"Ingenuity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... jig was up. With a heart as young as ever, with a face as good and a purse able to supply all reasonable demands, I was knocked out of the race on the first round by this adipose tissue that no ingenuity ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... another to the 'Bottle Department; a third to the 'Wholesale Department;' a fourth to 'The Wine Promenade;' and so forth, until we are in daily expectation of meeting with a 'Brandy Bell,' or a 'Whiskey Entrance.' Then, ingenuity is exhausted in devising attractive titles for the different descriptions of gin; and the dram-drinking portion of the community as they gaze upon the gigantic black and white announcements, which ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the railway takes one there is not much to be said, but the attention of the traveller is at once called to the marvellous ingenuity of the famous engineer Meiggs, who built the railway. Gradually rising as the coast recedes, the train reaches Arequipa, at an elevation of 7,500 feet, and distant from Mollendo about 200 miles. Arequipa has about 45,000 inhabitants, and, while rather prettily ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... describe the objects that are to be grouped, before the pupil be called upon to do so. And when the object has not been seen by the child, and cannot be exhibited by a picture, or otherwise, the teacher must exert his ingenuity in enabling him to form an idea of the thing that is unknown, by a combination of parts of objects which are. Thus a tiger may be described as resembling a large cat; a wolf, a fox, or even a lion, as resembling certain kinds of dogs; a howdah as a smaller sofa, and a palanquin, as a light crib. ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... the matter of speed and comfort of railway travel our railroads give at least as good service as those of any other nation, and there is no reason why this service should not also be as safe as human ingenuity can make it. Many of our leading roads have been foremost in the adoption of the most approved safeguards for the protection of travelers and employees, yet the list of clearly avoidable accidents continues unduly large. The passage of a law requiring the adoption of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... mortal have conceived that this old withered man; so taciturn, and apparently lost to feeling, could have treasured up for years the thoughtless pleasantry of a boy, to punish him with such cruel ingenuity? I could now account for his dying smile, the only one he had ever given me. He had been a grave man all his life; it was strange that he should die in the enjoyment of a joke; and it was hard that that joke should ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... granite walls nor the multiplication of barriers could preserve their mummies from profanation: no sooner was vigilance relaxed, either in the time of civil war or under a feeble administration, than robbers appeared on the scene, and boring passages through the masonry with the ingenuity of moles, they at length, after indefatigable patience, succeeded in reaching the sepulchral vault and despoiling the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... deciphering of some of the letters I.H.S.—M.I.A. at the top of the inscription has exercised the ingenuity of our Oldbucks and Monkbarns, the plate itself and its inscription will furnish to the student of history an indefeasible proof of the exact spot, and of the date, when and where stood the oldest of our seigniorial manors,—that of Robert Gifart, on the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... his body and his dirt. The soles consisted chiefly of huge nails, and the upper leathers of almost everything. The ship of the Argonauts was not a greater miscellany. During the ten years of their performance in the character of shoes, the most skilful cobblers had exercised their science and ingenuity in keeping them together. The accumulation of materials had been so great, and their weight was so heavy in proportion, that they were promoted to honours of proverbialism; and Abon Casem's slippers became a favourite comparison ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... themselves, threw their ballots for it, and made the law.... Nobody doubts that Daniel Webster could make a good speech. Nobody doubts that there were good and plausible things to be said on the part of the South. But this is not a question of ingenuity, not a question of syllogisms, but of sides. How came he there? ... But the question which history will ask is broader. In the final hour when he was forced by the peremptory necessity of the closing armies to take a side,—did he take ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... those beautifull things, for which I have so much passion (as I have said) pass on without looking on them, and leave them to others more curious of those rarities, which I have assembled together with art and care enough. Now Reader, ingenuity being a matter necessary for a man of Honour, and the theft of glory being the basest that may be committed, I must confess here for fear of being accused of it, that the History of the Count of Lavagna, which you shall see in my Book, is partly a Paraphrase of Mascardies; this Adventure falling ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... at the bottom of the mystery; but we had measured many weary miles in the wilderness, and the plotter's trap had been fairly baited, set and sprung, before the lightning flash of explication came to show us all its devilish ingenuity. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... of man's ingenuity, the moving picture, is destined to play the greatest part in quick education. It is ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... what we loathe; but we like to indulge our hatred and scorn of it; to dwell upon it, to exasperate our idea of it by every refinement of ingenuity and extravagance of illustration; to make it a bugbear to ourselves, to point it out to others in all the splendour of deformity, to embody it to the senses, to stigmatise it by name, to grapple with it in thought, in action, to sharpen our intellect, to arm our will against ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... flutter of spirits which required all the reasonings and soothings and attentions of every kind that Emma could give. Emma felt that she could not do too much for her, that Harriet had a right to all her ingenuity and all her patience; but it was heavy work to be for ever convincing without producing any effect, for ever agreed to, without being able to make their opinions the same. Harriet listened submissively, and said "it was very true—it ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... King—Fulton and Steam Telegraph and American Modesty Reaping Machine Opinion of a Borderer American Ingenuity Fire-arms ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... correspondent has wasted his ingenuity: the bearings are, first quarter, Denmark, Or, semee of hearts gules, three lions passant guardant. Second quarter, Norway, a lion crowned, or holding a Danish battle-axe. In base Azure, three crowns, or two and one, Sweden. Surmounted by the royal crown. See Souverains du Monde, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... [FN194] The ingenuity of the bride's attendants, on the occasion of a wedding, is strained to the utmost to vary her attire and the manner in which the hair is dressed on the occasion of her being displayed to her husband, and one favourite trick consists in fastening her tresses about her chin and cheeks, so as to produce ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... follows closely the "Relacion of Cabeca de Vaca." It illustrates the resourcefulness, bravery and ingenuity of Spanish cavaliers of the heroic age as hardly ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... offer. They had some curios; rudely carved or painted bamboos, and sea-shells cunningly fashioned into pin-cushions, with Pitcairn in bold black letters, just as one might see "A Present from Largs." These were the work of the women-folk, and showed considerable ingenuity in the way ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... the English, conducted by Mr. King, the most thorough and rigid master in the school. A question was asked—a question calculated to tax severely the skill and ingenuity of the active brain. Ada hesitated for one moment, then made a fatal blunder; and Nellie, answering correctly, slipped quietly into the seat of the deposed sovereign. Winnie's delight was indescribable. One triumphant glance after another flashed ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... church is subjected. As to arranging with those who have robbed us, we never will do any such thing. All transaction on this ground is impossible. By whatever reservations it might be accompanied, with whatever ingenuity of language it might be disguised, we could not accept, without appearing to consecrate the wrong. The Sovereign Pontiff, before his exaltation, as well as the cardinals before their nomination, bind themselves by oath to cede ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... dell' Orto, where Tintoretto was buried, and where four of his chief masterpieces are to be seen. This church, swept and garnished, is a triumph of modern Italian restoration. They have contrived to make it as commonplace as human ingenuity could manage. Yet no malice of ignorant industry can obscure the treasures it contains—the pictures of Cima, Gian Bellini, Palma, and the four Tintorettos, which form its crowning glory. Here the master may be studied in four of his chief moods: as the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... as one of my own townswomen who has weathered cape forty without a husband, and her tongue goes like a dog-vane in a calm, first one way and then another. But here is her dictionary. Now own, Griff, in spite of your college learning and sentimentals, that a woman of ingenuity and cleverness is a very good sort ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Thereupon Erasmus launches into more general considerations on war. Even animals, he points out, do not fight, save rarely, and then with only those of other species, and, moreover, not, like us, "with machines upon which we expend the ingenuity of devils." In every war also it is the non-combatants who suffer most, the people build cities and the folly of their rulers destroys them, the most righteous, the most victorious war brings more evil than good, ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... had foreordained our trip to that country, even the food we were to eat, and the invention of the extraordinary "cart" on which we were to ride. The idea of such a journey, in such a peculiar way, was not to be accredited to the ingenuity of man. There was a purpose in it all. When we ventured to thank him for his hospitality toward two strangers, and even foreigners, he said that this world occupied so small a space in God's dominion, that we could well afford to be brothers, ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... Hilda, "the principle upon which I work is very simple; but I wish you to try the solution with your own unaided ingenuity. So, simple as my plan is, I will not tell you any ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... uncomfortable, if not painful. Hard manual labor, long hours of toil, and partial isolation from one's fellows usually and generally characterize it. Of course, there are many who by nature or habit, or who by their ingenuity and thrift, have made it serve them, and who therefore have come to love the life of the country; but we are speaking with reference to the average men and women who have not mastered the forces at hand, which can be turned to their service only ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... place as these mountain tops generally are; nothing but grass, rocks, and snow; a shanty, with a show case full of minerals, articles of carved wood, and engravings of the place for sale. In these show cases the Alps are brought to market as thoroughly as human ingenuity can do the thing. The chamois figures largely; there are pouches made of chamois skin, walking sticks and alpenstocks tipped with chamois horn; sometimes an entire skin, horns and all, hanging disconsolately downward. Then all manner of crystals, such as are found in the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sentence, means put out of consideration. The phrase, let alone, which is now used as the imperative of a verb, may in time become a conjunction, and may exercise the ingenuity of some future etymologist. The celebrated Horne Tooke has proved most satisfactorily, that the conjunction but comes from the imperative of the Anglo-Saxon verb (BEOUTAN) TO BE OUT; also, that IF comes from GIF, the imperative of the Anglo-Saxon verb which signifies ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... open are the more normal channels to men's minds? The Administration was trying, and while the war continued it very largely succeeded, I believe, in creating something that might almost be called one public opinion all over America. But think of the dogged work, the complicated ingenuity, the money and the personnel that were required. Nothing like that exists in time of peace, and as a corollary there are whole sections, there are vast groups, ghettoes, enclaves and classes that hear only vaguely about much that ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... no sooner was her independence declared than she gave signs of great commercial and intellectual activity. Her Hudsons navigated every sea and planted the Dutch flag on shores not then traced on any map of the world; her manufacturers supplied all markets with the fruit of their labor and ingenuity; her soldiers were a match for any European force; her De Ruyters and Van Tromps knew how to contend with the Blakes of England; her William of Orange, whom she gave to her British neighbor, made as good ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... trying to Mrs. Thursby—who, as every one knows, was one of the brainless Copleys of Copley—that Mrs. Alwynn, who in the lottery of marriage had drawn an honorable, should take precedence of herself. To obviate this difficulty, Mrs. Thursby, with the ingenuity of her sex, had at one time introduced Mr. and Mrs. Alwynn as "our rector," and "our rector's wife," thus denying them their name altogether, for fear lest its connection with Lord Polesworth should be remembered, and the fact that Mr. Alwynn was his brother, and consequently ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... commerce, the seat of manufactures, the focus of great moneyed operations, and the concentrating point of vast, disposable, and accumulating capitals, which will stimulate, enliven, extend, and reward the exertions of human labor and ingenuity, in all their processes and exhibitions. And before the revolution of a century, the whole island of Manhattan, covered with habitations and replenished with a dense population, will constitute one vast city." [Footnote: View of the Grand Canal (N. ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... It would have been possible, also, for the rock that was to be broken away to be greatly thinned by quarrying its open face while the water was rising slowly after the great dam was built. Clearly, the whole work had been planned with a calm, diabolical ingenuity that assured with absolute certainty the accomplishment of the horrible purpose that those who labored at it had in view. It seemed impossible, but for the proof that we here had of it, that human hearts could have in them enough of purely devilish cruelty to spend years in thus working out to ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... extraordinary valour of our soldiers, devices of every sort were opposed by the Gauls; since they are a nation of consummate ingenuity, and most skilful in imitating and making those things which are imparted by any one; for they turned aside the hooks with nooses, and when they had caught hold of them firmly, drew them on by means of engines, and undermined the mound the more skilfully on ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... did not felicitate his people on the luck which, in the words of another old writer, "hath disposed them to so thriving a genius." Their restless ingenuity in making and maintaining dry land where nature had willed the sea, was even more like the industry of animals than had been that life of their forefathers. Away with that tetchy, feverish, unworthy agitation! ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... octahedron, and the various forms of pyramid and prism have been mastered, may come the more complex regular bodies—the dodecahedron and icosahedron—to construct which out of single pieces of cardboard, requires considerable ingenuity. From these, the transition may naturally be made to such modified forms of the regular bodies as are met with in crystals—the truncated cube, the cube with its dihedral as well as its solid angles truncated, the octahedron and the various prisms as similarly modified: in imitating ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... situated in the backwoods of Kentucky, or amidst the gloomy forests of Indiana. The Americans too speak in prospective, when they talk of great places; no doubt "calculating" that, one day, all the mighty productions of the old world will be surpassed by their ingenuity and perseverance. ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... in America there was a "Deutschen Hetze." Very many German papers had really persuaded themselves, and apparently had convinced a large part of the German people, that throughout our country there existed a hate, deep and acrid, of everything German and especially of German-Americans. The ingenuity of some German papers in supporting this thesis was wonderful. On one occasion a petty squabble in a Roman Catholic theological school in the United States between the more liberal element and a reactionary German priest, in which the latter came to grief, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... willingness to endure privation and even the fiendish savage tortures for the sake of their faith. "What manner of men are these?" he wrote, apropos of the account of Bressani, who had undergone the most devilish inflictions which savage ingenuity could devise, and yet returned maimed and disfigured the following spring to "dare again the knives and fiery brand of the Iroquois." Clemens was likely to be on the side of the Indians, but hardly in their barbarism. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... which is the full dress of the South Indian woman, as a modest garment and as a charming full-dress equipment would be a revelation to the much dressed votary of the West. In the arranging of this cloth there is considerable scope for ingenuity and for aesthetic taste; although, in this matter, the rules of each caste furnish an iron etiquette which must be followed by the women. Indeed, the tyranny of Worth in the West is nothing as compared with caste tyranny as the Fashioner of the ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... And, indeed, help used to come whenever the distress of the holy society became too urgent. One day the foundress had not a single penny left, and was, to use a common expression, at her wits' end. But, thank God, there is something better than human wits or human ingenuity in such extremities; and that is prayer. The Sister who acted as housekeeper placed her bills before the Superioress, and asked for money to buy food for the day. Mdlle. —— told her to wait a little, and went out, not knowing ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... compliment that it is, and not magic me into something unpleasant, or (more probably) write another book to prove to my own dissatisfaction that I am everything I least wish to be. That indeed is the gravamen of my charge: the diabolic ingenuity with which he makes not so much our pleasant vices as our little almost-virtues into whips to scourge us with. All this has been wrung from me by the perusal of Mr. Teddy (FISHER UNWIN). Even now ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... called Tatting in England, Frivolite in French, and Frivolitaeten in German, is a work which seems, from all accounts, to have been in favour several generations ago. Modern ingenuity has discovered some ways of improving on the original plan of tatting, which was, indeed, rather a primitive sort of business as first practised. To Mrs. Mee, one of our most accomplished artistes in all matters connected with ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton
... of it than all the rest, except when Jack Wilmington curtly ordered them to do this or that in illustration of some point he was explaining. She wearied herself, as people do in such places, in expressing her wonder at the ingenuity of the machinery; it was a relief to get away from it all into the room, cool and quiet, where half a dozen neat girls were counting and stamping the stockings with different numbers. "Here's where I used to work," said Lyra, "and here's where I first met Mr. Wilmington. ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... personage, educated by this Saemund's grandson, took in hand next, near a century afterwards, to put together, among several other books he wrote, a kind of Prose Synopsis of the whole Mythology; elucidated by new fragments of traditionary verse. A work constructed really with great ingenuity, native talent, what one might call unconscious art; altogether a perspicuous clear work, pleasant reading still: this is the Younger or Prose Edda. By these and the numerous other Sagas, mostly ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Nancy. I need your backbone and wits and pluck and ingenuity, but if I can't ask you to sit with your hands folded for the rest of your life, as I'd like to, you shan't use them for other people. You're marrying me to make a man of me, but I'm not marrying you ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the fashion of fantastic ingenuity" was Marinus, whose epic "Adone," in twenty cantos, dilates on the tale of Venus and Adonis. He also wrote "Gerusalemme Distrutta" and "La Strage degl' Innocenti," and his poetry is said to have much of ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... in the country cannot so conveniently secure the books their boys and girls may wish or need. I know one woman, the mother of two boys, living in the country, who has to exercise considerable ingenuity to provide her sons with books of the "How to Make" kind. There is no public library within available distance of the farmhouse which is her home, and she and her husband cannot afford to buy many books for their children. The boys, moreover, ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... that they have their chief significance. As a by-product, one might almost say, the reader gets the art which reveals the story of the Falkenbergs by a process of indirect approach equalled in its ingenuity and verisimilitude ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... the pictorial satire of "Prince Albert's Studio" (by the way the hat is in no ways exaggerated), is the following: "Ever since the accession of Prince Albert to the Royal Husband-ship of these realms, he has devoted the energies of his mind, and the ingenuity of his hands to the manufacture of Infantry caps, Cavalry trousers, and Regulation sabretaches. One of his first measures was to transmogrify the pantaloons of the Eleventh Hussars; and, as the regiment alluded to is "Prince Albert's Own," ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... faults are more easily discovered after the books are printed, as being then more read, and more narrowly examined, especially if the author has been much cried up before, for then the severity of the scrutiny is sure to be the greater. Those who have raised themselves a name by their own ingenuity, great poets and celebrated historians, are commonly, if not always, envied by a set of men who delight in censuring the writings of others, though they could never produce any of their own."—"That is no wonder," quoth Don ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the processes by a shortsighted jealousy. He immediately sat down with a yard of carpeting, and, patiently unraveling it thread by thread, combined and calculated till he invented the machinery on which the best carpets of the Old and the New World are woven. No pains which such ingenuity and energy can render effective are spared to make our fabrics equal those of the British market, and we need only to be disabused of the old prejudice, and to keep up with the movement of our own country, and find out our own resources. The fact is, every year ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... attack upon the Station in the manner of a regular Indian siege. His success, however, was no better than it had been before; the loss appeared to be all upon his side; his stock of provisions was nearly exhausted; having for nine days tried the bravery of his savage force, and tasked his own ingenuity to its utmost, he raised the siege, and abandoned the grand object of ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... aim and relentless energy tasking science to its utmost ingenuity, the multitudes of men to their utmost endurance, whole nations work day and night, fitting ourselves for the quick and extensive killing of men. This preparation for war. Armies meet on the field of battle; shot and shell rend the air; men ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... discuss together the exact significance of all his marks of emphasis and irony; and the girl would have all she could do sometimes not to feel a disloyal amusement at the transparency of the devices and the simplicity of the loving hearts that marvelled at the writer's depth and ingenuity. But she was none the less deeply impressed by his courageous cheerfulness, and by the power of a religion that in spite of its obvious weaknesses and improbabilities yet inspired an old man like Sir Nicholas with so ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... have stayed, as he generally did, at his own boarding house or at Bluff Head. Janet had learned of his intimacy there, although she had never imagined Mr. Devant's ingenuity in trying to keep them, at first, apart. If Thornly were away from the shanty, Janet knew the hiding place for the key; she could enter at will and the secrets of the treasure house were not ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... and moral Father and Maker. Religion will have its origin in a tribal joke, and will have become not 'diablement,' but 'divinement,' 'changee en route.' Readers of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen will see that the Arunta philosophy, primitive or not, is of a high ingenuity, and so artfully composed that it contains no room either for a Supreme Being or for the doctrine of the survival of the soul, with a future of rewards and punishments; opinions declared to be extant among other Australian tribes. There is no creator, and every ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... than half a century after Thespis had, by his ingenuity, so improved the dramatic art as to form an era in its history, arose the illustrious personage, whose further improvements and astonishing poetical talents justly obtained for him the high distinction ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... whether any instrument not written by an inspired hand was more clear, terse, frugal of all words except those necessary to express its precise meaning, than the Constitution of the United States. It would require the greatest ingenuity to discover where fewer words could be used to accomplish a plain end. How shall it be that in this closely considered charter, where every word, every punctuation was carefully weighed and canvassed, they should ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... disliked by the patient they may be slipped into such foods as cocoa or gruels. Appeal to the appetite can be made by changing the methods of preparing foods. The selection and preparation of food for the sick call for ingenuity and resourcefulness on the part ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... best. In the second place, some adequate power must be found to propel the machinery, which is ordinarily too heavy to be run by hand or foot power. This necessary motive power was discovered in steam. The steam engine was devised by James Watt, an English inventor of great ingenuity. He invented a cylinder containing a piston, which could be forced back and forth by the introduction of steam. His progress was much retarded by the inability of the mechanics of his time to make an accurate ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... a Slavonic story mentioned by Gubernatis (Zoological Mythology, vol. II. p. 111), a bear is about to kill a peasant in revenge. A fox appears, "shakes its tail and says to the peasant, 'Man, thou hast ingenuity in thy head and a stick in thy hand.' The peasant immediately understands the stratagem," and persuades the bear to get into a sack he has with him that he may carry the bear three times round the field instead of doing penance, after which the bear is to do what ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... chasing him,—till perhaps a right moment arrive. For he is full of silent finesse, this young King; soon sees into his man, and can lead him strange dances on occasion. In no man is there a plentifuler vein of cunning, nor of a finer kind. Lynx-eyed perspicacity, inexhaustible contrivance, prompt ingenuity,—a man very dangerous to play with at games of skill. And it is cunning regulated always by a noble sense of honor, too; instinctively abhorrent of attorneyism and the swindler element: a cunning, sharp as the vulpine, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... lengths—but, let me only begin some good piece of writing of the kind, and ... no, you shall have it, have what I was going to tell you stops such judicious beginnings,—in a parallel case, out of which your ingenuity shall, please, pick the meaning—There is a story of D'Israeli's, an old one, with an episode of strange interest, or so I found it years ago,—well, you go breathlessly on with the people of it, page after page, till at last the end must come, you feel—and the tangled threads draw to one, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... thoroughly actualizes the whole story. More than this, the book strikes home to the English middle class because it records how a plain Englishman completely mastered apparently insuperable obstacles through the plain virtues of courage, patience, perseverance, and mechanical ingenuity. Further, it directly addresses the dissenting conscience in its emphasis on religion and morality. This is none the less true because the religion and morality are of the shallow sort characteristic of Defoe, a man who, like Crusoe, would have had no scruples ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... he prided himself, and which is not laid down in any of the dictionaries. He afforded much sport to the boys, who would gather around him, and give him words by the dozen to spell. The readiness and ingenuity with which he would mis-spell the most simple words, was quite amusing to them. He never hesitated, nor stopped to think, but always spelt the given word in his peculiar way, just as promptly as though he did it according to a ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... royal days of coffee-planting in Ceylon, before a single season and a rotten fungus drove a whole community through years of despair to one of the greatest commercial victories which pluck and ingenuity ever won. Not often is it that men have the heart when their one great industry is withered to rear up in a few years another as rich to take its place, and the tea-fields of Ceylon are as true a monument to courage as is the lion at Waterloo. But in '72 ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... achieved a marvellous degree of skill in the craft. I developed a faculty of invention that led me into a series of experiments regarding the capabilities of purely mechanical combinations. I studied and improved upon the best automata ever constructed by human ingenuity. Babbage's calculating machine especially interested me. I saw in Babbage's idea the germ of something infinitely more ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... ironical speech that the whole staff were wont to pause in the rush of their work to listen and to admire when a new member was unhappy enough to require instructions, their silent admiration acting as a spur to Mr. Bates' ingenuity in the invention of ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... had been going very ill at the Castle. Edward Cossey's lawyers were carrying out their client's instructions to the letter with a perseverance and ingenuity worthy of a County Court solicitor. Day by day they found a new point upon which to harass the wretched Squire. Some share of the first expenses connected with the mortgages had, they said, been improperly ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... the preparation of the caoutchouc, of which we had found several trees. I encouraged the boys to try their ingenuity in making flasks and cups, by covering moulds of clay with the gum, as I had explained to them. For my part, I took a pair of old stockings, and filled them with sand for my mould, which I covered with a coating of mud, and left to dry in the sun. I cut out a pair of soles ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... on this important point—hypocritical, illogical and absurd. But what would you? You cannot defy it; you literally cannot. If you tried, you would not even get as far as print, to say nothing of library counters. You can only get round it by ingenuity and guile. You can only go a very little further than is quite safe. You can only do one man's modest share in the education of ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... a hoped result. Small favours from her were really worth, thrice worth, the utmost from other women. They tasted the sweeter for the winning of them artfully—an honourable thing in love. Nature, rewarding the lover's ingenuity and enterprise, inspires him with old Greek notions of right and wrong: and love is indeed a fluid mercurial realm, continually shifting the principles of rectitude and larceny. As long as he means nobly, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of Ransome from his home, in that hurried, surreptitious flight through the darkness, that he most felt the pressure and the malignant pinch of poverty. Owing to his straitened circumstances, with all his mother's forethought and good will, with all the combined resources of their ingenuity, they could do no better to meet his lamentable case than this. "This," indeed, was imperative, inevitable. He reflected bitterly that, if he had been a rich man, like the manager or the secretary of Woolridge's, instead of a ledger clerk (that ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... may be said that for purposes of plot-study the photoplay serial can hardly be surpassed. Good, bad or indifferent, every photoplay serial reveals a sheer ingenuity of plotting that is a genuine inspiration to the writer of often better material. And a careful following-up and study of a good serial is a liberal photoplay-writing education ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... nature of fate. This is what Boethius says (De Consol. iv): "Fate is worked out when Divine Providence is served by certain spirits; whether by the soul, or by all nature itself which obeys Him, whether by the heavenly movements of the stars, whether by the angelic power, or by the ingenuity of the demons, whether by some of these, or by all, the chain of fate is forged." Of each of these things we have spoken above (A. 1; Q. 104, A. 2; Q. 110, A. 1; Q. 113; Q. 114). It is therefore manifest that fate is in the created causes themselves, as ordered by God to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... forms of Religion are no less a product of human ingenuity than Art or Science. He holds, in effect, that all religions take their rise in the desire to explain the world; and that, in regard to truth and error, they differ, in the main, not by preaching monotheism polytheism or pantheism, but in so far as they recognize pessimism or optimism ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... trundled across the narrow island to the beach. In the evenings they went to the Piazza, where their faces and figures had become known, and the Venetians gossipped them down to the last fact of their relation with an accuracy creditable to their ingenuity in the affairs of others. To them Mrs. Lander was the sick American, very rich, and Clementina was her adoptive daughter, who would have her millions after her. Neither knew the character they bore to the amiable and inquisitive public of the Piazza, or cared for the fine eyes that aimed ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... have been easy, by a little ingenuity in the earlier portion of this narrative—whatever source of vulgar interest might be derived from the mystery of names and persons. As in Charles Spencer the reader is allowed at a glance to detect Sidney Morton, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... this kind of work have achieved a reputation for it alone, among the large circle of dealers in the principal cities of Europe. The necessities of the time have thus brought into prominence a modification of the art of the old Italian liutaro, in which there has to be displayed much more mechanical ingenuity if with very little or no originality; the high class of artisan has become strongly in evidence, while the artist has disappeared. It was in the consideration of these facts that the idea was first suggested that a work treating of the general methods adopted ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... previous years, and all the monetary difficulties which befel England, and attributed them, with dextrous dishonesty, to whig impolicy and free trade. These calamities, which were chiefly caused by delaying free trade too long, he ascribed to that measure. The perverted ingenuity thus displayed did not serve his party or convince his opponents. He was opposed in a blunt and candid speech by Mr. Hume, and in one of the happiest orations ever delivered by Sir Robert Peel. Lord John Russell also made an effective reply. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... permitted to remain—beneath them a seat is placed, and in some cherished spot, watched over with the tenderest care, is an exotic sprig of heath or broom. About the Hibernian's dwelling may be a mixture of all these differing tastes, while perhaps a little of the national ingenuity may be displayed in a broken window, repaired with an old hat, or an approximation towards friendliness between the domestic animals and the inmates. With the interior of these dwellings one is agreeably surprised, they (that is, generally speaking), ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... guilt, as from their nature they usually do, by a terrible death: slow roasting alive— mutilation by degrees before the throat is mercifully cut—tying to stakes at low tide that the high tide may come and drown—and any other death human ingenuity and hate ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... and the loom, man turns the sharp edge of his mind to things of the mind, considers himself in all his relations, thinks, feels, states, expresses, concerns himself with spiritual, rather than material, problems. With the Industrial Revolution begins the third act. Again human intelligence and ingenuity concentrate on the prehistoric problem—the perfecting of the instrument. For a hundred years Europe marches merrily back towards barbarism. Then, at the very moment when she is becoming alarmed and self-critical, at the very moment when she is wondering how she is to reconcile ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... entitled, "Illustrations of the Author of Waverley, being Notices and Anecdotes of real Characters, Scenes, and Incidents, supposed to be described in his works, by Robert Chambers." This work was, of course, liable to many errors, as any one of the kind must be, whatever may be the ingenuity of the author, which takes the task of explaining what can be only known to another person. Mistakes of place or inanimate things referred to, are of very little moment; but the ingenious author ought to have been more cautious of attaching real names to fictitious characters. I think it ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... especially if you are rheumatic. For this purpose build some sort of a platform ten inches or more high, that will do for a seat in daytime. You can make a sort of spring bottom affair if you can find the poles for it, and have a little ingenuity and patience; or you can more quickly drive four large stakes, and nail a framework to them, to which you can nail boards or barrel-staves.[9] All this kind of work must be strong, or you can have no rough-and-tumble sport on it. We used to see in the army sometimes, a ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... yet she was none the less to have to admit, after delay, that the bread he had cast on the waters had come home, and that she should thus be justified of her old apprehension. The consequence of this, in turn, was a renewed pang in presence of his remembered ingenuity. To be ingenious with HER—what DIDN'T, what mightn't that mean, when she had so absolutely never, at any point of contact with him, put him, by as much as the value of a penny, to the expense of sparing, doubting, fearing her, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... year, pursuant to a law of Congress, commissioners were appointed to the Antwerp Industrial Exposition. Though the participation of American exhibitors fell far short of completely illustrating our national ingenuity and industrial achievements, yet it was quite creditable in view of the ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... of the two objects of strategy, namely to avoid fighting the enemy on ground of his own choosing, and to compel him to fight under unfavourable conditions, Lord Roberts was extraordinarily successful. There was a light touch, an ingenuity, in his swift and silent strategy which contrasted strongly with the heavy and dull methods which had hitherto controlled the action. While Buller was talking about his tedious railway across the veld, and Milner ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... airy posture of the famous Mercury of the Bolognese. The drapery was fluttering, scanty, and of a light sea-green tint, as if it had imbibed a hue from the element beneath. The face was of that dark bronzed color which human ingenuity has, from time immemorial, adopted as the best medium to portray a superhuman expression. The locks were dishevelled, wild, and rich; the eye, full of such a meaning as might be fancied to glitter in the organs of a sorceress; while a smile so strangely meaning and malign played about the mouth, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... character for his hero, it is not wonderful that Mr. Weyman has evolved a story that for ingenuity of plot and felicity of treatment is equal to some of his best efforts.... 'The Red Cockade' is one of the unmistakably strong historical romances of the ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... Bunyip Bluegum, after about fifteen verses of the Salt Junk Sarah, 'the superior skill, ingenuity and darin' with which you bested them puddin'-snatchers reminds me of a similar incident in Sam's youth, which I will now sing you. The incident, though similar as regards courage an' darin', is totally different in regard to ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... impression that that was what the horse was there for, and I know that it was also the impression of at least one other of the command, for we talked about it at the time, and admired the military ingenuity of the device; but when I was out West three years ago I was told by Mr. A. G. Fuqua, a member of our company, that the horse was his, that the leaving him tied at the door was a matter of mere forgetfulness, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ruddy-haired man in working clothes sat in the hall, within sight, though not within hearing, of the sick room, playing with the rosy child, and exerting all his ingenuity to invent quiet games that they could play there "where Muvver tan see us"; Ariadne soon learned the reason for staying in one place so constantly. She was very happy that day. Never in her life had she had so enchanting a playfellow. He showed her a game ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... genius of Bunyan none of these other three celebrated prose authors of this time has anything in common. He stands apart from them in his fervently religious and romantic temperament, in his richness of representation and ingenuity of analogy, and in his forcible quaintness of style, as completely as he did in social status and in personal surroundings. In complete contrast to the romantic productions of the self-educated tinker of Bedford, the works of Walton and Evelyn were at any rate influenced by, though ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... muskrat's dwelling, with its water-passage, would afford all the means of escape from its ordinary enemies—the beasts of prey—and, perhaps, against these alone nature has instructed it to provide. But with all its cunning it is, of course, outwitted by the superior ingenuity of its enemy—man. ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... rooms. In this way they went at railroad pace through the suite of rooms and the library, - where the chief thing pointed out appeared to be a grease-mark on the floor made by somebody at somebody else's wedding-breakfast, - and to the chapel, where they admired the ingenuity of the sparrows and other birds that built about Rysbrach's monumental mountain of marble to the memory of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough; - and then to the so-called "Titian room" (shade of mighty Titian, forgive the insult!) where they saw the Loves of the Gods ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... obtain a thorough overhauling. From Mr Hall he had received a pressing invitation to Hendlip for himself and his confidential servant, Nicholas Owen, who went by the name of "Little John." The latter was an old acquaintance at Hendlip, for it was his ingenuity that had devised the numerous hiding-places which had been added to the Hall by its present owner. To Hendlip accordingly Garnet removed from Coughton,—accompanied by Anne Vaux and the Brooksbys,— ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... opposition to that project, which appeared to him rather over-heroic for a Parisian, but ended by adopting it, too happy himself to harbor the romance of his love in that romantic spot. He began, however, taxing his ingenuity to attenuate what there might be too austere in that abode, by opening relations with some of the neighbors for Clotilde's benefit, and by procuring her, at intervals, her mother's society. Madame de Pers was kind enough to lend herself ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... all nonsense, for with such a clever savage as Ebo and our own ingenuity and tools we could have built another boat—not such a good one as we had arrived in, but quite strong enough to bear us over a calm sea to one or the other of the islands where trading ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... chosen mine. I can find no warranty for believing in the distinct creation of a score of successive species of crocodiles in the course of countless ages of time. Science gives no countenance to such a wild fancy; nor can even the perverse ingenuity of a commentator pretend to discover this sense, in the simple wrords in which the writer of Genesis records the proceeding of the fifth and sixth days of ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... advised the regent to convoke the states-general, and declare a national bankruptcy. The Duke de Noailles, a man of accommodating principles, an accomplished courtier, and totally averse from giving himself any trouble or annoyance that ingenuity could escape from, opposed the project of St. Simon with all his influence. He represented the expedient as alike dishonest and ruinous. The regent was of the same opinion, and this desperate remedy ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... general reasoning. He is a great moralizer; and what makes him worth attending to is that he moralizes on his own feelings and experience. He is not a commonplace pedant. If Lear is distinguished by the greatest depth of passion, Hamlet is the most remarkable for the ingenuity, originality, and unstudied development of character. Shakespeare had more magnanimity than any other poet, and he has shown more of it in this play than in any other. There is no attempt to force an interest: everything is left ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... ballad's birth have been related with such fulness of detail by Wordsworth, and Coleridge's own references to them are so completely reconcilable with that account, that it must have required all De Quincey's consummate ingenuity as a mischief-maker to detect any ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... spite of all the learning and ingenuity brought to bear against it, I avow myself an impenitent believer in Sir J. G. Frazer's main theory, and as I have said above, I hold that theory to be of greater and more far-reaching importance than ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... fell to the ground. Those who were obliged to reject the ridiculous legends which invested the whole of their Pantheon, together with the fabulous adjudgers of future punishments, could not but dismiss the punishments, which were, in fact, as laughable, and as obviously the fictions of human ingenuity, as their dispensers. In short, the civilized part of the world in those days lay in this dreadful condition; their intellect had far outgrown their religion; the disproportions between the two were at length become ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... to be understood in a negative sense. For when Goethe, himself searching for a way of bringing the confusing multiplicity of plant phenomena into a comprehensive system, met with the Linnaean system, he was, despite his admiration for the thoroughness and ingenuity of Linnaeus's work, repelled by his method. Thus by way of reaction, his thought was brought into its own creative movement: 'As I sought to take in his acute, ingenious analysis, his apt, appropriate, though often arbitrary laws, a cleft was set up in my inner nature: what he sought to ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... and yet the same. They are all for purposes of torture, but they vary infinitely in the ingenuity with which they severally inflict pain and death. That is esteemed in Rome the most perfect instrument which, while it inflicts the most exquisite torments, shall at the same time not early, assail that which is a vital part, but, you observe, prolong life to the utmost. ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... England," exclaimed Dinah. "London does not exert such tyranny as that by which Paris oppresses France—for which, indeed, French ingenuity will at last find a remedy; however, it has a worse disease in its vile hypocrisy, which is a far ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... laid down soon after a separation which I had, never to say or do to my late colleague what he could say or do against me in return. I knew that I had the personal superiority, but what his own ingenuity could not suggest, others could ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... six photographs, showing the various positions assumed by the figure during the process of excavation, can be consulted upon the second page following. This work of art was raised by Dr. Le Plongeon, with the assistance of his wife and ten Indian laborers, by his own ingenuity, and without other engineering apparatus than he had contrived from the trees and vines, making use also of the bark, from which he constructed ropes. Dr. Le Plongeon, in a private letter to the writer, says, "The statue is carved out of ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... Baronet at the head of the Government, would without the smallest scruple have supported him if he had in this, as in former years, asked us to give nine thousand pounds for twelve months. So it is: yet I cannot help wondering that it should be so. For how can any human ingenuity turn a question between nine thousand pounds and twenty-six thousand pounds, or between twelve months and an indefinite number of months, into a question of principle? Observe: I am not now answering those who maintain that nothing ought to be given out of the public ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... might have said, who has the least knowledge of him?—And yet, good Gods! what a wonderful man! I say nothing of his merit as a Citizen, a Senator, and a General; we must confine our attention to the Orator. Who, then, has displayed more dignity as a panegyrist?—more severity as an accuser?—more ingenuity in the turn of his sentiments?—or more neatness and address in his narratives and explanations? Though he composed above a hundred and fifty orations, (which I have seen and read) they are crowded with all the beauties ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... what, though neither augur skill'd Nor prophet, I yet trust shall come to pass. He shall not, henceforth, live an exile long From his own shores, no, not although in bands Of iron held, but will ere long contrive His own return; for in expedients, framed With wond'rous ingenuity, he abounds. But tell me true; art thou, in stature such, 260 Son of himself Ulysses? for thy face And eyes bright-sparkling, strongly indicate Ulysses in thee. Frequent have we both Conversed together ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... no mode which human ingenuity has ever yet devised for determining the hands in which the supreme executive of a nation shall be lodged, which will always avoid doubt and contention. If this power devolves by hereditary descent, no rules can be made so minute and full as that cases will not sometimes occur that ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... persons, who make it a particular study. Probably the true principles on which it ought to be founded are yet to be discovered. But it may be presumed, that in this part of the graphic art there remains to the ingenuity of future generations a course of improvements totally inconceivable to the present; by which the whole train of impressions now made upon the mind by reading a long and well written treatise may be conveyed by a few strokes of the pen, and be ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... class of offenders and bequeathed to posterity, was the art of inflicting an exquisitely vicious poke or dig with the wards of a key in the small of the back, near the spine. She likewise originated a mode of treading by accident (in pattens) on such as had small feet; also very remarkable for its ingenuity, and ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... upon to state your qualifications for a post. The knowing, upon being asked if they possess certain attributes, reply in an immediate affirmative and add others, just to be on the safe side. It is felt that what is really required in this War is thrust and ingenuity, things which adequately make up for the absence of any specialist knowledge. Accordingly my friend found himself described as possessing, among other things, "French, fluent." It was not until ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... your ingenuity in a rational and contemplative manner.—No, I do not proscribe certain forms of philosophical speculation which involve an approach to the absurd or the ludicrous, such as you may find, for example, in the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... that I was beguiled out of my personal examination of this chapel, since I have seen the plates of it in my Baronial Sketches. It is the rival of Melrose, but more elaborate; in fact, it is a perfect cataract of architectural vivacity and ingenuity, as defiant of any rules of criticism and art as the leaf-embowered arcades and arches of our American forest cathedrals. From the comparison of the plates of the engravings, I should judge there was less delicacy of taste, and ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... Brigham Young retained the title and authority of Governor, and addressed to the legislature the customary annual message, reviewing the condition of the Territory. This document was prepared in reality by Taylor, and was worded with considerable ingenuity. Not the slightest allusion was made to the declarations of independence that had been reiterated throughout the summer and autumn, but the relations of Utah to the United States were discussed as those of a Territory to the Union. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... was to get rid of the immense web, which, as I have already described, the forest had woven with diabolic ingenuity all around, and in and out the skeleton of the sturdy old masonry. Till that was done, it was impossible to get any notion of the ground plan of the several connected buildings. So the first day was taken up with the chopping and slashing of vegetable serpents, the tearing out of roots that ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... face of which all revenue laws were inadequate and powerless. The credit of the government, its resources and capacity for taxation, had to be appealed to. Resort was had to every possible mode of taxation that could be devised by the ingenuity of man, to supply the requirements of the war, and to maintain the public credit. The Morrill tariff act was, therefore, greatly modified by subsequent laws, the duties doubled and in some cases trebled. Internal taxes, yielding twofold the amount collected from customs, were levied, and cheerfully ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... and she makes every effort to warn her friends of their error. But there is one amid the mourners who knows that she is endeavouring to tell of the black stain. And this one, whose face she cannot readily distinguish, maliciously, and with diabolical ingenuity, withdraws the attention of the others, so that they ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... been, it is clear that he was one of the dramatists of Lope's school, for he has the impudence to charge Cervantes with attacking him as well as Lope in his criticism on the drama. His identification has exercised the best critics and baffled all the ingenuity and research that has been brought to bear on it. Navarrete and Ticknor both incline to the belief that Cervantes knew who he was; but I must say I think the anger he shows suggests an invisible assailant; it is like the irritation of a man stung by a mosquito in the dark. Cervantes ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the call or the appearance of an animal when he tries to approach near enough to use his bow and arrow. Civilized men have lost much of the keenness of sight and hearing they once had, but they have far more than made up for this through their ingenuity in making deadly weapons. ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... is a mistake, to suppose that the inventive faculty can be employed only on important subjects; it can be exercised in the most trifling circumstances of domestic life. Scarcely any family can be so unfortunately situated, that they may not employ the ingenuity of their children without violent exertion, or any grand apparatus. Let us only make use of the circumstances which happen every hour. Children are interested in every thing that is going forward. Building, or planting, or conversation, or reading; ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... his left-hand neighbour and empties the one he receives. Then the glasses are refilled, passed to the right, and emptied again as soon as possible. The president, it seems, has to exercise a good deal of discretion and ingenuity, for if the Kneipe seems flat it lies with him to order the moves in the game that will make it lively and stimulate beer, song, and conversation. There are various fines and punishments inflicted according to strict rule on those who transgress the code of the Kneipe, but as far as I can make ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... well suited to the talents and situation of women; it is not a science of parade; it affords occupation and infinite variety; it demands no bodily strength; it can be pursued in retirement; it applies immediately to useful and domestic purposes; and whilst the ingenuity of the most inventive mind may in this science be exercised, there is no danger of inflaming the imagination, because the mind is intent upon realities, the knowledge that is acquired is exact, and the pleasure of the pursuit is a ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... uncertain seasons, is unfavourable to agriculture and trade; to social intercourse, and to the moral and physical prosperity of civilised man. With equal truth, it may be observed, that there is no region of earth susceptible of so much improvement, solely by the labour and ingenuity of man. If there be no navigable rivers, there are no unwholesome savannas; if there are rocky ranges, they afford, at least, the means of forming reservoirs of water; and, although it is there uncertain when rain may ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... and cannot be replenished from without; ingenuity and labor must evoke them. We have a fine garden in growth, plenty of chickens, and hives of bees to furnish honey in lieu of sugar. A good deal of salt meat has been stored in the smoke-house, and, with fish from the lake, we expect to keep the wolf from the door. The season ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... well known, that many things appear plausible in speculation, which can never be reduced to practice; and that of the numberless projects that have flattered mankind with theoretical speciousness, few had served any other purpose than to show the ingenuity of their contrivers. A voyage to the moon, however romantick and absurd the scheme may now appear, since the properties of air have been better understood, seemed highly probable to many of the aspiring wits in the last century, who began to dote upon their glossy ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... at once that he would use the great advantage which chance and the ingenuity of his friend had thrown in his way; but that necessity of putting money in his purse was a sore grievance to him, and it occurred to him that it would be a grand thing if he could induce his brother to help him in this special matter. ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... is becoming more and more an indispensable factor in combined operations. In co-operation with the artillery, in particular, there has been continuous improvement both in the methods and in the technical material employed. The ingenuity and technical skill displayed by the officers of the Royal Flying Corps in effecting this improvement have been ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... time, at their weddings, sing Talasius for their nuptial word, as the Greeks do Hymenaeus, because, they say, Talasius was very happy in his marriage. But Sextius Sylla the Carthaginian, a man wanting neither learning nor ingenuity, told me Romulus gave this word as a sign when to begin the onset; everybody, therefore, who made prize of a maiden, cried out, Talasius; and for that reason the custom continues so now at marriages. But most are of opinion (of whom Juba particularly is one) that this word was used ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... unlikely to have suggested the doggerel of Sir Benjamin Backbite; and the scandalous conversation in this scene, though far inferior in delicacy and ingenuity to that of Sheridan, has somewhat, as the reader will see, of a parental ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... young work-women, Tessa showed the most taste and ingenuity in the grouping of leaves and arranging of ferns, and her beautiful combinations constantly called forth the admiration of both companions and teachers. The little Italian received their commendations ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... peasants, live in miserable cabins, which afford them little more than shelter from the storms. The Boor of Norway is said to make all his own utensils. In the Hebrides, whatever might be their ingenuity, the want of wood leaves them no materials. They are probably content with such accommodations as stones of different forms ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... created can better be imagined than described. The all-absorbing topic of conversation was, how could Milkova best show its loyalty and admiration for the Head of the Imperial Family, the Right Arm of the Holy Orthodox Church, and the Mighty Monarch of seventy millions of devoted souls? Kamchadal ingenuity gave it up in despair! What could a poor Kamchatkan village do for the entertainment of its august master? When the first excitement passed away, the starosta was questioned closely as to the nature of the letter which had brought ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... yoga. The Bengal reading is dharanam. The commentator goes for explaining all the verses as metaphorical. Considerable ingenuity is displayed by him, and he even cites the Srutis ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... than the nature and properties of things. For, as I said in the preface to the third Part, I regard human emotions and their properties as on the same footing with other natural phenomena. Assuredly human emotions indicate the power and ingenuity, of nature, if not of human nature, quite as fully as other things which we admire, and which we delight to contemplate. But I pass on to note those qualities in the emotions, which bring advantage to man, ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... books which may be placed in this category, "On the Various Contrivances by which Orchids are Fertilised by Insects," was published in 1862, and whether we regard its theoretical significance, the excellence of the observations and the ingenuity of the reasonings which it records, or the prodigious mass of subsequent investigation of which it has been the parent, it has no superior in point of importance. The conviction that no theory of the origin ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... adorned with entire skeletons, looking as if they were wrought most skilfully in bas-relief. There is no possibility of describing how ugly and grotesque is the effect, combined with a certain artistic merit, nor how much perverted ingenuity has been shown in this queer way, nor what a multitude of dead monks, through how many hundred years, must have contributed their bony framework to build up these great arches of mortality. On some of the skulls there are inscriptions, purporting that such a monk, who formerly ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... of Ireland, but in this he is not alone. His sentiments are shared by every Irishman I have met, no matter what his politics. The Unionist party are the more merciful, sparing expletives, calling no ill names. They admire his ability, his wonderful vitality, versatility, ingenuity of trickery. They sincerely believe that he is only crazy, and think it a great pity. They speak of the wreck of his rich intellect, and say in effect corruptio optimi pessima est. There is another monkish proverb which may strike them as they watch him in debate, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... friends band themselves together under the title of the Maritzburg Scouts. From first to last the boy scouts are constantly engaged in perilous and exciting enterprises, from which they always emerge triumphant, thanks to their own skill and courage, and the dash and ingenuity of their leader. ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... fair presage and a present sanction of the future city. And the angel, at the prayers of Patrick, removed far from thence an exceeding huge stone which lay in the wayside, and which could not be raised by the labor or the ingenuity of man; lest it should be an hindrance to passengers approaching ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... accomplished. John Carty is the American son of Irish parents. He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 14, 1861. His father was a gun-maker and an expert mechanic of marked intelligence and ingenuity who numbered among his friends Howe, the creator of the sewing-machine. As a boy John Carty displayed the liveliest interest in things electrical. When the time came for him to go to school, physics was his favorite study. He ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers |
