|
|
|
More "Ingenuity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that, there being such an unanimous {151} consent in what has been just now declared, & the Controversie being about Matter of fact, wherein Authority, Number, and Reputation must cast the Ballance, Mons. Hevelius, who is as well known for his Ingenuity, as Learning, will joyn and acquiesce ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... descriptions of the curious objects which I saw in the great houses and museums which I visited. There is, however, a work of art at Longford Castle so remarkable that I must speak of it. I was so much struck by the enormous amount of skilful ingenuity and exquisite workmanship bestowed upon it that I looked up its history, which I found in the "Beauties of England and Wales." This is what is there said of the wonderful steel chair: "It was made by Thomas Rukers at the city of Augsburgh, in the year 1575, and consists of more than 130 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to put the blame on Great Britain, it will tax the ingenuity even of the Germans to explain away the fact that it was a German torpedo, fired by a German seaman from a German submarine, that sank the vessel and caused ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... us, that he walked away, with great strides, greatly rejoicing. I can remember, at this moment, but one tale in which this style of descriptive searchings into the feelings is altogether justifiable—Godwin's "Caleb Williams;" for there the ever instant terror, varying by the natural activity and ingenuity of the mind, which, upon the one pressing point, feverishly hurries into new, and all possible channels of thought, requires this pervading absolutism. It is the Erynnis of a bygone creed, in a renovated form of persecuting ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... bill, the chancellor of the exchequer brought forward the proposition for prohibiting the circulation of small notes. In doing so he said that though fluctuations were inseparable from trade, in defiance of any precautions which ingenuity could invent, yet their effects were often aggravated by a state of currency, and a facility of speculation like those produced by the existing issues of paper. The small notes especially carried the consequences of these changes among those on whom they pressed most severely. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... this obvious necessity we get an immense abstraction, worked out with all the subtle ingenuity and learning of the Cambridge professor. Mr. Cook has, in fact, used the materials he has collected with such amazing care to project therefrom just those mythological conceptions which Celt and Teuton would have worked out for themselves if they, like the Hindu and the Greek, had developed the ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... this ingenuity of speech for? Over whose wedding-gown are you displaying Your emblematic learning? ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... on the picturesque dignity of a pageant. A real pageant we dearly loved, but the show was too expensive to be offered more than once or twice annually. We had to hire musicians as our own were too busy to serve. Then the costumes and banners and hangings took a good bit of money, though artistic ingenuity helped out amazingly. Where all the magnificence came from was a mystery, the splendors of purple and gold, of rich draperies, fine furbelows, shining garments and glittering adornments being really splendid. ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... daily as he saw his dream assuming concrete form. The many problems arising as the work advanced afforded him unceasing activity; the unforeseen obstacles which were encountered hourly required swift and certain judgment, taxing his ingenuity to the utmost. He became so filled with it all, so steeped with the spirit of his surroundings, that he had thought for nothing else. Every dawn marked the beginning of a new battle, every twilight heralded another council. His duties swamped him; he was ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... of the "Palais-Chateau-Ermitage" of Marly-le-Roi were from the fertile brain of Mansart, and were arranged with considerable ingenuity, if not taste, generously interspersed with lindens and truly magnificent garden plots. There was even a cascade, or rather a tumbling river (according to the French expression), for it fell softly over sixty-three marble steps, forming a sort ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... application. A fair degree of adaptability to purpose and environment is seen, indicating that the Casa Grande was one, and not the first, building of a series constructed by the people who erected it and by their ancestors, but the degree of skill exhibited and amount of ingenuity shown in overcoming difficulties do not compare with that found in many northern ruins. As architects, the inhabitants of the Casa Grande did not occupy the ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff
... charges mostly: pilfering, fraud, theft, occasionally arson or manslaughter. One man, however, was arraigned for murder with highway robbery, and a woman for the most ignoble traffic, which evil feminine ingenuity ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... without discrimination is a sensual enjoyment, and, like all sensuality, ought to be restrained: but that charity with discretion, is foremost amongst the virtues, and must not be contaminated with heedless profusion.—Still the author has shown such ingenuity in the event which arises from this incident, that those persons, who despise the silly generosity of Thornberry, are yet highly affected by the ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... were not what Francoise would have called 'real people.' But none of the feelings which the joys or misfortunes of a 'real' person awaken in us can be awakened except through a mental picture of those joys or misfortunes; and the ingenuity of the first novelist lay in his understanding that, as the picture was the one essential element in the complicated structure of our emotions, so that simplification of it which consisted in the suppression, pure and simple, of 'real' people would be a decided improvement. ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... Boemond III, surnamed le Baube (the Stammerer), succeeded his mother in 1163. We owe the doubtless correct rendering of this passage to the ingenuity of the late Joseph Zedner. Benjamin visited Antioch before 1170, when a fearful earthquake destroyed a great part of ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... which the fourth gospel presents to all three of the synoptical gospels, have also been considered simply as existing facts. Chap. 2, Nos. 14 and 15. But when we seek an explanation of these remarkable phenomena, we enter upon a very difficult problem, one on which the ingenuity of Biblical scholars has exhausted itself for several successive generations without reaching thus far a result that can be regarded as perfectly satisfactory. Almost all conceivable theories and combinations ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... The ingenuity and perseverance of the fraternity of swindlers is only equaled by the gullibility and patience of their dupes. During the flush times that followed the war, immense fortunes were suddenly acquired ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... curious to notice with what ingenuity and how readily Parliament took advantage of the most trifling circumstances or of charges based upon the very slightest grounds to summon the officers of the Chatelet before its bar on suspicion of prevarication ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... all his technological skill and a part of his technological interest to bear on the new problems. Women had been able to thrust a stick into the earth and drop the seed and await a meager harvest. When man turned his attention to this matter, his ingenuity eventually worked out a remarkable combination of the animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms: with the iron plow, drawn by the ox, he upturned the face of the earth, and produced food stuffs in excess of immediate demands, thus creating the ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... English words when he was told what they meant, and made Ste. Marie write them down for him on two visiting-cards. So they made a trio out of "Little Willie," the great Duval inventing a bass part quite marvellous in its ingenuity, and they were compelled to sing it over and over again, until Ste. Marie's falsetto imitation of a tenor voice cracked and gave out altogether, since he was by nature barytone, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... no direction of human enterprise is there such a wide and profitable field for work, as in the generation of power. It is constantly growing in prominence, and calls for the exercise of the skill of the engineer and the ingenuity of the mechanic. Efficiency and economy are the two great watchwords, and this is what the world is striving for. Success will come to him who can contribute to it in the ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... of the Gesta Romanorum is most conspicuously to be traced in the work of Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate; but it has served as a source of inspiration to the flagging ingenuity of each succeeding generation. It would be tedious to enter on an enumeration of the various indebtednesses of English literature to these early tales. A few instances will ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... which, as Hawkesbury was due back next morning, I would then have to be prepared to hand over. It was no small satisfaction to find that my accounts were right to a penny, and to know that in the fair copy of those accounts which I drew up no ingenuity or patience would be able to discover an error. Indeed, I was so particular, that, having made a minute blot in my first fair copy, I went to the trouble of writing out another, absolutely faultless, preserving the other in my desk, as ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... been poverty-stricken, was glad of a scanty gift. When he was asked why he was behaving so, he said that the arm which lacked ornament and had no splendour to boast of was mantling with the modest blush of poverty to behold the other. The ingenuity of this saying won him a present to match the first. For Rolf made him bring out to view, like the other, the hand which he was hiding. Nor was Wigg heedless to repay the kindness; for he promised, uttering a strict vow, that, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... chemistry, and which at the last galvanic touch rushed forth from the laboratory, and from the horrified eyes of its creator, an independent, scoffing, remorseless, and inevitable enemy of him to whose rash ingenuity it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... unnatural, but would the same objection hold good that because a man has had the misfortune to suffer amputation, he must, therefore, limp through life on crutches, rather than use the mechanical substitute that man's ingenuity has devised? ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... us, we returned home with masses of mushrooms, flower-like in hue,—bronze, pink, snow-white, green, and yellow; and Osip cooked them delicately, in sour cream, to accompany the juicy young blackcock and other game of our host's shooting. Osip was a cordon bleu, and taxed his ingenuity to initiate us into all the mysteries of Russian cooking, which, under his tuition, we found delicious. The only national dish which we never really learned to like was one in which he had no hand,—fresh cucumbers sliced lengthwise ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... seem. The other party to the bet is bound by the ironclad codes of Wolf to inflict no permanent physical damage (no injury that will not heal with three suncourses). But from sunrise to sunset, any torment or painful ingenuity which the half-human mentality of Wolf ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... cannot be confirmed, and falsity is confirmed more readily than truth. 2. Truth does not appear when falsity has been confirmed, but falsity is apparent from confirmed truth. 3. The ability to confirm whatever one pleases is not intelligence but only ingenuity, to be found in the worst of men. 4. Confirmation may be mental and not at the same time volitional, but all volitional confirmation is also mental. 5. Confirmation of evil both volitional and intellectual causes man to believe that one's own prudence is everything and divine providence ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... qualifications for a post. The knowing, upon being asked if they possess certain attributes, reply in an immediate affirmative and add others, just to be on the safe side. It is felt that what is really required in this War is thrust and ingenuity, things which adequately make up for the absence of any specialist knowledge. Accordingly my friend found himself described as possessing, among other things, "French, fluent." It was not until he was informed that the Official Interpreter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... therefore it has not been deemed advisable to dimension the boats described in this Chapter. What the author desires to do is to impart the principles of construction, so that every boy may use his own ingenuity in regard to size and proportion ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... next morning, as we have seen, they named their summer home Camp Chaparral, and for a week or more they were the very busiest colony of people under the sun; for it takes a deal of hard work and ingenuity to make a comfortable and beautiful dwelling-place ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that this castle should be brought Up to grapple with the caravels, by which the Portuguese might be attacked on equal terms. On seeing this machine, the zamorin liberally rewarded Cogeal for his ingenuity, and gave orders to have other seven constructed of the same kind. By means of his spies, Pacheco got notice of the construction of these floating castles, and likewise that the enemy were preparing certain fireworks to set the caravels on fire[6]. To keep off the fireships ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... cold things and take hold of and seize them, we know that we have, to use a homely simile, eaten our cake. The supply of pearls is continuous, and under the control of the cruel ingenuity of man they grow to an ordinary size in less ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... this, the book strikes home to the English middle class because it records how a plain Englishman completely mastered apparently insuperable obstacles through the plain virtues of courage, patience, perseverance, and mechanical ingenuity. Further, it directly addresses the dissenting conscience in its emphasis on religion and morality. This is none the less true because the religion and morality are of the shallow sort characteristic of Defoe, a man who, like Crusoe, would have had no scruples about selling ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... his mighty ingenuity to keep Napoleon from urging too far that the King of Prussia be brought forward. Bismarck knew that King William was tender-hearted, and, tempted by the disaster that had come to Napoleon, would in consequence be inclined to deal leniently ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... realised how helpless man, with all his ingenuity, became in the midst of such a storm. Absolutely nothing could be done but trust themselves to the hands of God, and wait patiently for ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... a mind and ingenuity far beyond his years, Jimmy Holden knew that he alone was the most active operator in this vicious drama. It was not without shock that he realized that he himself could still be killed to gain possession of his fabulous machine. For only with all three Holdens dead could Paul Brennan ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... was herself again, however, she insisted upon going on, and fell into so restless and wild a state that the gate-keeper and his wife were forced to yield. Her carpet-bag was repacked with all the additions which the old lady's motherly ingenuity could suggest, her pocket-book well filled, and then, having found her a companion to Bellaire, the Colonel was again telegraphed to, and Ellen herself was the bearer of letters from the Governor of Ohio and her new friends, in the hope of obtaining a furlough for Carrol. With a prudent after-thought, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... mention of Moreau's name. All eyes were turned towards the conqueror of Hohenlinden, and while the Procureur Imperial read over the long indictment and invoked the vengeance of the law on an attempt against the head of the Republic, it was easy to perceive how he tortured his ingenuity to fasten apparent guilt on the laurels of Moreau. The good sense of the public discerned proofs of his innocence in the very circumstances brought forward against him. I shall never forget the effect produced—so contrary to what was anticipated by ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... right. With a slavish literality delicate shades of meaning cannot be reproduced, nor allowance be made for the influence of interwoven thought, or of the writer's ever shifting—not to say changing—point of view. An utterly ignorant or utterly lazy man, if possessed of a little ingenuity, can with the help of a dictionary and grammar give a word-for-word rendering, whether intelligible or not, and print 'Translation' on his title-page. On the other hand it is a melancholy spectacle to see men of high ability and undoubted ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... prepared to support him. But could he make an effectual struggle, he might depend upon the aid of the servile Barrere, a sort of Belial in the convention, the meanest, yet not the least able, amongst those fallen spirits, who, with great adroitness and ingenuity, as well as wit and eloquence, caught opportunities as they arose, and was eminently dexterous in being always strong upon the strongest, and safe upon the safest side. There was a tolerably numerous party ready, in times so dangerous, to attach themselves ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... The young man's ingenuity again comes to his aid. All intangible, ghostly menace downs before this real danger. Paul quits his room, and in disguise watches for incoming steamer from Calcutta. He will seek first chance to explain all to Pierre Lanier. Father and son then ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... said the Count, who had been some time silent, and with a low bow, 'but the gallantry of the compliment had been utterly lost, but for the ingenuity that discovered the application.' ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... matter: swank and an evening suit will do it; nothing very exclusive about those people. But the people of Limehouse, and, indeed, of any slum or foreign quarter, are exclusive; and to get into a Poplar dope-house on bargain night demands the exercise of more Oriental ingenuity than ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... Caroll's"—"Sylvia and Bruno," and "Sylvia and Bruno, Concluded," are perhaps most important. As a curious narrative, "Travels in the Interior" (of a human body) must not be forgotten. It certainly called forth much ingenuity on the part of the artist. In "Romps," and in all his work for children, there is an irrepressible sense of movement and of exuberant vitality in his figures; but, all the same, they are more like Fred Walker's idyllic ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... desideratum in navigation, for the ascertainment of which so many nations have offered a public recompense, and in the investigation of which so many mathematical heads have been disordered. Some of those who now appeared candidates for the prize deserved encouragement for the ingenuity of their several systems; but he who seemed to enjoy' the pre-eminence in the opinion and favour of the public was Mr. Irwin, a native of Ireland, who contrived a chair so artfully poised, that a person sitting in it on board a ship, even in a rough sea, can, through a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... a spirit so calm and strict and noble, was a heart-breaking spectacle. The Baroness could only tell lies, with a woman's ingenuity, to conceal the whole dreadful ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... one of the other servants said to the boy, "Sam, bring the wooden nut-crackers you made!" When the boy brought them, the visitor, after cracking a nut, examined them carefully for some time, and was so struck with the ingenuity displayed in their construction that he took the lad and apprenticed him to a clock-maker in Leicester, where he became one of the cleverest workmen in the kingdom, the most elaborate and curious piece of mechanism he made ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... uttered with entire unreserve. But the jangle of discord was not there. It was seen and felt that the American church, in the presence of the unchristian and antichristian powers, and in presence of those solemn questions of the needs of humanity that overtask the ingenuity and the resources of us all combined, was "builded as a city that is at unity with itself." That body which, by its strength of organization, and by the binding force of its antecedents, might have seemed to some most hopelessly isolated from the common sympathies ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... forge, and the many expedients they had invented, even before we left the islands, for working the iron they had procured from us, into such forms as were best adapted to their purposes, were strong proofs of docility and ingenuity. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... contribute to this extraordinary phenomenon. It must be said that his artificial season at Pantin is the result of man's ingenuity. ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... men dream at that time of the wealth of other discoveries that was soon to increase enormously the complexity of their problems; or of the inferences that would be drawn from them with an ingenuity and an assurance that would task to the utmost the ability and the patience of the defenders ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... disturbed by the firing of the Bizarro's carabine at midnight. They ran through the woods to seek the captain, but finding him lifeless and headless, they became so much surprised that many of them surrendered to the government, and relinquished their trade, and the band of Bizarro, as it lived by his ingenuity, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... would prefer to be alone that first evening. Kate did her best to preserve some tattered fragments of the amenities. She told college stories, talked of Lena Vroom and of beautiful Honora Fulham,—hinted even at Ray McCrea,—and by dint of much ingenuity wore ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... became evident that Ralph Mainwaring's oft repeated assertions concerning the elaborate preparation he had made for the coming contest were no idle boast. Nothing that human ingenuity could devise had been left undone which could help to turn the scale in his own favor. The original will of Ralph Maxwell Mainwaring, by which his elder son was disinherited, was produced and read in court. Both wills were photographed, and numerous copies, minute ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... Mr. Darwin's argument our own private ingenuity has not hitherto enabled us to pick holes of any great importance; and judging by what we hear and read, other adventurers in the same field do not seem to have been much more fortunate. It has been urged, for instance, that in his chapters on the struggle for existence and on natural ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... referring to the very same period, narrating the very same events, can talk of this army as "a company of poor men," "your poor army," "those poor contemptible men." To attempt to detect any political motive for this absurd phraseology, would be a very idle speculation, mere waste of ingenuity: he was simply more in the puritanic vein in the one ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... rooms the company examined even microscopically the response of the stranger to Mr. Winterblossom, straining their ingenuity to discover, in the most ordinary expressions, a deeper and esoteric meaning, expressive of something mysterious, and not meant to meet the eye. Mr. Meiklewham, the writer, dwelt on the word circumstances, which he read with ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... experiment there was a lull in the Parachute folly until some twenty years ago, when Madame Poitevin startled the Metropolis from its propriety by her perilous escapes both in life and limb. Although considerable ingenuity was displayed in the plan of expanding the Parachute by the sudden discharge of gas from the balloon; still the very fact of a woman being exposed to such danger by her husband, will, we trust, hereafter prevent Englishmen from countenancing such an exhibition ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... art of inflicting an exquisitely vicious poke or dig with the wards of a key in the small of the back, near the spine. She likewise originated a mode of treading by accident (in pattens) on such as had small feet; also very remarkable for its ingenuity, and previously ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... the boy's arms about the girl's waist. Digging a Well is similar to Picking Grapes, and calls for as many kisses as there are feet in depth to be dug. In competition games where forfeits are sold there is no limit to the devices for indirect love expressions except the fertility and ingenuity in invention of the young people, and every one knows that in this particular regard their resources are well nigh inexhaustible. London Bridge is made use of to satisfy the hugging impulse. The game is played as follows. Two leaders agree upon two objects, for example, a horse-and-carriage ...
— A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes • Sanford Bell
... watching the processes by a shortsighted jealousy. He immediately sat down with a yard of carpeting, and, patiently unraveling it thread by thread, combined and calculated till he invented the machinery on which the best carpets of the Old and the New World are woven. No pains which such ingenuity and energy can render effective are spared to make our fabrics equal those of the British market, and we need only to be disabused of the old prejudice, and to keep up with the movement of our own country, and find out our own resources. The fact is, every year ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... would be that we should send our manufactures, not to Portugal, but to South America; while Portugal would be obliged to send the bullion to some other country that it might carry on a smuggling trade with its neighbour, Spain. It was impossible for the ingenuity of man to point out any ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... necessity. You recollect the man that Mr. Clarke spoke to you of this morning, who, at the sacking of Lawrence, hid himself in the cellar, while his wife guided with a lantern the border ruffians who were in search of him. She relied apparently upon the ingenuity of the husband to hide himself effectively—a reliance in which she was not disappointed. Not having found him, they decided to set fire to the house, and then she asked permission to bring out her household furniture and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... bring to greater perfection. Whether this natural process is to be repeated in the present instance must be left for the future to decide. In any case, Mr. Grimston's success, if success is to be his reward, though it will be well merited by his ingenuity and perseverance in solving a difficult problem, will never cause us to forget the prior claims of Herr Frederick Siemens, of Dresden, to the palm of the discoverer. Mr. Grimston may or may not be the happy inventor of the best gas-burner of the day; but there ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... has it, men are tormented by the opinions they have of things, rather than by the things themselves. This is eminently true of many of our worst problems to-day. We have available knowledge and ingenuity and material resources to make a far fairer world than that in which we find ourselves, but various obstacles prevent our intelligently availing ourselves of them. The object of this book is to substantiate ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... therefore, recommend to my readers not to satisfy themselves with this account of the Credit, but to look into that which Archbishop Spottiswood narrates; which, as it is much more distinct in answering to each part of complaint from the Congregationers, so it has all the air of ingenuity, and seems fully to answer the character of that wise and worthy Princess." He then proceeds to quote from Spottiswood's MS. some remarks, differing from the corresponding passage in the printed History; but these are too long to ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... that would promptly consign him to the obscurity from which he had emerged. Pending the decease of genius, Chatelet appeared to offer up his hopes as a sacrifice at Mme. de Bargeton's feet; but with the ingenuity of a rake, he kept his own plan in abeyance, watching the lovers' movements with keenly critical eyes, and waiting for the opportunity of ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... and feelings, while Mr. Irwine was pronouncing the solemn "Absolution" in her deaf ears, and through all the tones of petition that followed! Anger lay very close to disappointment, and soon won the victory over the conjectures her small ingenuity could devise to account for Arthur's absence on the supposition that he really wanted to come, really wanted to see her again. And by the time she rose from her knees mechanically, because all the rest were rising, the colour had returned to her cheeks even with a heightened ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... the young man closely and, after much serious thought, wrote to his personal friend, Dr. Marmion, of New York, inviting him to the Monastery to take a day or two of rest. Nancy exhausted her ingenuity to tempt and increase his appetite, but nothing served to help him, and what made matters worse, he seemed to have no desire to improve. True, he was just as exact and faithful in the discharge of his official ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... negotiations confided, difficulties to be explained, here and there by possibility a jest or two might be scattered, a witty allusion thrown in, or a sentiment interwoven; but for the main body of the case, it neither could receive any ornamental treatment, nor if, by any effort of ingenuity, it had, could it look otherwise ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... translation. The taste and the literary habits of each age demand different qualities in poetry, and therefore a different sort of rendering of Homer. To the men of the time of Elizabeth, Homer would have appeared bald, it seems, and lacking in ingenuity, if he had been presented in his antique simplicity. For the Elizabethan age, Chapman supplied what was then necessary, and the mannerisms that were then deemed of the essence of poetry, namely, daring and luxurious conceits. Thus in Chapman's ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... Mark Twain and other American humorists; but perhaps the most curious was his amusement over a cutting from an American newspaper—a printed recipe for an American concoction known as "Hohenzollern punch," said to be in readiness for the prince on his arrival. The number of intoxicants, and the ingenuity of their combination, as his Majesty read the list aloud, were amazing; it was a terrific brew, which only a very tough seaman could ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... may, if he thinks best, give an outline of the argument to follow. In making these summaries, a debater must always avoid stating them in so bald and crude a form as to make them monotonous and offensive. He ought rather to use all the ingenuity at his command in an attempt to make this repetition ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... story. It threw, even to her confused perceptions, and imperfectly initiated vision, a lurid glare on the whole hazy episode of the Blue Star Mine. Her husband had made his money in that brilliant speculation at the cost of "getting ahead" of some one less alert to seize the chance; the victim of his ingenuity was young Robert Elwell, who had "put him on" to ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... live in the forest. He has much skill and ingenuity. The wildcat shows us we must think, must use tact, must be shrewd when we set out to do anything. The wildcat is one of the ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown
... the most hateful of all vices is that it goes first beyond ordinary limits, and then beyond those of humanity; that it devises new kinds of punishments, calls ingenuity to aid it in inventing devices for varying and lengthening men's torture, and takes delight in their sufferings: this accursed disease of the mind reaches its highest pitch of madness when cruelty itself turns into pleasure and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... and ingenuity in her treatment. With a clam-shell she scraped and saved the rich fat from under the skins of the squirrels, and this she "tried out" in a golden dish, over the fire. The oil thus got she used to anoint his healing wound. She used a dressing of clay and leaves; ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... could be crammed fuller of the clearest proofs of the most intelligent design, indicating a mind of the highest order? Many of the most remarkable inventions of man were suggested by the wonderful contrivances found in the human body. Yet they say this marvelous piece of ingenuity did not come from the hand of the Creator but was developed by blind chance or "natural laws," without a trace of intelligent design by the Creator, or by man or beast. The human body can no more be a product of chance or causo-mechanical ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... the inquest were looked upon as exaggerations too outrageous for belief even by the most credulous. Probably his version of the incidents, owing to its rich substratum of the marvellous yet true, was much more accurate than was usual with him when the marvellous depended on his ingenuity to provide it. It was, however, roundly discredited in his own circle, and nothing in it could have evoked recognition in Sapps Court even if the name of the convict had reached the ears that knew it. For it was not only wrongly reported but ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... For arch centering, it is necessary and convenient to use independent ribs and loose lagging, for the centers can then be carried forward piece-meal, the falsework upholding the green arch and re-erected at the advance end of the work. In these matters each contractor prefers to use his own ingenuity, and so long as the work is properly built, the engineer can well give him considerable latitude as to use of methods. One thing, however, the engineer must insist upon—that all centering and falsework be as nearly rigid as ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... tribute. The heating, lighting and ventilating arrangements [Page 278] of the hut had been left entirely in his charge, and had been carried out with admirable success. The cook's corner was visited next, and Scott was very surprised to see the mechanical ingenuity shown by Clissold. 'Later,' he says, 'when I found that Clissold was called in to consult on the ailments of Simpson's motor, and that he was capable of constructing a dog sledge out of packing-cases, I was less surprised, because I knew by this time that he had had considerable training ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... the poor in the East-end of London, and the crowning disgrace of his trial for seditious libel at the Old Bailey, where he was condemned to six months' imprisonment; a penalty from which he was rescued by the ingenuity of his counsel, who discovered a flaw in the indictment, and succeeded, at great cost to Trefusis, in getting the sentence quashed. Agatha at last got tired of hearing of his misdeeds. She believed ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... enable the statesmen of the street to know the result within a few minutes of the closing of the polls—whereby many are spared to their country who would otherwise incur fatal disorders by exposure to the night air while assisting in awaiting the returns. But a voting-machine that human ingenuity can not pervert, ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... mass, a system of enormities, which incontrovertibly bids defiance to every regulation which ingenuity can devise, or power effect, but a TOTAL EXTINCTION. Why ought slavery to be abolished? Because it is incurable injustice. Why is injustice to remain for ...
— Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America • Moses Grandy
... is this: I want to see whether a man can come out here in the woods, naked, with no aid but that of his own hands and his own ingenuity and—" ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... the situation would require all my address and ingenuity. If the wedding bells were ever to ring out in the little church of Market Snodsbury, Bertram had plainly got to put in some shrewdish work. I had gathered, during my conversation with Aunt Dahlia, that there had been ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... Triplett's ingenuity was responsible for the bamboo mast, woven paa-paa sail and the new yard-arm, which, in the absence of a universal joint was cleverly ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... exceedingly simple device bore witness to the ingenuity of the inventor. He had noticed in his days of free ballooning that to rise the aeronaut had to throw out sand-ballast; to descend he had to open the valves and let out gas. As his supply of both gas and sand was limited it was clear that ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... 'Pagan Taylor'. And Taylor's translations and commentaries of Plato had been favourites of Shelley in his college days. Something at least of Taylor's queer mixture of flaming enthusiasm and tortuous ingenuity may be said to appear in the unexpected document we ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... and Huntingdonshire, where the infamous scoundrel "Witch-finder-General" Matthew Hopkins, under the sanction of the courts, was "pricking," "waking," "watching," and "testing" persons suspected or accused of witchcraft, with fiendish ingenuity of indignity and torture. Says James Howell in his ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... The value of an article also becomes greatly enhanced to the consumer, when it is permitted to pass through so many hands, each individual of whom must place upon it a profit which he deems adequate to his labour or his ingenuity. Allowing liberty to a prisoner to pursue this kind of avocation is productive of another evil; it leads him, by gradual steps, from becoming careless of his proper duty, to the assumption of a degree of importance and independence which induces him to place himself above his master, ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... letters from the Montreal friends in whom he believed. Reginald was chopping wood; the two sisters were over their daily lessons. What to do with Jay, while the above question was being asked and answered, was a problem tasking Robert's ingenuity, and finally he assumed the office of writing-master, set her a sum in long division, which he assured her would require the deepest abstraction of thought, and advised a withdrawal to some other room for ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... material. Parts are often shaded with a brush, high lights and details worked in with stitches of silk, and sometimes whole flowers or figures are embroidered, cut out, and couched down. This sort of work is extremely amusing, and gives scope to much play of fancy and ingenuity, and when artistically composed it is sometimes ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... will be suspicious.—I will return once again to the hated mansion.—You, my swain, must conceal yourself in the mazes of this friendly wilderness. It shall not be long ere I come to you again.—With motives like mine to inspire ingenuity, I shall easily find a way to elude the strictest guard, and escape from the closest thraldom.—Say, my Edwin!—this stratagem shall suffice,—and you shall lead me in safety under the friendly cover of the night to liberty ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... the journey of Ignatius, the condition of the Church of Antioch, and the persons visiting or visited by him, no contradictions have yet been made out; but, on the contrary, the several notices fit in one with another in a way which at all events shows more care and ingenuity than might be expected in a falsifier. (4) All the supposed anachronisms to which objection has been taken in these Epistles fail on closer investigation. More especially stress has been laid on the fact that this writer describes Christ as God's 'eternal Logos, not having proceeded ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... learning and ingenuity in making out that sixty-five years in this connection means thirty-two years of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in reflecting on his feelings, as day after day, week after week, month after month passed by—as he spared no exertions, no personal sacrifice, to perform the duties that were placed upon him—as he lengthened out the siege by inconceivable prodigies of ingenuity, of activity, of resource—and as, in spite of it all, in spite of the deep devotion to his country, which had prompted him to this great risk and undertaking, the conviction gradually grew upon him that ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... us used to stay in town till midnight, trusting to our ingenuity in bluffing the guard. Many were the dodges used to gain entrance to the camp. Some townsboys could get passes till midnight about once a week, and instead of handing these to the guard, as they hurried past, they would substitute a piece of blank paper. If they ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... passed from one to another and all were sick before the journey ended, although Samson kept the reins in hand through his misery. There were many breaks to mend, but Samson's ingenuity was always equal ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... betraying his own interest in the investigation. As might be expected, when the struggle was between adversaries so equal, the result of the encounter answered the expectations of neither. The latter had put all the interrogatories his ingenuity and practice could suggest, concerning the state of the tribe of the Loups, their crops, their store of provisions for the ensuing winter, and their relations with their different warlike neighbours without extorting any answer, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... written on those principles upon which art is founded, and great ingenuity displayed. But treatises on taste, on beauty, on grace, and other perceptions of intellectual pleasure, are not very satisfactory, and must be necessarily indefinite. In what does beauty consist? Do we arrive at ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... utility. To him, all ceremony was affectation, and the refinements of legal proceeding were, in his estimation, anti-republican innovations upon the original simplicity of mankind. Technicalities he considered merely the complicated inventions of lawyers, to exhibit their perverse ingenuity—traps to catch the well-meaning or unwary, or avenues of escape for the guilty. The rules of evidence he neither understood nor cared for; he desired "to hear all about" every cause brought before him; and the ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... of Italy, criticised unsparingly that of the Tuileries, saying that it was inconvenient, badly planned, and much too large for a palace theater; but notwithstanding all these criticisms, when the day of inauguration came, and the Emperor was convinced of the very great ingenuity M. Fontaine had shown in distributing the boxes so as to make the splendid toilets appear to the utmost advantage, he appeared well satisfied, and charged the Duke of Frioul to present to M. Fontaine the congratulations he ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... made, I believe, a great mistake in surrendering your own judgment to that of those who surrounded you at Vienna; but who can dare to say you were favouring any interest of your own, or what malice or ingenuity can pretend to find the shadow of a low or unworthy ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... lecture. I shall be relieved at all events, and from the outset, of the doubt by which many a Professor, here and elsewhere, has been haunted: I mean the doubt whether there really is such a subject as that of which he proposes to treat. Anything that requires so much human ingenuity as reading English in an English University must be ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... women presented image toys, made from the bones and teeth of animals, models of canoes, and various articles of dress, made of seal skins, and the membranes of the abdomen of the whale, all of which displayed considerable ingenuity and neatness, and for which they received in exchange, needles, knives, and beads. It was very clear that European deception had reached them, from the manner in which they tenaciously held their articles till they grasped what was offered in ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... that neither of the surveyors stirred! A suspicion of the dread truth forced itself on my mind; but I can hardly say that the shock was any the less, when, on getting near, we saw by the pallid countenances, fixed, glassy eyes, and fallen jaws, that all our friends were dead. The savage ingenuity of Indians had propped the bodies in reclining positions, and thrown them into attitudes that had a horrible resemblance to the species of indulgence that I have ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... male personages of my story, Bagwax should perhaps be allowed to stand first. It was his energy and devotion to his peculiar duties which, after the verdict, served to keep alive the idea that that verdict had been unjust. It was through his ingenuity that Judge Bramber was induced to refer the inquiry back to Scotland Yard, and in this way to prevent the escape of Crinkett and Euphemia Smith. Therefore we will first say a word as to Bagwax and ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... the wooden shovel with essays and arithmetical exercises, which he would shave off and then begin again. It is touching to think of this great-spirited child, battling year after year against his evil star, wasting his ingenuity upon devices and makeshifts, his high intelligence starving for want of the simple appliances of education, that are now offered gratis to the poorest and most indifferent. He did a man's work from the time he left school; his strength and stature were already far beyond those ...
— Children and Their Books • James Hosmer Penniman
... like an allegory or a prophecy. In the person of the little maid, oppressed and enslaved Africa comes to the good Doctor for protection; instinctively she knows she may trust him; his heart opens at once, his ingenuity contrives a way of protection and deliverance, and he will never give her up. It is a little picture of ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... us in connection with this glib project is the enormous difficulty of carrying it into execution. It is easy, we all know, to call spirits from the vasty deep, but exceedingly difficult to induce them to obey the summons. It is easy, and to feminine ingenuity rather pleasant than otherwise, to devise sumptuary laws for the kitchen. But it is quite another thing to try to enforce them. By what coercive machinery is Betsy Jane to be forced into the detested uniform? We know how deeply the Anglo-Saxon mind ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... receive, in early childhood, doctrines and philosophy and wisdom of life from the wisest and best educated men of all ages; we thus learn to recognize and understand clearness, dignity, charm, ingenuity, delicacy, and elegance in language and action, and gradually accustom ourselves to them." ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... the serene magnanimity of Nature and console ourselves with the reflection that the rural philosopher, if only assured of a sympathetic hearing in an enlightened Press and provided with a suitable equipment by the ingenuity of its directors, may contemplate the vagaries of tyrannical misgovernment with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... other, that no stretch of imagination can conceive how the thoughts were led from the former to the latter. The transitions, nevertheless, may have been all so easy and gradual, that, were they successfully detected by the fortunate ingenuity of a theorist, we should instantly recognize, not only the verisimilitude, but the truth of the conjecture: in the same way as we admit, with the confidence of intuitive conviction, the certainty of the well-known etymological ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... Astorre with Lavinia Colonna, at Midsummer, 1500. The festival began and lasted several days amid gloomy forebodings, whose deepening effect is admirably described by Matarazzo. Varano himself encouraged them with devilish ingenuity: he worked upon Grifone by the prospect of undivided authority, and by stories of an imaginary intrigue of his wife Zenobia with Gianpaolo. Finally each conspirator was provided with a victim. (The Baglioni lived all of them in separate houses, mostly on the site ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... respite; then came the English, conducted by Mr. King, the most thorough and rigid master in the school. A question was asked—a question calculated to tax severely the skill and ingenuity of the active brain. Ada hesitated for one moment, then made a fatal blunder; and Nellie, answering correctly, slipped quietly into the seat of the deposed sovereign. Winnie's delight was indescribable. One triumphant glance ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... MAGIC AND MIRACLES. Inventive ingenuity did not restrict itself to the production of useful contrivances, it added amusing ones. Soon after the introduction of science into Italy, the houses of the virtuosi began to abound in all kinds of curious mechanical surprises, and, as they were termed, magical effects. In the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... should be kind to HIM: something exactly of that sort was what they dreamed of for him. But they had dreamed before and been disappointed and were now on their guard. From the moment they should feel they were on solid ground they would join hands and dance round her. Francie's answer to this ingenuity was that she didn't know what he was talking about, and he indulged in no attempt on that occasion to render his meaning more clear; the consequence of which was that he felt he bore as yet with an insufficient mass, he cut, to be plain, a poor figure. His uneasiness had ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... in remembering the class of facts which have no logical associates in which we can relate them; but even then I cannot help feeling that if we should use the same care and ingenuity in carefully recording the seemingly unrelated facts that we do in working out the device and making the association in it, we should discover hidden relations for most of the facts we wish to remember, and we should be able to insure their recall as certainly and ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... aided by the action of fire; a few were cut beautifully smooth, evidently with metallic tools. Hence a gradation could be traced from a pattern of extreme rudeness to one showing great mechanical ingenuity. Two of them were built of planks, one of the two, dug up on the property of Bankton in 1853, being 18 feet in length, and very elaborately constructed. Its prow was not unlike the beak of an antique galley; its ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... of a pageant. A real pageant we dearly loved, but the show was too expensive to be offered more than once or twice annually. We had to hire musicians as our own were too busy to serve. Then the costumes and banners and hangings took a good bit of money, though artistic ingenuity helped out amazingly. Where all the magnificence came from was a mystery, the splendors of purple and gold, of rich draperies, fine furbelows, shining garments and glittering adornments being really splendid. Bonico and I, as Heralds, for example, once were superbly ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... body these vases differ but little from the legless forms already given, excepting where the use of life forms has led to eccentric modifications. Very great interest attaches to the modeling of the tripod supports, upon which the potters have expended much time and ingenuity. ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... hope to attain the princess. The prince inquiring the reason, the old man continued, "Sultan Amir bin Noamaun has resolved that no one shall wed his daughter unless he can perform three tasks which he will impose, and these are of so difficult a nature as not to be executed by the labour or ingenuity of man, and many unhappy princes have lost their heads in the attempt; for he puts them to death instantly on failure: be advised, therefore, and give up so fruitless an expedition." The prince, instead of listening to the admonition of the old man, resolved to proceed; and having requested ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... affected to find one in the idea that the actual happening of the World War has removed from us the old fictional scares, novels of German super-spies, and unsuspecting islanders taken unprepared. But to think this is to reckon without the ingenuity of such writers as Mr. RIDGWELL CULLUM. He, for example, has but to postulate that worst nightmare of all, an inconclusive peace, and we are back in the former terrors, blacker than ever. Suppose the Polish inventor of German undersea craft to have been so stricken with remorse at the frightful ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... obtaining a passport, or, that excuse failing, in eluding the vigilance of the British authorities. Or some more hieroglyphics might come, carrying another message, postponing his start, saying that the propitious moment had not yet arrived after all. There were several devices open to ingenuity; many ways in which Beaumaroy might protract a situation not so bad for him even as it stood, and quite rich in possibilities. Her acid smile was turned against herself when she remembered that she had been fool enough to talk to ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... great evils there is some redeeming feature—some good results, even where it is not intended: pride and vanity, utterly selfish and wrong in themselves, often throw money into the hands of the poor, and thus tend to excite industry and ingenuity, while they produce comfort. But slavery is all evil—within and without—root and branch,—bud, ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... his study, regarding speculative matters that are of no practical moment, and followed by no consequences to himself, farther, perhaps, than that they foster his vanity the better the more remote they are from common sense; requiring, as they must in this case, the exercise of greater ingenuity and art to render them probable. In addition, I had always a most earnest desire to know how to distinguish the true from the false, in order that I might be able clearly to discriminate the right path in life, and proceed in it ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... elated. It was almost more than waif-and-stray human nature could stand to be respectfully "sirred" by a London policeman—his old foe, whom, in days gone by and on occasions innumerable, he had scorned, scouted, and insulted, with all the ingenuity of ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... especially strongly built and carefully hidden. On one occasion I managed after a great deal of difficulty and crawling on all-fours to make my way into one of these kraals, and was much amazed to notice what labour and ingenuity had been expended on its construction. Unlike the Masai, the Wa Kikuyu have a fairly good idea of agriculture, and grow crops of m'tama (a kind of native grain from which flour is made), sugar-cane, ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... most interesting question whence these symbols and rites had their origin, and what they were really meant to shadow forth. Bryant, Davies, Faber, Oliver, and several other well known mythologists, have labored, with no slight learning and ingenuity, to show that all these ceremonies sprang from traditions of the Deluge and of Noah's adventures at that time. The mystic death, burial, and resurrection of the initiate, they say, are a representation of the entrance of the patriarch into the ark, his dark and lonesome sojourn in it, and his final ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... fence wouldn't be the right sort of thing. So he conceived the idea of having a high, thick wall, modeled after an old English wall, overgrown with moss and ivy. As those walls were generations in growing, he saw that to produce one in a few months or even a few years required some ingenuity. He set to work on the problem and he devised a scheme for making an imitation hedge by planting ivy in deep boxes and piling the boxes on one another. When he submitted it to McLaren he was told that it was good except ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... Straits till the 12th of November; and then froze up, without anchoring, off Cape Cockburn, perhaps one hundred and forty miles from their harbor of the last winter. The log-book of that winter is a curious record; the ingenuity of the officer in charge was well tasked to make one day differ from another. Each day has the first entry for "ship's position" thus: "In the floe off Cape Cockburn." And the blank for the second entry, ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... adoption of the Declaration of Independence, which, as I have already stated, he himself drafted. It is said, however, that he was most valuable in committee work, because of the aptness of his sensible and methodical mind, and the ingenuity he possessed in putting his ideas upon paper, and doing it in such a way as to create but little, if any, antagonisms. In all of the official stations in which he was placed by his fellow citizens, by means of his talents for constructive statesmanship, and ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... entrained under the care of fatherly French railway officials, curiously liable to hysteria on ordinary excursion days, but now as calm as Egyptian Pyramids in the face of national disaster. They pieced together with marvelous ingenuity the broken thread of speech presented to them by the occasional French scholars upon the British Staff; but more often still they shook polite and emphatic heads, and explained that there quite simply were no trains. ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... way that evokes the admiration of the whole world, even of her enemies, the recurring emergencies of this greatest of wars. The patriotic self-sacrifice, the valor, the uncomplaining endurance, the ingenuity which the French people have shown during these two years of war reveal what is in truth the "birth of a new nation". To an extent which scarcely seemed possible, France has discovered within herself the ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... one, ordered from the States, which was to arrive on the Hoonah. Then again she set her mind to the solution of the problem before her. . . . It came to her in a flash, one of Kayak Bill's tales of an Eskimo woman's ingenuity! ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... Henry, who had greatly admired the ingenuity displayed by Saloo in the construction of his singular ladder, bethought him of ascending it. He was led to this exploit partly out of curiosity to try what such a climb would be like; but more from a desire to examine the odd nest so discovered—for to him, ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... wholly unworthy of rational beings, having neither the pretence of exercising the body, of exerting ingenuity, or of giving any natural pleasure, and owing its entertainment wholly to an unnatural and vitiated taste;—the cause of infinite loss of time, of enormous destruction of money, of irritating the passions, of stirring up avarice, of innumerable sneaking ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... goes so far as to form a notion of their features, and air, and person. While the former, who gives no credit to the testimony of the author, has a more faint and languid conception of all these particulars; and except on account of the style and ingenuity of the composition, can receive ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... All eyes were turned towards the conqueror of Hohenlinden, and while the Procureur Imperial read over the long indictment and invoked the vengeance of the law on an attempt against the head of the Republic, it was easy to perceive how he tortured his ingenuity to fasten apparent guilt on the laurels of Moreau. The good sense of the public discerned proofs of his innocence in the very circumstances brought forward against him. I shall never forget the effect produced—so contrary to what was anticipated by the prosecutors—by the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Washington Irving had "added clarity to the English tongue." This was a service of which the language just then stood sadly in need. There are always men ready enough to make English turbid, to wreak their ingenuity upon oddities of phrase and diction. At that moment, certainly, the anxious courtier of words was not so much needed as the easy autocrat, whose style, however cavalier, should have grace and firmness and clarity to commend ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... made common-sense a social lever;—a British merchant or statesman attaches his name to a document in characters of such individuality that the signature is known at a glance; a French official invents a flourish so intricate that the forger's ingenuity is baffled in the attempt to imitate it;—government, on one side of the Channel, employs a taster to detect adulteration in wine whose sensitive palate is a fortune; on the other, the hereditary fame of a brewery is the guaranty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... licensing that Sainted Inquisition could ever yet contrive. Which is what I promised to deliver next: that this order of licensing conduces nothing to the end for which it was framed; and hath almost prevented me by being clear already while thus much hath been explaining. See the ingenuity of Truth, who, when she gets a free and willing hand, opens herself faster than the pace of method and discourse ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... conduct at Fort du Quesne and at Quebec can never be defended or palliated, all will agree that he exhibited, during his eventful career, most indomitable fortitude, a boundless ingenuity, and great devotion to his country—the whole crowned with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... involved in debt, and Blake suspected that it had cost Challoner something to redeem the share of his mother's property which brought him in a small income. That it had been carefully tied up was not, he thought, enough to guard it from the Blake extravagance and ingenuity in raising money. Afterwards the Colonel had brought him up and sent him into the army, doing so with a generous affection which was very different from cold charity, and demanded some return. Then Bertram had never been jealous ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... Ill fix him!" said Toby. And he seemed raised to the very summit of happiness on discovering that there was something, requiring the exercise of his ingenuity, still to be done ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... of the jelly mold a bunch of grapes, cherries, berries, or currants on their stems, sections of oranges, pineapples, or brandied fruits, and pour in a little jelly when quite cold, but not set. It makes a very agreeable effect. By a little ingenuity you can imbed first one fruit and then another, arranging in circles, and pour a little jelly successively over each. Do not re-heat the jelly, but keep it in a warm place, while the mold is on ice and the ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... practised by English hands against the Heavenly Maid. And much was practised—the iron cage, the chains, the brutal guards, the final stake, for which may God and also the world, forgive a crime fully and often confessed. But it was by French wits and French ingenuity that she was tortured for three months and betrayed to her death. A prisoner of war, yet taken and tried as a criminal, the first step in her downfall was a disgrace to two chivalrous nations; but the shame is greater upon those who sold than upon those ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... had been accustomed to hamper and resist the endeavors of even the best-disposed of their visitors, he resolved to listen to no suggestions of delay, and to push vigorously forward with his mission, in spite of every obstacle their wily ingenuity could oppose to him. Their assumptions of exclusiveness and superiority he met by precisely the same sort of display, allowing no familiarity on the part of the natives until all was definitely settled as he desired, and intrenching ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... ingenuity can torture language into being a fit word to use in connection with either sounds or any other symbols that have not been intended to convey a meaning, or again in connection with either sounds or symbols in ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... met every day between the visits of their gaolers. Faria showed Dantes the products of his industry and ingenuity—his books, written on the linen of shirts, his fish-bone pens and needles, knives, and matches, all accomplished secretly; and beguiled much of the weariness of confinement by educating Dantes in the sciences, history, and languages. Dantes possessed a prodigious memory, combined with readiness ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... means of dissemination that allow large families to disperse quickly over the country, so that each member may have his place in the sun without injuring his neighbour; and these apparatus, these methods vie in ingenuity with the elm's samara, the dandelion-plume and the catapult ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... saw, furnished no close estimate of the total income of the nation or of the value of home industries. Since no direct census of the English population was taken before 1805, the numbers were never exactly known, and eighteenth century economists spent much time and ingenuity in trying to ascertain the growth of population by calculations based upon the number of occupied houses, or by generalising from slender and unreliable local statistics, without in the end arriving at any close agreement. Still less reliable will ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... I fancy, at least twice in the year, as I have seen young birds early in the hot weather both at Mount Aboo and in Deesa, and I have also taken nests in the rains. The nest is usually constructed with much skill and ingenuity. One nest which I took on the 3rd September at Mount Aboo consisted of three leaves cleverly sewn together with raw cotton, leaving a moderate-sized entrance on one side near the top, the inside being lined exclusively with horsehair and ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... of the common lot. The book differed from Progress and Poverty, which also powerfully and directly affected the English working class, in that it suggested a financial scheme, of great apparent simplicity and ingenuity, for the compensation of the landlords; it was shorter, and more easily to be grasped by the average working man; and it was written in a singularly crisp and taking style, and—by the help of a number of telling illustrations borrowed directly from the circumstances of the larger ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... did know anything of the day's program until she had consulted her secretaries, who, with dovetailing ingenuity, arranged her hours and booked to each day—often many months in advance—the engagements which lay ahead. Therein she showed a calmer and more philosophic temperament than her consort. The King always knew; ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... his wits' end, also, about the field- hands. They were impassive or sullen before his face, and abounding in whispers and significant glances behind his back. What they knew, how much they knew, he could not discover by any ingenuity of questioning or threatening, and he was made to feel that excessive harshness might lead to serious trouble. Disturbing elements were on all sides, in the air, everywhere, yet he could not lay his ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... make myself useful before being dispensed with. Then again I would be something to display at the villages and something to dance about when it came to appeasing the ghosts of the slain warriors. We broke camp that night, and with malicious ingenuity Ward strapped packs on my shoulders until my back buckled. As he finished and was promising to thrust his knife into my legs if I displayed any weariness, Cousin's sister came up and sharply directed him to remove the packs as I was ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... discovery was attained."[26] The mathematics of which he thus speaks included the geometry of the ancients, as it had been handed down to the modern world, and arithmetic with the developments it had received in the direction of algebra. The ancient geometry, as we know it, is a wonderful monument of ingenuity—a series of tours de force, in which each problem to all appearance stands alone, and, if solved, is solved by methods and principles peculiar to itself. Here and there particular curves, for example, had been obliged to yield the secret of their ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... the mouth of the Severn, and about forty miles from the English Channel. These pieces of chalk cannot therefore have been used as net-sinkers, leaving out of consideration their composition; they were found with weaving tools and they fit the position. So far the ingenuity of our ablest archaeologists at home and abroad has not succeeded in ascribing the use of these objects to anything else than net-sinking or warp tension. The adaptability of the articles for use as warp weights, the small groups in which they ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth
... relentlessness similar to the restless eagerness with which the people of the region from New York to Chicago now pursue their business enterprises. This led the Iroquois to torture their prisoners with the utmost ingenuity and cruelty. Not only did the savages burn and mutilate their captives, but they sometimes added the last refinement of torture by compelling the suffering wretches to eat pieces of flesh cut from their own bodies. ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... Chaplain asked me to go to a battalion. Chaplains who had been through the previous winter with battalions were not anxious for another winter of it, if fresh men could be found. I was thankful to go, in spite of all the kindness there had been on every hand and the friendships made. The devilish ingenuity of wounds was getting the ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... may serve well for three or four couplets but, when it extends, as in the Ghazal-cannon, to eighteen, and in the Kasidah, elegy or ode, to more, it must either satisfy itself with banal rhyme words, when the assonants should as a rule be expressive and emphatic; or, it must display an ingenuity, a smell of the oil, which assuredly does not add to the reader's pleasure. It can perhaps be done and it should be done; but for me the task has no attractions: I can fence better in shoes than in sabots. Finally I print the couplets in Arab form separating the hemistichs ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... he climbed out, stripped off the canvas, and gazed at the bulky engine. It was one of those very tall and impressive rollers with a canopy over the top. The machinery was not complicated, and the ingenuity of desperation spurred him on. Hurriedly he opened the draughts in the fire-box, shook up the coals, and saw the needle begin to quiver on the pressure-gauge. He experimented with one or two levers and handles. The first one he touched let off a loud scream from the whistle. ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... and his pre-eminence in these qualities commanded their respect. His conduct of the siege of Detroit, as we shall see, was marked by duplicity and diabolic savagery. He has often been extolled for his skill as a military leader, and there is a good deal in his siege of Detroit and in the murderous ingenuity of some of his raids to support this view. But his principal claim to distinction is due to his position as the head of a confederacy —whereas the other chiefs in the conflict were merely leaders of single tribes—and ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... despair, because they were loathsome to him. Dr. Cheever eloquently says, "What made the fight a thousand times worse for poor Christian was, that many of these hellish darts were tipped, by Apollyon's malignant ingenuity, with sentences from Scripture"; so that Christian thought the Bible was against him. One of these fiery darts penetrated his soul with the awful words, "no place for repentance"; and another with, "hath never forgiveness." ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... scholarship; and perhaps had he himself chosen the foundation on which to build his fame, this is what he would have preferred above all. History may come and politics go, and the principles of both may change with the generations, but Latin verse goes on for ever: no false ingenuity of criticism can pick holes in the deathless structure of an art with which living principles have had nothing to do for ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... to occupy his leisure with a prodigious number of pets and the construction of mechanical contrivances for their convenience, in which he showed no little ingenuity. There were occasionally tragedies in connection with the pets which were turned to good account by the master of their fate even at the expense of his own feelings—and fingers—as on the occasion when he cremated a puppy-dog who had come to an ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... ironical speech that the whole staff were wont to pause in the rush of their work to listen and to admire when a new member was unhappy enough to require instructions, their silent admiration acting as a spur to Mr. Bates' ingenuity in the ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... tactless in the matter of drowning citizens of the United States, this simple and ingenuous diplomat might very well have succeeded, he would have us believe, in persuading President WILSON to declare in favour of a peace-loving All-Highest. As an essay in special pleading the book does not lack ingenuity, and as an example of the familiar belief that other peoples will shut their eyes and swallow whatever opinions the Teuton thinks good to offer them, it may have interest for the psychologist. For ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... hedge. This was accomplished, probably with the help of the male, during the short time it took the plough to get to the end of the field and back, and is a remarkable illustration of devotion and ingenuity. Not for nothing indeed is the partridge a game bird, for it has been seen to attack cats, and even foxes, in defence of the covey; and I have seen, in the MS. notes of the second Earl of Malmesbury, preserved in the library at Heron Court, mention of one that drove off a carrion crow that ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... at work every influence to obtain an invitation for a reporter, but without success, the reply invariably given being that an official account will be sent to the press. Now, I want you to set your ingenuity at work, and gain admittance if possible, for I am determined to have an account of this ball written in such a way that everyone who reads it will know that the writer was present. If you can manage this, I can hardly tell you how grateful ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... very charming, dear. But, perhaps the first will be the most instructive; for there will be goods from every country in the world—specimens of natural productions,—the arts and manufactures,—of every invention that the ingenuity of man has constructed; and of almost all the glorious things that God has given us, in this ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... did not know anything about it. It was Bank Holiday, but for employments such as mine there are not any holidays, so I went to my office at the usual hour, and after transacting what business was necessary I bent myself to the notes above and below the stave, and marvelled anew at the ingenuity of man. Peace was in the building, and if any of the attendants had knowledge or rumour of war they did not mention ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... certain magazine editors have lists of story-writers to whom they look for the bulk of their fiction. Gradually this list of trained and capable, and consequently successful, writers for the screen is growing larger, for daily some new writer is demonstrating that the freshness, brightness, and ingenuity of his ideas warrant the editor's putting him on the list of those from whom good ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... thought of it," he ends, "the more I became convinced that the greatness of art among the ancients was due to the assistance they received from great princes, who were content to leave to the painter the credit and renown derived from their own ingenuity in bespeaking pictures." Alfonso's requirements for his new castle were frankly pagan. Mythological scenes were already popular. Mantegna had adorned Isabela d'Este's "Paradiso" with revels of the gods, Botticelli had given his conception of classic myth in the ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... manner of lengths—but, let me only begin some good piece of writing of the kind, and ... no, you shall have it, have what I was going to tell you stops such judicious beginnings,—in a parallel case, out of which your ingenuity shall, please, pick the meaning—There is a story of D'Israeli's, an old one, with an episode of strange interest, or so I found it years ago,—well, you go breathlessly on with the people of it, page after ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... full of remarkable happenings, dangerous doings, strange events, jealous intrigues and sweet love making. The reader's interest is not permitted to lag, but is taken up and carried on from incident to incident with ingenuity and contagious enthusiasm. The story gives us the Graustark and The Prisoner of Zenda thrill, but the tale is treated with freshness, ingenuity, and enthusiasm, and the climax is both unique and satisfying. It will hold the fiction ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... inquisitors were able to devise that long array of minutely prying questions; questions whose subtlety and ingenuity and penetration are astonishing until we come to remember Loyseleur's performance and recognize their source. Ah, Bishop of Beauvais, you are now lamenting this cruel iniquity these many years in hell! Yes verily, unless one has come to your help. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... brother to Lessingham's temple and about some female monster, whom he regarded with such fear and horror that every allusion he made to her was followed by a convulsive paroxysm which taxed all the ingenuity of his medical attendants to bring him out of. He frequently called upon his sisters by name, speaking of them in a manner which inevitably suggested that he had been an unwilling and helpless witness of hideous tortures which they ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... sheets; there was no end of shirt-making for the men. They put the hems in their own frocks and aprons, they stitched gussets and bands and seams. People were still spinning and weaving, though the mills that were to lead the revolution in industries had come in. The Embargo was taxing the ingenuity of brains as well as hands, and as more of everything was needed for the increase of population, new methods were invented to shorten processes that were to make New England the manufacturing ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... 35. If this measure had been taken two months ago it might have been of some use, but it is absurd to suppose that soldiers can be improvised in a few days. I must congratulate my friends here upon the astounding ingenuity which they show in discovering pretexts to avoid military service. It is as difficult to get them outside the inner ramparts as it is to make an old fox break cover. In vain huntsman Trochu and his first whip, Ducrot, blow their horns, and crack their whips; the wily reynard, ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... illustrate Raleigh's life in Ireland during 1581, and they are somewhat numerous, give the student a much higher notion of his brilliant aptitude for business and of his active courage than of his amiability. His vivacity and ingenuity were sources of irritation to him, as the vigour of an active man may vex him in wading across loose sands. There was no stability and apparently no hope or aim in the policy of the English leaders, and Raleigh showed no mock-modesty in his criticism of that policy. ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... heir-at-law and the family solicitor. It is affirmed that never has the secret of this hidden room been revealed to more than two living persons at a time. This mysterious room has no window, and, despite every endeavour to discover it, has successfully defied the ingenuity of even visitors staying in the house. This Netherall tradition is very similar to the celebrated one connected with Glamis Castle, the seat of Lord Strathmore, only in the latter case the secret room possesses a window, which, nevertheless, has not led to its identification. It is ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... himself as "unsatisfactory and discouraging," which was almost as true of the devices he exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial. The new-comers, like Edison, Berliner, Blake, Hughes, Gray, Dolbear, and others, brought a wealth of ideas, a fund of mechanical ingenuity, and an inventive ability which soon made the telephone one of the most notable gains of the century, and one of the most valuable additions to human resources. The work that Edison did was, as usual, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... word in canoeing is never go until you can swim. There is practically no difference between the shape of the modern canoe and the shape of the Indian birch bark canoes which were developed by the savages in America hundreds of years ago. All the ingenuity of white men has failed to improve on this model. A canoe is one of the most graceful of water craft and, while it is regarded more in the light of a plaything by people in cities, it is just as much a necessity to the ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... One of the castrati—Pamfilo by name—played the part of Lisetta, "una putta di undici anni," and exhibited the most remarkable turn of satirical observation and humour I have ever seen before or since. Horrible in a manner as it was, it would have redeemed any performance. This demon of ingenuity and wit was little more than fourteen years old, and sang like an angel of Paradise. Another of them was the Lucrezia, the Roman matron—put into the short skirts, spangles, and mischievous peering glances of Colombina. Belviso would have sustained it had he been present. Adone, his understudy, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... Philadelphia is still remembered in that city,) set himself at work to contrive a limb which should take the place of the one he had lost, fulfilling its functions and counterfeiting its aspect so far as possible. The result was the "Palmer leg," one of the most unquestionable triumphs of American ingenuity. Its victorious march has been unimpeded by any serious obstacle since it first stepped into public notice. The inventor was introduced by the late Dr. John C. Warren, in 1846, to the Massachusetts General ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... northern choirs, is indeed the unnarrowed elongation of the nave, whose breadth extends round you like a frozen lake. From which experiments and comparisons, your conclusion, I think, will be, and I am sure it ought to be, that the most studious ingenuity could not produce a design for the interior of a building which should more completely hide its extent, and throw away every common advantage of its magnitude, than this of the Duomo ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... common, for instance, to all mammals, by another those common to all carnivora, by another those common to the dog-genus, and then by adding a single sentence, a full description is given of each kind of dog. The ingenuity and utility of this system are indisputable. But many naturalists think that something more is meant by the Natural System; they believe that it reveals the plan of the Creator; but unless it be specified whether order in time ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... solitary thought our acquirements may only prove availing to ourselves as matters of self-gratification. The benevolent affections, which ought not merely to be allowed, but taught to expand, may thus not only be permitted but encouraged to contract, and the exercise of that studious ingenuity, which perhaps leads the world to admire the achievements of learning, thus deceive us into a state of existence little better than cold selfishness itself. Sir Isaac Newton, who soared so high and travelled ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... dresses were furnished with very long trains. The only prominent difference that I saw in their state dresses, and the rare and costly ones I had seen in my own and other countries, was in the waist. As the women of Mizora admired a large waist, their dresses were generally loose and flowing. Ingenuity, however, had fashioned them into graceful and becoming outlines. On occasions of great state and publicity, comfortably fitting girdles confined ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... true the modern demand for a great deal of music has outstripped the supply of muscle for its production; but the ingenuity of man has partially made up for his lack of physical strength, and the sublimer harmonies may still be rendered with tolerable effectiveness, and with little actual fatigue to the artist. As we retrograde towards the condition of Primeval ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... had this frightful shock produced? Had the ingenuity of the constructors of the projectile obtained any happy result? Had the shock been deadened, thanks to the springs, the four plugs, the water-cushions, and the partition-breaks? Had they been able to subdue the frightful pressure of the initiatory speed of more than 11,000 ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... novelty, because, after all, it is only ringing the changes upon one simple affection, which every one understands. The novelty there consists, not in the original topic, but in continually bringing ordinary things, by happy strokes of natural ingenuity, into new associations with ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... number of individuals. Those who have done the most for it have added but little to the whole. It may be subverted by revolution for a time, but will always reassert itself again. It may be amended or modified by reason, but cannot be replaced, either by the ingenuity of one man or ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... and proceeded to explain her arrangements in a manner elaborately composed. It appeared that she had displayed considerable ingenuity in the way ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... Eleanor Syme of Edinburgh, who, in 1777, became the wife of Henry Brougham of Brougham Hall, Westmoreland. Their eldest son was Lord Brougham, who was thus the third cousin of Patrick Henry. To some it will perhaps seem not a mere caprice of ingenuity to discover in the fiery, eccentric, and truculent eloquence of the great English advocate and parliamentary orator a family likeness to that of his renowned American kinsman; or to find in the fierceness of the champion of Queen Caroline against George IV., ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... his best. This was the 'Roman Comique,' the only one of his productions which is still read. That it should be read, I can quite understand, on account not only of the ease of its style, but of the ingenuity of its improbable plots, the truth of the characters, and the charming bits of satire which are found here and there, like gems amid a mass of mere fun. The scene is laid at Mans, the town in which the author had himself perpetrated his chief follies; and many of the characters were probably ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... Paul's attainments were in humility, in purity of intention, and in simplicity and sincerity of heart, yet the mind of Christ was not so given even to His most gifted apostle, that he could seriously say that he had attained to such utter ingenuity, simplicity, disengagement from himself, and surrender to Christ, as to be able to face the sun with a spotless ministry. All he ever says at his boldest and best on that great matter is to be read in the light of his ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... as well as to authority, but to what extent it should do so, has been matter of dispute. "The knowledge of useful arts," says Sanctius, "is not an invention of human ingenuity, but an emanation from the Deity, descending from above for the use of man, as Minerva sprung from the brain of Jupiter. Wherefore, unless thou give thyself wholly to laborious research into the nature of things, and diligently examine the causes and reasons ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the fraction of a moment Claire hesitated. Janet saw the doubt, and attributed it to disinclination to exhibit a shabby room; but in reality Claire was proud of her attic, which a little ingenuity had made into a very charming abode. Turkey red curtains draped the window, a low basket-chair was covered in the same material, a red silk eiderdown covered the little bed. On the white walls were a profusion of photographs and prints, framed with a simple ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... metal was a very simple one; the main difficulty in the invention came, after getting the idea, in devising the ways and means by which such a corrugation could be made. It is a curious circumstance in the history of modern inventions that it often requires much more ingenuity and effort to contrive a way to make the article when invented, than it did to invent the article itself. It was, for instance, much easier, doubtless, to invent pins, than to invent the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... examples in the elaborately illustrated Catalogue of the library at Laon by Ed. Fleury, and in that of Cambray, by M. Durieux. Most of these pre-Carolingian designs are barbarous in the extreme, dreadfully clumsy in execution, but they evince considerable ingenuity and ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... of procuring this necessary element is singular, and they exhibit in this particular much ingenuity and great fertility of resources. They are never harassed with the idea of being without any; which not only distresses but adds to the horror of thirst with the European explorer, who has not experienced the constant watchfulness ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... impossibilities and absurdities, discourage the reader at the outset, and it needs an effort to take it as seriously as it deserves. And yet when we judge it deliberately, it will be seen that, here again, the story is admirably adapted to the moral. The constructive ingenuity exhibited throughout is almost morbid. Nothing could be more happily imagined, as a REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM of the aristocratic principle, than the adventures of Gwynplaine, the itinerant mountebank, snatched suddenly out of ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... plot which he had been astute enough to detect. But not daring to take the only honorable and safe way of declaring His innocence, and summoning a cohort of soldiers to clear the court, he endeavored to exculpate himself by throwing the responsibility on Herod. He congratulated himself on the ingenuity of a plan which should relieve him of the necessity of grieving his conscience on the one hand, or of irritating the Jews on the other, and which would conciliate Herod, with whom he was at this time on unfriendly ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... rhythmic whole, complete and perfect, while at the same time they all possess the fresh and unconscious grace which marks the productions of primitive times." Now, there is some truth in this criticism; for it is a mark of man's early ingenuity, in many arts, to seek complexity (where you would expect simplicity), and yet to lend to that complexity an infantine naturalness. One can see this phenomenon in early decorative art, and in early law and custom, and even in the complicated structure ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... was placable, and his temperament calm. Freeman had grossly and frequently insulted him without the faintest provocation. But he had long since taken his revenge, such as it was, and he could afford to be generous now. He discovered, with some ingenuity, a point of agreement in that Freeman, like himself, was a champion of classical education. Therefore, "along with his asperities," he had "strong masculine sense," and had voted for compulsory Greek. If the right of suffrage were restricted ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... fitness and utility enters into our sense of beauty. But it does so very indirectly, rather by convincing us that we should tolerate what practical conditions have imposed on an artist, by arousing admiration of his ingenuity, or by suggesting the interesting things themselves with which the object is known to be connected. Thus a cottage-chimney, stout and tall, with the smoke floating from it, pleases because we fancy ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... like that which preceded it, is a drama of intrigue, borrowed from the Spanish, and claiming merit only in proportion to the diversity and ingenuity of the incidents represented. On this point every reader can decide for himself; and it would be an invidious task to point out blemishes, where, to own the truth, there are but few beauties. The ease ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... given any one even the vaguest notion of looking into that harmless little cube. I would have you observe, besides..." Lupin went on pursuing his remarks relative to the packet of Maryland and the crystal stopper. His adversary's ingenuity and shrewdness interested him all the more inasmuch as Lupin had ended by getting the better of him. But to Clarisse these topics mattered much less than did her anxiety as to the acts which must be performed to save her son; ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... waiting was so long in passing as that on which it was announced to them that Derek Pruyn had landed that afternoon. He had sent word that he could not come home at once, as business required his immediate presence at the office. Having already exhausted their ingenuity in adorning the house, and putting everything he could possibly want in the place where he could most easily find it, there was nothing to do but to sit through the long hours in an impatience which even Diane found it difficult to disguise. ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... diminishing and cannot be replenished from without; ingenuity and labor must evoke them. We have a fine garden in growth, plenty of chickens, and hives of bees to furnish honey in lieu of sugar. A good deal of salt meat has been stored in the smoke-house, and, with fish from the lake, we expect to keep the wolf from the door. The season for game is about ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... divine Priest, the ideal hierophant, in whom are united the functions of the three chief classes of Rigvedic sacrificial priests, the hota, adhvaryu, and brahman, and hence as an all-knowing sage and seer. If infinite zeal and ingenuity in singing Agni's praises and glorifying his activities can avail to raise him to the rank of a great god, we may expect to find him very near the top. But it is not to be. The priests cannot convince the plain man of Agni's super-godhead, and soon they will ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... his head on his hands, while a great sob convulsed his big bulk from head to foot. He and Judge Harlin argued the question all the way to Las Plumas, and the judge well-nigh exhausted his knowledge of law and his ingenuity in argument in the effort to convince his companion that Emerson Mead had done the best thing possible for him to do. But the last thing Tom said as they drew up in front of Judge Harlin's ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... show itself in all kinds of inventions with which she mitigated the discomforts of the raw mining camp. As vegetables were exceedingly scarce, the diet of the miners consisted almost exclusively of meat, and Mrs. Osbourne made a great hit by her ingenuity in devising variations of this monotonous fare. She learned how to cook beef in fifteen different ways. Her great achievement, however, was in making imitation honey, to eat with griddle-cakes, out of boiled sugar with a lump of alum ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... objectionable company, uncaressable as puppets. Their artifices are staringly naked, and have now the effect of a painted face viewed, after warm hours of dancing, in the morning light. How could the Lurewells and the Plyants ever have been praised for ingenuity in wickedness? Critics, apparently sober, and of high reputation, held up their shallow knaveries for the world to admire. These Lurewells, Plyants, Pinchwifes, Fondlewifes, Miss Prue, Peggy, Hoyden, all of them save charming ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... period of time. The treatment of milk by sterilization has not met with any general favor in this country, although it has been more widely introduced abroad. In most cases the process is carried out after the milk is bottled; and considerable ingenuity has been exercised in the construction of devices which will permit of the closure of the bottles after the sterilizing process has been completed. Milks heated to so high a temperature have a more or less pronounced boiled or cooked taste, a condition that does ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... ourselves, was strikingly manifested. If these pages fail to convey entertainment or information, sufficient may at least be gleaned from them to furnish matter for serious reflection; but to those who have been placed in situations of danger where human ingenuity availed them not, and where human foresight was baffled, I feel persuaded that these remarks ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... all the force and freshness of a first shock of discovery;" he was also writing daily on the Psalms; he was preparing a paper for the Oriental Congress which was to startle the educated world by "its originality and ingenuity;" and he was composing with great and careful investigation his Oxford lecture on "The rise and progress of learning in ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... some sweet bud peeped out from the fresh leaves of the one, or pure blossom burst forth from the other to greet them. The big Bible occupied its accustomed place in the corner, and a couple of neat shelves, the work of Pat's ingenuity, held the few books and little ornaments that had been accumulating since their good fortune commenced. Winnie's cradle was put away in her mother's bedroom with the rag-baby still lying beneath ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... admit of passing in and out the door a slit was made, or two tapestries joined at this spot. Set Gothic furniture scantily about such a room, a coffer or two, some high-backed chairs, a generous table, and there is a room which the art of to-day with its multiple ingenuity cannot surpass ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... such a thing, if it be possible, the arguments are numberless. Such work is a source of ingenuity and enjoyment in the cabin of the peasant; it rather fills up time that would be otherwise idled than takes from other work. Our peasants' wives and daughters could clothe themselves and their families by the winter night work, even as those of Norway do, if the peasants possessed the little ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... complete system of scouts who in this bare and thinly populated district, descry the police when miles away, giving timely warning to the marauders; these, besides, are readily concealed by their neighbours and friends, who in this display an ingenuity and enthusiasm worthy a better cause. Suppose the villains are caught red-handed; even then the difficulties are by no means over. In Ireland a felon once in the hands of the police, by that one circumstance at once and for ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... evidence to prove that the Princess Palatine was a person of large intelligence, who was able to hold her own with men of the greatest capacity. De Retz and Bossuet tell us so. Some letters of the Palatine, however, are extant in which, whilst there is no lack of solidity, refinement, and ingenuity of thought, it will be seen that they often abound with errors, obscure phraseology, and not unfrequently outrageously violate even the commonest rules of orthography. It must not, however, by any means be inferred from this that the Palatine had not ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... were always straying,—that he had an adventure of a more serious and decidedly lurid sort. The horses had led him a pace through the Bad Lands westward out over the prairie, and night overtook him not far from Mingusville, a primitive settlement named thus with brilliant ingenuity by its first citizens, a lady by the name of Minnie and her husband by the name of Gus. The "town"—what there was of it—was pleasantly situated on rolling country on the west bank of Beaver Creek. Along the east side of the creek were high, steep, cream-colored buttes, ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... no conjurors more subtle in taking us in at every available opportunity with or without reason, often for the sole pleasure of playing tricks on us. And they play these tricks with incredible simplicity, astonishing audacity, unparalleled ingenuity. They play tricks from morning till night, and they all do it—the most virtuous, the most upright, the most sensible of them. You may add that sometimes they are to some extent driven to do these things. Man has always idiotic fits of obstinacy and tyrannical ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... it attentively, but only for a moment. Then he said, "A characteristic penmanship, but to me it only shows forcefulness, ingenuity and good nature. However, I'm not an expert, I only get a general impression, and the traits I've mentioned are undoubtedly to be found in the lady's nature. Are they not?" and he turned to me, as ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... account, can we find such an active sense of the beautiful as that which permeated the minds of the polished Greeks. The admiration of physical beauty became an almost absorbing passion, and its attainment was sought after in every process which human ingenuity could devise. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... slight alteration of last year's dresses; and such was their declared intention when their hands were forced by the Dressmakers' revolutionary change in the fashion which substituted the full skirt for the tight skirt of 1913-14. The extraordinary ingenuity of this move was, not only that it thwarted any good intention of not buying a new dress this year, it being manifestly impossible to "alter" a tight skirt into a crinoline, but also that the extra cloth required for the unusually full skirts more than compensated the trade for the continued abstention ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... denying themselves everything; a farthing was sacred in their eyes. Out of sheer calculation Cesarine threw herself into her business with the devotion of a young girl. She sat up at night, taxing her ingenuity to find ways of increasing the prosperity of the establishment, and displaying an innate commercial talent. The masters of the house were obliged to check her ardor for work; they rewarded her by presents, but she refused all articles of dress and ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... never gives the rough sound to the r when he can help it, and often displays considerable ingenuity in avoiding ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... served to stimulate Mr. Taggett; it required a complex case to stir his ingenuity and sagacity. That the present was not a complex case he was still convinced, after four days' futile labor upon it. Mr. Shackford had been killed—either with malice prepense or on the spur of the moment—for his money. The killing had likely enough not been premeditated; the old man had ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... a variety of ready-made, garments for the infant and conveniences for the nursery; in many of them notable ingenuity is displayed which aims at the child's comfort or the saving of labor to the mother. Catalogs of these articles, which are often expensive, are ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... until the thin hand of the sick child has relaxed its clasp on his own, then, moved by a loving impulse, noiselessly busies himself in removing a littered mass of vials, cups, and glasses, which have accumulated on the stand near the bed, to a table just at hand, and taxes his childish ingenuity in arranging thereon, in the prettiest possible form, a multitude of toys and trinkets, gifts sent by the servants of the house to his brother, putting the new ones in front, so that his eye may fall on them ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... one of the striking characteristics of all social life, it is especially so of child life. The country child has all out-of-doors for the scope of his energies, the city boy and girl are cramped by the tenement and the narrow street, with occasional resort to a small park. It requires ingenuity to devise methods of diversion in such small areas, but necessity is the mother of invention, and the children of the city become expert in outwitting those whose business it is to keep them within bounds. This kind of education has a smack of practicality ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... forward by the minister Chamillart: this was the celebrated Superintendent of Finance, Nicolas Fouquet. In 1837, Jacob, armed with documents and extracts, once more occupied himself with this Chinese puzzle on which so much ingenuity had been lavished, but of which no one had as yet got all the pieces into their places. Let us see if he ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... was endowed with a wonderfully fine gift of ingenuity, and although he was somewhat behind in the payment for the Masses on behalf of his predecessors, and even more so with his mundane creditors, still was he a man who meant well and would do the right thing if he only ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... made, as it requires but little metal or machine work, and it is here described because it will be a pleasure for a boy to make such a useful tool. What he needs is the proper plan and the right dimensions to carry out the work, and his own ingenuity will make the modifications suitable ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... same time the hen, that has all this seeming ingenuity (which is indeed absolutely necessary for the propagation of the species), considered in other respects, is without the least glimmerings of thought or common sense. She mistakes a piece of chalk for an egg, and sits upon it in the same manner: She is insensible ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|
