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Innovation   /ˌɪnəvˈeɪʃən/  /ˌɪnoʊvˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Innovation

noun
1.
A creation (a new device or process) resulting from study and experimentation.  Synonym: invention.
2.
The creation of something in the mind.  Synonyms: conception, design, excogitation, invention.
3.
The act of starting something for the first time; introducing something new.  Synonyms: creation, foundation, founding, initiation, instauration, institution, introduction, origination.  "The foundation of a new scientific society"



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"Innovation" Quotes from Famous Books



... not in vain, after being summarily dismissed from Lane's, in Leadenhall Street, and with whom he remained for some years. It was not until some time after he had started on his own account that Tegg commenced his nightly book-auctions at 111, Cheapside, an innovation which resulted in Tegg finding himself a fairly rich man. His next move was to the old Mansion House, once the residence of the Lord Mayor, and here he met with an increased prosperity and popularity. He was elected a Common Councillor of the ward ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts

... headache, and when he was raised to the peerage he petitioned the king to allow him to dispense with the wig. He was refused, his Majesty saying he could not permit such an innovation. In vain did his lordship show that the wig was an innovation, as the old judges did not wear them. "True," said the king; "the ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews

... was not a captain—when he was merely "young Cy," a boy, living with his parents, a dancing school was organized in Bayport. It was an innovation for our village, and frowned upon by many of the older and stricter inhabitants. However, most of the captain's boy friends were permitted to attend; young Cy was not. His father considered dancing ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... restore the good feeling between the Administration and Washington "society," which had been ruptured during the political rule of General Jackson. He gave numerous entertainments at the White House, and used to attend those given by his Cabinet, which was regarded as an innovation, as his predecessors had never accepted social invitations. Ex-President Adams, the widow of President Madison, and the widow of Alexander Hamilton each formed the centre of a pleasant coterie, and the President was open in the expression of his desire that ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... and damnable custom. The literal meaning of bidah is "an innovation or invention, anything new;" but the word is commonly used in the sense of "heresy" or "heterodox innovation," anything new being naturally heretical in the eyes of the ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... little tables in some light and airy open-air cafe; and my thoughts have gone back to the plain wooden bench and wooden table that stands solitary and weather-stained outside so many neglected English inns. We talk of experimenting in the French cafe, as of some fresh and almost impudent innovation. But our fathers had the French cafe, in the sense of the free-and-easy table in the sun and air. The only difference was that French democracy was allowed to develop its cafe, or multiply its tables, while English ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... ancient families, in their turreted houses, were not pleased with this innovation, especially when they saw the handsome dwellings that were built for the weavers of the mills, and the unstinted hand that supplied the wealth required for the carrying on of the business. It sank their pride into insignificance, ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt

... the Salic Law been in use in Spain: the irregular act of a despotic King was repudiated both by his grandson and his great-grandson. Nothing, therefore, can be more ridiculous than the pretension of legitimacy on the part of a pretender whose party simply attempts to make an illegal innovation, in defiance of the legitimate kings and of the Council of Castile, a fundamental law of the monarchy. Carlism, the party of the Church against the nation, came into existence when, during the first years of Cristina's Regency, Mendizabal, the patriotic merchant of Cadiz and London, then First ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite not only that you speedily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... mechanic are never indifferent to the various improvements which are taking place around them; nor do they ever stand apart, till they are forced upon their notice by third parties, or public notoriety. There is, in the case of the manufacturer, no nervous timidity about innovation; nor does he ever attempt to deceive himself by ignorantly supposing that the change can be no improvement.—Nor will he suffer himself to be deceived by others. His workmen are not allowed, to save themselves ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall

... council for a matter wherein the Turquoise people were interested, had artfully told him that as one of their number it would be better if the maseua would issue the call. He knew very well that this was an innovation; but the deceiver made it apparent that if Topanashka should yield, and commit the desired misstep, the blame would of course fall upon the war-chief, and the civil chief would profit by the other's mistake, and would gain in the ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... speaking in terms of the warmest admiration not only of their skill but of their conscientiousness and power of endurance. When I went to live in Munich (1903) a woman surgeon was just beginning to practice. This, to Germany, was an innovation with a vengeance, and the German male is the least tolerant of female encroachment within his historic preserves. The men practitioners threw every possible obstacle in her way, and with no particular finesse. But nothing could daunt her, and two or three years later she ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... colouring, as well as all originality of sentiment and genius; and I am bold enough to tell you Count, that even in your country, this literary orthodoxy, if I may so express myself, which is opposed to every innovation, will in time render your literature extremely barren. Genius is essentially creative; it bears the character of the individual that possesses it. Nature, who has not formed two leaves alike, has infused a still greater variety into the human soul; imitation is therefore a species of death, ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... accredited secretaries in the field to act as a competent medium of communication between the men on service and the political representatives of their class at the War Office (for I shall propose this representative innovation presently). It will shock our colonels; but I know of no bodies of men for whom repeated and violent shocking is more needed and more likely to prove salutary than the regimental masses of the British army. One rather pleasant ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... now called. Even at the last moment, however, the new title of "Atherly" hung in the balance. The romantic daughter of the pastor had said that Mr. Atherly should be called "Atherly of Atherly," an aristocratic title so strongly suggestive of an innovation upon democratic principles that it was not until it was discreetly suggested that everybody was still free to call him "Atherly, late of Rough and Ready," that ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... declared that the existing distribution of power in Europe was a monstrous thing, and he made the people sovereign that there might be no hindrance to their achievement in the shape of sinister interest. The powers of the people thus became their rights and herein was an unlimited sanction for innovation. It is easy enough then to understand why such a philosophy should have been anathema to Burke. Rousseau's eager sympathy for humble men, his optimistic faith in the immediate prospect of popular power were to Burke the symptoms of insane delusion and ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... to Zenobia—published nearly ten years ago under the name of 'Probus,' was soon republished, in several places abroad, under that of 'Aurelian.' So far from complaining of the innovation, I could not but regard it as a piece of good fortune, as I had myself long thought the present a more appropriate title than the one originally chosen. Add to this, that the publisher of the work, on lately ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... victory could not hope in them; so after it, ought he not to fear them. The contrary falls out in Kingdoms governed as is that of France: for it is easie to be enterd by the gaining of any Baron in the Kingdom; for there are alwaies some malecontents to be found, and those that are glad of innovation. Those for the reasons alledg'd are able to open thee a way into that State, and to further thy victory, which afterwards to make good to thee, draws with it exceeding many difficulties, as well with those that have ayded thee, as those thou hast supprest. ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... comparatively new institutions in the Province of Quebec. They have been borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon world, but the habitant takes kindly to the elector's privileges and struggles are sometimes keen. The innovation of the ballot not having been adopted, as yet, in municipal elections, the voting is open. Every voter must thus show his preferences and when a moral question, such as the licensing of drinking places, is before the electors this open ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... making no new engagements for this winter, and, therefore, this is the only chance I shall have to disembowel my skull for a year—close the mouth in that portrait for a year. I want to offer thanks and homage to the chairman for this innovation which he has introduced here, which is an improvement, as I consider it, on the old-fashioned style of conducting occasions like this. That was bad that was a bad, bad, bad arrangement. Under that old custom the chairman got up and made a speech, he introduced the prisoner at the bar, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... and the shield was placed over the entrance. The knights vied with each other in the decoration of their pavilions; all was in accordance with ancient customs: and if the shade of Froissart had witnessed the scene, it could not have complained of modern innovation or misplaced ornament. The procession of the King of the tournament, the Queen of Beauty, with the judges, heralds, pursuivants, halberdiers, musicians, men-at-arms, as also the splendid retinues of the noble challenger and the gallant knights, ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous

... now that 1789 has opened our eyes; and his main business in life is to ride in open carriages and bow to an applauding public who are applauding at so much per head. He must expect to be aspersed with calumny, and once in a while with bullets. He may at the utmost aspire to introduce an innovation in evening dress,—the Prince Regent, for instance, has invented a really very creditable shoe-buckle. Tradition obligates him to devote his unofficial hours to ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... the very person to enlighten me too, should she be thereunto moved. She was a venerable, silver-haired old lady, clad in the traditional dress of her sect, and looking very much like a living representation of Elizabeth Fry. She received me very cordially; though I felt as if I were a fussy innovation of the nineteenth century breaking in upon the sacred, old-fashioned quiet of her neat parlour. She "thee'd and thou'd" me to my heart's content: and—to summarize the conversation I held with her—it was to the disuse of the old phraseology and the discarding of the peculiar ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... was done in the households by hand work. Within recent years five cotton factories, representing a capital of more than $2,500,000, have been established, and furnish labor for 3,000 men, women and children. This innovation was not opposed by the guilds because its products would come into direct competition only with the cotton goods of England, and would give employment to many idle people; but now that silk looms and other machinery are proposed the guilds are becoming alarmed and are asking where ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... favorite of Heaven and earth, the excellency of his country, the happiest of men." And yet, he confesses that the scholars of this country have not fulfilled the reasonable expectation of mankind. "Men here, as elsewhere, are indisposed to innovation and prefer any antiquity, any usage, any livery productive of ease or profit, to the unproductive service of thought." For all this he offers those correctives which in various forms underlie all his teachings. "The resources of the scholar are proportioned to his ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... sentences, comprised in vigorous and animated lines. This character Rowe has very diligently and successfully preserved. His versification, which is such as his contemporaries practised, without any attempt at innovation or improvement, seldom wants either melody or force. His author's sense is sometimes a little diluted by additional infusions, and sometimes weakened by too much expansion. But such faults are to be expected in all translations, from the constraint ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... various times attempted reform, but the difficulty heretofore encountered has been that the mechanical application was in the hands, not of the owners and reasoners, but in those of a class of men who are, for the most part, ignorant, prejudiced, and, consequently, apt to oppose any innovation upon the old abuses in which they have had centuries of vested right; and it was not until the studies of Mr. R. A. Goodenough that there were brought to bear veterinary knowledge, mechanical skill, and inventive faculty, to overcome the stolidity and interest which have been the lions ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell

... to be published upon iron-clad war-ships, as introduced practically in the Civil War. To the Southerners is due the innovation on a fair scale, though the experiments were not at all profitably demonstrative. Upon rumors that the enemy were building the novelties of iron-cased vessels, the Federal government responded by voting money—and throwing it away upon a fiasco. Meanwhile, the others ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... and the Thessalian nymph Cyrene, and was reared by Hermes, who made him immortal; although he is also sometimes called the son of Urana and Gaea. His connection with the Orpheus myth was probably an innovation of Virgil (Georgics, iv, ll. 315-558) who tells how he caused the death of Eurydice, who was killed by a serpent while fleeing from his persecutions. See Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... great bulk of the better classes, and particularly those connected with the law, still lived in flats or dungeons of the Old Town. The manners also of some of the veterans of the law had not admitted innovation. One or two eminent lawyers still saw their clients in taverns, as was the general custom fifty years before; and although their habits were already considered as old-fashioned by the younger barristers, yet the custom of mixing wine and revelry with serious business was still maintained by those ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... Champney, properly gagged, found herself lashed to a rocking-chair in the charming little bed chamber, occupying, so to speak, a select position from which to observe the hasty but skillful operations of her recalcitrant beneficiary. She watched him empty her innovation trunk, the drawers in her bureau, and the closet in which her choicest gowns were hanging. He did it very thoroughly. The floor was strewn with lingerie, hats, shoes, slippers, gloves, stockings, furs, frocks,—over ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon

... expedition Kheyr-ed-Din had made an innovation in the manning of some of the most powerful of his galleys, which was of the utmost importance, and which was to add enormously to the success of his future maritime enterprises. The custom had always been that the Ottoman galleys ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... entrance-hall of the Conciergerie, and lighted by loop-holes on the yard side, has lately been opened out towards the back, and the opening filled with glass, so that the interviews of the lawyers with their clients are under supervision. This innovation was made necessary by the too great fascinations brought to bear by pretty women on their counsel. Where will morality stop short? Such precautions are like the ready-made sets of questions for self-examination, where pure imaginations are defiled ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... were making in the south, great dissatisfaction was excited in Albemarle. In 1670, Stevens, the governor, had been ordered to introduce into that settlement, the constitution prepared by Mr. Locke. This innovation was strenuously opposed; and the discontent it produced was increased by a rumour, which was not the less mischievous for being untrue, that the proprietors designed to dismember the province. There was also another cause which increased ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... of a government which in a great part of its constitution is popular, that has raised the present ferment in the nation. The people, without entering deeply into its principles, could plainly perceive its effects, in much violence, in a great spirit of innovation, and a general disorder in all the functions of government. I keep my eye solely on this system; if I speak of those measures which have arisen from it, it will be so far only as they illustrate the general scheme. This is the ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... Sunday-school was the result of old sentiments in a new and intelligent combination; and the neighbors, who had always trusted Clarice, did not doubt her now. Novelty is always pleasing to simple souls among whom innovation has not first taken the pains ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... government to engineer the extension of the telegraph-line from Su-chou to Urumtsi, for it was feared by the government that the employment of a foreigner in this capacity would only increase the power for evil which the natives already attributed to this foreign innovation. The similarity in the phrases, telegraph pole and dry heaven, had inspired the common belief that the line of poles then stretching across the country was responsible for the long-existing drought. In ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... judgment is rendered unlikely, not only by inherent improbability, but also by three specific facts: the tiresome succession of like stories which follow unendingly in the wake of every popular success; the palpable fear of the editor to attempt innovation, experiment, or leadership; and the general complaint against "magazine stories." In truth, the American editor plays safe, constantly and from conviction; and playing safe in the short story means ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... about to say something witty. "Buonaparte?" he repeated, accentuating the u: "I think, however, now that he lays down laws for Austria at Schonbrunn, il faut lui faire grace de l'u! * I shall certainly adopt an innovation and call ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... situation, and thought it wisest not to attempt something which he had no hope of putting through. It was, therefore, a great triumph for the British and a sure wedge into the confidence of the desert folk when the hospital was opened, for any people that can introduce so marked an innovation among the hidebound desert communities must have won their confidence and respect in a remarkable degree. Ibrahim, the hereditary Sheikh of Zobeir, himself contributed largely to the fund for the endowment. It was arranged that Doctor Borrie, ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... injunctions of the chamber, he deputed them to it as bearers of an imperial message drawn up for the purpose. Prince Lucien was appointed to accompany them, under the title of commissioner general. That this innovation might not hurt the feelings of the ministers, the Emperor said to them, that Prince Lucien, by means of his temporary office of commissioner general, might answer the interrogatories of the representatives, without its having any future ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... member of the firm. In fact, he slightly anticipated this event by flinging himself into the affairs of Bartlett & Bangs with even more ardor than was advisable. Hardly a day passed that he did not seek a chance to apprise Mr. Bangs of some colossal scheme or startling innovation that would revolutionize ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... surprise. Mr. Hardinge kept everything like exaggeration and those physical excitements which it is so much the habit of certain sects to mistake for religious impulses, even from the negroes of the Clawbonny property. Neb's speech sounded more like an innovation of this nature than I had ever heard among my people; and I looked hard at the fellow for an ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... daily engaged in the delectable task of hurling anathemas at each other's heads. Interest in the national cause had almost completely ebbed away. A Liberal Chief Secretary, in the person of Mr John Morley, reigned in Dublin Castle, but all that he is remembered for now is that he started the innovation of placing Nationalist and Catholic Justices of the Peace on the bench, who became known in time as "the Morley magistrates." Otherwise he left Dublin Castle as formidable a fortress of ascendancy authority as it had ever been. Under conditions as they were then, or as they are now, ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... saw another innovation almost as revolutionary, compared with the old regime, as the introduction of civil government itself. This was the issue of the first newspaper in Canada, where, indeed, it was also the first printed thing of any kind. Nova Scotia had produced an earlier paper, the Halifax Gazette, which ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood

... Many of the cottage people were indeed going to bed, but by the light which remained in a window here and there he was able to preserve himself from accident as he strolled along. Two or three dogs, sworn enemies to innovation, scented him, and protested at their loudest against the novelty, not to say wickedness, of a passenger at that hour of the night. It was, perhaps, to them what Lizzie Hampson's independence was to Mrs. Wilberforce,—a sign of the ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... life, and make them less careful of their spiritual welfare. This is the case, at all events, when theologians oppose scientific conclusions on religious grounds, and not simply from mental dulness or rigidity. And, in so far as it is religious feeling which thus prompts resistance to scientific innovation, it may be said, with some appearance of truth, that there is a conflict ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... pastorate for several years, he seemed to have very little influence in the community. Elder Concannon and several other older members controlled the church and its policies utterly; and they frowned on any innovation. ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long

... disagreeably conspicuous solitude he now inhabits among his fellow-officers through any of those agencies of usage and familiarity which would result if other Flippers were to follow him into the army and help to dull the edge of the innovation. Just what Flipper is to do with himself does not seem altogether clear. Even the excitement of leading his men among the redskins will be denied him, now that Spotted Tail has pacified the malcontents and Sitting Bull has retired to the ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... husband, might be sent into the surgery. A few elegant cold trifles for herself and Molly would not scent the house, and she would always take care to have some little dainty ready for him. He acceded, but unwillingly, for it was an innovation on the habits of a lifetime, and he felt as if he should never be able to arrange his rounds aright with this newfangled notion of a six ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... life. Unfortunately the housewife has been accustomed for so many years to have her "servants" work for her all day long on every day of the week, with only a few hours off duty "on every other Sunday and on every other Thursday," that she is rather inclined to resent such an innovation as the observance of legal holidays in domestic labor. She fails to perceive that by her present attitude she shows herself in a very unfavorable light as an employer, for the lack of holidays is decidedly one of the reasons for which housework is ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker

... got into repute. And the same vulgar prejudice, which induces people to retain an accustomed remedy upon bare assertion and presumption, either of ignorance or partiality, will, in like manner, oppose the introduction of any innovation in practice with asperity, and not unfrequently with a quantum sufficit of scrutiny and abuse, unless, indeed, it be supported by authorities of ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... probable that the remainder of the summer would be peaceful; and so it would have been with regard to the Punic enemy: but besides that the tempers of the Spaniards themselves are naturally restless, and eager for innovation, Mandonius, together with Indibilis, who had formerly been petty prince of the Ilergetes, having stirred up their countrymen, came to lay waste the peaceful country of the Roman allies, after the Romans had retired ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... before you tie him down for life! It's a pity I'm not a boy—I should have loved to be at Lloyd's. Even now—if I went round with the slips, and coaxed the underwriters, don't you think it might be a striking and lucrative innovation?" ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... proposition should have gained general acceptance is not surprising—indeed, at first sight, appearances are much in its favour: but, as for the second, one can only admire the surpassing courage of its enunciator, seeing that it is an innovation which is not only opposed to generally and justly accepted doctrines, but which is directly negatived by the testimony of all original inquirers, who have specially investigated the matter: and that it neither has been, nor can be, supported by a ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley

... signet-ring was the sign of a free-born Roman knight. Its grant to freedmen was an innovation ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... Walden woods; and Nathaniel Hawthorne, the writer of many familiar romances; also George Bancroft, the historian, Dr. Charles T. Follen, Samuel G. Ward, Caleb Stetson, William Russell, Jones Very, Robert Bartlett and S. V. Clevenger, sculptor. As an innovation in clubs there were lady members, among whom were Elizabeth P. Peabody, and her sister Sophia, who became the wife of Hawthorne; Miss S. Margaret Fuller, remarkable for her intellectual capacity, and who became the wife of Count D'Ossoli, of Italy; ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... Catechism. In 1887 Antoine opened his Theatre Libre at Paris, and 'Therese Raquin,' although nothing but an adapted novel, became the dominant model. It was the powerful theme and the concentrated form that showed innovation, although the unity of time was not yet observed, and curtain falls were retained. It was then I wrote my dramas: 'Miss Julia,' ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg

... of Christ; whereupon he orders the slaughter of the children. One of the peculiarities of this tragedy, is the introduction of a character, who takes no part in the action, but observes and philosophizes upon it, somewhat after the manner of the old Greek chorus. This innovation cannot be said to be successful; moreover there is generally too much philosophizing and moralizing ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... do precisely as he liked, take even his neighbor's property, and annihilate all distinctions of society, all inequalities of condition,—a miserable, fanatical dream, impossible to realize under any form of government which can be conceived. It was this spirit of reckless innovation, promulgated by atheists and drawn logically from some principles of the "Social Contract" of which Rousseau was the author, which excited the ire of Burke. It was license, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... housekeepers; where she got her charm I don't know. Six-o'clock tea, and that the last meal in the day, was the rule in Elgin, and a good enough rule for Mrs Murchison, who had no patience with the innovation of a late dinner recently adopted by some people who could keep neither their servants nor their digestions in consequence. It had been a crisp October day; as Mr Murchison remarked, the fall evenings were beginning to draw in early; everybody was glad ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... to confess"—(whence comes this phrase? Is 't English? No—'tis only parliamentary) That Innovation's spirit now-a-days Had made more progress than for the last century. He would not tread a factious path to praise, Though for the public weal disposed to venture high; As for his place, he could but say this of it, That the fatigue was greater ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... sceptical genius of France in modern ages, combined, in himself, the double passion of this people at such a period—the passion of destruction, and the desire of innovation, hatred of prejudices, and love of knowledge: he was destined to be the standard-bearer of destruction; his genius, although not the most elevated, yet the most comprehensive in France, has hitherto been only judged by fanatics ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... will I speak on this subject," he said; "otherwise, I should leave the doors and windows of St. Ruth open, as a melancholy monument of rebellion, and seek my future compensation from the Crown, when the confiscated estates of the leaders of this accursed innovation on the rights of princes shall come to the hammer. But you, Miss Alice, are entitled to every consideration that a lady can expect from a gentleman. Be pleased, therefore, to write to my agent, and request him to seal up my papers, and transmit ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... be told) no commoner has been consul since the expulsion of the kings. What then? ought no innovation to be introduced? and what has not yet been practised, (and in a new state there are many things not yet practised,) ought not even such measures, even though they be useful, be adopted? During the reign of Romulus there were no pontiffs, nor augurs: they were appointed by Numa Pompilius. ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... holds in its hands the sentence: "Ex illa hora accepit eam discipulus in suam." In this we perceive how Cimabue began to give light and open the way to inventions, bringing words, as he does here, to the help of his art in order to express his meaning, a curious device certainly and an innovation. ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari

... anatomical conception. One of these reforms was to act stoutly on the strength of a recent legal decision, and simply prescribe, without dispensing drugs or taking percentage from druggists. This was an innovation for one who had chosen to adopt the style of general practitioner in a country town, and would be felt as offensive criticism by his professional brethren. But Lydgate meant to innovate in his treatment also, and he was wise enough to see that the best security for his practising honestly ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... has been taken towards interrupting that peace and mutual good understanding which has prevailed so long in this place, and which, if once seriously disturbed, will be succeeded by dissensions the more intractable, because justified in the minds of those who resist innovation by a feeling ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... course," said Marilla, as if getting boys from orphan asylums in Nova Scotia were part of the usual spring work on any well-regulated Avonlea farm instead of being an unheard of innovation. ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... on the one hand, and the Puritans on the other, did endeavour to sully and bespatter the glory of her Reformation: the one taxing it with innovation, and the other ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various

... which had been such a characteristic of the Nanking Instrument. Such details as transpired showed that the principle of absolute money-control was not only to be the dominant note in the Permanent Constitution, but that a new and startling innovation was being included to secure that a de facto Dictatorship should be rendered impossible. Briefly, it was proposed that when Parliament was not actually in session there should be left in Peking a special Parliamentary Committee, charged with supervising and controlling the Executive, ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... used in most ceremonials today has a bowl with its axis at right angles to the stem, but so far as I have studied ancient Pueblo pipes this form appears to be a modern innovation.[158] To determine the probable ancient form of pipe, as indicated by the ritual, I will invite attention to one of the most archaic portions of the ceremonies about the altar of the Antelope priesthood, at the time of the ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes

... replace the names connoting mythological and pagan ideas by the names of apostles, saints, popes, bishops, and other dignitaries of the church, &c. Aries became St Peter; Taurus, St Andrew; Andromeda, the Holy Sepulchre; Lyra, the Manger; Canis major, David; and so on. This innovation (with which the introduction of the twelve apostles into the solar zodiac by the Venerable Bede may be compared) was shortlived. According to Charles Hutton [Math. Dict. i. 328 (1795)] the editions published in 1654 and 1661 had reverted to the Greek names; on the other hand, Camille Flammarion ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... and imagination combined. But his kind has died out, and in his place we have a herd of overfed, sleek, timorous, hopping white rabbits, hoarding their piles of gold, shivering at the mention of change or innovation, asking only for peaceful possession, as free from thought as the fat oyster in ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... characteristics which are essentially British, is the tendency to receive almost any innovation, be it a new style of dress or a new method of locomotion, with some degree of distrust which shows itself in satirical criticism; to be followed soon after by the acceptance of the accomplished fact and ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton

... pursued—acquaintance with the Roman classics—was no recognized object of Puritan learning. Cicero appears to have been for a long time the only classic of whom the students were supposed to have any knowledge. The reading of Virgil was a daring innovation of the eighteenth century. The only Greek required was that of the New Testament and the Greek Catechism. The whole rich domain of ancient Greek literature, from Homer to Theokritos, was as much an unexplored territory as the Baghavad-Gita or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... the scene was utterly overlooked; but this proud indifference was something new, and charmed the audience, which took her wounded pride for superb disdain of a pampered beauty, and accepted it as a graceful innovation; while she stood trembling from head to foot, conscious only of a burning desire to break away from it all and hide herself forever. She did once move swiftly toward the wing, but there stood Olympia, and the first glimpse of that ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens

... the worst of times has preserved, is deep-rooted in the growth of the nation, and accounts for their characteristic love of freedom in the present day. It was this that made the freedom-loving peasant detest the military conscription imposed by the Austrians in 1849, an innovation the more obnoxious because enforced with every ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... and men and maids were at one on the fact that he was a visitor who conferred social distinction on the establishment. They had decided that we should "dine late so long as The Gentleman" was with us, whilst my mother was thinking how to break so weighty an innovation to such valuable servants. They served him with alacrity, and approved of his brief orders and gracious thanks. The Colonel did unheard-of things with impunity—threw open his bedroom shutters at night, and ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... Acton has so well said, "The modern age did not proceed from the medieval by normal succession, with outward tokens of legitimate descent. Unheralded, it founded a new order of things, under a law of innovation, sapping the ancient reign of continuity. In those days Columbus subverted the notions of the world, and reversed the conditions of production, wealth, and power.... Luther broke the chain of authority and tradition at the strongest ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... M'Gregor's eulogy of Salen did not comprise a reference to the local hotel, which is conducted on the Gothenburg system. It is comfortable and snug, but not whole-heartedly patronised by some of the natives, as they consider the system is an un-Celtic innovation, and believe further that every drink they take is written down in a big book with an alphabet on the edge of the leaves to ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... anxious-eyed beings grudgingly furloughed from shop and desk, and now sternly determined to descend at Charing Cross without breaking into the few reserve sovereigns. Serious-looking women, clad in many colors, and stolid cockneys, hostile to all foreign innovation, met his eye. He sighed as he cast his social net ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... grounds demanding far less of moisture—but also other and various substitutes have been presented to Ceylon. Manioc, maize, the potato, the turnip, have all been cultivated. Mr Bennett himself would, in ancient Greece, have had many statues raised to his honour for his exemplary bounties of innovation. The food of the people is now secure. And, as regard their clothing or their exports, there is absolutely no end to the new prospects opened before them by the English. Is cotton a British gift? Is sugar? Is coffee? We are not the men lazily and avariciously to anchor our hopes on a pearl ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... they did, though Calico was a little doubtful as to whether he approved of this innovation. It was not exactly comfortable for anyone concerned and they soon gave it up. But when Chicken Little tried to make the intelligent pony dance on his hind legs, Calico waxed indignant. Instead of rising gracefully, he gave two short, plunging leaps, descending with forelegs rigid ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... Betterton's funeral in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey on May 2, 1710, instanced his rendering of Othello as proof of an unsurpassable talent in realising Shakespeare's subtlest conceptions on the stage. One great and welcome innovation in Shakespearean acting is closely associated with Betterton's first name. He encouraged the substitution, that was inaugurated by Killigrew, of women for boys in female parts. The first role that was professionally rendered ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... Germany, "The Bleeding and Dying Jesus," by Reinhard Keiser, and the "Passion nach Cap. 19 S. Johannis" by Handel. In the former, cantatas were substituted for the narrative and chorales, one of the numbers being in the nature of a love-song,—an innovation upon the established forms which brought down upon the composer the indignation of the critics both in the pulpit and out of it. The passion-music of Handel was but a weak prelude to the colossal works ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... innovation of the pendulum do much good at first, although theoretically makers of clocks conceded pendulums to be a scientific advance over older methods. Of course the theory of the pendulum had been for a long time in the minds of many thoughtful persons. Galileo had seized on its principle ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... requirement of the zealous candidate. He even learned to make speeches, not the lucid exponents of the law that belonged to his court career, but prompt addresses, apparently unconsidered, at short notice. The one innovation he drew the line at was the flattering recognition of men he had never, in the beaten way of life, recognised before. He could not, he said, kiss babies. But he would tell the town what he thought it needed, coached, he ironically added when he spoke the ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... sulphur and mercury, in order to produce gold by the union of both. Paracelsus now adds to the two principles a third, salt, as the element of fixedness or palpability, as he terms it. According to my notion, Paracelsus has not introduced an essential innovation, but only used in a new systematic terminology what others said before him, even if they did not follow it out so consistently. The principles mercury, sulphur and salt—their symbols are [Symbol: Mercury], [Symbol: Sulphur] and [Symbol: Salt]—were among the followers of ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... parcelling out of its various divisions and a constructive scattering of these divisions about the canvas. But he seems in this most recent work distinctly desirous of keeping an appearance of matter. He shrinks from no innovation, and if colour seems likely to balk him in his search for a pure artistic form, he throws it overboard and paints a picture in brown and white; and the problem of purely artistic form is the real ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky

... sometimes non-committal, but always and obviously reasonable, and often presenting a brief argument for the change proposed. In these days of woman's rights it is curious to read "Th. J. to Mr. Gallatin. The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... in his "Pamela" did a revolutionary thing in making a kitchen wench his heroine; English fiction had previously assumed that for its polite audience only the fortunes of Algernon and Angelina could be followed decorously and give fit pleasure. His innovation, symptomatic of the time, by no means pleased an aristocratic on-looker like Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who wrote to a friend: "The confounding of all ranks and making a jest of order has long been growing in England; ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... with another of their movements during the building season. The steward has suffered a considerable number of sheep to graze on a lawn near the house, somewhat to the annoyance of the Squire, who thinks this an innovation on the dignity of a park, which ought to be devoted to deer only. Be this as it may, there is a green knoll, not far from the drawing-room window, where the ewes and lambs are accustomed to assemble towards evening, for the benefit of the setting sun. No sooner were they gathered here, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... instance of what we have already so often observed: what is brought forward in Deuteronomy as an innovation is assumed in the Priestly Code to be an ancient custom dating as far back as to Noah. And therefore the latter code is a growth of the soil that has been prepared ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... appear he spake with purpose to induce another state by depriving the present. So in all causes belonging either to Church or Commonwealth, we are to have regard what mind the complaining part doth bear, whether of amendment or innovation; and accordingly either to suffer or suppress it. Their objection therefore is frivolous, "Why, may not men speak against abuses?" Yes; but with desire to cure the part affected, not to destroy the whole. 2. A second fault is in their ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton

... absurdity and malice that were manifested beside the coffin of Father Zossima. It is my private opinion that several different causes were simultaneously at work, one of which was the deeply-rooted hostility to the institution of elders as a pernicious innovation, an antipathy hidden deep in the hearts of many of the monks. Even more powerful was jealousy of the dead man's saintliness, so firmly established during his lifetime that it was almost a forbidden thing to question it. For though ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... the heads of these professions are usually quite satisfied with their own monopolies, are opposed to change, and are always ready with a stock of plausible arguments to show the folly and danger of innovation. If the Utilitarian appeals to facts, common sense, and experience, so also does the Conservative; and until public opinion is decidedly for progress the dead weight prevails. Not for a day did Bentham relax his strenuous ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... Hector Macneill, both in prose and verse, tended rather to diminish than increase his fame. They exhibit the sentiments of a querulous old man, inclined to cling to the habits of his youth, and to regard any improvement as an act of ruthless innovation. As the author of some excellent songs, and one of the most popular ballads in the Scottish language, his name will continue to be remembered. His songs, "Mary of Castlecary," "My boy, Tammie," "Come under my plaidie," "I lo'ed ne'er a laddie but ane," "Donald and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... equal suffrage became effective in Arizona in December, 1912, the many critics of the innovation have been quite effectually silenced by the advantageous manner in which enfranchisement of women has operated. Not only have the women of this state evinced an intelligent and active interest in governmental issues, but in several instances ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber

... bore the stamp of the peculiar position which Edward occupied in English history between Saxon and Norman. By birth he was a Saxon, but in all else he was a foreigner. Accordingly the Church at Westminster was a wide-sweeping innovation on all that had been seen before. 'Destroying the old building,' he says in his charter, 'I have built up a new one from the very foundation.' Its fame as a 'new style of composition' lingered in the minds of men ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin

... among his people, of the customs of civilized life. Before this he regarded with favor the philanthropic designs of Washington and others, which contemplated such a change. But henceforth his influence and energies were uniformly exerted, in resisting any innovation, upon the anciently established usages of the Iroquois. Several causes seemed ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard

... under contribution all the famous women writers of the day; he chose the best of the men writers to write on women's topics; and it was not long before the syndicate was supplying a page of women's material. The newspapers played up the innovation, and thus was introduced into the newspaper press of the United States the ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... was a major innovation in the Coast Guard's manpower policy. For the first time a number of Negroes, approximately 1.6 percent of the guard's total enlisted complement, would undergo regular (p. 115) recruit and specialized training.[4-41] More than half would serve aboard ship ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... reminded of the Duchess when I read Miss Emily Faithfull's admirable article in Gralignani on 'Ladies as Shopkeepers.' 'The most daring innovation in England at this moment,' says Miss Faithfull, 'is the lady shopkeeper. At present but few people have had the courage to brave the current social prejudice. We draw such fine distinctions between the wholesale and retail traders that our cotton-spinners, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... Commissioners Boston felt the greatest uneasiness. "We shall now," wrote Andrew Eliot, "be obliged to maintain in luxury sycophants, court parasites, and hungry dependents." The strongest expression upon the general situation was in Dickinson's "Farmer's Letters."[18] "This," said he, "is an INNOVATION, and a most dangerous innovation. We being obliged to take commodities from Great Britain, special duties upon their exportation to us are as much taxes as those imposed by the Stamp Act. Great Britain ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French

... cause enough to expose them as I have done, and will do more. I do not think as they do; for, if I did, I must think treason; but I must in conscience write as I do, because I know, which is more than thinking, that I write for a lawful established government, against anarchy, innovation, and sedition: but "these lies (as prince Harry said to Falstaff) are as gross as he that made them[25]." More I need not say, for I am accused without witness. I fear not any of their evidences, not ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... as conquering but as re-conquering a realm. He was not like a man attacking total strangers on a hitherto undiscovered island. He was not opening up a new country, or giving his name to a new continent, and he could boast none of those ideals of imperial innovation which inspire the more enlightened pioneers, who exterminate tribes or extinguish republics for the sake of a gold-mine or an oil-field. Some day, if our modern educational system is further expanded and enforced, the whole ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... intends to make a most original innovation. Instead of going immediately out of town, she will remain at home and attend the Bachelors' Ball, in the evening, leaving for Philadelphia at three in the morning. At several of the church weddings the guests are only bidden there; ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... Such an innovation on the silence and retirement of the forest could not fail to enlist the ears of those who journeyed at so short a distance in advance. The Indian muttered a few words in broken English to Heyward, who, in his turn, spoke to ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... masses against the authors and favourers of the revolution of 1789. Burke, however, was too great a man to be absurd, even in his errors; and it is not upon record that he asked uninformed persons to consider what might be the effect of such an innovation as the discovery of oxygen on the minds of members ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... and the stormy glories of the sixteenth century rose on awakened Europe. But Spain was the citadel of darkness,—a monastic cell, an inquisitorial dungeon, where no ray could pierce. She was the bulwark of the Church, against whose adamantine front the wrath of innovation beat in vain. In every country of Europe the party of freedom and reform was the national party, the party of reaction and absolutism was the Spanish party, leaning on Spain, looking to her for help. Above all, it was so in France; and while ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... present and the future, a wider realization of human brotherhood than has yet existed, a greater theoretical willingness to judge by the individual than by the class, a breezy indifference to authority and a positive predilection for innovation, a marked alertness of mind, and a manifold variety of interest—above all, an inextinguishable hopefulness and courage. It is easy to lay one's finger in America upon almost every one of the great defects of civilization—even those defects which are specially characteristic of the civilization ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... served in some degree, maugre the looping up of the brim, to shelter the face from the sun; not indeed when worn full front, as it was in Dr Johnson's time, and as we remember the household troops used to wear it—but when, by a daring innovation of revolutionary times, it came to be turned round on its human pivot, and lay gently athwart the line of vision. Thus it is that our generals wear it in this nineteenth century; thus it was that the Great ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... into a sort of confraternity for private fun. The meetings held in each other's dormitories were of a hilarious description, and included games. At Gowan's suggestion they even went a step farther, and produced literary contributions—"of a sort," as she wisely qualified the rather appalling innovation. ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil



Words linked to "Innovation" :   innovate, concoction, creativeness, creativity, commencement, paternity, creative thinking, authorship, contrivance, start, beginning



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