"Sagacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chosen, even though he had been gifted with no more than human sagacity, but the body of men whom he selected? It becomes me but ill to speak so warmly in favour of that body of whom I am the least worthy member, but what other is there in Erewhon so above all suspicion of slovenliness, ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... had been grossly attacked by rival booksellers; see Gent. Mag., viii. 156. Hawkins says (Life, p. 92), 'With that sagacity which we frequently observe, but wonder at, in men of slow parts, he seemed to anticipate the advice contained in Johnson's ode, and forbore a reply, though not his revenge.' This he gratified by reprinting in his own Magazine one of the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... wonderful sagacity of the Amerindians as game trackers, Alexander Henry the Elder tells the following story in the ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... prolongation and exaggeration or rarefication of such pleasures as we know, they invite the retort, "And pray what would become of any one of our known pleasures, or even of our conceivable pleasures, if it were made everlasting?" As Jowett asked, with his usual dry sagacity, in his ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... from Melbourne to Bendigo in '52; a hundred miles, for 100 per ton. He had had two teams at that time, and, being a man of prudence and sagacity, had two teams still, and was able to pay his way. I had known him since I was about the height of this table; he was Old Price then; he is Old Price still; and he will probably be Old Price when my head is dredged with the white flour of a blameless life, and I am pottering about with ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... 'In the first place, the word "pretended" is not in my journal. In the second, although of course it does not follow, if one takes another person for a man of sagacity or a gentleman - it does not follow that he is either ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... handed in to them! (Weber, i. 276.) A victorious Parlement smells new danger. D'Espremenil has ordered horses to Versailles; prowls round that guarded Printing-Office; prying, snuffing, if so be the sagacity and ingenuity of ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... scheme, Ulysses proceeded to count the whole band, and found that there were forty-six men, including himself. He then numbered off twenty-two of them, and put Eurylochus (who was one of his chief officers, and second only to himself in sagacity) at their head. Ulysses took command of the remaining twenty-two men, in person. Then, taking off his helmet, he put two shells into it, on one of which was written, "Go," and on the other, "Stay." ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... into the possession of wealth without being possessed by it, which certainly is the noblest state to be reached by the soul of a philosopher. I shall feel myself obliged, very soon, to earn profits of some kind to show that my sagacity has not failed me during my prosperity. I am in search of the means to reach such an issue; my mind ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... suffragist's legislative sagacity we may note that she asks that we should put back the clock, and return to the days when any arbitrary principle might be adduced as a ground for legislation. It is as ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... concessions as they considered necessary at the same time that they in their turn made to him such as he might consider sufficient for his party and himself. It has already been remarked with what sagacity Pope Sixtus V. had divined the character of Henry IV., at the very moment of condemning Henry III. for making an alliance with him. When Henry IV. had become king, Sixtus V. pronounced strongly against a heretic king, and maintained, in opposition to him, his alliance with Philip II. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... country. Being illegitimate, they could quell opposition only by violence; and they made it clear what violence they meant to use when they gave an office to Marat. This man had been a writer on science, and Goethe celebrates his sagacity and gift of observation in a passage which is remarkable for the absence of any allusion to his public career. But he considered that the rich have no right to enjoyments of which the masses are deprived, and that the guilt of selfishness and oppression could only be expiated by death. A ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the midst of the act of War itself, anxious sagacity and the apprehension of too great danger find vantage ground, by means of which they can exert their power, and tame ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... they paddled on, without intermitting their efforts, then, to James's surprise, Nat turned the head of the canoe to the western shore. He asked no question, however, having perfect faith in Nat's sagacity. They were nearly in the middle of the lake when they altered their course, and it took them half an hour's hard paddling, before the dark mass of trees loomed up in the darkness ahead of him. Ten minutes before, Nat had passed the word that they should paddle quietly ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... Wilkie the secret of his birth. He must be taught how to utilize the knowledge. The Viscount de Coralth devoted himself to this task, and burdened Wilkie with such a host of injunctions, that it was quite evident he had but a poor opinion of his pupil's sagacity. "That woman d'Argeles," he thought, "is as sharp as steel. She will deceive this young idiot completely, if ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... that I can only see their faces, and they are all leaning their chins on a beam, and with their wrinkled faces and gray beards are looking exactly like ——-. It is most interesting to be among wild beasts, which, though tame, or partly so, are not in captivity, and to see their great sagacity and their singular likeness and unlikeness to us. I could dispense with the reptiles, though. Last night there were seventeen lizards in my room and two in my slippers. During the profound stillness of about 3 A.M., a crowd, hooting, yelling, and beating clappers, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... not less to be noted than the friendly interest of Banks. His administration of the Admiralty in Pitt's Government was distinguished by his selection of Nelson as the admiral to frustrate the schemes of the French in sea warfare; and it stands as an additional tribute to his sagacity that he at once recognised Flinders to be the right man to maintain the prowess of British ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... well manned, replete with every modern improvement, and managed with great commercial skill. In three or four years, given ordinary trading luck, he must have doubled his own fortune and earned a world-wide reputation for far-seeing sagacity. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... The sagacity of a savage, which Michaud's new occupation had developed among his faculties, joined to an acquaintance with the passions and interests of Blangy, enabled him partially to understand a third idyll in the Greek style, which poor villagers like Tonsard, and middle-aged rich men like Rigou, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... only point upon which I resolved to do nothing. Herr Strouss was a very simple-minded man, yet full of true sagacity, and he warmly advised, in his very worst English, that none but my few trusty friends should be told of my ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... This troubled her greatly but the Antislavery Society, recognizing her value, wrote her, "We cheerfully pay your expenses and want to keep you at the head of the work." They took note of her "business enterprise, practical sagacity, and platform ability," and looked upon the expenditure of $1,000 for the education and development of such an exceptional worker as a ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... splints and bandages, and they discovered, what we both very well know, that there was not even so much as an ossicle of the worthy Capuzzi's right foot dislocated, still less broken. It didn't require any uncommon sagacity to understand ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... that any notice from her was a favour, and communicative from the same sense of importance, or from a natural love of talking, she immediately said in a tone of great satisfaction, and with a look of arch sagacity:— ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... of sagacity. They came to a place where it was necessary to turn sharply to the right to cross a small creek; one of the dogs shot forward, and sent the leading sheep scurrying down the bank, while the other fell back a few yards and prevented the mob turning back. After a moment's ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... it came very near to passing under the rule of France. From this it was saved in 1840 by the foresight and energy of Gibbon Wakefield, who forced the hand of our reluctant Government; and its steady progress was secured by the sagacity of Sir George Grey, one of our greatest empire-builders in Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. Thanks to them and to others, there has arisen in the Southern Pacific a state which, more than any other, seems to resemble the mother country with its sea-girt islands, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... not before noticed. Over this we carefully made our way, now descending nearly to the water's edge, and then rising again until the roaring stream was fifty feet below, and we could drop stones from our outstretched arms directly into the boiling, foaming waters. Presuming too much upon the sagacity of a sure-footed horse, I carelessly attempted the passage of the ravine without dismounting, and came near paying the penalty of my rashness by a violent death. About half way through, where the trail was only eight or ten feet above the bed of the torrent, the ledge, or a portion ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... the handsomest man on the face of the earth." Quoth the Lady Dunya, "Didst thou ask him if he had any need, that he might tell us and we might satisfy it?" But the nurse shook her head and said, "The Lord keep thy sagacity! By Allah, he hath a want, may thy skill not fail thee. What! is any man free from wants?" Rejoined the Princess, "Go back to him and salute him and say to him, 'Our land and town are honoured by thy visit and, if thou have any ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... I put a particular stress on that remark. He admitted, after a short reflection, that it would not be. No. Not as usual. In fact it was his wife who hoped, rather, for my presence. She had formed a very favourable opinion of my practical sagacity. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... general knowledge. Lord Westholt was plainly a young man of many attractions. If the two were drawn to each other—and what more natural—all would be well. He wondered if it would be Westholt. But his love quickened a sagacity which needed no stimulus. He said to himself in time that, though she liked and admired Westholt, she went no farther. That others paid court to her he could guess without being told. He had seen the effect she had produced ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a strange fancy of yours, Dick," said my lord; "but I am willing to pursue it,—first, to discover what you drive at; and, secondly, to satisfy all that are here present of the truth or falsehood of it, that they may know what value to set upon your sagacity hereafter. Let us all go over that apartment together; and let Joseph be called ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... theory was, it had many admirers, particularly among men of letters. It was now to be reduced to practice; and the result was, as any man of sagacity must have foreseen, the most piteous and ridiculous ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... all these circumstances, the adroitness, the ability, the sagacity, and the success of his speech were most wonderful. Gladstone was more philosophical, statesmanlike, and eloquent; Whiteside more impassioned and vehement; Disraeli more witty, sarcastic, and telling; but Lord Palmerston ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... prophesied the most sagacious of modern politicians, by the inspiration of genius, calculating the prospects of the future by the light of his past experience. This prediction of Napoleon's is a very fair specimen of the oracles of human sagacity; which always overlooks the most stupendous facts—such as the conversion of an empire—and the commonest experiences—such as the birth of a brace of conflicting twins from the womb of the Rachel of revolution, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Hall its owner kept retailing instances of the creature's sagacity and powers of scent, which, according to his account, were little less than miraculous. His anecdotes had a poor audience, I fear, for my mind was filled with the strange story which I had been reading, while Mordaunt strode on with wild eyes and feverish cheeks, without ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... place for himself in their admiration and influence, so that he was received with flattering consideration at the Court of P'hra Narai, and very soon invited to take service under government. By his sagacity, tact, and diligence in the management of all affairs intrusted to him, he rapidly rose in favor with his patron, who finally elevated him to the highest post of honor in the state: ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... knew, that I would not hang up such a scare, in the expectation that it would pass for a man, and deceive a bird; and he would therefore look for a deeper plot. I expected to outwit the bird by a duplicity that was simplicity itself I may have over-calculated the sagacity and reasoning power of the bird. At any rate, I did over-calculate the amount of peas I ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... heightened the significance of patent facts. Throughout a shire it would be told how this suitor won a judgment by a sumptuous feast; how that suitor bought the justice's favor with a flask of rare wine, a horse of excellent breed, a hound of superior sagacity. ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... proselyte so obtained is coerced and not won. We are not insensible to the nature of the ties which bind a partisan to his leader. Their relative strength or weakness are the tests of the personal excellence of the latter—of the regard which his talents inspire—of the veneration which his sagacity commands. Strong indeed must be the necessity which on any occasion can unloose them; nor can it, in the ordinary case, arise except from the fault of the leader. For the leader and the follower, if we consider the matter rightly, are alike bound to common allegiance: some principle must ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... affects not at all the truth of our proposition, that divinity, properly so called, is not a progressive science. A very common knowledge of history, a very little observation of life, will suffice to prove that no learning, no sagacity, affords a security against the greatest errors on subjects relating to the invisible world. Bayle and Chillingworth, two of the most sceptical of mankind, turned Catholics from sincere conviction. Johnson, incredulous ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... him must be given, showing his extraordinary sagacity as well as his determination. When he had set his mind on anything, brick walls were well-nigh powerless to stop him. He obeyed one man, if he were by; in his absence, he acted solely in furtherance of the plans he had in mind, ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... and comparison of experience; and neither the men nor the women of intuition usually shine in this department, unless, indeed, the experience necessary is such as they can acquire by themselves. For what is called their intuitive sagacity makes them peculiarly apt in gathering such general truths as can be collected from their individual means of observation. When, consequently, they chance to be as well provided as men are with the results of other people's experience, by reading and education, ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... strongest Republican newspapers in New England is The Springfield Republican (Mass.) which sees in the new movement an evidence of good faith on the part of the Conservatives, and of sagacity and honesty on the part ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... His sagacity, his patience, his knowledge of the varied elements that are blended in our nationality, his sincere devotion to pacific conceptions of progress, his unwavering loyalty to the cause of liberty secured by law, national and international, made him the one man of all others to whom this great decision ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... contending for their homes and their hunting grounds—the tombs of their forefathers—the graves of their children. They saw the gradual, but certain, encroachments of the whites upon their lands; and they had the sagacity to perceive, that unless this mighty wave of emigration was arrested, it would overwhelm them. They fought as savage nature will fight, with unflinching courage and unrelenting cruelty. But it was not alone this encroachment upon their lands, which roused their ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... original. They came hither in such abundance, that it was abandoned by the [510]inhabitants. Argos was infested in the same manner, till Apis came from Egypt, and settled in that city. He was a prophet, the reputed son of Apollo, and a person of great skill and sagacity. To him they attributed the blessing of having their country ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... professors year after year, course after course, the interlarded witticisms included. The high ministry of education becomes with many, an ordinary trade; nor need the students be endowed with great sagacity to find this out. Furthermore, tradition regarding University life sees to it that the young folks do not take their years of study too seriously, and many a youth, who would take them seriously, is repelled by the pedantic and unenjoyable style of the professors. The decline in the zeal ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... sheep-dogs, a volume could be written on the facts concerning them, and a still more entertaining book on the fictions, for a New Zealand shepherd will always consider it a point of honour to cap his neighbour's anecdote of his dog's sagacity, by a yet stronger proof of canine intelligence. I shall only, briefly allude to one dog, whose history will probably be placed in the colonial archives,—a colley, who knows his master's brand; and who will, when the sheep get boxed, ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... traditions and customs of hospitality, live in other parts of the city. The club houses, libraries, galleries, and semi-public conveniences for social life are also blocks away. We find workingmen organized into armies of producers because men of executive ability and business sagacity have found it to their interests thus to organize them. But these workingmen are not organized socially; although lodging in crowded tenement houses, they are living without a corresponding social contact. The chaos is as great ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... of becoming an enthusiast, and of receiving Divine truths upon the account of the strength and vigour of his fancy; which, being so well qualified with holiness and sanctity, proved not unsuccessful in sundry apprehensions, but in others it fared with him after the manner of men, the sagacity of his imagination failing him, as well as the anxiety of reason does others of like integrity ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... that she seemed to have an instinct for coquetry. The most silly animals in the creation, from the insect tribe upwards, show, on some occasions, where their interests are immediately concerned, a degree of sagacity and ingenuity, which, compared with their usual imbecility, appears absolutely wonderful. The opinion which Vivian had early formed of the weakness of this lady's understanding prevented him from being on his guard against her artifices: he could not conceive it possible ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... Elizabeth appears to have been exalted by her friends and depreciated by her enemies, in nearly equal proportions. As a monarch, her activity and force of mind, her magnanimity, sagacity, prudence, vigilance, and address, have scarcely been surpassed in royal annals, and are worthy of the highest admiration. Pope Sixtus V. spoke of her on all occasions as "a woman with a strong head," and gave her a place among ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... talk about Mr Evans' wonderful train of half dogs, half wolves, with which for years he travelled. With great enthusiasm they would talk of their marvellous speed and endurance, of their fierceness and sagacity; of how, when the nights in the wintry camps were unusually cold—say fifty or sixty degrees below zero—these fierce animals would crowd into the camp, and, lying on their backs, would hold up both their fore and hind feet, and thus mutely beg for some one to have compassion ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... gained in public esteem for his integrity, his sagacity, and his unrivalled good sense. His humor, wit, and conversational ability caused his society to be universally sought. He was a good judge of books for his infant library, and he took a great interest ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... when teeth flash at every gleam of his wit and eyes moisten at every touch of his sentiment. Having tried each of these poems before more than a hundred audiences, Mr. Saxe has fairly earned the right to face critics fearlessly; and, indeed, the poems themselves so abound in sense, shrewdness, sagacity, and fancy, in sayings so pithy and wit so sparkling, are so lull of humor and good-humor, and flow on their rhythmic and rhyming way with so much of the easy abandonment of vivacious conversation, that few critics will desire to reverse the favorable decisions ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... the wilderness, and a settlement of Swedes in Delaware and of Hollanders on the Hudson shall be added to the incongruous, unconcerted, mutually jealous plantations that begin to take root along the Atlantic seaboard. Not only grandeur and sagacity of conception, but success in achievement, is illustrated by the comparative area occupied by the three great European powers on the continent of North America at the end of a century and a half from the founding of Quebec in 1608. Dividing the continent into ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... profound truth conveyed in George's statement, and admired his brother's immense sagacity. "No, George," says he, "you are right. Mother can't marry our murderer; she won't be as bad as that. And if we pink him he is done for. 'Cadit quaestio,' as Mr. Dempster used to say. Shall I send my boy with a ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the insurrection of the Seminoles, has made him very popular in Florida, where the energy and sagacity with which the closing campaign of the war was conducted are spoken of in the highest terms. He has lately fixed his head-quarters at ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... confidences; he was not to be bought; and he was not to be frightened. Further, he was endowed with a penetrating perception of character, immense powers of organisation, and industry which was absolutely indefatigable. It was an immediate mark of the young queen's singular sagacity that even before her accession she had selected Cecil to lean upon, in preference to any of the great nobles, and even to Paget who had for many years been recognised as the most astute statesman ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... in view of the rapid extension of commerce and the consequent jealousy of foreign competitors, were no longer able to afford sufficient protection to the foreign trade—a condition which did not escape the statesmen of Lubeck, with their marked power of initiative and political sagacity. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... of thy body is also thy little sagacity, my brother, which thou callest "spirit"—a little instrument and plaything ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... ear. Thus perished a woman worthy to be remembered with the purest and proudest who have done honor to nature and the sex; one who, with all the feelings and sensibilities of the woman, possessed all the pride and patriotism, the courage, the sagacity and the daring of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... courage of a knight-errant Cochrane added the shrewd and humorous sagacity of a Scotchman. If he had commanded fleets he would have rivalled the victories of Nelson, and perhaps even have outshone the Nile and Trafalgar. And to warlike genius of the first order Cochrane added a certain weird and impish ingenuity which his ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... a pronounced democrat. Reading his political addresses to-day, after a lapse of half a century, we find in them the clearness and sagacity that distinguish the scientific productions of the investigator. Here is an extract from his words of consolation addressed to the families of the heroes of the March revolution ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... and dug the surface of the terre-plein indignantly with his heel. "As for fortification, do I not know already what additional defences we need? Fort Amitie, monsieur, was constructed by the great Frontenac himself, and with wonderful sagacity, if we consider the times. Take, for example, the towers. You are acquainted, of course, with the modern rule of giving the bastions a salient angle of fifteen degrees in excess of half the angle of the figure in ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... on into what seemed the interminable recesses that surrounded them the greater became their wonder as to how they were to find those they sought. The chances seemed very much against them; but then they had an abounding faith in Elmer's sagacity; and he seemed to be determined on persevering. Doubtless, too, the others reasoned to themselves, Elmer had some clever plan laid out which would be sprung when the proper time arrived; and this confidence did much to relieve their minds ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... hosts: "Judge ye in truth between Me and yonder Uzza, the Angel of the Egyptians. At the first I brought a famine upon his people, and I appointed My friend Joseph over them, who saved them through his sagacity, and they all became his slaves. Then My children went down into their land as strangers, in consequence of the famine, and they made the children of Israel to serve with rigor in all manner of hard work there is in the world. They groaned on account of their bitter service, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... had the right to confidently expect came; but it was bitter and sardonic. I think indignation was apparent in the minds of his hearers. It was felt, for the first time, that there was a limit to practical joking. A deception carried on for a year, compromising the sagacity of Monte Flat, was deserving the severest reprobation. Of course, nobody had believed Plunkett; but then the supposition that it might be believed in adjacent camps that they HAD believed him was gall ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... Catch—my dog—whom I had so loved, had died in my absence; not from old age, for he was but young, having only seen his fifth birthday; but, "full of honours," as every one liked him and respected him who knew of his sagacity and faithfulness, and saw his honest brown eyes and handsome high ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... very old; and, since Augustus' day, the detritus had grown and grown. Diocletian had devoted a political sagacity amounting in some respects to genius to setting things right, and had accomplished something. He had moved out of Rome itself, where the psychic atmosphere was too thickly encumbered; had gone eastward, where the air, after long pralaya, was clearer; had propped up imperial ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... his joke, while the object of that joke is wrapped up from you in the profoundest mystery, and you will consequently make the concession to a certain point of his character, which has been really obtained by a faculty you had not penetration to discover, or, rather, which he had too much sagacity to exhibit. Of course, as soon as your back is turned, the broad grin is on him, and one of his cheeks is stuck out two inches beyond the other, because his tongue is in it at your stupidity, simplicity, or folly. Of all the national characters on this habitable ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... as well as in all my other philosophical writings, I have made it a rule not to conceal the real views with which I have made experiments; because though, by following a contrary maxim, I might have acquired a character of greater sagacity, I think that two very good ends are answered by the method that I have adopted. For it both tends to make a narrative of a course of experiments more interesting, and likewise encourages other adventurers in experimental philosophy; shewing them that, by pursuing even false lights, ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... and his eye steady when he spoke to his wife; there was no trace of self-consciousness in his demeanour. She admired the masculinity of the brain that could forget by an effort of will. She felt that he trusted her to forget also; that he relied on her common-sense, her characteristic sagacity, to extinguish for ever the memory of an awkward incident. He loved her. He was intensely proud of her. He treated her with every sort of generosity. And in return he expected her to ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the strength of that odious foreknowledge often imparted by science, before the white fruit whose core is ashes, and which we call death, has set beneath the pallid and drooping flower of sickness. There is a singular sagacity very often shown in a patient's estimate of his own vital force. His physician knows the state of his material frame well enough, perhaps,—that this or that organ is more or less impaired or disintegrated; but the patient has a sense that he can ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of complaint which brings out in relief the logical endowment and legislative sagacity ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... professed to discover the etymon of the Latin word lucus, a grove, in the substantive lux, light; and vindicated the derivation on the ground, that in groves darkness usually prevailed. The familiar expression of lucus a non lucendo, owes its birth to this striking manifestation of critical sagacity. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... sagacity and taste of Charlotte Williams. Those large dark eyes always judge well. I will compliment her by ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... compromises of the Elizabethan Reformation, and which saw in the moral poverty and incapacity of many of its chiefs a proof against the great traditional system of the Church which Elizabeth was loath to part with, and which, in spite of all its present and inevitable shortcomings, her political sagacity taught her to reverence ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... calculate the inevitable consequences. This branch of the system is so intimately combined and linked with the others that as surely as an effect is produced by an adequate cause, if it be resuscitated and revived and firmly established it requires no sagacity to foresee that it will necessarily and speedily draw after it the reestablishment of a national bank, the revival of a protective tariff, the distribution of the land money, and not only the postponement to the distant future of the payment of the present ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... note of triumph, indiscreetly remarked, with just the air of superior sagacity that in a wife drives husbands ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... transcended Forsyteism. For it is written that a Forsyte shall not love beauty more than reason; nor his own way more than his own health. And something beat within him in these days that with each throb fretted at the thinning shell. His sagacity knew this, but it knew too that he could not stop that beating, nor would if he could. And yet, if you had told him he was living on his capital, he would have stared you down. No, no; a man did not live on his capital; it was not done! The shibboleths of the past are ever more real than the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... obscure; he is too brilliant and subtle for the ready reader of a ready writer to follow with any certainty the track of an intelligence which moves with such incessant rapidity, or even to realise with what spider-like swiftness and sagacity his building spirit leaps and lightens to and fro and backward and forward, as it lives along the animated line of its labour, springs from thread to thread, and darts from centre to circumference of the glittering and quivering web of living thought, woven from the ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... suspicion had arisen; but, at the same time, it was ascertained that the Pristaw spoke no more than the truth in representing himself to have discredited 25 these suspicions. The fact was that the mere infatuation of vanity made him believe that nothing could go on undetected by his all-piercing sagacity, and that no rebellion could prosper when rebuked by his commanding presence. The Tartars, therefore, pursued their preparations, confiding 30 in the obstinate blindness of the Grand Pristaw as in their perfect safeguard, and such it proved—to his own ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... handled every dollar of the funds, superintended the erection of all the buildings, the laying off of the Monastery Park, and had charge of the farm; and through all the years no auditing committee had ever found an inaccuracy in his accounts. Foresight, sagacity, rectitude are synonymous terms with the name of Quintin. True as gold is Jerry Quintin. He always means what he says, and says just what he means. Let me assure you, there is no truer man in the Empire State than ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... cashier, the river-pirate, or the great counterfeiter. He paid his hotel-bill as a gentleman should always do, if he has the money and can spare it. The detective had probably overrated his own sagacity when he ventured to suspect Mr. Venner. He reported to his chief that there was a knowing-looking fellow he had been round after, but he rather guessed he was nothing more than ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and sagacity of George were foreshadowed more clearly by this copy-book than by any other. Its reference to the necessities of manhood was so plain and direct as to prove that he kept preparation for that period of life constantly in view. This book has been carefully preserved, ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... other was the beautiful greyhound, Eos, jet black with the exception of a narrow white streak on the nose and a white foot. Her master had got her as a puppy of six weeks old, when he was a boy in his fourteenth year, and had trained the loving, graceful creature in all imaginable canine, sagacity and cleverness. She had been the constant companion of his youth. She had already come to England with him, on the decisive visit of the previous autumn, and was known and dear to his ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... him, begging me to shake hands with him. I extricated myself from his grasp and pass'd on; he soon after follow'd and began loudly reproaching me for my cruelty, and asking why I would not shake hands. I was extremely distress'd, but at last told him his own sagacity might explain to him why I never would, and that his conduct to-night did not tend to alter my determination. I then hurried out of the room, and by way of completely avoiding him, cross'd a very formal circle of old ladies, and went and seated myself between Lady Euston ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... means confident of his powers of executing it. He had arranged the future life and adventures of Walter so very differently, and so entirely to his own satisfaction; he had felicitated himself so often on the sagacity and foresight displayed in that arrangement, and had found it so complete and perfect in all its parts; that to suffer it to go to pieces all at once, and even to assist in breaking it up, required ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... hardest work of all. We went as far south as the train would take us, and settled ourselves at Coronado to bask in the sunshine until the tiredness was gone and we became a band of explorers, with the world before us! A pair of buggies drawn by nags of unblemished reputation for sagacity and decorum, driven by C. C. and me, carried us over many a picturesque and rough road. It invariably took us all day to get anywhere and back, irrespective of what the distance was supposed to be. The outfit was so old that I often had to draw up my steed and mend the harness with a safety-pin. ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... a window and talked in a low voice with Madame Mongenod, the mother, who was sitting there, and to whom all the affairs of the bank were confided. For over thirty years this woman had given, to her husband first and then to her sons, such proofs of business sagacity that she had long been a managing partner in the ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... California. We are indebted to him for an interesting discourse upon the subject, delivered before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. He concludes this performance with the following observations, which we believe to be altogether just. Mr. KANE is a man of sagacity and integrity, and his opportunities for the formation of a wise opinion upon this subject were such as very ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... answered: "Your sagacity will be able to devise a remedy for this matter, and what plan can develop while my spirit is broken by the thought ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... was able to identify the youth who had spoken to her with the young man who had appeared at church on the previous Sunday, Miss Jane, with her usual sagacity, ascertained that he was staying at the Texford Arms, and that Miles Gaffin, the miller had met him on his arrival. It was supposed that he was the eldest son of ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... times are not the same, nor equally fortunate; and those incidents which the vulgar call omens, though not founded on any natural reason, have, even by persons of sagacity, been held and deemed as fair and fortunate. One of these superstitious omen-mongers rises in the morning, goes abroad, chances to meet a friar belonging to the beatified St. Francis; and as if he had encountered a dragon in his way, runs back to his ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... consisted of thirteen ships of the line, seven forty-gun frigates, with twenty-four smaller vessels of war, and nearly 200 transports. Mr. Udney, our consul at Leghorn, was the first person who procured certain intelligence of the enemy's design against Malta; and, from his own sagacity, foresaw that Egypt must be their after object. Nelson sailed from Gibraltar on the 9th of May, with the VANGUARD, ORION, and ALEXANDER, seventy-fours; the CAROLINE, FLORA, EMERALD, and TERPSICHORE, frigates; and the BONNE CITOYENNE, sloop of war, to watch this ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... Ministries into power threatened to pass into a phase of violence and disorder. The concessions already made were mocked by men who expected to win all the victories of democracy in an hour. It remained to be seen whether there existed in Italy the political sagacity which, triumphing over all local jealousies, could bend to one great aim the passions of the multitude and the fears of the Courts, or whether the cause of the whole nation would be wrecked in an ignoble strife between demagogues and reactionists, between ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... him intimately and well. He was unselfish and generous to a fault; he was modest yet masterful; he was quiet yet intense; his common sense and sagacity seemed uncanny, such was his knowledge of human nature. His was a great soul in which no bitterness or littleness could even find a lurking place. His was the great heart of Lincoln, with malice toward none and charity for all. ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... gifts her with a thousand virtues, to the one she loves; it is from that love, that she drinks her nobler nature;—it gives her the meekness of a dove, the devotion of a saint. In his danger, she has the sagacity of the serpent, and the courage of the lioness. Like the chivalrous knight, she who thus feels, will "avoid no ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... obtained his knowledge by any unworthy means. He had been neither an eavesdropper, nor an inquirer into private communications, as so often happens around the persons of men in high trusts; all his knowledge having been obtained through native sagacity and unavoidable opportunities. On the present occasion, the secretary, with the tact of a man of experience, felt that his presence might be dispensed with; and he cut short the discussion between the two admirals, by a very timely remark of ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Delvile, "your affairs will not much miss him! Since I have heard of the excess of his extravagance, I have extremely rejoiced in the uncommon prudence and sagacity of his fair ward, who, in such dangerous hands, with less penetration and sound sense, might have been drawn into a thousand difficulties, and perhaps defrauded of half ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... of your father as the man on whom I most relied; and so it was. I relied on one other, also a remarkable man, who took the same course, at nearly the same time; but on him most, from my opinion of his sagacity. From the correspondence of 1838 you might suppose that he relied upon me, that he had almost given himself to me. But whatever expressions his warm feelings combined with his humility may have prompted, it really was not so; nor ought it to have been so, for I always ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... said with a sort of shouting and ear-shattering whisper: "I say, my name is Wilkinson. You know—Wilkinson's Entire was my grandfather. Can't drink beer myself. Liver." And he shook his head with extraordinary sagacity. ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... surprises me, I confess, that the feeling, judgment, and sagacity, which sufficed to produce the work that I have been commending, should have suffered the golden opinions of me, which you entertained, to be filched and adulterated by mere traducers, whose reports the hearer's own experience could have almost refuted, and whose testimony was so ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... Bolton a decided opinion. Under no circumstances was he to give money to these persons. Were he to be guilty of that weakness he would have delivered himself over into their hands. And not only did he put implicit trust in the sagacity of Robert Bolton, but he himself knew enough of the world's opinion on such a matter to be aware that a man who has allowed himself to be frightened out of money is supposed to have acknowledged some terrible ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... travelling physicians, had performed several very astonishing cures, in cases which the French Physicians had long treated without success: And indeed the French physicians, however checked by interest or envy, were obliged to acknowledge this gentleman's uncommon sagacity in the treatment of diseases. What I say of this ingenious traveller, is for your sake more than his; for I know nothing more of him than the fame he has left behind him at Montpellier, and which I doubt not will soon be verified by his deeds ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse |
