"Inventive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fleur-de-riz for softening the skin," &c. Further, there are the hairdressers, who provide theatrical wigs of all kinds, and advertise the merits of their "old men's bald pates," which must seem a strange article of sale to those unversed in the mysteries of stage dressing-rooms. One inventive person, it may be noted, loudly proclaims the merits of a certain "spirit gum" he has concocted, using which, as he alleges, "no actor need fear swallowing his moustache"—so runs the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... five. There go the carriages,—look alive! Everything that man can drive, Or his inventive skill contrive,— Yankee buggy or English "chay," Dog-cart, droschky, and smart coupe, A desobligeante quite bulky (French idea of a Yankee sulky); Band in the distance playing a march, Footman standing stiff as starch; Savans, lorettes, deputies, ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... forgot what—the king determined to have a masquerade, and whenever a masquerade or any thing of that kind, occurred at our court, then the talents, both of Hop-Frog and Trippetta were sure to be called into play. Hop-Frog, in especial, was so inventive in the way of getting up pageants, suggesting novel characters, and arranging costumes, for masked balls, that nothing could be done, it ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... escape, and evidently with the purpose of softening the irritation between them as much as possible, it was finally, though "temporarily," agreed to take Montholon's word for his being at Longwood. On the 21st of September, the priests and Dr Antomarchi arrived. Napoleon, always active and inventive, now attempted to interest the Emperor of Russia in his liberation. It must be owned, that this was rather a bold attempt for the man who had invaded Russia, ravaged its provinces, massacred its troops, and finished by leaving Moscow in flames. But he dexterously limited himself to explaining the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... tendency of their teaching, or by a yet more fatal demerit,—their lack of interest. They are in some respects notably tame and puerile,—with a puerility which is not childish simplicity, but a lack of inventive fancy, and which exhibits itself in bald repetition. The giant, for instance, always complains of a smell of Christian blood, and is always answered by the formula, that a crow flew over the chimney and must have dropped a bone down it; the hero almost always meets three old women, or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... since your friend Malicorne is such an inventive genius, let him find me a means of being adored by Monsieur, and a pretext to ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... I went to one of the principal Fire Brigade Stations. We all know, or ought to know, the Americans are an inventive race. Much I saw showed great ingenuity, and not only that but high powers of organization. I may mention one instance. The horses for service stand ready harnessed except their collars (the harness is peculiarly simple). The said collars are suspended in front of the fire-engine, as far from ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... proofs that man's inventive genius was at work among farm implements. Worlidge mentions[347] an engine for setting corn, invented by Gabriel Plat, made of two boards bored with wide holes 4 in. apart, set in a frame, with a funnel to each hole. It was fitted with iron pins 5 in. long to 'play ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... ceased at the waist, leaving a Jaeger-like and unmedieval gap thence to the tops of the stockings. The inventive genius of woman triumphantly bridged it, but in a manner which imposes upon history almost insuperable delicacies of narration. Penrod's father was an old-fashioned man: the twentieth century had failed to shake his faith in red flannel for cold weather; and it was while Mrs. Schofield ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... Mary Wortley Montagu, writing to her daughter, the Countess of Bute, over a year later [January 1st, 1755], remarked that "my friend Smollett . . . has certainly a talent for invention, though I think it flags a little in his last work." Lady Mary was both right and wrong. The inventive power which we commonly think of as Smollett's was the ability to work over his own experience into realistic fiction. Of this, Ferdinand Count Fathom shows comparatively little. It shows relatively little, too, of Smollett's vigorous ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... unforeseen occurred, before a full year has passed the job might be done. Were any surprises in store? They didn't seem to think it was probable that the Germans had any surprises in store.... The Germans are not an inventive people; they are merely a thorough people. ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... forward those negotiations with the papal court which were of vital importance and of the highest difficulty. In a word, it was he who had convoked this meeting to elect a chief and who asked the proxies of the absent. Are we then to believe that this bold spirit, this far-seeing mind, this astute, inventive, and politic Ignatius, born to rule other minds, and able always to subjugate his own will; that this contriver of a despotism, after having carried the principle of unconditional obedience, after having won the consent of his companions to the proposal that their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... these happy scenes confirms me in the belief, that had my brother WILLIAM not then been interrupted in his philosophical pursuits, we should have had much earlier proofs of his inventive genius. My father was a great admirer of astronomy, and had some knowledge of that science; for I remember his taking me, on a clear frosty night, into the street, to make me acquainted with several of the most beautiful constellations, after we had been gazing at a comet which ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... queer boy. He was of an inventive turn of mind, and given up to science. His experiments rarely succeeded, and when they did they almost invariably landed him in disgrace. Still he persevered and hoped some ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... over the legends of heathendom. The age and period of these crosses, the greater influence of one or other of these schools have wrought differences; the beauty and delicacy of the carving is in most cases remarkable, and we stand amazed at the superabundance of the inventive faculty that could produce such wondrous work. A great characteristic of these early sculptures is the curious interlacing scroll-work, consisting of knotted and interlaced cords of divers patterns and designs. There is an immense variety in ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... hath a two-fold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain. Dries me there, all-the foolish, dull, and crudy vapours which environ it: makes it apprehensive, quick, inventive; full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which, delivered over to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit—The second property of your excellent sherris, is, the warming of the blood; which, before, cold and settled, left the liver white and pale: which is the ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... old customs are held, which causes them to regard the fact that their fathers had this fashion as reason enough for their having it, and above all to the total absence of all but oral tradition. But so great a faith have I in the lack of inventive power in the African, that I feel sure all their customs, had we the material that has slipped down into the great swamp of time, could be traced back either, as I have said, to some natural phenomenon, or to the thing being advisable, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... customs of the peoples of his day in the Far East. He was not satisfied with doing this, but added to his narrative a number of on-dit more or less marvellous in character, which he collected from credulous or inventive persons with whom he came into contact, principally from mariners ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont
... some distance lying on the ground. Such unpromising materials as dust and sage brush had not quenched their inventive power or hampered their imaginations. They played with as an absorbed an industry here as in their own garden at home. They had scraped the earth into mounded shapes marked with the print of baby fingers and furrowed with paths. One led to a central mound crowned with a wild sunflower blossom. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... the senses employed or implied as here described means much more than mere previous consideration or reflection, which may be very feeble. It is, in fact, "constructive," which, as inventive, implies active thought. "Forethought stimulates, aids the success of honest aims." Therefore, as the active principle in mental work, I regard it as a kind of self-impulse, or that minor part in the division of the force employed which sets the major into action. ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... between the hunter and the beast-mind the intellectual powers of perception, memory, reason and will were developed; experience and knowledge by experience were enlarged, language and the graphic arts were fostered, the inventive faculty was evoked and developed, and primitive science was fostered in the unfolding of numbers, metrics, clocks, astronomy, history and the philosophy of causation. Beliefs and practices with reference ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... everything appertaining to camp life attached to each soldier by a hook. Marcy, who saw the humorous side at once, said to Davis: "It's no use to court-martial this man. The matter will be made public and the laugh will be upon us. Besides, a man who has the inventive genius that he has displayed, as well as the faculty of design, ill-directed though they be, is too valuable to the service to be trifled with." Derby therefore was not brought to grief, and in time Davis's anger was sufficiently ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... I returned from a row, we would often see the children waiting for us, running like sand-spiders along the beach. They always liked to swim in company with a grown-up of buoyant temperament and inventive mind, and the float offered limitless opportunities for enjoyment while bathing. All dutiful parents know the game of "stage-coach"; each child is given a name, such as the whip, the nigh leader, the off wheeler, the old lady passenger, and, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... descent, who made for him a happy home during fifty-seven years.[1] He bought a house in Hempstead, expecting to remain there; and in the household, as in business, he gave rein to his ardent and versatile inventive faculty. One of his domestic contrivances rocked the cradle, fanned away the flies, and played a lullaby to the baby. He sold the patent in Connecticut to a Yankee peddler for a horse and wagon, and the peddler's stock, ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... literal. An author gets no credit whatever for inventive faculty—his characters and stories are supposedly real people and real things. I am asked how I came to know so much about such and such a thing. I once wrote a love story with an unhappy ending ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... quite beside himself, half mad, half senseless from sheer terror and amazement. Presently he began to gaze about him with desperate alertness, like a wild beast that has fallen into a trap and looks eagerly for a way out of it, rallying all its powers for a final struggle, becoming resourceful and inventive in proportion to its peril, and forgetting the very instinct of life in the longing for freedom, at last gets to fear nobody and nothing. After fruitless struggles it surrenders in despair, lies down, closes its eyes, and the next instant once more begins ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... form of inventive genius. Tom Swift is a bright, ingenious boy and his inventions and adventures make the ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... the humble home at Nazareth; and from these qualified informants Matthew and Luke probably derived the knowledge of which they wrote. The record made by those who knew is marked by impressive brevity. In this absence of detail we may see evidence of the genuineness of the scriptural account. Inventive writers would have supplied, as, later, such did supply, what we seek in vain within the chapters of the Gospels. With hallowed silence do the inspired scribes honor the boyhood of their Lord; he who seeks to invent circumstances and to invest the life of Christ with ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... paying more attention to science, by giving the students a free choice of studies, and by shortening the course when desired. But the mechanical idea in the new education seemed to be the attraction. The boys were seized with a passion for doing something with their hands, and their inventive faculties were quickened, increasing in a remarkable degree their interest in their work ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... no man but himself can say; but it is reasonable to suppose that, man of science though he was, he was still sufficiently human to regard with critical yet innocent pride and exultation the wonderful fabric which owed its existence to the inventive ingenuity of his fertile brain. It is probable, too, that when he had at length gratified himself with an exhaustive contemplation of its many points of interest, he went on board the ship, and with his own eyes and hands made a final ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... was when he was at this work that Dr. Garnett pictures him so vividly—"the sanguine, enthusiastic projector, fertile, inventive creator, his head an arsenal of expedients and every failure pregnant with a remedy, imperious or suasive as suits his turn; terrible in wrath or exuberant in affection; commanding, exhorting, entreating, as like an eminent personage of ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... is much too well established for that, even with professed philosophers; I am only surprised at his expecting to escape detection. Now I am myself vain enough to cherish the hope of bequeathing something to posterity; I see no reason for resigning my right to that inventive freedom which others enjoy; and, as I have no truth to put on record, having lived a very humdrum life, I fall back on falsehood—but falsehood of a more consistent variety; for I now make the only true statement you are to expect—that I am a liar. This confession is, I consider, a full defence ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... weather, and too full of anxiety to mind either cold or wet. He had, indeed, almost always felt gloomy weather exciting rather than depressing. For one thing, it seemed, when he was indoors, to close him about with protection from uncongenial interruption, leaving the freer his inventive faculty; and now that he was abroad in it, and no inventive faculty left awake, it seemed to clothe him with congenial sympathy, for the weather was just the same inside him. And now, as he strode along with his eyes on the ground, he scarcely saw any of the objects about ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... drink, and eminently to no other vice; hard in bargaining, but just; surly and respectless, as in all democracies; thirsty, industrious, and cleanly; disheartened upon the least ill-success, and insolent upon good; inventive in manufactures, and cunning in traffick: and generally, for matter of action, that natural slowness of theirs, suits better (by reason of the advisedness and perseverance it brings with it) than the rashness and changeableness of the ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... of improvement's hammer as it fell on the anvil of our possessions. Long lines of streets passed through the meadow-lands, and where, in less level places, rocks and stones were in the path, the power of inventive genius was applied and the victory gained. Some of our people felt it keenly. To father it was an advantage, but to ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... rank among exhibitors, does not suffice to meet the increasingly urgent demands of our manufacturers. The efforts of the Commissioner-General are ably directed toward a strictly representative display of all that most characteristically marks American achievement in the inventive arts, and most adequately shows the excellence of our ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... thought themselves released from all the ties of nature and humanity towards this brood of Satan, and justified in committing the most savage atrocities upon them. Woe to the Swedish soldier who fell into their hands! All the torments which inventive malice could devise were exercised upon these unhappy victims; and the sight of their mangled bodies exasperated the army to a fearful retaliation. Gustavus Adolphus, alone, sullied the lustre of his heroic character by no act of revenge; ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Nan ungratefully. "Well, you'd better. You've made enough mischief for one not very inventive young person, don't you think? And wouldn't it seem to you you'd better use your influence with your mother to-morrow morning and get out ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... to himself, 'I could almost fancy Melpomene in love with me. But I have seldom seen her laugh, and when she has done so now and then, it has usually been at me. That is not much like love. Her last remark was anything but a compliment to my inventive genius.' ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... of agriculture and the earnings of commerce, were of the value of $494,075,498. But, in a few years after the completion of these works, this amount will be doubled. Such is the skilled and educated industry of New England, and such the inventive genius of her people, that there is no limit to her products, except markets and consumers. As New York increases, the swelling tide of the great city will flow over to a vast extent into the adjacent shores of Connecticut and New Jersey, and Hoboken, West Hoboken, Weehawken, Hudson City, Jersey ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... attention of all present was concentrated on the solemnity of the occasion, the thoughts of these ladies were wandering on their own poetical imaginations about 'sweet flags;' or if, again, on the Ninth-day festival,[45] when all the nobles present were exercising their inventive faculties on the subject of Chinese poems, they were to volunteer to pour forth their grand ideas on the dew-laid flowers of the chrysanthemum, thus endeavoring to rival their opponents of the stronger sex. There is a time ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... Prefect. There each individual explained ably, but especially, said Fourier, with much detail, the difficulties which he perceived. As regards the means of vanquishing them, the authorities seemed to be much less inventive. Confidence in administrative eloquence was not yet worn out at that epoch; it was resolved accordingly to have recourse to proclamations. The commanding officer and the Prefect presented each a project. The assembly was ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... force. In the economy of the Aryan household, of which the Slavic race is but a member, each member has hitherto had a special office in the discharge of which its originating force was to be spent. The German has thus done the thinking of the race, the American by his inventive faculty has done the physical comforting of the race, the Frenchman the refining of the race, the Englishman the trading of the race; but the Russian has no such force peculiar to him. The office of the Slavonic ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... advantage of printed books? The answer will be, on ninety-nine persons in a hundred—Because the mystery of printing was not then discovered. But this is altogether a mistake. The secret of printing must have been discovered many thousands of times before it was used, or could be used. The inventive powers of man are divine; and also his stupidity is divine—as Cowper so playfully illustrates in the slow development of the sofa through successive generations of immortal dulness. It took centuries of blockheads to raise ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... they never availed themselves of these resources, which must have led to great improvements in their architecture, and almost entirely reserved the use of stone for ornamental purposes. This would tend to show, at all events, that the Assyrians were not distinguished for inventive genius. They had wandered northward from the lowlands, where they had dwelt for centuries as a portion of the Chaldean nation. When they separated from it and went off to found cities for themselves, they ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... Moliere's; and observe how they reveal these prentice playwrights at work, each seeking to display his cleverness and each satisfied when he had done this. In 'Love's Labor's Lost,' Shakspere is trying to amuse by inventive wit and youthful gaiety and ingenuity of device, just as Moliere in the 'Etourdi' is enjoying his own complicating of comic imbroglios, not yet having anything of importance to say on the stage, but practising against the time when he should want to ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... players or dancers. He enhanced, as well, the beauty and dignity of those portions of the masque in which noble lords and ladies took their parts to create, by their gorgeous costumes and artistic grouping and evolutions, a sumptuous show. On the mechanical and scenic side Jonson had an inventive and ingenious partner in Inigo Jones, the royal architect, who more than any one man raised the standard of stage representation in the England of his day. Jonson continued active in the service of the court in the writing of masques ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... which they appear. Otherwise you will be wise historically,—a fool in practice. Seldom have two ages the same fashion in their pretexts and the same modes of mischief. Wickedness is a little more inventive. Whilst you are discussing fashion, the fashion is gone by. The very same vice assumes a new body. The spirit transmigrates; and, far from losing its principle of life by the change of its appearance, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... community, Thomas," said the Judge, laying down his spectacles and newspaper at the same time. "Mr. Editor Peters and the gossips ought to be infinitely obliged to you for wounding yourself, and affording him an opportunity to display his inventive genius and the brilliancy of his imagination, and giving them something to talk about. Here, Anne, read the article ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the air in primrose satin, with red-velvet trimming. This mild mixture re-appeared on her head in a primrose hat with a red feather. A gold chain, so big that it would have done for a felon instead of a fool, encircled her neck, and was weighted with innumerable lockets, which in size and inventive taste resembled a poached egg, and betrayed the insular goldsmith. A train three yards long completed this gorgeous figure. She had commenced life a shrimp-girl, and pushed a dredge before her, instead of pulling a silken ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... is to yield to their personal inventive action, historically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones, and the gradual, spontaneous class-organisation of the proletariat to the organisation of society specially contrived by these inventors. Future history ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... shortly afterward, seemed likely for a time to be more serious. The sophomore class, exuberant and inventive as ever, were evidently determined to "try it on'' their young professor—in fact, to treat me as they had treated their tutors. Any mistake made by a student at a quiz elicited from sundry benches expressions of regret much too plaintive, or ejaculations of contempt much ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... darkness. Oh Imogen, I may now behold thee for the last time. The moment we sally from this retreat, I may be discovered by that enemy from whom we have so much to fear. I may be confined to all the wantonness of inventive torture, and that beauteous form, and the smiles of that bewitching countenance may be torn from these longing eyes for ever. But here, my shepherdess, we are safe. We may here secure ourselves from sudden intrusion, and ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... should have said. As I am not an inventive liar, I could only smile feebly. I am never at my ease with Aunt Jessica. I am not the kind of person to afford her entertainment. I do not belong to her world of opulence, and if even I desired it, which the gods forbid, my means would not ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... their profit; and this because, in spite of the violated conscience of the nation, we refuse to give him protection for his property. Examine your Constitution; are slaves the only species of property there recognized as requiring peculiar protection? Sir, the inventive genius of our brethren of the North is a source of vast wealth to them and vast benefit to the nation. I saw a short time ago in one of the New York journals, that the estimated value of a few of the patents now before us in this Capital for renewal, was $40,000,000. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... French inventive genius continued to occupy itself with coffee making, and in the invention of Edward Loysel de Santais, of Paris, in 1843, produced the first of the ideas that were later incorporated in the hydrostatic percolator for making "two thousand cups ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... peculiar endowment of inventive genius as a divine gift, involving a special and defined responsibility, and considered himself called of God, as was Bezaleel, to that particular course of invention to which he devoted the chief part of his life. This he often expressed, though with his ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... subdivisions of time which we now enjoy. Unrest, progress, discontent with things that be, we must acknowledge, have, from the appearance of the first clock to the present hour, been the powers which have driven on the inventive genius of watch and clockmakers to designate some new and more acceptable system for regulating the course of the movement. In consequence of this restless search after the best, a very considerable ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... said to have been abolished in the Russian Army. Our own military authorities, on the other hand, declare that it would be unwise to abolish a practice in which the inventive genius of the young ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... whatever they may be, they will always be colonial. What is colonial necessarily lacks originality. A country that borrows its language, its laws, and its religion, cannot have its inventive powers much developed. They got civilised very soon, but ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... be lost in making my will." Monsieur Crapaud was too wise to express any astonishment; and his master began to hunt for a tidy-looking stone (paper and cambric were both at an end). They were all rough and dirty; but necessity had made the Viscount inventive, and he took a couple and rubbed them together till he had polished both. Then he pulled out the little pencil, and for the next half hour wrote busily. When it was done he lay down, and read it to his friend. This was Monsieur the Viscount's ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... first country in the world to use the threads of a moth or worm for fabrics. The patience and care and inventive skill required in first making silk were very great. But it gives us an index to invention when we hear that Confucius regarded the making of linen, using the fiber of a plant, as a greater feat than utilizing the strands made by the silkworm. Confucius had a sort of tender sentiment toward the ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... many curious and interesting things that happen daily, and in spite of the inventive faculty of the mind, it is impossible to find a new plot. "History repeats itself" in small affairs as well as in great, and the human mind has not changed materially since the first days of story telling. ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... selected by the natural leaders of each community. Moreover, they had not merely the adhesion of all the more able, ambitious, and intellectual who seceded from a republic in which neither talent nor industry could give comfort or advantage, but also the full benefit of inventive genius, stimulated by the hope of wealth in addition to whatever public spirit the habits of Communism had not extinguished. They systematically encouraged the cultivation of science, which the Communists had very early put down as a withdrawal of energy from the labour due to the community ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... say, one in substance. Take away one idea and put a genuine reality in its place—and the whole of Christianity crumbles to nothingness!—Viewed calmly, this strangest of all phenomena, a religion not only depending on errors, but inventive and ingenious only in devising injurious errors, poisonous to life and to the heart—this remains a spectacle for the gods—for those gods who are also philosophers, and whom I have encountered, for example, in the celebrated dialogues at Naxos. At the moment when their disgust ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... collector discovered some, he generously brought them to a descendant of the great painter, who coldly observed, that "he had a great deal more in the garret, which had lain there for many years, if the rats had not destroyed them!" Nothing which this great artist wrote but showed an inventive genius. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... arrangements are largely due to the experimental character of the exploration and development of this continent. The new energies released by the settlement of the colonies were indeed guided by stern determination, wise forethought, and inventive skill; but no one has ever really known the outcome of the experiment. It is a story ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... when a higher social organization succeeded. The result is that to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy;[37:1] that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... it is admission as an employee. In each case we present the qualifications of the following at college age: Thomas Edison, Michael Faraday, Nicholai Tesla, James Watt, Heinrich Hertz, Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, and Henry Ford. The admissibility of this group of the world's scientific and the inventive leaders is shown here." Baker pointed to a minute dab of red ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... the most interesting one can read of in the history of the Polar regions. Badly equipped as they were, they had to have recourse, like Robinson Crusoe, to their inventive faculties. The most extraordinary contrivances were devised in the course of the winter, and when spring came the three men stepped out of their hole, well and hearty, ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... mental activity, and in this he found his place. The future, which may look for his record in libraries, or in the results of research, scientific or literary, will not find him to occupy a position. He had, however, great mechanical inventive powers, as well as a marvelous knowledge of human nature; the former solved the problem, amongst others, of anthracite coal combustion for American steamers. In the latter lay his qualifications as the greatest teacher of young ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... at first as a paid soldier of Prussia, later as an adherent of the Czar. At the bombardment of Bender he had become a Cossack hetman. His extraordinary physical strength, his natural common sense and inventive power, had distinguished him even at this time, but the peace which was concluded barred before him the gate of progress. He was sent with many discharged officers back to the Don. Let them go again and look after their field labors! Pugasceff's head, however, was full of other ideas than that of ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... the comparison, and only remarking, with reference to the Newgate Calendar, that its compilers have usually been very inferior wits, in fact attorneys, it must be owned that great creative and inventive genius, the most brilliant gifts of bright fancy and happy expression, and a glorious imagination, well-nigh seeming as if it must be inspired, have too often been found most unsuitably lodged in ill-living and scandalous mortals. Though few things, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... pieuvre, and all other evils are terminated and evaded and sanctified by the embrace and the euthanasia of the sea. Perhaps it is poetry rather than novel or even romance—in substance it is too abstract and elemental for either of the less majestical branches of inventive literature. But it is great. "By God! 'tis good," and, to lengthen somewhat Ben's famous challenge, "if you like, you may" put it with, and not so far from, in whatever order you please—the deaths of Cleopatra and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... perhaps other occasions, Bonaparte displayed some of the frolic temper of youth, mixed with the inventive genius and the talent for commanding others by which he was distinguished in after time, his life at school was in general that of a recluse and severe student, acquiring by his judgment, and treasuring ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... even more urgent in India, and that fact is apparently being realised by the Indian Government itself. The inventive range of Lord Morley and his advisers does not, however, for the moment appear to extend much beyond the adaptation of the model of the English House of Lords to Indian conditions, and the organisation of an 'advisory Council ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... cheese. Our sole riches consisted in our ammunition, packets of cartridges which we had stowed away inside some of the huge cheeses. We had about a thousand of them, just two hundred each; but then we wanted rifles, and they must be chassepots; luckily, however, the captain was a bold man of an inventive mind, and this was the plan that ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... may long for leisure for purposes of study or meditation," I remarked, "he cannot get out of the harness, if I understand you rightly, except in these two ways you have mentioned. He must either by literary, artistic, or inventive productiveness indemnify the nation for the loss of his services, or must get a sufficient number of other people to contribute to such ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... broken English spoken by individuals among the Germans, French, Portuguese, Arabs, and Negroes, with whom he had at various times associated, modified by his own ignorance, and seasoned with a dash of his own inventive fancy. ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... years since I planned the story related in these volumes, the outcome of a series of lectures which I had occasion to deliver on the period of the Roman dominion in Egypt. But the pleasures of inventive composition were forced to give way to scientific labors, and when I was once more at leisure to try my wings with increase of power I felt more strongly urged to other flights. Thus it came to pass that I did I not take the time of Hadrian for the background ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... analysis of chemical compounds, in the explanation of the phenomena of the heavens, in the wonders of steam and electricity, in mechanical appliance to abridge human labor or destroy human life, in astronomical researches, in the miracles which inventive genius has wrought,—seen in our ships, our manufactories, our wondrous instruments, our printing-presses, of our observatories, our fortifications, our laboratories, our mills, our machines to cultivate the earth, to make our clothes, to build our houses, to multiply ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... the development of the balloon lagged, until Count Zeppelin and M. Santos-Dumont consecrated their fortunes, their inventive minds, and their amazing courage to the task of perfecting a dirigible. In a book, necessarily packed with information concerning the rapid development of aircraft which began in the last decade of the nineteenth century ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... Athena, Apollo stands close to the sitting Jupiter, singing, with a deep, quiet joyfulness, to his lyre. The sun is always thought of as the master of time and rhythm, and as the origin of the composing and inventive discovery of melody; but the air, as the actual element and substance of the voice, the prolonging and sustaining power of it, and the symbol of its moral passion. Whatever in music is measured and designed belongs therefore to Apollo and the Muses; whatever is impulsive and ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... ABEL. I'm usually inventive. Let me see. Look here, why couldn't you have his refused picture brought home just as all your ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... Menzies will say—'Pelargoniums for the hall, Miss Percival, and some nice maidenhair.' He's not inventive, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... remarkable man, and he had hitherto shown much inventive ability; but in that month in the cave he had developed into an intellectual giant. After mature deliberation, he proposed a prodigious scheme to his followers. He explained that, while they might, by using the utmost discretion, hold the financial world in their power by means ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... York state. His mother was dead, and a Mrs. Baggert kept house. Eradicate was an eccentric, colored helper, but of late had become too old to do much. Mr. Swift was also quite aged, and had been obliged to give up most of his inventive work. ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... at the same time declaring, that if he had committed a fault in drawing out the plan of the expedition, he was ready to answer for it. He made this declaration in such a cold, self-satisfied tone, that it drew down upon his head the most bitter inventive from members of the opposition. Barre, Luttrell, Burke, Townshend, and Fox, all, in their turns, assailed the haughty secretary, and revelled in descriptions of the loss and disgrace which we had sustained—necessarily, from chagrin, heightening the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... who are not capable and who yet occupy positions of great responsibility. The young engineer, fresh from college and a bit puzzled as to the game as a whole, if he accept a connection under an engineer, for instance, whose inventive ideas are impractical, will unwittingly absorb such a man's viewpoint on construction, and so spoil himself as an engineer for all time to come. Cases like this are not rare. The writer personally knows ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... pottery, and tile-work[31]—a somewhat important branch of human skill. Next to the potter's work, you have all the arts in porcelain, glass, enamel, and metal,—everything, that is to say, playful and familiar in design, much of what is most felicitously inventive, and, in bronze or gold, most precious ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... him was,'"My son, learn how to say No." She warned me further of an error into which, from the vivacity of my temper, I was most likely to fall. "Your inventive faculty," said she, "will lead you eagerly into new plans; and you may be dazzled by some new scheme before you have finished, or fairly tried what you had begun. Resolve to ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... have, then, three orders of ornament, classed according to the degrees of correspondence of the executive and conceptive minds. We have the servile ornament, in which the executive is absolutely subjected to the inventive,—the ornament of the great Eastern nations, more especially Hamite, and all pre-Christian, yet thoroughly noble in its submissiveness. Then we have the mediaeval system, in which the mind of the inferior workman is recognised, and has full room for action, but is guided and ennobled by ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... infirmary for poor Stevie—if only during inquiries—wrung her heart. For she was a proud woman. Winnie's stare had grown hard, intent, inventive. ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... far on:... "There are continual foragings, on both sides; with parties mutually dashing out to hinder the same. The Prussians have a detached post at Smirzitz; which is much harassed by Hungarians lurking about, shooting our sentry and the like. An inventive head contrives this expedient. Stuff a Prussian uniform with straw; fix it up, by aid of ropes and check-strings, to stand with musket shouldered, and even to glide about to right and left, on judicious pulling. So it is done: straw man is made; set upon his ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... glimmerings of social science are beginning to see—is precisely a newly acquired vision of the art of self-government. It has been unfortunately necessary—or perhaps fortunately necessary—for the great democracies to turn their energies and resources and the inventive ingenuity of their citizens to the organization of armies and indeed of entire populations to the purpose of killing enough Germans to remove democracy's exterior menace. The price we pay in human life is appallingly unfortunate. But the necessity for national organization socializes the nation capable ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sympathetic eye. "Oh, Daff, I'm so sorry for you; just at the time, too, when——" He dared not proceed, awed by Dill's protesting pathos. "Come, now," he ventured presently, "why shouldn't we let Ignace in on this? He's so inventive; ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... everything—everything, I tell you, and, as you yourself admitted, proceeded to play her part with the utmost sagacity. But that is not to be at all compared with what took place on the occasion of Musso's visit to the old gentleman. The most practised address, the most impenetrable cunning,—in short, all the inventive arts of the most experienced woman of the world could not have done more than little Marianna did, in order to deceive the old gentleman with perfect success. She could not have acted in any better way to prepare the road for us for any kind of enterprise. Our feud ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... adust, where rivers never flow, Where constant suns repel approaching snow, How Nature's various and inventive hand Can pour unheard-of moisture o'er the land! immortal plants she bids on rocks arise, And from the dropping branches streams supplies, The thirsty native sucks the falling shower, Nor asks for juicy fruit or blooming ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... now explained with honor to Robert. The conduct which his parents had ascribed to indifference really sprang from affection; he had neither obeyed the voice of ambition nor of avarice, nor even the nobler inspiration of inventive genius; his whole motive and single aim had been the happiness of Genevieve and Michael. The day for proving his gratitude had come, and he had returned ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of Ireland, being out a-hunting, had, in the act of leaping a fence, the misfortune to have one of the skirts of his coat torn off; upon which his lordship tore off the other, observing, that to have but one left was like a pig with one ear! Some inventive genius took the hint, and having made some of these half-coats, out of compliment to his lordship, gave them the ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... be a matter of cultivation and perseverance. A man of ordinary intelligence may, by determined resolution, push his way to power in many directions, and the one talent may become ten talents. But genius is not mere cleverness, however well directed and carefully developed. Genius is creative and inventive; it has insight, it has imagination, it "bodies forth the forms of things unknown," and "gives to airy nothings a local habitation and a name." Isaiah speaks of the inspiration of the inventor of the agricultural instrument: "His God doth instruct ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... thoroughfares, on great bridges, and frequented cross-roads, detective vigilance kept sleepless watch, and fancied in every approaching form, the doomed victims, who were at once to satisfy the angry gallows and its own excited avarice. Equally well assured were we that the most inventive and hazardous scrutiny would never track our footsteps to the dizzy height of Carn-Tuathail. One motive with us was to baffle all calculation on the part of our pursuers. When we found we were tracked and discovered, our first care was to consider how ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... brother urged him to waylay her and press his own suit. He exerted all his inventive power to procure him an opportunity of speaking to her alone. Our hero refused to be urged or to accept his offers. After all, it was useless. All that he might accomplish would be to make ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... laws, is something from which you can deduce definite programmes and schemes and methods of instruction for immediate schoolroom use. Psychology is a science, and teaching is an art; and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves. An intermediary inventive mind must make the application, ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... the ways and means through which the want may be satisfied. Ages may elapse before an ideal may be realized. Numberless attempts must be made, the lessons of the successive failures must be learned. It is in the ability to draw the right inference from failure that inventive genius is seen. ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... ever busy with new inventions. To his nephew, Talus, or Perdrix, he taught all that he himself knew of all the mechanical arts. Soon it seemed that the nephew, though he might not excel his uncle, equalled Daedalus in his inventive power. As he walked by the seashore, the lad picked up the spine of a fish, and, having pondered its possibilities, he took it home, imitated it in iron, and so invented the saw. A still greater invention followed this. While those who had always thought that there could be none greater ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... proposition is stated, we have to imagine the demonstration; that is, we have to find upon what proposition already known the new one depends, and from all the consequences of this known principle select just the one required. According to this method the most exact reasoner, if not naturally inventive, must be at fault. And the result is that the teacher, instead of making us discover demonstrations, dictates them to us; instead of teaching us to reason, he reasons for us, and ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... Meighen for the cordiality with which he greeted me, as the inventive Canadian press had added impromptu reflections of their own to what I had said of him. I sat next to Mr. MacKenzie King, but as we had no opportunity of private conversation, he invited me to go to his house for supper ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... a mechanical routine, because in the exercise of their ostensible calling their imaginative faculties are drawn away to pursuits more alluring. Therefore, in their proper vocation they are seldom bold or inventive,—out of it they are sometimes both to excess. And when they do take up a novelty in their own profession they cherish it with an obstinate tenacity, and an extravagant passion, unknown to those quiet philosophers who take up novelties every day, examine them with the sobriety of practised ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... all about our national waste of inventive talent, our mean standard of intellectual attainment, our disingenuous criticism, and the consequent failure to distinguish men of the quality needed to carry on the modern type of war. Almost universally we have the wrong men ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... justness of my cause, the unbounded confidence I had in my own resolution, and the labours of an inventive head and iron body—these only could have preserved my life. These bodily labours, these continued inventions, and projected plans to obtain my freedom, preserved my health. Who would suppose that a man fettered as I was could find means of exercising himself? By swinging ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... southern continent, &c!", A zeal so red-hot as this, could scarcely be cooled down to any thing like common sense, on one of the fields of ice encountered by Cook in his second voyage; but what a pity it is, that it should not be accompanied by as much of the inventive faculty, as might serve to point out how impossibilities can be performed, and insuperable obstructions removed! It is but justice to this gentleman to say, that his willingness to undertake such a task, was as enthusiastic as his idea of its magnitude and importance. His industry, besides, in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... necessary, then, to keep our habitual acts under some surveillance of attention, to pass them in review for inspection every now and then, that we may discover possible modifications which will make them more serviceable. We need to be inventive, constantly to find out better ways of doing things. Habit takes care of our standing, walking, sitting; but how many of us could not improve his poise and carriage if he would? Our speech has become largely automatic, but no doubt all of us might remove faults of ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts |
