invention Quotes

″“Hazel,” he said quickly, “that’s a piece of flat wood—like that piece that closed the gap by the Green Loose above the warren—you remember? It must have drifted down the river. So it floats. We could put Fiver and Pipkin on it and make it float again. It might go across the river. Can you understand?” Hazel had no idea what he meant. Blackberry’s flood of apparent nonsense only seemed to draw tighter the mesh of danger and bewilderment.”

“Most of them had not understood Blackberry’s discovery of the raft and at once forgot it. Fiver, however, came over to where Blackberry was lying against the stem of a blackthorn in the hedge. “You saved Pipkin and me, didn’t you?” he said. “I don’t think Pipkin’s got any idea what really happened; but I have.” “I admit it was a good idea,” replied Blackberry. “Let’s remember it. It might come in handy again sometime.”″

“Stanley’s mother insists that there never was a curse. She even doubts whether Stanley’s great-great-grandfather really stole a pig. The reader might find it interesting, however, that Stanley’s father invented his cure for foot odor the day after the great-great-grandson of Elya Yelnats carried the great-great-great-grandson of Madame Zeroni up the mountain.”

“He is a marvel -- man is! I would I knew who invented him.”

″‘What a curious helmet you’ve got!’ she said cheerfully. ‘Is that your invention too?’ The Knight looked down proudly at his helmet, which hung from the saddle. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I’ve invented a better one than that – like a sugar loaf. When I used to wear it, if I fell off the horse, it always touched the ground directly. So I had a very little way to fall, you see – But there was the danger of falling into it, to be sure. That happened to me once – and the worst of it was, before I could get out again, the other White Knight came and put it on. He thought it was his own helmet.‘”

“The lamp l am writing by is deer fat poured into a turtle shell with a strip of my old city trousers for a wick.”

“We can embrace love; its not too late. Why do we sleep, instead with hate? Belief requires no suspension to see that Hell is our invention.”

“Without those weapons, often though he had used them against himself, Man would never have conquered his world. Into them he had put his heart and soul, and for ages they had served him well. But now, as long as they existed, he was living on borrowed time.”

″‘But in my book he doesn’t get Red Riding Hood,’ said Polly. ‘Her father comes just in time to save her.’ ‘Oh, he doesn’t in my book!’ said the wolf. ‘I expect mine is the true story, and yours is just invented.‘”

“It was always repugnant to him to use for his own private gain that wonderful gift of invention he had received from nature.”

Result: they’re decanted as freemartins--structurally quite normal (except, he had to admit, that they do have just the slightest tendency to grow beards), but sterile. Guaranteed sterile. Which brings us at last,” continued Mr. Foster, “out of the realm of mere slavish imitation of nature into the much more interesting world of human invention.”