. Men and animals go about in flocks. Originality is a lost habit." ...

— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... of late years in all foreign society from their beauty, their wit, and their originality. From the somewhat perilous admiration of the Prince of Wales and other Royal Highnesses for American beauties, there has grown up, however, a rather presumptuous boldness in some women, which has rather speedily brought them into trouble, and therefore it may ...

— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... earliest poem—a perfect sincerity, taking effect in the deliberate use of the most direct and unconventional expression, for the conveyance of a poetic sense which recognised no conventional standard of what poetry was called upon to be. At a time when poetic originality in England might seem to have had its utmost play, here was certainly one new poet more, with a structure and music of verse, a vocabulary, an accent, unmistakably novel, yet felt to be no mere tricks of manner adopted with a view to forcing attention—an accent which might rather count ...

— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... delivery of a fixed number of manuscripts. Their enthusiasm for Aristotle is equally notorious; but it would be unjust to imagine that, in adopting the Aristotelian method, together with the astrology and alchemy of Persia, and of the Jews of Mesopotamia and Arabia, they were wholly devoid of originality." ...

— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... or memories, for neither ever painted directly from nature; the same conception of the subject as a whole, its rhythmic and harmonic unity as opposed to the fragmentary manner of treatment of most of their contemporaries; the lyric passion in line and tint; the same originality which often became waywardness in the conception of subject in itself; the same revolt from all precedent; and the same passion for subtle gradation and infinite space, air, and light—and some of Rousseau's skies were the most ...

— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... miserable huts, very low and smoky, were scattered along the shores of the Aldane. Here he wrote several stories, and the "Dream of Makar," which was published two years later, and greatly praised by the critics for its originality and its setting. The dreary country around Yakutsk and the life that is lived there made such a profound impression on the young man that even to-day he speaks of that time ...

— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... light, easy way of touching on things, as if all his concessions, conclusions, and concurrences were merest matter of course; and thus making himself appear master of the situation over which he merely skimmed on insect-wing. Mr. Raymount took him not merely for a man of thought but one of some originality even—capable at least of forming an opinion of his own, as is, he was in the habit of averring, ...

— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... hear its own fine sounds. Hitherto we had heard the repetition of the word of courage and of brotherhood uttered by all our gathering armies. But here, in battle, face to face with the eternities, that spirit of his sounds like the chord of an instrument heard for the first time in its originality and its infinite sensibility. Nor are these random notes; they soon make one harmonious sound and acquire a most touching significance, until by daily practice he learns how to abstract himself altogether from the most wretched surroundings. A quite impersonal ...

— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous

... that though Mr. Darwin gained "far wider general acceptance" for both the doctrine of descent in general, and for that of the descent of man from a simious or semi-simious ancestor in particular, "he laid no sort of claim to originality or proprietorship in either theory." This is not the case. No one can claim a theory more frequently and more effectually than Mr. Darwin claimed descent with modification, nor, as I have already said, is it ...

— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... and a season of prayer followed. Their prayers were marked for their originality and earnestness. Said one woman, "Oh Lord, do please hitch up your cheer a little nearer your winder—draw aside your curtain, an' look down 'pon us poor creturs, an' gib your table-cloth a good shake, dat we may pick ...

— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... of thought and originality, this stanza certainly deserves credit," Li Wan asserted; "but as regards pregnancy and simplicity of language, it, after all, yields to that of ...

— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... his manner to his matter, we cannot claim for Byron any absolute originality. His sources have been found in Rousseau, Voltaire, Chateaubriand, Beaumarchais, Lauzun, Gibbon, Bayle, St. Pierre, Alfieri, Casti, Cuvier, La Bruyore, Wieland, Swift, Sterne, Le Sage, Goethe, scraps of the classics, and the ...

— Byron • John Nichol

... everything which man undertakes, true greatness is the most ready to recognize and most willing to obey those simple outward laws which have been sanctioned by the experience of mankind, and we suspect the originality which cannot move except ...

— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... has really been taken either from Comte's claims as a powerful original thinker, or from his immeasurable pre-eminence over Saint Simon in intellectual grasp and vigour and coherence. As high a degree of originality may be shown in transformation as in invention, as Moliere and Shakespeare have proved in the region of dramatic art. In philosophy the conditions are not different. Il faut prendre son ...

— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley

... to consider how much originality and spontaneity emanate from these various individuals who, on the preceding evening, did not even know each other, and who are now, for several days, condemned to lead a life of extreme intimacy, jointly defying ...

— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... give to beginners—"Go to the theatre; study its conditions and mechanism for yourself"—is, in fact, of very doubtful value. It might, in many cases, be wiser to warn the aspirant to keep himself unspotted from the playhouse. To send him there is to imperil, on the one hand, his originality of vision, on the other, his individuality of method. He may fall under the influence of some great master, and see life only through his eyes; or he may become so habituated to the current tricks of the theatrical trade as to lose all sense ...

— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... discovered in 1497 by the celebrated Italian adventurers, John Cabot and his sons, under a commission from Henry VII of England, who, however, did not avail of the discovery.] "I should like," he exclaimed with characteristic impetuosity and originality, "I should like to see the clause in Adam's will which authorizes these, my royal cousins, to divide the New World between them!" As there seemed, however, little chance of his being permitted to adjust the rival claims by a reference to our ...

— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... Povey's. Between them they manufactured tickets by the dozen and by the score—tickets which, while possessing nearly all the smartness and finish of Mr. Chawner's tickets, were much superior to these in originality and strikingness. Constance and Mr. Povey were delighted and fascinated by them. As for Mrs. Baines, she said little, but the modern spirit was too elated by its success to care whether she said little or much. And every ...

— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... There is a refreshing originality (sic) in the al fresco meals partaken of in the fresh open air, in a comfortable trench—so comfortable that legs are twelve inches too long, knees in the way of your chin, and somebody's boots making doormats of your tiny bit of cheese. Water and tea—when you get it—has ...

— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq

... herself again following Somers's cynical but good-humored description of the various guests, and, I fear, seeing with his eyes, listening with his ears, and occasionally participating in his superior attitude. The "fearful joy" she had found in the novelty of the situation and the originality of the actors seemed now quite right from this critical point of view. So she learned how the guest with the long hair was an unknown painter, to whom Rushbrook had given a commission for three hundred yards of painted canvas, to be cut up and framed as occasion and space required, ...

— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... of the initiative spirit in religion, of at least a percentage of the colonial women, but the statements above should be sufficient to prove that religious affairs were not wholly left to the guidance of men. And what of women's originality and daring in other fields of activity? The indications are that they even ventured, and that successfully, to dabble in the affairs of state. Sewall mentions that the women were even urged by the men to expostulate with the governor about his plans for attending ...

— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... undoubtedly a man of genius and of considerable originality, and a close study of his writings shows conclusively his mental eccentricity. Judging wholly from his printed utterances, Mr. Ingersoll was only a superficial scientist and mediocre scholar. His power lay in his wonderful word imagery, ...

— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir

... not to speak of the electricity in them, but of the originality in them, that I referred to these works of fiction. There is no originality in them whatever. Human thought is incapable of originality. No man ever yet imagined a new thing—only some variation or extension of an ...

— Dreams - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome

... by his tooth or a compositor by his left thumb, care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction! But, indeed, if you are trivial. I cannot blame you, for the days of the great cases are past. Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools. I think that I have touched bottom at last, however. This note I had this morning marks my zero-point, ...

— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... affairs. He told of one in particular, an old sea-captain, who was captured by the British in the revolutionary war for being an American; how he suffered everything while incarcerated in Dartmoor prison, rather than deny his birthright. The originality of this old "grandsir," as he was called, also interested them. He always called the gentry, or the "upper ten," the "Qual." This was his name for the quality, as others called them. Tom was specially pleased to hear that the farm which he owned and lived on was ...

— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... whole scheme of a planning department to do the thinking for the men, as well as a number of foremen to assist and lead each man in his work, on the ground that this does not tend to promote independence, self-reliance, and originality in the individual. Those holding this view, however, must take exception to the whole trend of modern industrial development; and it appears to the writer that they overlook the ...

— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor

... his cast-in-a-mould mind, does not understand the trait developed among other peoples of seeing things for themselves. He is unacquainted with originality in human beings. He thinks a correspondent does not observe anything unless it is pointed ...

— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... have been original with Shakespeare; at least no satisfactory evidence has been given to show that he borrowed it. This is rather unusual, for Shakespeare showed a fine contempt for originality, and borrowed the plots of his plays from a great variety of sources. His own version of each story, however, was so masterly that no one regrets that he availed himself of all the ...

— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... insight, a penetrating perception. The style of such men, even when most vivacious, is never marked by geniality, by newness of turns, by imaginative combinations, by rhythmical sweeps, and especially not by freshness, of all which the fountain is originality, genius, creativeness. It is related that after several of Carlyle's papers had appeared in the "Edinburgh Review," Brougham, one of its founders and controllers, protested that if that man were permitted to write any more he should cease to be a contributor. And so the pages of the ...

— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... different periods have introduced an irregular though powerful influence that supersedes in some places the authority of the established governments, and imposes a real dominion on the natives where a nominal one is not assumed. This, in a course of years, is productive of innovations that destroy the originality and genuineness of their customs and manners, obliterate ancient distinctions, and render confused the path of ...

— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... relapsed into a deferential silence. His daughter smiled and questioned very graciously, and called everything beautiful and delightful; which rather disappointed me, as I had taken her to be a woman of some originality. She is rather a puzzle;—or is she, indeed, a very commonplace person, and the fault in me, who am forever taking women to mean a great deal more than their Maker intended? Regarding Miss Blunt I have collected a few facts. She is not twenty-four, but twenty-seven ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... a glance truth and beauty. These inspired moments give us the most solid knowledge we have. They are mental experiences, which are the master lights of all our being. They give direction and unity to all our other thoughts and opinions. They constitute mental originality. The peculiarity of inspiration, in this general sense, does not lie in the subjects of the thoughts, but in the manner of their coming. Ideas and thoughts of very different kinds may all be inspired thoughts. The poet, the artist, have their inspirations. ...

— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... You" is not only a pleasant comedy, full of bustle and amusing episodes, and abundantly stored with illustrations of manners, but it is a piece which exhibits, on the part of the unknown writer, a considerable share of power and originality. The crazed Earl of Gloucester is not an ill-conceived character, and may have supplied a hint to Shakespeare; and the cross-purposes, stratagems, and deceptions, of which it is full, remind us of our great dramatist's own "Comedy of Errors," with which, however, it has nothing in common. ...

— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... therefore determined that he would change to the inside of the coach when an opportunity should offer, and leave the Superior Being to sit "wrapped in the solitude of his own originality." ...

— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... not within the scope of a work like the present to give an account of the doctrines of the Wealth of Nations, or any estimate of their originality or value, or of their influence on the progress of science, on the policy and prosperity of nations, or on the practical happiness of mankind. Buckle, as we know, declared it to be "in its ultimate results probably the most important book that has ever been written"; a ...

— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... title-page and the table of contents (219) of Comenius' Great Didactic, point out the originality and ...

— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... her heart towards the little maid-child. What would she not have given for such a daughter! During Bruce's call, Mary had been busy with the child. She had combed and brushed her thick brown hair, and, taken with its exceeding beauty, had ventured on a stroke of originality no one would have expected of her: she had left it hanging loose on her shoulders. Any one would think such an impropriety impossible to a Scotchwoman. But then she had been handling the hair, and contact with anything alters so much ...

— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... the matter of the entomological bulletins, it will inevitably be influenced by the needs and demands of the people of the respective States, and while originality should be kept in mind, there must needs be in the earlier years of the work much restatement of what is already well known. That some results have been published of work which reflects no particular credit upon our calling is a mere incident ...

— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various

... is no novitiate, for all is allowable," exclaimed Paul Barr fiercely; and he filled another goblet. I almost felt afraid of his gaze, it had become so intense and ardent. I tried not to look in his direction, though there was an originality and fascination about him that made it next to impossible not to steal an occasional ...

— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... originality of Manfred, it may be taken for granted that Byron knew nothing about the "Faust-legend," or the "Faust-cycle." He solemnly denies that he had ever read Marlowe's Faustus, or the selections from the play in Lamb's Specimens, etc. (see Medwin's Conversations, etc., pp. 208, ...

— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... House. She was introduced by the Governor, who was chairman of the meeting, and fully three- fourths of the members of the Senate and the House were present. Miss Drake's speech was a rare combination of originality, humor, arid pathos. Her aptitude at anecdote, her gift for description and dialect had fairly astounded her audience. The applause was so constant and persistent that the brave young speaker had difficulty in pursuing her theme. And when it was over the members of the House and ...

— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... need much experience of ascetic literature to recognize the boldness and originality of this attitude in such a time and place. From the point of view of orthodox sanctity, whether Hindu or Mohammedan, Kabr was plainly a heretic; and his frank dislike of all institutional religion, all external ...

— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)

... of no record of the whole drama of English history to be compared with it. We know of none that is so distinctly a work of genius.... Mr. Green's volume is a really wonderful production. There is a freshness and originality breathing from one end to the other, a charm of style, and a power, both narrative and descriptive, which lifts it altogether out of the class of books to which at first sight it might seem to belong. The range ...

— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... No originality is claimed for the methods here described. They are those which the author has found most suitable and convenient in his own work, and most easily learned by students. The aim has been to describe each operation in such detail that a beginner can follow the process ...

— Laboratory Manual of Glass-Blowing • Francis C. Frary

... over and Mr. Craig had gone away. The men would hang about and talk the lesson over, expressing opinions favourable or unfavourable as appeared to them good. Then it was that all sorts of views, religious and otherwise, were aired and examined. The originality of the ideas, the absolute disregard of the authority of church or creed, the frankness with which opinions were stated, and the forcefulness of the language in which they were expressed, combined to make the discussions altogether ...

— Black Rock • Ralph Connor

... industrial work, and a few by written work alone. In subject-matter and original thought, South Dakota's work compared favorably with that of other schools of like age and conditions, especially in simplicity and originality. ...

— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... think there is much courage or originality in giving utterance to truths that everybody knows, but which get overlaid by conventional trumpery. The only distinction which it is necessary to point out to feeble-minded folk is this: that, in asserting the breadth and depth of that significance which gives to fashion and fortune their ...

— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... of the other Saxon and Norman kings were, as a general rule, less voluminous even than these that have been named; and probably did not exceed them in originality. [9] The Norman princes, from William the Conqueror to John, I think without exception, bound themselves, and, in order to mqintain their thrones, were obliged to bind themselves, to observe the ancient ...

— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner

... from the School of Art, her well-worn portfolio under her arm, thinking how many successive generations of boys and girls she had drilled through 'free-hand,' 'perspective,' and even 'life' with an unvarying average of failure and very moderate success, and how little talent or originality had come to the front, though all might be the better for knowing how to use eyes ...

— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... THE CHINESE MANNER (fig. 230).—All Chinese embroidery displays undoubted originality and wonderful skill and judgment in the choice of material and colour. It excels particularly, in the representation of figures, flowers, and animals, but differs from European work in this, that instead of using flat stitch and ...

— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont

... whom took upon themselves to be important agents of the world's destiny, yet were simply bores of a very intense water. Such, I imagine, is the invariable character of persons who crowd so closely about an original thinker as to draw in his unuttered breath, and thus to become imbued with a false originality. This triteness of novelty is enough to make any man of common sense blaspheme at all ideas of less than a century's standing, and pray that the world may be petrified and rendered immovable in precisely the worst moral and physical state that it ever yet arrived at, rather than be benefited ...

— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... without highways, where a strange face still excited interest and a journey of thirty miles made even one of the more important inhabitants the Ulysses of his vicinage—in short, a spot, as so many more that once could be found in Germany, with all the failings and the virtues, all the originality and the narrowness that can flourish ...

— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... harmony of the Originating Spirit within itself is duly regarded, then the individual mind affords a fresh center from which the Spirit contemplates itself in what I have ventured to call its Artistic Originality—a boundless potential of Creativeness, yet always regulated by its own inherent ...

— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward

... Robert, or "King," Carter of Corotoman in Lancaster County. There is no doubt about it: he was an oyster lover. He not only knew a way to hold oysters over an extended period—one wishes one knew what it was—but he had the courage and originality to eat them in July, contrary ...

— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton

... Meilhan has so much originality of character, and I admit only originality of mind. He puts his horse in his chamber, which is an original idea, to be sure; but I think horses had better be kept in the stable, where they would certainly be more comfortable. And these dreadful poets are such ...

— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... level with the surface of the ground; and the wall, in this subterranean part of the building, is considerably thicker than it is above. The balustrade of quatrefoils above appears coeval with the rest, and may be regarded as tending to establish the originality of that in the nave of the abbey church of ...

— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... well repay the enthusiasm and energy of every girl who has a gift in this direction. What the girl with ability for this work needs to bring to her problem is, not only enthusiasm and energy, but originality and initiative. "I have a real gift," she should say to herself; "how can I make the best use ...

— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy

... violates the conventions as to start with a mother whose moral instability is a worry to her children, and a hero who longs to be a practical builder despite a parental command to follow art—such a tale can at least claim the merit of originality. Mr. J. D. BERESFORD would be fully justified in claiming this and much more for An Imperfect Mother (COLLINS). Here is an interesting, fascinating and certainly unusual story, in which only two characters are of any real moment, Cecilia, ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various

... men. They anticipate lines of action; philosophers generally follow (Machiavelli's theories the practice of Louis XI., Nietzsche's that of Napoleon I.). The critic recognises the tentative steps of genius in letters. The work of fine delicacy and reserve, the work that follows, lacking the real originality, is liable to neglect, and may become the victim of ill-luck, unfair influence, or other extraneous factors. Yet on the whole, so numerous are the publics of to-day, there never, perhaps, was a time ...

— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... sense of the term, they have never had to keep, and their squalid abiding-places, overrun with wretched and quarrelsome half-clad children, and bare of the commonest comforts of life, have offered very unattractive fields for womanly originality and painstaking endeavor. A cheerful, quiet home, wherein the laborer is always sure of warmth and light and wholesome food, has in it a saving grace which all the creeds in Christendom cannot compass ...

— White Slaves • Louis A Banks

... so condenses and systematizes general military instruction and the work done at Plattsburg so that it may be easily utilized in training other troops. No broad claim for originality is made except in the arrangement of all available material; the bibliography makes acknowledgment to all texts so utilized. Besides bringing helpful reminders to new officers regarding the elements of modern warfare, ...

— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... has numerous references to Gawain's skill in healing. Of course the advocates of the originality of Chretien de Troyes will object that these references, though found in poems which have no connection with Chretien, and which are translations from lost French originals of an undetermined date, are one and all loans from ...

— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... owned indeed that Francis Thompson was a puzzle to his contemporaries of the nineties. He paid the usual penalty of vaulting originality. The decade is famous for its bold experiments and shining successes in the art of poetry. One might expect that a public, grown accustomed to exquisitely wrought novelties and eager to extend them a welcome, would have been preordained to recognize and hail the genius of Thompson. But it was not ...

— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson

... Schools, we would dissect his magnificent pages, which afford so rich a field for scientific observation. We would, in the first place, analyze his Nocturnes, Ballades, Impromptus, Scherzos, which are full of refinements of harmony never heard before; bold, and of startling originality. We would also examine his Polonaises, Mazourkas, Waltzes and Boleros. But this is not the time or place for such a study, which would be interesting only to the adepts in ...

— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... case, as we have before hinted, with even the most original. Had not Shakspeare and Milton been "celestial thieves," their writings would have been far less rich and brilliant than they are; although, had they not possessed true originality, they would not have taken their present lofty position in the world of letters. So, to say that Burns was much indebted to his predecessors, and that he often imitated Ramsay and Fergusson, and borrowed liberally from the old ballads, is by no means to derogate from his genius. If he ...

— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... reconcile the degree of unanimity and cooeperation which is requisite for the full exertion of social power, with that amount of individuality which would be useful in promoting a progressive change. Spontaneity or originality is disintegrating in its immediate tendency. It disturbs the order of society, though, in the end, on the whole, it is advantageous. Thus we have the tenacity of old habits and prevailing sentiments on ...

— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... in his works and proved by his biography, is so perfectly honest, open, home-bred English, that we claim him with pride—as belonging exclusively to England. His originality is of English growth; his satire broad, bold, fair-play English. He was no screened assassin of character, either with pen or pencil; no journalist's hack to stab in secret—concealing his name, or assuming a forged ...

— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... and Boru, instead of having to face all those girls again. She had tried at first to find her place among them, but the old dread of being "different" made her shy and self-conscious; even with Daphne before her as an example of the charms of originality she had ...

— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill

... the north, meanwhile, Eustace Le Neve worked away with a will at the idea for his viaduct. As he rightly wrote to Cleer, the need itself inspired him. Love is a great engineer, and Eustace learned fast from him. He was full of the fresh originality of youth; and the place took his fancy and impressed itself upon him. Gazing at it each day, there rose up slowly by degrees in his mind, like a dream, the picture of a great work on a new and startling principle—a modification ...

— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen

... his studies, that we had very little in common to bring us together; and I hardly remember any striking fact connected with him, except one or two speeches at the Union Club, when in eloquence and originality he far outshone ...

— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... that has not been invented, and that has in it every evidence of divine originality, is pure and simple deism. It must have been the first and will probably be the last that man believes. But pure and simple deism does not answer the purpose of despotic governments. They cannot lay hold of religion as an engine but by mixing it with ...

— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... however, so easily satisfied.* The statue bearing his inscription, of which the lower part was discovered by Naville at Bubastis, appears to have been really carved for himself or for one of his contemporaries. It is a work possessing no originality, though of very commendable execution, such as would render it acceptable to any museum; the artist who conceived it took 'his inspiration with considerable cleverness from the best examples turned out by the schools of the Delta under the Sovkhotpfts ...

— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... and the soul. He is well aware—though not fully at first—that these conceptions were familiar to St. Bernard and many a Catholic mystic; it was for the poetic apprehension and expression of them that he claimed originality; or, at least, for their unification and systematic development. "That his apprehensions were based generally—almost exclusively, on the fundamental idea of nuptial love must," as Mr. Champneys says, "be admitted." This was the governing category of his mind; the mould into ...

— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... aid of foot-notes to an old edition, a multitude of the most absolute plagiarisms from various authors. From the Bible mainly, and also from the Greek and Latin poets, he has taken nearly all his ideas; and every one of the words he uses are to be found in the dictionary. Talk of originality, after that! His conceptions also are sometimes absurd; for instance, the Address to Light. No one, who has not been stultified by theological nebulosities, ought to fail to know, as we knew when we first began ...

— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various

... two young people in America, which may end in a friendship of a summer, or extend to the cordial esteem of a lifetime, or result in marriage. I always liked the girl; she had such a sunny temper, such a flow of originality in her mental attitude towards people and things without being a wit or a critic, and so much piquancy in all her little ways. She would take to matrimony, I should say, like a duck to water, with unruffled plumage, but as a wife she would never be commonplace, or anything but engaging, ...

— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... she was unfeignedly surprised when, on her way to Washington, whither she traveled with many others, her society was sought by those whom she had long regarded with something akin to awe. She did not guess how her enthusiasm and fresh originality stimulated persons of lower vitality ...

— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... on taking home with him, and Tchirikov, his best man, a Moscow conciliation-board judge, Levin's companion in his bear-hunts. The dinner was a very merry one: Sergey Ivanovitch was in his happiest mood, and was much amused by Katavasov's originality. Katavasov, feeling his originality was appreciated and understood, made the most of it. Tchirikov always gave a lively and good-humored support to ...

— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... Harte's stories lies in their originality of conception, their well-defined local color, and the chaste richness of their literary style. The power to pique one's interest to the last page belongs to Mr. Harte above all other writers of stories of American life. His latest book has all the good qualities of its ...

— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various

... interest you to know that the Nevada Buildings at the San Francisco Exposition were erected "on the originality" of Fred, de Longchamps, and though their cost was comparatively small, they compared favorably with any ...

— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton

... self-reliance, together with a dislike of such cruelty as had been officially (so to speak) recognized as cruelty, and a sense of public service to a State run by and for the public schools; but it would have required far more originality than he possessed ever to look at Life from any other point of view than that from which he had been born and bred to watch Her. To fully understand harbinger, one must, and with unprejudiced eyes and brain, have attended one of those great cricket matches ...

— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... earlier and fresher models. Perhaps I hear some one cry out: But this is not the way to be original! It is not; nor is there any way but to be born so. Nor yet, if you are born original, is there anything in this training that shall clip the wings of your originality. There can be none more original than Montaigne, neither could any be more unlike Cicero; yet no craftsman can fail to see how much the one must have tried in his time to imitate the other. Burns is the very type of a ...

— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... taking the world—for this pioneer of an everybody's literature had his subjectivities—into books. What a survival of one long-past day, for instance, in "A Ramble from Richmond to London"! What truth to the surface of common things, to their direct claim on our interest! yet with what originality of effect in that truthfulness, ...

— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater

... the meeting was over and Mr. Craig had gone away. The men would hang about and talk the lesson over, expressing opinions favourable or unfavourable as appeared to them good. Then it was that all sorts of views, religious and otherwise, were aired and examined. The originality of the ideas, the absolute disregard of the authority of church or creed, the frankness with which opinions were stated, and the forcefulness of the language in which they were expressed, combined to make the discussions altogether marvellous. The passage between Abe Baker, the ...

— Black Rock • Ralph Connor

... lattice of this sick chamber; I was almost content to forget it. All within me became narrowed to my lot. Tame and still by habit, disciplined by destiny, I demanded no walks in the fresh air; my appetite needed no more than the tiny messes served for the invalid. In addition, she gave me the originality of her character to study: the steadiness of her virtues, I will add, the power of her passions, to admire; the truth of her feelings to trust. All these things she had, and for these ...

— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... Benny from Grandpa.' 'For a good girl, from Susy's grandmother.' 'Jim, from Aunt Minnie and Aunt Aggie.' 'Lucy, with love from Aggie and Minnie.' And Clarence! What hearts you have got! Well, I always say there never were such thoughtful girls, and you always show such taste and such originality. I long to get at the things." She keeps fingering the large bundle marked with her husband's ...

— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells

... its essentials, has undergone no material change since we have any record of it; and to use any other word than "beauty" for what we mean by beauty, or than "goodness" for what we mean by goodness, would seem a mere superstition of originality. The interpretation offered, in what follows, of the existence of these experiences is sufficiently startling to require no assistance from novelty of phrasing to give it interest and poignancy. That our souls are actually able to touch, in the darkness ...

— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... neighbouring landowners! How clearly he exposed their faults and failings! How thoroughly he knew the story of certain ruined gentry—the story of how, why, and through what cause they had fallen upon evil days! With what comic originality could he describe their little ...

— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... it was written in the orderly book) 'than strict adherence to the principles of free trade;' and that if the deputation doubted it, they might read Burke." A leading morning journal remarked, that Sir R. Routh's reply to the Achill deputation had not even the merit of originality; for there was an Eastern story, in which it was related how a deputation of Sheiks came, once upon a time, to the Calif, and announced the sad intelligence that all their date trees had withered, and his ...

— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... himself. In energetic minds, truth soon changes by domestication into power; and from directing in the discrimination and appraisal of the product, becomes influencive in the production. To admire on principle, is the only way to imitate without loss of originality. ...

— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... connection between the philosophical systems of Sankara, Ramanuja and Anandathirtha, and the Arabian merchants who came to India in the first centuries of the Hejira, and he is no doubt fully entitled to any credit that may be given him for the originality of his discovery. This mysterious and occult connection between Adwaita philosophy and Arabian commerce is pointed out in p. 212 of his book, and it may have some bearing on the present question, if it is anything more than a figment of his fancy. ...

— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... on their side. Of the rest of the population an immense number were the indifferent, who had no sympathies to spare for any beyond their own fireside circles. In the course of time sensation writers came up on the surface of society, and by way of originality they condemned almost every measure and person of the past. "Emancipation was a mistake;" and these fast writers drew along with them a large body, who would fain be slaveholders themselves. We must never ...

— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... natural. But genius in itself is not an abnormal mental condition. It does not even consist of an extraordinary memory, vivid imagination, quickness of judgment, or of a combination of all of these. Kant defines genius as the talent of invention. Originality and productiveness are the fundamental elements of genius. And it is an almost instinctive force which urges the author on in his creative work. In the main his activity is due less to free will than ...

— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun

... the writing as it is entertaining in the reading. It is actual comedy of the most artistic sort, and it is handled with a freshness and originality that is unquestionably novel."—Boston Transcript. "A feast of humor and good cheer, yet subtly pervaded by special shades of feeling, fancy, tenderness, or whimsicality. A merry thing in prose."—St. ...

— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... for an outspoken criticism, and when he became tired of it, he sent an ultimatum to the effect that if he were not released at once, he would break out himself, take a rifle and bundle of cartridges and hold the Lovcen (a high mountain) against all comers. The originality of his threat gained him his freedom. Since then he has kept a closer guard over that unruly member and only unburdened himself in the seclusion of the Club. Otherwise P., myself, and a young and intensely patriotic Scotchman completed the ...

— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... a subject on which (as he perhaps knew) the German never could resist enlarging, for in common with most German masters, he was giving birth to a new Grammar, which, from the daring originality of its plan, and its extreme simplicity, was destined to supersede ...

— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... matron, in a white lace mantilla, with three very juvenile daughters; and if these ladies sometimes yawned, they never shivered. For myself, I confess that if I sometimes shivered, I never yawned. A long list of bulls was sacrificed, each of whom had pretentions to originality. The banderillos, in their silk stockings and embroidered satin costumes, skipped about with a great deal of elegance; the espada folded his arms, within six inches of the bull's nose, and stared him out ...

— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... journey, when relating why Lord Byron could not accompany him in an excursion to Negropont; for he energetically expresses his regret at being obliged to separate, even for so short a time, from a companion, who, according to him, united to perspicacity of wit and originality of observation, that gay and lively temper which keeps attention awake under the pressure of fatigue, softening ...

— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... check; for to the French taste Mark Twain's pleasantry appeared macabre, his wit brutal, his temperament dry to excess. By some, indeed, his exaggerations were regarded as symptoms of mental alienation; and the originality of his verve did not succeed in giving a passport to the incoherence of his conceptions. "It has been said," remarked M. Forgues, with keen perception, "that an academician slumbers in the depths of every Frenchman; and it was this which prevented the ...

— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... such persons as are called merry fellows and good companions are very often more esteemed by men than the virtuous and orderly, and most of the young men of Siena followed Sodoma, extolling him as a man of originality. And this Sodoma, being an eccentric, and wishing to please the common herd, always kept at his house parrots, apes, dwarf donkeys, little Elba horses, a talking raven, barbs for running races, and other suchlike creatures; from which he had won such a name among the vulgar, ...

— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari

... find the translation of the speeches in idiomatic English, but it may be pointed out that in most cases that defect is due to the translator having aimed at preserving, as far as possible the stamp of originality as it ...

— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell

... century is rendered chiefly remarkable by the power he showed (in his time singularly exceptional) of harmonising the ideas of mediaeval mysticism with some of the most characteristic features of modern religious thought. A man of deep and somewhat ascetic piety, and gifted with much originality and with a cultured and progressive mind, he had many readers and a few earnest and admiring adherents, yet was never greatly in sympathy with the age in which he lived. Three or four generations earlier, or three or four generations later, he would have found much more that ...

— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... could not have made a better short abstract, even his terms standing "as heads of chapters." He goes on to say that he would at once write to Mr. Wallace offering to send his MS. to any journal; and concludes: "So my originality is smashed, though my book [the forthcoming 'Origin of Species'], if it will have any value will not be deteriorated, as all know the labour consists in the ...

— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... surrender of Guthrum, Alfred, feeling that the power was now in his hands, had had ample time to reflect on the course which he should pursue with his subjugated enemies; and the result to which he came, and the measure which he adopted, evince, as much as any act of his life, the greatness, and originality, and nobleness of his character. Here were two distinct and independent races on the same island, that had been engaged for many years in a most fierce and sanguinary struggle, each gaining at times a temporary ...

— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... when in England girls are in the schoolroom and come down to dessert, this 'child of the wilderness' had more courage, discretion, and power of mind than many a woman of mature age nurtured in idleness and luxury, with minds carefully drilled and educated out of any originality or self-resource that nature ...

— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... child of Nature, who did, freshly, what he would, regardless of the strained discretion of others, or a futile, scheming hypocrite, screaming after forced puerilities, without even a finger on the skirts of originality? ...

— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens

... readers. No one could tire reading these sermons. They are as racy as a magazine article, as instructive as a lecture, and as impressive and lofty as a message from God. They are thoroughly American for their fearlessness, their living energy, and their originality. Sermons of this high order are sure to ...

— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... reasons for all these illogicalities. Children do not want to be treated altogether as adults: such treatment terrifies them and over-burdens them with responsibility. In truth, very few adults care to be called on for independence and originality: they also are bewildered and terrified in the absence of precedents and precepts and commandments; but modern Democracy allows them a sanctioning and cancelling power if they are capable of using it, which children are not. To treat a child wholly as an adult would be to mock ...

— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... old pigtails for this blind belief in themselves, which grows out of the boastful arbitrariness of the Rococo, in the midst of and in spite of the constraint of the Pigtail, and is closely connected with the mad cult of originality practised by so many individual types. We have strong doubts concerning the excellence of our advanced mental development, while in the days of our great-grandfathers nobody doubted that that age, which we properly stigmatize with the sobriquet of the Pigtail Age, ...

— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... have seldom been duplicated, and that when the same topic has been twice used, the handling of it has been so different that little duplication has been noticeable. Each oration well represents the originality and the individuality of the writer or orator. Duplication is shown in the quotations, and it is therefore suggested ...

— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... paraphrasing in conversation the purple passages from contemporary writers. He said them exquisitely and sometimes his own embroidery was as good as the original. This discipleship, however, always suggested to me a lack of originality. In especial Matthew Arnold had an extraordinary influence upon him, almost as great indeed ...

— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... Conjuracion de Venecia (1834) and Aben Humeya (1836: it had already been given in French at Paris in 1830), mark the first public triumph of romanticism in Spain. But Martinez de la Rosa lacked force and originality and his works merely paved the way for the greater triumph of the Duke of Rivas. Angel de Saavedra, DUQUE DE RIVAS (1791-1865), a liberal noble, insured the definite triumph of romanticism in Spain by the successful performance ...

— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various

... means, but the motive was as vulgar as the art was great. To surround his interior with a sort of invidious sanctity, to tantalise society with a sense of exclusion, to make people believe his house was different from every other, to impart to the face that he presented to the world a cold originality—this was the ingenious effort of the personage to whom Isabel had attributed a superior morality. "He works with superior material," Ralph said to himself; "it's rich abundance compared with his former resources." Ralph was a clever ...

— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... consented, but said there was no need of much preparation, as he should not be for staying long, for he did not wish me to be Londonized, and to lose my country freshness and originality by too much intercourse with the ladies of the world. I thought this folly; but I did not wish to contradict him now: I merely said that I was of very domestic habits, as he well knew, and had no particular wish to ...

— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... enthusiasm into a disquisition on medicine; and dropping in one fine day at Professor Gambert's,—the pensioned schoolmaster,—he proved himself no mean adversary in a discussion upon natural history. He invariably approached a subject with a refreshing originality, and on one occasion maintained with an obstinacy born of conviction that the reason Moses had prohibited the Jews from eating pork was because ...

— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various

... can fuse the elements. Hold your place; do not try to shift into the place that another occupies. Keep your eye on what you have to work with, not on what somebody else has. The ultimate result, the originality, flavor, distinction, usefulness of your life, depend on the care, the reverence, and the intelligence with which you work up and out from where you are ...

— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell

... said this quietly, and in a tone of regret, but without the slightest intention of expressing poetical ideas, or laying claim to originality of thought. Yet his distinct denial of being an angekok or wise man, and his sentiments regarding the voices of Nature, only confirmed his countrymen in their belief that he was the greatest angekok they had ever seen ...

— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne

... theories, I eagerly welcome. How much of the conception is original with me, I cannot say. It is the product of my groping interpretation of the theories of many brilliant scientific minds of today—humbly combined with perhaps some originality of my own. The mind flings far afield when it starts to grope with the Unknown. Try it! Read what I have written and then let your mind roam a little further. Probe a little deeper. Perhaps we may contribute something. It is only by that process—each mind following some other's cleared path ...

— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... was to write caustic epigrams. At the school examination in 1815, the aged poet Derzhavin was among the visitors; and when he heard the boy read his "Memories of Tzarskoe Selo," he at once predicted his coming greatness. As is natural at his age, there was not much originality of idea in the poem; but it was amazing for its facility and mastery of poetic forms. Karamzin and Zhukovsky were not long in adding their testimony to the lad's genius, and the latter even acquired the habit of submitting his own poems to ...

— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... tone which is characteristic of such an era as the Elizabethan age in England. In short, justice or toleration, since it encourages men to push on to the limit of their powers, promotes not only originality and diversity, but ...

— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... status of existing parties, be a stickler for creed, ceremonies, and stale opinions, and adhere to ancient orthodoxy in medicine and religion. The animal faculties, since they are staid and regular, are naturally antagonistic to genius, sensibility, and originality. Their mental tendencies have been fairly described and their physiological results may be ...

— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... however, not in the gorgeous mosaics alone that we find the delight and originality of S. Vitale. The whole church is amazingly different from anything else to be seen in Italy, for it is altogether outside the Roman tradition, an absolutely Byzantine building as well in its construction as in its decoration. It must be compared ...

— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... and western Europe, driving out native art and substituting a conventionalized copy of Graeco-Roman or Italian art, which is characterized alike by its technical finish and neatness, and by its lack of originality and its dependence on imitation. The result was inevitable. The whole external side of life was lived amidst Italian, or (as we may perhaps call it) Roman-provincial, furniture and environment. Take by way of example the development of the so-called 'Samian' ware. The ...

— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield

... scene of "As You Like It," for their own amusement, not for an audience, in the wilderness at Hampton Court. They were by no means prodigies, but it did not surprise me that my son, when he grew up, should be first a good actor, then an artist of some originality, and should finally turn all his brains and industry to new developments in the art of the theater. My daughter has acted also—not enough to please me, for I have a very firm belief in her talents—and has shown again and ...

— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... appeared, and although he had already a considerable literary reputation in Edinburgh, and some in London, the amount of his original publications was then but small. Indeed, on the austere principles of those who deny 'originality' to such things as reviews, or as the essays in the Minstrelsy, it must be limited to a mere handful, though of very pleasant delights, the half-dozen of ballads made up by 'Glenfinlas,' 'The Eve of St. John,' the rather ...

— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... out by the other yacht, but could not be distinguished, and, for the last time, they sat down to dinner. Three days' companionship on board of a vessel, cooped up together, and having no one else to converse with, will produce intimacy; and Pickersgill was a young man of so much originality and information, that he was listened to with pleasure. He never attempted to advance beyond the line of strict decorum and politeness; and his companion was equally unpresuming. Situated as they were, and feeling what must have ...

— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat

... to any journal in the world. Willis is the lightest and most mercurial 'knight of the quill' in all the tournament. It is astonishing with what dexterity, felicity, and grace he touches off the veriest trifle of the day, investing the trite with originality, and giving the value of wit and poetry to the worthless and the dry. Pity that this brilliant 'quid nunc' should degenerate into a mere trifling 'arbiter elegantiarum,' and expend his buoyant and ductile genius in the indictment of ephemeral paragraphs. His ...

— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... and enthusiastic? Is it not a self-complacent dream? Are the tendencies adverted to so productive? Is any such genius really forming as is here claimed? Is it not, on the contrary, now fully understood that the Americans are a commonplace people, meagre-minded money-makers, destitute of originality? What have they done to demonstrate genius yet?—These skepticisms are somewhat prevalent nowadays, and are a natural enough reaction from Fourth-of-July flatulencies. Let them have their day. The fact will vindicate ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... Hundred Eight, is modeled after the "Liber Veritatis." But the book surpasses Claude's, and Turner knew it, and this may have led him to burst his shackles and cast loose from his idol. For, in Eighteen Hundred Fifteen, we find him working according to his own ideas, showing an originality and audacity in conception and execution that made him the butt of the critics, and caused consternation to rage ...

— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... "I have a silent sorrow here," was avowedly written by Sheridan, as the music of it was by the Duchess of Devonshire—two such names, so brilliant in their respective spheres, as the Muses of Song and Verse have seldom had the luck to bring together. The originality of these lines has been disputed; and that expedient of borrowing which their author ought to have been independent of in every way, is supposed to have been resorted to by his indolence on this occasion. Some verses by Tickell are mentioned as having supplied ...

— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... foot of the descent she paused again, and looked to the right and left. Captain Phippeny was watching her from his vantage ground above. His figure was one unmistakably of the seaboard. His trousers were of a singular cut, probably after a pattern evolved in all its originality by Mrs. Phippeny, her active imagination working towards practical effect. In addition, he wore a yellow flannel shirt ribbed with purple, which would hopelessly have jaundiced a rose-leaf complexion, but which, having exhausted ...

— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull

... for he firmly believed that he knew life and considered his knowledge of it something unshakeable, stable and perfect. My silence seemed to him to give him a right to strike a fuller note in his stories of Caucasian life—a life full of so much wild beauty, so much fire and originality. ...

— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky

... may be thought of Clerk's claim to originality in constructing a system of naval tactics, and it has been seriously impugned, there can be no doubt that his criticisms on the past were sound. So far as the author knows, he in this respect deserves credit for an ...

— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... opportunity of garnering something worth saying, a rule of Parliamentary life that might be recommended to the attention of some who shall here be nameless. For the rest it was the same grinding out of barrel-organ tunes in varied keys that has been going on these three years. McKenna gave touch of originality to his remarks in winding up debate by avoiding reference to the late Giraldus Cambrensis. Thus momentarily refreshed, Members gratefully went out to Division Lobby, and Third Reading was carried ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various

... house. Most of these ideas have been ridiculed, because experience has proved that families seldom reside comfortably in crowded quarters. The tribes of which we are writing, while they destroy the originality of the communistic ideas of the Nineteenth Century, also disprove the arguments which are principally brought against them. In these singular houses or colonies, several families live together in perfect harmony. There are no instances on record of disputes such as are met with in boarding-houses ...

— My Native Land • James Cox

... of it in the literature. This era produced nothing of inspired or reformatory force. A profound pessimism stifled all originality. Korolenko alone, who was living during the greater part of this time as a political prisoner in distant Yakutsk, where he did not imbibe the untoward influences of the reaction, remained unmoved and strong. Anton Chekhov, too, survived the gloomy ...

— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald

... these was Rocco, supreme and unapproachable. Half-way along the suite of kitchens, Rocco had an apartment of his own, wherein he thought out those magnificent combinations, those marvellous feats of succulence and originality, which had given him his fame. Visitors never caught a glimpse of Rocco in the kitchens, though sometimes, on a special night, he would stroll nonchalantly through the dining-room, like the great man he was, to receive the ...

— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... He returned to Strathmiglo, and while busily plying the shuttle began to compose verses for his amusement. These compositions were jotted down during the periods of leisure. Happening to quote a stanza to Dr Paterson of Auchtermuchty, his medical attendant, who was struck with its originality, he was induced to submit his MSS. to the inspection of this gentleman. A cordial recommendation to publish his verses was the result; and a large number of subscribers being procured, through the exertions of his medical friend, he appeared, ...

— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... there is no instance of any ancient writing proved to be a forgery, which combines excellence with length. A really great and original writer would have no object in fathering his works on Plato; and to the forger or imitator, the 'literary hack' of Alexandria and Athens, the Gods did not grant originality or genius. Further, in attempting to balance the evidence for and against a Platonic dialogue, we must not forget that the form of the Platonic writing was common to several of his contemporaries. Aeschines, Euclid, Phaedo, ...

— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato

... Brethren, under Spangenberg's guidance, entered on a new phase. In originality they had lost; in sobriety they had gained; and now they were honoured by the orthodox party in Germany as trusted champions of the faith delivered once ...

— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... contemporary literature is found, to my thinking, in the vice which has been very graphically called effectism, or the itch of awaking at all cost in the reader vivid and violent emotions, which shall do credit to the invention and originality of the writer. This vice has its roots in human nature itself, and more particularly in that of the artist; he has always some thing feminine in him, which tempts him to coquet with the reader, and display qualities that ...

— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... ignores and defies honor, and which not a single redeeming feature. It has neither wisdom nor wit, no spirit, no genius, no impulsiveness, scarcely boyish mirth. A narrow range of stale practical jokes, lighted up by no gleam of originality, seems to be transmitted from year to year with as much fidelity as the Hebrew Bible, and not half the latitude allowed to clergymen of the English Established Church. But besides its platitude, its one over-powering ...

— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... the narrow way. Mr. Heatherbloom leaned back, his gaze straight ahead, but Betty Dalrymple looked around with interest at the people of divers shades and hues, and, for the most part, in costumes of varying degrees of picturesque originality. After having narrowly escaped running over a small proportion of the juvenile colored population overflowing from odd little shops and houses, they reached the transportable zinc shed that served as a cable office. Here Miss Dalrymple indited rapidly ...

— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... the reverend gentleman's scrutiny with modest grace, almost as if it flattered her. And indeed there was nothing whatever of ill-breeding in Mr. Wyvern's mode of instituting acquaintance with his parishioner; one felt that he was a man of pronounced originality, and that he might be trusted in his variance from the ...

— Demos • George Gissing

... the throat of Cash Dallam, owner of the National House, Blue Creek's leading, and likewise only, hotel. The National was a board structure, formerly painted—with some originality of taste—a bright orange hue, relieved with red trimmings round doors, windows and eaves. But the sun had blistered and the hot desert winds had cracked and peeled its originally gaudy hues, and it was ...

— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... agreeing with his, he had the satisfaction of transcribing literally and verbatim the speech made by the Companion of Jehu to citizen Jean Picot. Then, this conversation written down, he exclaimed with an accent that lent a singular stamp of originality ...

— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... birthright, she took her place in the social world as a queen by virtue of her position, her gifts, and her heritage. Already, before her marriage, she had changed the tone of her mother's salon. She brought into it an element of freshness and originality which the dignified and rather precise character of Mme. Necker had failed to impart. She gave it also a strong political coloring. This influence was more marked after she became the wife of the Swedish ...

— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... such intensity of imaginative power Browning must have known—even if it were but for moments—by experience. And again, there is impressive truth and originality in the description of the state of the poet's mind which succeeded the wreck of his early faith and early hopes inspired by the voice of Shelley—the revolutionary faith in liberty, equality and human ...

— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... premium you put on originality!" responded Mrs. Staggchase. "That is all very well for her, but how ...

— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... course, no easy task to infuse a spirit of originality into matter which has already achieved such a measure of celebrity as have these wild and wondrous tales of Rhineland. But it is hoped that the treatment to which these stories have been subjected is not without a novelty of its own. One circumstance ...

— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... of life; but from the tyranny of the government, and probably from the effects of his long incarceration in a damp, unhealthy jail. It is the best and most scriptural guide that has ever appeared to aid us in the performance of relative duties: written with originality of thought and that peculiar and pious earnestness which so distinguishes all ...

— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... stories which have gathered about his name; but for ourselves the interest which attaches to Polycarp is far greater. This importance he owes to his peculiar position, rather than to any marked greatness or originality of character. Two long lives—those of St John and of Polycarp—span the period which elapsed between the personal ministry of our Lord and the great Christian teachers living at the close of the second century. Polycarp was the disciple of ...

— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... the glory of having elaborated a system of private law that was logically deduced from clearly formulated principles and was destined to become the fundamental law of all civilized communities. But even in connection with this private law, where the originality of Rome is uncontested and her preeminence absolute, recent researches have shown with how much tenacity the Hellenized Orient maintained its old legal codes, and how much resistance local customs, the woof of the life of nations, offered to unification. In truth, ...

— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... in the fact, that being called to Rome especially to adorn the palace of the so-called head of the Church, and called as the chief representative of the Christian artists of his time, Raphael had neither religion nor originality enough to trace the spirit of poetry and the spirit of philosophy to the inspiration of the true God, as well as that of theology; but that, on the contrary, he elevated the creations of fancy on the one wall, to the same rank as the objects of faith upon the other; that in ...

— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... philosophy was much more definite than Coleridge's; it gave substance to his character and edge to his intellect, and, in the end, can scarcely be distinguished from the emotion generating his verse. There is, however, no trace of originality in his speculative writing, and we need not regret that, after hesitating whether to be a metaphysician or a poet, he decided against philosophy. Before finally settling to poetry, he at one time projected a complete and systematic account of the operations of the human mind. ...

— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow

... to supply the terms of the required definition. I have seen it, and yet the definition does not satisfy me. "Original"! Well—more or less; but to use old materials in a novel manner is quite enough for originality. The girl brought up as a boy is not absolutely new or original, vide Tom Noddy's Secret, and multiply the heroine of that farce by three. The three men hunting after the three girls and obtaining ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various

... Paris, slightly anterior to the poet of Troyes, and in all probability the source of part at least of his work) were posterior and probably derivative. Now this, of itself, would of course to some extent put up Chrestien's value. But it, and the necessary corollaries from it, as originality and so forth, by no means exhaust the additional honours and achievements which have been heaped upon Chrestien by M. Paris and by others who have followed, more or less accepted, and in some cases bettered his ascriptions. ...

— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... because each writer, one in making notes of commonplaces on sleep, the other in a speech about sleep, uses the regular expression 'Uprouse,' and the poetical commonplace 'Golden sleep' for 'Good rest.' There was no originality in the matter. ...

— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang

... the spiritual or metaphysical requisitions of the former, he must necessarily find himself without an audience, except here and there an individual or possibly an isolated clique. His writings, to do them justice, are not altogether destitute of fancy and originality; they might have won him greater reputation but for an inveterate love of allegory, which is apt to invest his plots and characters with the aspect of scenery and people in the clouds, and to steal away the human warmth ...

— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... and belonged to Wes. Her chief characteristic was her devotion to Dinkey. She worshiped Dinkey, and seconded her enthusiastically. Without near the originality of Dinkey, she was yet a very good and sure pack-horse. The deceiving part about Jenny was her eye. It was baleful with the spirit of evil,—snaky and black, and with green sideways gleams in it. Catching the ...

— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... apparently no originality. As in the oldest days of their drama the Romans had copied the Greeks, so they copied them still. We may believe that the acting was often excellent; especially in respect of intonation and gesture, but little can be said for the play, whether from the point of view of literature or of morals. ...

— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... are young we may be susceptible to the new, only because it is new to us. We are ready to welcome in book or speech anything which charms us with a novelty we readily mistake for originality. After we have crossed a line it may be well that most of us should become a bit obstinate, a little stiff in our beliefs, lest we be blown about by every wind of doctrine.[2] At the same time, there is always the danger ...

— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd

... must be left for ethnologists more industrious and better informed than myself to decide. In any case, the possible common Aryan source will tend to obscure the truth, just as it often does the derivation of Rommany words. But nothing can detract from the inexpressibly quaint spirit of Gipsy originality in which these odd credos are expressed, or surpass the strangeness of the reasons given for them. If the spirit of the goblin and elfin lingers anywhere on earth, it is ...

— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... can peruse without confessing the acuteness and strength of its reasoning, the nice discrimination of its criticism, and the precision and purity of its diction. Whatever difference of opinion may be formed as to some of its conclusions, no one will deny that the originality and importance of its views make it a substantial accession to theological science; and that, within the range permitted by the subject, it presents, on the whole, one of the noblest specimens of scholarship, and elegance of composition, ...

— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... persuading him to accept payment. Meanwhile we were obliged to make an attempt to dig out the tent, regardless of the weather; the situation was no longer endurable. We waited all the forenoon in the hope of an improvement; but as none came, we set to work at twelve o'clock. Our implements showed some originality and diversity: a little spade, a biscuit-tin, and a cooker. The drift did its best to undo our work as fast as we dug, but we managed to hold our own against it. Digging out the tent-pegs gave most trouble. After six hours' hard work we got the tent ...

— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... our fellow-passengers, Mr. Ruby, is the type of a vulgar tradesman. Without any originality or magnanimity in his composition, he has spent twenty years of his life in mere buying and selling, and as he has gener- ally contrived to do business at a profit, he has realized a considerable fortune. What he is going to do with the money, he does not seem able to say: his ideas do not go ...

— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... contribution if our account contained only what we saw, in our rapid travel; for I have a theory that any addition to the great body of print, however insignificant it may be, has a value in proportion to its originality and individuality,—however slight either is,—and very little value if it is a compilation of the observations of others. In this case I know how slight the value is; and I can only hope that as the trip was very entertaining ...

— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the virtue of originality," she admitted, "and it never fails to excite curiosity. I am sorry you were misled. Nothing could be more distressing than to be mistaken for the heroine of a story and then turn out to be a mere nobody in the end. I've no doubt that if the amiable Miss Blithers were ...

— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... want of serious interest in contemporary intellects renders them more accessible to the earliest symptoms of superficial shiftings of taste. They are anxious to be at the head of the fashions in thought as well as in dress, and pure love of novelty serves to some extent in place of genuine originality. Amongst such men Walpole deserves a high place; and it is not easy to obtain a high place even amongst such men. The people who succeed best at trifles are those who are capable of something better. In spite of Johnson's aphorism, it is the colossus who, when he tries, ...

— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... three classes:—those which by their originality have recently led discussion into altogether new channels; those which have attracted deserved attention as powerful special pleas upon one side or the other in great current questions; and finally, purely critical and analytical dissertations. The series will aim to ...

— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... will disdain the old worn-out distinctions of a hackneyed universe— eschew all baronies, mine host, and cast earldoms and dukedoms to the shades. The immortal Locke has unlocked his fertile mind to furnish you with appellations suited to the originality of your condition and the nature of your country. Ah! here comes the Cacique of Pedee, in ...

— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... and pastures new." The zest of life with them is emphatic. Their humor is fresh, unbounded, sincere; there is no trace of cynicism. In folk literature we do not feel the presence of a "writer" who is mightily concerned about maintaining his reputation for wisdom, originality, or style. Hence the freedom from any note of straining after effect, of artificiality. In the midst of a life limited to fundamental needs, their literature deals with fundamentals. On the whole, it was a literature for entertainment. A more learned upper class may have concerned itself then about ...

— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... pictures influence us. The introduction of them into daily newspapers is an important development of the arts of suggestion. Mediaeval art in colored glass, carving, sculpture, and pictures reveals the grossness and crass simplicity of the mediaeval imagination, but also its childish originality and directness. No doubt it was on account of these latter characteristics that it had such suggestive power. It was graphic. It stimulated and inflamed the kind of imagination which produced it. It found its subjects in heaven, hell, demons, torture, and the ...

— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... of church organization among the Puritan plantations is the more remarkable in view of the notable independence and originality of the leading men, who represented tendencies of opinion as widely diverging as the quasi-Presbyterianism of John Eliot and the doctrinaire democracy of John Wise. These variations of ecclesiastico-political theory had much to do with the ...

— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... character, was capable of energetic but solitary resolutions, and possessed little influence over his colleagues, although he talked much. M. Laine, on the contrary, had a warm and sympathetic heart under a gloomy exterior, and an elevated mind, without much vigour or originality. He spoke imposingly and convincingly when moved by his subject; formerly a Republican, he had paused as a simple partisan of liberal tendencies, and being promptly acknowledged as the head of the Commission, consented without hesitation to become its ...

— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... something more from the pen of the same author. This is at last announced. In Metzel Changes His Mind, Miss Schauffler strengthens the impression made by her first book that she is a writer of marked originality. Here again she has provided an unusual setting for her tale. The scene is largely laid in a pathological laboratory, surely a new background for a romance. It is a background, moreover, which is used most effectively ...

— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... Diocletian himself. When Constantine, therefore, established a new seat of government at Byzantium, he adopted a policy inaugurated before his day as essential to the preservation of the Roman dominion. He can claim originality only in his choice of the particular point at which that seat was placed, and in his recognition of the fact that his alliance with the Christian church could be best maintained in ...

— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... of his characters, the melody of his songs, and the originality of his quaint, but beautiful conceptions, Governor Taylor's lectures are temples of thought, lighted with windows ...

— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... a remarkable story: full of vivid fancy and quaint originality. In its most fantastic imaginings it carries with it a sense of reality, and derives a singular attraction from that combination of simplicity, originality, and subtle humour, which is so much appreciated by lively and thoughtful ...

— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... was the Major's idea goes without saying. At Looe they had neither the originality ...

— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... To my mind the occurrence of such a vision in the daytime is more impressive than if it had happened in a midnight dream. Readers are therefore asked to correct the misrelation, which affords an instance of how our imperfect memories insensibly formalize the fresh originality of living fact—from whose shape they slowly depart, as machine-made castings depart by degrees from the sharp hand-work of ...

— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy

... to be two ten-penny nails. The boat building industry was thriving and the boys often went aboard a new boat picking up the nails the carpenters let fall in their work. The nail idea was Lin's and we must accord her some degree of originality. ...

— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... such minds are seldom distinguished by an air of originality: they are anticipated in their happiest efforts; and if they are found to differ in anything from their predecessors, it is only in irregular sallies and trifling conceits. The more extensive therefore your acquaintance is with the works of those who ...

— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... of some works is stylistic; a technical pre-occupation stands them instead of some robuster principle of life. And with these the execution is but play; for the stylistic problem is resolved beforehand, and all large originality of treatment wilfully foregone. Such are the verses, intricately designed, which we have learnt to admire, with a certain smiling admiration, at the hands of Mr. Lang and Mr. Dobson; such, too, are those canvases where dexterity or even breadth of plastic style takes the place ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... well-defined roots existing in all countries, from which spring the current legends of the supernatural; and therefore for the germs of the stories in this book the Author claims no originality. These legends differ one from the other only in local color and in individual treatment. If the Author has succeeded in clothing one or two of these norms in some slightly new vesture, he ...

— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram

... half, we encounter the history of a people without a government, more than that, without a land, a people stripped of all the tangible accompaniments of nationality, and nevertheless successful in preserving its spiritual unity, its originality, complete ...

— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow

... Once more the bold originality of Aeschylus displays itself. Here is a theme unique in Greek literature. The strife between the two races of gods opens out a vista of the world ages before man was created. It will provide a solution to a very difficult problem which will confront ...

— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... of Erasmus. His enormous industry, the vast store of classical learning which he gradually accumulated, Erasmus shared with others of his day. In patristic study he may have stood beneath Luther; in originality and profoundness of thought he was certainly inferior to More. His theology, though he made a greater mark on the world by it than even by his scholarship, he derived almost without change from Colet. But his combination of vast learning ...

— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... does not offer entertainment pure and simple, depending on mere wit or felicity, but is also capable of stirring an educated curiosity—in a way which I hope will be exemplified in the following pages. They are intended to have an attraction independent of any originality of subject, any happiness of general design, any verisimilitude in the piling up of fictions. This attraction is in the veiled reference underlying all the details of my narrative; they parody the cock-and-bull stories of ancient poets, historians, ...

— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... to do with his own things what he pleases, provided, in so doing, he does not infringe upon the rights of others. On this point, it appeared that the editor thought and argued differently, and Mr. Freeman said, that in taking the above ground, he did not claim originality, for it is a principle of law, as laid down in Blackstone, Paley, and others—it is the language of great commentators, and upon it he would stand or fall, and leave the distinguished editor to battle ...

— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... the observation that a great nation in a state of decay betakes itself to the fine arts. Perhaps no one has made the observation yet. It is certainly among the records of my brain, but I may possibly have put it there myself. If so, I make it now, for the possibilities of originality are getting scarce and will soon disappear from the face of the earth as completely as the mastodon. The present application of the saying is to the people of Goa, who, while they carry through the world patronymics which breathe of conquest ...

— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... was born at Mersbury, in Swabia, and studied medicine at the University of Vienna. He read freely the books written by the authors already mentioned, and accepted much of their teaching. His originality consisted principally in applying to the sick this universal principle, by means of contact and passes, while his predecessors infused the vital spirit through the use of talismans and of magic boxes. He took his medical degree in 1766 and chose as the subject of his inaugural dissertation ...

— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... "a greater width of view and intellectual power" than woman's does; that in the feminine utterances "little beyond the actual love of this life is imagined";[277:1] and that in such utterances "we notice . . . an absolute want of originality and of power to look at the passion of love in an abstract sense outside the woman herself ...

— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... its fame on assiduous imitation rather than originality. But at what cost? Its people had degenerated in the process from thinking humans to dumb, driven cattle, going, going, for ever going, but non-comprehending the why or the wherefore of it all, beyond the arrogant assumption of "welt-politik." Every refining trait ...

— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor

... of originality, or shall we say individuality, about the lady,"—he observed, with a critical, not to say insolent stare in Maryllia's direction,—"The French term 'beaute du diable' expresses it best. But whether the charm will last, ...

— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... built by a young painter, who was intoxicated by a first success, and had been perforce resold almost as soon as it was habitable. It was in the palatial Renaissance manner and had fantastic interior arrangements which consisted of modern conveniences framed in a setting of somewhat artificial originality. Count Muffat had bought the house ready furnished and full of hosts of beautiful objects—lovely Eastern hangings, old credences, huge chairs of the Louis XIII epoch. And thus Nana had come into artistic surroundings ...

— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... had first become interested in her. As soon as she began to feel at ease with him, her shyness rapidly disappeared, and he was astonished to discover that the stiff, silent girl whom he had thought rather dull possessed cultore and originality such as few girls of his acquaintance could lay claim to. His assurance beyond possibility of doubt that she was as really glad to see him whenever he called as she said she was, and that though his speech ...

— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... one's own, is to have other people's affairs brought before us in a shape that is interesting; this is sure to happen from your pen; our affairs and management will have an air of simplicity or importance that will not fail to strike; and I am convinced you have conducted them with as much originality as if you had been conducting discussions in politics or philosophy; and what more worthy of experiments and system (its importance and its errors considered) than ...

— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... popular legends, and a free use of the songs of other bards, are features perfectly consistent with poetical originality. In fact, the most original writer is still drawing upon outward impressions—nay, even his own thoughts are a kind of secondary agents which support and feed the impulses of imagination. But unless there be some grand ...

— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... him in with me and show him the ropes, but he couldn't learn anything worth while that way. He'd simply be a copy-cat. He'd develop no originality. Besides, I'd rather see him in some other line. You understand, Ellins? Something a little more substantial. Got to find it for himself, though. He's got to make good on his own hook before I'll help him any more. So out ...

— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford

... successful because he is less ambitious.... It is to be hoped that Mr. Ramakrishna's interesting sketches of Southern Indian village life will obtain a wide circulation in England. He is to be congratulated on having produced a work of no little merit and originality.—Madras Mail. ...

— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna

... considered under three divisions or types, differing in form, but essentially the same in character. In adopting this classification, which is by no means restricted to this single valley, I do not claim originality, but follow that used by the best writers on this subject. My limitation of the types and general definitions may, however, be found to differ somewhat ...

— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes

... as much as M. Zola, have insistently claimed the absolute and incontrovertible right to compose—that is to say, to imagine or observe—in accordance with their individual conception of originality, and that is a special manner of thinking, seeing, understanding, and judging. Now the critic who assumes that "the novel" can be defined in conformity with the ideas he has based on the novels he prefers, and that certain immutable rules ...

— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... to charge Cicero with a want of originality as a philosopher, and on that score to depreciate his works. The charge is true, but still absurd, for it rests on a misconception, not merely of Cicero's purpose in writing, but of the whole spirit of the later Greek speculation. The conclusion drawn from the charge is also ...

— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... some extent in the whole world, on account of natural conditions which limit the forms of life possible in one region; for nature is intolerant in her laxity and punishes too great originality and heresy with death. Such moral integration has occurred very markedly in every good race and society whose members, by adapting themselves to the same external forces, have created and discovered their common soul. Spiritual unity is a natural product. There ...

— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... believe that the idea was not unjust; he ranged airily, like a blue-fly, from one agglomeration of ordure to another; and he finally suggested a task, not necessary to dwell on, but which reached the utmost height or depth of originality in connection with such a subject. Mr. Lyddon laboured under some shadow of doubt, but he quickly agreed when his man reminded him of the past ...

— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... because they are believed to be vulgar. They come down to us from rough old days; but they are relics of a time when life, if rough, was at least kind and hearty. We admire that life on the stage, we ape it in novels, we affect admiration and appreciation of its rich picturesqueness and vigorous originality, and we lie in so doing; for there is not an aesthetic prig in London who could have lived an hour in it. Truly, I should like to know what Francois Villon and Chaucer would have thought of some of their modern adorers, or what the lioness Fair-sinners ...

— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland