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Inventive   Listen
adjective
Inventive  adj.  Able and apt to invent; quick at contrivance; ready at expedients; as, an inventive head or genius.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Inventive" Quotes from Famous Books



... said of the commerce of Louisiana, may easily shew that it will necessarily encrease in proportion as the country is peopled; and industry also will be brought to perfection. For this purpose nothing more is requisite than some inventive and industrious geniuses, who coming from Europe, may discover such objects of commerce as may turn to account. I imagine a good tanner might in this colony tan the leather of the country, and cheaper than in France; I even imagine that the leather might there be brought ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... no prince of painters; I mean that Gaudenzio Ferrari's feeling was profound, whereas Raphael's was at best only skin deep. Nevertheless Signor Morelli is impressed with Ferrari's greatness, and places him, "for all in all, as regards inventive genius, dramatic life, and picturesqueness * * far above Luini." Bernardino Luini must stand so very high that no one can be placed far above him; nevertheless, it is hard not to think that Gaudenzio Ferrari was upon the ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... ammunition, packages of cartridges which we had stowed away inside some of the large cheeses. We had about a thousand of them, just two hundred each, but we needed rifles, and they must be chassepots. Luckily, however, the captain was a bold man of an inventive mind, and this was the plan that he ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... may long for leisure for purposes of study or meditation," I remarked, "he cannot get out of the harness, if I understand you rightly, except in these two ways you have mentioned. He must either by literary, artistic, or inventive productiveness indemnify the nation for the loss of his services, or must get a sufficient number of other people to contribute to ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... and lives, I believe, solely by instinct. I do not consider it an inventive, or very ingenious insect. To succeed well, its accommodations should be of the simplest and securest form. Therefore, instead of adopting the complicated plans of many of the patent hives, I have made, and used a simple box, like that now before you, containing a cube of one foot square inside—made ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen

... right, of having invented this very agreeable description of punishment. They are considered a heavy, phlegmatic sort of people, but on every point in which the art of ingeniously tormenting is in request, it must be admitted that they have taken the lead of much more vivacious and otherwise more inventive nations. ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... whole church was rich beyond expression. All that opulent devotion and inventive ingenuity could devise, in wood, bronze, marble, silver, gold, precious jewelry, or blazing sacramental furniture, had been profusely lavished. The penitential tears of centuries had incrusted the whole interior with their glittering ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... contrasted with that of the Dean, both in its weakness and its delicacy. Swift was too fond of bringing forward into the light what should be concealed, but saw the fault in others, and imputed it to an absence of inventive power. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... age of steel, a very great part of the inventive genius of man has gone into devices intended to facilitate transport, both of men and goods, and the growth of civilisation is in reality the facilitation of transit, improvement of the means of communication. He was a genius who first ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... but himself can say; but it is reasonable to suppose that, man of science though he was, he was still sufficiently human to regard with critical yet innocent pride and exultation the wonderful fabric which owed its existence to the inventive ingenuity of his fertile brain. It is probable, too, that when he had at length gratified himself with an exhaustive contemplation of its many points of interest, he went on board the ship, and with his own eyes and hands made a final inspection ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... mystery of Italian song, but in the work of such men as Whistler and Albert Moore, who have raised design and colour to the ideal level of poetry and music. For the quality of their exquisite painting comes from the mere inventive and creative handling of line and colour, from a certain form and choice of beautiful workmanship, which, rejecting all literary reminiscence and all metaphysical idea, is in itself entirely satisfying to the aesthetic sense—is, as the ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... of inventive genius is largely independent of known laws, and may provisionally be relegated to the domain of "accident," there are certain reasons which favoured the cotton industry in the industrial race. Its concentration ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... less and works much more than the modern legend supposes. But it is quite true that he has not the horror of bodily outbreak, natural to the classes that contain ladies; and it is quite true that he never has that alert and inventive sort of industry natural to the classes from which men can climb into great wealth. He has grown, partly by necessity, but partly also by temper, accustomed to have dirty clothes and dirty hands normally ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... beautiful Anita know that he had been ignominiously "piled" by that pinto horse? Not he. "Circumventions alters cases," he soliloquized, not altogether untruthfully. Then aloud, "Me hoss put his foot in a gopher-hole. Bruk his leg, and I had to shoot him, lady. Hated to part with him." And the inventive Sundown illustrated with telling ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... book is the first to tell the active, inventive and practical American boy the things he really wants to know; the thousand things he wants to do, and the ten thousand ways in which he can do them, with the helps and ingenious contrivances which every boy can either procure or make. The author divides the book among the sports of the four seasons; ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston

... the extraordinary skill which attracted me most in these etchings. It was rather the singular inventive power shown in the different scenes, the peculiar contrast between light and shade, and the almost childlike manner in which the figures had been treated. The artist's soul not only spoke through the choice of subject, but it found an expression in every single detail, conveyed ...
— Rembrandt • Josef Israels

... hearts of men. And then, turning away from the past, we face the sunrise of to-morrow with faith and resolution to make a better world than that of yesterday, and to demonstrate that our heroic defenders have not died in vain. These are dangerous times to permit the inventive genius of man to go unchecked in matters of armament. The unspeakable horrors of the war just ended make us instinctively turn our faces away from the possibility of a half-century from now, if our thought is to be turned intensively ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris

... which the most unquestioned belief accords to the history of man on our planet, could we suppose the average duration of life throughout equal to that of a generation now, there would have been time for 177 generations of working, planning, inventive men—of men desiring at each period the best they could conceive of, and framing the best schemes they were capable of to attain it. Here has been space for the slow rise and fall of nation after nation,—vast solitary tides heaving at long intervals the face of a wide, living, sullen ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... was shy, dreamy, sensitive, inventive, and a liar. He and his brother Dick were together walking in the shabby High Street, and talking ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... consumption," either by the objectionable nature of their subjects, by the still more objectionable tendency of their teaching, or by a yet more fatal demerit,—their lack of interest. They are in some respects notably tame and puerile,—with a puerility which is not childish simplicity, but a lack of inventive fancy, and which exhibits itself in bald repetition. The giant, for instance, always complains of a smell of Christian blood, and is always answered by the formula, that a crow flew over the chimney and must have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... what can you expect.' But as I have said, she did not approve of William. It was not so much that she took exception to the trail of tobacco ash that followed in his wake, or the unusual litter he created during his inventive period. She resented the fact that he was unmarried, having, at all times, a strong objection ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick

... tongue, German, Latin, French and Italian. Naturally cheerful and hospitable, he delighted in lively society; but he was also passionate, irritable and sensual. He had courage, a vivid sense of duty, an indefatigable love of work, and all the inquisitive zeal and inventive energy of a born reformer. Yet, though of the stuff of which great princes are made, he never attained to greatness. His own pleasure, whether it took the form of love or ambition, was always his first consideration. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... Imogen, I may now behold thee for the last time. The moment we sally from this retreat, I may be discovered by that enemy from whom we have so much to fear. I may be confined to all the wantonness of inventive torture, and that beauteous form, and the smiles of that bewitching countenance may be torn from these longing eyes for ever. But here, my shepherdess, we are safe. We may here secure ourselves from sudden intrusion, and a thousand means ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... liked your finesse. You are awfully inventive, Willis. Why, Willis, I've just thought of something. Oh, it would be so good if ...
— A Likely Story • William Dean Howells

... any innovation upon the old abuses in which they have had centuries of vested right; and it was not until the studies of Mr. R. A. Goodenough that there were brought to bear veterinary knowledge, mechanical skill, and inventive faculty, to overcome the stolidity and interest which have been the lions in the way ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell

... Whatever you wish, Dick," he said; "just turn on the tap. If my inventive faculty keeps on growing, I'll soon have a shower bath, hot ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... annually produced by it, ask ourselves what would happen if some duly qualified angel were to pick out and kill, or otherwise make away with, every man, who, in virtue of his assimilated scientific knowledge, his inventive gifts, his constructive and practical imagination, his energy, his initiative, and his natural powers of leadership, was better able to direct others than the other nine were to ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... Sue wondered about Judy, while Brian and Betty Jo exhausted their inventive faculties in efforts to satisfy the dear old lady with plausible reasons for the mountain ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright

... his arrangements are largely due to the experimental character of the exploration and development of this continent. The new energies released by the settlement of the colonies were indeed guided by stern determination, wise forethought, and inventive skill; but no one has ever really known the outcome of the experiment. It is a story ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... being permitted to huzza for any thing whatever which calls them together. In the rear of these troopers came the main body of the prisoners, at the head of whom were some of their leaders, who were treated with every circumstance of inventive mockery and insult. Several were placed on horseback with their faces to the animal's tail; others were chained to long bars of iron, which they were obliged to support in their hands, like the galleyslaves in Spain when travelling to the port where they are to be put on ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... opening and occasionally awkward style, Barksted's Mirrha is a poem of more power than Dom Diego. Among its more affecting passages are a vivid portrayal of a "gloomy gallerie" lined with portraits of Mirrha's suitors (p. 128) and an inventive account of Hebe's spilling the nectar that rained spices on Panchaia (p. 147). Barksted's early and unqualified recognition of Shakespeare's greatness, and his humbly accurate assessment of his own limited powers, compared to "neighbor" Shakespeare's, ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale

... firstlings of Shakspere's art and of Moliere's; and observe how they reveal these prentice playwrights at work, each seeking to display his cleverness and each satisfied when he had done this. In 'Love's Labor's Lost,' Shakspere is trying to amuse by inventive wit and youthful gaiety and ingenuity of device, just as Moliere in the 'Etourdi' is enjoying his own complicating of comic imbroglios, not yet having anything of importance to say on the stage, but practising against the time when he should ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... of the logic of those who, whilst they cry out against the inundation of foreign merchandise, have the courage to declaim equally against the excessive production resulting from the inventive power ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... here observe, that when I deny justice to be a natural virtue, I make use of the word, natural, only as opposed to artificial. In another sense of the word; as no principle of the human mind is more natural than a sense of virtue; so no virtue is more natural than justice. Mankind is an inventive species; and where an invention is obvious and absolutely necessary, it may as properly be said to be natural as any thing that proceeds immediately from original principles, without the intervention of thought or reflection. Though the rules of justice be artificial, they are not ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... summer was a sore trial to all of us; but Miss Christie, being of an inventive turn of mind, soon taught us a short way out of it. She folded and smoothed her undergarments with her hands and then sat on them for a specified time. We all followed her example and thus utilized the hours devoted to our French lessons and, while reading ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... or eight years of age. He became just what he promised to be in his boyhood, when he robbed the old cat of the tip of her tail out of which to manufacture a brush, to prosecute his delicate art. Thus it was with Eli Whitney, who proved himself such a benefactor to mankind by his inventive genius. His sister gives the following account of his boyhood: "Our father had a workshop, and sometimes made wheels of different kinds, and chairs. He had a variety of tools, and a lathe for turning chair-posts. This gave my brother an opportunity of learning the use of tools when ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer

... community, Thomas," said the Judge, laying down his spectacles and newspaper at the same time. "Mr. Editor Peters and the gossips ought to be infinitely obliged to you for wounding yourself, and affording him an opportunity to display his inventive genius and the brilliancy of his imagination, and giving them something to talk about. Here, Anne, read the article aloud ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... o'clock next morning I scrambled out of my berth at the imminent risk of broken bones, wondering why the inventive powers of our Yankee neighbours had not hit upon some arrangement to facilitate the descent; dressed, and went in search of fresh air. Picking my steps quietly between sleeping forms—for men in almost every attitude, some with blankets or great-coats rolled round them, were lying on the floor and ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... think I am going to do? You may have three guesses. Lock Willow? Wrong. The Adirondacks with Sallie? Wrong. (I'll never attempt that again; I was discouraged last year.) Can't you guess anything else? You're not very inventive. I'll tell you, Daddy, if you'll promise not to make a lot of objections. I warn your secretary in advance that my ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster

... its most elevated and elegant form. Beneath our skies, fancy neither sickens nor dies. The fire of poetry is kindled by our storms. Amid our plains, on the banks of our waters, and on our mountains, dwells the spirit of inventive enthusiasm. ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth

... or nine years of age he began to earn his own living, selling papers. When twelve years old his enterprise, pushed by ambition, secured him a position as newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railroad. Here his inventive genius manifested itself. Arranging with station agents along the line, he caused the headings of news to be telegraphed ahead, the agents posting the same in some conspicuous place. By this means the profits of his business were greatly augmented. He next ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... the housekeeper who looked after Tom and his father, and got their meals, when they consented to take enough time from their inventive work to eat. Another member of the household was Eradicate Sampson, a genial old colored man, who said he was named Eradicate because he used to eradicate the dirt ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton

... the number 16 plainly on the door. Then he grinned at Thad as he hurriedly went on to explain further; for his inventive faculties seemed without end when they were exercised in order to get him out ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson

... for my entertainment did not always harmonize entirely with my own ideas. He had an inventive mind, and wanted me to share his boyish sports. But I did not like to ride in a wheelbarrow, nor to walk on stilts, nor even to coast down the hill on his sled and I always got a tumble, if I tried, for I was rather a clumsy child; besides, I much preferred girls' ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom

... and will be considered unsatisfactory by many, however much it may satisfy the merely documentary claims. The attempt to make it better required an inventive phantasy and this was not always fortunate in its attempts. The rosicrucian theory cannot be dismissed off hand, especially if we conceive it in a somewhat broader sense. In agreement with Katsch, Hoehler (Herm. Phil., p. 6) recalls how generally people ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... now meditated. There was in Antwerp an Italian named Gianobelli, a man of great science and inventive power. He had first gone to Spain to offer his inventions to Philip, but had met with such insolent neglect there that he had betaken himself in a rage to Flanders, swearing that the Spaniards should repent their treatment of him. He had laid his plans before the Council ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty

... on his own judgment, he was not partial to counsellors who dealt much in suggestions and objections. At the same time he had too much discernment, and too much elevation of mind, to be gratified by sycophancy. The confidant of such a prince ought to be a man, not of inventive genius or commanding spirit, but brave and faithful, capable of executing orders punctually, of keeping secrets inviolably, of observing facts vigilantly, and of reporting them truly; and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... of Daven Judd, who although he is described as "lover, idealist and sometime fugitive from justice," comes at last to strange and beautiful happiness, it is difficult to believe that an author could have evolved such a book out of his own inventive faculties. One feels rather that Mr. Edwards has dared to reveal the emotions of creatures who are actual flesh and blood; emotions at times strange and terrible, frail and beautiful at others, yet ever tinged with human appeal. Mr. Edwards has never written anything like HIGH ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... perfection in his polish, less unimpeachable in the diamond lustre and clearness of his tone, than De Beriot, Ernst had as much elegance as that exquisite violinist, with greater depth of feeling. Less audaciously inventive and extravagant than Paganini, he was sounder in taste, and, in his music, with no lack of fantasy, more scientific in construction.... The secret, however, of Ernst's success, whether as a composer or a virtuoso, lay in his expressive power and accent. ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee

... A scheming drug-vender, (inventive genius,) an utterly untrustworthy and incompetent observer, (profound searcher of Nature,) a shallow dabbler in erudition, (sagacious scholar,) started the monstrous fiction (founded the immortal system) of Homoeopathy. I am very fair, you see,—you can help yourself to either ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... that are deeper—motor, i.e., impulsive or inhibitory—which we may neglect the less since it is in movements that we seek the origin of the creative imagination. This motor element is what current speech and often even psychological treatises designate under the terms "creative instinct," "inventive instinct;" what we express in another form when we say that creators are guided by instinct and "are pushed like animals toward ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... sudden assault, he determined to employ siege-works and penthouse shelters. The work was accordingly divided among the legions, and there was a truce to fighting until they had got ready every means of storming a town that had ever been devised by experience or inventive ingenuity. ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... had rendered him inventive. He was full of resources. He had no money, but he found means, when it seemed good to him, to indulge in "unbridled extravagance." One night, he went so far as to eat a "hundred francs" in a supper with a wench, which inspired him to make this memorable ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... instructions from their colonies, tried to dissuade him from his purpose. Chief among them was Benjamin Franklin, then agent for Pennsylvania, a New Englander by birth, not a puritan either in religion or morals, a wise politician, shrewd, public-spirited, inventive, and full of schemes of practical usefulness. He proposed that the money should be voted by the provincial assemblies, but could not say that the colonies would agree as to the amount which each should contribute. On that of course the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... musician [1838], I am quite aware that I could learn of him for years; but he, too, some things of me. Brought up under similar circumstances, destined for music from childhood, I would surpass you all—that I feel from the energy of my inventive powers." ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... the Negro race, Murray favored such an exposition because, he declared, it would offer opportunity to have registered the facts and statistics of the Negro's achievement since emancipation. As evidence of the inventive genius of his race, he submitted to Congress at this time a list of patents which had been granted by the government for the inventions of Negroes. Murray spoke briefly of what the Negroes were doing and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... [AP] Or inventive! See Woltmann, p. 267. "The shinbone, or the lower part of the arm, exhibits only one bone, while the upper arm and thigh are often allowed the ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... it was likewise impossible to stand his bearing so fiercely against me, in his agitations and endeavours to enter that way, whilst his belly battered directly against the recent sore. What should we do now? both intolerably heated: both in a fury; but pleasure is ever inventive for its own ends: he strips me in a trice stark naked, and placing a broad settee-cushion on the carpet before the fire, oversets me gently, topsy turvy, on it; and handling me only at the waist, whilst you may be sure I favoured all my dispositions, brought my legs round his neck; so that my ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... lesson of the value of Divine sympathy from the Buddha. The supernatural element ascribed to Krishna, as well as to Rama, was a growth, and had its origin in the jealousy of the Brahmans toward the warrior caste. His exaltation as the Supreme was an after-thought of the inventive Brahmans. As stated in a former lecture, these heroes had acquired great renown; and their exploits were the glory and delight of the dazzled populace. In raising them to the rank of deities, and as such appropriating them as kindred to the divine Brahmans, ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... materials to the whole country. Thagaste was the great mart of woodland Numidia, the warehouse and the bazaar, where to this day the nomad comes to lay in a stock of provisions, and stares with childish delight at the fine things produced by the inventive talent of the workers ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... vast extent of his wealth, with the fact that, upon the event of his death, it would fall into your hands, and from that hour I resolved that you should marry my son. To bring about this result I have practised every art which my inventive genius could suggest in order to get you in my power, and after finding out where and with whom you resided, I have watched day and night for an opportunity to secure your person, and at last success crowned my efforts, as I obtained the command of the vessel in ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker

... to his inventive powers. He made a locomotive and then a steamboat, perfect in every part, even to the minutest, using nothing but his knife, hammer, and a small chisel. He constructed a clock with his jack-knife, which kept perfect time, and the articles which he made were wonderfully stared ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis

... may achieve world-wide fame as an architect, his canvas may glow with the marvellous coloring of Titian or repeat the rare and delicate grace of Correggio, the triumphs of his chisel may reflect honor upon England and his age; the inventive genius of Jones, painfully elaborating, through long and suffering years of obscure poverty, the crude conceptions of his boyhood, may confer inestimable benefits upon his race; the scientific discoveries of Robinson ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... an inventive genius, but directed it only to useful projects. Their Mercuries filled Egypt with wonderful inventions, and left it scarcely ignorant of any thing which could contribute to accomplish the mind, or procure ease and happiness. The discoverers of any useful invention received, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... indicated by the title-page of this book runs, as a golden thread, through every part of it, while the reader is constantly kept in contact with the workings of an inventive and ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... Daphne was inventive, and something of a genius; and next day she concocted another dish out of the Giant's heads. She boiled them, and sifted them, and mixed them with eggs and sugar and milk and spice; then she lined some plates with puff paste, filled them with the mixture, and set them ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... Athenaeum, and he muttered something about writing to you or some one on the subject; I am however all in the dark. I suppose, however, I shall be illuminated, for I am going to dine with him in a few days, as my inventive powers failed in making any excuse. A friend of mine dined with him the other day, a party of four, and they finished ten bottles of wine—a pleasant prospect for me; but I am determined not even to taste his wine, partly for the fun of seeing ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... clever and a sort of hero. I am sure I do not know why. No one was taken into his confidence but Edwards, and he only because it was necessary to talk to somebody about his poaching schemes, and to excite wonder and admiration at his inventive skill and daring courage, and this Edwards was ready at all times to express. He was never taken to Marriner's, but he still occasionally accompanied his friend to the yard—on Sundays, usually, because of the card-playing, to which he had taken a great fancy. He still thought ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough

... of the Arrowhead Ranch. Between fields along the river bottom were gates distressingly crude; clumsy, hingeless panels of board fence, which I must dismount and lift about by sheer brawn of shoulder. Such gates combine the greatest weight with the least possible exercise of man's inventive faculties, and are named, not too subtly, the Armstrong gate. This, indeed, is the American beauty of ranch humour, a flower of imperishable fragrance handed to the visitor—who does the lifting with guarded drollery or ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... Chapman in his picture of Bussy's quarrels and encounters-at-arms was deviating little, except in details of names and dates, from the actual facts of history. Bussy's career was so romantic that it was impossible for even the most inventive dramatist to embellish it. This was especially true of its closing episode, which occupies the later acts of Chapman's drama—the intrigue with the Countess of Montsoreau and the tragic fate which it involved. It is somewhat singular that the earliest narratives ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... inventive by necessity, Gamelin had conceived a new and happy thought, as he at any rate believed,—an idea that was to make the print-seller's fortune, and the engraver's and his own to boot. This was a "patriotic" pack of cards, where for the kings and queens ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... into beauties,[258] in enriching it with circumlocutions and metaphors, in pruning it of harsh and uncouth expressions, in systematizing the structure of a sentence.[259] This is that copia dicendi which gained Cicero the high testimony of Caesar to his inventive powers,[260] and which, we may add, constitutes him the greatest master of composition that the ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... was this," replied M. Verduret. "Clameran, finding that the child was dead, supposed that he could, in spite of this disappointment, obtain money from Mme. Fauvel; he was mistaken. His first attempt failed. Having an inventive turn of mind, he determined that the child should come to life. Among his large circle of rascally acquaintances, he selected a young fellow to impersonate Raoul-Valentin Wilson; and the ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... the solution of the puzzle, that nature puts to every child. To every infant, indeed, the world is an enormous riddle or puzzle, whose parts lie in fragments about him, waiting the operation of his curious and inventive mind toward the reconstruction of the whole. Endless variety and complexity confront us all in the beginning. There is indeed an order and classification of things in nature, but it does not appear on the surface, ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... exhibited before the Academy of Science an hydraulic machine of his own invention of which the model was the subject of a flattering report, and was placed in Charles's collection. The events of the Revolution soon gave him an opportunity for a further display of his inventive faculty. The war with England deprived France of plumbago; he substituted for it an artificial substance obtained from a mixture of graphite and clay, and took out a patent in 1795 for the form of pencil which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... instructions were sent to Massachusetts to release all her prisoners. With their arrival in England in February, 1690, the debate before the committee went on in a new and livelier fashion. Randolph renewed his complaints in every form known to his inventive mind; Andros presented his defense and was relieved of all charges of mal-administration; Mather and others contested every move of their opponents and sought to obtain as favorable terms as possible for Massachusetts; while Oakes ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews

... plausible story to account for what he knew nothing about—a part that the greatest of sages would find it difficult to perform. The young, however, whom sages well may envy, seldom fail in lifting their inventive faculties to the level of their spirits, and two minutes of Hippias's angry complaints against the friend he serenely inquired for, gave ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... resort, her own particular property. It was about fifteen feet square, and no one but a Londoner would have bestowed on it so dignified a name. But Erica, who was of an inventive turn, had contrived to make the most of the little patch of ground, had induced ivy to grow on the ugly brick walls, and with infinite care and satisfaction had nursed a few flowers and shrubs into tolerably ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... identify her and distinguish her from this flashing and vanishing apparition it would clear away a trying perplexity. Why not be bold and call upon them where they were dwelling? But where? Their names were not in the directory. Now, inventive ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... had begun to act for Arnold, to play to his special consciousness, he was fastened to his chair, held down, so to speak, by a whirlpool of conflicting impulses. She did so much more than "lift" the inventive vulgarisation of the Bible story in the common sense; she inspired and transfused it so that whenever she appeared people irresistibly forgot the matter for her, or made private acknowledgments to the effect that something ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... to century and from nation to nation, and the human mind is in general so slow to invent, that originality in any department of mental exertion is everywhere a rare phenomenon. We are desirous of seeing the result of the efforts of inventive geniuses when, regardless of what in the same line has elsewhere been carried to a high degree of perfection, they set to work in good earnest to invent altogether for themselves; when they lay the foundation of the new edifice on uncovered ground, and draw all the preparations, all the building ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... days when everything went wrong and actresses, breaking down, sobbed in the wings and refused to be comforted, I had dimly recognised the fact that when I met Margaret I should have to be honest with her. Plans for evasion had been half-matured by my inventive faculties, only to be discarded, unpolished, on account of the insistent claims of the endless rehearsals. To have concocted a story with which to persuade Margaret that I stood to lose money if ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... qualifications of the following at college age: Thomas Edison, Michael Faraday, Nicholai Tesla, James Watt, Heinrich Hertz, Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, and Henry Ford. The admissibility of this group of the world's scientific and the inventive leaders is shown here." Baker pointed to a minute dab of ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones

... wrestling with the Lord in prayer, and who had taught Satan to dread the new Puritan hug. Add two hundred years' influence of soil, climate, and exposure, with its necessary result of idiosyncrasies, and we have the present Yankee, full of expedients, half-master of all trades, inventive in all but the beautiful, full of shifts, not yet capable of comfort, armed at all points against the old enemy Hunger, longanimous, good at patching, not so careful for what is best as for what will do, with a clasp to his purse and a button to his pocket, not skilled to build against Time, as ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... which was the popular view of his case. Turrifs Station had become notorious. Trenholme received jeers and gibes even by telegraph from neighbouring stations. He had given account to no one of the midnight visit, but inventive curiosity had supplied details of a truly wonderful nature. It was not on this account that he gave up his situation on the line, but because a new impulse had seized him, and he had no particular reason for remaining. He waited till a new caretaker ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... of the war we thought we could shoot people rapidly enough to satisfy our consciences, with single-loading rifles; but along came the inventive Yankee and produced revolvers and repeaters, and Gatling guns, and magazine guns—guns that carried a dozen shots at a time. I didn't wonder at the curiosity exhibited in this direction by a backwoods Virginian we captured one night. The first remark he made was, "I would like ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... determined to have a masquerade, and whenever a masquerade or any thing of that kind, occurred at our court, then the talents, both of Hop-Frog and Trippetta were sure to be called into play. Hop-Frog, in especial, was so inventive in the way of getting up pageants, suggesting novel characters, and arranging costumes, for masked balls, that nothing could be done, it seems, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... departed. Of their brother Wang-li they took no farewell, inasmuch as he was absorbed in a chess problem. Before separating, they agreed to meet on the same spot after thirty years, with the treasure which they doubted not to have acquired by the exercise of their inventive faculties in foreign lands. They further covenanted that if either had missed his reward the other should ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... from which you can deduce definite programmes and schemes and methods of instruction for immediate schoolroom use. Psychology is a science, and teaching is an art; and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves. An intermediary inventive mind must make the application, ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... of his round, squat, busy head he had an inkling that some day he would even matters with some people. Meanwhile he was patient, good-humoured, amusing when given a chance, and, as the few people he knew found out, inventive and resourceful in suggesting new methods of time-killing to any wealthy and fashionable victim of ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... the palate to a perfection as absolute as the art which built the Parthenon, and sculptured out of gold and ivory the Olympian Jove. But the first course, with its profusion of birds, flesh, and fishes, its marvellous combinations of forced meats, and inventive poetry of sauces, was now over. And in the interval preceding that second course, in which gastronomy put forth its most exquisite masterpieces, the slaves began to remove the tables, soon to be replaced. Vessels of fragrant waters, in which the banqueters ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... are not," said Mr. Carmyle shortly. He was finding Ginger's reserve a little trying, and wished that he had been more inventive. ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... future held for me, I sat down and framed an advertisement, which I contemplated putting in all the newspapers, weeklies, and monthly periodicals, offering a handsome reward for any suggestion which might result in ridding me of the cockney ghost. The inventive mind of man has been able to cope successfully with rats and mice and other household pests. Why, then, should there not be somewhere in the world a person of sufficient ingenuity to cope with an obnoxious spirit? If rat -dynamite ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... European sovereignty upon the ruins of the Mogul Empire was Dupleix, the French Governor at Pondicherry. His long residence in the East had given him a knowledge of Indian affairs that few Europeans possessed. "His restless, capacious, and inventive mind," says Macaulay, "had formed this scheme at a time when the oldest servants of the English Company were busied only about invoices and bills of lading. Nor had he only proposed for himself the end. He had also a just and distinct view of the ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... Mr. Leslie. "Blake handed his plans to Ashton, and took no receipt. The plans disappeared. Ashton leaves; comes back in a month with plans that he hasn't the skill to apply in the construction of the bridge—plans include an entirely new modification of bridge trusses—stroke of inventive genius, you ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... or sea in it; no living creatures, forests, flowers; no bright colours, brilliant lights, or cavernous darks. In clear grey twilight appear a multitude of naked forms, both male and female, yet neither male nor female of the actual world; rather the brood of an inventive intellect, teeming with preoccupations of abiding thoughts and moods of feeling, which become for it incarnate in these stupendous figures. It is as though Michelangelo worked from the image in his brain outwards to a physical presentment supplied by his vast knowledge of life, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... through the saloon, and seated herself at the table; she then gave the sign to the grand-master, that her guests should be seated. And now the servants, in golden liveries, flew from side to side bearing silver plates, containing the rare and fragrant viands which the inventive head of Baron Pollnitz had ordered for the favored guests of her majesty the ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... tenderly regarded by the people than anywhere, the cherished companions of daily life, carefully cultivated on every poorest balcony. Certainly in Paris one sees very conspicuously the absence of the love of flowers; or, rather, one may say that for the subtle and inventive children of the Ile de France the flower is artificial, and what we call flowers are merely an insipid and subordinate variety, "natural flowers," having their market in a remote and deserted corner of the city, whereas in Barcelona the busiest and central part of the city is the Rambla ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... required both for security and for comfort in the lower region, they retained them, instead of choosing natural elevations in the upper one. As clay was the only possible material in the one place, clay was still employed, notwithstanding the abundance of stone, in the other. Being devoid of any great inventive genius, the Assyrians found it easier to maintain and slightly modify a system with which they had been familiar in their original country than to devise a new one more adapted to the land of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... the first steps toward the exact subdivisions of time which we now enjoy. Unrest, progress, discontent with things that be, we must acknowledge, have, from the appearance of the first clock to the present hour, been the powers which have driven on the inventive genius of watch and clockmakers to designate some new and more acceptable system for regulating the course of the movement. In consequence of this restless search after the best, a very considerable number of escapements have been invented and made up, both for clocks and watches; ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous

... been an observer his inventive faculty would have worked better; not more interestingly, but more rationally, more plausibly. Cooper's proudest creations in the way of "situations" suffer noticeably from the absence of the observer's protecting gift. Cooper's eye was splendidly inaccurate. Cooper seldom ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... hurt!" urged Mr. Swift. He had aged rapidly in the last few months, and had been obliged to give up most of his inventive work. Naturally, he was ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton

... N. no imitation; originality; creativeness. invention, creation. Adj. unimitated^, uncopied^; unmatched, unparalleled; inimitable &c 13; unique, original; creative, inventive, untranslated; exceptional, rare, sui ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... his fat lips. It's a trick with your railway kings. "Well, young men are often more inventive than old ones," he answered, slowly. "Youth has ideas; middle age has experience. In a matter like this, my own belief is, the ideas count for most. Yes, if I were you, Tyrrel, I'd ask ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen

... a centre degree of civilization. They weave and dye the fibres of the banana and cocoa-nut palms, as do those of Ualan and Puinipet. Their fishing-tackle does credit to their inventive faculties, especially a sort of case constructed of small sticks and split bamboo-canes, which the fish cannot get out of when once in. They also use nets of the shape of ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... natural leaders of each community. Moreover, they had not merely the adhesion of all the more able, ambitious, and intellectual who seceded from a republic in which neither talent nor industry could give comfort or advantage, but also the full benefit of inventive genius, stimulated by the hope of wealth in addition to whatever public spirit the habits of Communism had not extinguished. They systematically encouraged the cultivation of science, which the Communists had very early put down as a withdrawal of energy from the labour due to ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... the approaching revolution were not wanting. Rumours transcended in sensationalism all past products of inventive fertility; but though men of weight were beginning to respect the fama the populace hi the mass were too "ware" to fondle her. With the women hi the mines it was different; their newly-acquired appreciation of "Home, sweet home" had induced symptoms of their primeval ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... speed and prompt regularity with which they were produced; and the fertile ingenuity with which the pill of political economy is wrapped up in the confectionery of a tale, may stand as a marvel of true cleverness and inventive dexterity. Of course, of imagination or invention in a high sense there is not a trace. Such a quality was not in the gifts of the writer, nor could it in any case have worked within such limitations as those set by the matter and the object ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley

... ought to make me bold in will and majestic in labour. I ought to be inventive in chivalrous enterprise, and I ought to covet the hardest parts of the field. If the mighty Ally will never fail, I should never be afraid of the marshalled hosts of wickedness. "One with God is in a majority." "He always wins who sides with God." "The Lord ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... customs are held, which causes them to regard the fact that their fathers had this fashion as reason enough for their having it, and above all to the total absence of all but oral tradition. But so great a faith have I in the lack of inventive power in the African, that I feel sure all their customs, had we the material that has slipped down into the great swamp of time, could be traced back either, as I have said, to some natural phenomenon, or to the thing being advisable, for reasons ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... separated from him for several days. This gave him an excellent opportunity to escape, but he refused to take advantage of it. Of his own accord he joined Lafayette once more, and during the whole long season of his captivity he gave ample proof of his devotion. He possessed a rare inventive genius and was constantly on the alert to devise means for making the prisoners comfortable and to find out ways for carrying on secret correspondence. He invented a special language known only to himself and to the prisoners, and also a unique gesture-language. ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow

... about that in every country a great and growing body of energetic and inventive men was busied either for offensive or defensive ends, in elaborating the apparatus of war, until the accumulating tensions should reach the breaking-point. Each power sought to keep its preparations secret, to hold new weapons in reserve, to anticipate and learn ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... have placed in the hands of the malevolent fanatics an instrument of exquisite torture. It is constructed to effect a double purpose, the achievement of the maximum of production and the expenditure of the minimum of human effort. It is the acme of inventive genius. To work the breakers, a man need have no more intelligence than the tow-mule that plods a beaten path; and such a man is the ideal laborer from the standpoint of the ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... (SS53, 56). It was said that he established "peace in the kingdom such as had not been known within the memory of man." At the same time the Archbishop, who was himself a skillful mechanic and worker in metals,[1] endeavored to encourage inventive industry and the exportation of products to the Continent. He did everything in his power to extend foreign trade, and it was largely through his efforts that "London rose to the commercial greatness it has held ever since."[2] Because of these things, one ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... and fleur-de-riz for softening the skin," &c. Further, there are the hairdressers, who provide theatrical wigs of all kinds, and advertise the merits of their "old men's bald pates," which must seem a strange article of sale to those unversed in the mysteries of stage dressing-rooms. One inventive person, it may be noted, loudly proclaims the merits of a certain "spirit gum" he has concocted, using which, as he alleges, "no actor need fear swallowing his moustache"—so runs ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... dignity of those portions of the masque in which noble lords and ladies took their parts to create, by their gorgeous costumes and artistic grouping and evolutions, a sumptuous show. On the mechanical and scenic side Jonson had an inventive and ingenious partner in Inigo Jones, the royal architect, who more than any one man raised the standard of stage representation in the England of his day. Jonson continued active in the service of the court in the writing of masques and other entertainments ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson

... form of inventive genius. Tom Swift is a bright, ingenious boy and his inventions and adventures make the most interesting kind ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer

... equal-sell them; to be happy selling equally with them! I do not see the use of underselling them. Cotton-cloth is already two-pence a yard or lower; and yet bare backs were never more numerous among us. Let inventive men cease to spend their existence incessantly contriving how cotton can be made cheaper; and try to invent, a little, how cotton at its present cheapness could be somewhat justlier divided among us. Let inventive men consider, Whether ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... Ireland, being out a-hunting, had, in the act of leaping a fence, the misfortune to have one of the skirts of his coat torn off; upon which his lordship tore off the other, observing, that to have but one left was like a pig with one ear! Some inventive genius took the hint, and having made some of these half-coats, out of compliment to his lordship, gave them the significant ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... that the famous Parrott guns were made at this place, and many implements of warfare during our civil strife. The foundry was started by Gouverneur Kemble in 1828, and brought into wide renown by the inventive genius of Major Parrott. Cold Spring has a further distinction in having the first ground broken, about three miles from the river, for the greatest engineering enterprise of the age—"The Water ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... like Shakespeare in the range of his genius, but there is something of the same magnanimity, directness, and unaffected character about him. With but little of Shakespeare's imagination or inventive power, he had the same life of mind; within the narrow circle of personal feeling or domestic incidents, the pulse of his poetry flows as healthily and vigorously. He had an eye to see, a heart to feel,—no more. His pictures of good ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... the demand is ever increasing as the tide of emigration rolls westward, so the inventive brains of the Americans are ever discovering some mechanical means of abridging manual labour, which seldom or ever meets the demand. The saws, axes, and indeed all cutting tools made at respectable establishments in the States, are said to be superior to ours. On going into a hardware store ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... movement. The reason may be, that he is too old, too crippled, to be able to take the field in person, and too inflated by conceit to give the glory of the active command to any other man. Wrote to Charles Sumner in Boston to stir up some inventive Yankee to construct a wheelbarrow in which Scott could ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... fear. The wise in all important cases will doubt, and will fear, till they are sure. But her apparent willingness to think well of a spirit so inventive, and so machinating, is a happy prognostic for me. O these reasoning ladies!—How I love these reasoning ladies!—'Tis all over with them, when once love has crept into their hearts: for then will they employ all their reasoning powers to excuse rather than to blame the conduct ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... stories what is there to say, but that they are an unmixed blessing and delight? He is surely one of the most inventive of talents, discovering not only a new kind in humor and fancy, but accumulating an inexhaustible wealth of details in each fresh achievement, the least of which would be riches from another hand."—W. D. Howells, ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton

... England in 1860, exclusive of agriculture and the earnings of commerce, were of the value of $494,075,498. But, in a few years after the completion of these works, this amount will be doubled. Such is the skilled and educated industry of New England, and such the inventive genius of her people, that there is no limit to her products, except markets and consumers. As New York increases, the swelling tide of the great city will flow over to a vast extent into the adjacent shores of Connecticut and New Jersey, and Hoboken, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... ideas which the morning was to bring to light, and we may be sure that they did not wait for the lazy winter sun to put in an appearance before beginning their investigations. Amid shouts of merriment the revelations of a remarkably inventive Santa Claus were greeted, while Polly held her climbing excitement in check until the hour should be ripe for greater things. But when, at last, just as the sun was peeping in at the kitchen window, Dan's ferret fingers penetrated ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller

... ever-willing Sarah. The old maid threw herself into the affair with zest, planning and contriving like a veritable strategist; and I must admit that she was full of resource and invention. We were now in mid-May and enjoying a spell of hot summer weather. This gave the inventive Sarah the excuse for using the back garden as a place wherein to sit in the cool of the evening in ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... skeleton was shown. Perhaps the mummy was too closely connected with the personal history of Mr. White for exhibition to strangers; it was that of a lady who had been attended medically for some years by Mr. White, and had owed much alleviation of her sufferings to his inventive skill. She had, therefore, felt herself called upon to memorialize her gratitude by a very large bequest—not less (I have heard) than twenty-five thousand pounds; but with this condition annexed to the gift—that she should be embalmed as perfectly as the resources in that art ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... only say that such frantic and suicidal devotion to the most remote interests of his country almost earns the captain pardon for the crime. But do you not see, my dear Professor, that the very richness and variety of your inventive genius throws a doubt upon each explanation when considered in itself? We who read you in England reach a condition of mind in which it no longer very much matters what explanation you offer, or whether you offer any at all. We are prepared to hear that you sank the Lusitania because the ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... Louis to practise law. The climate was unkind to him, and he returned and began the practice in New York. But he could not be a lawyer. His health was too uncertain, and his tastes and ambition allured him elsewhere. His mind was brimming with the results of observation. His fancy was alert and inventive, and he wrote tales and novels. At the same time he delighted to haunt the studio of his friend Church, the painter, and watch day by day the progress of his picture, the Heart of the Andes. It so fired his imagination that he wrote a description of it, in which, as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... confirmed us in the belief that the work called the Arabian Nights is rather a vehicle for stories, partly fixed and partly arbitrary, than a collection fairly deserving, from its constant identity with itself, the name of a distinct work, and the reputation of having wholly emanated from the same inventive mind. To say nothing of the improbability of supposing that one individual, with every license to build upon the foundation of popular stories, a work which had once received a definite form from a single writer, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... He was of an inventive turn of mind, and given up to science. His experiments rarely succeeded, and when they did they almost invariably landed him in disgrace. Still he persevered and hoped some day ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... willing militia of the seas, doubled its tonnage in eight months, and established an actual blockade from Cape Hatteras to the Rio Grande; in the course of the war it was increased five-fold in men and in tonnage, while the inventive genius of the country devised more effective kinds of ordnance, and new forms of naval architecture in wood and iron. There went into the field, for various terms of enlistment, about two million men, ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... extent of prevalent superstitions, the exaggerations incident to a state of general excitement, and the fertile inventive faculties of the accusing girls, there is much in the evidence that cannot easily be accounted for. In other cases than that of Westgate, we find the symptoms of that bewildered condition of the senses and imagination ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... hearts, in unison with all, swell with pride at our great achievements as a people; our free speech, free press, free schools, free church, and the rapid progress we have made in material wealth, trade, commerce and the inventive arts? And we do rejoice in the success, thus far, of our experiment of self-government. Our faith is firm and unwavering in the broad principles of human rights proclaimed in 1776, not only as abstract truths, but as the corner stones of a republic. Yet ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... the incident is sufficient to prevent its having occurred in reality or to more than one inventive imagination. It must therefore have been brought to Europe from the East and adapted to local conditions at Dort and Swaffham. Prof. Cowell suggests that it was possibly adapted at the latter place to account for the effigy of the ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various

... sceptics are in one sense benefactors: although they do not generally originate improved modes of thought and action, they at least prevent the adoption of crude theories and ill-digested measures. To meet the criticism of these opponents, inventive genius must more carefully bring its ideas and plans to the test of practical experiment and thorough investigation; and as truth must ultimately prevail, it cannot be considered unjust or injurious to insist upon its presenting its credentials. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various

... your courage; because of your dauntless pioneer spirit; because of the unconquerable will that drove you and the inventive genius that made it possible—because all these have set you above us more ordinary men, since they have made you the first men to fly through space—it is my privilege now to show you the honor in which you are held ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin

... French inventive genius continued to occupy itself with coffee making, and in the invention of Edward Loysel de Santais, of Paris, in 1843, produced the first of the ideas that were later incorporated in the hydrostatic percolator for making "two thousand cups of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... book. Inside it was but a commonplace London house, only one room, perhaps, differing from any one that might have been found in any other house in the square. That was my grandfather's "work-room", where he had a lathe fitted up, for he had a passion and a genius for inventive work in machinery. He took out patents for all sorts of ingenious contrivances, but always lost money. His favorite invention was of a "railway chair", for joining the ends of rails together, and in the ultimate success of this he believed to his death. It was (and is) used on several ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... as a dramatic author, "Frou-Frou," written in collaboration with Meilhac, being one of the greatest theatrical successes of his century. He soon, however, forsook the drama for fiction. His first novel, "Monsieur and Madame Cardinal," published in 1873, gave ample promise of the inventive genius and gift of characterisation that were fully realised nine years later in "L'Abbe Constantin." The tale, an exquisite study of French provincial life, came as a distinct revelation of French life and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... as representing the personification of divine wisdom, or, more exactly perhaps, the inventive power of the human mind. A little library of forty-two books—which a patricist saw, but not being initiate could not read—was attributed to him.[17] The books contained the entire hieratic belief. Fragments that are held to have survived in an extant Greek novel ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... of King Arthur's European conquests—extending over nearly all Western Europe, from Iceland and Norway to Gaul and Italy—are still more the work of Geoffrey's inventive genius, though it is possible they may rest on early Celtic myths about the voyage of Arthur to Hades, as Professor Rhys suggests, or on late Breton traditions which mixed up Arthur ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little

... allied sovereigns, the royal authority was openly exercised to compel such expressions of sentiment as the courts of London and Paris desired; and the measures which were taken oblige us more than ever to regret the inventive efforts of Cranmer's genius. For, in fact, these manoeuvres, even if honestly executed, were all unrealities. The question at issue was one of domestic English politics, and the metamorphosis of it into a question ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... justice, however, to this modern Robin Goodfellow, there was most commonly a fund of goodnature at the bottom of his wildest tricks or his most egregious romances,—for in the matter of a jest he was apt to draw pretty largely from an inventive faculty of remarkable fertility; he was constant in his attachments, whether to man or beast, loyal to his employers, and although idle and uncertain enough in other work, admirable in all that related to the stable or the kennel—the ...
— Miss Philly Firkin, The China-Woman • Mary Russell Mitford

... a thought (what a thing suggests but is not as it is presented) is creative,—an incursion into the novel. It involves some inventiveness. What is suggested must, indeed, be familiar in some context; the novelty, the inventive devising, clings to the new light in which it is seen, the different use to which it is put. When Newton thought of his theory of gravitation, the creative aspect of his thought was not found in its materials. They were familiar; many of them commonplaces—sun, ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... little tale! To think of Mr. Lucas listening to that. I was not a very inventive storyteller, though I could warm into eloquence on occasions, but Flurry's demand was so excessive that I hit on a capital plan ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... the fearful temperament, if it is not a mere unmanning and desolating dread, are not to be overlooked. Fear is the shadow of the imaginative, the resourceful, the inventive temperament, but it multiplies resource and invention a hundredfold. Everyone knows the superstition which is deeply rooted in humanity, that a time of exaltation and excitement and unusual success is held to be often the prelude to some disaster, just as the sense of excitement ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... had slept upon his interview with Ferris, and now sat in his laboratory, amidst the many witnesses of his inventive industry, with the model of the breech-loading cannon on the workbench before him. He had neatly mounted it on wheels, that its completeness might do him the greater credit with the consul when he should show it him, but the carriage ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... watching her might have seen that there was a fortifying thought within her. Just as when inventive power is working with glad ease some small claim on the attention is fully met as if it were only a cranny opened to the sunlight, it was easy now for Dorothea to write her memoranda. She spoke her last words to ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... Staff, and so it is among the junior commands, down to the semi-isolated posts where boy-Napoleons live on their own, through unbelievable adventures. They are inventive young devils, these veterans of 21, possessed of the single ideal—to kill—which they follow with men as single-minded as themselves. Battlefield tactics do not exist; when a whole nation goes to ground there can be none of the "victories" of the old bookish days. But there is always the killing—the ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling

... which the eye, however educated, does not altogether find in external nature; but which, from the data of external nature, the mind creates, partly by combination, and partly from a power of its own invention altogether. The external senses in educated man are obedient to this inventive direction of the mind, and at length receive their greater, perhaps often only, pleasures from it. It is easy to imagine how the more evident and real beauties of the inferior schools, for we do not hesitate to speak of the Italian as the higher, more easily captivate, especially, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various



Words linked to "Inventive" :   creative, inventiveness, originative, imaginative



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