"Invention" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gripped by a sort of stupor, so overlaid you would hardly guess it was there. But, too, as we all know, it often shines out with a startling brilliance. It is less in degree than with God, but it is the same thing, a bit of God in man. This explains man's marvellous achievements in literature, in invention, in ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... work was seen at Sparta by the traveler Pausanias, and was regarded by him as the most ancient existing statue in bronze. A great impulse must have been given to bronze sculpture by the introduction of the process of hollow-casting. Pausanias repeatedly attributes the invention of this process to Rhoecus and Theodorus, two Samian artists, who flourished apparently early in the sixth century. This may be substantially correct, but the process is much more likely to have been borrowed from Egypt than ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... Seventh Century Pre-Atomic. We initiated a technological and economic revolution here, and such revolutions have their casualties, too. A number of classes and groups got squeezed pretty badly, like the horse-breeders and harness-manufacturers on Terra by the invention of the automobile, or the coal and hydroelectric interests when direct conversion of nuclear energy to electric current was developed, or the railroads and steamship lines at the time of the discovery of the contragravity-field. ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... interview with his allies and asked their counsel. Most of the princes of the Low Countries remained faithful to him and the Count of Hainault seemed inclined to go back to him; but all hesitated as to what he was to do to recover from the check. Van Artevelde showed more invention and more boldness. The Flemish communes had concentrated their forces not far from the spot where the two kings had kept their armies looking at one another; but they had maintained a strict neutrality, and at the invitation of the Count ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... so is it a like impossibility above. But our molecules, the infinitesimals of the vacuum "below," are replaced by the giant-atom of the Infinitude "above." When demonstrated, the four-dimensional conception of space may lead to the invention of new instruments to explore the extremely dense matter that surrounds us as a ball of pitch might surround—say, a fly, but which, in our extreme ignorance of all its properties save those we find it exercising ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... you this experiment," pursued Von Holzen, setting the lamp on a side-table, "we must have a little talk about his lordship. With all modesty, you and I have the clearest heads of all concerned in this invention." He looked at Cornish with his sudden, pleasant smile. "You will excuse me," he said, "if while I am doing this I do not talk much. It is a difficult thing to keep in one's head, and all the attention is required in order to avoid ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... a nice house, right enough. (Lowering his voice.) And I suppose old Mr. Dan is never up yet. I was told by Johnny McAndless, he was terribly full last night at McArn's publichouse and talking—ach—the greatest blethers about this new invention of his. ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne
... marched on with much gravity. Another carried after the secrets of their religion, closed in a coffer. There was one that bare on his stomacke a figure of his god, not formed like any beast, bird, savage thing or humane shape, but made by a new invention, whereby was signified that such a religion should not be discovered or revealed to any person. There was a vessel wrought with a round bottome, haveing on the one side, pictures figured like unto ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... Conversely, the ideas of the human mind would be only transformed laws. Genius would be in a literal sense an exquisitely purged sympathy with nature. Those associative conceptions of the imagination, those unforeseen types of passion, would come, not so much of the artifice and invention of the understanding, as from self-surrender to the suggestions of nature; they would be evolved by the stir of nature itself realizing the highest reach of its latent intelligence; they would have a kind of antecedent ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... alive to improvement and invention, having discovered a mode of extracting sugar in considerable quantity from this fruit, I shall transcribe the ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... Netherlands, could not commit the absurdity of giving away his own property to other people, nor would Don John choose to be an instrument in so foolish a transaction. The Governor entreated the Emperor, therefore, to consider such fables as the invention of malcontents and traitors, of whom there were no lack at his court, and to remember that nothing was more necessary for the preservation of the greatness of his family than to cultivate the best relations with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... tower constructed of vermilion stone quarried on the upper waters of the great river Euphrates. There my poor brother is to stay until he can invent a new stock of stories, but being utterly devoid of invention, only death or relenting upon the part of the imam could release him. Hearing of his plight, I went to the imam with the proposition that I seek out some other story-teller and that upon bringing him to Muscat, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... the arrival of Ney's corps at Schmoditten towards the end of the day, made Benningsen fear that his line of communication would be cut, and so he ordered a retreat in the direction of Konigsberg, leaving the French masters of the horrible battlefield covered with dead and dying. Since the invention of gunpowder one has not seen such a terrible effect, for in relation to the numbers engaged at Eylau, in comparison to all the battles, ancient or modern, the proportion of losses was highest. The Russians had twenty-five thousand casualties, and although the figure for French losses ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... fortitude in going through a cruel ordeal against which he could have defended himself as effectually as he cleared the moneychangers out of the temple. "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild" is a snivelling modern invention, with no warrant in the gospels. St. Matthew would as soon have thought of applying such adjectives to Judas Maccabeus as to Jesus; and even St. Luke, who makes Jesus polite and gracious, does not make him meek. The picture of him as an English curate of ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... yield up the particular associations necessary for weaving the given words into some kind of unity. The child must pass from what is given to what is not given but merely suggested. This requires a certain amount of invention. Scattered fragments must be conceived as the skeleton of a thought, and this skeleton, or partial skeleton, must be assembled and made whole. The task is analogous to that which confronts the palaeontologist, who is able to reconstruct, with a high degree ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... method of surgery beyond material art, but it was not a supernatural act. On 44:24 the contrary, it was a divinely natural act, whereby divinity brought to humanity the understanding of the Christ- healing and revealed a method infinitely above that of 44:27 human invention. ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... cyclist. He is not an invention. We have his description, his valise, his bicycle. The fellow must be somewhere. Why should we not ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... asked Oscar, whose artistic ear was somewhat offended by this strange roar of sounds. The young man from Baltimore assured him that this was called music; the music of a steam-organ or calliope, then a new invention on the Western rivers. He explained that it was an instrument made of a series of steam-whistles so arranged that a man, sitting where he could handle them all very rapidly, could play a tune on them. The player had only to know the key to which ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... Benedick challenging her with her love for him, which he had learned from Hero, a pleasant explanation took place; and they found they had both been tricked into a belief of love, which had never existed, and had become lovers in truth by the power of a false jest: but the affection, which a merry invention had cheated them into, was grown too powerful to be shaken by a serious explanation; and since Benedick proposed to marry, he was resolved to think nothing to the purpose that the world could say against it; and he merrily kept up the jest, and swore to Beatrice, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of varied agriculture,—for the wants of a slave population are few in number and limited in kind; none of inland trade, for that is developed only by communities where education induces refinement, where facility of communication stimulates invention and variety of enterprise, where newspapers make every man's improvement in tools, machinery, or culture of the soil an incitement to all, and bring all the thinkers of the world to teach in the cheap university of the people. We do not, of course, mean to say that slaveholding ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Both species of worship existed for some time peacefully side by side; and even when, through the exertions of the Latin priesthood, the Slavic liturgy was gradually superseded by the occidental rites, the former was at least tolerated; and after the invention of printing, the Polish city of Cracow was the first place where books in the Old Slavic dialect, and portions of the Old Slavic ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... my self-setting sawmill I dammed one of the streams in the meadow and put the mill in operation. This invention was speedily followed by a lot of others,—water-wheels, curious doorlocks and latches, thermometers, hygrometers, pyrometers, clocks, a barometer, an automatic contrivance for feeding the horses at any required hour, a lamp-lighter and fire-lighter, an early-or-late-rising ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... For this reason it is not improbable that long sojourns at way stations on the cold, Alaskan route from central Asia may have weeded out certain types of minds. Perhaps that is why the Indian, though brave, stoical, and hardy, does not possess the alert, nervous temperament which leads to invention and progress. ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... attractions of woman. The comparatively small number of war formulas is explained by the fact that the last war in which the Cherokees, as a tribe, were engaged on their own account, closed with the Revolutionary period, so that these things were well nigh forgotten before the invention of the alphabet, a generation later. The Cherokees who engaged in the Creek war and the late American civil war fought in the interests of the whites, and their leaders were subordinated to white officers, hence there was not the same opportunity for the exercise of shamanistic ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... The adaptability, invention and resource of the men of the Discovery when they set to work after the failures of the autumn to prepare for the successes of the two following summers showed that they could rise to their difficulties. Scott admitted that "food, clothing, ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... at home. It was at that period that the description of human geniuses, called the Schoolmen, principally flourished. The writers who preceded the Christian era, possessed in an extraordinary degree the gift of imagination and invention. But they had little to boast on the score of arrangement, and discovered little skill in the strictness of an accurate deduction. Meanwhile the Schoolmen had a surprising subtlety in weaving the web of an argument, and arriving by a close deduction, through a multitude of steps, to a sound ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... dinner-table was "deeply, darkly, beautifully blue." But the young baronet was by no means a fool, notwithstanding these sportsmanlike proclivities. The Jocelyns had been hard riders for half-a-dozen centuries or so, and crack shots ever since the invention of firearms. Sir Philip was a sportsman, but he did not "hunt in dreams," and he was prepared to hold his wife a great deal "higher than his horse," whenever he should win that pleasant addition to his ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... men to consistency. How then are strict vegetarians to make pastry, butter being classed with the forbidden fruit? We fear we cannot tell them how to make good puff paste; but "Necessity is the mother of invention," and naturally olive oil must ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... romance," he says, "of which a journey to an Utopia, in the centre of Africa, forms the chief part, called The Adventures of Signor Gaudentio di Lucca, has been commonly ascribed to him; probably on no other ground than its union of pleasing invention with benevolence and elegance."—Works, vol. i. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various
... certain that ninety-nine per cent. of your readers will not be able to enlighten you) the necessity for accuracy does not arise. And so, I settled myself down to invent "history," and, if my historical narrative is all invention, I can defend myself by saying that if it isn't true—it might be. And many historical romances cannot ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... with her hair, washing the footsteps of the goddess in her tears, besought her mercy, with many prayers:—"By the gladdening rites of harvest, by the lighted lamps and mystic marches of the Marriage and mysterious Invention of thy daughter Proserpine, and by all beside that the holy place of Attica veils in silence, minister, I pray thee, to the sorrowful heart of Psyche! Suffer me to hide myself but for a few days among the heaps of ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... have, and Europe being what it is, will always continue to have the aptitude for the sea, the genius in mechanical invention and the superabundant wealth which between them are the three factors of the great modern fleet. A lengthy coast line training millions of her workers to a seafaring life, a long tradition of naval families, and pioneer ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... and copses and flowers appear the heathen deities; Jove and Phoebus, Neptune and AEolus, with a long train of mythological imagery, such as a college easily supplies. Nothing can less display knowledge, or less exercise invention, than to tell how a shepherd has lost his companion, and must now feed his flocks alone; how one god asks another god what has become of Lycidas, and how neither god can tell. He who thus grieves can excite no ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... which represents Talbot in the act of presenting a volume of romances to the King and Queen. Henry was notoriously plain in his dress, but his example was not followed by his court. Fairholt says: "It would appear as if the English nobility and gentry sought relief in the invention of all that was absurd in apparel, as a counter-excitement to the feverish spirit engendered by civil war."—History of Costume, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... unwilling to think that the residence of the gods should be encumbered with so much useless rubbish. The natives of Otaheite entertain similar notions respecting these things, viz. that brutes, plants, and stones exist hereafter, but it is not mentioned that they extend the idea to objects of human invention."[658] ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... several times, resting on the final w, and pausing between each repetition—wow! wow! wow!—you will find that the sound is not at all unlike the tolling of a funeral bell; and therefore the word is most probably an onomatopoetic invention of ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... Hans, overcome by this misplaced trust. "That is my invention. Nobody knows that she did that. Shall you forgive me for ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... and its predecessor of 1851 have declared that the case of aniline dye-stuffs—for by that time quite a number of new pigments had been discovered—excited at the later the same attention as that given to the Koh-i-noor at the earlier. The invention, out of which grew the enormous German business already alluded to, and with which has been associated the discovery and manufacture of the synthetic drugs, was entirely British in its inception and in its early stages. Moreover the raw materials on which it depended, namely, ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... terrify his lawful master, what could I think, wench? I only trust the Doctor has kept the great secret of all from his knowledge.—But here we are at the Lodge. Go to thy chamber, wench, and compose thyself. I must seek out Doctor Rochecliffe; he is ever talking of his quick and ready invention. Here come times, I think, that ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... book was finished above thirteen years since, (1696) which is eight years before it was published. The author was then young, his invention at the height, and his reading fresh in his head." And again: "Men should be more cautious in losing their time, if they did but consider, that to answer a book effectually requireth more pains and skill, more wit, learning and ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... Eighty years of age; and tho an Old man, yet appears not to be like one, neither in countenance nor action. His Apparel is very strange and wonderful, not after his own Countrey-fashion, or any other, being made after his own invention. On his head he wears a Cap with four corners like a Jesuits three teer high, and a Feather standing upright before, like that in the head of a fore-horse in a Team, a long band hanging down his back after the Portuguez ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... way was prepared for the introduction of still another invention of paganism, which Rome named purgatory, and employed to terrify the credulous and superstitious multitudes. By this heresy is affirmed the existence of a place of torment, in which the souls of such as have not merited eternal damnation are to suffer punishment for their ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... pocket an ingenious little invention which he had exhibited all along the road as an indispensable article in every well-kept house. He wanted to show it to her, but it was too cold a day for her to stop outside. Wouldn't she allow him to step in and explain how her work could be materially lessened and her labour turned ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... our next Lecture, then, must be an inquiry into the real nature of Idolatry; that is to say, the invention and service of Idols: and, in the interval, may I commend to your own thoughts this question, not wholly irrelevant, yet which I cannot pursue; namely, whether the God to whom we have so habitually prayed for deliverance "from battle, murder, and sudden ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... the burly scholar's habit of robust banter being enough to account for the form of his remark. As a matter of fact, his own plays are strewn with classic transcriptions; and though he evidently plumed himself on his power of "invention"[108] in the matter of plots—a faculty which he knew Shakspere to lack—he cannot conceivably have meant to charge his rival with having committed any discreditable plagiarism in drawing upon Montaigne. At most he would mean to convey that ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... nom soient les memes qu'il avait faites; elles viennent bien de lui pour la plupart, quant a la matiere et la pensee; mais les paroles sont d'un autre." And again, "C'est donc a Hesiode, que j'aimerais mieux attribuer la gloire de l'invention; mais sans doute il laissa la chose tres imparfaite. Esope la perfectionne si heureusement, qu'on l'a regarde comme le vrai pere de cette sorte de production." M. Bayle. ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... behind me with as virulent a case of the deeps as often comes to a man when his digestion is good. It wasn't that I could not bear the thought of hardship; I've taken hunting trips up into the mountains more times than I can remember, and ate ungodly messes of my own invention, and waded waist-deep in snow and slept under the stars, and enjoyed nearly every minute. So it wasn't the hardships that I had every reason to expect that got me down. I think it was the feeling that dad had turned me down; that I was in exile, and—in his eyes, at least—disgraced, ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... justify violence is anger. The only circumstance which can justify the taking of human life is anger. And anger may be expressed by a rope or a knife-edge, but not by a roundabout or any other morbid invention of a cold-blooded philosopher such as the electric chair, or the lethal chamber. In the same way, if flogging is to continue as a punishment, it must be inflicted by a man ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... ready practiser of the art of dissimulation, and would at this moment have been much the better of a hint from Wamba's more fertile brain. But necessity, according to the ancient proverb, sharpens invention, and he muttered something under his cowl concerning the men in question being excommunicated outlaws both ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... that they are strongly marked with the original genius of their author, as well as with the more peculiar traits of the national character,—the ground, no doubt, on which they have always been favourites at home, and less valued than they deserve to be abroad. As works of invention, they rank, among their author's productions, next after Don Quixote; in correctness and grace of style they stand before it.... They are all fresh from the racy soil of the national character, as that character is found in Andalusia, and are written with an idiomatic richness, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... help boys to translate at sight. Of the many books of unseen translation in general use few exhibit continuity of plan as regards the subject-matter, or give any help beyond a short heading. The average boy, unequal to the task before him, is forced to draw largely upon his own invention, and the master, in correcting written unseens, has seldom leisure to do more than mark mistakes—a method of correction almost useless to the boy, unless accompanied by full and careful explanation when the ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... congregation joining in the latter, in which the composer not only reveals an astonishing dramatic power in the expression of sentiment and the adaptation of his music to the feeling and situation of the characters, but also a depth and accuracy of musical skill and invention which have been the despair of composers from that time ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... in a century gone mad from bickering. About ten years ago we perfected what I call The Fourth Drive. It would take days to explain it, but it can throw a ship into Trans-Einsteinian Space. We had equipped the Old Ship with the new invention. Our experimental ship was so equipped. And this newer, larger one will also have The Fourth Drive. But we have made a few ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... was becoming tragic. The thought of the pleasures of scraping the ice-cream freezer paddles was enough to make Sammy turn to desperate invention for release. ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... lady would also share the hazard of such a broadside, I had no leave to blow myself and the powder convoy to kingdom come, as I thirsted to—could not, you will say, having neither pistol to snap nor flint and steel to fire a train. Nay, nay, my dears, I would not have you think so lightly of my invention. Had this been the only obstacle, you may be sure I should have found a way to grind a firing spark out of two ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... almost nothing in them, as well as for fat wallets stuffed with bank-bills, and suggesting something which can be made, accepted and enjoyed by everybody, large and small, all the wide world over? Who can it be that possesses this inexhaustible fertility of invention and kindness of heart? No ordinary human being, you may be sure. Not Father Santa Claus! He has enough to do with distributing the presents after they are made; besides, fancy-work is not in a man's line,—not even a saint's! But what so likely as that ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... professional, call'd thee 'chattel'— A vile distinction for a beaver hat! A lawyer's hat!—alack! what teeming store-house oft Of mischiefs dire; ill-boding parchment; 'writs,' With hieroglyphics mystical inscribed; Invention curious of graceless men, And in sad mock'ry named 'the grace of God!' What mighty 'suits at law,' begot and born Within thy strait enclosure, yet survive Thy tenth successor! And what mighty 'suits In chancery,' (so named from CHANCE, who ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... which it has brought to man's power over his environment. There is no need to recite here in detail the marvelous record of mechanical progress that constituted the "industrial revolution" of the eighteenth century. The utilization of coal for the smelting of iron ore; the invention of machinery that could spin and weave; the application of the undreamed energy of steam as a motive force, the building of canals and the making of stone roads—these proved but the beginnings. Each stage of invention ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... her writings, (says the editor), it does not, perhaps, become me largely to speak; yet I must hazard the remark, that her defects will be perceived to be those of youth and inexperience, while in invention, and in that mysterious power of exciting deep interest, of enchaining the attention and keeping it alive to the end of the story; in that adaptation of the measure to the sentiment, and in the sudden change of measure to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various
... front of me some of the finest destructive agents you could wish to light upon—carbon-monoxide, chlorine-trioxide, mercuric-oxide, conine, potassamide, potassium-carboxide, cyanogen—when Edwards entered. I was wearing a mask of my own invention, a thing that covered ears and head and everything, something like a diver's helmet—I was dealing with gases a sniff of which meant death; only a few days before, unmasked, I had been doing some fool's trick with a couple of acids—sulphuric and cyanide of potassium—when, ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... who had just joined us, cast down his eyes at this tale about him, and murmured in a sententious tone of voice, "Pipes are an invention of ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... upheavings is that the whole population is disarmed, no party suffering its rival to have any means of offence or defence. Moreover, as industry and commerce develope, the citizens become unwilling to fight, while on the other hand the invention of firearms, subverting the whole system of warfare, renders special military training more and more necessary. In the days of the Lombard League, of Campaldino and Montaperti, the citizens could fight, hand to hand, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... could confidently assign it to the latest period of Ibsen's career, on noting a certain difference of scale between its foundations and its superstructure. In his earlier plays, down to and including Hedda Gabler, we feel his invention at work to the very last moment, often with more intensity in the last act than in the first; in his later plays he seems to be in haste to pass as early as possible from invention to pure analysis. In this play, after the death of Eyolf ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen
... of seven hundred years, which has not turned to the advantage of equality. The Crusades and the wars of the English decimated the nobles and divided their possessions; the erection of communities introduced an element of democratic liberty into the bosom of feudal monarchy; the invention of fire-arms equalized the villein and the noble on the field of battle; printing opened the same resources to the minds of all classes; the post was organized so as to bring the same information to the door of the poor man's cottage and to ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... marshalled; can one expect of such a book that it should be neatly composed? It is crowded with life, at whatever point we face it; intensely vivid, inexhaustibly stirring, the broad impression is made by the big prodigality of Tolstoy's invention. If a novel could really be as large as life, Tolstoy could easily fill it; his great masterful reach never seems near its limit; he is always ready to annex another and yet another tract of life, he is only restrained by the mere necessity of bringing a novel somewhere to an end. ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... wanton Wife you think me, What wou'd more welcome be then that Revenge— Here on my knees I beg again, my Lord, You would perswade your self, that what I told you Was cause of that close meeting, was so truly, And no invention; and as this Day Began our Nuptial Joys, so let it end Our Marriage Discords; then shall I have cause To keep it Annually a Festival; In thanks to Heav'n for two such ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... whether the saying, "The corpse of an enemy smells sweet," attributed to Charles IX. of France, in allusion to Coligny, is historical or was the invention of a romancer. It occurs in Dumas's ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Paris papers, a new invention, called papier linge, has lately attracted much attention. It consists of a paper made closely to resemble damask and other linen, not only to the eye, but even to the touch. The articles are used for every purpose ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... means together, and by giving a sum to the sheriff's black boy, (a man more intelligent, gentlemanly, and generous-hearted than his master,) had a measure of coffee, sugar, and bread brought in. Necessity was the mother of invention with them, for they had procured a barrel for twenty-five cents, and made it supply the place of a table. With a few chips that were brought to them by a kind-hearted colored woman that did their washing, and bestowed many little ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... together with perfect ease through an electric medium; ships ploughed the seas by electricity; printing, an art of which the dwellers on Earth are so proud, was accomplished by electricity—in fact, everything in the way of science, art, and invention known to us was also known in Jupiter, only to greater perfection, because tempered and strengthened by an electric force which never failed. From Jupiter, Azul guided me to many other fair and splendid worlds—yet none of them ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... as any part of this under-sea voyage," replied the professor. "These diving suits are something I have not told you about," he went on. "They are my own invention. Besides the regular rubber suits there is an interlining of steel,—something like the ancient suits of chain mail—to withstand the great pressure of water. Then, instead of being dependent on a ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... scene of that day in review before me many times, I always saw that the poor gentleman believed the story readily, because I was one of the Jews—that you believed the story readily, my child, because I was one of the Jews—that the story itself first came into the invention of the originator thereof, because I was one of the Jews. This was the result of my having had you three before me, face to face, and seeing the thing visibly presented as upon a theatre. Wherefore I perceived that the obligation was upon me to leave ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Augury and the Prophecy and the Preface of the Tale, and the Occasion of its invention and conception, and the Pillow-talk which Ailill and Medb had in Cruachan. [1]Next follows the Body of ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... Leicester to see him become the husband of her beautiful rival; Mary, on her part, despised the "new-made earl", and Leicester himself apologized to Mary's ambassador for the presumption of the proposal, "alleging the invention of that proposition to have proceeded from Master Cecil, his secret enemy".[69] While the Leicester negotiations were in progress, the Earl of Lennox, who had been exiled in 1544, returned to Scotland with his son Henry, Lord Darnley, a handsome ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... away. In addition to the dread that, having led up to so much mischief, it would be now more likely than ever to alienate Joe from me if he believed it, I had a further restraining dread that he would not believe it, but would assort it with the fabulous dogs and veal-cutlets as a monstrous invention. However, I temporized with myself, of course—for, was I not wavering between right and wrong, when the thing is always done?—and resolved to make a full disclosure if I should see any such new occasion as a new chance of helping in the discovery ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Nor is the invention of Lupa, for the name of the mother of the Roman twins, by any means satisfactory. May not the mysteries of Lycanthropy have had their origin in such a not infrequent fact, if Col. Sleeman may be trusted, as the rearing of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... upon new terms in philosophy with the same suspicion with which Jack Cade regarded "a noun and a verb, and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear," by showing that the head and front of our offending, "the Unconditioned," is no modern invention of Teutonic barbarism, but sanctioned even by the Attic elegance of a Plato. And in the second place, it contains almost a history in miniature of the highest speculations of philosophy, both in earlier and in later times, and points out, with ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... is by no means a very significant one; since, although the Vey alphabet, the invention of a man now living, so far differs from the Mandingo, as to be spelt by the syllable rather than the letter, it is anything but an independent creation of the Negro brain. Doala Bukara, its composer, ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... was the merriest of comrades, the most appreciative of partners. She also, to her own surprise, became deeply interested in her work and, while the hours and confinement sometimes irritated her, her field of invention was wide enough to employ her real talent, and her success was ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... manner in which Hermann Hesse's Trip to India came into existence, and Kellermann has similarly published two books on Japan (A Promenade in Japan, 1911, Sassayo Yassal, 1913). The danger of this tendency lies in the confusion of poetic invention and journalistic report. Kellermann's most recent novel The Tunnel (1913), which sold inside of a few months to the number of a hundred thousand copies, cannot be regarded as a genuine work of art. It is not "the epic of iron and electricity, the Odyssey of modern engineering and capitalism" ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... won't do!" hastily urged Constance. "He must have the check right now. Don't you see he only has a million and ten thousand dollars? He owes Polly five thousand and me fifteen thousand, and if you give him ten thousand dollars for his invention he'll have a million and how much? I'm all mixed up! But I do know this: that he'll have his million dollars ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... vocation, some trade, but they do all by ministers and servants, ad otia duntaxat se natos existimant, imo ad sui ipsius plerumque et aliorum perniciem, [3216]as one freely taxeth such kind of men, they are all for pastimes, 'tis all their study, all their invention tends to this alone, to drive away time, as if they were born some of them to no other ends. Therefore to correct and avoid these errors and inconveniences, our divines, physicians, and politicians, so much labour, and so seriously exhort; and for ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Since the invention of the inexpensive Reflectoscope, illustrated talks in camp are now possible. Travel talks, using postal cards from different parts of the world, postals telling the "Story of the Flag," "State Seals and their Mottoes," etc., are now ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... band to-night, that had come from some distant but celebrated capital; musicians known by fame to everybody, but whom nobody had ever heard. They played wonderfully on instruments of new invention, and divinely upon old ones. It was impossible that anything could be more gay and inspiring than their silver bugles, and ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... been a caricature of this kind—for instance, the Vedanta doctrine in Asia, and Platonism in Europe. Let us not be ungrateful to it, although it must certainly be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome, and the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a dogmatist error—namely, Plato's invention of Pure Spirit and the Good in Itself. But now when it has been surmounted, when Europe, rid of this nightmare, can again draw breath freely and at least enjoy a healthier—sleep, we, WHOSE DUTY IS WAKEFULNESS ITSELF, are the heirs of all the strength which the struggle against this error ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... against the press. However, the closing words of the article, save for the tone, can hardly be gainsaid: "Never," asserted Janin, "has Monsieur de Balzac's talent been more diffuse, never has his invention been more languishing, never has his style been more incorrect, even if we include the days when the illustrious novelist had nothing to fear from serious criticism, days when he was too unknown to be noticed by the small newspapers, days when ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... not go to bed as soon as the evening's work was over, as she would have done at ordinary times. To counteract the malign spell which she imagined poor Eustacia to be working, the boy's mother busied herself with a ghastly invention of superstition, calculated to bring powerlessness, atrophy, and annihilation on any human being against whom it was directed. It was a practice well known on Egdon at that date, and one that is not quite ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... and that while he did so he should keep a mature man and a vast and elaborate machine waiting for him in the street outside. And Mr. Melchizidek's manner alone convinced Mr. Prohack that what he had told his family, and that what he had told Miss Winstock in the car, was strictly true and not the invention of his fancy—namely that the appointment was genuinely ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... understanding but the Spirit. The Common Prayer Book will not do it, neither can any man expect that it should be instrumental that way, it being none of God's ordinances; but a thing since the Scriptures were written, patched together one piece at one time, and another at another; a mere human invention and institution, which God is so far from owning of, that he expressly forbids it, with any other such like, and that by manifold sayings in his most holy and blessed Word. (See Mark 7:7,8, and Col 2:16-23; Deut 12:30-32; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Then followed a flash photo of the dead girl lying on the floor,—her poor, thin, battered and bruised body straight out, the knees and feet stretching the wet drapery,—nothing had been left out. Most of the details were untrue,—the story of the lover being a pure invention, but the effect was all right. Then, again, no other morning journal had more than a ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... be so pitiful that a wretched, brainless dog, when placed in a position like this, should be able to scramble out, while I, with the power of thinking given to me, with reason and some invention, was perfectly helpless. ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... the serious chronicles, he combined in cleverly impudent fashion all the adaptable miscellaneous material, fictitious, legendary, or traditional, which he found at hand. In dealing with Arthur, Geoffrey greatly enlarges on Gildas and Nennius; in part, no doubt, from his own invention, in part, perhaps, from Welsh tradition. He provides Arthur with a father, King Uther, makes of Arthur's wars against the Saxons only his youthful exploits, relates at length how Arthur conquered almost all of Western ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... problem of the entertainment. He had constructed, what he thought to be distinctly American, a huge music-box, which was to produce the most wonderful tones ever heard. This instrument had the appearance of a big wine-cask and yet a street-organ at the same time, and was an invention of the ingenious inn-keeper. It was practically a barrel, covered with illustrations of old Sunday newspapers and county-fair posters. To its side was fastened an improvised lever, made from a broken cart-wheel. Under this barrel, concealed so that no one could see within, were ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... degrees, and with nearly 150 pounds weight among seven of us, for the sick hand was of course relieved as far as possible. I got the requisite observation for latitude during the night; and since necessity is ever the mother of invention, read off my sextant by a torch made for the occasion from pieces of paperbark. It will easily be believed, that I did not needlessly prolong the work; for the light of the torch rendered me a prominent mark for any prowling savage to hurl his spear at: however, His Eye, to whom ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... sources of lamentation furnished to the worthy squire, by the improvement of society, and the grievous advancement of knowledge; among which there is none, I believe, that causes him more frequent regret than the unfortunate invention of gunpowder. To this he continually traces the decay of some favourite custom, and, indeed, the general downfall of all chivalrous and romantic usages. "English soldiers," he says, "have never been the men they were in ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... be a more infernal invention than that made against the. Queen by Hdbert,—namely, that she had had an improper intimacy with her own son? He made use of this sublime idea of which he boasted in order to prejudice the women against the Queen, and to prevent her execution from exciting pity. It had, however, no other ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... had to go into farming when he married Hakes's daughter as brought the farm with her; and now he had gone back to his books he was more than ever took up with the idea of finding something out—making something new that no one had ever made before—his invention, he called it, but I never understood what it was all about—and indeed Mrs. Blake took very good care ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... dans toutes les mains. Le suffrage de la multitude se joignit a celui des connoisseurs; la mode, qui est aussi en possession de donner son suffrage, s'empressa de parer les ajustemens d'invention recente, du nom de l'illustre perroquet; les vases d'ornement, les vases usuels qui sortoient des fabriques francoises, retracoient presque tous quelques episodes du petit poeme. Un artist dont le nom est venu jusqu'a nous, Raux, en peignit sur email les sujets les ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.04.06 • Various
... boys should be interested in this invention, as it suggests many ideas for the improvement ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 53, November 11, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... reasons that could induce him to so execrable an attempt upon his sovereign. Incisions were made into the muscular parts of his legs, arms, and thighs, into which boiling oil was poured. Every refinement on cruelty, that human invention could suggest, was practised without effect; nothing could overcome his obstinacy; and his silence was construed into a presumption, that he must have accomplices in the plot. To render his punishment more public and conspicuous, he was removed to Paris, there to undergo a repetition ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... as any cat—and harmless as a tame rabbit. If she caught the maids at fault, she found an excuse for them at the same time. If she was quite exasperated with the stupidity of Yakub, the dvornik, she pretended to curse him in a phrase of her own invention, a mixture of Hebrew and Russian, which, translated, said, "Mayst thou have gold and silver in thy bosom"; but to the choreman, who was not a linguist, the mongrel phrase conveyed ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... Venus and Adonis "the first heir of his invention," apparently implying that it was his first effort at literary composition. He should not have said it. It has been an embarrassment to his historians these many, many years. They have to make him write that graceful and polished and flawless and beautiful poem before he ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Russian man in every respect; he loved Russian viands, he loved Russian songs, but the accordion, "a factory invention," he detested; he loved to watch the maidens in their choral songs, the women in their dances. In his youth, it was said, he had sung rollickingly and danced with agility. He loved to steam himself in the bath,—and ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... parson, and some more ammunition, as we had scarcely half a pound of balls left between us. The lawyer enjoyed, by anticipation, the happiness of once more filling his half-gallon flask, and the doctor promised to give us dishes of his own invention, as soon as he could meet with a frying-pan. In fine, so exuberant were our spirits, that it was late before we ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... they conceived to be some of the attributes of God, perhaps in order to present things in a way better adapted to the comprehensions of the vulgar, than the abstruse idea of an indescribable, invisible God; and hence the invention of a Brahma, a Vishnu, and a Siva or Iswara. These were represented under various forms; but no emblem or visible sign of Brihm or Brehm, the Omnipotent, is to be found. They considered the great mystery of the existence ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... fourteen; His body was long and lank and lean— Just right for flying, as will be seen; He had two eyes as bright as a bean, And a freckled nose that grew between, 20 A little awry;—for I must mention That he had riveted his attention Upon his wonderful invention, Twisting his tongue as he twisted the strings, And working his face as he worked the wings, 25 And with every turn of gimlet and screw Turning and screwing his mouth round too, Till his nose seemed bent To catch the scent, Around some corner, of new-baked pies, ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... xxxvi ff.; it was the duty of every village or town upon the banks of the main canals in Babylonia to keep its own section clear of silt, and of course it was also responsible for its own smaller irrigation-channels. While the invention of the system of basin-irrigation was practically forced on Egypt, the extraordinary fertility of Babylonia was won in the teeth of nature by the system of perennial irrigation, or irrigation all the year round. In Babylonia the water was led into small fields of two or three acres, while ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... are led away from the divine institutions to those of human invention. Human wisdom is exalted above divine; and all with ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... glared through his spectacles like the eyes of a serpent about to spring, and his whole body became rigid. Then we started computing and, ha! ha!—my rival computed with a multiplication table of his own invention that gave entirely new results. "He's way off in his reckoning!" said the burgomaster, and, glancing in my direction, held out his hand to me with the appointment. It smelled terribly of tobacco, but I took it and raised it humbly to my lips.—Here ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... that vision realized, are the same. The only legitimate aesthetic analysis is, then, that of the relation between the aesthetic object and the lover of beauty, and all the studies in the psychology of invention—be it literary, scientific, or practical invention—have no ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... that horrible creature's back for two minutes before I discovered that it was a "Go-As-He-Pleased" affair and that "Going-As-I-Pleased," like the flowers that bloom in the Spring, had nothing to do with the case. Had I begun in the pursuit of the pleasures of the track in later years after the invention of wheels, whereby that easy running vehicle, the sulky, was brought into being, and when, by the taming of the horse, the latter became a domesticated animal with sporting proclivities, instead of a mere prowler of the plains, I might have found the joys of racing more to my taste, although ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... confused by the misuse of the word Extempore. Prior to the invention of Printing every one who had to conduct Services was required to know them by heart, so as to be able to say them without book. The fact that he used no book did not make the prayers extempore. In like manner one who is about to conduct the prayers of a Congregation ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... That fable and history have been indiscriminately mingled by the Spanish authors is plain enough from the fact that ridiculous miracles are constantly recorded by them as having actually occurred, which were the pure invention of the priesthood, designed to influence and awe the ignorant native race. This reduces us to the unfortunate condition of being obliged to doubt what may have been historically true. The Inquisition exercised a censorship over everything designed for publication, and unless it ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... nature once more. 'God! Who is He? I know nothing of your God! I want to know nothing of Him if He has stolen you away from me, who have never harmed Him. My uncle Jeanbernat was right then when he said that your God was only an invention to frighten people, and make them weep! You are lying; you love me no longer, and that God of yours does ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... seen hide or hair of him since; I suppose he is off in the woods or up in his room, reading or figuring on some invention. Do ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... should so mistake the gospel message as to think differently, and to act as if all should be thrust out who do not conform to certain rules and regulations of man's invention, although they with deep repentance trust in the blood of Christ alone for salvation. Many a once heathen savage will rise up in the day of judgment to condemn those men. Would that, for their own sakes, they could even now voyage ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... mother of invention," exclaimed Adair suddenly. "Here's a piece of tin. I have some scissors in my dressing-case, and I think I could manage to cut out a hook or two before they are quite blunted. Let's ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... jewels, showing breasts which stood out like pomegranates and unveiling a face as it were the moon on the night of fullness. Then she began to dance, and Ibrahim beheld motions he had never in his life seen their like, for she showed such wondrous skill and marvellous invention, that she made men forget the dancing of bubbles in wine-cups and called to mind the inclining of the turbands from head[FN326]-tops: even as saith of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... Thames, and the more fashionable region of Scotland Yard. Here, where now Z 300 repairs to report his investigations to a Commissioner, the young dandies of Charles II.'s day strutted in gay doublets, swore hasty oaths of choice invention, smoked the true Tobago from huge pipe-bowls, and ogled the fair but not too bashful dames who passed to and fro in their chariots. The court took its name from the royalties of Scotland, who, when they visited the South, were there lodged, as being conveniently near ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... waiting and watching among the lilies by the pool. By these things it seemeth that the boy was not mortal, as she supposed, but rather the Demon or Spirit of Love, whom John of Dreux for his two arrows holdeth to be that same Eros of Greece.—MSS. Mus. Aix. B. 754. Needless to say, it was a pure invention and not a copy, or travesty of an old model. I was egregiously proud of the scription at the end which, if I remember rightly, my father helped me to concoct. A certain interest has always attached in my mind to this piece of prose. ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... at the very spot and at the very moment, the precise measure of impact necessary to counterbalance its perpetual tendency to fall in one direction or another, so that the two have all the air of a single invention—such an invention as one might meet with in an ancient clock, contrived when men had time to mingle play with earnest—and you will have in your mind's eye a real likeness of Sir George attended, any midnight in the week, by his son Gilbert. Home the big one staggered, reeled, gyrated, and tumbled; ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... social distinctions are rapidly disappearing. In fact, we have scarcely any thing left, even now, but the shadow of a true aristocracy, and that is only to be found in Virginia. At the North, mere wealth makes a man a gentleman; and this new invention of these degenerate times is fast being adopted even here in the 'Old Dominion.' But it won't do—unless a man is born and bred a gentleman, he ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... shrewd by half," he said, with a smile. "It is for Grant's birthday and nobody was to know. As a matter of fact," he added, his invention quickly leaping to the refinements of details in his falsehood, "I fancy Ninitta really wants it for the ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... far more probable, on the contrary, that, after what he had done in the morning, they would have ascribed his charges to a mistake, or seen in them a weak invention in order to cover his retreat? Therefore it was a thousand times better to keep silence, to be resigned to postpone to another day every attempt to avenge himself in a manner corresponding to the injury he had suffered, and all the more effectively, as his ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... locomotion. But a barbarian has none of these facilities: his interests are few; his dress, such as it is, is intended to stand the wear and tear of years, and all weathers; it is relatively very costly, and is an investment, one may say, of his capital rather than of his income; the invention of his people is sluggish, and their arts are few, consequently he is perforce taught to be conservative, his ideas are fixed, and he becomes scandalised even ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... back, learning to manage the animal with voice or switch and without either saddle or bridle. This thinking people soon invented the snaffle bit, and both rode and drove with its aid. The curb bit was a Roman invention. Shoeing was not practiced by either Greeks or Romans. Saddles and harnesses were at first made of skins ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... is expressly mentioned on the title-page, where "Kemp's applauded merriments of the men of Gotham, in receiving the King into Gotham" are made prominent; but unless much were left to the extemporaneous invention of the performer, or unless much has been omitted in the printed copy, which was inserted by the author in his manuscript, it is difficult at this time of day to discover in what the wit, if not the drollery, consisted. As this portion of the play has come down to us, it seems to be composed ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... of us is born into the world he is subject to the influences of forces that reach backwards to the earliest days of the race. The "dead hand" rules,—yes, and the dead thought, belief and custom continue to shape the lives and character of the living. The invention and development of speech and writing have brought into every man's career the mental life and character of all his own ancestors and the ancestors of every ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... unscathed came crowding back on him now. When he was not actually driving himself to physical labour his mind would fill with pictures that he was able to conjure up without knowing how; sometimes Blanche would partner him in those imaginings, sometimes some stranger woman of his invention. He felt ashamed of these ideas, but that did not prevent them coming, and sometimes he would deliberately give way and allow himself hours to elaborate them, from which he would rouse himself worn ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... distinctly mercenary. But then Skippy lived in a materialistic age and Skippy's father owned a department store. Yet the practical and profitable possibilities did not proceed from any inward contamination of the generous impulse of invention, but from contact and suggestion. At Bill Appleby's, where he wandered in hungrily, in a desperate hope of meeting some friend whose memory could be jogged by reference to past favors, he perceived the celebrated Doc Macnooder in earnest ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... at Barlow). Nonsense. Nothing in it. Mere invention of Barlow's. He's a regular Edison ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... observation is less keen than theirs, her portraiture less vivid, her humor less cordial and abundant. Her conceptions have not the intensity of Charlotte Bronte's, nor her great scenes the dramatic fire of Scott's. In the minor matters of invention and plot she sometimes has recourse to shifts that betray the deficiencies they are intended to conceal. The quality in which she is supreme is one that lies beyond the strict domain of art. It is the power of penetrating to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... no doubts. For you know, this is not any invention of my own; it is only what we all of us know, and what Christ revealed ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... the not altogether unrelished fear and excitement that he always caused her, she returned to her seat under the tree, and began to wonder what Festus Derriman's story meant, which, from the earnestness of his tone, did not seem like a pure invention. It suddenly flashed upon her mind that she herself had heard voices in the garden, and that the persons seen by Farmer Derriman, of whose visit and reclamation of his box the miller had told her, might have been Matilda and John Loveday. She further recalled the strange agitation ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... employ the interior language. We commune directly with the Holy Spirit. You get some message from Him every day more satisfactory than words. It's the answer of your prayers. I tell you, sir, words are an invention of the devil. Do you like Rayel?" he asked, turning ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... century approached; in the fourteenth the Rhine witnessed the invention of artillery; and on its bank, at Strassburg, a printing-office was first established. In 1400 the famous cannon, fourteen feet in length, was cast at Cologne; and in 1472 Vindelin de Spire printed ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... previous experience gained in experimenting with other processes, was that a practical method of mounting fish was devised, a method by means of which the angler can successfully mount his own specimens. "Necessity is the mother of invention," you know. ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... swords whirling and flickering beautifully in the moonlight, and the audience clapped hands gently in time, and there was an occasional heugh! as used to be the way in our Highland Reel, before the invention of the—lowlander, the ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... signal for which was given when the brave old bell rang out from Independence Hall its message of freedom. The very colors then unfurled, and for the first time named the flag of the United States, were the handiwork, and in part the invention of a woman. That to the taste and suggestions of Mrs. Elizabeth Ross, of Philadelphia, we owe the beauty of the Union's flag can not be denied. There are those who would deprive her of all credit in this connection, and assert that the committee appointed ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... it would return at her call for food and eat from her hand. The blue-jay is naturally a very wild bird, but when it is tamed it becomes very inquisitive and social, and seems to have a brain full of invention and becomes a very comical pet. Mrs. Woods called her pet ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... decay. We welcome these people; and yet they must eat to live, and the majority of them must work, or they will have nothing to eat. I think the most of them labor cheerfully, and my experience is that idleness is the worst foe of man. But, on the other hand, every year invention so protects and fortifies capital, that one must do a larger business or employ fewer men. In five years the condition of labor has greatly changed at Hope Mills, and in five years more it will change again. This is the inexorable law of nature, or, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... these young republicans, were an invention of the Evil One, invented for the sole purpose of interfering with them. But for the monitors they could carry out their long-cherished scheme of a pitched battle on the big staircase, for asserting their right to go down ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... and are by her intended for the church—vestals for Hymen's altar: at any rate, I hope they will escape the sacrifices of Cytherea. Harriette is now about forty years of age: she was, when at her zenith, always celebrated rather for her tact in love affairs, and her talent at invention, than the soft engaging qualifications of the frail fair, which fascinate the eye and lead the heart captive with delight: her conversational powers were admirable; but her temper was outrageous, with ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... himself when he looked the image of profound melancholy. At that time I had warmer admiration for his art than I have now, and the general public looked upon him as the greatest artist in England. No doubt he was very observant, and had a wonderful memory for animals and their ways, as well as some invention; he had also unsurpassable technical skill, of ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... British subject to be ingenious at his peril: of harassing him, obstructing him, inviting robbers (by making his remedy uncertain, and expensive) to plunder him, and at the best of confiscating his property after a short term of enjoyment, as though invention were on a par with felony. The system had uniformly found great favour with the Barnacles, and that was only reasonable, too; for one who worthily invents must be in earnest, and the Barnacles abhorred and dreaded nothing half so much. That again was very reasonable; ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... economic aspects of slavery. This revolution of opinion had been wrought in large degree by the cotton-plant. When the National Government was organized in 1789, the annual export of cotton did not exceed three hundred bales. It was reckoned only among our experimental products. But, stimulated by the invention of the gin, production increased so rapidly, that, at the time of Missouri's application for admission to the Union, cotton-planting was the most remunerative industry in the country. The export alone exceeded three hundred thousand bales annually. But this highly profitable culture was in regions ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... do so," said the young man, with a quickness which gave proof of his ready invention. "I am (as you have said) the Count Andrea Cavalcanti, son of Major Bartolomeo Cavalcanti, a descendant of the Cavalcanti whose names are inscribed in the golden book at Florence. Our family, although still rich (for my father's income amounts to half a million), has experienced ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... The discussion on riding involves the theories concerning horse-nomadic tribes and the period of this way of life. It also involves the problem of the invention of stirrup and saddle. The saddle seems to have been used in China already at the beginning of our period; the stirrup seems to be as late as the fifth century A.D. The article by A. Kroeber, The Ancient Oikumene as ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... wonderful nature of the invention. If a strange planet should happen to come within hail, and one of its philosophers were to ask us, as it passed, to hand him the most remarkable material product of human skill, we should offer him, without a moment's hesitation, a stereoscope containing an instantaneous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... thing. The fact is that originality (unless in minds of very unusual force) is by no means a matter, as some suppose, of impulse or intuition. In general, to be found, it must be elaborately sought and, although a positive merit of the highest class, demands in its attainment less of invention than negation. ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... which you know well I had contrived long before the Act for registering seamen was proposed. And that of educating women, which I think myself bound to declare, was formed long before the book called "Advice to the Ladies" was made public; and yet I do not write this to magnify my own invention, but to acquit myself from grafting on other people's thoughts. If I have trespassed upon any person in the world, it is upon yourself, from whom I had some of the notions about county banks, and factories for goods, in ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... denominated the Niskhi, or upright character: if this is understood, the others may be easily comprehended. This is the character in which the Koran was originally written. In the seventh century, the Arabs adopted the invention of Moramer ben Morra, a native of Babylonian Irak, which was afterwards improved by the Kufik. The Kufik and the Niskhi are synonymous. Richardson, in his Arabic Grammar, p. 4. say, "The Mauritannick character, which is used by the Moors of Marocco and Barbary, descendants of ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny |
