"Originality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Domenico Barbaja, who had his palazzo in that street, and who, from being waiter in a coffeehouse at Milan, became the manager of three theatres at one time, namely, San Carlo, La Scala, and the Vienna opera. He appears to have been a man of great energy and originality of character, concealing an excellent heart under the roughest manners and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... Scotland and the harbours of Scandinavia. Amid new surroundings he was not always easy to please; bad food or smelly streets would call forth loud protests and upset him for a day; but his friends found it worth their while to risk some anxiety in order to enjoy his keen observation and the originality of his talk. Wherever he went he took with him his stored wisdom on Homer, Dante, and the 'Di maiores' of literature; and when Gladstone, too, happened to be one of the party on board ship, the talk must have been well worth hearing. ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... Beresynth, "who are dunces in many things. What philosophical tolerance! and yet among them many a fellow is all snout, and confronts the learned physiognomists of the ocean with a countenance, grave, cold, calm in the consciousness of its originality: nay, the whole deep brims and swims with one can't count how many eccentric faces, and gills, and teeth, and eyes astart from their sockets, and every other kind of striking contour: but every monster there floats his own way quietly and peaceably, without having ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... moments give us the most solid knowledge we have. They are mental experiences, which are the master lights of all our being. They give direction and unity to all our other thoughts and opinions. They constitute mental originality. The peculiarity of inspiration, in this general sense, does not lie in the subjects of the thoughts, but in the manner of their coming. Ideas and thoughts of very different kinds may all be inspired thoughts. The poet, the artist, have their inspirations. ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... intensity than those of the conspiracies in the seventh and eighth books, and none have given a more intimate and accurate perception of the modes of thought and feeling at the time. The History ends with the death of Lorenzo de Medici in 1492. Enough has been said of its breadth of scope and originality of method. The spirit of clear flaming patriotism, of undying hope that will not in the darkest day despair, the plangent appeal to Italy for its own great sake to rouse and live, all these are found pre-eminently in the History as they ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... deft workman, and he was soon so enticed by the perfect appliances as to take tool in hand and prove himself not unadroit in the craft. Friedel however excelled in delicacy of touch and grace and originality of conception, and produced such workmanship that Master Gottfried could not help stroking his hair and telling him it was a pity he was not born to belong ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... acted recklessly on his first impulses, and rushed blindfold at all his conclusions. On the other hand, it was to be said in his favor that his disposition was open as the day; a more generous, affectionate, sweet-tempered lad it would have been hard to find anywhere. A certain quaint originality of character, and a natural healthiness in all his tastes, carried him free of most of the dangers to which his mother's system of education inevitably exposed him. He had a thoroughly English love of the sea and of all that belongs to ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... come, men who were coming, met there on equal footing. Among them, as years ago among my schoolmates, I found my place—somewhat to my dissatisfaction. I amused. Much rather would I have shocked them by the originality of my views, impressed them with the depth of my judgments. They declined to be startled, refused to be impressed; instead, they laughed. Nor from these men could I ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... years previously, she had lived in London, and was at present engaged as modiste at the Maison Collette, where many of the "creations" of that world-famous house were due to her own artistic taste and originality. ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... person from the muddle of the world, and to set them for a week in a pattern which must catch the eyes of Cabinet Ministers, and the eyes once caught, the old arguments were to be delivered with unexampled originality. Such was the scheme as a whole; and in contemplation of it she would become quite flushed and excited, and have to remind herself of all the details that intervened between her ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... maintained on funds insufficient to forestall dilapidation. Fortunately the Franciscan friars had built for beauty as well as for use; the architecture which they devised in skillful adaptation of their native Spanish type displayed originality and picturesque charm. Hence, of late years, Californians have come to feel a worthy pride in the monuments of the early history of their state, and have taken steps to preserve such of them as survive. No less than twenty-one are today the goal ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... In originality, erudition, and accomplishments Burke had no rival among Parliamentary speakers. His prose is, as we read it now, the most fascinating, the most musical, in the English language. It bears on every page the divine lineaments of genius. Yet an orator requires ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... knock the horns off cattle; a hornless steer comes to the slaughter pen more quietly and with less of threat to those who handle him. In a day when Money rules as King, its first care is to knock the horns off originality and brains. Money wants no great horned mental forces roaming the world; they might become a threat. Richard thought on these matters as he considered this conservative, careful White House one, whose pains had ever been to think nothing that hadn't been thought, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... subject Shaw and Chesterton disagree; yet they are both men who, in some way, attempt to be reformers. Shaw proceeds by satire and contempt; Chesterton proceeds by originality and good nature, except on the question of divorce, which makes him very angry, and, as I have said, uncritical. Shaw chastises the world and is angry; Chesterton laughs, and, in a genial way, asks what is wrong; and, having found out, attempts to put things right. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... held up their hands and looked aghast. The idea of any man venturing to do what no one ever thought of doing before was so utterly subversive of all their ideas of propriety—such a desperate piece of profane originality—that they ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... hoped for a work expressing the deepest conflicts of the human soul, the highest thoughts of his time on human and divine things—in a word, one of those supreme syntheses like the 'Divine Comedy' or 'Faust.' Instead of which he goes to work like the visual artists of his own day, not caring for originality in our sense of the word, simply reproducing a familiar circle of figures, and even, when it suits his purpose, making use of the details left him by his predecessors. The excellence which, in spite of all this, can nevertheless be attained, will be the ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... POUNDS 235 less than it had done nine months before when it was bought by the distinguished collector whose sudden death had brought it once more under the hammer. Perhaps Charles Strickland's power and originality would scarcely have sufficed to turn the scale if the remarkable mythopoeic faculty of mankind had not brushed aside with impatience a story which disappointed all its craving for the extraordinary. And presently Dr. Weitbrecht-Rotholz produced the work which finally set at rest the ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... that it is likely to keep long possession of the stage. Whether this new drama was the product of judgment or of luck, the praise of it must be given to the inventor; and there are many writers read with more reverence, to whom such merit of originality ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... like many a great man before him, seemed not to be aware of how much credit he was entitled to for his invention, for he did not divulge to his companions the originality of his proceeding; he wished them to believe he was only proceeding in the commonplace manner, and had no ambition to be distinguished as the happy projector of so simple ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... very extraordinary talents; as a commercial writer, he is fairly entitled to stand in the foremost rank among his contemporaries, whatever may be their performances or their fame. His distinguishing characteristics are originality, spirit, and a profound knowledge of his subject, and in these particulars he has seldom been surpassed. As the author of Robinson Crusoe he has a claim, not only to the admiration, but to the gratitude of his countrymen; ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... or the city dandy, many degrees above the bushman, or the digger, or the pioneer, in vocations which have been the life-work of the latter. O, the wearisome nonsense of this kind which is remorselessly thrust upon a docile public! And what an opportunity for some novelist, in his rabid pursuit of originality, to merely reverse the incongruity—picturing a semi-barbarian, lassoed full-grown, and launched into polished society, there to excel the fastidious idlers of drawing-room and tennis-court in their own line! This miracle would be more reasonable than its antithesis. Without ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... novelist Samuel Richardson passed the greater part of his life. This pompous, vain little man, who never to the end of his life abated one whit of his savage envy of his successful contemporaries, was endowed with the genius of originality which prompted him to write as no one had ever thought of writing before. He remained here until 1755, when he moved to Parsons Green. He had begun life as one of the nine children of a man of small means, and was apprenticed ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... his peculiarities, and the other his spirit. Were it possible, therefore, to find an exact medium, a manner so close that it should let slip nothing of the text, nor mingle any thing extraneous with it, and at the same time so free as to have an air of originality, this seems precisely the mode in which an author might be best rendered. I can assure my readers from my own experience, that to discover this very delicate line is difficult, and to proceed by it when found, through the whole length of a poet voluminous ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... found the next day by Mrs. Henderson, crying softly over her work at the mosaic department-work which was only the mechanical arrangement from patterns provided, for she had no originality, and would never attain to any promotion in ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... No originality is claimed for the methods here described. They are those which the author has found most suitable and convenient in his own work, and most easily learned by students. The aim has been to describe each operation in such detail that a beginner can follow ...
— Laboratory Manual of Glass-Blowing • Francis C. Frary
... are very plain and devoid of pockets, but the older women's are rich in texture and design, some of them being of silk and others even of costly brocade. The women's head-dress is almost grotesque in its originality, the hair being woven into two rolls, swathed round with tape, and wound into a coronet across the head. Over this is drawn tightly a kind of cap, which forms a peak behind and is crossed in front like a handkerchief. Should widowhood ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... opportunity to some men, whose energy is more sharply spurred by the shout of a multitude than by the grudging Well done! of conscience. Some theorists have too hastily assumed that, as the power of public opinion increases, the force of private character, or what we call originality, is absorbed into and diluted by it. But we think Horace was right in putting tyrant and mob on a level as the trainers and tests of a man's solid quality. The amount of resistance of which one is capable to whatever lies outside the conscience, is of more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... Caleb Cushing, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and William Bachiler Greene, a man less widely known than these distinguished compatriots. Mr. Greene was, however, a man of mark in his own time, a daring thinker, and one who was possessed of much brave originality, whose own deep thoughtfulness was always planting seeds of thought in others, and who can certainly never be forgotten by those who were fortunate enough ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... necessary for the editor of the Northern Echo, the friend of many of the distinguished personages of the day, to seek my testimony as to his value to his employer. He quickly became recognised for what he was—a journalist of exceptional capacity and of great originality ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... admirable; there is great freshness and vigour in the descriptions of scenery and character, and in the narrative there is abundance of invention, and many of the situations are extremely dramatic.... A book of unusual originality ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... circle which is most before the public to-day there is a tendency to despise the traditions of English literature and to worship only the idol of originality. In a paper largely devoted to literary matters I recently read a statement to the effect that many authors, indifferent to books, neither buy nor read them, whilst others positively dislike them. Mr. Shaw's quarrel with Shakespeare ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... of many other distinguished artists have passed through my hands. Theodore Spiering has been responsible for the educational detail of classic and modern works; Arthur Hartmann—a composer of marked originality—Albert Spalding, Eddy Brown, Francis MacMillan, Max Pilzer, David Hochstein, Richard Czerwonky, Cecil Burleigh, Edwin Grasse, Edmund Severn, Franz C. Bornschein, Leo Ornstein, Rubin Goldmark, Louis Pershinger, Louis Victor Saar—whose ms. always look as ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... please. Their conversation is too much tainted with theatricals—they do not travel off the stage in their discourse—their gossip smacks of the green-room—their jests and good things are, for the most part, extracts from plays—they lack originality—the drama is their world, and they think nothing worthy of argument but men and matters connected with it. They are the weakest of all critics, their observations on characters in plays are hereditary opinions of the corps, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... "We know they had birthrights. And I'd sooner be a birthright than a wine-cooler any day. Besides, Jonah could go as a mess of pottage. There's an idea for you. Talk about originality!" ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... any answer. She was prepared to look upon him very favourably, and accept what he said as full of originality and force; but the tone the conversation had taken was not entirely to her mind. Phoebe could have managed it; but Ursula was not Phoebe. She was more disposed to take offence at the young man's tone than to ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... referred to have been analysed. And beyond this, every allegorical work that could be found, previous to the eighteenth century, has been examined in all the European languages, and the result is a perfect demonstration of the complete originality of Bunyan."] ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... poem. We are "o'er informed;" and as with Nature, so with Art, the eye must be couched, and the film of association removed, before we can see clearly. But there is one characteristic feature of Childe Harold which association and familiarity have been powerless to veil or confuse—originality of design. "By what accident," asks the Quarterly Reviewer (George Agar Ellis), "has it happened that no other English poet before Lord Byron has thought fit to employ his talents on a subject so well suited to their display?" The question can only be ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... famous painting or out in the fields stalking a tree with the hopes of an embryo Corot. The world moves and has only a position in the rank and file for imitators. Occasionally an artist goes to work with a vim and indulges in research, thereby demonstrating originality in two respects. Painting is just as much a ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... relations with Buddhism on the one hand and with Brahmanism on the other will afford many important ways of access to a more exact knowledge concerning the religious ideas which prevailed in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., and to the establishment of the boundaries of originality between ...
— On the Indian Sect of the Jainas • Johann George Buehler
... has been made of anecdote and incident, so as to quicken the interest and hold the attention to the end. These anecdotes have been selected from every available quarter, and no claim of originality is made concerning them ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... with originality of either thought or expression, Mr. Herbert Cressey stopped Banneker outside of his apartment with the remark made and provided for the delayed reunion of frequent companions: "Well ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the vicinity of Regency Park, I shall confine myself at present to that object that first arrests the attention at the entrance, which is the church; it has been erected under the commissioners for building new churches. The architect is J. Soane, Esq. There is a pleasing originality in this gentleman's productions; the result of extensive research among the architectural beauties of the ancients, together with a peculiar happy mode of distributing his lights and shadows; producing in the greatest degree picturesque effect: these are peculiarities essentially his own, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... is a parasitic profession and Mr. Root's public career is parasitic. He lacks originality, he lacks passion—there is no place for passion in that clear mind—he lacks force. He elucidates other men's ideas, works out or puts into effect their policies, presents their case, is, by temperament, by reason of gifts amounting almost to genius, ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... pick of young England's manhood," I assured him. "The idea is to make the Navy into a real live force, capable of originality and enterprise." ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... lies in the fact, that Xenophon himself was clearly an "average" Greek, one, that is to say, of good natural parts, of perfectly normal faculties and tastes, undisturbed by any originality of character or mind, and representing therefore, as we may fairly assert, the ordinary views and aims of an upright and competent man of the world. His description of the "gentleman," therefore, may be taken as a representative account of the recognised ideal ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... degree of unanimity and cooeperation which is requisite for the full exertion of social power, with that amount of individuality which would be useful in promoting a progressive change. Spontaneity or originality is disintegrating in its immediate tendency. It disturbs the order of society, though, in the end, on the whole, it is advantageous. Thus we have the tenacity of old habits and prevailing sentiments on the one hand, tending to the harmony of society, and enabling ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... head must originally have been very beautiful; very manly, too,—dark with sudden anguish and recoil. There is a separate head of St. John, in oils, in the same collection, which shows how fixed was this noble originality of type in Holbein's conception of "the beloved apostle." But it is in Judas that the patient student will find, perhaps, most of Holbein's peculiar cast of thought, when once ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... imagination is for ever captive. His horizon is for ever bounded. He is fettered by routine, and paralyzed by tradition. His very ideas must put on the livery of his predecessors; for in a profession where originality of thought stands for the blackest shade of original sin, skill—mere skill—must be the end ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... mind; my fastidiousness being so great that I invariably reject whatever ideas I do not think to be legitimately my own. But there is one circumstance to which I cannot help alluding here, as it serves to show what miseries this love of originality must needs bring upon an author. I am constantly discovering that, however original I may wish to be, I am continually producing the same things which other people say or write. Whenever, after producing something which gives me perfect satisfaction, and which has cost me perhaps days ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... opposition to him and a more eminent colleague, the position which in 1862 I had assigned to Dr. Mayer. [Footnote: See 'Philosophical Magazine' for this and the succeeding years.] In those days Professor Tait denied to Mayer all originality, and he has since, I regret to say, never missed an opportunity, however small, of carping at Mayer's claims. The action of the Academy of Sciences and of the Royal Society summarily disposes of this detraction, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... power, fire, originality, the chief things which went for the making up of Leone's character; no two people could be more dissimilar, more unlike; yet both had a charm for Lord Chandos; with the one he found the stimulant of wit and genius, ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... of those gifts. He worked like a dog, he was ambitious and temperate and he was the soul of honor. But although his brain was clear enough, the blindest love would, perceive in time that it lacked originality. ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... skirmishing; deft, but never deep; much moved too by the opinions of his permanent staff. These on the night in question had plied him well with hackneyed objections; but to see him get up and relieve himself of them—the air of originality, the really original air he threw around them; the absurd light which he turned full on the weaknesses of his noble friend's propositions, was as beautiful to an indifferent critic as it as saddening to the man who had at heart the sorrows of ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... the war of the Revolution, and at a still earlier date, as we have seen, participants in the wars with the Narragansetts and other Indian tribes. To his Puritan ancestry we may trace his sturdy independence, his originality, and persevering industry; while to his Celtic progenitors may be due something of his generous and genial nature. He graduated in 1868, at Hamilton College, with an excellent reputation as a scholar ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... to induce Stephen to deduce that originality, though producing its own reward, does not invariably ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... his left thumb, care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction! But, indeed, if you are trivial. I cannot blame you, for the days of the great cases are past. Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools. I think that I have touched bottom at last, however. This note I had this morning marks my zero-point, I fancy. ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... custom of most Scotch ministers of his time. But this Sunday, all that he had committed slipped clean out of his memory. He preached as he had never been known to preach before, and never preached again—with originality, power, eloquence; speaking from his deepest heart, as if the words thence pouring out had been supernaturally put into it; which, with a superstition that approached to sublimest faith, he afterward solemnly believe ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... vision in the daytime is more impressive than if it had happened in a midnight dream. Readers are therefore asked to correct the misrelation, which affords an instance of how our imperfect memories insensibly formalize the fresh originality of living fact—from whose shape they slowly depart, as machine-made castings depart by degrees from the sharp hand-work of ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... had discovered the girl's keen mind and her quaint originality. As much for his own pleasure as her advantage he had taught her as he had some of the other village children, erratically, inconsequently, and here she was now demanding that he fit her out with a chart for ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... had formerly read, I could not find it. The Night-piece on Death is indirectly preferred by Goldsmith to Gray's Church-yard; but, in my opinion, Gray has the advantage in dignity, variety, and originality of sentiment. He observes, that the story of the Hermit is in More's Dialogues and Howell's Letters, and supposes it to have ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... that so large and diversified a show of Machinery could not be made up in the United States as is here presented in behalf of British Invention; yet I think a strictly American Fair might be got up which would evince more originality of creation or design. If I am wrong in this, I shall cheerfully say so when convinced of it. Many of these machines are very good of their kind without involving any novel principle or important adaptation. With regard to Flax-Dressing, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... solos on every noisy plaything at that time manufactured for children's use. And not content with thus avoiding the beaten track in preparing the entertainments at the ball, he determined also to show decided originality, even in selecting the attendants who were to wait on the company. Other people in his rank of life were accustomed to employ their own and hired footmen for this purpose; the marquis resolved that his attendants should be composed of young ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... Nature, to affirm what is normal, and later to confirm it by the categorical imperative of custom and law. This tendency still flourishes in our civilized communities, and, as the worship of the normal, is often a deadly foe to the abnormal and eccentric, and too often paralyzes originality." ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... trusted so deeply in the possibility of reaching some brighter truth. No; not a new discovery;—but one who approaches it with so much sensibility feels it to be new, with all the fervor which the most absolute novelty could rouse. This is the deepest and the true originality, to possess such intensity of feeling that the oldest truth, when approached by our own methods, shall be full of ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... language have ever been most intimately allied. If language, by its originality of structure and its native richness, can, in its delineations, interpret thought with grace and clearness, and if, by its happy flexibility, it can paint with vivid truthfulness the objects of the external world, it reacts at the same time upon thought, and animates ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... fewest of such liberties: in art as in morals, and as in everything which man undertakes, true greatness is the most ready to recognize and most willing to obey those simple outward laws which have been sanctioned by the experience of mankind, and we suspect the originality which cannot move except ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... shall have something to say with regard to originality of design, but now we must take up our tools again and begin work upon ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... was quite evident that some of the men were attracted by her singular originality and a certain good comradeship in her ways. And it was on one of their riding excursions that Peter noticed that she was singled out by a good-looking, blond-haired young lawyer of the town for his especial attentions. As the cavalcade straggled in climbing the mountain, the ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... example, does not imply profundity or originality of thought. Homer and Chaucer are not deep thinkers, nor is Herodotus or Virgil, Burns, Keats, or Tennyson. There need be nothing philosophically epoch-making about a literary creation which is destined to be immortal. Nor yet does the supreme literary gift necessarily imply ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... literature; he indulges in an elaborate criticism of Statius, and points out what a sudden fall that author makes at one place from extravagant bombast; he communicates the latest efforts of his muse, and tries, one regrets to say, to get more credit for precocity and originality than fairly belongs to him; he accidentally alludes to his dog that he may bring in a translation from the Odyssey, quote Plutarch, and introduce an anecdote which he has heard from Trumbull about Charles I.; he elaborately discusses Cromwell's classical translations, adduces authorities, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... this heap. We're too close to the ship; and besides, I want your full, undivided, concentrated attention. No, I don't think originality was expressly forbidden. It would have been, of course, if the Masters had thought of it, but neither they nor you ever even considered the possibility of such a ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... excused, though in their case they laid too much embargo upon the interchange of thought; but when the mind is an ordinary one, the offence is insufferable, if not unpardonable. Those that talk much cannot often talk well. There is generally the least of originality and interest about what they say. It is the dry, old, oft-repeated things which are nearly as well stereotyped upon the minds of the hearers as they are upon their own. And even those who have the gift of talking sensibly as well ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... called the dog and the woman went on, relieved. But when her fright was past she probably confessed to herself that the smallest Corner House girl certainly had originality of ideas. ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... piety. He uses no hackneyed terms, no second-hand or imitated phrases. His language, as well as his thoughts, his method, and ideal standard, are purely his own. Indeed, we might set up and sustain for him a claim of absolute individuality, if not even of originality, in the standard of godliness and righteousness which he fashioned for himself, and then with such zeal and heroism ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... of its natural significance. We meet with the same phenomenon later on, in an incalculably exaggerated form, but only as a copy: the Christian church, put beside the "people of God," shows a complete lack of any claim to originality. Precisely for this reason the Jews are the most fateful people in the history of the world: their influence has so falsified the reasoning of mankind in this matter that today the Christian can ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... Burns had not been serious; he had been testing Jean's originality. "Well, what will ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... sentiment, remote from the clamor of schools and the complaints of critics, with recollections of the grandest art of the world in his mind, and beautiful aspects of nature continually before his eyes, he could hardly fail to work out a style of marked originality. The effort, however, was slow; one does not erase on the instant the impressions that eighteen years of study and practice have made, and Fuller found his life at Deerfield none too long to rid him ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... M. Brunet: his work and the public would be considerable gainers by it: his books would not be so costly, and would be more profitable. The English Author describes nothing in a sang-froid manner: he is for ever charging: and, as he does not want originality in his vivacity, he should seem to wish to be the CALLOT of Bibliography." CRAPELET. Ibid. I accept the title with all ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... now asserted by experts that he owed the success of his watch, not so much to originality of invention, as to the exquisite skill and precision of his workmanship. He had one of the most perfect mechanical hands that ever existed. It was the touch of a Raphael applied ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... by his emotion. "How is it possible," he says to himself, "that any one can read my 'Gaspings for Immortality' without being impressed by their freshness, their passion, their beauty, their originality?" Tears come to his relief freely,—so freely that he has to push the precious volume out of the range of their blistering shower. Six years ago "Gaspings for Immortality" was published, advertised, praised by the professionals whose business it is to boost their publishers' authors. A week ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... terribly in want of the fig-leaf, if anything less than a cabbage leaf will do, before they can be fit (fitted?) for family reading. It is not possible (Is it not possible?) that by the time a household selection has been sifted out of the great work, everything which makes the originality and the value—such as it is—of Richard's series of volumes will have disappeared, and nothing will remain but his diverting lunacies of style." The Bookmart, I am informed, is edited by one Halkett Lord, an unnaturalised Englishman who finds it pays best to abuse everything and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the pencil, or in verse, what they severally felt, undisturbed by fear, unswayed by example, unsolicitous about fame, unconscious of excellence. They did so for the first time. Thence the freshness and originality, the vigour and truth, the simplicity and raciness by which they are distinguished. Shakspeare owed much of his greatness to the same cause; and thence his similarity, in many respects, to these great masters of his own or the sister arts. When Pope asked Bentley what ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... various, and as Philo calls them very rich, and this statement holds good all the way down to the Christian priest who inherited most of the virtues of his Jewish predecessors. Thus no wonder for the priests to keep their people in dense ignorance of the historical originality of the priesthood. And the high priest, besides all duties and privileges already mentioned as common to him and the ordinary priest, he must not marry a widow, nor a divorced woman, or a profane, or that had ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... importance, and metaphysical originality of the two dialogues: no works at once so good and of such length are known to have proceeded from ...
— Statesman • Plato
... Originality, unselfishness, genius of the rarest order, are all displayed in these letters; already had her mind grasped some great truths which it requires the average philosopher half a century to discover, when at seventeen, she says, "Man is the epitome of the universe. The revolutions of the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... magnificent pages, which afford so rich a field for scientific observation. We would, in the first place, analyze his Nocturnes, Ballades, Impromptus, Scherzos, which are full of refinements of harmony never heard before; bold, and of startling originality. We would also examine his Polonaises, Mazourkas, Waltzes and Boleros. But this is not the time or place for such a study, which would be interesting only to the adepts ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... master of the composition of the short story. Examine "The Gift of the Magi" and you will find that it develops one main incident carried out in a single afternoon with all the necessary details compressed; that is, the details are suggested in a few words but not developed. The story has originality and appeals to the imagination of the reader, for the whole life of the two characters is suggested through this brief, rather touching sketch. The end, though it is a surprise and comes like the crack of a whip, was nevertheless carefully prepared for. Then the writer is through, and we ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... large public room, cleared away the tables, fitted up a device in evergreens which was supposed to represent the words Loo and Reu, and otherwise garnished the ball-room with specimens of his originality and taste, while old Fiddlestrings, who was a self-taught half-breed, fitted to his violin a new string made by his wife ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne
... and a man with any depth of feeling and of mind, he does not tire, of course; but otherwise he eventually becomes either oppressed or frightened; he either wishes that women would not take themselves so seriously and forget to be amusing, or her belief in her peculiar and absolute originality communicates itself to him, and he does not feel equal to handling and directing ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... are full of wit; but the wit never chokes the style, which is simple and pellucid. Their fanciful postulates being granted, they are absolutely rational. And they are in a high degree original. Originality, good temper, good sense, moderation, wit—these are classical qualities: and he is a rare benefactor who employs them all for the ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... have been so is his crowning merit, and is one that can hardly be overestimated. At the same time it must be borne in mind that he was a loyal son of the Church, and never dreamed of opposing or undermining her. His greatest originality is in 'Ethics,' in which, by placing the essence of morality in the intent and not in the action, he anticipated Kant and much modern speculation. Here he did admirable work. Abelard founded no school, strictly speaking; nevertheless, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... authors to own the traditions and standards established by these men, and thereby to enrol themselves in their immortal fellowship, why, then it must be owned that they have deliberately incurred that humiliation. One American of vivid originality tried to escape it, and with what result? Simply that Whitman holds a place of his own, somewhat like that of Blake one might say, in the literature of the English language, and has produced at least as much effect ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... Suddenly it struck him that the farm would be very dull without this very fascinating woman moving about the place in her silent, resolute way. Bessie was, no doubt, delightful and charming to look on, but she had not her sister's brains and originality; and John Niel was sufficiently above the ordinary run to thoroughly appreciate intellect and originality in a woman, instead of standing aghast at it. She interested him intensely, to say the least of it, and, ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... could never have dreamed of, and with the experience of twenty centuries to guide us we have made no advance during more than half a century. Our best architects acknowledge that until we get a new method of building, originality in architecture is an impossibility, mainly because all the existing styles of architecture have been worked out to their legitimate conclusion, and have been perfected under circumstances and conditions with which we have entirely broken; the originality in detail which ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... it failed to express his ideas or feelings, he forced it—the result was a new term, or a change in the ordinary meaning of words sprang forth from has pen. With this was joined a vigour and breadth of style, very pronounced, which makes up the originality of the works of Saint-Simon and contributes toward placing their author in the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... are seldom distinguished by an air of originality: they are anticipated in their happiest efforts; and if they are found to differ in anything from their predecessors, it is only in irregular sallies and trifling conceits. The more extensive therefore ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... any hidden motive behind Madeline's sudden departure she had no way of confirming her theory, and when Betty escorted the entertainment committee, all of whom happened to be splendid workers but without a spark of originality among them, to Eleanor's room, and declaring sadly that she couldn't remember half the features of the toy-shop that they had discussed together, claimed Eleanor's half-promise of help, why there was nothing for Eleanor to do but redeem it. Nothing ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... "Histoire Romaine" would have been invaluable, if the general industry and accuracy of the writer had in any degree equalled his originality and brilliancy, eloquently remarks: "It is not without reason that so universal and vivid a remembrance of the Punic wars has dwelt in the memories of men. They formed no mere struggle to determine the lot of two cities or two empires; but ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... and minute observation of nature, but their versification—still reminding us of the imitators of Pope— has little originality or charm. They attracted the admiration of Coleridge, ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... that it aims at arriving at the simple sense of the text, the so-called "Pesohat,'' on solid grammatical principles. It is in this that, although he takes a great part of his exegetical material from his predecessors, the originality of his mind is everywhere apparent, an originality which displays itself also in the witty and lively language of his commentaries. To judge by certain signs, of which Spinoza in his Tractatus Theologico Politicus makes use, Ibn Ezra belongs to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 1837. Until 1863 he remained in the country about his native place, working on his father's farm, getting his schooling in the district school and neighboring academies, and taking his turn also as teacher. As he himself has hinted, the originality, freshness, and wholesomeness of his writings are probably due in great measure to the unliterary surroundings of his early life, which allowed his mind to form itself on unconventional lines, and to the later companionships with unlettered men, which kept ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... Commissioner of Patents shall give advice of a scientific and legal character as he may be desired and qualified to do, to inventors. He may guaranty the originality of any invention at his own risk, at any price be may agree upon with any inventor to give certificates thereof, and this shall not interfere with his regular salary. But it is provided that the Commissioner shall not in any manner prevent others from examining and guarantying the originality ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... imbued with romanticism, and his two plays, Conjuracion de Venecia (1834) and Aben Humeya (1836: it had already been given in French at Paris in 1830), mark the first public triumph of romanticism in Spain. But Martinez de la Rosa lacked force and originality and his works merely paved the way for the greater triumph of the Duke of Rivas. Angel de Saavedra, DUQUE DE RIVAS (1791-1865), a liberal noble, insured the definite triumph of romanticism in Spain by ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... about in French treatises on hysterics and nervous diseases. These stories are "fairy tales of science," by a man of science, who is also a humourist, and has a touch of the poet, and of the old fathers who were afraid of witches. The "blend" is singular enough, and not without its originality of fascination. ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... dash of originality in their ideas as to the successful prosecution of their calling; we mean those "native and to the manor born." Some of them possess two and even three cadaverous dogs, taught to follow closely at their heels, as they wander about, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... work, "a greater width of view and intellectual power" than woman's does; that in the feminine utterances "little beyond the actual love of this life is imagined";[277:1] and that in such utterances "we notice . . . an absolute want of originality and of power to look at the passion of love in an abstract sense outside the woman herself ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... Meilhan has so much originality of character, and I admit only originality of mind. He puts his horse in his chamber, which is an original idea, to be sure; but I think horses had better be kept in the stable, where they would certainly be more comfortable. And these ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... means alone the timeliness of Moussorgsky that has advanced him to his present position. It is the marvelous originality of his art. He is one of the most completely and nobly original among composers, one of the great inventors of form. The music of Moussorgsky is almost completely treasure-trove. It is not the development of any one thing, the continuation of a line, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... architectural details which occur elsewhere,[57] such as the big and somewhat incontinent hands, the typical putti, and the rather heavy drapery. To this we may add the authority of early tradition, the originality and strength of treatment, and finally the practical impossibility ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... discussion among public men, who became subscribers in consequence. A dispute was going on between Governor Burnett and the Massachusetts Assembly, and Benjamin commented upon it with so much wisdom and originality that his intimate acquaintance was sought by ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... been born an engineer. The originality of his genius and the strength of his understanding appeared at a very early age. His playthings were not the toys of children, but the tools men work with; and his greatest amusement was to observe artificers ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... claim to originality for much of the material presented, but he has given a new setting to old truths, a setting which experience has proved to be interesting to the children of ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... that Shelley, notwithstanding his originality of mind, was destined, through the mobility of his impressions, to be easily influenced by what he read. The study of Plato and of Spinoza had already given to his metaphysical views a different bent. But before his ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the matter at once, by saying that it had once been oval, but the canvass getting an injury, he had reduced it to its present form. Since then, an engraving has been discovered that scarce leaves a doubt as to the originality of the portrait.] ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... page of this work appeared the text of Old Mother Hubbard written in the boy's large, childish, downhill hand with spelling of distinct originality. Above it in a flaming red wrapper a lady with a large bust and impossible tiny feet, slanted tipsily toward some shelves—conspicuously empty, while in the offing quite aloof from the lady a lean, pale-green animal stood with despondent ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... disastrous denationalisation of the land in Victoria, are useful illustrations of the difference between the experiments of a centralised compared with a decentralised system of government. Neither Australia nor Canada approached the United States in vigour, originality, and spirit, until, like the United States, they were left free to work out their own problems in their own way. It is not the republican form of government that has made all the difference, though that has had many ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley
... thought that, after all, the main use of a classical education consists in the check it gives to originality, and the way in which it prevents an inconvenient number of people from using their own eyes. That we will not be at the trouble of looking at things for ourselves if we can get any one to tell us what we ought to see goes without saying, ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... his life. To enter upon these matters, however, is obviously impossible in a brief and hurried obituary notice; and equally impossible is it for me to enter into the poetic principles of a writer whose very originality has been a barrier to his winning a ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... is always welcome to our table. Many of its articles evince marked ability and striking originality."—National Era, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... for a number of years, Earth Triumphant and Other Tales in Verse is his first published book. In it are contained, in addition to the several narratives of modern life, a number of shorter lyrics. It is a volume distinguished by originality and power. ...
— Makers of Madness - A Play in One Act and Three Scenes • Hermann Hagedorn
... said almost the same things: "... Knowledge of counterpoint. Complicated writing. Lack of inspiration. No melody. Written with the head, not with the heart. Want of sincerity. Trying to be original...." Followed a paragraph on true originality, that of the masters who are dead and buried, Mozart, Beethoven, Loewe, Schubert, Brahms, "those who are original without thinking of it."—Then by a natural transition they passed to the revival at the Grand Ducal Theater of the Nachtlager ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... in the valley of the Rio Verde may be considered under three divisions or types, differing in form, but essentially the same in character. In adopting this classification, which is by no means restricted to this single valley, I do not claim originality, but follow that used by the best writers on this subject. My limitation of the types and general definitions may, however, be found to differ somewhat from ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... originality in his paper," said Mrs. Stubbs, who, it seemed, did not fall in with the general opinion that "any ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... story-teller was widely recognized on the Continent, where he was accepted as an authority in regard to the customs of the pioneers and the guerilla warfare of the Indian tribes, and was warmly praised for his freshness, his novelty, and his hardy originality. The people of France and Germany delighted in this soldier-writer. "There was not a word in his books which a school-boy could not safely read aloud to his mother and sisters." So says a late English critic, to which another adds, that if he has somewhat gone out of fashion of late years, the more's ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... subject; {84} while Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton, has written no less than four papers on one whom he knew and admires personally, and of whom he insists that "his idealizing powers, his romantic cast of mind, his force, his originality, give him a title to a permanent place high in the ranks of ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... had no good opinion of 'the light of nature.' "They say," said he, "that everybody knows about God naturally. A lie. All such ideas are by teaching." If Harriet had taken the other side of her question and argued as every believer tries to to-day, she would have deserved some credit for originality. Nevertheless the form of her argument is remarkable for her years, and would not have dishonored Dr. Beecher's next sermon. This amazing achievement of a girl of twelve can be read in the Life of Mrs. ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... to be much obliged to Ireland for its contribution of members, and to resist to the last the principle of Home Rule. For it is not, as at present constituted, an assembly that can afford to lose any element that has about it a tinge of originality, a flash of humour, ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... answered the secretary. 'He certainly does not encourage originality among those who surround him. I have heard him say many a time that he desired nothing but mediocrity, which was a poor compliment, it must be confessed, to us who have the ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was to him very much what his printed bill-heads were,—a necessity of the sale itself. His countenance presented a sort of comical assurance and conceit mingled with good nature, which gave it originality and saved it from too close a resemblance to the insipid face of a Parisian bourgeois. Without this air of naive self-admiration and faith in his own person, he would have won too much respect; he drew nearer to his fellows by thus contributing ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... himself the pleasure of reading French, and he had nowhere to turn for tragic literature but to the classics, which he read in literal versions while he renewed his faded Latin with the help of a teacher. But he believed that his originality as a tragic author suffered from his reading, and he determined to read no more tragedies till he had made his own. For this reason he had already given up Shakespeare. "The more that author accorded with my humor (though I very well perceived all ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... the spiritual or metaphysical requisitions of the former, he must necessarily find himself without an audience, except here and there an individual or possibly an isolated clique. His writings, to do them justice, are not altogether destitute of fancy and originality; they might have won him greater reputation but for an inveterate love of allegory, which is apt to invest his plots and characters with the aspect of scenery and people in the clouds, and to steal away the human warmth out of his conceptions. His ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... time to arrive at some final choice in the matter of coat-colour; but the kangaroo hasn't. He never makes up his mind about anything; he begins life in a pale-grey colour; in a year or two he changes his mind and turns very dark—darker than either his father or his mother. The originality pleases him for a little while, and then he gets doubtful of his choice, and makes a wretched compromise—the kangaroo is compromise all over—settling down for the rest of his life to a tint midway between the light and the dark. If he ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... be a praiseworthy undertaking. The biography of General Garfield, however imperfectly executed, can not but be profitable to the reader. In this story, which I have made as attractive as I am able, I make no claim to originality. I have made free use of such materials as came within my reach, including incidents and reminiscences made public during the last summer, and I trust I have succeeded, in a measure, in conveying a correct idea of a character whose nobility we have only learned to appreciate ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... are able to say on the very best authority that the idea at the root of the story is of a quite unusual nature; indeed, if secrecy were not for the moment imposed, one might even go a step further and declare it to be of startling originality." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... overtook Joe Lynch, driving toward town with his customary load of bones. Morgan walked his horse beside Joe's wagon to chat with him, finding always a charm of originality and rather more than superficial thinking about the old fellow that was refreshing in the ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... passing in the girl's mind. But Hedwig was passive, unless a little shudder at the first touch of the baroness's fingers might pass for a manifestation of feeling. Hedwig had hitherto liked the baroness, finding in her a woman of a certain artistic sense, combined with a certain originality. The girl was an absolute contrast to the woman, and admired in her the qualities she thought lacking in herself, though she possessed too much self-respect to attempt to acquire them by imitation. Hedwig sat like a Scandinavian fairy princess on the summit of a glass ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... affairs. He told of one in particular, an old sea-captain, who was captured by the British in the revolutionary war for being an American; how he suffered everything while incarcerated in Dartmoor prison, rather than deny his birthright. The originality of this old "grandsir," as he was called, also interested them. He always called the gentry, or the "upper ten," the "Qual." This was his name for the quality, as others called them. Tom was specially pleased to hear that the farm which he owned and lived ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... his credulity, in thinking it probable that a girl so young, so pretty, so solitary, should have escaped the seductions of Giraudeau, Cabrion, and Germain. Still, for all that, Miss Dimpleton's frankness and originality disposed him to ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... reckless, in opposition to the too ethereal or merely stupid and prosaic aspects of life (though in reality seldom do the dissipated and those who prey on the vices of mankind possess any brilliance or originality), then beauty and virtue will aid vice, through the stimulus of contradiction it will provide. Vice will gain by the brilliance, wit and beauty, which the artists and creators of the world ought to be induced, were the world's cause properly cared ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... century had vulgarised the motive, Correggio's bold attempt to paint heaven in flight from earth—earth left behind in the persons of the Apostles standing round the empty tomb, heaven soaring upward with a spiral vortex into the abyss of light above—had an originality which set at nought all criticism. There is such ecstasy of jubilation, such rapturous rapidity of flight, that we who strain our eyes from below, feel we are in the darkness of the grave which Mary left. A kind of controlling ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... performed feats that most men would have regarded as impossible, both possessed extraordinary personal bravery and exceptional genius for war, and a love for adventure. Both accomplished marvels, and neither was appreciated at his full value by his countrymen, both having a touch of originality that amounted in the case of Peterborough to absolute eccentricity. In other respects they had little in common. Cochrane's life was passed in one long struggle on behalf of the oppressed. He ruined his career in our navy, and created for himself a host of bitter enemies by his crusade ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... was the first to recognize the liberal character of the Church of England, its "Calvinistic Creed and Arminian Clergy"; he was the first to sound the note of Parliamentary reform. One of his earliest measures shows the generosity and originality of his mind. He quieted Scotland by employing its Jacobites in the service of their country and by raising Highland regiments among its clans. The selection of Wolfe and Amherst as generals showed his contempt for precedent and his ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... a compound, of which the ingredients are minuteness, interest, perseverance, ingenuity, audacity, nonchalance, originality, impertinence, and grin. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... tragedy, with its tiresome regularity of form and attempted imitation of the classic drama.[A] And a powerful influence it was in the days of good Queen Anne, so powerful, verily, that it almost emasculated the art of play-writing, and for a time well nigh bereft the stage of originality of thought or freedom of expression. Form, form, that was the cry still ringing in the ears of the author when he put the finishing touches to a production which was to be famous for the nonce, and then go down in the dark ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... Byzantine types. The human figures are long, slender, and swathed almost like mummies in their drapery. The faces are strongly individualized and seem to be portraits. While these statues must be attributed to a period previous to the middle of the twelfth century, we see in them the originality of French genius struggling to break away from the fetters ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... man has struck a solid social foundation on which it can prosper. The individual originality in man is valued; it fructifies art, literature, science, which now, in so far as they are dependent upon the state and ownership—which is far-reaching—must take the direction of prescribed models that are acknowledged, ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... here put together is a compilation from papers in "The Nineteenth Century," and other sources. It has no pretentions to originality, but only to give a brief and connected account of the subject, more condensed and freed from surrounding details than that which the original ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... likely to affect its vitality. Never did an idea go round civilisation so rapidly. Crinoline has already a heavier martyrology than many a creed. The world is used easily, if one can only hit on the proper method; and force of character, originality, of whatever kind, is always certain to make its mark. It is a diamond, and the world is its pane of glass. In a world so commonplace as this, the peculiar man even should be considered a blessing. Humorousness, eccentricity, the habit of looking at men and things from ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... together in the living room. She read aloud to her uncle, who smoked his cigar and listened, commenting on the doings of the story folk with characteristic originality and aptitude. Each night, after the reading was over, he wrote his customary note to Abbie Baker at South Denboro. He made one flying trip to that village: "Just to prove to 'em that I'm still alive," as he explained it. "Some of those folks down there ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... which led to a wider future were already opening. The professors at the Sorbonne appreciated his great intellect and originality. "You have a true vocation," said one. "Follow it. But go to the bar, where your voice, which is one in a thousand, will carry you on, study and intelligence aiding. The lecture room is a narrow theater. If you like, I will write to your father ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden |
