"Strategist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of controlling the Mississippi River was well seen by the great strategist, Lincoln, who called it "the backbone of the rebellion"—"the key to the whole situation." If it could be held by the government, the Confederacy could neither move its troops up and down it, nor—thus cut in half—could it bring over ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... managed to say with the proper note of incredulity, but in his heart he was not incredulous. Dimly, Albert had begun to perceive that years must elapse before he could become capable of matching himself in battles of wits with this master-strategist. ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Brown. "He was always more for duty than for dash; and with all his personal courage was decidedly a prudent commander, particularly indignant at any needless waste of soldiers. Yet in this last battle he attempted something that a baby could see was absurd. One need not be a strategist to see it was as wild as wind; just as one need not be a strategist to keep out of the way of a motor-bus. Well, that is the first mystery; what had become of the English general's head? The second riddle is, what had become of the Brazilian general's heart? President ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... whose area extended over hundreds of square miles, by all the six counties concerned—it was generally felt that this was but due to him for the neglect of his warnings—and Mr. Gerzson proved on this occasion that if he was not a great strategist, at any rate he was a great beater up of game. His plan was to occupy all the mountain roads and passes leading out of the six counties with armed bands of militia, while at the same time he himself advanced slowly along the highroads with his gentlemen-volunteers joining hands ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... acquiescence. She was watching Major White—that great strategist—tear up Mrs. Vansittart's letter and throw it into the fire, with a deliberate non-concealment which was perhaps superior to any subterfuge. The ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... rendered great services. Pompey had subdued the East, and Caesar the West. Pompey had more prestige, Caesar more genius. Pompey was a greater tactician, Caesar a greater strategist. Pompey was proud, pompous, jealous, patronizing, self-sufficient, disdainful. Caesar was politic, intriguing, patient, lavish, unenvious, easily approached, forgiving, with great urbanity and most genial manners. Both were ambitious, unscrupulous, and ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... by his still shouting master. St.-Ange, the captain, the crew, gazed in silent wonder at the strategist. Pausing but an instant over the master's hat to grin an acknowledgment of his beholders' speechless interest, he softly placed in it the faithfully-mourned and honestly-prayed-for Smyrna fund; then, saluted by the gesticulative, silent applause of ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... an opportunity to be shut up in Chattanooga, as Pemberton had been in Vicksburg; but, a more acute strategist, he knew the value of an army in the field to be greater than that ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... with perfect clarity and a long-headedness that proved him a strategist at four-and-twenty, Gabriel Armstrong whistled a louder note as he tramped away to northward, away from the hateful presence of Herzog, away from the wage-slavery of the Oakwood Heights plant, away—with that precious secret in his brain—toward the far scene of destined ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... Southern victories, for the tide began to ebb when Jackson fell; and those who read his volumes will, I am convinced, look forward eagerly to his story of the years which followed, when Grant, with the skill of a practised strategist, threw a net round the Confederate capital, drawing it gradually together until he imprisoned its starving garrison, and compelled Lee, the ablest commander of his ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... for thirty years the moving spirit, organizer, adviser, and athletic strategist of Yale, was chosen chairman of the Athletic Department, with the title General Commissioner of Athletics for the United ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... born strategist," cried the major, who was too generous to have any ill feeling because somebody offered him a suggestion. "We'll go that way." And he ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... Among their spokesmen was General McClellan. On him rested the chief hope of the North for military success during the year following the disaster of Bull Run. He was an admirable organizer and a good theoretical strategist; his care for his men won their affection; and sometimes in the field he struck heavy and effective blows. But he was always prone to overrate the enemy's resources and underrate his own; he was slow ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... sir," said Mr. Galloway, "in a war such as we have witnessed the Almighty is the only strategist. You fight against the forces of Nature, and a newcomer little knows that the success or failure of every operation he can conceive depends not upon generalship, but upon the confirmation of a vast country. ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... Alexis, "am I not a strategist? Did you not tell me so with your own lips? As a strategist there is none better than I. Why, I ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... mining-camp boys are, when you wake up the south side of their hearts; yes, and just like so many reckless and unreasoning children when you wake up the opposite of that muscle. They did everything they could think of to comfort him, but nothing succeeded until Wells-Fargo Ferguson, who is a clever strategist, said, ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... a great strategist," said Brown to himself next morning as he sat watching with surreptitious glances the faces of the young ladies beside him. The preacher was at his best. The great land where his life mission lay, with its prairies, foot-hills mountains, and valleys, and all their marvellous resources, was spread ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... and prepared to attack the Syx mine. For some reason the military guard had been depleted, and the mob, under the leadership of a man named Bings, who showed no little talent as a commander and strategist, surprised the small force of soldiers and locked them up in their ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... this calamity, Chief?" I asked, amazed at his knowledge of the great historical soldier and strategist. ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... to come to blows in his then feeble state was to rush on certain destruction; so he ordered his troops to retire, and, being a first-rate strategist, echelonned his retreat so skilfully that his enemies, though they followed, dared not attack him, and he re-entered the pontifical town without the loss of a ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... himself energetically to the task of making Prussia the greatest military power of Europe. He it was who had put into the hands of Prussian soldiers the weapon that won Koeniggraetz. With his clear eye for the right man he had found Moltke and placed the premier strategist of his day at the head of the General Staff. Roon he picked out as if by intuition from comparative obscurity, and assigned to him the work of preparing and carrying out that scheme of army reform which all continental Europe ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... various offices with credit, he was made governor of the province in 1741, and had discharged his duties with both tact and talent. He was able, sanguine, and a sincere well-wisher to the province, though gnawed by an insatiable hunger for distinction. He thought himself a born strategist, and was possessed by a propensity for contriving military operations, which finally cost him dear. Vaughan, who knew something of Louisbourg, told him that in winter the snow-drifts were often banked so high against the rampart that it could be mounted ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... Ferrier showed perhaps his most characteristic side at moments of leisure or intimacy; while the moods expressed in outbreaks of the kind had little or no effect on his pugnacity as a debater or his skill as a party strategist, ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... but the trappings and the suits of his sovereignty: he let it be known he had the substance as well. No great strategist himself, he commanded the services of mighty generals: one Meng-tien in especial, a bright particular star in the War-God's firmament. An early step to disarm the nations, and have all weapons sent to Changan; then, with these, to furnish forth a great standing army, which he sent out under ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Perdue's Corner, Washington City was taken not less than a dozen times a week, and occasionally both New York and Boston were captured and sacked. Of all the generals who fought their battles at the Corner, Major Jimmy Bass was the most energetic, the most daring, and the most skilful. As a strategist he had no superior. He had a way of illustrating the feasibility of his plans by drawing them in the sand with his cane. Fat as he was, the major had a way of "surroundering" the enemy so that no avenue was left for his escape. At Perdue's Corner he captured Scott, and McClellan, and Joe ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... took the risk of some peasant or visitor seeing you—took the risk of bringing the police to the spot and turning what might have easily been a case of accidental death into an obvious case of wilful murder. I think you called yourself a strategist," ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... it. On the other hand, the two finest of his prose pamphlets, the Relation of the Action in Cadiz Harbour and the incomparable Report on the Fight in the Revenge, supply us with ample materials for forming an idea of his value as a naval strategist. Raleigh's earliest biographer, Oldys the antiquary, speaks of him as "raising a grove of laurels out of the sea," and it is certainly upon that element that he reaches his highest effect of prominence. It was at sea that he could give fullest scope ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... was not sufficiently sanguinary for the monks. As a strategist he had refused, at the outset, to undertake with 1,500 European troops a task which was only accomplished by his successor with 28,000 men. But the priests thought they knew better, and Blanco left for Spain in December, 1896. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... to the roof and heave water down," said Drummond, the strategist. "You can get out from Milton's dormitory window. And take care not to chuck it down ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... In the days of the Troglodytes, when one gentleman would crack another gentleman's thigh-bone to get at the marrow, the most important man of course was the one best able with physical force to murder his fellows. At various times the great explorer, the great military strategist, has been the most important of men. To-day the most important man is the organizer of industry. He is really the most important, not only in the size of his reward, but in the service which he renders. Nature gives ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... Sir Serpent," I said, or thought, "but it is dangerous, say the military authorities, to leave an enemy or possible enemy in the rear; the person who does such a thing must be either a bad strategist or a genius, and I ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... his head. He was up and kicking the door and bellowing unamiable proposals and invitations, so that a strategist emerging silently by the tap door could locate him without difficulty, steal ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... something which exists in the other man's mind. To read the other man's mind or make a good guess at it, defeats the most scientifically conceived strategy. Napoleon outwitted the best military brains and was himself the greatest strategist of his time, because he invariably departed from fixed military customs and kept his opponent entirely at sea regarding what he was doing or intended to do. Very seldom did he do the thing which his enemy thought he would do; which seemed most likely and proper according to military science. ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... in the fight? This, if supported by infantry, could have outflanked the enemy while the perilous rush was made against the bridge; and such a turning movement would probably have enveloped the Austrian force while it was being shattered in front. That is the view in which the strategist, Clausewitz, regards this encounter. Far different was the impression which it created among the soldiers and Frenchmen at large. They valued a commander more for bravery of the bull-dog type than for any powers of reasoning and subtle combination. These, it is true, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... fishing rod, thus inducing him to retire to the river. The communications with the servants had been cut. Of the strict neutrality of the gardener he was already assured. Edwin felt that the moment had come for going over the top. Yet being an able strategist, he was anxious not to attempt to advance on too wide ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... his fellows until they commenced to play like madmen; I have no doubt they were precisely that. His spirit was like some galvanic current, and he directed them with a master mind. He was a natural-born strategist, of course, for through him ran the blood of the craftiest race of all the earth, the blood of a people who have always fought against odds, to whom a forlorn hope is an assurance of victory. On this ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... Jael, the wife of Heber, whose hammer and nail are welded fast in historical narration with the brow of the sleeping guest, Sisera, the captain of Jabin's army; the famous exploits of Gideon who, if he was a superior strategist and warrior, gave little evidence, by his seventy sons, of his morality according to Christian standards; the death of Abimelech, which was half suicidal lest it should be said that a woman's hand had slain him; these, ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... there were heavy losses on both sides. The French, however, though inferior in numbers had the advantage in being a more compact force than that of the allies; and William, poorly supported by the Imperialist contingents, had to retire from the field. He was never a great strategist, but he now conducted a retreat which extracted admiration from his opponents. His talents for command always showed themselves most conspicuously in adverse circumstances. His coolness and courage in moments of peril and difficulty never deserted him, and, though ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... and the main phases of the situation laid before him. The three men sat in silence for many minutes while the crafty strategist studied ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... of the Senate" smiled patronizingly on the senior Senator from Mississippi, as though amused and scornful of his limitations as a strategist, as a tenacious fighter. Then his jaw set hard, ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... aristocratic party, the other to the popular. Pompey was proud, pompous, and self-sufficient. Caesar was politic, patient, and intriguing. Both had an inordinate ambition, and both were unscrupulous. Pompey had more prestige, Caesar more genius. Pompey was a greater tactician, Caesar a greater strategist. The Senate rallied around the former, the people around the latter. Cicero distrusted both, and flattered each by turns, but inclined to the side of Pompey, as belonging ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... departments might have resulted in dangerous collisions; but in this season of political quietude it only made the position of the President extremely uncomfortable. Mr. Van Buren soon became recognized as the formidable leader and organizer of the Jackson forces. His capacity as a political strategist was so far in advance of that of any other man of those times that it might have secured success even had he been encountered by tactics similar to his (p. 193) own. But since on the contrary he had only to meet straightforward ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... penetrate to the core-truth. For example, not only Greeley, but Henry Wilson, Burlingame, Washburne, Colfax, and more, really believed that Douglas was turning his back upon his whole past career, and that this brilliant political strategist was actually bringing into the anti-slavery camp[76] all his accumulations of prestige, popularity, and experience, all his seductive eloquence, his skill, and his grand mastery over men. Blinded by the dazzling prospect, they gave all their influence in favor of this priceless recruit, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... my groom, and my crowning mercy. But for his deafness I am sure he would long since have left the humble rank of gunner far beneath him, and the Staff might have gained a brilliant strategist. In addition to dulness of hearing, Steggles is endowed—I should indeed be ungrateful to use the word afflicted—with a vacuity of expression which puts rivals or antagonists off their guard, and doubles his value during the vicissitudes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... king. How great his renown was in Europe was seen in 1347, when on the death of Lewis of Bavaria the electors offered him the Imperial Crown. Edward was in truth a general of a high order, and he had shown himself as consummate a strategist in the campaign as a tactician in the field. But to the world about him he was even more illustrious as the foremost representative of the showy chivalry of his day. He loved the pomp of tournaments; he revived ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... retired and abandoned the coast towns, he might perhaps achieve a victory like those which the vizier of Orodes had won over Crassus and Juba over Curio, and he could at least endlessly protract the war. The simplest consideration suggested this plan of campaign; even Cato, although far from a strategist, counselled its adoption, and offered at the same time to cross with a corps to Italy and to call the republicans there to arms— which, amidst the utter confusion in that quarter, might very well meet with success. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... dangerous thing. It tempts the fates. Even while our strategist smiled, the girl who sat so silently beside him was wondering about that smile—and other things. He was much better, she reflected, if he could find his passing thoughts amusing. Amusement at one's own fancies is a healthy sign. And today she had noticed, also, that his laziness was almost ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... moonlight poured down the slopes and flooded the valleys. The Virginia roads have been cursed by larger armies than any that ever marched in Flanders, but Oscar was not a swearing man. He paused to rest his beast occasionally and to observe the landscape with the eye of a strategist. Moonlight, he remembered, was a useful accessory of the assassin's trade, and the faint sounds of the spring night were all promptly traced to their causes as they reached ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... insisted, still commanded, but he could not move her. At last he gave it up and turned her over for the day's inquest to an old hand at tricks and traps and deceptive plausibilities—Beaupere, a doctor of theology. Now notice the form of this sleek strategist's first remark—flung out in an easy, offhand way that would have thrown any ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... for the most careful examination, not only because it baffled the great German strategist to reconcile it with his theory of war, but also because it is the form in which Great Britain most successfully demonstrated the potentiality for direct continental interference of a small army acting in conjunction ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... are the makings of a strategist about Jack though his methods are coarse. (Aloud.) You'd better get a new dress, then. (Aside.) Let us pray that that will ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Winfield. "It would take a social strategist to perceive your hidden meaning. Still, my finer sensibilities respond instantly to your touch, and I will go. I flatter myself that I've never had to be put out yet, when I've been calling on a girl. Some subtle suggestion like yours has always ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... battle showed himself a strategist, and won without bringing up his reserves; if he had failed with Mr. Lacy he had another arrow behind in his quiver. He had been twice to the mayor and claimed a coroner's jury to sit on a suicide. The mayor had consented and the ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... talked a good deal about "Stonewall" Jackson. General Johnston said that although this extraordinary man did not possess any great qualifications as a strategist, and was perhaps unfit for the independent command of a large army; yet he was gifted with wonderful courage and determination, and a perfect faith in Providence that he was destined to destroy ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... war between France and Germany the campaign was planned and led by elderly men. The Emperor William, then King of Prussia, was in his seventy-fourth year; Von Moltke, the master strategist of the war, was seventy-one years old; General von Roon was sixty-eight; and Bismarck, the master mind in the larger field, was in ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... old admirer of his personality and of his genius, though an adversary of his policy, and of the government dependent on that policy. Society, like nature, devours everything that it does not need. The death of William I., the Caesar; the death of Roon, the organizer; the death of Moltke, the strategist, all say to him that the species of men to which he belongs is fading out and becoming extinct. Modern science teaches that extinct species do not re-appear. Bossuet would say that the Eternal has destroyed the instrument ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... at ten hours, my spy was upon the platform. I knew him, for those who had kept him under watch had informed me of him. I had with me two police officers en bourgeois, what you call plain clothes, and I distributed them with the acumen of a strategist. It was un train a couloir. The spy disposed himself in a compartment. I placed one of my officers in the same compartment with him, the other in the compartment contiguee towards the engine, myself in that a derriere. ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... Ivan Petrovitch on the birth of a son, who had made his appearance in the world, in the village of Pokrovskoe, on August 20, 1807, and was named Feodor, in honour of the holy martyr, Feodor the Strategist. Owing to her extreme weakness, Malanya Sergyeevna added only a few lines; but those few lines astonished Ivan Petrovitch: he was not aware that Marfa Timofeevna had taught his wife to read and write. However, Ivan Petrovitch did ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... and I followed him. Taking one of the oars, he paddled the tender to the shore, and we landed. Mr. Waterford was evidently a thorough strategist, for he went through all the forms of doing what he had proposed. We hauled the boat out of the water, removed everything movable, ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... intuitively correct was his grasp of military situations, has been attested since in the enthusiastic admiration of brilliant technical students, amply fitted by training and intellect to express an opinion, whose comment does not fall short of declaring Mr. Lincoln "the ablest strategist of ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... just the spot for a strategist like Athelstan to meet the invader, trying to force a way between the forest and the marshes about Port Sunlight. This old port at Dove Point has been washed away, though many wonderful relics of Roman and earlier ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... on the campaign at sea. It is hardly conceivable that Napoleon has forgotten where the Marne is. But it may have changed since his day. At any rate, he says that, if ever the Russians cross the Marne, all is over. Coming from such a master-strategist, this ought ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... and grim when at work. He has no patience for anything but the highest efficiency. At a single stroke he cashiered a score of Generals who did not measure up to his standards. He is a master builder, organizer and strategist. Though rather taciturn he is loved both by the officers and poilus. Among the latter he became known as ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... gloomily. He made no secret of the fact that he believed that, if he dressed for the chase and took to the woods, he would in the end find and capture the princess, but it might take a week or ten days. The archduke cried shame upon a strategist of his ability that he should be baffled by children for a week or ten days. Count Zerbst said sulkily that it was not the children who would baffle him, but the caves and the woods they were using. At last they began ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... it with a whimsical smile, and it passed him unheeded that the smile ended in a contracting of the brows and a bitter little sigh. The fighter judged war by its victories; the strategist by their effects. Montcalm could win victories; even now, by putting himself into what might pass for his adversary's mind, he hoped to snatch a success against odds. But what avails it to administer drubbings which but leave your foe the more stubbornly aggressive? British Generals blundered; ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... interminable delegations, personages, and journalists, and perform all the other time-consuming duties incident to having greatness thrust upon you; for things obviously cannot be in a very bad way when the master strategist can thus take "time out" from strategizing. But the influence of "our Hindenburg," as he is often affectionately called, is wider than the east; the magic of his name stiffens the deadline in the west, and the man ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... serious confusion to which any such interruption can give rise, it has become far more difficult than in the past to execute offensive flanking operations, changes of front, or counter-attacks, all of which are movements which the practical strategist must bear in mind. On paper and on the map such undertakings appear to present no more elements of friction than formerly, but on the ground itself those who have once seen masses of several corps all huddled together know that things are very different. All such movements ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... principal contest was over the possession of the Miami village, now Fort Wayne, which controlled the trade in both the Wabash and the Maumee Valleys, and that President George Washington, consummate strategist that he was, foresaw at once in 1789, the first year of his presidency, that the possession of the great carrying place at Miamitown would probably command the whole northwest and put an end to ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... contested conflict. Satan is a trained strategist, and an obstinate fighter. He refuses to acknowledge defeat until he must. It is the fight of his life. Strange as it must seem, and perhaps absurd, he apparently hopes to succeed. If we knew all, ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... becoming a soldier and a strategist. I think you had better make your report over again, Mr. Merwyn;" and he drew out a fuller account of events than had been given the evening before, also the result of the young man's ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... advanced farther and farther from their base. It was a great army—the greatest ever seen. For Napoleon had eight monarchs serving with the eagles; generals innumerable, many of them immortal—Davoust, the greatest strategist; Prince Eugene, the incomparable lieutenant; Ney, the fearless; four hundred thousand men. And they carried with them ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... Ellison, boldly, and back they ran to the parlor, where they found Basil and the Colonel and his wife in earnest conclave. The Colonel, like a shrewd strategist, was making show of a desperation more violent than his wife's, who was thus naturally forced into the attitude ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... The strategist, with his officers, the nomarch of the district with his subordinates, and many citizens of Tennis had arrived. Hermon knew most of them by their voices, but their figures were not visible. The red, violet, and black cloud before him was all ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... overset the former and defied the latter. His story was of the smoothest. He was a military strategist, he declared, and General Leborge had asked him to investigate the citadel, in order to determine its value as the site ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... court card; cheval de bataille [Fr.], great gun; coup, coup d'etat [Fr.]; clever stroke, bold stroke, good move, good hit, good stroke; bright thought, bright idea. intrigue, cabal, plot, conspiracy, complot^, machination; subplot, underplot^, counterplot. schemer, schemist^, schematist^; strategist, machinator; projector, artist, promoter, designer &c v.; conspirator; intrigant &c (cunning) 702 [Obs.]. V. plan, scheme, design, frame, contrive, project, forecast, sketch; devise, invent &c (imagine) 515; set one's wits to work &c 515; spring a project; fall upon, hit upon; strike ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... career one may have chosen, however humble one's birth, one is then certain of finding distinguished friends and impassioned advocates. If you happen to be in the army and unmarried, you are declared to be a strategist like Caesar, or an organizer like Moltke; if you are an artist, instead of having your faults proclaimed and your failings scourged, your qualifications are eulogised and you find yourself compared to Michel Angelo or Titian! I would not willingly exaggerate here; ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... my strategist, my financier." And Monsieur Gratiot smiled. He struck me as a man who never let himself go ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... dangling his legs out of the window while he shouted forth drunken songs of revelry. This was not the whole of Antony. Joining the Roman army in Syria, he showed himself to be a soldier of great personal bravery, a clever strategist, and also humane and merciful ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... Baudelaire, with scientific support from Freud and Jung, and with some extremely able British and American lieutenants, the cause of unashamedness appears to be winning its way in literature. The George Moore of these Confessions stands to view as a reckless and courageous pioneer, a bad strategist but a faithful soldier, in the foolhardy, disastrous and gallant ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... any moment; everybody was nervy: and each Battalion as it came out of the Line thanked its lucky stars that they had escaped the first onslaught. To even the ignorant strategist it was patent that either side could, by a preconceived attack, penetrate a mile or so into any chosen sector of a few miles frontage: but such a salient had little absolute value in a scheme of operations having the turning or breaking of a portion of front as objectives. A break had to be made ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... explanation. So humiliating to her did his misunderstanding seem, that it was intolerable he should retain it a moment longer, and she felt almost desperate enough to go and knock at his door and correct it. Far too clever a strategist to risk an encounter that evening, he sat in his room comfortably smoking and attending to arrears of correspondence, aware that he was supposed by her to be sulking desperately all the while. He knew that her feeling was anger and not grief, and while, had ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... been a master at concentration, a master strategist-a great general. With passionate beliefs on all important social questions, she resolutely set herself against being seduced into other paths. Far from being naturally an ascetic, she has disciplined herself into denials and deprivations, cultural and recreational, to pursue her objective ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... Foch taught. Why he is not only the greatest strategist and tactician of all time, but the ideal leader and ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... world-conqueror though he may have been during a period of national disorganization, is an object of microscopic size. The French emperor did not know the strength of Russian feeling, the great revolutionist was ignorant of the Europe he had unconsciously regenerated. If he blundered as a strategist in not confessing defeat at Smolensk, he behaved like a tyro in statesmanship when he ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Humboldt, Leopold von Buch, and Erman, the physicist. He points out how Moltke, as historian and as an expert cartographer, introduces scientific spirit and work into his great creation, the German General Staff. As a strategist, however, it remains to be said that he follows in the footsteps, puts into practice and develops the methods of General von Clausewitz, the first mind who put war on an empirical and scientific basis. Moltke was intimately acquainted with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... as a strategist, enjoys the same high reputation as the commander-in-chief, General Joffre. He was born on April 24, 1849, at Saint-Bat in the department of the Haute Garonne. He entered the Saint-Cyr military academy ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... beg to pull from his place on the shelf, and to present to the reader, my friend General Xenophon, a most graceful writer, a capital huntsman, an able strategist, an experienced farmer, and, if we may believe Laertius, "handsome ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... "He'll go far! he'll go far!" repeated Mrs. Brewton. Sport glittered in her eye. She gathered her curtains, and was among the sun-bonnets in a moment. Then it fully dawned on me. The agent for Mrs. Eden's Manna in the Wilderness was indeed a shrewd strategist, and knew his people to the roots of the grass. They had never seen a baby-show. They were innocent. He came among them. He gave away packages of manna and a diamond ring. He offered the prizes. But he proposed to win some. Therefore ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... got through the Narrows, and some sceptical critics are asking what we should do if we got through to Constantinople, without a land force. It is a great scheme, if it comes off; and the "only begetter" of it, if report is true, is Mr. Winston Churchill, the strategist of the Antwerp expedition, who now aspires to be the Dardanelson of our age. Anyhow, the Sultan, lured on by the Imperial William o' the Wisp, is already capable ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... that artifice is the resource of cunning, whether it acts on the principle of concealing truth or boldly asserting falsehood. Here the reverend strategist did both: he knew how a little truth could deceive. You must remember that at this point of the case, when the Rev. Faker was called, there was nothing to cross-examine about. I knew nothing of the parties, the witnesses, the solicitors, or any one except ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... first step in the perilous path of the strategist when she handed the incendiary telegram ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... the greatest strategist of this century, had, as a foundation for his other talents, the power to "hold his tongue in seven languages." A young man went to Socrates to learn oratory. On being introduced, he talked so incessantly that Socrates asked for double fees. "Why charge ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... been, and can be, found in Washington as commander. He did not have the advantages of a good military education. He did not know, and he never quite learned, how to discipline and to drill his men. He was not a consistently brilliant strategist or tactician.... (Often) he secured advantage ... by avoiding battle. Actually he was quite willing to fight when the odds were not too heavily against him. He retreated only when he was compelled to do so, during the ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... certainly mean that Alexieff had proved himself the better strategist of the two, and had contrived in some subtle manner to slip past us to the westward, when any one or two of three terrible things might happen. He might realise Togo's original terrible fear of an attack on the undefended coast of Japan; ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... placed before it, for action, much as it did with military questions—for, after all, good generalship, on its intellectual side, is simply the application, to the solution of a military problem, of a mind naturally gifted therefor, and stored with experience, either personal or of others. As a strategist and tactician, Nelson made full proof of high native endowments, of wisdom garnered through fruitful study and meditation, and of clear insight into the determining conditions of the various military situations with which he had to deal. To Mr. Rose, the young captain ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... gallantry of France might be expected from the English Government and people; what his acquaintance with the German races led him to suppose would be the effect on the Southern States of the first defeat of the Prussians; whether the man called Moltke was not a mere strategist on paper, a crotchety pedant; whether, if Belgium became so enamoured of the glories of France as to solicit fusion with her people, England would have a right to offer any objection,&c., &c. I do not think that during that festival Graham once thought one-millionth so much about the fates of Prussia ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... making the best of nothing, the pitiful preparation for the coming of the man. Wild roses from the creek bloomed against the gnarled and weather-warped logs of the walls. Sprays of clematis trailed their white bridal beauty from cans rescued from the ashes of a camp-fire. But Alida was a strategist when it came to adorning her home, and the rusty receptacle was hid beneath trailing green leaves. There was at the window a muslin curtain that in its starched and ruffled estate was strongly suggestive of a child's frock hastily converted into a window drapery. The curtain ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... Prussian strategist, von Moltke, was carrying out a far more incisive plan of operations—that of sending three Prussian armies into the middle of Bohemia, and there forming a great mass which would sweep away all obstacles from the road to Vienna. This design received prompt and ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... will be agreed that Colonel Garfield was a strategist of the first order. His plan required a boldness and dash which, under the circumstances, did him the ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... we were going out—I didn't say where," was the answer. "I'm something of a strategist ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes
... that they lost their point. But all is fair in love and war, and this was war—war to the knife and the knife to the hilt—so Mr. Paul should not be hated but admired, even by his foes. He was a brilliant strategist. Many there are who argue to this day that Mr. Paul won the strike for the company, but Mr. Paul says Watchem, the detective, did it. At all events they each earned the deathless hatred of the strikers. But, leaving this question open, the fact ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... likely to bring forth some notable men who have not previously been heard of before the world. General Evanoff is the idol of the Russian army. He is the strategist who plans the movements against Austria and Germany in the East, who surrounds Przemysl and says, "Now, we can take it when we please, but we will not sacrifice Russian troops to take it now; Cracow is more important. Lodz is not important from a military standpoint. ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... might wear them home when she reached there. "There won't be any trouble about this other stuff," he said. "I'll have it cared for until we make some other arrangement." It was all very simple and easy; he was a master strategist. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... found at close range on his native heath, wearing the mantle of the departed Botha, carrying on a Government with a minority, and with the shadow of an internecine war brooding on the horizon, was the same serene, clear-thinking strategist who had raised his voice in the Allied Councils. Then the enemy was the German and the task was to destroy the menace of militarism. Now it was his own unreconstructed Boer—blood of his blood,—and behind that Boer the larger problem of a rent and dissatisfied universe, ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... strategist. He led the way to the lower cabin, where the terrified women had been driven ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... "Now, Lazarre," the strategist confided, "your dearest Annabel is going to cover herself with Parisian disgrace. You don't know how maddening it is to have every step dogged by a woman who never was, never could have been—and manifestly never will be—young! Wasn't that a divine flash about the corbeille ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... choose between two sides, between the T'ai P'ing and Tseng Kuo-fan. Although Tseng represented the gentry and was thus against the simple common people, peasants fought in masses on his side, for he paid better, and especially more regularly. Tseng, being a good strategist, won successes and gained adherents. Thus by 1856 the T'ai P'ing were pressed back on Nanking and some of the towns round it; ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... "I confess that you have us very much in your hands to mould us as you will. Now, you are such a soldier and such a strategist as it would pleasure me to have about my person in Urbino. What says your Highness?" he continued, turning now to the almost speechless Gian Maria. "I have yet another niece with whom we might cement the union of the two duchies; and ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... would not carry so far; which was a tremendously important little fact, since the other fellow was aiming a rifle. The bullet from that rifle neatly clipped a prickly pear over Driscoll's head. The strategist certainly knew his business. There was a familiar shimmer of silver about his high peaked hat. Yes surely, he was Don Tiburcio, the loyal Imperialist of the baleful eye. No doubt the malignant twinkle gleamed in that eye now, even as the blackmailer bit a cartridge for the ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... and that wriggle as he might, he would be what all in his position were. He could not have believed it! Had he not at one time longed with all his heart to establish a republic in Russia; then himself to be a Napoleon; then to be a philosopher; and then a strategist and the conqueror of Napoleon? Had he not seen the possibility of, and passionately desired, the regeneration of the sinful human race, and his own progress to the highest degree of perfection? Had he not established ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... what the priest had taught him in the morning. But, of all his masters, the one to whom he listened with the least repugnance was the colonel. It is true that Bayonet, for that was the colonel's name, was a skilful strategist, and that he could say, like the ancient poet, with a slight variation, "I am a man, and nothing that pertains to the art of despatching poor human beings is indifferent to me." It was he that initiated Charming ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... in many of their attributes. Indeed, it is said that Napoleon never tired of quoting or having quoted to him some striking characteristic of Cromwell. We could hardly, with any degree of good judgment, put Leslie the Covenanter or Sir Jacob Astley the Royalist, or Nelson the matchless naval strategist and national hero, on a par with either Cromwell or Napoleon. They are only here referred to in connection with the two unequalled constructive statesmen and military generals as representing a type of peculiarly religious men who have occupied high military and naval positions ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... from the dining-room, would come the babble of many tongues and the laughter of officers telling stories against one another over their bottles of wine, served by Gaston the head-waiter, between our discussions on strategy—he was a strategist by virtue of service in the trenches and several wounds—or by "Von Tirpitz," an older, whiskered man, or by Joseph, who had a high, cackling laugh and strong views against the fair sex, and the inevitable cry, "C'est la guerre!" when officers complained of the service... There had been ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... entered into his birthright. As a strategist he was superb, the best of his time. What his eye took in his mind snapped up—like a steel gin. And his eye was the true soldier's eye, comprehending by signs, investing with life what was tongueless else. Over great stretches of barren country—that limitless land ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... pitched and must be brought nearer the earth. For five months the war had been carried on under the orders of a federal syndicate composed of the two Presidents sitting with casual military assessors, scarcely one of whom was a strategist or capable of viewing the Boer cause synoptically. Cronje was gone into captivity; Joubert was suspected to be half-hearted; and Botha, who had begun so well in ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... each interview. A large experience in love making assured him that the object of his idolatry was not wholly indifferent to him. The paternal Whedell had hobbies. Matthew had studied them, like a skilful strategist, catered to them, and felt quite sure that he had that revered individual on his side. But, in the midst of these pleasant imaginings, there rose the dark and ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... richer. His real estate appreciated in value; rents went up. Every time he speculated in wheat it was upon a larger scale, and every time he won. Hitherto he had been a bear; now, after the talk with Gretry, he had secretly "turned bull" with the suddenness of a strategist. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... cunning strategist, Fountain dropped to the ground, sky-lined his man on the crest of a little hillock he had to cross, and took a careful two-handed aim which enabled Rio Grande ranchers thereafter ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... his pains. I suspect that he revolved the subject in his mind while he revolved the great wheel of the churning-machine, and that some turn or other brought him a happy thought, for next time he showed himself a strategist. Instead of giving chase to the wood-chuck, when first discovered, he crouched down to the ground, and, resting his head on his paws, watched him. The woodchuck kept working away from his hole, lured ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... Moltke at this time came prominently on the European stage as the greatest strategist since Napoleon. He was chief of staff to the king, who was commander-in-chief. He set his wonderful machinery in harmonious action, and from his office in Berlin moved his military pawns by touch of electric wire. Three great armies were soon centralized in Bohemia,—one ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... be adduced) serve to show that Milton's ear was too busy about the larger interests of his measures to be always careful of the lesser. He was a strategist rather than a drill-sergeant in verse, capable, beyond any other English poet, of putting great masses through the most complicated evolutions without clash or confusion, but he was not curious that every foot ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... of you! You did bring about my getting out here in the tent. Yes, I've heard the whole story from Jo—I know what a strategist you were. You're such a good friend, to take ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... had been informed of how, through the deep arrangements of that strategist of stocks, he had borrowed every dollar of those five hundred thousand from Mr. Bayard, as well as every share of Northern Consolidated delivered to perfect those sales that had brought him down in ruin—in ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... persistence, endurance, and aptitude are alike and equally displayed, assuring to him beyond dispute the credit of a great tactician. Accordingly, in direct consequence of what has been noted, it is as a tactician, and not as a strategist, that he can claim rank; for whatever may be the fundamental identity of principles in the military art, whether applied to strategy or to tactics, it in the end remains true that the tactician deals with circumstances immediately before him and essentially ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... trees. Strategy has not changed since prehistoric days. It must always remain the same: feint and surprise. The first primitive man who looked at the breast of his opponent and struck suddenly at his face was a strategist; so, too, the anthropoid at the Zoo who leads another to make a leap for a trapeze and draws it out from under him; so, too, the thug who waits to catch his victim coming unawares out of an alley. Anybody facing more than one opponent ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... on a subject never wearisome to Americans may not be out of place. Washington's chief characteristics were fortitude, the sense of justice of which I have spoken, and the ability to grasp conditions and seize upon opportunities. He was a thoroughly practical man, a strategist by instinct, fearless but not rash, possessing an impetuous temper kept within careful control, and unleashed only when, as at the battle of Monmouth, there was prudence in its vehemence. He was an excellent judge of men. The officers who owed their advancement to Washington seldom ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... of General Scott. Lieutenant Grant, afterwards General Grant and President of the United States, was one of the first to enter the fortified position at the taking of Chapultepec. Grant, in his memoirs, pays General Scott due honor as a soldier and a strategist, but expresses the opinion that both the battles of Chapultepec and Molino del Rey were needless, as the two positions ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... seriousness and ostensible amiability, nod acquiescence to the wild-eyed revolutionist upon whom he inwardly vows to keep a careful watch lest the fire-brand agitator commit serious public mischief. The ideal editor of the popular press must be the quintescence of tact; an adroit strategist, a sagacious chief executive, keenly critical, ably judicial, broad, generous, sympathetic, hospitable, aye, charitable, magnanimous, ready to forgive and forget, patient and long-suffering when subjected ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... a good deal of what has passed here. I have often been blamed for the freedom with which I have written of other operations and criticised their commanders. I respectfully submit that I am as venomous an amateur strategist as exists at this time. It is very easy—and much more easy than profitable—when freed from all responsibility to make daring suggestions and express decided opinions. I assert that I would not hesitate to criticise mercilessly if I was not myself sobered by the full ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill |
