"Ingenious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the surgery of wounded, mortified or diseased pieces of intestine by the introduction from Chicago of an ingenious contrivance named, after the inventor, Murphy's button. This consists of a short nickel-plated tube in two pieces, which are rapidly secured in the divided ends of the bowel, and in such a manner that when the pieces are ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... halls, and the baths. The great fireplaces, one for every hypocaust, built in arches under the outer walls of the villa, were approached from the outside by passages of rough masonry. From them the hot air was carried back through the hypocaust and led to the rooms above by means of an ingenious system of flue tiles. The fires, burning constantly from the first approach of the keen weather of Autumn, needed incessant attention. All day slaves went back and forth, carrying wood and buckets of mineral coal from ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... offered to us for acceptance is unknown to any other civilised country. Parts of it are borrowed from the United States; some of its provisions are imported from the British colonies, whilst others are apparently the inventions of the unknown and irresponsible Abbe Sieyes, who is the ingenious constitution-maker of the Cabinet. But the new polity as a whole resembles in its essence neither the American Commonwealth nor the Canadian Dominion, nor the Government either of New Zealand or of any other self-governing colony. It is an attempt—its admirers ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... magnificent. I could hardly judge about Man, as all the gloss of novelty was completely worn off. But certainly the aggregation of the evidence produced a very striking effect on my mind. The chapter comparing language and changes of species seems most ingenious and interesting. He has shown great skill in picking out salient points in the argument for change of species; but I am deeply disappointed (I do not mean personally) to find that his timidity prevents him giving any judgment.... From all my communications with him, I must ever think ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... after M. Vignal has carried off Madame de Gorne and made his escape, that Mathias de Gorne, foaming at the mouth, wild with rage, but suddenly seeing his chance of taking the most terrible revenge, hits upon the ingenious idea of using against his enemy the very snowfall upon whose evidence you are now relying. He therefore plans his own murder, or rather the appearance of his murder and of his fall to the bottom of the well and makes off backwards, step ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... Anatomy.)—L.] There is one circumstance, however, which seems to mark a decided difference between the two animals; the eye of the dog of every country and species has a circular pupil, but the position or form of the pupil is oblique in the wolf. Professor Bell gives an ingenious but not admissible reason for this. He attributes the forward direction of the eyes in the dog to the constant habit, "for many successive generations, of looking towards their master, and obeying his voice:" but no habit of this kind could by possibility ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... into air, and suffer torments by the fire, because of their contrary qualities. And for this reason 'tis that the demons, who had a body of an aetherial nature, were massed with a body of air, that they might feel the fire." Mackenzie's Scottish Writers: vol. i., 49. All this may be ingenious enough; of its truth, a future state only will be the evidence. Very different from that of Scotus is the language of Gregory Narienzen: "Exit in inferno frigus insuperabile: ignis inextinguibilis: vermis immortalis: fetor intollerabilis: tenebrae palpabiles: flagella cedencium: horrenda visio ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... adds, "But what is most remarkable, interesting, and striking in these monuments, and which alone would be sufficient to give them the first rank among all known orders of architecture, is the execution of their mosaic relievos, very different from plain mosaic, and consequently requiring more ingenious combination and greater art and labor. They are inlaid on the surface of the wall, and their duration is owing to the method of fixing the prepared stones into the stone surface, which made their union with it perfect." Figure 33, taken from Charnay's photograph, shows part of the mosaic decoration ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... occurred to me. If wood is a deposit from the leaves or fibres sent down from the leaves, how is the presence of wood to be accounted for in tendrils, which have no leaves, but yet which are evidently branches? The theory of the formation of wood, which considers it as above, is deemed ingenious, but it will not I think be found to be true. The bark evidently has a great deal to say to ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... fairies is supposed to have been brought, with other extravagancies of a like nature from the Eastern nations, whilst the Europeans and Christians were engaged in the holy war: such at least is the notion of an ingenious writer, who thus expresses himself: "Nor were the monstrous embellishments of enchantments the invention of romancers, but formed upon Eastern tales, brought thence by travellers from their crusades and pilgrimages, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... FRIEND: Whereabouts are you in Ariosto? Or have you gone through that most ingenious contexture of truth and lies, of serious and extravagant, of knights-errant, magicians, and all that various matter which he announces in the beginning ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... on the invalid's knees, Brandes took his cue; and the conversation developed into a monologue on the present condition of foreign missions—skilfully inspired by the respectful attention and the brief and ingenious questions of Brandes. ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... or a fragment of his ragged old dressing-gown, to put among her keepsakes. She sighed at him when he was in a passion, and put her handkerchief to her eyes when he was sulky. In short, she tormented Morgan, whenever she could catch him, with such ingenious and such relentless malice, that he actually threatened to go back to London, and prey once more, in the unscrupulous character of a doctor, on ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... do we know that there were any such people, and that we in England are descended from them, or that they were the forefathers of the other nations of Europe, and of the Hindus, and of the old Greeks and Romans? We know it by a most curious and ingenious process of what may be called digging out and building up. Some of you may remember that years ago there was found in New Zealand a strange-looking bone, which nobody could make anything of, and which seemed to have belonged to some creature quite lost to the world ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... ingenious: the horrible facts at her disposal were damaging enough in all conscience: but they did not content her. She invented a love-story, assuming that Hedrick was living it: he was supposed to be pining for Lolita, to be fading, day-by-day, because of enforced separation; and she contrived this to such ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... the spirit of the thing. In fact, their enthusiasm was almost too exuberant. Orde had constantly to negative new and ingenious schemes. ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... than ordinary degree of indignation against his work in France. It was amusing enough to observe the hostility carried on against him in the Parisian Journals. The writers in these Journals found it much easier to condemn M. SCHLEGEL than to refute him: they allowed that what he said was very ingenious, and had a great appearance of truth; but still they said it was not truth. They never, however, as far as I could observe, thought proper to grapple with him, to point out anything unfounded in his premises, or illogical in the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... sufficient quantities of yarn. This economic consideration directed more and more attention to experiments in spinning machinery, and so we find that, long before the invention of the jenny and the water-frame, ingenious men like John Kay of Bury, Wyatt, Paul, and others had tried many patents for improved spinning. The great inventions of Hargreaves and Arkwright and Crompton enabled spinning to overtake and outstrip weaving and when, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... yet another production of this time, of which we have a notice from himself in a letter to Toby Matthews, the curious and ingenious little treatise on the Wisdom of the Ancients, "one of the most popular of his works," says Mr. Spedding, "in his own and in the next generation," but of value to us mainly for its quaint poetical colour, and the unexpected turns, like answers to a riddle, given to ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... in New York, may be said to have had its beginning in April, 1792. Seldom has an election been contested with such prodigality of partisan fury. The rhetoric of abuse was vigorous and unrestrained; the campaign lie active and ingenious; the arraignment of class against class sedulous and adroit, and the excitement most violent and memorable. If a weapon of political warfare failed to be handled with craft and with courage, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... found in any other house in the square. That was my grandfather's "work-room", where he had a lathe fitted up, for he had a passion and a genius for inventive work in machinery. He took out patents for all sorts of ingenious contrivances, but always lost money. His favorite invention was of a "railway chair", for joining the ends of rails together, and in the ultimate success of this he believed to his death. It was (and is) used on several ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... sentry was marching up and down in front of that ingenious specimen of native work, the big stone entrance to the cave which ran so easily upon a pivot; while the detachment in charge of the big gun talked shudderingly of the risk they had unknowingly been running, ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... outs with, because the intelligent critic immediately perceives that it has the same sort of merit ascribed to ups with. What our hero dignifies with the name of his bread-earner is the knife with which, by scraping shoes, he earned his bread. Pope's ingenious critic, Mr. Warton, bestows judicious praise upon the art with which this poet, in the Rape of the Lock, has used many "periphrases and uncommon expressions," to avoid mentioning the name of scissars, which would sound too vulgar for epic dignity—fatal ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... pictures and the moving statuary in the Grand Palais exhibited the fine arts of war as they are practised by civilized men using explosive shells, with bombs, shrapnel, hand-grenades, mitrailleuses, trench-mines, and other ingenious instruments by which the ordinary designs of God may be re-drawn and re-shaped to suit the modern tastes of men. I saw here the Spring Exhibition of the Great War, as it is catalogued by surgeons, doctors, and scientific experts in wounds and ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... said William, as he shut the door behind them: "certainly, Sir." And then, having placed the musty documents upon the shelf, whence they could be fetched down without difficulty on the slightest sign of a client, that ingenious youth, with singular confidence that nobody would be inconvenienced thereby, put a notice on the door to the effect that he would be back immediately, and adjourned to indulge in the passionately exhilarating game of "chuck ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... was, though ingenious, a misinterpretation of Gaubil's. Mr. Wylie has sent me a paper of his own (in Chin. Recorder and Miss. Journal, July, 1871, p. 45), which makes things perfectly clear. The expression transcribed by Pauthier, Yao san wen, and rendered "Hosanna," appears in a Chinese work, without reference ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... has been followed by others. I transcribe with pleasure a convivial one contained in the following lines, which an ingenious and patriotic Dutchman addressed to his excellency Mr. Adams, on drinking to him out of a large beautiful glass, which is called a baccale, and had inscribed round its ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... of a fire. The darkness, too, weighed upon him. He was abominably thirsty. Also he wanted to smoke. In addition to this, the small of his back tickled, and he more than suspected the cupboard of harboring mice. Not once nor twice but many hundred times he wished that the ingenious Webster had thought ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... Well-doing the infinite is approachable for certain souls, the out-of-the-world possibilities of Evil are limited. In his excesses of stupration and murder the Marshal cannot go beyond a fixed point. In vain he may dream of unique violations, of more ingenious slow tortures, but human imagination has a limit and he has already reached it—even passed it, with diabolic aid. Insatiable he seethes—there is nothing material in which to express his ideal. He ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... has been called Marigold for a similar reason, being more or less in blow at the times of all the festivals of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the word gold having reference to its golden rays, likened to the rays of light around the head of the Blessed Virgin." This is ingenious, and, as he adds, "thus say the old writers," it is worth quoting, though he does not say what old writer gave this derivation, which I am very sure is not the true one. The old name is simply goldes. Gower, describing ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... Proposing this ingenious stratagem in a confidential whisper, Mr. Vanstone took Frank's arm and led him round the house by the back way. The first ten minutes of seclusion in the conservatory passed without events of any kind. At the end of that time, a flying figure in bright garments flashed ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... gleamed among the green, and the slanting rays of the low sun, shining on the drops that fell from the never-resting wheels and buckets that irrigated the land, turned them into showers of diamonds. These water-works, of the most ingenious construction, many of them invented and contrived by scientific engineers, were the weapons with which man had conquered the desert that originally surrounded this lake, forcing it into green fertility and productiveness ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... species doth not in either science so strongly affect and agitate the muscles as the other; yet it will be owned, I believe, that a more rational and useful pleasure arises to us from it. He who should call the ingenious Hogarth a burlesque painter, would, in my opinion, do him very little honour; for sure it is much easier, much less the subject of admiration, to paint a man with a nose, or any other feature, of a preposterous size, or to expose him in some absurd or monstrous attitude, than to express the ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... Squire's, little dreamed he was an ordained clergyman. Yet a good-natured English clergyman translated Lucian; another, equally good-natured, wrote Tristam Shandy; and a third, an ill-natured appreciator of good-natured Rabelais, died a dean; not to speak of others. Thus ingenious and ingenuous are some of ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... was a formidable-looking affair constructed entirely of wrought iron of treble thickness. An ingenious device regulated its opening. On the massive door were five movable steel buttons engraved with the letters of the alphabet. Before the key could be inserted in the lock, these buttons had to be manipulated in the same order in which they had been used when the safe was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... centimes!" shouts another public orator; "the most ingenious little machine ever invented! Goes into the waistcoat pocket—is wound up every twenty-four hours—tells the day of the month, the day of the year, the age of the moon, the state of the Bourse, the bank rate of discount, the quarter from which the wind ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... the union of the States is to be found in a total abstinence from the exercise of all doubtful powers on the part of the Federal Government rather than in attempts to assume them by a loose construction of the Constitution or an ingenious perversion of its words, I have endeavored to avoid recommending any measure which I had reason to apprehend would, in the opinion even of a considerable minority of my fellow-citizens, be regarded as ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... example, the greatest creation of Bret Harte, greater even than Colonel Starbottle (and how terrible it is to speak of anyone greater than Colonel Starbottle!) is that unutterable being who goes by the name of Yuba Bill. He is, of course, the coach-driver in the Bret Harte district. Some ingenious person, whose remarks I read the other day, had compared him on this ground with old Mr. Weller. It would be difficult to find a comparison indicating a more completely futile instinct for literature. Tony Weller and Yuba ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... headstrong as he was narrow, with insanity lurking in his mind, succeeded to the throne in 1760, and he seized the first opportunity to get rid of his masterful Minister, William Pitt. He replaced him with the Earl of Bute, a Scotchman, and a man of ingenious parts, but with the incurable Tory habit of insisting that it was still midnight long after the sun was shining in the forenoon ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... the public primarily through the stage alongside of the school, and thus have formed at least a first step towards the understanding of the Hellenic poetry. But still deeper was the effect—on which the most ingenious literary critics of antiquity justly laid emphasis—produced by the naturalization of the Greek poetic language and the Greek metres in Latium. If "conquered Greece vanquished her rude conqueror by art," ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... fact. He (Mr. B.) came to Congress not by the aid of money, but against the use of money. The gentleman could not escape by any subtlety or by any ingenuity a thorough and complete exposure of any ingenious device to which he might resort for the purpose of putting gentlemen in a false position, and the sooner he stopped ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... The ingenious young rogue had been reading the book that very day, and in the drama of the "Midnight Alarm," played at Woodville, he had chosen for himself the part of Sylvester Sound. While his father went for a hammer and nails, ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... 3ft. above the pavement, constantly overflowing with hot water. From this a channel is visible in the pavement, in a line of direction eastward, conveying the water to Lucas's Bath.... Assisted by Mr. Palmer, an ingenious builder, I have ventured to exhibit a complete ground plot of the Roman Baths,[7] a discovery of no less curiosity than instruction.... This ground plot is exhibited in the plate annexed (Pl. V.) as far as the earth is cleared ...
— The Excavations of Roman Baths at Bath • Charles E. Davis
... diminished, and irregularities would be indefinitely increased. What confusion the practice must make in the language, especially when we come to inflect this part of the verb with st or est, has already been suggested. Yet an ingenious and learned writer, an able contributor to the Philological Museum, published at Cambridge, England, in 1832; tracing the history of this class of derivatives, and finding that after the ed was contracted in pronunciation, several eminent writers, as Spenser, Milton, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... one of his disciples, who asked permission to perform the funeral rites at his father's grave: "Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead," is an obvious condemnation of one of the most widespread superstitions of the ancient world. So, according to an ingenious suggestion of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, was the fifth commandment of Moses: "Ne parentum seriem tanquam primam aliquam causam suspicerent homines, et proinde cultum aliquem Divinum illis deferrent, qualem ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... Mistress Broughton says he was not at first accredited in Boston, but that her father, and Mr. Atkinson, and the chief people there now, did hold him to be not only what he professeth, as respecteth his gentlemanly lineage, but also learned and ingenious, and well-versed in the Scriptures, and the works of godly writers, both of ancient and modern time. I noted that Robert was very silent during the rest of our journey, and seemed abashed and troubled in the presence of the gay gentleman; for, although a fair and comely ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... formed an ingenious scheme for leaving Lady Isabel and Lord Colambre TETE-A-TETE; but the sudden entrance of Heathcock disconcerted her intentions. He came to beg Lady Dashfort's interest with Count O'Halloran, for ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... Should tell the Ietting Lattine that it came But slowly after, as though stiff and lame. So Scotland sent vs hither, for our owne That man, whose name I euer would haue knowne, To stand by mine, that most ingenious knight, My Alexander, to whom in his right, I want extreamely, yet in speaking thus I doe but shew the loue, that was twixt vs, And not his numbers which were braue and hie, So like his mind, was his clear Poesie, 170 And my deare Drummond ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... (Vol. viii., p. 439.).—Your correspondent B. H. C., though ingenious, is in error. The X on brewers' casks originated in the fact, that beer above a certain strength paid 10s. duty; and the X became a mark to denote beer of that better quality. The doubling and tripling of the X are nothing but inventions of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... a couple more across at each end, and laid a long stout bamboo in the forks they made for a ridge-pole, binding all as strongly as could be with an ingenious twist, and after that making rafters of smaller bamboos, so that in a couple of hours he had made the ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... joy of living, fun-loving, given to ingenious mischief for its own sake, with a disregard for petty convention which is an unfailing source of ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... physically, but was in great mental distress as well. He feared that at any moment Charley, alarmed by his long absence, might call or fire off one of the guns and bring the outlaws to his hiding-place. How could he warn him of the danger he was in? Suddenly the bound lad was seized by an ingenious idea. Assuring himself by their deep breathing, that his captors were fast asleep, he began to whistle, softly at first, then gradually louder and louder till the weird, mournful strains of the "Funeral ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... season summer, and were these merely summer apartments, or was the whole city uniformly heated or cooled? He became interested in these questions, began examining the smooth texture of the walls, the simply constructed bed, the ingenious arrangements by which the labour of bedroom service was practically abolished. And over everything was a curious absence of deliberate ornament, a bare grace of form and colour, that he found very pleasing to the eye. There were ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... staircase is a large painting, formerly in fresco at Houghton House, which was taken off the wall, and put on canvass by an ingenious process of the late Mr. Salmon. It represents a gamekeeper, or woodman, taking aim with a cross-bow, full front, with some curious perspective scenery, 6 feet by 9-1/2 feet. We have heard a tradition, that it is some person of high rank in disguise; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... on his iron chair, and I on a wooden box which I had contrived to stuff with the royal grass he gave me, and so made a complete miniature imitation of his throne. The folly in now allowing me to sit upon my portable iron stool, as an ingenious device for carrying out my determination to sit before him like an Englishman. I wished to be communicative, and, giving him a purse of money, told him the use and value of the several coins; but he paid little regard to them, and soon put them down. The small-talk of Uganda had ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... devoutly—I could not but regret the discomfiture of Arabella. Her approach to our chosen idol may have slightly lacked in reverence; she may, indeed, in plain English, have cheeked him. But she had done so in the prettiest, airiest manner. Pogson's punishment of her indiscretion, if highly ingenious, still struck me as not in the best taste. For was it not at once rather mean and rather cheap to make so charming a person the subject, and that before ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... Implements, equal to the best we have in Europe, are made here under his direction. Our Spanish companions were struck with admiration at what he had done; but what astonished them most, was the effect of a windmill; they had never before seen a machine so ingenious, and so ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... hypospadias who, suffering with delusions, was confined in the insane asylum at Utica. When he determined to get married, fully appreciating his physical defect, he resolved to imitate nature, and being of a very ingenious turn of mind, he busied himself with the construction of an artificial penis. While so engaged he had seized every opportunity to study the conformation of this organ, and finally prepared a body formed of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... of a similar nature, one ingenious expedient to which he resorted to cheat the doctor he thus disclosed to Mr. Wade, from whom I received it. He said, in passing along the quay where the ships were moored, he noticed by a side glance a druggist's shop, probably an old resort, and standing ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... a generous reforming spirit, have not been slow to see what abundant materials lie ready to their hand in these vast masses, profoundly ignorant and superstitious, if they can only be drawn into the turbid stream of "Non-co-operation" by some novel and ingenious appeal to their fears ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... the phone transmitter; it was fastened to the inside of the helmet, directly in front of his mouth, while the receiver was placed beside his ear. All three stopped short to adjust each other's electrical heating apparatus. To do this, they did not use their fingers directly; they manipulated ingenious non-magnetic pliers attached to the ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... of the party-system as also to accept his own best safeguard in the foundation of the Bank of England. The Cabinet, towards the close of his reign, had already become the fundamental administrative instrument. Originally a committee of the Privy Council, it had no party basis until the ingenious Sunderland atoned for a score of dishonesties by insisting that the root of its efficiency would be found in its selection from a single party. William acquiesced but doubtfully; for, until the end of his life, he never understood why his ministers ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... in many branches of crime. He was an excellent forger, a skilful lock-picker, an ingenious planner of shady projects, and had given a great deal of earnest study to the subject of the loopholes of the law. He had a high reputation in criminal circles for his ability in getting his fellow-rascals out of jail. There was reason to believe that in the past year no less ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... there is little or nothing with which to replace them, how fast food seems to be consumed, and clothing to be worn out! And so at length it came to pass that, notwithstanding the labors of the most tireless of needles, and the cutting, clipping, and contriving of the most ingenious of hands, the poor mother was forced to own to herself that her darlings looked really shabby, and kind neighbors one by one hinted and said that she must do something with her boy—that he was old enough to earn his own living; and the same idea occurred ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... utmost vigilance was necessary to guard against their sly pilferings, as well as the more violent attempts of the numerous bands of robbers who infested the neighbourhood. They reached Kanipe, a straggling village, on the 13th of May. Here the women had fallen upon an ingenious plan to extort amber and beads. After many hours labour, they had drawn up all the water from the wells and carried it away. They were fairly baffled, however, by the travellers; for in the evening, one of the soldiers having, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... and were both unkindly and unjustly called by Dryden "Ben's dotages." As for the charming Sad Shepherd, it was never acted, and is now unfinished, though it is believed that the poet completed it. It stands midway as a pastoral Feerie between his regular plays and the great collection of ingenious and graceful masques and entertainments, which are at the top of all such things in England (unless Comus be called a masque), and which are worth comparing with the ballets and spectacle pieces of Moliere. Perhaps a complete survey of Jonson's work indicates, as his greatest defect, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... that of the poetic turn of mind in general that we seem to catch him alike in anticipations or divinations, and in lapses and freshnesses, of experience that surprise us. He makes various reflections, some of them all perceptive and ingenious—as about the faces, the men's in particular, seen in the streets, the public conveyances and elsewhere; though falling a little short, in his friendly wondering way, of that bewildered apprehension of monotony of type, of modelling lost in the desert, which we might have ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... be allowed to eat horseflesh and to practice exposure of infants.[980] In old German law infanticide was treated as the murder of a relative. The guilty mother was buried alive in a sack, the law prescribing, with the ingenious fiendishness of the age, that a dog, a cat, a rooster, and a viper should also be placed in the sack.[981] In ancient Arabia the father might kill newborn daughters by burying them alive. The motive of the old custom was anxiety about provision for the child and shame at the disgrace of having ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... to the window and, unobserved, took a quick survey of the interior. Following some ingenious idea of his own regarding fitness, the beautiful Filgee had induced Uncle Ben to seat himself on the floor before one of the smallest desks, presumably his brother's, in an attitude which, while it certainly gave him considerable elbow-room for those contortions common to immature penmanship, ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... "That is ingenious, Surajah. Anyhow, I don't see any better excuse for crossing the frontier, and so we must make the best of it; but I hope we sha'n't be ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... recent novel, "Before Expiration,"—which recalls "Sanine" to our minds again,—Artzybashev has found some ingenious variations on the old theme, "love and death." The story of the love affairs of the painter Mikhailov, a cynical and brutal Lovelace who abandons his mistresses when they are with child, is intermingled incessantly with gloomy episodes, such as the agonies of ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... cranks because he preferred to avoid a suit that might overthrow his or other patents. For example, if the Wasbrough and Pickard patents had been voided, they would have become public property; and Watt feared that they might "get into the hands of men more ingenious," who would give Boulton and Watt more competition than Wasbrough ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... All the folks on the farm—both young and old—were delighted with the pretty creature with the bushy tail, the wise, inquisitive eyes, and the natty little feet. They intended to amuse themselves all summer by watching its nimble movements; its ingenious way of shelling nuts; and its droll play. They immediately put in order an old squirrel cage with a little green house and a wire-cylinder wheel. The little house, which had both doors and windows, the lady squirrel was to use as a dining room and bedroom. For this reason they ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... Afghan and Turkish gold and silver inlaid shields, and the intensely picturesque and finely ornamented matchlocks and flintlocks. Here, too, as in China, we find an abnormally large rifle—something like the gingal of the Celestials. These long clumsy rifles possess an ingenious back sight, with tiny perforations at different heights of the sight for the various distances on exactly the principle of ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... about him could distract and disturb him, even amid the great thoughts of these solemn days? His heart, his life were in his faith. For more than twenty years, by prayer and meditation, by all the ingenious means that the Catholic Church provides, he had developed the sensibilities of faith; and for the Catholic these sensibilities are centred upon and sustained by the Passion. Now, hour by hour, his Lord was moving to the Cross. He ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... for he had learned by this time to know his wife well. The bathroom fund was dear to her heart. The small room at the front of the house upstairs, which had been left unfurnished, had been temporarily fitted up as a bathroom by sundry ingenious devices in the way of a tin bath and a hot and cold water connection, but a full equipment of the best sort was to be put in as soon as practicable, and there was ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... taken at random, impromptu, and the plot and the moral came of itself as it were, with no plan on the part of the story-teller. Seryozha was very fond of this improvisation, and the prosecutor noticed that the simpler and the less ingenious the plot, the stronger the impression it made ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to be heated to incandescence is firmly held in place on a metal spindle, which is slowly revolved by means of an ingenious clock-work in the base of the fixture. The arrangement is such that by turning off the gas the clock-work is stopped, and by the turning on of the gas, it is again set in motion. The movement of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... an iron cross, though it had often been pierced by the trials of life. She has seen enough of real poverty and mortification, but never dreamed of such a thing as poverty and mortification self-imposed, by wearing upon her flesh a garment of sacking-cloth, or the ingenious invention of a bed so contrived as to deprive herself of wholesome sleep. Images and holy water occupy no place in her creed, though soap and water are almost too prominent. She did her good deeds from a sense of duty which she owed to her kind, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... liberal quotations from the inspired writings. My mind was unprepared to coincide in all his reasoning, nor was I sure that in some instances I rightly comprehended his positions. But nothing could be more impressive than the eager enthusiastic manner of the good old man, and nothing more ingenious than his mode of reasoning. The Scotch, it is well known, are more remarkable for the exercise of their intellectual powers, than for the keenness of their feelings; they are, therefore, more moved by logic than by rhetoric, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... concealed himself under the shape of that animal, to carry off his mistress. Palaephatus and Tzetzes suggest, that the story took its rise from the name of the general of Asterius, who was called Taurus, which is also the Greek name for a bull. Bochart has an ingenious suggestion, based upon etymological grounds. He thinks that the twofold meaning of the word 'Alpha,' or 'Ilpha,' which, in the Phoenician dialect, meant either a ship or a bull, gave occasion to the fable; and that the Greeks, on reading ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... bouquet of flowers and grain, he marches at the head of the Convention and officiates on the platform; he sets fire to the veil which hides from view the idol representing "Atheism," and suddenly, through an ingenious contrivance, the majestic statue of "Wisdom" appears in its place. He then addresses the crowd, over and over again, exhorting, apostrophizing, preaching, elevating his soul to the Supreme Being, and with what oratorical combinations! What an academic swell of bombastic cadences, strung ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... had been partially carried out. It gave a scathing account of Sir Wilfrid's course on the suffrage question—of his earlier coquettings with the woman's cause, his defection and "treachery," the bitter and ingenious hostility with which he was now pursuing the Bill before the House of Commons. "An amiable, white-haired nonentity for the rest of the world—who only mention him to marvel that such a man was ever ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cried out, that I would tear it, or throw it into the sea, till they saw how properly I held the roll, and made a sign that I would write in my turn: their apprehensions then changed into wonder. However, as they had never seen an ape that could write, and could not be persuaded that I was more ingenious than others of my kind, they wished to take the roll out of my hand; but the captain took my part once more. "Let him alone," said he, "allow him to write. If he only scribbles the paper, I promise you that ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... the easiest, least expensive, and most salubrious methods of preparing those highly finished soups, sauces, ragouts, and piquante relishes, which the most ingenious "officers of the mouth" have invented for the amusement of thorough-bred ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... attached long threads to them, waited in a bush hard by, until the pluck at the end of his line should give token that the fish had bitten. The experienced "old hand" was too acute for him. Filled with disgust and ambition, he determined upon an ingenious little trick. He was certain that Dawes possessed tobacco; the thing was to find it upon him. Now, Rufus Dawes, holding aloof, as was his custom, from the majority of his companions, had made one friend—if so mindless and ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... November mark turning-points of the year in Europe; the one ushers in the genial heat and the rich vegetation of summer, the other heralds, if it does not share, the cold and barrenness of winter. Now these particular points of the year, as has been well pointed out by a learned and ingenious writer,[566] while they are of comparatively little moment to the European husbandman, do deeply concern the European herdsman; for it is on the approach of summer that he drives his cattle out into the open to crop the fresh grass, and it is on the approach of ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... Mora. As I was walking out beyond the Porta San Giovanni the other day, I heard the most ingenious and consolatory periphrasis for a defeat that it was ever my good-fortune to hear; and, as it shows the peculiar humor of the Romans, it may here have a place. Two of a party of contadini had been playing at Mora, the stakes being, as usual, a bottle of wine, and each, in turn, had lost ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... great man, a man really grand and noble in heart and intellect, has this advantage with women, that he is an idol ready-made to hand; and so that very painstaking and ingenious sex have less labor in getting him up, and can be ready to worship him on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... "That's ingenious, but not convincing," retorted Dick, as the two chums stepped into dressing quarters. "To tell you the truth, Dave, I think a good many people now believe that you ought ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... must decline friend Tom's ingenious proposal, and take yours, Brandon, for as usual you have ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... occur to that ingenious Writer, that the State of the English Language is very different at this time from what it was in Chaucer's Days: It was then in its Infancy: And even the publick Worship of God was in a foreign Tongue, a thing as fatal to the Language of any Country, as to Religion ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson
... invent ingenious speeches to Carteret and to her father. Hatch ingenious schemes and pretty plots—in the style of dear Aunt Felicia almost!—Was that lady's peace-making passion infectious, by chance? And supposing it were, hadn't it very charming and praiseworthy turns to it—witness ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... a novel of the ordinary kind. But this is not a novel of the ordinary kind. The real staple of the book consists not of the incidents and the characters, but of discussions and reflections which sparkle with wit, with shrewd observation, and with ingenious if not absolutely profound speculation. There are a hundred little essays in it, compact with thought and bristling with epigram, that have an eighteenth-century flavor, and suffuse with a sauce piquante what would otherwise have been a flavorless dish. Whether the theory from which the title ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... of Prussia than she had been as her ally, assembled a corps of 40,000 men in Bohemia. That corps was called an army of observation; but the nature of these armies of observation is well known; they belong to the class of armed neutralities, like the ingenious invention of sanitary cordons. The fact is, that the 40,000 men assembled in Bohemia were destined to aid and assist the Russians in case they should be successful (and who can blame the Austrian Government for wishing to wash away the shame of the Treaty of Presburg?). ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... on the mountainside, on soft grass near a fall of water. The Indians showed no fear of attack from man or beast. They could make fire in a most ingenious fashion, setting stick against larger stick and turning the first with such skill, vigor and persistence that presently arose heat, a spark, fire. But they seemed to need or wish no watch fire. They lay, naked and careless, ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... moglich—mochte ich noch heute Vormittag Geschaftsfreunde zu treffen.) My mind is made up to one thing: I will be an exile, in spirit and in truth: I will see no one during these three months. Father is very ingenious—oh, very! thinks he is, anyway. Thinks he has invented a way to force us to learn to speak German. He is a dear good soul, and all that; but invention isn't his fach'. He will see. (With eloquent energy.) Why, nothing in the world shall—Bitte, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ranks among his best productions. Of this ode we are enabled to present a faithful metrical translation, quite in the spirit of the original, as far as conversion of the Gaelic into the Scottish idiom is practicable. The version was kindly undertaken at our request by Mr William Sinclair, the ingenious author of "Poems of the Fancy and the Affections," who has appropriately adapted it to the lively tune, "Alister M'Alister." The song, remarks Mr Sinclair, is much in the spirit, though in a more humorous strain, of the famous Sword Song, beginning in the translation, "Come ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... used to discuss a flask of champagne and a Rhenish trout or two after play, 'see this amiable youth! He has been troubled by religious scruples, and has flown for refuge to my chaplain, Mr. Runt, who has asked for advice from my wife, Lady Lyndon; and, between them both, they are confirming my ingenious young friend in his faith. Did you ever hear of such doctors, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... exceedingly clear, and, although ingenious, still simple and explicit. When you left the Bishop's ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... house thrown into agitation by its daughter and heiress receiving attentions unprecedented in its annals. More than this, he went so far as to promise himself some entertainment from the little drama—if drama it was—of which Mrs. Penniman desired to represent the ingenious Mr. Townsend as the hero. He had no intention, as yet, of regulating the denouement. He was perfectly willing, as Elizabeth had suggested, to give the young man the benefit of every doubt. There was no great danger in it; for Catherine, at the age ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... way through. Missing it will bring you to ever-narrowing ledges, until at last you end at a precipice, and there is no room to turn your horses around for the return. Some of the great box canons thousands of feet deep are practicable by but one passage,—and that steep and ingenious in its utilization of ledges, crevices, little ravines, and "hog's-backs"; and when the only indications to follow consist of the dim vestiges left by your last predecessor, perhaps years before, the affair becomes one of considerable skill and ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... except himself, could complete the work. Mr. M. felt that the demand was exorbitant, and appealed in his dilemma to the slaves who were assisting in the moulding. "I can do that well," said one of them, an intelligent and ingenious servant, who had been intimately engaged in the various processes. The striker was dismissed, and the negro, assisted occasionally by the finer skill of his master, took the striker's place as superintendent, and the work went on. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... of the Christian creed,—in one view, how natural and inevitable a process; yet what enormous waste of intellect, what diversion from sound inquiry! The original hypothesis being pure fancy, all the ingenious deductions are mere ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... pardon me; but Mrs. Newell is a very ingenious woman." Mr. Newell shook out his remaining crumbs and turned ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... Sueur, his Majesty's servant, now dwelling in St. Bartholomew's, London; the most industrious and excellent statuary, in all materials, that ever this country enjoyed. The best of them is the Gladiator, moulded from that in Cardinal Borghesi's Villa, by the procurement and industry of ingenious Master Gage. And at this present, the said Master Sueur hath divers other admirable moulds to cast in brass for his Majesty, and among the rest, that famous Diana of Ephesus. But the great Horse with his Majesty upon it, twice as great as the life, and now well nigh finished, will compare ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... other things, he had contrived an original project for reviving the lemon industry of his country, which, though it involved a few tariff modifications—"a mere detail"—struck me as amazingly effective and ingenious. The local deputy, it seems, shared my view, for he had undertaken to bring it before the notice ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... coolness. One plan generally employed was to put into a hat a quantity of sea-water with which we washed our faces for a while, repeating it at intervals. We also bathed our hair and held our hands in the water. Misfortune made us ingenious, and each thought of a thousand means to alleviate his sufferings. Emaciated by the most cruel privations, the least agreeable feeling was to us a happiness supreme. Thus we sought with avidity a small empty phial which one of us possessed, ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... formation of hail is an effect of which electricity is the cause, and the cloud being deprived of this agent by the conductors, descends in the shape of rain. Mr. John Murray, F.S.A., F.L.S., &c., in his work on Switzerland, speaks very decidedly of their utility. Has then this ingenious contrivance been considered with reference to the protection of the Great Exhibition and its valuable, or rather invaluable, contents? or why is it deemed inapplicable to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... story of Baucis and Philemon, with the rest, which I hope I have translated closely enough, and given them the same turn of verse which they had in the original; and this, I may say without vanity, is not the talent of every poet. He who has arrived the nearest to it, is the ingenious and learned Sandys, the best versifier of the former age, if I may properly call it by that name, which was the former part of this concluding century. For Spenser and Fairfax both flourished in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; great ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... "I thought we'd lost you. I want to introduce you to Mrs. Kemball and her daughter, who are to be your fellow voyagers. Mr. Lester's a very ingenious young man," he added. "Make him amuse you!" and he hastened away to catch the gang-plank before it ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... been so cruelly taken away from her. Then,—as it was said at the time,—an important letter was sent from the Home Office to the Postmaster-General, giving Mr. Bagwax much praise, and suggesting that a very good thing would be done to the colony of New South Wales if that ingenious and skilful master of postmarks could be sent out to Sydney with the view of setting matters straight in the Sydney office [1]. There was then much correspondence with the Colonial Office, which did not at first care very much about Bagwax; but at last the order ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... banishment to the isle of Rhodes, occupied himself in studying how to wreak his vengeance upon his enemies at Rome, and, with the fury of the Panther, as soon as he had the opportunity, glutted his vengeance. This notion, however, seems more ingenious than ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... that which is being performed at a distance from him, the intervention of a special conducting mechanism becomes indispensable, in order to establish instantaneous communication between him and the distant performers. Many attempts, more or less ingenious, have been made of this kind, the result of which has not everywhere answered expectations. That of Covent Garden Theatre, in London, moved by the conductor's foot, acts tolerably well. But the ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... the schemes of smugglers were never before carried to such perfection. Above 6000 persons of the lower orders went backwards and forwards, about twenty times a day, from Altona to Hamburg, and they carried on their contraband, trade by many ingenious stratagems, two of which were so curious that they ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... besides its two occupants, a variety of household goods, and a dog or two coiled and motionless, his sharp nose resting between his outstretched forepaws. The tame crow occupied an ingenious cage ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... slightly more distinguished than Wapping. He never lets us forget that he is a scholar of antiquity, a man of education and a speculative philosopher. Hence his references to Celsus and Hippocrates and his ingenious etymologies of wheatear and samphire, more ingenious in the second case than sound. Smollett's field of observation had been wide and his fund of exact information was unusually large. At Edinburgh he had studied medicine under Monro and John Gordon, in company with such able and distinguished ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... admitted such a law to be constitutional, in the next he argued that the act of the person designated by law, or of the president pro tempore, assuming the power is clearly "unconstitutional." By this ingenious process of reasoning, to which the strict constructionists have always been partial, it might be unconstitutional to carry out constitutional law. The assumption of such power was therefore, Mr. Gallatin held, usurpation, to be resisted in one of two ways; by declaring ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... that Medland had appreciated it too, and had laid a cunning trap for Dick's innocent feet. It did not suit him to produce yet the public explosion which he destined for his enemy; but he lost no time in determining to checkmate this last ingenious move by some private communication which would put Dick—or perhaps ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... less ingenious in calling the state of the soul devoid of the light of the mind, "a being out of one's mind," "a being beside one's self." From whence we may understand that they who gave these names to things were of the ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... myself at the ingenious way in which you conveyed to me what an imprudence it was in you to fall in love with a girl who had no fortune, and the shock it would give your friends when they should ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... contains a map of their country, divided into seventeen districts, with seventeen little pieces of historical painting, representing the seventeen persecutions of the primitive Christians; the whole being folded up in a very small compass, and is a most ingenious ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... by a member of the House of Representatives that the native race is not decreasing, but actually increasing slightly. It is another evidence that they are a superior breed of savages. I do not call to mind any savage race that built such good houses, or such strong and ingenious and scientific fortresses, or gave so much attention to agriculture, or had military arts and devices which so nearly approached the white man's. These, taken together with their high abilities in boat-building, and their tastes and capacities in the ornamental arts modify ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... live only for climate and the affections," said the lady "I am fond of society that pleases me, that is, accomplished and natural and ingenious; otherwise I prefer being alone. As for atmosphere, as I look upon it as the main source of felicity, you may be surprised that I should reside in your country. I should myself like to go to America, but that would not suit Colonel Campian; and, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... rescue the city of God from the pollutions and abominations of the infidels. In recording this declaration of the expiring monarch, Hume adds a comment as full of bitter sarcasm as it is tinctured with his characteristic (p. 310) spirit of scepticism. "So ingenious are men in deceiving themselves, that Henry forgot in these moments all the blood spilt by his ambition, and received comfort from this late and feeble resolve; which, as the mode of those enterprises was now past, he certainly would ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... the corner of the rue de Rivoli. He ran and caught the omnibus. But he had lost his two assistants. He must continue the pursuit alone. In his anger he was inclined to seize the man by the collar without ceremony. Was it not with premeditation and by means of an ingenious ruse that his pretended imbecile had separated him from ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... fortune's, sir, or of fortune's cat (but not a musk-cat), that has fallen into the unclean fishpond of her displeasure, and, as he says, is muddied withal: pray you, sir, use the carp as you may; for he looks like a poor, decayed, ingenious, foolish, rascally knave. I do pity his distress in my similes of comfort, and leave him ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... of course, could only have been achieved by ingenious arrangements and a peculiar construction of the engines, whereby the waste steam and fumes of the furnaces should be prevented from emitting their foul and sulphurous odours. The carriages are brilliantly lighted ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... (what he apologised to my aunt for calling) a false front. My aunt did not at first grasp the idea, but what Nibletts did in fact refer to was a contrivance that would admit one sitter only at a time, subsequent unauthorised entrance being cut off by an ingenious drop slide. Further elaborate construction also prevented the sitter herself from turning round to peck. She had to remain sitting till some human ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... he persuaded me, and I did buy them for L4 10s. the two. Then to the Exchange and bought gloves, and so to the Bull-Head Taverne, whither he brought my French gun; and one Truelocke, the famous gunsmith, that is a mighty ingenious man, and he did take my gun in pieces, and made me understand the secrets thereof and upon the whole I do find it a very good piece of work, and truly wrought; but for certain not a thing to be used much with safety: and he do find that this very gun was never yet shot off: I was mighty satisfied ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... from pains in the back—but that's another story. Incidentally Mahomet at present inhabits a sniper's post surrounded by a perfect thicket of barbed-wire, and I had a bright scheme for its removal. I got hold of a trench catapult, an ingenious contrivance of elastic that hurls a bomb some hundreds of yards, and placed in it a harpoon attached to a long coil of rope. The idea was that on release of the catapult the harpoon would be hurled in the air, the rope would neatly pay out, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... Of course I understood their drift. She had tried to feel her way with the dead man. She had wanted to marry me, and yet retain Guido for her lonely hours, as "her lover always!" Such a pretty, ingenious plan it was! No thief, no murderer ever laid more cunning schemes than she, but the law looks after thieves and murderers. For such a woman as this, law says, "Divorce her—that is your best remedy." Divorce her! Let the criminal go scot-free! Others may do it that choose—I have different ideas ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... indeed, could they say? No doubt the little servant had broken the strict letter of domestic law by running off in that highly eccentric and inconvenient way; but, as Hilary tried to explain by a series of most ingenious ratiocinations, she had fulfilled, in the spirit of it, the very highest law—that of charity. She had also shown prompt courage, decision, practical and prudent forethought, and above all, ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... from time to time put forth new organs and discovered new weapons of offence and defence. We ask for evidence that the Church has regenerated the world; and we are shown how, by hook or by crook, it has succeeded in safeguarding its own interests. Ecclesiastical historians are ingenious and unscrupulous; but it is impossible even for them to exhibit Church history as the record of a continuous intervention of the Spirit of Christ in human affairs. If any Spirit has presided over the councils ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... had in her mind a plan which, had it gone through safely, would have added many grey hairs to the duke's scanty collection. It was a mighty ingenious plan, too, for a ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath |
