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More "Inspiration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "the first conception of the Meltka furnace was mine. The white heat of the night gave it to me; a child's cry, 'thou art my father and thou wilt save me,' was my inspiration. Some of you will have heard that there are smelting works to-day where the sulphurous acid, which copper pyrites supplies when it is roasted, is used for the manufacture of sulphuric acid. That was my discovery. Many have claimed it since, but the Meltka furnace was mine—as ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... men, and in Mars it creates matter, for the slow assumption of material parts, as I have said, is propagated and accomplished by music, and the parts thus made are the most perfect expression of matter the divine form of man or woman can know, I think. They are tuned to health, to beauty, to inspiration, but all of ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... though in pain, roll their eyes in an ecstasy, and shout, 'How perfectly perfect!' Then the poet will grip both her hands very tightly and say he loves her but will not marry her, and, in an agony of inspiration, he will tear himself away and stand drinks to himself until he is put out. This is, of course, only one way of being a poet. If he perseveres he will ultimately write lyrics for the music halls and make ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... wrought mischief enough in the past, degrading so much noble genius, corrupting the purity of Mozart, reducing Handel to a writer of high-class singing-exercises, and defrauding the world of the only inspiration worthy of Sophocles and Euripides, the poetry of the great poet Gluck? Is it not enough to have dishonored a whole century in idolatry of that wicked and contemptible wretch the singer, without persecuting an obscure young ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... memory there is an impalpable touch of the artificial about the prepared speech which impairs its vitality. On the other hand, especially with the first speeches on each side, you cannot get to your feet and trust entirely to the inspiration of the moment; you must have something thought out. One of the most notable lecturers in Harvard University prepares his lectures in a way which is an excellent model for debaters. He writes out beforehand a complete analytical and tabulated plan of his lecture, similar to the ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... philosophers who loved an argument, the poet Callicrates, the high priest of Serapis, some young men whose chief amusement was training horses, and lastly some women, of whom there was little to be said except that they were young. Then, by a supernatural inspiration— ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... are many rare thoughts and profound confessions in these letters, which would have commanded the praise of Goethe, had they been written by a rival; and coming, as they did, from a devotee who declared that she drew her inspiration from him alone, they must have filled his soul with incense, of which that burned by the priest in the temple of the gods is only an emblem. To be brief and compendious on this book, it appears to be a heart ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... or crisis, the disease would fain assume the symptoms of religious inspiration. The poetasters are all pious—all smitten with sanctity—Christian all over—and crossing and jostling on the Course of Time—as they think, on the high road to Heaven and Immortality. Never was seen before such a shameless set of hypocrites. ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... to justify these frightful passages, these infamous laws of war, because the bible is the word of God. As a matter of fact, there never was, and there never can be, an argument, even tending to prove the inspiration of any book whatever. In the absence of positive evidence, analogy and experience, argument is simply impossible, and at the very best, can amount only to a useless agitation of the air. The instant we admit that a book is too sacred to be doubted, or even ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... it is just such problems that lend charm to the work of building your own house. An architect or a professional builder would have the thing all cut and dried beforehand and leave nothing to chance and inspiration; this takes the whole charm out of the work when one is building for recreation and the pleasure to be ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... trouble, is it?" she said. "That I did not seem to care? Well, I assure you that I don't like burnt food any better than you do, but I have some self-control. I wouldn't spoil a whole evening just because—" A sudden inspiration came to her. Her voice failed her, and she hid her face in ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... commanded, and bent, Miss Bailey and her buttoned-in-back-waist followed the example of less fashionable models, shed its pearl buttons in a shower upon the smooth blotter and gave Yetta the inspiration for which she had been waiting. She gathered the buttons, extracted numerous pins from posts of trust in her attire, and when Miss Bailey had returned to her chair, gently set about ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... done for these Indians Captain Russell's judgment and sound, practical ideas were the inspiration. His true manliness, honest and just methods, together with the warm-hearted interest he took in all that pertained to matters of duty to his Government, could not have produced other than the best results, in what position soever he might have been placed. As all the lovable ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... points; they appropriated all the commanding heights; they knew where the sun would best strike the grapevines; they perched themselves wherever there was a royal view. When I see how unerringly they did select and occupy the eligible places, I think they were moved by a sort of inspiration. In those days, when the Church took the first choice in everything, the temptation to a Christian life must have ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... smack the bellowing prince; the Honourable John Ruffin continued to ask the baron what the devil he meant by it; and the poor wits of the panting nobleman continued to work on his dreadful problem. Then a flash of inspiration showed him the saving solution: he could accept his noisy questioner's view that his fall had been an accident. He sat up and began to apologise faintly and sulkily for having ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... mainland, to gain what treasure he could by peaceful barter with the natives, and by any means he could to secure their conversion. It was commanded by Cortes, a man of extraordinary courage and ability, and extraordinary gifts for leadership, to whose power both of control and inspiration must be ascribed, in a very great degree, the success ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... indicate what the English owed to Italy and what was essentially their own. From that Southern land of Circe about which they dreamed, and which now and then they visited, came to their imaginations a spirit-stirring breath of inspiration. It was to them the country of marvels, of mysterious crimes, of luxurious gardens and splendid skies, where love was more passionate and life more picturesque, and hate more bloody and treachery more black, than in our Northern climes. Italy was a spacious grove of wizardry, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... sensitive far-seeing eye, here and there caught glimpses from the region beyond. The French, driven just then well-nigh to despair, caught the least glimmer of light and the whole nation was soon on fire! A few of the most highly strung minds caught the inspiration of an ideal dream of the regeneration of the world by some patent process of redistribution! All the ancient bundle of precedents, and the swaddling bands of restraints and customs in which men had been content to remain confined for thousands of years, were henceforth ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... eruption, signalised by the miraculous preservation of two pious youths who ventured into the burning shower to carry their parents into a place of safety. The poem is throughout a model of propriety, but deficient in poetic inspiration; the technical parts, elaborate as they are, impress the reader less favourably than the digressions, where subjects of human interest are treated, and the Roman character comes out. Lucilius called himself ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... in a word, as she has been from the days of Theodoric and Theodolinda to the days of Napoleon and Francis Joseph. It is this Italy—our Italy—which through all the centuries of bloodshed and of suffering never ceased to bear aloft and unharmed its divining-rod of inspiration as S. Christopher bore the young Christ above the swell of the torrent and the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... this particular time, whether they were printed at length or cut up into eights and sixes, they had an almost irresistible tendency to degenerate into a kind of lolloping amble which is inexpressibly monotonous. Even when the spur of a really poetical inspiration excites this amble into something more fiery (the best example existing is probably Southwell's wonderful "Burning Babe"), the sensitive ear feels that there is constant danger of a relapse, and at the worst the thing becomes mere doggerel. Yet for about ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... music, too. It appeared to come to him; he'd begin to play and you had to keep time. You couldn't be still; he loved to sweep a crowd around with that bow of his. I think it was the thing you call inspiration. I can see him now, his handsome head bent, his cheeks red, his eyes snapping, and that bow going across the strings, and driving us like sheep. He always kept his body swinging, and he loved to play. He often slighted his work shamefully, and sometimes her a little; that is why she hated it—Elnora, ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... tragic grandeur, the pageant of a nation's history wiped out in the groans of conquest, lit the beauty of her eyes. So must the Maid of Orleans have appeared to those who in awe listened to her. Softened by her translation into the world of inspiration, she ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... organ whose grand inspiration, Serenely majestic in utterance, lofty and calm, Interprets to mortals with melody great as its burthen The mystical harmonies chiming for ever throughout ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... when in difficulties, originate at the moment vast ideas or dazzling projects; who, under the influence of excitement, are able to cast a light, almost as if from inspiration, on a subject or course of action which comes before them; who have a sudden presence of mind equal to any emergency, rising with the occasion, and an undaunted magnanimous bearing, and an energy and keenness which is but made intense by opposition. This is genius, this is heroism; it ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... thought to escape temptation—and vainly too—in stony cells. To some the purple cluster suggests Bacchanal revelry; to others, sitting under one's own vine and fig-tree—in brief, a home. The vine is like woman, the inspiration of the best and ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... returning to Swanstead rather earlier than usual one evening, and the train was stopped at a certain signal to let another pass. There was conversation in the carriage and I learned certain details. One said that there would be an accident some day, and so forth. In a flash—as by an inspiration—I saw how the circumstance might be turned to account. A bad accident and the shares would certainly fall and my position would be retrieved. I think Mr. Carrados has somehow learned ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... notion, very few of the great modern inventions have been the result of a sudden inspiration by which, Minerva-like, they have sprung full-fledged from their creators' brain; but, on the contrary, they have been evolved by slow and gradual steps, so that frequently the final advance has been often ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... busy all day—foolishly cumbered about much serving—and had gone out to forget maids, and food, and domesticities generally, into the dear garden."—She paused, smiling. "Ah! it is a gracious night," she said, "full of inspiration. You must have enjoyed the drive home. The household refuses to take this marriage of yours philosophically, Dickie. It demands great magnificence, quite as much, be sure, for its own glorification ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... who had died in the World War "to make the world safe for democracy," and he prayed that their sacrifice had not been in vain. Finally, he spoke of the chapel service, which the students were required to attend. He hoped that they would find inspiration in it, knowledge and strength. He assured them that the service would always be nonsectarian, that there would never be anything in it to offend any one of any race, creed, or religion. With a last ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... suppressed, grew clearer by the very flow of his harmonious recital; the breath of poetic inspiration soon elevated him to himself; and his look, raised to heaven, became sublime as that of the young evangelist, conceived by Raffaello, for the light still shone on it. He narrated in his verses the first disobedience ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... the herald of the coming of the sun. It may yet be made the theme of a majestic musical composition, now that Wagner has come to teach men how to build a lyric drama upon a phrase. Perhaps the coming American national song may have this familiar crow for its inspiration and its burden. We might do worse, perhaps, than to take the rooster for our national bird, even if we reject his song as the basis of our national anthem. We took our eagle from Rome, as France did hers; would it not have been wiser if we had taken the cock instead, as ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... merry throng of strangers, his eyes soon distinguished that one in whom he felt special interest—Mrs. Dupont, dancing now with McDonald, the rather corpulent Major exhibiting almost youthful agility under the inspiration of music. The lady talked with animation, as they circled among the others on the floor, her red lips close to her partner's ear, but Hamlin, suspicious and watchful, noted that her eyes were busy ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... the enthusiast collected herself, than her gaze became instantly steady, her features assumed a determined energy, and when she began to speak, the words flowed from her with a profuse fluency, which might have passed for inspiration, and which, perhaps, she herself mistook ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... Important to Publishers Indian, The Interesting to Bone Boilers Interior Illumination Indian Question, The Information Wanted Inspiration vs. Perspiration Items ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... the influence of Aristophanes and of Lucian, his intimate acquaintance with nearly all the writers of antiquity, Greek as well as Latin, with whom Rabelais is more permeated even than Montaigne, were a mine of inspiration. The proof of it is everywhere. Pliny especially was his encyclopaedia, his constant companion. All he says of the Pantagruelian herb, though he amply developed it for himself, is taken from Pliny's chapter on flax. And there is a great ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... listened to, and the report of the eager, kind-eyed woman from the little-back-water-of-the-world was heard with interest. The Federation knew the value of this woman who said what she meant, and did what she promised. They sent her home to her town to be an inspiration. She was a little torch, ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... operating for cataract and plunging the needle to the bottom of the patient's eye, that by experiment upon a human being he might see the effect of irritating the retina? ... Surely, in these names, and such as these, there can be no uplift or inspiration to young men toward that unselfish service and earnest work which alone shall help toward the amelioration ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... the lake of Alba, the old man answered, "Surely the Gods were wroth with Veii that day when they put it into my mind to betray the thing which by the ordering of fate must bring about the destruction of the city. Nevertheless I cannot recall that which I once uttered by divine inspiration so that it should be as if it were unsaid; and perchance there is no less wickedness in concealing that which the immortal Gods would have revealed than in uttering that which they would have concealed. Know therefore that in the books of fate and in ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church
... one whose virginal bosom, whose ardent and voluptuous forms, have realized for me the only woman of my dreams—of my dreams! She is the original of that ravishing picture called La Femme Caressant sa Chimere, the warmest, the most infernal inspiration of the genius of antiquity; a holy poem prostituted by those who have copied it for frescoes and mosiacs; for a heap of bourgeois who see in this gem nothing more than a gew-gaw and hang it on their watch-chains—whereas, it is the whole woman, an abyss of pleasure ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... understand their business. They have discovered the cries which make the popular animal take note, what offense offends him, what charm attracts him, and on what road he should be made to follow. Once drawn in and under way, he will march blindly on, borne along by his own involuntary inspiration and crushing with his mass all that he encounters on ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Jimmy wrote steadily, doing no less than five articles of the type which the Record had accepted. One he sent to Dodgson, the others to papers which Douglas Kelly had mentioned, and then, suddenly, inspiration seemed to fail him. He could not write a line, could not even think of a subject; and, for a whole day, he felt something nearly akin to dismay. If his ideas ran out as quickly as this his prospects were small indeed; and when the postman ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... thwart her power) and borne on winds "Swift through the air, the fated house she finds "And instant enters, where the inmost walls "The sacrilegious wretch inclose; in sleep "Deep bury'd, for night reign'd; and with her wings "Him clasping close, in all the man she breath'd "Her inspiration: in his throat, his mouth, "His chest, and in his unreplenish'd veins, "Her hunger she infus'd. The bidden deed "Complete, she vanish'd from those verdant fields, "And turn'd her to the needy roofs again, "And ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Phil felt positive that the move against him was the result of deliberate intent, else how should his fair friend of the early evening know that a plot was brewing? Unquestionably she had heard or learned of the prince's directions to the duke. Her own interest in the prince was, of course, the inspiration. To no one but herself could she entrust the delivery of the warning. Her agitated wish, openly expressed, that Quentin might win the contest had a much deeper meaning than would appear ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... applied. Granted that the Pope was infallible, how could the Cardinals know that he was, unless they claimed for themselves the same or even greater infallibility? It is far more easy to be inspired than to know some one else is or was inspired; the true inspiration is, and always has been, the spirit of truth within, and this is but another name for the spirit of God. It is truth that makes inspiration, not inspiration that makes truth. Whoever knows what truth is, knows also what inspiration is: not only theopneustos, blown into the soul by God, but the ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... and women represent great things. Studying about these people is an inspiration to the children for the bigger and nobler things ...
— History Plays for the Grammar Grades • Mary Ella Lyng
... Hot upon the inspiration Mr. Leary decided on his course of action. He would get himself safely and expeditiously removed from the hateful company and the ribald comments of the Lawrence P. McGillicuddys and their friends. He would get himself ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... Bloomfield is to be distinguished from her European rivals, by a frame so singularly feminine as to appear fragile, a delicacy of exterior, that, were it not for that illumined face of hers, might indicate a general feebleness, a sensitiveness and quickness of intellect that amount almost to inspiration; and yet all is balanced by a practical common sense, that renders her as safe a counsellor as she is a warm friend. This latter quality causes you sometimes to doubt her genius, it is so very homely and available. Now it is in this, that I think the American woman, when she does rise above ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... cried. "Oh, it can't be!" she added, with sudden inspiration, which was clouded with disappointment the next minute as ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... himself anywise in the law, or pretend that he lives and works by it, it is a sure sign that he is merely tithing cummin, and that there is no true art nor religion in him. For the true artist has that inspiration in him which is above all law, or rather, which is continually working out such magnificent and perfect obedience to supreme law, as can in no wise be rendered by line and rule. There are more laws perceived and fulfilled in the single stroke ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... anxiously around for fresh inspiration, lighted on the portrait over the mantelpiece. He started and paled. Then he knew his hour had come. There must be no more beating about ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... and had a great ambition to find the place where Theseus was buried, he, by chance, spied an eagle upon a rising ground pecking with her beak and tearing up the earth with her talons, when on the sudden it came into his mind, as it were by some divine inspiration, to dig there, and search for the bones of Theseus. There were found in that place a coffin of a man of more than ordinary size, and a brazen spear-head, and a sword lying by it, all which he took aboard his galley and brought with him to Athens. ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... and in the models which they follow; while Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris," Scott's "Ivanhoe," Fouque's "Der Zauberring," and Rossetti's painting, "The Girlhood of Mary," are no less certainly romantic in their inspiration. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... of the family, with a devotion beautiful to see, would sacrifice their own pleasure for his advancement. He would be put into long robes and allowed to give himself up wholly to learning, while parents, brothers, and sisters found inspiration for their own harder labors in the thought of the bright future that awaited him. The difficulty is that education has been regarded as the privilege of a gifted few, not as the right of all. In a land where scholarship ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... the hall the next morning after a late breakfast that Clovis had his final inspiration as he stood engaged in coaxing rust spots from an ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... a period when the intelligent study of the past, whether in palaeography, philology, or history, has been so highly cultivated as in the present day. If we have lost the inspiration that creates, we have, at least, learned to venerate and cherish the noble works ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... "And so, Diana," I continued, "I want you to promise that henceforth you will so govern your conduct, so order your life that you may become a woman, gentle and sweet and good, in whose presence no evil thing may exist, one who is herself an inspiration to good and noble things, a woman whose friendship is a privilege and whose—whose love would be a crowning glory. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... Why, a man born with a knowledge, a sense, an experience, of music, who does not require to go through the mill of learning all the rudiments before music can express itself through him, because the soul of music is in him. He plays by instinct—some folk call it inspiration. Technical, skill he may have to acquire—his fingers are new to it. The understanding of notation he may have to master again—the brain he uses consciously is also of fresh construction. But the sub-conscious self, the Ego of ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... American flags; and after the last regular toast of the evening was given, the bonnet rouge, or red cap of liberty, was placed first upon the head of Genet, and then upon each one present in turn, the recipient being expected, under the inspiration of the emblem of freedom, to utter a patriotic sentiment. The national flags were finally delivered to the French sailors, who "swore to defend till death these tokens of liberty, and of American ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... evident intention of the President to render abortive the Reconstruction acts, refused the mayor's demand. Then he tried to have the treasurer and comptroller restrained by injunction, but the city attorney, under the same inspiration as the council, declined to sue out a writ, and the attorney being supported in this course by nearly all the other officials, the mayor was left helpless in his endeavors to preserve the city's credit. Under such circumstances he took the only step left him—recourse ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... listened with great interest to the man's account of former trips to Europe and his description of famous places. The speaker's voice was pleasant and well-modulated. His clean-cut face lighted up under the inspiration of some vivid description. Chester found himself drawn to the man nearly as much as he ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... had once passed the Slap, Kirstie was received into seclusion. She looked back a last time at the farm. It still lay deserted except for the figure of Dandie, who was now seen to be scribbling in his lap, the hour of expected inspiration having come to him at last. Thence she passed rapidly through the morass, and came to the farther end of it, where a sluggish burn discharges, and the path for Hermiston accompanies it on the beginning of its downward path. From this corner a wide view was opened to ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fanatic. Could a mind so weak as that of Ferdinand resist the delusions of his counsellors, who exaggerated his resources and his strength, as much as they underrated those of his enemies; or the exhortations of his preachers, who announced the effusions of their fanatical zeal as the immediate inspiration of heaven? The dreams of astrology filled his mind with visionary hopes; even love conspired, with its irresistible fascination, to complete the seduction. "Had you," demanded the Electress, "confidence enough in yourself to accept the hand of a king's daughter, ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... was brisk and pleasant this morning, and all nature was in full glory, the inspiration did not come to the Vicar quite so readily as usual. In fact, he could not write at all, and at one time was thinking of pleading ill health, and not preaching, but afterwards changed his mind, and patched the sermons ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... at the Bray country, that lovely country red with the gold of autumn. By force of habit, my nerves spell out a few sensations which my thoughts do not put into words. My heart is beating. Now, with no idea or purpose in my mind, I am speeding with a full heart towards the girl who was at least the inspiration of a splendid hope and above ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... came the inspiration! Quickly, he slipped off his shirt and began waving it violently in the air. He developed a velocity of about two inches a second—not very fast, but fast enough. By the time he had put his shirt back on, he had ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... this remarkable element in the world of nature without recognizing its correspondence in the world of spirit. If an element radiates perpetual light, heat, and power with no loss of its own inherent energy, so the spirit can radiate love, sympathy, sweetness, and inspiration with no diminution of its own quality. Science may be unable to recognize the medium from which radium is fed; but religion recognizes the medium from which the spirit draws its sustenance in the power ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... to be accused of a superstitious faith in dream-books, but I do want to say that I have found all sorts of inspiration in a philosophical acceptance of that oracle attaching to my unfortunate birthday. If Saturday's child must work for her living, why not make the best of it? Why not make the most advantageous terms possible with ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... rare at Beachy Head, but jackdaws and gulls are in great and noisy profusion; and this reminds me that it was on Beachy Head in September, 1886, that the inspiration of one of the most beautiful bird-poems in our language came to its author—the ode "To a Seamew" of Mr. Swinburne. I quote five of ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... SON NOR DAUGHTER.'"—(Mr. Bradshaw's voice broke a little as he went over the words again with great deliberation and infinite pathos.)—"The inspired writer leaves the fact just as it stands, and is content. Inspiration itself can do nothing to make it more touching than it is in its own bare nakedness. There is no thought in Jephthah of recantation, nor in the maiden of revolt, but nevertheless he has his own sorrow. HE ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... steeple, and fully as large around. In all my whole life never was a man's presence so agreeable and his services so acceptable. It gave me a confidence in myself I never felt before nor since. His manly features and giant-like powers acted like inspiration upon me, and I felt for the time like a Goliath myself, and rose to my feet to join in the fray. But my good deliverer pushed me back ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... specious language and gentle attractions of the Due de Bouillon." He also described him as very dependent upon Prince Maurice. On the other hand Langerac professed unbounded and almost childlike reverence for Barneveld, was devoted to his person, and breathed as it were only through his inspiration. Time would show whether those sentiments would ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... conversation about the weather. Whenever she came to lay his table, he felt bound to say something. Not being an experienced gagger, he found it more and more difficult each evening to hit on something bright, until finally, from sheer lack of inspiration, ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... her own compositions that she is trying to keep hidden under a bushel, as it were," said Guy, with a sudden inspiration. ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... lucky inspiration which prompted me to conceal my bag, and how much more imperative now became the necessity that I should effect my escape without delay, not only for my own sake, but in order also that I might recover possession of those compromising ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... smoke and fire of her sister's martyrdoms scarcely quenched) was none of her least remarkable actions; but the support and establishment thereof, with the means of her own subsistence amidst so powerful enemies abroad, and those many domestic practices, were, methinks, works of inspiration, and of no human providence, which, on her sister's departure, she most religiously acknowledged—ascribing the glory of her deliverance to God above; for she being then at Hatfield, and under a guard, and the Parliament sitting ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... before, it delights me; I glued my lips tighter to hers, our heaves are quicker, our sighs shorter, I feel the least bit of her tongue touching my lips. I had never heard of that voluptuous accompaniment of fucking, and it was to me an inspiration; shooting out my tongue into her mouth,—hers comes out to meet it; they are exchanging liquids,—the delight spreads electrically through our bodies,—up comes her belly,—shorter are my shoves,—a quivering wriggle to get deeper up her—and we both spend together, as it seems with more ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... inspiration," he kept shouting. "Just look at Frangipane. What an action, eh? I back Frangipane at eight ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... "not yet. It is strange to what impressions the brain will respond. In Clarke's house, in the midst of inspiring things, inspiration failed me. But while I was with that girl an idea came ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... exercises was as follows: First, a jerk at the doorbell; second, precipitate entrance, hat in hand; third, "Happy New Year," remark on fine weather, and introduction of friends; fourth, a second remark on fine weather, or any other one remark which might occur to friends on inspiration of moment; fifth, acceptance of one sip of wine, and one bite of cake, if any offered, with compliments on excellence of both; sixth, reference to list in hand, observation on the necessity of retiring, and regret for the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... - Detail of the Fountains of the Rising and the Setting Sun. Adolph A. Weinman, Sculptor Finial Figure in the Court of Abundance. Leo Lentelli, Sculptor Atlantic and Pacific and the Gateway of all Nations. William de Leftwich Dodge, Painter Commerce, Inspiration, Truth and Religion. Edward Simmons, Painter The Victorious Spirit. Arthur F. Mathews, Painter The Westward March of Civilization. Frank V. Du Mond, Painter The Pursuit of Pleasure. Charles Holloway, Painter ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... Still troubles come, long drawn out and wearying, like the monotonous dripping of water with which old torturers used to drive their victims mad. Still sins bring shame to the conscience and tragic consequence to the life, and tiresome work, losing the buoyancy of its first inspiration, drags itself out into purposeless effort and bores us with its futility. Folk now, as much as ever in all history, need to have their souls restored. The scientific control of life, however, is not adequate for that. Electricity and subways and motor cars do ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... T. Fields, the ground-plan of this work was laid the preceding winter, but Hawthorne became dissatisfied with the way in which the subject developed itself and so set the manuscript aside until he could come to it again with fresh inspiration. With the more bracing weather of September he commenced on it again, and wrote during the next two months that portion which we now have. On December 1 he forwarded two chapters to Ticknor & Fields, requesting to have them set up so that he could see them in print and obtain a retrospective ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... have banished the inspiration. I sing no more. And as for you, Monsieur Blaise, take yourself off with that long sword of yours. It frightens the ape, and I have that to say which is ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... exactly. It was something like, "Sahib General?" and I said, "No, no," as if Generals were rather small fry in my estimation, and racked my brains how to index myself. I've read you must "buck" in the East—isn't that the expression?—so a happy inspiration came, and I said with solemnity, "I am a J.P.,—a Justice of the Peace, you understand?" and I could see he was greatly relieved, for unless you have some official position in India you are no one. He went on packing perfectly satisfied, murmuring, "Yes Sahib, I know, Sahib Lord Chief ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... all mortal strife. In proportion as it possesses, or is void of, the diviner something that quickens the pulse of the heart, and elevates the wing of the imagination, it presents a mockery to the philosopher, or an inspiration to the bard. Feel that something, and no contest is mean! Feel it not, and, like Byron, you may class with the slaughter of Cannae that field which, at Waterloo, restored the landmarks of nations; or may jeer ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the tongue? or am I not rather to regard them as a solemn, and sacred, and pathetic, and most ancient expression of Christian faith and Christian feeling; which, united as it is with the noblest productions of divine inspiration and of Christian art may haply not only instruct and elevate the mind, but also enkindle in the soul flames of that pure and practical devotion, which this holy season demands from every follower of Christ? ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... known "Jim" Gillis intimately and they all agreed that he possessed a keen sense of humor and had at command a practically inexhaustible stock of stories, upon which he drew at will. Whether Bret Harte derived any inspiration from "Jim" Gillis may perhaps always remain in doubt; but that Mark Twain did, there cannot, I think, be ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... I spoke a flash of inspiration seemed to light up my dark brain. My own careless words had created a picture which charmed, which intrigued. It was as though a veil had lifted, and I caught sight of beckoning hands. I saw before me a great, grim building, storey after storey rising in unbroken ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... those artistic utilizations of chance accessories—which were the more effective precisely because they were accidental, and the more appreciated because their use so obviously was an inspiration—was the final exit of Oedipus: a departure "into desert regions" that Mounet-Sully was able ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... jump; his pulse beat more quickly under the stress of a sudden inspiration. He felt convinced that the fortress was not Suwarndrug; the Gujarati's anxiety to pile up testimony to the contrary was almost sufficient in itself to prove that. If not Suwarndrug, it was probably one of Angria's strongholds, possibly Kulaba. In that case the grabs now beating out were certainly ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... he was placed by the side of Henrietta, who was then fifteen years old; and the countess, seeing these two young and handsome people side by side, was suddenly struck with an idea which seemed to her nothing less than inspiration from on high. Why might she not intrust the future happiness of her daughter to the brother of the poor man who had loved her so dearly? Thus she might make some amends for her own conduct, and show some ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... drift, but, at any rate, to swing at their moorings. Within the pale of the Anglican establishment, I venture to doubt, whether, at this moment, there are as many thorough-going defenders of "plenary inspiration" as there were timid questioners of that doctrine, half a century ago. Commentaries, sanctioned by the highest authority, give up the "actual historical truth" of the cosmogonical and diluvial narratives. University professors of deservedly high repute accept ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... grew pale, and slunk back in the box. The audience had never seen the part so conceived, and a few criticised it. But her beauty and her voice and her overflowing feeling carried all before her; and this, also, was accepted as a remarkable inspiration of ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... startling unfolding of the poetic gift, of this passage of a soft and dreamy boy into the keenest, boldest, sternest of poets, the free and mighty leader of European song, was, what is not ordinarily held to be a source of poetical inspiration—the political life. The boy had sensibility, high aspirations, and a versatile and passionate nature; the student added to this energy, various learning, gifts of language, and noble ideas on the capacities ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... an inspiration," said Dick one evening when several of his companions, including Tom and Bert, had gathered in ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... essential not to scare the quarry thoroughly by smashing the roof-line instead of the head. So the bullets flew high, and although the sharpshooter was comforted by the remarks of the other man, no progress was made. Then suddenly the rifleman fired, on an inspiration, he said afterwards, and lo! and behold, the head and shoulders of a Chinese brave rose clear in the air and then tumbled backwards. "Killed, by G——; killed, by G——!" swore the man with the binoculars irreverently; and well content with their ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... never be read again; for he knew how to put the right music into those thunderous interlardings and make them seem a part of the text, make them sound as if they were bursting from Shakespeare's own soul, each one of them a golden inspiration and not to be left out without damage to the ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... flowering bush. The figure was too slender to be mistaken for that of the present chatelaine of Quesnay: in Miss Elizabeth's regal amplitude there was never any hint of fragility. The lady upon the slope, then, I concluded, must be Madame d'Armand, the inspiration of Amedee's "Monsieur has ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... sits. Things are so because they are so. And the chances are she is right, in spite of the irregular way she got there. Something superior to reason enters into her operations—an intuition of truth akin to inspiration. In early ages women unusually endowed with this quality of perception were honored as seers. To-day they are recognized as counselors of prophetic wisdom. "If I had taken my wife's advice!" How often one ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... rather than its serenity. Only a rare listener, here and there among her world-wide audiences, was aware of deeper deficiencies and of the slow changes that time had wrought in her art. For it was inspiration no longer; it was the memory of inspiration. The Nemesis of the artist who expresses, not what he feels, but what he is expected to feel, what he has undertaken to feel, had fallen upon the great woman. Her art, too, showed the fragrant taint of an artificial atmosphere. She had played ten ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... of books for girls which have been uniformly successful. Janice Day is a character that will live long in juvenile fiction. Every volume is full of inspiration. There is an abundance of humor, quaint situations, and worth-while effort, and likewise plenty ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... fierce, desperate, clearheadedness of a strong, cool-nerved man face to face with despair, a voice—a female voice, lifted in song—sounded across his path, nearer and nearer. And now a wave of hope, of relief, surged through Laurence Stanninghame's heart, for there flooded in upon him, as with an inspiration, a way out of the situation. For he knew both the voice and the singer, and at that moment a turn in the bushes brought the latter ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... every note, and saw her fingers playing it on the piano; now smiling, over what she liked; now shaking her head over what displeased her. This spirit he took as the critic and judge of the whole work. There have rarely been such instances of actual personal inspiration in any work of art, and certainly none which do more credit to the absorption of the artist-mind in the worship of its idol. Furthermore, much of the composition was done at the home preparing for Caroline's actual presence, and he wrote those suave and optimistic pages of music to an accompaniment ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... who stood at work, Patient and accurate, full fourscore years, Cherished his sight and touch by temperance; And, since keen sense is love of perfectness, Made perfect Violins, the needed paths For inspiration and high mastery." ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... prophecy, a cure or a devastating curse. Moreover, social tradition treasures the memory of these revelations, and, blending them with the contributions of humbler folk—for all of us dream our dreams—provides in myth and legend and tale, as well as in manifold other art-forms, a stimulus to the inspiration of future generations. For most purposes fine art, at any rate during its more rudimentary stages, may be studied in connection ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... Keese with the daughter of George Pomeroy and Ann Cooper. Renewing in all ways the charm and grace of its early days, "Edgewater," as the home of Mr. George Pomeroy Keese, the grandson of Fenimore Cooper's youngest sister Ann, commands at the foot of the lake its length, breadth, beauty, and inspiration. ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... qualify that a little. Nothing persuaded me that this guidance, so infallible, so constant, owed its origin to what men call a being; I certainly found no name for it; exactness, I think, might place its truest description in some such term as energy, inner force or inspiration; yet I must admit that, with its steady repetition, there awoke in me an attitude towards it that eluded somewhere also an emotion. And in this emotion, in its quality and character, hid remotely a personal suggestion: ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... greater width than length, ran parallel to the facade; the other, which was longer than it was wide, stood at right angles with the former, exactly opposite to the entrance. The decoration of these chambers took its inspiration from the scheme which prevailed in the time of the Memphite dynasties, but besides the usual scenes of agricultural labour, hunting, and sacrifice, there were introduced episodes from the public life of the deceased, and particularly the minute portrayal of the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... father's handwriting, which he had often seen before in account-books and memoranda, and read eagerly some trifling poems, which did not show much genius, nor much mastery of language and rhythm,—such poems, in short, as a self-educated man, with poetic taste and feeling rather than poetic inspiration or artistic culture, might compose with credit, but not for fame. But suddenly, as he turned over these "Occasional Pieces," Leonard came to others in a different handwriting,—a woman's handwriting, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a few fanatics to divine inspiration increased the evil. While the Reformation had continually appealed from the pretended authority of the Church to the real authority of the holy Scriptures, these enthusiasts not only rejected the authority of the Church, but of the Scriptures also; they spoke only of an inner word, of an internal ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... 'Hermes' is a scribal error for 'Herines,' and that the scribe has added 'thou' out of his own head, to keep 'Hermes' company. The context bears this out; for the author utterly rejects the inspiration of the Muses in the preceding stanza, and proceeds to invoke furies, harpies, and, to use his own expression, 'all this lothsome sort.' Many of the lines almost defy scansion, so that no help is to be got from observing the run of the lines. Nevertheless, this fresh instance of the occurrence ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... the old-time pastor-preacher is becoming as rare as the former general practitioner; when the lines of division between speaker, educator, expert in social hygiene, are being sharply drawn—as though new methods insured of themselves fresh inspiration, and technical knowledge was identical with spiritual understanding—it would be worth while to dwell upon the culture of the pastoral office and to show that ingenuity is not yet synonymous with insight, and that, in our profession at least, card-catalogues cannot take the place of the personal ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... O Henry! always striv'st thou to be great 335 By thine own act—yet art thou never great But by the Inspiration of great Passion. The Whirl-blast comes, the desert-sands rise up And shape themselves; from Heaven to Earth they stand, As though they were the Pillars of a Temple, 340 Built by Omnipotence in its own honour! But the Blast pauses, and their shaping spirit Is fled: the mighty Columns were but ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... thing with another. You can't leave a girl alone anywheres here, unless she's taken in by some perfessor or ranger or guide or cook or chauffeur or something, who comes along and carries her off to show her the bears or Old Faithful or Inspiration Point or something. Seems to me like we've heard them words before, too—and then there's Lovers' Leap and the Devil's Slide. We've even got them in Ioway, where the hills ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough
... Changelings, and the Coniurer writeth downe their Sayings in a Booke, groveling on the ground, as if he whispered to the Devil to tell him the truth, and so expoundeth the Letter, as it were by inspiration. Many other foolish Rites they have, whereupon they doe dote ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... crossed the viaduct and stopped to gaze round-eyed upon a pile of empty coffins meant for the bodies of the identified dead found up and across the river in the ruins of Johnstown proper. As they gazed the Sergeant, seeking transportation for the coffins, came along. A somewhat malicious inspiration of military genius lighted his eye. With the best imitation possible of a regular army man, he shouted to the idlers, "Each of you men take a ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... benevolence of heart. In him the afflicted and the poverty-stricken ever found a sympathising friend, and if none of the rewards which the ruling faction were ready to shower on the Irishman of his position who looked to the Castle for inspiration, fell to his share, he enjoyed a recompense more precious in the prayers and the blessings of the poor. The steps of his door were crowded with the patients who flocked to him for advice, and for whom he prescribed gratuitously—not without some reluctance, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... the bactrian's frame With anger was inflated, Till, growing larger, he became Egregiously elated; For inspiration's sudden spell Had pointed ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... indirectly connected with Rousseau's energetic attack upon another great Encyclopaedist leader, the famous Letter to D'Alembert on Stage Plays. "There," Rousseau said afterwards, "is my favourite book, my Benjamin, because I produced it without effort, at the first inspiration, and in the most lucid moments of my life."[344] Voltaire, who to us figures so little as a poet and dramatist, was to himself and to his contemporaries of this date a poet and dramatist before all else, the author of Zaire and ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... spiritual dignity. Why are you incenst against him who comes forward to meet you and all mankind with his love? Did you know how his doctrine comforts me, how he lifts up my soul and guides it heavenward, how in his mouth piety and religion find the words and images of inspiration, which bear his scholars as with the wings of the spirit into the regions above the earth, you would not think and speak thus harshly of him. Learn to know him more nearly; seek his intercourse; and you will soon be moved by penitence and love to abjure ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... doxology is the refrain or final stanza of each of his three long hymns, "Morning," "Evening" and "Midnight," printed in a Prayer Manual for the use of the students of Winchester College. The "Evening Hymn" drew scenic inspiration, it is told, from the lovely view in Horningsham Park at "Heaven's Gate Hill," while walking to and ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... man?—a creature without inspiration, Gross of form and feature, dull of inclination? Or was his primordial self a something higher? Fresh from test and ordeal ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... to speak a few earnest words to Umslopogaas, pointing out that matters must go no further as regards Thomaso, whom I knew that he and his people hated, Goroko went back to the circle and was seized with a new burst of inspiration. ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... dabbled in verse, he sketches and he has written, but without brilliancy. Accident made him a lawyer, but he was really intended to be an artist; he would have produced no masterpiece, for genius is not in him, but he would have been happy in his work and perhaps have given inspiration to men of greater talent. Without being a fanatic or dogmatic, he is strongly religious; religion to him has a meaning and is not merely a convention; he has a code which he has always observed and ideals which he has preserved; he is charitable in his judgments and has never allowed ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... California mine-owner, the negro, and perhaps a stray visiting Indian chief, represent widely differing and highly interesting forms of life and opinion. Whenever native genius has cast aside foreign influence and has found inspiration in American traditions and institutions, the extent and richness of its literary ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... the deep sea of passionate sex is a greater disaster still. And now we have only these two things: sex as a fatal goal, which is the essential theme of modern tragedy: or ideal purpose as a deadly parasite. Sex passion as a goal in itself always leads to tragedy. There must be the great purposive inspiration always present. But the automatic ideal-purpose is not even a tragedy, it is a slow humiliation ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... even more than a hope. It was an inspiration, a passion. For it the Jews 'passed through fire and water,' enduring tribulation and death for the sake of the Unity. All the Jewish martyrologies ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... music of the carnival was under the direction of the competent leadership of Mr. Gustav Hinrichs, who, with his splendid military band, gave pleasure to thousands of spectators and inspiration to the able participants, quickening their steps and urging them on each night to even better work. The executive committee spared no pains to make every part attractive to the public. Every convenience of the spectators was promptly attended to. New attractions were added from day to day, ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... while in a state of bad health, produced, in the course of a few hours, one or two thousand rhymed lines, some of which he repeated in our hearing afterwards, and which were full of point and poetry. We cannot see that Caedmon's lines betray any weird inspiration; but when rehearsed the next day to the Abbess Hilda, to whom the town-bailiff of Whitby conducted him, she and a circle of learned men pronounced that he had received the gift of song direct from heaven! They, after one or two other trials ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Lord confirm as an authoritative bestowal, the name which, through inspiration, had been assumed by His obedient children, The Church of Jesus Christ. The Lord's explanation as to the one and only Name by which the Church could be appropriately known is cogent and convincing. It was not the church of Lehi or Nephi, of Mosiah or Alma, of Samuel or ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... had to hurry off to school, and it was a pity to call them early: they had lessons to learn in the afternoon. To them the garden was work, not play as it should have been; so they failed to gain that contact with mother earth which gives inspiration as well as health; they failed to acquire a love of nature, became infected with the germ of gregariousness, preferred the glare of lights, the rush of hurrying crowds, and lost the relish for fresh air and quiet. This second generation came to the city boarding-house and flat as soon as ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... unique and of quite exceptional interest, but because it strikes precisely that note of real antiquity that underlies the modern din and bustle of Antwerp, though apt to be obscured unless we listen needfully. Happy, indeed, was the inspiration that moved the city to buy this house from its last private possessor, Edward Moretus, in 1876. To step across this threshold is to step directly into the merchant atmosphere of the sixteenth century. The once great printing house ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... with defeat perching amid her freckles. "He's got ye this time," her face said, and the elder's expression of placid satisfaction affirmed the same opinion. But Timmins rose to a sudden inspiration. ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... the party were now really ill from the foul stench in which they had lived so long. The visions of liberty that had first lured them to desperate efforts under the inspiration of Rose and Hamilton had at last faded, and one by one they lost heart and hope, and frankly told Colonel Rose that they could do no more. The party was therefore disbanded, and the yet sanguine leader, with Hamilton for ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... reminding one of the St. Sebastian of Guido Roni in the museum of the Capitol; a face of the noblest manhood, without a single coarse feature. His manner, although quiet, gave the impression of keen enthusiasm, or, more rightly speaking, of unworldly inspiration. All who saw him were powerfully attracted, but half-unconsciously felt a slight doubt whether even so fine a specimen of manhood was quite fitly organized and equipped for the strife of existence. At the university he had ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... deep shadows from the trees. There they expected to find him, breathing the air of orange blossoms, gazing enraptured into the water, and on the gold fish and the swans and the fountains. He would be teasing Nature for a sonnet's inspiration. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... are technically superior to the first two, inasmuch as they show mastery of a more difficult form. But their appeal is not so great; there is lacking a something that might be inspiration, personal sympathy—some indefinable essential that the author himself has taught us to expect. They are less hamsunsk than most of Hamsun's work. Hamsun is at his best among the scenes and characters he loves; tenderness and sympathy make up so great a part of his charm that he is hardly recognizable ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... The very thought of him, faring quietly about among his hills and lakes, murmuring his calm verse, in a sober and temperate joy, looking everywhere for the same grave qualities among quiet homekeeping folk, brings with it a high inspiration. But we tend to think of Wordsworth as a father and a priest, rather than as a brother and a friend. He is a leader and a guide, not a comrade. We must learn that, though he can perhaps turn our heart the right way, towards the right things, we cannot ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... vehicles began to move along the highway, with that alert perception peculiar to a state of excitement, and which seems to be a sort of inspiration, she became aware that her headlong pace and distracted air might bring on her remark and suspicion. She therefore put the boy on the ground, and, adjusting her dress and bonnet, she walked on at as rapid a pace as ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... myself, when I am at a loss, "Never mind, we shall have it at seven o'clock to-morrow morning." If I have forgot a circumstance, or a name, or a copy of verses, it is the same thing. There is a passage about this sort of matutinal inspiration in the Odyssey,[164] which would make a handsome figure here if I could read or write Greek. I will look into Pope for it, who, ten to one, will not tell me the real translation. I think the first hour of the morning is also favourable ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... power and liberality of thought were apparent, not only in continual amplification and illustration of scriptural story by the artist's own invention, but in the acceptance of profane mythology, as part of the Scripture, or tradition, given by Divine inspiration. ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... name of God, he preaches content to the poor and oppressed, flatters the rich and powerful, and makes religious tyranny the handmaiden of political privilege, he blasphemes. And when he takes the Bible in his hand, and says it was written by the inspiration of God, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... Spencer girl—or a Spicer—going to college! Miss Cordelia gasped. If Mary had been noticing, she might not have pursued her inspiration further, but her mind was running along a breathless panorama of Niagara Falls, Great Lakes, Chicago, the farms of the Middle West, Yellowstone Park, geysers, the Old Man of the Mountain, Aztec ruins, redwood forests, orange groves and at the end of the vista—like a statue at ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... This line marks a change in the direction of David's thought. Up to stanza X it was the glorious past that he had been urging upon Saul's attention. But now he realizes that true inspiration comes not so much from a re-living of one's achievements, as from the thought of the permanence of ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... his studies the great name of Brunellesco was still the inspiration of all Florence, and we cannot doubt that Leonardo was open to it, since we find among his sketches the plan of the church of Santo Spirito[Footnote 1: See Pl. XCIV, No. 2. Then only in course of erection after the designs of Brunellesco, though he was already dead; finished in 1481.] and a lateral ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... felt nerve and resolution fail her. She looked at Mrs. Hurd and wrung her hands. The mother was muttering and moving, but not yet fully awake; and Willie lay as before. Hardly knowing what she was doing, she drew the curtains back, as though inspiration might come with the light. The rain-clouds trailed across the common; water dripped heavily from the thatch of the cottage; and a few birds twittered from some bedraggled larches at the edge of the common. Far away, beyond and beneath ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and Hamilton Fish lieutenant-governor to fill the vacancy occasioned by Addison Gardiner's election to the new Court of Appeals. The president of this seceders' mass-meeting was Churchill C. Cambreling, an old associate of Martin Van Buren, but its leader and inspiration was John Van Buren. He drafted the address to the people, his eloquence made him its chief orator, and his enthusiasm seemed to endow him ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... out, we pray" Hereat he paused; his better heart Strove strongly then; prompted a worthier part Than coldly to endure his doom. Speak out? Ay, speak, and for the brave, Who else no voice or proxy have; Frankly their spokesman here become, And the flushed North from her own victory save. That inspiration overrode— Hardly it quelled the galling load Of personal ill. The inner feud He, self-contained, a while withstood; They waiting. In his troubled eye Shadows from clouds unseen they spy; They could not mark within his breast ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... be the word for the present dress of Englishwomen. It forms in itself a lovely picture to the eye, and is not merely the material or the inspiration of a picture. It is therefore the more difficult of transference to the imagination of the reader who has not also been a spectator, and before such a scene as one may witness in a certain space of the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... of the uncultivated in our own days, undoubtedly, with somewhat different aspect, presented themselves at Rome. The enthusiasms, the visions, the loud preaching and praying, the dull iteration and reiteration of inspired truth till all the inspiration is driven out, were all probably to be heard and witnessed in the early Christian days at Rome. Not all the converts were saints,—and none of them were such saints as the Catholic painters of the last three centuries have prostituted Art and debased Religion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... introduced into Swedish poetry by Runeberg. Although born of Swedish parents, he was brought up in Finland, his mind being nurtured in the traditions and the mixed racial influences of his new fatherland. Thus he breathed a new spirit, and a new inspiration, drawn from the realities of life, into poetical fiction. He was a realist in the best sense of that much-misused word. He sought his ideals in life, instead of outside of it and above it in imaginary creations. ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... destroyed because the white man came here only to gratify his cupidity. The priests could bring no inspiration sufficient to overcome the degradation caused by the traders. The Marquesan saw that Jesus had small influence over their rulers. Civilization lost its opportunity because it gave precept, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... — N. imagination; originality; invention; fancy; inspiration; verve. warm imagination, heated imagination, excited imagination, sanguine imagination, ardent imagination, fiery imagination, boiling imagination, wild imagination, bold imagination, daring imagination, playful imagination, lively imagination, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... stagnant self-complacence, and you discern no essential difference. "Water's water," you say, with your broad, stupid generalization, and go oozing along contentedly through peat-bogs and meadow-ditches, mounting, perhaps, in moments of inspiration, to the moderate sublimity of a cranberry-meadow, but subsiding with entire satisfaction into a muck-puddle; and all the while the little brook that you patronize when you are full-fed, and snub when you are hungry, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... refreshment which occasionally comes when one has gone body and soul out of doors, or when one is delivered over to the enchantment of sober and elevating music, and suddenly made aware of the better things that have been long forgotten. Such experiences are a moral inspiration. It is as though, the clamor of the world being for the moment shut out, one hears at last the voices that speak with authority. For an instant the broad sweep of truth flashes upon eyes that have been too intently watchful of affairs near at hand. The ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... Then an inspiration flashed on Godfrey's bewildered mind. Suddenly he recollected that, by the direction of heaven, Mrs. Parsons had sewn a ten shilling piece into the lining of his waistcoat, "in case he should ever want any money sudden-like." He undid that garment and heedless of the mockery of ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... "How splendid! Such an inspiration! Only think, my love, you were to be kept bright and cheerful, and what could be better for ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... must use representation. Thus a man will paint an execution, and, fearing to miss with his first barrel of significant form, will try to hit with his second by raising an emotion of fear or pity. But if in the artist an inclination to play upon the emotions of life is often the sign of a flickering inspiration, in the spectator a tendency to seek, behind form, the emotions of life is a sign of defective sensibility always. It means that his aesthetic emotions are weak or, at any rate, imperfect. Before a work of art people ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... salt-junk. Thereafter, the rum buzzing in his head, he ran on in a vivacious way upon all things under the sun, save himself, so that the windy night seemed very far away, indeed, and the lamplight and fire to lend an inspiration to his nimble tongue, until, in a lull of the engaging discourse, he caught my uncle peering greedily into the cabin, all but licking his lips, his nostrils distended to the savor, his flooded eyes fixed upon the fresh beef ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... an ascendant in public assemblies. Vane was noted in all civil transactions for temper, insinuation, address, and a profound judgment; in all religious speculations, for folly and extravagance. He was a perfect enthusiast; and fancying that he was certainly favored with inspiration, he deemed himself, to speak in the language of the times, to be a man above ordinances, and, by reason of his perfection, to be unlimited and unrestrained by any rules which govern inferior mortals. These whimseys, mingling with pride, had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... still the meaning of the affair remained to him a mystery. By way of answer, he fell to sucking at his pipe with such vehemence that at length the pipe began to gurgle like a bassoon. It was as though he had been seeking of it inspiration in the present unheard-of juncture. But the pipe only gurgled, et ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... like Gordon! I wonder he consents to have a name at all. When I was telling some one about the young men who work under his orders—the young savants—he said I must not say that—I must not speak of their working 'under his orders.' I don't know what he would like me to say! Under his inspiration!" ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... 2 combined) spirit, spiritual, perspire, transpire, respire, aspire, conspiracy, inspiration, expiration, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... and this is simpler than the scratch {108} reflex, which consists of a rapid alternation of flexion and extension by one leg, while the other is stiffly extended and supports the trunk. Coughing, which would be called a reflex rather than an instinct, consists of a similar alternation of inspiration and forced expiration, and swallowing consists of a series of tongue, throat and gullet movements. These compound reflexes show that we cannot accept the simple definition that is sometimes given for an instinct, that it is a compound of reflexes. Such a ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... faces of the women one by one, and talking softly to himself in a way that had grown upon him as his age increased. 'Yet they are very well: that one with her shoulder turned is pure and charming—the brown-haired one will pass. All very harmless and innocent, but without character; no soul, or inspiration, or eloquence of eye. What an eye was hers! There is not a girl among them so beautiful. . . . Tipman! Come and take it away. I don't think I will subscribe to these papers any longer—how long have I subscribed? Never mind—I take no interest in these things, and I suppose I must ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... does no more than set at rest the fable of the "Romanoff Execution," it will have done its work by characterizing the source and methods and objects of its inspiration. If it raises the presumption of generosity in quarters generally subject to suspicion, it will be equally praiseworthy for expelling the darkness that has always hovered around Imperial thrones. If it ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... family and the young clerics attached to the palace chapel; he was the life and soul of the Academy of the palace, and we have still, in the Dialogue of Pepin (son of Charlemagne) and Alcuin, a sample of the intellectual exercises in which they indulged. It was under his inspiration that Charles wrote his famous letter de litteris colendis (Boretius, Capitularia, i. p. 78), and it was he who founded a fine library in the palace. In 790 Alcuin returned to his own country, to which he had always been greatly attached, and stayed there some time; but Charlemagne needed him to combat ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Jehovah.' If our religion does not drive the wheels of daily life, so much the worse for our life and our religion. But, above all, this charge reminds us that the secret of right living is to imitate God. These peasants were to find direction, as well as inspiration, in gazing on Jehovah's character, and trying to copy it. And we are to be 'imitators of God, as beloved children,' though our best efforts may only produce poor results. A masterpiece may be copied in some wretched little newspaper blotch, but the great artist ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... property for residential purposes in several cities. The decision in this case was broad, comprehensive and far-reaching. This important, fair and equitable decision has given the colored American new hope and new inspiration. It has strengthened and intensified his loyalty and devotion to his country, his government, its flag and its institutions. It makes him feel that with all of its faults and shortcomings, our form of government is superior to, and better than that of any other, and that by a few more decisions ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... proved an inspiration to Mr. Burroughs cannot be doubted. Possibly we should never have had him as a nature writer at all, had he spent his impressible youthful years in a less favored locality. It is, however, a curious fact that the town which produced this lover of nature ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... splendour of their coming faded—faded imperceptibly day after day; Denton's eloquence became fitful, and lacked fresh topics of inspiration; the fatigue of their long march from London told in a certain stiffness of the limbs, and each suffered from a slight unaccountable cold. Moreover, Denton became aware of unoccupied time. In one place among the carelessly heaped lumber ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... readers of all ages. Students of piano, violin or other instruments need to know how the great composers lived their lives. In every musical career described in this book, from the old masters represented by Bach and Beethoven to the musical prophets of our own day, there is a wealth of inspiration and practical guidance for the artist in any field. Through their struggles, sorrows and triumphs, divine melody and harmony came into being, which will bless the world for ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... saw any one else except you, and Maude, who sat beside you. I knew you would be there, and I looked the room over, missing you at first, and feeling as if something were wanting to fire me up; then, when I found you, the inspiration came, and if I began to flag ever so little, I had only to look at your blue eyes and my blood was ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... victories." Roswitha doubtless had some similar idea, but for the present her joy over the new arrival knew no bounds. Without further ado she called the child "little Annie," which the young mother took as a sign. "It must have been an inspiration," she said, "that Roswitha hit upon this particular name." Even Innstetten had nothing to say against it, and so they began to talk about "little Annie" long ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... still more mysterious sparkle of the midnight stars. This sense of the presence of the shadow of immensity—immensity itself cannot be felt any more than measured—this sight like that vouchsafed to Moses of the "backparts" of the Divine—the Divine itself cannot be seen—has been the inspiration of all the highest poetry of the world—of the "Paradise Lost," of the "Divina Commedia," of the "Night Thoughts," of Wordsworth and Coleridge, of "Festus," and, highest far, of the Hebrew Prophets, as they cry, "Whither can we go from Thy presence? ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... occupied by a charming old English gentleman, a perfect example of the old school, learned, benevolent, and very fond of animals and feathered pets. No one can tell what chance it was that brought the unhappy and wounded young rook to the window of this good man. But possibly it was a real inspiration on the part of the young bird. Toby was wet, weary, wounded and hungry, and as he looked in upon the cheerful wood fire and the kindly face of the master of the house, his longing expression was met by ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... impassioned vehemence, and the most redundant energy of gesture, he went on to declaim against the influences of civilisation upon language and manners as being fatal to all real poetry. If the true inspiration yet existed upon earth, it burned in the hearts and brains of men far removed from cities, salons, and the clash and din of social influences. Your only true poets were the unlettered peasants, who poured forth their hearts in song, not because they wished to ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... thoughts and profound confessions in these letters, which would have commanded the praise of Goethe, had they been written by a rival; and coming, as they did, from a devotee who declared that she drew her inspiration from him alone, they must have filled his soul with incense, of which that burned by the priest in the temple of the gods is only an emblem. To be brief and compendious on this book, it appears to be a heart unveiled. German ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... London morning journals had been making a great feature of the Scarnham affair from the moment Parkinson, on Starmidge's inspiration, had supplied the Press with its details, and it had that day printed an exhaustive resume of the entire history of the case, brought up to the discovery of Frederick Hollis's body. Easleby bought a copy of this issue as soon as he and Starmidge returned to town, and carefully blue-pencilled ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... the division of labour implies a common understanding among the workers, and in history no such understanding exists. Except in the preparatory operations of external criticism, each worker follows the guidance of his own private inspiration; he is at no pains to work on the same lines as the others, nor does he pay any regard to the whole of which his own work is to form a part. Thus no historian can feel perfectly safe in adopting the results of another's work, as may be done in the established sciences, for he does not know ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... advice as to shopping, recommending Herbault for toques and Juliette for hats and bonnets; he added the address of a fashionable dressmaker to supersede Victorine. In short, he made the lady see the necessity of rubbing off Angouleme. Then he took his leave after a final flash of happy inspiration. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... unduly by the indescribable quality of her glances. The German woman was quite ordinary; there were two boys to look after; they were ordinary, too, I presume; and Flora, I understand, was very attentive to them. If she taught them anything it must have been by inspiration alone, for she certainly knew nothing of teaching. But it was mostly "conversation" which was demanded from her. Flora de Barral conversing with two small German boys, regularly, industriously, conscientiously, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... shod good Winnie in such a manner that she could not sink in the snow; and he clad her over the loins with a sheep-skin dyed to her own colour, which the wild horses were never tired of coming up and sniffing at; taking it for an especial gift, and proof of inspiration. And Winnie never came home at night without at least a score of ponies trotting shyly after her, tossing their heads and their tails in turn, and making believe to be very wild, although hard pinched by famine. Of course Tom would get them all into his pound in ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... interesting fact that this impressiveness depends only in a slight degree upon the fulfillment of the old dreams and prophecies. To be sure they are fulfilled; but we are not required to put faith in the inspiration either of the Arab soothsayer or of the Christian monk. Their vaticinations might be mere fallible guess-work; Don Cesar might live and give them the lie, so far as any external constraint is concerned. But he himself feels that the heavy hand of fate is upon him and that continued life would ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... uplifted on his tormentors, his mate ceased to bale out the pea-soup, and the whole ship seemed paralysed. The boatswain, having checked himself in the middle of his long-winded dinner-tune, drew a fresh inspiration, and dashed off into the opposite sharp, abrupt, cutting sound of the "Pipe belay!" the essence of which peculiar note is that its sounds should be understood and acted on with the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the greater part of the night I lay awake, musing upon the work which I had determined to execute. For a long time my brain was dry and unproductive; I could form no plan which appeared feasible. At length I felt within my brain a kindly glow; it was the commencement of inspiration; in a few minutes I had formed my plan; I then began to imagine the scenes and the incidents. Scenes and incidents flitted before my mind's eye so plentifully, that I knew not how to dispose of them; I was in a regular embarrassment. At length I got out of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... finger; it would not go over the middle joint, but persisted in sticking fast just where the one he bought stopped. It was a magnificent little affair—almost enough to bribe a girl to say "Yes" for the pleasure of wearing it, and Maurice congratulated himself on the happy inspiration. Being in a tempting shop, he also bethought himself of carrying out with him some trifling gifts for his old friends; and by the time he had finished his selection, he found to his great satisfaction that he might return to the hotel for his luggage, ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... so that the face look upward, all the back part of the head being under water, and its weight consequently in a great measure supported by it, the face will remain above water quite free for breathing, will rise an inch higher every inspiration, and sink as much every expiration, but never so low as that the water may come ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... You're an inspiration, Senator. Just like that dago or Dutchman or whoever he was who tried to smash up the windmills. But you ...
— Makers of Madness - A Play in One Act and Three Scenes • Hermann Hagedorn
... slept, loved, and hated, like another; my life was as the vapor and is not; but this I saw and knew: this if anything of mine, is worth your memory." That is his "writing"; it is, in his small human way and with whatever degree of true inspiration is in him his inscription, or scripture. That is ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... its present message began to be heard through their first though faltering interpreter, Christian Conrad Sprengel, a German botanist and school-master, who upon one occasion, while looking into the chalice of the wild geranium, received an inspiration which led him to consecrate his life thence-forth to the solution of the floral hieroglyphics. Sprengel, it may be said, was the first to exalt the flower from the mere status ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... act or function of breathing; the act by which air is drawn in and expelled from the lungs, including inspiration ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... all is a snare to the unhappy; the smallest matter brings the sick mind back to its woes; but the greatest evil of certain woes is the persistency which makes them a fixed idea pervading our lives. A constant sorrow ought rather to be a divine inspiration. You love flowers for themselves, whereas I love them as I love to listen to fine music. So, as I was saying, the secret of a mass of things escapes me. You, my old friend, you have a passion,—that of the horticulturist. When you return to town ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... historical relationship, we can trace in the lofty moral and spiritual teachings of the former, as contrasted with the grotesque and polytheistic representations of the latter, the veritable action of the Spirit of God upon the minds of men. Modern research has, in fact, raised the doctrine of inspiration from a vague and conventional belief to the level of an ascertained fact, evidenced by observation. Just as a scientific man can watch his facts under his microscope or in his test tubes, so such comparison as has been suggested, between Genesis and the cuneiform tablets, enables us to watch ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... greatest Minister that ever governed England. Foremost among the gifts by which he acquired his supreme ascendency must be placed his power of parliamentary speaking. He was not, as his father was, an orator in that highest sense of oratory which implies something of inspiration, of genius, of passionate and poetic rapture; but he was a public speaker of extraordinary merit. He had while still a youth what Coleridge aptly termed "a premature and unnatural dexterity in the combination of words," and this developed into "a power of pouring ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... for religion and temperance, and exhorted the little boys to be good and diligent and try to become like him some day. The speakers won the deathless hatred of the house by these delays, but at last there was an end and hope revived; inspiration ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was too slender to be mistaken for that of the present chatelaine of Quesnay: in Miss Elizabeth's regal amplitude there was never any hint of fragility. The lady upon the slope, then, I concluded, must be Madame d'Armand, the inspiration of Amedee's "Monsieur has ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... in spirit with the prophets named in the three preceding chapters, Amos, Hosea, and Micah. It is by no means impossible that he had listened to the sermons of Hosea, and thus caught from him his inspiration. He must certainly have known Micah personally, for they lived and preached only some twenty-five or thirty miles apart—Micah in the village of Moresheth and Isaiah ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... gratitude to Dr. W.W. Willoughby, not only for his careful criticism of this study during its preparation, and for the helpful suggestions by which he has attempted to correct some of its obvious deficiencies, but especially for his kindly inspiration at ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell
... the exclusion of other motives. We have seen that the Utopian child takes many things in his stride which other children would regard as distasteful. If they are not distasteful to him, the reason is that he does them, not from a sense of duty, but under the inspiration of love,—love of life, love of Egeria, love of his schoolmates, love of his school. And the longer he can remain on the high plane of love, the better it will be ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... genius, as the world understands that term. It was by probity, industry, perseverance, a well-strung nerve, and an iron will, that they conquered the obstacles before them, and acquired that true greatness which has made their names preeminent among the famous of earth, and their example the inspiration of American youth. Circumstances may do something for us; we can do more for ourselves. We must have faith, we must be in earnest.' The healthful American spirit which pervades the 'Address,' characterizes not less prominently ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... to strengthen her husband's life and exalt her own? Never perhaps, as she had preconceived them; but somehow—still somehow. In this solemnly pledged union of her life, duty would present itself in some new form of inspiration and give a new meaning ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... surrounded by wooded hills, the ruins of Tintern Abbey stand. The somber-looking heights, which close in to the east and west, create the atmosphere of loneliness and separation from the world so sought after by the Cistercian monks, who doubtless found inspiration in the grandeur of the surrounding mountains and in the peacefulness of the sweet valley below. Tho the church of the Early English abbey is roofless and the central tower gone, the noble structure, with its many graceful arches, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... impressive earnestness he told her his name was Neumann, repeating it three times, almost as if in defiance of contradiction; that his niece was his deceased brother's child; that her Christian name—here he was swept away by inspiration—was Maria-Theresa; that he had saved enough as a teacher of German in London to retire into the country; and that he was looking for a cottage in which to spend his ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... just how Walter is making out," thought the doctor. Then, after a pause, he resumed, with a sudden inspiration: "Why shouldn't I know? I'll go over to Euclid to-morrow with out giving Walter any intimation of my visit, and ...
— Walter Sherwood's Probation • Horatio Alger
... French nation. Our conception of the French people derived from books, chiefly novels of a questionable nature, are entirely wrong. The French soldier is cool and intrepid and they "carry on" their work without the slightest "fuss." The pose of the nation is an inspiration and ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
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