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More "Originality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were over, and a Hellenizing civilization came in its room. It is true that Italy had been subject to the influence of Greece, ever since it had a history at all. We have formerly shown how the youthful Greece and the youthful Italy—both of them with a certain measure of simplicity and originality—gave and received intellectual impulses; and how at a later period Rome endeavoured after a more external manner to appropriate to practical use the language and inventions of the Greeks. But the Hellenism of the Romans of the present period was, in its causes as well ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... principle: for my part, I am at enmity with the whole corps, from the bishop of Salisbury down to the bell-man: nay, I hate their writings as much as I do themselves: there is nothing so pernicious as reading; it destroys all originality of sentiment. My lord Devonshire has more than ten thousand volumes in his house; I entreated his lordship to lodge me as far as possible from that pestilential corner: I have but one book, and that is Euclid, but I begin to be tired of him; I believe he has done ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... subject on which (as he perhaps knew) the German never could resist enlarging, for in common with most German masters, he was giving birth to a new Grammar, which, from the daring originality of its plan, and its extreme simplicity, was destined to supersede all other ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... vile," cried another voice indignantly. "Toujours wall-paper! They might have a little originality, and think of something else. I longed ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... story: full of vivid fancy and quaint originality. In its most fantastic imaginings it carries with it a sense of reality, and derives a singular attraction from that combination of simplicity, originality, and subtle humour, which is so much appreciated by lively and thoughtful children. Children of a larger ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... brilliantly, and now the power and originality of Priscilla's acting divided the attention of the house. Surely there never was a ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... higher position or a larger salary. Enlarge the position you already occupy; put originality of method into it. Fill it as it never was filled before. Be more prompt, more energetic, more thorough, more polite than your predecessor or fellow workmen. Study your business, devise new modes of operation, be able to give your employer points. The art ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... you for having sent me, through my son, your lectures, and for the very honourable manner in which you allude to my works. The lectures seem to me to be written with much force, clearness, and originality. You show also a truly extraordinary amount of knowledge of all that has been published on the subject. The type in many parts is so small that, except to young eyes, it is very difficult to read. Therefore I wish that you would reflect on their ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... present work, it is well known, stands at the head of those physiologists who have investigated the mechanism of animal dynamics—indeed, we may almost say that he has made the subject his own. By the originality of his conceptions, the ingenuity of his constructions, the skill of his analysis, and the perseverance of his investigations, he has surpassed all others in the power of unveiling the complex and intricate movements ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... his?" Elizabeth, who was regarded in her set as a wit, a reputation acquired by reason of the fact that she possessed a certain knack for adapting slang humorously (for there was no originality to her alleged wit), now bent her head and looked at her brother incredulously. "My ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... is not less heterogeneous. O wise Solomon!" cried the Doctor, with his mouth full of kidney-pie; "had I but the authority you enjoyed in a like dispute, I would resign to you all the credit of originality!" ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... people, if they're good and true, And treated well, and let alone, Will kindly take to what's their own, And always be original, Like children. Honor's just like all The rest of us! But, thinking so, 'Tis well she miss'd Lord Clitheroe, Who hates originality, Though he puts up with it in me. Poor Mrs. Graham has never been To the Opera! You should have seen The innocent way she told the Earl She thought Plays sinful when a girl, And now she never had a chance! Frederick's complacent smile and glance ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... had no good opinion of 'the light of nature.' "They say," said he, "that everybody knows about God naturally. A lie. All such ideas are by teaching." If Harriet had taken the other side of her question and argued as every believer tries to to-day, she would have deserved some credit for originality. Nevertheless the form of her argument is remarkable for her years, and would not have dishonored Dr. Beecher's next sermon. This amazing achievement of a girl of twelve can be read in the Life of Mrs. Stowe by ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... magic touch of the deft workman, and he was soon so enticed by the perfect appliances as to take tool in hand and prove himself not unadroit in the craft. Friedel however excelled in delicacy of touch and grace and originality of conception, and produced such workmanship that Master Gottfried could not help stroking his hair and telling him it was a pity he was not born to belong to ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... intercourse with the learned, and by the friendships which he formed, he soon became thoroughly German, which he proved by his poems, which were distinguished above the crowd of such compositions by the originality of their style, and peculiar vigour. From 1804 to 1806 he published the "Almanack of the Muses," in conjunction with Varnhagen von Ense. At the peace of Tilsit he left the army, and visited France, when his family obtained back part of their ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... intoxicated by a first success, and had been perforce resold almost as soon as it was habitable. It was in the palatial Renaissance manner and had fantastic interior arrangements which consisted of modern conveniences framed in a setting of somewhat artificial originality. Count Muffat had bought the house ready furnished and full of hosts of beautiful objects—lovely Eastern hangings, old credences, huge chairs of the Louis XIII epoch. And thus Nana had come into artistic surroundings of the choicest kind and of the most extravagantly ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... once Mrs. Fisher lacked originality. "Do you mean, like Gerty Farish, to recommend the unfailing panacea of 'a ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... probably be unable even with this military tax which oppresses the country to put his regiments in condition to undertake a fresh war in Italy. It is money, that cursed money! which has killed the finest part of soldiering—personal bravery, initiative, originality—just as it has crushed the workman, making ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... not, Mr. Lindsay,—I never imitate. Originality is, if I may be allowed to say so much for myself, my peculiar forte. Why, the critics allow as much as that. See ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... an exclamation. And, strange as it may seem, it was not entirely of chagrin, for the striking originality and ingenuity of the plan immediately appealed to his own peculiar genius for getting ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... given to no man to be absolutely original in the sense of creating ideas of which no germs existed before his day. But short of such an impossible independence of the past, Benedict de Spinoza had perhaps as much originality as any man who ever lived. Yet with a modesty ever characteristic of moral greatness, he himself was disposed, at any rate during his earlier philosophical development, to exaggerate his indebtedness to the philosopher Descartes, whose system he laboriously abridged in the inappropriate ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... looked out from her clear hazel eye, and won the interest and the affection of all who knew her. Gentle and affectionate in disposition, but at the same time, firm, enduring, and fall of energy, she combined the characteristic qualities of both her parents, and added to them an originality all her own. Her education, in the common acceptation of the term, had necessarily been both desultory and imperfect; and yet, under its influence, the mind and character of Edith had strengthened and matured in no common degree. The very circumstances by which ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... Victor Hugo as much as M. Zola, have insistently claimed the absolute and incontrovertible right to compose—that is to say, to imagine or observe—in accordance with their individual conception of originality, and that is a special manner of thinking, seeing, understanding, and judging. Now the critic who assumes that "the novel" can be defined in conformity with the ideas he has based on the novels he prefers, and that certain immutable rules of construction can be laid down, will always ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... us from the "prologue;" the first words in which stamp the entire production with originality. Assassins, who let themselves out by the job, have long been pleasantly employed in melodramas, being mostly enacted by performers in the heavy line; but the author of "Die Hexen am Rhein" introduces ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... with want of foresight; for, just as a child can neither feed nor develop without the milk of a nurse, so a city cannot increase without fertile fields, have a large population without plenty of food, and allow its inhabitants to subsist without rich harvests; so, while giving the originality of your plan my approval, I have to say to you that I disapprove of the place that you have selected for putting it into execution. But I want you to stay near me, because I shall ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... creative originality in Russian literature. There is not a single form of literary development that is native to the Russian soil, not a single contribution to philosophy, to art, to letters, the form of which can be said to have been born on Russian ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... treasure Darnley had. The government will be too rejoiced at his death to care whether he had money at the time he was killed, or not. Keep what you have got—say not a word about it to any one, for if you do, you will be the laughing-stock of all Australia. The originality of the act would surprise our good people, and you would be looked upon as fit ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... Social conditions, desire, fatigue, monotony, purpose, intelligence, inhibition, all enter into habit and habit formation. Youth experiments with habit; old age clings to it. Efficiency is the result of good habits but originality is the reward of some who discard habits. A nation forms habits which seem to be part of its nature, until emigration to another land shows the falsity of this belief. So with individuals: a man feels he must eat or ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... educational, etc. They eventually established a periodical as their organ called The Dial, a publication which immediately attracted wide attention by the admirable literary style of its articles as well as by their originality and commanding interest. The Dial had the effect of imparting greater cohesion to the company of editors, contributors and others interested in its publication, and these presently became known to the world as the Transcendentalists; a word borrowed from Germany ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... finds them, and they turn out only clever imitations after all. In these days there is a mania for shamming originality of some kind. I am always imagining people I meet are real, and not shadows, until one day I unintentionally put my hand through them, and find out my mistake. I am getting tired of being ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... Mrs Montague, the least but the most influential of them all. There must have been a good deal of what is called fortune in this successful introduction to the higher orders of London society; for many a work of superior intelligence and more important originality has been produced, without making its author known beyond the counter of the publisher. But what chance began his merits completed. The work was unquestionably fit for the hands of blue-stockingism; the topic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... the bronzed column of the throat rose in austere dignity. A pair of Mr. Yellett's trousers, stuffed into high, cow-puncher's boots, that met the hem of a skirt coming barely to the knees, contributed to the originality ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... abnormal mental condition. It does not even consist of an extraordinary memory, vivid imagination, quickness of judgment, or of a combination of all of these. Kant defines genius as the talent of invention. Originality and productiveness are the fundamental elements of genius. And it is an almost instinctive force which urges the author on in his creative work. In the main his activity is due less to free will than ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... me add," continued the lawyer, consulting a little sheet of notes, "that although these volumes are very valuable to the practical builder, you must be careful not to lose originality. He tells you also not to be 'hadden doun'—his own expression—by the theory of strains, and that Portland cement, properly sanded, will go ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the cake-walk, but I think they ought to be proud of it. It is my opinion that the colored people of this country have done four things which refute the oft-advanced theory that they are an absolutely inferior race, which demonstrate that they have originality and artistic conception, and, what is more, the power of creating that which can influence and appeal universally. The first two of these are the Uncle Remus stories, collected by Joel Chandler Harris, and the Jubilee songs, to which ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... enough, did not hail from Morocco, and who lived, not in the West End proper, but only on the borders of it, in a street where one could not get so much as a side peep at the lake. It was not a pretty house either where she lived. It was square and clumsy and without any originality, and, moreover, faced plump on the street, so that one could look right into its parlor and sitting-room windows as one strolled along the wooden sidewalks. And people were in the habit of looking in that way a good deal. Nothing was ever going on in there ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... too absolutely to fear him much, reposed in him a confidence so unlimited that topics of conversation could no more be wanting with him than subjects for communion with her own heart. In those moments, happy as a bird with its mate, she would show me what she had of vivacity, of mirth, of originality in her well-dowered nature. She would show, too, some stores of raillery, of "malice," and would vex, tease, pique me sometimes about what she called my "bizarreries anglaises," my "caprices insulaires," with a wild and witty wickedness that ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... example, does not imply profundity or originality of thought. Homer and Chaucer are not deep thinkers, nor is Herodotus or Virgil, Burns, Keats, or Tennyson. There need be nothing philosophically epoch-making about a literary creation which is destined to be immortal. Nor yet does the supreme literary gift necessarily imply ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... the sea; always the sea, either as rigid as a mirror under hard, blue skies or shuddering symphonically up some exotic beach. Conrad is a painter doubled by a psychologist; he is the psychologist of the sea—and that is his chief claim to originality, his Peak of Darien. He knows and records its every pulse-beat. His genius has the rich, salty tang of an Elizabethan adventurer and the spaciousness of those times. Imagine a Polish sailor who read Flaubert and the English Bible, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... bethought himself of philology, and he set himself to spring fragments of philological instruction (often far from sound) upon his reader in the most unexpected places, that his ingenuity could devise. He then began to base hopes upon the book in proportion to its originality. At the last moment, however, the Author grew querulous about his work, distrustful of the reception that would be given to it, and even as to the advisability of producing it at all. Much yet remained to be done, but for a long time he refused, ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... good talents and indomitable energy. He wrote respectable verses, though not marked by any decided originality. In 1822, he published, at Forfar, a small volume of poems, entitled, "Poetical Trifles," of which a second and enlarged edition appeared five years afterwards. The whole of his poems, with an account of his life, in a duodecimo ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... too," offered the reckless youth. "I'm crazy about art. It's the only solace of my declining years. And," he added cunningly and with evil intent to flatter and cajole, "I can tone down that design of yours without affecting its beauty and originality at all." ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... guest chambers at Compiegne; mignons of Agrippa's day, who called one another: "My heart," or "My dear love." Scandal and wickedness in every form, consciences sold or for sale, the vice of an epoch devoid of grandeur or originality, attempting to copy the freaks of all other epochs, and contributing to the Jardin Bullier that duchess, the wife of a minister of state, who rivalled the most shameless dancers of that resort. And they were the people who turned their ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... is the most sure. The translators had the handling of matter of the gravest dignity and momentousness, and their sense of reverence kept them right in their treatment of it. They cared passionately for the truth; they were virtually anonymous and not ambitious of originality or literary fame; they had no desire to stand between the book and its readers. It followed that they cultivated that naked plainness and spareness which makes their work supreme. The Authorized Version is the last and greatest of those English translations which were the fruit of Renaissance ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... however, not in the gorgeous mosaics alone that we find the delight and originality of S. Vitale. The whole church is amazingly different from anything else to be seen in Italy, for it is altogether outside the Roman tradition, an absolutely Byzantine building as well in its construction as in its decoration. It must be compared with the ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... all-conquering panorama, a panorama of unlimited ambition, whose infinite ought to set in the hearts of the young men dwelling there a determination to subjugate the world. Pierre, who came thither opposed to the principle of the "Prix de Rome," that traditional, uniform education so dangerous for originality, was for a moment charmed by the warm peacefulness, the limpid solitude of the garden, and the sublime horizon where the wings of genius seemed to flutter. Ah! how delightful, to be only twenty and to live for three years amidst ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... gleaned from the lodges with no little pains-taking, as mere materials to be worked up by the literary loom, although the work should be done by one of the most popular and fascinating American pens. I feared that the roughness, which gave them their characteristic originality and Doric truthfulness, would be smoothed and polished off to assume the shape of a sort of Indo-American series of tales; a cross between the Anglo-Saxon and ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... woman, and her every word and gesture, her every expression of face and tone of voice, were worth noting and watching. By no means finished work—as how should it be, in a young teacher but few years out of school herself—it yet had an originality and freshness of interpretation all its own, and the applause which praised it was very spontaneous and genuine. Roberta had been the joy of her class in college dramatics, and several of her former classmates, in her audience to-night, gleefully told one another that she was surpassing ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch, and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him." And yet it is but fair to say that Jonson prided himself, and justly, on his originality. In "Catiline," he not only uses Sallust's account of the conspiracy, but he models some of the speeches of Cicero on the Roman orator's actual words. In "Poetaster," he lifts a whole satire out of Horace and dramatises it effectively for his purposes. The sophist Libanius suggests the ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... course the '15 or '45; the hero a Jacobite, and connected with one or other of the enterprises of those periods; and the author, to show how unprejudiced he is, and what original views he takes of subjects, must needs speak up for Popery, whenever he has occasion to mention it; though, with all his originality, when he brings his hero and the vagabonds with which he is concerned before a barricadoed house, belonging to the Whigs, he can make them get into it by no other method than that which Scott makes his rioters employ to get into the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... rules inconsistently urged or discordantly interpreted. Such indeed is the state of every deep philosophy in its first stages, and therefore of theological knowledge. What we need at present for our Church's well-being, is not invention, nor originality, nor sagacity, nor even learning in our divines, at least in the first place, though all gifts of God are in a measure needed, and never can be unseasonable when used religiously, but we need peculiarly a sound judgment, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... exceptional) of harmonising the ideas of mediaeval mysticism with some of the most characteristic features of modern religious thought. A man of deep and somewhat ascetic piety, and gifted with much originality and with a cultured and progressive mind, he had many readers and a few earnest and admiring adherents, yet was never greatly in sympathy with the age in which he lived. Three or four generations earlier, or three or four generations later, he would have found ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... have another try, Colonel," inquired General Murger silkily. "Any amount of real initiative and originality about this Corps. But I am old-fashioned enough to prefer drill-book evolutions on the barrack-square, I confess. Er—let the Major carry on as ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... the best informed, but learning and wisdom are by no means equivalent terms. Isolation and entire dependence upon himself; give independence of character and favor that self-inquiry which best enables man to comprehend and measure the motives of his fellow. Crowded together in cities originality is lost, mind becomes as it were acadamized; and though the intercourse is favorable to the acquisition of knowledge, it is most unfriendly to that individuality, independence, and purity, without which ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... only to add, that while correcting the foreign idiom of his Author, and making numerous alterations in the structure of the language, he has been as careful as posible not to injure the originality of the composition, stamped as it is with the simplicity, good sense, and candour, inseparable from the Author's character. In the Editor's wish, however, to preserve this originality, he cannot flatter himself that incorrect expressions may not sometimes ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... planned garments with a freedom and bravery which astonished while it delighted her daughter. She combined twenty styles into one style of terrifying originality. She conceived dresses of a complexity beyond the labor of any but a divinely inspired needle, and others again whose simplicity was almost too tenuous for human speech. She discussed robes whose trailing and voluminous richness could with difficulty be supported by ten strong attendants, ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... unite those which he praises in M. Brunet: his work and the public would be considerable gainers by it: his books would not be so costly, and would be more profitable. The English Author describes nothing in a sang-froid manner: he is for ever charging: and, as he does not want originality in his vivacity, he should seem to wish to be the CALLOT of Bibliography." CRAPELET. Ibid. I accept the title with ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... gorges of the Himalayas. But it is not true that the Cairngorm range of mountains is a distant place to tourists. It is in the very centre of their haunts. They swarm in the valleys of the Spey and the Tay, at Laggan, Blair Athol, and Braemar, and want but enterprise or originality enough to direct their steps out of the beaten paths which have formed, since Scottish touring became fashionable forty years ago, the regular circles in which these creatures revolve. They care not in general to imbibe the glories ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... studied the novel, it may be that Mr. Moore had conquered it, too, though I doubt it, for the concentration necessary to drama is alien to his method as a novelist. As it is, his best plays are but the good journeyman work of one who is a skilled literary craftsman. Mr. Martyn has more originality of theme, more intimacy with Irish character, a surer instinct for effective situation, and more nobility of intention, though Mr. Moore's greater power over words gives his plays a dignity as art that the plays of Mr. ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... of what limitless wealth could accomplish for a single night's entertainment. In these descriptions there was much eulogy of my father as "the uncrowned king of Ellan," as well as praise of Alma, who was "displaying such daring originality," but little or no mention ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Originality is not the proper characteristic of an anthologist, and in the choice of extracts I have rarely indulged my personal likings when they conflicted with time-honored preferences; yet this anthology,—the first published in a projected series of four or five volumes comprising the English poets from ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... is selected for its originality. A set of seventy-five maps will be supplied to any reader free for seventy-five cents. This offer is only open ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... paid so well. Every one saw suddenly, and with a faint breath of astonishment, how honesty worked. But the main point about the magazine in distinction from its competitors seems to have been that it not merely saw how honesty worked, but it saw it first and it had the originality, the moral shrewdness and courage, to put up money on it. It believed in honesty so hard that suddenly one morning, before all the world, it risked its entire fortune on it. Now that it has been done once, the new level or standard of ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... girls were in their tenth. She was comely and knew it, but a constitutional indolence had preserved her from becoming a woman of fashion, and had nurtured in her a reflective mood, which, if it led to no marked originality of thought, at all events contributed to an appearance of culture. At the time of her husband's death she was at the point where graceful inactivity so often degenerates into slovenliness. Mrs. Rossall's homekeeping tendencies and the growing childhood of her twins tended ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... you need not give authorities, if it be only clear that you are not pretending originality. Do not say, as dear Pemberton used to, "I have a book at home, which I bought at the sale of Byles's books, in which there is an account of Parry's first voyage, and an explanation of the red snow, which shows that the red snow is," &c., &c., &c. Instead of this say, "Red snow is," &c., &c., ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... He maintained that character with the utmost nicety; and as there is a strong feeling of friendship, almost equal to that which exists in Scotland, amongst all those who are born in the departments of France bordering on the Rhine, and who maintain their Teutonic originality, he always found friends and supporters in every regiment in the ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... another in casting metals, another in chiselling, and they were certainly the draughtsmen of an age in which the art of drawing was practically lost among painters; and it was because they learned how to draw that so many of them became great painters when the originality of two or three men of ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... to a wider future were already opening. The professors at the Sorbonne appreciated his great intellect and originality. "You have a true vocation," said one. "Follow it. But go to the bar, where your voice, which is one in a thousand, will carry you on, study and intelligence aiding. The lecture room is a narrow theater. If you like, I will write to your father to tell him what my opinion of you is." ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... fluent writer, but his resources of expression ever correspond to his richness of thought. And if his style cannot be said to bend gracefully to the variations of his subject, it still bends and does not break. In felicity and originality of epithet, the usual sign of a writer's genuineness of perception, he is excelled by no theologian of the time. He also has that power of pithy and pointed language which so condenses a statement of a fact or principle that it gives forth the diamond sparkle of epigram. The effect ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... Indian courts might certainly be relied upon to prove that swindlers as a class in the East come very close to, if they do not surpass, in brilliancy of execution and originality of design the most expert of their fraternity in Europe and America. India in especial is the home of forgery. There are some particular districts which are noted as marts for the finest specimens ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... continued Beresynth, "who are dunces in many things. What philosophical tolerance! and yet among them many a fellow is all snout, and confronts the learned physiognomists of the ocean with a countenance, grave, cold, calm in the consciousness of its originality: nay, the whole deep brims and swims with one can't count how many eccentric faces, and gills, and teeth, and eyes astart from their sockets, and every other kind of striking contour: but every monster there floats his own ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... so delight the natives of India and Africa. The name is taken from the way in which they are prepared, namely, by means of a jet of intense flame, and great skill and dexterity is required on the part of the workman, who can display his talent and originality by ornamenting them with flowers and arabesques. The combined effects of light and colour are often very beautiful, and seem a fit adornment for all those eastern and southern nations over whom a halo of ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... journal published in Paris in the English language, "Galignani's Messenger." It is old, and in its way is very useful, but it is principally made up of extracts from the English journals. It has no editorial ability or originality, and of course never advances any opinion upon a ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... and the String. One of the best illustrations I know of the keenness and originality of a wild bear's mind and senses, is found in Mr. W. H. Wright's account of the grizzly bear he did not catch with an elk bait and two set guns, in the Bitter Root Mountains. This story is related ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... permanently the reading public. Based upon an intuition of the public mind, changing with the wind,—always after, never before it,—such editorial judgment, indeed, must be of doubtful validity; must lead in many instances to unwise and unprofitable restrictions upon originality in fiction. ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... Yet Another Bloody Acronym. Whenever some program is being named, someone invariably suggests that it be given a name that is acronymic. The response from those with a trace of originality is to remark ironically that the proposed name would then be 'YABA-compatible'. Also used in response to questions like "What is WYSIWYG?" See ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... confirms this opinion. Woman is here on the average much inferior as regards creation or production, properly so called, and even her best results are wanting in originality and do not open up new paths. On the contrary, as virtuosos, women compare well with men in simply reproductive art. There are, however, exceptional women whose productions are original, creative and independent. The philosopher Stuart ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... the sea of imagination without such a powerful bark; but there are many points in the book very admirably done. There is a certain St. Clair, a New Orleans gentleman, who seems to me to be conceived with great power and originality. If he had not "a Grecian outline of face," which I began to be a little tired of in my earliest infancy, I should think him unexceptionable. He has a sister too, a maiden lady from New England, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... Chinese system, at any rate after it assumed its final form, was harmful through the fact that it was based solely on the classics, that it was purely literary, and that it allowed no scope whatever for originality. The system was established in its final form by the Emperor Hung Wu (1368-1398), and remained unchanged until 1905. One of the first objects of modern Chinese reformers was to get it swept away. ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... unconventional. And yet, though his mother sighs now and then over his repugnance to young ladies, and tries to badger him into looking a little more spruce, I can perceive that she is thoroughly proud of his originality and independence, and believes that he is even more likely than his conventional brother to distinguish himself and immortalize the family name. Josephine used to say, when the boys were little, that she hoped one of them ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... curate had never asked himself; but it came upon him at this moment with disconcerting force that she was right. Luckily for his self-esteem, it did not occur to him at the same time that it was this very lack of the conventional virtues, a certain freshness and originality born of her defiant neglect of them, which formed the stronger part of ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... the house, and many queer old portraits, afforded me matter of Speculation, and would have filled up more time than I had to bestow. There are portraits of Jane Shore and Fair Rosamond, which have some marks of originality, being miserable daubs, yet from evidently beautiful subjects. Arabella Stuart is also at full length, and King Charleses and Jameses in abundance, with their queens, brethren, and cousins. There are galleries in this house of the dimensions of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... upon the situation of the community at the time he writes, and of the class of readers for which he takes his pen. Now at the present time, it is undoubtedly true, that, while among the great mass of teachers there may be too little originality and enterprise, there is still among many a spirit of innovation and change, to which a caution ought to be addressed. But before I proceed, let me protect myself from misconception by one or ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... our fellow-passengers, Mr. Ruby, is the type of a vulgar tradesman. Without any originality or magnanimity in his composition, he has spent twenty years of his life in mere buying and selling, and as he has gener- ally contrived to do business at a profit, he has realized a considerable fortune. What he is going to do with the money, he does not seem able to say: his ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... of the season. The characters are few, | | but remarkably well drawn; the dialogue fresh, crisp, and | | sparkling, and the incidents thoroughly natural." | | | | From the Cincinnati Chronicle. | | | | "There is a singular freshness about this novel, often a | | quaint originality of expression, always a smooth rippling | | of words not without ideas, of seed thoughts, many of which | | are well worth cherishing, and which may germinate and grow | | in the reader's mind long after he has forgotten that ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... same thing in Paris before the war,' the squire explained. 'Renan gave me a card to her. An extraordinary woman. No particular originality; but one of the best persons "to consult about ideas," like Joubert's Madame de Beaumont, I ever saw. Receptiveness itself. A beauty, too, or was one, and a bit of a sphinx, which adds to the attraction. Mystery becomes a woman vastly. One ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "I have a class," she says, "of seventeen pupils, between the ages of 16 and 22. They come to me for fifty minutes every day. I allow them great freedom in questioning, and I am puzzled by them daily. They show more mathematical ability and more originality of thought than I had expected. I doubt whether young men would show as deep an interest. Are there seventeen students in Harvard College who take mathematical astronomy, do you think?" So Mr. Vassar's magnificent donation ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... was careful to use a traditional manner and matter; yet did something altogether different, changed by that toil, impelled by my share in Cain's curse, by all that sterile modern complication, by my 'originality' as the newspapers call it. Morris set out to make a revolution that the persons of his 'Well at the World's End' or his 'Waters of the Wondrous Isles,' always, to my mind, in the likeness of Artemisia and her man, might walk his native scenery; and I, that my native scenery ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... ii, and iii of the Monist (1890-1893) contain a number of articles by Mr. Charles S. Peirce, articles the originality of which has apparently prevented their making an immediate impression, but which, if I mistake not, will prove a gold-mine of ideas for thinkers of the coming generation. Mr. Peirce's views, tho reached so differently, ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... are usually selfish, always garrulous, with a love of romancing, while a ready wit combined with fertile imagination often gains them a bubble reputation for learning they do not possess. Invention, poetry, music, artistic taste and originality are occasionally of a high order, and the memory is sometimes phenomenal; but desultory, half-finished work, and ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... left me father, an' this is the way I'm goin' back to him!" replied Peg sturdily. "Goodbye, Cousin Alaric," and she laughed good-naturedly at the odd little man. In spite of everything he did, he had a spice of originality about him that compelled Peg to overlook what might have seemed ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... of this "gentleman of acknowledged genius and sovereign popularity," we have never been able to discover. If oddity were always originality, if quaintness and beauty were synonymous, if paradox were necessarily wisdom, we should be ready to grant that Mr. Tupper is a wise, beautiful and original thinker. But thought, after all, is an affair of mind, and ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... unlike; the generative ferments of the ductless glands work to different ends.[3] Masculine qualities and feminine qualities are fundamentally and eternally distinct and incommensurate. Energy, struggle, daring, initiative, originality, and independence, even though sometimes combined with rashness, extravagance, and defect, seem likely to remain qualities in which men—on the average, it must be remembered—will be more conspicuous than women. Their manifestation will resist the efforts put forth to constrain ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... by Mr. Bigge; but he endeavoured to render it suitable, by suggesting a code of regulations, in which may be discovered the outline of several schemes, since claiming originality. It was intended for those convicted of serious crimes, or such as committed offences in the colonies. The prisoners, two together, were to build their own huts; their sole implement the hatchet, and their material wood and nails: ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... St. Maclou's staircase was finished, but the main lines of the structure are so suggestive of the earlier work that I cannot but imagine this fine piece of French Renaissance to be a deliberate copy, by a master strong enough to retain his own originality of treatment, of the main design that appears in ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... obtaining the active principles from indigenous plants, has opened the way to the use of a few of the most important of these remedial agents, hitherto almost wholly unknown to the medical profession, and the encouraging results attending our practice have amply repaid us for the investigation and originality in our ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... it?" she demanded; then she smiled at him and added: "Thank you, for introducing me to the wonderful originality of being natural. On the whole I ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... the time. But a full-length portrait of a man's domestic life with enough picturesque detail to enable us to see him through the eyes of private friendship did not exist in the language. Boswell's originality and merit may be tested by comparing his book to the ponderous performance of Sir John Hawkins, or to the dreary dissertations, falsely called lives, of which Dugald Stewart's Life of Robertson may be taken for a type. The writer is so anxious to be dignified and philosophical ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... of you, my dear fellow. Of course your name goes with a certain public—and I rather like the originality of our bringing out a work so out of our line. I daresay it may boom us both." His creases deepened at the thought, and he shone ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... is Gothic, but the general treatment has much of that Byzantine-Romanesque which produced some very remarkable buildings in Southern France. The portal is very wide and deeply recessed, and the tympan is crowded with bas-reliefs, the sculpture of which, rude yet expressive, is of a striking originality. There is a broad arabesque moulding in the doorway suggesting Eastern influence, and the closed arcade of the facade, with corbel-table above and its row of uncouth monstrous heads, presents a highly curious effect of struggling motives ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... verse, in which nascent excellence struggles with dim obscurities, like a young moon with heavy clouds. But his 'Silex Scintillans,' or 'Sacred Poems,' produced in later life, attests at once the depth of his devotion, and the truth and originality of his genius. He died ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the world, and for a fortnight no soul looked into it, concluding its name was its true name. No such thing. It is a set of letters in verse, in all kind of verses, describing the life at Bath, and incidentally everything else; but so much wit, so much humour, fun, and poetry, so much originality, never met together before. Then the man has a better ear than Dryden or Handel. Apropos to Dryden, he has burlesqued his St. Cecilia, that you will never read it again without laughing. There is a description of a milliner's box ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... conclusion," said Bones, thoughtfully, "not without originality—when it first occurred to you, but as a conclusion, if you will pardon my criticism, sir, if you will forgive me for suggestin' as much—in callin' me an ass, sir: apart from its bein' contrary to the spirit an' letter ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... of 'Northanger Abbey' in 1798, and the commencement of 'Mansfield Park' in 1811, may sufficiently account for any difference of style which may be perceived between her three earlier and her three later productions. If the former showed quite as much originality and genius, they may perhaps be thought to have less of the faultless finish and high polish which distinguish the latter. The characters of the John Dashwoods, Mr. Collins, and the Thorpes stand out from the canvas with a vigour and originality which ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... been used in the inauguration of colonial governors and in the opening of colonial assemblies. They furnish a further proof that the American nation has been a thing of growth, an imitation of existing conditions until such time as originality could be developed or imitations transformed to meet the new conditions. Local forms furnished the models. They would be changed only as national ideals were developed. The fact that most of these European ceremonials ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... with diminished claims to our love and honour to the full extent of his differences from them?—Or are these very differences additional proofs of poetic wisdom, at once results and symbols of living power as contrasted with lifeless mechanism—of free and rival originality as contradistinguished from servile imitation, or, more accurately, a blind copying of effects, instead of a true imitation of the essential principles?—Imagine not that I am about to oppose genius to rules. No! the comparative value of these rules is the very cause ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... in love with a suit of clothes as with a future class orator. We took in one man once because he bought a pair of patent-leather tan shoes in his Junior year. We argued that, if he had the nerve to wear the things to his Y. M. C. A. meetings, there must be some originality in him after all—and we took a chance. We won. But it's a risky business. Once five frats rushed a fellow for a month because of the beautiful clothes he wore—and just after the victorious bunch had initiated ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... who in their own day had a like supremacy. Such do not in fact form a class, because, though a certain community of ideas and principles may be traced in their actions, their personalities and methods bear each the stamp of originality in performance; and where originality is found, classification ceases to apply. There is a company, it may be, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... things that I address myself to you, fellow-men. Society has not changed during my absence, and yet, to be saved, it needs to be changed. It needs, above all, real men, men and women of originality and individuality; men and women, not afraid to brave the scornful contempt of the conventional mob, men and women brave enough to break from the ranks of custom and lead into new paths, men and women strong enough to smash the fatal social ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... the writing as it is entertaining in the reading. It is actual comedy of the most artistic sort, and it is handled with a freshness and originality that is unquestionably novel."—Boston Transcript. "A feast of humor and good cheer, yet subtly pervaded by special shades of feeling, fancy, tenderness, or whimsicality. A merry thing in prose."—St. ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... artificial. For the artificial, no doubt, has a wide place in Sanskrit literature. Everywhere we find systems, rules and models, castes and schools, but nowhere individuality, no natural growth, and but few signs of strong originality and genius. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... to be a mere fish, and to differ but little in sentiments and ethical culture from all the rest of his remote cousins. But when one comes to look closer at their character and antecedents, it becomes evident at once that there is a deal of unsuspected originality and caprice about sharks and flat-fish. Instead of conforming throughout to a single plan, as the young, the gay, the giddy, and the thoughtless are too prone to conclude, fish are in reality as various and variable in their mode of life as any other great group in the animal ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... genius shown by the great Scotch philosopher, and equally by the brilliant exposition of those views by Playfair in his Illustrations. To the former he gave unstinted praise for the breadth and originality of his views, and to the latter for the eloquence of his writings—adopting quotations chosen from these last, indeed, as mottoes ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... the ideal: first, general principles; secondly, personages; thirdly, their character and their passions. Hegel winds up by considering the qualities necessary in an artist: imagination, genius, inspiration, originality, etc. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... late sixteenth century may have also had much to account for the secular reaction of the succeeding period. But Rembrandt had no need to seek new ground to escape from a formal rendering of well-known themes. Like most masters of supreme genius, his originality consisted in the realisation of his own deepest and most personal emotion in his treatment of the old stories. They appealed to him as the vehicle of the noblest thoughts of man in relation to himself ...
— Rembrandt, With a Complete List of His Etchings • Arthur Mayger Hind
... thought and originality, this stanza certainly deserves credit," Li Wan asserted; "but as regards pregnancy and simplicity of language, it, after all, yields ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... rend and harass one. Thus an everyday use of the term today was once wrenched and immoderate speech. Possibly the first man who heard of rough weather was puzzled for a moment, then amused or delighted as he caught the figure. It did not require great originality to think of a crowd as rough in its movements. But our poet applied the idea to an individual. To him a rude, uncivil, impolite, ungracious, uncourteous, unpolished, uncouth, boorish, blunt, bluff, gruff, brusk, or burly person was as the unplaned lumber or the unpolished gem; and we imitative ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... amusing account was given of the effort "to accommodate the routine activities of the organization to the demand of the press for something new or sensational, which made great demands upon the originality, initiative and judgment of both the board and the publicity department," but it was managed about four times a week. The Sunday papers "drew heavily upon the ingenuity of the publicity department; special ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... Colenso, London, 1888, especially vol. i, chap. v. For the dramatic performance at Colenso's cathedral, see vol. ii, pp. 14-25. For a very impartial and appreciative statement regarding Colenso's work, see Cheyne, Founders of Old Testament Criticism, London, 1893, chap. ix. For testimony to the originality and value of Colenso's contributions, see Kuenen, Origin and Composition of the Hexateuch, Introduction, pp. xx, as follows: "Colenso directed my attention to difficulties which I had hitherto failed to observe or adequately ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... suffered, and were afraid. They had opinions also, on most subjects, firmly held and decidedly expressed. Indeed, some of them had a way of putting things which was a positive refreshment and stimulus to him. It had, for the moment, the effect of genius and originality, and in the first pleasure of contact, he was inclined to give to some of his new friends a higher place intellectually than he gave them afterward. Happily, he kept his opinions of men and things very much to himself in these first days, and scandalised ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... enterprises of those periods; and the author, to show how unprejudiced he is, and what original views he takes of subjects, must needs speak up for Popery, whenever he has occasion to mention it; though, with all his originality, when he brings his hero and the vagabonds with which he is concerned before a barricadoed house, belonging to the Whigs, he can make them get into it by no other method than that which Scott makes his rioters employ to get into the Tolbooth, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... in fact he could imitate almost anything—and well, too—the easier that he had nothing of his own pressing for utterance; for he had yet made no response to the first demand made on every man, the only demand for originality made on any man—that he should order his ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... by Mr. Saintsbury to deserve the title of "the greatest man of letters of the French eighteenth century." He places him above Voltaire because "of his far greater originality ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... which becomes a source of considerable revenue; as the hall is crowded at almost every meeting. I must here record, one more feature which implies, besides the oratorical powers and progressive originality of the father, an intensity of interest on the part of a daughter, in her father's views, such as is seldom witnessed. Miss Alice B. will, from the beginning to the end of every lecture, keep the eye of her father, watching every change ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... I know better than the greatest pedant of them all that the fashion, no matter when it began, no matter when it may end, belongs as essentially to the Nineties as the fashion for the crinoline belongs to the Sixties. Harland was not original in wanting to set up a pulpit for himself—the originality was in the design for it. The Yellow Book was not like any other quarterly from which any other young man ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... power he showed (in his time singularly exceptional) of harmonising the ideas of mediaeval mysticism with some of the most characteristic features of modern religious thought. A man of deep and somewhat ascetic piety, and gifted with much originality and with a cultured and progressive mind, he had many readers and a few earnest and admiring adherents, yet was never greatly in sympathy with the age in which he lived. Three or four generations earlier, or three or four generations later, he would ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... if for no other reason, at least for this one. We may grant safely that the mind of Luther was the necessary result of a combination of natural laws. We may go further, and grant, but by no means safely, that Luther, was the creature of circumstances, that there was no self- moving originality in him, but that his age made him what he was. To some modern minds these concessions remove all difficulty and mystery: but not, I trust, to our minds. For does not the very puzzle de quo agitur remain equally real; namely, why the average ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... collected from his own library, rich in works that few others had read, and from that of his beloved University, crabbed with Greek, rich with Latin, drawing into itself, like a whirlpool, all that men had thought hitherto, and combining them anew in such a way that it had all the charm of a racy originality. Then he had projects for the cultivation of cobwebs, to which end, in the good Doctor's opinion, it seemed desirable to devote a certain part of the national income; and not content with this, all public-spirited citizens would probably be induced to devote as much of their time and means as ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... His eccentricities, his quaint sayings, and out-of-the-way actions, became as notable in the great world as they had been in the small one of a public school. That he was very clever there was no doubt, and that the cleverness was of a high order might be surmised, not only from the originality but the independence of his character. He dazzled the world, without seeming to care for its praise or its censure,—dazzled it, as it were, because he could not help shining. He had some strange notions, whether political or social, which rather frightened his father. According to Southey, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... best. We are frequently reminded of this singer and of that. The young American is instinctively loyal to the long tradition of English literature. He is content to undergo the influence of the great masters, and does not seek for premature originality on the by-paths of eccentricity. But while he is the disciple of many, he is the vassal of none. His matter is always his own, the fruit of personal vision, experience, imagination, even if he may now and then unconsciously pour ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... fiction,—that he had been attempted without humour by Stothard, without lightness by Mulready,[31]—that he had been made comic by Cruikshank, and vulgarised by Rowiandson,—it was certainly to Mr. Thomson's credit that he had approached his task with so much refinement, reverence and originality. If the book has a blemish, it is to be mentioned only because the artist, by his later practice, seems to have recognised it himself. For the purposes of process reproduction, the drawings were somewhat loaded ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... of his banishment. His imagination is for ever captive. His horizon is for ever bounded. He is fettered by routine, and paralyzed by tradition. His very ideas must put on the livery of his predecessors; for in a profession where originality of thought stands for the blackest shade of original sin, skill—mere skill—must be the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... returned Margaret. "Sometimes women will laugh because they are expected to, and they did that afternoon. Everything was simply cut and dried. It always is at Mrs. George B. Slade's. I never knew a woman so absolutely destitute of originality." ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... you, not hurtful. A man is called to let his light shine before men; but he ought to understand better and better what medium it is through, what retinas it falls on: wherefore look there. I find in this, as in the two other Speeches, that noblest self-assertion, and believing originality, which is like sacred fire, the beginning of whatsoever is to flame and work; and for young men especially one sees not what could be more vivifying. Speak, therefore, while you feel called to do it; and when you feel called. But for yourself, my friend, I prophesy it will not do always: ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... for a moment, to disclaim originality for the principles he had just enunciated, even at the price of trying to pronounce the name of ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... dear. What we should strive for is originality—American originality; but soberly, slowly. Art is evolved painfully, little by little; it can't be bought ready-made at shops for the asking like tea and sugar. If we invite designs for the new church, ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... observing cursorily that I every now and then, whilst studying this Welsh, generally supposed to be the original tongue of Britain, encountered words which, according to the lexicographers, were venerable words highly expressive, showing the wonderful power and originality of the Welsh, in which, however, they were no longer used in common discourse, but were relics, precious relics, of the first speech of Britain, perhaps of the world; with which words, however, I was already ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... less heterogeneous. O wise Solomon!" cried the Doctor, with his mouth full of kidney-pie; "had I but the authority you enjoyed in a like dispute, I would resign to you all the credit of originality!" ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... mechanical method of a machine. Nor, again, can the result we see be due to the working of blind physical and chemical processes alone. There is a great deal too much variety and spontaneity and originality about. We could not possibly look upon the forest as a machine—even of the most complicated kind. A machine goes grinding round and round, producing things of exactly the same pattern. Whereas no two things exactly alike are ever turned out in the forest. ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... dunces in many things. What philosophical tolerance! and yet among them many a fellow is all snout, and confronts the learned physiognomists of the ocean with a countenance, grave, cold, calm in the consciousness of its originality: nay, the whole deep brims and swims with one can't count how many eccentric faces, and gills, and teeth, and eyes astart from their sockets, and every other kind of striking contour: but every monster there floats ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... of warning about doing too much for the children in these exercises, and even guiding too much, carrying system and method too far in dictation. We must remember that an excess of systematizing crushes instead of developing originality, and that it is all too easy even in the kindergarten to turn children into machines incapable of acting when the ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... rule, shown in such manner as to indicate in any way which part was performed by woman and which by man. The grand prize work, I am informed by the Rand, McNally Company, was nearly half performed by women; certainly 45 per cent of it. In this the skill and ingenuity displayed and the originality was not separable ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... particular, Brook Farm is a much improved model for the oft-praised schools of New England. It is time that the imitative and book-learned systems of the latter should be superseded or liberalized, by some plan better calculated to excite originality of thought and the native energies of the mind. The deeper, kindly sympathies of the heart, too, should not be forgotten; but the germination of these must be despaired of under a rigid hireling system. Hence Brook Farm, ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... in the mouth of him who first used them, but by constant repetition by others have become mere slang, with all the offensiveness of plagiarism. The prime objectionableness of slang is its hideous lack of originality. Until mouth-worn it is ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... forgiven by acquaintances for his social brilliancy, and by friends for his frank affection. With some business talents and practical shrewdness, he was quite incapable of wisely conducting his affairs, by reason of a mania for speculation and originality. There was considerable waste of good material in ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... was certainly pretty, he could not remember her mother sufficiently to trace any likeness, and he had never admired the mother's pronounced beauty. She had flashed out for an instant into what seemed originality and feeling. But it had passed, and she had asked no further questions ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... February 6, 1910. There were several important achievements during his pastorate. In 1890, at a cost of about $25,000, he remodeled the building left by J. H. Brooks and changed the name to Vermont Avenue Baptist Church. Being a great preacher and pastor noted for his originality and his ability to master the situation, he soon attracted a large following and increased the membership of his church almost to 4,000. He easily became a man of national reputation and in his travels abroad so impressed the people wherever he ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... This is a common case, as we have before hinted, with even the most original. Had not Shakspeare and Milton been "celestial thieves," their writings would have been far less rich and brilliant than they are; although, had they not possessed true originality, they would not have taken their present lofty position in the world of letters. So, to say that Burns was much indebted to his predecessors, and that he often imitated Ramsay and Fergusson, and borrowed liberally ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... separately: (1) his power of visualization; (2) his choice of significant detail; (3) his originality or lack of it; (4) his range in characterization; (5) his power of suggestion as over against his vividness of delineation; (6) his economy—or lack of it—in expression. Where ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... Ireland are of comparatively recent growth, and though in many instances exquisitely fine, do not as yet show much originality. ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... have ever been most intimately allied. If language, by its originality of structure and its native richness, can, in its delineations, interpret thought with grace and clearness, and if, by its happy flexibility, it can paint with vivid truthfulness the objects of the external world, it reacts at the same time upon thought, ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... sportsmanship, personal cleanliness, and self-reliance, together with a dislike of such cruelty as had been officially (so to speak) recognized as cruelty, and a sense of public service to a State run by and for the public schools; but it would have required far more originality than he possessed ever to look at Life from any other point of view than that from which he had been born and bred to watch Her. To fully understand harbinger, one must, and with unprejudiced eyes and brain, have attended one of those great cricket matches in which ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... who was regarded in her set as a wit, a reputation acquired by reason of the fact that she possessed a certain knack for adapting slang humorously (for there was no originality to her alleged wit), now bent her head and looked at her brother incredulously. "My ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... heart, to deliver in pseudo-extempore fashion, as was the weary custom of most Scotch ministers of his time. But this Sunday, all that he had committed slipped clean out of his memory. He preached as he had never been known to preach before, and never preached again—with originality, power, eloquence; speaking from his deepest heart, as if the words thence pouring out had been supernaturally put into it; which, with a superstition that approached to sublimest faith, he afterward ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Pipelet had caluminated her; then again he smiled at his credulity, in thinking it probable that a girl so young, so pretty, so solitary, should have escaped the seductions of Giraudeau, Cabrion, and Germain. Still, for all that, Miss Dimpleton's frankness and originality disposed him to ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... his efficiency and originality as a designer but he had exercised the utmost discretion in the management of the cutting room. Moreover, he had little taste for music and never so much as whistled a melody during ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... a scribe of sense, or comicality, Avoiding the sensational, the silly, and the shoppy; But he can never make a claim to true originality, His contributions always ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 25, 1893 • Various
... that Vauvenargues has the defects of his qualities, and that with his aversion to emphasis was bound up a certain inability to appreciate even grandeur and originality, if they were too strongly and boldly marked. 'It is easy to criticise an author,' he has said, 'but hard to estimate him.'[23] This was never more unfortunately proved than in the remarks of Vauvenargues himself upon the great Moliere. There is almost a ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... of her hair mingled with his pleasurable sense of her frank originality. For the first time the bargain really appealed to him. He could not but see that she was easily the fairest of that crush of fair women, and to have her prostrated at the foot of his career was more subtly delicious than to have her surrender to his person. The ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... recommended imitation as a road to originality and few have disagreed with him on this point. It is undoubtedly easier to write a sonnet if one is familiar with Wordsworth or to write a ballade if one has read Dobson. At the same time to be of value the imitation must be done broadly and systematically. The artist does ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... Peterkin; and he continued, "Observe the quaint originality of form in the body and limbs of that bloated old spider that is crawling up your ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... there is such a remarkable uniformity in Shakespeare's humour as must acquit him of all charge of plagiarism in this respect, and may go some way towards proving the general originality of his plays. Certainly, verbal conceits were then in high favour, and the character of Shakespeare's humour is only one of many proofs that pleasantry had not at this time ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... "*Whereas*, in originality of design, perfection in detail and attractiveness in equipment, the New York State building at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition is thoroughly representative of the dignity and position of the ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... drawing-room was John's great microscope, with the green-shaded apparatus for lighting it; the books also from the library had been allowed to overflow into it, and encroach upon all the tables. The dining-room alone was as other people's dining-rooms, but John's own den was so very far gone in originality and strangeness of litter, that Justina felt decidedly uneasy when she saw it; it made manifest to her that her hoped-for spouse was not the manner of man whom she could expect to understand; books also here had accumulated, and stood in rows on chairs and tables ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... instead of being brilliant, the writer of these pages has endeavored to shun the path of those whose aim appears to have been to dazzle, rather than to instruct. As he has aimed not so much at originality as utility, he has adopted the thoughts of his predecessors whose labors have become public stock, whenever he could not, in his opinion, furnish better and brighter of his own. Aware that there is, in the public mind, a strong predilection for the doctrines contained in Mr. Murray's grammar, ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to whom its energetic language and unfamiliar conceptions would have presented insuperable difficulties. Between Dante and Alfieri no Italian poet except Michael Angelo expressed so much deep thought and feeling in phrases so terse, and with originality of style so daring; and even Michael Angelo is monotonous in the range of his ideas and uniform in his diction, when compared with the indescribable violence and vigour of Campanella. Campanella borrows little by way of simile or illustration from the outer ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... a man of moderate abilities and somewhat ungraceful appearance. He was tall, sandy-haired, with a half-anxious countenance, as though the cares of the shining new edifice and of the flock rather troubled him. He preached with no striking originality, but with evident earnestness, mingled with abortive efforts at rhetoric. He spoke good words for Christ, extolling His power to save sinners; and the simple statements, however trite they may have sounded to others, ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... of them wore petticoats. She differed from the frivolous women of court life in her earnest pursuit of intellectual pleasures. Her whole day was given up to the study of writers such as Leibnitz and Newton, the philosopher. She rarely wasted time, and could certainly claim originality in that her working hours were never broken by social interruptions. She was unamiable, but had no love for slander, though she was herself the object of much spiteful gossip from women who passed as wits in the ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... prepare his one meal; for his breakfast and supper were but a cup of coffee. Slowly and with the greatest care the materials were prepared and the cooking watched. There was a savor of the camp, a savor of the Paris cafe, and a savor of originality; and often, wearied with the dishes prepared by my half-breeds, I have come over to the island to dine with Jacques, for the old soldier was proud of his skill, and liked an appreciative guest And I—But it is not my story ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... brutal degree of growth. Yet it might be the lad had started well enough, come of good stock, but been turned thereafter into an artificial atmosphere, and warped, transformed? Had he worked so hard in an office, in a shop, that his whole originality was lost thereby? Ay, maybe 'twas so. Anyway, here he is now, easy and passionless, a little weak, a little heedless, wandering farther and farther off the road. He might envy every soul among his fellows in the wilds, but has ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... privilege to flirt and carry on with the young men they know, yet when a strange young lady is introduced into their circle of gentlemen friends, they have more respect for her if she shows some originality and does not behave just exactly as ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... and minute observation of nature, but their versification—still reminding us of the imitators of Pope— has little originality or charm. They attracted the admiration of Coleridge, but ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... so tender as Drake ever was for the lives of his men and the safety of his ships, to attack such a place might well have appeared hopeless; but the originality of the amphibious corsair at once descried a hole which had escaped all the science of the Spanish martialists. Instead of entering by the Bocca Grande, with consummate skill and daring he piloted the whole fleet through the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... now the power and originality of Priscilla's acting divided the attention of the house. Surely there never ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... will not always find the translation of the speeches in idiomatic English, but it may be pointed out that in most cases that defect is due to the translator having aimed at preserving, as far as possible the stamp of originality as ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... and none have given a more intimate and accurate perception of the modes of thought and feeling at the time. The History ends with the death of Lorenzo de Medici in 1492. Enough has been said of its breadth of scope and originality of method. The spirit of clear flaming patriotism, of undying hope that will not in the darkest day despair, the plangent appeal to Italy for its own great sake to rouse and live, all these are found pre-eminently ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... an intensely interesting sport even if no great results were obtainable from it. There is a fascination which gets hold of anyone who has tried the art. Each day brings fresh situations and conditions requiring quick change of action and originality to meet them. ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell
... looking up to her, would be Aristotle, disputing and reckoning up his arguments on his fingers.[1311] This austere lady formed all her disciples in the same mould. In those days nothing was more despicable than singularity. Originality of mind did not then exist. The clerks who treated of the Maid all followed the same method, advanced the same arguments, and based them on the same texts, sacred and profane. Conformity could go no further. Their minds were ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... irritable mind, which gave him point and passion; and moreover he had a certain obstinate originality and a generous disposition. So that he was always lively, sometimes spacious, and never vile. He loved to write and talk. He talked about everything, he had ideas about everything; he could no more help having ideas about everything ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Pons fallen by adapting himself to the company of his entertainers! In their houses he echoed their ideas, and said the obvious thing, after the manner of a chorus in a Greek play. He did not dare to give free play to the artist's originality, which had overflowed in bright repartee when he was young; he had effaced himself, till he had almost lost his individuality; and if the real Pons appeared, as he had done a moment ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... and epigrams which he threw off in fertile profusion are still clinchers; even his humor plays around them. Critics undertake to fix on the genuine sayings by internal evidence. Only a mind of transcendent originality could win its way to posterity ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... their not infrequent personal magnetism. They are very abstemious, their morals are pure, they have certain mental qualities, as yet undeveloped, and they are thrifty. But "they are so devoid of both originality and unity," says Sir Charles Eliot,[81] that acutest of observers, "that it is vain to seek for anything in politics, art, religion, literature or customs to which the name Albanian can be properly applied as denoting something common ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... and revised edition. This beautiful volume contains more than one hundred new poems, displaying this popular poet's well-known taste, cultivation, and originality. The author says: "The final word in the title of the volume refers to the Divine power in every human being, the recognition of which is the secret of all success and happiness. It is this idea which many of the verses endeavor to inculcate and ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... is a most admirable book, full of originality, wit, information and philosophy. Indeed, the vividness of the book is extraordinary. The scenes and descriptions are absolutely life-like."—Southern ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... of form. Then, as his travels extended his acquaintance with foreign literatures to that of Italy, he here found abundant fresh materials from which to feed his productive powers, and more elaborate forms in which to clothe their results; while at the same time comparison, the kindly nurse of originality, more and more enabled him to recast instead of imitating, or encouraged him freely to invent. In "Troilus and Cressid" he produced something very different from a mere condensed translation, and achieved a work in which he showed himself a master of poetic expression and sustained narrative; in ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... all this is true of Miss Walton, and yet, for some reason, she interests me a little this evening. She is refined, but nowhere in the world will you meet drearier monotony and barrenness than among refined people. Having no real originality, their little oddities are polished away. In Miss Walton I'm beginning to catch glimpses of vistas unexplored, though perhaps I am a fool ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... in the writing as it is entertaining in the reading. It is actual comedy of the most artistic sort, and it is handled with a freshness and originality that is unquestionably novel."—Boston Transcript. "A feast of humor and good cheer, yet subtly pervaded by special shades of feeling, fancy, tenderness, or whimsicality. A merry thing in ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... cattle, prickly pear, cottonwoods, Caddo Lake, the Brazos River, Santa Fe adobes, or other features of the land, let him bolster and put into perspective his own knowledge by reading what others have said on the matter. Knowledge fosters originality. Reading gives ideas. ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... a parasitic profession and Mr. Root's public career is parasitic. He lacks originality, he lacks passion—there is no place for passion in that clear mind—he lacks force. He elucidates other men's ideas, works out or puts into effect their policies, presents their case, is, by temperament, by reason of gifts amounting almost to genius, of defects that go with those gifts ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... "At last the time has arrived when the demoralization of the bar caused by a certain criminal lawyer must be dealt with as it is and without gloves." Once when Joe had saved a half-witted negro from "the extreme penalty" for murder, the Tocsin had declared, with great originality: "This is just the kind of thing that causes mobs and justifies them. If we are to continue to permit the worst class of malefactors to escape the consequences of their crimes through the unwholesome dexterities ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... those days taught more through the classics and less through handy text-books and shallow treatises concerning the Renaissance; they came with preconceived notions which were often strongly dashed with old-fashioned prejudice, but which did not lack originality: they come now in the smattering mood, imbued with no genuine beliefs, but covered with exceeding thick varnish. Old gentlemen then visited the sights in the morning, and quoted Horace to each other, and in the evening endeavoured by associating with Romans to understand ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... their meetings. It is not easy to decide which influenced the other more. Godwin's was the trained, systematic, academical mind, but Holcroft added to a rich and curious experience of life and a vein of native originality, wide reading and something more than a mere amateur's taste for music and art. It was Holcroft who drove Godwin out of his compromising Unitarianism into a view which for some years he boldly described as Atheism. His religious opinions were afterwards ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... Islanders, male and female, dress with far greater taste and ascetic originality than the christian natives. The women are fond of gay colours, the predominant ones being scarlet and green. Their nether bifurcated garment is very baggy, the bodice is extremely tight, and, with equally close-fitting ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... intellectual powers had commenced a fresh growth, I could not tell; but I leaned to the latter conclusion, especially after I began to observe that her peculiar remarks had become modified in form, though without losing any of their originality. The unearthliness of her beauty likewise disappeared, a slight colour displacing the almost marbly ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... not confine himself to questions of constitutional reform and internal government. He often spoke on the foreign policy of the Government, and it is in these speeches that he shews most originality. ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... the site chosen by Mr. Bigge; but he endeavoured to render it suitable, by suggesting a code of regulations, in which may be discovered the outline of several schemes, since claiming originality. It was intended for those convicted of serious crimes, or such as committed offences in the colonies. The prisoners, two together, were to build their own huts; their sole implement the hatchet, and their material wood and nails: their only furniture, stools and ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... this poem with admiration; he calls Varro the poet of the sail-tossing sea, says no age will be ignorant of his fame, and even thinks the ocean gods may have helped him to compose his song. [99] Quintilian with better judgment [100] notes his deficiency both in originality and copiousness, but allows him the merit of a careful translator. We gather from a passage of Ovid [101] that he wrote love poems, and from other sources that he translated Greek works on topography and meteorology, both strictly ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Professor Bales, of the University, lectured here on 'The Prime Function of Education.' He said it was the development of the individual, and that the chief end of educational work was the promotion of originality. And yet, when I think along original lines—when I depart from stereotyped formulae, and state boldly that I will not accept any religion, be it Presbyterian, Methodist, or Roman Catholic, that makes a God of spirit the creator of a man ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... artists of his day, that we shall have no difficulty in recognising it in the churches where he painted; the eye of the spectator is directly attracted towards it; his carnations are natural and varied according to his subjects; his draperies display much fancy and originality, with middle tints blended so skilfully as to equal the most beautiful produced by any other artist. And, if we may say so,—he succeeded in representing the minds even better than the forms of his subjects. He particularly studied this branch of the art, and we seldom observe more marked attitudes ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... and the quality of that which we call originality, creative power, or genius, is entirely dependent upon the activity, force, and integrity of the Imagination. Talent belongs to Thought, and works only with facts and ideas as others have done before. It may be skilful, sensible, and faithful, but it can walk only in the old, beaten ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... of much higher importance than to discover the cause of the growth of wood. Medullary rays are most difficult, because they are very often deficient particularly in climbers. I am horridly idle, and yet what can I do without books; yet with regard to books, the more originality we possess, the less we require them? There is nothing to be got here except a few marsh plants coming into flower. One beautiful Chara, which might disclose the secret, had I good glasses, it is a most graceful pellucid form, an undescribed ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... and they have the originality which such a style must naturally possess when carried out by a feminine ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... superior to one of purer descent. It possesses more enterprise and energy, more originality of thought and purpose. The virtues and failings of the different elements it embodies are alike intensified in it. We shall probably not go far wrong if we ascribe to this mixed character of the Israelitish people the originality ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... Benham, "it is. But I tell you, Brown, she is no ordinary woman. The very conception of that murder had a stroke of originality about it that I very much admire. I do not remember anything like it in the annals of crime. It is the true way in which a murder should be committed. The very publicity of the occasion was a safeguard. Think of poisoning a man ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... are relics of a time when life, if rough, was at least kind and hearty. We admire that life on the stage, we ape it in novels, we affect admiration and appreciation of its rich picturesqueness and vigorous originality, and we lie in so doing; for there is not an aesthetic prig in London who could have lived an hour in it. Truly, I should like to know what Francois Villon and Chaucer would have thought of some of their modern adorers, or what the lioness ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... cod-fish, cooked with garlic or onions, is deservedly a favourite: it contains more nourishment than beef. There is superior originality amongst the doces (sweetmeats) for which Madeira was once world-famous; and in the queques (cakes), such as lagrimas-cakes, cocoanut-cakes, and rabanadas, the Moorish 'rabanat,' slabs of wheat ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... denotes a quality similar in kind to pungent but less in degree, stimulating and agreeable; pungent spices may be deftly compounded into a piquant sauce. As applied to literary products, racy refers to that which has a striking, vigorous, pleasing originality; spicy to that which is stimulating to the mental taste, as spice is to the physical; piquant and pungent in their figurative use keep very close to ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... demanded; then she smiled at him and added: "Thank you, for introducing me to the wonderful originality of being natural. On the whole I ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... certainly; {244} nor can it be disputed that uniformity of surroundings puts a tax upon originality. To make bricks and find your own straw are terms of bondage. Modern characters, like modern houses, are possibly built too much on the same lines, Dickens's description of Coketown ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... part, in which Isaiah follows Micah (comp. the arguments in proof of originality in Micah, Vol. i., p. 413 ff.), has already been expounded on a former occasion. We have here only to answer the question, why it is that the Prophet opens his discourse with a proclamation of salvation borrowed from Micah? His ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... others in this Part, makes no pretense at originality. The author has studied and compared a considerable number of works by the best authorities on the subject and has endeavored to adapt the best of their contents to the use of printers' apprentices. Every author ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... best-known Russian dramatists of the period; he possessed more originality than Kniajnine. "Oedipus in Athens," "Fingal," "Demetrius Donskoi," and "Polyxena," are the best known ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... his merry humour and handsome, manly figure, backed up by the best letters of introduction, made him a general favourite. Polite society had a peculiar phraseology in those days. Rudeness used to be called frankness; bad language, originality; violence, manliness; and frivolity, nonchalance. To Mike, therefore, was attributed a whole host of good qualities, and the only alteration required of him was that he should wear an attila instead of a mente. He was a gentleman by birth, and that was enough. ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... volume is a real advance on its predecessor of the same name, and contains at least one poem of great originality, as well as many of much tenderness, sweetness, and beauty. 'The Organ-Boy' we have read again and again, with fresh pleasure on every reading. It is as exquisite a little poem as we have read for many a ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... man whose evil passion had providentially been kept in check for over a quarter of a century by the gross unskilfulness, the appalling monotony, of a Mrs. Butt. Could it be that there existed women, light and light-handed creatures, creatures of originality and resource, who were capable of producing prodigies like this kidney omelette on the spur of the moment? Evidently! Helen existed. And the whole omelette, from the melting of the butter to the final steady glance into the saucepan, had not occupied her more than six minutes—at most. She ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... made a better short abstract, even his terms standing "as heads of chapters." He goes on to say that he would at once write to Mr. Wallace offering to send his MS. to any journal; and concludes: "So my originality is smashed, though my book [the forthcoming 'Origin of Species'], if it will have any value will not be deteriorated, as all know the labour consists in the ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... work, but, as Tolstoi himself complains, they have never been seriously discussed. I hardly think that he will have to repeat the complaint in regard to the present volume. One may disagree with his views, but no one can seriously deny the originality, boldness, and depth of the social conception which he develops with such powerful logic. The novelist has shown in this book the religious fervor and spiritual insight of the prophet; yet one is pleased to recognize that the artist is not wholly lost in ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... scholarship. Her papers and those of Garnet Emerson were the only ones of outstanding merit. In re-examining the remaining eighteen we find a uniform level of mediocrity. As regards your set of papers, the general standard is low, with one exception. We consider that your essay on Lady Jane Grey shows an originality and a capacity for thought which may be worthy of training. On the strength of this—and this alone—the Governors have decided to allow you to retain your scholarship. In so doing they are perfectly within their rights. They did not undertake to grant free tuition to the ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... young cousin and could see no sign of the languishing lover. That young man seemed to find difficulty in deciding which young lady he considered the most attractive. Molly was all that was lovely and sweet and delightful; Judy had a singular charm for him, with her vivacious manner and originality; Elise O'Brien evidently amused him and interested him greatly; and now a new star had come on his horizon: Frances Andrews, whom he had met at the Browns' and found very fascinating, a mixture of American and French. Philippe had, in truth, met too many charmers in too short a space of time and ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... Another day he wanted counsel how to get a valentine to her,—because it was too big to shove in a lamp-post, and she might catch him if he left it on the steps, rang the bell, and ran away. Daniel wrote his own valentine; but, despite its originality, that document gave him no such comfort as Billy got from twenty-five cents' worth of embossed paper, pink cupids, and doggerel. Finally, Billy announced to me that he had been to play with Jimmy, and got introduced ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... Potomac at its feet, it resembles the capitol in Rome, surrounded by the Alban hills, with the Tiber at its feet. But the situation is grander than that of the Roman capitol. The edifice itself is worthy of the situation. It has beauty of form and sublimity in proportions, even if it lacks originality in conception. In itself it is a work of art. It ought not to receive in the way of ornamentation any thing which is not a work of art. Unhappily this rule has not always prevailed, or there would not be so few pictures and marbles about us worthy of the place they occupy. But bad pictures ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... by the categorical imperative of custom and law. This tendency still flourishes in our civilized communities, and, as the worship of the normal, is often a deadly foe to the abnormal and eccentric, and too often paralyzes originality." ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... but one hypothesis regarding the origin of species of animals in general which has any scientific existence—that propounded by Mr. Darwin. For Lamarck, sagacious as many of his views were, mingled them with so much that was crude and even absurd, as to neutralize the benefit which his originality might have effected, had he been a more sober and cautious thinker; and though I have heard of the announcement of a formula touching "the ordained continuous becoming of organic forms," it is obvious ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... Fine Arts Palace. It presents the astounding spectacle of a building which violates the architectural conventions on more than one occasion, and in spite of it, or possibly for that very reason, it has a note of originality that is most conspicuous. Everybody admits that it is most beautiful, and very few seem to know just how this was accomplished. Many of the "small fry" of the architectural profession enjoy themselves in picking out its faults, which are really, as suggested above, ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... really written in prison and by a prisoner distressed by ill-health as well as by lack of liberty, surely no task was ever better devised to while away weary hours. Leaving abundant scope for originality in selection, modification, and arrangement, as a compilation and translation it had in it that mechanical element which adds the touch of restfulness to literary work. No original, it is said, has ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... Wacht unrolled the drawing at which he had worked during the past week, and Engelbrecht was greatly astonished at the boldness and originality of the invention no less than at its exceptional neatness in the finished state. The mechanical part of the contrivance was so skilfully and cleverly arranged that even Engelbrecht, with all his great experience, could not comprehend it at once; but the greater therefore was ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... conduct, is not a phenomenon of to-day only, we may see alike in the appearance of Franklin at the French court in plain clothes, and in the white hats worn by the last generation of radicals. Originality of nature is sure to show itself in more ways than one. The mention of George Fox's suit of leather, or Pestalozzi's school name, "Harry Oddity," will at once suggest the remembrance that men who have in great things diverged from the beaten track, have frequently done so in ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... what has been left out of him, but it is more than possible to begin his education by using what ought to have been left out of him. So long as parents and teachers are either too dull or too busy to experiment with mischief, to be willing to pay for a child's originality what originality costs, only the most hopeless children can be expected to amount to anything. If we fail to see that originality is worth paying for, that the risk involved in a child's not being creative is infinitely more serious than the risk involved in his being ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... nymph-like form, so that when her back was turned she still was not unlike the girl who had jumped, with Anne of Austria, over the moat of the Tuileries in 1563. In all other respects she was the same mad creature who threw over her amours such an air of originality as to make them proverbial for eccentricity ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... paint, too," offered the reckless youth. "I'm crazy about art. It's the only solace of my declining years. And," he added cunningly and with evil intent to flatter and cajole, "I can tone down that design of yours without affecting its beauty and originality at all." ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... or art our attention is perpetually riveted upon the past: the men of Greece or of the Renaissance did better than any men do now; the triumphs of former ages, so far from facilitating fresh triumphs in our own age, actually increase the difficulty of fresh triumphs by rendering originality harder of attainment; not only is artistic achievement not cumulative, but it seems even to depend upon a certain freshness and navet of impulse and vision which civilisation tends to destroy. Hence comes, to those who have been nourished on the ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... instances the words also. The extraordinary power shown by Lina Dale in maintaining the character she had assumed and sustained during two years and a half was fully carried out by the skill and cleverness of her pretended correspondence; and in reading over these piles of letters, so full of originality, one could not but feel regret at the perversion of powers so remarkable,—powers which might have been developed by healthy action into means ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... with young Bretton. As she got settled, and accustomed to the house, she proved tractable enough with Mrs. Bretton; but she would sit on a stool at that lady's feet all day long, learning her task, or sewing, or drawing figures with a pencil on a slate, and never kindling once to originality, or showing a single gleam of the peculiarities of her nature. I ceased to watch her under such circumstances: she was not interesting. But the moment Graham's knock sounded of an evening, a change occurred; she was instantly at the head of the staircase. Usually her welcome was a reprimand ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... can compare with Diffin's last short story, "The Power and the Glory," which appeared in the last (July) issue. For originality of theme, clever phraseology and excellent literary craftsmanship it stands alone—a little masterpiece. Its ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... Of the Kab[i]r Panth[i]s Wilson says: "It is no part of their faith to worship any Hindu deity." A glance at the Dabist[a]n will preclude the possibility of claiming much originality for the modern deism of India. This work was written in 1645, and its Persian author describes, as a matter of every-day occurrence, religious debates between 'Jews, Nazarines, Mussulmen, and Hindus,' who meet more to criticise than to examine, but yet to ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... everything you know. No one else would take any trouble with you. Has Foinet ever bothered about you? And I can tell you this—you can work here for a thousand years and you'll never do any good. You haven't got any talent. You haven't got any originality. And it's not only me—they all say it. You'll never be a painter as ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... seventeen ethical precepts merit much approbation. With the exception of the doctrine of expediency, enunciated at the close of the tenth article, the code of Shotoku might be taken for guide by any community in any age. But the prince as a moral reformer* cannot be credited with originality; his merit consists in having studied Confucianism and Buddhism intelligently. The political purport of his code is more remarkable. In the whole seventeen articles there is nothing to inculcate worship of the Kami or observance of Shinto ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... for me." "He is as simple as a child," said the woman who took care of him in his last illness; "if he has done amiss, it was from ignorance rather than wickedness." A charming and a curious being, serious and simple, profound and childlike, winning by reason of his very vagaries, his good-natured originality, his helplessness in common life, La Fontaine knew how to estimate the literary merits as well as the moral qualities of his illustrious friends. "When they happened to be together," says he, in his tale of Psyche, "and had talked to their heart's content of their diversions, if they chanced ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... do a good deal in that time," I said, not flattering myself on the originality of the remark, but desiring to set him talking. In the country, as elsewhere, we must forego profundity if we ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... at once useful information, and delightful for elegant composition, embellished by plates, such as have never yet been given, both for their subjects and their execution. Literature is a perpetual source opened to us; but the Fine Arts present an unploughed field, and an originality of character ... But Money, Money must not be spared in respect to rich, beautiful, and interesting Engravings. On this I have something to communicate. Encourage Dagley, [Footnote: The engraver of the frontispiece of "Flim-Flams."] whose busts of Seneca and Scarron are pleasingly executed; ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... Wilhelm's pastel seemed wrong, her own drawing right. She was no bloodthirsty Sphinx revelling in human victims, but a harmless little cat purring against the side of the young god. She was diffident, eager to learn, slow to contradict. She broke herself of her paradoxes, and concealed her originality. She liked best to listen while he talked. He must explain everything to her, enlarge her experience, correct and improve her judgment. Her favorite words were, give me, show me, tell me! From morning till night he must give, tell, show. The sea washed up a medusa to the shore—give it ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... utterly destroyed A.D. 450, by Totila, Flagellum Dei, who, with great want of originality, immediately rebuilt Fiesole; thus repeating, but reversing, the achievement of the Romans five hundred years before. So Fiesole and Florence seem to have alternately filled and emptied themselves, like two buckets in a well, down to the time of Charlemagne. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... think that I am appealing only to the few men who have the rare gift of creative genius. But happily the progress of the world is not in the exclusive custody of the occasional men of genius. Great originality is, indeed, rare; but on a smaller scale it is not uncommon, and the same principles apply to the production of all creative work. The great scholar and the lesser intellectual lights differ in brilliancy, but the same process must ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... I proposed this solution of a passage of admitted difficulty in the Classical Museum. I take "Difficile est proprie communia dicere" in its ordinary sense, "It is hard to treat hackneyed subjects with originality." Horace then goes on to say that it is better to give up the attempt altogether and simply copy (say) Homer, than to run the risk of outraging popular feeling by a new treatment of (say) the Trojan story, or a new view of the chief ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
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