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More "Invent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... faint, I do assure ye! For me to 'ave to unpack an' open 'em, and take out all the things inside,—ah, Passon, it's an orful 'sponsibility, seein' there's jewels packed among the dresses quite reckless-like, rubies an' sapphires an' diamants, somethin' amazin', and we've taken a reg'lar invent'ry of them all lest somethin' might be missin', for the Lord He only knows whether there might not be fifty thousand pounds of proputty in one of them little kicketty boxes, all velvet and satin, made just as if they was sweetmeats, only when ye looks inside ye sees a sparklin' stone glisterin' ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... what not, is enough to daze or frighten any timid animal out of its normal state of mind and nerves. To put a wild sapajou monkey,— weak, timid and afraid,—in a strange and formidable prison box filled with strange machinery, and call upon it to learn or to invent strange mechanical processes, is like bringing a boy of ten years up to a four-cylinder duplex Hoe printing-and-folding press, and saying to him: "Now, go ahead and find out how to run this machine, and print both sides ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... soon discovered the stars and the compass could not be relied upon to furnish them the reliable information they needed in locating their position. Therefore, about 1713 England offered a prize of L20,000 to any one who should invent a timekeeper sufficiently accurate to enable navigators to ascertain ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... emphatically. "You forget the first man to reach New Mu was a Spink. A Spink helped Columbus wade ashore in the West Indies. The first man to invent a road-map all citizens could unfold ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... believe one word he said, all the time!' said Hazel, coolly ignoring the insinuations. 'Why should Stuart Nightingale invent falsehoods to cover ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... me to be frank with you?" she inquired. "Well, then, to tell you the truth, I think I shall come no more. I have no pretext, and I cannot invent one." ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... parents obey that obligation reluctantly, and as soon as they can afford it they resort to all kinds of compromises to save the lives of their new-born. As has been so well pointed out by my friend Elie Reclus,(35) they invent the lucky and unlucky days of births, and spare the children born on the lucky days; they try to postpone the sentence for a few hours, and then say that if the baby has lived one day it must live all its natural life.(36) They hear the cries of the ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... his second a house; his third a coat. The sense of these needs and the possibility of satisfying them by exchange, draw individuals together on the same spot; and this is the beginning of a State, which we take the liberty to invent, although necessity is the real inventor. There must be first a husbandman, secondly a builder, thirdly a weaver, to which may be added a cobbler. Four or five citizens at least are required to make a city. Now ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Gujarati keenly. The man's manner fully confirmed his suspicions, and even in the tenseness of the moment he felt a passing amusement at the big fellow's puzzle-headed attempts to invent an explanation that would square with the facts. Failing to hit upon a plausible argument, he began ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... you are talking, all of you! For Heaven's sake consider what an important matter we are called upon to decide. It is not now the titles of those very respectable works which issued from the Minerva Press that I ask you to remember,—it is to invent a title ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... common nucleus is derived from India and India alone. The Hindus have been more successful than others, because of two facts: they have had the appropriate "atmosphere" of metempsychosis, and they have also had spread among the people sufficient literary training and mental grip to invent plots. The Hindu tales have ousted the native European, which undoubtedly existed independently; indeed, many still survive, especially in Celtic lands. Exactly in the same way, Perrault's tales have ousted the older English folk-tales, and it is with the utmost difficulty that ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... extended to man; the intellect must have been all-important to him, even at a very remote period, as enabling him to invent and use language, to make weapons, tools, traps, etc., whereby with the aid of his social habits he long ago became the most dominant ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... there is one benefit in writing of something you know nothing about (and you are certain that ninety-nine per cent. of your readers will not be able to enlighten you) the necessity for accuracy does not arise. And so, I settled myself down to invent "history," and, if my historical narrative is all invention, I can defend myself by saying that if it isn't true—it might be. And many historical romances cannot ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... daily, and she communicated it to the others; they treated me insolently, and him very strangely—running away whenever he came as if they saw a serpent—and plotting with their governess—a cunning Italian—how to invent lyes to make me hate him, and twenty such narrow tricks. By these means the notion of my partiality took air, and whether Miss Thrale sent him word slily or not I cannot tell, but on the 25th January, 1783, Mr. Crutchley came hither to conjure me not to go to Italy; he had heard such ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... charter bill, the chancellor of the exchequer brought forward the proposition for prohibiting the circulation of small notes. In doing so he said that though fluctuations were inseparable from trade, in defiance of any precautions which ingenuity could invent, yet their effects were often aggravated by a state of currency, and a facility of speculation like those produced by the existing issues of paper. The small notes especially carried the consequences of these changes among those on whom they pressed most severely. These notes were chiefly ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a stormy petrel," he said. "I used to think the chief difficulty in writing a book would be to invent things to happen, but if I were to sit down and write the adventures I'd had with her it would be ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... at this juncture an amiable friend subscribed in my name for the "Century," and I determined to make a personal trial of the workings of the censorship in as strong a case as I could have found had I deliberately desired to invent a test case. I may as well remark here that "the censor" is not the hard-worked, omnivorous reader of mountains of print and manuscript which the words represent to the mind of the ordinary foreigner. The work of auditing literature, so to speak, is subdivided among such a host of men that office ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... duchess' cheek. In the middle of this broad and fantastically carved joist there was an old painting representing a cat playing rackets. This picture was what moved the young man to mirth. But it must be said that the wittiest of modern painters could not invent so comical a caricature. The animal held in one of its forepaws a racket as big as itself, and stood on its hind legs to aim at hitting an enormous ball, returned by a man in a fine embroidered coat. Drawing, color, and accessories, all were treated in such a way as to suggest ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... procrastination of the fruits of success, where success was certain. Mr. Stelling was so broad-chested and resolute that he felt equal to anything; he would become celebrated by shaking the consciences of his hearers, and he would by and by edit a Greek play, and invent several new readings. He had not yet selected the play, for having been married little more than two years, his leisure time had been much occupied with attentions to Mrs. Stelling; but he had told that fine woman what he meant to do some ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... prejudiced in favour of Blifil by the apparently unjust prejudice of Blifil's mother in favour of the jovial Tom. A generous man may easily become blind to the faults of a supposed victim of maternal injustice; and even here Fielding fairly escapes from the blame due to ordinary novelists, who invent impossible misunderstandings in order to bring about ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... from the beaten track of life; but will try what can be found in female delicacy. I will marry a wife as beautiful as the houries, and wise as Zobeide; and with her I will live twenty years within the suburbs of Bagdad, in every pleasure that wealth can purchase, and fancy can invent. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... language, are the most intense that it is possible to conceive. He rejected the measure of the epic, dramatic, and lyrical forms, because he sought to kindle a harmony in thoughts divested of shape and action, and he forbore to invent any regular plan of rhythm which would include, under determinate forms, the varied pauses of his style. Cicero sought to imitate the cadence of his periods, but with little success. Lord Bacon was a poet.[11] His language has a sweet and majestic rhythm, which satisfies ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... on the coming of her younger sister were significant of her mental attitude. "Pixie's no trouble. She's such an easy soul. She fits into corners and fills in the gaps. She'll amuse the boys. It will keep them in good humour to have her to invent new games. She'll keep Geoff company at breakfast when I'm tired. I'll get some of the duty visits over while she's here. She'll talk to the bores, and be so pleased at the sound of her own voice that she'll never notice they don't answer. And she'll cheer me ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... malicious lies (4) invent, (4) Malicious lines. And would to death the innocent By treacherous means (5) expose. (5) By ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... had no other fruit to offer your Highness the first time I saw you, and you were then pleased to invent for me some reason why they should be acceptable. I did not dry these: may I present them, such as they are? We shall ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... have you curse yourself now, that your bounty (Which makes men truly noble) e'er should make me A villain. O, that to avoid ingratitude For the good deed you have done me, I must do All the ill man can invent! Thus the devil Candies all sins o'er; and what heaven terms vile, ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... scamps suggested that perhaps a lemon would relieve that, and a nice lemon was instantly produced. They had plenty of sugar themselves, and so from good Mother Harris's benevolent provision for the colic these rascals deliberately brewed a pitcher full of excellent hot whiskey punch. They had to invent a number of additional lies to keep her out of the room, but they were equal to it. She sent her orderlies in, one after the other, to inquire how the patient was progressing, and the boys secured a proper message back by letting them in for a swig. I hope the good old lady never ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... a hot fire till the very flesh and even the bones were consumed. Others were suspended by their limbs, and heavy weights attached to them to make the agony more intense. Others were deprived of their teeth; and every cruelty that a horrible ingenuity could invent was used. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the gentle consumptive dominie. If there was any class of men whom Sir Walter could not away with, it was the race of schoolmasters, "black cattle" whom he neither trusted nor respected. But he could make or invent exceptions, as in the uncomplaining and kindly usher of the verbose Cleishbotham. Once launched in his legend, with the shooting of the Popinjay, he never falters. The gallant, dauntless, overbearing Bothwell, the dour Burley, the handful of Preachers, representing ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... to you for small bits of calicoes, old swords, knives, &c. to make slaves for you and your children? This being done, have you not brought us among you, in chains and handcuffs, like brutes, and treated us with all the cruelties and rigour your ingenuity could invent, consistent with the laws of your country, which (for the blacks) are tyrannical enough? Can the American preachers appeal unto God, the Maker and Searcher of hearts, and tell him, with the Bible in their hands, that they make no distinction on account of men's colour? Can they say, O God! thou knowest ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... useless. You can't carve wood with them. None but a practical carver can design these tools, and then he must invent and make the steel molds first. Try and sell them in London or Paris, you'll soon find the difference. Mr. Bayne, I wonder you should call me from my forge to examine 'prentice-work." And, with this, he walked off disdainfully, but not quite easy in his ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... drier than the other portions of the soil. It is impossible to say how many cows have been cut into atoms by the trains in America, but the frequent accidents arising from these causes has occasioned the Americans to invent a sort of shovel, attached to the front of the locomotive, which takes up a cow, tossing her off right or left. At every fifteen miles of the rail-roads there are refreshment rooms; the cars stop, all the doors ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... employment of butter that has been subjected to the influence of heat, the better. The woman of modern times is not a "leech;" but she might often keep the "leech" from the door, if she would give herself the trouble to invent innocent sauces. ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... been assigned. But even by postulating the highest possible dates for the Dynasties of Babylon and Ur, enormous gaps occurred in the scheme of chronology, which were unrepresented by any royal name or record. In his valiant attempt to fill these gaps Radau was obliged to invent kings and even dynasties,[27] the existence of which is now definitely disproved. The statement of Nabonidus has not, however, been universally accepted. Lehmann-Haupt suggested an emendation of the text, reducing the number by a thousand years;[28] ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... obtain material to express desire there must also be a world composed of desire stuff. Carrying our argument to its logical conclusion, we also hold that unless a World of Thought provides a reservoir of mind stuff upon which we may draw, it would be impossible for us to think and invent the things which we see in even ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... could reason, they ought to improve in their condition. Men become more civilized day by day. They invent many things that were unknown to their forefathers. One man can improve upon the works of another, etc. But, we never see anything of this kind in the actions of animals. The same kind of birds, for instance, build the same kind of nests, generation after generation, without ever making change or ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... like people. Sensible folk settle their own problems, then look for more. Terra? One half of the globe is against the other half of the globe. Fighting one another tooth and nail, they still find time to invent and cross space to other planets and continue their ...
— Instinct • George Oliver Smith
... public man, he was that still; but excited, speaking aloud, muttering oaths and threats in a voice that had suddenly grown tender again at the memory of the dear old woman. To have dragged her into that—her also! Oh, if she should read it, if she should understand! What punishment could he invent for such an infamy? He had reached the Rue Royale, up which were disappearing with the speed of horses that knew they were going home and with glancings of shining axles, visions of veiled women, heads ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... old topic of discussion whether Dickens could invent an organic and powerful plot, and carry out an elaborate scheme with perfect skill. It is certain that he has never done so, and it can hardly be said that he has ever essayed it. The serial form in parts, wherein ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... with two "whoppers," as Mr. Jo Gargery might call them, Surtees goes on to invent a perfectly incredible heraldic bearing. He found it in a MS. note in the "Gwillim's Heraldry" of Mr. Gyll or Gill—the name is written both ways. "He beareth per pale or and arg., over all a spectre passant, SHROUDED SABLE"—"he" being Newton, of Beverley, in Yorkshire. ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... feed he enjoys so well as a young lamb. Coyotes seem to know when the lambs come and they make ready to raid the flocks. You'd think folks would be bright enough to catch 'em, but there ain't wit enough in the world to get ahead of them. They're the cutest! The tricks a coyote will invent, sir, pass belief. In spite of the fact this pasture is fenced with coyote-proof wire the creatures manage to get in—goodness only ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... elegance, rendered yet more delightful by the elemental war, reigned triumphant within a large and splendidly furnished apartment in the noble mansion of M. Dantes, the Deputy from Marseilles, in the Rue du Helder. Every embellishment which art could invent, luxury court, wealth invoke, or even imagination conceive, seemed there lavished with a most prodigal hand. The soft atmosphere of summer, perfumed by the exotics of a neighboring conservatory, delighted the ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... great brevity, terseness, regularity, and poetic expressiveness, might be formed. It would be necessary to restore to its alphabet the consonants f, l, and r, and v. Its primitive pronouns might be retained, with simple inflections, instead of compound, for plural. It would be necessary to invent a pronoun for she, as there is, apparently, nothing of this kind in the language. The pronouns might take ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... of Christianity. A pure faith and a gorgeous ritual are not so incompatible as many people think. God should be worshipped with pomp and splendour; we should bring to His service all that we can invent in the way of art and beauty. If God has prepared for those who believe the splendid habitation of the New Jerusalem with its gates of pearl and its streets of gold, why should we, His creatures, stint ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... wombat and a hairy-nosed wombat. They don't come out much in daylight, and they had been here some time before they found themselves both out for an airing together. "Halloa," reflected the hairy-nosed wombat, "here is my neighbour. I'll chaff him!" and he straightway set to work to invent some facetious observation. In an hour or so an idea struck him, and, advancing to the partition bars, he said to the common wombat, "Here, I say—you're common!" and laughed uproariously. The common wombat felt the sting of the remark ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... unlucky as to let the box fall into the water for, when her palfrey stumbled under her, the box slipped from her gasp, and she came near falling in too, which would have been still worse luck. It is her intention to invent this story when she comes into her mistress' presence. Together they held their way until they came to the town, where the lady detained my lord Yvain and asked her damsel in private for her box and ointment: and the damsel repeated to her the lie as she had invented it, not ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... is!" broke in a new voice. "Bless my overshoes, but he is a smart lad! A wonderful lad, that's what! Why, bless my necktie, there isn't anything he can't invent; from a button-hook to a battleship! ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... favoured reign. There are many such; and of great advantage will they prove to the spiritual welfare of the people. They have an especial work, it seems to me, to show that all the old forms of worship are wrong, and invent as many new ones as their imaginations can devise. Wherever they spring from, they're serving the Pope of Rome well, for the more the Protestants are divided, the better will it be for his faithful children ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... occasioned their separation, and the rest of the story relating to him, as already told. They then bemoaned one another's ill fortune, and rejoiced in their good: he complained of her with the kindest expressions love could invent, chiding her tenderly for making him languish so long without her; and she excused herself with the reasons already related. After which, it growing late, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... While he was in the train he was planning how he could most effectively announce his return. To ring at his own hall-door, or to open it with a latch-key, or to walk in in the ordinary fashion of the master of the house did not content him at all. He must invent a more novel manner of return than that. He was really fond of Little-sing. She suited him to perfection. What he called her "fine-lady airs," when they were displayed to any one but himself, pleased him mightily. He thought of her as pretty and gracious and ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... story as it was needed by the printer, so that the first numbers of the "Pickwick Papers" appeared while Charles was still working on the next ones. This often put him to great inconvenience, as he sometimes found it hard to invent new adventures to fit Seymour's pictures and yet had to have the story written by a ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... could invent something to fly with," thought Vane, as he reached the turning some distance short of the first houses of the town. "It does seem so easy. Those birds just spread out their wings, and float about wherever they please with hardly a beat. ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... well as the knowledge of how to lay it on. If anything, the where and why are more important than the how. There are almost infinite methods and processes of getting the paint onto the surface. Every painter may select or invent his own way, and provided it accomplishes the main purpose—the bringing about of combinations of form, relative color and pitch, the expression of an idea—it is all right. But there are laws which govern the positions of the different spots of paint, and ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... the history of almost every human creature four different states or modes of existence. First, there is sleep. In the strongest degree of contrast to this there is the frame in which we find ourselves, when we write! or invent and steadily pursue a consecutive train of thinking unattended with the implements of writing, or read in some book of science or otherwise which calls upon us for a fixed attention, or address ourselves to a smaller or greater audience, or are ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... victorious in Persia, but withal so far distant from Macedonia, his hereditary kingdom, that the joy of the one did not expel the extreme grief which through occasion of the other he had inwardly conceived; for, not being able with all his power to find or invent a convenient mean and expedient how to get or come by the certainty of any news from thence, both by reason of the huge remoteness of the places from one to another, as also because of the impeditive interposition of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... inclined, I have always entertained a desire to invent something worth while. I set out to perfect a cracker that would be fool-proof, easy to work, fast, simple, and strong enough to last a lifetime. This I accomplished in the Model 6. Before reaching this point, I had designed and tested five different models, made five different ways, to see ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... You see we've all got to take it turn and turn about, and it's wonderful how soon a feller gets used to it. I'm rather fond of it, d'ye know? We haven't overmuch to work on in the way o' variety, to be sure, but what we have there's lots of it, an' it gives us occasion to exercise our wits to invent somethin' new. It's wonderful what can be done with fresh beef, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, flour, tea, bread, mustard, sugar, pepper, an' the like, if ye've got a talent ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... one asks, Whence have they come? What could have tempted, or what change compelled, a tribe of men, to leave the fine regions of the north, to travel down the Cordillera or backbone of America, to invent and build canoes, which are not used by the tribes of Chile, Peru, and Brazil, and then to enter on one of the most inhospitable countries within the limits of the globe? Although such reflections must at first seize on the mind, yet we may feel sure that they are partly erroneous. There is ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... is said that Xerxes offer'd a reward To those who could invent him a new pleasure: Methinks the requisition 's rather hard, And must have cost his majesty a treasure: For my part, I 'm a moderate-minded bard, Fond of a little love (which I call leisure); I care not for new pleasures, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... allusion, illusion, delusion folk, family conscience, consciousness evidence, testimony identity, identification party, person, firm limit, limitation plenty, many, enough of majority, plurality portion, part materialize, appear solicitation, solicitude invent, discover human, humane prescribe, proscribe bound, determined some, somewhat, something fix, mend mutual, common foot, pay noted, notorious creditable, credible wait for, wait on exceptionable, exceptional ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... fully aware of this; and, without troubling to invent a transition, he ceased his jeremiads, leapt to his feet, cut a sort of agile caper before Hortense' eyes and cried, in a ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... this chapter to attempt the delineation in terms, not exclusively of Ritschl, but of that which may with some laxity be styled Ritschlianism. The value judgments of religion indicate only the subjective form of religious knowledge, as the Ritschlians understand it. Faith, however, does not invent its own contents. Historical facts, composing the revelation, actually exist, quite independent of the use which the believer makes of them. No group of thinkers have more truly sought to draw near to the person of the historic Jesus. The historical ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... am at a loss to conceive what could induce Napoleon to invent such a story. He might have recollected his acquaintance with Madame Grassini at Milan before the battle of Marengo. It was in 1800, and not in 1805, that I was first introduced to her, and I know that I several times took tea with ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... rediscovered the picaresque method, as it were instinctively, by the mere fact of his having to express sentiments of a certain description; he has indeed rediscovered it by the same process which led Cervantes and Hurtado de Mendoza to invent it—by virtue of that necessity which always enables genius to give the most appropriate clothing to its conceptions. To attain this result, however, it is necessary that genius should not be thrown off its balance by deliberate ambition, or too much preoccupied by the immediate ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... share in the criticisms and attacks on his profession; and these discussions were extremely amusing. The Emperor was very gay and talkative at such times, and I believe, when he had at hand no examples to cite in support of his theories, did not scruple to invent them; consequently these gentlemen did not always rely upon his statements. One day his Majesty pulled the ears of one of his physicians (Halle, I believe). The doctor abruptly drew himself away, crying, "Sire, you hurt ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Germany, offers but a faint parallel. If we add to this our obligations to Italy for painting and sculpture, to France for mathematical science, popular comedy, and the culture of the salon, to the Jews for finance, and to other nations for those town amusements which we are so slow to invent for ourselves, we shall still not have exhausted or even adequately illustrated the multifarious influences shed on every department of Roman life by the newly transplanted genius of Hellas. It was not that she merely lent an impulse or gave a direction to elements already existing. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... to take, perplexed him. Those big, soft brown eyes of hers would see through any lie he tried to invent, and he was but a poor liar anyway. What could he tell Pearl? He would temporize—he would stall for time. She was too young—she had seen so little of the world—it would be hard to wait—he believed he could take that line with ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... their fathers were Sir Mordred and Sir Agrawaine, who had for brothers, Sir Gawaine, Sir Gaheris and Sir Gareth. And their mother was Queen of Orkney, sister to King Arthur. Now Sir Agrawaine and Sir Mordred had evil natures, and loved both to invent slanders and to repeat them. And at this time they were full of envy of the noble deeds Sir Lancelot had done, and how men called him the bravest Knight of the Table Round, and said that he was the friend of the King, and the sworn defender of the Queen. So they ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... with a sense of duty, a sense of doing the right thing, a sense of "improving yourself," rather than with a sense of gladness. You do not smack your lips; you say: "That is good for me." You make little plans for reading, and then you invent excuses for breaking the plans. Something new, something which is not a classic, will surely draw you away from a classic. It is all very well for you to pretend to agree with the verdict of the elect that Clarissa Harlowe is one of the greatest novels in the world—a new Kipling, ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... Tom had been able to make a picture that had saved a fortune. But Tom did not stop there. With him to invent was as natural and necessary as breathing. He simply could not stop it. And so we find him now about to show to his chum, Ned Newton, his latest patent, an aerial warship, which, however, was not the success Tom had ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... story to be true. And for the same reason, I like a story with a bad moral. My sonnies, all true stories have a coarse touch or a bad moral, depend upon't. If the story- tellers could ha' got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd ha' troubled to invent parables?" Saying this the tranter arose to fetch a new stock of cider, ale, ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... like a little occupation—of a well-paid sort," said Thorpe slowly. He realized that it was high time to invent some pretext for his ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... prescription is not going to cure you. No medicine that I can give you is going to perform any such miracle unless you help yourself. Nothing on earth that man has invented, or is likely to invent, can cure your disease unless by God's grace the patient pitches in and helps himself. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... see that; and gradually you'll get them more and more beautiful machines, till their work is just pleasure and nothing else. And do invent something to prevent Sabina and Nancy and Alice hurting their hands. They have to stop the spindles so often, and it wounds them, and Nancy gets chilblains in the winter, so ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... another, the matter was come to an issue, I hesitated as to what I should do. Either I might put him off, and invent a story to please him, or I might refuse to answer anything, or I might convince him of his mistake, or I might run for it. In the first case, I should be acting unfairly to Tim; in the other cases, I should be ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... Further, religion according to Tully (De Invent. Rhet. ii, 53) is that "which offers worship and ceremony to the Divine nature." Now the offering of worship and ceremony to God would seem to pertain to the ministry of holy orders rather than to the diversity of states, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... with my making, why should I feel that nobody but God can set things right? Ah! but he must be such a God as I could imagine—altogether, absolutely true and good. If we came out of nothing, we could not invent the idea of a God—could we, Robert? Nothing would be our God. If we come from God, nothing is more natural, nothing so natural, as to want him, and when we haven't got him, to try to find him.—What if he should be in us after all, and working in us this way? just this very way of ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... into mischief. Of course he won't really be watched, you understand, but he thinks he will. Which is better, for it saves trouble. Besides, we know where the cups are—I feel sure he was speaking the truth about them, he was too frightened to invent a story—and here is most of the money. So it all ends well, if I may put it so. My advice, sir, and I think you will find it ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... outside. Since the days when "Adam gave names to all cattle and to the fowl of the air and to every beast of the field" never were so many new names called for. Unfortunately, names were not given by the best educated in the community, but often by those least qualified to invent satisfactory names: not by a linguist, a botanist, an ornithologist, an ichthyologist, but by the ordinary settler. Even in countries of old civilisation names are frequently conferred or new words invented, at times with good and at times with unsatisfactory results, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... secret of plant creation, and that it is the simplest thing imaginable. The ur-plant will be the strangest creature in the world, for which nature herself should envy me. With this model and the key to it one will be able to invent plants ad infinitum; they would be consistent; that is to say, though non-existing, they would be capable of existing, being no shades or semblances of the painter or poet, but possessing truth and necessity. The same law will ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... said that he instituted the famous petitions urged against the clergy in 1532, and it is hinted that the abuses, of which those petitions complained, had no real existence. No doubt Henry encouraged the Commons' complaints; he had every reason to do so, but he did not invent the abuses. If the Commons did not feel the grievances, the King's promise to redress them would be no inducement to Parliament to comply with the royal demands. The hostility of the laity to the clergy, arising out (p. 267) of these grievances, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... old, To take in sail:— The god of bounds, Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal rounds, And said: "No more! No farther shoot Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root. Fancy departs: no more invent; Contract thy firmament To compass of a tent. There's not enough for this and that, Make thy option which of two; Economize the failing river, Not the less revere the Giver, Leave the many and hold the few. Timely ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... French have the superiority over the Spaniards, that the Spaniards ruminate, while the French invent." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... be their children's pride. But read Motley, or the recent and remarkably well-written volumes of Douglas Campbell, and you will see that every atrocity that Spanish hatred, religious intolerance, and mediaeval bigotry could invent, every horror that ever followed in the train of war, swept over and desolated Holland. And yet, to teach a lesson to oppressors, they endured, they fought, they suffered, they conquered; and when they conquered, the whole world was taught ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... "Couldn't you invent an iron bed, then?" said Miss Adamson, looking at a representation of these articles hanging alongside the three royal ladies. "Perhaps they'll last three hundred years, and if you could bind yourself up with the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... being spent by mankind in the satisfaction of physical demands, then none of us would have to work more than two or three hours a day. If all of us, rich and poor, worked three hours a day the rest of our time would be free. And then to be still less dependent on our bodies, we should invent machines to do the work and we should try to reduce our demands to the minimum. We should toughen ourselves and our children should not be afraid of hunger and cold, and we should not be anxious about their health, as Anna, Maria, ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... that there must be "no next time." Viscount Grey warns us that if the world cannot organize against war, if war must go on, "then nations can protect themselves henceforth only by using whatever destructive agencies they can invent, till the resources and inventions of science end by destroying the humanity they were meant to serve." Leagues of nations are proposed, organization for peace on a scale commensurate with the past organization for war is ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... series of chastisements which, even as he had prophesied when administering them, I have not been able to forget, although I cannot see that any of them ever resulted in a lasting reformation of my ways. On the contrary the desire to see what new form of thrashing his disciplinary mind could invent led me into devising new kinds of provocation, so that for a great many years his visits to our house were a source of great anxiety to my parents. His view of me and my ways were expressed with some degree of force to our family physician ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... to read in the life of the Lord Keeper Guilford, that his lordship's court enemies, "hard put to it to find, or invent, something tending to the diminution of his character," took advantage of his going to see a rhinoceros, to circulate a foolish story of him, which much annoyed him. It was in the reign of James II. his biographer thus records it. The rhinoceros, referred to, was the first ever brought ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... reasoners? Whenever they cannot divine the natural causes of things, they invent what they call supernatural; such as spirits, occult causes, inexplicable agents, or rather words, much more obscure than the things they endeavour to explain. Let us remain in nature, when we wish to ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... and the chandelier—which they now saw for the first time without its fly-specked cover—that they gave way to most exuberant folly and indulged in the coarsest enjoyment. Their voices rose in the warm atmosphere more huskily and eulogistically at each successive dish till they could scarcely invent fresh compliments. However, one of them, an old retired master-tanner, hit upon this fine phrase—that the dinner was a ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... comparatively a short distance to the elder Entriken's farm, and, rather than invent a laborious explanation of the horse's absence all night, Gordon walked. Numberless excuses offered him plausible reason for his own delayed return home.—It was better to say nothing to Lettice ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... state could be founded on atheism. "Atheism," said he, "is aristocratic. The idea of a great being who watches over oppressed innocence, and who punishes triumphant guilt, is and always will be popular. If God did not exist, it would behoove man to invent him." Accordingly Robespierre offered in the Convention the following resolution: "The French people acknowledge the existence of the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul." The decree was adopted, and the churches that had been converted into temples of the Goddess of Reason were ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... back of the cliff on the north side o' the city. I picked them for intelligence as well as strength and activity. Well, I have taught them a wild war-dance. It cost me no little trouble and many sleepless nights to invent it, but I've managed it, and hope to show the Queen and Court what can be done by a little organisation. These fifty are first of all to glide quietly among the trees, each man to a particular spot and hang on the branches fifty ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... would invent the most absurd explanations to defend her son. Who could tell? Perhaps he had the habit of painting during the night, utilizing it for original work. Men resort to so many devilish ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... that Rufus should eat his Sunday dinner at the family table down at The Ship. Mrs. Peck—Adam's wife was never known by any other title, just as the man's own surname had dropped into such disuse that few so much as knew what it was—had made an especial point of this, and Rufus had never managed to invent any suitable excuse for refusing. He never remained long after the meal was eaten. When all the other fisher-lads were walking the cliffs with their own particular lasses, Rufus was wont to trudge back to his hermitage ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... monumental stupidity of her diplomacy Germany has found it necessary to invent explanations. The form these have taken as regards America has been the attributing of fresh low motives. Her object at first was to prove to the world at large how very little difference America's participation in hostilities would make. When America tacitly negatived ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... the occupations of this little group were many and various. They worked if they had something to do, or could invent a pretext. They told and retold stories until all were wearisome. They sang songs. Mercedes taught Spanish. They played every game they knew. They invented others that were so trivial children would scarcely have been interested, and these they played seriously. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... picture; I had them by heart, but I could never with certainty remember the order of their succession; therefore I always had to keep those notes by me and look at them every little while. Once I mislaid them; you will not be able to imagine the terrors of that evening. I now saw that I must invent some other protection. So I got ten of the initial letters by heart in their proper order—I, A, B, and so on—and I went on the platform the next night with these marked in ink on my ten finger-nails. But it didn't answer. I kept track of the figures ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... He bade her recollect King Henry, and how, when dealing with that cruel monster, the Castellane of Meaux, he had merely required death, without enhancing the agony; but Joan, in her rage and misery, had left the Englishwoman behind her, and was implacable. All that human cruelty could invent was to be the lot of Robert Graham and his associates; and whereas they had granted no priest to their victim, none ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and he sells it. It's the men who name things and sell things, not the ones who invent them, that get the money. My father is Peter Rolls, ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... as multiform and as diverse as are the people who worry. Indeed worriers are the most ingenious persons in the world. When every possible source of worry seems to be removed, they proceed immediately to invent some new cause which an ordinary healthful mind could never ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... Convocation which had finally settled the doctrine of the Church of England, been itself out of the pale of the Church of Christ? Nothing could be more ludicrous than the distress of those controversialists who had to invent a plea for Elizabeth which should not be also a plea for William. Some zealots, indeed, gave up the vain attempt to distingush between two cases which every man of common sense perceived to be undistinguishable, and frankly owned that the deprivations of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... my neighbour Mrs. Jones to me one day, "what shall I do for good help? I am almost worried out of my senses. I wish somebody would invent a machine to cook, wash, scrub, and do housework in general. What a blessing it would be! As for the whole tribe of flesh and blood domestics, they are not ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... sciences, in proportion as they increase and improve, invent methods by which they facilitate their reasonings; and, employing general theorems, are enabled to comprehend, in a few propositions, a great number of inferences and conclusions. History also, being a collection ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... imagine that we presume to invent such things or to exaggerate for the sake of "sensation." We relate well-authenticated facts. We entertain strong doubts as to whether devils are, in any degree, worse than some among the unsaved human race. There is great occasion ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... found quite as urgent as the need of roads suitable for all carts, and of measures by which those carts could bring definite quantities of metal and grain tribute to the capital. Accordingly the First August Emperor's prime minister did at once set to work to invent the "lesser seal" character, in which (so late as A.D. 200) the first Chinese dictionary was written; this "lesser seal" is still fairly readable after a little practice, but for daily use it has long been and is impracticable and obsolete. If we reflect how difficult it is ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... forefather of the IONIANS and ACHAEANS. Thus the Greeks accounted for the origin of the four great divisions of their race. The descent of the Hellenes from a common ancestor, Hellen, was a fundamental article in the popular faith. It was a general practice in antiquity to invent fictitious persons for the purpose of explaining names of which the origin was buried in obscurity. It was in this way that Hellen and his sons came into being; but though they never had any real existence, the tales about them may be regarded as the traditional ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... so, I could not have observed Mr. Razumov or guessed at his reality by the force of insight, much less have imagined him as he was. Even to invent the mere bald facts of his life would have been utterly beyond my powers. But I think that without this declaration the readers of these pages will be able to detect in the story the marks of documentary evidence. And that ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... but when it appeared that her mistress meant to keep Fan and make much of her, then her jealousy was aroused, and she displayed as much spite and malice as she dared. She had not succeeded in frightening Fan into submission, and she had not dared to invent lies about her; and unable to use her only weapon, she felt herself for the time powerless. On the other hand, it was evident that Fan had ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... liberty for our children as that proper to cats and dogs? Children, indeed, when left to themselves to take exercise, show impatience, and are prone to quarrel and cry; older children feel it necessary to invent something whereby they may conceal from themselves the intolerable boredom and humiliation of walking for walking's sake, and running for running's sake. They try to find some object for their exertions; the younger children play pranks. The activity of children thus left ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... his Majesty, "that my daughter cannot be kept amused. What is the use of an expensive government and a well-dressed court, if there are not enough toys for her to play with? Can no one invent a new ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... the rest of them, that the books, the ballads, the barber's shops, the theatres are full of, were really and truly ladies of flesh and blood, and mistresses of those that glorify and have glorified them? Nothing of the kind; they only invent them for the most part to furnish a subject for their verses, and that they may pass for lovers, or for men valiant enough to be so; and so it suffices me to think and believe that the good Aldonza Lorenzo is fair and virtuous; and as to her pedigree it is very little matter, for no one ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... fragments of the speeches of its orators which have come down to us) no less remarkable for the native intelligence of its population than for the wide extent of their information, owing to the activity of their publishers in diffusing all that they could invent, beg, borrow, or steal. Nor were they less noted for their perfect freedom from all restraints in thought, or speech, or deed; except, to be sure, the beneficent and wise influence of the majority, exerted, in case of need, through ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... and he wants power. He tries to do the big things in the world because there is the big thing to do—for sure. Without such men the big things are never done, and other men have less work to do, and less money and poorer homes. They discover and construct and design and invent and organize and give opportunities. I am a working man, but I know what Ingolby thinks. I know what men think who try to do the big things. I have ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... The girl was one of those bright happy creatures whom men worship and women love, and whom envy can scarcely dislike. She was so infinitely superior to both father and mother, that a believer in hereditary attributes was fain to invent some mythical great-grandmother from whom the girl's graces might have been derived. But she had something of her father's easy good-nature and imprudent generosity; and was altogether one of those impulsive creatures whose lives are perpetual difficulties and dilemmas. More lectures ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... indifferent; no fruit or vegetables, or fish. Eggs we had in abundance from the chickens and ducks we had brought with us, and which had scarcely ceased laying since we arrived, so much did they thrive in this luxuriant island. The evenings were very tedious, and we had to invent all sorts of games which would at once amuse them, and yet be ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... anything. Besides, your father isn't as big a fool as those London Leaguers who started the silly show. Sir Maurice Gedge and all that crowd. He didn't invent the beastly thing." ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... taken the contract from Professor Morse to lay the tube in which the wire was to be placed. He had made a bad bargain, he feared. The job was going to cost more than he had calculated, on. He was trying to invent something that would dig the ditch, and fill in the dirt again after the pipe was laid. Cornell listened to him, questioned him, found out the size of the pipe and the depth of the ditch, then sat down and passed some minutes in ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... his demands upon the Devil, and put him to all sorts of absurd and ridiculous tasks; but they were all punctually performed, until Simon could invent no new ones, and the Devil sat all day with his hands in his pockets ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... King James, Jonson began his long and successful career as a writer of masques. He wrote more masques than all his competitors together, and they are of an extraordinary variety and poetic excellence. Jonson did not invent the masque; for such premeditated devices to set and frame, so to speak, a court ball had been known and practised in varying degrees of elaboration long before his time. But Jonson gave dramatic value to the ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... society now reduced to defend itself, unable though he was to say whence would come the new Messiah of Gentleness, in whose hands he would have liked to place poor ailing mankind. A new religion, yes, a new religion. But it is not easy to invent one, and he knew not to what conclusion to come between the ancient faith, which was dead, and the young faith of to-morrow, as yet unborn. For his part, in his desolation, he was only sure of keeping his vow, like an ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... fact already shown, that to Brahmanism are due some of the most marked traits of both the heretical sects. The founder of Buddhism did not strike out a new system of morals; he was not a democrat; he did not originate a plot to overthrow the Brahmanic priesthood; he did not invent the order of monks.[2] There is, perhaps, no person in history in regard to whom have arisen so many opinions that are either wholly false ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... the first time in his life that a woman's behavior need not be the logical indicator of her deepest feelings, and, enriched with this joyful discovery, inspired with new hope, he had returned, but had not dared at once to seek the Parsonage, until he could invent some plausible reason for his return; but his imagination was very poor, and he had found none, except that he loved the pastor's ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... consuming even the biggest blocks, so the person who increaseth his power by making alliances and friendships soon becometh capable of subjugating even the most formidable foe. The hope thou givest unto thy foe should be long deferred before it is fulfilled; and when the time cometh for its fulfilment, invent some pretext for deferring it still. Let that pretext be shown as founded upon some reason, and let that reason itself be made to appear as founded on some other reason. Kings should, in the matter of destroying their foes, ever resemble razors in every particular; unpitying as these are sharp, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... "Invent one," she insisted swiftly. "Leave here before ten o'clock. Don't let anything keep you. And destroy that piece of paper in ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and shielding his eyes with his hand, he continued in a scarcely audible whisper: "It would be advisable that you should withdraw a little from society; and of course to any unavoidable questions it will be necessary to invent an answer of some sort. It seems to me it will be best to say that your old lung-trouble obliges you to take certain precautions. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... there alternately shivering and attempting to invent imperative engagements in town which he had just ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... don't invent anything from me to Bertie Du Meresq." Then, with a softer manner, and most cordial squeeze of the hand as she saw the other men rising to go,—"Good-bye, and come back safe, you ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... his hand, to say, "This is good!" or, "Really, madam, you are very beautiful so." And to vary that in a hundred different ways. To keep himself cool, to bear himself like a nobleman, to have a free tongue and a modest one, to endure with a smile all the evils the devil may invent on his behalf, to smother his anger, to hold nature in control, to have the finger of God, and the tail of the devil, to reward the mother, the cousin, the servant; in fact, to put a good face on everything. In default ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... soon attempt to persuade you, that: 'A presumption which necessarily arises from circumstances,—is very often more convincing and more satisfactory than any other kind of evidence; it is not within the reach and compass of human abilities to invent a train of circumstances, which shall be so connected together as to amount to a proof of guilt, without affording opportunities of contradicting a great part, if not ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... less pleased, because there is something above its comprehension, nor the friend at all the less entertained, because he laughs at what was not intended for his capacity. A writer of children's tales—(If they are any thing better than what every nursery-maid can invent for herself)—is precisely in this position: he will, he must have in view the adult listener. While speaking to the child, he will endeavour to interest the parent who is overhearing him; and thus there may result a very amusing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... herself!—and that so far from being light I seemed to you particularly heavy? Say that I did nothing but talk about myself, and that when you wanted to talk about yourself you couldn't get in a word edgewise. Do try, now, Miss Kenton, and see if you can! I don't want you to invent a character for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... but if I absolutely wished to quarrel with you, I should try and invent a falsehood, perhaps, and speak to you about a certain arbor, where you and that illustrious princess were together—I should speak also of certain gratifications, of certain kissings of the hand; and you who are so secret on all occasions, ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... there might see me," Rodolphe resumed, "then I should have to invent excuses for a fortnight; ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... credit—and may very possibly lead to the final detection and suppression of a series of hitherto utterly unaccountable transactions of a most nefarious character. At all events we can do no harm by keeping a wary eye upon this alleged Vestale for the future, and I will make it my business to invent some plausible pretext for boarding her on the first opportunity which presents itself. And now I think you have been on deck quite as long as is good for you, so away you go below again and get back to your hammock. ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... of good acting to prevail; and he made the newly returned actress a tempting offer, instigating some journalist friends of his at the same time to lament over the decay of the grand school of acting, and to invent or republish anecdotes ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... of our senses which makes more mistakes than do all our other senses put together. When a man six feet high is a mile off, it says that he is only six inches high. The eye can see nothing of the vast microscopic living world which lies within six inches of the eyeball, and so we have had to invent a microscope to make up for this serious deficiency. But what would the Russian Witte not have given if he could have telegraphed to St. Petersburg that he had actually SEEN the Japanese Komura while they were talking about making peace at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and that he knew just ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... more and more complex, and brings its new pains as well as new pleasures. Man attaches himself to "things," and each day creates for himself artificial wants, which he must labor to meet. His Intellect may not lead him upward, but instead may merely enable him to invent new and subtle means and ways of gratifying his senses to a degree impossible to the animals. Some men make a religion of the gratification of their sensuality—their appetites—and become beasts magnified ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... has favored may, until the day of doom, invent sophisms to veil their selfishness, but they cannot get rid of the obligations resting upon them—without ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... Confederate officer who was trying to escape in the disguise of a clergyman and that he had therefore tried to arrest him. He could, of course, give no grounds for the accusation, still questions might be asked which would be impossible for him to answer; and, however plausible a story he might invent, the lawyer whom the fellow would doubtless employ to defend him might suggest that the truth of his statements might be easily tested by the dispatch of a telegram, in which case he would be placed in a most awkward situation. It was better to run the risk of trouble with the ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... you are very beautiful so." And to vary that in a hundred different ways. To keep himself cool, to bear himself like a nobleman, to have a free tongue and a modest one, to endure with a smile all the evils the devil may invent on his behalf, to smother his anger, to hold nature in control, to have the finger of God, and the tail of the devil, to reward the mother, the cousin, the servant; in fact, to put a good face on everything. In default of which the female escapes and leaves you in a fix, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... impatient when they are waiting for the accomplishment of any event they have set their hearts upon. The prince, therefore, to make the time seem short to him, proposed as a kind of merry pastime that they should invent some artful scheme to make Benedick and Beatrice fall in love with each other. Claudio entered with great satisfaction into this whim of the prince, and Leonato promised them his assistance, and even Hero said she ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Christian. Euclid, if I remember right, was not a Christian, and yet he had quite a turn for mathematics. As a matter of fact, Christianity got its idea of algebra from the Mohammedans, and, without algebra, astronomical knowledge of to-day would have been impossible. Christianity did not even invent figures. We got those from the Arabs. The very word "algebra" is Arabic. The decimal system, I believe, however, was due to a German, but whether he was a Christian or not, I ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... "Yes, certainly," answered the monk, "and I doubt not but that his soul hath departed in peace." This expression was reported to Erasmus; but "I don't believe it," said he; "it is the story that these fellows are obliged to invent after their victim's death, to appease the wrath ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... to stir up conflagrations in other countries without leaving his own. Passports and things are put in to make it more difficult when he comes to getting his inflammable material and directions for use over the frontier. So he has to invent a way ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... outcome was earnest, and she looked to a slow and painful progress as the result of human struggles. When called an optimist, she responded, "I will not answer to the name of optimist, but if you like to invent Meliorist, I will not say you call me out of my name." She trusted in that gradual development which science points out as the probable result of the survival of the fittest in human life. In "A Minor Prophet" she has presented her conception of ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... on duty and two off. But for the thousand-odd colonists, the men and women who were to be the spearhead of migration to a new and friendlier planet, it had none. They slept, and played, worked at such tasks as they could invent, and slept again, while the huge ship ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... that branch of his science which treats of variable stars. His methods have been followed by his successors to the present time. It was his policy to make the best use he could of the instruments at his disposal, rather than to invent new ones that might prove of doubtful utility. The results of his work seem to ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... had any need to be toned down, veiled, or dressed up to suit the taste of modern France. They showed themselves deficient in the critical faculty in supposing that the Catholicism of the theologians was the self-same religion of Jesus and the prophets; but they did not invent for the use of the worldly, a Christianity revised and adapted to their ideas. This is why the serious study—may I even add, the reform—of Christianity is more likely to proceed from St. Sulpice than from the teachings of M. Lacordaire or M. Gratry, and a fortiori, ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... every local eruption. Every time he batted he made a home run. He even made initiative suggestions for schemes which were more or less amalgamated with reason and insanity. It is said that he was first at the dances, and first in the hearts of the ladies. It is certain he was the first to invent the sewerage system idea; and the patents were applied for before the final endorsements had ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... so energetic, and so able to invent mechanical devices at sudden need, was bound to succeed in a business like this. And young Eads did succeed. "Fortune," he believed, "favors the brave;" and his ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... the publishers that I meant it when I said I would not. Yet the reason is plain: I cannot. I wish I could. There are some facts one can bring home much more easily than otherwise by wrapping them in fiction. But I never could invent even a small part of a plot. The story has to come to me complete before I can tell it. The stories printed in this volume came to me in the course of my work as police reporter for nearly a quarter of a century, and were printed ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... as distinguished from nature; but art itself is natural to man. He is in some measure the artificer of his own frame, as well as of his fortune, and is destined, from the first age of his being, to invent and contrive. He applies the same talents to a variety of purposes, and acts nearly the same part in very different scenes. He would be always improving on his subject, and he carries this intention wherever ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... and were driven to the attempt at pure self-expression—to the exaltation of the great god Whim. They had no training, they recognized no traditions, they spoke to no public. Each was to express, as he thought best, whatever he happened to feel or to think, and to invent, as he went along, the language in which he should express it. I think some of these men had the elements of genius in them and might have done good work; but their task was a heart-breaking and a hopeless ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... scratches at the door his purpose is other than appears. But he has some apology to offer for the vice. Many of the signs which form his dialect have come to bear an arbitrary meaning, clearly understood both by his master and himself; yet when a new want arises he must either invent a new vehicle of meaning or wrest an old one to a different purpose; and this necessity frequently recurring must tend to lessen his idea of the sanctity of symbols. Meanwhile the dog is clear in his own conscience, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... entertaining me with a love-story, a little April comedy, which I ought certainly to hand over to the author of A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE, for he could write it as it should be written, and I am sure (although I mean to try) that I cannot. - But who would have supposed that a Brownie of mine should invent ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... interesting to see whether she would commit herself to his plot by not recognizing him. If she did that—Yet he hoped she wouldn't. If she did recognize him he would say that it was through Miss Desmond's relatives that he had heard of Madame Gautier. Betty could not contradict him. He would invent a niece whose parents wished to place her with Madame. Then he could ask as many questions as he liked, about hours and studios, and all the details of the life ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... always said that Fred was the most ingenious fellow they had ever known. He could invent schemes that often made some of the duller-witted chaps fairly gasp, and declare he must be ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... son's indignant disregard, Lady Audley turned all her fury on her niece; and, in the most opprobrious terms that rage could invent, upbraided her with deceit and treachery—accusing her of making her pretended submission instrumental to the more speedy accomplishment of her marriage. Too much incensed to reply, Sir Edmund seized his cousin's hand, and was leading her from ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... everything in life, my lord; and would lay it down for any one of them. What brings you here to disturb this quiet household? What keeps you lingering month after month in the country? What makes you feign illness, and invent pretexts for delay? Is it to win my poor patron's money? Be generous, my lord, and spare his weakness for the sake of his wife and children. Is it to practise upon the simple heart of a virtuous lady? You might as well storm the Tower single-handed. But you may blemish her ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... to be lost to the world. Still, it may be that sufficient will be recovered to give some skilled mechanician sufficient guidance to enable him to reproduce the lost pirate car. If not, well, I don't suppose it matters. Some one else will be sure to invent something similar. In fact, from the hints Mannering gave me, and owing to the opportunity I had of examining the car in his workshop, I think it is not unlikely that I shall shortly be applying for letters ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... like one of Mrs. Humphry Ward's puppets, set up to be a great politician. Remington as a thinker is almost a great man; he is a profound analyst of society on its human side; he is a gifted critic of public institutions; even his absurd perversity in trying to invent a constructive, motherhood-endowing Toryism is the perversity of a versatile and clever man whose action is ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... in his library still, it had been a busy day with him; it appeared as if every creature within reach who could invent a plea of business had chosen that time to ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... conceivable that, in the course of the ages, the wisdom of mankind might invent some language more ideally perfect than Esperanto, but we cannot afford to wait. We want a key language and we want it now. And as by general agreement of all the most competent authorities, Esperanto is the best ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 1 • Various
... heard and seen among the Christians, it did not become me to act with slaves as I had acted hitherto—that they too were people. For a number of days they moved about in mortal terror, in the belief that I was delaying so as to invent punishment the more cruel, but I did not punish, and did not punish because I was not able. Summoning them on the third day, I said, 'I forgive you; strive then with earnest service to correct your fault!' They fell on their knees, covering their faces with tears, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... of their own, But catch the spreading notion of the town; They reason and conclude by precedent, 410 And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent. Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men. Of all this servile herd, the worst is he That in proud dulness joins with quality; A constant critic at the ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... believe Mr. Bingley's being imposed on, than that Mr. Wickham should invent such a history of himself as he gave me last night; names, facts, everything mentioned without ceremony. If it be not so, let Mr. Darcy contradict it. Besides, there was truth ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... thing before the Owl had explained to her half-a-dozen ingenious structures. She said that inanimate objects had no business to be so clever, and that, if the mechanicians did not take care, they would shortly invent machines that would conspire together to assassinate them, and then ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... getting proofs of the different states of his plates whilst etching them, incited my husband to invent a press for his own laboratory, that he might judge of his work in progress by taking proofs for himself whenever he liked. Considering the present state of our affairs I was not favorable to the idea, but I was overruled, as in all ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... as to whether I was to turn or to keep straight ahead. This necessitated my turning back to Mr. Mortimer to catch a glimpse of which way his feet were pointing. I covered this by speaking to him, begging him to will me aright —to will me more earnestly—or some such bunk. I could invent many reasons for turning round; pretend I had lost my feeling of 'guidance,' or pretend I heard a sudden noise, as of danger, or even pretend I felt I was going wrong. Well, I got a peek at those feet as often as was necessary, and the rest was just play-acting to mislead the people's minds. Of ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... address in Putney, verify the fact that Ricardos has a daughter, and give me a trunk call to Brighton. Better go yourself, Graviter. If you see her, don't say anything, of course— invent some excuse. [GRAVITER nods] I'll be up in time ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... is in allusion to the misnomer of Wallace's book, "Darwinism," that he introduces the term "Wallaceism" {0d} for a theory of descent that excludes the transmission of acquired characters. This was, indeed, the chief factor that led Charles Darwin to invent his hypothesis of pangenesis, which, unacceptable as it has proved, had far more to recommend it as a formal hypothesis than the equally formal ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... wretchedness out of my pale face. But they never knew the story, and they could only guess at what made me wretched. It is amazing (again) what power there is in silence, and how much you can keep in your hands if you do not open them. People may surmise—may invent, but they cannot know your secret unless you tell it to them, and their imaginings take so many forms, the multitude of things that they create blot out all definite design. Thus every one at R—— had a different theory about my loss of spirits and the relapse of Mr. Langenau, but no one ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... the course of a brilliant career of forty years we have never seen only six cans of peaches that were worth the powder to blast them open. A man that will invent a can opener that will split open one of these pale, sickly, hard hearted canned peaches, that swim around in a pint of slippery elm juice in a tin can, has got a fortune. And they have got to canning pumpkin, and charging money ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... of a planet we are on, or how large or small it is. If suddenly it sometimes seems as if it were all used up and things look cramped again (which they do once in so often) we have but to think of something, invent something, and let it out a little. We move over into a new world in a minute. Columbus was mere bagatelle. We get continents every few days. Thousands of men are thinking of them—adding them on. Mere size is getting to be old-fashioned—as a way of arranging ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... were consumed. Others were suspended by their limbs, and heavy weights attached to them to make the agony more intense. Others were deprived of their teeth; and every cruelty that a horrible ingenuity could invent was used. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... only be produced and operated by large co-operative farms like this; with a carefully chosen force of co-operators, who are thinkers as well as workers; who are intellectually, physically and socially prepared to invent and construct machines that are perfectly fitted to do this particular kind ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... results it led, the whole world would take a very strong interest in the revelation. The essential point, however, to be observed, is that it is the real truth in respect to the subject that the world are now interested in knowing. Were a romance writer to invent a tale in respect to the origin of writing, however ingenious and entertaining it might be in its details, it would excite in the learned world at the present ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... my word on 't, the balance of power is with us. Our tongues have enough to do at home, without chattering in high places; and as to our arms! mine could ill wield battle-axe or broadsword. I suppose these people of whom you speak would invent a new sex to look after domestic matters, while we assist in the broil and the battle! We shall lose our influence, depend on 't, the moment we are taken out of our sphere—we shall lose caste as women, and be treated with contempt as men. ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... sensible heart is still more susceptible of impressions; and where the unfeeling mind, in the want of other men's wit to invent, forms schemes for its own amusement—our youths both fell in love: if passions, that were pursued on the most opposite principles, can receive the same appellation. William, well versed in all the licentious theory, thought himself in love, because ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... shoulders. The Madonna of the Goldfinch is a still higher type of loveliness, uniting with gentle dignity a certain delicate, high-bred grace, which Raphael alone could impart. Her face is charmingly framed in the soft hair which falls modestly about it. One wonders if any modern coiffeur could invent so many styles of hair dressing as does this gifted young ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... joy to invent a carmen gratulatorium to his Majesty, whom, by the grace of Almighty God, I was to see, the which my little daughter ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... and it is not too far for you," said Mrs. Coleman (who evidently considered me in the last stage of a decline), trotting into the breakfast-room where I was lounging, book in hand, over the fire, wondering what possible pretext I could invent for ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... of position has constantly to be spoken of, it is denoted by the word "homology" and its derivatives; and for Geology (which after all is only the anatomy and physiology of the earth) it might be well to invent some single word, such as "homotaxis" (similarity of order), in order to express an essentially similar idea. This, however, has not been done, and most probably the inquiry will at once be made—To what end burden science with a new ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... deal, which seemed to him a mistake; no doubt if Mr. Man could see their car he would have his changed. Then the 'Coon and the Old Black Crow said, "Of course," and that there never was anybody so smart to invent things as Mr. 'Possum, and that it was too bad he couldn't go over and suggest thoughts to ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... deck-chairs. Deck-stewards darted hither and yon, wearing the harassed expressions appropriate to persons of their calling—doubtless to a man praying for that bright day when some public benefactor should invent a steamship having at least two leeward sides. A clatter of tongues assailed the ear, the high, sweet accents of American women predominating. The masculine element of the passenger-list with singular ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... twenty-five miles in the snow; increase business; buy mahogany in the plank; saw veneers with a hand saw; trade cases for movements; move to Bristol; bad luck; lose large sum of money; first cases by machinery in Bristol; make clocks in Mass.; good luck; death of my little daughter; form a company; invent Bronze Looking ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... with this one; for he thought him the most curious, odd, ridiculous creature he had ever seen; and there he was not far wrong; for all the ingenious men, and all the scientific men, and all the fanciful men, in the world, with all the old German bogy-painters into the bargain, could never invent, if all their wits were boiled into one, anything so curious, and so ridiculous, as ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... blissful. But there were times too, when she felt—though always with a certain contempt of herself, as when she sat on that sunwarmed stone below the tor—a queer dissatisfaction, a longing for something outside a world where she had to invent her own starvations and simplicities, to make-believe ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... for my own departure. To this point I had persuaded the host, but now found him by no means inclined to advance me the additional funds needed for carrying off a young singer. To cloak the bad behaviour of my directors I was compelled to invent some tale of misfortune, and to leave the astonished and indignant young lady behind. Heartily ashamed of this adventure, I travelled through rain and storm via Leipzig, where I picked up my brown poodle, and reaching Magdeburg, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... "A word invented by the Boston transcendentalists." And Mr. Bartlett quotes from Judd's Margaret. Mr. Judd was a good scholar, and the word is legitimately compounded, like ensphere and imparadise; but he did not invent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... corrupter to the corrupted, had he never taken, and it would have appeared in his eyes a species of degradation to receive the first, and of treason to his nationality to accept the last; though he would lie, invent, manage, and contrive, from morning till night, in order to transfer even copper from the pocket of his neighbor to his own, under the forms of opinion and usage. In a word, Ithuel, as relates to such things, is what is commonly called ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... in the most gentle terms he could invent, had no other effect than to set her into an immoderate laughter: nothing could be more provoking, than the contempt with which she treated his advice; and on his insisting at last, in terms which she might think were somewhat too strong, on her being less frequently seen with some persons he ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... arts will survive; only luxury will be annihilated. It is what was seen at the fall of the Roman Empire; the art of writing even became very rare; almost all those which contributed to the comfort of life were reborn only long after. We invent new ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... some of whom I had no doubt were in the opposing army, as it was recruited where many of them lived; and I knew they would be loyal to the old flag, and ready to defend it with their lives. But the alarm came so suddenly that I had no time to feign sickness, or invent an excuse for being ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... approached; but no other homage was paid to the sovereign, who thus takes his walk in public almost every day. Lady Morgan is merry at the expense of the Grand Duke's taste for brick and mortar: but monarchs, like other men, must have their amusements; some invent uniforms, some stitch embroidery;—and why should not this good-natured Grand Duke amuse himself with his trowel if he likes it? As to the Prince of Carignano, I give him up to her lash—le traitre—but perhaps he thought he was doing right: and at all events there are not ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... gain according to schedule. But I've only Dinky-Dunk's bulky grain-scales, and it's impossible to figure down to anything as fine as ounces or even quarter-pounds on such a balancer. Yet my babies, I'm afraid, are not gaining as they ought. Poppsy is especially fretful of late. Why can't somebody invent children without colic, anyway? I have a feeling that I ought to run on low gear for a while. But that's a luxury I ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... God's; wastes shall yet become savings and defeats victories; nevertheless, life's woes, wrongs and delays are such as to stir misgiving. The multitudes hunger for power and influence, hunger for wealth and wisdom, for happiness and comfort; satisfaction seems denied them. Watt and Goodyear invent, other men enter into the fruit of their inventions; Erasmus and Melanchthon sow the good seeds of learning; two centuries pass by before God's angels count the bundles. In a passion of enthusiasm for England's poor, Cobden wore his life out toiling for the corn ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... there was much talent and many a spark of genius in that army. But only those who were there know of the many busy brains that worked overtime devising improvements in the weapons that were available, and ever seeking to invent contrivances that added to comfort. Many of the inventions are forgotten, but some are in use in France to-day, notably the "periscope rifle" or "sniperscope" and the "thumb periscope" which is no thicker than a man's finger. It was found that our box-periscopes were always ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... religious worship should have place in the heart or on the tongue of his own true sons and daughters, can it become a faithful child of our Heavenly Father to be seeking for excuses and palliations, and to invent distinctions between one kind of ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... Confederates. For he spared none that seemed guilty: some to this day lye chained in Prison, being sequestred of all their Estates, and beg for their living. One of the most noted Rebells, called Ambom Wellaraul, he sent to Columba to the Dutch to execute, supposing they would invent new Tortures for him, beyond what he knew of. But they instead of executing him, cut off his chains, and kindly entertained him, and there he still is in the City of Columba, reserving him for some designs they may hereafter have ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... in at the receipt of her letter, was not a flattering idea:—to know she was in Paris, where, in all probability, she had come to seek him, and to have the intelligence of it from herself, had all the effect on him that the most raptured fancy can invent. ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... is doubled, and sometimes tripled. I have, therefore, listed Dr. Samuel Johnson in some of my memorandums of the principal planters and favourers of the enclosures, under a name which I took the liberty to invent from the Greek, Papadendrion[299]. Lord Auchinleck and some few more are of the list. I am told that one gentleman in the shire of Aberdeen, viz. Sir Archibald Grant, has planted above fifty millions ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Singh between the tables in case he should have any orders to give, noticed particularly that he did not say we were going to Gallipoli. He said, "The plan now is to send us to Gallipoli." The trade of a leader of squadrons, thought I, is to confound the laid plans of the enemy and to invent unexpected ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... astonished at what makes them fall in love. Often it suffices for a man to ride past them at the head of a company of artillery, or show himself at a ball in tight clothes. Sometimes a mere turn of the head, a melancholy attitude, makes them suppose a man's whole life; they'll invent a romance to match the hero—who is often a mere brute, but the marriage is made. Watch the Chevalier de Valois: study him; copy his manners; see with what ease he presents himself; he never puts on a stiff air, as you do. Talk a little more; one would ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... no cure for the evil. The brain of man is fertile enough, as fast as one custom is prohibited, to fix upon another. And if all the games, now in use, were forbidden, it would be still fertile enough to invent others for the same purposes. The bird that flies in the air, and the snail, that crawls upon the ground, have not escaped the notice of the gamester, but have been made, each of them, subservient to his pursuits. The wisdom, therefore, of ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... Ruth said. "And what we want to do is to invent some way of earning money in which every girl will have her part, and do her part, and feel that she has done her full share in rebuilding the ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... lamentable epilogue was in truth the guiding thought of the whole investigation. Nature had been proved a figment of human imagination so that, once rid of all but a mock allegiance to her facts and laws, we might be free to invent any world we chose and believe it to be absolutely real and independent of our nature. Strange prepossession, that while part of human life and mind was to be an avenue to reality and to put men in ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... American styles. Ralph had two theories about this intervenes. Either his passion was a sentimental fiction of Miss Stackpole's (there was always a sort of tacit understanding among women, born of the solidarity of the sex, that they should discover or invent lovers for each other), in which case he was not to be feared and would probably not accept the invitation; or else he would accept the invitation and in this event prove himself a creature too irrational to demand further consideration. The latter clause of Ralph's argument might have seemed incoherent; ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... me," whispered Will, "for I'm not going to get out beyond the reach of the rails. I guess we'll have to go back and invent some other means of ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... protestatem.. To ditto for a capias ad computandum.. To Frog's new tenants per account to Hocus, for audita querelas.. On the said account for writs of ejectment and distringas.. To Esquire South's quota for a return of a non est invent and nulla habet bona.. To —— for a pardon in forma pauperis.. To Jack for a melius inquirendum upon a felo-de-se.. To coach-hire.. For ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... forests of Spenser and Ariosto. What a pity, that instead of a princess in distress we meet only a nurserymaid! But here is the fitting and convenient locality to brood over our thoughts; to project the great and to achieve the happy. It is here that we should get our speeches by heart, invent our impromptus; muse over the caprices of our mistresses, destroy a cabinet, and ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... the further objection, that it is true that our legislators can never invent regulations such as are convenient for all individuals, 'Nulla lex satis commoda omnibus est; id modo quaeritur, si majori parti et in summam prodest. (Cato apud Livium, L. 34, circa init.)' But the reason is that the limited condition of their knowledge compels them to cling to laws which, ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... this man's soul abhorreth the truth of God; no marvel, therefore, if God's soul abhorreth him; he hath invented a way contrary to God, to bring about his own salvation; no marvel, therefore, if God invent a way to bring about this man's damnation: and seeing that these rebels are at this point, we shall have peace; God will see whose word will stand, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... What beautiful colors it presents! Seen through the microscope it is a miracle of order and beauty. All the ingenuity of man cannot stop its growth. Think of the amount of thought it must have required to invent a way by which the life of one man might be given to produce one cancer? Is it possible to look upon it and doubt that there is design in the universe, and that the inventor of this wonderful cancer must be infinitely powerful, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... absurd, and did expose her to the greed of every lying mendicant within reach of her. Not unnaturally, therefore, it had occurred to a certain collier to make his way to the bottom of the shaft, on the chance—hardly of finding, but of being enabled to invent something worth reporting; and there, to the very fooling of his barren expectation, he ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... turning point in Pestalozzi's career. He was soon chosen assistant teacher at Burgdorf. His experience at Stanz, without books and without appliances, had compelled him to invent methods of interesting the children. He was thus brought to the use of objects, and here we have the beginning of practical object teaching. It was not long, however, before the head master of the school became jealous of him because he secured ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... *security of property is essential to civilization and progress*. Men would labor only for the needs of the day, if they could not retain and enjoy the fruits of their labor; nor would they be at pains to invent or actualize industrial improvements of any kind, if they had no permanent interest in the results of such improvements. Then, too, if there were no protection for property, there could be no accumulation ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... wretch![1] The villagers have min; kaj mi retiras min de la beaten me; and I am retiring from aferoj. Neniam, ecx en miaj plej business. Never, even in my most eltrovemaj tagoj, mi elpensis ingenious[2] days, did I invent tiel mortigan turmenton por such a deadly[3] torment for a progresema homo, kiel sukcesi en progressive man, as to succeed in la produkto de profitiga uzilo, producing a beneficial[4] device, kaj tiam devi penadi, por igi and then ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... perhaps, there still was in the world something to write about. Yet I did not see anything at first in the mere story. A rascal steals a large parcel of a valuable commodity—so people say. It's either true or untrue; and in any case it has no value in itself. To invent a circumstantial account of the robbery did not appeal to me, because my talents not running that way I did not think that the game was worth the candle. It was only when it dawned upon me that the purloiner ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... try what can be found in female delicacy. I will marry a wife beautiful as the Houries, and wise as Zobeide; with her I will live twenty years within the suburbs of Bagdat, in every pleasure that wealth can purchase and fancy can invent. I will then retire to a rural dwelling, pass my last days in obscurity and contemplation, and lie silently down on the bed of death. Through my life it shall be my settled resolution, that I will never depend upon the smile of princes; that I will never stand exposed to the artifices ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... my success, for I knew what it meant—they thought that Rendle was in love with me! Do you know, at times, they almost made me think so too? Oh, there was no phase of folly I didn't go through. You can't imagine the excuses a woman will invent for a man's not telling her that he loves her—pitiable arguments that she would see through at a glance if any other woman used them! But all the while, deep down, I knew he had never cared. I should have known it if he had made love to me every day of his life. I could never ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... of invention is easily disposed of. Any child can invent a world transcending human experience by the simple combination of ideas which are in themselves incongruous—a world in which the horses have each five feet, in which the grass is blue and the sky green, in which seas are balanced on the peaks ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... McQuade can invent. I should be very careful, if I were you. Your own conscience may prove you guiltless of scandal, but there are certain people who would rather believe bad than good—scandal than truth; and these are always in the majority. Don't ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... long before Noah, and he is allowed to be called just what he pleases, and I am to have no voice in it with my own particular and dearest friends! Nevertheless I will go, and if I don't come to-day, or the day after, I will write you the prettiest little love-letter I can invent." ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... You said, 'My darling wife, it has all been a mistake—a terrible mistake—and I am come to ask your pardon and to take you home.' In my dream, Norman, you kissed my face, my lips, my hands, and called me by every loving name you could invent. You were so kind to me, and I was so happy. And the dream was so vivid, Norman, that even after I awoke I believed it to be reality. Then I heard the sobbing of the waves on the beach, and I cried out, 'Norman, Norman!' thinking you were still ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... What did the first lawgiver think when, seeking for the corner-stone in the social edifice, angered doubtless by some idle importunity, he struck the tables of brass and felt in his bowels the yearning for a law of retaliation? Did he then invent justice? And the first who plucked the fruit planted by his neighbor and who fled cowering under his mantle, did he invent shame? And he who, having overtaken that same thief who had robbed him of the product of his toil, forgave him his sin, and instead of raising his hand to smite ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... with their own, and more and more appropriated the tales of the Greek mythology, linking them to their own deities. Of the early worship peculiar to the Romans, we know but little. But certain traits always belonged to the Roman religion. Their mood was too prosaic to invent a theogony, to originate stories of the births, loves, and romantic adventures of the gods, such as the Greek fancy devised. The Roman myths were heroic, not religious: they related to the deeds of valiant men. Their deities were, in the first place, much more abstract, less vividly ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... wouldn't let it get dusty," said Mrs. Maybough, and then, in self-defence, Charmian gave Cornelia the worst character for housekeeping that she could invent from her knowledge ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... absolute darkness. At last he was discharged, a friendless, tradeless, penniless man, without a past, and with very little to look to in the future. His very name was altered, for it had been necessary to invent one. John Huxford had passed away, and John Hardy took his place among mankind. Here was a strange outcome of a Spanish ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "I shall invent some means of consolation for him," she replied. "I like dancing among the bright flowers. Why should we not have everything gay and bright ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... notes himself to a hollow in a rock near a clear spring called "The Phantom," which was in the outskirts of the park, sheltered by a thatched roof. Sidonie thought that a charming episode. In the evening she must invent some story, a pretext of some sort for going to "The Phantom" alone. The shadow of the trees across the path, the mystery of the night, the rapid walk, the excitement, made her heart beat deliciously. She would find the letter saturated with dew, with ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Ramsgate, and the days seemed to go by quickly, instead of creeping along as they did at first. And this was in a great measure owing to the companionship of Sophia Jane, for, though Aunt Hannah was kind and Nanna and Margaretta caressing, Susan's life would have been dull without someone to invent games with her and play in the attic; and, although she thought herself far superior to Sophia Jane, she knew this very well. When she wrote to her mother she was able to say that she liked being at the ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... slumber, and did the laws of nature become silent at his command? When we transcend what is scientifically possible, all suppositions are admissible; and we leave the reader to take his choice between these and any others he may choose to invent. ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... real thing, but always the same thing. There were moments when I rather writhed under the serenity of her confidence that she WAS the real thing. All her dealings with me and all her husband's were an implication that this was lucky for ME. Meanwhile I found myself trying to invent types that approached her own, instead of making her own transform itself—in the clever way that was not impossible for instance to poor Miss Churm. Arrange as I would and take the precautions I would, she always came out, in my pictures, too tall—landing me in the dilemma of having ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... of His sufferings were omitted. Think, for instance, of the predictions contained in the xxii Psalm. Death by crucifixion was unknown among the Jewish people. No nation in touch with Israel, living at that time, put human beings to death in that way. It was reserved for cruel Rome to invent death; by crucifixion. Yet in this Psalm there is given by divine inspiration a complete picture of that unknown mode of death by crucifixion. We read of His hands and feet pierced, the bones out of joint, the excessive thirst, the tongue cleaving ...
— The Work Of Christ - Past, Present and Future • A. C. Gaebelein
... pray that God would set a watch before his mouth, and on his lips, lest he should be led to utter evil words. By evil words he means excuses which we invent to cover our sins.[1] ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... another Italy. She must have her miracles, and if God will not perform them, so surely will some one be at hand to invent them. Still further, the miracle must be a miracle pertaining to the Virgin. La Madonna! the mind, the heart, the tongue of the Italians are full of ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... said to his friend: "My heart has been stolen by Love-cluster. It is no longer in my body. How can I comfort it? Love has made an empty quiver of me. So invent some plan by which I may meet ...
— Twenty-two Goblins • Unknown
... exclaimed, with the most comforting sympathy. "You have had a run of bad luck and no mistake! We must invent something. You can't read and you can't sew—how about knitting? Suppose we knit a scarf in school colours for Dick, or a jumper for yourself to wear when you are better? I could get wool in the village. That would do to begin with, till I ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... that since the good fortune of the Lady Dorothea prevented them carrying out their scheme, they must invent some other way of taking him home to ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... they found it difficult to manage without her. Seven younger brothers and sisters all looked to Patty to settle their quarrels, hem their boat sails, dress their dolls, kiss their bumps and bruises better, sympathize with their small woes and troubles, tell them stories, invent new games, and generally take the lead in all the important matters of the nursery. She was her mother's right hand, and from the time she was old enough to feel herself a little older than the rest, she had helped ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... hunger drives them, may find these details set out in the pages of Josephus, the renegade Jewish historian. It serves no good purpose and will not help our story to repeat them; indeed for the most part they are too terrible to be repeated. History does not record, and the mind of man cannot invent a cruelty which was not practised by the famished Jews upon other Jews suspected of the crime of having hidden food to feed themselves or their families. Now the fearful prophecy was fulfilled, and it came about ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... things stir a man's blood, like a great wrong or passion of the instant. And with these in their minds, and with a museum there, having a chamber full of such frightful instruments of torture as the devil in a brain fever could scarcely invent, there are hundreds of parrots, who will declaim to you in speech and print, by the hour together, on the degeneracy of the times in which a railroad is building across the water at Venice; instead of going down ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... and was even most tyrannical towards his own connections, as he drove all the kings out of the Uplands: although, indeed, it was but just reward for having been false to their oaths of fealty to King Canute, and having followed this King Olaf in all the folly he could invent; so their friendship ended according to their deserts, by this king mutilating some of them, taking their kingdoms himself, and ruining every man in the country who had an honourable name. Ye know yourselves how he has treated the lendermen, of whom many of the worthlest have been murdered, and many ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... grew outrageous in his demands upon the Devil, and put him to all sorts of absurd and ridiculous tasks; but they were all punctually performed, until Simon could invent no new ones, and the Devil sat all day with his hands in his pockets ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it were not Friday,' Vida said slyly as her sister was preparing to leave the house, 'you'd invent some errand to take you out of the contaminated air of Queen Anne's ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... void of any of those feelings which actuate men to do good. But he was perhaps equally void of those which actuate men to do evil. He got into debt with utter recklessness, thinking of nothing as to whether the tradesmen would ever be paid or not. But he did not invent active schemes of deceit for the sake of extracting the goods of others. If a man gave him credit, that was the man's look-out; Bertie Stanhope troubled himself nothing further. In borrowing money he did the same; he gave people references ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... our food was but indifferent; no fruit or vegetables, or fish. Eggs we had in abundance from the chickens and ducks we had brought with us, and which had scarcely ceased laying since we arrived, so much did they thrive in this luxuriant island. The evenings were very tedious, and we had to invent all sorts of games which would at once amuse them, and yet ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... 705 T' enervate this objection, And prove myself; by topic clear No gelding, as you would infer. Loss of virility's averr'd To be the cause of loss of beard, 710 That does (like embryo in the womb) Abortive on the chin become. This first a woman did invent, In envy of man's ornament; SEMIRAMIS, of Babylon, 715 Who first of all cut men o' th' stone, To mar their beards, and lay foundation Of sow-geldering operation. Look on this beard, and tell me whether Eunuchs wear such, or geldings either? 720 Next it appears I am no horse; That I can argue ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... adultery, they stand in connection with the prophet only through the mother; as soon as he has rejected the mother, he has nothing further to do with them.—The supposition that Gomer had died, is evidently the result of an embarrassment which finds itself compelled to invent such fictions.—Finally,—Several interpreters, after the example of Augustine, suppose that no marriage at all is here spoken of, but only a certain kindness which the prophet should manifest to some woman, in order to encourage her conversion. But this opinion is ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... If all the manufacturers of a single product get together and agree to form a patent pool, it means that if one company buys a patent, all of them can use it. Say the automobile companies have one. That means that if you invent a radical new design for an engine—one, maybe that would save them millions of dollars—you'll be offered a few measly thousand for it. Why should they offer more? Where else are you going to sell it? If one company gets it, they all get it. There's no competition, and if you ...
— With No Strings Attached • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA David Gordon)
... monitory or profitable to them.... As soon as possible he would make the children learn to write; and, when they had the use of the pen, he would employ then in writing out the most instructive, and profitable things he could invent for them.... The first chastisement which he would inflict for any ordinary fault was to let the child see and hear him in an astonishment, and hardly able to believe that the child could do so base ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... to talk over this matter of the poor Le Bretons with your son. Oh, Mr. Arthur, something must really be done to help them. I know you say there's nothing to be done; but there must be; we must find it out; we must invent it; we must compel it. When I sat there this morning with that dear little woman and saw her breaking her full heart over her husband's trouble, I said to myself, somehow, Hilda Tregellis, if you can't find a way out of this, you're not worth your salt in this world, and you'd better make haste ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... the Government for its new coastguard service. 'I don't deny,' he said, 'it's an improvement on anything we've seen yet under the Customs, or would be, if there was any real smuggling left to grapple with. But the "trade" has been dwindling now for these thirty years, and to invent this fire-new service to suppress what's dying of its own accord is an infernal waste of public money.' 'I doubt,' Sir John demurred, 'if smuggling be quite so near death's door as you fancy. Hey, doctor—in Polpeor now?' The doctor ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... or homely, tall or short, fair or dark, plump or spare. I was interested in their eyes, but, somehow, I was still more interested in their mouths. Some mouths would set my blood on fire. I would invent all sorts of romantic episodes with myself as the hero. I would portray my engagement to some of the pretty girls I had seen, our wedding, and, above all, our married life. The worst of it was that these images often visited my brain while I was ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... be found, like a wild flower, 215 All over his dear Country; [S] left the deeds Of Wallace, like a family of Ghosts, To people the steep rocks and river banks, Her natural sanctuaries, with a local soul Of independence and stern liberty. 220 Sometimes it suits me better to invent A tale from my own heart, more near akin To my own passions and habitual thoughts; Some variegated story, in the main Lofty, but the unsubstantial structure melts 225 Before the very sun that brightens it, Mist into air dissolving! Then a wish, My best and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... The forms also of Reduction (a term which will be explained later on) would be simplified; and generally the introduction of the quantified predicate into logic might be attended with certain mechanical advantages. The object of the logician, however, is not to invent an ingenious system, but to arrive at a true analysis of thought. Now, if it be admitted that in the ordinary form of proposition the subject is used in extension and the predicate in intension, the ground for the doctrine is at once cut away. For, if the predicate be not used in its ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... bakers, Cardinal Khlesl and the Vizier Etmekdschifade. It was destined to endure through all the horrors of the great war, a stronger protection to Vienna than all the fortifications which the engineering art could invent. He was safe too from Poland, King Sigmund being not only a devoted Catholic ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to become rifle-bombers, although their knowledge of bombs was of the most elementary description. Two problems therefore faced those responsible for the training and equipment of the rifle-bombers. First how to get them even partially trained in the time, and second to invent some apparatus for carrying the rifle-grenades. At first it was only possible to train the N.C.O.s in charge of the rifle-bombing sections—leaving them to instruct their sections as ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... aggravated, when such advantage is taken of an unexperienced and innocent young creature, whom we pretend to love above all the women in the world; and when we seal our pretences by the most solemn vows and protestations of inviolable honour that we can invent? ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... surfaces, and of determining the foci of lenses, and of the relative positions of the images which they form, and the objects from which the rays proceed. He was thus led to explain the rationale of the telescope, and to invent the astronomical telescope, which consists of two convex lenses, by which objects are seen inverted. Kepler also discovered the important fact, that spherical surfaces were not capable of converging rays to a single focus, and he conjectured, what Descartes afterwards proved, that this property might ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... you needn't be troubled about that, Agnes. I dare say they've got on perfectly well together. Very likely they're sitting down to the unwholesomest hot supper this instant that the ingenuity of man could invent. ...
— The Sleeping Car - A Farce • William D. Howells
... This he sometimes tries to do; and people who have seen him "turning cart-wheels" along the side of the road have supposed that he was amusing himself, and idling his time; he was only trying to invent a new mode of locomotion, so that he could economize his legs and do his errands with greater dispatch. He practices standing on his head, in order to accustom himself to any position. Leapfrog is one of his methods ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... with tug and strain, lifts it, ready to slip off and smash at any moment, and, grunting, transfers it to the kiln. A little mechanical appliance would save nine-tenths of the labour, a stage on wheels raised or lowered at will (a thing which surely should not be hard to invent) would bring it from the bench to the kiln, and then, if needs be, and no better method could be found, the fork might be used to put ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... deities are like the figures on porcelain vases: all know their appearance and some their names, but hardly anyone can give a coherent account of them. A poly-daemonism of this kind is even more fluid than Hinduism: you may invent any god you like and neglect gods that don't concern you. The habit of mind which produces sects in India, namely the desire to exalt one's own deity above others and make him the All-God, does not exist. No Chinese god ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... said Jeanne Bergre, "that already God has opened His mind to her, and that she knows of that vengeance, which we with our small minds are not able to invent." ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... a short distance to the elder Entriken's farm, and, rather than invent a laborious explanation of the horse's absence all night, Gordon walked. Numberless excuses offered him plausible reason for his own delayed return home.—It was better to say nothing to Lettice of his actual intention; she was already ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... little chance that he would know anything of what had occurred. It was a fortunate chance that the next day was Sunday, and there would be no morning paper to enlighten him as to the doings in Hampshire. They had only to invent some plausible excuse for their wish to accompany him, and get him to drop them upon the Spanish coast. Once out of sight of England and on the broad ocean, what detective could follow ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you could find some scheme, invent some plot, to get me out of the trouble I am in, I should think myself indebted to you ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere
... are of every sort,[535] and taken from everywhere. Chaucer never troubled himself to invent any; he received them from all hands, but he modelled them after his own fashion, and adapted them to his characters. They are borrowed from France, Italy, ancient Rome; the knight's tale is taken from Boccaccio, that of the nun's priest is imitated from the "Roman de Renart"; ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... the exercise of the reasoning powers is absolutely sinful—l'homme qui raisonne est l'homme qui peche. Franklin, on the other hand, in a familiar tone of playful banter, vindicates its utility, alleging that it is mightily 'convenient to be a rational animal, who knows how to find or invent a plausible pretext for whatever it has an inclination to do.' Examples of this convenience abound. The Barbary Jews were rich and industrious, and, accordingly, their wealth provoke the cupidity of the indolent and avaricious ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... first the occupations of this little group were many and various. They worked if they had something to do, or could invent a pretext. They told and retold stories until all were wearisome. They sang songs. Mercedes taught Spanish. They played every game they knew. They invented others that were so trivial children would scarcely have been interested, and these they played ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... definition of the word which can make it possible to describe him as having any style at all. It is not only that he manifestly recognized no external canons whereto to conform the expression of his thoughts, but he had, apparently, no inclination to invent and observe—except, indeed, in the most negative of senses—any style of his own. The "style of Sterne," in short, is as though one should say "the form of Proteus." He was determined to be uniformly eccentric, regularly irregular, and that was all. His digressions, ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... toilet-boxes, containing blond sponges, curling-irons, sea-wolves' teeth to polish the nails, the green rouge of Egypt, which turns to a most beautiful pink on touching the skin, powders to darken the eyelashes and eyebrows, and all the refinements that feminine coquetry could invent. Other litters were freighted with purple robes of the finest linen and of all possible shades from the incarnadine hue of the rose to the deep crimson of the blood of the grape; calasires of the ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... presented to the public. In vain did the author of this work, in his younger days, search the book stores and libraries in the hopes of finding such a book, and many are the traps and snares which necessity forced him to invent and construct for himself, for want of just such a volume. Several of these original inventions will appear in the present work for the first time in book form, and the author can vouch for their excellence, and he might almost say, their infallibility, for in their perfect state he has never yet ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... interested, could not help saying that he was thankful these murderous engines of war had not been discovered in his time. It is indeed sad to think that the ingenuity of people should be required to invent such dreadful engines for the destruction of their fellow-creatures. When will the blessings of the gospel of peace be universally spread abroad, and nations learn ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... best intentions, say unpleasant things. She has for this quite a rare talent—you will soon experience this; but she does not intend anything so bad. She can also joke! Thank God that you will not remain there over night, otherwise you would experience what she and the Mamsell can invent!" ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... course proves the terms On which man wins content; Reason the proof confirms— We spurn it, and invent A false course for the world, and for ourselves, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
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