"Invention" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 call ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... of invention, of creation, has flooded the world since Jefferson. This is the main fact about the modern man, that he is gloriously self-made. He is practising democracy, inventing his own life, making his own ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... to the Cathedrals, the only evidence of wealth in the country. But let us return to our progress. Worse even for agriculture than the drought is the ignorance and routine of the labourers, every new invention or scientific appliance repels them, thinking it evil. 'The old times were the good ones, our ancestors cultivated in this way and so ought we'; and so ignorance is turned into a sort of national glory, and we cannot hope for any remedy at present. In other countries ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... make man an innovator, initiator, an improver. The side of man's nature that urges him to possess, directs him toward wealth and power. The side of his nature that leads him to create points to invention, to craftmanship, to artistry. Thus the possessive and the creative instincts are not merely at odds. Possession leads to status while creation leads ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... Kilmarnock answered, "No, my Lord, I do not think it can be an invention, because, while I was a prisoner at Inverness, I was told by several officers that there was such an order, signed 'George Murray,' and that it was in the Duke of Cumberland's custody." To this statement, (which was wholly erroneous) Lord Balmerino exclaimed, "Lord George Murray! Why then, they ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... immediate future; he had no powerful foes to fight, for he did not bid for a great position in the world like Handel. Nor was he a romantic consumptive like Chopin, with a bad cough, a fastidious regard for beauty, and a flow of anaemic melody. He was divinely gifted with a greater richness of invention than was given to any other composers excepting two, Bach and Mozart; and death would not take his gifts as an excuse when he was thirty-seven. Hence our Mr. Cummings has droppings of lukewarm tears; hence, generally, compassion for his comparatively short life has ousted ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... whose expletives were often of his own invention, "I meant to set old Dil at work to-day, clearing a place for a tent. Dad, we must go over to the city to-morrow, and get a tent, and some lanterns and flags. We want to make the place look ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... for ages, and applied to all purposes; and that so long as any given style is in practice, all that is left for individual imagination to accomplish must be within the scope of that style, not in the invention of a new one. If there are any here, therefore, who hope to obtain celebrity by the invention of some strange way of building which must convince all Europe into its adoption, to them, for the moment, I must not be ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... of sailing-bottoms, the use of iron is likely to supersede that of timber, is a question for the speculative. At present, our commercial activity affords ample employment for both. There can be no doubt, however, that in connection with the steam-engine, and that admirable invention of modern date, the screw-propeller, iron ship-building is destined to attain and enjoy an enlarged existence; to the full maturity of which its present condition, healthful and prosperous as it appears, is but ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... as I suppose, are those in the chapter that followeth expounded: Where it says, "Let us build us a city, and a tower"; for this work was chiefly the invention of Nimrod, who, with his wicked council, contrived this work; and as one that had made himself head of the people, he enjoined them to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... having such communication most frequently. Its presence is probably the result simply of borrowing a convenient feature from those who invented it to meet a necessity. The conditions under which the houses were built have hardly been such as to stimulate the Tusayan to the invention of such a device. The uniform height of the second-story roofs seen in this village, constituting an almost unbroken level, is a rather exceptional feature in pueblo architecture. Only one depression occurs in the whole length of ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... the stateliness of its ceremonies and the charm of its traditions, paganism had never been, in plain truth, a religion; faith and piety had held but a paltry place in it; instead of a God, the creator and acting sovereign of the world, its gods were of human invention and human nature: their adventures and the parts they played were pleasing to the imagination, but gave no sort of satisfaction to the deep instincts and higher aspirations of the soul. Christianity is God hovering over, watching over, and descending to earth; paganism ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... 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, ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... corn measures are not equal in all places, but where men buy they are large, and where these same sell again they are smaller: well, in like manner the Justs which are not natural, but of human invention, are not everywhere the same, for not even the forms of government are, and yet there is one only which by nature would be ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... discovery or invention that has blessed mankind has had to fight its way to recognition, even against the opposition of the most ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... reason. It would not be easy to produce a passage that deserves the epithet of sublime or pathetic; to select a verse that melts the heart or enlarges the imagination. We should vainly seek, in the poems of Claudian, the happy invention, and artificial conduct, of an interesting fable; or the just and lively representation of the characters and situations of real life. For the service of his patron, he published occasional panegyrics and invectives: and the design of these slavish compositions encouraged his propensity to exceed ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... expanded at their ends by a special tool into the tube-plates of the fire-box and boiler front. George Stephenson and his predecessors experienced great difficulty in rendering the tube-end joints quite water-tight, but the invention of the "expander" has removed ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... story of striking interest to tell. It would need the powers of invention of a romancer to devise a series of adventures as remarkable as those which befell old Marius in his flight. It is one of the strangest stories in all the annals of history, a marked illustration of the saying that fact is often ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... life from her own soul, as a fire emits a spark. In fact, the fancy occurs in some form in all mythologies, great or small. In one old Irish legend a wizard turns a Thought into a watch-dog. The history of genius and of Invention is that of realizing ideas, of making them clearer and stronger and more comprehensive. Thus it seems to me that the word Forethought as generally loosely understood, when compared to what it has been shown capable ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... twenty-five regiments, classified into brigades and 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 give it ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Author is disposed to express his suspicion that the entire story of the tripartite league is the creature only of invention, originating in some inexplicable mistake, or fabricated for the purpose of exciting feelings of contempt ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... an invention that has proved invaluable to travellers: they have been used in all quarters of the globe, and are found to stand every climate. A full-sized one weighs only 40 lbs. They have done especial service in Arctic exploration; the waters of the Great Salt Lake, in the Mormon country, were first ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... Majesty, I have here a formula for constructing armour-plating which no gun can pierce. If these plates are adopted in the Royal Navy our warships will be invulnerable, and therefore invincible. Here, also, are reports of your Majesty's Ministers, attesting the value of the invention. I will part with my right in it for a ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... it is quite evident that the mental readjustments, effected at a cost which remains to be told, have given good results only along directions in which the race had always shown capacities of special kinds. Thus, the appliances of Western industrial invention have worked admirably in Japanese hands,—have produced excellent results in those crafts at which the nation had been skillful, in other and quainter ways, for ages. There has ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... of the older pupils a party of us surprised some "Panzen"—as we called the younger ones—one hot afternoon engaged in a very singular game of their own invention. They had undressed to the skin in the midst of the thickest woods and were performing Paradise and the Fall of Man, as they had probably just been taught in their religious lesson. For the expulsion ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... strong in them. When they graduate from the home into the school they find opportunity for the expression of this impulse through their new associations. On the way to and from school and at recess they have opportunity to indulge their impulses and to use their powers of invention. Among the younger children the desire for muscular activity makes running games of all sorts popular; as boys grow older they imitate the primitive impulse to hit and run, so well provided for in games of ball; girls enjoy their recreation in a quieter way as they grow older, and show a ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... and satisfaction for the favour which Heaven had granted him in illustrating his reign by such an invention, and he said to Sissah, 'Ask me ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... an official position like his own gave him such limited opportunity for forwarding impatient electrical inventors to their native shores. No doubt the case was imminent; he was glad his visitor felt so confident about the outcome of his invention; he had known a man at home who went in for that sort of thing—had fitted up the lights for his own country house on the Sound; but he himself had never dreamed such a thing as a transmitting camera, that could ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... slavery, to find all at once in the Bible the divine sanction and defense of it as a wise, righteous, and permanent institution? Doubtless there was mixture of influences in bringing about the result. The immense advance in the market value of slaves consequent on Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin had its unconscious effect on the moral judgments of some. The furious vituperations of a very small but noisy faction of antislavery men added something to the swift current of public opinion. But demonstrably the chief cause of this sudden change of religious opinion—one ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... then would have an end. Progression then would cease, Invention have no earnest friend, And science ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... are pure invention and as fittingly might have been staged in any other of the nine provinces. The author humbly craves indulgence if he has in any way exceeded the license allowed him in spinning the incidents necessary for a novel of this type ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... climate and physical conditions it resolves itself into an account of a series of attacks and modifications and supplements made by excessive and superfluous forces engendered within the community upon the Normal Social Life. The very invention of writing is a part of those modifying developments. The Normal Social Life is essentially illiterate and traditional. The Normal Social Life is as mute as the standing crops; it is as seasonal and cyclic as nature ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... review before me many times, I always saw that the poor gentleman believed the story readily, because I was one of the Jews—that you believed the story readily, my child, because I was one of the Jews—that the story itself first came into the invention of the originator thereof, because I was one of the Jews. This was the result of my having had you three before me, face to face, and seeing the thing visibly presented as upon a theatre. Wherefore I perceived that the obligation was ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... though they are very effective and severe if the mouthpiece is no wider than the horse's mouth. But the mouthpiece which gives complete room for the tongue, and yet brings the cannons into perfect contact with the bars, is that of which M. de Solleysell claims the invention, and which he describes as "a pas d'asne, with the porte gained from the thickness of the heels." Let the mouthpiece be in width four inches inside, this I believe, will be sufficient for most horses, since the part of a horse's mouth where the bit should work is narrowest, ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... be observed, in excuse of his correspondents, that the post was then much more tardy than since Mr. Palmer's ingenious invention has taken place; and with respect to honest Dinmont in particular, as he rarely received above one letter a quarter (unless during the time of his being engaged in a lawsuit, when he regularly sent to the post-town), his correspondence ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... arrived with startling promptness, and if Angela had been given time to think it might have occurred to her that there was not, perhaps, as much competition for this new invention as the hotel clerk had implied. The inventor, who was driver and chauffeur as well, bore a striking resemblance to a sulky codfish, but his half-boiled eyes lighted up and glittered (even as his car glittered with blue paint), at the prospect of business. Other vehicles were now being produced ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... given up her 'stupid plan,' as the other party was no longer free. As she slily added to me that she had devised her project merely to be able to come into my house with my young wife and to resume her motherly care over me, and as this was evidently the truth, I also gave credence to the invention that Ellen had left a betrothed lover in America, who was about to appear in Eden Vale. 'Only think, Ellen never made this confession until I approached her with my plan of getting her married! It is very lucky that you, ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... approaching darkness and toil might affront me even now, if I were ungrateful; but I live for the present only. Let grave persons talk about the grand achievements and discoveries that have made this age or that age illustrious; I hold that holidays are the noblest invention of the human mind, and, if any philosopher wants to argue the matter, I flee from his presence, and luxuriate on the yellow sands or amid the keen kisses of the salty waves. I own that Newton's discoveries were meritorious, and I willingly applaud Mr. George ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... which he fastened a large quantity of pointed instruments, and harnessed horses to it to drag it on the road. He then tried its motion, and found it admirably calculated for his purpose. The people were astonished at the ingenuity of the invention, and lauded him to ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... short, and those brought up in the Roman Catholic religion, who hesitate about believing Pius VII. to be the vicar of Christ, will soon remember the precepts of atheists and freethinkers, and believe that Christ is not the Son of God, and that God is only the invention of fear. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... never adequate, did take the Wood, and then lose it; did take and lose this and that;—but was unable to make more of it than keep his ground thereabouts. A resolute man, says Retzow, but without invention of his own, or head to mend the mistakes of others. In and about Kreczor, Hulsen did maintain himself with more and more tenacity, till the general avalanche, fruit of sad mistakes swept HIM, quite spasmodically struggling at that period, off to the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... positive. Every man surrenders his fancy to a general tone which is itself a surrender. And over all the heartless and fatuous unity spreads this new and wearisome and platitudinous press, incapable of invention, incapable of audacity, capable only of a servility all the more contemptible because it is not even a servility to the strong. But all who begin with force and conquest will ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... creative principle, capable of serving as motive to invention and innovation in fashions, we shall have to go back to the primitive, non-economic motive with which apparel originated—the motive of adornment. Without going into an extended discussion of how and why this motive asserts ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... made his mark on the ware by the originality of his forms is Frank A. Butler. He is quite deaf and almost dumb. He is one of many thus heavily afflicted who have passed through the school. He began his artistic life as a designer of stained glass, but his invention was not needed, nor, I dare say, discovered in the practice of an art which is almost traditional. I introduced him to the new work, and in a few months he brought out many new thoughts from the silent seclusion of his mind. A bold originality of treatment, and the gift of invention, are ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... own invention. My father is a little weak in the head, but he understands a good many things, although he can not talk about them. He used to get weary of sitting still all day in his chair, so I lined the screens with these pictures in order ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... buoyant type of the actual—this implies a subtle, creative life in the mind, this is the test of poetic faculty. To stand this test there must be an inward sea of thought and sensibility, dipping into which the poet is enabled to hold up his conception or invention all adrip with sparkling freshness. The poetic mind, with a firm, and at the same time free, easy hold, holds a subject at arm's length, where it can be turned round in the light; the prosaic mind grasps and hugs what it handles so close that there is no room for play of light ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... way of being pleased in yourself Pleasure and business with equal inattention Prefer useful to frivolous conversations Pride remembers it forever Prudent reserve Reason ought to direct the whole, but seldom does Refuge of people who have neither wit nor invention of their own Refuse more gracefully than other people could grant Repeating Represent, but do not pronounce Rochefoucault Rough corners which mere nature has given to the smoothest Scandal: receiver is always thought, as bad as the thief Scarcely any body who is ...
— Widger's Quotations from Chesterfield's Letters to his Son • David Widger
... great art of invention is to found it upon facts. There are some people who out of a mole-hill will make a mountain; and facts and fiction become so blended nowadays, that even truth ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... Australia, it was said, and had come to live at Woodbury some fourteen years earlier, where my mother had died when I was a child of four; and some accounts said she was a widow of fortune. My father had been interested in chemistry and photography, it seemed, and had lately completed a new invention, the acmegraph, for taking successive photographs at measured intervals of so many seconds by electric light. He was a grave, stern man, the papers said, more feared than loved by his servants and neighbours; but nobody about was known to have a personal grudge against him. On the contrary, ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... direct his steps. He replied, to Saragossa, to take part in the harness jousts which were held in that city every year. Don Juan told him that the new history described how Don Quixote, let him be who he might, took part there in a tilting at the ring, utterly devoid of invention, poor in mottoes, very poor in ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... it has all happened so," said Amy, after the little fellow had reluctantly come to the end of his facts and his invention also. "You make me feel as if I had known you for years—almost, indeed, as if I had come to you as a little girl, and had grown up among you. Come, Ned, it shall all turn out just as you expected. I'll go with you upstairs, and hang my stocking beside yours, and mamma shall ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... we mean when we speak of the All-Originating Spirit. The existence of this Spirit is not a theological invention, but a logical and scientific ultimate, without predicating which, nothing else can be accounted for. The word "Spirit" comes from the Latin "spiro" "I breathe," and so means "The Breath," as in Job xxxiii, 4,—"The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... tilled soil. A remarkable feature of the plantation is a steep bank, the original strand line of the Island. Christmas, with the reins soaring like lassos, and harness welting his fat sides, stampeded to his fate. In a flash I saw what a ludicrous misfit the "pony dot" was. The impish invention—malignant purpose in its incompassionate metallic heart—furiously pursued Christmas twenty feet at a bound, discs whirling, every bearing squeaking with spite and fury. Struck with bewilderment, the honey-eaters became dumb, the dismayed doves forgot ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... he saw her, not to try his fortune at the tables, but to meet his elder brother and sister-in-law who were to finish their honeymoon close by, at Cap Martin, and to stay for an aviation week at Nice, when an invention of his would be tried for the first time. But if Mary had gone on beyond Monte Carlo, he too would have gone on. Having plunged into the adventure, for a pair of eyes, he was prepared to pursue it to the end wherever the end might be, even if he ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... not heed this piece of news, any more than the slight flush on his sister's face as she delivered it; he was wondering whether what Bully Tom said was mere invention to frighten him, or whether there ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... the mis-direction of self-love. Two principal obstacles to improvement have been the difficulty of transmitting ideas from age to age, and that of communicating them rapidly from man to man. These have been removed by the invention of printing. The press is "a memorable gift of celestial genius." In time all men will come to understand the principles of individual happiness and public felicity. Then there will be established among the peoples of the earth an equilibrium of forces; ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... for an ideal female ruler in Queen Elizabeth. No one can deny the severities which were practised under her government even with her knowledge. The systematic hypocrisy imputed to her may seem an invention of her enemies or of historians not thoroughly informed; she herself declares truthfulness a quality indispensable for a prince; but in her administration, as well as in that of most other rulers, reasonings appear which rather ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... fabrics and machinery at the absolute disposition of the whims of every man or woman in the nation. You can go to one of the stores and order any costume of which a historical description exists, from the days of Eve to yesterday, or you can furnish a design of your own invention for a brand-new costume, designating any material at present existing, and it will be sent home to you in less time than any nineteenth-century dressmaker ever even promised to fill an order. Really, talking ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... be put in practice, may meet with strong opposition by the cowardly slavish indulgence of the men to the intolerable pride arrogance vanity and luxury of the women, who strictly adhering to the rules of modern education seem to employ their whole stock of invention in contriving new arts of profusion, faster than the most parsimonious husband can afford; and to compass this work the more effectually, their universal maxim is to despise and detest everything of the growth and manufacture of their own country, and most to value whatever ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... lay feeling, aim, aspiration, such as did not concern itself primarily with any question of whether a subject were painted well or ill, if only it were first of all a subject at all—a subject involving manipulative excellence, perhaps, but feeling and invention certainly. This, then, stated briefly, was the meaning of pre-Raphaelitism. The name (as shall hereafter appear) was subsequently given to the movement more than half in jest. It has sometimes been stated that Mr. Ruskin was an initiator, but ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... the sweep of my blade over such a lather as—Ah! flea of iniquity and abomination! what! am I doomed to thy torments?—so let's spread! Lo! this lather, is't not the pride of Shiraz? and the polish and smoothness it sheddeth, is't not roseate? my invention! as the poet says,—O accursed flea! now the knee-joint, now the knee-cap, and 'tis but a hop for thee to the arm-pit. Fires of the pit without bottom seize thee! is no place sacred from thee, and art thou a restless soul, infernal flea? So then, peace awhile, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of government in the state of nature, and secondly, the ideal of the socialist utopia. Most political theorists of Defoe's time postulated a state of nature in which man lived either entirely free from government or under loose patriarchal control, from which he was removed either by the invention of money, the discovery of agriculture or by some crime. To a certain extent, Misson's pirate government may be regarded as a stage in the evolution of government. In The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Defoe showed how government ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... upon Greek philosophy as an invention of the devil. Irenaeus was more discriminating. He opposed the broad and lax charity of the Alexandrines, but he read the Greek philosophy, and when called to the bishopric of Lyons, he set himself to the study of the Gallic Druidism, ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... absence of tangible grounds for accusations against England when a foolish invention as the one cited must do duty for such, ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... of the will to power; the teaching of success and achievement is largely the discovery of means by which it is to be gained. However we may disguise it to ourselves, power is what we mainly seek, though we may call our goal knowledge, science, benevolence, invention, ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... papers, a new invention, called papier linge, has lately attracted much attention. It consists of a paper made closely to resemble damask and other linen, not only to the eye, but even to the touch. The articles are used for every purpose to which linen is applicable, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... told you," said he, "that Clairfait would turn out well. I see that he has been taught in our school. Observe that manoeuvre;" he continued his comment with increasing force of gesture—"That was the Great Frederic's favourite, the oblique formation. The finest invention in tactics, with that he gained Rosbach, and beat the French and Austrians; with that he gained the battle of Breslau; and with that he gained the grand fight of Torgau, and finished the war. Yet the king always said that he had learned the manoeuvre from Epaminondas, and was only fighting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... of God. Farther—The ungodly could not by any means consider the sufferings of the righteous ones as vicarious, because they themselves suffered as much; and as little could they despise the godly on account of their sufferings. It is a mere invention, destitute of every historical foundation, to assert that it was especially the God-fearing who had to suffer so grievously in the captivity. On the contrary, their fear of God gained for them the respect of the Gentiles; and among [Pg 340] their ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... he ventured to interrupt the speaker. Each narrator conceives his tale differently, and one individual is apt to garnish the experience of many, or what he has heard from others, with a little spice of his own invention. Further, the details of ten or twelve occurrences are associated with one single spot; all of which appear externally different, and yet internally are connected closely, "so that when comprehended in one whole picture, and not till then, they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... spread over the whole of the nose and mouth. The demon said this was very amusing. When a good or pious thought passed through the mind of any one it was misrepresented in the glass; and then how the demon laughed at his cunning invention. All who went to the demon's school—for he kept a school—talked everywhere of the wonders they had seen, and declared that people could now, for the first time, see what the world and mankind were really like. They carried the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... desired from the public taste which prevails around them. But no one can examine even superficially the works which adorn these walls without perceiving that British art retains all its fertility of invention, and this year as much as in any year that I can remember, exhibits in the department of landscape, that fundamental condition of all excellence, intimate and profound sympathy ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... invention of the microscope opened the way for a renewal of the controversy regarding the origin of life. Bacteria were discovered in 1683; and it was soon observed that no precautions with screens or other stoppers could prevent bacteria and other low organisms ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... self-assertion. If she had shown herself aggressively disagreeable, they would have made some attempt to conciliate her; but as it was, she became at once the object of a succession of spiteful annoyances, varying in intensity with the fluctuating invention of the two boys. At one time they satisfied themselves with making grimaces of as insulting a character as they could produce; at another they rose to the rubbing of her face with dirt, or the tripping up of her heels. Their persecution bewildered her, and the resulting stupefaction was ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... really happened they would have been challenged, he is assuming that a state of mind existed in which it was possible for miracles to be challenged; and thus commits an anachronism as monstrous as if he had attributed the knowledge of some modern invention, such as steamboats, to those ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... intrusted to the memory of an illiterate people. The monuments of the Homerites were inscribed with an obsolete and mysterious character; but the Cufic letters, the groundwork of the present alphabet, were invented on the banks of the Euphrates; and the recent invention was taught at Mecca by a stranger who settled in that city after the birth of Mahomet. The arts of grammar, of metre, and of rhetoric, were unknown to the freeborn eloquence of the Arabians; but their penetration ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... shee sleepes, And lookes more lovely now she sleepes. Against she wakes, Invention, grow thou poore, Studying to finde a banquet which the gods Might be invited to. I need not court her now For a poor kisse; her lips are friendly now, And with the warme breath sweeting all the Aire, Draw mee thus to them.—Ha! the lips of Winter ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... will be disposed to think the credit of the Africans, however positive, or the belief of the author, however strong, sufficient evidence of the truth of this story. Yet it certainly is a common report of the country, and not the invention of Cada Mosto. Jobson, who was at the Gambra or Gambia in 1620, repeats the whole substance of this story; and Movette relates the circumstances of the blacks trafficking for salt without being seen, which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... if he heard the thought, Osiris stirred, and the noise of his will shook the universe; the sun in its central seat alone stood firm. And Isis looked, but saw no change; then while she was smiling, assured that her lord's last invention was sped, suddenly the creature arose, and seemed to listen; and his face brightened, and he clapped his hands for joy, for Sounds were heard the first time on earth—sounds dissonant, sounds harmonious. The winds murmured in ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Mongol invention. It was built by the Manchus and is an eloquent tribute to a knowledge of the fine arts of cruelty that has ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... The invention of the photoplay is as great a step as was the beginning of picture-writing in the stone age. And the cave-men and women of our slums seem to be the people most affected by this novelty, which is but an expression of the ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... with the possession of the uterine function of sex tends to go exceptional intellectual capacity in the direction of mathematics rather than natural history, or an inclination for statecraft rather than for mechanical invention; were it proved that, generally speaking and as a whole, out of twenty thousand women devoting themselves to law and twenty thousand to medicine, they tended to achieve relatively more in the field of law than of medicine, there would yet be no possible healthy or rational ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... the fatal accident occurred. One day, however, in order to convince the millwright of the excellence of this improvement, my father caused the machinery to be stopped, and then placed his own weight upon the large wheel, in order to manifest the sense he felt in the security of his invention. He was in the very act of laughing exultingly at the manner in which the millwright shook his head at the risk he ran, when the arresting power lost its control of the machinery, the heavy head of water burst into the buckets, and the wheel whirled round carrying my unfortunate father ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... genius of mankind, stimulated by the exigencies of war, had produced a multitude of death-dealing mechanisms, most of which had in turn been rendered ineffective by some counter-invention of another nation. Three of these products of the human brain, however, remained unneutralized and in large part accounted for the impasse at which the hostile armies found themselves. One of these had revolutionized warfare in the field, and the other two had ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... our successors, though they riot in "Vril" and balloons, and go on Cooks' Tours to the constellations. The network of nerves in which we live and move and have our being is only capable of a certain quota of sensations, and no invention will really enlarge our enjoyments except it be of a new set of nerves. Persons whose lives have known strange vicissitudes have been astonished to find pleasure and pain about equally distributed in all; and I am optimist ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... stone implements, and marked by a similarity which is often extremely striking, in races and tribes widely severed by distance and climatic conditions. The raw material of the human product in science, art, and invention was alike in texture although often exuberant in detail and imagination. But it had not yet the unity of an organic whole, knit by a common ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... and you say that the very precautions I have used will leave my memory more completely at the mercy of ill-judging or ill- informed survivors, who, in the absence of more authentic information, may draw on their own invention, and do me injustice. This is the plea that has prevailed with me now: the uncertainty of mortal life, with the apprehension that if suddenly removed I shall become the heroine of some strange romance, founded probably on the facts of a life by no means deficient ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... truth, minds daily nourished with the best literature of Greece and Rome necessarily grew too strong to be trammelled by the cobwebs of the scholastic divinity; and the influence of such minds was now rapidly felt by the whole community; for the invention of printing had brought books within the reach even of yeomen and of artisans. From the Mediterranean to the Frozen Sea, therefore, the public mind was everywhere in a ferment; and nowhere was the ferment ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the substance in the grate to a state of incandescence, and there was our fire, which gave out a tremendous heat for the size of the grate. As an aid to this stove, and an economiser of fuel, we purchased also a most extraordinary invention, which was named the "Norwegian cooking-stove" if I ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... immense engines, conveniently located in adjacent stations or "power-houses." The cars carried a readily manipulated "grip-lever," or steel hand, which reached down through a slot into a conduit and "gripped" the moving cable. This invention solved the problem of hauling heavily laden street-cars up and down steep grades. About the same time he also heard, in a roundabout way, that the Chicago City Railway, of which Schryhart and Merrill were the principal owners, was about to introduce this mode of traction on its lines—to cable State ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... horse-racing in England gets its name of Turf from the fact that the races are run on the grass, and not on the bare ground, as with us. We call the sport the Turf, too, but that is because in this, as in so many other things, we lack incentive and invention, and are fondly colonial and imitative; we ought to call it the Dirt, for that is what it is with us. As a spectacle, the racing lacks the definition in England which our course gives, and when it began, I missed the relief into which our track throws the bird-like sweep ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... for some years as Shakespeare's 'deer-barn,' but no portion of Fulbroke Park, which included the site of these buildings (now removed), was Lucy's property in Elizabeth's reign, and the amended legend, which was solemnly confided to Sir Walter Scott in 1828 by the owner of Charlecote, seems pure invention. {28} ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Invention. Vasco da Gama; His Voyages and Adventures. Pizarro; His Adventures and Conquests. Magellan; or, The First Voyage Round the World. Marco Polo; His Travels and Adventures. Raleigh; His Voyages and Adventures. Drake; The ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... been playing at it. Well, we had the good fortune to discover just how to get over that little difficulty—how to write on glazed paper with a quill so as the cutest analyst couldn't spot it, and likewise how to detect the writing. I decided to sacrifice that invention, casting my bread upon the waters and looking for a good-sized bakery in return ... I had it sold to the enemy. The job wanted delicate handling, but the tenth man from me—he was an Austrian Jew—did the deal and scooped fifty thousand dollars out of it. ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... path between us and it: for the path, like a true mountain trail, had the passion for climbing developed into a mania, and could never rest content with the river's bed whenever it spied a chance to rise. It had just managed an ascent up a zigzag stairway of its own invention, and had stepped out in the dark upon a patch of tall mountain grass, as dry as straw, when Yejiro conceived the brilliant idea of torches. He had learned the trick in the Hakone hills, where it was the habit, he told the guide, when caught out at night; and he proceeded to roll some of the grass ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... The end of such constant upheavings is that the whole population is disarmed, no party suffering its rival to have any means of offence or defence. Moreover, as industry and commerce develope, the citizens become unwilling to fight, while on the other hand the invention of firearms, subverting the whole system of warfare, renders special military training more and more necessary. In the days of the Lombard League, of Campaldino and Montaperti, the citizens could fight, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... sentences are knobby sticks. We love him as a good man playing the bully even more than as a wise man talking common sense. He is one of the comic characters in literature. He belongs, in his eloquence, to the same company as Falstaff and Micawber. He was, to some extent, the invention of a Scottish humourist named Boswell. "Burke," we read in Coleridge's Table Talk, "said and wrote more than once that he thought Johnson greater in talking than writing, and greater in Boswell than in real life." Coleridge's conversation is not to the same extent a coloured expression of ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... that business ("Household Words" business) will keep me in town to-morrow. But on Monday I propose coming down and returning the same day. The train for my money appears to be the half-past six A.M. (horrible initials!), and to that invention for promoting early rising I design to ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... more than he sinned against morals. But his obscenity is an ocean, without bottom or shore. Literally, he sticks at nothing that is coarse. Nay, this is absurdly short of expressing the fact. The genius of Rabelais teems with invention of coarseness, beyond what any one could conceive as possible, who had not taken his measure of possibility from Rabelais himself. And his diction was as ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... famous Quatrains—Omar Ibn Ibrahim al-Khayyam—not himself a tent-maker, but so-called, as are the Smiths of our own day—was of the city of Nishapur. The invention of the Rubaiyat, or Epigram, is not to his credit. That honor belongs to Abu Said of Khorasan (968-1049), who used it as a means of expressing his mystic pantheism. But there is an Omar Khayyam club ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... besoin, & qu'il sera plus expdient pour sa gloire, que nous cherchons uniquement. Comment avez-vous pu mettre dans votre esprit qu'appuys de nos propres forces, nous eussions prsum de penser un si glorieux dessein? Si Dieu n'est point dans l'affaire de Montral, si c'est une invention humaine, ne vous en mettez point en peine, elle ne durera gure. Ce que vous prdisez arrivera, & quelque chose de pire encore; mais si Dieu l'a ainsi voulu, qui tes-vous pour lui contredire? C'tait la reflexion que le docteur Gamaliel faisait ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... Parisian gas-works, who, together with Reithmann, a watchmaker of Muenich, hotly contested Lenoir's priority to this invention, brought out a modification of this engine. He cooled the cylinder by injecting water as well as using a water-jacket, and used flame instead of electric ignition. The consumption was now brought down to 87.5 ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman
... excellent raconteur; so are all such vagabonds. I possess a collection of these tales by Renucci, published at Bastia[10], and proposed to interweave some of them into my narrative. They may be worked up, with invention and embellishment, into pretty romances; but that is not our business. In Renucci, we have stories of Ospitalità , Magnanimità , Fedeltà , Probità , Generosità , Incorruttibilità , all the virtues ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... A recent invention in steam engineering, which exhibits in a marked degree the controllability and adaptability of steam, is Mr. Herbert Wadsworth's steam tiller, an engraving of which we ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... that the ingenious construction which he was gazing at was essentially a Yankee invention, resembling nothing ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... body of Antigonus's troops was the phalanx. The Macedonian phalanx is considered one of the most extraordinary military contrivances of ancient times. The invention of it was ascribed to Philip, the father of Alexander the Great, though it is probable that it was only improved and perfected, and brought into general use, but not really originated by him. The single phalanx was formed ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... now I guess the meaning of those looks—those words," muttered Lilburne between his teeth. "This pretension to the name of Vaudemont was always apocryphal—the story always but half believed—the invention of a woman in love with him—the claim on your property is made at the very time he appears in England. Ha! Have you a newspaper there? Give it me. No! 'tis not in this paper. Ring the bell ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... an idle invention of my brain—but think it for a moment the speech of a true diviner, and what ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... anything at all regarding mechanisms of human invention, it indisputably teaches that every machine or mechanism that has ever been made, implies the existence of a maker, and that the maker possessed intelligent attributes, as reason, judgment, perception, and imagination. ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... attracted the attention of the world. This kite is the invention of H.H. Clayton, Chief Observer at Blue Hill Observatory, near Boston. It is used at this and other weather stations for sending up instruments in making observations. Kites of this type have attained the wonderful height of 9,200 feet, ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 37, July 22, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... did the muse of L. E. L. dream of and describe music, moonlight, and roses, and "apostrophise loves, memories, hopes, and fears," with how much ultimate appetite for invention or sympathy may be judged from her declaration that, "there is one conclusion at which I have arrived, that a horse in a mill has an easier life than an author. I am fairly ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... the result was, the realization of princely fortunes, and the enriching even the nation itself. On the expiration of their partnership, Arkwright went on by himself at Cromford, and the Strutts for themselves at Belper. A spirit of detraction would make it appear that Arkwright stole the invention of another, but Mr. William Strutt, who knew him well, and is a competent judge on such subjects, assured me that Arkwright was a man of very superior talents as a mechanic, and quite equal to such an invention. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... inadequate to the ejection of that person from the car of which he occupied a conspicuous fraction. The obese fellow declined to have his ticket punched, and defied the officers of the road to come on and punch his head. It is for the expulsion of such blisters upon the social cuticle that PUNCHINELLO'S invention has ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... artillery had been brought from Woolwich to fire a salute. Many old friends, notably members of the great Whig houses—Lord Melbourne, Lord and Lady Palmerston, the Marquis and Marchioness of Normanby—met to grace the occasion. There was a grand ball, at which the aristocracy of invention and industry, trade and wealth, represented by the Arkwrights and the Strutts, mingled with the autocracy of ancient birth and landed property. Mrs. Arkwright was presented to the Queen. Her Majesty opened the ball with the Duke of Devonshire, dancing afterwards with Lord Morpeth ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... invention, as I found by experience that the general defect of shells was the too immediate explosion upon impact. This would cause extensive damage to the surface, ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... blade, a process referred to more than once in the Records and the Chronicles, was a practice of the Chinese, who seem to have borrowed it from the Mongolians; the other, that the sounding arrow (nari-kabura) was an invention of the Huns, and came to Japan through China. It had holes in the head, and the air passing through these produced a humming sound. As for the Chronicles, they are permeated by Chinese influence throughout. The adoption of the Chinese sexagenary ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... better not to interrupt this catalogue of brilliant discoveries by any biographical details; but we must now retrace our steps to the years 1609 and 1610, the era of the invention of ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... illiteracy. The Nation has marched far beyond that. The more complex the problems of the Nation become, the greater is the need for more and more advanced instruction. Moreover, as our numbers increase and as our life expands with science and invention, we must discover more and more leaders for every walk of life. We can not hope to succeed in directing this increasingly complex civilization unless we can draw all the talent of leadership from the whole people. One civilization after another ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... evidence? And to this purpose it was well said of Lactantius, "Sapientiam sibi adimunt, qui sine ullo judicio inventa maiorum probant, et ab aliis pecudum more ducuntur:" "They neglect their own wisdom, who without any judgment approve the invention of those that forewent them; and suffer themselves after the manner of beasts, to be led by them;" by the advantage of which sloth and dullness, ignorance is now become so powerful a tyrant, as it hath set true philosophy, physics, and divinity ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... a great deal of possible confusion in this word mechanical. To most readers it would bring the idea of invention, the increasing number of cotton mills and iron founderies, of steamships and power presses, and such progress would be considered in the highest degree praiseworthy; but the sense in which we use the word is somewhat more general. A machine differs from a man in this respect: the former acts without ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... activity and labor. Indeed, search the three realms through and through, and you would hardly find one on its own legs doing such remarkable varieties of work. Briareus, with all his fabled faculties, never had such numerous and supple fingers as this creature of human invention. When set a-going, they are clattering and whisking and frisking everywhere, on the barn-floor, on the hay-loft, in the granary, under the eaves, down cellar, and all this at the same time. It is doubtful if any stationary engine in a machine ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... passed to the right of the first great rock; and seeing the tumult and confusion of the others, they said to themselves: "These are they who followed not us. We have chosen the better part. Our leader bears the only perfect Chart. All other charts are the invention of men. In the right Chart there can be nothing false; in the others there can be nothing true. Those who have not the true Chart can never go right, not even for a moment. For even good deeds done in the paths of evil must partake of the nature of sin. Straight is the way and narrow is ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... and a single freckle was shown spread out over nose and mouth. That was very amusing, the demon said. When good, pious thoughts passed through any person's mind these were again shown in the mirror, so that the demon chuckled at his artistic invention. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... that it was likely such a method of concealing a crime would have suggested itself to such an one, more than to another. It is the clever invention of one who meditated murder. But, I may say at once to you, what I shall have to say in due season to the magistrates, that the trick is not a new one. I have heard of such a thing ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... club. I've never made any secret, you know, of the fact that I think the Pendleton connection hide-bound. And you understand Bessie—there's no good of my explaining her. You'd have thought divorce a brand-new invention of the devil, instead of a comparatively old institution. And if you don't mind my saying so, my boy, you took this fence a bit on the run, the way you ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... invention of this description was recently exhibited at the Royal Institution. A pencil and a small bead are so connected together by means of a thread passing over pullies, that if a person, looking through an eye-piece, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... was lolling on a silken couch which had cost him $12,000, his neglected wife was starving to death in Dresden. Minna was honourable enough to answer this attack with an open letter to those German newspapers which, in 1866, outjaundiced that yellow journalism for the invention of which New America ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... these old British farmers were sufficiently scientific agriculturalists to have invented wheeled ploughs,[23] and to use a variety of manures; various kinds of mast, loam, and chalk in particular. This treatment of the soil was, according to Pliny, a British invention[24] (though the Greeks of Megara had also tried it), and he thinks it worth his while to give a long description of the different clays in use and the methods of their application. That most generally employed was chalk dug out from pits some hundred feet in depth, ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... It happened 'cause it had to be in the play, I cal'late. The mortgage, or an 'invention' or somethin', was on board the bark and just naturally took a short cut for home, way I figgered it out. But, Jim, you ought to have seen that hero! He peeled off his ileskin-slicker—he'd kept it on all through the sunshine, but now, when 'twas rainin' and rainin' ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... take up the cross God lays upon us, and not one of our own invention; nor did one of the holy men and women it tells of live the life of an anchorite. Nor can peace and freedom from temptation and sin be found in a convent any more than elsewhere; because we carry our evil natures with ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... the parent of invention; and I suppose, by the help of this, more than from any real genius I possessed for contriving, I at last succeeded in sketching out the plan of a rat-trap. It was certainly of the simplest kind, but I felt pretty sure it would be effective. I should make me a large bag ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... of rich people in the country, apart from intellectual interests, is apt to gormandise; and the Maverings always sat down to a luxurious table, which was most abundant and tempting at the meal they called tea, when the invention of the Portuguese man-cook was taxed to supply the demands of appetites at once eager and fastidious. They prolonged the meal as much as possible in winter, and Dan used to like to get home just in time for tea when he came up from Harvard; it was always ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sometimes spoken of as a Macedonian invention, but Philip and Alexander simply improved upon an old ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... Varunas, their Zeus, Jovis pater, Diespiter is the Djaus pita of the Vedas. An unexpected light has been thrown on various enigmatical forms in the Hellenic mythology by recent researches regarding the earlier divinities of India. The hoary mysterious forms of the Erinnyes are no Hellenic invention; they were immigrants along with the oldest settlers from the East. The divine greyhound Sarama, who guards for the Lord of heaven the golden herd of stars and sunbeams and collects for him the nourishing rain-clouds as the cows of heaven to the milking, and who moreover ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... into a bathing establishment, where coolies were getting steamed rather than bathed at rather less than a penny a head, which penny includes, moreover, a cup of tea. So that these despised Chinamen have bathing-houses for the million. With us they are a recent invention: they have had them, I believe, for centuries. I am told that they are much used by the labouring class. I was struck by an instance of the malevolence towards the Chinese, which I met with to-day. Baron Gros told me that a boat with ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... things about the effeminacy and cowardice of Crassus. All this was public. But Surena assembling the Senate of Seleukeia,[89] laid before them certain licentious books of the Milesiaca of Aristeides,[90] and, in this matter, at least, there was no invention on his part; for they were found among the baggage of Rustius,[91] and they gave Surena the opportunity of greatly insulting and ridiculing the Romans, because they could not, even when going to war, abstain ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... Dgian-ben-Dgian, the builder of the Pyramids? Here it is! It is composed of seven dragons' skins placed one above another, joined by diamond screws, and tanned in the bile of a parricide. It represents, on one side, all the wars which have taken place since the invention of arms, and, on the other, all the wars that will take place till the end of the world. Above, the thunderbolt rebounds like a ball of cork. I am going to put it on your arm, and you will carry it to ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... almost equally difficult,' said Tocqueville, 'to make a speech of which the words are prepared. There is a struggle between the invention and the memory. You trust thoroughly to neither, and therefore are ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... invention, civic and economic progress, the growth of humanitarian ideas, and the approach to Christian unity, are all combining to give woman and woman's work a central place in the social order. The vast machinery of government, especially in the new activities of the ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... paste is the invention of an old Italian fruit merchant who specialized years ago in crystallized fruits. Put ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... demanded now as it never was before, for we are advancing blindly to a crisis which our political economists and statesmen have not foreseen, and do not yet recognize. The genius that increases by invention the productive power of labor ought to increase the rewards of labor, but it does not. Labor is demanded only to supply what is consumed; and if at present a million laborers are employed to produce the food, clothing, fuel, furniture, and houses ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... any device stamped in the substance of a sheet of paper while it is in a damp or pulpy condition. The practice dates back to the early part of the sixteenth century, and came into vogue soon after the invention of printing. The mark is produced by pressure as the paper passes over a wire-gauze net, or under a roller, in its progress from the vat, the raised lines of the design making the paper thinner at the points ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... which the author is indebted to Miss Elizabeth Turner, is calculated to convey a faithful idea of the effect of the whole. Whatever is here seen is purely Norman, except the spire; and upon the subject of spires antiquaries are far from being agreed: some regarding them as a comparatively modern invention, while others, on the contrary, believe that the use of them may be traced to a very remote period. The semi-circular east end, with a roof of high pitch, the windows separated by shallow buttresses, or by slender cylindrical pillars, and the grotesque corbel-table, are, all ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... asserts that the monks have planted in their garden a bush similar to those which grow in Europe, and that by the most ridiculous imposture, they hesitate not to affirm that it is the same which Moses saw—the miraculous bush. The assertion is false, and the alleged fact a mere invention."—Geramb's Pilgrimage to Palestine, ...
— Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21 - A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, - Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. • Various
... howitzers outweighted our field guns. And on the same day on which we were so roughly taught how large the guns were which labour and good will could haul on to the field of battle, we learned also that our enemy—to the disgrace of our Board of Ordnance be it recorded—was more in touch with modern invention than we were, and could show us not only the largest, but also the smallest, shell which had yet been used. Would that it had been our officials instead of our gunners who heard the devilish little one-pound shells of ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The Invention of Eggs was merely accidental, two or three of which having casually roll'd from off a Shelf into a Pudding which a good Wife was making, she found herself under a Necessity either of throwing away her Pudding, ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... nation; and in this way he diverted attention from the Prince, and sometimes gained admission for the pair into strange societies. The civil authorities were never taken into the secret of these adventures; the imperturbable courage of the one and the ready invention and chivalrous devotion of the other had brought them through a score of dangerous passes; and they grew in confidence as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... capacity as a link between the societies where concerted action is required, will be necessary even when the organisation of farmers into societies is completed. The economic life of rural communities is in continual need of adjustment. Now it is an invention like a steam separator which revolutionises an industry. At another time the crisis created by a change in the tariff of a foreign country forces the producer either to find a new outlet for his wares, or to abandon ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... Exposition, science, invention, art, manufacture, the field, the forest, the mine, the air and the water have contributed their choicest treasures. How well we have succeeded in presenting them you must judge. But I wish to say to you that no matter how high a standard we have reached, still more important than ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... originally in a state of nature, by violence and without laws, is due to Critias. Communism in its grossest form was recommended by Diogenes of Sinope. According to the Sophists, there is no duty above expediency and no virtue apart from pleasure. Laws are an invention of weak men to rob their betters of the reasonable enjoyment of their superiority. It is better to inflict than to suffer wrong; and as there is no greater good than to do evil without fear of retribution, so there is no worse evil than to suffer without the consolation of revenge. ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... breath of wind which mysteriously penetrates through both, and communicates itself with the rapidity of an arrow." These are the words of Kuopho, a Chinese panegyrist on the magnet, who wrote in the beginning of the fourth century. (Klaproth, 'Lettre a M. A. de Humboldt, sur l'Invention de la Boussole', ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... then sharply divided into two camps, the one composed of those who welcomed with enthusiasm the wonderful new invention which obliterated space, the other of those who dreaded and abhorred the ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... pocket an ingenious little invention which he had exhibited all along the road as an indispensable article in every well-kept house. He wanted to show it to her, but it was too cold a day for her to stop outside. Wouldn't she allow him to step in and ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... experience so acquired that fitted them for the part afterwards played in the trials. This statement has been repeated by so many recent writers as to become a commonplace of accepted history; it would seem, however, that the representation depends on the invention of a modern essayist, who transferred to the colonial period ideas derived from his acquaintance with the phenomena of contemporary spiritualistic seances, and that the habit of "trying projects," no doubt universal in colonial times, had nothing to do with ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... invention of the devil, who has adulterated the holy book," replied the great numskull of a bishop in a ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... "freedom of the seas," he believed that the first use of the phrase was made by Colonel House (on his return from one of his visits to Berlin)[40], but the public now regarded it as a German invention and it meant to the British mind a policy which would render British supremacy at sea of little value in time of war; and public opinion resented this. He knew perfectly well that at a convenient time new rules must be made governing the conduct ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick |
