"Ingenuity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his ingenuity could never amuse Harry with such things, but he determined to buy some toys that very evening, and to try his hand at winning the child's heart the next evening. Jane took very little notice of any of them and after putting the baby to bed, announced that she had shopping to do, and ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... in a striking degree all the characteristics of the successful soldier. His methods were all stamped with tenacity of purpose, with originality and ingenuity. He depended for his success more upon the powers of invention than of adaptation, and the fact that he has been compared, at different times, to nearly every great commander in history is perhaps the best proof ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Germans against that half-savage mate of hers who had cunningly annoyed and harassed them with a fiendishness of persistence and ingenuity that had resulted in a noticeable loss in morale in the sector he had chosen for his operations. They had to charge against him the lives of certain officers that he had deliberately taken with his own hands, and one entire section of trench that had ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of all kinds for the hero and his friends, whose pluck and ingenuity in extricating themselves from awkward fixes are always equal to the occasion. It is an excellent story full of honest, manly, patriotic efforts on the part of the hero. A very vivid description of the battle of ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... winter of 1901-02, while rummaging an old closet in the shed-chamber of my father's house, I unearthed a salt-box which had been equipped with leather hinges at the expense of considerable ingenuity, and at a very remote period. In addition to this, a hasp of the same material, firmly fastened by carpet-tacks and a catch of bent wire, bade defiance to burglars, midnight ...
— The Real Diary of a Real Boy • Henry A. Shute
... that he would use the great advantage which chance and the ingenuity of his friend had thrown in his way; but that necessity of putting money in his purse was a sore grievance to him, and it occurred to him that it would be a grand thing if he could induce his brother to help him in this special matter. If he could only ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... to have erected a dam (Shass) at Blackwall, and by these means to have grounded the Danish fleet. The Danes held a treaty, and eventually withdrew into Cambridgeshire and Gloucestershire; the Londoners came down to the scene of Alfred's ingenuity and destroyed or appropriated the ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... pitched, in a cleared space amid pines and cedars; and the ingenuity of the "couriers," as messengers and orderlies were called in the Southern army, had fashioned alleys and walks leading to the various tents, the tent of the commanding general occupying the centre. Of the gentlemen of General Lee's staff we have not considered it necessary ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... advertised, and physical, as well as moral, degradation frequently results. Crime is often inculcated—even the crime of murder, that the nostrum manufacturer may profit thereby. Cures for incurable diseases are promised, and guaranteed. Every scheme that human and devilish ingenuity can devise to wring money from its victim is resorted to, which can be employed without actually bringing the advertisers into court. All this wicked quackery parades under the guise of 'patent' medicines, and asks the protection of our ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... days the ingenuity of man was concentrated upon extending by any means short of the criminal the duration of the leave. When Robert first went on leave he was young and innocent. He had four days given him; he left his unit on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... is the very thing I want, for it's starved wid the cowld I am," said the shivering creature, who with characteristic ingenuity had failed to apprehend the meaning of the menace addressed to him. But a sudden flash and the dull thud of a bullet against the ice beside him interpreted to his sluggish brain the ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... ladies and gentlemen, for myself, that from first to last I have never uttered one syllable that could be twisted by any ingenuity into encouragement by the Boers. No, I have never even expressed ordinary pity for, or sympathy with them, because I did not wish to run the risk of being misunderstood. What I have done, and what ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... the ingenuity and address of Almona that he made her his wife. Zadig departed, after having thrown himself at the feet of his fair deliverer. Setoc and he took leave of each other with tears in their eyes, swearing an eternal friendship, and promising that the first of them that should acquire ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... mechanicians in the world, are engineers— just as the Italians are musicians and the Germans metaphysicians— by right of birth. Nothing is more natural, therefore, than to perceive them applying their audacious ingenuity to the science of gunnery. Witness the marvels of Parrott, Dahlgren, and Rodman. The Armstrong, Palliser, and Beaulieu guns were compelled to bow ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... always barred his way, distrust of a mind and character to which problems appear as exercises in ingenuity rather than questions of right and justice. His greatest opportunity for constructive statesmanship was offered in the making of the New York State constitution. But when it became known that Mr. Root had dominated the Constitutional Convention, that the proposed constitution ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... et Decadence des Romains, c. viii. He illustrates the nature and use of the censorship with his usual ingenuity, and with uncommon precision.