"Inventor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thought, there surely can exist little comparison between Reynolds and Hogarth. Reynolds was, indeed, the finest painter, especially the most superb colorist, of the English school. But Hogarth was the greatest inventor,—the greatest discoverer of character,—in the English or any other school. As a painter of manners he is unapproached. In a kindred walk, he traversed all the passions from the lowest mirth to the profoundest melancholy, possessing the tragic element in the most eminent degree. And if ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... the big telescope. If it does not make you an astronomer or a great inventor, it may stir up your brain to the pitch of inventing a really good chicken coop. That is still lacking, and in ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... the canvas sloped to the ground, forming a tent in the shape of a regular cone. The opening at the top caused a draught, by means of which a fire could be kept up beneath the tripod without choking the inmates with smoke. An Indian lodge had evidently been the model of the inventor. Most of the civil officers, however, dug square holes in the ground, over which they built log huts, plastering the cracks with mud. Their little town they named Eckelsville, after the Chief Justice. A depot for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... on the furniture; the brokers came in, and finally the poor fellow was taken to a lunatic asylum, and his wife and family were thrown on the parish. The story impressed Hubert strangely. He saw an analogy between himself and the crazy inventor, and he asked himself if he would go on re-writing The Gipsy until he went out of his mind. 'Even if I do,' he thought, 'I can hurt no one but myself. No one else is dependent on me; my hobby can hurt no one but myself.' These forebodings passed away, and his mind filled up with schemes ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... fitting brother of the Arabic timsah, denoting the dread horny lizard of the waters? Moreover, have we not the voice of tradition that the afanc was something monstrous? Does it not say that Hu the Mighty, the inventor of husbandry, who brought the Cumry from the summer-country, drew the old afanc out of the lake of lakes with his four gigantic oxen? Would he have had recourse to them to draw out the little harmless beaver? ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... struggled in Thermopylae. Next to him was the Austrian diplomatist, the Sosia of all cabinets, in whose gay address and rattling conversation you could hardly recognise the sophistical defender of unauthorised invasion, and the subtle inventor of Holy Alliances and Imperial Leagues. Then came the rich usurer from Frankfort or the prosperous merchant from Hamburgh, who, with his wife and daughters, were seeking some recreation from his flourishing ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... for the Italian and Morris for the Scandinavian, Swinburne stands for the spirit of French romanticism. At the beginning of the nineteenth century France, the inventor of "Gothic" architecture and chivalry romance, whose literature was the most influential of mediaeval Europe, still represented everything that is most anti-mediaeval and anti-romantic. Gerard de Nerval thought that the native genius of France had been buried under two ages of imported classicism; ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... a curious fact that Lucas de Nehou, the inventor of plate glass, was originally induced by the founders of St.-Gobain to leave his own establishment at Tour-la-ville in Normandy and come to their works in Paris, because the Venetian glassworkers who had been invited by Colbert into France, refused to instruct ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... with sore eyes and a grievance against the Board of Guardians; a venerable son of Jerusalem with a most artistic white beard, who had covered the editorial table with carved nick-nacks in olive and sandal-wood; an inventor who had squared the circle and the problem of perpetual motion, but could not support himself; a Roumanian exile with a scheme for fertilizing Palestine; and a wild-eyed hatchet-faced Hebrew poet who told me I was a famous patron of learning, and sent me his book soon after with ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... lying close by, and which doubtless Obed had used before in order to test the accuracy of his figuring. This he inserted in the noose, and then gave it a hunch that not only tightened the rope but carried out the further purpose of the inventor. ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... art is determined by the degree of emotion which impelled its creation and by the degree in which the work itself is able to communicate the emotion immediately. The feeling which entered into the making of the first lock and key was simply the inventor's desire for such a device, his desire being the feeling which accompanied his consciousness of his need. At the other extreme is the emotion such as attended Michelangelo's vision of his "David" and urged his hand as he set his chisel to the unshaped ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... ancient book of beauty? But we must be content with what we have, and, in the regret, see the value of the present, looking to future value. Etching, is still old enough to interest by its portraiture of ages gone by. The inventor is not known. Perhaps the earliest specimen is the well-known "Cannon" by Albert Durer, dated 1518; and there is one by him, "Moses receiving the Tables of the Law," dated 1524. The art was soon after practised by Parmegiano, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Palamedes, the inventor Pamphilus, two of the name Pan, the god "Pankration" (the) Pantacles, unknown "Parsley and the rue" Pathos and bathos Patrocles, a rich miser Pauson, ruined —poverty of Peace, mother of Plutus Peacock and hoopoe Pebble, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... "netusxebla," applied by Dr. Zamenhof to his language, and so much resented in certain quarters. Surely not only is this degree of dogmatism amply justified by practical considerations, but it would amount to positive imprudence on the part of Esperantists to act otherwise. If the inventor of the language can show sufficient self-restraint, after long years spent in touching and retouching his language, to hold his hand at a given point (and he has declared that self-restraint is necessary), ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... The pun on "cant" and "recant" was not original, though Lord John's application of it was. Its inventor seems to have been Lady Townshend, the brilliant mother of Charles Townshend, the elder Pitt's Chancellor of the Exchequer. When she was asked if George Whitefield, the evangelical preacher, had yet recanted, she replied: "No, he has only ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... little doubt that this system of "revelation" was an idea of Rigdon. Smith was not, at that time, an inventor; his forte was making use of ideas conveyed to him. Thus, he did not originate the idea of using a "peek-stone," but used one freely as soon as he heard of it. He did not conceive the idea of receiving a Bible from an angel, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... commemoration of it, and to call it "Wellington's Victory." Maelzel was a man of remarkable mechanical ingenuity. He had before this won his way into Beethoven's good graces by making him an ear-trumpet, which he used for several years. He was the inventor of the metronome and a man of considerable intelligence. He had invented a Panharmonicon, an automaton instrument containing most of the instruments found in full orchestra, on the principle of the modern orchestrion. Allied to his talents ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... it for a moment with his hand, as if it were a pet child. Then he mounted nimbly. Pride shone in his eye. I saw in a second he was a fond inventor. ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... of these good wishes, the recovery was very slow; for, as the surgeon had suspected, the want of skill in those who had had the charge of Berenger at the first had been the cause of much of his protracted suffering. Pare, the inventor of trephining, was, perhaps, the only man in Europe who could have dealt with the fracture in the back of the head, and he likewise extracted the remaining splinters of the jaw, though at the cost of much severe ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... now constituted. He has displaced the old formless race of gods, and is the leader of a new and vigorous race now ruling in their stead. The old scholars rationalised Odin into a chief who had led a migration from Asia to Norway in early times. He is the inventor of the art of writing by runes and the founder of poetry; thus he has the aspect of a culture-hero; that is to say, of a man of advanced views who, for the benefits he conferred on his people, was exalted first to a hero and then to a god. ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... and became the ancestors of nearly all of their name in this country. William and Anthony settled at Newbury, Massachusetts. The latter became a respected citizen, and among his descendants were such men as Rev. Dr. James Morse of Newburyport, Samuel Finley Breese Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, Rev. Sidney Edwards Morse, and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... it yet," answered the young inventor. "I was going to show it to you, and see what you thought of it. It's the kind ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... follow its lead, and be amazed at its creations. And yet, sometimes, in a dream of tragic intensity, as one begins to awake, a third person seems to intervene, and says reassuringly that it is only a dream. This intervention seems to disconcert the inventor, who then promptly retires, while it brings sudden relief to the timid and frightened observer. It would seem then that the rational self reasserts itself, and that the two personalities, one of which has been creating and the ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... always rounded into completeness; the man is then not merely a specialist, he has the gift of universality. Do you think that an engineer from the Ecole Polytechnique could ever create one of those miracles of architecture such as Leonardo da Vinci knew how to build,—mechanician, architect, painter, inventor of hydraulics, indefatigable constructor of ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... their approval of the boilers, sent in an adverse report to the Admiralty, and Lord Dundonald had to wait several months before he could disprove the statements made against them; and opposition of the same sort—the common experience of nearly every inventor—encountered him at every turn, and had again and again to be overcome. His Portsmouth engine continued to work well; but in September, 1845, he learnt that a malicious trick had been resorted to, to prevent its working better. "On a recent examination of the pumps in the well," ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... Tell Mr. Shannon, and he, too, will become a believer. I believe in you. I believe in him, Mr. Shannon. Don't sneer! Tell him, uncle." Mila's words, almost imploring in their tone, calmed the infuriated inventor, who left the room. He reentered in a moment, his head dripping, and ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Hazlehurst Boneval, 1803- lawyer, inventor Md. Picture of Baltimore, History of Maryland, Biography of Charles Carroll, Reminiscences of ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... the greater claim on his pity; and he contrives to present the King with a petition in favour of Fontanares, and to obtain a ship for an experiment to be made. But now professional jealousies combine with love rivalries to thwart the inventor; and when, at last, the ship is made to move by its own machinery, the honour of the success is attributed to another. To avenge his wrongs, and the loss of his betrothed, who is given to his rival and dies, he blows up the steamer in presence ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... confrontation of your systems has brought up more and extraordinary difficulties; for amid the apparent or adventitious diversities, you have discovered a fundamental resemblance, a common groundwork; and each of you pretending to be the inventor, and first depositary, have taxed each other with adulterations and plagiarisms; and thence arises a difficult question concerning the transmission of religious ideas ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... of the kingdom; and also appears to have introduced other judicious reforms and improvements,—indeed he seems to have been the Rowland Hill of those days; but he has not the slightest claim to be considered as the "Inventor of the Post-office." The mistake may have arisen from a misapprehension of the following statement frown Blackstone: "Prideaux first established a weekly conveyance of letters into all parts of the nation, thereby saving to the public the charge of maintaining postmasters, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... inventor, Thomas A. Edison, now in his 75th year, has today a mind as brilliant and ingenious, and a skill as remarkable for inventing things that are of practical use, as when at 21 he invented his automatic ...
— How to Eat - A Cure for "Nerves" • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... the first who make the effort to imitate the processes of the newly invented art. This again was necessary, in order that they might be induced to the effort, and thus forward the great and final result to which we approach. They gain much; but they gain less than the inventor, for competition has commenced its work. The price of books now continually decreases. The gains of the imitators diminish in proportion as the invention becomes older; and in the same proportion imitation becomes less meritorious. Soon the new object of industry attains ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... ideas of the respective merits of different avocations. It is better to be the successful driver of a dray than to be the unsuccessful inventor of a still-born motor. I would rather discover how to successfully wean a calf from the parent stem without being boosted over a nine rail fence, than to discover a new star that had never been used, and the next evening find that it had made ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... enough, there's now talk of such a discovery, in which a new set of levers generates considerable power. Did its inventor meet up with ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... of attainment in science have continued in University positions, Robert S. Woodward, 72e, President of the Carnegie Institution, Charles F. Brush, '69e, the inventor of the arc light, Otto Klotz, '72e, Director of the Dominion of Canada Observatory at Ottawa, William W. Campbell, '86e, Director of the Lick Observatory, and Heber D. Curtiss, '92, at the same observatory, may be mentioned as exceptions. ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... policy which for the last eighteen years have engrossed public attention, and from books accessible to ordinary readers. If I can claim no special acquaintance with Ireland, still less have I the presumption or the folly to come forward as the inventor of any political nostrum. My justification for publishing my thoughts on Home Rule is that the movement in favour of the Parliamentary independence of Ireland constitutes, whether its advocates recognise the fact or not, a demand for fundamental alterations in the ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... Sylphs and Gnomes act at the toilet and the tea- table what more terrific and more powerful phantoms perform on the stormy ocean or the field of battle: they give their proper help and do their proper mischief. Pope is said, by an objector, not to have been the inventor of this petty notion, a charge which might with more justice have been brought against the author of the "Iliad," who doubtless adopted the religious system of his country; for what is there but the names of his agents which Pope has not invented? Has he not assigned them characters ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... good old- fashioned tents, and gathering themselves into a nation instead of remaining a mere family horde; and gave their own account of the myth, just as the antediluvian savages gave theirs of that strange Eden scene, by the common interpretation of which the devil is made the first inventor of modesty. Men are all conservatives; everything new is impious, till we get accustomed to it; and if it fails, the mob piously discover a divine vengeance in the mischance, from Babel to ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... displayed in the operations of nature. The type of all is that very ancient Phrygian cult in which by the side of Ma, mother of mountains and mistress of herds, stood Papas, father of the race of shepherds and inventor of the rustic pipe.[183-1] Quite characteristic was the classification of the gods worshipped by the miners and metal workers of Phrygian Ida. This was into right and left, and the general name of Dactyli, ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... motive to science is the love of truth apart from all consideration of fame, and science with us too is devoted almost solely to practical uses, essential to our social conversation and the comforts of our daily life. No fame is asked by the inventor, and none is given to him; he enjoys an occupation congenial to his tastes, and needing no wear and tear of the passions. Man must have exercise for his mind as well as body; and continuous exercise, rather than violent, is best for both. Our most ingenious cultivators of science are, as ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... could be made to ring without him. History tells us that William, Abbott of Hirschau, who died toward the end of the eleventh century, invented a horologium modeled after the celestial hemisphere; therefore he may have been the inventor of the clock, for soon after his death these striking bells begin to make their appearance on church towers ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... almost exclusively with the writings of Pouchkine, Gogol, Dostoievsky, Tourguenef, who was the inventor of the word Nihilism, and the mystic Tolstoy, who was the principal apostle of the doctrine. All these, with the possible exception of Tourguenef, had one characteristic in common. Their intellects were in a state of unstable ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... hold on," now interrupted Waldron. "Let him discourse, if he wants to. Ever know a scientist who wasn't primed to the muzzle with expositions? Here, Herzog," he added, turning to the inventor, "I'll listen, ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... from the people, were at that time esteemed Puritanical novelties. The patriarchal scheme, it is remarkable, is inculcated in those votes of the convocation preserved by Overall; nor was Filmer the first inventor ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... a rather large lute, made of gold and ivory, and as he handed it to Sappho, he said, with a smile: "The inventor of this glorious instrument, the divine Anakreon, had it made expressly for me, at my own wish. He calls it a Barbiton, and brings wonderful tones from its chords—tones that must echo on even into the land of shadows. I have told this poet, who offers his life ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the inventor of a new school of detection of crime. The system came in with him, and it may go out with him for lack of a man of his genius to perpetuate it. He insisted that there was nothing spectacular or romantic in the pursuit of the criminal, or, at least, that there ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... the grand means of blowing Grumkow out of the field, produced a far opposite result on trying, as we shall see! That was a bit of heavy ordnance which disappointed everybody. Seized by the enemy before it could do any mischief; enemy turned it round on the inventor; fired it off on the inventor, and—it exploded through the touch-hole; singeing some people's ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... marvellous blowing up of the island of St. Vincent, which in circumstantial invention and force of description must be ranked among his master-pieces. But Defoe did more than embellish stories of strange events for his newspapers. He was a master of journalistic art in all its branches, and a fertile inventor and organizer of new devices. It is to him, Mr. Lee says, and his researches entitle him to authority, that we owe the prototype of the leading article, a Letter Introductory, as it became the fashion to call it, written on some subject ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... the story crops up in other quarters; so that we cannot look upon Otto as the inventor of the myth. The celebrated Maimonides alludes to it in a passage quoted by Joshua Lorki, a Jewish physician to Benedict XIII. Maimonides lived from 1135 to 1204. The passage is as follows: "It is evident ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... penetrating exquisiteness of which has never in the succeeding centuries lost its hold on the world. But then Titian, saturated with the Giorgionesque, and only less truly the poet-painter than his master and companion, carried the style to a higher pitch of material perfection than its inventor himself had been able to achieve. The gifted but unequal Pordenone, who showed himself so incapable of sustained rivalry with our master in Venice, had moments of a higher sublimity than Titian reached until he came to the extreme ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... cases. Here are portraits of Voltaire; the hardy Sir Francis Drake; Cosmo de Medici and his secretary (a copy from Titian); Martin Luther; Jean Rousseau; Captain William Dampier, by Murray; Giorgioni's Ulysses Aldrovandus; Sir Peter Paul Kubens; the inventor of moveable type, John Guttenberg (which would be more appropriately placed in the library); John Locke; a poor woman, named Mary Davis, who in the seventeenth century, was celebrated for an excrescence ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... of his bedstead. He put the filings in a little pot which had been used for ointment of some kind. A few drops of water and some salt mixed with this powdered brass formed a poison which might have cost its inventor his life. I was furious at this stratagem. I wrote to the Val-de-Grace, and an ambulance conveyance was sent to ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... "you have done well—remarkably well. I am certainly proud of you. Some day the people of the United States will be proud of you. I am sure that the inventor's instinct and the scientist's indefatigable energy are characteristics ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... objectionable stupidities. I do not like the manner in which the author takes off Monsieur Thiers; he quite forgets the old and well-known resemblance of the chief of the executive power to Monsieur Prud'homme, or what is the same thing, to Prud'homme's inventor, Henri Monnier. One day Gil Perez the actor, met Henri Monnier on the Boulevard Montmartre. "Well, old fellow!" cried he, "are you back? When are you and I going to get at our practical jokes again?" Henri Monnier looked profoundly astonished; ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... but courteous note should be sent to him, expressing regret that the desired loan could not be furnished. It did not need the persuasion of his sister to induce "Cobbler" Horn to decline all dealings with the importunate inventor; but it was with great difficulty that she could dissuade him from making substantial promises to the religious institutions from ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... says an anonymous letter of the time. "He thought he could manage consciences and control religion by those harsh measures which, in spite of his wisdom, his violent nature suggests to him almost in everything." Louvois was the inventor, of the dragonnades; it was his father, Michael le Tellier, who put the seals to the revocation of the edict of Nantes; and, a few days before he died, full of joy at his last work, he piously sang the canticle of Simeon. Louis XIV. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... that compose this fine contexture, though they are as small as those that constitute the finer sorts of Silks, have notwithstanding nothing of their glossie, pleasant, and lively reflection. Nay, I have been informed both by the Inventor himself, and several other eye-witnesses, that though the flax, out of which it is made, has been (by a singular art, of that excellent Person, and Noble Vertuoso, M. Charls Howard, brother to the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... pounds, and there was not a penny in the treasury. The difficulty was overcome by the issue of treasury-notes, an expedient which was not adopted in England till five years afterwards. Charles Montagu, the alleged inventor of exchequer bills doubtless owed his idea to the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... be lost or become extinct without ancestors or descendants. He on the contrary believed that species underwent a slow modification, and that the fossil forms are the ancestors of the animals now living. Moreover, Lamarck was the inventor of the first genealogical tree; his phylogeny, in the second volume of his Philosophie zoologique (p. 463), proves that he realized that the forms leading up to the existing ones were practically extinct, as we now use the word. ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... far more for the teaching of science than the preparation of books, however useful these were. He was the practical inventor of the laboratory system of teaching zooelogical science, and all over the world the methods invented by him have been adopted in university laboratories and technical schools. He had always declared that since zooelogy was a physical science, the method of studying it must needs be analogous ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... with a chuckle, "I can get back to earth again free of cost on my own hook, whether my eminent inventor wants me there or not. I never approved of his killing me off as he did at the very height ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... was given to the surgery of wounded, mortified or diseased pieces of intestine by the introduction from Chicago of an ingenious contrivance named, after the inventor, Murphy's button. This consists of a short nickel-plated tube in two pieces, which are rapidly secured in the divided ends of the bowel, and in such a manner that when the pieces are subsequently "married'' the adjusted ends of the bowel are securely fixed together and the canal rendered practicable. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Hubner,[144] in which the coffee beans are well washed and then spread in layers and kept covered with water at 15 deg. C. until limited germination has taken place, whereupon the beans are removed and the caffein extracted with water at 50 deg. C. It is claimed by the inventor that sprouting serves to remove some of the caffein, but it is quite probable that the process does nothing more than accomplish ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... into an instrument in order to become master of it. It is this mastery that profits humanity, much more even than the material result of the invention itself. Though we derive an immediate advantage from the thing made, as an intelligent animal might do, and though this advantage be all the inventor sought, it is a slight matter compared with the new ideas and new feelings that the invention may give rise to in every direction, as if the essential part of the effect were to raise us above ourselves and enlarge our horizon. Between the effect and the cause ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... in the Old World or in the New, did I see an assemblage of worse-looking men. They seemed fitted for any deeds of robbery, blood, and death. Several distinguished duellists were pointed out to me; among them Colonel Crane, an old man, who had repeatedly fought with Mr. Bowie, the inventor of the "Bowie knife," and had killed several men in personal combat! The motion before the house just at that time was for the release from prison of a Mr. Simms, who a few days before had violently assaulted ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... was dissatisfied, and still longed to know positively from whence the priests had derived their vain system. This desire filled my mind for some days, and at last it struck me that the Pope must have been the inventor of it. I then naturally began to wish to discover who the Pope was, and what right he had to impose such a doctrine. I had often read and heard, both in conversation and from the pulpit, that St. ...
— The Village in the Mountains; Conversion of Peter Bayssiere; and History of a Bible • Anonymous
... made of Whitney's invention of the cotton gin. The event was of such world-wide importance that the story should be told here. Whitney, the inventor of the gin, was born in Massachusetts in 1765, in very poor circumstances. While the War of the Revolution was going on, he was earning his living by making nails by hand. He was such an apt mechanic that he was able to make and save enough money to pay his way through Yale College, ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... says one of his greatest critics, "arose from his hand the patriarch of poverty; the hump of his dwarf is impressed with dignity; his infants are men, and his men are giants." And, says another critic, "he is the inventor of epic painting, in that sublime circle of the Sistine Chapel which exhibits the origin, progress, and final dispensation of the theocracy. He has personified motion in the cartoon of Pisa, portrayed meditation in the prophets and sibyls ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... them home to Pocket. It was the first she had ever heard of them. But then he had never discussed his photography with her, never showed her plate or print. That it was not merely a hobby, that he was an inventor, a pioneer, she had always felt, without dreaming in what direction or to what extent. Even now she seemed unable to grasp the full significance of the print from the broken negative; and when she would have examined it afresh, there ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... 1667-1731. Apprenticed to Niccolo Amati. Is best known as the inventor of the "hammer system," and, therefore, the father of the modern pianoforte. Bow instruments of his make are rare, but authentic examples are in every way excellent. A fine Double Bass, dated 1715, is in the museum of the Musical Academy in Florence. Violoncellos ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... overwhelmingly convincing, today does little more than gather dust in the libraries, for the simple reason that our generation has ceased to believe in the kind of God it argued for. Whatever sort of God may be, we know today that he is nevermore that mere external inventor of 'contrivances' intended to make manifest his 'glory' in which our great-grandfathers ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... stanza [of The Bard] the abrupt beginning has been celebrated; but technical beauties can give praise only to the inventor. It is in the power of any man to rush abruptly upon his subject that has read the ballad of Johnny Armstrong.' Johnson's Works, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... shut up in the bull, and the metal of the bull was to be made red hot. The cries of the victims inside were so reverberated as to resemble the roarings of a gigantic bull. Phalaris made the first experiment by shutting up the inventor himself ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... purpose of being inserted in Industrial Biography, or Ironworkers and Toolmakers, which was published at the end of 1863. He was of opinion that the outline of his life there presented was sufficiently descriptive of his career as a mechanic and inventor. ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... one that gets what he hath by observation, and makes only nature privy to what he indites; so slow an inventor, that he were better betake himself to his old trade of bricklaying; a bold whoreson, as confident now in making of[54] a book, as he was in times past in laying of ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... order that their shattered bones might be decently knitted in two or three hours. The Jap presently came to, and I found that he was a civilian like myself, but one who had long been employed on the U. S. W. research staff as a ray and explosive expert. I realized at once that he was the inventor of the kotomite with which the ship ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... inventor has devised a scheme for lassoing enemy submarines. This is a decided improvement on the method of just sticking a pin into them as they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... Like every other inventor who had grappled with the problem, he had found himself constantly faced with that fatal ratio of weight to power. No engine that he could devise would do more than lift itself and the machine. Again and again he had made a toy that would fly, as others had done before him, but a machine that ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... George B. Selden, was inventor of the gasoline automobile, and her father, Henry R. Selden, was a New York State Court of Appeals judge and one-time ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... not a cheap method of illumination. The enormous heat developed is largely wasted. The quest of the inventor is to find a means whereby light can be produced without the generation ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... to great intellectuality in a man is to be a good animal," says Maxim the inventor. Hamerton, in his best-known book, offers convincing proof that overflowing health is one of the first essentials of genius; and shows how triumphant a part it played in the careers of such mighty men of intellectual valor ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... returned to the infernal regions. The people believe that, if his wife had obeyed his summons, and he had not gone back at that time, all the dead would return to life. [Blank space in MS.] Inheritances, and their inventor. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... velvet and surmounted by a little head sunken in shoulders of a questionable color. No efforts could retain her waist-belt in its natural place. "Bebelle" candidly admitted that prudence forbade her wearing corsets. The imagination of a poet or, better still, that of an inventor, could not have found on Bebelle's back the slightest trace of that seductive sinuosity which the vertebrae of all women who are women usually produce. Bebelle, round as a tortoise, belonged to the genus of invertebrate females. This alarming development ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... Plautus which in his opinion were genuine. He sought, after the Greek fashion, to determine historically the origin of every single phenomenon in the Roman life and dealings and to ascertain in each case the "inventor," and at the same time brought the whole annalistic tradition within the range of his research. The success, which he had among his contemporaries, is attested by the dedication to him of the most important poetical, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... await the unwary and the sanguine. The enterprise in which you are engaged is not facile, nor is it short. I think I have sufficiently predicted that you will have your hours of woe, during which you may be inclined to send to perdition all writers, together with the inventor of printing. But if you have become really friendly with Lamb; if you know Lamb, or even half of him; if you have formed an image of him in your mind, and can, as it were, hear him brilliantly stuttering ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... inventor of the balance spring, soon discovered it could be manipulated to isochronism, i.e., so arcs of different extent would be formed in equal time. Of course, the friction-rest escapement requiring a spring to possess different properties from one which would be isochronal with a perfectly detached ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... Helmont made a first step, by pointing out that the peculiar hissing and bubbling of a fermented liquid is due, not to the evolution of common air (which he, as the inventor of the term "gas," calls "gas ventosum"), but to that of a peculiar kind of air such as is occasionally met with in caves, mines, and wells, and which he calls ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Press. In their search for an expert, a Baltimore manufacturer named Hahl, who had constructed some of these machines, was consulted, and upon his recommendation his cousin, Ottmar Mergenthaler, was selected to undertake the work, and thus the future inventor of the Linotype ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... bill; the invention had become his own—in plain English, he stole it. Washington is always full of people claiming each other's brains. The lawyers at the Patent Office have their hands full. They must keep wide awake, too. Each inventor, when he relates his grievances, brings a witness to maintain his claim. There is no doubt that, after a while, there will be those who can testify to the fact of having seen the idea as it passed through the inventor's mind. The way it is settled at present is this—whoever ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... a lively interest in all new firearm improvements and inventions, and it sometimes happened that, when an inventor could get nobody else in the Government to listen to him, the President would personally test his gun. A former clerk in the Navy ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... which he has spent half an anxious lifetime, a dozen copyists will in a year have out a dozen "improved machines," each of them better than the first one, and therefore each helping to ruin the inventor. He had all the labour and all the knowledge. All the others did was to add a few slight improvements, for which they get all the credit due to the man without whom they would not have had an idea. This is, alas! very ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Inventor, and discovered, all alone, A plan for making everybody's fortune but his own; For, in business, an Inventor's little better than a fool, And my highly-gifted friend was no exception to the rule. His poems - people read them in the Quarterly Reviews - His pictures - they engraved them in the ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... work and had developed the beginnings of many industries, man had become a specialist along another line. His occupation had been almost exclusively the pursuit of animals or conflict with his neighbors; and in this connection he had become the inventor of weapons and traps, and in addition had learned the value of acting in concert with his companions. But a hunting life cannot last forever; and when large game began to be exhausted, man found himself forced to abandon his destructive and predacious activities, and adopt the settled ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... no less generous was accorded the members of the other missions—the Italian, headed by the Prince of Udine, son of the Duke of Genoa and nephew of King Victor Emmanuel, and including Signor Marconi, the inventor of wireless telegraphy; the Russian, headed by Boris Bakhmetieff, the new Russian Ambassador; and the Belgian, headed by Baron Moncheur. Other missions came from ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... it, one in every county or town furnished reliable persons, (either sex) who will promise to show it. Send at once to *Inventor*, 26 ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... state of the winds, since the machine cannot fly so much in totally calm weather as in stormy. This prodigious machine is directed and guided by a tail seven palmi long, which is attached to the knees and ankles of the inventor by leather straps; by stretching out his legs, either to the right or to the left, he moves the machine in whichever direction he pleases.... The machine's flight lasts only three hours, after which the wings gradually close themselves, when the inventor, perceiving this, goes ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... spear. One thing about him we can know: he was a radical. And we can be sure that he was considered feather-brained and anarchistic by his conservative tribesmen. His difficulty was much greater than that of the modern inventor, who has to convince in advance only one or two capitalists. That early inventor had to convince his whole tribe in advance, for without the co-operation of the whole tribe the device could not be tested. One can well imagine the nightly pow-wow-ings in that primitive island ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,— We'd jump the life to come; but, in these cases We still have judgment here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which being taught, return To plague the inventor. This evenhanded justice Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice, To our own lips. He's here in double trust; First as I am his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against the deed; then, as his host, Who should against his murderer shut the ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... the priest is regarded as the mouthpiece of divinity, and therefore the highest type of man, the artist, the inventor, the discoverer, the genius, the man of truth, has always been regarded as a criminal. Society advances as it doubts the priest, distrusts his oracles, and loses faith ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... American than a voyage to New York by a Fall River boat, they ought to take that route thither. So much upholstery, so much music, such variety cf company, he understood, could not be got in any other way, and it might be that they would even catch a glimpse of the inventor of the combination, who represented the very excess and extremity of a certain kind of Americanism. Isabel had eagerly consented; but these aesthetic motives were paralyzed for her by the thought ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Tyre is a being of the same character as the chief gods of Moab, Ammon, and Israel. He has to do not only with the blessings of agricultural life, but with state and government. He is the founder of a state; he is the inventor of navigation and of purple; he is the first king; when a colony is sent out, it goes with his approval, and he himself leads the expedition; he is the dread ruler whom none must disobey; the majesty, the power, and the enterprise ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... means, and by means gradually perfected in the practice of others. Yet there is always this difference, that in mechanics anyone can learn to make use of an invention; but in the higher activities, invention, if it becomes mechanical, destroys the activity itself, even in the original inventor. The medium is always a medium, not merely a material; and if it becomes merely a material to be manipulated, it ceases to ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... royal house. A Danish dramatist. A celebrated Moorish King. An early King of England. An early King of Spain. A modern English poet. Answer—Primals form the first name and finals the second name of a celebrated American inventor. ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... for the applause of his audiences; a great discoverer or inventor has his public acclaim; a statesman or public benefactor is rewarded by the voice of the people; but the gratification of a newspaper man in having accomplished a notable achievement for his paper is his only recompense and ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... gentleman—his neck something short, and remarkable for the largest pimple on his nose, which, by his particular desire, is still extant in his picture, said to be a striking likeness, though taken when young. He is said also to be the inventor of raspberry whisky, which is very likely, as nobody has ever appeared to dispute it with him, and as there still exists a broken punch-bowl at Castle Rackrent, in the garret, with an inscription to that effect—a great curiosity. ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth |
