"Clear-sighted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "unwise," "imprudent," "fanatical," "impracticable." During the six years they held their own claims in abeyance to the slaves of the South, and labored to inspire the people with enthusiasm for the great measures of the Republican party, they were highly honored as "wise, loyal, and clear-sighted." But again when the slaves were emancipated and they asked that women should be recognized in the reconstruction as citizens of the Republic, equal before the law, all these transcendent virtues vanished like dew before the morning sun. And thus it ever is so long as woman labors to second ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Consul-General at the Emperor's court to be considered. If his mission was not actually official, it was semi-official at all events; and we were obliged to await his return. To give some colour to our delay, M. de Nion sent a fresh summons to Sidi Bousselam, pasha of Larrache, a clear-sighted and intelligent man, whom the Sultan had deputed to negotiate with us. A fresh extension of time was granted. I took advantage of it to get our consuls withdrawn, and went myself to Tangier to see to the sudden removal ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... David. While youth bears a child's heart, it is capable of sublime reticence. Perhaps, too, Lucien began to dread the Phocion's axe which David could wield when he chose, perhaps he was afraid to meet those clear-sighted eyes that read the depths of his soul. But when he read Chenier's poems with David, his secret rose from his heart to his lips at the sting of a reproach that he felt as the patient feels the probing ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... so palpable that even the Westminster Reviewer, though not the most clear-sighted of men, could not help seeing it. Accordingly, he attempts to guard himself against the objection, after the manner of such reasoners, by committing two blunders instead of one. "All this," says he, "only shows that the members of a government would do well if they were all-wise," and he proceeds ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... she is! Her nose is sharper than ever. Poor dear, she is plain!" reflected Dreda, candid and clear-sighted. ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Gerald was blind on occasions that did not seem to him to warrant any close attention, he was clear-sighted on those that did. He understood that something was amiss; and though her exclamation had, indeed, made him angry for a moment, he was now sorry; he felt that she was unhappy, and he couldn't bear people to be unhappy. 'I've done something that ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... making an effort to bring the glass steadily to my lips, "you are a capital fellow—a clear-sighted, sensible, capital ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... not very clear-sighted, they permitted themselves to be dazzled by modernity and promises of light and liberty, and forswore the ideal of the re-nationalization of Israel, so placing themselves outside the fellowship bond that united, by a common hope, the great masses of the Jews who were still ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... Coombe Hills, on the extreme southern edge of Berkshire, and not far removed from the great highway leading from Bath to London, lies the farmery where this restless, petulant, suffering, earnest, clear-sighted Tull put down the burden of life, a hundred and twenty years ago. The house is unfortunately largely modernized, but many of the out-buildings remain unchanged; and not a man thereabout, or in any other quarter, could tell me where the former occupant, who fought so bravely his fierce battle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... worst of all, the fine instincts of Ireland's glorious youth were being corrupted and perverted. The cry of "Up the Mollies!" became the watchword of the new movement and the creed of selfishness and sectarianism supplanted the evangel of self-denial and self-sacrifice. It was a time when clear-sighted and earnest men almost lost hope, if they did not lose faith. To be held in subjection by the tyranny of a stronger power was a calamity of destiny to be resisted, but that the people should themselves bind the chains of a more sordid tyranny of selfishness around their spirits ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... to men. Elise listened to the good counsellors; she conversed long with them, and the more pure recollections they sent into her soul the lighter it became therein. The light of love was kindled in her, and in its light she became clear-sighted in many directions. She saw now what it was right for her to do respecting her novel, and this revelation warmed her heart. She knew also that this was the only one she should ever write, and that her husband should never again miss her from the tea-table, and therefore ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... Serbia! Thy clear-sighted spirit was to have but a glimpse of one of the most essential necessities of the Serbian people. Thy frail and fragile body has not permitted thee to enjoy the pleasure to which thou hast devoted so much love. For the well-being of this dear people thou hast given thyself entirely, ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... as the greater; it is she who bears in her hands the rich metal from which Hope forges her anchor, and the strong cords that hold it; her experience supplies all the colours with which her sister paints the dim distance; and she it is who makes the other bold to be sure of the future, and clear-sighted to see the things that are not as though they were. To love the Lord is the path, and the only path, to hoping in the Lord. So had the psalmist found it for himself. In his changeful, perilous years ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... thin-skinned. But then I do not tell it, I do not show it; I conceal it very well, I think. Without any doubt, I am thought to be one of the most indifferent men in the world. I am sceptical, which is not the same thing, sceptical because I am clear-sighted. And my eyes say to my heart, Hide yourself, old fellow, you are grotesque, and ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... chance frequently brings about." While affecting to be deeply engaged in examining the ladder, the mind of Dantes was, in fact, busily occupied by the idea that a person so intelligent, ingenious, and clear-sighted as the abbe might probably be able to solve the dark mystery of his own misfortunes, where he ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... at that plastic and impressionable age were bound to leave in the boy a profound mistrust of life. The young man learned to reflect, which is a destructive process, a reckoning of the cost. It is not the clear-sighted who lead the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm mental fog, which the pitiless cold blasts of the father's analysis had ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... said—and as he said it, there was no elation in him, only a clear-sighted vision of a life of struggle, toil, torment, defeat, in front of him, something so hard and arduous that the new Peter Westcott that had now been born seemed small indeed to ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... incomprehensible that a monarch so clear-sighted, himself the daily witness of my demeanour, one well acquainted with mankind, and conscious I wanted neither money, honour, nor hope of future preferment; I say it is incomprehensible that he should really suppose me guilty. I take God to witness, and all those who knew ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... first to equal, then to surpass, the splendors of the oldest and most famous dynasties. This insatiable thirst for action and for renown was to be the source of Napoleon's strength and also of his weakness. But only a few clear-sighted men made these reflections when the Empire began. The masses, with their easy optimism, looked upon the new Emperor as an infallibly impeccable being, and thought that since he had not yet been beaten, he was invincible. Josephine indulged in no such illusions; ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... despotism, and who trusted that their system would be restored by a reconciliation of James with the Tory Parliament they expected to be returned. Halifax however, though he had long acted with the Tories, was too clear-sighted for hopes such as these. He had taken no part in the invitation or revolt, but now that the revolution was successful he pressed upon William the impossibility of carrying out a new system of government with such a sovereign ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... her weakness, and want of sincerity to himself; Adeline, for such unjustifiable management and manoeuvring; and young Taylor, for what he called his "presumption and puppyism." And to think that he, Harry Hazlehurst, who prided himself upon being clear-sighted, had been so completely deceived by others, and what was worse, by himself! He was obliged to remember how sure he had felt himself of Jane; it was humiliating to think what a silly part he had been ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... her—enough to be our united portions of future pain—suffer you no more, therefore. You are too young, tender and credulous to try a fall with that creature. She must have divined long ago that you were enamored of her. She is not too clear-sighted in all things, but she sees such effects by intuition. It is very probable that she has returned to this house on your account, so suddenly. I could guess that she was on the eve of flight, but not that she would ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... more slowly, and dipping his bread into the soup. His skin had become burning, and especially his forehead, where the veins were throbbing. But suddenly the church bells began to ring. Mass was over, and instinct rather than fear, the instinct of prudence, which guides all beings and makes them clear-sighted in danger, made the carpenter get up. He put the remains of the loaf into one pocket and the brandy bottle into the other, and he furtively went to the window and looked out into the road. It was still deserted, so he jumped ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... any thing, father, he is clear-sighted for his own interest. He knows the road he is going to take, you ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... Caribbean and the filibuster shared her good graces with the buccaneer, without the latter being jealous in the slightest degree?" The Gascon asked himself still further what could be the object of Blue Beard in offering her hand to him, and what price she would put upon this union. He was too clear-sighted not to have noticed the lively emotion, sincere on the part of the widow, when she showed such indignation that the adventurer should believe her capable of playing a comedy in offering her hand. On this point Croustillac had not deceived ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... young, has not yet, like his illustrious rivals of the Rhine Province, been the object of minute enquiries and copious and innumerable reports. But the incidents which I have just mentioned and which are vouched for by such men as Professor Mackenzie and M. Duchatel, the learned and clear-sighted vice-president of the Societe Universelle d'Etudes Psychiques,[1] who went to Mannheim for the express purpose of studying them, appear to be no more controvertible than the Elbenfeld occurrences, of which they are a sort ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... either of the preceding novels, but soon becomes in fact the dullest and most wearisome of the three. During a portion of this novel he seems to have taken for his model of narrative the "Wilhelm Meister" of Goethe; but the calm domestic manner which is tolerable in the clear-sighted man, who we know can rise nobly from it when he pleases, accords ill enough with the bewildered, most displeasing, and half intelligible story which Andersen has here ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... the queen's passion; she being a person so much above him, and, by the suffrages of all her people, already destined to Lysimantes: Besides, that he was prepossessed (as the queen somewhere hints it to him) with another inclination, which rendered him less clear-sighted in it, since no man, at the same time, can distinctly view two different objects; and if this, with any shew of reason, may be defended, I leave my masters, the critics, to determine, whether it be not much more conducing ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... compassion of Daudet. In Hawthorne and in George Eliot there is no aristocratic remoteness; and Turgenieff and Tolstoi are innocent of haughty condescension. Everywhere now in the new century can we perceive the working of the democratic spirit, making literature more clear-sighted, more tolerant, more pitying. ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... the only man who really knew very much about him as a cavalry officer, and Stannard's opinion was what brought it all about. They had served for some months at the same post, and both the major and his clear-sighted wife had taken a fancy to the young officer, whose first appearance in "citified garb and a pince-nez" gave little promise of future usefulness in the field. Pelham and Stannard knew that it had to be Billings ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... I broke out, "there is no delusion like your own. On all points but one you are a man, frank, healthful, right-thinking, clear-sighted: on this exceptional point you are but a slave. I declare, where Miss Fanshawe is concerned, you merit no respect; nor have ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... had a clear-sighted, kind-hearted teacher (Batsch). His natural system of botany[20] gave me great satisfaction, although I had always a painful perception of how much still remained for him to classify. However, my view of Nature as one whole became by his means substantially clearer, ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... indifference. Bohemund, animated himself by a worldly spirit, did not know the true character of the Crusaders, nor understand the religious madness which had brought them in such shoals from Europe. A priest, more clear-sighted, devised a scheme which restored all their confidence, and inspired them with a courage so wonderful as to make the poor sixty thousand emaciated, sick, and starving zealots put to flight the well-fed and six times as numerous legions of the Sultan ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... operations; until our career was unfortunately checked by the indiscretion of my ally, who, being detected in the very act of conveying a card, was immediately introduced to a magistrate. And this minister of justice was so curious, inquisitive, and clear-sighted, that Count Maurice, finding it impossible to elude his penetration, was fain to stipulate for his own safety, by giving up his friend to the cognisance of the law. I was accordingly apprehended, before I knew the cause of my arrest; and being unhappily known by some soldiers of ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... myself to the decision of your lordship; the line is, therefore, Latin. Yet I may be permitted to hint that were your lordship disposed to submit this question, as you are shortly about to do another and a similar one, to those clear-sighted and intelligent gentlemen there, I am satisfied, my lord, it would be Greek to every ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... and looked at me intently. Instinctively I shrank into myself. She seemed to be in some swift, clear-sighted way taking my measure, and labeling the visible marks of my personality. Then she came graciously forward, her step reminding me, in its smooth, gliding motion, of some graceful animal of the jungle that might both fascinate ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... of the vampires or vroucolacas, which concern only what he considered a heretical church, and with which, therefore, he might deal according to his own will—apply to them the ordinary rules of evidence, and treat them as mundane affairs—there he is clear-sighted, critical and acute, and accordingly he discusses the matter philosophically and logically, and concludes without fear of sinning against the church, that the whole is delusion. When, on the other hand, he has ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... "It is almost thirty years," Mr. Carlyle wrote, "since my acquaintance with him began; and on my side, I may say, every new meeting ripened it into more and more clear discernment of his rare and great worth as a brother man: a most cordial, sincere, clear-sighted, quietly decisive, just and loving man: till at length he had grown to such a recognition with me as I have rarely had for any man of my time. This I can tell you three, for it is true and will be welcome to you: to others less concerned I had as soon ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... he said to himself. "Uncommonly clear-sighted woman, Louisa. But a trifle hard. Wonder if Barking ever feels that, now? Not very sensitive man, Barking, though. Suppose that hardness in Louisa comes of her having no children. Always plenty of children in our family—except ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Count, I mean—to whom, in your place, I should go for assistance if there is trouble about Dick." She was thinking of what Tremayne had told her of the attitude of the Portuguese Government, and her clear-sighted mind perceived an obvious peril in permitting Count Samoval to become aware of Dick's whereabouts should ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they found it. He may be right or wrong in his opinion: but he is too clear-sighted to be unjust. He is simple as he is forcible, and as brief ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Brewster was "hiding in England" when the SPEEDWELL sailed from Delfshaven. There can be no doubt that, with his ever ready welcome of sound amendment, he will, on examination, revise his opinion, as would the clear-sighted Goodwin, if living and cognizant of the facts as marshalled against his evident error. As the leader and guide of the outgoing part of the Leyden church we may, with good warrant, believe—as all would wish—that Elder Brewster was the ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... suspense or in grave suspicion. In respect to very many questions a wise man's mind rests long in a state neither of belief nor of unbelief. But your intellectually short-sighted people are apt to be preternaturally clear-sighted, and to find their way very plain to positive conclusions upon one side or the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sensual, playing upon the vanity of his patrons, playing upon their vulgar sentimentality, playing upon their vulgar pietisms and their vulgar materialism, Sludge after all is less the wronger than the wronged. Who made him what he is? Who, keen and clear-sighted enough in fields which they had not selected as their special parade-ground for self-conceit, trained him on to knavery and self-degradation? Who helped him through his blunders with ingenious excuses—"the manifestations ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... efforts he made, and however firmly he adhered to his resolution of silence, the hypochondria from which he suffered could not escape the notice of the 'grand chasserot'. He was not clear-sighted enough to discern the causes, but he could observe the effects. It provoked him to find that all his efforts to enliven his cousin had proved futile. He had cudgelled his brains to comprehend whence came ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... who are endowed with creative power—have much difficulty in adapting themselves to the technical drudgery of preparatory criticism: they are far from despising it; on the contrary, they hold it in honour, if they are clear-sighted; but they shrink from devoting themselves to it, for fear of using a razor, as is said, to cut stones. "I have no mind," wrote Leibnitz to Basnage, who had exhorted him to compile an immense Corpus of unpublished ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... words in the shop in Brunford. Perhaps because he had roused some personal antipathy. Anyhow, in her heart of hearts was the longing to see him beaten. And yet she was afraid. She did not like the idea of spending so much time at Howden Clough. She was too clear-sighted to be blind to Wilson's intentions, and she felt sure as to ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... that there may not be a third solution to the mystery?" asked Roger, who was clear-sighted and somewhat matter-of-fact. "There being a good many people who desire to have it supposed that the Duke is the rightful heir to the throne of England, it is possible that the paper was a bold forgery, ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... political resolution on account of this very course of action, namely, that he assisted the enemies of Florence to extricate themselves from their dilemmas. Such criticism fails entirely to understand both the aim and the scope of his policy. He desired to keep Italy for the Italians. His clear-sighted sagacity saw nothing but danger in the plans of Ludovico of Milan to invite the French King into Italy, or in those of Venice to encourage the Duke of Lorraine to press his claims upon Milan. The intervention ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... expensive obstacles to its humors. And I have not heard, either in public, or from any of themselves, a clear expression of their own conception of their use. So that it seems thus to become needful for all men to tell them, as our one quite clear-sighted teacher, Carlyle, has been telling us for many a year, that the use of the Lords of a country is to govern the country. If they answer that use, the country will rejoice in keeping them; if not, that will become of them which must of all things found ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... child, was not only in need of counsel and guidance, but had no one else of her own sex to whom she could so naturally look for information or advice. They were, as she explained to Mercy, her only society; and, though she was too clear-sighted not to see their faults, and not at times to be aware that she was suffering from their perverseness, she, like other people, was often compelled to tolerate what she could not mend, and to shut her eyes to disagreeable ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... did not die at this time: and Controller-General Calonne, now again eager to shake off an importunate and far too clear-sighted Mirabeau Junior, said to the latter: 'Back to Berlin, could n't you? Their King is dying, a new King coming; highly important to us!'—and poor Mirabeau went. Left Paris again, in May; with money furnished, but, no other outfit, and more in the character of Newspaper ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... bold and clear-sighted deduction from the lessons of history, which revolutionary politicians in Asia, where no nationalities have yet been formed, may well take to heart. Parliamentary institutions, as Lord Acton has well said, presuppose ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... pious fervor in this florid sentiment. But as she was honest and clear-sighted, she could not accept a statement which seemed so plainly in contradiction with his common teachings, without bringing his flattering assertion to the test of ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... ready appreciation and the note of earnest remonstrance in the Graaf Reinet speech is apparent enough. The despatch is dated June 23rd, 1897; the speech was delivered on March 3rd, 1898. What had happened in this interval of nine months to produce so marked a change in the mind of the genial, clear-sighted Englishman, who, as Mr. Asquith said, took with him to South Africa "as sympathetic an imagination" as any man of his acquaintance? Nemo repente fuit turpissimus. Whether the diagnosis of his Graaf Reinet speech was ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... yourself. You are too conceited to be sociable; he is not. I am an obscure, weak-minded woman,—weak-minded, you know, compared with men. I can be patronized,—yes, that's the word. Would you be equally amiable with a person as strong, as clear-sighted as yourself, with a person equally averse with yourself to being under an obligation? I think not. Of course it's delightful to charm people. Who wouldn't? There is no harm in it, as long as the charmer does not sit up for a public ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... position affect young women very differently, according to their various dispositions. Had Elinor been weak and vain, she would have fallen into the hands of a fortune-hunter. Had she been of a gloomy temper, disgust at the coarse plots and manoeuvres, so easily unravelled by a clear-sighted person, might have made her a prey to suspicion, and all but misanthropic. Had she been vulgar-minded, she would have been purse-proud; if cold-hearted, she would have become only the more selfish. Vanity would have made ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... out of the beaten track, our dialect offered others hardly inferior. As I was about to make an endeavor to state them, I remembered something that the clear-sighted Goethe had said about Hebel's 'Allemannische Gedichte,' which, making proper deduction for special reference to the book under review, expresses what I would have said far better than I could hope to do: 'Allen diesen innern guten Eigenschaften ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... country is a peasantry speaking a patois that is often of varying inflections, but is always full of racy poetry, illiterate and yet possessed of a vast oral literature, sharing brains with other classes more equally than education, humorous, nimble-witted; clear-sighted, astute, cynical, not too virtuous, and having a lofty, contempt for the wiseacres ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... of Sir Walter Raleigh consists in the clairvoyance with which he perceived and the energy with which he combated this monstrous assumption. Other noble Englishmen of his time, and before his time, had been clear-sighted and had struck hard against the evil tyranny of Spanish dynastic militarism, but no other man before or since was so luminously identified with resistance. He struts upon the stage of battle with the limelight ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... a nation still in war with him); leave no room to doubt of His Majesty's inclination to give England all securities and advantages for their trade, which they can reasonably demand. But as His Majesty cannot persuade himself, that a government, so clear-sighted as ours, will insist upon conditions which must absolutely destroy the trade of France and Spain, as well as that of all other nations of Europe, he thinks the demands made by Great Britain may require a ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... clear-sighted interpretations of the mind and life of Dante, and of the history-making Commedia, attest the importance of including the poet and his work in this record of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... As a bold navigator Columbus won the fame of a world-discoverer; but he never knew himself what he had found; and if Mr. Winsor's estimate is just, it is not altogether unfitting that the name of a more clear-sighted voyager than he should be given to the world ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... too. Mr. Conquest pointed it out to me. He took no advantage of my ignorance. As a matter of fact, I wasn't ignorant at all. I was extremely clear-sighted and wise. My love for you made me so. I knew—I felt it—that money might fail to do what I wanted. But I knew too that there was one thing that wouldn't fail. If you were innocent—and I wasn't wholly sure that you were—I knew there was one energy that would surely prove you so—and that ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... and many Frenchmen of note who were less clear-sighted. Livingston encountered rebuff after rebuff, and delay after delay. Talleyrand met him with his usual front of impenetrable duplicity. He calmly denied everything connected with the cession of Louisiana until even the details became public ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... discerning few what he really is at his best—their greatest earthly friend and benefactor. All I have seen of American schoolboys impresses me that the feeling which dictates their bearing toward their teachers is born of a clear-sighted and intuitive appreciation of superior knowledge, worth or experience, and not of conventional observance or necessity. It is generally said abroad that American children are unruly, forward and irreverent toward their parents and elders; and one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... touch of flunkeyism in this? Not so; it is the clear-sighted scientific Greek, that ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... something already, in her tentative delineation, of that "piercing and overpowering tenderness which glorifies the poet of Pompilia." Festus, Michal's husband, the friend and adviser of Paracelsus, is a man of simple nature and thoughtful mind, cautious yet not cold, clear-sighted rather than far-seeing, yet not without enthusiasm; perhaps a little narrow and commonplace, as the prudent are apt to be. He, like Michal, has no influence on the external action of the poem. Aprile, the Italian poet whom Paracelsus encounters in the second scene, is an integral part ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... however, in 1862 the more powerful element had rallied to and upheld the government. The court and the army were so loud in their admiration of the profound policy of the Emperor that those who heeded the croakings of the few clear-sighted men composing the ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... generally are too acute and clear-sighted to fall into such a palpable contradiction as this. It is a common accusation against them, that they believe one to be three, and three one; but this charge is, in most cases, unjust. This would be only true in case they affirmed that God is three in the same way in which he is one; but they do ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... not easily make a wrong use of either their feelings or conclusions. On the other hand, the value of the critic's observations mainly depends upon the correctness of their application to the individual case, and since for one clear-sighted critic there have always been fifty ingenious ones, it would have been a wonder if this application had always been applied with all that caution which is required to hold the balance equally between the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... railway and industrial shares have been forced enormously above the standard of actual values, and innumerable persons have parted with good money in exchange for mere phantoms of imaginary values. At such times the short sales of discernment, directing the X rays of clear-sighted criticism into the swollen and opaque mass of financial carrion that is exposed for sale in the market, are of the utmost benefit to the public. The bear is then a benefactor to the community, and when ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... alternative, all the difficulties, great or small, of Communism would be but as dust in the balance."—John Stuart Mill, "Principles of Political Economy." Mill strove diligently to "reform" the bourgeois world, and to "bring it to reason." Of course, in vain. And so it came about that he, like all clear-sighted men, became a Socialist. He dared not, however, admit the fact in his life time, but ordered that, after his death, his auto-biography be published, containing his Socialist confession of faith. It happened to him as with Darwin, who cared not to be known in his life as ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... all that is feeble and unsightly and vulgar with anger and disdain, like the man in the parable who took advantage of his being forgiven a great debt to exact a tiny one. The tragedy is that the knock-kneed clerk is all in all to himself. In clear-sighted and imaginative moments, he may realise in a sudden flash of horrible insight that he is so far from being what he would desire to be, so unheroic, so loosely strung, so deplorable—and yet that he can do so little to bridge the gap. The only method of manufacturing ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Durer blush. He did not say a word in answer. The little man, who was very clear-sighted, said—"This young fellow is ashamed to own that he belongs to a poor shepherd in the village hard by. Bad heart—strong head—detestable nature! This boy will never make anything but a diplomatist." Then, after a moment's reflection, he said to ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... astonished if you find me do any sort of good—you can't help it, how can you, when it's just and true? Do you know I sometimes have had absurd dreams of what I might have been if you had not been so terribly clear-sighted. You stood in your white frock under the old mulberry tree—your first long skirt—and you saw that I was no good, and you were perfectly right, but, after all, what is your life to ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... happiness are altogether empirical, i.e., they must be borrowed from experience, and nevertheless the idea of happiness requires an absolute whole, a maximum of welfare in my present and all future circumstances. Now it is impossible that the most clear-sighted and at the same time most powerful being (supposed finite) should frame to himself a definite conception of what he really wills in this. Does he will riches, how much anxiety, envy, and snares might he not thereby draw upon his shoulders? Does he will knowledge and discernment, ...
— Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals • Immanuel Kant
... personal development? Does he not miss much from the lack of the world's hearty give-and-take? He gets criticism, but not of a just or all-round kind. Small things may be pecked at, trifles may be made mountains of by the disgruntled, but where does he get a clear-sighted, whole-hearted estimate of himself and his work? Who tells him of his real virtues, his real faults? Among all his friends, who is there, man or woman, who is ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... be said that Lena put all this into words, even to herself: but such thoughts were there, or those very much like them. She was given to reasoning and pondering over things in the recesses of her own mind, and she was uncommonly clear-sighted for a girl of her age. Probably the child was ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... not only happy in a fine imagination, a great memory, an excellent understanding, and an exact judgment, but had all these crowned by virtue and piety: she was too learned to be vain, too wise to be conceited, too knowing and too clear-sighted to irreligious. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... Atahuallpa was not one of those to whom, in the language of the Grecian bard, "the Gods are willing to reveal themselves." 17 He had not read the handwriting on the heavens. The small speck, which the clear-sighted eye of his father had discerned on the distant verge of the horizon, though little noticed by Atahuallpa, intent on the deadly strife with his brother, had now risen high towards the zenith, spreading wider and wider, till it wrapped the skies in darkness, and was ready to ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... that helped," said James. Then, laying his hand on the youth's shoulder: "And what is My wrapt John dreaming of? I was not yonder in the mist; I was here with you, I tell you, friends: He is blind who sees without believing, and clear-sighted ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... occurrence at a moment of unprecedented success. Resolute not to recur to his ancient Orangeism, yet desperate after his discomfiture of rallying a moderate party around his ministry, his practical mind, more clear-sighted than foreseeing, was alarmed at the absence of all influences for the government of Ireland. The tranquillity which might result from a reformed tenure of the soil, must, if attainable, be a distant blessing, and at present he saw only the obstacles to ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... then we felt that a new misfortune was lurking in the silent house, for the health of Jane Hamerton, who had never been very strong, now began to disquiet her friends, particularly my husband, whose affection for her was very true and tender. Aunt Susan, who was her devoted but clear-sighted nurse, wrote to us in the course of the summer that her case was very serious, notwithstanding the short periods of improvement occurring at intervals. The poor girl had grown very weak and lost her appetite; almost constantly feverish, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... requires an occasion. The common man is helpless in an emergency: assailed by contradictory suggestions, or confused by his incapacity, he cannot see his way. The hour of emergency finds a hero calm and strong, and strong because calm and clear-sighted; he sees what can be done, and does it. This is often a thing of great simplicity, so that we marvel others did not see it. Now it has been done, and proved successful, many underrate its value, thinking ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... was not of good laws, but of men strong enough and courageous enough to administer them. He would see: if the good to be accomplished were great enough to over-balance the evil ... it was a temptation to compromise—a sharp temptation; and he found himself longing for Patricia, for her clear-sighted comment which, he felt sure, would go straight to ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... the highest degree, believed that another learned man, his friend and greatest admirer, was his bitter enemy. All efforts to convince him to the contrary were fruitless, for although remarkably clear-sighted on most other subjects, he obstinately refused on this to listen to the truth. Indeed, the remonstrances of his friends had the effect of strengthening his conviction that the reptile, as he called the supposed ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... surface of any Elizabethan document. The most diligent explorers of these documents, in two centuries and a quarter, had not found it. No faintest suspicion of it had ever crossed the mind of the most recent, and clear-sighted, and able investigator of the Baconian remains. It was buried in the lowest depths of the lowest deeps of the deep Elizabethan Art; that Art which no plummet, till now, has ever sounded. It was locked with its utmost reach of traditionary ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... for a moment, and Took up the other—held them both— As might a friend, I will take oath: Spoke leisurely, as might a man Praying for no thing other than He thinks Heaven's justice;—She was blind, I said, and yet a noble mind Most truly loved her; one whose fond Clear-sighted vision looked beyond The bounds of her infirmity, And saw the woman, perfectly Modeled, and wrought out pure and true And lovable. She quailed, and drew Her hands away, but closer still I caught them. "Rack me as you will!" She cried out ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... as necessary as eating, drinking or any other business. Statesmen like Machiavelli and Bacon were keen for the largest armies {488} possible, as the mainstay of a nation's power. Only Erasmus was a clear-sighted pacifist, always declaiming against war and once asserting that he agreed with Cicero in thinking the most unjust peace preferable to the justest war. Elsewhere he admitted that ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... success of which might win for himself and his successors a wider constituency and a more stable following. The error in judgment is excusable in one who had never veiled his sympathy with the Italian cause, and had hitherto found it no hindrance to his popularity; but so clear-sighted a man as Gracchus must have felt at times that he was staking, not only his own career, but the fate of the programme and the party which he had built up, on the chance of securing an end, which had ceased to be regarded as the mere removal of an obstacle and had grown to be looked on ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... regarded her adopted brother, and personal jealousy made him more clear-sighted as to the possibility of her affection ripening into love than her father had as yet become; and gladly would the rival of the unsuspecting Henrich have blackened him in the eyes of the Chieftain, and caused him to be banished from ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... alone opposed the bill in the House, and with clear-sighted sense (though the stock had risen from 130 to 300 in one day) denounced "the dangerous practice of stock-jobbing, and the general infatuation, which must," he said, "end in general ruin." Rumours of free trade with Spain pushed the shares up to 400, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... people who do not appreciate him. For I have observed that there are people who (having no children of their own) hold very just and severe views about spoiled boys and girls, but who (having dogs of their own) are much less clear-sighted on the subject of spoiled terriers and Pomeranians. And I do not want to be like that—dear ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... was not dealing with a booby, but with a sensible clear-sighted man, and so studied to express myself in a way which would not for an instant give him the impression that I was promising to marry him because—what I don't know and it doesn't matter much, ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... consciousness of a purpose that filled his life, a dignity which made him unapproachable. He had the expression of a thinker, meditation dwelt on the fine nobly carved brow. You could tell from the dark bright eyes, so clear-sighted and quick to observe, that their owner was wont to probe to the bottom of things. He gesticulated very little, his demeanor was grave. Lucien felt an ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... of the school-yard and street, in respect to challenges, fights, and contests of all sorts, has an atmosphere of its own, through which sometimes the most clear-sighted older heads ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... means exhaust the case; but I have said enough in support of conclusions anticipated by Grimm's clear-sighted genius and confirmed by every fresh discovery. Let me, therefore, recapitulate the results of the investigations contained in this and the two preceding chapters. We have rapidly examined several types of fairy tales in which the hero, detained in Fairyland, is unconscious ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... to the sovereignty of the rest of Italy. This has been their policy for centuries. It is their policy still; and that policy has been the curse of Italy. This fatal gift of the patrimony of St. Peter—as Dante saw—as Machiavelli saw,—as all clear-sighted Italians have seen,—as we are seeing it now in these very days—has kept her divided, torn by civil wars, conquered and reconquered by foreign invaders. Unable, as a celibate ecclesiastic, to form his dominions into a strong hereditary ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... frequently referred to, and always thus. The clear-sighted, great old man, already perceives how much his fame will owe to such an apostle and preacher of his faith—for he sees also what Carlyle himself will become. The mention of Lockhart ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... were having their teeth set on edge because their parents had eaten sour political grapes. Then think of the young men themselves! Many of them had no illusions about the policy that led to the war: they went clear-sighted to a horribly repugnant duty. Men essentially gentle and essentially wise, with really valuable work in hand, laid it down voluntarily and spent months forming fours in the barrack yard, and stabbing sacks of straw in the ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... repulsive, but also for the most part both clumsy and unsuitable. He flattered himself, that in knowledge of men and the world, in an acquaintance with courts and politics, he surpassed the most shrewd and clear-sighted observers. With a mind naturally alive to honour, he yet conceived the design of taking in hand the "doctrine of the murderous Machiavel;" and displays, broadly and didactically, all the knowledge which he had acquired of these arts. He had no suspicion that a remorseless ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... the province of Tenasserim, as "the Directors of the East India Company looked upon this territory as of no value to them." For a quarter of a century peace was preserved, for there ruled at Ava a prince "who was too clear-sighted to attempt again to measure arms with the British troops." Anon he was succeeded by a new king—the Pagan Prince—"who cared for nothing but mains of cocks, games, and other infantile amusements," and who, after the manner of Oriental despots, inaugurated his reign by putting to death ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... "and then he is so clear-sighted, intelligent, and energetic; so conscientious in regard to what he owes to his employer that he takes just as much interest in the business as ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... which they can perform. Other mobs are dull masses; which roll onwards with a dull fierce tenacity, a dull fierce heat, but emit no light-flashes of genius as they go. The French mob, again, is among the liveliest phenomena of our world. So rapid, audacious; so clear-sighted, inventive, prompt to seize the moment; instinct with life to its finger-ends! That talent, were there no other, of spontaneously standing in queue, distinguishes, as we said, the French People from all ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... building was declared open and another important project initiated by the Prince of Wales had reached completion. The London Times of the succeeding day referred with accuracy, in this connection, to his "clear-sighted initiative and untiring energy" and a member of the Executive Committee, which had the enterprise in hand, wrote to the same paper that during the past six years "every important step in connection with the Institute ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... found urgent entreaties from the French Minister to the United States, and from Lafayette, to carry his fleet to the continent, where the clear-sighted genius of Washington had recognised already that the issue of the contest depended upon the navies. The French admiral declined to comply, as contrary to his instructions, and on the 16th of August sailed for Europe, with nineteen sail of the line, leaving ten at ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... Perhaps the clear-sighted Scarites has seen me in my corner, at the other end of the room; perhaps a subtle scent has revealed my presence to him. We will do more, then. I cover him with a bell-glass which will save him from being worried by the Flies and I leave the room; I go ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... the inevitable interview with Mr. Armstrong. He knew him to be a sharp man of business, clear-sighted and keen, and he felt that this part of the conference would be an awkward and embarrassing one. He had tried to nerve himself for the interview, and thought he had succeeded, but when the servant brought Mr. Armstrong's card he felt a sinking at his heart, ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... Ministry, he withdrew from public life on the outbreak of war with Austria, and remained in retirement during the dictatorship of Kossuth and the struggle of 1849. As a loyal friend to the Hapsburg dynasty, and a clear-sighted judge of the possibilities of the time, he stood apart while Kossuth dethroned the Sovereign and proclaimed Hungarian independence. Of the patriotism and the disinterestedness of Deak there was never the shadow of a doubt; a distinct political faith severed him from the leaders ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... personal intercourse with them, and was a new happiness to her. Studying daily a subject of such vast complications, her mind perceptibly grew, and from year to year she was able to grasp new and higher truths. She gained the hatred of a few clear-sighted opponents, but most persons only ridiculed her, contemptuously wondering why she should pursue this course when her interest lay so clearly the other way. But she was now far beyond the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... twenty-one years he passed from honor to honor in the Colony, living in much state, though personally always abstemious and restrained, and growing continually in the mildness and toleration, from which his contemporaries more and more diverged. Clear-sighted, and far in advance of his time, his moderation hindered any chafing or discontent, and his days, even when most absorbed in public interests, held a rare severity and calm. No act of all Bradstreet's life brought him ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... dropped her hand. "No, no. You've said good-by to the cinch, I can see that. You're on the road to opera boxes and limousines. What is your plan? What would you advise Wayland to do if you knew I was hard against his marrying you? Come, now, I can see you're a clear-sighted individual. What can he do to earn a living? How will you live without my aid? Have ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... he has done as a poet, as a preacher, as a reformer, and as a lecturer, I must say that I think he was made for a lawyer. Vigorous and acute, clear-sighted, self-possessed, and logical to a fault, if he had not married so early, or if a respectable inheritance had fallen to him, after he had learned to do without help or patronage, as Dr. Samuel Johnson did, while undergoing Lord Chesterfield, he might ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... volcano. She has little weaknesses, but is a real generous-hearted woman, which I suppose is the finest thing in the world.' Though neither mother nor son could be called beautiful, they make a pretty picture; the ugly, generous, ardent woman weaving rainbow illusions; the ugly, clear-sighted, loving son sitting at her side in one of his rare hours of pleasure, half- beguiled, half-amused, wholly admiring, as he listens. But as he goes home, and the fancy pictures fade, and Stowting is once more burthened with debt, and the noisy companions and the long hours ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ourselves? Briefly this, I think. In mundane matters, where the personal equation dominates, their judgment is apt to be turbid and perverse; but as one rises into questions of pure intelligence, it becomes serenely impartial. We, on the other hand, who are pre-eminently clear-sighted in worldly concerns of law and government and in all subsidiary branches of mentality, cannot bring ourselves to reason dispassionately on non-practical subjects. "L'esprit aussi a sa pudeur," says Remy de Gourmont. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... conscious of the evil. He recognized that the fault of the government lay in the fact that it did not govern, and he deplored that his own function, in a decadent age, was but "to prop up mouldering institutions." He was not constitutionally averse from change; and he was too clear-sighted not to see that, sooner or later, change was inevitable. But his interest was in the fascinating game of diplomacy; he was ambitious of playing the leading part on the great stage of international ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... be clear-sighted enough to see that the world needs from them not the same but different contributions to the upreach and onward march of the race from those elements in which man has excelled. If society-at-large is to become truly a family of those who love and serve each other, then human beings of the mother-sex ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... present, and Charles X., who looked too far into the future; it was moreover bound to accept the will of the king, though the king was deceiving and tricking it. This unfortunate youth, blind and yet clear-sighted, was counted as nothing by old men jealously keeping the reins of the State in their feeble hands, while the monarchy could have been saved by their retirement and the accession of this Young France, which the old doctrinaires, ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... Henry James, for instance, wrote a review of "Drum Taps" in the Nation, November 16, 1865. In the lusty heyday and assurance of twenty-two years, he laid the birch on smartly. It is just a little saddening to find that even so clear-sighted an observer as Henry James could not see through the chaotic form of Whitman to the great vision and throbbing music that seem so plain to us to-day. Whitman himself, writing about "Drum Taps" before its ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... scale. The Earl of Salisbury in his proposal formally invited the Parliament to adduce the grievances which it had, and promised in the King's name to redress all such so far as lay in his power. It is affirmed that his clear-sighted and vigorous speech made a favourable impression. Parliament in turn acceded to the proposal, and alleged its most important grievances. They affected both ecclesiastical and financial interests: among the latter class ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... effect of brutal violence on legal authority. Emboldened by success and by impunity, they reckon up their strength and the weakness of the latter. One blow more, and they are undisputed masters. Besides, the issue is already apparent to clear-sighted men. When the agitators of the public thoroughfares, and the porters at the street-corners, convinced of their superior wisdom, impose decrees by the strength of their lungs, of their fists, and of their pikes, at that moment experience, knowledge, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... observation, though they were not to dread it, if it could not be avoided. They were, however, on no account to enter a town, by night or by day, if they could help it. No one, indeed, could have arranged a more perfect plan than Miss Rosalie had done. There's nothing like the wits of an honest clear-sighted woman when people are in trouble, to get them out ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... the desert. No, he had deep and intricate roots in the past of his race and in the soil of his fatherland. But yet, how far are all the influences which we can trace, from accounting for the forceful energy, the clear-sighted sagacity, and the dominant genius of the man! As far as we can judge at this distance, his personality was the mightiest element that entered into the denouement of that bloody world-drama, the Thirty Years' War. Had he been other than he was, had he been a man of less heroic mould, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... of the Middle Ages as the British workman, except perhaps the British business man who employs him. Yet all who know even a little of the Middle Ages can see that the modern Trade Union is a groping for the ancient Guild. It is true that those who look to the Trade Union, and even those clear-sighted enough to call it the Guild, are often without the faintest tinge of mediaeval mysticism, or even of mediaeval morality. But this fact is itself the most striking and even staggering tribute to mediaeval morality. It has all the clinching ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... run his head against various regulations of the bureaucracy; and this let him know, with all the amenities of official censure, that if they could not recognize what he had done well, they were perfectly clear-sighted as to where ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... found the Chevalier de Guise was his rival, and the Chevalier knew that the Duke de Nemours was his; Monsieur de Guise was the only man in the Court that had unravelled this affair, his interest having made him more clear-sighted than others; the knowledge they had of each other's sentiments created an opposition between them in everything, which, however, did not break out into an open quarrel; they were always of different ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... definition, and classification, which gives it the air of being a parody of L'Esprit des Lois, is yet full of originality, of lively anecdote and keen observation. Nobody but Beyle could have written it; nobody but Beyle could have managed to be at once so stimulating and so jejune, so clear-sighted and so exasperating. But here again, in reality, it is not the question at issue that is interesting—one learns more of the true nature of Love in one or two of La Bruyere's short sentences than in all Beyle's three hundred pages of disquisition; but what is absorbing is the ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... Barrett, 'as he called her. Certain it is that, with the intuition of genius, Elizabeth Barrett understood, appreciated, and made allowances for the unhappy man more completely than was possible to any other of his contemporaries. Clear-sighted to his faults and weaknesses, her chivalrous spirit took up arms in defence of his conduct, even against the strictures of her poet-lover. 'The dreadful death of poor Mr. Haydon the artist,' she wrote to her friend Mrs. Martin, a few days after the event, 'has quite ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... gods had admonished him to do anything, it was as impossible to make him take a contrary resolution as it would have been to have prevailed with him in a journey to change a guide that was clear-sighted for one that knew not the way, and was blind likewise. For this reason he pitied their folly, who, to avoid the derision of men, live not according to the admonitions and commands of the gods; and he beheld with contempt all the ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... resemblances. The Emperor has indeed several accomplishments, more especially in artistic matters, which, so far as I can learn, the President has not; but both are ambitious in the noblest sense; both are young men of deep beliefs and high aims; earnest, vigorous, straightforward, clear-sighted; good speakers, yet sturdy workers, and anxious for the prosperity, but above all things jealous for the honor of the people whose affairs they are called to administer. The President's accounts of difficulties in finding men for responsible positions in various ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... urged in a less agreeable manner, would have been intolerable; they were not universally tolerated as it was: but the gifts and graces of the critic made them—so far—inoffensive, even rather fascinating, to all save the least accommodating or the most clear-sighted, and to ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... in progress, which their world was to take, to make this their aim, and to expend their energy in promoting it. World-historical men—the heroes of an epoch—must, therefore, be recognized as its clear-sighted ones; their deeds, their words are the best of that time. Great men have formed purposes to satisfy themselves, not others. Whatever prudent designs and counsels they might have learned from others would be the more limited and inconsistent features in their career; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... "This clear-sighted man has mentioned a suspicion which I myself had already felt. A worldly-minded young Christian of your rank is not so ready to give up earthly joys and happiness for the doubtful bliss of your Paradise ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ever-recurring and favorite toast of "Here's your goot healt' and your family's, and may dey live long and prosper." The meditative and philosophic Rip is signaled by the abstract "Ja," which sometimes means yes, and sometimes means no. The shrewd and clear-sighted Rip is marked by the interview with Derrick Van Beekman. The thoughtful and kind-hearted Rip makes his appearance in that sad consciousness of his uselessness and the little influence he exerts when he says to the children, talking of their future marriage: "I thought maybe you might want ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... probably it would be to an Italian too; but in England there are many women that have a purely imaginative idealism, a romanticism fed on ridiculous novels, and they fall into traps like these, which seem clumsy and grotesque to you here in the South, where people are more clear-sighted and realistic." ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... liberated the world, not as a system of ethics, not as a philosophy of altruism, but by its revelation of the power of pure and unselfish love. Its vital principle is not its code, but its motive. Love, clear-sighted, loyal, personal, is its breath and immortality. Christ came, not to save Himself, assuredly, but to save the world. His motive, His example, are every man's key to his own gifts and happiness. The ethical ...
— When a Man Comes to Himself • Woodrow Wilson
... nature of the Fourth Dimension—heard that it was an inhabited plane—invisible to our eyes, but omnipresent; heard that I had seen it when Bell Harry had reeled before my eyes. I heard the Dimensionists described: a race clear-sighted, eminently practical, incredible; with no ideals, prejudices, or remorse; with no feeling for art and no reverence for life; free from any ethical tradition; callous to pain, weakness, suffering and ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... to the temptation to write to her, probably because in his inmost heart he knew too well that if she wanted him she would write—on some other excuse. He had been in a curious way clear-sighted about her from the first; he had always acknowledged that strain of insincerity, but he had fallen into the error of believing that underneath all those shifting sands there was at last bedrock and that it was his hand which was ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... his reign; but this was the only reproach he could level at fate; and when we murmur at fate ourselves our complaints have much the same value. For the rest, it is legitimate enough to suppose that there needed but one single act of energy, absolute loyalty, disinterested, clear-sighted wisdom, to change the whole course of events. If the flight to Varennes—in itself an act of duplicity and culpable weakness—had only been arranged a little less childishly, foolishly (as any man would have arranged it who was accustomed to the habits of life), there ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... in the meshes of a net; but looked forth shy yet serene, accepting the position in which it found itself. For Faircloth inspired her with deepening faith. He needed no guiding, as she told herself; but was strong enough, as his words convincingly testified, clear-sighted and quick-witted enough, to play his part in the complicated drama without prompting. Hadn't he done just what she asked?—Stayed until, by operation of some quality in himself or—could it be?—simply through the mysterious ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... did not neglect any of his tasks. Like the least of our parish priests, he prepared the neophytes for the Sacraments. He was an incomparable catechist, so clear-sighted and scrupulous that his instructions may still be taken as models by the catechists of to-day. Neither did he, as an aristocrat of the intelligence, only trouble himself with persons of culture, and leave to his deacons the care of God's common people. All had a right to his ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... of child-like simplicity,' he has himself observed,[39] 'which genius impresses on its works, it shows also in its private life and manners. It is bashful, for nature is ever so; but it is not prudish, for only corruption is prudish. It is clear-sighted, for nature can never be the contrary; but it is not cunning, for this only art can be. It is faithful to its character and inclinations; but not so much because it is directed by principles, as because after all vibrations ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... white as the linen of her shift, and little beads of sweat stood out at the roots of her hair. Andor, whose love for her made him clear-sighted and keen, saw the look of obstinacy which had crept round her mouth—the sudden obstinacy of the meek, which nothing can move. He alone could see what this sudden obstinacy meant to her, whose natural instincts were those ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... powerful, but formidable, to the hour of the total ruin of the monarchy. This fall of the monarchy was far from being preceded by any exterior symptoms of decline. The interior were not visible to every eye; and a thousand accidents might have prevented the operation of what the most clear-sighted were not able to discern nor the most provident to divine. A very little time before its dreadful catastrophe, there was a kind of exterior splendor in the situation of the crown, which usually adds to government strength and authority at home. The crown seemed then to have obtained some of the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... if women would only not be quite so afraid of being thought unwomanly, they would be a great deal more womanly than they are. To be brave, and single-minded, and discriminating, and judicious, and clear-sighted, and self-reliant, and decisive, that is pure womanly. To be womanish is not to be womanly. To be flabby, and plastic, and weak, and acquiescent, and insipid, is not womanly. And I could wish sometimes that women would not be quite so patient. They often exhibit a degree of long-suffering entirely ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... Plutus became clear-sighted again and drove out Poverty, 'twould be the greatest blessing possible for the ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... time chivalry lasted; and grace of dress and mien, and all else that was connected with chivalry. Then came the ages which, when they have taken their due place in the depths of the past, will be, by a wise and clear-sighted futurity, perhaps well comprehended under a common name, as the ages of Starch; periods of general stiffening and bluish-whitening, with a prevailing washerwoman's taste in everything; involving a change of steel armour into cambric; ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... personal predominance, his labyrinthine allegorical interpretations of the Scriptures, his enigmatic visions, and his false certitude about the Divine intentions, never ceased, in his own large soul, to be ennobled by that fervid piety, that passionate sense of the infinite, that active sympathy, that clear-sighted demand for the subjection of selfish interests to the general good, which he had in common with the greatest of mankind. But for the mass of his audience all the pregnancy of his preaching lay in his strong assertion of supernatural claims, in his denunciatory visions, in the false certitude ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... admirably. Mr. Howard himself was not more regular at church, or Alice more devout, than Dr. Richards. The children, whom he had denominated "ragged brats," were no longer spurned with contempt, but fed with peanuts and molasses candy. He was popular with the children, but the parents, clear-sighted, treated him most shabbily at his back, accusing him of caring only for Miss ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... as in the other, it is Intelligence which is at fault, the enlightened brain, the calm and discerning eye that can see things for what they are, neither debasing nor exalting them. The clear-sighted eye in front of the enlightened brain—there can be no Imbecility then. Only the Diseases of the Soul which Reason ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... who are oppressed by the rich, because the last do not wish to let the first rob them of their estates! We hear a great deal of the strong robbing the weak, all over the world, but few among ourselves, I am afraid, are sufficiently clear-sighted to see how vivid an instance of the ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... so clear-sighted, nor so well satisfied with what she had done, as all this. She left the house of Mrs. Markle feeling very unhappy. Although she had been using her little unruly member against Mrs. Comegys with due industry, she was all the ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... because he willed everything; a prodigious phenomenon of will, conquering an illness by a battle, and yet doomed to die of disease in bed after living in the midst of ball and bullets; a man with a code and a sword in his brain, word and deed; a clear-sighted spirit that foresaw everything but his own fall; a capricious politician who risked men by handfuls out of economy, and who spared three heads—those of Talleyrand, of Pozzo de Borgo, and of Metternich, diplomatists whose death would ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... altogether brave, and honourable, and clearsighted would have ventured, and he knew that some would suffer with him. He might have made arrangements to go a little farther still if he had been courageous, clear-sighted, and dishonest, and might have held his head up for another matter too, perhaps. But he had lacked the nerve for that, and had never consciously been a rogue. He felt even now a pride of honesty. He had been unfortunate, and his creditors would ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... walking just now in the sun by the river side, doubts as to my own sanity arose in me; not vague doubts such as I have had hitherto, but precise and absolute doubts. I have seen mad people, and I have known some who have been quite intelligent, lucid, even clear-sighted in every concern of life, except on one point. They spoke clearly, readily, profoundly on everything, when suddenly their thoughts struck upon the breakers of their madness and broke to pieces there, and were dispersed and foundered ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... not less passionate curiosity about life, but with more patience in waiting upon it, watching it, noting its surprises, we have a simple and sufficient commentary upon the books and upon the man. The narrative has warmth and reserve, and is at once tender and clear-sighted. J'entrevois nettement, she says with truth, combien seront precieux pour les futurs historiens de la litterature du xix^e siecle, les memoires traces au contact immediat de l'artiste, exposes de ses faits et gestes particuliers, de ses origines, de la germination de ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... said to himself, "it looks as if this good man were really going to let himself be taken in and done for. It is singular how very clear-sighted we can be about things that don't touch us. This poor fly is going to let himself be caught by a very clever spider, or I'm much mistaken. Very likely my widow is quite of my opinion, and yet in what concerns herself she will remain stone-blind. Well, such is life! We have only ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... to an ideal; the worship of a deified, glorious being who does not, never could, exist. Too often the realisation of the truth that the idol has feet of clay is enough to burst the iridescent glowing bubble. Too seldom the love deepens, develops into the true and lasting devotion of the woman, clear-sighted enough to see the real man through the mists of illusion, but fondly wise enough to cherish him in spite of his faults, aye, even because of them, as a mother loves her deformed child for its ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... in politics; as if success were the only thing to be regarded. But I need not stop to expose such an atrocious rule of action, which would justify whatever is base or criminal. It is urged, however, in vindication of methods of acquiring influence which offend a clear-sighted conscience, that if a party cannot prevail but by using the weapons with which it is attacked, it must resort to these means of self-preservation. What is this but another way of expressing the doctrine on the ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... possible that the insular Druids were more devoted to magic than those of Gaul, but since the latter are said to have "tamed the people as wild beasts are tamed", it is obvious that this refers to their powers as magicians rather than to any recondite philosophy possessed by them. Yet they were clear-sighted enough to use every means by which they might gain political power, and some of them may have been open to the influence of classical learning even before the Roman invasion. In the next chapter the magic of the Druids will be ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch |
