"Invention" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... salve continued to be much spoken of on the Continent, and many eager claimants appeared for the honour of the invention. Dr. Fludd, or A Fluctibus, the Rosicrucian, who has been already mentioned in a previous part of this volume, was very zealous in introducing it into England. He tried it with great success in several cases; and no wonder; ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... mocking, cruel invention— What the deep intention? Who shall give replies? Demons wildly sporting, God's beautiful distorting, Or His ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... place of a knowledge of facts, very justly reproaches the Americans for the sort of confusion which exists in the accounts of the expenditure in the townships; and after giving the model of a departmental budget in France, he adds:—"We are indebted to centralization, that admirable invention of a great man, for the uniform order and method which prevail alike in all the municipal budgets, from the largest town to the humblest commune." Whatever may be my admiration of this result, when I see the communes of France, with their ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... time of war they will prove wholly useless, since they will be attacked at once by foes both foreign and domestic, whom together it will be impossible for you to resist. And if ever fortresses were useless they are so at the present day, by reason of the invention of artillery, against the fury of which, as I have shown already, a petty fortress which affords no room for retreat behind fresh works, cannot ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... been lately introduced into literature, of writing very long notes upon very indifferent verses, appears to me a rather happy invention, as it supplies us with a mode of turning dull poetry to account; and as horses too heavy for the saddle may yet serve well enough to draw lumber, so Poems of this kind make excellent beasts of burden and will bear notes though they may not bear reading. Besides, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... imagination capable after so strong a proof of its power? Can it be doubted that among all the pretended apparitions of which stories are related, the fancy alone works for all those which do not proceed from angels and the spirits of the blessed, and that the rest are the invention of men? ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... ought also to love one another," 1 John iv. 9, 10, 11. "Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us," Eph. v. 2. Here are the topics of the most vehement persuasion. There is no invention can afford so constraining a motive, God so loving us, sinful and miserable us, that he gave his only begotten Son, that we might live through him, and Christ so loving us, that he gave himself a sacrifice for sin. O then! who should live to himself, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... now," thought he, "is about a hundred pounds of high-grade dynamite, or a gallon of nitroglycerin. Better still, a dozen capsules of my own invention, my 'Pulverite!' ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... could recall of how the plot came to be hatched. Nor was Dick glory-hunter enough to give himself any more credit than he did his partners. In his brief account the freshman spread all the credit for the invention equally over the six ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... the dramatic poets of the Elizabethan age remain unequalled by any other school or group of dramatists, and the English novelists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the representatives of any other development of prose-fiction. In the art of construction, in the invention and the arrangement of incident, these dramatists and novelists may have been left behind by others; in the creation of character they are on the whole without rivals in their respective branches ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... from setting down so trite a truism; it is the common ground of all religion, but I have reached it from the opposite pole. Religion is to me the unworthy triumph of instinct over knowledge, a lazy substitution of invention for discovery. Religion invites us to take her postulates on trust; but a material age is deserving of material proofs, and it is these proofs I have striven to supply. Surely it is a higher aim, and not a lower, to appeal to the senses ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... Now, it is a curious fact that although cane sugar can be transformed into glucose, yet the latter form of sugar has never, so far, been changed into cane or crystallisable sugar. As Mr. J.A. Despeissis points out, the invention of a process that would achieve this would be worth more than all the mines of New South Wales ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... in French and German, all the great authors old and modern; he took the important reviews of Germany and France, and several newspapers. He knew much more than I of history past and present, of the happenings in the great world, art and music and invention, finances and politics. He could name the cabinets of Europe, the characters and records of their members, or discuss the quality of Caruso's voice as compared with Jean de Reszke's, though he had heard neither. Twenty-two years ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... who lays vows upon his followers, the object of which is to avoid sin, could nevertheless make virtue and sin purely dependent upon the disposition of fate, and preach the uselessness of carrying out the law. The accusation that Nataputta embraced fatalism must therefore be regarded as an invention and an outcome of sect hatred as well as of the wish to throw discredit on their opponents. [Footnote: Jacobi loc. cit.. ...
— On the Indian Sect of the Jainas • Johann George Buehler
... wonderfully can I hang this arch in air, or weave this tracery across the clouds? And the catastrophe was instant and irrevocable. Architecture became in France a mere web of waving lines,—in England a mere grating of perpendicular ones. Redundance was substituted for invention, and geometry for passion; tho Gothic art became a mere expression of wanton expenditure, and vulgar mathematics; and was swept away, as it then deserved to be swept away, by the severer pride, and purer learning, of the schools founded ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... raconteur; so are all such vagabonds. I possess a collection of these tales by Renucci, published at Bastia[10], and proposed to interweave some of them into my narrative. They may be worked up, with invention and embellishment, into pretty romances; but that is not our business. In Renucci, we have stories of Ospitalità , Magnanimità , Fedeltà , Probità , Generosità , Incorruttibilità , all the virtues ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... interminable systems of vibrations propagated along the nerves, or animal spirits rushing up and down between the muscles and the brain; which, if the facts could have been proved, would have been an important addition to our knowledge of physiological laws; but the mere invention, or arbitrary supposition of them, could not unless by the strongest delusion be supposed to render the phenomena of animal life more comprehensible, or less mysterious. Nothing, however, seemed satisfactory, but ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... informs us that the author, Holdsworth, said it was "exceedingly well done," I have before me another, printed in London for R. Gosling, 1715, with an engraved frontispiece, illustrative of the triumphant reception of Taffy's invention. The depredations of the mouse are illustrated in the various figures around, as cheeses burrowed through, even the invasion of a sleeping Welshman's very [Greek: erkos odonton], &c. The title is, The Mouse-Trap, a Poem done from the original ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... has been extended by some, even to the gifts of nature; and an opinion has been long conceived, that quickness of invention, accuracy of judgment, or extent of knowledge, appearing before the usual time, presage a short life. Even those who are less inclined to form general conclusions, from instances which by their own nature must be rare, have ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... are they? who are the cowled monks, the hooded friars who glide with shrouded faces in the procession of life, muttering in an unknown tongue words of mysterious import? Who are they? the midnight assassins of reputation, who lurk in the by-lanes of society, with dagger tongues sharpened by invention and envenomed by malice, to draw the blood of innocence, and, hyena-like, banquet on the dead? Who are they? They are a multitude no man can number, black-stoled familiars of the inquisition of slander, searching for ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... arch-thief, come to be presiding genius here? Denis knew; his friend Eames had explained everything to him. Mercury had nothing whatever to do with the site. That name had been proved by the bibliographer to be the invention of some pedantic monk who liked to display his learning to a generation avid of antiquities, a generation which insisted on attaching a Roman deity to every cavern. It was a wilful fabrication, made in the infancy of archaeology when historical criticism was non-existent. And the same with ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... we who on our return saw for the first time the hut and its annexes completely equipped were amazed; though perhaps the gadget which appealed most to us at first was the electric apparatus by which the cook, whose invention it was, controlled the ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... passed, confirming the patent to Mr Stead, as though it had been regularly filed within the prescribed period. A second patent was afterwards obtained, but that related more particularly to the form of blocks. The first patent, which had been infringed, was for an invention consisting of a mode of paving with blocks of similar sizes and dimensions, of either a sexagonal, triangular, or square form, so as to make a level ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... Libertatia, Caraccioli became Secretary of State, while the Council was formed of the ablest amongst the pirates, without distinction of nation or colour. The difficulty of language, as French, English, Portuguese, and Dutch were equally spoken, was overcome by the invention of a new language, a kind of Esperanto, which was built up of words from all four. For many years this ideally successful and happy pirate Utopia flourished; but at length misfortunes came, one on top of the other, and a sudden and unexpected attack by the hitherto friendly natives ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... books, is longer than the Odyssey. It closely follows the history as told by Livy; but the elements of almost epic grandeur in the contest between Rome and Hannibal all disappear amid masses of tedious machinery. Without any invention or constructive power of his own, Silius copies with tasteless pedantry all the outworn traditions of the heroic epic. What Homer or Virgil has done, he must needs do too. The Romans are the Dardanians ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... of a frolic of the Titans, or rather as if reared by the boys and girls, while their fathers and mothers 'lay stretched out huge in length,' and in breadth too, upon the slopes around, and laughed thunderously at the sportive invention of their sons and daughters. Falconer helped his father up to the edge of the rampart that he might look over. Again he started back, 'afraid of that which was high,' for the lowly valley was yet at a great height above the diminished waves. ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... opened the case generally, I proceed, in the first place, to examine the hereditary system, because it has the priority in point of time. The representative system is the invention of the modern world; and, that no doubt may arise as to my own opinion, I declare it before hand, which is, that there is not a problem in Euclid more mathematically true, than that hereditary government has not a right to exist. When therefore we take from any man the exercise of hereditary ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... accustomed to. It was a newer and more deadly game, and I had to watch my splendid army eaten away as waves eat a sandhill. Never once did I get a chance of forcing close action. These new tactics that had come from Phorenice's invention, were beyond my art to meet or understand. We were eight to her one, and our close-packed numbers only made us so much the more easy for slaughter. A panic came, and those who could fled. Myself, I had no wish to go back and earn the axe that waits for the unsuccessful general. I tried to die ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... customary and reasonable to discard as fanciful the various devices and theories put forward by the experimenters in the Middle Ages and fix the beginning of practical aeronautical devices with the invention of hot-air balloons by the Montgolfiers, of Paris, ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... left during the night by the Infant Jesus. Since the Empire introduced English ways here, plum-pudding and mincepies have been eaten, and even Christmas-trees have flourished. This year these festive shrubs, as an invention of the detested foe, have been rigidly tabooed. Plum-puddings and mincepies, too, will appear on few tables. In order to comfort the children, the girls are to be given soup tickets to distribute to beggars, and the boys are to have their choice between French and German wooden ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... the Mountain (Fjallkirkjan; of the five novels making up this sequence, three have been translated into English under two titles, Ships in the Sky and The Night and the Dream). This is one of the major works of Icelandic literature—containing a fascinating world of fancy, invention, and reality. It is the story of the development of a writer who leaves home in order to seek the world. One of the best known stories in all Icelandic literature is his masterly short novel Advent or The good Shepherd (Aventa).—Father ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... a road or path; and thus they successfully escaped the vengeance of Parasurama. This futile fiction only demonstrates the real ignorance of their Brahman priests, who, if they had known a little history, need not have had recourse to their invention to furnish the Daharias with a distinguished pedigree. A third derivation is from a word dahri or gate, and they say that the name of Dahria or Daharia was conferred on them by Bimbaji Bhonsla, because of the bravery ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... offensive, the only possible decisive blow, is still merely talked of. Not once nor twice only have the Western Allies had victory within their grasp—and failed to grip it. The British cavalry generals wasted the great invention of the tanks as a careless child breaks a toy. At least equally remarkable is the dragging inadaptability of European statecraft. Everywhere the failure of ministers and statesmen to rise to the urgent definite necessities of the present time is glaringly conspicuous. They seem to be incapable even ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... old man—a cunning old rascal with short-cropped grey hair, a wrinkled face packed with craft, and a big pipe. The artist, a tall, bearded man, was painting with vigour, but without, so far as I could discern, any model; and yet it was obviously a portrait on which he was engaged and no work of invention. After joining the crowd before the easel for a minute or so, I was passing on when a figure emerged from a cool corner where he had been resting and held out his hand. He was a cunning old rascal with short-cropped grey hair, ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... that astronomer had not the means of determining. It is positively asserted by astronomers that at least twelve hundred years were required, "during which time the observations must have been taken with the greatest care and regularly recorded," to arrive at the knowledge necessary for the invention of the Neros, and that such observations would have been impossible without the ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... was a witty invention to put the bloodhounds off the scent, since Dalaber would scarce deliver over his friend into the hands of his ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... suddenly, remembering from the astonished faces of Keene and Markham that the secret was not known to them, while they, impressed with the belief that the story was a sudden invention of Brimmer's, with difficulty preserved their composure. But the women were quick to notice their confusion, and ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... only enjoined her to keep a quiet tongue about his private affairs, which Mrs. Kebby usually did until excited by too copious drams of gin, when she talked freely and unwisely to all the servants in the Square. It was to her observation and invention that Berwin owed his ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... large or general scale. Schemes of federal union were put into operation, though too late to be of avail against the assaults of Macedonia and Rome. But as for the principle of representation, that seems to have been an invention of the Teutonic mind; no statesman of antiquity, either in Greece or at Rome, seems to have conceived the idea of a city sending delegates armed with plenary powers to represent its interests in a general legislative assembly. To the Greek statesmen, no doubt, this too would have seemed derogatory ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... from Huish; "If we examine the account which Huber gives of his invention (!) of the royal jelly, the existence and efficacy of which are fully acquiesced in by the aforesaid editors, to what other conclusions are we necessarily driven, than that they are the dupes of a visionary enthusiast, whose greatest merit consists ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... cure for the drunkard's craving after alcohol," he said, looking up at her with a smile. "'A thing of my own invention,' to quote the knight in 'Through the Looking ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... to put her children to bed, only to find that her fertility of imagination in the afternoon was to prove her undoing in the evening; for her memory was by no means as reliable as her powers of invention. ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... mode of treatment, and the patient died, he was adjudged guilty of murder. Many drugs and medicines were used; the ciphers, or characters, employed by modern apothecaries to designate grains and drams are of Egyptian invention. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... and also for a bath-tub. Indeed, for the former office my razeed dory gained such a reputation on the voyage that my washerwoman at Samoa would not take no for an answer. She could see with one eye that it was a new invention which beat any Yankee notion ever brought by missionaries to the islands, and she had ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... yet extant in the archives of Simancas, from Denia and others, give rise to strong suspicion that the story which the world has believed so long—Juana's insane determination not to bury the coffin of her husband—was a pure invention of their own, intended to produce (as it has produced) a general belief in the insanity of ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... "your boat is at least a century before its time, perhaps an era. What a misfortune that the secret of such an invention ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... fell at length upon a cobbler, Giles Gorgon by name, who produced several new grins of his own invention, having been used to cut faces for many years together over his last. At the very first grin he cast every human feature out of his countenance; at the second he became the face of spout; at the third a baboon; at the fourth the head of a bass-viol; and ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... fight was invented some two thousand years ago, and the innocent, conventional persons who still believe in a kind of routine, or humdrum, of shooting, who have not caught up with this two-thousand-year-old invention, are about to be irrevocably displaced in our modern life by men who have a livelier, more far-seeing, more practical, more modern kind of courage. From this time on we have made up our minds, we, the people of this world, that the only men we are going to allow to fight for us are ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... convinced that all religion, no matter what its antiquity or its modernity may be, is an invention of our groping earthly minds. It occurs to him that it would be interesting and proper to lay aside all theology, all creed, all the superficial trappings placed by man about his conceptions of a deity, and ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... afford to waste his knowledge. If he talked only half the time nobody would believe him. They'd think he was crazy, and they'd know why, in past ages, everybody had died but him, and they'd wonder how he had managed to survive the invention of gunpowder. These girls have overestimated the value of good-will. Their securities are not well secured. There are millions of watered stock in their treasuries, and it isn't worth five cents on the dollar. Marie, you can have a lot of fun. I ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... that "necessity is the mother of invention." These natives have no wood. Not a single tree grows in the whole land of which I am writing. There are plenty of plants, grasses, mosses, and beautiful flowers in summer—growing, too, close beside ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... contrary, it confirmed my belief that he did not dabble in music, until, to my horror, I discovered that the strangely discordant sounds of a harp which kept reaching my ears from some unknown region were actually proceeding from his basement, where he had two harpsichords of his own invention. He informed me that he had unfortunately neglected playing them for a long time, but that he now meant to begin practising again assiduously in order to give me pleasure. I succeeded in dissuading him from this, by assuring him that the ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... quite classical in a party of philosophical erratics in quest of novelty. This tale of Dr. Daniel Dove, of Doncaster, has given a frame and pegs, on which some literary man has founded a story, and on which he has hung the contents of his scrap book. The invention is not Coleridge's; and the writer believes the story itself to be traditional. The following account of his ascent up the Brocken was written by himself, soon ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... "Mother's invention" was a standing joke with the young Carrolls, but their mother had a serene belief that some day SOMETHING might be done with the little contrivance she had thought of some years ago, by which the largest of windows might be washed outside as ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... most forward of its riders. He was a man much addicted to hunting, as far as the get-up of the thing was concerned; he was great in boots and breeches; wondrously conversant with bits and bridles; he had quite a collection of saddles; and patronised every newest invention for carrying spare shoes, sandwiches, and flasks of sherry. He was prominent at the cover side;—some people, including the master of hounds, thought him perhaps a little too loudly prominent; he affected a familiarity with the dogs, ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... aeronaut Garnerin accompanied him and threw down flowers to Napoleon and Josephine. "Thus," the Moniteur goes on, "in a single day, at one show, the Italians have combined the proudest pomp of the ancients and the boldest invention of modern science, together with the presence of a hero who excels both ancients ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... Christians was not perceptibly lessened by these cruel punishments, they became tired of putting them to death, and attempts were then made to make the Christians abandon their faith by the infliction of the most dreadful torments which the most diabolical invention could suggest. The Japanese Christians, however, endured these persecutions with a great deal of steadiness and courage; very few, in comparison with those who remained steadfast in the faith, were the number of those ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... planted your chairs immediately outside. I was the first- comer, you observe, not yourselves, and I cannot say I was interested enough to listen to your conversation until my attention was attracted by the description of myself. I presume the very descriptive title was originally your invention?" ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... extreme satisfaction which children derive from quenching their thirst with pure water? And who that has perverted his appetite for drink, by stimulating his palate with bitter beer, sour cider, rum and water, and other beverages of human invention, but would be a gainer, even on the score of mere animal gratification, without any reference to health, if he could bring back his vitiated taste to ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... he then exclaimed, and the conversation was suddenly interrupted, as if they had found some fresh and powerful subject of interest. The mine was his invention, his method of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... mutual jokes about one of these gentlemen-apprentices who used to set about his smith's work in white wash-leather gloves, for fear of spoiling his hands. Mr Holdsworth often spoke to me about my father as having the same kind of genius for mechanical invention as that of George Stephenson, and my father had come over now to consult him about several improvements, as well as an offer of partnership. It was a great pleasure to me to see the mutual regard of these two men. Mr Holdsworth, young, handsome, keen, well-dressed, an object ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... it would surely have been one of the great misdeeds of history. Partially performed, the misdeed is not altogether to be regretted; for as one stands in the court of the castle, and lets one's eye wander from the splendid wing of Francis I. - which is the last work of free and joyous invention - to the ruled lines and blank spaces of the ponderous pavilion of Mansard, one makes one's reflections upon the advantage, in even the least personaI of the arts, of having something to say, and upon the stupidity of a taste which had ended by ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... essential part of the force which carried five British posts, and made upwards of eleven hundred prisoners. Its leader, in the performance of these services, displayed a mind of so much fertility of invention and military resource, as to add greatly to his previous reputation as ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... upon the subject. The kind of scriptures or science which one always studies gives him the kind of knowledge which it is capable of giving. Such Knowledge verily becomes agreeable to him. Ignorance leads to barrenness of invention in respect of means. Contrivance of means, again, through the aid of knowledge, becomes the source of great felicity. Without entertaining any scruples and any malice,[390] listen to these instructions. Through the decrease of the treasury, the king's forces are decreased. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... by the preparations for the concert, there came in one day a certain Herr Moritz, whom Bulow had introduced to me in Paris as a ridiculous person. His clumsy and importunate behaviour and the idiotic messages— evidently of his own invention—which he brought me from Bulow drove me in the end to show him the door with great emphasis, for I too was carried away by Tausig's lively annoyance at this very officious intruder. He reported on this to Cosima in a ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... century did the builder or even the restorer add aught but Italian accessories where any considerable work was to be accomplished. Why, or how, the Renaissance ever came into being it is quite impossible for any one to say, sans doubt, as is the first rudimentary invention of Gothic itself. Perhaps it was but the outcome of a desire for something different, if not new; but in the process the taste of the people fell to a low degree. Architecture may be said to have been all but divorced from life, and, while the fabric is a dead thing of itself, it ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... soldiers, and the American was obliged to surrender, with no terms granted save that he and his associates should be treated with humanity. [Footnote: Letter of Hamilton, Dec. 18-30, 1778. The story of Helm's marching out with the honors of war is apparently a mere invention. Even Mann Butler, usually so careful, permits himself to be led off into all sorts of errors when describing the incidents of the Illinois and Vincennes expeditions, and the writers who have followed him have generally been less accurate. The story of Helm drinking toddy by the fire-place when ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... raffled for! What a comment, what a satire on our institutions! The conclusion will be, that mankind will hang itself upon a tree. And have all the precepts in all the Bibles taught men only this? and is the last and most admirable invention of the human race only an improved muck-rake? Is this the ground on which Orientals and Occidentals meet? Did God direct us so to get our living, digging where we never planted,—and He would, perchance, reward us with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... telegraphy will serve to illustrate the difference between the two points of view. Almost all the serious intellectual labour required for the possibility of this invention is due to three men—Faraday, Maxwell, and Hertz. In alternating layers of experiment and theory these three men built up the modern theory of electromagnetism, and demonstrated the identity of light with electromagnetic waves. The system which they discovered is ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... take me by surprise, but I found towards the end that Miss E. EVERETT GREEN had contrived to slip in the real villain all unsuspected while I, as she meant me to, was staring hard at the supposed one, so that there I must acknowledge myself defeated. With a stolen invention, an old gentleman found shot in his room, and a son under a vow to avenge his father, the story provides plenty of thrills, and the "Silver Tea-shop" itself has the fascination that business ventures in books often exercise. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... the residence of the gods should be encumbered with so much useless rubbish. The natives of Otaheite entertain similar notions respecting these things, viz. that brutes, plants, and stones exist hereafter, but it is not mentioned that they extend the idea to objects of human invention."[658] ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... and your light—my light, rather—I am in command here in place of men you blinded. Saiksi, you deserve no consideration from me, in spite of our rooming together at Annapolis. You took—I don't say stole—my invention, and turned it against the country that educated you. You, or your confreres, did this before a declaration of war. You are a pirate, and I could string you up to ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... consequence of his believing that it was his sudara; but its coming to her out of the river when she called it by the name of white king, and taking the food she had brought it, must have been a fable of her own invention; for this being false, it was impossible that she should believe it to be true. The girl's story, however, as well as that of the man, is a strong proof that they both firmly believed the existence of crocodiles that are ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... missionary to the North-west. At his station of Norway House, he devoted himself to his great work. Rev. E. R. Young, in the Canadian Methodist Magazine for November, 1882, thus speaks of Mr. Evans' eminent service to the mission cause by his famous invention. He says:— ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... interest you to know that Nansen used every available modern invention to help make his voyage successful ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 56, December 2, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... now scarcely regretted her captivity. Preparations were made for the nuptials, and in a short time Mazin was made happy in the possession of his beloved genie. A round of festivities succeeded their marriage, and the seven sisters strove with each other who should by invention of new amusements make their residence among them most delightful to the happy pair Mazin, however, now began to think of his mother and his native city with fond regret, and at length begged leave of his kind patronesses to return home, to which request they, from admiration of his ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... the evening, when upon deck, by a little drummer, who invariably collects all the sailors round him, and spins them long, endless stories of his own invention, to which they listen with intense interest. On he goes, without a moment's hesitation, inventing everything most improbable and wonderful; of knights and giants and beautiful princesses, and imprisoned damsels, and poor peasants becoming ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... good, I hug them till I squeeze their blood. Libertas bears a large import: First, how to swagger in a court; And, secondly, to shew my fury Against an uncomplying jury; And, thirdly, 'tis a new invention, To favour Wood, and keep my pension; And, fourthly, 'tis to play an odd trick, Get the great seal and turn out Broderick; And, fifthly, (you know whom I mean,) To humble that vexatious Dean: And, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... Saxon race, while its founder was the ancestor of the imperial house of the Basileus of Britain. The dragon seems also to have been a Norman ensign. The lions or leopards, popularly assigned to the Conqueror, are certainly a later invention. There is no appearance of them on the banners and shields of the Norman army in the Bayeux tapestry. Armorial bearings were in use amongst the Welch, and even the Saxons, long before heraldry was reduced to a science by the Franks ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... big notch, Cely keeping tally by the knots in her bit of twine; thus, when two strings were tied about the stick, the ten dollars were seen to be an indisputable fact." This interesting method of computing the amount of her debt, whether an invention of her own or a survival of the African life of her parents, served the old negro woman's purpose perfectly; and it illustrates, as well as a score of examples could, the methods of numeration to which the children of barbarism resort when any number is to be expressed which exceeds ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... (32-pdr.), with 3 guns in each end and 12 on each side, but no guns in the wake of paddle wheel and machinery. Hatches to give air to the stokehold were located amidships. The Battery was to have been supplemented at the ends of each hull by a Columbiad "submarine gun" (100-pdr.), Fulton's invention, but these were not fitted. Provision was to be made in the fireboxes for heating shot, and a force pump with a cylinder 33 inches in diameter was employed to throw a stream of cold water, about 60-80 gallons per minute, for a distance of about two hundred feet. This could be done only when the paddle ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle
... in despair, for not a single idea would come to her aid, and yet to acknowledge such a want of invention would have been to forfeit her position, and therefore not to be thought of for a second. Her eyes roamed from side to side, and lit upon a table on which some working materials happened to be lying. A basket, a folded length ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... The method in which we distinguish the forms and distances of objects was not understood until Berkeley published his "New Theory of Vision." Few persons are aware of the opposition of bigotry, stolidity, and authority against which the brilliant advances of scientific discovery and mechanical invention and social improvement have been forced to contend, and in despite of which they have slowly won their way. Excommunications, dungeons, fires, sneers, polite persecution, bitter neglect, tell the story, from the time the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... century, by facilitating travel, made the invention of a key language a necessity. The twentieth century must ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 1 • Various
... during his reign the laws and principles of government which he found in force at his accession. If there had been an Order of the Millstone, Charles Felix would doubtless have conferred it upon his dutiful nephew; failing that, he presented to him for signature this wonderful document, the invention of which he owed to Prince Metternich. At the Congress of Verona in 1822, Charles Albert's claims to the succession were recognised, thanks chiefly to the Duke of Wellington, who represented England ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... no' been ony stream flowing there in the recollection o' living man. But"—and the naturalist was predominant for the instant—"there are rare kinds o' hawk moth to be found in that same desert! You'll be seeing the value o' my phosphorus invention before another couple of ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... power; the teaching of success and achievement is largely the discovery of means by which it is to be gained. However we may disguise it to ourselves, power is what we mainly seek, though we may call our goal knowledge, science, benevolence, invention, ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... material plane, there are numberless opportunities for the new Columbus. Ever and anon a canard appears in a newspaper, or a romance is published, reporting or describing some imaginary invention which is to revolutionize the economical situation. The problem of air-navigation is among the more familiar of these suggestions, though by no means the most important of them. No doubt we shall fly before long, but that mode of travel will be, after all, nothing ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... they visited in turn the court of the Woman's Building, the main hall, the east vestibule, the library, the Cincinnati parlor, the invention room, the nursing section, the scientific department, and ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... Robert Beaufort to assure the reader that he wholly disbelieved his brother's story of a private marriage. He considered that tale, when heard for the first time, as the mere invention (and a shallow one) of a man wishing to make the imprudent step he was about to take as respectable as he could. The careless tone of his brother when speaking upon the subject—his confession that of such a marriage there were no distinct proofs, except a copy ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of a student he might also have run into that nugget of the ancient Greek. Morals are the invention of the weak to protect themselves from ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... work is described in the thirty-fifth section of the Vita Nuova. The hostile nature of the visit seems to be of Browning's invention.—COOKE. ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... historian, tells us besides, that Pericles made use of engines of battery in this siege, being much taken with the curiousness of the invention, with the aid and presence of Artemon himself, the engineer, who, being lame, used to be carried about in a litter, where the works required his attendance, and for that reason was called Periphoretus. But Heraclides Ponticus disproves this out of Anacreon's poems, where mention ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... love the tarantella more than any other dance," Hermione murmured to her husband, "because it seems to be the invention of the moment, as if they were wild with joy and had to show it somehow, and showed it beautifully by dancing. Look ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... his death appoints his nephew, Eumenes, King of Pergamus; the competition for books between him and Ptolemy Philadelphus causes the latter to prohibit the export of papyrus from Egypt; this leads to the invention of parchment at Pergamus, whence ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... peaks of the Cordilleras. Now Percerin had been a clever man all his life, and by way of keeping up his reputation beyond the grave, took very good care not to make a bad death of it; and so contrived to die very skillfully; and that at the very moment he felt his powers of invention declining. He left a son and daughter, both worthy of the name they were called upon to bear; the son, a cutter as unerring and exact as the square rule; the daughter, apt at embroidery, and at designing ornaments. The marriage of Henry IV. and Marie de Medici, and the exquisite court-mourning for ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... this form,—where humor, quaint and sly, Dimples the cheek, and points the beaming eye; Where gay invention seems to boast its wiles In amorous ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... the greatest Folly in the World, if I should go about to give a Character of Persons of whom I have no manner of Knowledge. To speak well or ill of 'em wou'd be equally Ridiculous and Dangerous: For it must be all Invention, and I might then abuse a Man both in my Praise and Dispraise. It is thus with me with Respect to the Author of the Letter lately publish'd about our Language, and to his Patron. I know neither of them, and if I say a Word more than themselves, or the World have said of ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... one of his rooms a large globe of silk, swelled out and lighted by a lamp withinside, so that when the room was darkened we could plainly see the map of the world painted on it, as suggested in Practical Education. My father mentioned to this gentleman my Aunt Charlotte's invention of painting the stars on the inside of an umbrella: he was much pleased with it, and I think he will make such an umbrella.... Tell Sneyd that we saw at Edinburgh his old friend the Irish giant. I suppose he remembers seeing him at Bristol? he is so tall that he can with ease ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... cried Cutty, his nimble mind pouncing upon a happy invention. "You're romantic, Kitty. You're imagining all sorts of nonsense about this chap, and you must not let the situation intrigue you. If I spoke the name oddly—this Stefani Gregor—it was because I sensed in a moment that this was a bit of the overflow. Southeastern Europe, where the ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... written down or printed. It is left 'masterless,' unsigned; for of the original author's composition, may be, only a word or two remains. It has passed through many mouths, and has been made over countless times. But once written down it ceases virum volitare per ora; the invention of printing has spoiled the powers ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... before, and was a little anxious lest they should have lost something of their cunning. He did not know that mechanical faculty, for fine work as well as rough, goes in general with square-pointed fingers. Delicately tapered fingers, whatever they may indicate in the way of artistic invention, are not the fingers of the painter or the sculptor. The finest fingers of the tapering kind I have ever seen, were those of a distinguished chemist of the last generation. Eager to satisfy both his father and himself, that the hands of the bookmender had not degenerated more than ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... happy in fertility of invention and exaggerated descriptions; hence, large fresh-water rivers, valuable ores, and quarries of limestone, chalk, and marble were daily proclaimed soon after we had landed. At first we hearkened with avidity to such accounts, but perpetual disappointments taught us to listen with caution, and to believe ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... immediate personal violence, had not my whole attention been at the moment arrested by a fact of the most startling character. The cloak which I had worn was of a rare description of fur; how rare, how extravagantly costly, I shall not venture to say. Its fashion, too, was of my own fantastic invention; for I was fastidious to an absurd degree of coxcombry, in matters of this frivolous nature. When, therefore, Mr. Preston reached me that which he had picked up upon the floor, and near the folding-doors of the apartment, it was with an astonishment nearly bordering upon terror, that I ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... of a shade; for he has taken the character of Martinus Scriblerus, as he found it in the memoirs of that unsubstantial personage. The adventures indeed in which the author has engaged him, though they did not require much power of invention, are yet sufficiently ludicrous; and we join, perhaps, more willingly in the laugh, as it is aimed at general folly and not at individual weakness. The wit is not condensed and sparkling as in the Dunciad; the writer's chief resource ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... and grafein, to write), the result of transposing the letters of a word or words in such a manner as to produce other words that possess meaning. The construction of anagrams is an amusement of great antiquity, its invention being ascribed without authority to the Jews, probably because the later Hebrew writers, particularly the Kabbalists, were fond of it, asserting that "secret mysteries are woven in the numbers of letters.'' Anagrams were known to the Greeks ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... first number forms that the world used this is not the place to speak. Many of them are interesting, but none had much scientific value. In Europe the invention of notation was generally assigned to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean until the critical period of about a century ago,—sometimes to the Hebrews, sometimes to the Egyptians, but more often to the early ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... A. Leland, I have the honor to report that said letters patent were granted for an improved paint can August 14, 1860, for the term of fourteen years; that they consequently expired on the 14th day of August, 1874, whereupon the invention became the property of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... daggers, crosses, poison, and famine, were made use of in various parts to despatch the christians; and invention was exhausted to devise tortures against such as had no crime, but thinking differently from the ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... by point his minute accuracy to all that is known of ancient Carthage, his faithfulness to every indication which can serve for his guidance, his patience in grouping rather than his daring in the invention of action and details), that is not the question. 'I care little enough for archaeology! If the colour is not uniform, if the details are out of keeping, if the manners do not spring from the religion and the actions from the passions, if the characters are not consistent, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... selection was not happy; for Blackhead had none of the qualities which the trade of a false witness requires except wickedness. There was nothing plausible about him. His voice was harsh. Treachery was written in all the lines of his yellow face. He had no invention, no presence of mind, and could do little more than repeat by rote the lies taught him ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and removed a little further up to the Thames, and the more fashionable region of Scotland Yard. Here, where now Z 300 repairs to report his investigations to a Commissioner, the young dandies of Charles II.'s day strutted in gay doublets, swore hasty oaths of choice invention, smoked the true Tobago from huge pipe-bowls, and ogled the fair but not too bashful dames who passed to and fro in their chariots. The court took its name from the royalties of Scotland, who, when they visited the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... "carried on a separate existence side by side." The reason for this failure to apply theory to practice, and vice versa, must be sought in the defects of the theory, he thought, because "the mechanisms themselves have been quietly developed in practical machine-design, by invention and improvement, regardless of whether or not they were accorded any direct and proper theoretical recognition." He pointed out that the theories had thus far ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... origin, they are evidently the invention of an ignoramus, who knows nothing of the delicate anatomy of the generative organs or of the proper treatment of the diseases incident thereto, for none other would have thought of such a preposterous plan of ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... but has fallen asleep!" thought Miss Mary. "Perhaps that horror, which I thought seized the child in the empty drawing-rooms, was an invention of her mind? Surely it was nothing more; she is simply ill; perhaps, not very ill, since she fell ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... concepts and technologies for Rapid Dominance. Understanding the interplay between technology and doctrine is not only or simply a straightforward matter of establishing operational requirements and then seeking to attain them through invention and design. It is a complex and interactive process of experimentation and discovery wherein intellect, hard work, endurance, and innovation must drive the use of technology. Rather than make changes, ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... metaphysicians, it is well known—as, for example, Dr Campbell and Dugald Stewart—have laid rude hands upon the syllogism. They have pronounced it to be a vain invention. They have argued that no addition of knowledge, no advancement in the acquisition of truth, no new conviction, can possibly be obtained through its means, inasmuch as no syllogism can contain any thing in the conclusion ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... required, in this country, at least, during the present century. The publication of the reports of battles, written on the field, and frequently during the heat of an engagement, was a marked feature of the late war. "Our Special Correspondent" is not, however, an invention belonging to this important era ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... immensely strong in itself, with a perfect glacis and field of fire. Every invention of modern defensive war helped to make it stronger. In front of it was the usual system of barbed wire, stretched on iron supports, over a width of fifty yards. Behind the wire was the system of the First Enemy ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing
... and fro by other means of transportation, such as automobiles, electric cars, etc. (Daniel 12:4) There is no one living in modern times who is wiser than Solomon; yet during the past 125 years there has been a great development in invention and a marvelous increase of knowledge; because it is due time, and because the prophets of God centuries ago foretold that such would come ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... of formation and rejuvenation, with the constant hope and desire for unity as the incentive to their irresistible efforts; the system of compulsory military service, which made them a nation of trained soldiers, provided with the most effective arms of modern invention, with generals who were masters in the art of strategy, proudly mindful still of the crushing defeat they had administered to Austria; the intelligence, the moral force that resided in that army, commanded as it was almost exclusively by young generals, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... cutting yourself. But there's still the fact to consider that the ragged edge of tin left around the top makes it almost impossible to pour out all of the food. Yet now, all this trouble, waste and danger is ended. No wonder salesmen everywhere are finding this invention a truly revolutionary ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... that this was an instance where "necessity was the mother of invention." He realized that if he could run some of his front material over to the back he would relieve the pressure at the front, present a more varied contents there, and make his advertisements more valuable by putting them next to the most expensive ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... "Women's virtue is man's best invention." Balsac was wrong. Virtue—the unswerving devotion to one mate—is common among birds and some of the higher mammals. If Balsac meant celibacy when he said virtue, why that is one of man's inventions—though ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... once in the Bible the divine sanction and defense of it as a wise, righteous, and permanent institution? Doubtless there was mixture of influences in bringing about the result. The immense advance in the market value of slaves consequent on Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin had its unconscious effect on the moral judgments of some. The furious vituperations of a very small but noisy faction of antislavery men added something to the swift current of public opinion. But demonstrably the chief cause of this sudden change of religious opinion—one ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... whom he assisted in plundering and destroying under Elizabeth. He could only judge of their books from English translations, not being sufficiently acquainted with the language to understand its niceties. Yet he had to acknowledge that their poems "savoured of sweet wit and good invention, but skilled not of the goodly ornaments of poetry; yet were they sprinkled with some pretty flowers of their natural device, which gave good grace ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... duties, of our burdens and blessings. The forest has fallen by the ax of our woodsmen; the soil has been made to teem by the tillage of our farmers; our commerce has whitened every ocean. The dominion of man over physical nature has been extended by the invention of our artists. Liberty and law have marched hand in hand. All the purposes of human association have been accomplished as effectively as under any other government on the globe, and at a cost little exceeding in a whole generation the expenditure of ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... horses, and the pride and fondness of their ducal owners; and trustworthy critics have praised their eminent truth. But it is only the artist or the hippanthrop who can delight in them long; and we presently left them for the other chambers, in which the invention of Giulio had been used to please himself rather than his master. I scarcely mean to name the wonders of the palace, having, indeed, general associations with them, rather than particular recollections ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... was hanged in the jail itself, the Potter's Field being more public and also more convenient, all things considered, but the punishments in this New York Bridewell were severe in the extreme. Those were the days of whippings and the treadmill,—a viciously brutal invention,—of bread and water and dark cells and the rest of the barbarities which society hit upon with such singular perversity as a means of humanising its derelicts. The prison record of Smith, the "revengeful desperado" who spent half a year in solitary confinement, is probably ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin |
