"Ingenious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sleigh have degenerated in the same way as crafty and cunning, both of which once meant skilled. Chaucer calls the wings of Daedalus "his playes slye," i.e. his ingenious contrivances. Quick meant alert, lively, as in "the quick and the dead." Slight, cognate with Ger. schlecht, bad, once meant ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... The lumps of lead endorsed this idea. Whilst the large piece was flat and difficult to move, the small piece was like a ball and meant to roll and strike the side the moment the coffin was moved. It was presumably necessary that the theft should be discovered, and your ingenious idea of a revengeful enemy appealed to me, Wigan. I elaborated the idea to Sir Arthur, you ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... their signification fixed. That the diamond is combustible, was a proposition certainly not dreamed of when the words Diamond and Combustible first received their meaning; and could not have been discovered by the most ingenious and refined analysis of the signification of those words. It was found out by a very different process, namely, by exerting the senses, and learning from them, that the attribute of combustibility existed in the diamonds upon which the experiment was tried; ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... strangers, were not pleasant for nervous people. Tom, however, was used to dogs, and soon became friends with him, which evidently pleased his host. And then the breakfast arrived, all smoking, and with it the two other ingenious youths, in velvet caps and far more gorgeous apparel, so far as colors went, than Drysdale. They were introduced to Tom, who thought them somewhat ordinary and rather loud young gentlemen. One of ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... pocketed his book and somewhat awkwardly with his huge hands unfastened the left side of his cassock, and tore the silk from the lining. Monsieur the Cure's cassock seemed a cabinet of oddities. First he pulled from this ingenious hiding-place a crucifix, which he replaced; then a knot of white ribbon which he also restored; and finally a tiny pocket or bag of what had been cream-colored satin embroidered with small bunches of heartsease, and which was aromatic with otto ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... are told of the men and women he helped away, some of them full of pathos, and some decidedly amusing. He told the latter which related to his ingenious contrivances for assisting fugitives to escape the police with much pleasure, in his later years. We would repeat many of them, but this is not the time or place. The necessity of avoiding the police was the only thing, however, which ever forced him into any secrecy in his operations, and ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... enhanced, as well, the beauty and dignity of those portions of the masque in which noble lords and ladies took their parts to create, by their gorgeous costumes and artistic grouping and evolutions, a sumptuous show. On the mechanical and scenic side Jonson had an inventive and ingenious partner in Inigo Jones, the royal architect, who more than any one man raised the standard of stage representation in the England of his day. Jonson continued active in the service of the court in the writing of masques and other entertainments far into the reign of King Charles; but, ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... surprising mechanical faculty, and great patience and skill in passing the figures he contrives through the programme arranged for them. Having read one of his novels, you feel as if you had been amused with a puppet-show of rare merit, and you would like to have the ingenious mechanician before the curtain. So much cleverness, however, seems to be thrown away on the entertainment of a single evening, and you sigh for its application to some work of more lasting usefulness; and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... him so, certainly,' said Mr. Winkle, astounded on this ingenious dove-tailing of the few words he had heard. 'I was on the staircase, and couldn't hear distinctly; the ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... the beauty of Nature, have a taste for the beauty of Art? Why not hang up a picture in the room? Ingenious methods have been discovered—some of them quite recently—for almost infinitely multiplying works of art, by means of wood engravings, lithographs, photographs, and autotypes, which render it possible for every person to furnish his rooms with beautiful pictures. Skill and science have thus brought ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... nothing whatever to defend herself against this ingenious sally; she simply stood there in graceful abstraction. Bernard was vaguely vexed at her neither looking at him nor speaking to him; her indifference seemed a contravention of that right of criticism which Gordon had bequeathed ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... days he goes about his grounds, petting his trees and his chickens, and working in his garden. He has several ingenious methods of fighting weeds and raises the earliest, best and latest sweet corn in ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... this volume photographic reproductions of certain pages of the original manuscript of Doctor Grimshawe, selected at random, upon which those ingenious persons whose convictions are in advance of their instruction are cordially invited to try their teeth; for it has been maintained that Mr. Hawthorne's handwriting was singularly legible. The present writer possesses specimens of Mr. Hawthorne's chirography at various ages, from boyhood until a day ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... think and listen and give full attention to both mental processes without letting either suffer at the expense of the other, had reconstructed the murder. He knew Cotherstone—nobody knew him half as well. Cotherstone was what Mallalieu called deep—he was ingenious, resourceful, inventive. Cotherstone, in the early hours of the evening, had doubtless thought the whole thing out. He would be well acquainted with his prospective victim's habits. He would know exactly when and where to waylay Kitely. The filching of the piece ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... signed 'Smith' as the etchings were signed 'Prince.' By no means! They were signed 'Buckingham Smith.' George much admired them, though less than he admired the etchings. They were very striking and ingenious, in particular the portraits and the still-life subjects. He had to admit that these fellows to whom he had scarcely given a thought, these fellows who existed darkly behind ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... the Riddleberger bill, which the creditors refused to accept, and an ingenious "coupon killer." Similar acts were passed in 1886 and 1887. The United States Supreme Court, before which these acts were brought, pronounced them unconstitutional in that they impaired the obligation of contracts, ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... was the finger of providence—providence taking you off your guard to give you your chance." This was ingenious, but, though he could glow for a moment in response to it, Francie's lover—if lover he may in his so infirm aspect be called—looked as if he mistrusted it, thought it slightly sophistical. What really shook him however was his companion's saying to ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... was prolonged to a late hour in the evening, in which a variety of anecdotes were related of the ingenious methods employed by Milosh to fill his coffers as rapidly ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... of metre in the preface is highly ingenious and touches at all points on truth. But I cannot find any statement of its powers considered abstractly and separately. On the contrary Mr. Wordsworth seems always to estimate metre by the powers which it exerts during (and, as I think, in consequence of) its ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... was very much at home in his own house. He had inhabited it for many years, and its arrangements were the expression of a creature immensely able and ingenious, but maimed both in ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... no time to effect, with all his works, before their friend came to ask whether they were relieved about their sister, and was amused at the handy little schoolboy's ingenious preparations. 'After all, I find it is to be more of an affair than I expected; I thought it was to be only ourselves and the Brandons, but they are the kind of people who always pick ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... multiplied upon this spot of earth, needing land for dwelling and business, envious eyes had been cast upon the Field, the last large "undeveloped" tract anywhere near the great city. Men who were skillful in such real estate "deals," greedy and ingenious in the various ways of turning civic growth to private profit, were figuring upon the possibility of getting hold of Clark's Field, when the short leases expired, and after making the necessary "improvements" cutting it up for sale. They saw fat profits in the ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... her with breaking her promise of some medals which she engaged to send him. I know not whether she had not, in her turn, some reason for complaint. A letter was sent her, not so much entreating, as requiring her patronage of Mrs. Barber, an ingenious Irishwoman, who was then begging subscriptions for her Poems. To this letter was subscribed the name of Swift, and it has all the appearance of his diction and sentiments; but it was not written in his hand, and had some little improprieties. ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... of conversations between four characters—Halieus,[3] Poietes, Physicus, Ornither. In the "First Day" we have an ingenious vindication of fly fishing against the well-known satire of Johnson[4] and Lord Byron, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... mind had flown back to the model. He was already living in the life that the promised gold would give to the dumb thought. True that all the ingenious additions to the engine—additions that were to convince the reason and startle the fancy—were not yet complete (for want, of course, of the diamond bathed in moonbeams); but still there was enough in the inventions already achieved to excite curiosity and obtain ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... where the gold-dust was stolen. Suggestion of thrift. Landlords to profit by trial, wherever held. Mock respect of the miners for the Squire. Elect a president at the trial. The Squire allowed to play at judge. Lay counsel for prosecution and defense. Ingenious defense of the accused. Verdict of guilty. Light sentence, on account of previous popularity and inoffensive conduct. Thirty-nine lashes, and to leave the river. Owner of gold-dust indemnified by transfer of thief's interest in a mine. A visit to Smith's Bar. Crossing the river on log bridges ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... sabres, ammunition in great quantity, large commodious camel-boxes for carrying specimens of natural history, one sextant and artificial horizon, three boiling-point and common atmospheric thermometers, and one primitive kind of camera obscure, which I had made at Aden under the ingenious supervision of Herne. ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... exemplary, inasmuch as it illustrates the homely maxim, that every man is the architect of his own fortune. Apart from this consideration, the memory of Bewick should be cherished by all our readers; since he re-invented the ingenious means by which we are enabled to embellish unsparingly each of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... very ingenious liar," remarked Luke, turning to the tramp. "Which of these stories do you want ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... distinguished Past President of The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, has invented an ingenious system of piece work which is adapted to meet this very case, and which has especial advantages not possessed by any of ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... enabled her to arrange her new possessions and her old to the best possible advantage. The cost of those purely useful articles which had not been purchased under the guidance of Don, as compared with such delightful things as cushions and gowns, surprised her very much indeed, but the ingenious Don had secured a quantity of cutlery, linen and other household necessities from an acquaintance "in the wholesale trade," thus saving Flamby more than half the usual cost. Once committed to an emprise, ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... an interesting work of Dr. R. Dozy, Professor of History and Oriental Languages at Leyden, Die Israeliten in Mecca, 1864. By a series of ingenious inferences from Bible texts (1 Sam. xxx, 1 Chron. iv. 24-43, &c.) he essays to establish that the tribe of Simeon, after David had dispersed the Amalekites who had already been weakened by Saul, entered Arabia and settled all along in the land of ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... the whole, Sir, to be forced to confess to you, that I have met with so many discouragements in virt'u and literature. If an independent gentleman, though a private one, finds such obstacles, what must an ingenious man do, who is obliged to couple views of profit with zeal for the public? Or, do our artists and booksellers, cheat me the more because I am a gentleman? Whatever is the cause, I am almost as sick of the profession of editor, as of author. If I touch upon either more, it will be more ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... hit, however, caused rejoicing in Tsing-tao which, it is asserted, would not have been equalled by the sinking of a Japanese Dreadnought. The Triumph singled out for attack Fort Bismarck especially, and two of the German 6-inch guns were early put out of action. The British gunners adopted the ingenious plan of heeling their ship by five degrees, and bombarding the enemy, from sight strips specially calculated, without exposing themselves or their weapons. It became customary aboard to call the bombardment 'pressing the enemy' ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... pause, the ingenious reader is kindly requested to pay his bill at the Hotel at Boulogne, to mount the Diligence of Laffitte, Caillard and Company, and to travel for twenty-five hours, amidst much jingling of harness-bells and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... people dissect and analyse. I am content with the spettacolo. That pleases. What does a man want more? The Nozze is a comedy of life and manners. The music is adorable. To-night the women were not bad to look at—the Lucca was divine; the scenes—ingenious. I thought but little. I came away delighted. You could have a better play, Caro Signore!' (with a bow to our host). 'That is granted. You might have better music, Cara Signora!' (with a bow to Miranda). 'That too is granted. But when the play and the music come together—how shall I say?—the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... to draw the enemy down," and "admirable for its advantages and ingenuity." In the first place it is an open question whether the enemy needed drawing down; on this occasion he advanced boldly enough. The formation may have been ingenious, but it was the reverse of advantageous. It would have been far better to have had the strongest vessels to windward, and the schooners, with their long guns, to leeward, where they would not be exposed to capture ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... expulsion, is an exploded one. It was asserted by some that hunger excited the foetus to struggle to free itself from the womb; others were disposed to attribute its efforts to accomplish its entrance into the world, to the need of respiration which it experienced. But all these ingenious theories, which presupposed the embryo to be actuated by the same feelings which would influence a grown person if shut up in such a confined abode, are unsatisfactory, and not tenable. It is well known that ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... is he also who stole the millions in the rue du Quatre Septembre, a sensational robbery which would have ruined your bank, had not this issue of bullion been well covered by an insurance: this insurance signified that you were no losers by this robbery—in fact, owing to an ingenious combination of insurances, you have actually gained by the robbery! As we are on this subject, I might add that were I a member of the Band I should propose restoring to you the vanished ingots—robbers find bullion somewhat difficult to put into circulation: you might buy ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... the camera with its two positions quite parallel, especially for objects at a short or medium distance, as to let its centre radiate from the principal object to be delineated; and to accomplish this desideratum in the readiest way (for portraits especially), the ingenious contrivance of Mr. Latimer Clark, described in the Journal of the Photographic Society, appears to me the best adapted. It consists of a modification of the old parallel ruler arrangement on which the camera is placed; but one of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... in her boudoir. She had passed an uneasy hour on the previous afternoon after they had left her, but her equanimity was now entirely restored. She had made up her mind that, however ingenious the concocted evidence might turn out to be, it was absolutely impossible to harm Giovanni by means of it. His position was beyond attack, as, in her mind, his character was above slander. Far from experiencing any sensation ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... at the mere sight of a sledge. 'He is going,' Scott, in referring to this most intractable pony, wrote, 'to be a trial, but he is a good strong pony and should do yeoman service. Day is increasingly hopeful about the motors. He is an ingenious person and has been turning up new rollers out of a baulk of oak supplied by Meares, and with Simpson's small motor as a lathe. The motors may save ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... was raised up irrefragably to establish by new and original arguments. When a free trade in corn was at last sanctioned by the legislature, Lord George continued to offer an industrious, courageous, and ingenious opposition, and by the vigour of his mind and the incessant energy of his attacks, kept up the party life of the opposition, which he resuscitated and led. Lord George looked upon himself as the champion of a class; to save or serve the aristocracy, irrespective ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... serve without pay, satisfied with the consciousness that they are discharging a duty to their country, and qualifying themselves to sustain the honour of our flag and the freedom won by our fathers. They represent fairly all classes of our citizens. Our hard-working and ingenious mechanic—our enterprising and energetic merchant—our intelligent professional men—our grocers, butchers, bakers, and cartmen, are all to be found in our ranks, exhibiting in public spirit, energy, and intelligence, a body ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... "such vanities began to grow out of fashion; till at last Stilicho burnt them all under Honorius (a son of Theodosius the Great), for which he is so severely censured by the noble poet Rutilius, in his ingenious itinerary." ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... it in an ingenious manner with all subsequent metaphysics and with German idealism, and founded a universal realm of metaphysics, the attack on speculative metaphysics and on all metaphysics was once again synonymous, as ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... of it is clear, then. He is working a simple but ingenious game on Freddie. It wouldn't succeed with everybody, I suppose; but from what I have seen and heard of him Freddie isn't strong on intellect. He seems to have accepted the story without a murmur. What does he do? He has to raise a thousand pounds immediately, and ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... do it, and I didn't never suspect a thing. Uh-huh! Seems like I was unfortunate, just gettin' a start in life like I be.... Bonds, says they. Uh-huh! They'll place 'em, and place 'em handy. First int'rest day there won't be no int'rest, and them bonds'll be foreclosed—and where'll I be? Mighty ingenious fellers, Crane and Keith.... And I up and walked right into it like a fly into a molasses barrel. Them fellers," he said, even more somberly, "come here calc'latin' to cheat me out of my river.... Me bein' jest a fat ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... wire rope works are situated not far from these; and between the two, at the foot of the inclined plane, an ingenious device for transferring boats from one canal to the other, is the celebrated "Tar Tunnel," driven into the coal measures, from which petroleum was formerly exported on a large scale, under the name of ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... body remains a striking manifestation of the progressiveness of the organism, for to this it must be ascribed. To it energy is available which is denied to the protozoon. Ingenious adaptations to environment are more especially its privilege. A higher manifestation, however, was possible, and was found in the development of mind. This, too, is a servant of the cell, as the genii of the lamp. Through it energy is available which is denied to ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... he would to retain it, and the verse was like a medal which has turned out imperfect through the inexperience of the caster, who has not calculated the proper quantity of metal necessary for filling the mould. With ingenious patience he poured the metal back into the crucible and began all over again. Finally the verse came out full and clear, and the whole sonnet lived and breathed like a free ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... uniform. What is there in the language of that speech which expresses such purpose or bears such construction? I have again and again said that I would not enter into any of the States to disturb the institution of slavery. Judge Douglas said, at Bloomington, that I used language most able and ingenious for concealing what I really meant; and that while I had protested against entering into the slave States, I nevertheless did mean to go on the banks of the Ohio and throw missiles into Kentucky, to disturb them in ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... our crowd were sitting. It was—just two or three weeks after—after Dad left town. Lois wouldn't let me drop out of things.... Anyway, it was dark and I heard Judge Marshall saying something about 'the simplest and most ingenious arrangement you ever saw. Of course that's where the rascal kept his securities—...' I knew they were talking about Dad, from the way Judge Marshall shut up and changed the subject as ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... more feeble. Her remorse and her feeling of the dire necessity for confessing her sin had sustained her hitherto. But now her duty was done, she had no longer any mental stimulant. In spite of Isa's devoted and ingenious kindness, the sensitive vanity of Mrs. Plausaby detected in every motion evidence that Isa thought of her as a thief. She somehow got a notion that Mrs. Ferret knew all about it also, and from her and ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... skin canoe of these Northern aborigines is, with its hunting implements, one of the most complete and ingenious manifestations of intelligence to be found in any aboriginal tribe. Over a light framework, an almost infinite number of small pieces of wood deftly lashed together with sealskin thongs, is stretched the tanned skin ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... when. The back and current numbers of the "Well-Spring" had fallen prey to my insatiable appetite for literature. With the story of the small boy who stole a pin, repented of and confessed that crime, and then became a good and great man, I was as familiar as if I myself had invented that ingenious and instructive tale; I could lisp the moral numbers of Watts and the didactic hymns of Wesley, and the annual reports of the American Tract Society had already revealed to me the sphere of usefulness in which my grandmother hoped I would ultimately ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... thrifty after his kind, and on the lookout for a "good thing." A party of indigent prospectors, returning from the survey of a mine in Mexico, reached the Arizona bank with no money to pay for the crossing, and hit upon the ingenious plan of surveying a town site here and trading lots to the German for a passage. Boldly commencing operations, the sight of the work going on soon brought the ferryman over to investigate, and when he saw the map under construction he fell headlong ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... part, a series of incidents that is, we believe, the most ingenious yet planned by its author.... The adventure develops and grows, the tension increases with each page, to such an extent that the hackneyed adjective, 'breathless,' finds an appropriate place."—NEW YORK MAIL ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... were more delighted with le Bourdon's ingenious mode of discovering the hive than with the richness of the prize; while Ben himself, and Gershom, manifested most satisfaction at the amount of the earnings. When the tree was cut in pieces, and split, it was ascertained that years of sweets were contained ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... effect of a dream. The baluster of this staircase forms a spiral connecting itself by a square landing to five of the six sides of the tower, requiring at each landing transversal corbels which are decorated with arabesque carvings without and within. This bewildering creation of ingenious and delicate details, of marvels which give speech to stones, can be compared only to the deeply worked and crowded carving of the Chinese ivories. Stone is made to look like lace-work. The flowers, the ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... kind which the French call cabbyrays, or wine-houses; and jest as master's green glass-coach pulled up, another coach drove off, out of which came two ladies, whom I knew pretty well,—suffiz, that one had a humpback, and the ingenious reader will know why SHE came there; the other was poor Miss Kicksey, who came ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... impatiently. "King Alfred's supposed device of measuring Time by Candles—a Myth." Would to heaven his invention of juries was a myth, too. Scotland Yard would get on much better without them. "A Lamp-clock was another Simple and Ingenious Design." How intolerably long-winded the writer was. What had he to say about hood clocks? "Very few of the Early Clocks had Dials. The Device was generally a Mechanical Figure which struck the Hour on a ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... craft—CORACLES. Yes; in that lonely Pacific island, among that motley crowd of floating nondescripts, were specimens of the ancient coracle of our own islands, constructed in exactly the same way; that is, of wicker-work, covered with some waterproof substance, whether skin or tarpaulin. But the ingenious Kanaka, not content with his coracles, had gone one better, and copied them in dugouts of solid timber. The resultant vessel was a sort of cross between a butcher's tray and ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... of Berlin, published an ingenious theory of primitive speech, to the effect that man had a creative faculty giving to each conception, as it thrilled through his brain for the first time, a special phonetic expression, which faculty became extinct when its necessity ceased. This theory, which makes each ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... "and you can neither move it one way nor the other. It is an ingenious idea of mine, for which I may also apply for a ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... Lady of Poole, Whose soup was excessively cool; So she put it to boil by the aid of some oil, That ingenious Young ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... of the election had virtually condoned his breach of the constitution. This apparent victory, however, had been won only by a direct appeal to the people, and all its advantages accrued to the people, and not to George III. His ingenious system of weak and divided ministries, with himself for balance-wheel, was destroyed. For the next seventeen years the real ruler of England was not George III., but William Pitt, who, with his great popular following, wielded such a power as no English sovereign had possessed since the days ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... dollars have been made and are being made by various men and concerns, who have devised ingenious mechanical agencies which are supposed to cure, and in curing renew the lost health caused by constipation. We have in mind in this connection, a man who conceived the ingenious plan of putting the opening of an ordinary fountain ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... to issue a currency of bank notes on a capital to be created to some extent out of Government stocks. Although this proposition was refused by a direct vote of the Convention, the object was afterwards in effect obtained by its ingenious advocates through a strained construction of the Constitution. The debts of the Revolution were funded at prices which formed no equivalent compared with the nominal amount of the stock, and under circumstances which exposed the motives of some of those who participated ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... influence which Pericles exercised for so long a period over an ingenious but fickle people like the Athenians, is an unquestionable proof of his intellectual superiority. This hold on the public affection is to be attributed to a great extent to his extraordinary eloquence. Cicero regards him as the first example of an almost perfect orator, ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... human life, of the utter dependability of all human purposes and plans on conditions beyond human control. In our most fundamental industry, agriculture, an untimely frost can undo the work of the most ingenious industry and thrift. A tornado or a snowstorm can disorganize the cunning and subtle, swift mechanisms of communication which men have invented. In the field of humanly built-up relations, again, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... time my conscience had but little to reproach me with. I had gained three hundred dollars by the most ingenious integrity." ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... far have been engaged in deciphering these inscriptions. By representing Hea as male, Nin is made to appear as the offspring of two fathers while he is left absolutely motherless. To obviate this difficulty an ingenious attempt has been made to account for his existence by substituting his own wife as the author of his being. Although in the numerous accounts which I had read of Hea, in my search for information concerning her, she had always ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... unjust monopolies of certain unworthy servants of the East India Company, who to aggrandize their own fortunes have oftentimes bought up, on speculation, all the salt in the different ports and markets, and thus have deprived the ingenious but wretched natives of their only remaining comfort, salt being the only addition they are usually enabled to make to their poor pittance of rice. Many of the poor in England, previously to the late reduction especially, have loudly lamented the high ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... Matthews, he celebrated the coronation at Dizful, in bed. And by the time he had slept off his fag, Bala Bala and the Father of Swords and the green chest and the ingenious Magin looked to him more than ever like figures of myth. He was too little of the timber out of which journalists, romancers, or diplomats are made to take them very seriously. The world he lived in, moreover, was too solid to be shaken by any such flimsy device ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... everything he did in the world, and, of course, consented to suffer what he had suffered, in consideration of what he had enjoyed. I have heard the same statement from others. A very learned and ingenious professor in the north, whose lucubrations have often cast the effulgence of his rare genius over the pages of the Border Tales, has no hesitation in declaring that he would gladly consent to receive another tack of existence in this strange world, with all ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... Mechanical Theatre, there is a flight of great stone steps and balustrades of granite upon which, in company with our German friends, we hung and climbed and stood, while the most ingenious little play was performed by tiny puppets that I ever had the good fortune to behold. Over and over again the midgets went through every performance of mechanicism with such precision and accuracy that it took me back to the first mechanical toy I ever possessed. This little mechanical ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... he was so learned and rich in such knowledge that he often had in his mind the wish to write, for the sake of sculptors and painters, a treatise on the movements of the human body, its aspect, and concerning the bones, with an ingenious theory of his own, devised after long practice. He would have done it had he not mistrusted his powers, lest they should not suffice to treat with dignity and grace of such a subject, like one practised in the ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... applied to the various purposes of which it is susceptible. You observe that Whitehurst supposes it to have been the agent, which bursting the earth, threw it up into mountains and valleys. You ask me what I think of his book? I find in it many interesting facts brought together, and many ingenious commentaries on them. But there are great chasms in his facts, and consequently in his reasoning. These he fills up by suppositions, which may be as reasonably denied as granted. A sceptical reader therefore, like myself, is left in the lurch. I ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... this ingenious wire stretcher, he stapled his wire to post number one, carried the length past post number two, looped the chain around post number three, having the chain long enough so that he might tauten the wire and hold the crankhandle steady ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... shrubs of various sorts, that seemed as if it had been planted for the purpose of protecting from the north-west winds this delightful meadow, over which were promiscuously scattered a few clumps of trees that would have puzzled the most ingenious designer of pleasure-grounds to have arranged more agreeably. While we stopped to contemplate these several beauties of nature in a prospect no less pleasing than unexpected, we gathered some gooseberries and roses in ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... allowing Anthony to fall asleep before he had finished all he had to say, Mr Pecksniff, in the disposal of the refreshments on the table, a work to which he now applied himself in earnest, resorted to many ingenious contrivances for attracting his attention; such as coughing, sneezing, clattering the teacups, sharpening the knives, dropping the loaf, and so forth. But all in vain, for Mr Jonas returned, and Anthony had ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... this ingenious plan; then, luckily for the pig, old Jonas, who had chuckled over it for a while, revealed the fraud and put him ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... appendix, of the great and learned Dr. Burnet's book, published this winter in Latin, and by him dedicated to our most gracious Sovereign, King William..... As for the piece itself, I think it is one of the most ingenious I have ever read, and full of the most acute as well as learned observations. Nor can I find anything worthy an objection against him, as some of the censorious part of the world pretend; who would have you believe it a mere burlesque upon Moses, ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... below the level. On the outside, in the space between the house and the fence, there was a pigeon house and a poultry yard, and close to the little verandah spoken of before, there stood two spinning-wheels of a light and ingenious construction. All round on the outside of the fence, the trees were high and thick; and though the sun was above the hills, the house was completely shaded except at the end, where a small opening admitted the rays into the verandah. We staid some time with the old farmer, ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... of the story before us, without being intricate, is ingenious and the interest in the characters is fully sustained throughout. The trying experiences of Kitty DeWitt were those of a multitude of girls and women, and their decision for patriotism was a power in shaping the great national events which followed. Such books are educational in patriotism. The ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... sell at about $1400. It regulates the discount rate, gauging it so as to maintain its gold reserves, and it also keeps the coinage in good order by weighing every coin that passes through the bank, and casting out the light ones by an ingenious machine that will test thirty-five thousand in a day. It also prints its own notes upon paper containing its own water-mark, which is the chief reliance against forgery. The bank transacts the government business in connection with the British public debt ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... American tribes,[12-1] and one fragment appeared in (20) in which I offered a psychological explanation of the character of the hero god Gluscap, so prominent in the legends of the Micmacs and Abenakis. At that time I was not acquainted with the ingenious suggestions on the etymology of the name subsequently advocated by ...
— A Record of Study in Aboriginal American Languages • Daniel G. Brinton
... expose him to, he has written his own defence, applying his usual analytical acuteness to distinguish between originality and singularity.[12] The contradiction of a common prejudice, which always passes for paradox, is often such only in appearance. It is true that an ingenious person may take advantage of the elusive nature of language to play tricks with the ordinary understanding, but it is equally true that words of themselves have a way of imposing on the uninquiring mind and passing themselves off at an inflated ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... of the nine millions contributing indirectly twenty-four thousand four hundred dollars in seven hundred years and all of them two hundred and nineteen billion six hundred million dollars—a scheme as ingenious, says one, as Fourier's "scheme to pay off the national debt of France with a setting hen." [Footnote: Speech on the bill to encourage agriculture, July 25, 1850. Speeches on the homestead bill, April 29, 1852, and ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... property and slave soil. But the slow and tedious hand method of separating the fiber of the cotton bulb from the seed greatly limited the ability of the Cotton States to meet and satisfy the fast growing demand of the English manufacturers, until Eli Whitney, in 1793, by an ingenious invention solved the problem of supply for these States. The cotton gin was not long in proving itself the other half—the other hand ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... the average reader who patronizes the New York public library prefers Conan Doyle's detective stories to any others. Quite naturally. There is more artistry in Poe, and the tales about the Frenchman, Arsene Lupin, are ten times more ingenious than Doyle's; but Doyle has infused the adventures of Sherlock Holmes with the undefinable something known as romance, and that has preserved them. The great majority of ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... the marshy island, which was the chief defense of the river, an attack was made, and a breach was soon effected in the works, which ensured its capture. Two days after this Lord Cornwallis proceeded against the redoubt on Red Bank, and this was also captured. Franklin's ingenious mechanism was then destroyed, and a full and free communication was established along the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... 3: See Goodyear's Grammar of the Lotus for an elaborate and ingenious presentation of the theory of a common lotus-origin for all the conventional ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... excuse of his correspondents, that the post was then much more tardy than since Mr. Palmer's ingenious invention has taken place; and with respect to honest Dinmont in particular, as he rarely received above one letter a quarter (unless during the time of his being engaged in a law-suit, when he regularly sent to the post-town), his correspondence usually remained for ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that day) in which the author's extensive, though not very profound, acquaintance with natural phenomena was set forth; but in a still greater degree, probably, to the boldness of the speculative views, always ingenious and sometimes fantastic, in which he indulged. The conception of evolution set afoot by De Maillet and others, in the early part of the century, not only found a vigorous champion in Erasmus Darwin, but he propounded an hypothesis as to the manner in ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... fillet of beef at Flicoteaux's represent black game and fillet of sturgeon at Very's; they are not on the regular bill of fare, that is, and must be ordered beforehand. Beef of the feminine gender there prevails; the young of the bovine species appears in all kinds of ingenious disguises. When the whiting and mackerel abound on our shores, they are likewise seen in large numbers at Flicoteaux's; his whole establishment, indeed, is directly affected by the caprices of the season and the vicissitudes ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... however, the bell-rope wore thin, and some ingenious citizen fastened a wisp of hay to it, that this might serve as a handle. One day in the height of summer, when the deserted square was blazing with sunlight, and most of the citizens were taking their noonday ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten |
