"Innovator" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... minds of both as the innovator, for though not a farmer he was closely leagued with farming operations. And as if in response to their thought he came up at that moment, looked at the machine, walked round it, and handled it as if he knew something about its make. The two watchers ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... resurrection, both the building and the occupant are very likely to fall victims to a rapid consumption." In this way did Crony contrive to beguile the time, until we found ourselves entering the arena in front of the Dean's house, Westminster. "Here, alone," said my old friend, "the hand of the innovator has not been permitted to intrude; this spot remains unpolluted; but, for the neighbourhood, alas!" sighed Crony, "that is changed indeed. The tavern ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... discrepant extravagancies of Nature as M. Besnard and Mr. John Sargent have done. His style has always been marked by such extreme reserve that the critical must have sometimes inclined to reproach him with want of daring, and ask themselves where was the innovator in this calculated reduction of tones, in these formal harmonies, in this constant synthesis, sought with far more disregard for superfluous detail than Hals, for instance, had ever dared to show. The still more critical, while admitting the beauty and the ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... teaching of a certain Austrian Jew of brilliant genius; but even those who knew this fact also recognised that he had shown such enormous ability in adapting the principles of his Semitic master to modern English conditions that he was entitled to be regarded quite as much as an innovator as a disciple. ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... recommend especially those of Rhys Davids for ontology (also J[a]takis. First Part) and Oldenberg (now in second edition). For Northern Buddhism Koeppen's Religion is still excellent, although it is vitiated by the point of view taken by the author, who regards Buddha as an emancipator, a political innovator, etc. Davids has two recent articles on Buddhist sects, JRAS. xxiii. 409; xxiv. ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... first produced, Oct. 5, 1762. Its success determined him at once to acquaint the musical world with his purpose to reform the opera by making it dramatically musical instead of purely lyric, thus paving the way for the great innovator of Baireuth. "Alceste," produced in 1767, was the first embodiment of these ideas. Strong criticism greeted it, to which he replied with "Iphigenie en Aulide," written in 1772, and performed for the first time in Paris two years later, under the auspices of Marie Antoinette, who had once ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... you hadn't carried Simon Crood's niece away from under his very nose," said Tansley. "But now that you've brought personal matters into the quarrel, the old chap'll move every piece he has on the board to checkmate you. It won't do to have you on the Council, Brent, you're too much of an innovator. Now this town—the real town!—doesn't want innovation. Innovation in an ancient borough like this is—unsettling and ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... Erasmus, a satirist of mediaeval abuses, few would now deny that Protestantism would be too narrow rather than too broad for him. If he was obviously not a Protestant, there are few Protestants who would deny him the name of a Reformer. But he was an innovator in things more alluring to modern minds than theology; he was partly what we should call a Neo-Pagan. His friend Colet summed up that escape from mediaevalism which might be called the passage from bad Latin to good Greek. In our loose modern debates they are lumped together; but Greek ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... cut to the reverend Farniente. He looked blank, but evidently wanted the boldness and ingenuity to frame an answer to this redoubtable innovator. At last he gaped at me to help him ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... impossible; and that the best course he could pursue would be to leave France for three years, under the pretext of visiting some of the places rendered celebrated during the late wars; but that if he preferred a diplomatic mission I would make a suitable provision for his expenses; and the great innovator, Time, might effect great changes during the period of his absence. But my foolish Council affirmed to me that his guilt, as a principal, being evident, it was absolutely necessary to bring him to trial; and now his sentence is only that of a pickpocket. What think you I ought to do? Detain him? ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... [Exit BRUTUS.]; in whose name myself Attach thee as a traitorous innovator, A foe to the public weal. Obey, I charge thee, And ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the past time and passive participle."—Cobbett's English Gram., 169. How could the man who saw all this, insist on adding st for the second person, where not even the d of the past tense could he articulated? Am I to be called an innovator, because I do not like in conversation such new and unauthorized words as littest, leaptest, curstest; or a corrupter of the language, because I do not admire in poetry such unutterable monstrosities as, light'dst, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... innovator of the family. She often brought her conservative mother to the verge of horror. Hers was the hardy, daring, and unconventional strain of the pioneer. She liked the edge; if the edge was a little ragged, so ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... culture. In the first period of his relationship with Wagner, he thought that he had found the man who was prepared to lead in this direction. For a long while he regarded his master as the Saviour of Germany, as the innovator and renovator who was going to arrest the decadent current of his time and lead men to a greatness which had died with antiquity. And so thoroughly did he understand his duties as a disciple, so wholly was he devoted ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... of wrongs impossible, while the Duke's sbirri and the agents of the Holy Office could drag a man's thoughts from his bosom and search his midnight dreams. The Church party, in the interest of their order, fostered the Duke's fears of sedition and branded every innovator as an atheist; the Holy Office having even cast grave doubts on the orthodoxy of a nobleman who had tried to introduce the English system of ploughing on his estates. It was evident to Odo that the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... a subaltern poring over his books before his colleagues were out of bed. We have seen him varying the monotony of War Office administration by solving problems in tactics. Indubitably he is a student: incidentally he is an innovator. This fact of mental duality raises him in a moment out of the ruck of mere cavalry experts—of both sorts. On the one hand he is not a competent machine working out other people's ideas in the ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... that Kaundinya is meant by the wicked king, but he lived about 300 years before I-Ching's visit and the language seems to refer to more recent events. Although Bhavavarman is not known to have been a religious innovator he appears to have established a new order of things in Camboja and his inscriptions show that he was a zealous worshipper of Siva and other Indian deities. It would be even more natural if I-Ching referred to Isanavarman ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... none the less. Among his bitter opponents at first was Dr. Rigollot, who in 1855, searching earnestly for materials to refute the innovator, dug into the deposits of St. Acheul—and was converted: for he found implements similar to those of Abbeville, making still more certain the existence of man during the Drift period. So, too, Gaudry a ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... is unrestraint ("punch" is the nearest modern equivalent). The neo-Gaul is an innovator and this is his vice. It is a byproduct of originality and a symptom of a restless desire for change. The realist who makes a poem, not on his lady's eyebrows but her intestines, is a good current example. ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... because they constitute a very special and arresting feature of the situation. I mean this, that there were always Radical revolutionists; but now there are Tory revolutionists also. The modern Conservative no longer conserves. He is avowedly an innovator. Thus all the current defenses of the House of Lords which describe it as a bulwark against the mob, are intellectually done for; the bottom has fallen out of them; because on five or six of the most turbulent topics of the day, the House of Lords is a mob itself; ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... all of his tribe, speaks of the medical profession as a great confederation of bigoted monopolists. He, too, says that "If an innovator should appear, holding out hope to those in despair, and curing disorders which the faculty have recorded as irremediable, he is at once, and without inquiry, denounced as an empiric and an impostor." He, too, cites ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... he speaks out of a cut-and-dry vocabulary. But you—may it not be that your defence reposes on some subtlety of feeling, not so much as touched upon in Shakespeare, to express which, like a pioneer, you must venture forth into zones of thought still unsurveyed, and become yourself a literary innovator? For even in love there are unlovely humours; ambiguous acts, unpardonable words, may yet have sprung from a kind sentiment. If the injured one could read your heart, you may be sure that he would understand and pardon; but, alas! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of law and gospel. Both of them had seats in the Executive Council, and, under the then-existing state of things, were official but irresponsible advisers of the Crown's representative. More than one would-be innovator of those days had been made to feel the weight of their hands, without in the least knowing, or even suspecting, whence the blow proceeded. They were the head and front of the junto of oligarchs who formed the Vehmgericht ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... was decidedly an innovator and reformer. He was the first to use set-scenes, and what are technically known as 'raking pieces.' Before his time the back scene was invariably one large 'flat' of strained canvas extending the whole breadth and height of the stage. He also invented transparent scenes, introducing ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... relieve toil and increase power. In the arcana of temples or in the chambers of court physicians knowledge may still be sought; but it will be hidden as a secret thing, or if it dares come out to elevate common thought or brighten common life, it will be trodden down as a dangerous innovator. For as it tends to lessen the mental power devoted to improvement, so does inequality tend to render men adverse to improvement. How strong is the disposition to adhere to old methods among the classes who are kept in ignorance by being compelled to toil ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... had been characterised at least by efficiency in detail, and this efficiency had been secured by gentle measures, by unceasing vigilance, by the cultivation of a true soldierly spirit, and by the untiring example of the commander. The courage of the innovator—a courage at once political and military—had also given Rome, in the mass of the unpropertied classes, a fathomless source from which she could draw an army of professional soldiers, if she possessed the capacity ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... His individuality and, perhaps, his chief excellence as a story-writer lay in his use of strictly logical methods, in his ability to make the most impossible yarn seem real by his reasonable way of telling it. Moreover, he was a discoverer, an innovator, a maker of new types, since he was the first to introduce in his stories the blend of calm, logical science and wild fancy of a terrifying order; so he served as an inspiration as well as a point of departure for ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... whose works he edited. Doubtless he would cheerfully have admitted the inferiority of his own poetry to Dryden's and Pope's. He had no programme to announce, but just went ahead writing romances; in practice an innovator, but ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the prescriptive right of every member of the community to food and shelter was the first step to vast changes in social legislation. Cavour's natural inclinations were more those of a social and economic reformer than of the political innovator. Gasworks, factories, hospitals, and prisons were in turn inspected. Cavour went thoroughly into the questions of prison labour and diet. He did not object to the treadmill in itself, but thought unfruitful labour demoralising. Useful work with a small gain reformed the convict. The prison ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... refuge. Toulouse, the only town in France where the Inquisition took firm root and flourished, Toulouse so perilous to Muret, so mortal to Dolet and Vanini, ought, one might have fancied, to have been avoided by an innovator flying from a charge of heresy.[87] Still it must be remembered that Toulouse was French. Italian influence did not reach so far. Nor had Bruno committed himself even in thought to open rupture with Catholicism. He held the opinion, so common ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Church, and first embraced Calvinism; then he fled into the camp of the Semi-Judaising party, publishing a book De Christo non invocando, which was answered by Faustus Socinus, the founder of Socinianism. The Prince of Transylvania, Christopher Bathori, condemned David as an impious innovator and preacher of strange doctrines, and cast him into prison, where he died in 1579. There is extant a letter of David to the Churches of Poland concerning the millennium ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... wall-paintings. In the great double church of Assisi, built by the Franciscans over the grave of St. Francis within a few years of his death, Giotto has illustrated the whole story of his life. An isolated reproduction of one scene would give you no idea of their power. In many respects he was an innovator, and by the end of his life had broken away completely from the Byzantine school of painting. He composed each one of the scenes from the life of St. Francis in an original and dramatic manner, and so vividly that a person unacquainted with the story would know what was going on. Standing ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... out of her, as out of Sion, should be proclaimed and sounded forth the first tidings and trumpet of Reformation to all Europe? And had it not been the obstinate perverseness of our prelates against the divine and admirable spirit of Wickliff, to suppress him as a schismatic and innovator, perhaps neither the Bohemian Huns and Jerome, no nor the name of Luther or of Calvin, had been ever known: the glory of reforming all our neighbours had been completely ours. But now, as our obdurate clergy have with violence demeaned ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... of arises just here: the desire to infect at once the whole mass crowds out the courage of the innovator. No man can do his best work if he bows at every step to the public conscience of his age. The real service to democracy is the fullest, freest expression of talent. The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must whisper unpleasant truths in the master's ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... and he would create a new kind of tragedy. These two halves of a proposition, of which he appears never to have entertained a single moment's doubt, had originated at the same time and developed in close connection: that he could be otherwise than an innovator was as inconceivable to Alfieri as that he could be otherwise than a genius, although, in reality, he was as far from being the one as from being the other. The fact was that Alfieri felt in himself the power of inventing a style and of producing works which ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... has been long expunged from the language, and extirpate what is firmly rooted, undoubtedly you yourself become an innovator."—Campbell's Rhet., p. 167; Murray's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... opinions." This remark remains true of France to the present hour, and it would be an interesting digression, did time allow, to consider its significance. France can at all events count one master innovator, the founder of Cartesianism himself. D'Alembert points out that the disciples violate the first maxims of their chief. He describes the hypothesis of vortices and the doctrine of innate ideas as no longer tenable, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... all over the place to avoid that pit. And now he found himself flashing at moments into wild and hopeless rebellion against the institution of marriage, of which he had hitherto sought always to be the dignified and smiling champion against the innovator, the over-critical and the young. He had never rebelled before. He was so astonished at the violence of his own objection that he lapsed from defiance to an incredulous examination of his own novel ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... in a large barn about fifteen miles from Moscow. The Superior being unwilling to publish the true facts of the broken jaw-bone, a certain fame, the fame of an earnest but misunderstood religious innovator, had preceded him. Adherents, barely twenty at first, gathered to his side. These disciples, humble analphabetics like himself, have left us no word of what passed at those long discussions. Certain it is that he now began to formulate the rules of his Revised Church. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... all three, the awkwardness, of using the same word for both singular and plural, must often have been felt: this has been remedied, in the case of "series" by coining the plural "serieses", which has already found its way into the dictionaries: so I am no rash innovator, but am merely "following suit", in using the ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... looks more with eagerness to the future than with satisfaction on the past, and whose pre-eminent optimism is inspired by his ardent appreciation of the living present. Walt Whitman stood forth as an innovator into such realms, where the rigor of conditions demanded an abstract compliance with rules which were based on absolute truths, and where a swerving from them was evidence of impotence. His unconventional forms, the rhymeless rhythm of his verses, which, in appearance, resembled ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... all sentiments in France is vanity. The wounded vanity of the many induced a thirst for Equality; though, as the most ardent innovator will some day discover, Equality is an impossibility. The Royalists pricked the Liberals in the most sensitive spots, and this happened specially in the provinces, where either party accused the other of unspeakable atrocities. In those days the blackest deeds ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... strongest in continuance; but good, as a forced motion, strongest at first. Surely every medicine is an innovation; and he that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator; and if time of course alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end? It is true, that what is settled by custom, though it be not good, yet ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... temple, and that all his spare time was devoted to works of benevolence and general utility; and as they bent devoutly as he passed through the streets they little dreamed that the high priest of Osiris was regarded by his chief brethren as a dangerous innovator. ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... Constantinople, who covered the churches of Italy with a sublime monotony of Byzantine traditions. But the Gothic blood was burning in the Italian veins; and the Florentines and Pisans could not rest content in the formalism of the Eastern splendour. The first innovator was, I believe, Giunta of Pisa, the second Cimabue, the third Giotto; the last only being a man of power enough to effect a complete revolution in the artistic principles of ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... to the first charge, it could not be technically proved that he had assailed the gods, for he was exact in his legal worship; but really and virtually there was some foundation for the accusation, since Socrates was a religious innovator if ever there was one. His lofty realism was subversive of popular superstitions, when logically carried out. As to the second charge, of corrupting youth, this was utterly groundless; for he had ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... pieces, Giotto appears as a great innovator, a number of situations suggested by the Scriptures being now either represented for the first time or seen in a totally new form. Well-known subjects are enriched with numerous subordinate figures, making ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... again with a joyous voice. "What's the odds?" he said. "The world is made up for the most part of low, selfish, sensual beings, incapable of belief in noble aims. Every innovator in such a world exposes himself to the risk of being slandered or ridiculed, or even shut up in a lunatic asylum. But who wouldn't rather be St. Theresa in her cell than Catharine of Russia on her throne? And in your case, what does it come to anyway? Only that you've gone through the fiery furnace ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... triumph. At the end of the thirteenth century the scholastic method was far from having run its career. The minds of men were occupied with problems which it alone seemed to be able to resolve, and they would not abandon it at the will of the first innovator. The questions in dispute were embittered by personal feeling and party animosities. Franciscans and Dominicans were divided by points of logic not less than by the rules of their orders.[12] Ignorance and passion alike gave ardor to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... meaning given to the old and familiar, in the acceptance in thorough earnest, and with keen purpose to call it into action, of what had been guarded and laid by with dull reverence. Dr. Newman can hardly be called in these sermons an innovator on the understood and recognised standard of Anglican doctrine; he accepted its outlines as Bishop Wilson, for instance, might have traced them. What he did was first to call forth from it what it really meant, the awful heights ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... later. It is commonly said that Racine wrote in the conventional and courtly taste of his own day. In reality his presentation of tragic passions in their terror and their truth shocked the aristocratic proprieties which were the mode. He was an innovator, and his audacity at once conquered and repelled. It was known that Racine was engaged on Phedre. The Duchesse de Bouillon and her brother the Duc de Nevers were arbiters of elegance in literature, and decreed that it should fail. A rival play on the same subject was ordered from Pradon; ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... he assailed the memory of Constantine also as an innovator and a disturber of established laws and of customs received from ancient times, accusing him of having been the first to promote barbarians to the fasces and robe of the consul. But in this respect he spoke with folly and levity, since, in ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... causes of local celebrity. An innovating citizen had been ordered by the authorities to remove a lightning-conductor from his house within three days, as being a mischievous practical paradox, as well as a danger and an annoyance to his neighbours. Robespierre pleaded the innovator's case on appeal, and won it. He defended a poor woman who had been wrongfully accused by a monk belonging to the powerful corporation of a great neighbouring abbey. The young advocate did not even shrink from manfully arguing a case against the august Bishop of Arras himself. His independence ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... light sorrow to a mother's heart,' said Portia, 'to know that her two sons, and her only sons, are, one the open enemy of his country, the other—what shall I term you, Lucius?—an innovator upon her ancient institutions; and while he believes and calls himself—sincerely, I doubt not—the friend of his country, is in truth, as every good Roman would say—not an enemy, my son, I cannot use that ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... stage; thus symbolizing at once with the most conservative and the most radical tendencies of the age: for, strange as it may seem, the Drama then led the van of progress; Shakespeare being even a more audacious innovator in poetry and art than Bacon was in philosophy. Be this as it may, Forman evidently took great delight in the theatre, and he kept a diary of what he witnessed there. Not many years ago, the manuscript of this diary was discovered by Mr. Collier in the Ashmolean Museum, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... The democracy had been reinstated, and he was understood to be a moderate in politics. And the democracy was conventional-minded in religion; and he was understood to be irreligious, a disturber and innovator. And the democracy was still smarting from the wound; imposed on it by Critias and Charmides, understood to have been his disciples; and could not forget the treacheries of Alcibiades, another. And there were vicious youths ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... had no regard for the Louvre and its architectural traditions; his palatial garden-city idea, worked out at Versailles, shows what an innovator he was. He allowed the Louvre to be filled up with all sorts of riffraff, who were often given a lodging there in place of a money payment for some service rendered. The Louvre thus became a sort of genteel poor-house, while king and court ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... ruled from 1603 to 1868. Nothing new was permitted, and any attempt at modification, enlargement, or improvement was not only frowned and hissed down as impious innovation, but usually brought upon the daring innovator the ban of the censor, imprisonment, banishment, or death by enforced suicide.[10] In Yedo, the centre of Chinese learning, and in other parts of the country, there were, indeed, thinkers whose philosophy did not always tally with what was taught by the orthodox,[11] but as ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... Christianity, is one of the most brilliant passages to be found in any of the works of this very brilliant writer. Indeed, if you are searching for the soul of Saltus you could not do better than turn to this chapter. Of Jesus he says, "He was the most entrancing of nihilists but no innovator." Here is another excerpt: "Paganism was not dead; it had merely fallen asleep. Isis gave way to Mary; apotheosis was replaced by canonization; the divinities were succeeded by saints; and, Africa aiding, the Church surged from mythology with the Trinity for tiara." Again: "Satan was Jew from ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... who has conquered the world now, but only in his old age. Think of Beethoven, of Schubert, of Wagner, and of all the rebel musicians of to-day. But in the past the great artists, Michelangelo, Titian, even the great innovator Giorgione; Mozart, Bach, Handel; none of these were thought of as rebels. They had not to conquer the world against its will. They came into the world, and the world knew them. So, we may be sure, the decadent artists of the ...
— Progress and History • Various
... made his first public appearance eleven years before Chateaubriand found a publisher for his Essai sur les Revolutions, wherein the great innovator first used the American materials that he worked over more effectively in his travels, tales, and memoirs. In Saint-John de Crevecoeur, we have a contemporary—a correspondent, even—of Franklin; ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... unknown to the Athenian literati; but, when they entered into conversation with him, some of them were disposed to ridicule him as an idle talker, whilst others seemed inclined to denounce him as a dangerous innovator. "Certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him; and some said—What will this babbler say? other some—He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods, because he preached unto ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... exordium is not without practical importance, as will be seen when we reach the application of the whole argument to the house of Medici at the conclusion of the treatise. The initial obstacles which an innovator has to overcome, meanwhile, are enormous. 'He has for passionate foes all such as flourish under the old order, for friends those who might flourish under the new; but these are lukewarm, partly from fear of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... actions,' that is to say, fights between two individual ships. In the former the achievements of Nelson stand out with incomparable brilliancy. It would be impossible to describe his method fully in such a paper as this. We may, however, say that Nelson was an innovator, and that his tactical principles and methods have been generally misunderstood down to this very day. If ever there was an admiral who was opposed to an unthinking, headlong rush at an enemy, it was he. Yet this is the character that he still bears in the conception of many. He was, in truth, ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... to her:—could it be credited? Mr. Austin was a firm believer in new and higher destinies for women. He went farther than she could concede the right of human speculation to go; he was, in fact, as Radical there as Nevil Beauchamp politically; and would not the latter innovator stare, perchance frown conservatively, at a prospect of woman taking counsel, in council, with men upon public affairs, like the women in the Germania! Mr. Austin, if this time he talked in earnest, deemed that Englishwomen were on the road to win such ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... disturb either his effects or the way in which the public was accustomed to be moved. On the other hand, he was filled with a mixture of contempt and hatred for anything which threatened to disturb that arrangement and put him to extra trouble. Contempt would predominate if the innovator had no chance of emerging from obscurity. But if there were any danger of his succeeding, then hatred would predominate—of course until the moment when he had gained ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... complimentary obituary notices of our long loved friend, so fair, so tender, so full of praise, we have exclaimed, what changes the passing years have wrought in the popular estimate of a woman once considered so dangerous an innovator in the social and religious world; and yet the Lucretia Mott of to-day is only the perfected, well-rounded character of half a century ago. But the slowly moving masses that feared her then as an infidel, a fanatic, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage |
