Shakespeare's name, you may depend upon it, stands absurdly too high and will go down.He had no invention as to stories, none whatever. He took all his plots from oldnovels, and threw their stories into dramatic shape† That he threw over whatever he did write some flashes of genius, nobody can deny; but this was all.

-Rochdale
  Letter to  James Hogg, 24 Mar.

The Muses'garden, with pedantic weeds O'erspread, was purged by thee; the lazy seeds Of servile imitation thrown away, And fresh invention planted.

-Carew,Thomas
  'An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of Paul's, Dr.  John Donne'.

'Faith' is a fine invention When Gentlemen can seeö But Microscopes are prudent In an Emergency.

-Dickinson, Emily Elizabeth
c.1860  Complete Poems, no.185 (first published1891).

Fancy being remembered around the world for the invention of a mouse!

-Disney,Walt(er Elias)
c.1966  Comment to his wife during his last illness. Quoted in Leonard Mosley Disney's World (1985).

   I sought out quaint words, and trim invention; My thoughts began to burnish, sprout, and swell, Curling with metaphors a plain intention, Decking the sense, as if it were to sell.

-Herbert, George
'Jordan (2)', collected in The Temple, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (published posthumously,1633).

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there isno place for industry; becausethe fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

-Hobbes,Thomas
Leviathan, pt.1, ch.13.

A long poem is a test of invention which I take to be the Polar star of poetry, as fancy is the sails, and imagination the rudder.

-Keats,John
  Letter to Benjamin Bailey, 8 Oct.

One oughttoacknowledgethesignificance for mankind of the simultaneous invention of gunpowder and printer's ink.

-Kraus, Karl
Aphorism collected in Heinrich Fischer (ed) Beim Wort genommen (1955). Translated by Harry Zohn in Half-truths and one-and-a-half truths (1986).

Ceremony is an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. It endeavours to make up, by superior attentions in little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to deny in the greater.

-Lamb, Charles
  Essays of Elia,'A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People'.

   The greatest invention since the novel.

-Mead, Margaret
  Of television. Comment, 31 Dec.

   A genuine invention in the realm of ideas must first emerge as an abstruse and even partial concept† At first blusha new idea appearstobe verycloseto insanity because to be new it must reverse important basic beliefs and assumptions which, in turn, have been institutionalized and are administered by one or another kind of priesthood with a vested interest in an old idea.

-Miller, Arthur
  The Collected Plays,'Introduction, II'.

It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention; it is only theapplication of themthat is human. Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable asthose by whichthe universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them.

-Paine,Thomas
  TheAge of Reason, pt.1.

Socrates isguilty of corrupting the minds of the young, and of believing indeities of his own invention instead of the gods recognized by the state.

-Plato
The formal indictment in Socrates' trial, quoted in the Apology, 24b (translated by H Tredennick).

Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or true artistry, Pull down thy vanity, Paquin pull down! The green casque has outdone your elegance.

-Pound, Ezra Loomis
  The Pisan Cantos, no.81.

   But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay; Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows† Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite, 'Fool,'said my muse to me; 'look in thy heart, and write.'

-Shute, Nevil originally Nevil Shute Norway
Astrophel and Stella, sonnet1.

The man whose life is spent in performing a few simple operations of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention. He generally becomes asstupidand ignorant asit ispossible for a human creature to become.

-Smith, Adam
  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.5, ch.1, pt.3, article 2.

Without invention nothing is well-spaced.

-Williams,William Carlos
  Paterson, bk.2,'Sunday in the Park',1.