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... nonsense, for with such a clever savage as Ebo and our own ingenuity and tools we could have built another boat—not such a good one as we had arrived in, but quite strong enough to bear us over a calm sea to one or the other of the islands where trading ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... of this curious place is as black as a coal-mine, and a partition, more than half the way across, divides the part where Kynaston used to reside by day from that in which he slept and kept his horse, for he had actually the ingenuity to make the animal ascend and descend the stairs above-mentioned. The robber's initials, and the date of the year in which we may suppose he cut them, appear on the partition just opposite the entrance. The romance of the place was not a little augmented ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... Even such a man as Dugald Stewart declared that the discovery of Sanskrit was altogether fraudulent, and endeavoured to prove that the Brahmans had made it up from the vocabulary and grammar of Greek and Latin. Others exercised their ingenuity in picking the new discovery to pieces, and still others attributed it all ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... your critical observations,-which, not confined to works of utility or ingenuity, is equally open to those of frivolous amusement,-and, yet worse than frivolous, dullness,-encourages me to seek for your protection, since,-perhaps for my sins!-it intitles me to your annotations. To resent, therefore, this offering, however insignificant, would ill become the ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... speech known to Caspak or for that matter to the world—that employed by the Bo-lu. I found it far from difficult, and even though it was a great handicap upon my instructor that she could not speak my language, she did remarkably well and demonstrated that she possessed ingenuity and intelligence of ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... had learned about them, but he knew that he had a reputation for being tough and that this reputation usually brought out the best in cadets. Early in his long and brilliant career he had learned that his life depended on the courage and ingenuity of his fellow spacemen. When he became an instructor at the Academy, he had determined that no cadet would ever be anything but the best, and that, when they blasted off in later years, they ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... elevated position we could do better battle for the country we all love than we possibly can from those lower ones where, from the force of habit, the prejudices of the past, and selfish hopes of the future, we are sure to expend much of our ingenuity and strength in finding fault with and aiming blows at each other. But since you have denied me this I will yet be thankful for the country's sake that not all Democrats have done so. He on whose discretionary judgment Mr. Vallandigham was arrested and tried is a Democrat, having ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... to perfumery is quite new; it is probable that the study of all the ethers or ethereal combinations already known, and of those which the ingenuity of the chemist is daily discovering, will enlarge the sphere of their practical applications. The capryl-ethers lately discovered by Bouis are remarkable for their aromatic smells (the acetate of capryloxide is possessed ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... zooelogist, to the laws which regulate the formation and the evolution of species, and the decision of Ellida, on which so much depends, is an amazing example of the limitation of the power of change produced by heredity. The extraordinary ingenuity of M. de Gaultier's analysis of this play deserves recognition; whether it can quite be accepted, as embraced by Ibsen's intention, may be doubtful. At the same time, let us recollect that, however subtle our refinements become, the instinct ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... the welcome the Chevalier received. Mme. de Combray, her daughters, the nuns and the Chartreux friars used all their ingenuity to satisfy the slightest wish of this man, who modestly called himself "the agent general of His Majesty." They arranged a hiding-place for him in the safest part of the house, and Pere Lemercier blessed it. Acquet stayed there part of the day, and in the evening joined in ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... bold freedom which in so great measure distinguishes the Canterbury Tales; and the fact is easily explained when we remember that, in the earlier poem, Chaucer followed a beaten path, in which he had many predecessors and competitors, all seeking to sound the praises of love with the grace, the ingenuity, and studious devotion, appropriate to the theme. The story of the poem is exceedingly simple. Under the name of Philogenet, a clerk or scholar of Cambridge, the poet relates that, summoned by Mercury to the Court of Love, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... desire to bring about the action and if there is no better way to do it, we must use the drug, and there is still need for the druggist. As a matter of fact, the number of drugs at your disposal today is vastly greater than ever before, largely owing to the labor, and the ingenuity, of the analytical chemist. And there are still great classes of compounds of whose existence the chemist is assured, but which he has not even had time to form, much less to investigate. Among these may lurk remedies more valuable than any at our disposal today. It does not look, at any ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... what he could do to earn his living and still be true to the call of his genius. In his Journal of 1851 he says: "While formerly I was looking about to see what I could do for a living, some sad experiences in conforming to the wishes of friends being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I thought often and seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely I could do, and its small profits might suffice, so little capital is required, so little distraction from my wonted thoughts." He could range the hills in summer and still look after the flocks of King Admetus. He also ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... their fiction. Gradually this list of trained and capable, and consequently successful, writers for the screen is growing larger, for daily some new writer is demonstrating that the freshness, brightness, and ingenuity of his ideas warrant the editor's putting him on the list of those from whom good material may ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... once took it to pieces, and this so effectually that he succeeded in analysing it into a good many more pieces than its fabricator had ever dreamed of. To put it together again would have taxed the ingenuity of the same fabricator—no wonder that it was beyond the power of Jacky altogether. But this mattered nothing to the "little darling," as he did not understand his father's learned explanation of the uses of the instrument. ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... council the full story of the means by which the crew of the Pluto had gained their liberty, showing how the recapture was entirely due to the initiative of Francis, and to the ingenuity with which he overcame all difficulties. ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... be soothing and diplomatic. She brought all her fund of talent and ingenuity to the fore, and presently had arranged things so well that she was able to rush to her desk in Mrs. Aylmer's boudoir and ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... her that Mark took any joke against himself badly, but she was determined to do it. I gave way reluctantly. Reluctantly, also, I told her the secret of the passage. (There is an underground passage from the library to the bowling-green. You should exercise your ingenuity, Mr. Gillingham, in trying to discover it. Mark came upon it by accident a year ago. It was a godsend to him; he could drink there in greater secrecy. But he had to tell me about it. He wanted an audience, even ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... be silly!" he said. "I am delighted to be of use for a change. I don't do much worth the doing, being more or less of a loafer. It is good for me to exercise my ingenuity now and then. It only gets rusty ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... closed. Rupert was as much amused as Crawford had been at seeing his sisters in their military attire. He fully approved of all Percy had done; and when he heard of the proposed dummies, he thought the idea excellent. While Crawford, who possessed a great deal of mechanical ingenuity, went in to assist Mrs Broderick, he hurried to the back of the house, where he found Mangaleesu and Kalinda employed in manufacturing Kaffir warriors. They had collected a number of poles and sticks, and had obtained from ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... Conundrums, Cryptographs, Enigmas, Logogriphs, Puzzles, Rebuses, Riddles, Transpositions, &c. Of these there are such a variety, that they are suited to every capacity; and they present this additional attraction, that ingenuity may be exercised in the invention of them, as well as in their solution. Many persons who have become noted for their literary compositions may date the origin of their success to the time when they attempted the composition of ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... of a more serious and decidedly lurid sort. The horses had led him a pace through the Bad Lands westward out over the prairie, and night overtook him not far from Mingusville, a primitive settlement named thus with brilliant ingenuity by its first citizens, a lady by the name of Minnie and her husband by the name of Gus. The "town"—what there was of it—was pleasantly situated on rolling country on the west bank of Beaver Creek. Along the east side of the creek were high, steep, cream-colored buttes, gently rounded ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... editor of the new series of "Hymns for the Ages," who boldly appends to the poem, "Milton, 1608-1674." Yet Mrs. Child's early ventures in the way of writing speeches for James Otis and sermons for Whitefield should have made her a sharper detective of the ingenuity of others. Those successful imitations, published originally in her novel of "The Rebels," have hardly yet ceased to pass ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... the other trees are stripped and maimed and, with miracles of strength and ingenuity, are pushed away as far as possible in order to make with them a solid and reliable ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... crimson of the beeches and the gold of the elms, we shall do well to emulate the serene magnanimity of Nature and console ourselves with the reflection that the rural philosopher, if only assured of a sympathetic hearing in an enlightened Press and provided with a suitable equipment by the ingenuity of its directors, may contemplate the vagaries of tyrannical misgovernment with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... few days, along comes Angus, fills, out into the world from college to make a name for himself. By ingenuity or native brute force he had contrived to graduate. He was nice as ever and told me he was going to look about a bit until he could decide what his field of endeavour should be. Apparently it was breaking his neck in outdoor sports, including loop-the-loop in his ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... perfect, while at the same time they all possess the fresh and unconscious grace which marks the productions of primitive times." Now, there is some truth in this criticism; for it is a mark of man's early ingenuity, in many arts, to seek complexity (where you would expect simplicity), and yet to lend to that complexity an infantine naturalness. One can see this phenomenon in early decorative art, and in early law and custom, and even in the complicated structure of primitive ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... to me that in a valley connected with civilization by only a trail there should be found McCormick's reapers and Pitt's threshers. Parts too large for a mule's pack had been cut in two and afterwards reunited. By some dint of ingenuity even a millstone had been hauled over the roadless mountains. The wheat we harvested was ground at the Hoopa mill and the flour was shipped to the ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... intense story, that of the long wanderings and the close hiding of the dangerous secret. Among all those who had known that a man who was an impassioned patriot was laboring for Samavia, and using all the power of a great mind and the delicate ingenuity of a great genius to gain friends and favor for his unhappy country, there had been but one who had known that Stefan Loristan had a claim to the Samavian throne. He had made no claim, he had sought—not a crown—but the final freedom of the nation for which ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... with masses of mushrooms, flower-like in hue,—bronze, pink, snow-white, green, and yellow; and Osip cooked them delicately, in sour cream, to accompany the juicy young blackcock and other game of our host's shooting. Osip was a cordon bleu, and taxed his ingenuity to initiate us into all the mysteries of Russian cooking, which, under his tuition, we found delicious. The only national dish which we never really learned to like was one in which he had no hand,—fresh cucumbers sliced ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... not forbidden to cross the line. Then there are stools, one stool at least indispensable to human nature; and the inside of this, once you open it, is a chest-of-drawers, containing paper, ink, new literature and much else. No end to Munchow'a good-will, and his ingenuity is ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... photographs, showing the various positions assumed by the figure during the process of excavation, can be consulted upon the second page following. This work of art was raised by Dr. Le Plongeon, with the assistance of his wife and ten Indian laborers, by his own ingenuity, and without other engineering apparatus than he had contrived from the trees and vines, making use also of the bark, from which he constructed ropes. Dr. Le Plongeon, in a private letter to the writer, says, "The ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... so long as experiments in selective breeding had not produced varieties which were more or less infertile; and that insecurity remains up to the present time. But, with any and every critical doubt which my sceptical ingenuity could suggest, the Darwinian hypothesis remained incomparably more probable than the creation hypothesis. And if we had none of us been able to discern the paramount significance of some of the most patent and notorious ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... is possible. An advocate who is changing his clients is ill-advised in hampering himself with the enumeration of maxims which may from time to time be quoted against him. In such cases Mr. Hope-Scott almost converted a self-imposed difficulty into an additional resource. With marvellous ingenuity he proved that any competition scheme which he happened to support formed an exception to the rule which he carefully reasserted; and unsophisticated hearers admired the consistency with general principles which was found not to ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... now began to show itself in all kinds of inventions with which she mitigated the discomforts of the raw mining camp. As vegetables were exceedingly scarce, the diet of the miners consisted almost exclusively of meat, and Mrs. Osbourne made a great hit by her ingenuity in devising variations of this monotonous fare. She learned how to cook beef in fifteen different ways. Her great achievement, however, was in making imitation honey, to eat with griddle-cakes, out of boiled sugar with a lump ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... removing the eyebrows, Magdalen was free to combat the unfortunate impression produced on her companion's mind by every weapon of persuasion which her ingenuity could employ. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... principal cities of Europe. The necessities of the time have thus brought into prominence a modification of the art of the old Italian liutaro, in which there has to be displayed much more mechanical ingenuity if with very little or no originality; the high class of artisan has become strongly in evidence, while the artist has disappeared. It was in the consideration of these facts that the idea was first suggested that a work treating of the general ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... his writing-table, and took the letter from the drawer. Its ingenuity, its knowledge of local circumstance, astonished him as he read. He had expected something of a vulgarer and rougher type. The handwriting was clearly disguised, and there was a certain amount of intermittent ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... up for show. No doubt, Ecelino used such things, and many worse, of which even the ingenuity of Signor P—— cannot conceive. But he is an eccentric man, loving the horrors of history, and what he can do to realize them he has done in ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... de Courcy would do anything that was requested of him. Ellen was taken out of the ring of walkers, and mounted on a fine animal, and set by herself to have her skill tried in as many various ways as M. de Courcy's ingenuity could point out. Never did she bear herself more erectly; never were her hand and her horse's mouth on nicer terms of acquaintanceship; never, even to please her master, had she so given her whole ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... our modern kitchen-gardens is a semi-artificial plant, the produce of our agricultural ingenuity quite as much as of the niggardly gifts of nature. Spontaneous vegetation supplied us with the long-stalked, scanty-leaved, ill-smelling wilding, as found, according to the botanists, on the ocean cliffs. He had need of a rare ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... Michilimackinac, or Mackinaw as it is now called, remained, and all the ingenuity of the chieftain was directed to the possession of these strongholds. The following plan, well worthy of his invention, was at length determined upon. During a temporary truce, and while Ponteac was holding forth proposals for an ultimate and durable peace, a ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... may have art, poetry, and science, all the refinements of civilized life, all the comforts and safeguards that human ingenuity can devise; but if it lose this spirit of personal and local independence, it is doomed and deserves its doom. As President Cleveland has well said, it is not the business of a government to support its people, but of the people to support their government; ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... the canoe leave the ship's side, ceased to live intellectually. There was no need for more thinking, for any display of mental ingenuity. He had done with it all. All his notions were perfectly fixed and he could go over them in the same ghostly way in which he haunted the deck of the Emma. At the sight of the ring Lingard would return to Hassim and Immada, now ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... inmate, beloved of all. The party was waited on sedulously by an old servant of the Ursulines, Bonnehomme Michel, as she was called, who was the most faithful, hard-working, and devoted of creatures, and displayed the greatest ingenuity in contriving, out of the scantiest of materials, such dishes as should tempt the appetite of the sick Bishop, and make the rest forget that they were ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Some of his schemes for insuring the safety of his capital, for the resettlement of the greater part of the income by trustees—for combining, in fact, a maximum of growing power for the fortune with a minimum of enjoyment for the heir—were really marvels of ingenuity. ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... that kind which they could want. With the help of those tools they were so very handy that they came at last to build up their huts or houses very handsomely, raddling or working it up like basket-work all the way round. This piece of ingenuity, although it looked very odd, was an exceeding good fence, as well against heat as against all sorts of vermin; and our men were so taken with it that they got the Indians to come and do the like for them; so that when I came ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... and reserved man, but that was a matter of no moment to Obo, who threatened him in front, skirmished in his rear, charged him on the right flank with a reed spear, shelled him on the left with sweet potatoes, and otherwise harassed him with amazing perseverance and ingenuity. ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... and now there was hardly anything of which she could not suspect her girl to be capable. Lady Anna was watched, therefore, during every minute of the four and twenty hours. A policeman was told off to protect the house at night from rope ladders or any other less cumbrous ingenuity. The servants were set on guard. Sarah, the lady's-maid, followed her mistress almost like a ghost when the poor young lady went to her bedroom. Mrs. Bluestone, or one of the girls, was always with her, either indoors ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... towns, and the traditional mode of building was continued in the country. Some say that by this means our ancestors tried to protect the lower part of the house, the foundations, from the influence of the weather; others with some ingenuity suggest that these projecting storeys were intended to form a covered walk for passengers in the streets, and to protect them from the showers of slops which the careless housewife of Elizabethan times cast recklessly from the upstairs windows. Architects tell us that it was ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... letter of July 22d was the following characteristic account, conveying the impression that while he was willing to waste all the resources of his colored inks and literary ingenuity on our friendship, I must pay the freight. I think he had a superstition that it would cause a flaw in his title of "The Good Knight, sans peur et sans monnaie" if he were to add the price of a two-cent postage ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Napoleon, "Madame Remusat, your favourite, has made a fool of you, this is only to teach you that you shall not make a fool of me: Had not De Segur fortunately for him—had the ingenuity to extricate us from the dilemma into which my confidence and dependence on you had brought me, I should have made a fine figure indeed on the first day of my emperorship. Have patience, Madame; you have plenty of books to divert you, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... to escape. The time necessary to the accomplishment of this might also be profitably employed in acquiring a knowledge of Spanish, without which he fully realised that his attempt must inevitably fail; and he believed that, by the time he had thus paved the way for the great attempt, his ingenuity would have proved sufficient to gain without suspicion from his fellow-slaves a tolerably accurate idea of the perils and difficulties with which ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... sentiments of another denomination. The particulars of this change are given by Mrs. Judson in a letter to her friends. By her we are informed that for a long time her husband's new notions did not correspond with her own. With woman's ingenuity and skill, she sought to dissuade him from any public statement, and even from an investigation of the subject. She well knew to what such a step would lead. The friends who had been so kind to her, who were then supporting her, who were ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... straightway married an Egyptological young lady who had written upon the sixth dynasty, and having thus secured a sound base of operations he set himself to collect materials for a work which should unite the research of Lepsius and the ingenuity of Champollion. The preparation of this magnum opus entailed many hurried visits to the magnificent Egyptian collections of the Louvre, upon the last of which, no longer ago than the middle of last October, he became involved in a most strange ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the influence of old conservative families was still paramount. Altogether the Punjab Provincial Council is perhaps less representative of the whole electorate than in any other province in India. Some official ingenuity had been displayed in grouping remote towns together without any regard for geography, in order to prevent townsmen undesirably addicted to advanced political views from standing as candidates for the rural constituencies in which many ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... downstairs, picking up Brooke's stick on the way and beating poor Oliver about the head with it.... You know well enough how he was found. I only came to myself when it was done. And then, my wife—with all a woman's ingenuity—bundled me into bed, swore that I had never left it, and that Caspar Brooke had done it. It was a lie—she told me so afterwards. Eh, Mary?—Forgive me, old girl: I've got you into trouble now; but that is better than letting ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... truth, though supported by much ingenuity and brilliance, would seem to contradict the very idea of truth, and to be subversive of all moral values. If truth has no independent validity, if it is not something to be sought for itself, irrespective of the inclinations and interests of man, then its pursuit can bring ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... technological interest to bear on the new problems. Women had been able to thrust a stick into the earth and drop the seed and await a meager harvest. When man turned his attention to this matter, his ingenuity eventually worked out a remarkable combination of the animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms: with the iron plow, drawn by the ox, he upturned the face of the earth, and produced food stuffs in excess of immediate demands, thus creating the ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... quite fit for use by sundown, but the question was where to lay them. Every one naturally objected to the trees, and the ridge of the roof was no more inviting than on the first night. But a little ingenuity soon put all right. Timber was so plentiful with us that poles and planks lay piled up at the back of the house, and after a number of these had been hunted up, from where they had floated among the trees, and laid in the full sunshine, a platform was built up high above the muddy earth, ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... had been growing steadily less both in Europe and America. The ingenuity of the manufacturer showed itself in the make of cheaper substitutes, while the beavers that had been hunted so persistently were becoming scarce: there were few regions in which trapping could be ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... co-operative effort is the rule rather than the exception. That it is more difficult to effect satisfactory arrangements in farming must be conceded, else they would be more common. Doubtless it will often tax the ingenuity of father and son to devise the plans best suited ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... been done by men of mark and ability, by Italians, by men who read the Commedia in their own mother tongue. It has been maintained as a satisfactory account of it—maintained with great labor and pertinacious ingenuity—that Dante meant nothing more by his poem than the conflicts and ideal triumphs of a political party. The hundred cantos of that vision of the universe are but a manifesto of the Ghibelline propaganda, designed, under the veil of historic images and scenes, to insinuate what it was dangerous ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... to our people's prosperity and well-being is the removal of restrictions upon the importation of the raw materials necessary to our manufactures. The world should be open to our national ingenuity and enterprise. This can not be while Federal legislation through the imposition of high tariff forbids to American manufacturers as cheap materials as those used by their competitors. It is quite obvious ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... the strongest and best book-cover paper obtainable. This paper is made in large quantities especially for these book covers and will protect books perfectly. The book covers themselves are a marvel of ingenuity, and, although they are in one piece and can be adjusted to fit perfectly any sized book without cutting the paper, they are also so simple that any boy or girl can use them; as they are already gummed they are always ready ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1. No. 23, April 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... is the notice of Gallic ingenuity and skill, the acknowledgment must be made, that, for the invention of the trunk or well, with its attendant advantages, navigation is indebted to Commander Labrousse, of the French navy; and for a novel arrangement of the screw- propeller, which has not attracted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Company proceeded to build its dams and walls while the Lehigh Coal Company constructed the first roadway in America built on the principle—later adopted by the railway—of dividing the total distance by the total descent in order to determine the grade. Not to be outdone in point of ingenuity, the Lehigh Navigation Company, then suffering from an unprecedented dearth of water, adopted White's invention of sluice gates connecting with pools which could be filled with reserve water to be drawn upon ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... is often useful," said he. "When I recovered I managed, by a device which had perhaps some little merit of ingenuity, to get old Cunningham to write the word 'twelve,' so that I might compare it with the ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... suit will do it; nothing very exclusive about those people. But the people of Limehouse, and, indeed, of any slum or foreign quarter, are exclusive; and to get into a Poplar dope-house on bargain night demands the exercise of more Oriental ingenuity ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... labour. Every trade—every profession in this respect, is subject to the same law—the lawyer, the physician, the tradesman, and the mechanic. This labour is required at our hands, even in an old community; how much more then is it called for in a new, where the ingenuity of men is put to trial to secure those means of accomplishing their ends which here are abundant. Now, it appears to me but consistent, that he who is obliged to leave his native country from want of means to hold his station there, can hardly expect to find, or rather to secure, abundance elsewhere ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... culinary process. The subject of cookery is too generally neglected by mistresses, as something beneath their notice; or if engaged in, it is to contrive a variety of mischievous compositions, both savoury and sweet, to recommend their own ingenuity. Yet it is quite evident that every good housewife ought to be well acquainted with this important branch of domestic management, and to take upon herself at least its entire direction and controul. This is a duty which her husband, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... and inside the case appeared the screw, which communicated with the bedtop below. Extra lengths of screw, freshly oiled; levers covered with felt; all the complete upper works of a heavy press—constructed with infernal ingenuity so as to join the fixtures below, and when taken to pieces again to go into the smallest possible compass—were next discovered and pulled out on the floor. After some little difficulty the subprefect succeeded in putting the ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... seating herself in the deep recess of another window, at a considerable distance from Robert Audley, settled to a large piece of Berlin-wool work—a piece of embroidery which the Penelopes of ten or twelve years ago were very fond of exercising their ingenuity upon—the Olden Time at ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... the real thing, with great ingenuity they proceeded to extemporise an imitation, the appearance of which they hoped would be sufficient to frighten off the foreigner. They purchased an English trading vessel, the Cambridge, intending to turn her into, at least in appearance, a man-of-war, and built some strange-looking little ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... Neither was our adventurer the least among the sufferers. Driven out of his previous employ—a sort of porter in a river-side warehouse—by this sudden influx of rivals, destitute, honest men like himself, with the ingenuity of his race, he turned his hand to the village art of chair-bottoming. An itinerant, he paraded the streets with the cry of "Old chairs to mend!" furnishing a curious illustration of the contradictions of human life; that he who did little but ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... his Father; but coming into the Senate, and hearing a Multitude of Crimes proved upon him, was so oppressed when it came to his turn to speak, that he was unable to utter a Word. The Story tells us, that the Fathers were more moved at this Instance of Modesty and Ingenuity, than they could have been by the most Pathetick Oration; and, in short, pardoned the guilty Father for this early Promise ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of the power of it, if we make our Saviour's most excellent life the pattern of our lives.' By our Saviour's life, as by a parenthesis you also express, you mean, as yourself hath in short described it (ch 5) viz., 'The greatest freedom, affability, courtesy, candour, ingenuity, gentleness, meekness, humility, contempt of the world, contention, charity, tenderness, compassion, patience, submission to the divine will, love of God, devoutest temper of mind towards him, mighty confidence and trust ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the prize must be big. A man of Enderby's caliber doesn't concoct a scheme of such ingenuity, and go into bondage with it, for nothing. Do you belong to ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... necessary mechanisms a great deal of ingenuity has been expended. With the advance of luxury and the increased worship of wealth, it becomes more and more necessary to guard one's belongings against the less scrupulous members ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... fell to the ground. Those who were obliged to reject the ridiculous legends which invested the whole of their Pantheon, together with the fabulous adjudgers of future punishments, could not but dismiss the punishments, which were, in fact, as laughable, and as obviously the fictions of human ingenuity, as their dispensers. In short, the civilized part of the world in those days lay in this dreadful condition; their intellect had far outgrown their religion; the disproportions between the two were at length become monstrous; and as yet no purer or more elevated faith ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... order and rabid foes of England. They drove men into battle by fear of the guillotine; they formed rapine and destruction into a system, and perverted to their detestable purposes all the talents and ingenuity derived from the civilization around them. He was careful, however, to correct the mis-statement of Fox, that the Government was struggling for the restoration of the French monarchy. While believing that that nation would live most happily under ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... "Talleyrand said that language was given to man to conceal ideas, and we all know the gentleman's ingenuity in the use of language. The proper time! When will that be?" Mr. Brooks then proceeded at some length to answer this question. He supposed the proper time would be as soon as the House was organized, and before ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... added. Sir Walter, after repeated perusals, considered "Udolpho" "a step beyond Mrs. Radcliffe's former work, high as that had justly advanced her." But he admits that "persons of no mean judgment" preferred "The Romance of the Forest." With these amateurs I would be ranked. The ingenuity and originality of the "Romance" are greater: our friend the skeleton is better than that Thing which was behind the Black Veil, the escapes of Adeline are more thrilling than the escape of Emily, and the "Romance" is not nearly so long, not nearly ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... born at Auchinleck, Ayrshire; was a manager of the Soho Works under Boulton and Watt, where he distinguished himself by his inventive ingenuity, and where on his suggestion coal-gas was first ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... my worthy and learned friend, Mr. Joseph Maynard, that such as did inhabitare montes gibberosos, were called Gubbings, such will smile at the ingenuity who dissent from ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... his popularity were: First, his addiction to dirt; second, his eccentricities of dress, heretofore enumerated; third, a reputation for political craft and long-headedness, not wholly unfounded, as his ingenuity in procuring the passage of resolutions supporting the policy of the Administration, in all the conventions of his party since he became postmaster, fully proved. This political sage walked about town with Post-Office documents and confidential communications from Washington ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... description of the present as compared with the past social life of the colonies, though I am quite prepared to agree with her remark, that 'in proportion as the conditions of life become more complex, they should be met by more ingenuity, more culture, and a deeper sense of duty;' and that 'the suddenness of our accumulation of wealth has scarcely prepared our little community for some necessary modifications of our social arrangements.' Therein lies the whole source of both what is best ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... against Europe, alone can be compared in the whole annals of mankind. They developed almost ideal civic virtues and gifts; generosity, faith, firmness; sympathy the most affecting, resources the most exhaustless, ingenuity the most magical. They brought forth the most beautiful and heroic character who in recent times has ever led a nation, the only blameless type of the statesman since the days of Washington. Under him they created the purest model of government which has yet been seen on the earth—a whole ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... any theatre in London. (Herein Artemus slightly exaggerated. The coloring of the theatre was white and gold, but it was inefficiently lighted with oil lamps. When Brigham Young himself showed us round the theatre, he pointed out, as an instance of his own ingenuity, that the central chandelier was formed out of the wheel of one of his old coaches. The house is now, I believe, lighted with gas. Altogether it is a very wondrous edifice, considering where it is built and who ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... kill this young man ought really to be given up now. The job has been tried over and over again by villains and bad people of all kinds, but no one has ever succeeded. There has been an amount of energy and ingenuity expended in seeking to lay up that one man which, properly utilized, might have finished off ten million ordinary mortals. It is sad to think of ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... pears, but few vegetables; the cultivation, except of asparagus (of which there are two excellent beds), having been abandoned, as the bird monopoly of peas, caused every shilling's worth that came to table to cost five, and the ingenuity of the slugs and snails having completely baffled all amateur gardening schemes of defence against their slimy invasions. [Picture: Rustic bench] Among many experiments I may mention one. Some vegetables were protected by a circumvallum of salt; but, notwithstanding, the slugs and snails ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... dignity of a pageant. A real pageant we dearly loved, but the show was too expensive to be offered more than once or twice annually. We had to hire musicians as our own were too busy to serve. Then the costumes and banners and hangings took a good bit of money, though artistic ingenuity helped out amazingly. Where all the magnificence came from was a mystery, the splendors of purple and gold, of rich draperies, fine furbelows, shining garments and glittering adornments being really splendid. Bonico and I, as Heralds, for example, once were superbly ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... the doctrine, I cannot pretend to say. When it finds it convenient to explain things away, theology, like Voltaire's Minor Prophet, "est capable de tout"; and the need for reconciling the doctrine of original sin with the teaching of modern science has in recent years laid a heavy tax on its ingenuity. ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... generally considered that the invention of a system of arbitrary and external signs to communicate thought is one of the greatest and most arduous achievements of human ingenuity, yet so universal is the disposition to make future generations acquainted with our condition and history,—a disposition the efficient cause of which can only be found in a sense of the value of such knowledge,—that you can scarcely find ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... observer in the "Munition Areas," as the public has learned to call them, of England and Scotland. That great spectacle, as it exists to-day—so inspiring in what it immediately suggests of human energy and human ingenuity, so appalling in its wider implications—testifies, in the first instance, to the fierce stiffening of England's resolve to win the war, and to win it at a lessened cost in life and suffering to our men in the field, which ran through the ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... they cheered him, privately expressed their regret that such a capital speaker, who might be anything, was not a practical man. Low prices, abundant harvests, and a thriving commerce had rendered all appeals, varied even by the persuasive ingenuity of Thornberry, a wearisome irritation; and, though the League had transplanted itself from Manchester to the metropolis, and hired theatres for their rhetoric, the close of 1845 found them nearly ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... him extremely. He was less of a conservative than many of his profession; he kept his mind open, and was not disinclined to examine into odd theories, and even, perhaps, to originate a few such himself upon occasion. The question that now confronted him and challenged his ingenuity was, What was the matter with Archibald? Why had the boy suddenly gone back to the primitive source of nourishment, not from mere childish whim, but from actual ignorance—as it seemed—that nourishment was obtainable in any other way? An obvious reply would be that the boy had become ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... good tale, written with charm, and full of remarkable happenings, dangerous doings, strange events, jealous intrigues and sweet love making. The reader's interest is not permitted to lag, but is taken up and carried on from incident to incident with ingenuity and contagious enthusiasm. The story gives us the Graustark and The Prisoner of Zenda thrill, but the tale is treated with freshness, ingenuity, and enthusiasm, and the climax is both unique and satisfying. It will hold the fiction ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... true frigates, with one complete battery of long guns and one interrupted one of carronades. That they were better than any other frigates was highly creditable to our ingenuity and national skill. We cannot, perhaps, lay claim to the invention and first use of the heavy frigate, for 24-pounder frigates were already in the service of at least three nations, and the French 36-pound carronnade, in use on ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the limitless ingenuity and invention of man, and portrays the works and achievements of a castaway, who, thrown ashore almost literally naked upon a desert isle, is able, by the use of his brains, the skill of his hands, and a practical knowledge of the ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... of his achievements that he could not bear the idea of a rival. His sister had placed her son Perdix under his charge to be taught the mechanical arts. He was an apt scholar and gave striking evidences of ingenuity. Walking on the seashore he picked up the spine of a fish. Imitating it, he took a piece of iron and notched it on the edge, and thus invented the SAW. He put two pieces of iron together, connecting them at one end with a rivet, and sharpening the other ends, and made a PAIR OF COMPASSES. ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... building caused the removal of books from a portion of the attic to the basement where further space had been made available. Other rooms have more recently been provided to store the books and periodicals in the Library and constant ingenuity is necessary to see that the most economical use is made of ...
— Report of the Chief Librarian - for the Year Ended 31 March 1958: Special Centennial Issue • J. O. Wilson and General Assembly Library (New Zealand)
... snaky, hissing sound-sensation as the idea unfolded of the dirk slipping through the flimsy fabric of the shift, cast on the bunker cot to remain the silent evidence of the tragedy. The very acme of touches came in the punctuation[8] of the concluding lines—pauses that emphasize with so much ingenuity the very question that lends the speculatively mournful ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... of glaciers and snow and other unpleasant things myself, and was merely going to say that, shortly after I last talked with you, I discovered another instance of an unknown enemy's ingenuity," he went on. "A wagon we had chartered upset down a steep ravine, and several costly pieces of machinery I had brought out from England, and can hardly replace, were smashed ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... The convict, in the hope of obtaining his pardon as a reward, had filed a guinea and some brass buttons, which, judicially mixed, made a tolerable pile of gold-dust, and this he carefully distributed over a small tract of sandy land. In lieu of the expected freedom, his ingenuity was rewarded with close confinement and other punishments. Thus ended the first idea of a gold-field in ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne |
