"Creative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seriously planning to build a new house and farm buildings. Creative activity was his passion. He was never satisfied with what he had ready-made; he longed to make something new. He planted little trees, raised pines and fir-trees from seed, looked after them as though they were his children, and, like Colonel Vershinin in his "Three ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... at first in a new pursuit. A maker of microscopes told me that, in a new attempt on a different kind of object-glass, he failed forty-nine times, but the fiftieth was a complete success. The poet of Scotland intimates that even Creative Nature herself improved ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... American, but parts of it were inapplicable to the conditions in which the thirteen Colonies found themselves, and where the model failed the Convention struck out anew. The sagacity of the American statesmen in this creative work may well fill Englishmen, so Sir Henry Maine wrote, "with wonder and envy." Mr. Bryce's classification of constitutions as flexible and rigid is apt: of our Constitution it may be said that in the main it is rigid in those matters which should not be submitted ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... Poesy might wake her heav'n-taught lyre, And look through Nature with creative fire; Here, to the wrongs of Fate half reconcil'd, Misfortunes lighten'd steps might wander wild; And Disappointment, in these lonely bounds, Find balm to soothe her bitter, rankling wounds: Here heart-struck Grief might heav'nward stretch ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... resemblance, though the differences here are as numerous as the analogies. Roosevelt was not a clergyman, and not a creative writer, a novelist, or poet. His temperament was not very similar to Kingsley's. Yet the two shared a love for bold adventure, a passion for sport, and an eager interest in the life of animals and plants. Sport with Kingsley took the shape of trout fishing ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... similarity of feature, especially in profile, between peers and peeresses, poets and poetesses, statesmen and the grandes dames of society. Caricatured, it lived in the drawings of Leech and Du Maurier. Taken seriously, it inspired creative artists both of pen and brush when dealing with the heroic. Superficial writers confused it with the Hebraic nose, and in prints of criminal and depraved characters one frequently found it distorted ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... luxuriance. The three craft were the only evidences of man's intrusion upon the scene with which we were confronted; everything else was the work of Nature herself, untrammelled and uninterfered with; and it appeared as though in the riotous delight of her creative powers she had put forth all her energies in the production of strange and curious shapes and bewildering combinations of the richest and most dazzling colours. True, the water of the creek, which in consequence of the sheltering height of the bordering vegetation was glassy smooth, was so fully ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... ecclesiastical domination in the Philippines, it was to be expected that the wards would turn against their mentors the methods that had been used upon them, nor is it especially remarkable that there was a decided tendency in some parts to revert to primitive barbarism, but that concurrently a creative genius—a bard or seer—should have been developed among a people who, as a whole, have hardly passed through the clan or village stage of society, can be regarded as little less than a psychological phenomenon, and provokes the perhaps presumptuous inquiry as to whether there ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Prudhomme, of Matthew Arnold, of Lowell, to name three of his younger contemporaries. In his nature all was based upon equilibrium; his spirit, though full of graceful and philosophical intuitions, was critical rather than creative. He wrote little, and with difficulty, and in exquisite form. His life was as blamelessly correct as his literary art was harmonious. Wergeland knew nothing of the Danish tradition of his day, which he treated with violent and bitter contempt. Welhaven, ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... has always lain chiefly in the perfecting of his tools. From the beginning he has had certain ideas, certain tendencies, a certain consciousness of things to express; he has been haunted, as only creative artists are haunted, by a world waiting to be born; and, from the beginning, he has built on a basis of criticism, a criticism of life. Part of his strength has gone out in fighting: he has had ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... the study of religion not only a somewhat fresher mind than the European, but a temperamental earnestness about serious things which is the world's best hope of creative action. Moreover there is something Greek about the American. He is always young, as Greece was young in the time of Themistocles and AEschylus. He is conscious of "exhilaration in the air, a sense of walking in new ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... reproduction of a style of architecture belonging to colonial days, examples of which survived into the period of his youth, but have since been radically modified or destroyed. Here, as elsewhere, he exercised the liberty of a creative mind to heighten the probability of his pictures without confining himself to a literal description of something he ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the current theological ideas, and it was this daring rebellion against the popular faith, the chief support of custom which caused all the trouble. If ever he attempted to show the non-existence of Deity, his negation was solely directed against the gross human notions of a creative power, and ergo a succession of finite creative powers ad infinitum, or a Personal God who has only been acknowledged in the popular teachings as an autocratic tyrant, and as Shelley puts it ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... the aims in both cases were the same—by subtle and secret influence so to mold the actions of men that France should be exalted in power. In their high politics the French sometimes overreached themselves. To seize points of vantage, to intrigue for influence, are not in themselves creative. They must be supported by such practical efforts as will assure an economic reserve adequate in the hour of testing. France failed partly because she did not know how to lay sound industrial foundations which should give substance to the brilliant ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... as the origins of Drama are concerned the Ode quoted later from the Naassene Document is absolute and definite proof of the close connection existing between the Attis Mystery ritual, and dramatic performances, i.e., Attis regarded in his deified, Creative, 'Logos,' aspect, not ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... away the existence of matter and to identify the soul with the Lord more closely than its original formulae allow. Matter is described as Maya and is potentially contained in the Lord who manifests it in the creative process which begins each kalpa. The Lord is also said to be one with our souls and yet other. The soul is by nature ignorant, in bondage to the illusion of Maya and of Karma, but by the grace of the Lord it attains to union (not identity) with him, in ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... characterization of himself. And so it is. He could have sprung from no other stock. In person and speech, in the indefinable quality of the man, in the humour which continually tempers his tremendous seriousness, he belongs to London. Among the men of our time who have done creative writing I can think of no other about whom this can be ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... were, however, prepared by one perhaps greater than himself in creative genius, and as unscrupulous and cruel as he. Philip found his kingdom a little brook; he left it a river—broad, deep, and grand. Under Alexander, this river became an irresistible torrent, sweeping every thing away ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... herself, are represented as having no more than a blind and instinctive apprehension of the supersensual beauty which is shining through the flesh, and which is the real object of desire. But thus much ideality must be characteristic of love, it seems obvious, before it can be spiritually creative. Unless there is some sense of a universal force, taking the shape of the individual loved one, there can be nothing suggestive in love. Instead of waking the lover to the beauty in all of life, as we have said, it would, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... as the wisdom of the world, we call him 'the Word,' 'He, who covers his limbs with names,' as the sacred Text expresses itself, is the power which gives to things their distinctive forms; the scarabaeus, 'which enters life as its own son' reminds us of the ever self-renewing creative power which causes you to call our merciful and benevolent God a monster, but which you can deny as little as you can the happy choice of the type; for, as you know, there are only male scarabei, and this ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of organic matter commences the instant it is abandoned by the creative and conservative vital force, and proceeds uninterruptedly, whether slowly or rapidly, to the final result, it is evident that each moment in the progress of this decomposition presents us with a phase of structure and composition different from that which preceded and from that which follows ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... up; things as ugly were possible in Scotland then, and for at least a century later; and while we may hope that Buchanan has overstated his case, we must not blame him too severely for yielding to a temptation common to all men of genius when their creative power is roused to its highest energy by a great ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... of this political infighting and personality conflict was support for the king. Amidst the factionalism, corruption, and greed, independent members of parliament saw the crown as the only means for creative, effective leadership. For that reason George, after 1770, not only had a minister he could work with, he had a more tractable parliament aided by the complete disintegration of the Whigs and ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... of the Mississippi, built the ship railroad across the Isthmus of Panama and other like wonders, never had a day's instruction in any higher institution of learning than the common schools of Dearborn County. Ericsson, who invented the Monitor, and whose creative genius revolutionized naval warfare, was a Swedish immigrant. Robert Fulton, who invented the ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... processes give pleasure to all who behold. The domineering type is present in eight members, especially in those families which claim by right of inheritance either social or religious leadership. And, as to others, as I quoted an observer above, "They are an obedient people." I do not know any creative minds, much less any class with original initiative. If there had been any such, Quaker Hill would have produced artists, great and small, and writers, not a few. There is a consciousness of material for creation, and in certain families ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... United States and Hungary we discover many common traits: the same state-creative energy in the predominant people, which finds expression in constitutional forms, relying upon the love of freedom, which unites so many different races in one uniform whole; the same independent institutions; the same ideas ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... in early April, full of the hush which seems to gather all the creative forces together, before the wild outburst of prodigal creation begins in wild flower and weed and moorland grasses, and Robert Sinclair, who had walked and tramped over the moors for hours, until he was nearly exhausted, his heart torn and ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... in a higher degree than man that adaptation to the conditions surrounding her which is everywhere accepted as evidence of superior vitality and higher physical rank in life; and when biology becomes more fully understood it will also be universally acknowledged that the primal creative power, like the first ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... has been marvelous on the appreciative and interpretive side. With such a musical awakening, we can look forward to the appearance of great creative genius right here in this country, perhaps in the near future. Why should we not expect it? We have not yet produced a composer who can write enduring operas or symphonies. MacDowell is our highest type as yet; but others will come who ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... Malory is again a collection of traditional stories, as is the Gesta Romanorum, and not the creative work of a single intellect. As might be expected, it straggles, and overlays its climax with a too-lavish abundance of incidents; it lacks the harmony of values which results from the introduction of a unifying ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... better known as the queen of "Little Trianon" than as a queen of Versailles. At the former place she gave full license to her creative bent. Her palace, as well as her environments, she fashioned according to her own ideas, which were not French and only made her stand out the more conspicuously as a foreigner. From this sort of fairy creation arose the distinctively Marie Antoinette art and style; she caused artists to ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... divinity of joining ocean to ocean construed to him as she could construe it, would not the great man become plastic under her hands? And if, while this was a-doing, Felix would run away with Marie, could not forgiveness be made easy? And her creative mind ranged still farther. Mr Broune might help, and even Mr Booker. To such a one as Melmotte, a man doing great things through the force of the confidence placed in him by the world at large, the freely-spoken ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... all gossip is purposely harmful in its intention. The deliberate, creative gossip is probably rare. In fact, gossip usually represents the need of a bored world to be entertained at any price, the restless ennui that must be forever talking or listening to fill the vacuity of its existence, ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... epopee was dead; the Arthurian tales were rehandled in prose; under the influence of the Roman de la Rose, allegory was highly popular, and Jean de Meun had shown how it could be applied to the secularisation of learning; the middle classes were seeking for instruction. In lyric poetry the free creative spirit had declined, but the technique of verse was elaborated and reduced to rule; ballade, chant royal, lai, virelai, rondeau were the established forms, and lyric verse was often used for matter of a didactic, moral, or satirical tendency. Even Ovid was tediously moralised (c. 1300) ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... thy mind;" each varied power, Creative fancy, musings high, And thoughts that glance behind, ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... creative art suggest A world where people may revise Their silly past, and realise Those second thoughts which are the best; Where, having seen the larger light, A perfect liberty to hedge And swap the wrong man for the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... witness here how mighty is the energy, how unfailing the life, of that Catholic Church which they so bitterly hate; how little wisdom they display in matching their strength and their temporary triumphs over her against that incomparable union of living forces which the creative power of Christ has bound around this central rock. More than ever is it needful in our age, that all men should see and understand that the only strong and lasting tie between men's souls depends on the reign over all of the same ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... professors to prepare treatises on prescribed topics. Every khalif had his own historian. Books of romances and tales, such as "The Thousand and One Arabian Nights' Entertainments," bear testimony to the creative fancy of the Saracens. Besides these, there were works on all kinds of subjects—history, jurisprudence, politics, philosophy, biographies not only of illustrious men, but also of celebrated horses and camels. These were issued without any censorship ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... this vast creative activity, he recognized only one self-imposed limitation—beauty. Hence, though his span of life was short, his work is imperishable. He steadily progressed: but he was ever true, beautiful and pure, and freer than any other master from superficiality ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... statements given about His incarnation. "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee." From the Gospel of Matthew we learn the full meaning of this statement. "That which is begotten in her is of the Holy Ghost." Therefore His human nature was produced in the virgin by the creative action of the Holy Spirit. Because His human nature was thus produced, it was a nature without sin; not only did He not sin, but He could not sin. He was sinless, absolutely holy, because He was conceived ...
— The Work Of Christ - Past, Present and Future • A. C. Gaebelein
... as a spirit, or invisible man or animal, of ethereal substance, the counterpart of the visible body, within which it resides, and to which it imparts life, strength, and the power of assimilating food.[261:2] Archaeus was regarded as the creative spirit, which, working upon the raw material of water or fluidity, by means of a ferment promotes the various actions which result in the development and nutrition of the physical organism. As life and all vital action depended upon archaeus, any ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries with some reference to the political condition of Florence and of Italy at that time. In truth, Florence during the period of its life was Italy,—the vivida vis, creative, contemplative, ornative, impulsive to the clay of Europe. The art of painting seems to spring full-grown into existence, with the appearance of Cimabue in the latter part of the thirteenth century. Even so the Italian language suddenly crystallizes itself into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... hills. Now and then a knot of poplars diversify their craggy summits, and sometimes a miserable shed. Mantua itself rises out of a morass formed by the Mincio, whose course, in most places, is so choked up with reeds as to be scarcely discernible. It requires a creative imagination to discover any charms in such a prospect, and a strong prepossession not to be disgusted with the scene where Virgil was born. For my own part, I approached this neighbourhood with proper deference, and began to feel the God, but finding no tufted ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... satirise the Sensibility-novel just as those of Catherine do the Terror-story of the immediate past. But it is on a much larger scale: and things of the kind are better in miniature. Moreover, the author's sense of creative faculty made her try to throw up and contrast her heroine with other characters, in a way which she had not attempted in Northanger Abbey: and good as these are in themselves, they make a less perfect whole. Indeed, in the order of thought, Sense and Sensibility is the "youngest" ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... be quite as near the truth to say that conjugation is the one purely accidental and incidental condition of marriage. Conjugation is essential to nothing but the propagation of the race; and the moment that paramount need is provided for otherwise than by marriage, conjugation, from Nature's creative point of view, ceases to be essential in marriage. But marriage does not thereupon cease to be so economical, convenient, and comfortable, that the Superman might safely bribe the matrimonomaniacs by offering to revive all the old inhuman stringency and irrevocability of marriage, ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... turn to Bishop Butler when we think of moral character. Butler is an author who has drawn no characters of his own. Butler's genius was not creative like Shakespeare's or Bunyan's. Butler had not that splendid imagination which those two masters in character-painting possessed, but he had very great gifts of his own, and he has done us very great service by means of his gifts. Bishop Butler has helped many men ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... accorded to me by the English publishers of Bergson's works to quote passages directly from these authorized translations—To Messrs. Geo. Allen & Unwin, Ltd. (Time and Free Will and Matter and Memory), to Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd. (Creative Evolution, Laughter, Introduction to Metaphysics), and to T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd. (Dreams). Through the kindness of M. Louis Michaud, the Paris publisher, I have been enabled to reproduce (from his volume of selections, Henri Bergson: Choix de textes et etude de systeme philosophique, Gillouin) ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... to speak with perfect calmness of his lost book, because he had almost brought himself to a philosophic indifference regarding it, the more easily as he had had consoling indications lately that his creative power had not been exhausted with that one effort, and that with returning health he might yet do good ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... the same sphinx-like grandeur, with its long bold promontory stretching out into the western waters. These two seem to be keeping watch and ward over mountain and sea: each appropriate in its place and equally impressive. There the stern prophet surveying the home of great beginnings, the cradle of creative energy; and here, its counterpart, a mighty recumbent lion, its dreamy, peaceful gaze turned with confidence out over the wide Pacific to the setting sun, with assurance of ultimate success, a pledge of aspirations satisfied, of achievements assured, of——Whoa there! ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... say. This is especially true of work recast by men in mature age. Writers and painters (sculptors luckily are restrained by the nature of their art—unless they deliberately go and break up their work with a hammer) retouch and change, in the years when they have become more critical and less creative, what they think to be the insufficient achievements of their youth: yet it is the vigour and the simplicity of their youthful work which other men often prefer to remember. On this account any number of good things remain anonymous, because ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... are afflicted with doubt and fear, timidity and lack of confidence, this means that your mental inhibitions are too numerous, too high or too strong. Remove them and access is had to the latent energy of accumulated and creative thought complexes. You will then become buoyant, cheerful, overflowing with enthusiasm, and ready for a fresh, definite, active ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... you criticize God's complete human beings, who feel the great vibrations of the universe, who glow and thrill with that divine creative force, who live a thousand lives and die a thousand deaths before they learn the glory ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... marriage would apply. And this is also true of the historical development of man and social conditions. It is not marriage but motherhood which has given permanence to sex relations wherever they appear. Motherhood standing at the source of life with its creative and ever recreative force. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... spoken of the plans that lie at the foundation of all the variety of the Animal Kingdom as so many structural ideas which must have had an intellectual existence in the Creative Conception independently of any special material expression of them. Difficult though it be to present these plans as pure abstract formulae, distinct from the animals that represent them, I would nevertheless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... inveighing against the profession at great length, and his inability to decide where he should lunch, generally prevented him from beginning the day until three o'clock in the afternoon, Mr. Enwright had given many highly concentrated hours of creative energy to the design. And Mr. Haim had adorned the sheets with the finest lettering. The design was held to be very good. The principals knew the identity of all the other chief competitors and their powers, and they knew also the idiosyncrasies ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... much console Philip, who imagined that only some grand heroism could unlock the sweetness of such a heart; and Philip feared that he wasn't a hero. He did not know out of what materials a woman can construct a hero, when she is in the creative mood. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... eternal type of the unfolding of the speculative spirit of man. This springs, no doubt, from the essentially subjective character of astronomy,—more than all the other sciences a construction of the creative reason. From the initiative of scientific astronomy, when the early Greek geometers referred the apparent diurnal movements to geometrical laws, to the creation of the nebular hypothesis, the logical filiation of the leading astronomical ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... Hypersensitiveness is never anything but a makeshift kind of satisfaction. Despite certain subconscious reasoning, it does not make one more important nor more beloved. Neither does it furnish a real expression for that great creative love-instinct whose outlet, if it is to bring satisfaction, must be a real outlet into the external world. An understanding of the motives is helpful only when it makes clear that they are short-sighted motives and that the real desires back of them may be satisfied ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... There you misread it, Beauchamp. We that fight the living world must have the universal for succour of the truth in it. Cast forth the soul in prayer, you meet the effluence of the outer truth, you join with the creative elements giving breath to you; and that crust of habit which is the soul's tomb; and custom, the soul's tyrant; and pride, our volcano-peak that sinks us in a crater; and fear, which plucks the feathers from the wings of the soul and sits it naked and shivering ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of mankind,—will use religion for his disciplining and educating work, just as he will use the contemporary political and economic conditions. The selecting and disciplining influence—destructive, as well as creative and fashioning—which can be exercised by means of religion is manifold and varied, according to the sort of people placed under its spell and protection. For those who are strong and independent, destined ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... for that reason that in her youth we must lead one who is truly thirsty only to fountains pouring from the heaven's brink. It might seem cruel if it did not merely illustrate the law of risk involved in any creative process, that the more generously women fulfil the "function of their sex" the more they are in danger of losing their souls to furnish a mess of pottage. The risk of life for life at a child's birth is more dramatic but no truer than the risk of soul for body as the child ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... accustomed to look upon a railroad as a cold thing of dirt and sand and rock, ties and steel,—a mechanical something associated with gradients and curves. But the history of railroading in Canada is one long romance; back of each line is its creative wizard. We are too near these men to get their proper measure; the historian of the future will place their names on Canada's bead-roll:—Charles M. Hays, the forceful President of the Grand Trunk Pacific; Mackenzie ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... whiskers which developed into a little thicker tuft on his chin. His eyes were pure blue, like the blue of the speedwell. They were not piercing, but perfectly transparent, indicative of a character which, if it possessed no particular creative power, would not permit self-deception. They were not the eyes of a prophet, but of a man who would not be satisfied with letting a half-known thing alone and saying he believed it. His lips were thin, but not compressed into bitterness; and above everything there ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... usual. Even on such a day, however, the remote distance was hazy and indistinct, and at any other season I should have been diverted with the various mistakes I made. From occasional combinations of color, modified by light and shade, and of course powerfully assisted by the creative state of the eye under this nervous apprehensiveness, I continued to shape into images of Agnes forms without end, that upon nearer approach presented the most grotesque contrasts to her impressive appearance. But I had ceased even to comprehend the ludicrous; ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... and he had done his best to catch its tone and to find Inspired Millionaires in Sir Isaac and Charterson and to bring it to their notice and to the notice of the readers of the Old Country Gazette. He felt that if only Sir Isaac and Charterson would see getting rich as a Great Creative Act it would raise their tone and his tone and the tone of the Old Country Gazette tremendously. It wouldn't of course materially alter the methods or policy of the paper but it would make them all feel nobler, and Blenker was of that finer clay that ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the secrets He has scattered around us in plant and earth and animal life. Consistently with various grades of competence for investigation, the man may be social, or may flee his fellows; may be witty, or incapable of seeing the broadest fun; a poet, or almost devoid of creative imagination; full of refinement and rife with multiple forms of culture, or neither scholarly nor well-informed outside of his especial line of work. According as he is endowed with mental graces and forms of culture, apart from his science, will be his charm as a companion; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... one like that"—with a pleased creative air, "it would look rather ducky floating from my shoulder—or even my hat—or my hair in the evenings, just held by a tiny sparkling chain fastened with a diamond pin—and with lovely little pink and blue streamers." With the touch of genius she had at once ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that hover o'er With untired gaze the immeasurable fount Ebullient with creative Deity! And ye of plastic power, that interfused 405 Roll through the grosser and material mass In organizing surge! Holies of God! (And what if Monads of the infinite mind?) I haply journeying my immortal course ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and enlarged its range; at Michigan, James Burrill Angell proved it possible to maintain sound, scholarly, and non-political education, in a public institution supported by taxation; in a new university a private benefactor, Johns Hopkins, gave to Daniel Coit Gilman a chance to show that creative scholarship can flourish in a democracy. But the essential soundness of the Republic was as much obscured in 1868 as its wealth had been in 1861, and for the present the objects on the surface, brought there by violent convulsion, represented ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... creative force on the two sides of the ocean, or not? Nothing but a careful comparison through the whole realm of life can answer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... mantle".[111] The bishop of the city in which an Arian Ostrogoth ruled supreme as to temporal things was acknowledged by the head of the empire, from whom the Ostrogoth derived his title, as the person in whom our Lord's word—the creative word which founds an empire as it makes a world—was accomplished, had been during five hundred years accomplished, ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... formed erect, and capable of rendering service upon a moment's notice. Therefore some of us are conceited enough to believe that we are the most perfect and beautiful beings of the universe, the highest expression of creative art, and that all other creatures in a million orbs ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... is most interesting. We contemplate with awe the vast splendours of the consecutive civilizations of the East; the ancient richness and fertility of the whole of the Asiatic continent; the genius for empire and for commerce; the creative power which seemed to pour itself forth, unchecked by wars and conquests; the great dynasties which rose and fell, leaving behind them gigantic works, and the records of fabulous luxury in the empires of China, Assyria, India, and Persia, of which the remains have ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... of morality. The element of athletic asceticism which is a part of all virility, and is found even—indeed often in a high degree—among savages, has its main moral justification as one aid to sublimation. Throughout life sublimation acts by transforming some part at all events of the creative sexual energy from its elementary animal manifestations into more highly individual and social manifestations, or at all events into finer forms of sexual activity, forms that seem to us more beautiful and satisfy us more widely. Purity, we thus come ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... plot-situations. Many a man of brains and of excellent education who in any other calling might easily make his mark, finds himself totally unable to win success in short-story writing and photoplay writing simply because, not having an imaginative or (in the literary sense) creative mind, he neglects the thousand-and-one opportunities to stock that unimaginative mind with ideas furnished wholesale by the life he sees about him every day, or by available books of reference, magazines and daily papers; and, last, but far ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... examples, you will understand that in carrying you to the end of the animal chain where are found the most simple organizations, and that in considering among these organizations those whose simplicity is so great that they lie at the very door of the creative power of nature, then this same nature—that is to say, the state of things which exist—has been to form directly the first beginnings of organization; she has been able, consequently, by the manner of life and the aid of circumstances which favor its duration, ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... is once more exercising its powerful, I might say its creative, influence upon circumstances. I may say that at this moment the country holds no ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... Commerce, as with so many flowers and wild ornaments grave and gay. I will not make more account of them. I believe in Eternity. I can find Greece, Asia, Italy, Spain and the Islands,—the genius and creative principle of each and of all eras, in my ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... introductions and notes to his poems and novels are even overburdened with learning. But this, though important, was but the lesser part of his advantage. "The old-maidenly genius of antiquarianism" could produce a Strutt[11] or even perhaps a Warton; but it needed the touch of the creative imagination to turn the dead material of knowledge into works of art that have delighted millions of readers for a hundred years in all ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... drive about the country visiting patients. He could enjoy the sunshine and feel the drive of rain and wind in his face. He rebelled at the thought of engaging in any profession that would rob him of the open sky. But he also demanded that the profession he should choose should be one of creative work. This would be necessary if his life were to ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... kisses; still, Warm clingings to the image cold, With an impossible faith's close fold, Creative, through its ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... the creative power seems to be, as it were, contending against itself. Good of every kind is in conflict with evil. Slowly and fitfully, with many reverses, good seems to prevail. Humanity as a whole advances, and if we could believe in its collective ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith
... countryman of ours, who, as a novelist, take him all in all, is entitled to precedence of every other now living. "With what amazing power," exclaims Balzac, in the Revue de Paris, "has he painted nature! how all his pages glow with creative fire! Who is there writing English among our contemporaries, if not of him, of whom it can be said that he has a genius of the first order?" And the Edinburgh Review says, "The empire of the sea, has been conceded to him by acclamation;" that, "in the lonely desert or ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... veracity of vision that could not be refused, and of moral that could not be foreseen, which in modern historical inquiry has been left wholly out of account; being indeed the thing which no merely historical investigator can understand, or even believe; for it belongs exclusively to the creative or artistic group of men, and can only be interpreted by those of their race, who themselves in some measure also see visions ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... to express an opinion on the subject are, at present, agreed that the manifold varieties of animal and vegetable form have not either come into existence by chance, nor result from capricious exertions of creative power; but that they have taken place in a definite order, the statement of which order is what men of science term a natural law. Whether such a law is to be regarded as an expression of the mode of operation of natural forces, or whether it is simply ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... there are two of us," was Philip II.'s favourite observation; and the Prince of Parma was at this moment sorely perplexed by the parsimony and the hesitations of his own government, by which his large, swift and most creative ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... work thus with materials and upon models already prepared, without being drawn down to their level and subdued to their quality, requires, if possible, a higher order and exercise of power than to strike out in a way and with a stock entirely new. And so the absorbing, quickening, creative efficacy of Shakespeare's genius is best seen in this, that, taking the Drama as it came to his hand, a thing of unsouled forms and lack-lustre eyes, all brainless and meaningless, he at once put a spirit into it, tempered its elements in the proportions of truth, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... is both the power and beauty of the Author's former works, we know none that mark the creative thinker, more than the present production. Its pages are full of new lights ...
— The Author's Printing and Publishing Assistant • Frederick Saunders
... of the Ganges and listen to the wisdom of Europe. Antiquity readily trusted the wonderful knowledge of men which Homer displays. He has instinctively delineated the characters with the inner truth of life. How far was this art of the creative poet accompanied by the power of psychological abstraction? I do not think that we can find in the forty-eight books of Homer even a dozen contributions to our unwritten system of the naive psychology of the nations. To be sure we ought not to omit in ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... to burn, the artist has to employ the most cunning detail, to complicate and refine upon thought and passion a thousand fold.... Yet, in spite of this intricacy, the poem has the clear ring of a central motive; we receive from it the impression of one imaginative tone, of a single creative act."[3] ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... them with all the attributes required to sustain that status; finally it refers them all to a Transcendental Ego, which is not, indeed, a soul, but sufficiently like one to provide something that can admire the creative synthesis of ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... vulgarest ambition: one effort of productive power,—a little book, for instance, which should impress or should agitate several successive generations of men, even though far below the higher efforts of human creative art—as, for example, the "De Imitatione Christi," or "The Pilgrim's Progress," or" Robinson Crusoe," or "The Vicar of Wakefield,"—was worth any conceivable amount of attainments when rated as an evidence of anything that could justly denominate a man "admirable." ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... abundance, that links the Spanish tradition to ours of the present day is the strangely impromptu character of much Spanish art production. The slightly ridiculous proverb that genius consists of an infinite capacity for taking pains is well controverted. The creative flow of Spanish artists has always been so strong, so full of vitality, that there has been no time for taking pains. Lope de Vega, with his two thousand-odd plays—or was it twelve thousand?—is by no means an isolated instance. Perhaps the strong sense of individual ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... extraordinary memory, vivid imagination, quickness of judgment, or of a combination of all of these. Kant defines genius as the talent of invention. Originality and productiveness are the fundamental elements of genius. And it is an almost instinctive force which urges the author on in his creative work. In the main his activity is due less to free will than ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... catastrophe in the earth's crust, races wholly unlike any that had preceded them were introduced, from time to time, as new inhabitants of the globe. Here, then, was an absolute necessity for the continuous operation of an intelligent creative power, apart from the blind mechanical laws, which, at the utmost, could only allow each species, once introduced, to continue its kind. The marvellous adaptations of these new races to the altered conditions of the earth's surface when they appeared, then, become additional ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... dealt, leadership has been largely with the Germans. Effort was indeed made in the chapter on the sciences to illustrate the progress of thought by reference to British writers. In this department the original and creative contribution of British authors was great. There were, however, also in the earlier portion of the nineteenth century movements of religious thought in Great Britain and America related to some of those which we have previously considered. Moreover, one of the most influential ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... was Tasso; the second in tender harmony, Ovid; and the third, entitled Anacreon, was to partake of the gayety of the dithyrambus. I tried my skill on the first act, and applied to it with an ardor which, for the first time, made me feel the delightful sensation produced by the creative power of composition. One evening, as I entered the opera, feeling myself strongly incited and overpowered by my ideas, I put my money again into my pocket, returned to my apartment, locked the door, and, having close drawn all the curtains, that every ray of ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... civilization of the Indo-Germanic stock, but destined, like the earlier cycle, to traverse an orbit of its own. It too is destined to experience in full measure the vicissitudes of national weal and woe, the periods of growth, of maturity, and of age, the blessedness of creative effort in religion, polity, and art, the comfort of enjoying the material and intellectual acquisitions which it has won, perhaps also, some day, the decay of productive power in the satiety of contentment ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... English's daughters (he had no sons) afterward married a son of John Hathorne. How masterly is the touch of the artist's crayon in this imaginative creation, based upon the mental and moral anatomy of actual beings! It is a delicate study of the true creative art to follow out this romantic shape, and contrast it with the real creatures and incidents to which it has a sort of likeness. With perfect choice, the artist selects, probably not consciously, but through association, whatever he likes from the real, and deviates from it precisely where ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... utmost importance in every walk of life. The greatest and most original genius is in the main a creature of imitation. By imitation he reaches the level of knowledge and skill attained by others; and upon this foundation builds his structure of original and creative thought, experiment, and achieve- ment. Furthermore he does not imitate at random; but concentrates his activity on those things and persons in the line of ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott |
