"Ingenuity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Rough and ready they were, nevertheless they fitted well and tightly to their feet; but it was found that the want of a joint at the instep rendered it difficult to walk with these soles on, and impossible to run. Roy's ingenuity, however, soon overcame this difficulty. He cut the soles through just under the instep, and then, boring two holes in each part, lashed them firmly together with deerskin, thus producing a joint or hinge. Eager to try this new invention, he fastened on his own "sliders" first, ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... worth the stealing—old Luddy had done well, and lived and existed on next to nothing—the stones, she said, were worth about fifteen thousand dollars. Not so bad, even for twenty-five years of vegetable selling from a pushcart! He could steal them all right; it would tax the Gray Seal's ingenuity little to do so simple a thing as that, but that was not all, nor, indeed, hardly a factor in it—it was vital that if he were to succeed at all he must steal ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Frederick Douglas[45] we are told that when he was about thirteen he began to feel deeply the moral yoke of slavery and to seek means of escaping it. He became interested in religion, was converted, and dreamed of and prayed for liberty. With great ingenuity he extracted knowledge of the alphabet and reading from white boys of his acquaintance. At sixteen, under a brutal master he revolted and was beaten until he was faint from loss of blood, and at seventeen he fought and whipped the brutal overseer Covey, who would have invoked the law, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... the household at their chosen seat marks the second stage in backwoods-life, a stage which calls for all the powers of mind and body, tasks the hands, exercises the ingenuity, summons vigilance, and awakens every latent energy. Woman steps at once into a new sphere of action, and hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, with her stronger but not more resolute companion, enters on that career which looks to the formation ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... The student who understands the general principles, and is able to perform the above experiments successfully, will have no difficulty in reproducing the genuine feats of the public mind readers, by simply using his ingenuity in arranging the stage-effects, etc. Among other things, he will find that he will be able to obtain results by interposing a third person between the projector and himself; or by using a short piece of wire to connect himself and the projector. Drawing pictures on a blackboard, or writing ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... that, there being such an unanimous {151} consent in what has been just now declared, & the Controversie being about Matter of fact, wherein Authority, Number, and Reputation must cast the Ballance, Mons. Hevelius, who is as well known for his Ingenuity, as Learning, will joyn and acquiesce ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... descriptions of the curious objects which I saw in the great houses and museums which I visited. There is, however, a work of art at Longford Castle so remarkable that I must speak of it. I was so much struck by the enormous amount of skilful ingenuity and exquisite workmanship bestowed upon it that I looked up its history, which I found in the "Beauties of England and Wales." This is what is there said of the wonderful steel chair: "It was made by Thomas Rukers at the city of Augsburgh, in the year 1575, and consists of more than 130 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to put the blame on Great Britain, it will tax the ingenuity even of the Germans to explain away the fact that it was a German torpedo, fired by a German seaman from a German submarine, that sank the vessel and caused ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... us, that he walked away, with great strides, greatly rejoicing. I can remember, at this moment, but one tale in which this style of descriptive searchings into the feelings is altogether justifiable—Godwin's "Caleb Williams;" for there the ever instant terror, varying by the natural activity and ingenuity of the mind, which, upon the one pressing point, feverishly hurries into new, and all possible channels of thought, requires this pervading absolutism. It is the Erynnis of a bygone creed, in a renovated form of persecuting ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... bill, the chancellor of the exchequer brought forward the proposition for prohibiting the circulation of small notes. In doing so he said that though fluctuations were inseparable from trade, in defiance of any precautions which ingenuity could invent, yet their effects were often aggravated by a state of currency, and a facility of speculation like those produced by the existing issues of paper. The small notes especially carried the consequences of these changes among those on whom they pressed most severely. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... this obvious necessity we get an immense abstraction, worked out with all the subtle ingenuity and learning of the Cambridge professor. Mr. Cook has, in fact, used the materials he has collected with such amazing care to project therefrom just those mythological conceptions which Celt and Teuton would have worked out for themselves if they, like the Hindu and the Greek, had developed the ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... this ingenuity of speech for? Over whose wedding-gown are you displaying Your emblematic learning? ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... on the picturesque dignity of a pageant. A real pageant we dearly loved, but the show was too expensive to be offered more than once or twice annually. We had to hire musicians as our own were too busy to serve. Then the costumes and banners and hangings took a good bit of money, though artistic ingenuity helped out amazingly. Where all the magnificence came from was a mystery, the splendors of purple and gold, of rich draperies, fine furbelows, shining garments and glittering adornments being really splendid. ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... daily as he saw his dream assuming concrete form. The many problems arising as the work advanced afforded him unceasing activity; the unforeseen obstacles which were encountered hourly required swift and certain judgment, taxing his ingenuity to the utmost. He became so filled with it all, so steeped with the spirit of his surroundings, that he had thought for nothing else. Every dawn marked the beginning of a new battle, every twilight heralded another council. His duties swamped him; he was ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... of the "Palais-Chateau-Ermitage" of Marly-le-Roi were from the fertile brain of Mansart, and were arranged with considerable ingenuity, if not taste, generously interspersed with lindens and truly magnificent garden plots. There was even a cascade, or rather a tumbling river (according to the French expression), for it fell softly over sixty-three marble steps, forming a sort ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... application. A fair degree of adaptability to purpose and environment is seen, indicating that the Casa Grande was one, and not the first, building of a series constructed by the people who erected it and by their ancestors, but the degree of skill exhibited and amount of ingenuity shown in overcoming difficulties do not compare with that found in many northern ruins. As architects, the inhabitants of the Casa Grande did not occupy the ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff
... charges mostly: pilfering, fraud, theft, occasionally arson or manslaughter. One man, however, was arraigned for murder with highway robbery, and a woman for the most ignoble traffic, which evil feminine ingenuity ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... without discrimination is a sensual enjoyment, and, like all sensuality, ought to be restrained: but that charity with discretion, is foremost amongst the virtues, and must not be contaminated with heedless profusion.—Still the author has shown such ingenuity in the event which arises from this incident, that those persons, who despise the silly generosity of Thornberry, are yet highly affected by the ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... were not what Francoise would have called 'real people.' But none of the feelings which the joys or misfortunes of a 'real' person awaken in us can be awakened except through a mental picture of those joys or misfortunes; and the ingenuity of the first novelist lay in his understanding that, as the picture was the one essential element in the complicated structure of our emotions, so that simplification of it which consisted in the suppression, pure and simple, of 'real' people would be a decided improvement. ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... Boemond III, surnamed le Baube (the Stammerer), succeeded his mother in 1163. We owe the doubtless correct rendering of this passage to the ingenuity of the late Joseph Zedner. Benjamin visited Antioch before 1170, when a fearful earthquake destroyed a great part of ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... which the fourth gospel presents to all three of the synoptical gospels, have also been considered simply as existing facts. Chap. 2, Nos. 14 and 15. But when we seek an explanation of these remarkable phenomena, we enter upon a very difficult problem, one on which the ingenuity of Biblical scholars has exhausted itself for several successive generations without reaching thus far a result that can be regarded as perfectly satisfactory. Almost all conceivable theories and combinations ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... The ingenuity and perseverance of the fraternity of swindlers is only equaled by the gullibility and patience of their dupes. During the flush times that followed the war, immense fortunes were suddenly acquired ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... curious to notice with what ingenuity and how readily Parliament took advantage of the most trifling circumstances or of charges based upon the very slightest grounds to summon the officers of the Chatelet before its bar on suspicion of prevarication ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... all his technological skill and a part of his technological interest to bear on the new problems. Women had been able to thrust a stick into the earth and drop the seed and await a meager harvest. When man turned his attention to this matter, his ingenuity eventually worked out a remarkable combination of the animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms: with the iron plow, drawn by the ox, he upturned the face of the earth, and produced food stuffs in excess of immediate demands, thus creating the ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... English words when he was told what they meant, and made Ste. Marie write them down for him on two visiting-cards. So they made a trio out of "Little Willie," the great Duval inventing a bass part quite marvellous in its ingenuity, and they were compelled to sing it over and over again, until Ste. Marie's falsetto imitation of a tenor voice cracked and gave out altogether, since he was by nature barytone, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... no direction of human enterprise is there such a wide and profitable field for work, as in the generation of power. It is constantly growing in prominence, and calls for the exercise of the skill of the engineer and the ingenuity of the mechanic. Efficiency and economy are the two great watchwords, and this is what the world is striving for. Success will come to him who can contribute to it in the ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... of the Gesta Romanorum is most conspicuously to be traced in the work of Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate; but it has served as a source of inspiration to the flagging ingenuity of each succeeding generation. It would be tedious to enter on an enumeration of the various indebtednesses of English literature to these early tales. A few instances will ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... which, as Hawkesbury was due back next morning, I would then have to be prepared to hand over. It was no small satisfaction to find that my accounts were right to a penny, and to know that in the fair copy of those accounts which I drew up no ingenuity or patience would be able to discover an error. Indeed, I was so particular, that, having made a minute blot in my first fair copy, I went to the trouble of writing out another, absolutely faultless, preserving the other in my desk, as ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... been poverty-stricken, was glad of a scanty gift. When he was asked why he was behaving so, he said that the arm which lacked ornament and had no splendour to boast of was mantling with the modest blush of poverty to behold the other. The ingenuity of this saying won him a present to match the first. For Rolf made him bring out to view, like the other, the hand which he was hiding. Nor was Wigg heedless to repay the kindness; for he promised, uttering a strict vow, that, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... chemistry, and which at the last galvanic touch rushed forth from the laboratory, and from the horrified eyes of its creator, an independent, scoffing, remorseless, and inevitable enemy of him to whose rash ingenuity it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... unnatural, but would the same objection hold good that because a man has had the misfortune to suffer amputation, he must, therefore, limp through life on crutches, rather than use the mechanical substitute that man's ingenuity has devised? ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... us, we returned home with masses of mushrooms, flower-like in hue,—bronze, pink, snow-white, green, and yellow; and Osip cooked them delicately, in sour cream, to accompany the juicy young blackcock and other game of our host's shooting. Osip was a cordon bleu, and taxed his ingenuity to initiate us into all the mysteries of Russian cooking, which, under his tuition, we found delicious. The only national dish which we never really learned to like was one in which he had no hand,—fresh cucumbers sliced lengthwise ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... seem. The other party to the bet is bound by the ironclad codes of Wolf to inflict no permanent physical damage (no injury that will not heal with three suncourses). But from sunrise to sunset, any torment or painful ingenuity which the half-human mentality of Wolf ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... cannot be confirmed, and falsity is confirmed more readily than truth. 2. Truth does not appear when falsity has been confirmed, but falsity is apparent from confirmed truth. 3. The ability to confirm whatever one pleases is not intelligence but only ingenuity, to be found in the worst of men. 4. Confirmation may be mental and not at the same time volitional, but all volitional confirmation is also mental. 5. Confirmation of evil both volitional and intellectual causes man to believe that one's own prudence is everything and divine providence ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... qualifications for a post. The knowing, upon being asked if they possess certain attributes, reply in an immediate affirmative and add others, just to be on the safe side. It is felt that what is really required in this War is thrust and ingenuity, things which adequately make up for the absence of any specialist knowledge. Accordingly my friend found himself described as possessing, among other things, "French, fluent." It was not until he was informed that the Official Interpreter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... therefore it has not been deemed advisable to dimension the boats described in this Chapter. What the author desires to do is to impart the principles of construction, so that every boy may use his own ingenuity in regard to size and proportion ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... next morning, as we have seen, they named their summer home Camp Chaparral, and for a week or more they were the very busiest colony of people under the sun; for it takes a deal of hard work and ingenuity to make a comfortable and beautiful dwelling-place ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that this castle should be brought Up to grapple with the caravels, by which the Portuguese might be attacked on equal terms. On seeing this machine, the zamorin liberally rewarded Cogeal for his ingenuity, and gave orders to have other seven constructed of the same kind. By means of his spies, Pacheco got notice of the construction of these floating castles, and likewise that the enemy were preparing certain fireworks to set the caravels on fire[6]. To keep off the fireships ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... cold things and take hold of and seize them, we know that we have, to use a homely simile, eaten our cake. The supply of pearls is continuous, and under the control of the cruel ingenuity of man they grow to an ordinary size in less ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... this, the book strikes home to the English middle class because it records how a plain Englishman completely mastered apparently insuperable obstacles through the plain virtues of courage, patience, perseverance, and mechanical ingenuity. Further, it directly addresses the dissenting conscience in its emphasis on religion and morality. This is none the less true because the religion and morality are of the shallow sort characteristic of Defoe, a man who, like Crusoe, would have had no scruples about selling ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... his mighty ingenuity to keep Napoleon from urging too far that the King of Prussia be brought forward. Bismarck knew that King William was tender-hearted, and, tempted by the disaster that had come to Napoleon, would in consequence be inclined to deal leniently ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... realised how helpless man, with all his ingenuity, became in the midst of such a storm. Absolutely nothing could be done but trust themselves to the hands of God, and wait patiently for ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... a mind and ingenuity far beyond his years, Jimmy Holden knew that he alone was the most active operator in this vicious drama. It was not without shock that he realized that he himself could still be killed to gain possession of his fabulous machine. For only with all three Holdens dead could Paul Brennan ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... was herself again, however, she insisted upon going on, and fell into so restless and wild a state that the gate-keeper and his wife were forced to yield. Her carpet-bag was repacked with all the additions which the old lady's motherly ingenuity could suggest, her pocket-book well filled, and then, having found her a companion to Bellaire, the Colonel was again telegraphed to, and Ellen herself was the bearer of letters from the Governor of Ohio and her new friends, in the hope of obtaining a furlough for Carrol. With a prudent after-thought, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... mention of Moreau's name. All eyes were turned towards the conqueror of Hohenlinden, and while the Procureur Imperial read over the long indictment and invoked the vengeance of the law on an attempt against the head of the Republic, it was easy to perceive how he tortured his ingenuity to fasten apparent guilt on the laurels of Moreau. The good sense of the public discerned proofs of his innocence in the very circumstances brought forward against him. I shall never forget the effect produced—so contrary to what was anticipated by ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... right. With a slavish literality delicate shades of meaning cannot be reproduced, nor allowance be made for the influence of interwoven thought, or of the writer's ever shifting—not to say changing—point of view. An utterly ignorant or utterly lazy man, if possessed of a little ingenuity, can with the help of a dictionary and grammar give a word-for-word rendering, whether intelligible or not, and print 'Translation' on his title-page. On the other hand it is a melancholy spectacle to see men of high ability and undoubted ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... prepared to support him. But could he make an effectual struggle, he might depend upon the aid of the servile Barrere, a sort of Belial in the convention, the meanest, yet not the least able, amongst those fallen spirits, who, with great adroitness and ingenuity, as well as wit and eloquence, caught opportunities as they arose, and was eminently dexterous in being always strong upon the strongest, and safe upon the safest side. There was a tolerably numerous party ready, in times so dangerous, to attach themselves ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... The young man's ingenuity again comes to his aid. All intangible, ghostly menace downs before this real danger. Paul quits his room, and in disguise watches for incoming steamer from Calcutta. He will seek first chance to explain all to Pierre Lanier. Father and son then ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... said the Count, who had been some time silent, and with a low bow, 'but the gallantry of the compliment had been utterly lost, but for the ingenuity that discovered the application.' ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... matter: swank and an evening suit will do it; nothing very exclusive about those people. But the people of Limehouse, and, indeed, of any slum or foreign quarter, are exclusive; and to get into a Poplar dope-house on bargain night demands the exercise of more Oriental ingenuity than ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... Caroll's"—"Sylvia and Bruno," and "Sylvia and Bruno, Concluded," are perhaps most important. As a curious narrative, "Travels in the Interior" (of a human body) must not be forgotten. It certainly called forth much ingenuity on the part of the artist. In "Romps," and in all his work for children, there is an irrepressible sense of movement and of exuberant vitality in his figures; but, all the same, they are more like Fred Walker's idyllic ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... desideratum in navigation, for the ascertainment of which so many nations have offered a public recompense, and in the investigation of which so many mathematical heads have been disordered. Some of those who now appeared candidates for the prize deserved encouragement for the ingenuity of their several systems; but he who seemed to enjoy' the pre-eminence in the opinion and favour of the public was Mr. Irwin, a native of Ireland, who contrived a chair so artfully poised, that a person sitting in it on board a ship, even in a rough sea, can, through a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... a spirit so calm and strict and noble, was a heart-breaking spectacle. The Baroness could only tell lies, with a woman's ingenuity, to conceal the whole dreadful ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... one of the other servants said to the boy, "Sam, bring the wooden nut-crackers you made!" When the boy brought them, the visitor, after cracking a nut, examined them carefully for some time, and was so struck with the ingenuity displayed in their construction that he took the lad and apprenticed him to a clock-maker in Leicester, where he became one of the cleverest workmen in the kingdom, the most elaborate and curious piece of mechanism he made ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... uttered with entire unreserve. But the jangle of discord was not there. It was seen and felt that the American church, in the presence of the unchristian and antichristian powers, and in presence of those solemn questions of the needs of humanity that overtask the ingenuity and the resources of us all combined, was "builded as a city that is at unity with itself." That body which, by its strength of organization, and by the binding force of its antecedents, might have seemed to some most hopelessly isolated from the common sympathies ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... forge, and the many expedients they had invented, even before we left the islands, for working the iron they had procured from us, into such forms as were best adapted to their purposes, were strong proofs of docility and ingenuity. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... contribute to this extraordinary phenomenon. It must be said that his artificial season at Pantin is the result of man's ingenuity. ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... men dream at that time of the wealth of other discoveries that was soon to increase enormously the complexity of their problems; or of the inferences that would be drawn from them with an ingenuity and an assurance that would task to the utmost the ability and the patience of the defenders ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... disturbed by the firing of the Bizarro's carabine at midnight. They ran through the woods to seek the captain, but finding him lifeless and headless, they became so much surprised that many of them surrendered to the government, and relinquished their trade, and the band of Bizarro, as it lived by his ingenuity, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... would prefer to be alone that first evening. Kate did her best to preserve some tattered fragments of the amenities. She told college stories, talked of Lena Vroom and of beautiful Honora Fulham,—hinted even at Ray McCrea,—and by dint of much ingenuity wore ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... became evident that Ralph Mainwaring's oft repeated assertions concerning the elaborate preparation he had made for the coming contest were no idle boast. Nothing that human ingenuity could devise had been left undone which could help to turn the scale in his own favor. The original will of Ralph Maxwell Mainwaring, by which his elder son was disinherited, was produced and read in court. Both wills were photographed, and numerous copies, minute ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... Mr. Darwin's argument our own private ingenuity has not hitherto enabled us to pick holes of any great importance; and judging by what we hear and read, other adventurers in the same field do not seem to have been much more fortunate. It has been urged, for instance, that in his chapters on the struggle for existence and on natural ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... referring to the very same period, narrating the very same events, can talk of this army as "a company of poor men," "your poor army," "those poor contemptible men." To attempt to detect any political motive for this absurd phraseology, would be a very idle speculation, mere waste of ingenuity: he was simply more in the puritanic vein in the one ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... rooms the company examined even microscopically the response of the stranger to Mr. Winterblossom, straining their ingenuity to discover, in the most ordinary expressions, a deeper and esoteric meaning, expressive of something mysterious, and not meant to meet the eye. Mr. Meiklewham, the writer, dwelt on the word circumstances, which he read with ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... experiment there was a lull in the Parachute folly until some twenty years ago, when Madame Poitevin startled the Metropolis from its propriety by her perilous escapes both in life and limb. Although considerable ingenuity was displayed in the plan of expanding the Parachute by the sudden discharge of gas from the balloon; still the very fact of a woman being exposed to such danger by her husband, will, we trust, hereafter prevent Englishmen from countenancing such an exhibition ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... art of inflicting an exquisitely vicious poke or dig with the wards of a key in the small of the back, near the spine. She likewise originated a mode of treading by accident (in pattens) on such as had small feet; also very remarkable for its ingenuity, and previously ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... the boy's arms about the girl's waist. Digging a Well is similar to Picking Grapes, and calls for as many kisses as there are feet in depth to be dug. In competition games where forfeits are sold there is no limit to the devices for indirect love expressions except the fertility and ingenuity in invention of the young people, and every one knows that in this particular regard their resources are well nigh inexhaustible. London Bridge is made use of to satisfy the hugging impulse. The game is played as follows. Two leaders agree upon two objects, for example, a horse-and-carriage ...
— A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes • Sanford Bell
... watching the processes by a shortsighted jealousy. He immediately sat down with a yard of carpeting, and, patiently unraveling it thread by thread, combined and calculated till he invented the machinery on which the best carpets of the Old and the New World are woven. No pains which such ingenuity and energy can render effective are spared to make our fabrics equal those of the British market, and we need only to be disabused of the old prejudice, and to keep up with the movement of our own country, and find out our own resources. The fact is, every year ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... would be that we should send our manufactures, not to Portugal, but to South America; while Portugal would be obliged to send the bullion to some other country that it might carry on a smuggling trade with its neighbour, Spain. It was impossible for the ingenuity of man to point out any ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... necessity. You recollect the man that Mr. Clarke spoke to you of this morning, who, at the sacking of Lawrence, hid himself in the cellar, while his wife guided with a lantern the border ruffians who were in search of him. She relied apparently upon the ingenuity of the husband to hide himself effectively—a reliance in which she was not disappointed. Not having found him, they decided to set fire to the house, and then she asked permission to bring out her household furniture and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... bring to greater perfection. Whether this natural process is to be repeated in the present instance must be left for the future to decide. In any case, Mr. Grimston's success, if success is to be his reward, though it will be well merited by his ingenuity and perseverance in solving a difficult problem, will never cause us to forget the prior claims of Herr Frederick Siemens, of Dresden, to the palm of the discoverer. Mr. Grimston may or may not be the happy inventor of the best gas-burner of the day; but there ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... has it, men are tormented by the opinions they have of things, rather than by the things themselves. This is eminently true of many of our worst problems to-day. We have available knowledge and ingenuity and material resources to make a far fairer world than that in which we find ourselves, but various obstacles prevent our intelligently availing ourselves of them. The object of this book is to substantiate ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... therefore, recommend to my readers not to satisfy themselves with this account of the Credit, but to look into that which Archbishop Spottiswood narrates; which, as it is much more distinct in answering to each part of complaint from the Congregationers, so it has all the air of ingenuity, and seems fully to answer the character of that wise and worthy Princess." He then proceeds to quote from Spottiswood's MS. some remarks, differing from the corresponding passage in the printed History; but these are too long to ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... that would promptly consign him to the obscurity from which he had emerged. Pending the decease of genius, Chatelet appeared to offer up his hopes as a sacrifice at Mme. de Bargeton's feet; but with the ingenuity of a rake, he kept his own plan in abeyance, watching the lovers' movements with keenly critical eyes, and waiting for the opportunity of ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... and feelings, while Mr. Irwine was pronouncing the solemn "Absolution" in her deaf ears, and through all the tones of petition that followed! Anger lay very close to disappointment, and soon won the victory over the conjectures her small ingenuity could devise to account for Arthur's absence on the supposition that he really wanted to come, really wanted to see her again. And by the time she rose from her knees mechanically, because all the rest were rising, the colour had returned to her cheeks even with a heightened ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... the young man closely and, after much serious thought, wrote to his personal friend, Dr. Marmion, of New York, inviting him to the Monastery to take a day or two of rest. Nancy exhausted her ingenuity to tempt and increase his appetite, but nothing served to help him, and what made matters worse, he seemed to have no desire to improve. True, he was just as exact and faithful in the discharge of his official ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... negotiations confided, difficulties to be explained, here and there by possibility a jest or two might be scattered, a witty allusion thrown in, or a sentiment interwoven; but for the main body of the case, it neither could receive any ornamental treatment, nor if, by any effort of ingenuity, it had, could it look otherwise ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... translation. The taste and the literary habits of each age demand different qualities in poetry, and therefore a different sort of rendering of Homer. To the men of the time of Elizabeth, Homer would have appeared bald, it seems, and lacking in ingenuity, if he had been presented in his antique simplicity. For the Elizabethan age, Chapman supplied what was then necessary, and the mannerisms that were then deemed of the essence of poetry, namely, daring and luxurious conceits. Thus in Chapman's ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... Mark Twain and other American humorists; but perhaps the most curious was his amusement over a cutting from an American newspaper—a printed recipe for an American concoction known as "Hohenzollern punch," said to be in readiness for the prince on his arrival. The number of intoxicants, and the ingenuity of their combination, as his Majesty read the list aloud, were amazing; it was a terrific brew, which only a very tough seaman could ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... may, if he thinks best, give an outline of the argument to follow. In making these summaries, a debater must always avoid stating them in so bald and crude a form as to make them monotonous and offensive. He ought rather to use all the ingenuity at his command in an attempt to make this repetition ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... story. It threw, even to her confused perceptions, and imperfectly initiated vision, a lurid glare on the whole hazy episode of the Blue Star Mine. Her husband had made his money in that brilliant speculation at the cost of "getting ahead" of some one less alert to seize the chance; the victim of his ingenuity was young Robert Elwell, who had "put him on" to ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... live in the forest. He has much skill and ingenuity. The wildcat shows us we must think, must use tact, must be shrewd when we set out to do anything. The wildcat is one of the ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown
... the most hateful of all vices is that it goes first beyond ordinary limits, and then beyond those of humanity; that it devises new kinds of punishments, calls ingenuity to aid it in inventing devices for varying and lengthening men's torture, and takes delight in their sufferings: this accursed disease of the mind reaches its highest pitch of madness when cruelty itself turns into pleasure and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... and ingenuity in her treatment. With a clam-shell she scraped and saved the rich fat from under the skins of the squirrels, and this she "tried out" in a golden dish, over the fire. The oil thus got she used to anoint his healing wound. She used a dressing of clay and leaves; ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... could be crammed fuller of the clearest proofs of the most intelligent design, indicating a mind of the highest order? Many of the most remarkable inventions of man were suggested by the wonderful contrivances found in the human body. Yet they say this marvelous piece of ingenuity did not come from the hand of the Creator but was developed by blind chance or "natural laws," without a trace of intelligent design by the Creator, or by man or beast. The human body can no more be a product of chance or causo-mechanical ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... the inquest were looked upon as exaggerations too outrageous for belief even by the most credulous. Probably his version of the incidents, owing to its rich substratum of the marvellous yet true, was much more accurate than was usual with him when the marvellous depended on his ingenuity to provide it. It was, however, roundly discredited in his own circle, and nothing in it could have evoked recognition in Sapps Court even if the name of the convict had reached the ears that knew it. For it was not only wrongly reported but ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... For arch centering, it is necessary and convenient to use independent ribs and loose lagging, for the centers can then be carried forward piece-meal, the falsework upholding the green arch and re-erected at the advance end of the work. In these matters each contractor prefers to use his own ingenuity, and so long as the work is properly built, the engineer can well give him considerable latitude as to use of methods. One thing, however, the engineer must insist upon—that all centering and falsework be as nearly rigid as ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... tribute. The heating, lighting and ventilating arrangements [Page 278] of the hut had been left entirely in his charge, and had been carried out with admirable success. The cook's corner was visited next, and Scott was very surprised to see the mechanical ingenuity shown by Clissold. 'Later,' he says, 'when I found that Clissold was called in to consult on the ailments of Simpson's motor, and that he was capable of constructing a dog sledge out of packing-cases, I was less surprised, because I knew by this time that he had had considerable training ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... the poor in the East-end of London, and the crowning disgrace of his trial for seditious libel at the Old Bailey, where he was condemned to six months' imprisonment; a penalty from which he was rescued by the ingenuity of his counsel, who discovered a flaw in the indictment, and succeeded, at great cost to Trefusis, in getting the sentence quashed. Agatha at last got tired of hearing of his misdeeds. She believed ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... enable the statesmen of the street to know the result within a few minutes of the closing of the polls—whereby many are spared to their country who would otherwise incur fatal disorders by exposure to the night air while assisting in awaiting the returns. But a voting-machine that human ingenuity can not pervert, ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... mass, a system of enormities, which incontrovertibly bids defiance to every regulation which ingenuity can devise, or power effect, but a TOTAL EXTINCTION. Why ought slavery to be abolished? Because it is incurable injustice. Why is injustice to remain for ...
— Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America • Moses Grandy
... is this: I want to see whether a man can come out here in the woods, naked, with no aid but that of his own hands and his own ingenuity and—" ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... the situation would require all my address and ingenuity. If the wedding bells were ever to ring out in the little church of Market Snodsbury, Bertram had plainly got to put in some shrewdish work. I had gathered, during my conversation with Aunt Dahlia, that there had been ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... Triplett's ingenuity was responsible for the bamboo mast, woven paa-paa sail and the new yard-arm, which, in the absence of a universal joint was cleverly ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... exceedingly simple device bore witness to the ingenuity of the inventor. He had noticed in his days of free ballooning that to rise the aeronaut had to throw out sand-ballast; to descend he had to open the valves and let out gas. As his supply of both gas and sand was limited it was clear that ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... 'Pagan Taylor'. And Taylor's translations and commentaries of Plato had been favourites of Shelley in his college days. Something at least of Taylor's queer mixture of flaming enthusiasm and tortuous ingenuity may be said to appear in the unexpected document we ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... and Huntingdonshire, where the infamous scoundrel "Witch-finder-General" Matthew Hopkins, under the sanction of the courts, was "pricking," "waking," "watching," and "testing" persons suspected or accused of witchcraft, with fiendish ingenuity of indignity and torture. Says James Howell in his ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... The value of an article also becomes greatly enhanced to the consumer, when it is permitted to pass through so many hands, each individual of whom must place upon it a profit which he deems adequate to his labour or his ingenuity. Allowing liberty to a prisoner to pursue this kind of avocation is productive of another evil; it leads him, by gradual steps, from becoming careless of his proper duty, to the assumption of a degree of importance and independence which induces him to place himself above his master, ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... letters from the Montreal friends in whom he believed. Reginald was chopping wood; the two sisters were over their daily lessons. What to do with Jay, while the above question was being asked and answered, was a problem tasking Robert's ingenuity, and finally he assumed the office of writing-master, set her a sum in long division, which he assured her would require the deepest abstraction of thought, and advised a withdrawal to some other room for ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... material. Parts are often shaded with a brush, high lights and details worked in with stitches of silk, and sometimes whole flowers or figures are embroidered, cut out, and couched down. This sort of work is extremely amusing, and gives scope to much play of fancy and ingenuity, and when artistically composed it is sometimes ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... will be suspicious.—I will return once again to the hated mansion.—You, my swain, must conceal yourself in the mazes of this friendly wilderness. It shall not be long ere I come to you again.—With motives like mine to inspire ingenuity, I shall easily find a way to elude the strictest guard, and escape from the closest thraldom.—Say, my Edwin!—this stratagem shall suffice,—and you shall lead me in safety under the friendly cover of the night to liberty ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin |
