"Acumen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself by his own acumen. The late Mrs. W. had not been in the least that sort of lady, and he had never been engaged to anybody else; yet here he was laying down the law with the serenest confidence. Some divine instinct must be inspiring him. His son seemed less favorably ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... Souriciere, the mouse-trap—the House of Detention where the accused are kept under the orders of the Examining Judge. He knew how to be an inflexible judge and a charitable man. And no one extracted a confession so easily as he without having recourse to judicial trickery. He had, too, all the acumen of an observer. This man, apparently so foolishly good-natured, simple, and absent-minded, could guess all the cunning of a prison wag, unmask the astutest street huzzy, and subdue a scoundrel. Unusual circumstances ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... you have found a prince of the church, pale as alabaster, sitting in his red robe, who put together the indicatory evidence of the crime that baffled you with such uncanny acumen that you stood ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... conduct the hearing. The chairman of this committee-he constituted himself chairman by virtue of the fact that he was first nominated—made a ringing speech in which he praised his honesty, his fairness, and his knowledge of the law. He complimented the miners for their acumen in selecting for such a position of responsibility a man of his distinguished qualifications. It was plain that he believed they had chosen wisely. Then, having inquired the names of his two committeemen, he likewise commended them in glowing terms, although ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... With a wonderful acumen, the gaunt gentleman seized the insinuating situation, and considering himself summarily dismissed, he edged away by stealthy strides and left me to ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... it the afterward popular name of 'animal spirits.' The Stoics called it simply 'nature,' which is now generally changed to 'nervous principle.'" "The far-reaching results of so quiet and yet so tremendous a force may be seen in the lives of the men and women who have the mental acumen to understand what is meant by it." The singer who has developed and controlled "the third power" through the true conditions of voice, never doubts its reality; and he, and he only, is able ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... treats, in that Essay, with his usual learning and acumen, and with remarkable directness and condensation. It will form but one volume of the series of that extraordinary man's ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... for his incomparably delightful epistles to his friends than for his poetry. Few letters in our language can compare with these for incisive but kindly and gentle irony; innocent but genuine fun; keen and striking acumen, and tender melancholy. Cowper died ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... had been quite unsuspected. It appeared indeed that certain teeth and skeleton bones previously discovered by Professor Cope were related to this new type of dinosaur, but the fragments known to the Philadelphia professor gave him no idea of what the animal was like, although with his usual acumen he had discerned that they differed from any animal known to science and registered them as new under the names of Agathaumas 1873 and Monoclonius 1876. Professor Marsh re-named his supposed bison "Ceratops" (i.e. "horned face") and gave to the closely ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... all their diabolical significance, those wild weird words: "The wolf has slept in the lair of the forest deer—the yellow fawn will be his victim!" Now knew I the wolf—a wolf disguised in the clothing of the lamb? It needed no remarkable acumen to tell to whom the figure referred. The writing itself revealed him—all but the name; and that was manifest by implication. The man with whom "Marian went away"—he whom I had seen in clerical garb and guise, was the wolf of the metaphor; and that man ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... were at the time affirmed and denied with all the earnestness, indeed with all the temper, which distinguished the mediaeval theologians upon points of doctrine once regarded as essential to salvation, but the very meaning of which is scarcely comprehended by modern ecclesiastics. With his mental acumen and with his never-failing common sense, Mr. Lincoln declined to take part in the discussion. In his last public speech he treated this question with admirable perspicuity, and with his wonted felicity of homely illustration: "I have been shown what is supposed to be an able letter," said ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... arguments and pleadings. Many of the older advocates have passed away, but new ones have taken their place. It is the unvarying testimony of the Senate and House Committees who have granted these hearings, that no body of men has appeared before them for any purpose whose dignity, logic and acumen have exceeded, if indeed they have equaled, those of the members of this association. They have been heard always with respect, often with cordiality, but their appeals have fallen, if not upon deaf, at least upon indifferent ears. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... was educated at the expense of the monarchy which had conquered his kith and kin. He nevertheless applied himself with energy to his favourite studies, especially mathematics. Defective in languages he still was, and ever remained; for his critical acumen in literature ever fastened on the matter rather than on style. To the end of his days he could never write Italian, much less French, with accuracy; and his tutor at Paris not inaptly described his boyish composition as resembling ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... "The Eastern Gazette" of the following week, a notice of Mr. Lansdowne's plea before the jury, in the great case of "The Commonwealth vs Jenkins," in which he was eulogized in the highest terms. He was said to have displayed "great acumen, extensive legal acquirements, and magnificent powers of oratory." So, Aunt Esther's confidence, about the "splen'id talk," was not without a ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... trouble was, the combination did not end there, as Edward might have foreseen had he been older and thus wiser. For as Edward bought and sold, so did his Sunday-school teacher, and all his customers who had seen the wonderful acumen of their broker in choosing exactly the right time to buy and sell Western Union. But Edward did not ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... back word to Steignton of their comfortable progress, and expectations of crossing the borders into Hampshire before sunset. Morsfield and Cumnock shrugged at the bumpkin artifice. They left their line of route to be communicated to the chariot, and chose, with practised acumen, that very course, which was the main road, and rewarded them at the end of half an hour with sight ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Lat. acumen, point), sharpened or pointed, a word used principally in botany and ornithology, to denote the narrowing or lance-shaping of a leaf or of a bird's feather into a point, generally at the tip, though sometimes (with regard to a ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the Jews under Vespasian. Published at Leyden, London, Paris, and Oxford, it gained for its author a European fame. His books written in English deal mostly with theological or controversial subjects, and while they display wide reading, great acumen, and keen powers of argumentation, they yet do not do full justice to his genius. Those which he published in Dublin are A Discourse of the Religion anciently professed by the Irish and British (1622), in which he tried to show that the ritual and discipline of the Church as originally ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... in point of literary and artistic taste, that the world has ever seen. A few centuries before, Greece had reached the summit of science and art. No country, in ancient or modern times, has surpassed the acumen of her philosophical writers and the aesthetic perfection of her poets and artists. Rome made use of her to embellish her cities, and inherited her taste for science ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... the second chapter. "Every nation, every age," he says, "has its own doll as a plaything for its children, and sentimentality (Empfindsamkeit) is ours." Then with lightness and grace, coupled with unquestionable critical acumen, he traces briefly the growth of "Empfindsamkeit" in Germany. "Kaum war der liebenswrdige Sterne auf sein Steckenpferd gestiegen, und hatte es uns vorgeritten; so versammelten sich wie gewhnlich in Teutschland alle Jungen an ihn herum, hingen sich an ihn, oder ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... does this many-sided genius command our admiration, but in many chosen fields, in all of which he excelled. As an institution, the Roycroft Shops would reflect credit upon the business acumen of the ablest men that America has produced in the field of achievement. The industry, it would seem, was launched to demonstrate the practicality of the high principles and philosophy preached by its founder, not only by the printed page, but from the platform. Right here let it be noted ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... N. intelligence, capacity, comprehension, understanding; cuteness, sabe * [obs3][U.S.], savvy * [U.S.]; intellect &c. 450; nous[Fr], parts, sagacity, mother wit, wit, esprit, gumption, quick parts, grasp of intellect; acuteness &c adj.; acumen, subtlety, penetration, perspicacy[obs3], perspicacity; discernment, due sense of, good judgment; discrimination &c 465; cunning &c. 702; refinement &c (taste) 850. head, brains, headpiece, upper story, long head; eagle eye, eagle- glance; eye of a lynx, eye of a hawk. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... set on your critical judgment when I say that I prefer you should weigh the whole in the balance rather than pick out a few for your special praise. Yet pieces, perfect in themselves, cease to appear so the moment they are all on a dead level of perfection. Besides, a reader of judgment and acumen ought not to compare different pieces with one another, but to weigh each on its own merits and not to think one inferior to another, if it is perfect of its kind. But why say more? What more foolish than to excuse or commend ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... the Burnham case sat listlessly in their chairs, glad that their work in the matter at issue was nearly done, yet regretful that a case had not been made out which might have called for the exercise of that large intelligence, that critical acumen, that capacity for close reasoning, of which the members of the average jury feel themselves to be severally and collectively possessed. As it was, there would be little for them to do. The case was extremely one-sided, ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... discovery of these remarkable and subtle properties of a delicate contact had indeed confronted Edison; he had held them in his grasp, they had stared him in the face, but not-withstanding all his matchless ingenuity and acumen, he, blinded perhaps by a false hypothesis, entirely failed to discern them. The significant proof of it lies in the fact that after the researches of Professor Hughes were published the carbon transmitter was promptly modified, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... now my faculties are blunted with age. But I have much to hope from your aid in this case. I know that you cannot appear publicly for Lady Vincent; but at the same time you may be of inestimable value as a private counselor. Your genius, acumen, and wonderful insight will enable us to expose this conspiracy, defeat the viscount, and save Claudia, if anything on earth can do so. Thank you, thank you, good and noble young friend!" said the judge, taking and cordially ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... of experiments is the entering wedge of a new method of incalculable reach in such questions. The future alone can show. Meanwhile, when we add to Dr. Ebbinghaus' "heroism" in the pursuit of true averages, his high critical acumen, his modest tone, and his polished style, it will be seen that we have a new-comer in psychology from whom the best may ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... legal firm of Rae & Macpherson was perplexed and annoyed, indeed angry, and angry chiefly because he was perplexed. He resented such a condition of mind as reflecting upon his legal and other acumen. Angry, too, he was because he had been forced to accept, the previous day, a favour from a firm—Mr. Rae would not condescend to say a rival firm—with which he for thirty years had maintained only the most distant and formal relations, to wit, the firm of ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... healthy, individual enterprise—the energy which is the sap of American citizenship. We capitalists have no fear of an honest man, provided he has the desire and the ability to protect legitimate business acumen against the slander of mere demagogues. I have a bill here," he added, drawing a printed document from his pocket, "which I am desirous to see passed by the next legislature. It embodies a charter authorizing the acquisition and merger in one corporation of all the gas companies ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... reader will obtain some notion of the difficulties alluded to, and the best mode of grappling with them, by consulting the recent Cambridge edition, published with English notes (Iph. in Aulide, 1840, in Tauris, 1846), performances of great critical acumen, attributed to the ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... minds as that of looking upon the slow torture of a human being on trial for life, except it be an execution; there is no display of human ingenuity, wit and power so fascinating as that made by trained lawyers in the trial of an important case, nowhere else is exhibited such subtlety, acumen, address, eloquence. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... foolish! Reason for a moment—any presentation of this matter calls for the highest ability; it involves sifting of evidence; symmetry of arrangement; cohesiveness of method, logic of argument, persuasiveness of advocacy, subtleties of acumen, charms of eloquence—all the elements of the greatest ...
— The Angel of Lonesome Hill • Frederick Landis
... with the love of reducing political transactions to one rigid scale of cause and effect, and at the same time of exhibiting their acumen by threading the mazes of events up to remote circumstances, pretend to trace the design of the partition of Poland for more than a century back. Rulhiere seems to plume himself on the idea. "The projects executed in our days against ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the fact that Mr. Herbert Spencer should have missed what now appears so obvious an idea. But most remarkable of all is the fact that Dr. Whewell, with all his stores of information on the history of the inductive sciences, and with all his acumen on the matter of scientific method, should not only have conceived the idea of natural selection, but expressly stated it as a logically possible explanation of the origin of species, and yet have so stated it merely for ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... disappeared. What more did she expect of him? How far was it going to go? He lived the life of a recluse, restraining his healthy passion, keeping a chaste fidelity out of habit and respect, seeking an outlet in the ardent vagaries of his fancy, and even that was a crime! With the acumen of a sick woman, she saw within him, divining his ideas, following their course, tearing off the veil behind which he concealed those feasts of fancy with which he passed his solitary hours. This persecution reached even his brain. He could not patiently endure the jealousy of ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... attainments, legal acumen, political sagacity and oratorical power, Robert Brown Elliott stands out as the most brilliant ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... 5.), and Wood (Athen. Brit., vol. ii., col. 980, ed. 1721), all which authorities are referred to by Mr. Nichols, are sufficiently founded upon truth. He was a violent and wrong-headed writer in many respects; but he had acumen, strength, and fancy. The Bibliotheca Literaria of WASSE (although his name does not appear as the professed editor) is a truly solid and valuable publication; worthy of the reputation of the learned editor of Sallust. The work was published in numbers, which ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... miners be employed in the spring-time, in Arctic (and doubtless also Antarctic) regions, in blowing up icebergs and otherwise facilitating the operations of old Sol, we give the ingenious Frenchman credit for at least as much philosophic acumen as we ourselves possess: and Heaven only knows how superb a compliment we ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... outset of the career of this excellent magistrate was distinguished by an example of legal acumen that gave flattering presage of a wise and equitable administration. The morning after he had been installed in office, and at the moment that he was making his breakfast from a prodigious earthen dish, filled with milk and Indian pudding, he was interrupted ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... of legal wits began. Before the building was done Joshua Kent had succeeded in making the owners meet part of the additional cost of the foundation, and Robert had developed an acumen that stood by him the rest of his life. But there was something for him in this job bigger than financial gain or loss. Week after week, as he overcame one difficulty after another, he was learning, learning, just as he had done at Weil ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... them might lie the true secret of her husband's aversion to his son and of his oath a month ago to see that same son hang if Mr. Caryll succumbed to the wound he had taken. With some women, to suspect a thing is to believe that thing. Her ladyship was of these. She set too high value upon her acumen, upon ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... This theory proclaims that, if the body is slouching, the mind will slouch; but that, if the body is alert, the mind will be equally so. Another college student always walked to and fro in his room when preparing his history lesson. A fine old lady, in a work of fiction, explained her mental acumen by the single statement, "I never slouch." Every person must have observed many exemplifications of this theory in his own experience even if he has not reduced it ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... susceptibility in the English mind itself, in spite of the Reformation, to what is affecting in religious ceremony. Only, in religion as in politics, Browne had no turn for disputes; was suspicious of them, indeed; knowing, as he says with true acumen, that "a man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender," even in controversies not [132] necessarily maladroit—an image in which we may trace a little ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... offense had been committed within the walls of his city, and against one of his civil officers, it was clearly within his proper jurisdiction. The governor rejoined by a repetition of his demand; the captain-general gave a surrejoinder of still greater length, and legal acumen; the governor became hotter and more peremptory in his demands, and the captain-general cooler and more copious in his replies; until the old lion-hearted soldier absolutely roared with fury at being thus entangled in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... tried to make good play; but she could not bring to it the same coolness or the same acumen that had fought with Miss Broadus. The well-formed, well-knit hand with the coat sleeve belonging to it, which was all of her adversary that came under her observation, distracted Eleanor's thoughts; she could not forget whose ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... rightness of this man's life was worthy of all praise; but in spite of some intellectual acumen, Knight had in him a modicum of that wrongheadedness which is mostly found in scrupulously honest people. With him, truth seemed too clean and pure an abstraction to be so hopelessly churned in with error as practical persons find it. Having now seen himself mistaken in supposing ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... twenty-five years old, Romanes shows the characteristic qualities of his mind and style already developed. The sympathy with the scientific point of view is there, as might be expected perhaps in a Cambridge 'Scholar in Natural Science': the logical acumen and love of exact distinctions is there: there too the natural piety and spiritual appreciation of the nature of Christian prayer—a piety and appreciation which later intellectual habits of thought could never eradicate. The essay, as judged by the standard of prize compositions, is of remarkable ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... occasions, and would be adopted only by ordinary intellects; for, in all cases of concealment, a disposal of the article concealed—a disposal of it in this recherche manner,—is, in the very first instance, presumable and presumed; and thus its discovery depends, not at all upon the acumen, but altogether upon the mere care, patience, and determination of the seekers; and where the case is of importance—or, what amounts to the same thing in the policial eyes, when the reward is of magnitude,—the qualities in question have never been known to fail. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... presbyters and the rest of his clergy, he was discussing too ambitiously the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, teaching that there was a unity in the Trinity. But Arius, one of the presbyters under his jurisdiction, a man of no inconsiderable logical acumen, imagining that the bishop was subtly introducing the doctrine of Sabellius the Libyan, from the love of controversy took the opposite opinion to that of the Libyan, and, as he thought, vigorously responded to the things said by the bishop. "If," ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... a critical investigating faculty, mental acumen, intellectual precision and independence equal to the occasion; without this, the completest inspection will be useless. Reason insists that the owner of it must further be allowed ample time; he will collect the rival candidates together, and make his choice with long, lingering, repeated ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... the den was frightful, yet among his black and hideous surroundings the grace of his manner and the genius of his conversation were only more apparent. I read my letter aloud—or rather "The Ascent of Long's Peak," which I have written for Out West—and was sincerely interested with the taste and acumen of his criticisms on the style. He is a true child of nature; his eye brightened and his whole face became radiant, and at last tears rolled down his cheek when I read the account of the glory of the sunrise. Then he read us a ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... in my friend's book myself to suggest that the author was, of necessity, anything over eighteen. The mistake appeared to me to display want of acumen, but it had evidently ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... stuttering widower from Vitebsk, that the squeaky, jerky intonation to the right came from the red-headed fellow whom I loathed for his thick lips, or that the sweet, unassertive cadences that came floating from the east wall were being uttered by Reb Rachmiel, the "man of acumen" whose father-in-law had made a fortune as a war-contractor in the late conflict with Turkey. All these voices blended in a symphonic source of inspiration for me. It was divine music in more senses ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Some acumen there, he thought, in medicine or mind: as for himself, it was true enough; whatever success he had gained in life had been by no flush of enthusiasm or hope; a dogged persistence of ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... studies lead to a mastery of both divisions of this one great subject: and having so lately seen how successfully Dr. Latham had pursued his researches into the languages of the earth, we were quite prepared to find, as we have done, the same learning, acumen, and philosophical spirit of investigation leading to the same satisfactory results in this kindred, but new field of inquiry. In paying a well-deserved tribute to his predecessor, Dr. Prichard, whom he describes as "a physiologist among physiologists, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... likely to be rather intolerant of any opinions but his own; it is easier for a great critic to be a great writer. In the case of Chesterton, because he is a great and original writer he has a brilliant critical acumen that probes deep into the minds of other authors and sees what is stored there in a way that other critics have, perhaps, failed to see, not because they did not choose to look for it, but rather because, almost without knowing it, critics who ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... her business acumen. One was chastely, severely elegant, holding a single hat poised on a ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... neighborhood the restless Sarmatians prowled and threatened. Hadrian, who had already written a book on tactics, knew at once how to act. Domitian's policy was before him; he followed the precedent, and paid the Sarmatians to be still. It requires little acumen to see that when Rome permitted herself to be ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... are not anxious for official offices. Men possessing talent and ability, with business acumen, are in great demand, and can distinguish themselves in their several professions in various ways; they can easily attain a position of wealth and influence, and so such men keep out of politics. It must ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... ready volunteer. Soon all hands were at work, and it was due to the girl's forethought that strips of linen were procured from Luisa Gomez, and healing herbs applied to the cuts and bruises of the injured men. Sylva was all for leaving the two soldiers on the island, but Coke's sailor-like acumen prevented the commission ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... the subject of the young man, with a view to getting a hint as to whether he purposed doing anything further. But old Hastings would not talk about it; he was still debating, was looking at the matter from a standpoint where his daughter's purely theoretical acumen could not help him to a decision. Jane rather feared that where her father was evidently so doubtful he would follow his invariable rule in ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... skepticism or ignorance that he had presented to her she had cut easily with the sword of truth if she could not untie; he had offered her one to-day that she could cut indeed as easily for herself,—but not for him. To do that called for not better wits, but for far greater controversial acumen and logical practice than Faith knew. He did not press his point, not even for victory; he gave the objection to her and left it there; but while to her it was mere rottenness of reasoning, she knew that for him it stood. It grieved her deeply; and Mrs. Derrick saw her worn and feverish all ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... of his craft, untiringly attentive to the working of his numerous self-recording instruments, observing all changes with scientific acumen, doing the work of two observers at least and yet ever seeking to correlate an expanded scope. So the current meteorological and magnetic observations are taken as never ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... then, for the historian should be, What accounts does this nation give of its early history? the second, What account of this nation's early history can be obtained ab extra? By stating and comparing these accounts with such critical acumen as the writer may be able to command, we may obtain something approaching to authentic history. The history of ancient peoples must have its basis on tradition. The name tradition unfortunately gives an a priori impression of untruthfulness, and ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... dispensed by one of the most up-to-date and progressive couples in the kingdom. In the intimacy of a house-party, not too large, one could enjoy the versatility, the charm, the wide information, the keen political acumen of this accomplished and magnetic British statesman. It was unfortunate for his country that from overwork he broke down so early ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... farm implement business in Frankfort, and though he was still under thirty he had made a very considerable financial success. Perhaps Wheeler was proud of his son's business acumen. At any rate, he drove to town to see Bayliss several times a week, went to sales and stock exhibits with him, and sat about his store for hours at a stretch, joking with the farmers who came in. Wheeler had been a heavy drinker in his day, and was still a heavy ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... acumen for which he was noted, Lakely had touched the key-stone of the situation on that morning; and succeeding events, each fraught with its own importance, had established the ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... Guard. Mrs. Harriman and Mrs. Sage, who manage properties of many millions, are denied the privilege of voting in regard to the expenditure of their taxes; but every ignorant immigrant can cast a vote, thanks to the doctrine that the political acumen of a man, however degraded, is superior to that of a woman, however great her genius—an admirable obedience to the saw in Ecclesiasticus that the badness of men is better than the goodness of women. Let me quote again ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... acumen came in, I was sure that these times could not last. It is easy to make money on a rising market, but when it is falling the matter is very different. In five minutes I made up my mind. I sent for my junior partners, for I had taken in ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... fancy—his entire time taken up, and all the resources of his inventive and artistic nature (which were exceptionally great) drawn upon for the purpose of carrying out designs which at first seemed freakish and impossible, but which later astonished him by the extraordinary scientific acumen they displayed, as well as by their adaptability to the forces of nature. Then, the money!—the immense sums which this strange creature, Morgana Royal, had entrusted to him!—and with it all, the keen, business aptitude she had displayed, knowing to a centime how much she had spent, though ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... are all too short for him. All his faculties give their consent to his work; say "yes" to his occupation. He is a man; he respects himself and is happy because all his powers are at play in their natural sphere. There is no compromising of his faculties, no cramping of legal acumen upon the farm; no suppressing of forensic oratorical powers at the shoemaker's bench; no stifling of exuberance of physical strength, of visions of golden crops and blooded cattle amid the loved country ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... settled. That there was nothing even remotely resembling a chair in camp she felt reasonably assured, as "paw" was sitting on an inverted soap-box under a pine-tree, and "paw," by reason of age and infirmity, appropriated all luxuries. Mrs. Yellett, with her usual acumen, ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... of conversation in the dialogue, and a skill in arranging the plot and producing striking situations, in which she has few equals.' He frequently insists upon her 'great skill in conducting the intrigue of her pieces', and with no little acumen declares that 'her comedies may be cited as the most perfect models of the drama of the latter half of the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... for, just drunk enough to be audacious, he had not all his faculties at his perfect command, and his usual acumen was a little at fault. Still, accustomed to brave public opinion, and to carry himself through the failures of his exhibitions by heavier drafts on the patience and credulity of his audience, he determined to persevere as the most likely way of extricating himself from the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... imply that they were not much heeded. Other papers had indeed taken the matter up,—but they had taken it up only to drop it. The subject had not been their own. The little discovery had been due not to their acumen, and did not therefore bear with them the highest interest. It had almost seemed as though nothing would come of it;—for Mr. Slide in his wildest ambition could have hardly imagined the vexation and hesitation, the nervousness and serious discussions which his words had occasioned among ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... career of this excellent magistrate was distinguished by an example of legal acumen, that gave flattering presage of a wise and equitable administration. The morning after he had been installed in office, and at the moment that he was making his breakfast from a prodigious earthen dish, filled with milk and Indian pudding, he was interrupted ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... pictura, poesis: erit quae, si propius stes, Te capiat magis; et quaedam, si longius abstes: Haec amat obscurum; volet haec sub luce videri, Judicis argutum quae non formidat acumen: Haec placuit ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... Strand. Some two years later we have news of 'Will's,' the most famous, perhaps, of the coffee-houses. Here Dryden held forth with pedantic vanity: and here was laid the first germ of that critical acumen which has since become a distinguishing feature in English literature. Then, in the City, one Garraway, of Exchange Alley, first sold 'tea in leaf and drink, made according to the directions of the most knowing, and travellers ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... What might well have seemed a break on the part of the pre-eminent innkeeper when he cited as a precedent for his decision the practice of the highest hotels in London was really no break, but a stroke of the finest juridical acumen. Nothing could have gone further with the vast majority of his paying guests than some such authority, for they could wish nothing so much, in the exclusiveness supplied them, as the example of the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... maintained any such undue predominance on the part of the clergy in secular affairs as exists. With the development of an educated Catholic laity, among some members of which one may expect to see evolved that critical acumen and balanced judgment which are what the fine flower of a university culture is supposed to produce, this preponderance will disappear, but in the meanwhile, be it noted, it is the refusal of Englishmen to found an acceptable ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... materia medica? PUNCHINELLO is gravely told that a Celestial doctor is about to come to New York, whose favorite prescriptions, in accordance with Chinese practice, "will be baked clay-dust, similar to brick-dust and dog-soup." In one of these remedies the medical acumen of PUNCHINELLO recognizes a homoeopathic principle. Man having been made out of the dust of the earth, nothing is so well adapted to cure him as baked clay. Every man's house is now not only his castle, but his apothecary shop. A brick may be considered a panacea, and may be carried ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... and Porphyry." "He was one of the first German professors to learn Greek and Hebrew." Moreover, Luther possessed, besides knowledge, those indispensable requisites in a good professor: "the faculty of plain, clear, correct, and independent thought, resourcefulness, acumen" (Boehmer, p. 179 f.). He had the courage to tell the Church that it was a shame, that a heathen philosopher, Aristotle, should formulate the doctrines which Christians are to believe and their pastors are to teach. He threw this ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... three bright golden sovereigns, an eight-and-six brass turnip, which went jolly well, although its tick was a trifle vigorous under Gus's pillow, and an agreement. This document, drawn up by himself, Gus regarded as a very masterpiece of business-like acumen. Gus could have his gold watch back again within the year by paying three sovereigns, and buying the brass turnip for half a sovereign, the profit accruing on this latter transaction being, as Gus explained proudly, the jeweller's percentage on the loan. The family jeweller had informed Gus ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... of acumen and critical faculty following a writer in an inquiry of this nature places himself in the position of a lawyer who will not accept the interpretation of an Act of Parliament, or even a clause in it, as correct, except,—as his ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... see it. Louis listened to Batchgrew's ingenious arguments with naive interest and was obviously impressed. When Batchgrew called him "a business man as smart as they make 'em," and then proved that the money so invested would be as safe as in a stocking, Louis agreed with a great air of acumen that certainly it would. When Batchgrew pointed out that, under the proposed new investment, Louis would be receiving in income thirty or thirty-five shillings for every pound under the old investments, Louis' eye glistened—positively glistened! Rachel trembled. She ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... the curses, high, middle and low, which these lovers of money (I should say "of souls") are able to send or to have sent upon me. For these most courteous men, armed, as they are, with very dense acumen, since they cannot deny what I have said, now pretend that in my Disputation I have spoken against the ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... Garry's tall figure already seated at a long table near the empty chair that the Mayor was to occupy. He was dressed in black, almost like an English clergyman, and the theological spirit of the Puritan shone from his face. Yet there was too much worldly acumen, too much cold determination in his impressive features for a clergyman. He held his eye-glasses in his hand and now and then turned over the pages of his notes. Mr. Samuelson and Mr. Lilienfeld took seats on the other side of the Mayor's chair, without greeting him. The rest of the space about ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Anatomy of the Vertebrata." These investigations are as much distinguished by a profound knowledge and careful working out of the wonderfully-extensive empirical materials for the subject, as by their critical acumen and philosophic grasp. At the same time they set in the clearest light the immeasurable value of the theory of descent in the causal explanation of the most difficult morphological problems. Gegenbaur might, therefore, with perfect right, enunciate this axiom in the Introduction to his ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... larger host of writers than ever conspired to praise a man of genius, who was also a man of God. Johnson and Franklin, Scott, Coleridge, and Southey, Byron and Montgomery, Macintosh and Macaulay, have exerted their philosophical acumen and poetic feeling to analyze his various spell, and account for his unequalled fame; and though the round-cornered copies, with their diverting woodcuts, have not disappeared from the poor man's ingle, illustrated editions blaze from the shelves of every ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... all—the two hounds which lay couched before us by the hearth, appeared to enjoy a share of the sorcerer's benison! These dogs, Fritz and Bruno, directly descended from Hans, had often displayed strong evidence of lucidity, and under its influence they had been known to act with acumen and sagacity wholly beyond the reach of ordinary dogs. Their immediate sire, Gluck, was the property of a community of monks living fourteen miles distant in the Arblen valley; and though the Raouls were not aware that he had yet distinguished himself by any ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... dramatist, belonged to a Roman Catholic family, and was an unsuccessful playwright, a literary hack, and a critic of little acumen or discrimination. He attacked Pope as "Sawny Dapper," and was in return embalmed in The Dunciad. He also ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... brought much metaphysical acumen to bear upon definitions of Capital, and have reached very widely divergent conclusions as to what the term ought to mean, ignoring the clear and fairly consistent meaning the term actually possesses ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... of Wallingford's will, which lay uppermost amongst a small collection of private papers in a drawer of the dead man's desk, led Brent and Tansley into a new train of thought. Tansley, with the ready perception and acumen of a man trained in the law, was quick to point out two or three matters which in view of Wallingford's murder seemed to be of high importance, perhaps of deep significance. Appended to the will was a schedule of the testator's ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... postulates the Persian superiority, moral, as against the accidental inferiority of the moment caused by want of cavalry and the dependence on others which that involves. I suppose it's no reflection on Cyrus' military acumen not to foreseen this need. It would have been premature then, now it organically grows; and there's no great ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... had no better resource than grammatical and literary study. Science was purely empirical, mathematics was mainly arithmetic and mensuration, and there was no room in these subjects for that exercise of discernment and acumen as well as of taste which was provided by well-directed study of the best authors. In the secondary education, therefore, the chief object sought was "the knowledge of right expression," and the ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... with innocence (see Hamlet, iv. 5. 158: "I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died"). Prof. Hales, however, thinks that some particular vale is here alluded to, and argues, with much acumen, that the poet referred to the woodlands close by Athens to the north-west, through which the Cephissus flowed, and where stood the birthplace of Sophocles, who sings of his native Colonus as frequented by nightingales. The same critic regards the epithet 'violet-embroidered' ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... merely dramatists, and in no other way notorious or eminent. Mr. Greenwood justly says "the contemporary eulogies of the poet afford proof that there were some cultured critics of that day of sufficient taste and acumen to recognise, or partly recognise, his excellence . . . " {30a} (Here I omit some words, presently to be restored to the text.) From such critics the poet received such applause as has reached us. We also know that the plays were popular; but the ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... who walks in his sleep says it is not a club. So say all of his kind with which he herds. They gather together and solemnly and gloatingly make and repeat certain noises that sound like "discretion," "acumen," "initiative," "enterprise." These noises are especially gratifying when they are made backward. They mean the same things, but they sound different. And in either case, forward or backward, the spirit of the ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... system; a habit of putting your best into everything you do, which means the ultimate attainment of your maximum efficiency. In other words, if you give your best to your employer, the best possible comes back to you in skill, training, shrewdness, acumen, and power. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... intelligently, and have an earnest desire to understand and to know more. A form of this kind frequently accompanies a question, and if, as is sometimes unfortunately the case, the question is put less with the genuine desire for knowledge than for the purpose of exhibiting the acumen of the questioner, the form is strongly tinged with the deep orange that indicates conceit. It was at a theosophical meeting that this special shape was encountered, and it accompanied a question which ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... room, he found that both host and chef were anxiously awaiting his coming. He had spent the past two hours with Arlt, listening to scraps of the completed overture, suggesting, praising, criticising it with an acumen which surprised even the young composer, though he was fast learning to attribute omniscience to his friend. After the shabby room with its half-light, after the intent earnestness of Arlt, Thayer felt a passing dislike of the gorgeousness ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... his Epistle Dedicatory to the Marquise d'O, daughter of his patron M. de Guillerague, showed his literary acumen and unfailing sagacity by deriving The Nights from India via Persia; and held that they had been reduced to their present shape by an Auteur Arabe inconnu. This reference to India, also learnedly advocated by M. Langles, was inevitable in those days: it had not then been proved ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... I am convinced that a desire to do his bit, as he termed it, was only a part of his anger that evening. The rest was the feeling that Tish's superior acumen had foiled him. He had a truly masculine hatred of being thwarted by a woman, ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Kensington, with its Wild West Show, has attracted its thousands, and at this moment two dramas (both from the United States) are very popular in the Strand and Oxford Street. A few nights ago, anxious to save you the trouble of filling a stall with your customary urbanity and critical acumen (to say nothing of your august person and opera-glasses), I visited the Princess's, to assist at a performance of The Shadows of a Great City. It was really a most amusing piece, written by JEFFERSON, the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... were interviewed. Civil war threatened: the medical fraternity, upheld by a few doubting Thomases among the more abstract followers of the science, on one side of the field, by far the greater number of those who peer into the human mechanism with mere scientific acumen on the other. Doctors, notoriously as conservative as kings and as jealous as opera singers, found themselves threatened with the loss of elderly patients whose steady degeneration was a source of respectable income. When it was discovered that New York actually held a practicing physician ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... his day, a fact obviously at variance with daily practice. Yet it is a dictum not to be altogether contravened. For instance, my first impressions of Schoenberg were neither flattering to his composition nor to my indifferent critical acumen. If I had begun by listening to the comparatively mellifluous D-minor string quartet, played by the Flonzaley Quartet, as did my New York colleagues, instead of undergoing the terrifying aural tortures of Lieder des Pierrot Lunaire, I might have been as amiable as the critics. The ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... advice—the sort of information which experience alone can supply, such landmarks as only genius can place. In those papers, smelling of tobacco, and covered with writing so vile as to be almost hieroglyphic, there are suggestions for a fortune, and forecasts of unerring acumen. There are hints as to certain parts of America and Asia which have been fully justified, both before and since Juste and I could ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... some years, became a dependence. His nervous system was pretty well "shot up"—it had never been case-hardened. A weight of apprehension had become constantly present, and he let its burden depress him miserably. One of his professors, noting his appearance, talked with him earnestly, and with lay acumen decided his digestion was "out of fix" and told him of a "fine New York doctor." The stomach specialist worthily stood high in his profession. The examination was painstaking and exhaustive; the diagnosis seemed ominous to the morbid patient; ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... Unfortunately the so-called genuine monuments of ancient Persia were nothing more than recent Persian compilations or refacimenti. But notwithstanding this defect, which could hardly be avoided then, and a distortion of critical acumen, the book of Thomas Hyde was the first complete and true picture of modern Parsiism, and it made inquiry into its history the order of the day. A warm appeal made by him to the zeal of travellers, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various |
