"Ingenuity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at least indispensable to human nature; and the inside of this, once you open it, is a chest-of-drawers, containing paper, ink, new literature and much else. No end to Munchow'a good-will, and his ingenuity is great. [Preuss, ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... possible complications. It has become necessary that we should clearly understand one another—at least that you, my dear mother, should understand my position fully and finally. We have been too nice, you and I, heretofore, and, the truth being very far from nice, have expended much trouble and ingenuity in our efforts to ignore it. We went up to London in the fond hope that the world at large would support us in our self-deception. So it did, for a time. But, being in the main composed of very fairly honest and sensible persons, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... released Antonio, and dismissed the court. He then highly praised the wisdom and ingenuity of the young counsellor, and invited him home to dinner. Portia, who meant to return to Belmont before her husband, replied: 'I humbly thank your grace, but I must away directly.' The duke said he was sorry he had not leisure to stay and dine with him; and turning to Antonio, he added: 'Reward ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... interest rightly understood had nothing but the present world in view, it would be very insufficient; for there are many sacrifices which can only find their recompense in another; and whatever ingenuity may be put forth to demonstrate the utility of virtue, it will never be an easy task to make that man live aright who has no thoughts of dying. It is therefore necessary to ascertain whether the principle of interest rightly ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... put a man, or men, ashore, preferably on a desert island, leaving him, or them, to fend for himself, or themselves, as best he, or they, can! It may mean slow starvation—at best it means living on what you can pick up by your own ingenuity, on shell-fish and that sort of thing, even on edible sea-weed. Marooned? Yes! that was the only experience I ever had of that—it's all very well talking of it now, as we sit here on a comfortable little vessel, with a bottle ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... and render void one's best work. He learned these and other salutary lessons, which tend to tone down an amateur's conceit of his half-knowledge; and this chastened him. He felt his pride at stake—he who could so expertly, with almost demoniac ingenuity, force the costliest and most cunningly constructed burglar-proof lock; he whose not idle boast was that he was handy with his fingers! Slippy McGee baffled, at bay before a butterfly? And in the presence of a mere priest and a girl-child? Never! He'd show ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... was no less delighted; indeed, in his own bosom, he regarded both the composition itself and the device that had given birth to it, as a very remarkable monument of human ingenuity. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... of words and thought would, after all, be in itself little more than serious trifling, a mere exhibition of mental and verbal ingenuity. It would be a kind of intellectual and linguistical dexterity, which would give the author a singularity and supremacy above the world. It would make him the greatest of mental acrobats or jugglers, and he might almost deserve as eminent a reputation as a similar class ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... men were prophesying with every variety of ingenuity what would happen soon, and they all did it in the same way, by taking something they saw "going strong," as the saying is, and carrying it as far as ever their imagination could stretch. This, they said, was the true and simple way of anticipating the future. "Just as," said Dr. Pellkins, ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... her plan entirely laid out yet. She knows what must finally happen: the patient must be got out of that house, and away on a sea-voyage; but there will have to be various occurrences first. Your Aunt's ingenuity, Adonis, will be put to a severe strain. At present your Aunt is alone, and in difficulties. Many oxen come about her, fat bulls of Bashan compass her on every side, as the Scripture hath it; you are not acquainted with the Scripture, Adonis, so there ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... of his schemes for insuring the safety of his capital, for the resettlement of the greater part of the income by trustees—for combining, in fact, a maximum of growing power for the fortune with a minimum of enjoyment for the heir—were really marvels of ingenuity. ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... forms of Religion are no less a product of human ingenuity than Art or Science. He holds, in effect, that all religions take their rise in the desire to explain the world; and that, in regard to truth and error, they differ, in the main, not by preaching monotheism polytheism ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... always straying,—that he had an adventure of a more serious and decidedly lurid sort. The horses had led him a pace through the Bad Lands westward out over the prairie, and night overtook him not far from Mingusville, a primitive settlement named thus with brilliant ingenuity by its first citizens, a lady by the name of Minnie and her husband by the name of Gus. The "town"—what there was of it—was pleasantly situated on rolling country on the west bank of Beaver Creek. Along the east side of the creek were high, steep, cream-colored ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... All his ingenuity was needed in the explanation to his companion of why and wherefore the latter had been ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... fire, followed, if these point to guilt, as from their nature they usually do, by a terrible death: slow roasting alive— mutilation by degrees before the throat is mercifully cut—tying to stakes at low tide that the high tide may come and drown—and any other death human ingenuity and hate ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... jurisconsults of recognized competence in international law. It must be assumed that these requirements will continue to be carefully met, and with America joining the countries already concerned it is difficult to comprehend how human ingenuity could better provide for the establishment of a court which would maintain its independence. It has to be recognized that independence is to a considerable extent a matter of ability, character, and personality. Some effort was made in the early beginnings ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge
... commanded their respect. His conduct of the siege of Detroit, as we shall see, was marked by duplicity and diabolic savagery. He has often been extolled for his skill as a military leader, and there is a good deal in his siege of Detroit and in the murderous ingenuity of some of his raids to support this view. But his principal claim to distinction is due to his position as the head of a confederacy —whereas the other chiefs in the conflict were merely leaders of single tribes—and to the fact that he was situated at the very centre of the theatre ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... that the girls who exhibited so much taste and ingenuity in the arrangement of the festoons of evergreen, and tumblers of flowers around the Teacher's desk, be now requested to remove the faded roses and drooping violets. We have gazed on these ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... ten minutes the determined girl plied her reluctant and perplexed companion, by all the means which her ingenuity could invent, to accomplish her object; teasing, coaxing and threatening by turns, till, being unable to resist any longer, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... reason—that the second wrong presents itself to him in the guise of the only practicable right. The action which before commission has been seen with that blended common sense and fresh untarnished feeling which is the healthy eye of the soul, is looked at afterward with the lens of apologetic ingenuity, through which all things that men call beautiful and ugly are seen to be made up of textures very much alike. Europe adjusts itself to a fait accompli, and so does an individual character—until the placid adjustment is disturbed by a convulsive ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... distinct consciousness, as my friend the pitcher or the curling tongs has, of what I was before the ingenuity of man brought me into my present form. I would only mention that all the different materials of which I was formed must have been perfect of their kind, or I could never have performed the duties ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... allowed to be potent enough to crush all such half-believers as still clung to the idea of a Personal God and Intelligent Ruler; but it had no force or cogency against such as, following Arnold, attenuated the idea of God into a Stream of Tendency. This theme he elaborated with great ingenuity and characteristic dogmatism in his Bishop Butler and the Zeitgeist; and, inasmuch as no task can be more distasteful than to attack the teaching of a man whose genius and character one recognizes among the formative ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... writings which exist are those of authors who lived after the ages of gold, silver, and iron, 73. Writings of some learned authoresses, examined in the spiritual world in the presence of those authoresses, 175. The writings, which proceed from ingenuity and wit, on account of the elegance and neatness of the style in which they are written, have the appearance of sublimity and erudition, but only in the eyes of those who call all ingenuity by the name of wisdom, 175. Writing in the ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... melancholy stranger went past with a look of deep preoccupation, but he could not escape Caroline's gratitude; she had opened her window and affected to be digging in the square window-box buried in snow, a pretext of which the clumsy ingenuity plainly told her benefactor that she had been resolved not to see him only through the pane. Her eyes were full of tears as she bowed her head, as much as to say to her benefactor, "I can only repay you from ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... remarkable one. It was filled with every form of labor-saving device which the ingenuity of man could devise. The furniture, if luxurious, was not in any great quantity. Vacuum tubes were to be found in every room, and by the attachment of hose and nozzle and the pressure of a switch each room could be dusted in a few minutes. ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... was a huge man of about forty, and the epithet of "Red" had been given to him in consequence of the color of his hair. In expression his countenance was by no means unhandsome, being florid and symmetrical, but hard, and with scarcely any trace of feeling. His brows were far asunder, arguing ingenuity and invention, but his eyes, which were small and treacherous, glared—whenever he became excited—with the ferocity of an enraged tiger. His shoulders were broad, his chest deep and square, his arms long and powerful, but his lower limbs were somewhat ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... and the cruel ingenuity displayed by the bandits to keep safely their victim pending the negotiations for a ransom was often blood-curdling. I might fill a small volume with such anecdotes, but the terrible fate of two hacendados, kidnapped ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... did. Therefore the prize must be big. A man of Enderby's caliber doesn't concoct a scheme of such ingenuity, and go into bondage with it, for nothing. Do you belong to the ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... excuse or delay in providing all that is necessary from dealers in apparatus in the larger towns, from the drug store, markets, and elsewhere. In schools where both the funds and the time for such purposes are limited, the zeal and ingenuity of teachers and students are often put to a severe test. Fortunately a very little money and a great deal of ingenuity and patience will do apparent wonders towards providing a working supply ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... the real motive he had in sending her. She would have discovered the furious jealousy and wounded vanity which meant her to be a prime instrument in the wrecking of Bull Sternford and his mills. She would have realised the devilish ingenuity with which he intended to wreck her friendship with another man so that he might the more truly claim her for himself. But she had no suspicion, and had blindly yielded herself to the duty ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... hands. The fate of Stewart had served as a warning to him. It is wonderful that he should have been able to traverse such an extent of country as he did, and live in it so many months, and yet evade them. It required no little ingenuity and self-possession to take such measures as insured this ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... serving as cook of the camp while the boat was being built. Then, loading the craft with barrel-pork, hogs, and corn, they started on their voyage south. At a place called New Salem the flat-boat ran aground; but Lincoln's ingenuity got it off. He rigged up a queer contrivance of his own invention and lifted the boat off and over the obstruction, while all New Salem stood on the bank, first to criticise ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... happiness and comfort, to exile from it its ministering angels of peace and content, to shatter woman's sweet and blessed work to its very foundation. Let the wife concentrate, all day long, all her care and ingenuity and love upon building up her little paradise at home, let her hands be ever so busy in strewing fresh flowers around the domestic hearth, let her heart be ever so happy throughout the day in the discharge of her domestic duties, let her countenance ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... Not long after only a single pound was doled out once a week, and by the end of the month the supply entirely gave out. The beginning of July reduced the besieged to the necessity of tasking their ingenuity to make palatable food of the hides of cattle, next of the skins of horses, dogs, and asses. The stock of even this unsavory material soon became exhausted; whereupon, not very unnaturally, parchment was turned to good account. Manuscripts a good century old were eaten with relish. ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... compared to the knowledge of a language. The inhabitant of a civilised and long-settled country may speak and write his own language with the greatest purity, but very few ever reflect on the amount of thought, metaphor, and ingenuity which has been expended by their less civilised ancestors in bringing that language to perfection. The barbarian first feels the disadvantage of a limited means of communicating his ideas, and with great labour and ingenuity devises the means, from time to time, to remedy the imperfections ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Judaism, who need to have Hebrew words interpreted to them. Thus he interprets "Immanuel" (i. 23), "Golgotha" (xxvii. 33), and the words of our Lord on the cross (xxvii. 46). The numerous quotations from the Old Testament have for a long time exercised the ingenuity of scholars, who have believed that they enable us to determine how the Gospel was written. On the whole these quotations suggest two conclusions: (1) That the evangelist knew both Greek and Aramaic, (2) that the Gospel is not a mere translation from the Aramaic ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... phrase of alliterative ingenuity. He ground his teeth at the mere thought of it. Then Sylvia would come to hear of it, and what would she think? She would naturally be repelled, as any nice-minded girl would be, by the idea that her lover was in secret alliance with a supernatural being. And her father ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... done, the entire consistency of the several accounts becomes apparent; while the harmony which is established is often of the most beautiful nature. (3rdly) That when (for whatever reason) two or more versions of the same incident are not correct, no ingenuity can ever possibly reconcile them, as they stand. They lean apart in hopeless divergence. In other words, they contradict ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... narrow limits. Yet this has been done by men of mark and ability, by Italians, by men who read the Commedia in their own mother tongue. It has been maintained as a satisfactory account of it—maintained with great labor and pertinacious ingenuity—that Dante meant nothing more by his poem than the conflicts and ideal triumphs of a political party. The hundred cantos of that vision of the universe are but a manifesto of the Ghibelline propaganda, designed, under the veil of historic images and scenes, to insinuate ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... surplus vitality, and suffering from the added lassitude of illness, the woman should have become indifferent—willing to let a life that to her was full of fears and difficulties slip peacefully away from her, that was possible. But that she should exercise thought and ingenuity—that she should have reasoned the thing out and deliberately laid her plans, calculating at every point on ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... profoundest astonishment, and for a moment remained silent, trying to collect my thoughts under this unexpected blow. The queen saw my hesitation and laughed spitefully. "I am afraid, sire," she said, "that you have overrated this gentleman's ingenuity, though doubtless it has been much ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... experiment there was a lull in the Parachute folly until some twenty years ago, when Madame Poitevin startled the Metropolis from its propriety by her perilous escapes both in life and limb. Although considerable ingenuity was displayed in the plan of expanding the Parachute by the sudden discharge of gas from the balloon; still the very fact of a woman being exposed to such danger by her husband, will, we trust, hereafter prevent Englishmen from countenancing such ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... the day on which Thomas Shipley set out upon his journey, it was proposed to adjourn, and farther proceedings were postponed until Second day morning. At the meeting of the court, in the morning, the expected messenger was not there, and the ingenuity of the counsel was taxed still farther to procrastinate the important period. After three hours had been consumed in debate upon legal points, he, who was so anxiously looked for, came hurrying through the crowd, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... I shall, one way or other; you are continually astonishing one with your ingenuity in ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... fell into disfavor with the Government, the miserable offender caught by an officer seldom saved himself with the mere sacrifice of knup, coat, peot, and beard. And when the time arrived for the execution of the more important laws, such as the Exportation Act of April 20, 1843, no fiendish ingenuity could surpass the cruelty of the Cossacks. This ukase more than any other, it is claimed, embittered Lilienthal against Russia, and caused him to flee to where he could say as one awakening from a nightmare: "The horrible hatred against the Jews in Russia is nothing more to me than ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... Suppose this were true; yet the constitution allows only the means which are necessary, not those which are convenient. If such a latitude of construction be allowed this phrase, as to give any non-enumerated power, it will go to every one; for there is no one which ingenuity may not torture into a convenience, in some way or other, to some one of so long a list of enumerated powers. It would swallow up all the list of enumerated powers, and reduce the whole to one phrase. Therefore it was that the constitution restrained them to ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... who would make an excellent clerk in the Secretary's office, and request his name to be given to Mr. Young, to whom Young replied, I am not now Secretary but shall be to-morrow? I believe an intimation to this effect was given in the Journal, which you blink with as much ingenuity as though you had been bred in the same school with Mr. Young's colleagues. Amongst the great number to whom Mr. Young did give the information that he was shortly to be Secretary, you, then it seems ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... show. No doubt, Ecelino used such things, and many worse, of which even the ingenuity of Signor P—— cannot conceive. But he is an eccentric man, loving the horrors of history, and what he can do to realize them he has done in ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... assured that the Marquis of Orsini is really on most excellent terms with her ladyship—moreover, as this same marquis did pay a certain heavy gambling debt within an hour after the diamonds were pledged to you—it requires but little ingenuity to put all these circumstances together, to arrive at the result which I have mentioned. Is it ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... sometimes reversed and solitary, at others not wholly dismounted, canted at an angle, with one wheel in place. As there were six of them, complete in equipments, the scene was extensive and of most admired confusion; ingenuity had exhausted itself in variety, to enhance picturesqueness of effect. How the lieutenant in charge accounted for all this happening without his interference, I do not know. Certainly there was noise enough, but ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... advanced age, and columbines who might almost be crones; to say nothing of "young dogs" of light comedians, who in private life are well qualified to appear as grandsires, or even as great-grandfathers. But ingenuity in painting the face and padding the figure will probably long secure toleration for patriarchal Romeos, and ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... posts, houses, &c., was at first a source of amusement to the men, and gave them a great field in which to exercise their skill and ingenuity. People at home would, I think, have been delighted to see the pretty and tasteful things cut out of snow: obelisks, sphinxes, vases, cannon, and, lastly, a stately Britannia, looking to the westward, enlivened the floe, and gave voluntary occupation to the crews of the vessels. ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... deck. That there were no passengers—or, at least, no women passengers—aboard the brig, however, was practically certain—she was much too small for that—and unless the skipper happened to be a married man, with his wife aboard, Miss Trevor would have to fall back upon her own resources and ingenuity for a change of clothing. He discussed this matter with his companion as he swam onward; but the young woman just then regarded the question with a considerable amount of indifference; her one consuming anxiety, for the moment, was to again find herself on the deck of a craft ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... boundaries among the barbarians, his money was still active in Athens and elsewhere. His agents, often among the ablest men in a community, were busy using every cunning means at the command of the wonderful Greek ingenuity to conceal the danger or to reconcile the fickle people to a change that promised fine rewards for the sale of their liberty. Then he began to trim off one by one the outlying colonies and dependencies of the Greek States. His next step was to be the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... in the light of the trader's blunt philosophy, and of his own assurance that he was no fool, Shefford felt it incumbent upon him to accept a belief that there were situations no man could resist without an anchor. The ingenuity of man could not have devised a stranger, a more enticing, a more overpoweringly fatal situation. Fatal in that it could not be left untried! Shefford gave in and clicked his teeth as he let himself go. And suddenly he ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... walked the unstable breed, Bastien Lagrange, with a huge pack upon his back. The pack was heavy and the hill was steep, so that the human beast of burden perspired and groaned considerably. He also showed much imagination and ingenuity in the construction of strange words suitable to the occasion. Pepin's ears had just been assailed by some extra powerful ones when ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... talent and energy. The tendency of the Loyalists to conservatism was, under the circumstances, only natural. Their possession, for a time, of all the places in Upper Canada which were worth holding, was the consequence of their priority in tenure, and of their conspicuous pre-eminence in political ingenuity. Critics of a later date forgot, and still forget, in their wholesale indictment of the Family Compact, that the Loyalist group called by that name had earned their places by genuine ability. If, like other aristocracies, they found it hard to mark the precise moment for retirement ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... became evident that Ralph Mainwaring's oft repeated assertions concerning the elaborate preparation he had made for the coming contest were no idle boast. Nothing that human ingenuity could devise had been left undone which could help to turn the scale in his own favor. The original will of Ralph Maxwell Mainwaring, by which his elder son was disinherited, was produced and read in court. Both ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... the Valkyrie I shall make him port captain of the Blue Star Fleet, which job will keep him home nights. And since, by his ingenuity, he succeeded in purchasing for twenty-two thousand five hundred dollars a piece of property for which I was prepared to pay as high as seventy-five thousand dollars, for your wedding present I shall allot you and Captain Murphy a ten-thousand-dollar ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... home, as a son of Thomas Lincoln might be, without disparagement to his filial piety; and he was glad to get off with a neighbour on a commercial trip down the river to New Orleans. The trip was successful in a small way, and Abe soon after repeated it with other companions. He shewed his practical ingenuity in getting the boat off a dam, and perhaps still more signally in quieting some restive hogs by the simple expedient of sewing up their eyes. In the first trip the great emancipator came in contact with the negro in a way that did not seem likely to prepossess ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... a fool. But though the dramatist's jests are always serious and generally obvious, he is really affected from time to time by a certain spirit of which that climate theory is a case—a spirit that can only be called one of senseless ingenuity. I suppose it is a sort of nemesis of wit; the skidding of a wheel in the height of its speed. Perhaps it is connected with the nomadic nature of his mind. That lack of roots, this remoteness from ancient instincts and traditions is responsible for a certain ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... friendliness towards him, and treated him with a hauteur and disdain that he took for aristocratic behaviour and fashionable manners, and he thought all the more of her on that account. This busy man taxed his ingenuity to please them, and he sometimes succeeded. He got them cards for fashionable functions and boxes at the Opera. He furnished Mademoiselle Clarence with several opportunities of appearing to great advantage and in particular at a garden party which, although given by a Minister, was regarded ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... spectators, and buried itself among the mowing grass. "Come six, Podder!" I shouted, amid cries of "Keep on running!" "Run it out!" etc., from spectators and scouts alike. And run we did, for the umpire forgot to call "lost ball," and we should have been running still but for the ingenuity of one of our opponents; for, whilst all were busily engaged in searching among the grass, a red-faced yokel stole up unawares, with an innocent expression on his face, raced poor "Podder" down the pitch, produced the ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... of the arches are adorned with entire skeletons, looking as if they were wrought most skilfully in bas-relief. There is no possibility of describing how ugly and grotesque is the effect, combined with a certain artistic merit, nor how much perverted ingenuity has been shown in this queer way, nor what a multitude of dead monks, through how many hundred years, must have contributed their bony framework to build up these great arches of mortality. On some of the skulls there are inscriptions, purporting that such a monk, who formerly ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... photographs. It is intended for Mademoiselle Tigra of the Bouffes. A delicate attention from Dufilleul, isn't it? While Jeanne in her innocence is dreaming of the words of love he has ventured to utter to her, and cherishes but one thought, one image in her heart, he is exerting his ingenuity to perpetuate the recollection ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... influence of the music; it can quicken the fancy, and fire the imagination; it can prevent a gross misconception of the intentions of a composer and the character of his composition. Nevertheless, in determining the artistic value of the work, the question goes not to the ingenuity of the programme or the clearness with which its suggestions have been carried out, but to the beauty of the music itself irrespective of the verbal commentary accompanying it. This rule must be maintained in order to prevent a degradation of the object of musical expression. The vile, the ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... patrons and the stockholders of his road. Efforts have been made again and again by railroad companies to regulate their affairs and adjust their difficulties by resorting to pools, agreements, associations and combinations, formed with all the ingenuity of which men are capable, and supported by penalties and fines; but the unscrupulous railroad manager has always found a way to violate or subvert the agreement. There is a disposition among railroad companies to arrogate all the powers of sovereignty. They want to make their own laws, ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... determined to do it. I gave way reluctantly. Reluctantly, also, I told her the secret of the passage. (There is an underground passage from the library to the bowling-green. You should exercise your ingenuity, Mr. Gillingham, in trying to discover it. Mark came upon it by accident a year ago. It was a godsend to him; he could drink there in greater secrecy. But he had to tell me about it. He wanted an audience, ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... qualifications for a post. The knowing, upon being asked if they possess certain attributes, reply in an immediate affirmative and add others, just to be on the safe side. It is felt that what is really required in this War is thrust and ingenuity, things which adequately make up for the absence of any specialist knowledge. Accordingly my friend found himself described as possessing, among other things, "French, fluent." It was not until he was informed that the Official Interpreter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... committed ourselves, was strikingly manifested. If these pages fail to convey entertainment or information, sufficient may at least be gleaned from them to furnish matter for serious reflection; but to those who have been placed in situations of danger where human ingenuity availed them not, and where human foresight was baffled, I feel persuaded that these remarks ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... of the American Union has not been solved without much toil and trouble. The great puzzle of civilization—how to secure permanent concert of action without sacrificing independence of action—is a puzzle which has taxed the ingenuity of Americans as well as of older Aryan peoples. In the year 1788 when our Federal Union was completed, the problem had already occupied the minds of American statesmen for a century and a half,—that is to say, ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... its dainty pictures and adornments. Through the front door she saw the trim, velvet-swarded little lawn. Upstairs were two white rooms that only wanted a woman's living presence to make them jewels. And the kitchen on which she had expended so much thought and ingenuity—the kitchen furnished to the last detail, even to the kindling in the range and the match Willard had laid ready to light it! It gave Miss Sally a pang to think of that altar fire never being lighted. It was really the thought of the kitchen ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... flash I knew what the man meant to do, and the devilish ingenuity of it appalled me. He had concluded that I was strung up to ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... evenings and shining summer nights were entirely surrendered to the glittering pleasures and pastimes of a man of ease. We hear of entertainment after entertainment, banquet and ball and masquerade, pageant and play and pastime, each one of which seemed to be the last word of wealthy ingenuity until it was eclipsed by its still more splendid successor. And it was this part of which the Count of Montcorbier chose to make the most with a very special purpose. He caused, it seems, many emissaries of his to quit Paris and find shelter within the ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... unfortunately necessary mechanisms a great deal of ingenuity has been expended. With the advance of luxury and the increased worship of wealth, it becomes more and more necessary to guard one's belongings against the less scrupulous members ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... the ladder and door-opening tests of the preceding chapter are examples, has yielded interesting results concerning the individual initiative, ingenuity, motor ability, and ways of learning of the dancer; but it has not furnished us with accurate measurements of the rapidity of learning or of the permanency of the effects of training. In this chapter I shall therefore ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... Tower. Though only in his fourteenth year he already possessed both determination and courage, by reason of which he resolved to risk all danger, and make a third effort for freedom. Accordingly he laid his plans with much ingenuity, selecting two men from those around him to aid his undertaking. These were George Howard and Colonel Bamfield. The latter had once served in the king's army, but when the fortunes of war had gone against his royal master, had professed himself friendly to the Republicans. No doubt ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... Catherine, always looked at two sides of a penny: and he tried to purchase this mass a trifle under the usual terms, on account of the pitiable circumstances. But the good cure gently but adroitly parried his ingenuity, and blandly screwed him up to ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... dramatic encounter had taken place in a distant part of the house. Kerry Junior, having scientifically tested all the possible modes of egress from the room in which Lady Pat was confined, had long ago desisted, and had exhausted his ingenuity in plans which discussion had proved to be useless. In spite of the novelty and the danger of his situation, nature was urging her laws. He was growing sleepy. The crowning tragedy had been the discovery that he could ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... ingenuity the plan was being laid, for well I knew the amazing and quite uncanny fascination for women of all ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... see not the spring that moves it. The success of that petty province of Holland (of which the Grand Seignior proudly said, if they should trouble him, as they did the Spaniard, he would send his men with shovels and pickaxes, and throw it into the sea) I cannot altogether ascribe to the ingenuity and industry of the people, but the mercy of God, that hath disposed them to such a thriving genius; and to the will of his providence, that disposeth her favour to each country in their preordinate season. All cannot be happy at ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... struggle, and but for his academic successes he could not have completed the course of medical training. Twenty years of very successful practice had made him independent, and a mechanical invention—which he had patented—an ingenuity of which he thought nothing till some friend insisted on its value—raised his independence to moderate wealth. For his children's sake he was glad of this comfort; like every educated man who has known poverty at the outset of life, he feared ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... himself asserted that his object was to procure sufficient succours from King Louis, to give a decisive issue to the war. His subsequent negotiations at Paris proved that though his bodily health might be wretched, his ingenuity and readiness of resource had not deserted him. He justified himself both with James and Louis, outwitted Lauzan, propitiated Louvois, disarmed the prejudices of the English Jacobites, and, in short, placed the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... to sink her off the Isle of Wight (first of all, of course, taking the precaution to accurately ascertain the bearings of her berth), and to proceed to Portsmouth in the two boats, taking with them the spoils of their polar expedition, and trusting to their own ingenuity to evade such suspicions and speculations as might be engendered by the somewhat singular circumstances connected with their arrival, especially as the hour—about half-past four o'clock on the following morning—at ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... which he defended his conduct as one of their representatives in Sardinia. The speech was important for its caustic descriptions of the habits of the nobility when freed from the moral atmosphere of Rome. With extreme ingenuity he worked into the description of the habits of his own official life a scathing indictment, expressed in the frankest terms, of the self-seeking, the luxury, the unnatural vices, the rampant robbery of the average provincial ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... dead man was her father, and the very instant we let go one thread of the mystery the whole fabric will unravel. Poor Clara can never be acknowledged openly as my wife, the best and most patient wife a man ever had, and under a heavier sentence of death this moment than the utmost ingenuity of man could contrive." Gordon groaned, and let his head ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... had been in the saddle the greater part of the day, and the prospect of spending the night in pursuit of Glover did not appeal to him, though he knew it could not be avoided. The man was a notorious thief, whose last exploit had shown some ingenuity. Appearing at the house of a prosperous farmer, he had shown him a letter from a railroad contractor asking for the use of his best Clydesdale team on tempting terms. The farmer let the horses go and saw no more of them, while the contractor repudiated the letter. Glover was also supposed ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... worse, if worse may be, appeared to be held in such honour of all, that (to my thinking) the place is a centre of diabolical rather than of divine activities. To the best of my judgment, your Pastor, and by consequence all that are about him devote all their zeal and ingenuity and subtlety to devise how best and most speedily they may bring the Christian religion to nought and banish it from the world. And because I see that what they so zealously endeavour does not come to pass, but that on the contrary ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... were intimidated, beaten, raped, and butchered by angry and revengeful men. Bureau courts tended to become centres simply for punishing whites, while the regular civil courts tended to become solely institutions for perpetuating the slavery of blacks. Almost every law and method ingenuity could devise was employed by the legislatures to reduce the Negroes to serfdom,—to make them the slaves of the State, if not of individual owners; while the Bureau officials too often were found striving to put the "bottom rail on top," and gave the freedmen a power and independence ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... course of the day, and present a letter in the same handwriting for their delivery. The person who obtained the boxes accurately described their contents, the marks on them, and the time they were landed at Falmouth. The wharfinger, as might be expected, was completely put off his guard by the ingenuity and cunning of the thief, and delivered ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... to be attributed their thin faces, their pale skins, their unenergetic temperament—unenergetic as regards physical motion—and their early old age. The winters are long and cold in America, and mechanical ingenuity is far extended. These two facts together have created a system of stoves, hot-air pipes, steam chambers, and heating apparatus so extensive that, from autumn till the end of spring, all inhabited rooms are filled with ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... the truth, your Highness, America is crowded with 'wealthy families,' 'socially prominent,' 'old Colonial families,' two or three million Mayflower blossoms, and similar Philistines! There are hundreds of clever people who make good annual incomes in our country with their ingenuity in connecting the Joneses and the Browns and the Smiths with Richard the Lion-Heart and Bill the Conqueror, by marriage. In my native State, Kentucky, there are enough majors, colonels, and generals to officer the armies of Europe—and as for judges!... There are enough badges, fraternity ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... true, though my authority is good. In this very captaincy, within these twenty years, an Indian tribe had been so troublesome, that the Capitam Mor resolved to get rid of it. It was attacked, but defended itself so bravely, that the Portuguese resolved to desist from open warfare; but with unnatural ingenuity exposed ribands and toys infected with smallpox matter in the places where the poor savages were likely to find them: the plan succeeded. The Indians were so thinned, that ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... that the fun would begin. A well brought-up, moneyed, petted and curled girl of twelve was no easy pawn in anybody's game. He could not win her love by a mere offer of gum-drops. In fact, getting acquainted was likely to be a difficult matter, taxing his ingenuity to a standstill. But he entertained no doubts of his ability to ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... that line, and Harry ceased to be a liar, and became a story-teller of much humor and ingenuity." ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... sore temptation to do so much. There were those who would have urged me on to think that you had cast me from your heart for ever. There were those ready and willing to place the worst construction upon your conduct, and with a devilish ingenuity to strive to make me participate in such a feeling; but, no, Charles, no—I loved you, and I trusted you, and I could not so far belie my own judgment as to tell you other than what you always seemed ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... hastily put up bunk was covered with blue blankets, and boasted a sacking pillow. From the ridge-pole hung a candlestick, roughly fashioned from a knot of wood, and the furniture was completed by a rustic table and chair, made from branches, and showing considerable ingenuity in their fashioning. Wallaby skins thrown over the chair and upon the floor lent a look of comfort to the tiny dwelling; and a further touch of homeliness was given by many pictures cut from illustrated papers and fastened ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... said that people flocked there "by the million," but what I was told was that last year's attendance was 80,000. The street leading to the approach to the shrine was in a series of steps. On either side were the usual shops with piled-up mementoes in great variety and of no little ingenuity, and also, on spikes, little stacks of rin—the old copper coin with a square hole through the middle—into which the economical devotee takes care to exchange a few sen. We climbed to the shrine when twilight was coming on. At the point where the series of street steps ended there began a new ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... of the greatest perfections in their country;[7] but instead of that, they conveyed us into an huge room lighted up with abundance of candles, where this lazy people sat still above three hours to see several feats of ingenuity performed by others, who it seems ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... wounded as he was, Foy's heart sank in him at the words of this man, this devil who had betrayed his mother with a mock marriage, and who was the father of Adrian. The idea of making the heiress his wife was one worthy of his evil ingenuity, and why should he not put it into practice? Elsa, of course, would rebel, but Alva's officials in such days had means of overcoming any maidenly reluctance, or at least of forcing women to choose between death and degradation. Was it not common for them even to dissolve marriages ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... to use your utmost ingenuity to find out if your cousin James gave that photo to Fullaway," continued Chettle. "We know very well that he was in touch with Fullaway before he went off to Russia—I have it in my notes that when Fullaway came to see you here ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... bit of resourcefulness, calling at times for what seems an impossible amount of ingenuity. As someone has said, "It is beating the other fellow to it." It merits the consideration of those who have to handle boys and girls who are ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... literature and general refinement, evidently began to disdain the flat and coarse buffooneries which had formed the solace of its barbarous predecessors; and it was determined that devices of superior elegance and ingenuity should distinguish the festivities of the new court of Edward. Accordingly, George Ferrers, a gentleman regularly educated at Oxford, and a member of the society of Lincoln's inn, was chosen to preside over the "merry disports;" "who," says Holinshed, "being of better ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin |
