"Perspicacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... felt humiliated at Claudet's perspicacity; but he had too much pride and selfrespect to let his preferred rival know of his unfortunate passion. He waited a moment to swallow something in his throat that seemed to be choking him, and then, trying in vain to steady his ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... on; Mme. de Bargeton made no interruption. She was struck with his perspicacity. The queen of Angouleme had, in fact, counted upon ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... roof whose outlines are merged in the gray dusk of dreams. There is cruelty, horror, and a sense of the wickedly magnificent in the ensemble. What crimes were committed to merit such atrocious punishment? The boldness and clearness of it all! With perspicacity George Saintsbury wrote of Flaubert's Temptation of Saint Anthony: "It is the best example of dream literature that I know—most writers who have tried this style have erred, inasmuch as they have endeavoured to throw a portion of the mystery with which the waking ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... young is already known as the author of valuable historical works, has placed the result of his researches at my disposal with a disinterestedness I shall never be able adequately to acknowledge. He has also carefully read the whole of my work. M. Jean Brousson has given me the advantage of his perspicacity which far surpasses what one is entitled to expect ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... not realise the wisdom of this advice. The future was only too thoroughly to justify Greatauk's perspicacity. La Trinite demanded the documents belonging, to the Pyrot affair. Peniche, his Minister of War, refused them in the superior interests of the national defence, telling him that the documents under ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... questions quite natural, and was waiting in much curiosity for the answer of Montignac, of whose perspicacity I was now beginning to lose my high opinion, when the inn-maid entered the kitchen, and the secretary repressed the reply already on his lips. She took from the spit a fowl that had been roasting, and brought it to our chamber. To avoid exciting her suspicions ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... "have never come into Italy without inflicting ruin; and this invasion, if rightly considered, cannot but bring universal ruin, although it seems to menace us alone." In his agony Ferdinand applied to Alexander VI. But the Pope looked coldly upon him, because the King of Naples, with rare perspicacity, had predicted that his elevation to the papacy would prove disastrous to Christendom. Alexander preferred to ally himself with Venice and Milan. Upon this Ferdinand wrote as follows: "It seems fated that the popes should leave no peace in Italy. We are compelled to ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... received one of these despatches, they went to the King, and besieged his Majesty with entreaties for the castle upon the same terms as he had granted it to me. The King, who was a man of great goodness and perspicacity, would never consent to the presumptuous demands of those scoundrels, since he scented the malignity of their aims. Yet, wishing to keep them in expectation, and to give me the opportunity of coming back, he caused an angry letter ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... Then he looked long, hesitatingly at Pargeter, and the millionaire, with most unusual perspicacity, read and answered the question contained in that ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... sweet and tender as he was trying to make them. The poor lover forgot to reckon on the hazard of events. Adam fell seriously ill, and Thaddeus, instead of leaving the house, stayed to nurse his friend. His devotion was unwearied. A woman who had any interest in employing her perspicacity might have seen in this devotion a sort of punishment imposed by a noble soul to repress an involuntary evil thought; but women see all, or see nothing, according to the condition of their souls—love is their ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... illiterate, uncultured boy as Fibsy. The name was enough to condemn him! But as I thought the little chap over, I realized that his talk had been clear-headed and to the point, besides showing sagacity and perspicacity. ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... to interpret the sudden look he gave her, but her perspicacity warned her that she was on the wrong tack with this man of the ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... Rodaines? And had she not herself done something which had caused a fear of discovery should the pursuing sheriff overtake her? Bewildered, Robert Fairchild turned back to the more apparent thing which faced him: the probable death of Harry—the man upon whom he had counted for the knowledge and the perspicacity to aid him in the struggle against Nature and against mystery—who now, according to the story of Squint Rodaine, lay dead in the black waters of the Blue ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... perspicacity to discern the drawbacks to such a revolution in the conditions of social climate. "Commerce, like enlightenment, lessens ferocity, but also, just as enlightenment takes away the enthusiasm of self-esteem, so perhaps commerce ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... Louisa and her mother may be easily imagined. It might be a subject of more deep and curious interest to trace the influence of such a catastrophe on the mind of Mildred; but this also we must leave to the reflection and perspicacity of the reader. Mr. Bloomfield and his sister soon after left Italy, embarking in the steam-boat direct for Marseilles: they had grown weary of travel. Colonel Willoughby and his daughter Mildred took the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... King was so pleased with my perspicacity that he offered to sell me a village for twenty pounds sterling. But I buy no villages in the Himalayas so long as one red head flares between the tail of the heaven-climbing glacier and ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... I dispatched an emissary to hunt you down in that delightful capital, but, for myself, I have a certain flair in these matters, and I thought you would sooner or later come to Bellevue. You will admit that I showed some perspicacity?" ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... into the prisoners' eyes. The unwounded one spoke. And he had the perspicacity to address himself to the Boy rather than to Jabe, thereby conciliating ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... spirit of bigoted reaction. But in the latter case they must be charged, not with moral blindness or depravity, but only with the lack of that clearness of sight which leads men and parties at the right moment, or even in anticipation of the right moment, to despair; and such perspicacity, to say the least, is a highly scientific quality, requiring perhaps, to make it respectable and safe, a more exact knowledge of historical sequences than we even now possess. Even now we determine these historical necessities by our knowledge of the result. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... Bailly's work pen in hand, and he proposed to the illustrious astronomer some queries, which proved both his infinite perspicacity, and wonderful variety of knowledge. Bailly then felt the necessity of developing some ideas which in his History of Ancient Astronomy were only accessories to his principal subject. This was the ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... a horse and started for Widewood. He had to stop and shake hands with Parson Tombs over his front palings, and make an honest effort to feel annoyed by the old man's laughter-laden compliments on his energy, enterprise, and perspicacity. At the Halliday cottage he saw Fannie clipping roses from the porch trellis for Martha Salter, who stood ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... thought, as far back as 1832. In 1868-69 they made us swallow once again ideas of brotherhood from beyond the Rhine, by lulling our perspicacity, by enervating the courage we used to display towards foreigners, and it was several weeks before we realised in 1870 that all Germany, from one end to the other, was of the same type of honesty, the same character as the ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... Ismail I., a prince whose superior intelligence is ever anxious to develop the resources of his country. His Highness was perhaps the only man in his own dominions who, believing in the buried wealth of Midian, had the perspicacity to note the advantages offered by its exploitation. For the world around the Viceroy pronounced itself decidedly against the project. My venerable friend, Linant Pasha, suggested a comparison with the abandoned diggings ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... an alliance with the Romanoffs was coldly received. In the Emperor's opinion this, however, was a really splendid match. The Rhine princes and subsidiary monarchs hastened to Paris, and one of them showed his want of perspicacity by marked attentions to Josephine, which he hoped would secure her husband's favor. When men of such lofty and undisputed lineage were joining what was apparently an irresistible movement, the recusant nobility of France itself could not well stand aloof any longer. It amused ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... they said to themselves as one adventure followed another now in the career of Billy Breckenbridge you who read these words can judge, if you be blessed with ordinary perspicacity. For many things took place and many months went by before he reached down along his lean right thigh toward the butt of ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... quite impressed at the clergyman's perspicacity. She was quite self-possessed when he returned with his spectacles, a little black book, his wife and the gardener for witnesses, and a "here-is-the-job-I-love" expression on his amiable features. He examined the license, satisfied himself, apparently, that it was not a forgery, and after ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... said my wife with her usual perspicacity, "have dropped it on his way out. Let's see who the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... one instant; the next he knew his ground, and pronounced all well. With the true perspicacity des ames elites, he at once saw how this at first sight untoward event might be turned to excellent account. He saw how it might be so handled as to secure the accomplishment of his second task—namely, the disposal of his mother. He knew that a collision between him and Matthew always ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... library talking with Florence. At first I hesitated about telling my story before him, and then I remembered that he was one of the best of Florence's friends and advisers, and moreover a man of sound judgment and great perspicacity. Needless to say, they were both amazed and almost stunned by the recital, and it was some time before they could take in the situation in all its bearings. We had a long, grave conversation, for ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... constructed by a process of inference and synthesis. Much of it, to be sure, can be divined from the acts and conversations, from the dress and manners of the characters, but there is always more that has to be directly expounded. The writer cannot rely upon the reader's perspicacity to make the right inferences, or upon his knowledge to supply sufficient data; nor can he make his characters tell all that he may want told about their past and the life of the world in which they live, and through the influence of which they have become what they are. The novelist must construct ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... like David's enemies, "they grin like a dog and run about the city:" young women were content to find much beauty in the galleries and in the museums, and were simple enough to admire what they liked; young ladies of the present day can find nothing to admire except their own perspicacity in detecting faults in Raphael's drawing or Michael Angelo's colouring. This is the age of incompetent criticism in matters artistic, and no one is too ignorant to volunteer an opinion. It is sufficient to have visited half-a-dozen Italian ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... my diaries. I have written the first volume of my autobiography, encouraged by some of my friends—but no one has criticised my literary efforts with more perspicacity and insight ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... did not care to face the strain of some obstinate, inconclusive discussion for fear, maybe, of it ending in a serious quarrel. And so they had agreed that I should be fetched downstairs to create a diversion. I cannot say I felt annoyed. I didn't care. My perspicacity did not please me either. I wished they had left me alone—but nothing mattered. They must have been in their superiority accustomed to make use of people, without compunction. From necessity, too. She especially. She lived by her wits. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... exactly, and yet—unless—? Pshaw! impossible——!" upon which lucid commentary he stopped, gazing with anxious inquiry into Captain Jack's smiling eyes. "Ah, I believe you have just a glimmer of the truth with that confounded perspicacity of yours," saying which the sailor laughed and blushed not unbecomingly. "This is how it came about: I had transactions with old John Harewood, the banker, in Bristol, transactions advantageous to both sides, but perhaps most to him—sly old dog. At any ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... When her first surprise was over, she vainly endeavored to find a plausible explanation of M. Fortunat's acquaintance with her affairs, for she was not at all deceived by his pretended perspicacity. Meanwhile, delighted by the supposed effect he had produced, he recklessly continued: "Reserve your amazement for what I am about to disclose, for I have made several important discoveries. It must have been your good angel who inspired you with the idea of coming to me. You would have shuddered ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... I am confident, have ceased long ago to be matter of controversy; but the dust of prejudice and passion, which so distempers the intellectual vision of theologians and politicians, is seen to make, with ruthless impartiality, no exception of the perspicacity of philologists. ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... "Sheer American business perspicacity, that," said Salter, as he marched up and down, thinking of a particular case of this order. "There's something admirable in the practical way they make for what they want. They want to amalgamate with English people, not for their own ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... lover and husband could possibly be. Gwendolen wished to mount the chariot and drive the plunging horses herself, with a spouse by her side who would fold his arms and give her his countenance without looking ridiculous. Certainly, with all her perspicacity, and all the reading which seemed to her mamma dangerously instructive, her judgment was consciously a little at fault before Grandcourt. He was adorably quiet and free from absurdities—he would be a husband to suit with ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... "perhaps you have found a prince of the church, pale as alabaster, sitting in his red robe, who put together the indicatory evidence of the crime that baffled you with such uncanny acumen that you stood aghast at his perspicacity?" ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... indeed in their sort, but far too sophisticated to entertain aught but the most contemptuous disbelief in her pretensions of special foresight and mysterious endowment. They did not fear her discrimination, and told their story, through an interpreter, with a glib disregard of any uncanny perspicacity on her part. She was one of the many Indians of the reservation who speak no English. Her cabin was far from Quallatown, and indeed at a considerable distance from any other dwelling. With her and her few associates, the moonshiners thought the child would soon forget his name, ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... nature really craved friendship hardly less than Schiller's, there was something very grateful in this frank homage combined with rare perspicacity. He saw that Schiller understood him or was at least concerned to understand him. With all their differences they were spiritual congeners, and much might be hoped for from this new connection. So he sent a very cordial reply to the man who had thus 'with friendly hand struck the balance of his ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... Boulanger was thirty-four; he was of brutal temperament and intelligent perspicacity, having, moreover, had much to do with women, and knowing them well. This one had seemed pretty to him; so he was thinking about her ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... immediately occurred to him that, if the two women had really known each other, Mrs. Westmore would have no difficulty in obtaining the information she wanted; while, even if they met as strangers, the dark-eyed girl's perspicacity might still be trusted to come to their aid. It remained only to be seen how Mrs. Westmore would take his suggestion; but some instinct was already telling him that the highhanded method was the one ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... communications would have surprised anybody who did not know Tilling. A less subtle society, when assured from a first-hand, authoritative source that a report which it had entirely refused to believe was false, would have prided itself on its perspicacity, and said that it had laughed at such an idea, as soon as ever it heard it, as being palpably (look at Miss Mapp!) untrue. Not so Tilling. The very fact that, by the mouth of her ambassador, she so uncompromisingly denied it, was precisely why Tilling began to wonder if there ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... secession, which has become the rhetorical staple of the South, produced solely for exportation to the North, to be used there in manufacturing pro-slavery votes out of the timidity of men of large means and little courage or perspicacity, was then freely made by both divisions of the Union. Had we been of French or Spanish descent, there would have been barricades, coup-d'etats, pronunciamentos; but the English race know better how to treat the body-politic. They ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... Prompted by the formidable perspicacity of the Parisian half-breed, who spends her days stretched on a sofa, turning the lantern of her detective spirit on the obscurest depths of souls, sentiments, and intrigues, she had decided on making an ally of the spy. This supremely rash step was, perhaps ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... observation and accuracy of distinction which books and precepts cannot confer; from this almost all original and native excellence proceeds. Shakespeare must have looked upon mankind with perspicacity, in the highest degree curious and attentive. Other writers borrow their characters from preceding writers, and diversify them only by the accidental appendages of present manners; the dress is a little varied, but the body is the same. Our author had both matter and form to provide; for, except ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... admiration are equally incident to narrow minds: he whose comprehension can take in the whole subordination of mankind, and whose perspicacity can pierce to the real state of things through the thin veils of fortune or of fashion, will discover meanness in the highest stations, and dignity in the meanest; and find that no man can become venerable but by virtue, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... that Ferdinand judged Alexander VI with his usual perspicacity; this, however, did not hinder him, as we shall soon perceive, from being the first to ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and approval. A paragraph in the morning paper announced the sudden death of Doctor Lombard, the distinguished English dilettante who had long resided in Siena. Wyant's justification was complete. Our blindest impulses become evidence of perspicacity when they fall in with ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... of the perspicacity of the memorialists that they discern the real nature of the Controverted Question of the age. They are awake to the unquestionable fact that, if Scripture has been discovered "not to be worthy of unquestioning belief," faith "in the supernatural itself" is, so far, ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... up, in all the essential points of a good dictionary,—in the amplitude and selectness of its vocabulary, in the fulness and perspicacity of its definitions, in its orthoepy and (cum grano salis) its orthography, in its new and trustworthy etymologies, in the elaborate, but not too learned treatises of its Introduction, in its carefully prepared and valuable appendices,—briefly, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... perspicacity of his views, I turned homeward. Temple had been previously warned by me to avoid speaking of my father at Riversley; but I was now in such a boiling state of happiness, believing that my father would certainly appear as he had done at Dipwell farm, brilliant and cheerful, to bear me away to new ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... should exist in any one's idea a discrimination between the chaste principle as to more and less, and between the unchaste principle as to more and less; and without these distinctions all relation perishes, and therewith all perspicacity in matters of judgement, and the understanding is involved in such a shade, that it does not know how to distinguish fornication from adultery, and still less the milder kinds of fornication from the more grievous, and in like ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... without loss of time, her perspicacity penetrated the disguises, although not to the motives that impelled the plotters. She centered her thoughts on the old, white-locked pianist, who silently listened to all the parties and was tolerated even ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... so critical to her happiness, approached. The mind of Emily could not fail, on this occasion, to be extremely agitated. She had first exerted all her perspicacity to elude the vigilance of her attendant. This insolent and unfeeling tyrant, instead of any relentings, had only sought to make sport of her anxiety. Accordingly, in one instance she hid herself, and, suffering Emily ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... and Comte for a time was inconsolable. Then his sorrow found surcease in an attempt to do for her in prose what Dante had done for Beatrice in poetry. But the vehicle of Comte's thoughts creaked. The exact language of science when applied to a woman becomes peculiarly non-piquant and lacking in perspicacity and perspicuity. No woman can be summed up in an algebraic formula, and when a mathematician does a problem to his lady's eyebrow, he forgets entirely that femininity forever equals x. Those who can write Sonnets from the Portuguese may place their ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... are all, however, fitting tapestry for a chamber such as this. Here, too, are some chefs d'oeuvre of the unknown great; and here, unfinished designs by men, celebrated in their day, whose very names the perspicacity of the academies has left to silence and to me. What think you," said he, turning abruptly as he spoke—"what think you of this Madonna ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... some gentlemen do, that to participate in Government required intellect of the highest character, the greatest perspicacity of mind, the greatest discipline derived from education and experience, I should be convinced that a republican form of government could not live. It is because I believe that all that is essential in government for the welfare of the community is plain, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Quartermaster was angry at this, and it did not require any great perspicacity on my part to discover that he did not love ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Farfrae's chair, watching his dexterity in clearing up the numerical fogs which had been allowed to grow so thick in Henchard's books as almost to baffle even the Scotchman's perspicacity. The corn-factor's mien was half admiring, and yet it was not without a dash of pity for the tastes of any one who could care to give his mind to such finnikin details. Henchard himself was mentally and physically unfit for grubbing subtleties from soiled paper; he had in a modern ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... same question respecting Tsz-kung and Yen Yu he answered similarly, pronouncing Tsz-kung to be a man of perspicacity, and Yen Yu to be one ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... they had jointly conquered, but rather to manage them as common provinces in the interest of the conquerors. Considering, therefore, the abnormal conditions and our abnormal task, we are most especially called upon to guard against overestimating the perspicacity in human affairs of even the most far sighted politicians. I for one do not feel capable of foretelling with certainty what the conditions in Alsace-Lorraine will be three years hence. To do this one would need an eye capable of piercing ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... it, I once stopped and had a talk with a farmer whom I had asked for work. Although he had none to give me he was very civil, and we talked of tramps and tramping. He looked at me keenly. "I can see you are not of the regular professionals," said he. "Thank you for your perspicacity," I answered, and though perspicacity fairly floored him, he saw it was not an insult, and went on talking. "Now look here, my boy, they say we're hard on tramps, and perhaps some of us are, but I reckon we sometimes get enough to make us rough. Last summer ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... of his structure, he dissected with a singular perspicacity, the Avare, "the ordinary man," and "the passion of unhappiness," revealing meanwhile interesting comparisons which could be constructed between the operations of photography and ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... in the Duchess' attitude that Madame de Vaudremont rose, came up to her, and took the chair Martial placed for her; then without noticing him she said, "I can guess, madame, that you are talking of me; but I admit my want of perspicacity; I do not know whether it is for good ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... one too remote for contemplation. At the same time I reflected that I kissed a pretty model at Janot's when we met alone on the stairs. I wondered whether the diabolical perspicacity of women had seen traces of the kiss on ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... had been put in with a smutty finger, as the saying goes. He revolved the problem in his mind, and a moment later came upon the solution, so he told himself. An Irish mother, and an Italian father, so he decreed, metaphorically patting himself on the back the while for his perspicacity. ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... more than patriotic or insular sentiment. And these were precisely the qualities in which the queen herself excelled, and which marked also the man whom from the first she distinguished with her father's perspicacity as her chief counsellor. ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... her down, Tom," said Mr. Tulliver, rather sharply,—his perspicacity or his fatherly fondness for Maggie making him suspect that the lad had been hard upon "the little un," else she would never have left his side. "And be good to her, do you hear? Else I'll let ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... well as anywhere," said Markham, breaking his cigar-ash off. But Pinney's alluring confidence, and his simple-hearted acknowledgment of his lack of perspicacity had told upon him; he felt the fascinating need of helping Pinney, which Pinney was able to inspire in those who respected him least, and he said, "There was a priest who knew this man when he was at Haha Bay, and I believe he has a parish ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... to hand you over to Cayuse—good riddance to the whole country," answered Trimmer, with rare perspicacity of judgment. "You bet you're goin' ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... piercing sight, penetrating sight, clear glance, sharp glance, quick glance, eagle glance, piercing glance, penetrating glance, clear eye, sharp eye, quick eye, eagle eye, piercing eye, penetrating eye; perspicacity, discernment; catopsis^. eagle, hawk; cat, lynx; Argus^. evil eye; basilisk, cockatrice [Myth.]. V. see, behold, discern, perceive, have in sight, descry, sight, make out, discover, distinguish, recognize, spy, espy, ken [Scot.]; get a sight ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Correspondent Season of the Year. The South-West swells still keep up, notwithstanding the Gale hath been over about 30 Hours, a proof that there is no land near in that Quarter.* (* These are instances of Cook's observation and seamanlike perspicacity. The prevailing belief of the time was in a great southern continent.) The remainder part of this day fresh breezes and clear. At 9 a.m. took 3 Sets of Observations of the sun and moon in order to find the Longitude of the Ship. Wind ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... if he was to prompt the other actors who were to play in his drama. So, to give himself a countenance, he had attached himself to the jealous Amelie, the better to lull suspicion in Lucien and in Mme. de Bargeton, who was not without perspicacity. In order to spy upon the pair, he had contrived of late to open up a stock controversy on the point with M. de Chandour. Chatelet said that Mme. de Bargeton was simply amusing herself with Lucien; she was too proud, too high-born, to stoop to the apothecary's son. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... an inference. 'There has been an accident' thought he, and was elated at his perspicacity. Almost at the same time his eye lighted on John, who lay close by as white as paper. 'Poor old John! poor old cove!' he thought, the schoolboy expression popping forth from some forgotten treasury, and he took his brother's hand ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... deal of esprit, to whom forty years' experience of the great world had given a prodigious perspicacity of judgment, the Duchess of Chalux, arbitress of the opinion to be held on all new comers to the Faubourg Saint Germain, and of their destiny and reception in it;—one of those women, in a word, who make or ruin a man,—said, in speaking of Gerard de Stolberg, whom she ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... noticed with high praise by the Frankfurt Oberpostamts Zeitung. The work has just been completed by the publication of the fourth volume, which only confirms the reputation which the earlier portions gained for the author among the jurists of all Europe. Dr. Schaeffner, with equal learning and perspicacity, sets forth the relation of French law, and the changes it has undergone, to the history of the political institutions of the country. In this respect the work interests a much wider public than is ordinarily addressed by a juridical treatise. It opens with an account of the conflict ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... shown in the French Revolution. But, though suspected, the ineffectiveness of that squadron could not be assumed before proved. Until then—to use the words of an Italian writer who has treated the whole subject of this war with comprehensive and instructive perspicacity—Spain had "the possibility of contesting the command of the sea, and even of securing a definite preponderance, by means of a squadron possessed of truly exceptional characteristics, both tactical and strategic,"—in short, by means of a ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... knowing an earthquake, though one has never felt one before. He saw the double file of men stretching up one street, and stretching down the other from the corner of the bakery where the loaves were to be given out on the stroke of twelve, and he hugged himself in a luxurious content with his perspicacity. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... for his merits we accord the full Christian name—do any discredit to the perspicacity of his master, if it was not that he rather exceeded the hopes of his benefactor, for he was attentive to the horses, civil to the farmers, and handy at anything that came in his way. Then, to render the connection reciprocal, William was gratefully alive to the conviction that if he ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... doubt it was true: and Phil Compton would probably charm the inexperienced boy with his handsome, disreputable grace, and the unknown ways of the man of the world. And yet, he thought to himself, there is a perspicacity about children which is not always present in a man. Philip had no precocious instincts to be tempted by his father's habits; he had the true sight of a boy trained amid everything that was noble ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... your Majesty's perspicacity. You do not know, but you suspect, what I am about to disclose to you. My hope is that, when I am done, your Majesty will throw Kant and the rest of your philosophers out of the window. The people are sullen at the ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... draftsman, as one properly disgusted with his own lack of perspicacity. Then, after another and more searching scrutiny, in which the headlight glare of his own engine was helped out by the burning of half a dozen matches: "Whoever did ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... carry the note you write?" asked Thuillier, believing that by thus examining every detail he was giving proofs of amazing perspicacity. ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... Persistency persisteco. Person persono. Personage persono. Personal persona. Personality personeco. Personate reprezenti. Personate personigxi, imiti. Personification personigxo. Perspective perspektivo. Perspicuous sagaca. Perspicacity sagaceco. Perspiration sxvito. Perspire sxviti. Persuade konvinki. Persuasive konvinka. Pert malrespekta. Pertinacious trudpeta. Pertinacity obstineco, persisteco. Perturb konfuzi, turmenteti. Perturbation turmentado. Peruke ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... indeed very little have expected. But such are the energies of virtue! How changed at present do all surrounding objects seem! To me they were never dark; but they were not always pleasant. They are now all cheerfulness and perspicacity. We have the most charming walks and the most delightful conversations, Louisa; and on subjects so expansive, so sublime—! Often do I say—'Why is my friend not with us? Why does she not come and bear her part in discussion? She whose ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... and now I saw a face dressed in graces; smile, dimple, and rosy tint, rounded its contours and brightened its hues. I had been accustomed to nurse a flattering idea that my strong attachment to her proved some particular perspicacity in my nature; she was not handsome, she was not rich, she was not even accomplished, yet was she my life's treasure; I must then be a man of peculiar discernment. To-night my eyes opened on the mistake I had made; I began to suspect that it was only my tastes which were unique, not my power of ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... the colonel was left alone with Sylvie his perspicacity possessed itself immediately of certain signs which betrayed her uneasiness. He saw at once that she was under arms and had made this plan for seeing him alone. As he already suspected Vinet of playing him some trick, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... telling me to-night a long story of machinations against him in the club; the perspicacity with which he detected them, the odious repartees he made, the effective counter-checks he applied. "I was always a combatant," he says, with a leering gaiety. Then the next moment he is girding at the whole crew ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sugar-spoon or silver sugar-sifter, by means of which it is possible to dust sugar upon a tart or pudding without letting the whole or the greater part of the material run through the apertures uselessly in transit. You must have observed, Miss Cayley—with your usual perspicacity—that most sugar-sifters allow the sugar to fall through them ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... anything from the perspicacity of the astute Annas? You have pierced to the very heart of Judas. Yes, they insulted poor Judas. They said he had stolen from them three denarii—as though Judas were not the ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... moment doubt their constancy. Alas! it required but little perspicacity on her part to perceive that the letters on either side must have been intercepted by the Le Noirs—father ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... especially when he failed to find his bill-fold at the first sweep. The bottom dropped out of the market for confidence in the integrity of Mr. Iff and conceit in the perspicacity of Mr. Staff. He saw instantly how flimsy had been the tissue of falsehood wherewith the soi-disant Mr. Iff had sought to cloak his duplicity, how egregiously stupid had been his readiness to swallow that extraordinary yarn. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... of the Bristol Post Office Staff have to display no little perspicacity in elucidating quaint addresses on letters going through the post. To Postman Wade must go the credit of having correctly surmised that the letter addressed simply "25th March, Clifton," to which allusion has already been made, was intended for Lady Day, the wife of the Judge ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... scheme with a precision and an economy of words which, he makes you feel, is a tribute to your perspicacity rather than a demonstration of his own powers of exposition. He comes quicker to the point than nine men of business out of ten. And he sticks to the main point with a tenacity which might be envied by every industrial ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... and the English in the sea," would have been a war-cry that might have dazzled hundreds of to-day's so-called loyal colonists. He even asserted that those at the head of affairs in England had shown great perspicacity and a clear insight into the future. If at the Bloemfontein Conference, or after, Kruger had given the five years' franchise, and the dispute had been patched up for the moment, it would have been the greatest misfortune that could have happened. The intriguing in the colony, the reckless expenditure ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... being wealthy, was a man of business. His daughter should marry a man who had money sufficient to insure his worth. With perspicacity rare in a man, he had observed that the two singular men of this narrative admired his daughter. Now, Bat, being a freak, was making money rapidly, while Sampey was only a poor literary bureau! Castellani felt the need of a partner. Why should not ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... great perspicacity in pairing these two off together. "Poor fellow," he said to himself; "to preserve him from the temptations of the world and the flesh, she's considerately sent him in with the devil." For his own part, he devoted himself to Audrey and his dinner. From time to time he ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... no perspicacity? When all went well, what need to show thy picture? Why bring a picture that had angels in it? I saw them shudder and go yellow at the sight of those white, holy ones. Couldst thou not paint a picture all of devils, or else of things without religious meaning? And what possessed thee ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... excuse for buying them without putting themselves to any inconvenience. In such cases it is extremely difficult to act without injustice and without doing injury to art and science by vexatious measures. This requires much tact and rare perspicacity. ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... unable to decide whether the sun revolved about the earth, or the earth about the sun, [13] Pre Labat was, nevertheless, no more credulous and no more ignorant than the average missionary of his time: it is only by contrast with his practical perspicacity in other matters, his worldly rationalism and executive shrewdness, that this superstitious navet impresses one as odd. And how singular sometimes is the irony of Time! All the wonderful work the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... mode of setting the law at defiance was exactly similar to that adopted by the Irish, and it was persisted in for a period of ten years, or until they had secured a substantial victory. The history of the anti-rent agitation in New York also illustrates strikingly, as it seems to me, the perspicacity of a remark made, in substance, long ago by Mr. Disraeli, which, in my eyes at least, threw a great deal of light on the Irish problem, namely, that Ireland was suffering from suppressed revolution. As Mr. Dicey says, "The ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... Herr Herausgeber, in no wise! I here, by the unexampled favour you stand in with our Sage, send not a Biography only, but an Autobiography: at least the materials for such; wherefrom, if I misreckon not, your perspicacity will draw fullest insight: and so the whole Philosophy and Philosopher of Clothes will stand clear to the wondering eyes of England, nay thence, through America, through Hindostan, and the antipodal New Holland, finally conquer (einnehmen) great ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... historian, and antiquary, PETRARCH kindled a line of light through his native land, while a crowd of followers hailed their father-genius, who had stamped his character on the age. DESCARTES, it has been observed, accomplished a change in the taste of his age by the perspicacity and method for which he was indebted to his mathematical researches; and "models of metaphysical analysis and logical discussions" in the works of HUME and SMITH have had the same influence in the ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Thou (ii., 681, liv. xxiii.) in supposing Catharine deceived in the character of the Guises: "Comme elle ne connoissoit pas encore le caractere de ces Princes, elle crut qu'ils se soumettroient en tout a ses volontes," etc. This statement does injustice to the perspicacity of Catharine, who for so many years had been quietly, but none the less carefully, studying these courtiers and all others that figured on the stage of French politics. La Planche, with his usual acumen, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... "Really, your perspicacity does you credit," he returned ironically. "I saw no other way of getting her here, so, as you truthfully remark, I used those bits of paper ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... accustomed to be treated thus with contumely, and then later to see her suggestions acted upon—a feminine consolation which men would do well to take unto themselves. As soon as they entered the ball-room, Mrs. Ingham- Baker, with that supernatural perspicacity which is sometimes found in stupid mothers, saw that Agatha was refusing her usual partners. She noted her daughter's tactics with mingled awe and admiration, both of which tributes were certainly deserved. She saw Agatha look straight through one man at the decorations on the ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... honorificabilitudinity, Where is the maid could resist your vicinity, Wiled by the impudent grace of your plea? Then your vivacity and pertinacity Carry the day with the divil's audacity; No mere veracity robs your sagacity Of perspicacity, Barney McGee. When all is new to them, What will you do to them? Will you be true to them? Who shall decree? Here's a fair strife to you! Health and long life to you! And a great ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... intentions, in this letter. Gerald wanted her to be attached to the household at Shortlands, he was using Winifred as his stalking-horse. The father thought only of his child, he saw a rock of salvation in Gudrun. And Gudrun admired him for his perspicacity. The child, moreover, was really exceptional. Gudrun was quite content. She was quite willing, given a studio, to spend her days at Shortlands. She disliked the Grammar School already thoroughly, she wanted to be free. If a studio were provided, she would be free to go on with her work, she would ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... assumes that the secret police had somehow got wind of my relations with the revolutionists. Such an assumption presupposes on the part of the police an amount of intelligence and perspicacity which they do not usually possess. On this occasion they were on an entirely wrong scent, and the very day when I first noticed my shadowers, a high official, who seemed to regard the whole thing as a good ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... I do not say this to blame you. I say it in order to give myself an air of perspicacity. But let us speak with frankness. My boasting is, after all, without foundation. I knew, step by step, for more than two months past, the progress of your love-affair with Pepita; but I know it because your uncle the dean, to whom you were writing all that passed within your mind, ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... demonstrate the inconveniences and incongruities which the poet might have avoided, had he been more studious of design and uniformity. It is true that his romantic materials claim great liberties; but no materials exclude order and perspicacity." Warton assures the reader that Spenser's language is not "so difficult and obsolete as it is generally supposed to be;" and defends him against Hume's censure,[38] that "Homer copied true natural manners . . . but the pencil of the English poet was employed in drawing the affectations ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... named her sister, and he saluted her too. Gerald Scales, bronzed, plump, and very full in the eye, having looked the newcomer over, decided against him, and gave him a shoulder. "Foreign beggar," was the conclusion he came to, which does credit to his perspicacity, because the Pole had a very English appearance, and Scales himself the ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... You must see—I see it plainly enough—that Mr. Digby is going to marry Althea.' He actually didn't add, 'If she'll have him.' Helen wondered how far his perspicacity went; had he seen what Gerald had seen, and what she had ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... character of the first order of greatness, such as seems to pass out of the limits and courses of ordinary life, often lies above the ken of intellectual judgment; but its merits and its infirmities never escape the sleepless perspicacity of the common sentiment, which no novelty of form can surprise, and no mixture of qualities can perplex. The mind—the logical faculty—comprehends a subject, when it can trace in it the same elements, or relations, which it is familiar ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... judgments. She didn't seem to belong to any of the usual categories. One didn't want to judge her. One was thankful for the haze she made about herself and her motives. That Jack understood her was, Mary felt sure, the result of some peculiar perspicacity of Jack's, for she didn't believe that Mrs. Upton had ever explained or exculpated herself to Jack, either. It even dawned on her that his perspicacity perhaps consisted mainly in the sense of trust that she herself was experiencing. ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... inheritance of good done, and mischief destroyed, of truth in theory and in practice established, and of error in the same exposed and ended, such as no one since John Hunter has been gifted to bequeath to his fellow-men. As an instrument for discovering truth, I have never seen his perspicacity equalled; his mental eye is achromatic, and admits into the judging mind a pure white light, and records an undisturbed, uncolored image, undiminished and unenlarged in its passage; and he has the moral power, courage, and conscience, to use and devote such an inestimable instrument aright. ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... rose from the table might have been taken for assent. It was in reality satisfaction at her own perspicacity. She had not supposed for one moment that he had been ill but in no other way could she express what she wanted to know. It was in itself an innocuous and natural remark, but the sudden gloom that fell on him warned her that her ingenuity ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... under the impression that I expressed myself with considerable perspicacity," remarked the curate, ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... me, and offered to sell me a most charming young woman, quite the belle of the country; but as he could not bring me to terms, he looked over my picture-books with the greatest delight, and afterwards went into a discourse on geography with considerable perspicacity; seeming fully to comprehend that if I got down the Nile it would afterwards result in making the shores of the N'yanza like that of the coast at Zanzibar, where the products of his country could be exchanged, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... lived in constant fear, not for himself, but for the treasures that he had accumulated with such an earnest devotion and with so much perspicacity that the shrewdest merchant could not say that the Baron had ever erred in his taste or judgment. He loved them—his bibelots. He loved them intensely, like a miser; jealously, like a lover. Every day, at sunset, the iron gates at either end of the bridge ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... knew that she had lied when she had said that she was glad to see her. She understood now that Mrs. Toomey had accepted the loan hoping to carry water on both shoulders, and finding herself unable to do so, had eased herself of the burden which required the least courage. The perspicacity of years of experience seemed to come to Kate in a few minutes, so surely did she follow ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... came clearly into view; and what a base! An official Supreme Being, and a regulated Terror. The one was to fill up the spiritual void, and the other to satisfy all the exigencies of temporal things. It is to the credit of Robespierre's perspicacity that he should have recognised the human craving for religion, but this credit is as naught when we contemplate the jejune thing that passed for religion in his dim and narrow understanding. Rousseau had brought a new soul into the eighteenth century by the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... just profound enough to be fathomed of the multitude. For, after all, the multitude is ready enough to help, in a casual, parenthetic way, in the furtherance of a design; and a little depth, serving to flatter that vanity which taketh delight in a sense of superior perspicacity, only adds to the zest. There are plenty of people ready to pull on a rope or shove at a wheel, but there are more eager to do so if they are offered the direction ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... Nature, or in one of the ethnographical publications, stating briefly some discovery he had made, or some observation which he thought necessary to record. He had been asked now and again to make reports to the Foreign Office upon matters pertaining to the countries he knew; and Lucy had heard his perspicacity praised in no measured terms ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... "I have never seen a more despicable creature than you. The admirable perspicacity inherent in your tribe seems to have deteriorated in you to a hyperbolated insousancy." Then he reached out his arms and slapped the king four times, twice on one side of his face ...
— The Woggle-Bug Book • L. Frank Baum
... problem, and congratulating myself on my perspicacity, I started straight for the mill-pond, but to my utter amazement, in the few short hours while I had been asleep, that entire body of water had evaporated, the dam had disappeared, and the stream had dried up. I must certainly ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... of extracting the ore. To obtain a just notion of government, of religion, of right, of wealth, a man must be a historian beforehand, a jurisconsult and economist, and have gathered up myriad of facts; and, besides all this, he must possess a vast erudition, an experienced and professional perspicacity. If these conditions are only partially complied with, the result will only be a half finished product or a doubtful alloy, a few rough drafts of the sciences, the rudiments of pedagogy as with Rousseau, of political economy with Quesnay, Smith, and Turgot, of linguistics ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Perspicacity, as Gall called it, was a better term than Comparison, which was introduced by Spurzheim. Direct perception of truth is its leading character. Illustration by comparison belongs to the breadth of the forehead, to the Ideal and Inventive region, and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... acquired. "Good," said he, "it is about a lady, is it? It is from a personage fully as important, a giant in power, whose words resound from one extremity of Europe to another, and whom the Choiseuls believe their own entirely." "It is M. de Voltaire," I said. "Exactly so: your perspicacity has made you guess it." "But what does he want with me?" "To be at peace with you; to range himself under your banner, secretly at first, but afterwards openly." "Is he then afraid openly to evince himself my friend?" I replied, in a ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... tragic poet, a painter of foul abysses, of fire and blood, who can lay bare the souls of monsters and their crimes, whereas Thucydides is above all a great political moralist, a statesman endowed with extraordinary perspicacity, a painter of the open air and of a free state, who portrays the minds of those sane, ingenious, subtle, generous and marvellously intelligent men who peopled ancient Greece. The one piles on the gloom with a lavish hand, gathers dark shadows which ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... anything in my pockets except a plug of chewing—they wasn't after my life—and that saved it. I bit off a chunk and sits down on a pile of ties by the track to recogitate my sensations of thought and perspicacity. ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... reached it, and a gully where the surplus water was pouring into the valley below. "Fower feet o' water round her, but can't get any higher. So ye see she's all right for a month o' sich weather." Inwardly admiring the perspicacity of his companion, Jeff was about to open the coach door ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... on character; a cheerful heart In one, a buoyant imagination in another, and the sweet self-oblivion which Faith imparts in a third, sentiment here and will there, work the same miracle. Foresti belonged to that class of Italians who combine perspicacity and force of reasoning with a frank, affectionate, and trustful disposition,—types of the manly intellect, the childlike heart; incarceration, while it failed to enfeeble the former, by seclusion from life's game and the world's encroachments ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... Vaudrey enters his nephew's house, where an amusing scene occurs between him and Madame de Bonvalot. Then come a robbery and a fire, and abundance of incidents—some tolerably new in conception, all very pleasant in narration. The good sense, perspicacity and straightforward dealing of the baron, subjugate every one. He unmasks the fictitious viscount, cures his nephew of his electioneering ambition, and the painted dowager of her longing for an invite to the Tuileries; and adopts Froidevaux—whose ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... he said coldly, "will you be kind enough to carry my condolences to the ladies at court, and say that I recommend reading as an antidote for the poison which idleness produces. I've no doubt that they, with all the perspicacity of lonely and honest women, imagine that I maintain a harem as well as a bar-room. Kindly set them right about it. Neither my home nor my bar-room is open to ladies. If you don't mind we'll go ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... he explained to Bob and Frank. "I have to go back to the city, and Hampton is going to motor me to the railway. I can't thank you fellows enough for your part in this affair. If it hadn't been for your perspicacity, in the first place, we might not have gotten wind of what was going on. And the way you all fought and acted on your own initiative time and again when we were in trouble was ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... however, superficial; he redeemed them by an exquisite kind-heartedness which a rigid moralist might call the indulgence natural to superiority. He looked a little like a fox, and he was thought to be very wily, but never false or dishonest. His wiliness was perspicacity; and consisted in foreseeing results and protecting himself and others from the traps set for them. He loved whist, a game known to the captain and the doctor, and which the abbe learned to play in a very ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... your royal highness has studied my notes to great advantage; your amazing perspicacity overpowers me ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is kind above all, and perfectly honest. Religious principles are not objected to! The rest is left to your perspicacity, dear ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... Cafe de l'Echiquier, after treating the valet, he saw in the gate-way of the Lion d'Argent the lady and the young man in whom his perspicacity at once detected customers, for the lady with outstretched neck and anxious face was evidently looking for him. She was dressed in a black-silk gown that was dyed, a brown bonnet, an old French cashmere shawl, raw-silk ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... established thing, is one which we find only in very early religions, such as that of the most primitive Jews. It is this natural religion (primitive still, in spite of the fact that poets and men of science whose good-will exceeds their perspicacity keep publishing it in new editions tuned to our contemporary ears) that, as I said a while ago, has suffered definitive bankruptcy in the opinion of a circle of persons, among whom I must count ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... twinkled, and Zoe blushed crimson to see her noble brother manipulated by this artful minx and then flattered for his perspicacity. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade |
