"Sagacious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... really think that the sagacious Captain of the Secret Service would walk into the trap some fine evening, there to meet with certain destruction? Evidently, for the house was guarded night ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... these the false Achitophel was first; A name to all succeeding ages cursed: For close designs and crooked counsels fit; Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit; Restless, unfixed in principles and place; In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace: A fiery soul, which, working out its way, Fretted the pygmy body to decay.... A daring pilot in extremity, Pleased with the danger, when the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... The most sagacious Southern leaders saw in that result conclusive proof that the scale was turned. They realized that they were beaten within the lines of the Union, and they began to arrange for going out of it. They helped to elect a Republican ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... a quick, clear, penetrating, searching, knowing, sagacious mind, and also a scold; indicate warmth of love, hate, generosity, moral sentiment—indeed, positiveness ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... This sagacious warning caused a general movement in the party, for the intelligence of a hot press was among the rumors of the times. The husbandmen collected their implements of labor, and retired homewards; though many a curious eye was bent on the movements of the vessels from the distant hills, but very few ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... in The Surgeon's Daughter, Sir Walter's neighbours on Tweedside saw a true picture—a portrait from life of Scott's hard-riding and sagacious old friend to all the country dear."—Life, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... to pay a visit to the famous John Young, who had been for so long a time the faithful friend and sagacious adviser of King Kamahamaha. Although he was then old and in bad health, he was not the less able to supply Freycinet with some valuable information about the Sandwich Islands, where he had ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... gravely smelled of him. By some canine casuistry he arrived at the same conclusion which society had reached—that Haldane was a suspicious character, and should be kept at arm's-length. Indeed, the sagacious beast seemed to feel toward the unfortunate youth precisely the same impulse which had actuated all the prudent citizens in town—a desire to be rid of him, and to have nothing to do with him. If Haldane would only take himself off ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... his exploits when they and he lived in Kentucky; they knew he guided Otto Relstaub and Jack Carleton on their perilous journey from the Dark and Bloody Ground into Louisiana; they were aware, too, that he could read and write, and was one of the most sagacious and valuable friends the settlers ever had or could have. The story which Jacob Relstaub told was therefore received with much doubt, and no one who listened felt any distrust of the loyalty of the young Shawanoe. More ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... observed Robin, as we descended the stairs together; "but you don't ought to let your spirits go down, sir," he added, with a profoundly sagacious glance, "'cause, of course, he can't 'elp 'isself now. He'll 'ave to stick to you wotever 'appens—an' to ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... friends things which she thinks exceedingly flattering, but which cause a sagacious husband ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... boarded some foreign vessel during that time and procured contraband goods. In other words, though sailing in a narrow sound, between the Swedish islands and the Swedish coast, we had virtually been in a foreign country! It would scarcely be believed that this sagacious law ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... notwithstanding, (Pyrophilus) and what ever Curiosity I may have had to move some Questions to our Sagacious Blind man, yet thus much I think you will admit us to have gain'd by his Testimony, that since many Colours may be felt with the Circumstances above related, the Surfaces of such Coloured Bodies ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... Zanesville, Lancaster, and Chillicothe, were founded by a sagacious man of the name of Zane, one of the earliest of the settlers. They are admirably placed, geographically, but with little regard to the health of their future inhabitants. The local advantages of Zanesville might have been equally secured, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... strange to Ashman that Ziffak had ordered him to make all haste to the enchanted lake, instead of starting on a direct flight through the woods, returning to the Xingu at a lower point, yet the sagacious chieftain had the best of reasons for his course, as ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... should induce him to go there till the Friday. He surmised that he knew a thing or two, and as the trial wouldn't come off before Friday at the earliest, he wouldn't show his face in Salisbury before that day. He strongly urged Carry to be equally sagacious, and used some energetic arguments to the same effect on his father, when he found that his father was also to be at the assizes; but the miller did not like to be taught by his son, and declared that as the legal document ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... off 'to a dark land and a gloomy, to a land of eternal darkness, where there is no light, nor can one behold the life of men.' As for that good counsellor, who made known all the truth and taught that sagacious and wise king the way of salvation, understand thou that I, thy poor and humble servant, am he, who am come hither for to shew thee the good and infallible way to lead thee to things eternal and unending, and to ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... cannot have any direct effect on seeds of plant. This point which all theories about climate adapting woodpecker{50} to crawl up trees, miseltoe, <sentence incomplete>. But if every part of a plant or animal was to vary , and if a being infinitely more sagacious than man (not an omniscient creator) during thousands and thousands of years were to select all the variations which tended towards certain ends ([or were to produce causes which tended to the same end]), ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... a sagacious head of a department who, one might suppose, would have been sorry to part with a coadjutor of sufficient importance to be needed by Harvard University, seemed to me very suggestive. And yet I finally declined the place, perhaps unwisely for myself, though no one who knows what ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... the dedication—very well; there is another: but you will send the other to Mr. Moore, that he may know I had written it. I send also mottoes for the cantos. I think you will allow that an elephant may be more sagacious, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... basis of the American Confederation, "that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." It was well said. The rights of God are the only basis of the rights of man. One of the most sagacious of modern statesmen has borne his testimony to this fundamental truth—that religion is the only basis of social order—in words as trenchant as the guillotine which suggested them. "It is not," says Napoleon, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... riches, would you prefer to their studies and amusements? For you must necessarily look for that excellence which we are seeking for in that which is the most perfect part of man; but what is there better in man than a sagacious and good mind? The enjoyment, therefore, of that good which proceeds from that sagacious mind can alone make us happy; but virtue is the good of the mind: it follows, therefore, that a happy life ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... to apprehend a universal malaria, and many people of the same and other classes to assert that the sluices are not merely defective, but constructed on a plan totally and fatally wrong. Some bold and sagacious spirits have, however, taken the proper course in such cases by examining the obstructions and determining their nature and origin. According to their report, the difficulty lies not in any general unsoundness of the works, but in the failure to detect and stop a side ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... with them in opinion, who hold it to be that black-broth which was us'd of old in Lacedemon, whereof the Poets sing; Surely it must needs be salutiferous, because so many sagacious, and the wittiest sort of Nations use it so much; as they who have conversed with Shashes and Turbants doe well know. But, besides the exsiccant quality it hath to dry up the crudities of the Stomach, as also ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... put another on, then smelt the bridge noisily. Persuasions were useless; she only smelt, snorted, held back, and turned her cunning head and looked at me. It was useless to argue the point with so sagacious a beast. To the right of the bridge the ice was much broken, and we forded the river there; but as it was deep enough to come up to her body, and was icy cold to my feet, I wondered at her preference. Afterwards I heard that the bridge was dangerous. She is the queen of ponies, and ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... supreme authority was vested, that, according to him, there had been no instance from the foundation of the city, of any popular commotions sufficient to disturb its tranquillity; nor, on the other hand, of any tyrant, who had been able to destroy its liberty. This sagacious philosopher foresaw the circumstance which would destroy the constitution of Carthage; for when there was a disagreement between the two branches of the legislature, the suffetes and the senate, the question in dispute was referred to the people, and their resolve became the law. Till ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... graceful than its lovely curves? Doth not Scripture in some manner commend the sagacious reptile, holding him up to us as an example, and bidding us be wise even as serpents? The children of Israel, moreover, when in the wilderness, were cured of their wounds by merely looking at the brazen serpent, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... accounts, an elaborate business always with him, put his farms in order, corresponded with his merchants in England, and introduced agricultural improvements, which always interested him deeply. He had large investments in land, of which from boyhood he had been a bold and sagacious purchaser. These investments had been neglected and needed his personal inspection; so in September, 1784, he mounted his horse, and with a companion and a servant rode away to the western country to look after his property. He camped out, as in the early days, and heartily enjoyed ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... P.H. Ritter. Although not taking a strong line in politics, its inclinations are decidedly towards moderate Liberalism, and, thanks to its cheap price—14s. 6d. per annum—its extensive, prudently and carefully selected and worded supply of news, and its sagacious management, it became the family paper of the Dutch, excellently suiting the quiet taste of the middle class of the nation. It is found everywhere save in those few places where the Roman Catholic Church has sufficient ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... I have already observed, but permit myself, for immediate use, to repeat what I cannot but think the sagacious observation,—that the arrangement of any sort of animals must be, to say the least, imperfect, if it be founded only on the characters of their feet. And, of all creatures, one would think birds were those which, continually dispensing with the use of their feet, would require for their ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... our visit to David Marais, I went with Six-foot Johnny to the territory which belonged to Blind-boy. That sagacious bird was not so blind but that, with his one eye, he observed us coming, and met us more than half-way. Knowing him to be, comparatively, a peaceable bird, and being mounted, we entered the enclosure and rode towards him. From certain symptoms ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... Ursus was sagacious, contradictory, odd, and inclined to the singular expositions which we term fables. He had the appearance of believing in them, and this impudence was a part of his humour. He read people's hands, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... chimpanzee," says Buffon, the French naturalist, "is much more sagacious than the ourang outang, with which it has been inaccurately confounded; it likewise bears a more marked resemblance to the human being; the height is the same, and it has the same aspect, members, and strength; it always walks on two feet, with ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... rob it of its beauty, and her dark eyes were glazed and lustreless. At the sight of her mistress, poor Bell uttered so piteous a cry, that Leonard, moved by compassion, placed her on the pillow beside her, and the sagacious animal did not attempt to approach nearer, but merely licked her cheek. Roused by the touch, Nizza turned to see what was near her, and recognising the animal, made a movement to strain her to her bosom, but the pain she endured was so intense that she sank ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... was discovered the next morning through the good services of a sagacious dog, which led a ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... supreme reward of virtue, the good American is promised a visit to Paris when he dies. Those, however, of our sagacious fellow countrymen who can afford to make the trip, usually manage to see Lutetia before crossing the river Styx. Most Americans like Paris—some like it so well that they have made it their permanent home—although it must be added that in their admiration they rarely include the Frenchman. For ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... and thirty-six minutes, west longitude; for I love to be particular in all such cases—not that I suppose my readers care a pin if I had told them it was in the south-west horn of the new moon; but all authors, when they put pen to paper, seem actuated by the kind and neighborly spirit of the sagacious Dogberry—namely, to "bestow all their tediousness" upon their readers; and I do not know that I have any prescriptive right—I am sure I have no intention—to depart from so well-worn a track, or to fly in the face of ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... John Walker's ships. During this period it is not recollected that he exhibited anything very peculiar, either in his abilities or his conduct; though there can be no doubt but that he had gained a considerable degree of knowledge in the practical part of navigation, and that his attentive and sagacious mind was laying up a store of observations, which would be useful ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... said, as George sat down and looked at her with troubled eyes, "by that saying of complacently sagacious people, 'I told you so.' You may tell me ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... as Wully was to the world, he was always gentle with Dorley's sheep. Many were the tales of rescues told of him. Many a poor lamb that had fallen into a pond or hole would have perished but for his timely and sagacious aid, many a far-weltered ewe did he turn right side up; while his keen eye discerned and his fierce courage baffled every eagle that had appeared on ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... discovered by Americus Vespucius (as will appear in the following pages); so I do not see why any one should rightly object to calling it Amerige or America, i.e. land of Americus, after its discoverer Americus, a man of sagacious mind—since both Europe and Asia are named after women. Its situation and the ways of its people may be clearly understood from the four voyages ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... eminent writer to express a serious doubt as to the correctness of the earlier views of Mexican civilization was that sagacious Scotchman, William Robertson.[103] The illustrious statesman and philologist, Albert Gallatin, founder of the American Ethnological Society, published in the first volume of its "Transactions" an essay which recognized the danger of trusting the Spanish narratives without very ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... And don't you think I also know that you consider it ludicrous to listen to me. What a sagacious fellow, indeed! But he who has committed many sins is always wise. Sin is a teacher. That's why Yashka ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... east he did not believe that Grant would be allowed to arrange things as he chose. But several days passed and they heard nothing from the Confederates, although Donelson was only about twenty miles away. Johnston himself, brilliant and sagacious, was not there, nor was his lieutenant, Beauregard, who had won such a great reputation by his victory at ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... as I plashed through the water, stopping from time to time to utter a low whine to guide us when he got some distance ahead, and I often envied the sagacious animal his strength and activity, for beside him at a time like this I seemed to be a very helpless ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... given my mind to the subject, and the man who improves his opportunities in these wilds can soon attain the knowledge possessed by the redskins. I have met with many white trappers and hunters who were fully equal to the most sagacious ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... "a three-story brain," he said to himself as he looked at it, and this was the youth who was to find his complement in our pretty little Susan Posey! His judgment may seem to have been hasty, but he took the measure of young men of twenty at sight from long and sagacious observation, as Nurse Byloe knew the "heft" of a baby the moment she fixed her ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the campaign in this masterly manner, the same sagacious foresight had distinguished the operations ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... historians as the only real "systematizer" among the Lutherans of the first generation, was a man as proud, overbearing, and passionate as he was gifted, keen, sagacious, learned, eloquent, and energetic. He was born December 19, 1498, at Gunzenhausen, Franconia, and died October 17, 1552, at Koenigsberg, where he was also buried with high honors in the Old City Church. In 1522 he ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... allured and eluded him to the end, and he died in 1822 without seeing it even in prospect of solution. His estimate of the minimum distance of the nearest star, based though it was on the fallacious test of apparent brilliancy, was a singularly sagacious one, but it was at best a scientific guess, not ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... world, had suffered at Sir George's hands; believing at the time that he was some one else, or, rather, being ignorant then and for just an hour afterwards that such a person as Sir George Soane existed. Enlightened on this point and on some others connected with it (which a sagacious reader may divine for himself) the girl's first feeling in face of the astonishing future opening before her had been one of spiteful exultation. She hated him, and he would suffer. She hated him with all her heart and strength, and he would suffer. There ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... it. Nevertheless, next morning, upon awakening, I had my doubts,—I had somehow slept off the fumes of vanity. One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning. My procedure seemed as sagacious as ever.—but only in theory. How it would prove in practice—there was the rub. It was truly a beautiful thought to have assumed Bartleby's departure; but, after all, that assumption was simply my own, and none of Bartleby's. The great point was, not whether I ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville
... remains that this pretended indignation gained its end. Above all else, Gustavus knew the character of his people. They were particularly prone to sentiment. A few sham tears or an exuberant display of wrath had more effect upon them than the most sagacious argument that the monarch could employ. His policy, therefore, was to stir their feelings, and then withdraw to watch their feelings effervesce. It is not too much to say that no monarch has ever in so short a time effected greater change in sentiment than ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... this fatal journey, which began on the 10th of April. The infatuated Ferdinand had been taught to believe that he should find Buonaparte at Burgos; not meeting him there, he was tempted to pursue his journey as far as Vittoria: and from thence, in spite of the populace, who, more sagacious than their prince, cut the traces of his carriage, he was, by a repetition of the same treacherous arguments, induced to proceed stage by stage, and at length to pass the frontier and present himself at Bayonne, where the arbiter ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... have been working too hard, and losing under the pressure something of his usual calmness; and Horace, while urging him to escape from town for a few days, may have had it in view to insinuate the suggestion, that Jove smiles, not at the common mortal merely, but even at the sagacious statesman, who is over-anxious about the future—"ultra fas trepidat"—and to remind him that, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... got his head screwed on straight, and you the same, too, Haldane," said he approvingly, with a sagacious nod as he bent over the pile of sacks in the corner. "Come and see the poor fellow, me bhoy. There doesn't seem much loife lift in ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... that time in conjunction with a star thirty degrees eastward of sagitary, and in good truth it was the pernicious scorpion that presided at the birth of this happy, this incomparable child." And so it would, as Shakspeare says, "if my mother's cat had kittened. This," says our sagacious bard, "is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune, (after the surfeit of our own behaviour) we make guilt of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity; fools, by heavenly ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... excessive indignation, and I lifted my head the least bit. I was surprised to see how near they were—right under me. I could have spat upon their hats. They were looking on the ground, absorbed in thought. The manager was switching his leg with a slender twig: his sagacious relative lifted his head. 'You have been well since you came out this time?' he asked. The other gave a start. 'Who? I? Oh! Like a charm—like a charm. But the rest—oh, my goodness! All sick. They die so quick, ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... marks are still to be seen on the Kaek-l[o]'s face. A duck, hearing some one's cries, appeared and inquired the cause of the trouble. "I wish to go to my people, but the roads are many, and I do not know the right one." The sagacious duck replied, "I know all roads, and I will lead you to your people." Having led the Kaek-l[o] to the spirit lake, he said, "Here is the home of the K[o]k-k[o]; I will guide you to the kiva and open for you the door." After entering the kiva the Kaek-l[o] viewed ...
— The Religious Life of the Zuni Child - Bureau of American Ethnology • (Mrs.) Tilly E. (Matilda Coxe Evans) Stevenson
... indebted for all these advantages not only to their national genius but to the poverty of their soil; and as proof of what I have so often advanced, look at the Vineyard (their neighbouring island) which is inhabited by a set of people as keen and as sagacious as themselves. Their soil being in general extremely fertile, they have fewer navigators; though they are equally well situated for the fishing business. As in my way back to Falmouth on the main, I visited this sister island, ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... presume to offer a remedy of my own. In truth, I am very suspicious of all remedies for the major ills of life, and believe that most of them are incurable. But I at least venture to discuss the matter realistically, and if what I have to say is not sagacious, it is at all events not evasive. This, I hope, is something. Maybe some later investigator will bring a ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... their departing,—the mystic effluence of the spirits that trod these wilds and sailed these waters,—the courage and the fortitude, the hope that battled against hope, the comprehensive outlook, the sagacious purpose, the resolute will, the unhesitating self-sacrifice, the undaunted devotion which has made this heroic ground: cast these into your own glowing crucible, O gracious friend, and crystallize for yourself such a gem of days as shall ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... others have given credence to these tales upon the authority of one "Olaus Magnus," whose name, from the circumstance, might be translated "great fibber." There is no doubt, however, that the glutton is one of the most sagacious of animals, and so, too, is the wolverene. The latter gives proof of this by many of his habits; one in particular fully illustrates ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... on the very brink of the ravine, on an outspread horse-cloth; round about are whole heaps of new-mown hay, which is fragrant to the point of inducing faintness. The sagacious householders have spread out the hay in front of their cottages: let it dry a little more in the hot sun, and then away with it to the barn! It will be a glorious ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... ended, the minister wiped his steaming face and turned down his cuffs, and nods and sagacious glances went round. Yet many, even of those who had presumably passed the same ordeal with credit, exhibited gentler judgment than the preacher's on a tergiversation of which they had probably recognized some germ in their own bosoms ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... dog, on this occasion occupied his official position ahead, although, as has been pointed out, he was sometimes alternated with the hound, who now ran just behind him. Third trotted Wolf, a strong beast, but a stupid; then Claire, at the sledge, sagacious, alert, ready to turn the sledge from obstruction. For a long, time all these beasts, with the strange intelligence of animals much associated with man, had entertained a strong interest in the doings of their masters. Something besides ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... at the hogany counter be a General,—Jones, the ostler, be a Colonel; and Wilkes what keep the oyster shop ober yonder be a Major! As for Captains, they are as thick and of as little use as blackbirds. Will you take somethin?' The sagacious negro bowed, and waited for a reply. I told him that being invited to a fish breakfast with the General at the 'White House,' I would forbear to liquor until ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... Holbein, whom he discovered as a young wood-engraver seeking work as Basel. With that keen eye for unrecognized genius which marked his career he employed Holbein to design borders and initials for his books. Later, with an equally sagacious and generous spirit, perceiving that the young artist was too great a man to spend his days in a printing office, he procured for him through Sir Thomas More an introduction to the court of Henry VIII, where he won fame and fortune as a portrait painter. I narrate the incident ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... observations on England, was published in April, 1837. In these works, forming a series of eight volumes, he relates and describes with much of the same distinctness as in his novels; and his remarks on the manners and institutions of the different countries, often sagacious, and always peculiarly his own, derive, from their frequent reference to ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... had to do it without being seen or making noise. Romer, despite his eagerness, did very well indeed. At last I espied our quarry, and indeed the sight was thrilling. Wild turkey gobblers to me, who had hunted them enough to learn how sagacious and cunning and difficult to stalk they were, always seemed as provocative of excitement as larger game. This big fellow hopped up from limb to limb of the huge dead pine, and he bobbed around as if undecided, ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... murmurs from the Centre.] I thank my honorable interrupters, feeling sure that their loud disapprobation is given to this strange dismissal, which is not open to the slightest doubt. [Laughter on the Left.] As for me, gentlemen, who could not be dismissed, I have been attacked with another weapon,—sagacious calumny, combined ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... they're standing!' whispered Mr. Winkle. 'Hush, can't you! Don't you see they are making a point?' said Wardle. 'Making a point?' said Mr. Winkle, glaring about him, as if he expected to discern some particular beauty in the landscape which the sagacious animals were calling special attention to. 'What are they pointing at?' 'Keep your eyes open,' said Wardle, not heeding the question in the excitement of the moment. 'Now then.'" How natural and humorous ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... had occasion to observe the high and well-merited opinion which you entertain of our president, General Porfirio Diaz, and of his splendid and statesmanlike achievements, and if to this be added your own well-known merits, your lofty character, and the sagacious, yet kindly notice you have taken of all that you have seen, no wonder that you have won, not our admiration, not our respect, not our good-will, for all these were yours already, but something more intimate, something that dwells deeper in the ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... My sagacious patron had long seen the course events were taking. I may state now that, for some years past, he had been busily employed in purchasing gunpowder, arquebuses, cannon, and all sorts of munitions of war, as well as cordage, and all naval stores required for fitting out ships. He had urged ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... Vespucius (as will appear in what follows): wherefore I do not see what is rightly to hinder us from calling it Amerige, or America—i.e., the land of Americus, after its discoverer, Americus, a man of sagacious mind, since both Europe and Asia have got their names from women. Its situation and the manners and customs of its people will be clearly understood from the twice two voyages of Americus, ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... only to what rude peasants say." His estimates of certain situations are masterpieces of picturesque concision. "Why did I stop and sign the preliminaries of Leoben? Because I played vingt-et-un and was satisfied with twenty." His insight into (dramatic) character is that of the most sagacious critic. "The 'Mahomet' of Voltaire is neither a prophet nor an Arab, only an impostor graduated out of the Ecole Polytechnique."—"Madame de Genlis tries to define virtue as if she were the discoverer ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... conjectures; he at one time gives the authour more profundity of meaning than the sentence admits, and at another discovers absurdities, where the sense is plain to every other reader. But his emendations are likewise often happy and just; and his interpretation of obscure passages learned and sagacious. ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... Princesse de Cleves", the earliest of the modern novels of the world, nor how much of Mme de La Fayette in the revised and re-revised text of the "Maximes." [8] But we know that she was no less sagacious and no less an enemy to illusion than he was, and those are probably not far wrong who have detected a softening influence from her conversation on the late genius ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... principles will be useful at all, unless you understand them to be, in one profound and stern sense, useless. [Footnote: I shall endeavour for the future to put my self- contradictions in short sentences and direct terms, in order to save sagacious persons the trouble of looking ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... Dashwood could not be mistaken for a pedant, unless a coxcomb be a sort of pedant. Dashwood pretended neither to win affection nor to command respect; but he was, as his pupil emphatically swore, "the best fellow in the world." Upon this best fellow in the world, Mlle. Panache fixed her sagacious hopes; she began to think that it would be infinitely better to be the wife of the gallant Mr. Dashwood, than the humble companion or the slighted governess of the capricious Lady Augusta. Having thus far opened the views and characters of these various personages, ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... arise, than an answer presented itself in the form of an offer from one whose coadjutor he had become on a previous and similar occasion. M. le docteur Veron, now the proprietor of the Constitutionnel, and as sagacious as ever in catering for the public taste, proposed to him to furnish every Monday an article on some literary topic. The notion of writing for the masses, of adapting his style to the requirements of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... the happiness of the species. Thus life became his study as a condition of happiness; man and Nature, as the means of obtaining it. He sought to control his passions as he sought to control the lightning, that he might strip them of their power to harm. Sagacious in the study of causes, he was still more sagacious in tracing their connection with effects; and his speculations often lose somewhat of their grandeur by the simple and unpretending directness with which he adapts them to the common understanding ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... Desert. It was ludicrous, too bizarre; it was the last straw. We gasped. A deep roar of ironical cheering went up. The Commander-in-Chief looked round and laughed. When we outspanned later the horses made a show of grazing for the first time for five months. The sagacious animals showed plain amazement in their eyes. At Wilhelmsfeste (Tsaobis) the bushveld begins. The water supply of Otjimbingwe is the feature of that rather quaint settlement. One must ever associate it with its ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... all times pleasant to contemplate thorough workmanship and sagacious foresight, particularly when these are allied with disinterested purpose and genuine enthusiasm. For the next few days Mr. Bunker, preparing to carry out to the best of his ability the delicate commission with which he had been entrusted, presented ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... to the gallery, I saw it bending forward, and leaning over a very decent woman, as if to assure itself whether the Judges had resumed their seats or not. Immediately afterwards that woman screamed, fainted, and was carried out. So with the venerable, sagacious, and patient Judge who conducted the trial. When the case was over, and he settled himself and his papers to sum up, the murdered man, entering by the Judges' door, advanced to his Lordship's desk, and looked eagerly over his shoulder at the pages of his notes which ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... is to make one's self ridiculous, and of being ridiculous the agnostic has a consuming fear. From the superhuman disinterestedness of the theory of the Religion of Humanity, before which angels might quail, he flinches not, but when it comes to the risk of being laughed at by certain sagacious persons he confesses that bravery has its limits. He dares do all that may become an agnostic,—who ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... horse Doth throw the rider, nor is the son at all times Quite 'neath the father's will; we can restrain The people only by unsleeping sternness. So thought Ivan, sagacious autocrat And storm-subduer; so his fierce grandson thought. No, no, kindness is lost upon the people; Act well—it thanks you not at all; extort And execute—'twill ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... horses. Both were to his taste; but perhaps on the whole he was really happiest walking up and down before the stalls, with the goat trotting after him, and the horses turning their heads to follow him with their sagacious eyes. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... have hurled it from its position. The short turf about the brink of the precipice was much trampled, as if stamped by the heels of men in a mortal struggle, or in the act of some violent exertion. Traces of the same kind, less visibly marked, guided the sagacious investigator to the verge of the copsewood, which in that place crept high up the bank towards the top of ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of such a man was an event in itself: to enter it on an errand of life and death—Well, it is under the inspiration of such opportunities that life is reawakened in old veins, especially when those veins connect the heart and brain of a sagacious, if ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... of demarcation between the illumined and unillumined portion of her spherical superficies, are due to mountains and their shadows; but more than fifteen centuries elapsed before the truth of this sagacious conjecture was unquestionably demonstrated. Selenography, as a branch of observational astronomy, dates from the spring of 1609, when Galileo directed his "optic tube" to the moon, and in the following year, in the Sidereus ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... true, unflinching patriot—a man of deeds, and not of words; a prudent, sagacious soldier, not sudden or quick in quarrel, but resolute to the end; a good disciplinarian, and beloved by his men, who came ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... brave, sagacious man, and struggled and fought to the last, but finally in silence he rejoined his silent wife. At about three in the morning, and while the storm was at its height, she turned from the blank window ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... Fullalove, more sagacious than the worthy colonel, said earnestly— "Captain Dodd, may I never see Broadway again, and never see Heaven at the end of my time, if I ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Prime Minister frowned and said nothing. "My dear Duke," continued Lord Cantrip, "I can give you no other advice. Who is there that has your personal interest and your honour at heart so entirely as his Grace;—and what man can be a more sagacious or more ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... the mean while, can make nothing of Keith, the runaway Lieutenant. Dumoulin, with his sagacious organ, soon came upon the scent of Keith; and has discovered these things about him: One evening, a week before his Majesty arrived, Sunday evening, 6th August, 1730, [RELATIO EX ACTIS: in Preuss, iv. 473.] Lieutenant Keith, doubtless smelling something, saddled his ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... surely reveals between the lines the doubtfulness of the author about pushing his points home. The different sides of the man are hard to reconcile. Now he seemed frank and honest; again subtle and insincere. As an active politician in the narrow sense, he should have been sagacious and astute, yet he displayed at the crisis of his life the most absolute fatuity. At times he had a buoyant and puerile way of disregarding fact and enveloping himself in a world of his own imagining. He could bluster, when he wished, like any demagogue; and yet he could be persuasive, agreeable, ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... short, must supply the world with those active, skilful hands, and clear, sagacious heads, without which the affairs of life would be thrown into confusion by the theories of studious and visionary men. Wherefore, teach them their multiplication-table, good Master Cheever, and whip them well when they ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... assembled to see this highwayman, were sagacious enough to discern something very villainous in his aspect; which (begging their pardon) is the very picture of simplicity; and the justice himself put a very unfavourable construction upon some of his answers, which, he said, savoured of the ambiguity and equivocation of an ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... was, West felt that Mafeking must lie right ahead, and as they dashed on he began to feel a kind of certainty that if left to themselves their sagacious steeds would take them ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... degree; I regard them as the most poetical, most healthy, and joyous production of the young German literature. He himself made the same agreeable impression upon me; there is something so frank and straightforward, and yet so sagacious, in his whole appearance, I might almost say, that he looks himself like a village tale, healthy to the core, body and soul, and his eyes beaming with honesty. We soon ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... Naturhist. Vereins, Bonn, 1853. See 'Origin,' Historical Sketch.), has sent him a pamphlet published some years ago, in which the same view is nearly anticipated; but I have not yet seen this pamphlet. My brother, who is a very sagacious man, always said, "you will find that some one will have been before you." I am at work at my larger work, which I shall publish in a separate volume. But from ill-health and swarms of letters, I get on very very slowly. I hope that I shall not have wearied ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... said Dupin, amid a perfect whirlwind of smoke, "no more sagacious agent could, I suppose, be desired, or ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... reputed saint,—which was not put to the profit of his ambition. His daughter, the beautiful Mademoiselle de Vendome, had married that brilliant Duke de Nemours, who had come to such a miserable end. His eldest son, the Duke de Mercoeur, was a sagacious and estimable prince, and the Duke de Beaufort, his youngest, was the idol of the populace of Paris. It was Beaufort who, in 1643, urged by the two duchesses De Montbazon and De Chevreuse, had formed the design of assassinating ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... contemplated making an attempt to bribe the old beau into permitting him a glance at the letters, he abandoned the thought with sagacious alacrity. He must think of something safer. A letter to Van Buren and one to Glen was more than he had counted on discovering. It ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... ruin on all the frail flies that he caught; All right rules of decency set he at nought: Each meal made him much more rapacious. But his foot got entangled one horrible hour, As he rushed forth a poor screaming fly to devour, And to get his leg free was far out of his pow'r, Secure was our spider sagacious. ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... vitious coarseness and ribaldry, he kept it in correction, and scorned to disgrace his compositions with illiberal personal aspersions, or indecent, obscene, or satirical reflections; but endeavoured to make his comedies pictures of real life, replete with refined useful instruction, and sagacious observation, conveyed through the medium of natural elegant dialogue. His writings, though they did not draw the regards of the million with such irresistible and congenial attraction as those of Aristophanes, had the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... More sagacious in plan than all these party steps was the attempt of Spurius Cassius to break down the financial omnipotence of the rich, and so to put a stop to the true source of the evil. He was a patrician, and none in his order surpassed him in rank and renown. After two triumphs, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... development, petrified almost, by blindly accepted rules and unintelligent traditions, a new impulse, which transforms men from within, breaking through the letter of the law in order to realize its forgotten intent; the other gives to the spirit, thus freed from old limitations, a fresh and sagacious direction, but needs nevertheless to impose its own methods by constraint from without. It is the old struggle, ever renewed, between liberty and law; in the due, but difficult, combination of which consist both conservation ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... that they crowned her brow with laurels. That age would seem to have passed for ever away. A well-known adage says: "It is the unexpected that happens in French politics." To forecast their course is notoriously unsafe in that land of all lands. That careful and sagacious student of French life, Mr. Bodley, believes that the nation at heart dislikes the prudent tameness of Parliamentary rule, and that "the day will come when no power will prevent France from hailing a hero ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... garrison did not fail to occupy the attention of their besiegers by frequent sorties, one in considerable strength occurring on the day of the Modder River fight; but such measures, however commendable, cannot beyond a certain point impose upon a sagacious commander with good information, and Cronje well knew that to stop Methuen was his ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... Scarce dangerous less than him, the Dorian lords. These are not now the savage band who erst Follow'd thy father from their northern hills, Mere ruthless and uncounsell'd wolves of war, Good to obey, without a leader nought. Their chief hath train'd them, made them like himself, Sagacious, men of iron, watchful, firm, Against surprise and sudden panic proof. Their master fall'n, these will not flinch, but band To keep their master's power; thou wilt find Behind his corpse their hedge of serried spears. But, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... alluded to having originated with himself; and, be it observed, many of his plans were highly clever and promising, for, as I have already had occasion to say, the publisher in many points was a highly clever and sagacious person; but he ought to have been contented with planning the works originally, and have left to other people the task of executing them, instead of which he marred everything by his rage for interference. If a book of fairy tales was being compiled, he was sure to introduce some of his ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... protection of my two good Indian women, who made me their guest here as before; they first regaled me with sea-eggs, and then went out upon another kind of fishery by the means of dogs and nets. These dogs are a cur-like looking animal, but very sagacious, and easily trained to this business. Though in appearance an uncomfortable sort of sport, yet they engage in it readily, seem to enjoy it much, and express their eagerness by barking every time they raise their heads above the water to breathe. The net is held by two Indians, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... consequence in civil government: but during this period, it may be regarded as the great spring of men's actions and determinations. Though transported himself with the most frantic whimseys, Cromwell had adopted a scheme for regulating this principle in others, which was sagacious and political. Being resolved to maintain a national church, yet determined neither to admit Episcopacy nor Presbytery, he established a number of commissioners, under the name of tryers, partly laymen, partly ecclesiastics, some Presbyterians, some Independents. These presented to all livings ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... fortune, combined to designate him, in the opinion of all, for that important station. Local jealousy was suppressed, not only by the enthusiasm of the moment, but by that policy which induced the sagacious delegation from New England, to prefer a commander-in-chief ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... history was one of great progress. What Colbert was to France Talon was to New France. While the great minister, in the full light of European publicity, was gaining fame as a financial reformer and the reviver of trade and industry, the sagacious and painstaking intendant in his remote corner of the globe was laying the foundations of an economic and political system, and opening to the young country the road of commercial, industrial, and maritime progress. Talon ...
— The Great Intendant - A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 • Thomas Chapais
... thank my friend Charles Michel, who undertook the tedious task of rereading the proofs of this book, and whose scrupulous and sagacious care has saved me from many ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... me!" and groaned and lamented, saying "Well-away and alas for the loss of my Wazir and his just judgment and admirable administration and for the loss of his like of the Wazirs and Heads of the State and of the goodliness of their apt counsels and sagacious!" "O King," quoth the boy-minister, "Know that the fault is not with women alone, for that they are like unto a pleasing stock in trade, whereto the lusts of the lookers-on incline. To whosoever lusteth and buyeth, they sell it, but whoso buyeth not, none forceth him ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... difficulties of the time, the priests of St. Sulpice preserved an equally neutral and sagacious attitude, the only occasions upon which they betrayed anything like warmth of feeling being when the episcopal authority was threatened. They soon found out the spitefulness of M. de Lamennais, and would have nothing to do with him. The theological ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... minutes before the top of the house fell in. What a miraculous deliverance was here! How gracious! How good was God Almighty, to save all these children from destruction, and to make use of such an instrument as a little sagacious animal to accomplish His divine will! I should have observed that as soon as they were all in the garden, the dog came leaping round them to express his joy, and when the house had fallen, laid himself down quietly ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... ascertain any of them, except the three who are, for distinction, placed in the chief, or most honourable part of the escutcheon. Those who, from their exalted situation, we may naturally conclude the most distinguished and sagacious leeches of their day, have marks too obtrusive to be mistaken. He towards the dexter side of the escutcheon, is determined by an eye in the head of his cane to be the all-accomplished Chevalier Taylor, in whose marvellous and surprising history, written by his own hand, and published ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... partake of them. The same evening, the half-starved, half-clothed party of travellers were overtaken by a tremendous storm, which put out their fires, and they continued during the night in a most pitiable state from exposure to the cold and weather. All these misfortunes were set down by the sagacious native to the account of the muscles, nor was it till his master threatened him with a good beating, that Kaiber left off chattering to himself, while his mouth moved with the effect of the ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... maxim, but for all purposes of real life—bosh. Am I not in my own person a living instance to that effect? As soon as I pitched 'duty' to the dogs, why then, and only then, did I begin to travel in the contrary direction to those sagacious animals myself—which, of course, is simply appalling morality, but—it's life. Well, child, make the best of your life, and prove a shining ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford |
