"Ingenuity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bravery, his ingenuity and daring. But this was the last thing he expected: that the malicious, railing little half-breed would work with him and the law. Pierre seemed to understand his thoughts, for he said: "It is not for you. I am sick for adventure, and then there is mademoiselle—such ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... its hours away, we may watch the phrases of the capable Author of the great story as they come from His pen. His most useful characters are remote and unavailable. It would seem that the villain was likely to have his way. The Author must defeat him, if possible, with some stroke of ingenuity. For this ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... favour; but his very understanding of that made him seek for subtle treachery. She saw he suspected her; was it not good policy to seem perfectly frank, even if such frankness for the moment gave a strengthening to suspicion? What devilish ingenuity might after all be concealed in this woman, whom he had ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... before the date of these tragedies and changes, that he had sent me a Canto, or couple of Cantos, of Coeur-de-Lion; loyally again demanding my opinion, harsh as it had often been on that side. This time I felt right glad to answer in another tone: "That here was real felicity and ingenuity, on the prescribed conditions; a decisively rhythmic quality in this composition; thought and phraseology actually dancing, after a sort. What the plan and scope of the Work might be, he had not said, and I could not judge; but here was a light opulence of airy fancy, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... year. Lucan offered some slight opposition to that project, which appeared to him rather over-heroic for a Parisian, but ended by adopting it, too happy himself to harbor the romance of his love in that romantic spot. He began, however, taxing his ingenuity to attenuate what there might be too austere in that abode, by opening relations with some of the neighbors for Clotilde's benefit, and by procuring her, at intervals, her mother's society. Madame de Pers was kind enough ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... New York of his day; his description of the Ragged Mountains of Virginia, within very sight of the university which he attended, was borrowed, in the good old convenient fashion, from Macaulay; in fact, it requires something of Poe's own ingenuity to find in Poe, who is one of the indubitable assets of ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... of his own pressing danger. And it must be said, in the praise of a man who had fought for and against Marlborough and Tallard, that his courage in this trying and novel predicament never for a moment deserted him, but that he showed the greatest daring, as well as ingenuity, in meeting and averting the danger. He flew to the sideboard, where were the relics of a supper, and seizing the mustard and salt pots, and a bottle of oil, he emptied them all into a jug, into which he further poured a vast quantity of hot water. ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stream had originally cut a low arch in its egress, which human needs and ingenuity had broadened, heightened and closed by heavy iron bars, slipped into stone slots. Behind this gateway glimmered a faint light that brightened into a red star; and soon, a figure clad in the long, black monastic gown, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the early part of the century, the house being used as offices, while in the grounds an experimental tank was erected. In it tests were made of the speed and resistance of the various forms which Mr. Russell's ingenuity evolved—notably those based on the well-known stream line theory—as possible types of the steam fleets of the future. All the data derived from experiment was tabulated, or shown graphically in the form of diagrams, which, doubtless, proved of great interest to the savants ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... appearance to the men, as if they were daubed with an inky sponge. Nature having denied them beards, they tattoo curly locks along their faces, always bordered by a vandyke fringe, which must task their utmost ingenuity. Tanee, who has followed us with some of his warriors, is the very exquisite of a Kenowit. He is made like a Hercules, and is proud of showing his strength and agility. He piques himself upon having the best sword, of fine Kayan make and native metal, and the strongest arm in his ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... visited Spain, and took up his residence in Seville, to attend to some commercial transactions on account of the family of the Medici of Florence, and to repair, by his ingenuity, the losses and misfortunes of an unskillful ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... tending. But each age solves its own problems; and the passage into that promised land is the issue for another generation. A nearer view alone can determine where the passage is, and whether the land is truly desirable. We may justly put some faith in the common sense, as well as in the political ingenuity of those who come after us. If military socialism, whatever it is, should ever be the issue, this American people can be trusted to vote against it if it is undesirable. Meantime, what our people must vote upon in ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... depends entirely upon the belief of mortal mind. Stimulants, narcotics, poisons, affect the system solely because they are reputed to do so. And yet, with all her ingenuity, Mrs. Eddy has to admit that if a man took arsenic unknowingly it would probably kill him. This, she says, is because of the consensus of opinion that arsenic is deadly. Such would probably be her explanation of the destructive ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... pink stockings came up; but mostly, instead of it, some rugged, untractable subject; some topic impossible to be contorted into the risible; some feature, upon which no smile could play; some flint, from which no process of ingenuity could procure a distillation. There they lay; there your appointed tale of brick-making was set before you, which you must finish, with or without straw, as it happened. The craving Dragon—the Public—like him in Bel's temple—must ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... my criticism of Mr. Darwin's critics, himself among the number, which will be found in this volume. In "Evolution and its Consequences"[1] I am accused of misrepresentation, misquotation, misunderstanding, and numerous other negative and positive literary and scientific sins; and much subtle ingenuity is expended by Mr. Mivart in attempting to extricate himself from the position in which my exposition of the real opinions of Father Suarez has placed him. So much more, in fact, has Mr. Mivart's ingenuity impressed me than any other feature of his reply, that I shall take the ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the increasing anguish depicted on his wife's face. He had a presentiment that she was hiding something from him, and the thought nearly choked him. And, with this suspicion, his ingenuity came to his aid. He approached Jeanne, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... practical moment, and followed by no consequences to himself, farther, perhaps, than that they foster his vanity the better the more remote they are from common sense; requiring, as they must in this case, the exercise of greater ingenuity and art to render them probable. In addition, I had always a most earnest desire to know how to distinguish the true from the false, in order that I might be able clearly to discriminate the right path in life, and proceed in it ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... interest, he would sit for hours composing pictures, and attempting every possible variety in the views of the same little mill-pond, within a short distance of the house. He soon became quite expert in the management of his slate and pencil, and showed a good deal of ingenuity in rubbing in and out the white shading on the black ground, something in the manner of a stump-drawing; but, of course, these sketches all disappeared before Charlie went to take his regular lesson ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... countryside, men and women, have been making articles, and I can assure you it is a relief to have it over and such a success to boot, and life's quiet tone restored. We made large numbers of purchases, and consumed unbelievable quantities of more than solid nourishment. The people have shown the greatest ingenuity and diligence, and the display was a credit to their talent. I was particularly struck with the really clever carving representing local scenes which the fishermen had done with no other tools than their jack-knives. The auction was ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... lengthening the working hours. He put his watch on an hour. With the 'turning out' signal thus advanced, the actual marching period reached 12 hours. The situation was saved, and Evans flattered himself on his ingenuity. But the men knew it all the ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... exceptional violence and novel ingenuity of the attacks made upon him, Blaine met them with such ability and address that everywhere he augmented the ordinary strength of his party, and his eventual defeat was generally attributed to an untoward event among his own adherents at the close of the campaign. At a political reception ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... mind, and, if any philosopher wants to argue the matter, I flee from his presence, and luxuriate on the yellow sands or amid the keen kisses of the salty waves. I own that Newton's discoveries were meritorious, and I willingly applaud Mr. George Stephenson, through whose ingenuity we are now whisked to our places of rest with the swiftness of an eagle's flight. Nevertheless I contend that holidays are the crowning device of modern thought, and I hold that no thesis can be so easily proven as mine. How did our grandfathers take ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... 'buchot' system, has been practiced continuously at the village of Esnandes during all the centuries since that time, and the income to the little village last year was over one hundred and twelve thousand dollars as a result of the ingenuity of the castaway Irishman." ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... wield the Keth and their other uncanny weapons freely. We had learned, too, that every forge and artisan had been put to work to make an armour Marakinoff had devised to withstand the natural battle equipment of the frog-people—and both Larry and I had a disquieting faith in the Russian's ingenuity. ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... mere shoving—vis consili expers—would never bring her near to her goal. An adept in the art of pushing does not rely on sheer impudence alone. She has recourse to artificial aids and appliances. A great deal of ingenuity is exhibited in the selection of her self-propelling machinery. It is a good plan to acquire a name for some one ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... neither," I told him. "If you can help me make it both by any ingenuity, I shall be mighty glad. It's a pleasant world! But we will not talk any more of my running for New York like a kicked pup. The question is, will you and Phillida take care of the lady who calls herself Desire Michell, if tomorrow morning finds her ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... choirs. The whole work is written for double chorus, the two choruses singing the harmony of the chorales, accompanied by the instruments, while the congregation sing the tune in unison. They display to the utmost the breadth, richness, ingenuity, and power of Bach in this form of writing. The reflective portions of the work, the text written by Picander, are composed of arias introduced by recitative, with the first part repeated in the close; of arias accompanied by chorus; and ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... of the novelist's ingenuity is always the same; it is to give to his subject the highest relief by which it is capable of profiting. And the less dramatic, strictly speaking, the subject may be—the less it is able, that is to say, to express itself in action and in action only—the more it is needful to heighten its flat, ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... with this plan of action she presented an untroubled front at breakfast, went out riding with little Ann, and shopping with her mother afterwards. Owing to this news of Miltoun the journey to Scotland had been postponed. She parried with cool ingenuity each attempt made by Lady Valleys to draw her into conversation on the subject of that meeting at Gustard's, nor would she talk of her brother; in every other way she was her usual self. In the afternoon she even volunteered ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Pictures," "Tom Telescope," and a few others. I give abbreviated titles only, but if space permitted I mould like to quote them in full; they are remarkable no less for their curious quaintness and their clever ingenuity than for their attractiveness to both parents (who, it must not be forgotten, are more often the real buyers of children's books) and the young people for whom they were written, and they are in themselves most entertaining and amusing reading. This group of little books possesses, moreover, ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... altogether too convivial in his habits. I was often in bed, but never asleep, when he returned; and there was scarce a night when he did not betray the influence of liquor. By day he would still lay upon me endless tasks, which he showed considerable ingenuity to fish up and renew, in the manner of Penelope's web. I never refused, as I say, for I was hired to do his bidding; but I took no pains to keep my penetration under a bushel, and would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... job-owning, based upon an automatic self-drive principle, enables the job-owner to exact a return in faithful service that neither slavery nor serfdom ever made possible. Job-owning is thus the most thorough-going form of mastery yet devised by the ingenuity ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... was one passage into the wood; the dwelling, which was a hut, was built in that part of the wood which the prince thought most secure, but so covered that it could not be discovered until you came near it. But the greatest ingenuity was displayed in the construction of the passage that led to the hut, which was so narrow, that no more than one person could go abreast, and it was contrived in so intricate a manner, that it was a perfect labyrinth; the way going round and ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... graceful elegance of the golden age with the vigor and terseness of the silver one. He has the facility of Ovid and the brevity of Tacitus. In the construction of his fables, he displays observation and ingenuity; but he is deficient in imagination. He makes his animals the vehicles of his wisdom, but he does not throw himself into them, or identify himself with them; while they look and act like animals, they talk like human beings. In this consists the great superiority of Aesop to his Roman ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... epithet "genteel" gives an extra touch that we should be loth to lose. In reference to his Latin Translation of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity he adds: "He was only the fit man to make the learned of all nations happy." Of the Hortus Mertonensis he tells us that it was one "of several copies of his ingenuity and poetry that were greedily gathered ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... first day. Not that there was much to do, for Brownie had sent over a colossal hamper, declaring that Miss Tommy shouldn't be bothered with thinking about food when she wasn't 'ardly settled. So they packed into the little dining-room; where, indeed, it took no small ingenuity to stow so large a party, when three of the six happened to be of the size of David Linton and Jim and Wally; and Tommy did the honours of her own table for ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... grave mistake to regard it as a parochial eccentricity, as a specific Americanism. Nor is it the product of the misplaced ingenuity of individual paradox-mongers. It has come into being by the convergence of distinct lines of thought pursued in different countries ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... once there was busy activity in cutting down trees for the log huts. They were built nearly square, sixteen feet by fourteen, in rows, with the door opening on improvised streets. Since boards were scarce, and it was difficult to make roofs rainproof, Washington tried to stimulate ingenuity by offering a reward of one hundred dollars for an improved method of roofing. The fireplaces of wood were protected with thick clay. Firewood was abundant, but, with little food for oxen and horses, men had to turn themselves into draught animals ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... closely related to our people's prosperity and well-being is the removal of restrictions upon the importation of the raw materials necessary to our manufactures. The world should be open to our national ingenuity and enterprise. This can not be while Federal legislation through the imposition of high tariff forbids to American manufacturers as cheap materials as those used by their competitors. It is quite obvious that the enhancement of the price ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... Laura, with the expenditure of considerable ingenuity and muscle, got Billy safely to the foot of the cliff, and then worked her own way down by the rope without cutting her hands. She made a sling of her dress skirt in which to lower Billy, and ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... regulations exist nearly in the same state as established by the founder; in reciting them, such horrible perversions of human nature and reason make it almost difficult to believe the existence of so severe an order, and lead us to wonder at the artificial miseries, which the ingenuity of pious but morbid enthusiasm can inflict upon itself. The abstinence practised at La Trappe allows not the use of meat, fish, eggs, or butter; and a very limited quantity of bread and vegetables. They only eat twice a day; which meals consist of a slender repast at about eleven ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... 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 of that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of having broken into that dignified stronghold at last. His eyes, she knew, were following her everywhere. This was a triumph; and had it come naturally, such a triumph would have been the sweeter to her for this piquing delay. But it had been brought about by misdirected ingenuity, and she valued it only as she valued an artificial flower or ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... for I have often heard wounded men speak of the feeling of having received a terrible blow from some big and heavy thing, when hit with a musket-ball. The ladies entertained us with half-gay, half-pathetic stories of the way home-life had run on during the long campaigns, and of the ingenuity they were obliged to use to supply the place of tasteful articles of dress or adornment when the blockade had become stringent, and when each little community was thrown almost wholly upon its own resources. The head of the house discoursed more gravely ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... who has defeated the most famous champions—the White Pile. And as this victor in Flemish and English encounters wears at his heels, for the defter dispatching of his enemy, two razors fastened there by the ingenuity of man, by tomorrow night Chantecler will be dead, and his eyes picked out of ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... iron," "the strong arm, ruddy at times with the tongues of promethean fire." It is a big canvas, avowedly romantic. "It is," he wrote, after the play had been running in New York some months, "a work of great propulsive power, of genuine creative ingenuity, of massive dramatic effectiveness." On that account it is well worth the preserving ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye
... question by laying down two or three sweeping propositions covering the subject as a whole, and would then proceed to draw from these others which he could apply to the particular matter in hand. His well-stored memory and boundless ingenuity made this finding of such general propositions so easy a task that a method in itself agreeable sometimes appeared to be carried to excess. He frequently arrived at conclusions which the judgment of ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... Irish war. But the real difficulties were the difficulties at home. The death of Charles gave fresh vigour to the Royalist cause; and the loyalty which it revived was stirred to enthusiasm by the publication of the "Eikon Basilike," a work really due to the ingenuity of Dr. Gauden, a Presbyterian minister, but which was believed to have been composed by the king himself in his later hours of captivity, and which reflected with admirable skill the hopes, the suffering, and the piety of the royal "martyr." For a moment ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... the lower part of his father the sky, in which it is wrapped and hidden, and of which it is born again, its second mother being, in some versions of the legend, Hy—the Dew. The nursery, where Zeus places it to be brought up, is a cave in Mount Nysa, sought by a misdirected ingenuity in many lands, but really, like the place of the carrying away of Persephone, a place of fantasy, the oozy place of springs in the hollow of the hillside, nowhere and everywhere, where the vine was "invented." The nymphs of the trees overshadow it from ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... which was own brother to Lessingham's temple and about some female monster, whom he regarded with such fear and horror that every allusion he made to her was followed by a convulsive paroxysm which taxed all the ingenuity of his medical attendants to bring him out of. He frequently called upon his sisters by name, speaking of them in a manner which inevitably suggested that he had been an unwilling and helpless witness of hideous tortures which they had undergone; ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... by his own successful ingenuity, and was for running off directly to the spring. "Catharine shall now have cold water to bathe her poor ankle with, and to quench her thirst," he said, joyfully springing to his feet, ready for a start up the steep bank; but Hector quietly ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... ride. Harvey was called upon constantly to exercise ingenuity in the handling of his forces, and though Mallory was of great assistance, the strain of responsibility rested upon Harvey. He was tired when he started, but as the night wore on toward morning, nothing but his sound nerves kept him on his feet. At two-thirty o'clock ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... gunpowder did not meanly affect the destinies of mankind; wars are become less bloody by becoming less personal; mere brutal strength is rendered of comparatively little avail; all the resources of civilisation are required to maintain and move a large army; wealth, ingenuity, and perseverance become the principal elements of success; civilised man is rendered in consequence infinitely superior to the savage, and gunpowder gives permanence to his triumph, and secures the cultivated nations from ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... Let it be clearly understood by the advocates of this expedient for accounting for the state of the text of Codd. B. and {HEBREW LETTER ALEF}, that nothing whatever is gained for the credit of those two MSS. by their ingenuity. Even if we grant them all they ask, the Codices in question remain, by their own ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... endeavor to promote, and whereto they are obliged to submit? And since it is our lot to travel in an unbeaten path, we, therefore, promise to ourselves, from all sober and judicious readers, the greater candor and ingenuity in their measuring of our steps ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... scene of the War of the Third Coalition. Hasty preparations, rash plans, and, above all, Mack's fatal ingenuity in reading his notions into facts—these were the causes of a disaster which ruined the chances of the allies. The Archduke Charles, who had been foiled by Massena's stubborn defence, was at once recalled from Italy in order to cover Vienna; ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... talked at table he talked in the Convention. His peculiar style of oratory was now formed. It was not altogether without ingenuity and liveliness. But in any other age or country it would have been thought unfit for the deliberations of a grave assembly, and still more unfit for state papers. It might, perhaps, succeed at a meeting of a Protestant Association in Exeter Hall, at a Repeal dinner in Ireland, after men had ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... one of the greatest possible importance and advantage to him—had it been answered as he desired. 'T was quite delightful to see the Attorney-General and his experienced and watchful juniors all rise at one and the same instant: showing how vain were the tricks and ingenuity of their sly opponent. Mr. Attorney-General stated his objection briefly and pointedly; Mr. Subtle answered him, followed by Quicksilver and Lynx; and then Mr. Attorney-General replied, with great force and clearness. This keen ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... documents which illustrate Raleigh's life in Ireland during 1581, and they are somewhat numerous, give the student a much higher notion of his brilliant aptitude for business and of his active courage than of his amiability. His vivacity and ingenuity were sources of irritation to him, as the vigour of an active man may vex him in wading across loose sands. There was no stability and apparently no hope or aim in the policy of the English leaders, and Raleigh showed no mock-modesty in his criticism ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... floors, 16 feet by 24, is about 18l.; but it must be borne in mind that very little expenditure is needed on the part of the settler; his house and barns are generally built by himself, with the assistance of his neighbours; and a man with the slightest ingenuity or powers of imitation can also fabricate at a most trifling expense the few articles of household furniture needed at first. I have been in several log-houses where the bedsteads, tables, and chairs were all the work ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... different way, Mr. Goschen's remarkable endowments are neutralised by the same limitations. He has infinite ingenuity, but he can neither initiate nor propel; an intrepid debater in council and in action, he is prey to an ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... multitude had judged more correctly than the learned, and that the despised little book was really a masterpiece. Bunyan is indeed as decidedly the first of allegorists as Demosthenes is the first of orators, or Shakspeare the first of dramatists. Other allegorists have shown equal ingenuity, but no other allegorist has ever been able to touch the heart, and to make abstractions objects of terror, of ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... stratum, instead of the ledge they expected they struck four feet of rotten rock, so porous that when air was put on it to force the water back great air bubbles blew up all through the lot, forcing the men out of the other caissons and trenches. But this was a mere dull detail, to be met by care and ingenuity like the others. And at last, forty feet below street level, they reached bed-rock. Forty-six piers had to be driven ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... much resembles that of Lanius lahtora; but judging from the half-dozen or so I have seen, L. erythronotus certainly displays more skill and ingenuity in preparing its nest, which in structure is more neat and compact than that of L. lahtora. In shape it is circular, ordinarily varying from 51/2 to 7 inches in diameter, and from 2 to 21/2 inches in thickness. Hemp, old rags, and thorny twigs are freely used in the formation of the outer ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... a surprise for Lord Reginald. He had been anxious about the possibility of their boat leaking, through cracks which might open as the wood dried. Among the stores he had collected was a cask of pitch, which he now rolled out. He had to exert his ingenuity in forming a tar brush for putting it on. This he manufactured out of cocoanut fibre. An iron kettle, which had been too large for ordinary use, served for heating it. They found that they had more than sufficient to pay over the whole ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... the inquisitors were able to devise that long array of minutely prying questions; questions whose subtlety and ingenuity and penetration are astonishing until we come to remember Loyseleur's performance and recognize their source. Ah, Bishop of Beauvais, you are now lamenting this cruel iniquity these many years in hell! Yes verily, unless one has come to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... be inaccurate, Jack may not have climbed up so tall a beanstalk, or killed so tall a giant; but it is not such things that make a story false; it is a far different class of things that makes every modern book of history as false as the father of lies; ingenuity, self-consciousness, hypocritical impartiality. It appears to us that of all the fairy-tales none contains so vital a moral truth as the old story, existing in many forms, of Beauty and the Beast. There ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... rash assertion. The small erection that it had been the Major's pride to erect by means of the men a short distance back and just inside the jungle, and to which he had brought to bear all the ingenuity he possessed, so as to ensure safety—sinking it deep in the earth, protecting it by a chevaux de frise, and then thickly planting the outside with a dense belt of the closest and most rapid-growing of the jungle shrubs—had ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... him in the course of his glowing mendacity, Gammon acted as soon as he and Polly had said good-bye. He discovered Greenacre, who no longer slept at the Bilboes, but in a house of like cosiness and obscurity a little farther west; told him of the brilliant ingenuity with which he had escaped from a galling complication, and received his promise of assistance in strengthening the plot. Greenacre wrote to Polly that very night, and on the morrow conversed with her, emphasizing by many devices the secrecy and importance ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... things else, is fruitful in instances of every subject) and as Elisa hath done, to recount somewhat of the things that have befallen in other parts of the world; wherefore, passing over to Naples, I shall tell how one of those she-saints, who feign themselves so shy of love, was by the ingenuity of a lover of hers brought to taste the fruits of love, ere she had known its flowers; the which will at once teach you circumspection in the things that may hap and afford you diversion of those ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... a great deal of candour and ingenuity, that their condition was so miserable, and they were so sensible of it, that he believed they would abhor the thought of using any man unkindly that should contribute to their deliverance; and that, if I pleased, he would go to them with ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... spirit these injunctions were followed, and with what good effect, their whole history shows. A notable instance of the readiness and ingenuity of their statesmen in finding the means of public reconciliation in such cases is given in the Jesuit narrative. On the 24th of July, 1657, a great council was held at Onondaga to consider three matters, all of special import. First in order was the necessity of appeasing a threatened ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... the Tories contrived to afford them a triumph upon the Appropriation Clause, and at the same time enabled them to shake it off (onerous and inconvenient as it was) without further difficulty. There was some ingenuity in doing this. I cannot help thinking Peel likes to see his party defeated in this way. The Government think it has been a very great thing for them, and no doubt it has done them service. Peel's speech at the banquet ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Spears—some pointed with iron, some with stone, and others shaped simply by being burned to a point in the fire; bows and arrows, of every variety of material and form, swords, daggers, slings, clubs, darts, javelins, and every other imaginable species of weapon which human ingenuity, savage or civilized, had then conceived. Even the lasso—the weapon of the American aborigines of modern times—was there. It is described by the ancient historian as a long thong of leather wound into ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... professor. Then, in the last three years, English themes were required. The subjects were given out by Professor Channing, himself a most accomplished and admirable scholar in his line. He seemed to choose his subjects with a view of taxing the ingenuity of the boy to find anything to say about them instead of taking something which the boy knew about and devoting himself to improve his English style in expressing his thought. Channing was a good critic. His published lectures on rhetoric and ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... remember the exact date of the invention of stoves, but it was some years ago. Since then mankind have been tormented once a year, by the difficulties that beset the task of putting them up, and getting the pipes fixed. With all our Yankee ingenuity no American has ever invented any method by which the labor of putting up stoves can be lessened. The job is as severe and vexatious as humanity can possibly endure, and ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... the bottom is reached, surrounded and protected by a cylindrical shaft of ice; then the sand can be removed and the gold it contains washed out. They told us they were making good money and their ingenuity certainly deserved it. ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... Quickly I removed from my place near the door to the auctioneer's desk, having two objects in view; first, to warn the auctioneer not to part with the treasure too easily; and, second, to study the suspected man at closer range. Of all evil-doers the American is most to be feared; he uses more ingenuity in the planning of his projects, and will take greater risks in carrying them out than ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... unreserve. But the jangle of discord was not there. It was seen and felt that the American church, in the presence of the unchristian and antichristian powers, and in presence of those solemn questions of the needs of humanity that overtask the ingenuity and the resources of us all combined, was "builded as a city that is at unity with itself." That body which, by its strength of organization, and by the binding force of its antecedents, might have ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... lady in the land," said Tony, turning his large black eye round the room, and letting it dwell a moment on the beautiful face of Julia—her heart throbbed with tumultuous emotion at the first sound of his voice, and she was highly amused at the ingenuity he had displayed, in paying a characteristic compliment to her gentleness, in this clandestine manner—if he preserves his incognito so ingeniously he will never be detected, thought Julia, ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... was a young man possessed of a certain amount of ingenuity. It was said of him that he knew on which side his bread was buttered, and that if you wished to take him in you must get up early. After dinner and during the night he pondered a good deal on what he had heard. Lady Cantrip had told ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... food in a village no one need starve. The purity of love was unknown to a savage nature, chiefly animated by animal passion. Prisoners were treated with great ferocity, but the Iroquois exceeded all nations in the ingenuity of torture. Stoicism and endurance, even heroic, were characteristics of Indians generally, when in the hands of their enemies, and the cruellest insult that a warrior could receive was to be called a woman. Sometimes prisoners were ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... how to find a dry resting-place for the night. Sheets and blankets promised to be quite fit for use by sundown, but the question was where to lay them. Every one naturally objected to the trees, and the ridge of the roof was no more inviting than on the first night. But a little ingenuity soon put all right. Timber was so plentiful with us that poles and planks lay piled up at the back of the house, and after a number of these had been hunted up, from where they had floated among ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... thoroughly appreciate Finch's ingenuity, it is necessary to add here that Lucilla had shown, as she grew up, an increasing dislike of living at home. In her blind state, the endless turmoil of the children distracted her. She and her step-mother did not possess a single ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... insect also sometimes possesses travelling-apparatus, means of dissemination that allow large families to disperse quickly over the country, so that each member may have his place in the sun without injuring his neighbour; and these apparatus, these methods vie in ingenuity with the elm's samara, the dandelion-plume and the catapult of the ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... of finance and all the branches of unsanctified ingenuity. Even Andy, whose brain rarely ever stopped working, began to make ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... sketch of the character of women in his own words, interspersing comments and reflections. My comments, it is true, will all spring from a few simple principles, and might have been deduced from what I have already said; but the artificial structure has been raised with so much ingenuity, that it seems necessary to attack it in a more circumstantial manner, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... all its beauty, its happiness and suffering, its joys and pains" is planned with the utmost ingenuity, in order that the powers of the Self may be shown forth in manifestation. From the fire-mist to the LOGOS, all exist for the sake of the Self. The lowest grain of dust, the mightiest deva in his heavenly regions, the plant that grows out of ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... was reconstructed, with great ingenuity and labour, by the late Mr. Newton, 1855. But his reconstruction of Bethlem and its surroundings contains several inaccuracies which have been avoided in the accompanying view. The church in the quadrangle differs ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... Cavendish's fortune, had been thus far successfully carried out. The money was already practically in their possession, and not the slightest suspicion had been aroused. It had been a masterpiece of criminal ingenuity, so boldly carried out as ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... * * * These chroniclers had likewise to calculate the days, months, and years; and though they had no writing like ours, they had their symbols and characters through which they understood every thing; and they had great books, which were composed with such ingenuity and art that our characters were really of no great assistance to them. Our priests have seen those books, and I myself have seen them likewise, though many were burned at the instigation of the monks, who were afraid they might impede ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... silent, overwhelmed with the intensity of his own passion, baffled by the ingenuity of a serpent-wisdom he could ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... however, is left entirely for the ingenuity of the operator. No matter by hat means he accomplishes the object; all that is required is to heat the plate above the temperature of the atmosphere and retain that heat ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... things not material to the question before us, differs from Llwyd and Powel. He adds that David the Son of Owen Gwynedd having slain his illegimate Brother Howel in Battle, was best approved of, and chosen Prince of North Wales; because by the comeliness of his Person, and Ingenuity, he had gained the affections of the Lady Emma Plantagenet, Sister to King Henry the Second.[bb] This Writer must have seen Llwyd's and Powel's Account, and adds, that Madog after his last ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... not help personifying natural things. This feeling came out in abuse as well as in praise—e.g. of some seedlings—"The little beggars are doing just what I don't want them to." He would speak in a half-provoked, half-admiring way of the ingenuity of a Mimosa leaf in screwing itself out of a basin of water in which he had tried to fix it. One must see the same spirit in his way of speaking of Sundew, earth-worms, etc. (Cf. Leslie Stephen's 'Swift,' 1882, page ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... Madeleine! And how kindly you employ your fertile ingenuity! Who would have thought ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... recalls mention among his followers of such names as Smally, Bellamy, Emmons, and Hopkins. Those who listened to the preaching of such men could not avoid becoming thinkers, and thought has made our country what it is. Very possibly what is known as 'Yankee ingenuity' arose from the thinking habits of careful sermon-hearers. A man who could follow the subtle theories of the pulpit, could think out the most elaborate machinery. Next to Jonathan Edwards, Dr. Emmons possessed the most philosophical mind of the age. So severe ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... consequent declaration of dividends for the Harley exchequer; but there was an epilogue to the little farce, which nearly turned it into tragedy, from which the principals were saved by nothing short of my own ingenuity. Harley had fallen desperately in love with Marguerite Andrews, and Marguerite Andrews had fallen in love with Stuart Harley, and Harley couldn't find her. She eluded his every effort, and he began ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... necessary, to murder should there be a hope of obtaining gold. Among these men your enemies would have little difficulty in recruiting any number, and no appeal that we could make to the mayor would protect you from them when you have left the walls. We must trust to our ingenuity in smuggling you out. After that, it is upon your own strength and shrewdness that you must rely for an escape from any snares that may be laid for you. You will see, then, that at least another three or four days are needed before you can set forth. Your countrymen ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... to be denied that the ingenuity and versatility of Americans have caused them to excel other nations in many lines of manufacture. The public opinion of Europe regards their triumphs in agricultural implements as the most remarkable; but the nation which made the machine-tools for the government manufactories of small-arms both ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... of the striking characteristics of all social life, it is especially so of child life. The country child has all out-of-doors for the scope of his energies, the city boy and girl are cramped by the tenement and the narrow street, with occasional resort to a small park. It requires ingenuity to devise methods of diversion in such small areas, but necessity is the mother of invention, and the children of the city become expert in outwitting those whose business it is to keep them within bounds. This kind of education has a smack of practicality in that it sharpens the wits ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... full of designs for these knots; indeed, no gardening book of the date seems to have been considered complete if it did not give the "latest designs," and they seem to have much tried the wit and ingenuity of the gardeners, as they must have also sorely tried their patience to keep them in order; and I doubt not that the efficiency of an Elizabethan gardener was as much tested by his skill and experience ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... inducements; such as the reduction of taxes, the repeal of our oppressive license laws, taking the power out of the hands of our aristocracy-they are very tender here-and giving equal rights to emigrants. These points we must put as Paul did his sermons-with force and ingenuity. As for the low Irish, all we have to do is to crib them, feed and pickle them in whiskey for a week. To gain an Irishman's generosity, you cannot use a better instrument than meat, drink, and blarney. I often contemplate ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... the condition of the poor in the East-end of London, and the crowning disgrace of his trial for seditious libel at the Old Bailey, where he was condemned to six months' imprisonment; a penalty from which he was rescued by the ingenuity of his counsel, who discovered a flaw in the indictment, and succeeded, at great cost to Trefusis, in getting the sentence quashed. Agatha at last got tired of hearing of his misdeeds. She believed him to be heartless, selfish, and misguided, but she knew that he was not the loud, coarse, ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... rock-encumbered, so only that amidst all its misfortunes, it maintain the dignity of oak; and, indeed, I look upon this kind of tree as more ideal than the other, in so far as by its efforts and struggles, more of its nature, enduring power, patience in waiting for, and ingenuity in obtaining what it wants, is brought out, and so more of the essence of oak exhibited, than ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... of materials and methods displayed by their representatives, and the unanimity with which they agreed that a particular bid was, if not the cheapest, the most deeply satisfying of those offered. What they could not know was the ingenuity with which Murdock saved both the brain and the time of the council by arranging its debate beforehand. But the committee did mention, among themselves, the incongruity between the actual condition of St. Etienne's streets and the wisdom ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... brush, high lights and details worked in with stitches of silk, and sometimes whole flowers or figures are embroidered, cut out, and couched down. This sort of work is extremely amusing, and gives scope to much play of fancy and ingenuity, and when artistically composed it is sometimes ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... of human ingenuity—Mr. Buchanan says so," squealed the high-pressure cylinder. "This is simply ridiculous!" The piston went up savagely, and choked, for half the steam behind it was mixed with dirty water. "Help! Oiler! Fitter! Stoker! Help! I'm choking," it gasped. "Never in the history of maritime ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... inches of it affixed to the peg. Tying the handkerchiefs now to the second peg, he descended to a station below the third, taking care not to go too far down. By these means (means which I should never have conceived of myself, and for which we were indebted altogether to Peters' ingenuity and resolution) my companion finally succeeded, with the occasional aid of projections in the cliff, in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Proclamations (the wording of them so as to offend no parties, and not to give umbrage to Whigs or Dissenters, required very great caution), and the young prince, who had indeed shown, during a long day's labour, both alacrity at seizing the information given him, and ingenuity and skill in turning the phrases which were to go out signed by his name, here exhibited a good humour and thoughtfulness that ought to be set down ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... falsity is confirmed more readily than truth. 2. Truth does not appear when falsity has been confirmed, but falsity is apparent from confirmed truth. 3. The ability to confirm whatever one pleases is not intelligence but only ingenuity, to be found in the worst of men. 4. Confirmation may be mental and not at the same time volitional, but all volitional confirmation is also mental. 5. Confirmation of evil both volitional and intellectual causes man to believe that one's own prudence is everything and ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... more fortunate destiny than Count Larinski. She did not plume herself on having invented a new gun, nor did she depend upon her ingenuity for a livelihood; she had inherited from her mother a yearly income of about a hundred thousand livres, which enabled her to enjoy life and make others happy, for she was very charitable. She loved the world without loving it too much; she knew how to do without it, having ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... demoralized by his own plot, that in every turn of events he scented a similar piece of human ingenuity. Harriet was angry with his disbelief, or say, the grudging credit he gave to the glorious news. Notwithstanding her calmness, the thoughts of Lymport had sickened her soul, and it was only for the sake of her children, and from a sense of the dishonesty of spending ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... their hands at something else, as Mr Blyth had given notice that it would be some months before he should want a further supply of the articles on which they had hitherto so profitably employed their ingenuity. ...
— Principle and Practice - The Orphan Family • Harriet Martineau
... Christians to be educated in the learning of the Greeks, since he considered that only from them the power of persuasion was gained. Apollinaris,(112) therefore, at that time employed his great learning and ingenuity in the production of a heroic epic on the antiquities of the Hebrews to the reign of Saul as a substitute for the poem of Homer.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} He also wrote comedies in imitation of Menander, and imitated the tragedies of Euripides and ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... impartially as his state of mind permitted for the fact that, with her mother-in-law always, and her stepson intermittently, under her roof, her lot involved a hundred small accommodations generally foreign to the freedom of widowhood—even so, he could not but think that the very ingenuity bred of such conditions might have helped her to find a way out of them. No, her "reason", whatever it was, could, in this case, be nothing but a pretext; unless he leaned to the less flattering alternative that any reason seemed good enough for postponing him! Certainly, if her ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... them in the same melody. As the form of these sublime melodies was new, he set them in an old frame; and to give it the more relief he has silenced the orchestra, accompanying the voices with the harps alone. It is impossible to show greater ingenuity of detail, or to produce a grander general effect.—Dear me! again an outbreak!" said ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... Merchant have brilliantly marked the dramatic chronicle of our times. Discussion of the great character of Shylock steadily proceeds and seems never to weary either the disputants or the audience. The sentiment, the fancy, and the ingenuity of artists are often expended not only upon the austere, picturesque, and terrible figure of the vindictive Jew, but upon the chief related characters in the comedy—upon Bassanio and Portia, Gratiano and Nerissa, Lorenzo and Jessica, the princely and pensive Antonio, ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... you're not a set of pirates?" roared the Englishman. "You look like it! But wait till I get back to 'The Rosamond.' and I'll knock some of the impudence out of you, you young filibusters!" And with a parting malediction, which showed wonderful ingenuity in blasphemy, he growled out an order to back water; when the boat was turned, ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... Northern Ohio. The Cuyahoga bar was for many years considered the strongest in the State, but amongst all of its talented members, each with his own peculiar forte, for the faculty of close and long-continued reasoning, clearness of statement, nice discrimination, and never ending ingenuity, he had no superior. ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... which the report was concerned. The clergy attended in force and panoply led by His Serenity in person—monks, nuns, deacons and deaconesses—in a word, the Church was present. The cistern had been profaned. A son of Satan, moved by a most diabolical ingenuity, had converted it into a den of wickedness surpassing sinful belief; and the procession and awful conclave were to assist His Serenity in restoring the water to wholesomeness, impossible, in the belief of consumers, except by solemn exorcism.... Heed now, my friend—I am about to tap the heart ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... least expression of levity touching the Ten Commandments. But the Commandments do not always prevent such virtuous scoffers from dealings with their neighbor of which no gentleman could be capable and retain his claim to the title. Though it may require ingenuity to reconcile their actions with the Decalogue—the ingenuity is always forthcoming. There is no intention in this remark to intimate that there is any higher rule of life than the Ten Commandments; only it is illuminating as ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... favour of the critic of the day, and get the editors of the metropolis into a good humour,—above all, to have the name of the person to be puffed perpetually before the public. Artists cannot be advertised like Macassar oil or blacking, and they want it to the full as much; hence endless ingenuity must be practised in order to keep the popular attention awake. Suppose a great actor moves from London to Windsor, the Brentford Champion must state that "Yesterday Mr. Blazes and suite passed rapidly through ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... simple plan occurred to her by which Supreme Authority might be—she dared not use the word "circumvented." "Got round" was even worse; "evaded" sounded nicest. To resist the promptings of her own feminine ingenuity required a greater storage of cold moral force than Lady Hannah desired to possess. She took the editorial scissors, and daintily cut off the three paragraphs from the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... sized boats, and therefore it has not been deemed advisable to dimension the boats described in this Chapter. What the author desires to do is to impart the principles of construction, so that every boy may use his own ingenuity in regard to size and proportion of ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... "You have displayed ingenuity enough, I am free to own, if it had been directed to a better end; but in the best contrived scheme some flaw is ever found, which ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... Thomas Taylor 'the Platonist', alias 'Pagan Taylor'. And Taylor's translations and commentaries of Plato had been favourites of Shelley in his college days. Something at least of Taylor's queer mixture of flaming enthusiasm and tortuous ingenuity may be said to appear in the unexpected document ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... the people who gather about it. Simplicity and strength are happily combined in its pages, and no one can begin it without desiring to read it through. All the works of Mrs. Ann S. Stephens are books that everybody should read, for in point of real merit, wonderful ingenuity and absorbing interest they loom far above the majority of the books of the day. She has a thorough knowledge of human nature, and so vividly drawn and natural are her characters that they seem instinct ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... and Latin grammars of the utmost ingenuity and difficulty are published, boys on the whole change very little. They remain the beings whom Thackeray understood better than any other writer: Thackeray, who liked boys so much and was so little blind to their defects. I think he exaggerates their ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... beyond Shanghai in the East China Sea. Be wary, and be rested, Christopher, for you will have a battle such as you have never dreamed of, and even I cannot tell how it will end. It will depend on your quickness and ingenuity. And do not ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... doubt of its authenticity. I shall be much mortified if it proves a fiction, not on account of the importance of the letter, but the stain that a practice so disingenuous will bring upon America. When I first left America, such a fiction, with all its ingenuity, would have ruined the reputation of the author of it, if discovered, and I think that both he and the printer would have been punished. With all the freedom of our presses, I really think, that not only the government but the populace would have resented it. I ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... imagined that mangrove swamps are unproductive. Fish traverse the intricacies of the arching roots, edible crabs burrow holes in the mud, and in them await your coming, and more often than not baffle your ingenuity to extricate them. Among other stalked-eyed crustaceans is that with one red, shielding claw, absurdly large, and which scuttles among the roots, making a defiant clicking noise—the fiddle or soldier crab (GELASIMUS VOCANS). Oysters seal themselves to the roots, and various sorts of shell-fish ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... ruin all," groaned Louis on his death-bed. Ruin the prosperity of France, he meant, for Louis had been a good and thoughtful king, cherishing his land and enabling it to rise to the height of wealth and power, justified by its natural resources and the ingenuity of its people. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... as far as authority is concerned, to rest our claims to attention, rather upon that which bears a more modern date, and to bring forward the evidence of facts instead of the theories of ingenuity. The subject itself we may venture to hope, though a little homely, is not without interest, and certainly not unimportant. It is somewhat scientific from its very nature, and so far from being a matter confined to the medical faculty, it is one on which every man exerts, every day of his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... Necessity is the prompter of ingenuity, and the suggestion came from that source. There is no use in going further into detail. I convinced the landlord and secured another secretary of the treasury to look after the income, and we got out of town next morning as happy as clams at high water. Well, without ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... many as there are Muses, but a great many more; for although genius is to be met with, yet certain modes and species of human ingenuity cannot be ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... ingenious," she observed drily, as she rose to her feet. "I should not have thought of that. It is a pity that you have not been able to apply your ingenuity better in other ways, too. It ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... conscience, food for wonder: but over and above these dozen surprising pastimes, the books of Anaitis revealed to Jurgen, without disguise or reticence, every other far-fetched frolic of heathenry. Hitherto unheard-of forms of diversion were unveiled to him, and every recreation which ingenuity had been able to contrive, for the gratifying of the most subtle and the most strong-stomached tastes. No possible sort of amusement would seem to have been omitted, in running the quaint gamut of refinements upon nature which ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... Intendant's Secretary. Men cannot keep secrets that women are interested in knowing! I could make De Pean talk the Intendant's head off his shoulders, if I had him an hour in my confessional. But all my ingenuity could not extract from him what he did not know—who that mysterious lady ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... yet alone. She was surprised at his congratulatory visit; but, however, as it was a courtesy, the surprise was mingled with delight, and Bagger was not the man whose visit a lady would not receive with pleasure. With that ingenuity of wit one can sometimes have, just when the heart is full and taken possession of, he did wonders, and entertained the lady in so lively a manner that she did not perceive how long a time he was passing with her. As the door at length ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... remarked Grandfather, "had two masters to serve,—the king, who appointed him; and the people, on whom he depended for his pay. Few men in this position would have ingenuity enough to satisfy either party. Colonel Shute, though a good-natured, well-meaning man, succeeded so ill with the people, that, in 1722, he suddenly went away to England and made Complaint to King George. In the meantime Lieutenant-Governor Dummer directed the ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Rat Pope. Witty and genial, his sense of humour teased him with a full perception of the absurdity of his position. Peter and Pasquin concurred in forbidding him to desert his post; and he derived but small comfort from the ingenuity of his flatterers, who compared him to St. Paul contending with ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... if I said he did not look sad, madam," was the reply. "But he is not overcome. After the first astonishment, his presence of mind returned; and M. Galpin has in vain tried these three days by all his ingenuity ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... their place; and just as a skilful man "fighting the wilderness" fashions a plough from a hunting-knife, turns his implements into weapons of war, and for everything he possesses discovers a use never contemplated by its maker, so does Nature—only with an ingenuity exceeding that of man—use the means she has to meet all contingencies, and enable her creatures, seemingly so ill-provided, to maintain their fight for life. Natural selection, like an angry man, can make a weapon of anything; and, using the word in this wide sense, the mucous ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... acknowledged that this canal adds more than might have been expected to the convenience of Leicester, and the greater part of its county. Indeed, these water-roads, as navigable canals may be termed, reflect the greatest honour on the ingenuity of man, exemplified in their formation, and prove most strikingly to the thinking mind, how boundless are the advantages of civilized life, and how inviolable the security afforded to property by laws, ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... correct report of the debate, for it was held in a barbarous dialect of the Arabic unknown to my dragoman. I recollect I sincerely felt at the time that the arguments in favour of robbing me must have been almost unanswerable, and I gave great credit to the speakers on my side for the ingenuity and sophistry which they must have shown in maintaining ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... no time in letting fly an oar at him, the yoke and rudder quickly following. His vengeance was let loose, and he poured forth a stream of quarter-deck language at the top of his voice. His phrases were dazzling in ingenuity, and amid much laughter and applause he urged his hearers to keep at a distance from the fellow who had dared to ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... than any—leave out of sight, because they have no standard for measuring, that remarkable attribute of the American character, which is the greatest of the national assets, the combination of self-reliance and resourceful ingenuity which seems to make the individual American equal to almost any fortune. It is remarkable, but not beyond explanation. It is an essentially Anglo-Saxon trait. The British have always possessed it in a degree, if inferior to the present day American, ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... peculiarities cannot fail to excite the notice of an attentive observer; the sagacity and ingenuity they display in their buildings, their industry, and the plunder and devastation they commit, is incredible to those who have not witnessed their communities and empires. They are divided into innumerable societies, and acknowledge a king and queen, the former of which I brought to Europe, but ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... none of those thousand sources of irritation that the ingenuity of civilized man has created to mar his own felicity. There were no foreclosures of mortgages, no protested notes, no bills payable, no debts of honour in Typee; no unreasonable tailors and shoemakers perversely ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... children, amounted to but eighty. The nearest settlement from whence any help could come was at Lancaster, some forty miles northeast of Brookfield. The Indians surrounded the garrison, and for two days exerted all their ingenuity in attempting to destroy the building. They wrapped around their arrows hemp dipped in oil, and, setting them on fire, shot them upon the dry and inflammable roof. Several times the building was in flames, but the inmates ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... careful. I want—in the interest itself of what I've had and may still have—not to make stupid mistakes. The way not to make them is to get off again to a distance and see the situation from there. I shall keep it fresh," she wound up as if herself rather pleased with the ingenuity of her statement—"I shall keep it fresh, by that ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... ingenuity got the better of me. I was sitting by his fire drinking his whisky, and he was up in his favourite corner by the cornice, tacking a Turkey carpet to the ceiling, when the idea struck me. "By Jove, Pyecraft!" I said, "all this is ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells |
