Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Invention
A tool is but the extension of a man’s hand, and a machine is but a complex tool. And he that invents a machine augments the power of a man and the well-being of mankind.
Henry Ward Beecher—Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit. Business.
Se non è vere è ben trovato.
It is not true, it is a happy invention.
Giordano Bruno—Gli Froici Furori. Attributed erroneously to Cardinal d’Este. Quoted in Pasquier Recherces (1600) as “Si cela n’est vray, il est bien trouve.”
Want, the mistress of invention.
Mrs. Centlivre—The Busy Body. Act I. Sc. 1.
The golden hour of invention must terminate like other hours, and when the man of genius returns to the cares, the duties, the vexations, and the amusements of life, his companions behold him as one of themselves—the creature of habits and infirmities.
Isaac D’Israeli—Literary Character of Men of Genius. Ch. XVI.
God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.
Ecclesiastes. VII. 29.
Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.
Emerson—Letters and Social Aims. Quotation and Originality.
Take the advice of a faithful friend, and submit thy inventions to his censure.
Fuller—The Holy and Profane States. Bk. III. Of Fancy.
Electric telegraphs, printing, gas,
Tobacco, balloons, and steam,
Are little events that have come to pass
Since the days of the old régime.
And, spite of Lemprière’s dazzling page,
I’d give—though it might seem bold—
A hundred years of the Golden Age
For a year of the Age of Gold.
Henry S. Leigh—The Two Ages.
This is a man’s invention and his hand.
As You Like It. Act IV. Sc. 3. L. 29.
He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers.
Swift—Gulliver’s Travels. Pt. III. Ch. V. Voyage to Laputa.
We issued gorged with knowledge, and I spoke:
“Why, Sirs, they do all this as well as we.”
“They hunt old trails” said Cyril, “very well;
But when did woman ever yet invent?”
Tennyson—Princess. II. L. 366.