"Devising" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... political and social criminality, against which police repression is particularly directed, will be smaller than that done by the abuse inseparably connected with police power. In the case of atavistic criminality, prevention does not mean handcuffing of the man who is about to commit a crime, but devising such economic and educational measures in the family and administration as will eliminate the causes of crime or attenuate them, precisely because punishment is less ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... be shown all Mrs. Douglass's household arrangements and clever contrivances, of her own or her husband's devising, for lessening or facilitating labour. The lady was proud, and had some reason to be, of the very superb order and neatness of each part and detail. No corner or closet that might not be laid open fearlessly to a visitor's inspection. Miss Catharine was then directed to open her piano, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... for the day, and she went up to her own room. She had no light, and, without undressing, she threw herself on the bed. But no rest came to her. Hour after hour she tossed about, devising reason on reason for disbelieving the woman's ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... heart. Robespierre described the incident to the Convention, and amid prodigious enthusiasm demanded that the body of the young martyr of liberty should be transported to the Pantheon with special pomp, and that David, the artist of the Revolution, should be charged with the duty of devising and embellishing the festival. As it happened, the arrangements were made for the ceremony to take place on the Tenth of Thermidor—a day on which Robespierre and all Paris were concerned about a celebration of bloodier import. Thermidor, however, was still ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... Spanish dollar, from Louisiana and Cuba, had begun to supersede it as a measure of value. In New England the shilling had sunk from nearly one fourth to one sixth of a dollar; in New York to one eighth; in North Carolina to one tenth. It was partly for this reason that in devising a national coinage the more uniform dollar was adopted as the unit. At the same time the decimal system of division was adopted instead of the cumbrous English system, and the result was our present admirably simple currency, which we owe to Gouverneur Morris, aided as to some points by Thomas ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... Jack had made, instead of increasing his fever, had a beneficial effect, so it seemed, as it restored his spirits in a way that nothing else would have done. All his thoughts were now occupied in devising a scheme for carrying off Elizabeth from ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... of a countless army of sharpers is constantly at work in this country, devising plans to obtain funds dishonestly, without work, but, in fact, they often expend more time, skill, and labor in carrying out their nefarious schemes than would serve to earn the sum they finally secure, by honest labor. Every banker must, ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... affair, notwithstanding the many weary, puzzling, disheartening months spent in its construction. The damaged, almost useless dynamo from the Doraine had to be repaired and conveyed to the crest of the eminence; what seemed to be fruitless ages were consumed in devising an engine with power sufficient to produce even the feeble results that followed. And when the task of installing the plant was completed, the effective radius was far short of a hundred miles. Constant efforts were being ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... without some more elastic notation and machinery such as algebra provides, geometry was practically at the end of its resources. For some time, however, there were capable geometers who kept up the tradition, filling in details, devising alternative solutions of problems, or discovering new ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Bainbridge, I go to my summer home on the Hudson near Newburgh, where letters will reach me. This is the twenty-eighth of August; on the fifth of September, at noon meet me in the station at Newburgh. Come prepared to devote a week at the least in discussing the scope and plan of our work, devising ways and means etc. I very much desire that you have an interview with my father, I know he will be pleased with you. Do these arrangements suit your convenience? Do they meet your ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... they were hostile to your high benevolence, and as for women and children you need not even dream of excusing yourself to me. These English are no better than Armenians. It is necessary to extirpate them, and the younger you catch them the less time they have for devising wickedness against the Chosen of Allah. As for women, they need hardly be taken into account. In all these matters I know by your actions that you agree. You must proceed on your noble course until the last of these infidels is swept ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... was any, and the De Nugis Curialium shows us in him, side by side with a satirical and humorous bent, the leaning to romance and to the marvellous which only extremely shallow people believe to be alien from humour. But it is necessary for scholarship of the kind just referred to to be always devising some new thing. Frenchmen, Germans, and Celticising partisans have grudged an Englishman the glory of the exploit; and there has been of late a tendency to deny or slight Map's claims. His deposition, however, rests ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... miracles the Australian supply officers deserve the credit for them. The divisional trains worked hard in those strenuous days, and the 'Q' staff of the Desert Mounted Corps had many a sleepless night devising plans to get that last ounce out of their transport men and to get that little extra amount of supplies to the front which meant the difference between want and a sufficiency for ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... home organization the other multifarious tasks of devising new weapons for the war, improving the various types of aircraft, building larger submarines and guns of greater calibre went forward with unimpaired speed. Nothing was too vast or too complicated to be undertaken, no detail was too trivial to be studied. Politics, ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... rather recognise a place for fools' hypotheses, as Darwin did for "fools' experiments." But to complete the scientific character, there must be great patience, accuracy, and impartiality in examining and testing these conjectures, as well as great ingenuity in devising experiments to that end. The want of these qualities leads to crude work and public failure and brings hypotheses into derision. Not partially and hastily to believe in one's own guesses, nor petulantly or timidly to reject them, ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... little beyond and above the mere seeker after food. He was never entirely dormant, a sleeper on the skins and beech leaves, even when in the shelter of the cave, after the day's adventures. He reasoned according to such gifts as circumstances had afforded him and he had the instinct of devising. An instinct toward devising was a great thing to its possessor in the time of the ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... separate until blood was drawn. Of course, there were some difficulties to be overcome in bringing about the meeting, but, where the parties are willing, most difficulties are surmounted with tolerable ease. This being the case at present, it followed that both minds were busy at the same moment in devising the when, the how, and ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... has there been a man better equipped with literary gifts to preach a new gospel than Francis Bacon. He spent years in devising eloquent and ingenious ways of delivering learning from the "discredits and disgraces" of the past, and in exhorting man to explore the realms of nature for his delight and profit. He never wearied of trumpeting forth the glories of ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... the incidents of yesterday, Sir Samuel desired his chauffeur to take the wheel again from Nevers to Paris. But—no doubt with the view of keeping us apart, and devising new tortures for his enemy—Bertie elected to play Wolf to Jack's Spartan Boy, and sit beside him. This relegated me to the cage again, with back-massage ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... waited upon him at the appointed time; and we were conducted by him to his father, in whose presence the dispute with Eimeo was again talked over. Being very desirous of devising some method to bring about an accommodation, I sounded the old chief on that head. But we found him deaf to any such proposal, and fully determined to prosecute the war. He repeated the solicitations which I had already resisted, about giving them my assistance. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... important duties were now entrusted to him; and he soon became the travelling agent of the bank; which enabled him also to gratify his taste for the arts and sciences. He made the tour of the French provinces, making commerce his study, and devising means to render it flourishing. In 1648, he was introduced at Court, where his rare merit and conscientiousness in all affairs gained him great esteem. He was created Marquis of Croissy, and afterwards ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... the least given to fighting for the sake of fighting; on the contrary, the thought of bloodshed is abhorrent to them. All they wish is to be allowed to pursue their peaceful, partriarchal industries, as their fathers did before them, under laws of their own devising. But things have come to such a pass that their lives, their property and the honor of their women are not safe from the malice, cupidity and lust of their rulers. And even under such conditions the thought of a radical revolution does not occur ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... for subordination and the honours of birth; for I can hardly tell who was my grandfather[763].' He maintained the dignity and propriety of male succession, in opposition to the opinion of one of our friends[764], who had that day employed Mr. Chambers to draw his will, devising his estate to his three sisters, in preference to a remote heir male. Johnson called them 'three dowdies,' and said, with as high a spirit as the boldest Baron in the most perfect days of the feudal system, 'An ancient estate ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... unquiet companion. "But no, I had forgotten; we must give chase to these (hiccup) to these rascals. Now there's that son Bill of mine fast asleep, I suppose, in the arms of his little wife. They do nothing but lie in bed, while their poor old father is obliged to be up at all hours, devising plans for the good of the King's service, God bless him! But I shall soon (hiccup)!—Whoa Silvertail! whoa I say. D—n you, you brute, do you mean ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... a little blunt, "This scheme that you are advertising Was all along a private stunt Of WILSON'S singular devising; His game we weren't allowed to know; Under a misty smile he masked it; We never gave him leave to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... first, and the browning subsequently developing slowly. The writer was a student in the laboratory of Baron Liebig during the time that distinguished chemist was carrying out the series of experiments which resulted in devising a method of making silver mirrors commercially. One of the greatest troubles with which he had to contend was this browning—the cause for which was never fully cleared up by him. Some years ago, the writer, having in his possession two mirrors made by Liebig, and which had ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... companion: again a mysterious agent had interposed in their behalf. This second sacrifice cast dismay into the ranks of the assailants; and just as the sun was disappearing behind the western hills, the foe withdrew a short distance, for the purpose of devising new modes of attack. The respite came most seasonably to the scouts, who had bravely kept their position, and boldly maintained the unequal fight from the middle of ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... humility of Jenkins, his paternal smile in the duchess's presence, giving place instantly when he was left alone, to a savage expression of wrath and hatred, a criminal pallor, the pallor of a Castaing or a Lapommerais devising his sinister schemes. ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... commander, and knew well that when it came to a face to face encounter with him there could be no dodging. He must swallow his words or give his authority. Wilkins, therefore, had important business of his own or his able wife's devising which kept him from going to camp during the evening, and Stannard, being only the major, could not order him thither in the face of the colonel's permission to be absent. He trudged back across the prairie in no amiable mood, therefore, and swore in stalwart Anglo-Saxon ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... of criminals is correct, it is evident that it is very important both in studying the causes of crime and in devising practical measures for dealing with the criminal class; for the instinctive criminal, the habitual criminal, and the single offender manifestly need very different methods of treatment. One of the gravest faults of the criminal law and of penal institutions hitherto is that they have ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... so intently upon the cruel murder of his father that he was constantly on the verge of insanity, devising plans to either slaughter himself or wreak a terrible vengeance upon ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... not until the moment had actually arrived for him to do so that the full force of the calamity appeared to burst upon him. Up to that moment he had been working harder than any other man on board; and whilst his body had been actively engaged, his mind was no less busy devising expedients for the preservation of the noble ship with the lives and cargo which she carried, and for the safety of all of which he was responsible. But now all that was done with; the ship and cargo were hopelessly lost, and the time had come when they ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... local government itself the parishioners have practically no voice, the large measure of freedom they enjoy for the devising of ways and means to meet the demands made upon them (though they have no option whatever in granting or withholding supplies) gives to the parish a vigorous entity and a certain autonomous life of its own, which otherwise it never ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware
... who stand below the throne of the Lamb, receiving his commands to protect the Gospel against all its enemies in Hell, in Rome and in France, in Constantinople, in Africa and in India, and wherever else they may be, devising plans for its destruction. I am the Angel who saved thee beneath the Castle of Belial, and who showed thee the vanity and madness of all the earth, the City of Destruction and the splendor of Emmanuel's ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... Tellicherry sailing under a Bombay pass. From the master they learned that the Bombay squadron, with Macrae in command, was cruising in search of them. They were roused to fury by this news of Macrae's 'ingratitude,' and vied with each other in devising the tortures to which they would subject him if he fell into their hands again, while their anger was vented on England and all who had stood up for Macrae after the capture of the Cassandra. Before long they were sighted by Brown, who bore down on them and signalled them to heave to. This ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... of Ebronia, to prevent the Succession of the Eagle's Line, makes a Will, and supplies the Proviso of Renunciation by Devising, Giving or Bequeathing the Crown to the Grandson ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... in the stock language of Indictments for Blasphemy, as may be seen on reference to Archibold, with "being wicked and evil-disposed persons, and disregarding the laws and religion of the realm, and wickedly and profanely devising and intending to asperse and vilify Almighty God, and to bring the Holy Scriptures and the Christian Religion into disbelief ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... covers nearly the whole range of the practical and inventive field, and is of much value to inventors, draughtsmen, mechanics, machinists, engineers and all others interested in any way in the devising and operation of mechanical ...
— Practical Pointers for Patentees • Franklin Cresee
... her chair to hide her face from him, fairly cornered at last, brain a-whirl devising a hundred maneuvers, each more helpless than the last, to cheat and divert him for the time, until ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... mother of the gods, lifted up herself against them, gathering her forces, madly raging. The gods united themselves together with her, until (all) that had been created marched at her side. Banning the day they followed Tiamat, wrathful, devising mischief, untiring (?) day and night, prepared for the conflict, fiercely raging, they gathered themselves together and began the battle. The mother of the deep (?) (Khubur), the creatress of them all, added victorious weapons, creating monstrous serpents, ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... 'I have been devising, my noble young friend, allow me to call you so, by what means I should best make myself understood to you; and how most effectually prevail on you to contribute to my happiness, and to those great ends for which souls of ardour ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... established order made earning an honest living hard work; saw thousands living well without labor apparently, other thousands robbing under cover of legal technicalities; a legal profession living by devising statutes to punish crimes and prosecuting the criminals thus manufactured; often living better yet by teaching criminals to escape the penalties which their law imposed. He saw reform schools which instructed such children as he had been to become such men as he was; prisons and penitentiaries ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... with the beatings of a desperately anxious heart. Our Andrew, although an artist dead set on perfection and a shrewd man of business, was young, pitiful and generous. The pleading dog's look in Elodie's eyes was too much for him. He felt powerless to resist. His brain worked swiftly, devising all kinds of artistic possibilities. Besides, was not Fate accomplishing itself by presenting this ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... sold his horses, sold his hawks and hounds, Rented his vineyards and his garden-grounds, Kept but one steed, his favourite steed of all, To starve and shiver in a naked stall, And day by day sat brooding in his chair, Devising plans how best to hoard and spare. At length he said: "What is the use or need To keep at my own cost this lazy steed, Eating his head off in my stables here, When rents are low and provender is dear? Let ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... entrusted with the responsibility of administering the back lands, Congress immediately entered upon the work of arranging a method for their survey and sale, and of devising a feasible government to be extended over them. The pressing need of securing a revenue from them, together with a realisation that prospective purchasers would require protection both from each other and from the savages, impelled the members to immediate action. Against ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... if Evan Knowlton or any other young officer had lost his heart to her. But she isn't dressed, thought Gertrude; and the next moment a shadow crossed her heart as Diana's sun-bonnet came off, and a wealth of dark hair was revealed, knotted into a crown of nature's devising, which art could never outdo. "I'll find out about Evan," ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... more craving and impatient. They made no allowance for the distance and the difficulties of the way, and loudly inveighed against the tardiness with which the royal commands were executed. They even suspected Atahuallpa of devising this scheme only to gain a pretext for communicating with his subjects in distant places, and of proceeding as dilatorily as possible, in order to secure time for the execution of his plans. Rumors of a rising among the Peruvians were circulated, and the Spaniards were in apprehension of some ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... another; and by means of levers, windlasses, and screws, he showed the way to raise and draw great weights, together with methods for emptying harbours, and pumps for removing water from low places, things which his brain never ceased from devising; and of these ideas and labours many drawings may be seen, scattered abroad among our craftsmen; and I myself have seen not a few. He even went so far as to waste his time in drawing knots of cords, made according to an order, that from ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... a twin to mirth. We were always having festivities. The duke was ingenious in devising reasons for them. Because he was Scotch by origin, he celebrated all the peculiar Scottish festivals; because he was English by residence, he celebrated all the peculiar English festivals; because in his youth the "Old Style" of computing the year was still used, he first of all held ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... turn out to be nothing, I know," she said coldly. "You're always devising some new way of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... although devised by Calvin, was not imposed by him upon unwilling subjects, but established by a free and decisive vote of the people, in the exercise of its sovereignty, and influenced to its adoption by the same considerations that had determined Calvin himself in devising it.[424] ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... practices it may be assumed that they are fixed in general by climatic and topographical conditions. Where food is plentiful, thought and life are likely to be freer. In general, savage peoples are constantly on the alert to discover supplies of food, and they show ingenuity in devising economic methods—when one resource fails they look for another. Hunters and fishers are dependent on wild animals for food, and stand in awe of them. The domestication of animals leads men to regard them simply as material for the maintenance of life—the mystery that ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... not the simile too dignified to express that vile race, who, by a hundred devices all tending to one common end, live upon the wants of needy greatness, or administer to the pleasures of summer-teeming luxury, or stimulate the wild wishes of lavish and wasteful extravagance, by devising new modes and fresh motives of profusion. There stood the projector, with his mysterious brow, promising unbounded wealth to whomsoever might choose to furnish the small preliminary sum necessary to change egg-shells into the great arcanum. There was Captain Seagull, undertaker ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... and for him, and then remain for a quarter of a century a cumberer of the home and earth. Such waste of strength, time and accumulated capital would be cried out upon as wretched mismanagement were the scheme of human devising. ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... morning." From that moment Tommy was her devoted slave. Nobody had ever spoken like that to him before; nobody had ever smiled so at him. Tommy would have given his useless little life for Bessie, and thenceforth the time he was not devising mischief he spent in bringing little pleasures into her life. It was Tommy's delight to bring that smile to her pale little face and a look of pleasure into her big, patient blue eyes. The other boys on the street tried to tease Bessie at first and shouted ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was the shaft of an abler man than he—no other than Harvey Anderson, who had lately become known to the world by a book proving King John to have been the most enlightened and patriotic of English sovereigns, enduring the Interdict on a pure principle of national independence, and devising Magna Charta from his own generous brain—in fact, presenting a magnificent and misunderstood anticipation of the most advanced theories of the nineteenth century. The book had made so much noise in the world, that the author had been induced to quit his college ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was far on his homeward way, The rising night in his face, behind him the dying day. Rahero saw him go by, and the heart of Rahero was glad, Devising shame to the king and nowise harm to the lad; And all that dwelt by the way saw and saluted him well, For he had the face of a friend and the news of the town to tell; And pleased with the notice of folk, and pleased that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the East-end are a continual heavy burden on our heart; much thought and care are being bestowed in devising and perfecting plans for winning their young lives to the Saviour, and fitting them for honourable service for God and man. This great preventive work among those young bread-winners can only be successfully accomplished by those who, through studying their ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... upon his own share of the work no time was wasted by Lord Cochrane. He had already made himself acquainted with the naval resources of Greece, and done much in devising measures for augmenting them. He had resolved upon the first enterprise to be entered upon; and, while rapidly completing his arrangements for it, he did everything in his power to quicken in the hearts of the Greeks a patriotism as pure and zealous as was his own ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... reflected upon as one of our blessed years. It was not remarkable for any extraordinary occurrence; but there was a hopefulness in the minds of men, and a planning of new undertakings, of which, whatever may be the upshot, the devising is ever rich in ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... answered, "except your part of it, which you shouldn't have done. It was not arranged in honor of 'visiting ladies.' But you mustn't think me a comedian. Truly, I didn't plan it. My friend from Six-Cross-Roads must be given the credit of devising the ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... found himself quite active in devising and assisting various minor displays of squibs, rockets and colored lights. Then he got mixed up in a general rush for the sheer top of the hill amid the excited announcement that something unusual was going ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... the huge organism of modern society, which requires for its existence and for its development the maintenance of credit and of order. Burke's imagination led him to look out over the whole land: the legislator devising new laws, the judge expounding and enforcing old ones, the merchant despatching his goods and extending his credit, the banker advancing the money of his customers upon the credit of the merchant, the frugal man slowly accumulating the store which is to support him in ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... a committee of which he was chairman, and a report was made in favor of the measure. This led to the convention of Annapolis, and the subsequent adoption of the Federal Constitution. Monroe also exerted himself in devising a system for the settlement of the public lands, and was appointed a member of the committee to decide the boundary between Massachusetts and New York. He strongly opposed the relinquishment of the right to navigate the Mississippi river as ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... the purpose of making Mrs. Quirk happy, devising a hundred means to accomplish this. In the house she interested the old lady in reading, with fancy work, and, above all, with the artistic ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... taking of the habit, the interment of living souls. Add individual tortures to national degradations, and, whoever you may be, you will shudder before the frock and the veil,—those two winding-sheets of human devising. Nevertheless, at certain points and in certain places, in spite of philosophy, in spite of progress, the spirit of the cloister persists in the midst of the nineteenth century, and a singular ascetic recrudescence is, at this moment, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the historian, cannot let so great an element alone. By the cheap revolutionary it is commonly supposed that imagination is a merely rebellious thing, that it has its chief function in devising new and fantastic republics. But imagination has its highest use in a retrospective realization. The trumpet of imagination, like the trumpet of the Resurrection, calls the dead out of their graves. ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... could not have known. Could not have known that this thing he wrought spelled at once Beginning and End: that no such shocking departure remains long sole-possessed, either shaft or fire or mushroom-shape: that with each great thing of man's devising comes question and doubt ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... young lady at the chateau was very ill, he set about devising some means of informing her of her friend's safety. He went to La Verberie several times on pretended errands, and finally succeeded in seeing Valentine. One of the servants was present, so he could not speak to her; ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... In this he was not singular. The professed treatises of this time on poetry, of which there were several, assume the same theory, as the mode of "reforming" and duly elevating English verse. It was eagerly accepted by Philip Sidney and his Areopagus of wits at court, who busied themselves in devising rules of their own—improvements as they thought on those of the university men—for English hexameters and sapphics, or as they called it, artificial versifying. They regarded the comparative value of the native English rhythms and the classical ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... screwed to the topmost peg. I ran to the house in Soho, and (to make assurance doubly sure) destroyed my papers; thence I set out through the lamplit streets, in the same divided ecstasy of mind, gloating on my crime, light-headedly devising others in the future, and yet still hastening and still hearkening in my wake for the steps of the avenger. Hyde had a song upon his lips as he compounded the draught, and as he drank it, pledged the dead man. ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... the pontiffs of science. Who pervert young people by laying down such rules of hygiene? Who pervert women by devising and teaching them ways by which ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... him: Till Mark her lord had past, the Cornish king, With six or seven, when Tristram was away, And snatch'd her thence; yet dreading worse than shame Her warrior Tristram, spake not any word, But bode his hour, devising wretchedness. ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... at midnight on Saturdays and Sundays, the tables and the chairs are cleared away for the masked ball; and you will see the latest mode of Spanish dance. The women are of the lowest possible class; some, with a kind of savage irony, disguised as nuns, others in grotesque dominos of their own devising; but most wear every-day clothes with great shawls draped about them. The men are of a corresponding station, and through the evening wear their broad-brimmed hats. On the stage is a brass band, which plays one single tune till day-break, and to that one single ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... supply of fuel was prepared, Jim returned home. Full of pity for Mag, he set about devising measures for her relief. "By golly!" said he to himself one day—for he had become so absorbed in Mag's interest that he had fallen into a habit of musing aloud—"By golly! I ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... desired, to avoid the torture. The fiscal said he mocked them, ordered him to be fastened up again, and to receive the water torture. After suffering this for some time, he desired to be let down again to make his confession, devising as well as he could what he should say. Accordingly, he said that he, with Thomson, Johnson, Brown, and Fardo, had plotted about ten weeks before, to surprise the castle with the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... northwestern frontiers of the United States, and gained much valuable information which he laid before the Government. As he was a man of delicate constitution, we cannot but admire his indomitable spirit in ever devising new projects of usefulness to his fellow men. It was impossible for ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... against known disloyal secret organizations, secret loyal leagues were rightfully resorted to as a means of united and concentrated action against organized disloyalty. And if, in resisting moral evils, secrecy gives power and advantage in devising measures to resist vice and crime, it is not sinful to ...
— Secret Societies • David MacDill, Jonathan Blanchard, and Edward Beecher
... Ffolliot belonged to a previous generation he would probably, when angry, have whacked his sons and whacked them hard. They would infinitely have preferred it. But his fastidious taste revolted from the idea of corporal punishment, and his ingenuity in devising peculiarly disagreeable penalties in expiation of their various offences, was the cause of much tribulation ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... astonished at the effrontery with which Lord Byron has acknowledged his lampoon, we infinitely prefer it to the cowardly prudence of the author or authors of the Twopenny Post-bag lurking behind a fictitious name, and "devising impossible slanders," which he or they have not the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... crown whose weight he could no longer bear, and placed the same upon the head of his son Philip (see p. 534), who was a most zealous Catholic. Philip remained in the Netherlands after his coronation four years, employing much of his time in devising means to root out the heresy of Protestantism. In 1559 he set sail for Spain, never ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... in the Hermetic fragment are of course the eyes, a mechanism inferior in many ways to the camera of man's own devising. The phenomena of clairvoyance make known a mode of vision which is confined to no specific sense organ, approximating much more closely to true perception than does physical sight. Mr. C.W. Leadbeater in Clairvoyance specifically affirms that this higher power ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... was at this particular period, I should in all probability have perished. Her exhortations saved me from despair, when our position seemed to have grown quite desperate. But example did more, even, than precept. Her ingenuity in devising expedients; her activity in putting them in force; her unfailing cheerfulness under disappointment, and Christian resignation under privation, produced the best results. I was enabled to bear up against the ill effects of our crippled resources, consequent upon the ill conduct ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... tremendous era, in Nathaniel Pipkin's life, and it was the only one that had ever occurred to ruffle the smooth current of his quiet existence, when happening one fine afternoon, in a fit of mental abstraction, to raise his eyes from the slate on which he was devising some tremendous problem in compound addition for an offending urchin to solve, they suddenly rested on the blooming countenance of Maria Lobbs, the only daughter of old Lobbs, the great saddler over the way. Now, the eyes of Mr. Pipkin had rested on the pretty face of ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... according to his own thought and plan. If it were to be acceptable—a sweet savour unto the LORD—it must be an offering in every respect such as GOD had appointed. We cannot become acceptable to GOD in ways of our own devising; from beginning to end it must be, "Not my will, but ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... until my days of dotage come, and I cease remembering anything. "Hal will be home for Easter; he will bring two or three of his friends with him from Cambridge," she says. And straightway she falls to devising schemes for amusing the boys. When is she ever occupied, but with plans for ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... portion of our life consists in devising means and medication to relieve us of our states of ill health and disease. Sanitation and all the methods we are capable of discovering and inventing are becoming universally applied to kill and to destroy the menacing germs that God causes to inhabit ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... Thus he ran on, devising reasons for not thinking too harshly of the Devil. Most of it was an abridgement of some verses Jurgen had composed, in the shop when business ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... did not abandon the idea. His display of anger upon leaving the hotel had been due mainly to disappointment at the checkmate. But knowing well the hold he possessed upon the older woman, he laid it away for later use when the fight grew hot, and meanwhile devoted himself to devising further measures by which to harass his enemy and incidentally advance his ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... nearly had his breath taken away at Question time. Close student of methods of WORTHINGTON EVANS, Mrs. Gummidge of Parliamentary life, not yet recovered from depression as he sits below Gangway "thinking of the old 'un" (MASTERMAN). The Major has of late displayed much industry in devising abstruse conundrums designed to bring to light dark places in working of Insurance Act. In MASTERMAN'S enforced and regretted absence, duty of replying to this class of Question on behalf of Minister undertaken ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... ardent and too early stimulated nature was constantly increased by the restraints and narrow routine of the boarding school. She was always devising means to break in upon it. She had a taste which would have seemed ludicrous to her mates, if they had not felt some awe of her, from a touch of genius and power that never left her, for costume and fancy dresses, always some ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... and blood of wretches who, since their organisation, have introduced crimes and language into England to which it was previously almost a stranger—by purchasing, with paper, shares by hundreds in the schemes to execute which he contracts, and which are of his own devising; which shares he sells as soon as they are at a high premium, to which they are speedily forced by means of paragraphs, inserted by himself and agents, in newspapers devoted to his interest, utterly reckless of the terrible depreciation to which they are almost instantly subjected. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... he could quite well understand. He even rejoiced over those battles. He mistook the Duchess's heartless coquetry for modesty; and he would not have had her otherwise. So he had loved to see her devising obstacles; was he not gradually triumphing over them? Did not every victory won swell the meagre sum of lovers' intimacies long denied, and at last conceded with every sign of love? Still, he had had such ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... cottage, the floor swept, every dish washed and set aside; and Gibbie was examining an old shoe of Robert's, to see whether he could not mend it. Janet, having therefore leisure, proceeded at once with joy to the construction of a garment she had been devising for him. The design was simple, and its execution easy. Taking a blue winsey petticoat of her own, drawing it in round his waist, and tying it over the chemise which was his only garment, she found, as she had expected, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... the past one hundred years of American industry. The fact that this foundation was not built of mutual confidence, real justice, constructive good will is what makes the task of necessary reconstruction so extremely difficult. Countless persons might be capable of devising the mechanical approach to peace and prosperity—courts of arbitration, boards of representation, and the like. But how bring about a change of heart in ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... devising the best means of obviating the present danger, while the persons whom he beheld glimmered before him, less like distinct and individual forms, than like the phantoms of a fever, or the phantasmagoria with which a disease of the optic nerves has been known to people a sick ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various
... Counting-house;' another to the 'Bottle Department; a third to the 'Wholesale Department;' a fourth to 'The Wine Promenade;' and so forth, until we are in daily expectation of meeting with a 'Brandy Bell,' or a 'Whiskey Entrance.' Then, ingenuity is exhausted in devising attractive titles for the different descriptions of gin; and the dram-drinking portion of the community as they gaze upon the gigantic black and white announcements, which are only to be equalled in size by ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... disorder could not be the normal condition of man. And so we see them pass at once from the battle-field to the council-chamber. The fierce warrior of yesterday is the thoughtful legislator of to-day. The first interval of repose was ever employed in devising means for giving stability to their acquisitions, and a constitutional form to the society in which they were to be vested. Among the Teutons, such a task was never referred to the wisdom of any one leader, however successful,—any oligarchy of chiefs, however eminent. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... Sunday to his friend's room. She was then living alone, having quitted Mrs. Ogle the day after that decisive call upon Julian. There was really no need for her to have done so, Mrs. Ogle's part in the comedy being an imaginary one of Harriet's devising. But Julian was led entirely by his cousin, and, as she knew quite well, there was not the least danger of his going on his own account to the shop in Gray's Inn Road; he dreaded the ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... half an hour to devise a completely wacky and unorthodox way of hitting the holes in the enemy advance. He checked the time carefully, because there's no point in devising a strategy if the battle is too far gone to use it by the ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... always turning up, and needful things were often lacking. The most ordinary comforts of the sick-room, or what are considered so in America, were hard to come by, and much of Katy's time was spent in devising substitutes ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... covering before the doors and in the unsheltered streets, and possessing so far his mother's nature as being ever the companion of want. Yet, sharing also that of his father, he is forever scheming to obtain things good and beautiful; he is fearless, vehement, and strong; always devising some new contrivance; strictly cautious and full of inventive resource; a philosopher through his whole existence, a powerful enchanter, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... to talk of Willie to Lyndsay, and treasured up as household words any little anecdotes they could collect of his colonial life. Mrs. W. and her two daughters were highly accomplished, elegant women. They took a deep interest in the fate of the emigrants, and were always devising plans ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... on the first stage of his journey out into the world, the two turned back toward the broader path, which led to the southwest until it met the North Wilkesboro' road. The two walked side by side, along this lovers' lane of nature's kindly devising. They went sedately, in all seeming, for the mountain folk are chary in demonstrations of affection. Yet, beneath the austere mask imposed by convention, their hearts were thrilling with the rapture each found in the near ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... this date. For here, it was thought, ended the period during which the word revealed from Sinai and Zion to the apostles and prophets was the only rule of doctrine and Church discipline without any mixture of Babylon or the City of the Seven Hills, or of policy of man's devising; when the Church was 'Beautiful as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, terrible as ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... to learn from the Bureau of Education the extent to which educational privileges throughout the United States have been advanced during the year. No more fundamental responsibility rests upon Congress than that of devising appropriate measures of financial aid to education, supplemental to local action in the States and Territories and in the District of Columbia. The wise forethought of the founders of our Government has not only furnished the basis ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... States; and their requisitions, if conformable to the rule of apportionment, are in every constitutional sense obligatory upon the States. These have no right to question the propriety of the demand; no discretion beyond that of devising the ways and means of furnishing the sums demanded. But though this be strictly and truly the case; though the assumption of such a right would be an infringement of the articles of Union; though it may seldom or never have been avowedly claimed, yet in practice ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... upon the task with redoubled enthusiasm. He was encouraged from results obtained to give every possible aid to the indomitable and optimistic Dr. Hollman. There were months of persistent effort, the devising of expensive and complicated apparatus, including a special furnace for intense heat. At last the precise ethyl ester desired—with a number of others—was secured. Injections were made as before into the hips of patients—the large muscles were selected ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... the Prince's jester; a very dull fool, only his gift is in devising unprofitable slanders; none but libertines delight in him, and the commendation is not in his wit, but in his villany, for he both pleases men and angers them, and then they laugh at him ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... armed; but sought to practise on those who were pious and observant of truth, as imbeciles. 26. As another might take a pride in religion, and truth, and justice, so Menon took a pride in being able to deceive, in devising falsehoods, in sneering at friends; and thought the man who was guileless was to be regarded as deficient in knowledge of the world. He believed that he must conciliate those, in whose friendship he wished to ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... of misplaced confidence. Other things fare rather better—not much—but my poor gowns are only hopeless wrecks, and I am reduced to some old yachting dresses of ticking and serge. The price of washing, as this spoiling process is pleasantly called, is enormous, and I exhaust my faculties in devising more economical arrangements. We can't wash at home, for the simple reason that we have no water, no proper appliances of any sort, and to build and buy such would cost a small fortune. But a tall, white-aproned Kafir, with a badge upon his arm, comes now at daylight every Monday morning ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... to the ladies in the churches of the variety of work sustained by the Association and to assist in devising ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various
... work, Dioptrics, is said to have been a favorite book with Newton. During the later part of his life, however, Huygens again devoted himself to inventing and constructing telescopes, grinding the lenses, and devising, if not actually making, the frame for holding them. These telescopes were of enormous lengths, three of his object-glasses, now in possession of the Royal Society, being of 123, 180, and 210 feet focal length respectively. Such instruments, if constructed ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... of his undertaking, than was Mr. Sieppe during this period of preparation. From dawn to dark, from dark to early dawn, he toiled and planned and fretted, organizing and reorganizing, projecting and devising. The trunks were lettered, A, B, and C, the packages and smaller bundles numbered. Each member of the family had his especial duty to perform, his particular bundles to oversee. Not a detail was forgotten—fares, ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... lover of me and all my progeny, For grace to you I take her ever to my retinue. Over thy form, dear child, alas! my art Cannot prevail; but mine immortalising Touch I lay upon thy heart. Thy soul's fair shape In my unfading mantle's green I drape, And thy white mind shall rest by my devising A Gideon-fleece amid life's dusty drouth. If Even burst yon globed yellow grape (Which is the sun to mortals' sealed sight) Against her stained mouth; Or if white-handed light Draw thee yet dripping from the quiet pools, Still lucencies and cools, ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... devising mine estate, and establishing mine unstable mind, when I heard the words of a wise teacher calling loudly to me thus, 'Come ye out,' said he, 'all ye that will to be saved. Be ye separate from the vanity of the world, for the fashion ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... busy scenes of public life, I am solacing myself with those tranquil enjoyments, of which the soldier who is ever in pursuit of fame, the statesman whose watchful days and sleepless nights are spent in devising schemes to promote the welfare of his own, perhaps the ruin of other countries, as if this globe was insufficient for us all—and the courtier who is always watching the countenance of his prince in the hope of catching a gracious smile—can ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... a certain Chief hears of a gathering with the Chief of the city of Ciidsa (Kadesh on Orontes, the capital of the southern Hittites); devising hostilities, ready to fight, you have made alliance. And if so, why dost thou so? Why should a chief foregather with a chief save that he is on his side? But if you cause what is assured to be done, and you respect the orders to yourself and to him, I say nothing more as to the ...
— Egyptian Literature
... years[6], and so great was the devastation as to occasion great inconvenience to the colony for many years afterwards, from the want of timber. Don Henry appears to have been a prince of most uncommonly enlarged and liberal views; not only capable of devising the means of making maritime discoveries, which had never been thought of before his time, but of estimating their value when made, and of applying them to purposes the most useful and important for his country. Reflecting upon the reported fertility of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... return them to the House of Representatives with his objections. It is in his power also to propose amendments in the existing revenue laws, suggested by his observations upon their defective or injurious operation. But the delicate duty of devising schemes of revenue should be left where the Constitution has placed it—with the immediate representatives of the people. For similar reasons the mode of keeping the public treasure should be prescribed by them, and the further removed it may be from the control of the Executive the more ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... sound of their voices outside the house, Nicholas, who had passed a sleepless night, devising schemes for the recovery of his lost charge, started from his bed, and joyfully admitted them. There was so much noisy conversation, and congratulation, and indignation, that the remainder of the family were soon awakened, and Smike received a warm and cordial welcome, not only from Kate, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... Sickness attacked the latter violently on the journey and during the voyage, giving rise in Rome to an expectation of his death. They did not believe, however, that he was lingering so much by reason of ill health as because he was devising some harm, and consequently they expected to fall victims to every possible persecution. Yet they voted to these men many honors for their victory, such as would have been given assuredly to the others, had they conquered; in such crises it is ever the case that all trample on the loser ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... be delivered, that the picture no longer pleased him,—since, while it had turned out quite well in its details, it was not well composed as a whole, because it had been produced in this gradual manner; and he had committed a blunder at the outset, in not at least devising a general plan for light and shade, as well as for color, according to which the single flowers might have been arranged. He scrutinized, in my presence, the minutest parts of the picture, which had ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... impossible ever to allow him to be a partner with us again after this discovery. He was not such, however, but the ablest of practical mechanics with some business ability. Mr. Kloman's ambition had been to be in the office, where he was worse than useless, rather than in the mill devising and running new machinery, where he was without a peer. We had some difficulty in placing him in his proper position and keeping him there, which may have led him to seek an outlet elsewhere. He was perhaps flattered by men who were well known in the community; and in this case he was ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... ascetic, or naked philosopher, as the Greeks called him, exhausted his imagination in devising schemes of self-torture. He buried himself with his nose just above the ground, or wore an iron collar, or suspended weights from his body. He clenched his fists until the nails grew into his palms, ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... time. General Elles was a great chap, full of "go," and a tremendous worker. Hotblack, mild and gentle, full of charm; one could hardly imagine he had all those D.S.O.'s, and wound stripes—Hotblack, who liked to go for a walk and sit down and read poetry. He said it took his mind off devising plans to kill ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... are now broken and scattered; lament over one daughter of the Puritans who took the veil in a Roman Catholic convent; sternly relate, in Rabelaisian frankness, dark sins, punished with mediaeval justice. In fact, these righteous early colonists seemed to find a genuine satisfaction in devising punishments, and in putting them into practice. We read that the stocks (also called "bilbaos" because they were formerly manufactured in Bilbao, in Spain) were first occupied by the man who had made ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... verses, and acting a whole repertoire of parts, both laughter-raising and tear-compelling—now, by waking in the night, and cheating her restlessness by inventions that alternately diverted and teased her companions. She was always devising means to infringe upon the school-room routine. This involved her at last in a trouble, from which she was only extricated by the judicious tenderness of her teacher—the circumstances attending which 'crisis' are detailed at length in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various |
