"Invention" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he could desire from this stratagem, his fruitful invention soon hinted another. He now became the plain honest country farmer, who, living in the Isle of Sheppy, in Kent, had the misfortune to have his grounds overflowed, and all his cattle drowned. His habit was now neat ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... became fertile, and men and women married, and bore sons and daughters. The people in the island multiplied and grew rich. But all the while they lived without the invention of the boat, and they thought their island was the whole world, not knowing of the other lands that ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... press hard on the autoist. Since the invention of the automobile fine, the position of justice of the peace has become one of the highest offices in the gift of the nation. The city magistrate is a kindred soul. "Your Honour," says the prosecuting officer, "the question is whether the city's boulevards shall be given over to the ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... of our men, give us the trouser, and let us keep to it; we do not indeed seem likely to change it; yet, who can tell? Just as the civilian seems to have decided upon this happy invention, as the most useful and comfortable thing he ever donned, so will all military men agree in its praises. It is not so good for parade purposes, as the light pantaloon and gaiter, in as much as it conceals defects ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... that, if he had kept his word, in avoiding her, he had, nevertheless, also fulfilled his intention of spending the summer in Saracinesca. He had even been there since Easter, and the story of his going to the North had been a mere invention of the newspapers. She could not understand his conduct, nor why he had gone to Paris—a fact attested by people who knew him. It had probably been for some matter of business—that excuse which, in a woman's mind, explains almost any ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... the Arsenal on special detail. An invention of his pertaining to the rifle was being manufactured for tests. There was keen interest in it and its final adoption seemed assured. It was of sufficient importance to make his name one of those conspicuous in army affairs. He had already several lesser things—devices ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... A recent invention has been made in England, known as the digging machine or rotary spade, which—although from having too much gearing between the power and the part performing the labor, it is not adapted to general use—has given such promise of future success, that Mr. Mechi ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... nothing in them, as well as for fat wallets stuffed with bank-bills, and suggesting something which can be made, accepted and enjoyed by everybody, large and small, all the wide world over? Who can it be that possesses this inexhaustible fertility of invention and kindness of heart? No ordinary human being, you may be sure. Not Father Santa Claus! He has enough to do with distributing the presents after they are made; besides, fancy-work is not in a man's line,—not even a saint's! But what so likely as that he should have a mate, and that it is to ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... questions, and, as men had done at Washington, open out their hearts to her. They noticed, however, that while she made them barley-water, and all kinds of soft drinks from citric acid, sarsaparilla and the like, and had one special drink of her own invention, which she called cream-nectar, no spirits were to be had. They also noticed that Jim never drank a drop of liquor, and by and by, one way or another, they got a glimmer of the real truth, before it became known who he really was or anything of his story. And the interest in the two, and in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... shows the limitless ingenuity and invention of man, and portrays the works and achievements of a castaway, who, thrown ashore almost literally naked upon a desert isle, is able, by the use of his brains, the skill of his hands, and a practical knowledge of the common arts and sciences, to far surpass the achievements of all his ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... after our arrival in the Camoens, and furnished the only news the Icelanders had of the outside world since the advent of a Danish ship a fortnight previously. Iceland has not yet been annexed by cable, and knows nothing of the marvellous scientific invention which now flashes news so quickly round ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... need, now," thought he, "is about a hundred pounds of high-grade dynamite, or a gallon of nitroglycerin. Better still, a dozen capsules of my own invention, my 'Pulverite!' ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... Pilar's exclamation when Dick told her the story of last night's dilemma. But when asked what she would have done in our place, her invention failed; and the ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of enthusiasm, has excited so many hopes, has appeared to the human race to open up so many vistas of enterprise and research, as that for which we are mainly indebted to the Brothers Montgolfier. The discovery or the invention of the balloon, however, was one of those efforts of genius and enterprise which have no infancy. It had reached its full growth when it burst upon the world, and the ninety years which have since elapsed have witnessed no development of the original idea. The balloon of ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... hope, to provide them with a revolver as a last refuge from a brutal and licentious soldiery. And when things come to a crisis, in order to be concluded in our next, the revolvers ought to prove to be unloaded. I admit that this invention of mine is odious, and quite un-English, and such as would never occur to a right-minded subscriber to Mudie's. But it illustrates the mood caused in me by witnessing the antics ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... demi-brigades, the former commanded by Brigadier-General G. D. Wagner, Colonel C. G. Harker, and Colonel F. T. Sherman; the latter, by Colonels Laiboldt, Miller, Wood, Walworth, and Opdyke. The demi-brigade was an awkward invention of Granger's; but at this time it was necessitated—perhaps by the depleted condition of our regiments, which compelled the massing of a great number of regimental organizations into a division to ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... heard a great deal about Robert Fulton and the influences that have grown from his invention, but the little steamboat ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... after taking his bachelor's degree, was towards science; he was ambitious to enter the Ecole polytechnique, and joined the special mathematics class. Even when very young he had shown particular aptitude for mechanics, and a gift for invention which we have seen exercised in his practical jokes as a student. When he was only four or five years old he constructed a bed out of paper, which he raised by means ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... knotty difficulty. "The lad has been in the grass for a cover; the fire has come upon him in his sleep, and having lost his horse, he has been driven to save himself under that fresh hide of a buffaloe. No bad invention, when powder and flint were wanting to kindle a ring. I warrant me, now, this is a clever youth, and one that it would be safe to journey with! I will speak to him kindly, for anger can at least serve no turn of ours. My brother is welcome again," using the language, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was so concerned about the loss that he immediately sent advertisements off to every morning newspaper in London. The last part of that is true—the first part is not true! Mr. Levendale did not lose his book—he did not leave it in the 'bus! I'm sorry to have to say it—but all that is invention on his part—why, I ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... his own words. 'Many causes may vitiate a writer's judgment of his own works.... What has been produced without toilsome efforts is considered with delight, as a proof of vigorous faculties and fertile invention.' Johnson's Works, vii. 110. He had said much the same thirty years earlier in The Rambler ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... extreme satisfaction which children derive from quenching their thirst with pure water? And who that has perverted his appetite for drink, by stimulating his palate with bitter beer, sour cider, rum and water, and other beverages of human invention, but would be a gainer, even on the score of mere animal gratification, without any reference to health, if he could bring back his vitiated taste to ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... the many books of unseen translation in general use few exhibit continuity of plan as regards the subject-matter, or give any help beyond a short heading. The average boy, unequal to the task before him, is forced to draw largely upon his own invention, and the master, in correcting written unseens, has seldom leisure to do more than mark mistakes—a method of correction almost useless to the boy, unless accompanied by full and careful explanation when the ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... proud of my voucher. Though he is no idolater of fame, in some way or other Mr. Erskine will always do himself honor. Methinks, however, in following the precedents of these toasts, he seemed to do more credit to his diligence as a special pleader than to his invention as an orator. To those who did not know the abundance of his resources, both of genius and erudition, there was something in it that indicated the want of a good assortment, with regard to richness and variety, in the magazine of topics and commonplaces which I suppose he keeps by him, in imitation ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... unmanly lamentations Roderic was with difficulty recovered by the assiduities of the attendants. At length incited by their expostulations to the collectedness of reflection and the fortitude of exertion, he determined, with that quickness of invention with which he had been endowed at his birth, upon a plan to elude, if possible, the perseverance of Edwin, and the menaces of his fate. Recollecting that his person was not unknown to the swain, he communicated his instructions to those who were ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... he said, and placing the attache-case over the collar-box, he snatched it up and the collar-box had disappeared inside! It was an old invention of thieves and possessed no originality. I wondered that Rayne's friends employed such a contrivance, which, of course, was useful when it became necessary that ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... the joints of every limb the reliefs are converted into a hollow, and likewise every hollow of the innermost bends becomes a convexity when the limb is straightened to the utmost. And in this very great mistakes are often made by those who have insufficient knowledge and trust to their own invention and do not have recourse to the imitation of nature; and these variations occur more in the middle of the sides than in front, and more at the back than at ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... voluntarily silent while the single duty on tea is continued, or do any act, however innocent, simply considered, which may be construed by the tools of administration, (some of whom appear to be fruitful in invention) as an acquiescence in the measure, we are in extreme hazard; if ever we are so distracted as to consent to it, we ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... for his beloved Muntaz-i-Mahal; probably the money ran out. Few people take in that the dome of the Taj, that great airy white soap-bubble, is actually higher than the dome of St. Paul's. The play of fancy and invention of Shah Jehan's architects seems inexhaustible. All the exquisite white marble pavilions of Agra palace differ absolutely both in design and decoration, and Akbar's massive red sandstone buildings make the most perfect foil to ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... in close subjection to the historical authorities. I have furnished only the necessary details which would fill such blanks in the story as are of domestic character; taking care that these should accord, in all cases, with the despotic facts. In respect to these, I have seldom appealed to invention. It is in the delineation and development of character, only, that I have made free to furnish scenes, such as appeared to me calculated to perfect the portraits, and the better to reconcile the reader to real occurrences, which, in their original nakedness, however unquestionably true, might ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... by a previous correspondent of this paper; to consider the machines as identities, to animalise them, and to anticipate their final triumph over mankind. They are to be regarded as the mode of development by which human organism is most especially advancing, and every fresh invention is to be considered as an additional member of the resources of the human body. Herein lies the fundamental difference between man and his inferiors. As regards his flesh and blood, his senses, appetites, and affections, ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... nearly, in the essential feature. There is no proved pretence whatever for regarding him as mad; other than that he was like this malefactor, brimful of conceit, and a desire to become, even at the cost of the gallows (the only cost within his reach) the talk of the town. He had less invention than Hocker, and perhaps was not so deliberately bad; but his attempt was a branch of the same tree, and it has its root in the ground where the scaffold ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... in one direction and some in another; now one loses its beneficent effect like a medicine long used or a garment outgrown; another waxes in power, reinforced by a new geographic factor which has been released from dormancy by the expansion of the known world, or the progress of invention and ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... Great Government whose representative is involved in the not too pleasant transaction. One of our great inland cities had no water nearer than the river, several miles away. A foreign official with a machine of foreign invention digged deep into the earth and found pure, clear water. Then he thought, "If there is ater here for me, why not for all this great city of many tens of thousands?" Which was a worthy thought, and he saw ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... six-and-eightpenny world, or the whizz of an Excalibur to startle their drowsy imaginations into life. The beauties and the wonders of the universe died for them some centuries ago; they went out with Friar Bacon and the invention of gunpowder. Praised be Apollo! this is not our case. There is a snatch of poetry, to our apprehension, in almost everything. We have detected it pushing its petals forth from the curls of a barrister's wig, and scented its fragrance even in the ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... so mistake the gospel message as to think differently, and to act as if all should be thrust out who do not conform to certain rules and regulations of man's invention, although they with deep repentance trust in the blood of Christ alone for salvation. Many a once heathen savage will rise up in the day of judgment to condemn those men. Would that, for their own sakes, they could even ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... of David and the patriarchs of Israel. In the civilization into which I have come science and invention are in swaddling clothes, the Pyramids are yet young, the great nations of Western Europe still ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... gone so far as to make his invention. It had been suggested by their trouble with a key, in their late moving to their new house. He had studied the matter over a great deal. He looked it up in the Encyclopaedia, and had spent a day or two in the Public Library, in reading about Chubb's Lock and ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... bears his years well, being between Seventy and Eighty years of age; and tho an Old man, yet appears not to be like one, neither in countenance nor action. His Apparel is very strange and wonderful, not after his own Countrey-fashion, or any other, being made after his own invention. On his head he wears a Cap with four corners like a Jesuits three teer high, and a Feather standing upright before, like that in the head of a fore-horse in a Team, a long band hanging down his back after the Portuguez fashion, his Doublet ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... two hundred years, and sought in the history of the country from the first plantations in America." "I have always laughed," he declared in an earlier letter, "at the affectation of representing American independence as a novel idea, as a modern discovery, as a late invention. The idea of it as a possible thing, as a probable event, nay as a necessary and unavoidable measure, in case Great Britain should assume an unconstitutional authority over us, has been familiar to Americans from the first settlement of ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... number of inventions have been made in the last hundred and fifty years. The printing-press was, of course, a great invention of the fifteenth century, but it was simply called the printing-press, and did not take the name of its inventor. Yet this was a new name too, for the people of the Middle Ages would not have known what a ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... highest degree the sense of plastic beauty. Nor do people always recognise that he was a writer of sweet and flowing melodies. Weingartner expressed the surprise he felt when, imbued with current prejudice against Berlioz's lack of melodic invention, he opened, by chance, the score of the overture of Benvenuto and found in that short composition, which barely takes ten minutes to play, not one or two, but four or five melodies of admirable richness ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... drove off as fast as the old mare was disposed to go. This part of the journey was all very well, and the farmer felt in better spirits than usual; the sky was bright and clear above him, and the gig went on smoothly enough over the well-made road to the station. But the train was an invention which Mr. Shipton utterly despised, and when he found himself seated in the railway carriage, and in quicker motion than he had ever experienced before, he felt inclined to stop at the first station and go back to Dilbury at a more reasonable pace. ...
— The Boy Artist. - A Tale for the Young • F.M. S.
... whether the saying, "The corpse of an enemy smells sweet," attributed to Charles IX. of France, in allusion to Coligny, is historical or was the invention of a romancer. It occurs in ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... routine work, our inarticulate questionings radiate into the unknown. When the genius has his vision, almost invariably, among the ruder peoples, it is accepted by himself and his society as something supernormal and sacred, whether its fruit be an act of leadership or an edict, a practical invention or a work of art, a story of the past or a prophecy, a cure or a devastating curse. Moreover, social tradition treasures the memory of these revelations, and, blending them with the contributions of humbler folk—for ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... no;—though your behest I always heed with rapt attention, Most fervently I must protest Against this horrible invention; Your word has hitherto been law, But this appears ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... more than one Deputy Grand Master in a jurisdiction; so that the appointment of a greater number, as is the case in some of the States, is a manifest innovation on the ancient usages. District Deputy Grand Masters, which officers are also a modern invention of this country, seem to take the place in some degree of the Provincial Grand Masters of England, but they are not invested with the same prerogatives. The office is one of local origin, and its powers and duties are ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... until to-morrow," thought he, on redescending the staircase, "there will be no one to warn Lincoln.... The purchase of the drawings was an invention to demonstrate my tranquillity....Now I must ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... he could study French administration and observe its mechanism, Rabourdin worked in the circle where his thought revolved, which, we may remark parenthetically, is the secret of much human accomplishment; and his labor culminated finally in the invention of a new system for the Civil Service of government. Knowing the people with whom he had to do, he maintained the machine as it then worked, so it still works and will continue to work; for everybody fears to remodel it, though no one, according to Rabourdin, ought to be unwilling to simplify ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... "just so that God they preach is not a pure invention, a fraud! They themselves are the first not to believe ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... the Round Table; said to have belonged to the knight Sir Sagramor le Desirous; observe the round hole through the chain-mail in the left breast; can't be accounted for; supposed to have been done with a bullet since invention of firearms—perhaps maliciously ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... me!—the pupil's worthy the master if I am a judge of anything. I doubt if the Royal Navy can show his equal. To thrust himself deliberately between those two, at point-blank range, and so turn the tables on them! It asks courage, resource, and invention. And we land-lubbers were not the only ones he tricked by his manoeuvre. That Spanish Admiral never guessed the intent until it was too late and Blood held him in check. A great man, Miss Bishop. A ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... man. She felt convinced Caroline did love her brother, much as appearances were against her; and both these feelings urged her to sift the whole matter carefully, and not permit the happiness of two individuals to be sacrificed to what might be but the idle invention or exaggerations of a bad man. Her ready mind instantly formed its plan, which calmly but earnestly she imparted to her brother, and implored his consent to act upon it. Startled and disturbed, St. Eval at first peremptorily refused; but his ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... Press,—immortalised by its invention of that invaluable work of art, "The Hairless Author's Paper Pad," which the Baron herewith and hereby strongly recommends to Mr. GLADSTONE, who has so much writing to do with a pad on his knee, and for this purpose Mr. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... has made a new discovery or invention can ascertain, free of charge, whether a patent can probably be obtained, by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... successful, at reform, have been already described. Profane and amatory plays were forbidden in nunneries, bullfights were banished from the Vatican and the dangers of the confessional were diminished by the invention of the closed box in which the priest should sit and hear his penitent through a small aperture instead of having her kneeling at his knees. So depraved was public opinion on the subject of the confession that a {494} prolonged ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... walked up and down the room a few moments, with the purpose of his visit evidently still undischarged. "There 's one thing more I want to say," he presently resumed. "I feel as if I ought to tell you!" He stopped before Rowland with his head high and his brilliant glance unclouded. "Your invention ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... even in modern times, while in ancient times reading was restricted to the very smallest class of privileged persons. There may have been listeners at public and private festivals, at sacrifices, and later on in theatres, but readers, in our sense of the word, are a very modern invention. ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... in our service," he said, "instead of that of Sweden. You would have mounted fast. You have all the requisites for success, above all, promptitude of decision and quickness of invention. You did well in getting away from that Jewish scoundrel in the hut, and in killing his master, but it was your adventure with the wolves that showed your quality. That idea of setting fire to the tree in which you were sitting, in order at once to warm ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... Gore, Dissertations, p. 16. St. Luke i. 32, 33. — "How can all this," Dr. Chase asks, "be the invention of a believer in the Messiahship of Jesus when the Jews had rejected Him, and when the Resurrection and Ascension had raised the conception of His Messiahship to the height of a spiritual and universal ...
— The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord - A paper read (in substance) before the confraternity of the Holy - Trinity at Cambridge • B. W. Randolph
... no secret to old Miller, nor to any native in the country-side for a radius of forty miles. No modern invention can equal the wireless celerity that distributes information concerning other people's business throughout the rural wastes of this ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... more singular arrest of their power in Ireland than in any other European country. For in the eighth century Ireland possessed a school of art in her manuscripts and sculpture, which, in many of its qualities—apparently in all essential qualities of decorative invention—was quite without rival; seeming as if it might have advanced to the highest triumphs in architecture and in painting. But there was one fatal flaw in its nature, by which it was stayed, and stayed with a conspicuousness of pause to which there is no ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... know about the Satin Library? My dear sir, I hope it's going to be the hit of the day. Here's a dummy copy.' Mr. Winter picked up an orange-tinted object from a side-table. 'Feel that cover! Look at it! Doesn't it feel like satin? Doesn't it look like satin? But it isn't satin. It's paper—a new invention, the latest thing. You notice the book-marker is of satin—real satin. Now observe the shape—isn't that original? And yet quite simple—it's exactly square! And that faint design of sunflowers! These books will be perfect bibelots; that's what they'll be—bibelots. ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... which ascribes to the Lydians the invention of coined money is a proof of their commercial habits. The neighbouring Tmolus teemed with gold, which the waters of the Pactolus bore into the very streets of the city. Their industry was exercised in the manufacture of articles of luxury rather than those of necessity. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... recus bien ... la lettre de M. Paoli; mais ... il faut vous dire, Monsieur, que le bruit de la proposition que vous m'aviez faite s'etant repandu sans que je sache comment, M. de Voltaire fit entendre a tout le monde que cette proposition etait une invention de sa facon; il pretendait m'avoir ecrit au nom des Corses une lettre contrefaite dont j'avais ete la dupe."—Rousseau ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... name—Ali Baba or Aladdin, Puss in Boots or The Babes in the Wood—its savour is the same. If only a tenth part of the enterprise that goes to the making of its great pageants were devoted to the invention of a new subject, though it were only The Babes in Boots or Puss in the Wood! However, with Bolshevism in the air it is best perhaps not to tamper ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... a scholar when he was young, and had to go into farming when he married Hakes's daughter as brought the farm with her; and now he had gone back to his books he was more than ever took up with the idea of finding something out—making something new that no one had ever made before—his invention, he called it, but I never understood what it was all about—and indeed Mrs. Blake took ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... however, since then. But Mr. Bell unfortunately had no end of troubles with his scheme, and we all may thank these difficulties for the telephone, for had his harmonic telegraph gone smoothly we might not and probably would not have had Bell's other and far more important invention." ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... which is no invention of the poet, but a refrain of the country, always sung at rustic weddings, in accordance with a custom of strewing the bridal path ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... it became a perfect treasure house of Eastern and Grecian art. The Byzantine work, which spread over the East in the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, is therefore a union of the refinement of the Greek, the desire for color and detail of the Oriental, and the vigor of constructional invention and conception of mass and grandeur of the Roman. A portion of it was transplanted to Ravenna during Justinian's reign, and there is a glorious afterglow in the Venetian splendor of the tenth and ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 03, March 1895 - The Cloister at Monreale, Near Palermo, Sicily • Various
... this metre in his Hiawatha from Schiefner's German translation of the Kalevala, and as it was then a novelty in English, it was set down at the time as Longfellow's own invention, and was much ridiculed. A similar metre, however, was used before the appearance of Hiawatha in some parts of Kenealy's Goethe, which was published in 1850, and subsequently condensed and completed under the title ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... different from others. He asked our company to finance him while he was experimenting and perfecting the new projectile. The company couldn't undertake to do that, but I personally financed Mr. Kauffman, having confidence in his ability. He has been six months getting the invention made, tested and ready to submit to government experts, and up to the present it has cost a lot of money. However, it is now considered perfect and Mr. Kauffman has brought it here to-night to exhibit and explain it to Mr. Colton. If Mr. Colton approves ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... Green having "swallowed" this, his friend was thereby enabled, not only to use up old "sells," but also to draw largely on his invention for new ones. Just then, there came along the street, walking in a sort of young procession, - the Vice-Chancellor, with his Esquire and Yeoman-bedels. The silver maces, carried by these latter gentlemen, made them by far the most showy part of the procession, and accordingly ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... my opinion," exclaimed the professor, "that Captain Vindex is a very remarkable man—the most remarkable, in fact, that ever lived. He has invented a singular ship which can go under the sea at will, but why not? Was not the invention of steam engines laughed at, as well as the invention of gas? Who, a hundred years ago, would have believed in the electric telegraph, by means of which we send a message to the end of the earth ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood
... not surrender to desolation without repeated struggles. He strove to allure himself to his desk by the promise of some easy task; he would not attempt invention, but he had memoranda and rough jottings of ideas in his note-books, and he would merely amplify the suggestions ready to his hand. But it was hopeless, again and again it was hopeless. As he read over his notes, trusting that he would find some hint that might light up the ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... boarding. Equally upon the instant he saw the trick that had been played upon him and in a second flash had turned again. The turn and return had occupied but a moment of time, but that moment, thanks to the readiness of his own invention, had undoubtedly saved Mainwaring's life. As the other turned away his gaze for that brief instant Mainwaring leaped forward and upon him. There was a flashing flame of fire as the pistol was discharged and a deafening detonation that seemed to ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... clean and above board, is the spice of trade and invention," returned Tom, lightly. ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... should so readily have yielded at the suggestion of a picnic. Uncle John possessed a neat little morocco pocket-case, containing a dozen silver spoons, and silver-handled knives and forks, and although we are told that these implements are of later invention than fingers, there is, nevertheless, a very general bias in their favor, for the purpose to which they are applied. Now, Uncle John being aware of the prevalence of their employment, it was for this reason he never ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... nerves, or animal spirits rushing up and down between the muscles and the brain; which, if the facts could have been proved, would have been an important addition to our knowledge of physiological laws; but the mere invention, or arbitrary supposition of them, could not unless by the strongest delusion be supposed to render the phenomena of animal life more comprehensible, or less mysterious. Nothing, however, seemed satisfactory, but to make out that motion was caused by motion; by something like ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... which the authors of these petty compositions are distressed, arises from the perpetual demand of novelty and change. The compiler of a system of science lays his invention at rest, and employs only his judgment, the faculty exerted with least fatigue. Even the relator of feigned adventures, when once the principal characters are established, and the great events regularly connected, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... save were filled with water, Mr Gilbert working day and night to obtain a supply. At length, after a residence of five weeks on the sand-bank, which would assuredly have proved our grave, had it not been for the invention of our surgeon, we bade the sand-bank farewell, and stood towards Moreton Bay, on the Australian coast. The wind was fair and moderate. About thirty of us were on board the Hope, while six preferred trusting their fortunes to the lifeboat. ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... horse-shoe magnets, and copper wires which lay in a curious shaped box beneath one of the windows, and in a voice trembling with emotion as he spoke, he would have explained to you the value of this or that lever, and its necessary relation to this new invention of his which was so soon to revolutionize the motive power of the world. Or he would perhaps have talked to you as he did to me, of his theories and beliefs and of what he felt sure ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... he had. Not long afterwards he was reading in La Fontaine of a polite man who drew out of his pocket whatever was asked for. Chamisso thought, He will be bringing out next a coach and horses. Out of these hints came the fancy of "Peter Schlemihl, the Shadowless Man." In all thought that goes with invention of a poet, there are depths as well as shallows, and the reader may get now and then a peep into the depths. He may find, if he will, in a man's shadow that outward expression of himself which shows that he has been touched, ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... criticize the works of different periods; extracting, as far as we may, rules for the beautiful and the commendable, and seeking to find the "why?" also observing the operation of the law by which decay follows too soon after the best and highest efforts of genius, thought, and invention in art. ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... one who has studied the New Testament for many years and loves it beyond the power of speech to express, declare to them his conviction that there is not an atom of such teaching in the whole lovely, divine utterance; that such things are all and altogether the invention of men—honest invention, in part at least, I grant, but yet not true. Thank God, we are nowise bound to accept any man's explanation of God's ways and God's doings, however good the man may be, if it do not commend itself ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... back into the room, smiling to herself, while the twins pursued their mysterious course towards the shrubberies. She thought she would not bathe after all; but she dressed quickly and went down into the garden, a little curious to learn what new invention the children were busying ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... Westley Cement Mixer a success; it came near not being one. Back there when we were just starting it up, Craig Winton, a young, smart-looking chap, came to me with a mechanical device he'd invented that he believed we needed in our cement-mixing machine. We did—I knew right off that that invention was what we had to have to make our business a success; without it every cent the other stockholders and myself had put into the thing would be lost. I offered the young fellow a paltry amount, and when he wouldn't accept it, I let him go away. Our engineers worked hard to ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... yards? Oh, that depends on the idea, the invention. I have it here growing in my brain. The price? Ah, I cannot tell. When the work is complete then we know. There will ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... telephone, which, it is said, can be used without wires, by which signals can be projected by a vibrator on one vessel against a receiver on another. The Navy Department is keeping the details of this new system carefully to itself, as it desires to have the invention for the exclusive use of our ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... no doubt this story was all an invention, but I had no means of showing to the contrary. He begged me to go up-stairs, and help him kill the "varmint;" but I declined to do this, for I was not willing again to make myself the victim of ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... question as one which could not be answered with complete frankness. I don't enjoy lying. Not that my moral sense revolts, but because I am lazy. Lying calls for deliberate efforts of invention. ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... theme, I had dreamed out my dream, realised every difficulty, ascertained every factor in the problem. I had satisfied myself that only one thing needful was as yet wholly beyond the reach and even the proximate hopes of science. Human invention could furnish as yet no motive power that could fulfil the main requirement of the problem—uniform or constantly increasing motion in vacuo—motion through a region affording no resisting medium. This must be a repulsive energy capable of acting through an utter void. Man, animals, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... Findel, speaks of the Third Degree as if it were a pure invention, quoting a passage from Ahiman Rezon, by Lawrence Dermott, to prove it. He further states that Anderson and Desaguliers were "publicly accused of manufacturing the degree, which they never denied" (History of Masonry, chap. vii). But inasmuch as they ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... affairs from the Conquest to the year 1304, tells us expressly, that he did this, not because he could add much to the histories of Bede, William of Newburgh, and Matthew Paris, but "propter minores, quibus non suppetit copia librorum." (25) Before the invention of printing, it was necessary that numerous copies of historical works should be transcribed, for the instruction of those who had not access to libraries. The transcribers frequently added something of their own, and abridged or omitted what they thought ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... then her tongue got its way again, and the inevitable subjects were resumed. She talked of the 'gentlemen' whose acquaintance, in a greater or less degree, she had made at the seaside; described their manoeuvres to obtain private interviews with her, repeated jokes of their invention, specified her favourites, all at headlong speed of disjointed narrative. Emily sat beneath the infliction, feeling that to go through this on alternate days for some weeks would be beyond her power. She would not rise and depart, ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... have flashed into anger at such a speech as this, but now she did not answer. Young love is fertile in imagination. She had found a thousand glories in John Barren, and, when he left her, had woven a thousand explanations for his delayed return. Now invention grew dull; enthusiasm waned; her confidence was shaken, though she denied the fact even to herself as a sort of treachery. But there is no standing still in time. The remorseless fact of his non-return extended ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... when all is said and done, the most important person in the state—has stood still while the currents of science and invention have swept past him. He has watched the work of the world pass into the keeping of machines, shining miracles of steel and electricity, and has forgot himself in worshipping them. Now he is beginning to realize that it is much easier to ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... substitute for both the art of toneless squeaking! Further you deny the importance of action in the drama and assert it to be a worthless accident, a sop for the groundlings! You deny the validity of poetic justice, of guilt and its necessary expiation. You call all that a vulgar invention—an assertion by means of which the whole moral order of the world is abrogated by the learned and crooked understanding of your single magnificent self! Of the heights of humanity you know nothing! You asserted the other day that, in certain circumstances, a barber or a scrubwoman ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Highness has yet carried out the idea of that pattern of linked tracery which Messer Niccolo da Correggio suggested to you when we were last together. If you have not yet ordered the execution of this design, I am thinking of having his invention carried out in massive gold, on a camora of purple velvet, to wear on the day of Madonna Bianca's wedding, since my husband desires the whole court to lay aside mourning for that one day and to appear in colours. ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... clever; and your letter in heroic verse seems more amazing to me than if the King of Britain was to send an express for me, to dance a hornpipe before him, or the King of Prussia was to declare in a manifesto, that I was the occasion of the present war. I detest the invention of writing; and nothing could reconcile me to it, but that I can assure you at this distance, that I ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... so, after all. She was the Tokonatz of To-no-Chiujio," thought Genji; and now it also transpired that all that Koremitz had stated about To-no-Chiujio's visiting her at the Yugao house was a pure invention, suggested by a slight acquaintance with the ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... travelled went about armed, by reason of the abundance of highwaymen and the paucity and inefficiency of the police. Stage coaches had not reached Birmingham, and it took three days to get to London. Even canals were a recent and much opposed invention. ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... the advantages of an absolutely free Press. No, what I am talking of is the prominence given to the opinions and sentiments of men who were called Pro-Boers, as if they represented the feelings of a large section of their fellow-countrymen. The invention of lies, like the alleged quarrel between Lord Kitchener and the War Office, was intended to damage this country in the conduct of the war, as was also the wicked charges made against the humanity ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... in Washington scores of telephones are provided; even the secretary of the department and the chief of the bureau give orders by telephone. It goes without saying that this means of communication is also found in the home of almost every well-to-do family. The invention of a telephone is a great blessing to mankind; it enables friends to talk to each other at a distance without the trouble of calling.[1] Sweethearts can exchange their sweet nothings, and even proposals ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... of prison discipline, it is not our purpose here to enlarge. This must be reserved to some future occasion. We must content ourselves with observing, that we have little confidence in novelties, and little wish to prompt the invention of our legislators in this direction. We are as little disposed to advocate the silent as the solitary system. Such a demeanour as any reflective man would naturally expect to find in a place of public correction, is all that we should require to be preserved. All boisterous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... 'why there's no doin' nothin' with them,' says he. 'When they get fairly stumped, and you produce a text that they can't get over, nor get round, why they say "It ain't in our varsion at all; that's an interpolation, it's an invention of them 'ere everlastin' monks;" there's nothin' left for you to do with them, but to sarve them as Parson Possit detailed the boxer—lay right hold of 'em, and chuck 'em over the fence, even if they were ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... representative of such—at least not in America, where all social distinctions are rapidly disappearing. In fact, we have scarcely any thing left, even now, but the shadow of a true aristocracy, and that is only to be found in Virginia. At the North, mere wealth makes a man a gentleman; and this new invention of these degenerate times is fast being adopted even here in the 'Old Dominion.' But it won't do—unless a man is born and bred a gentleman, he ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... lines, my voice trembled so's to shake the tears out of my eyes, and Jim Jerdan took it up himself and sung it through for me to words of his own invention. He was always a kindly fellow, and he knew a little how the land ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... particular details; because generalities, which in all other cases are apt to heighten and raise the subject, have here a tendency to sink it. When we speak of the commerce with our colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... mouth-piece are carried through the tube to the ear, and are then heard exactly as they are spoken. When I used my instrument the person spoke into the mouth-piece exactly as if it were an ordinary tube, but the result was very different, for the great feature of my invention was that, no matter what language was spoken by the person at the mouth-piece, be it Greek, Choctaw, or Chinese, the words came to the ear ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... end of the room and back, as she was bid; she tried to express a preference, when she was asked for one; and as she was arrayed in one delicious gown after another, she became more and more alive to the beauty of the soft stuffs, the invention and caprice with which they were combined, the daintiness of their pinks and blues, their greys and creams, their lilacs and ivories. At last Mrs. Burgoyne happened upon a dress of white crape, opening upon a vest of pale green, with thin ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... few, perhaps, whose external situation resembled mine, who would have found in it any thing but incitements to industry and invention. A thousand methods of subsistence, honest but laborious, were at my command, but to these I entertained an irreconcilable aversion. Ease and the respect attendant upon opulence I was willing to purchase at the price of ever-wakeful suspicion ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... "he sent me to school. But when I had once found the delight of knowledge, and felt the pleasure of intelligence and the pride of invention, I began silently to despise riches, and determined to disappoint the purposes of my father, whose grossness of conception raised my pity. I was twenty years old before his tenderness would expose me to the fatigue of travel; in which time ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... thou spakest a minute past of despising all things, and taking up such a life of toil, was that an old tradition handed down from the teaching of the Apostles, or is this a late invention of your wits, which ye have chosen for yourselves as a more ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... intelligent, and human consciousness. For consciousness corresponds exactly to the living being's power of choice; it is coextensive with the fringe of possible action that surrounds the real action: consciousness is synonymous with invention and with freedom. Now, in the animal, invention is never anything but a variation on the theme of routine. Shut up in the habits of the species, it succeeds, no doubt, in enlarging them by its individual initiative; but ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... this Carlos displayed no great powers of invention. The farce of false debts is often played in Paris. There are many sub-Gobsecks and sub-Gigonnets who, for a percentage, will lend themselves to this subterfuge, and regard the infamous trick as a jest. In France ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... New England system than under the Virginia system. Jefferson said, "Those wards, called townships in New England, are the vital principle of their governments, and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government, and for its preservation[13]....As Cato, then, concluded every speech with the words Carthago delenda est, so do I every opinion with the injunction: Divide ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... tactics of his party and of his government were without consistency or cleverness, and the financial management of his chancellor of the exchequer as clumsy in detail, and what might be called manipulation, as destitute of invention, originality, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... taught one another a rough, awkward, and commonplace style for a great number of years, not by means of study but as a matter of custom, without ever dreaming of improving their designs by beauty of colouring or by any invention ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... To the wonderful invention known as his "secret war-plan" allusion will presently be made. His other most important mechanical pursuits had for their principal object the improvement of steam-engines and other appliances for steam-shipping. Almost his first reminiscence ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... language, as has already been said, has been deliberately invented, "still each word may not be unfitly compared to an invention; it has its own place, mode, and circumstances of devisal, its preparation in the previous habits of speech, its influence in determining the after progress of speech development; but every language in the gross is an institution, on which scores or hundreds of ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... a common graveyard. They disputed much with the joiners, painters, and loriners, who were always trying to trespass upon the rights of the saddlers. The introduction of coaches alarmed them as much as the invention of railways frightened the coachmen, but with less cause. The saddle trade prospered. The Civil War caused many saddles to be made and many emptied. Their records tell of much old-time civic life and customs. They had a barge on the river; they buried their ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... thought gives you comfort, retain it," returned the woman; "the whole story of the earl's illness was an invention to bring you at so short notice from the protection ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... nineteenth century as a national utterance. It sprang from a political rather than an artistic motive; it was the itch of jealous pride that sharply stressed the difference of musical style on the two sides of the Rhine. The very influence of German music was needed by the French rather than a bizarre invention of national traits. The broader art of a Saint-Saens here shines in contrast with the brilliant conceits of his younger compatriots, though it cannot be denied that the latter are grounded in classic counterpoint. With other nations ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... Invention of these Men less to be admired than their Industry or Vigilance. There is a Fragment of Apollodorus the Comick Poet (who was Contemporary with Menander) which is full of Humour as follows: Thou mayest shut up thy Doors, says he, with Bars and Bolts: It will be impossible ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... for in some respects "The Harlot's Progress" is one of the most characteristic and the most brilliant of his creations. Its popularity was immense and instantaneous; it was played in pantomime, and reproduced on ladies' fans. But if he did not surpass the genius of his first invention he certainly came very close to it, both in the "Rake's Progress" and in his ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... have no virtue or wisdom in their minds, to which, in a disappointment concerning the profitable effects of fraud and cunning, they can retreat. The wearing out of an old serves only to put them upon the invention of a new delusion. Unluckily, too, the credulity of dupes is as inexhaustible as the invention of knaves. They never give people possession; but they always keep them in hope. Your state doctors do not so much as pretend that any good whatsoever has hitherto ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... revenues of the archbishop are confiscated, his estates are laid waste, his possessions are plundered, and by the invention of a new kind of punishment, the whole kin of Thomas is proscribed together. For all his friends or acquaintance, or whoever was connected with him, by whatever title, without distinction of state or fortune, dignity or rank, age or sex, ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... to the end of thinking I'm a marvel, what happens? You don't know me any better. I might be a poisoner, or a ... or a...." Sally's invention failed her. "I might keep a shop, or serve a bar, or be an actress," she went on, recovering fertility. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... from lumbago, doubted (his nose growingredder and redder daily) whether he was fit for his post, and, by alternate mails, sent in and withdrew his resignation. Then, too, both the General and the Minister suffered acutely from that distressingly useful new invention, the electric telegraph. On one occasion General Simpson felt obliged actually to expostulate. 'I think, my Lord,' he wrote, 'that some telegraphic messages reach us that cannot be sent under due authority, and are perhaps unknown to you, although under the protection ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... historical interest, and as this operation (defective as it is) had been the means of saving many legs prior to the invention of amputation at the ankle-joint, a ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... close observation had not been at fault. The chimney over the river gable was a painted chimney, a mere invention. Yet, surely Santa Claus ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... immeasurably greater than it had previously been. A social unity of will was possible that could never have existed on earth hitherto. For all we know, thirty thousand years may have passed away before any other event occurred among human beings comparable in practical importance to the invention of spoken language. This, however, was all the time being gradually perfected under the stress of new experiences in general and ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... the edge of the border and there with enough crocheting any one who is hard of hearing can come to have a subdued voice. A little iron comes to take that place and that is not a discovery. A sign is enough to destroy that invention. ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... more touching to Fancy, perhaps, that they were homeless and attainted: the light of skeptic day was baffled by depths of forest where superstitious shapes still cowered, creatures of immemorial wonder, the raw material of Imagination. The invention of printing, without yet vulgarizing letters, had made the thought and history of the entire past contemporaneous; while a crowd of translators put every man who could read in inspiring contact with the select souls of all the centuries. A new ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... standard by Mr Bloom's window. Couldn't they invent something automatic so that the wheel itself much handier? Well but that fellow would lose his job then? Well but then another fellow would get a job making the new invention? ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... chapters with fierce disgust, or have laid them quietly aside. There is no vitality in them. If I read them aloud to any one, he would wonder what was wrong—they are as well written as my other books, as amusing, as interesting. But it is all without energy or invention, it is all worse than my best. The people are puppets, their words are pumped up out of a stagnant reservoir. Everything I do reminds me of something I have done before. If I could bring myself to finish one of these books, I could get money and praise enough. Many people would not know ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... those fellows had who tried to get away with your turbine model invention, dad. The one they used at the old General Harkness mansion, in the woods near the lake, and the same boat that fellow used when he got away from me the day I was ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... is no osculatory to be found in the records. This is a slightly later invention, and no one seems to kneel in ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... fissure as far as the arm would permit it to go, that this spring is equally warm with the former. The pool, however, which contains the water being of so considerable a size as to suffer it immediately to acquire the temperature of the atmosphere, it must undoubtedly have appeared cold before the invention of an instrument for ascertaining the real degree of heat. It would, therefore, have been thought cold in the days of Homer; and the poet is not incorrect who describes places and things as they appear to the generality of mankind. Several other sources contribute ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... of China has not changed much from the ways of the Empire. The Peking newspapers of June 17, 1914, contain a Presidential Edict stating that "the invention of heretical religions by ill-disposed persons is strictly prohibited by law," and that certain religious ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... Testaments. Though well-educated, they submitted meekly to a communal authority, chosen from among themselves, and led peaceful and honest working lives. All luxuries, even down to feminine ornaments or dainty toilettes, were banned. They considered war a heathen invention—merely "assassination on a large scale"—and though, when forced into military service, they did their duty as soldiers in peace-time, the moment war was in view it was their custom to throw away their arms and quietly desert. There were no beggars and no poor ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... torture called the boot. In regard to these machines there is a passage in the Privy Council Records which gives an idea of the spirit of the age about which we write. It runs thus: "Whereas the boots were the ordinary way to explicate matters relating to the Government, and there is now a new invention and engine called the Thumbkins, which will be very effectual to the purpose aforesaid, the Lords ordain that when any person shall by their order be put to the torture, the said boots and thumbkins be applied to them, as it shall be ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... about ten years ago, when it was regarded by many as a new invention, the art of macrame making had for centuries become almost extinct and save here and there in the ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... Mutton." That was another of his eccentricities. Just as he had insisted that God's "last name was Walker," so he had begun of his own accord, and for no visible reason, to call nurse "Mutton." He was always fitting names of his own invention to persons; and in his selection he was guided by a principle so obscure that Gabriella had never been able to discover its origin. Thus his grandmother from the first had been "Budd," and he had immediately started to ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... what you think of my invention," said she, as they rose from the table and opened the door ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... to the world in 1753. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, writing to her daughter, the Countess of Bute, over a year later [January 1st, 1755], remarked that "my friend Smollett . . . has certainly a talent for invention, though I think it flags a little in his last work." Lady Mary was both right and wrong. The inventive power which we commonly think of as Smollett's was the ability to work over his own experience into realistic fiction. Of this, Ferdinand Count Fathom shows comparatively ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... vocation, some trade, but they do all by ministers and servants, ad otia duntaxat se natos existimant, imo ad sui ipsius plerumque et aliorum perniciem, [3216]as one freely taxeth such kind of men, they are all for pastimes, 'tis all their study, all their invention tends to this alone, to drive away time, as if they were born some of them to no other ends. Therefore to correct and avoid these errors and inconveniences, our divines, physicians, and politicians, so much labour, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... birth of the early Greek philosophy, and were the only part of it which has had an uninterrupted hold on the mind of Europe. Philosophies come and go; but the detection of fallacies, the framing of definitions, the invention of methods still continue to be the main ...
— Meno • Plato |
