"Originality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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 ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... 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
... thought and originality, this stanza certainly deserves credit," Li Wan asserted; "but as regards pregnancy and simplicity of language, it, after all, yields to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... 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 |
