"Cleverness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... matter over, and I am convinced that Mowbray has got about him the most dangerous sort of a gang to carry on his work for him. Do you know if he is a man of any particular force and cleverness?" ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... punch?' clubs. If I blew my nose, it was to indicate that there was another confederate employed by the adversary; and THEN, I warrant you, some pretty trials of skill would take place. My Lord Deuceace, although so young, had a very great skill and cleverness with the cards in every way; and it was only from hearing Frank Punter, who came with him, yawn three times when the Chevalier had the ace of trumps, that I knew we were Greek ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Wrigley in the Great War was M.T., R.A.S.C., and knows so much about cars that he can tell the make of lamps from the track of the tyres; while I was a cavalryman and know so little that I judge Jimmy's cleverness only by other people's incredulity. On our stand at the show we exhibited two cars, which, as I carefully learned beforehand from the book of the words, were a Byng-Beatty and a Tanglefoot, these being the cars for which we are what they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... something out of me,' she thought as she gave him a smile for his compliment. And this idea that he wanted something, that circumstances should have forced him into the position of an applicant, distressed her. She grieved for him. She saw all his good qualities—his energy, vitality, cleverness, facile kindliness, his large masculinity. It seemed to her, as she gazed up at him from the music-stool in the shaded solitude or the drawing-room, that she was very intimate with him, and very dependent on him; and she wished him to be always flamboyant, ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... treats of the lighter and brighter side of life. It is seldom in deadly earnest; it tends somewhat to superficiality; and it prefers cleverness to profundity, in both conception and treatment. Naturally, then, comedy rather than tragedy is its usual sphere; and though the tale may end in gloom, it more frequently suggests a possible tragedy ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... Stone for May-June has cast off all undue seriousness, and teems with light and attractive matter concerning the recent Rocky Mount convention. Some of the displays of wit and cleverness are very striking and entertaining indeed, while no page departs so far from merit that it may ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... superhuman demons have to be overcome with strategy, not muscle. The heroes, consequently, are beings endowed with cleverness. After Suac has killed Pugut and has come into possession of his victim's magic club, he easily slays a man-eating giant (see F4 in notes to preceding tale). The tricks played on the Bungisngis by the monkey ("ringing ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... vine: But yet your mother's jealous temperament— Let not your prudence, dearest, drowse, or prove The Danaid of a leaky vase, for fear This whole foundation ruin, and I lose My honour, these their lives.' 'Ah, fear me not' Replied Melissa; 'no—I would not tell, No, not for all Aspasia's cleverness, No, not to answer, Madam, all those hard things That Sheba came to ask of Solomon.' 'Be it so' the other, 'that we still may lead The new light up, and culminate in peace, For Solomon may come to Sheba yet.' Said Cyril, ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Cummins did pretty well over there fifteen years ago," and the little detective's eyes twinkled at his own cleverness. ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... equal cleverness and spite, travestying both phrase and expression in a most ludicrous manner until the boys find it impossible to march for laughter; the Sergeant is ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... always got the answers to the test problems when the others didn't, and he kept his arithmetic papers buttoned up in the inside pocket of his little jacket until he modestly handed them to the teacher, never giving a neighbour the benefit of his cleverness. Leonard Dawson and other lusty lads of his own age made life as terrifying for him as they could. In winter they used to throw him into a snow-drift, and then run away and leave him. In summer they made ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... how a great scandal threatened to affect the kingdom of Bohemia, and how the best plans of Mr. Sherlock Holmes were beaten by a woman's wit. He used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it of late. And when he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always under the honourable ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... oar was held while in the reach forward, its bending under the push, were proofs of the force applied; not that only, they as certainly proved the rower's art, and put the critic in the great arm-chair in search of the combination of strength and cleverness which was the central idea of ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... of cleverness conceded to her ever since she could recollect, when she read better at three years old than her sister at five, and ever after, through the days of education, had enjoyed, and excelled in, the studies that were ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... God-recognising remembrance will deliver us from the abuses of that great power, by which so many of us turn our memories into a cause of weakness, if not of sin. There are people, and we are all tempted to be of the number, who look back upon the past and see nothing there but themselves, their own cleverness, their own success; 'burning incense to their own net, and sacrificing to their own drag.' Another mood leads us to look back into the past dolefully and disappointedly, to say, 'I have broken down so often; my resolutions have ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... unmeasured display of sentiment! And both sentiment and buffoonery could have been made very good too, in a way accessible to the meanest intelligence, at the cost of truth and honesty. Here it is where Maupassant's austerity comes in. He refrains from setting his cleverness against the eloquence of the facts. There is humour and pathos in these stories; but such is the greatness of his talent, the refinement of his artistic conscience, that all his high qualities appear inherent in the very things of which he speaks, as if they had been altogether ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... are lucky to have such things in your memory as you have. I have nothing in my memory—Once I went for a year without being flogged, and I remember my cleverness in contriving it—I have ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... aqueduct along the brow of one of the lower hills, the wheat and corn fields on the slopes, the trim orchards and vegetable gardens in the canons of the great bare mountains curving about the valley, were eloquent evidence of their cleverness and industry. From the open door of the church came the sound of lively and solemn tunes: the choir was practising for mass. The day was as peaceful as only those long drowsy shimmering days before the Americans came could be. And yet there ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... yet) I count my real start from the evening George Corvick, breathless and worried, came in to ask me a service. He had done more things than I, and earned more pence, though there were chances for cleverness I thought he sometimes missed. I could only however that evening declare to him that he never missed one for kindness. There was almost rapture in hearing it proposed to me to prepare for The Middle, the organ ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... till it passes over. Anything I do during the time it lasts, even household work, is badly done. The brain seems to become addled for the time being, while after gratification of desire it seems to attain an additional quickness and cleverness. Perhaps this cause contributes to the small amount of intellectual and artistic work done by women, admitting their natural inferiority to men in artistic impulse. A woman whose passions are satisfied generally has her strength sapped by maternity, while her attention is drawn from abstract ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... was: for my temporary superior the agent, having gone to Edinburgh a few days after my arrival, gave expression, in the head bank, to the conviction that it would be in vain attempting making "yon man" an accountant. Altogether deficient in the cleverness that can promptly master isolated details, when in ignorance of their bearing on the general scheme to which they belong, I could literally do nothing until I had got a hold of the system; which, locked up in the ponderous tomes of the agency, for some little ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... righteousness which has learned to be charitably blind where most of us would see and resent, a righteousness which has brought abiding happiness to a life that had long suffered, a slave to its conscience. Cleverness and wealth-having not charity-have sought such happiness in vain ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... seemed to revel in the luxury of showing off to some one, and he leaped about from one cupboard to another, produced cats and cockatoos out of empty jars, and made mice and rabbits disappear and reappear till James's head was in a whirl, for all his cleverness; and the nurse, as she washed up, wept tears of pure joy at her boy's ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... veteran souls can rarely understand them,—they are never subtle, and though they are new, they are never Modern. You may tell them in your cynical way that to-day is the only real day, and that there is nothing more unmentionable than yesterday except the day before. They will admire your cleverness very much, but the next moment you will find the witch sobbing over Tennyson, or the wizard smiling at the quaint fancies of Sir Edwin Landseer. You cannot really stir up magic people with ordinary human people. You and I have climbed over our thousand lives ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... a charming little book; and whether we regard its subject, cleverness, or delicacy of sentiment and expression,—to say nothing of its type and orthography,—it is likely to be a most acceptable present to young or old, be their peculiar taste for religion, morals, poetry, history, or ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... Then the knight at once rode into the fight and jousted with a knight who was approaching him, striking him in the eye with such violence that he knocked him lifeless to the ground. Then the lad dismounts, and taking the dead knight's horse and arms, he arms himself with skill and cleverness. When he was armed, he straightway mounts, taking the shield and the lance, which was heavy, stiff, and decorated, and about his waist he girt a sharp, bright, and flashing sword. Then he followed his brother ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... there were many sore backs in that kingdom. Lovers from south and from north, from east and from west, came to try their luck—they thought it was an easy thing to make a princess laugh. They were a queer lot altogether, but for all their cleverness and for all the tricks and pranks they played, the princess was just as serious and immovable ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... not become clever, Lord Atleigh; please don't, or I shall really give you up. Cleverness is all very well, but it isn't everything, you know. Yes, I will dance if you like, but you must go slowly; to be quite honest, I am afraid of tearing my lace in this crush. Why, I declare there is Garsington, my brother, you know," and ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... the author proceeds by narration. The tone is still governed by irony and pathos, wherein Thackeray chiefly excels; yet the contrasts between weak and strong natures, the superiority of honesty and the moral sense over craftiness and unscrupulous cleverness, are now touched off with a lighter and surer hand. The unmitigated villain and the coarse-tongued hard-hearted virago have disappeared with other primitive stage properties; the human comedy is played by men and women of the upper world, with their virtues and frailties sufficiently set in ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... inclinations lead them into philanthropic work, and there is a considerable body of sentiment in the class going to support efforts of reform and amelioration. And much of this philanthropic and reformatory effort, moreover, bears the marks of that amiable "cleverness" and incoherence that is characteristic of the primitive savage. But it may still be doubtful whether these facts are evidence of a larger proportion of reversions in the higher than in the lower strata, even if the same inclinations ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... that once the Shrewsbury mail carried me so rapidly away, that I had not time to examine the sunshine, or see whether it might not be some gilt Birmingham counterfeit; for you know, men of Birmingham, that you can counterfeit—such is your cleverness—all things in heaven and earth, from Jove's thunderbolts down to a tailor's bodkin. Therefore, the gloom is to be charged to my bad luck. Then, as to the noise, never did I sleep at that enormous Hen ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... of an emergency when first he decided to start business as a dog thief. Carissimo had been his first serious venture and but for my interference it would have been a wholly successful one. He had worked the whole thing out with marvellous cleverness, being greatly assisted by Madame Sand, the proprietress of the Hotel des Cadets, who was a friend of his mother's. The lady, it seems, carried on a lucrative business of the same sort herself, and she undertook ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... what clever people?" cried Alyosha, completely carried away. "They have no such great cleverness and no mysteries and secrets.... Perhaps nothing but Atheism, that's all their secret. Your Inquisitor does not believe in God, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... she slily helps her lover; in the other he recognizes an insignificant peculiarity of her person or attire. The third means is an indication given by one of the lower animals, which has better means of knowledge than the suitor, due probably to its greater cleverness—a quality, as I have already pointed out in Chapter II., universally credited in a certain stage of culture to these creatures. We will deal first with the ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... wanting to appear wiser than the laws, and to overrule every proposition brought forward, thinking that they cannot show their wit in more important matters, and by such behaviour too often ruin their country; while those who mistrust their own cleverness are content to be less learned than the laws, and less able to pick holes in the speech of a good speaker; and being fair judges rather than rival athletes, generally conduct affairs successfully. These we ought to imitate, instead of being led on by cleverness ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... meant to represent. The direction of their order was mentioned, because in most instances the initial character furnishes the guide. Apart from this, the illustrations are of interest as exhibiting the superior character and cleverness of their execution. ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... Jehoiachin, or else had been adopted by him from the line of Nathan, son of David. In either way, he was head of the house of David, and would have been king, had not the crown been taken away because of the sin of his fathers. He had, it is said, won favour at the court of Darius the Mede by his cleverness in a contention of wits, where each man was asked what was the strongest thing in existence. One said it was wine, because it made men lose their senses; another said it was the king, because of his great power; but Zerubbabel said it was woman, and so ingeniously ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... to this "Oh, the little deevil!" (when he heard of Tommy's failure he wanted to fight Gav Dishart and Willie Simpson), but Aaron was another kind of confidant, and even when she explained on Tommy's authority that there are two kinds of cleverness, the kind you learn from books and a kind that is inside yourself, which latter was Tommy's kind, ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... letter, which was written on Higgledy-Piggledy paper and in Josie's best handwriting. In it the cleverness of Miss Sally Blossom was lauded to the skies. Josie blushed through her paint ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... pluming herself on her cleverness and lost in the pleasant dreams of the fame that would be shortly hers, the door opened, and Margaret, who had only just come back and was still in her outdoor ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... a young woman to please him. Such a passion trenches on the fable of Narcissus. Besides that feeling of repugnance, there is, as I think, a mutual sense of inexperience which separates them. The reason why the hearts of young women are only understood by mature men, who conceal their cleverness under a passion real or feigned, is precisely the same (allowing for the difference of minds) as that which renders a woman of a certain age more adroit in attracting youth. A young man feels that he is sure to succeed with her, and the vanities of the woman are flattered by his ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... by the most charitable, have been called anything but plain—the cheekbones were high, the features rugged, the eyes small and light; but Philippa noted something very attractive in the expression. There was cleverness in the broad low brow under the wide-brimmed hat so deplorably innocent of all suggestion of prevailing fashion, and a whimsical twist about the corners of the mouth which showed its possessor to ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... expert in the legerdemain art of turning a penny. Still, however, a tinge of the old leaven is discernible, even unto this day, in their characters; witches occasionally start up among them in different disguises, as physicians, civilians and divines. The people at large show a keenness, a cleverness and a profundity of wisdom, that savors strongly of witchcraft; and it has been remarked, that whenever any stones fall from the moon, the greater part of them is sure to tumble ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... exists because early in his career man discovered that mutual aid, or team work, is, on the whole, in the struggle for existence and the pursuit of happiness, a more effective factor than physical strength or individual cleverness. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... to be, sir, but the blacks have a cleverness of their own, and it's hard to get the better of them, civilised as we are. Tut, tut, tut! It would be madness to start in search of them without ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... squarely on the chair that it did not overturn. He kept his place, instantly securing the scuttle against the entrance of the white man, whom he had baffled with such cleverness. Probably he had some idea of taking a shot at him, but the little manoeuvring in which he indulged told him the danger was too great, and ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... impression—ah that there is no room for improvement, but the thing was very well done, for an undergraduate. I must confess I never should have suspected it in Peters, and it's most interesting what you say about his cleverness in conversation." He twirled the head of his stick, apparently lost in reflection. "I may be wrong," he went on presently, "I have an idea it is you—" I must literally have jumped away from him. He paused a moment, without apparently ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... on the piano, and Nathaniel Mellen sang some pathetic negro melodies.[581] Altogether it was a pleasant occasion and I felt quite proud of the varied talents manifested by our young people. Some English friends remarked on their cleverness and readiness, all spontaneously called out ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... him with a hatred as deep as it was secret against the royalists. He now returned to his old opinions, and became the leader of the liberal party in Alencon, the invisible manipulator of elections, and did immense harm to the Restoration by the cleverness of his underhand proceedings and the perfidy of his outward behavior. Du Bousquier, like all those who live by their heads only, carried on his hatreds with the quiet tranquillity of a rivulet, feeble apparently, but inexhaustible. His hatred was that of a negro, so peaceful ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... would meet the loss, if it stripped the coat off of his shoulders,—meet it with a smile and some swaggering comment. And I knew as well that, if by any hook or crook he could prevent the contract from being carried out, he would do it with the devil's cleverness. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... can say is this—that if I don't get on by shamming cleverness, I'll try what open honesty will do, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... in the work, though tough to bear my part; It is these drooping little ones that sometimes wring my heart, And cheat me with the vain conceit the cleverness is mine To fill the churches of the Elk, and pass ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... so much as they spend their wit and labour to make them shrewd and bitter, do draw all the sweet and wholesome sap out of their lives and turn it into poison; and so they become vessels of mockery and wrath, remembered chiefly for the evil things that they have said with cleverness. ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... thought him to be still unconscious he did not believe. He was confident that his tactics had deceived the Jewess, but he entertained an almost superstitious respect for the cleverness of the Chinaman. The trick with the ball of leaf opium was painfully fresh in ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... There were five daughters: Anne, Amelia or Emily, Caroline, Mary, and Louisa. The Princess Caroline seems to have been by far the most lovable of the whole family. She inherited much of her mother's cleverness without her mother's coarseness. "Princess Caroline," says Lord Hervey, "had affability without meanness, dignity without pride, cheerfulness without levity, and prudence without falsehood." Her figure indeed ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... be praised for his talent, but there is an astonishing number of persons who envy him in this country. My son is delighted with his cleverness ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... "I admired him exceedingly for his cleverness and perseverance; but what other works? I can't think ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... children was great sweetness of manner. She seemed to love you, and you loved her in return. This, as well as I can now recollect, was what I felt in my early days, before I was old enough to be amused by her cleverness. But soon came the delight of her playful talk. She could make everything amusing to a child. Then, as I got older, when cousins came to share the entertainment, she would tell us the most delightful stories, ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... called handsome in his childhood,—what heir to a Throne ever lived that was not beautiful, to his nurse at least?—and in his early youth he had been grossly flattered for his cleverness as well as his good looks. Every small attempt at witticism,—every poor joke he could invent, adapt or repeat, was laughed at approvingly in a chorus of admiration by smirking human creatures, male and female, who bowed and bobbed up and down before the ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... graceful flow of line from the base toward the top is never interrupted, in spite of the many sculptural adornments used on all sides. In front of the tower are two very ornate illuminating shafts, showing Leo Lentelli's diabolical cleverness in making ornament out of human figures. Leo Lentelli's style is particularly well adapted to Mullgardt's Court of Abundance. Its care-free, subtle quality, full of animation, presenting new motives at every turn, is most helpful in the general spirit ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... not be found in the books. They are childish, just as the English novels which endeavoured to portray the soul of the generation were coarse and conceited. Behind all the conscious manifestations of cleverness and complexity lay a fundamental candour of which only a flickering gleam can now be recaptured. It glints on a page of M. Romains's Europe; the memory of it haunts Wilfred Owen's poems; it touches Keeling's ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... not a commonplace girl whom Corbett was to marry. On the contrary, she was exceptionally gifted, and a young woman whose cleverness had been supplemented by an elaborate education. There was, however, running through her character a vein of what might be called emotionalism. The habit of concentration, acquired through study, seemed rather to intensify ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... liked him. It was amusing to me, in my sick room, three hundred miles off, to hear of the impression he made, with his innocence, his fresh delight in his new life, his candor, his modesty, and his bright cleverness,—and then, again, to learn how diligently he had set about learning what I, his correspondent, was really like. In his dreams he had seen me very aged,—he thought upwards of eighty; and he had never doubted of the fact being ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... thought her letters to him were somewhat cold, she only answered with a playful humor; and when he tried to press her to some declaration about her leaving the stage or about the time of their marriage, she evaded the point with an extreme cleverness which was so good-natured and friendly that he could scarcely complain. Occasionally there were references in these letters that awakened in his breast a tumult of jealous suspicions and fears; but then again he consoled himself by looking ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... feelings, which mars the beauty of some women worse than physical deformity. From the day you entered our home as a stranger, graceful tact, sincerity, and the impulse of ministry have characterized your life. Can you imagine that mere cleverness, trained mental acuteness, and a knowledge of facts can take the place of these traits? No man can love unless he imagines that a woman has these qualities, and bitter will be his disappointment if he finds ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... terribly, for all the things in her that were tolerable, and even agreeable, when she was so pretty, seem quite different now she is ugly, and it is so long since she thought of using her mind or her natural cleverness, that I really don't think she has any left now. She is quite aware of all this herself, so you may imagine how unhappy she is, and how earnestly ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... had a lovely daughter, and he could not say enough about her beauty and cleverness. He used to tell all the men who brought their wheat to his mill, to be ground into flour, of the wonderful things this daughter could ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... work. And your name—the name the world knows—and its knowing it makes it worth having like everything—that name is the sum of every scheme you've planned, of every time you've got away with the goods, of every laugh you've lifted, of every bit of cleverness you've thought out and embodied, of everything that's in you, of ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... in the centre of the room. The electric light burns brightly above him. He seems the incarnation of alertness, vigor, cleverness, and cunning. ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... again and grinned. Had she not practised insincerity before? And any one with half an eye could see that she was in love with the Celebrity; even the Fraction had remarked it. What more natural than, with her cleverness, she had hit upon this means of terminating the author's troubles by ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... her sister. "As it seems you and Harry have had words about it, you had better not; but I'll call—I'll have her. And it shall be such an elegant, select little affair that it will show her off to charming advantage," she continued, with much animation, delighted with her own cleverness in the scheme. "He can't help but be ashamed of her. Don't ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... and parliamentary system, he did not perceive it. But this hardly interferes at all with the excellence of his pamphlets. The polished style, the admirable sense, the subdued and yet ever present wit, the avoidance of excessive cleverness (the one thing that the average Briton will not stand), the constant eye on the object, are unmistakable. They are nearly as forcible as Dryden's political and controversial prefaces, which are pamphlets ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... their walk home from Mrs. Brownlow's house; and now, as they wandered about the lawn and shrubberies of Popham Villa, she took care not to be with him out of earshot of the others. In all of which there was ten times more of womanly cleverness,—or cunning, shall we say,—than had yet come to the possession of ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... to touch her. She might have been wrapped in white fire. He found that though she had not stirred a finger, his hand had shrunk away from hers. He got to his feet, all the cleverness which all day long he had been weaving like a silk net to catch, to bewilder, to draw away her brain from the anguish of full comprehension, was shriveled. He stood and stared helplessly at her, dumb as a youth. And, obedient, he went out and shut the ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... country, with all the civil service largely filled by Serbs from Hungary and many of the higher offices in the possession of the relatives of the Princess, for Alexander's wife, a lady from the neighbourhood of Valjevo, was as celebrated for her cleverness as for her beauty. It is regrettable that she did not prefer to take in hand the women's legal status, which is still too much like that of minors. When the princely pair had been expelled in 1858 and Milo[vs], ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... Church——By the way, we haven't seen you there yet, and of course your husband was raised up a Baptist, and I do hope he won't drift away from the fold, of course we all know there isn't anything, not cleverness or gifts of gold or anything, that can make up for humility and the inward grace and they can say what they want to about the P. E. church, but of course there's no church that has more history or has stayed by the true principles of Christianity ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... thereby driving the fish into an enclosure, about twenty feet square, with a sluice towards the pond, and another fronting the dull ditch that flowed past beyond it. Whenever we had hunted the whole of the finny tribes—(barring those slippery youths the eels, who, with all their cleverness, were left to dry in the mud)—into the toils, we filled all the tubs, and pots, and pans, and vessels of all kinds and descriptions, with the fat, honest looking Dutchmen, the carp and tench, who really submitted to their captivity with all the resignation of most ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... pleasant legend, "All the days of the afflicted are evil, but he that is of a merry heart hath a continual feast." We are thus left to infer that William Longstreet was a man of a merry heart; and that fact is certified to by the cleverness with which his son, the author of "Georgia Scenes," has preserved for us some of the quaint characters that lived and moved and had their being on the borders of Georgia society ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... referred to must be the dog-headed ape, , which we see in pictures of the Judgment assisting Thoth to weigh the heart of the dead. This dog-headed ape is a wonderfully intelligent creature, and its weird cleverness is astonishing. ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Ursula, I feel a great interest in you; you are very handsome, and very clever; indeed, with your beauty and cleverness, I only wonder that you have ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... his way, exulting in the artful cleverness with which he had turned his thumb down on a Jew, and the old man went his different way up-stairs. As he mounted, the call or song began to sound in his ears again, and, looking above, he saw the face of the little creature ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... the worst of it, but I maintain it is a highly moral play, rightly considered, and the acting was most certainly most exquisite on the part of all the performers. Not that Alexandre Dumas, Fils, excels generally in morals (in his books, I mean), but he is really a promising writer as to cleverness, and when he has learnt a little more art he will take no low rank as a novelist. Robert has just been reading a tale of his called 'Diane de Lys,' and throws it down with—'You must read that, Ba—it is clever—only outrageous ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... meaningless folly, conquer apparently by both wit and reason, then turn his own hypothesis inside out, confute it, dash it into senseless atoms, and dismiss it as unworthy of a thought. In short, among us lads, busy with books and full of admiration of our own cleverness, he was delightful; and among other ostentatious pedantries such as prevail at college his passed unrebuked. When he tried his wits with Mr. Floyd, that gentleman implored him for God's sake to hold his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... "That's Sissie's blooming cleverness. She's a caulker, Sissie is; you don't take a rise out of Sissie in a hurry. She knows that if I knew who the other bloke was, I'd blow upon her little game to him and put him off her. And I WOULD, s'ep me taters; for I'm nuts on that girl. I tell you, Cumberledge, she ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... that dull-brained fellow?" said Etienne, lowering his voice, and glancing at Finot. "He has neither genius nor cleverness, but he is covetous; he means to make a fortune at all costs, and he is a keen man of business. Didn't you see how he made forty per cent out of me at Dauriat's, and talked as if he were doing me a favor?—Well, he gets letters from not a few unknown men of genius who go down on ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... hawks, keep them in cages, and offer them in sacrifice. At the time of killing one of them the following prayer should be addressed to the bird: "O divine hawk, thou art an expert hunter, please cause thy cleverness to descend on me." If a hawk is well treated in captivity and prayed to after this fashion when he is about to be killed, he will surely ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... conduct, which must have seemed very rude; but I am naturally of a cross-grained disposition, so I pray you to forgive me." And as he kept on humbling himself and making fair speeches, the heart of Kamei Sama was gradually softened, and he renounced his intention of killing him. Thus by the cleverness of his councillor was Kamei Sama, with all his house, ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... garden, you've heard me say nothing clever. And I've heard you say nothing that didn't make me laugh, or make me feel friendly, as well as telling me what to think and what to do. That's what I mean by real cleverness. Well, I haven't got it. I can give an order when I know what order to give. I can make men obey it, willing or unwilling. But I'm stupid, I tell you: stupid. When there's no Gordon to command me, I can't think ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... of mind of late, and foreseeing that she had immediately acted upon her impetuous determination, he grasped the situation with his usual promptness and handled it with his well-known business tact and cleverness. ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... that they decided to do all they could for her. They began by naming her Graziella, and then Placida said: 'You know, dear sisters, that the commonest form of spite or punishment amongst us consists of changing beauty to ugliness, cleverness to stupidity, and oftener still to change a person's form altogether. Now, as we can only each bestow one gift, I think the best plan will be for one of you to give her beauty, the other good understanding, ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... Bismarck und seine Leute, waehrend des Krieges mit Frankreich, in which, under the form of extracts from his diary, he gave an account of the chancellor's life during the war. The vividness of the descriptions and the cleverness with which the conversations were reported ensured a success, and the work was translated into several languages. This was followed in 1885 by another book, Unser Reichskanzler, chiefly dealing with the work in the foreign office in Berlin. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... out of water almost daily since early childhood, and, though there had never been a test, was confident that, among all the Shell People, there was none he could not overtake, despite what he had heard and knew of their wonderful cleverness in the water. Were not his arms and legs longer and stronger than theirs and his chest deeper? He felt that he could outswim easily any bold fisherman among them, and as for this girl, he would overtake her very quickly and draw her to the bank, and then there would be ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... Behn, so fascinated him by her wit and comeliness that he offered her his hand and fortune. During her married life she is said to have been in affluence, and even to have appeared at the gay licentious Court, attracting the notice of and amusing the King himself by her anecdotes and cleverness of repartee; but when her husband died, not impossibly of the plague in the year of mortality, 1665, she found herself helpless, without friends or funds. In her distress it was to the Court she applied for assistance; and owing to her cosmopolitan ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... his dress coat on each side and drew it forward, a trick he had with his gown in court, a nervous and mechanical action. Dora, who continued to play, watched him over the piano with an amusement not untinged with malice. She was a tall fair girl, with several kinds of cleverness. She did her hair quite beautifully, and she had a remarkable, effective, useful reticence. Her father declared that Dora took in a great deal more than she ever gave out—an accomplishment, in Mr Milburn's eyes, on the soundest ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... leading men on the Republican side of the House. Messrs. Schenck, Bingham and Spalding of Ohio, Mr. Jenckes of Rhode Island, and Mr. Kelley of Pennsylvania, all put pointed questions and were at once answered with undoubted tact and cleverness. Mr. Raymond was helped to a specious point by Mr. Niblack of Indiana, of which he made prompt and vigorous use, to the effect that the theory of Mr. Stevens, if carried to its legitimate consequences, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... they're getting on—that pretty creature, with her cleverness, and poor Mrs. Leighton? I was afraid they were venturing on a rash experiment. Do you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... they were clean enough. The governor, Baisemeaux, received D'Artagnan with more than ordinary politeness, but he behaved towards him with so marked a reserve of manner, that all D'Artagnan's tact and cleverness could not get a syllable out of him. The more he kept himself within bounds, the more D'Artagnan's suspicion increased. The latter even fancied he remarked that the governor was acting under the influence of a recent recommendation. Baisemeaux had ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... precious piece of cleverness, Silly Catharine returned to the house to see how her cabbage came on. But she had been gone so long that the water in the pot had all boiled away, and the cabbage was burning on hard and fast to the bottom of the pot. "Why, bless me! where can the water have gone to?" cried Silly Catharine. ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... when he has been convicted of murder. They must accuse Sir Edward Carson of outrageous rebellion, when his offence has really been a sleek submission to the powers that be. They must describe Mr. Lloyd George as using his eloquence to rouse the mob, whereas he has really shown considerable cleverness in damping it down. It was probably under the same impulse towards a mysterious misfit of names that people denounced Dr. Inge ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... forbidden by the censor is incest. That it can be mentioned in the parable in spite of the censor is accounted for by the exceedingly clever and unsuspected bringing about of the suggestion. Dreams are very adroit in this respect, and the same cleverness (apparently unconscious on the part of the author) is found in the parable, which is in every way analogous to the dream. Incest can be explicitly mentioned, because it is attributed to persons that have apparently nothing ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... for three half-crowns each; the original sketches—some of them a little free in posture, and not over delicately handled, were framed and disposed of for any sum from two to five guineas, according to the cleverness of the piece, or the generosity of the purchaser. Though far inferior to the productions of his manhood, they were much admired; engravers found it profitable to copy them, and before he was sixteen years old, his name had ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... matter with that paper, and now I know. They're always wondering whether there's anything intoxicating in the trifle!... I don't mind a boy talking in that wild way. A clever, intelligent lad ought to talk revolutionary stuff, but when a man reaches Palfrey's age and is still gabbling that silly-cleverness, then the man's an ass. There's no ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... or trifling facts in geography, topography, natural history, chronology, &c., or acquisitions in art, or accomplishments which the child makes by rote, and which are quite beyond its age; things of no value in themselves, but as they show cleverness; things hurtful to any temper, but to a child like yours absolute poison. Having said thus much, it seems almost impertinent to add that your child, above all, should, I might say, be chained down to the severest attention to truth,—I mean to the minutest accuracy in every thing ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... twirling round on your boot-heel. This helped a boy to wear out his boots very rapidly, but that was what his boots were made for, just as the sidewalks were made for the boys' marble-rings, and a citizen's character for cleverness or meanness was fixed by his walking round or over the rings. Cleverness was used in the Virginia sense for amiability; a person who was clever in the English sense ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... gentleman," said Grassini, breaking in upon the conversation in his slow and stately manner; "and I cannot say that what I have heard is much to his credit. He undoubtedly possesses a certain showy, superficial cleverness, though I think his abilities have been exaggerated; and possibly he is not lacking in physical courage; but his reputation in Paris and Vienna is, I believe, very far from spotless. He appears to ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... woman, I am the one who hasn't the right to realise. By Jove, I didn't give myself credit for the cleverness to fool every one so neatly. Really, don't you know, however, I feel a bit sorry for Miss Thursdale. She's a ripping good sort, and ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... cannot be called remarkable and cannot be sincerely praised without qualification. I must say the same of all the literary novelties I have read during the last ten or fifteen years; not one of them is remarkable, and not one of them can be praised without a "but." Cleverness, a good tone, but no talent; talent, a good tone, but no cleverness; or talent, cleverness, but not a ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... De Vlierbeck rallied sufficiently to take part in the chat; and gardening, agriculture, sporting, and a hundred different country topics, were fully discussed. Lenora recovered her spirits and charmed their commercial guest by the mingled charms of her intellectual cleverness and innocent gayety. Wild as a deer, she dared him to run a race with her, and danced along the paths by his side full of mirth and sportiveness. In truth, Denecker was altogether captivated by the ingenuous girl, and, as he looked on ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... company, with the most extraordinary conversation going on around him, without uttering a word, though he listened with extreme attention, watching the speakers with his childlike eyes. His face was very pretty and even had a certain look of cleverness. He did not belong to the quintet; it was supposed that he had some special job of a purely practical character. It is known now that he had nothing of the sort and probably did not understand his position himself. It was simply that ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... with us, blind as moles to beauties and goodness, but lynx-eyed for failings, and finding meat and drink in proclaiming them in tones of affected sorrow. How flagrant a breach of the laws of the kingdom this temper implies, and how grave an evil it is, though thought little of, or even admired as cleverness and a mark of a very superior person, Christ shows us by this earnest warning, embedded among His ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... come. When the school-master clutched the poles once more, and drove one under the lad's arms and under his own left arm, and so kept his burden afloat whilst he broke a swimming path for himself with the other, our admiration of his cleverness gave place to the blessed thought that it might now be possible to help him. The sight of the poles seemed suddenly to suggest it, and in a moment every spare pole had been seized, and, headed by our heavy friend, eight or ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Cleverness and cunning are incompatible. I never saw them united. The latter is the resource of the weak, and is only natural to them; children and fools are always cunning, but clever ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... fallen into folly. Also, she learned to understand that there might be greater weight and meaning in his confession than she had been inclined to allow to it at the time; that, at any rate, its extravagances ought not to be set down entirely, as her father-in-law had suggested with such extreme cleverness, to the vagaries of a mind suffering from sudden shock ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... Mr. Spencer one day to the Paymaster. "I am struck by him, sir, I am struck. He has an air of cleverness, and yet ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... sure whether Lucius Mason, with all his cleverness, could have put the matter much better, or have used a style of oratory more efficacious to the end in view. Peregrine had drawn his picture with a coarse pencil, but he had drawn it strongly, and with graphic effect. And then he paused; not with ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... man. The calm effrontery of him, the cleverness of him, to ask a favor of her! She turned from him to the distant ranges. She did not realize how much she turned from the roughness of the camp to the far desert views! Brooding, aloof, how big the ranges were, how free, how calm! For the first time her keeping Kut-le in Coventry seemed ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... lineal descendant of this Spaniard, minus his genius, for our young man is not a genius, despite his cleverness. He burlesques the themes of Goya at times, and in him there is more than a streak of the cruelty which causes such a painful impression when viewing the Proverbs or the Disasters ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... dissolute of other castes. Tents, as I have observed, are commonly pitched in shady groves, and in consequence admit of being approached unobserved, and a sharp knife in a skilful hand can easily secure an entrance on any side. Travellers have piquant stories to tell of the cleverness and impudence with which their property has been taken away. A missionary friend of ours awoke one morning to find that during the night everything in his tent had disappeared on which thieves could lay their hand. We had a large experience of tent ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... thus no life; for life is the result of a harmony between opposites. For him, cramped as he had been by a voluntary respect for far more than the letter of the law, the discovery of a freer mode of speech was of incalculable advantage. It removed from him all temptation to that 'cleverness' which Mr. Gosse rightly finds in the handling of 'the accidents of civilised life,' the unfortunate part of his subject-matter in The Angel in the House; it allowed him to abandon himself to the poetic ecstasy, which in him was almost ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... caught sight of him in the garden. He understood it all at once and did him a service, for he got Steiner out of the way and, taking his hand, led him along the dark corridor as far as Nana's bedroom. In affairs of this kind Labordette was wont to display the most perfect tact and cleverness. Indeed, he seemed delighted to be making other people happy. Nana showed no surprise; she was only somewhat annoyed by the excessive heat of Muffat's pursuit. Life was a serious affair, was it not? Love was too silly: it led to nothing. Besides, she had her scruples in view ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... be not so cold,' said he, and as he said it the champagne broke forth, and he contrived to pass his arm around her waist. He did this with considerable cleverness, for up to this point Eleanor had contrived with tolerable success to keep her distance from him. They had got into a walk nearly enveloped by shrubs, and Mr Slope therefore no doubt considered that ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... lack of betrayed fear, in that. With her, you know, you've never broken, quite the contrary, and she likes you as much as ever. We're leaving town; it will be the end; just now therefore it's nothing to ask. I'll ask to-night," Kate had wound up, "and if you'll leave it to me—my cleverness, I assure you, has grown infernal—I'll ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... experience Jeff discovered that while the gathering of news tends to sharpen the wits it makes also for the superficial. Alertness, cleverness, persistence, a nose for news, and a surface accuracy were the chief qualities demanded of him by the office. He had only to look around him to see that the profession was full of keen-eyed, nimble-witted old-young men who had never attempted to synthesize the life they were supposed to be recording ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... is a natural Abolitionist, with a dark complexion. He is a remarkable youth in other respects, though I should first consider the enormous fact of George's master appropriating to himself the benefit of his servant's cleverness. Even with a show of right this may be a mean trick, but it is the way of the world. A large portion of New England men are at this time claiming each other's patents. I know of an instance down East, for Southerners can sometimes "tak notes, and prent 'em too." A gentleman took a friend to his ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... the heights, that she regretfully admitted. With the eternal snows she possessed little or nothing in common. But, at a lower, more everyday level, had not she a vast amount to offer, what with her personal loveliness, her social cleverness, her knowledge of the world and its ways? She might not amount to the phoenix of Damaris' childhood's adoration; but she was very friendly, very diverting, delightfully kind. Damaris honestly believed all these excellent things ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... lit it. His nerves were shaken, his hands were trembling, but the storm in his heart was soothing down under the influence of this great thought. Tarling! What an inspiration! Tarling, with his reputation for ingenuity, his almost sublime uncanny cleverness. What could be more wonderful ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... presently adding, "Hast thou knowledge as to the points of excellence in beauty?" "Yes," answered Badr al-Din Hasan, "Beauty consisteth in brightness of face, clearness of complexion, shapeliness of nose, gentleness of eyes, sweetness of mouth, cleverness of speech, slenderness of shape and seemliness of all attributes. But the acme of beauty is in the hair and, indeed, al-Shihab the Hijazi hath brought together all these items in his doggrel verse of the metre Rajaz, [FN489] ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Cleaver fendilo. Cleft fendo. Clemency malsevereco. Clement malsevera. Clergy pastraro. Clergyman pastro. Clerk (commercial) komizo. Clerk (ecclesiastic) ekleziulo. Clever lerta. Cleverness lerteco. Client kliento. Cliff krutajxo. Climate klimato. Climb suprenrampi. Clinical klinika. Clink tinti. Clip (shear) tondi. Clip off detrancxi. Clipper tondisto. Clique fermita societo, kliko. Cloak mantelo. Cloak-room ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... ripened by study into a fool. I admit that to have a fund of conceptions, and not form, is only a half possession. For the most splendid knowledge in a head incapable of giving them form is like a treasure buried in the earth. But form without substance is a shadow of riches, and all possible cleverness in expression is of no use to him who ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... this character distinctly charming. Wherein does the charm consist? In two qualities, I think, one of which has not hitherto appeared in French painting, or, indeed, in any art whatever, namely, what we understand by cleverness as a distinct element in treatment—and color. Color is very prominent nowadays in all writing about art, though recently it has given place, in the fashion of the day, to "values" and the realistic representation of natural objects as the painter's proper aim. What precisely is meant ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... the cleverness, both of the pictures and letter-press, there can be no doubt. Miss Menpes's short papers on the children of different lands are full of insight, human and fresh experience; and Mr. Menpes's 100 pictures ... are above all remarkable for their extraordinary ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... He's a cunning and wary devil, and I could get nothing Out of him last night. He says he was in the coal cellar when his master met his death. That's where he showed his cleverness in protecting himself as well as shielding the girl, because if he was actually down in the coal cellar she might have gained entrance to the house and left it again without Thalassa knowing anything about it. He says that he admitted nobody, and ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... societies and eminent men and women in the United States and Europe.[116] The New York Sun said: "In ordinary hands this task would have been dull enough, but Miss Anthony enlivened it with her wit and cleverness and made a success of it." It may be truly said that not one woman in that audience, not even Mrs. Stanton herself, was prouder or happier than Miss Anthony over ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... having heard this story, said "Your cleverness has indeed been great, and your personation of the Siddha wonderful. May you long continue to possess such wisdom and prudence, combined with wit and cheerfulness." Then, looking at Visruta, he said: "It is now your turn;" ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... loved, she was bound to rejoice once more; and rejoice she did, not even allowing herself to be hindered by Mr. Harrison's too obvious failures to comprehend her best remarks. Helen argued that she was not engaged to the man because of his cleverness, and that when she had come to the infinite happiness towards which she was traveling so fast, she would have inspiration enough for two. She had enough for the present to keep them both happy throughout the drive, and when she returned she found that some ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... Nell, don't you know that he thinks very highly of you, and that he considers you a marvel of wisdom and cleverness?" ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... struggling down the road through the storm of the afternoon before, had worried not a little about him, and would have gone back to his aid, if they could have done so. But the wind and snow had been too fierce; and they could only plod on, hoping that his usual luck and cleverness would not desert him, and that he would gain ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... with kisses, and let me take other liberties with you, and that for a year together; and that you do all this not out of love, or liking, or regard, but go through your regular task, like some young witch, without one natural feeling, to shew your cleverness, and get a few presents out of me, and go down into the kitchen to make a fine laugh of it? There is something monstrous in it, that ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... three at a little distance, and discreetly, I smiled at the woman's rustic cleverness; and never did man ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... brothers, "You two elder ones must earn your living by your bodily strength and by the work of your hands, but as for you, little Slyboots, you will be able to rise higher in the world than your brothers, by your own cleverness." ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... reach her actual standard? Why is it that, speaking of this friend or that, we say in the tender mercies of our hearts, "No, she is not quite so bad as Becky?" We fear not only because she has more heart and conscience, but also because she has less cleverness. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... but unaffected. There is no politeness, no gentleness in her heart; but she possesses some warmth, much honesty, and great hospitality. She has acquired the character of being—oh, odious thing!—a clever woman! There are two descriptions of clever women, observe; the one is endowed with corporeal cleverness—the other with mental; and I don't know which of the two is the greater nuisance to society; the one torments you with her management—the other with her smart sayings; the one is for ever rattling her bunch of keys in your ears—the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... years in which little girls are petted like puppies and kittens, there comes a time when it seems less obvious what they can be good for, especially when, like Caterina, they give no particular promise of cleverness or beauty; and it is not surprising that in that uninteresting period there was no particular plan formed as to her future position. She could always help Mrs. Sharp, supposing she were fit for nothing else, as she grew ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... that is provided, it will not be amiss to make a slight reduction or addition, provided that it is done without going too far, but with intelligence. This will be possible, if the architect is a man of practical experience and, besides, not destitute of cleverness ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... he admitted was the main attraction. The coldness of temper suggested by these transactions is contradicted in turn by Cicero's romantic affection for his daughter Tullia, whom he is never tired of praising for her cleverness and charm, and whose death almost broke ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... it! I think it must be a national characteristic. You saw it in the war again and again—a wonderful plan brought to naught by some piece of over-cleverness on ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... "Doesn't want much cleverness to know that, though," said Bruno. "It's wonderful! it's magnificent! And it will shut up all their damned ... excuse me, ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... he had full credit for his cleverness as an organizer. Never before had they been so remote from civilization. When travelling in the carriage, stopping each night at the house of some well-to-do caid or adel, it had been comparatively easy to provide ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... out street dog, a rascally little cur that Buffon himself would have been puzzled to classify. He was ugly, but his features were uncommonly mobile and sparkled with cleverness. He seemed to understand what was told him, and his expression would change according as the words addressed to him, in the same tone of voice, were flattering or injurious. He rolled his eyes, turned up his lips, ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... bear many unkind suspicions—even his friends believed him to have been cognizant all the time of the identity of Pauline Alexes with Athel Kurston—and he was complimented on his cleverness in securing the property, with the daughter, instead of the widow, for an incumbrance. But those may laugh who win, and these things scarcely touched the happiness of ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... route, if he were bidden to sacrifice all precautions to speed. But Phorenice was no niggard with her couriers. She sent a corps of twenty to the headland that overlooks the sea-entrance to the straits; they started with the news, each on his own route; and it says much for their speed and cleverness, that no fewer than seven of these agile fellows came through scathless with their tidings, and of the others it was said that quite three were known ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... and Guatemala. He is a native of Oajaca, one of the Pacific States, and the same that contained the vast estates bestowed upon Cortes, to whom the Valley of Oajaca furnished his title of Marquis. A poor Indian boy, and a fruit-seller, Juarez found a patron, who saw his cleverness, and gave him an education, and so enabled him to play no common part in his country,—the independence of which he seems prepared to destroy, in the hope, perhaps, of securing for it a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... friends, I am afraid, with most of us is, sheer folly—not want of cunning and cleverness, but want of heart—want of feeling—what Solomon calls folly (Prov. i. 22-27), stupidity of soul, when he calls on the simple souls, How long ye simple ones will you love simplicity or silliness, and the ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... innocent part. Francesca dipped a pen in ink and offered it to Tom, who accepted it. Surely, he could not embarrass the girl, nor could he seem to refuse to add to her fortune by any means within his power. Don Luis had brought about the climax with great cleverness, for he felt certain of Tom ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... people, had a steady manly judgment, and was beloved of all. She was very fond of the Icelanders who were there, but most of Kjartan Olafson, for he had been longer than the others in the king's house; and he found it always amusing to converse with her, for she had both understanding and cleverness in talk. The king was always gay and full of mirth in his intercourse with people; and often asked about the manners of the great men and chiefs in the neighbouring countries, when strangers from Denmark or Sweden came to see him. ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... of portraying a large crowd of persons they often show great cleverness, and, as their habit was to avoid uniformity, the varied positions of the heads give a truth to the subject without fatiguing the eye. Nor have they any symmetrical arrangement of figures, on opposite sides ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... recognised. It steals quietly into the house, licks the lips of the sick man and eats the food which has been prepared for him. The sick man soon gets worse and dies. They say it is very difficult to catch the cat, as it has all the nimbleness of its nature and the cleverness of a bhut. However, they sometimes succeed, and then something wonderful happens. The woman out of whom the cat has come remains insensible, as it were in a state of temporary death, until the cat re-enters her ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... optimists with moments of hideous pessimism, enthusiasts at various stages of Parnassus, the peak of which is lighted with a huge dollar sign. A friendly, kindly lot, hard-working and temperamental, with some brilliance and a rather high level of cleverness—slaves of the magazine, probably, and therefore not able to throw stones farther into the future than the end of the month. This is not a country in which literature and art can ever grow big; the cost of living is too high. The modern Chatterton detests garrets and must drive something with ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... at himself because he ceased to believe so easily, and, not knowing that he felt as he did on account of the subtle workings of his inmost nature, he ascribed the certainty he had reached to his own cleverness. He was unduly pleased with himself. With youth's lack of sympathy for an attitude other than its own he despised not a little Weeks and Hayward because they were content with the vague emotion which they called God and would not take the further step which to himself seemed ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... the rug, two dogs, Ami and Finette, lay asleep. They were well-trained, obedient dogs, clean-limbed and civil, expert in many clever tricks, but not quite a match for the parrot in cleverness ...
— The Nursery, No. 103, July, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... was so deeply interested in Mr. Poppleton's ardent efforts to do credit to her teaching, that she was apparently unconscious of all else. She played with great cleverness, and carried her partner to the terminus, with an eager enjoyment of her skill quite pleasant to behold. She made little darts here and there, advised, directed, and controlled his movements, and was quite dramatic in a small way when ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a high average of cleverness, but have they ever during the last two thousand years produced one mighty genius? Moreover, against this high average of intelligence must be set an equally high average of mental derangement. On this point we have the evidence ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... read of the translation of Galahad. Still, the Rose and the Graal are but symbols of the eternal verities, not those verities themselves in their essences; and in these later days when we have become clever—with the cleverness of the Performing Pig—it is a great thing to find the most obscure and broken indications of the things which really are. There is the true enchantment of true romance in the Don Quixote—for those who can understand—but it is delivered in the mode of parody and burlesque; ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... for her beauty, in which she had no rival, and admired for her cleverness by the most gentlemanly men of the place, encouraged their admiration by conversations, for which it was subsequently asserted, she prepared herself beforehand. Finding herself listened to with rapture, she soon began to listen to herself, enjoyed haranguing her audience, and ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... to Mr. Kimball's arguments is likely to do me much harm. Mind you, I believe what I was brought up to believe. It saves a vast of trouble—and back of it all, God is good. The trouble with Mr. Kimball is, he's a leetle too clever. He thinks he's bound to live up to his cleverness and that it's smarter to thrash out some new way of getting to heaven than to go by the old track the common, ignorant folks is travelling. But he'll get there sometime all right and then he'll ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... stronger, a lover of moral dissertations, a counsellor of the public, a sort of lay preacher, less bent on defending the poor, more bent on censuring man; brought to the aid of satire a sustained common-sense, great knowledge of the heart, consummate cleverness, powerful reasoning, a store of meditated hatred, and persecuted vice with all the weapons of reflection... His novels are a war against the upper classes of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... rays of the ultra-violet light may have blinded Mr. Haswell, even to the recognition of his own daughter, but you can rest assured, Prescott, that the very cleverness of your scheme will penetrate the eyes of the blindfolded goddess of justice. Burnham, if you will have the kindness to summon the police, I will take all the responsibility for the arrest of ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... long been exchanging glances, regretting their friend's flow of cleverness. At last Vronsky, without waiting for the artist, walked away ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy |
