"Invention" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thus follows that Nature has provided in the change of mechanism for a new register, which is nothing else than a change of mechanism with a corresponding change of function. It will be at once apparent that the claim that registers are an invention of men, and without foundation in nature, is without support in anatomy and physiology. The crico-thyroid is probably, however, of much more importance to tragic actors and barytones than to tenors or sopranos. This, however, is no excuse for the neglect of its development by the latter class, ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... were united in death as in life. The poet Statius remarks that "to love a wife when she is living is pleasure; to love her when dead, a solemn duty" (Silvae, in prooemio). Yet some theologians would have us believe that conjugal love and fidelity is an invention ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... and under the pseudonym of "Estibius Psychalethes" dedicated to the clergy his Second Thoughts concerning the Human Soul, in which he contended that the notion of the soul as a separate immaterial substance was "a plain heathenist invention:" not exactly a position the clergy were likely to welcome, although the author repeatedly avowed his belief in an eternal future life. In 1704 the Doctor published his Grand Essay: a Vindication of Reason ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... the United States all joined as allies in the cause of the world's freedom. In accord with this idea, the highest mountain looking upon the sea has been named the Flying Squadron, in honor of the service of the air, born of an American invention, and carried to perfection by ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... very little Earth: For it representeth in an exceeding small model (as it were) the admirable properties magneticall of the huge Globe of the earth" (op. cit, p. 55). Gilbert set great store by his invention of the terrella, since it led him to propound the true theory of the mariners' compass. In his portrait of himself which he had painted for the University of Oxford he was represented as holding in his hand a ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Bohemia whose army had been defeated in the battle of the White Mountain in 1620. John Nepomuk was raised, they maintain, in opposition to the real national hero and martyr John Hus; therefore the whole story of the former John's death is all invention, and the tablet on the bridge over which he went to martyrdom is a brazen misstatement of fact. The tablet is of bronze, anyway, and shows the saint floating serenely on the surface, his head surrounded by a halo of stars ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... poem called the Theseid gives of this rising of the Amazons, how Antiope, to revenge herself upon Theseus for refusing her and marrying Phaedra, came down upon the city with her train of Amazons, whom Hercules slew, is manifestly nothing else but fable and invention. It is true, indeed, that Theseus married Phaedra, but that was after the death of Antiope, by whom he had a son called Hippolytus, or, as Pindar writes, Demophon. The calamities which befell Phaedra and this son, since none of the historians have contradicted ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... slight and subtle that they rarely pass into books and are only fully felt by direct personal contact, and the smallest knowledge of life shows how quickly anecdotes and sayings are distorted, coloured, and misplaced when they pass from lip to lip. Most of the 'good sayings' of history are invention, and most of them have been attributed to different persons. A history which is plainly written under the influence of party bias has the value of an advocate's speech giving one side of the question. ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... In Boaistuau's and Gruget's editions of the Heptameron the dialogue following this tale is replaced by matter of their own invention. They did not dare to reproduce Queen Margaret's bold opinions respecting the clergy, the monastic orders, &c., at a time when scores of people, including even Counsellors of Parliament, were being burnt at the stake for ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... desired no more of it! He had a considerable income from investments, and also at least four thousand a year from the Five Towns Universal Thrift Club, that wonderful but unpretentious organization which now embraced every corner of the Five Towns—that gorgeous invention for profitably taking care of the pennies of the working-classes—that excellent device, his own, for selling to the working-classes every kind of goods at credit prices after having received part of the ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... whether the saying, "The corpse of an enemy smells sweet," attributed to Charles IX. of France, in allusion to Coligny, is historical or was the invention of a romancer. It occurs in ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the government, and take the power into their own hands. Letters containing the details of this plot were discovered by the Dutch, and straightway sent to the monarch. The statement has been made by Spanish writers, that this conspiracy had no existence excepting in Dutch invention, and that the proofs of guilt were all forged for the purpose of more completely destroying the Portuguese; but the evidence is too strong to be overthrown by any such allegation. The result was, that imperial edicts were immediately put forth, enjoining the expulsion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... shut in the berth which was now vacated, the occupants being called off to their respective duties, and the assistant-surgeon having retired into the dispensary to concoct a specific against sea-sickness of his own invention, which made him and those he persuaded to ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... a fault or a folly. And yet it is just this enthusiasm of the young men that moves and lifts the world. It is this faith in themselves and in the possibility of great things, it is this faith that lies at the heart of every invention, of every great discovery, of every magnificent achievement. Read the history of invention. The world is full of stories of men who got a new idea. They were laughed at, they were told it was impracticable; and, if they ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... have seen the railroad; I am so glad you have seen that magnificent invention. I wish I had been on it with you. I wish you had seen Stephenson; you would have delighted in him, I am sure. The hope of meeting him again is one of the greatest pleasures Liverpool holds out to me.... With regard to what are called "fine ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... upper region, there burst forth an uproar so sudden and overwhelming that it might well have been taken for a premature testing of a large sample of Partridgite; until a moment later it began to resemble more nearly the shrieks of some partially destroyed victim of that death-dealing invention. It was a bellow of anguish, and it poured through the house in a cascade of sound, advertising to all beneath the roof the twin facts that some person unknown was suffering and that whoever the sufferer might be ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... century. It does not, indeed, seem probable that all these pious frauds were chargeable upon the professors of real Christianity, upon those who entertained just and rational sentiments of the religion of Jesus. The greatest part of these fictitious writings undoubtedly flowed from the fertile invention of the Gnostic sects, though it cannot be affirmed that even true Christians were entirely innocent and irreproachable in this matter" (Ibid, p. 55). "This disingenuous and vicious method of surprising their adversaries by artifice, and striking them down, as it were, by lies and fiction, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... extraordinary number is attested by Grotius, [185] a man of genius and learning, who preserved his moderation amidst the fury of contending sects, and who composed the annals of his own age and country, at a time when the invention of printing had facilitated the means of intelligence, and increased the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... great ends. Why do you deliberate, sir? What invention is needed? All is so plain. And many wish you disaster. If you refuse this, it may be hard to ...
— Oliver Cromwell • John Drinkwater
... Cowley's invention found a true master in Dryden, whose To the Pious Memory of ... Mrs. Anne Killigrew (1686), Song for St. Cecelia's Day (1687), and Alexander's Feast (1697) are justly praised for their 'concerted music.' The example had in fact already been set by a still greater master; ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... heard a great deal about Robert Fulton and the influences that have grown from his invention, but the little ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... countenance; and a patriotic lord-mayor and the corporation of London, to impress the public with deeper convictions of its importance, witnessed the indestructible property of the structure on the 110th anniversary of the commencement of the great fire of London. Yet the invention sunk into obscurity, and few records remain of it except the pompous obelisk and the ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... eat to live, and the majority of them must work, or they will have nothing to eat. I think the most of them labor cheerfully, and my experience is that idleness is the worst foe of man. But, on the other hand, every year invention so protects and fortifies capital, that one must do a larger business or employ fewer men. In five years the condition of labor has greatly changed at Hope Mills, and in five years more it will change again. This is the inexorable law of ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... history of the great storm of November, 1703, A Collection of the most remarkable Casualties and Disasters which happened in the late Dreadfal Tempest, both by Sea and Land, may be set down as the first of his works of invention. It is a most minute and circumstantial record, containing many letters from eye-witnesses of what happened in their immediate neighbourhood. Defoe could have seen little of the storm himself from the interior of Newgate, but it is possible that the letters are genuine, and ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... referred to a new invention by a California scientist, named Henry Myers, whereby telephonic communication had been curiously instituted with intelligences all around us—not spirits or ghosts, but forms of life like our own, but which our senses had hitherto not been able to perceive. They ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... by a secret spring, had been pushed aside, and discovered, built in the wall, a large and deep iron chest, the lid of which, being open, displayed the wondrous mechanism of one of those Florentine locks of the sixteenth century, which, better than any modern invention, set all picklocks at defiance; and, moreover, according to the notions of that age, are supplied with a thick lining of asbestos cloth, suspended by gold wire at a distance from the sides of the chest, for the purpose of rendering incombustible the articles contained ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... were dead. The letter might, therefore, have easily been lost; but if anything here below can take the place of Providence, it is the post. Postal spirit, incomparably above public spirit, exceeds in brilliancy of resource and invention the ablest romance-writers. When the post gets hold of a letter, worth, to it, from three to ten sous, and does not immediately know where to find the person to whom that letter is addressed, it displays ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... had not the art to rid himself of an undesirable travelling-companion, Fate, in the shape of a tin bath-tub, interposed in his behalf. This tub was the little paymaster's pride and delight, for in a measure it was his own invention. Having had it constructed in England especially for use in America, he had become so enamored of it that by this time he would sooner have parted with any other possession. It was a round affair, about three feet in diameter, had ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... Criminelle (1907, pp. 460 et seq.; cf., the same author's article, "La Criminalite Ancillaire," Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, July and December, 1906), has studied the psychology of the servant-girl. He finds that she is specially marked by lack of foresight, vanity, lack of invention, tendency to imitation, and mobility of mind. These are characters which ally her to the prostitute. De Ryckere estimates the proportion of former servants among prostitutes generally as fifty per cent., and adds that what is called the "white slavery" here finds its most complacent and docile ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... allowing for exceptions, the literary merits of the Queen Anne time are due to invention, fancy, and wit, to a genius for satire exhibited in verse and prose, to a regard for correctness of form and to the sensitive avoidance of extremes. The poets of the period are for the most part without enthusiasm, without passion, and without the 'fine madness' which, as Drayton ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... been in our service," he said, "instead of that of Sweden. You would have mounted fast. You have all the requisites for success, above all, promptitude of decision and quickness of invention. You did well in getting away from that Jewish scoundrel in the hut, and in killing his master, but it was your adventure with the wolves that showed your quality. That idea of setting fire to the tree in which you were sitting, ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... fabled animal, an invention of the ancient Egyptians, with the body and claws of a lioness, and the head of a woman, or of a ram, or of a goat, all types or representations of the king, effigies of which are frequently placed before temples on each side of the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... professed to be accompanied with critical notes. In a third trunk was a bundle of papers relating to the History of the Troubadours; in a fourth, was a collection of memoranda and literary sketches, connected with the invention of Arts and Sciences, with Antiquities, Dictionaries, and pieces exclusively bibliographical. A fifth trunk contained between two and three thousand cards, written upon on each side, respecting a collection of prints; describing the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... other works, but to encourage and extend their perusal. We can not too strongly recommend to young culturists to keep themselves well posted in this kind of literature, and give to every discovery and invention in this science a fair trial; not on a large scale, so as to sink money in fruitless experiments, but sufficient to afford a sure test of their real value. To no class of men is study more ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... powerful, but it cannot work alone; it has to have a partner. Its partner is man's TEMPERAMENT—his natural disposition. His temperament is not his invention, it is BORN in him, and he has no authority over it, neither is he responsible for its acts. He cannot change it, nothing can change it, nothing can modify it—except temporarily. But it won't stay modified. It is permanent, like the color of the man's eyes and the shape ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that species which generally dazzles the vulgar—it was not extravagant nor bizarre—he affected no system and no school. Many authors of his day seemed more novel and unique to the superficial. Profound and durable invention proceeds by subtle and fine gradations—it has nothing to do with those jerks and starts, those convulsions and distortions, which belong not to the vigour and health, but to the epilepsy and ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the plot, and the delineation of character, Hindu dramatists show considerable skill, yet they do not appear to have been remarkable for much fertility of invention. Love, according to Hindu notions, is the subject of most ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... highly. 'His Pilgrim's Progress has great merit, both for invention, imagination, and the conduct of the story; and it has had the best evidence of its merit, the general and continued approbation of mankind. Few books, I believe, have had a more extensive sale. It is remarkable, that it begins very much like the poem of Dante; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... existence. People live in it for reasons of their own. The people who do not live in it wonder for what reasons, but attain no better solution of the mystery than the statement that the air is very fine. "We have such bracing air!" says the resident, as proudly as if that said air were his special invention and property. Certain West-country doctors affect Norton-on-Sea for patients in need of restful change, and their melancholy advent justifies the existence of the great hotel on the esplanade, and the row of bath-chairs at the corner. There are ten bath-chairs in all, and ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... tact for invention are certainly features peculiar to the French character, but they are far behind the English in their methods of transacting business; this remark is applicable even to most of the public offices; that France is extremely flourishing, and Paris ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... and crafts and professions mankind has spent in every generation all that it had of drudgery or of genius, it has won in them its whole estate. The steel mill, the battleship, the court of justice, the university—these and the like of them are not accidents, nor miracles of individual invention, nor products of the vague longings and gropings of society in general. They are each the product of a brotherhood, of generations working to meet one social necessity, of an apostolic succession of masters living in the ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... Committee should be requested to report, from time to time, the result of those measures which they had found from experience to be most successful; whilst every friend to such a cause, who might suggest an invention or a means to facilitate these objects, would be certain, that in this Committee his plans would receive the most attentive consideration from those who would possess the power and the inclination to carry them ...
— An Appeal to the British Nation on the Humanity and Policy of Forming a National Institution for the Preservation of Lives and Property from Shipwreck (1825) • William Hillary
... Gore, Dissertations, p. 16. St. Luke i. 32, 33. — "How can all this," Dr. Chase asks, "be the invention of a believer in the Messiahship of Jesus when the Jews had rejected Him, and when the Resurrection and Ascension had raised the conception of His Messiahship to the height of a spiritual and universal ...
— The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord - A paper read (in substance) before the confraternity of the Holy - Trinity at Cambridge • B. W. Randolph
... An ingenious invention of this description was recently exhibited at the Royal Institution. A pencil and a small bead are so connected together by means of a thread passing over pullies, that if a person, looking through an eye-piece, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... with a big half breed giving evidence for the Police in a rustling case. The Judge, ignorantly persisting in his demand for a name for a child of nature who had all his life been content with "Blue Pete," had swallowed an invention of the moment, though every rancher in the room laughed at the ludicrously unfit term they knew so well. "Peter Maverick," the halfbreed had replied ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... support to the substance of the thesis maintained above is very welcome, strengthened as it is by the point which he makes in the first of the following sentences: "The deliberate invention of an incident, which had no point of contact in the authentic record of his life, is a procedure of which no assured parallel is found in the book. We must at least believe that a trustworthy tradition lies behind the passage in ch. xi; and the conclusion to which ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... with which any lively literature has to count. The desire for knowledge, I had almost added the desire for meat, is not more deeply seated than this demand for fit and striking incident. The dullest of clowns tells, or tries to tell, himself a story, as the feeblest of children uses invention in his play; and even as the imaginative grown person, joining in the game, at once enriches it with many delightful circumstances, the great creative writer shows us the realisation and the apotheosis of the day-dreams of common men. His stories may be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... extreme satisfaction which children derive from quenching their thirst with pure water? And who that has perverted his appetite for drink, by stimulating his palate with bitter beer, sour cider, rum and water, and other beverages of human invention, but would be a gainer, even on the score of mere animal gratification, without any reference to health, if he could bring back his vitiated taste to the simple ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... were vivid. She quoted the very words of Amanda, words she had overheard at Chexington in the twilight. They were no invention. They were the very essence of Amanda, the lover. It was as sure as if Benham had heard the sound of her voice, as if he had peeped and seen, as if she had crept by him, stooping and rustling softly. It brought back the living sense of her, excited, flushed, ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... they would not have oozed so speedily), in order to make that iced red-currant fool of which she had so freely partaken at Miss Mapp's last bridge party. That was a very scurvy trick, for iced red-currant fool was an invention of Miss Mapp's, who, when it was praised, said that she inherited the recipe from her grandmother. But Miss Poppit had evidently entered the lists against Grandmamma Mapp, and she had as evidently guessed that quite inferior ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... the part afterwards played in the trials. This statement has been repeated by so many recent writers as to become a commonplace of accepted history; it would seem, however, that the representation depends on the invention of a modern essayist, who transferred to the colonial period ideas derived from his acquaintance with the phenomena of contemporary spiritualistic seances, and that the habit of "trying projects," no doubt universal in colonial times, had nothing ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... tenfold for all the evil which had been inflicted on his servants. The dying words of these men were noted down: their farewell letters were kept as treasures; and, in this way, with the help of some invention and exaggeration, was formed a copious supplement to the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... youth, Whose every joy is born of pain, Through all our days were suffered to remain; Too merciful the law, That sentences each animal to death, Did not the road that leads to it, E'er half-completed, unto us appear Than death itself more sad and drear. Thou blest invention of the Gods, And worthy of their intellects divine, Old age, the last of all our ills, When our desires still linger on, Though every ray of hope is gone; When pleasure's fountains all are dried, Our pains increasing, ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... these things from hearsay, from listening to the talk at the Towers, while Osborne had run up from Cambridge two or three times to hear this, or to see that, wonder of the season. But she had the advantage over him in greater boldness of invention to eke out her facts; and besides she had more skill in the choice and arrangement of her words, so as to make it appear as if the opinions that were in reality quotations, were formed by herself from actual experience or personal observation; such as, in speaking ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... limited range of their civil and domestic life, and out of the simple theme of the characters above mentioned, the invention of the Greek comic writers contrived to extract an inexhaustible multitude of variations, and yet, what is deserving of high praise, even in that on which they grounded their development and catastrophe, they ever remained true to their ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... sense urges that mechanical ingenuity, which has done so much in other directions, should be employed in making the acquisition of knowledge less cumbrous and less tedious; that as we travel by steam, so we should also read by steam, and be helped in our studies by the varied resources of modern invention. There lies on my table at this present moment a Handbook of Library Appliances, in which fifty-three closely printed pages are devoted to this interesting subject, with illustrations of various contrivances ...
— Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods - The Rede Lecture Delivered June 13, 1894 • J. W. Clark
... nationalities—Egyptian or otherwise; and she rather wondered at the omission. But it did not occur to her to suppose that this portion of the entertainment had been entirely imaginary—a lurid figment of Harry's vivid fancy and fertile invention. ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... de sa fin, Par une invention jolie, En flairant seulement le vin, De trois jours prolonga sa vie. Le vin retarde plus la mort, qu'il ne la hate, Temoin notre Hypocrate, ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... the name I have used, "the Discourager of Hesitancy." It is the invention of Mr. Frank Stockton, as every one knows, but I applied it to my fellow-student because of her conduct in the case of the wrens; and a day or two later she proved her right to it by her treatment of a chipping-sparrow family near the house. She ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... bore upon several members of the Union, to the legislatures of none did this efficient and peaceable remedy, as it is called, suggest itself. The discovery of this important feature in our Constitution was reserved to the present day. To the statesmen of South Carolina belongs the invention, and upon the citizens of that State will, unfortunately, fall the evils of reducing it ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... to pause. He knocked off the tell-tale shoe with the help of a stone, threw it away into the middle of a bramble, and then after a little consultation, she decided on herself encountering the smith, not perhaps having much confidence in the readiness of speech or invention of her companion. ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a piece of wax, or an awl, according to the particular service in which his master thinks fit to employ him. When I saw him, he held a candle in this obsequious posture. I was very well pleased with the cobbler's invention, that had so ingeniously contrived an inferior, and stood a little while contemplating this inverted idolatry, wherein the image did homage to the man. When we meet with such a fantastic vanity in one of this order, it is no wonder ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... brigades and demi-brigades, the former commanded by Brigadier-General G. D. Wagner, Colonel C. G. Harker, and Colonel F. T. Sherman; the latter, by Colonels Laiboldt, Miller, Wood, Walworth, and Opdyke. The demi-brigade was an awkward invention of Granger's; but at this time it was necessitated—perhaps by the depleted condition of our regiments, which compelled the massing of a great number of regimental organizations into a division to ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... been engaged in these fascinating but wild pursuits, when results of very great importance began to appear. In a scientific point of view, the discovery of the strong acids laid the true foundation of chemistry; in a political point of view, the invention of ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... with the introduction of this tremendous new motive power, men had begun to build space ships and explore the sky. And, as so often happens with a new invention, the thing had grown rather ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... from his leathern bullet-pouch a piece of greased rag, kept there to wrap bullets in before ramming them in the barrel, he placed it in the "pan" of his rifle. Does the reader know what the "pan" of a rifle is? If not he knows nothing of flintlock guns, and I must explain. Before the invention of percussion caps, guns were provided with a little groove-shaped trough by the side of the powder chamber. From this "pan" as it was called, a little hole led into the charge. Over the pan fitted a piece of steel on a hinge, so that it could be opened ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... production placed them beyond the reach of the great majority. A single copy served for a community or a district in which the Hebrew or the Greek tongue was understood, but in localities where other languages were in use the living voice was needed to make revelation known. It is only since the invention of printing and the application of the steam-engine to the economical and rapid production of books, and since modern linguists have multiplied the translations of the Bible, that it has become in their own tongues accessible to believers in all lands, available for private perusal and ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... 1640 issued out writs under the great seal to call a great council of all the peers of England to meet and attend his majesty at York, previous to the meeting of the long parliament, the earl of Clarendon[e] mentions it as a new invention, not before heard of; that is, as he explains himself, so old, that it had not been practiced in some hundreds of years. But, though there had not so long before been an instance, nor has there been any since, of assembling them in so solemn a manner, yet, in ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... enjoined her to keep a quiet tongue about his private affairs, which Mrs. Kebby usually did until excited by too copious drams of gin, when she talked freely and unwisely to all the servants in the Square. It was to her observation and invention that Berwin owed ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... assumed that Buddhism was brought into existence by Gautama Buddha. The previous existence of Buddhism, Jainism and Arhat philosophy is rejected as an absurd and ridiculous invention of the Buddhists and others, who attempted thereby to assign a very high antiquity to their own religion. In consequence of this erroneous impression every Hindu book referring to the doctrines of Buddhists is declared to have been written subsequent to the time of Gautama Buddha. For ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... on Tom Collins for the last month and I instantly knew that I recognized the young friend from New York. Also my wits were at a branching of the road and I didn't know just what to do or say as Jacob waited with easy courtesy for my decision. And again I was too much perturbed for invention and had to speak out ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... stove business required his whole attention, and the machine branch was sold out to one of the other partners; he then bent all his energies to the invention and perfection of the stoves, and the vigorous prosecution of the business of the company. After conducting the business of the company ten years, he felt the want of a larger field for enterprise, cast around for the most eligible situation, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... too, of the future. There have been fifty magical years when you look back,—years of discovery, of perfection in art and invention, of nations making rapid strides, of Africa illumined by explorers, of Japan coming to the front when hardly fifty years have elapsed since she first ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... "It is no invention, citizen," rejoined Chauvelin with slow emphasis. "The papers do exist. They are actually in the possession of the Montorgueils, father and son. To capture the two aristos would be not only a blunder, but criminal ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... omitted in the Treatise. The nod is given to elocution. Invention is discussed, but only as a tool to assist the communicator in amplifying his ideas, as a means to spin out his thoughts to extreme lengths. Arrangement, memory, and delivery are overlooked. Accordingly, the Treatise neatly fits into the category of a Renaissance rhetoric on ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry
... such perfection, they lengthen their summer as long as they please, giving to every plant the degree of heat it would receive from the sun in its native soil. The effect is very near the same; I am surprised we do not practise (sic) in England so useful an invention. This reflection leads me to consider our obstinacy in shaking with cold, five months in the year rather than make use of stoves, which are certainly one of the greatest conveniencies (sic) of life. Besides, they are so far from spoiling the form of a room, that they add very much to the ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... revelations of ancient fashions, forms, and customs, are its chief glory, not to be obscured even by its modern renown for linen woven by hand and by machinery. For a person who really understands Russian architecture,— not the architecture of St. Petersburg, which is chiefly the invention of foreigners,—Yaroslavl and other places on the northern Volga in this neighborhood, widely construed, are mines of information and delight. However, as there are no books wherewith a foreigner can inform himself on this subject, any attempt at details would not only seem pedantic, but would ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... these studious mistresses of invention give laws to the polished world. After passing to London, Berlin, Hamburg, and Vienna, their models of fashion are disseminated all over Europe. These models alike travel to the banks of the Neva and the shores of the Propontis. At Constantinople, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... solicitude, went on board himself, before their departure, to see that everything had been completed to the wish of the officers. The ships were provided with a simple and excellent apparatus for distilling fresh from salt water, the invention of Dr. Irving, who accompanied the expedition. It consisted merely in fitting a tube to the ship's kettle, and applying a wet mop to the surface as the vapour was passing. By these means, from thirty-four to forty ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... probable, on the contrary, that, after what he had done in the morning, they would have ascribed his charges to a mistake, or seen in them a weak invention in order to cover his retreat? Therefore it was a thousand times better to keep silence, to be resigned to postpone to another day every attempt to avenge himself in a manner corresponding to the injury he had suffered, and all the more effectively, as his vengeance ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... considered one of the earliest reformers of the practice of physic. He left some papers written in elegant Latin, in the Ashmolean Collection, which contain many curious particulars relative to the first invention of several medicines, and the state of physic at that period. Petitot, the celebrated enameller, owed his success in colouring to some chemical secrets communicated ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... Sir my Brother, most sorry:—and so you have actually signed that HANOVER CONVENTION with our worst Enemy? France is far from having done so; France has done, and will do, great things. Our Royal heart grieves much at your situation; but is not alarmed; no, Your Majesty has such invention, vigor and ability, superior to any crisis, our clever younger Brother! And herewith we pray God to have you in his holy keeping." This is the purport of King Louis's Letter;—which Friedrich folds together again, looking up from perusal of it, we may fancy with ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... into five parts. This analysis of rhetoric into inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronuntiatio is to all intents and purposes universal in classical rhetoric and must be understood to give one a valid idea of its content.[58] Inventio, so often lazily mistranslated as "invention," is the art of exploring the material to discover all the arguments which may be brought to bear in support of a proposition and in refutation of the opposing arguments. It includes the study of arguments and fallacies; and is that part ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... pain in bones and brain I had I need not mention; It seemed to me such pangs must be Old Satan's own invention; Albeit I Was sure I'd die, The doctor reassured me— And, true enough, With his vile stuff, ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... spite and jealousy, and which is expressed with the intention of doing mischief and giving pain to the person of whom the judgment is expressed. You will occasionally find such judgments supported by wilful misrepresentation, and even by pure invention. In such a case as this, the essential thing is not the unfavorable opinion; it is the malice which leads to its entertainment and expression. And the conduct of the offending party should be regarded with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... early eminence has been extended by some, even to the gifts of nature; and an opinion has been long conceived, that quickness of invention, accuracy of judgment, or extent of knowledge, appearing before the usual time, presage a short life. Even those who are less inclined to form general conclusions, from instances which by their own nature must be rare, have yet been inclined to prognosticate no suitable progress from the first ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... told me," he said, "that the invention of the scheme that has ended so well is due as much to you as to him, that you accompanied him on the reconnoitring expedition and shared in the dangers of the party in the barge. I trust Sir Francis Vere will ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... vibrations must necessarily be rendered irregular from the operation of many interrupting causes, such as the introduction or failure of certain manufactures, a greater or less prevalent spirit of agricultural enterprise, years of plenty, or years of scarcity, wars and pestilence, poor laws, the invention of processes for shortening labour without the proportional extension of the market for the commodity, and, particularly, the difference between the nominal and real price of labour, a circumstance which has perhaps more than any other contributed ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... have an advocate Across whose memory convenient clouds Come floating at convenient intervals. The harvest fields that man has honored most Are those where human life is reaped like grain. There never rose a mart, nor shone a sail, Nor sprang a great invention into birth, By other motive than man's love of gold. It is for wrong that he is eloquent; For lust that he indites his sweetest songs. Christ was betrayed by treason of a man, And scourged and hung upon a tree by men; And the sad women who were at his cross, And sought him early ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... "the fruit of your invention for tracing out your father, and I will tell you what has occurred to me as the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... with sudden vigour, "Oh, 'tis a lie," he cried, "a fresh invention of that lying brain to ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... sir and friend, that I blame only the Ecole itself; no, I blame the system by which it is recruited. This system is the concours, competition,—a modern invention, essentially bad; bad not only in science, but wherever it is employed, in arts, in all selections of men, of projects, of things. If it is a reproach to our great Ecoles that they have not produced men superior to other educational establishments, it is still ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... fancy has surrounded her history with many surprising incidents, and Lope de Vega, the Spanish dramatist, has made her the heroine of a romantic play, but her actual history is so full of interest that we need not draw contributions from fable or invention. ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... was more impressed with the grandeur of human invention, than when ascending the dome. I could with difficulty conceive the means by which such a mighty edifice had been lifted into the air. That small frame of Sir Christopher Wren must have contained a mind capable of ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... kindly humanity may be distinguished in the selection, "The Inconsiderate Waiter," which you will read in this collection. The lovable Barrie, with his tenderness for child life, his poetic fancy and whimsical invention, will be revealed to you more truly when you have read his novels, Sentimental Tommy, Tommy and Grizel, The Little Minister, The Little White Bird, ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... never heard of a man sending flowers to a woman. Flowers were used for decorative purposes, also for funerals. He sent Genevieve flowers nearly every day, and so far as he was concerned the idea was original, as positive an invention as ever arose in the ...
— The Game • Jack London
... brighter every year. His supreme achievement was to show that a book might be crammed with the most wildly exciting incidents, and yet reveal profound and acute analysis of character, and be written with consummate art. His tales have all the fertility of invention and breathless suspense of Scott and Cooper, while in literary style they immeasurably surpass the finest work of these ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and William Ellford, esquire, of Plymouth. The latter, as chairman of the Plymouth committee, sent up for inspection an engraving of a plan and section of a slave-ship, in which the bodies of the slaves were seen stowed in the proportion of rather less than one to a ton. This happy invention gave all those, who saw it, a much better idea than they could otherwise have had of the horrors of their transportation, and contributed greatly, as will appear afterwards, to impress the public ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... ominously like an echo from Naudet[28] who, in the course of lauding Plautus' infinite invention and variety of embroidery, would translate him into a zealous social reformer by saying: "L'auteur se proposait de faire beaucoup rire les spectateurs, mais il voulait aussi qu'ils se corrigeassent en riant." All this is disappointing. We should have expected Gallic ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... his son after the bushel-of-green-spectacles bargain. He invented the most wonderful stories, and told them with imperturbable sedateness. Finding a credulous listener in me, he drew all the more freely upon his invention. When, however, he gravely asserted that Jonas was not the only man who had spent three days and three nights in a whale's belly, but that he himself had caught a whale with a man inside it who had lived there for more than a year on blubber, which, he declared, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Avalon fisherman and tackle-maker, had made me a double split-bamboo rod, and I had brought the much-talked-of B-Ocean reel. This is Boschen's invention—one he was years in perfecting. It held fifteen hundred feet of No. 24 line. And I will say now that it is a grand reel, the best on the market. But I did not know that then, and had to go through the trip with it, till we were both tried out. Lastly, and ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... Confirmation, Penance, Holy Orders, Matrimony and Extreme Unction were declared not to be Sacraments of the Gospel, and the Roman doctrine concerning Purgatory, Indulgences, the invocation of saints, and veneration of images and relics was pronounced to be a foolish and vain invention, contradictory to ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... war has depended largely upon two factors. One of these is invention. New weapons and new methods have become available, and have modified tactics, strategy, the relative advantage of offensive and defensive. The other chief factor in the evolution of the war has been social organisation. As Machiavelli points out in his Art of War, there ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... adapted to each other that the greater dispersion produced by the substance of one should be corrected by the smaller dispersion of the other. This contrivance corrected entirely the colored images which had rendered all previous telescopes very imperfect. He finds in this invention all the elements of design, as it appeared in the thought and action of a human designer. First, conjecture of certain laws or facts in optics. Then, experiment proving these laws or facts. Then, the contrivance and formation of an instrument by which those ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... tremendous success. With Cato Addison reached the highest point of his fame as an author in his own day, but now we remember him much more as a writer of delightful essays, and as the creator or at least the perfecter of Sir Roger, for to Steele is due the first invention of the worthy knight. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... days, So that the weather, or the ferule's stings, Colds in the head, or fifty other things, Transformed the helpless Hebrew thrice a week To guttural Pequot or resounding Greek, The vibrant accent skipping here and there Just as it pleased invention or despair; No controversial Hebraist was the Dame; With or without the points pleased her the same. If any tyro found a name too tough, And looked at her, pride furnished skill enough; She nerved her larynx for the desperate thing, And cleared the five-barred ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the product, and if he has special skill may rightly have the advantage of it, also hold that if a man toils with his brain, perhaps for years, and, uniting genius with perseverance, evolves some valuable invention, the public may rightly claim the benefit. The Americans have been more far-seeing. The enormous museum of patents which I saw at Washington is significant of the attention paid to inventors' claims; and the nation profits immensely from having in this direction ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... same Chinese anticipated us in several most important discoveries, by as many centuries as we may have preceded others. In the knowledge of the properties of the magnet, the composition of gunpowder, the invention of printing, the manufacture of porcelain, of silk, and in the progress of literature, they were before us. But then the power of making further discoveries was arrested, and a stagnation of the intellect prevented their advancing in the path ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... and amusing way of giving a present is not really Eliza's own invention. I did it some years ago when I gave her a pincushion. As the pincushion was made to imitate a poached egg (and really very like), perhaps the humour in that instance had rather more point. However, I do not say this at all to find fault with Eliza. I am rather ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... things. It was then, one golden summer day, among the flowering woods of Richmond, that I invented a new art, the art of preposterous conversation. A middle-class country has prevented me from patenting my exquisite invention, which has been closely imitated by dozens of people much older and much stupider than myself; but nobody so far has been able to rival me in my own particular line of business, and my society 'turns' at luncheon parties, dances, and dinners are invariably ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of some blessed isle of the southern seas, whose empty luxuriance they might change into luxury, and there living a long harmonious idyll of wedded love, in which old age and death should be provided against by never taking them into account. This mere fancy, which, poor in courage as it was in invention, she was far from capable of carrying into effect, yet seemed to herself the outcome and sign of a whole world of devotion in her bosom. If one of the meanest of human conditions is conscious heroism, paltrier yet is heroism before the fact, incapable of self realization! But even the poorest dreaming ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... invention this, Worthy of Love's most honied kiss, This art of writing billet-doux In buds and odours and bright hues, In saying all one feels and thinks In clever daffodils and pinks, Uttering (as well as silence may,) The sweetest ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... say, that Love passeth knowledge. How could man's imagination and invention ever have produced such a loving Person as our Lord, revealing ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein
... course of time he will learn—if indeed he has not already learnt, and is concealing the fact—that the "converted infidels" will not stand a minute's scrutiny. The only safe method is to drop questionable cases and resort to sheer invention. Even that method, however, is not devoid of peril, as one of its practitioners has recently discovered. The Rev. Hugh Price Hughes must by this time be extremely sorry he circulated that false and foolish story ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... "Vrai Dieu!" that person had exclaimed. "If what the dwarf said be true? To cross the king!—and yet," he had added cynically, "it sounds most unlike. Did Aladdin flee from the genii of the lamp? Such a magician is Francis. Chateaux, gardens—'tis clearly an invention of Triboulet's!" And the fallacy of this conclusion the duke's plaisant had not ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... John Brenwalter. My father, a drunkard, had a patent for an invention, for making coffee-berries out of clay; but he was an honest man and would not himself engage in the manufacture. He was, therefore, only moderately wealthy, his royalties from his really valuable invention bringing him hardly enough to pay his expenses of litigation with ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... could not hope to keep it always confined to the channel of religious emotion. People began to feel the need of painting as something that entered into their every-day lives almost as much as we nowadays feel the need of the newspaper; nor was this unnatural, considering that, until the invention of printing, painting was the only way, apart from direct speech, of conveying ideas to the masses. At about the time when Bellini and his contemporaries were attaining maturity, the Renaissance had ceased ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... when ground and spread over the fields, they form a fertilizing manure. Combs, knife-handles and many useful articles are made from the horns, which, when softened in boiling water, become pliable, so as to be formed into lanterns—an invention usually ascribed to King Alfred. We are furnished with candles from the tallow, and the feet afford an oil adapted to a variety of purposes. Glue is made from the cartilages, gristles and parings of the ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... Most of the princes of the Low Countries remained faithful to him and the Count of Hainault seemed inclined to go back to him; but all hesitated as to what he was to do to recover from the check. Van Artevelde showed more invention and more boldness. The Flemish communes had concentrated their forces not far from the spot where the two kings had kept their armies looking at one another; but they had maintained a strict neutrality, and at the invitation of the Count of Flanders, who promised them that the King of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... came to supper. The family as a whole were very devoted. Mr. Chichester Bell, you may recall, was the co-inventor with my father and Mr. Tainter of the phonograph. The wax records that are used today are their invention and their company, the Columbia Phonograph Company, operated ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... the chief speaker: he held out brilliant prospects; he favored the Klosking with a discourse on advertising. No talent availed without it; large posters, pictures, window-cards, etc.; but as her talent was superlative, he must now endeavor to keep up with it by invention in his line—the puff circumstantial, the puff poetic, the puff anecdotal, the puff controversial, all tending to blow the fame of the Klosking in every eye, and ring it in every ear. "You take my advice," said he, "and devote this money, every penny of it, to Publicity. Don't ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... invention relates to an improvement in that class of planes which are commonly termed "bench-planes," comprising the foreplane, smoothing plane, jack ...
— Woodworking Tools 1600-1900 • Peter C. Welsh
... eaves or hollow trees, and feeding on roots and nuts, without speech, without science, art, law, or sense of right and wrong; but prior to the prevalence of the Epicurean philosophy, they never pretended, that man could come out of that state alone by his own unaided efforts. They ascribed the invention of language, art, and science, the institution of civil society, government, and laws, to the intervention of the gods. It remained for the Epicureans—who, though unable, like their modern successors, the Positivists or Developmentists, ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... and natural science together and in harmony (despite the conflict between them). As men have progressed historically and socially from age to age their interpretation of nature has been modified with growing discovery, insight, invention, and utilization of her resources. Children also pass through a series of metamorphoses which are both physical and psychological, changing temper and mental tendency as the body ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... claim for Thorwaldsen that he was a great and original genius. He lacked that hirsute, independent quality of Michelangelo, and surely he lacked the Attic invention. He was receptive as a woman, and he builded on what had been done. He moved in the line of least resistance—made friends of Protestant and Catholic alike; won the warm recognition of the Pope, who averred, "Thorwaldsen is a good Catholic, only he does not know it." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... proverbial extent, with a general disbelief in the possible veracity of a brother sportsman, and an irresistible; desire to talk of new and privately discovered sporting-heavens. The gold-seeker stakes his claim, the "wild-catting" oil-borer boards up his lot, the inventor patents his invention, and the author copyrights his brain-fruit; but the sportsman crazily tells all he knows. So the secret gets out, and the discoverer is robbed of his treasure and forced to seek new fields for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various |
