"Ingenious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... using it is large, the seventeen years during which in our own country a patent may run affords, not only an adequate reward for the inventor, but an incentive to a myriad of other inventors to emulate him and try to duplicate his success. Ingenious brains, which are everywhere at work, usually prevent the owners of a particular patent from keeping any decisive advantage over competitors during the whole period of seventeen years. Long before the expiration of that time some device of a different sort may enable ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... before any foreign observers could have ventured to predict the final results of the campaign. From first to last the nation felt sure of its own strength, and of the impotence of China. The toy- makers put suddenly into the market legions of ingenious mechanisms, representing Chinese soldiers in flight, or being cut down by Japanese troopers, or tied together as prisoners by their queues, or kowtowing for mercy to illustrious generals. The old-fashioned military playthings, representing samurai in armor, were superseded ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... victims of their sentiments or their generous confidence in their fellow-creatures. Such was not his destiny. There was something about him which looked as if he would not take bullying kindly. He had also the advantage of being acquainted with most of those ingenious devices by which the proverbial inconstancy of fortune is steadied to something more nearly approaching fixed laws, and the dangerous risks which have so often led young men to ruin and suicide are practically reduced to somewhat less than nothing. So that Mr. Richard Veneer worked off his nervous ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... an ingenious explanation of this disputed word see Professor Pearce's article in Mod. Lang. Notes, Nov. ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... who had watched the making of this ingenious device, as well as lent assistance, "there are mosquitoes inside it even now; and with such swarms as are about us, how will you keep them out while ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... was done. Some new comfort or ornament appeared each time Sara opened the door at night, until in a short time the attic was a beautiful little room full of all sorts of odd and luxurious things. The ugly walls were gradually entirely covered with pictures and draperies, ingenious pieces of folding furniture appeared, a bookshelf was hung up and filled with books, new comforts and conveniences appeared one by one, until there seemed nothing left to be desired. When Sara went downstairs ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... best line to take—right or left,—but much of the power he had acquired over his fellows was due to his excessive self-sufficiency, coupled with reckless promptitude in taking action. If things went well he got the credit; if wrong—well, he was ingenious in devising explanations! ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... cornices, and specimens of a sort of diapering which seems to have been applied to screens or thin partitions. The capitals were somewhat heavy in design, and at first sight struck the spectator as barbarous; but they exhibited a good deal of ingenious boldness, an absence of conventionality, and an occasional quaintness of design not unworthy of a Gothic decorator. One especially, which combines the upper portion of a human figure, wearing the puffed-out ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... is done for us. Our problems are all worked out in "explanations" and "keys." Our boys are too often tutored through college with very little study. "Short roads" and "abridged methods" are characteristic of the century. Ingenious methods are used everywhere to get the drudgery out of the college course. Newspapers give us our politics, and preachers our religion. Self-help and self-reliance are getting old fashioned. Nature, as if conscious ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... township as then laid out; two or three buildings there were further on, but they stood altogether aloof. The bank, for a bank, was sufficiently isolated, and Fergus could not but congratulate himself on the completion of its ingenious and unsuspected defences. It only remained to keep the inventor reasonably sober for the evening, and thereafter to whistle or to pray for Stingaree. Meanwhile the present was no mean occasion, and Fergus was glad to see that Macbean had thrown open the ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... in a fountain; each claims it; at length they agree to refer the dispute to a count of their acquaintance who happened to be close by. He takes charge of the ring and says to the ladies, "Whoever in the space of six weeks shall succeed in playing off on her husband the most clever and ingenious trick (always having due regard to his honour) shall possess the ring; in the meantime it shall remain in my hands." This story was probably brought by the Moors to Spain, whence it may have passed into France, since it is the subject of a faliau, by Haisiau the trouvre, entitled "Des Trois ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... courses are served, the menu is simpler, and the decorations less elaborate. The serving is on the same order—a la Russe. If one is fortunate enough to have a maid who combines the experience of a waitress with the qualities of a good cook, by ingenious planning it is possible to serve six persons acceptably ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... attack of the submersible is to give better protection to the merchant marine itself. While a great deal of ingenuity is being concentrated on the problem of thwarting the submersible, but little common sense has been used. While endeavoring to devise intricate and ingenious mechanisms to sink the submersible, we overlook the simplest safeguards for our merchant vessels. To-day, the construction of the average ship is designed to conform to the insurance requirements. This does not mean in any way that the ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... Percy, Bishop of Dromore, and Sir Walter Scott, may well be excused the general censure. The former, living in and pandering to an age which invented and applied those delightful literary adjectives 'elegant' and 'ingenious,' may be pardoned with the more sincerity if one recalls the influence exercised on English letters by his publication. The latter, who played the part of Percy in the matter of Scottish ballads, and was nourished from his boyhood on the Reliques, printed for the first ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... he went to study the wisdom of the Egyptians. There he was initiated by their priests into the mighty secrets of their ceremonies, passing all belief; there he learned numbers in all their marvellous combinations, and the ingenious laws of geometry. Not content with these sciences, he next approached the Chaldaeans and the Brahmins, a race of wise men who live in India.[46] Among these Brahmins he sought out the gymnosophists. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... and do you think it probable that he was descended from, or connected with, the author of a work which I met with some time ago, intituled "Wit Revived, or A new and excellent way of Divertisement, digested into most ingenious Questions and Answers. By ASDRYASDUST TOSSOFFACAN. London: Printed for T. E. and are to be sold by most Booksellers. MDCLXXIV." 12mo. I do not know anything of the author's character, but he appears to have been a right-minded man, in so far as he (like yourself) ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 2, November 10 1849 • Various
... of his mouth, while the receiver was placed beside his ear. All three stopped short to adjust each other's electrical heating apparatus. To do this, they did not use their fingers directly; they manipulated ingenious non-magnetic pliers attached to the ends of ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... in a space that was often very limited, as for making the old signs or indications accord with the movements of the clockwork. Of these many were marked only in painting, and must have been renewed after a certain time, as for instance those for the eclipses, which now by a most ingenious mechanical combination will henceforth last for ever. The little statues which hitherto had no articulation, are now moveable; the twelve Apostles have been added to the former number of them. The figure of ...
— Historical Sketch of the Cathedral of Strasburg • Anonymous
... Talbot, and the Prior of Kilmaine. So that the total of the army that besieged Rouen was, at least, 45,000 men. This large force was brought across the Seine, partly by the old bridge of Pont de l'Arche, partly by a light and ingenious pontoon bridge made of planks supported on watertight leather boats, which could be packed up and carried with the army ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... judgment to decide upon? to knock a limpet from the rock does not require even cunning, that lowest power of the mind. Their skill in some respects may be compared to the instinct of animals; for it is not improved by experience: the canoe, their most ingenious work, poor as it is, has remained the same, as we know from Drake, for the last ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... or two very ingenious (hem!) little contrivances for adapting the difficulties of "Used Up" to the small stage. They will require to be so exactly explained to your carpenter (though very easy little things in themselves), that I think I had better, before Christmas, send my servant down for an hour—he is quite ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... or a long pedigree introduced with care and difficulty into the narrow pigeon-hole of an old cabinet. Waverley had the curiosity to clamber up and look in upon him in his den, as the lurking-place might well be termed. Upon the whole, he looked not unlike that ingenious puzzle, called a reel in a bottle, the marvel of children (and of some grown people too, myself for one), who can neither comprehend the mystery how it was got in, or how it is to be taken out. The cave was very narrow, too low in the roof to admit of his standing, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... elaborately ingenious narrative the adventures recorded are various and exciting enough to suit the most exacting reader. The incidents recited are of extreme interest, and are not drawn out ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... frequently stated that Beethoven's music shows a deficiency in counterpoint. His originality, the wealth of his ideas, his versatility, will explain this. The fugue, while it is ingenious and interesting, is artificial and, indeed often arbitrary in musical composition, sometimes introduced merely to stop gaps or for brilliancy of effect. It is not surprising that Beethoven should ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... she was, she knew, sure of a sympathetic listener. Had she known, too, that the mere mention of her lover's name was a stab to her listener's heart, and that every expression of her own deep and enduring love and each tone of endearment were new and ingenious tortures, she might ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... the thing better. But what do we want with captious judges in the bosom of a family? The scales of household polity are the scales of love, and he who holds them should be a sympathizing friend; ever ready to make allowance for failures, ingenious in contriving apologies, more lavish of counsels than rebukes, and less anxious to overwhelm a person with a sense of deficiency than to awaken in the bosom, a conscious power of doing better. One thing is certain: if any member of a family conceives it his duty to sit continually ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... two young daughters of the famished Megarian are sold in the market at Athens as suck(l)ing-pigs—a scene in which the convenient similarity of the Greek words signifying a pig and the 'pudendum muliebre' respectively is utilized in a whole string of ingenious and suggestive 'double entendres' and ludicrous jokes; another where the Informer, or Market-Spy, is packed up in a crate as crockery and carried off home by the ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... the doctor; "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 patent one ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... inventors and originators has become proverbial, but the ingenious individual whose nostrils rejoiced in the first pinch of snuff stood in no need of the niggardly praise of contemporaries or the lavish gratitude of posterity. That first 'pinch' was its own priceless reward, far above present appreciation or future fame. What matters it, that his great name ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Brinnaria, springing to her feet and snapping her fingers. "That is ingenious! That will give me trouble! I didn't credit Calvaster with that much sense. I never thought of anyone looking askance at my relations with Quintus. I've never taken any precautions as to when I was with him or how long or ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... seemed to him a most ingenious and satisfactory vehicle for his purpose, and it had broken down under him amid evidences of confusion which he could not account for. All at once his sense of physical ascendancy had melted away—disappeared. He looked ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... well as for human words. And in listening, she thought and reasoned patiently and continually, so that the slightest sounds had often long and accurate meanings for her. The deaf reason little or ill, and are very suspicious; the blind, on the contrary, are keen, thoughtful, and ingenious, and are distrustful of themselves rather than of others. Inez sat quite still, listening, thinking, and planning a means of ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... Tramore had none for sparing her child. She only showed in doing so a happy instinct—the happiest thing about her. She took in perfection a course which represented everything and covered everything; she utterly abjured all authority. She testified to her abjuration in hourly ingenious, touching ways. In this manner nothing had to be talked over, which was a mercy all round. The tears on Easter Monday were merely a nervous gust, to help show she was not a Christmas doll from the Burlington Arcade; and there ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... in fresh sheepskin, the odor of a sheep would be diffused, and the appearance of one so well counterfeited as to deceive even a bear. His gun he had charged heavily with buckshot; and altogether the ruse was ingenious, if nothing more. ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... words of Mr. Baxter.' The title sold so great a number of these papers, that, about a week after these, came out a second sheet, inscribed: 'More last words of Mr. Baxter.' In the same manner I have reason to think that several ingenious writers who have taken their leave of the public in farewell papers, will not give over so, but intend to appear, though perhaps under another form, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... ever had I followed them, as an idle man may follow a flitting marsh-fire. Indeed, I had grown so much interested in the phenomenon and its possible indications that I had invented various theories to account for them, some of which seemed to myself original and ingenious, while the common idea that they are vague reminiscences of a former state of being, I had again and again examined, and as often entirely rejected, as in no ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... sonorous, the sense largely depending upon inflection, copious in vowel sounds, abounding in metaphor; affording constant opportunity for the ingenious combination and construction of words to image delicate, and varying shades of thought, and to express vehement manifestations of passion; admitting of greater and more sudden variations in pitch, than is permissable in English oratory, and encouraging pantomimic gesture, for greater force ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... mechanical precision of her demeanor, the dull sadness of her lifeless eyes. There was a light in her face now, a tremulous quiver of her lips, a slight color in her thin cheeks. She looked like a creature who could feel and think: not an automaton, worked by ingenious machinery. ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... guilty of Barrisor's blood. Thus the main theme of the play is linked with the opening incidents, and the action from first to last is laid in Paris, whither the closing scenes of Bussy's career are shifted. By another ingenious departure from historical truth the Duke of Anjou, to whom Bussy owes his rise, is represented as the main agent in his fall. He is angered at the favour shown by the King to the follower whom he had raised to serve his own ends, and he conspires with Guise for his overthrow. He is the more ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... are made in an immense variety of textiles. It is impossible in the space allowed for this paper to enumerate them, but I may add that their ingenious construction, their good wearing qualities, the clever mechanism of the tools by which the various discs of cloth, metal, millboard, etc., are cut out, and the methods of uniting them so as to form a complete button, are marvels of ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... as ample as those with which she had rewarded the deliverers of the Holy Sepulchre. To the rapacious and profligate she offered the plunder of fertile plains and wealthy cities. Unhappily, the ingenious and polished inhabitants of the Languedocian provinces were far better qualified to enrich and embellish their country than to defend it. Eminent in the arts of peace, unrivalled in the "gay science," elevated above many vulgar superstitions, they wanted that iron courage, and that skill in martial ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his confusion at finding himself in a large city quite natural. Besides, his suspicions were in some degree reciprocated. When I saw him flying out of the window, I was convinced that he must be an ingenious burglar, and instantly ran back to examine my tools. I am glad to find that I was wrong. If he will return now with me, he shall be welcome to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Hamilton (1911) of reactive tendencies in P. rhesus and irus yielded preeminently important data concerning complex behavior. For the ingenious quadruple-choice method devised by this observer showed that mature monkeys exhibit fairly adequate types of response. As Hamilton's interest centered in behavior, he did not discuss ideation, but this does not prevent the comparison of his data with those of the present report, and ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... rested till to-day, when the final blow fell from the War Office. Herbert and I are to proceed to France together next Monday. On that day, if I am ingenious and agile enough not to meet him before, we ought to be about all square; after that, as far as I can see, there will be an inevitable moment when Herbert will turn to me with, "I say, old fellow, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... which are in every body's hands.[51] There is one particular in which Rousseau especially, and most other authors who have written upon education, have given very dangerous counsel; they have counselled parents to teach truth by falsehood. The privilege of using contrivance, and ingenious deceptions, has been uniformly reserved for preceptors; and the pupils, by moral delusions, and the theatric effect of circumstances treacherously arranged, are to be duped, surprised, and cheated, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... child's heart was very easily touched and pleased. Nothing was left undone which could be done to give freshness and daintiness to the scene. A luscious fruit salad looked cool and tempting in a glass bowl, while iced drinks, which had been carried in ingenious Eastern water-coolers, appealed to his parched lips. The galantine of chicken and the selection of hors d'oeuvre would not have disgraced the table of the Cataract Hotel at Assuan. Here, indeed, were the flesh-pots of Egypt—la tentation de ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... her his hand, but hanging the gold-enamelled rein over his arm, walked by her side; and a few words sufficing for his guidance, led her across the ground, through the very midst of the throng. He felt none of the young shame, the ingenious scruples of Marmaduke, at the gaze he encountered, thus companioned. But Sibyll noted that ever and anon bonnet and cap were raised as they passed along, and the respectful murmur of the vulgar, who had so lately jeered her anguish, taught her the immeasurable ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... calculation. He closes his fist, calls his first knuckle January, the depression before the next knuckle February, when he arrives at the end, beginning again; thus the months that fall upon the knuckles, are those containing thirty-one days, a somewhat ingenious mode of assisting ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... are subjected to violent rises, often as great as twenty feet in an hour or less. Such sudden floods play havoc with the bridges along the bank, but I noticed in riding into New Braunfels an ingenious arrangement of the wooden structure by which, no matter how high the stream may rise, the bridge accommodates itself, and floats on the surface, while securely held from being carried away ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... carpentry; nor of portable houses; nor of lattice-work with painted paper; nor even of a "schbang" such as I have often built of old doors, shutters, outer windows, and tarred paper: any one who is ingenious can knock together all the shelter his needs require or means allow. But, where you are camping for a week or more, it pays you well to use all you have in making yourself comfortable. A bush house, a canopy ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... we for? Shall we suffer the French to multiply, till we are no longer in a condition to oppose their efforts? What will the other nations say of us, who pass for the most ingenious of all the Red-men? They will then say, we have less understanding than other people. Why then wait we any longer? Let us set ourselves at liberty, and show we are really men, who can be satisfied with what we have. From this very day let us begin to set about it, order our women ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... He feared that at any moment Charley, alarmed by his long absence, might call or fire off one of the guns and bring the outlaws to his hiding-place. How could he warn him of the danger he was in? Suddenly the bound lad was seized by an ingenious idea. Assuring himself by their deep breathing, that his captors were fast asleep, he began to whistle, softly at first, then gradually louder and louder till the weird, mournful strains of the "Funeral ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... mechanic in a neighbouring parish. In his nineteenth year he published a volume of poems, which excited some attention, and led to his connexion with the newspaper press. He became a regular contributor to the Dumfries Courier, edited by the ingenious John M'Diarmid; and in 1825 and the following year conducted the Dumfries Magazine, in which appeared many interesting articles from his pen. In December 1826, he became editor of the Glasgow Free Press, which supported the liberal cause during the whole of the Reform Bill struggle. Along ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... family. He well knew how numerous and bitter were his enemies. He had not forgotten the doom of his predecessors in that palace, Louis XVI. and Maria Antoinette. For years assassins had dogged his path. All varieties of ingenious machines of destruction had been constructed to secure his death. He was appropriately called the Target King, so constantly were the bullets of his foes aimed at his life. Even a brave man may be excused for being terrified when his wife and his children are exposed to every ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... tableaux so exciting to a youthful temper of military glory. And thus, by degrees, we found ourselves bewildered by the most vivid contrasts and apparently irreconcilable traits, until the original idea of a Frenchman expanded to the widest range of associations, from the ingenious devices of a mysterious cuisine to the brilliant manoeuvres of the battle-field; infinite female tact, rare philosophic hardihood, inimitable bon-mots, exquisite millinery, consummate generalship, holy fortitude, refined profligacy, and intoxicating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... has the most ingenious mind of anybody I know. He ought to have been in the Spanish Inquisition just to think up new torments. I don't wonder they like him so well on the Stock Exchange: he probably initiates new members and makes them ride goats. Anyway, nothing could change him about the automobile, and I closed the ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... characteristic of him he nursed the thought of connecting himself with Messrs. Quodling & Son, oil and colour merchants. Theirs was a large and sound business, both in town and country. It might not be easy to become traveller to such a firm, but his ingenious mind tossed and turned the possibilities of the case, and after a day or two spent in looking up likely men—which involved a great deal of drinking in a great variety of public resorts—he came across an elderly traveller who had represented Quodlings ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... the woodcut we have given in our Treatise on Popular Astronomy (vol. i.). This great apparatus, and the entirely different stands that Herschel imagined for telescopes of smaller dimensions, assign to that illustrious observer a distinguished place amongst the most ingenious mechanics ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... utmost eagerness while I practised my French upon him, explaining to his wondering mind the relations of the States to each other and to the general government, and the system of State and Federal courts. He was very quick, and he took in the ingenious scheme with great facility. Then he would tell me about the workings of government in the French villages and departments; and as he read French papers, he had always something in the way of news or explanation of recent ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... it as best and as quickly as he could. There is evidence of laziness or of lack of invention in the story. If it were for the first time in fiction that a secret is learnt by some one hiding behind some pantomime plants in a conservatory, then too much praise could not be bestowed on the ingenious devisers of so strong and original a situation. But as "we know that situation,—he comes from Sheffield," and as it has done duty some scores of times before, on or off the stage, why, the thoroughgoing novel-reader shakes his head and asks, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, May 9, 1891 • Various
... was happy and contented, that was all she wished; she never reckoned his help as one of the assets of the household. For that matter, she had not reckoned Mr. Gillat's of much value either, but there she found she was a little mistaken. Johnny was very slow and very laborious and really ingenious in finding a wrong way of doing things even when she thought she had left him no choice, but he was very painstaking and persevering. He would do anything he was told, and he took the greatest pleasure in doing it. Whether it was ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... home, using a smaller kind of bow called dhunkara. The clean cotton is made up into balls, some of which are passed on to the spinner, while others are used for the filling of quilts and the padded coats worn in the cold weather. The ingenious though rather clumsy method of the Bahna has been superseded by the ginning-factory, and little or no cotton destined for the spindle is now cleaned by him. The caste have been forced to take to cultivation or field labour, while many have ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... you mean. It is you for putting life into a poor fellow and keeping him from despair. It is not the first time you have saved me. The devil hates you more than all the other parsons, for you are as ingenious in good as ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... infirmities bearing upon her, she considered it more fitting that the Lady Elizabeth should wait upon her. This, for the good of her soul, the Lady Elizabeth did. Two maids and a boy, a demon boy, in buttons, who dwelt below- stairs and gave his time to the killing of rats with ingenious catapults and crossbows, completed the household—except ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... O, 'tis a parlous boy; Bold, quick, ingenious, forward, capable: He is all the mother's, from the top ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... my eating that a small quantity would not suffice me; and being a most ingenious people, they slung up with great dexterity, one of their largest hogsheads, then rolled it towards my hand, and beat out the top: I drank it off at a draught; which I might well do, for it did not hold half a pint, and ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... had no intention of being submitted to the diabolically ingenious torments practised by the Korean executioners; the important thing, therefore, was to contrive, if possible, to escape while there was yet time. But before thinking about escape it was absolutely necessary that he should discover his own whereabouts, and the ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... ingenious martyrdom in this story, which has been told by other writers of fiction, is taken from an alleged fact related in Barbaro's treatise De Re Uxoria.It is said, indeed, to have been actually resorted to more than once; and possibly may have been ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... thing, for he is probably mistaken in saying that one of the dos timones specified was a spare one. Joinville (p. 205) gives incidental evidence of the same: "Those Marseilles ships have each two rudders, with each a tiller (? tison) attached to it in such an ingenious way that you can turn the ship right or left as fast as you would turn a horse. So on the Friday the king was sitting upon one of these tillers, when he called me and said to me," etc.[4] Francesco da Barberino, a poet of the 13th century, in the 7th part of his Documenti d'Amore (printed at ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... and somewhat has been done for the Summer Islands, Virginia, &c. But how far are all these short even of the knowledge of these and other Places of the West-Indies, which may be obtain'd from divers knowing Planters now Residing in London? And how easie were it to obtain what is Defective from some Ingenious Persons now Resident upon the Places, if some way were found to gratifie them for their Performances? However till such be found, 'tis to be hoped that the kind Acceptance only the Publick shall give to this present Work, may excite several other Ingenuous, ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... Bawd had made an end of Repeating her Verses, the Goldsmith's Lady told her they were very Ingenious and Diverting Lines, and that she had oblig'd her extreamly by repeating them. And then pray'd her to go on with her Discourse which she lik'd very well. Upon which the ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... the history of his conversations with ingenious men; his characters, tales, jests, and intrigues of them, of which no man was better furnished with them. She thinks she has some papers of these, and promises to look them out, and also to inquire after Mr. Griffin, of the Lord Chamberlain's office, that I ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... so deeply engaged the attention of Dymock by his suggestions of improvements to this same plough, that the young laird saw none but him, and allowed the evening to close in, and the darkness of night to cover the heath, whilst still engaged in talking to the stranger, and hearkening to his ingenious comments on the machinery ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... at this temerity, but Fleming, jumping to his feet, at once set out to meet his mysterious visitor. This was no easy matter, as the ingenious Faulkner was laboriously leading his charge up the steep gulch road, with great politeness, but many audible misgivings as to whether this was not "Jack Fleming's day for going ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... not dead, nor had he left London. He had become a member of a gang of ingenious rascals, who lived by imitating the less known gems of the old masters, and palming them off on the credulous public and wealthy collectors as genuine. The impostures were very cleverly manipulated, and quite a little system was instituted to bring them to perfection. ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... the passions which we wish to acquire with the said decisions, we shall acquire an absolute dominion over our passions. Such is the doctrine of this illustrious philosopher (in so far as I gather it from his own words); it is one which, had it been less ingenious, I could hardly believe to have proceeded from so great a man. Indeed, I am lost in wonder, that a philosopher, who had stoutly asserted, that he would draw no conclusions which do not follow from self-evident ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... of this one, of which the basis conceivably is ethical. As to these various owners of Brockhurst—Sir Denzil, the builder of the house, is a delightful person, and appears to have prospered mightily in his undertakings, as so liberal-minded and ingenious a gentleman had every right to prosper. But after him—from the time, at least, of his grandson, Thomas—everything seems to have gone to rather howling grief here. We have nothing but battle, murder, and sudden death. These become positively monotonous in the pertinacity ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the many traditions that abound among the Indians. They have traditions to account for almost everything in nature. Some of them are interesting, ingenious; others are ridiculous and senseless. It is well-known, however, no matter how the bear lost his beautiful tail, if he ever had one, he is still very fond of fish, and often displays a great deal of ingenuity in ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... to himself. To his view, the shadow of the raven upon the floor was the most glaring of its impossibilities. "Not if you suppose a transom with the light shining through from an outer hall," replied the ingenious Susan. ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... x. 13-16). It is already present among men (Luke xvii. 21). Together with these statements in our sources are still mingled fragments of the more ordinary cataclysmic, apocalyptic conceptions, which in spite of much ingenious exegesis, cannot be brought into harmony with Christ's predominant teaching, but remain as foreign elements in the words of the Master, possibly brought back through his disciples, or, more probably, used by Jesus uncritically—a part of the current religious imagery ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... torture of which no one can know, went on eternally. They were arguments, I knew, between my ingenious mind and the will which was trying to reclaim its mastery of ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... the leaves or fibres sent down from the leaves, how is the presence of wood to be accounted for in tendrils, which have no leaves, but yet which are evidently branches? The theory of the formation of wood, which considers it as above, is deemed ingenious, but it will not I think be found to be true. The bark evidently has a great deal ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... is the second baptismal name of Mr. Browning's son; and, in his infantine mouth, it became (we do not exactly guess how), the "Penini," shortened into "Pen," which some ingenious interpreters have derived from the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... thy?? behind the mountain Caf and make its site an abyss of the sea and its people fishes swimming in its midst." "O my daughter," said her father, "I conjure thee, by my life, to disenchant this young man, that I may make him my Vizier, for he is a right pleasant and ingenious youth." "With all my heart," replied she, and taking a knife, on which were engraved Hebrew characters, drew therewith a circle in the midst of the hall and wrote there in names and talismans and muttered words ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... for a reply. His lordship took too much turtle and cold punch for dinner yesterday, and cannot speak just now: but we have, by this ingenious question, silenced him altogether: let the world wag as it will, and poor Christians and curates starve as they may, my lord's footmen must have their new liveries, and his horses ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a telescope, he resolved to make one; an instrument eighteen or twenty feet long, which would reveal to him the phases of the remotest planets. And straightway the musician entered on a multitude of ingenious experiments, so as to discover the particular metallic alloys that reflected light with the greatest intensity, the best means of giving the parabolic figure to the mirrors, the necessary degree of polish, and other practical details. ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... of grasses—built on the ground amid tall grass or grain—usually quite skilfully hidden and arched or roofed over in a very ingenious way. ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... morally certain that had he lived, a recalcitrant, in former days, no amount of peine forte et dure would have opened the lips of Stonewall Jackson had he willed to keep them closed. During their earlier acquaintance officers and men alike had made many an ingenious endeavour to learn the plans they thought they ought to know. They set quaint traps, they made innocent-seeming remarks, they guided right, they guided left, they blazed beautiful trails straight, they thought, to the moment of revelation. It never came. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... and clerk were hardly more regular in their attendance than Jane Sands as a rule; it was almost an unheard-of thing for her seat to be empty. But to-day it was so, and the row of little boys whom her gentle presence generally awed into tolerable behaviour, indulged unchecked in all the ingenious naughtiness that infant mind and body are ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... taken up the challenge which Physiognomy once gave to mankind:—equally ingenious and equally fantastic, equally offering a semblance of truth, and equally incapable of leading us beyond the simple observation which strikes the eye. A well-formed head will probably contain a well-formed brain; and a well-formed brain will probably be the fittest for the operations of the intellect. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... says one of our old divines, with the quaintness characteristic of his day, 'resemble the two sons of the patriarch; Reason is the firstborn, but Faith inherits the blessing. The image is ingenious, and the antithesis striking; but nevertheless the sentiment is far from just. It is hardly right to represent Faith as younger than reason: the fact undoubtedly being, that human creatures trust and believe, long before they ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... of an easier way of death; wherein the water, entering the possessions of air, makes a temporary suffocation, and kills as it were without a fever. Surely many, who have had the spirit to destroy themselves, have not been ingenious in the contrivance thereof.'—'Cato is much to be pitied, who mangled himself with poniards; and Hannibal seems more subtle, who carried his delivery, not in the point but the pummel ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... soil of national conceit. That conceit is prodigious and universal. The Germans are past-masters in the art of self-glorification, and their pan-German literature is certainly not only bold but ingenious in this respect. Is any one great outside Germany? Very well, let us trace his German origin. It may be remote, it may be hidden by centuries of illusory nationality, but it must be there. France has her apostles ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... have taken the liberty to make two or three small alterations here, which we flatter ourselves the ingenious author's judgment will approve of and excuse, as they do not affect ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... a child classic reissued in a finer and handsomer form, in response to the persistent demand of those who know the mirth-provoking quality of the exploits of the ingenious small boy named Miltiades Peterkin Paul and spoken of as "a great traveler, although he was small." Whoever has once enjoyed the story of the restless little lad who imitated Don Quixote, and did many other things, ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... Meagles. 'But he has been ingenious, and he has been trying to turn his ingenuity to his country's service. That makes him a ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... whole history of philosophy, the systems reduce themselves to a few main types which, under all the technical verbiage in which the ingenious intellect of man envelops them, are just so many visions, modes of feeling the whole push, and seeing the whole drift of life, forced on one by one's total character and experience, and on the whole preferred—there ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... two fellows in a little village of Sussex lying upon the stones of the market-place, tied neck and heels, and methinks I never have heard such ingenious profanity as those men were yelling each at his unseen comrade. I asked the publican where I baited my horse the cause of so strange a spectacle, and he said this was their manner of disciplining ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... to furnish them with rare devices, but performed very little to what was expected." This is believed to have been Inigo Jones, who soon was to gain great fame as manager of the Court masques. The entertainment was probably ingenious and splendid enough, but every one took his cue from the king's pettishness, and poor "Mr. Jones" had to bear his share of ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... in so many words (let me be perfectly just to him)—but he positively gave me to understand that you were going to marry Felix Dysart. There! Don't mind that," seeing the girl's pained face. "He was bound to say something, you know. Though it must be confessed the Indian cousin story was the more ingenious. Why didn't you tell me ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... hundred thousand volumes, broad and flat, (The Bible not included) proving that, Have been put forth, though still the doubt remains If God has read them with befitting pains. No Morrow could get justice, you'll declare, If none who knew him foul affirmed him fair. Ingenious man! how easy 'tis to raise An argument to justify ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... what was wrong until I found out for myself. For instance, no one told me that the concrete flooring of my house was a fatal error. When, a little disheartened, I made a new one, by glazing that ruelle mentioned in the preliminary survey of my garden, they allowed me to repeat it. Ingenious were my contrivances to keep the air moist, but none answered. It is not easy to find a material trim and clean which can be laid over concrete, but unless one can discover such, it is useless to grow orchids. I have no doubt that ninety-nine cases of failure in a hundred among amateurs are ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... loss of the bell ringers to the English public Barnum secured and sent thither a party of sixteen North American Indians, who were widely exhibited. On his return to America after his first visit to Europe he engaged an ingenious workman to construct an automatic orator. This was a life-size and remarkably life-like figure, and when worked from a key-board similar to that of a piano it actually uttered words and sentences with surprising distinctness. It was exhibited for several months in London and elsewhere ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... become tolerably expert in the art of mumbling the peg. Indeed, it seems that the young grand-prince was wholly insensible to the joys of these and the other excellent sports in which ordinary youths delight, and being of an ingenious turn of mind, he invented others better suited to his tastes and character. One of these pastimes—perhaps the first and simplest one devised by the youthful genius—consisted in the dropping of cats, dogs, and ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... show the spot, eh?" he said. "Very ingenious. It would have deceived me. Now wait ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... air, and dribble, a very Idiot of a kettle, on the hearth. It was quarrelsome, and hissed and spluttered morosely at the fire. To sum up all, the lid, resisting Mrs. Peerybingle's fingers, first of all turned topsy-turvy, and then, with an ingenious pertinacity deserving of a better cause, dived sideways in—down to the very bottom of the kettle. And the hull of the Royal George has never made half the monstrous resistance to coming out of the water, which the lid of ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... to fiddle, at the houses of respectable farmers and trades-people at Christmas. His other occupation is tinkering; and he is ingenious at mending ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... scientist," he replied deliberately, "the theory, of course, does appeal to me, especially in the ingenious way in which that writer applied it. However, as a detective"—he shook his head slowly—"I must deal with facts—not speculations. It leaves much to be explained, ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... romantic scenes and circumstances that I might call up before me, with closed eyes, when I was tired of Scotland, and home, and that weary prison of the sick-chamber in which I lay so long in durance. Robinson Crusoe; some of the books of that cheerful, ingenious, romantic soul, Mayne Reid; and a work rather gruesome and bloody for a child, but very picturesque, called Paul Blake; these are the three strongest impressions I remember: The Swiss Family Robinson came next, longo intervallo. At these I played, conjured up their scenes, and delighted to ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Most ... uh ... ingenious!" The Leader seemed pleased, but slowly his smile died and he frowned again. "All this makes me want to believe you, Hanlon, but somehow I can't seem to rid myself of the belief that you still are connected with the Corps. Oh, I know," as Hanlon started to protest, "all about your ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... often excited the attention of the lovers of literature; and, from the revival of letters to this day, this class of the community, the most ingenious and the most enlightened, have, in all the nations of Europe, been the most honoured, and the least remunerated. Pierius Valerianus, an attendant in the literary court of Leo X., who twice refused a bishopric that he might pursue his studies uninterrupted, was a friend of Authors, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... rapid judgment on each other's suggestions; at the mechanical difficulties which they anticipated and provided for in the practical arrangement of the machine; and he speaks of these evenings as most interesting displays of two actively ingenious and able minds stimulating each other to feats of mechanical invention, by which it was ordained that the locomotive engine should become what it now is. These discussions became more frequent, and still more interesting, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... which his stature, gave him over most people there. Hundreds of these were pretty girls, in a great variety of charming costumes, such as the eclecticism of modern fashion permits, and all sorts of ingenious compromises between walking dress and ball dress. It struck him that the young men on whose arms they hung, in promenading around the long oval within the crowd of stationary spectators, were very much younger than students ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was Rose to be won, he felt as if burning talons were rending his bleeding heart, and as if he must perish in the midst of his unspeakable agony. Reinhold often came to him in his dreams and brought him striking designs for artistic castings, into which Rose's form was worked in most ingenious ways, now as a flower, now as an angel, with little wings. But there was always something wanting; he discovered that it was Rose's heart which Reinhold had forgotten, and that he added to the design himself. Then he thought he saw all the flowers and leaves of the work ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the reign, at any rate) ransomed from insipidity by the genius of Sir Joshua Reynolds. The king himself, it was conceded, had 'little propensity to refined pleasure;' but his consort, Queen Caroline, was credited with a lively anxiety to reward merit and to encourage the exertions of the ingenious. ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... had actually caught a duck, and in a most ingenious manner. Seeing the ducks fly off their nests, the happy idea struck him that, if he could only contrive a trap, or 'dead-fall,' he might catch them when they came back. So he selected a nest favorable to his purpose, ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... of the Andes in that particular region was remarkable, and more remarkable still was the British engineering triumph of constructing a railway from the sea to so high an elevation. In one or two places there were iron bridges of great height and ingenious construction. You felt a curious sensation as you flew over those bridges on the tiny car, and you saw between the rails the chasm underneath you; nor did you feel extraordinarily comfortable when, hundreds of feet ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... an Act of Parliament in ordinary, to associate us into a corporate body, and give us a personi standi in judicio, with full power to prosecute and bring to conviction all encroachers upon our exclusive privilege, in the manner therein to be made and provided. In a letter from the ingenious Mr. ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... discussed in France. There was M. Pouchet, a professor at Rouen, a very learned man, but certainly not a very rigid experimentalist. He published a number of experiments of his own, some of which were very ingenious, to show that if you went to work in a proper way, there was a truth in the doctrine of spontaneous generation. Well, it was one of the most fortunate things in the world that M. Pouchet took up this question, ...
— The Method By Which The Causes Of The Present And Past Conditions Of Organic Nature Are To Be Discovered.—The Origination Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley
... who has a notoriety in London as the prince of cooks, and a very ingenious man—a sort of Paxton of the kitchen—wrote to the daily journals, about the time of the disclosure at Gosport, to offer a few suggestions. He said: 'No canister ought to contain more than about six pounds of meat, the same to be very slightly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... which ingenious WILLETT planned To illume the work and leisure of the toilers of the land, Has not yet convinced the nation, or unto the mass appealed, Still without exaggeration it can claim ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various
... by two huge chimneys, occupied both the back part of the ground and that which fringed the Boulevard de Grenelle, the latter being shut off by long windowless walls. This important and well-known establishment manufactured chiefly agricultural appliances, from the most powerful machines to those ingenious and delicate implements on which particular care must be bestowed if perfection is to be attained. In addition to the hundreds of men who worked there daily, there were some fifty women, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... full of the joy of living, fun-loving, given to ingenious mischief for its own sake, with a disregard for pretty convention which is an unfailing source of joy ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... rushes through the air with very much the same movement as the tail of a kite, the situation is, at any rate, so anomalous that I am unable to sleep. A ventilator is open just over my head, and a lively draught, mingled with a drizzle of cinders, pours in through this ingenious orifice. (I will describe to you its form on my return.) If I had occupied the lower berth I should have had a whole window to myself, and by drawing back the blind (a safe proceeding at the dead of night), I should have been able, by the light of ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... the precise sense and manner in which this theory of labour as the sole producer of wealth is elaborated and defended by Marx in his Bible of Scientific Socialism. His argument, though the expression of it is very often pedantic and encumbered with superfluous mathematical formulae, is ingenious and interesting, and is associated with historical criticism which, in spite of its defects, is valuable. Marx was, indeed, foremost among those thinkers already referred to who first insisted on the fact that the economic conditions of to-day ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... said, continuing, "Providence could not be more powerful, love more ingenious, motherhood more clear-sighted than your friends have been for us. I bless the chance that has brought you here to-day; for Monsieur Joseph has disappeared forever; he has evaded all the traps I set to discover ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac |
