"Insight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a doctrinaire who is unconscious of the infinite variety and complexity of life, and its apparent simplicity is mainly due to his inability to realise and appreciate the difficulties of his task. He evinced no insight into the political complications of his time; and his total ignorance of affairs, together with his contempt for civilised life, prevented him from framing a theory of any practical utility. Indeed, the disastrous attempt of the Jacobins to apply his principles proved ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... Luttrell's visit to Colonel Oakley, Stella Croyle never knew. And, again, very likely it would not have mattered if she had. They were parted too widely for insight ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... he said, "it was sticking to the principle you started out on. I trust it is a sure thing. It will give you an insight into the retail trade, so that you may start for yourself some day. I would start in for myself to-morrow, ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... serious face, and said aloud, "Your scruples do your heart credit. They have given me an insight into your deep and sweet character, which emboldens me to ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... earth, The terraced atmospheres, the bounded seas; Who knowest equally both death and birth, Frail human men, strong divine mysteries, Whose unencumbered thought sways all the spheres, In all their turning, snake-like, perfect ways; Now that the season of my labour nears, Grant me an insight to Thy ...
— Eyes of Youth - A Book of Verse by Padraic Colum, Shane Leslie, A.O. • Various
... drily. "The intellects of you English have been nourished on beef and beer for so many generations that there is no such thing as spiritual insight left among you. We must not expect too much." This was said not ill-naturedly, but in that quiet jeering tone which was ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... tides of adversity. "The poet," said Thomas Carlyle, "was fortunate in his father—a man of thoughtful intense character, as the best of our peasants are, valuing knowledge, possessing some and open-minded for more, of keen insight and devout heart, friendly and fearless: a fully unfolded man seldom found in any rank in society, and worth descending far in society to seek. ... Had he been ever so little richer, the whole might have issued otherwise. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... to remark that the Professor's Wanderings, so far as his stoical and cynical envelopment admits us to clear insight, here first take their permanent character, fatuous or not. That Basilisk-glance of the Barouche-and-four seems to have withered up what little remnant of a purpose may have still lurked in him: Life has become wholly a dark labyrinth; wherein, through long years, our Friend, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... as sacrifice to Pallas, present her with bays as she is wise, and with armor as she is valiant; observing herein that excellent [Greek: to prepon], which dedicateth honors according to the perfection of the person. When I entered, right honorable, with a deep insight into the consideration of these premises, seeing your Lordship to be a patron of all martial men, and a Maecenas of such as apply themselves to study, wearing with Pallas both the lance and the bay, and aiming with Augustus at the favor of all, by the ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... loyalty to truth are not in good form. Wealth and social position become the chief ends of men's efforts, and, to buy these, unselfishness and truth and self-respect are bartered away. Luxury, enervation, and effeminacy are rife, and snobbery follows close behind them. The ancestral vigor, the insight to recognize great moral principles, and the power to gladly hazard all in their defence have disappeared in a mist of indifference, which beclouds the eyes and benumbs all the powers. The race of giants is dwindling into dwarfs. They say, when the time comes, we will rouse ourselves ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... claim to having inherited Elbert Hubbard's Genius, his Personality, his Insight into the Human Heart. I am another and totally different sort ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... and pale, but beautiful still. The very fixedness of her great eyes gave her a strange and powerful attraction; and, in the manner in which Andras regarded her, Count Varhely, with his rough insight, saw that there were pity, ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... pictured records of Egyptian life and history, Mr. Henty has produced a story which will give young readers an unsurpassed insight into the customs of one of the greatest of the ancient peoples. Amuba, a prince of the Rebu nation on the shores of the Caspian, is carried with his charioteer Jethro into slavery. They become inmates of ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... healthy, even when expressed, as by Clifford, with somewhat too much of robustious pathos in the voice. Free-will and simple wishing do seem, in the matter of our credences, to be only fifth wheels to the coach. Yet if any one should thereupon assume that intellectual insight is what remains after wish and will and sentimental preference have taken wing, or that pure reason is what then settles our opinions, he would fly quite as directly in the teeth ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... beginning of the end." This point came with Roland at the commencement of the rehearsals. Till then he had not fully realized the terrible nature of the production for which he had made himself responsible. Moreover, it was rehearsals which gave him his first clear insight into the character ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... lover; though I had infinite gratification in seeing the pretty characters that had been traced by Anne Mordaunt's hand, and of kissing the page over which that hand must have passed. But, there was a postscript, the part of a letter in which a woman is said always to give the clearest insight into her true thoughts. It was in these ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... He tried to give them an insight into the great meaning of His life; but they were puzzled, although Mary dimly felt all that He would have her understand. He did not at this time, however, explain to them further regarding what was in His own heart. It may be that He did not yet fully comprehend just what He was to ...
— Wee Ones' Bible Stories • Anonymous
... account of the great Cremonese master and his life-work, is singularly well and clearly told, whilst the technical descriptions and diagrams cannot fail to interest everyone who has fallen under the spell of the violin.... Mr. Petherick traces the career of Stradivari from his earliest insight into the mysteries of the craft to his highest achievements. Numerous illustrations lend attraction to the volume, not the least being a view of Stradivari's atelier, from a painting by Rinaldi, the sketch of which was ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... his confidence in the correctness of her judgment that he seldom, if ever, opposed her decisions. The Princesse de Lamballe used to say, "Though Marie Antoinette is not a woman of great or uncommon talents, yet her long practical knowledge gave her an insight into matters of moment which she turned to advantage with so much coolness and address amid difficulties, that I am convinced she only wanted free scope to have shone in the history of Princes as a great Queen. Her natural tendencies were perfectly domestic. Had she been kept in countenance ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... reward, I observe. Well, you won't get it. Like many others of your class you can follow a trail, but the insight to start right and to end in triumphant success is given only to a genius, and you are ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... difficult than he anticipated. He had visualized the situation with excellent insight up to a certain point, and he had imagined that it would not be a difficult matter to obtain proofs of the existence of an early flirtation or intrigue between Phil Heredith and the pretty girl who had occupied an anomalous position in the moat-house. But a further examination ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... why I always try to persuade you to give our poor ignorant police the benefit of your great insight and wisdom," said Polly, ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... about man's affection for woman, there is no transposition of the standpoint, there is no looking through another's eyes upon a girl. Many have loved, and many have rendered vivid pictures of the emotion, touched with insight of genius and universally proclaimed true to nature from general experience; but no two men love alike, and neither you nor another man can better say how a third feels under the yoke, estimate his thrall, or foretell his actions, despite ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... in a metaphysical cloud. None of these subtle resolvers of ancient riddles, however, approaches grand old Donne, who said in one of his fine discourses that "the Devil himself is only concentrated stupidity." What a magnificent flash of insight! Yes, the great enemy of mankind is stupidity; and, alas, against that, as Schiller said, the gods themselves fight in vain. Yet time fights against it, and time is greater than the gods; so ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... the mountain, his head full of the important task that had been laid upon him; dazzling visions of the great deeds he was to accomplish eclipsed the image of the fair Sirona, and he was so accustomed to believe in the superior insight and kindness of Paulus that he feared no longer for Sirona now that his friend had made ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... very early example of a string of nonsensical incongruities, possessing, however, no further value, except perhaps as affording an insight into what was regarded at that ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... character, sketched with freedom and animation. His reflections are piquant, and often rise to a philosophic tone, which discards the usual trammels of the age; and the progress of the story is varied by a multiplicity of personal anecdotes, that give a rapid insight into the ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... tramp toward the south, we came to Dresden, and there rested five days; but as they were week-days their experiences gave us no insight into the Sunday usages of the place, and I only allude to them because it would seem unbecoming to pass the capital of Saxony without a word; and because I feel morally convinced that of all the art-wonders collected in the Zwinger, Das Grune ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... of notes—American, English, and presently Italian—will dispel an often-expressed opinion that Mr. Hawthorne was gloomy and morbid. He had the inevitable pensiveness and gravity of a person who possessed what a friend of his called "the awful power of insight"; but his mood was always cheerful and equal, and his mind peculiarly healthful, and the airy splendor of his wit and humor was the light of his home. He saw too far to be despondent, though his vivid sympathies and shaping imagination often ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... friend of Archie Weir's?' said one to Frank Innes; and Innes replied, with his usual flippancy and more than his usual insight: 'I know Weir, but I never met Archie.' No one had met Archie, a malady most incident to only sons. He flew his private signal, and none heeded it; It seemed he was abroad in a world from which the very hope of ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to me I had another half-breed for two years, and before that there had been a series of full-blooded native boys. I found the half-breed greatly preferable. With full command of the native language, with such insight into the native mind as few white men ever attain, he combines the white man's quickness of apprehension and desire for knowledge; and the companionship had been pleasant and profitable. Both these boys had picked up quickly and efficiently, without ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... I felt for him was all the more genuine from its being my first friendship with a man of my own age. The pleasure which I derived from this intimacy gave me a new insight into life, and revealed capacities and needs of the soul of which I had hitherto been ignorant. As I could never wholly break away from that love of chivalry which had been implanted in me in early childhood, it pleased me to look upon him as my "brother in arms," and I expressed ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... curious insight into the Pappenheim-Wheeler marriage embroglio, and refers to some noble families that made their money in infamous trades; that the Kaiser adopted the title of one of these unspeakables ("Count of Henneberg") she doesn't seem ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... head station in the country, I returned to a spot about fifteen miles south of Shokuane, called Lepelole (now Litubaruba). Here, in order to obtain an accurate knowledge of the language, I cut myself off from all European society for about six months, and gained by this ordeal an insight into the habits, ways of thinking, laws, and language of that section of the Bechuanas called Bakwains, which has proved of incalculable advantage in my intercourse with ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... appropriate vehicles of his morality. He has left no work—unless the two short stories mentioned above be regarded as exceptions—in which romance and morality are welded into a single perfect whole, nothing that can be put beside The Scarlet Letter or The Marble Faun for deep insight and magic fancy joined in one. Hence his essays, containing as they do the gist of his reflective wisdom, are ranked by some critics above ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... earth so feminine as a hen—not womanly, simply feminine. Those men of insight who write the Woman's Page in the Sunday newspapers study hens more than women, I sometimes think; at any rate, their favourite types are all present ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... common order in which all souls shall finally be merged and be at one. The limitations of genius are consequently not so much limitations as the abrogation of limits in the ordinary sense; its originality of insight, interpretation, and expression broadens the human horizons and enriches the fields within them; it tells us what we may not have known or felt or guessed, but what we shall at last understand. Thus, as the theory of art is most fixed in the ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... of my business had ever been discussed before me, nor had I any insight into the periods at which these loans were due, or how the money was cared for when paid in by my father's executors, of whom, to my regret, Mr. Gerald Stanbury ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... duties, you will have to go to Lodheeana, seeing Major Graham at Agra, on the way, to get a little insight ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... a deeper insight into his character, they would have discovered yet further reason to doubt the fitness of the profession chosen for him; and if they had ever seen him at school, it is possible the doubt of fitness might have strengthened into a certainty of incongruity. His comparative inactivity amongst ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... of nature work have not been without considerable insight into human nature, as well," continues Mrs. Porter. "I know its failings, its inborn tendencies, its weaknesses, its failures, its depth of crime; and the people who feel called upon to spend their time analyzing, ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... than Miss Elinor Wyllys. He had a very poor opinion of Mr. Wyllys's money-making abilities, and thought him very "unenterprising." That gentleman, on the contrary, when brought in closer contact with Mr. Taylor, began to have a clearer insight into his character, and while he found him uncommonly clever, discovered that several of his propositions betrayed anything but high principles. He began to believe that Mr. Graham's dislike was ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... in a flash of grieved insight. "Well," he said, "that is positively the worst! Good-by, Mr. Salmon. Louis, pull out that-er, er—that branch!" and he began slowly to reel in the line. But old Louis, in the stern of the canoe, had taken hold of the ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... research it would be an easy task to pile up a mountain of criticism on points of detail. But, though easy, it would be a thankless task. It is scarcely too much to say that the dominant impression of most readers after perusing this book will be one of astonishment and admiration at the insight and breadth of view displayed by the author. When it was written the subject was a particularly thorny one to handle, and it undoubtedly required much courage to tackle the origin and development of the human race from a purely critical and scientific ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... flawless beauty, without regard to its spiritual import. What was to Aeschylus a secondary object; the purely artistic—was to Sophocles the whole thing. Aeschylus was capable of wonderful psychological insight. Clytemnestra's speech to the Chorus, just before Agamemnon's return, is a perfect marvel in that way. But the tremendous movement, the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... lest the enemy might come and attack him. On October 1, the President and several friends made a visit to Antietam, and during the three succeeding days reviewed the troops and went over the various battle-grounds in company with the general. The better insight which the President thus received of the nature and results of the late battle served only to deepen in his mind the conviction he had long entertained—how greatly McClellan's defects overbalanced ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... belongs to; and if he seems to be busy with what looks like a small piece of trivial experimenting, one may feel pretty sure that he knows what he is about, and that his minute operations are looking to a result that will help him towards attaining his great end in life,—an insight, so far as his faculties and opportunities will allow, into that order of things which he believes he can study with some prospect of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... not be forgotten that the battle is still raging—the issue is still uncertain. Mr. Froude is still free to assert that the 'post-mortem' will prove Carlyle was right. His political sagacity no reader of 'Frederick' can deny; his insight into hidden causes and far-away effects was keen beyond precedent—nothing he ever said deserves contempt, though it may merit anger. If we would escape his conclusion, we must not altogether disregard his premises. ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... deal, but the matter really lay in small compass. The profession of arms is not highly paid. It was true that the pay was poor enough as a seaman, and the life far harder, but then he was only bound for each voyage. At other times he was his own master, and having "gained an insight into" trading from his late captain, he saw indefinite possibilities before him. Alister seemed to have great faith in openings, opportunities, chances, &c., and he said frankly that he looked upon his acquired seamanship simply as a means of paying his passage to any part of the habitable ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... which I have long', thought reverses its own utility by coming at the wrong end of our life when we do not want it. This author knew the world and penetrated characters before she had stepped over the threshold; and, now she has seen so much of it, she has little or no insight at all perhaps she apprehended having seen too much, and kept the bags of foul air that she brought from the Cave of Tempests ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... day, on September 20, 1850, I shall be sitting in this chair, in this study, at ten o'clock at night, longing to die, weary of incessant insight and foresight, without delusions and without hope. Just as I am watching a tongue of blue flame rising in the fire, and my lamp is burning low, the horrible contraction will begin at my chest. I shall only ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... of life of the early Christians, as recorded in Scripture, which before was hidden from us, and into the simple maxims on which Scripture bases it. We may be led to understand that it is very different from the life which men live now. Now knowledge is a call to action: an insight into the way of perfection is a ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... merely a book made to encourage authors to be industrious and hard-working. It is more than that. It is the expression of the life of an unusual man, who did an unusual thing, and who writes about himself so well and so sincerely that he gives us an insight into a phase of English character which none ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... measured each other with watchful eyes, a measurement for which the fact that they crossed each other's path several times a day gave ample opportunity. Because the woman had the steadier eyes and the man was the more open-tempered, Eliza gained more insight into Harkness's character than he did into hers. While he, to use his own phrase, "couldn't reckon her up the least mite in the world," she perceived that under his variable and sensitive nature there was a strong grip of purpose upon all that ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... the character of an honest and disinterested lover and respecter of his species. In his fable entitled Death and the Dying, he unites the genius of Pascal and Moliere; in that of the Two Doves is a tenderness quite peculiar to himself, and an insight into the heart worthy of Shakspeare. In his Mogul's Dream are sentiments worthy of the very high-priest of nature, and expressed in his own native tongue with a felicity which makes the translator feel that all his labours are but vanity and vexation ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... record. It was a sort of combined memoir and journal, charming in its innocent frankness and childish insight. She used to keep it under her pillow, and after she was asleep the parents would steal it out and find a tender amusement and pathos in its quaint entries. It is a faithful record so far as it goes, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Settled down to complete the purchase of his wife. She had not resisted, but he had kissed the smile away Sign of private moral judgment was to have lost your soul Something new, and spiced with tragic sauce Supplied with their convictions by Society Sympathy that has no insight To do nothing is unworthy of a man! Too "smart" to keep their heads for long above the water Truth 's the very devil Unconscious that they themselves were funny to others Weighty dignity of attitude ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... shoals, in humanity? Are there no treacherous lee-shores, no dangerous currents, no breakers? It is amidst these and such as these I purpose to guide my fellow-men, not pretending for a moment to the possession of any heaven-born instinct, or any inspired insight into Nature. No; I have toiled and laboured in the cause. The experience that I mean to offer for sale I have myself bought, occasionally far more dearly than I intend to dispose of it. Haud ignarus mali; I am willing to tell where ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... came to pass which Mary Wells had planned from the first with deep malice, and that shrewd insight into human nature which many a low woman has—the cooler she was the warmer did Richard Bassett grow, till at last, contrasting his pale, meek little wife with this glowing Hebe, he conceived an unholy liking for the latter. She ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... calmly. "Only for you, I'd be hustling like the mischief right this minute along the get-rich trail. Say, Bill, I don't believe it's the dog!" He looked at her with the smile hiding just behind his lips and his eyes. And behind the smile, if one's insight were keen enough to see it, was a troubled anxiety. He shifted the pail of currants to the other arm ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... walk with Leigh. If her interview with the young man had been what he feared, it was natural she should have lain awake long into the night, and his heart misgave him at this additional confirmation of his insight. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... for him an immense and satisfactory contempt. He despised him with all his heart because he did not mean to let the doctor have any reward at all. He despised him, not as a man without faith and honour, but as a fool. Dr. Monygham's insight into his character had deceived Sotillo completely. Therefore he thought ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Confederate States, furnishing a continual surprise to Prescott, who now saw that beneath the man's occasional frivolity and epicurean tastes lay a mind of wonderful penetration, possessing that precious quality generally known as insight. He revealed a minute knowledge of the Confederacy and its chieftains, both civil and military, but he never risked an opinion as to its ultimate chances of success, although Prescott waited with interest to hear what he might say upon this question, one that often troubled himself. But however near ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... race, a greater comprehension than any living man has presented to our generation. We are glad to see you, because in our judgment you have brought to the analysis and distribution of this vast knowledge a more penetrating intelligence and a more thorough insight than any living man has brought even to the minor topics of his special knowledge. In theology, in psychology, in natural science, in the knowledge of individual man and his exposition and in the knowledge ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... on the intricacy of the investigations involved, and on the impossibility of making the two instruments on which their success depends—the imaginative and the analytical faculty—work harmoniously and effectively together. And supposing the goal achieved, supposing a man by insight and patience has succeeded in forcing his way farther than any previous explorer into the recesses of the Beautiful or the True, there still remains the enormous, the insuperable difficulty of expression, of fit and adequate communication ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was a bull-headed, sandy-haired Northumbrian; as we before stated, a relation of the owner's, or he never would have been permitted to remain in the ship. The reader has already had some insight into his diabolical character. It will be sufficient to add, that he was coarse and blustering in his manners; that he never forgot and never forgave an injury; gratitude was not in his composition; and, to gratify his revenge, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... "Insight," he answered promptly. "Don't think that I fear the big fight. I don't. With Dartrey on my side we shall wipe Miller into oblivion. It isn't true to-day to say that he represents the trades unions, for the very reason that the trades unions as solid bodies ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "Salvation from evil" is "through sharing the SAVIOUR's Spirit." (p. 87.)—We are further left to infer that "Justification by faith means the peace of mind, or sense of Divine approval, which comes of trust in a righteous GOD:" (p. 80:) that "Regeneration is a correspondent giving of insight, or an awakening of forces of the soul: Resurrection, a spiritual quickening: Salvation, our deliverance, not from the life-giving GOD, but from evil and darkness." (p. 81.) ... And this from a Clergyman who has just subscribed, "willingly ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... contemplates. Nay, the poetic relations themselves in the phenomenon may suggest to the imagination the law that rules its scientific life. Yea, more than this: we dare to claim for the true, childlike, humble imagination, such an inward oneness with the laws of the universe that it possesses in itself an insight into ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... scientific mind, knowledge is something to be arrived at by study and research. To the religionist, knowledge is something that is contained in an infallible and supernatural statement or insight. Religion exalts the transcendental; science manipulates only the material. To the consistent religionist, his belief, as such, determine the fact; to the scientist it is the evidence that establishes the fact. To ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... was not her spirit's growth measured in the instant of that flashing vision? For God had worked here—had worked in the pity of his heart, as well as in the awakening gratitude in Connie's; and because of the deeper insight he had attained, he could look back over the whole sordid tragedy and discern one of those steep and arduous roads by which the spirit mounts to enlightenment through the flesh. And if this were so here—if in ugliness such as this he could find beauty, was it not one and ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... Lacedaemonian governor of Byzantium. His appearance opens to us a new phase in the eventful history of this gallant army, as well as an insight into the state of the Grecian world under the Lacedaemonian empire. He came attended by the Lacedaemonian Dexippus, who had served in the Cyreian army until their arrival at Trapezus, and who had there been entrusted with an armed vessel for the purpose of detaining transports ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... that were still latent could be unfolded, yet, in another point of view, the time now apparently squandered by him, was, in after-days, turned most invaluably to account. By thus initiating him into a knowledge of the varieties of human character,—by giving him an insight into the details of society, in their least artificial form,—in short, by mixing him up, thus early, with the world, its business and its pleasures, his London life but contributed its share in forming that wonderful combination which his mind ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... interview, during our stay in the colonies, did we derive so much information respecting the real workings of the apprenticeship; from none did we gain such an insight into the character and disposition of the negroes. The company was composed of intelligent and pious men;—so manly and dignified were they in appearance, and so elevated in their sentiments, that we could with difficulty realize that they were slaves. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... was given to me for insight. You were brilliantly your best, and set in the meshes of gold and precious stones that the gods willed for you. There was not a false note, not an attribute wanting. Over your head were mellow, ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... in a flood, uttered mad things, foolish things, and things of an insight electrifying to her. Through the cottager's garden, across a field, and within the park gates of Tourdestelle it continued unceasingly; and deeply was she won by the rebellious note in all that he said, deeply too by his disregard of the vulgar arts of wooers: she detected none. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The prayers that a Brahmin now says three times a day are the same selections of Vedic verses as were used as prayer verses two or three thousand years ago. A little insight into the life of an ordinary Hindu of the present day will show that the system of image-worship is one that has been grafted upon his life, the regular obligatory duties of which are ordered according ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... shallow. So much for the increased horrors of the chasm of Loch Fyne when emptied. No doubt many a smiling valley with its stretching cornfields occupies exactly such a "horrid chasm," from which the waters have receded, though it requires the insight and the far sight of the geologist to convince the unsuspecting inhabitants of this fact. Often an inquisitive eye may detect the shores of a primitive lake in the low horizon hills, and no subsequent elevation of the plain ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... estates, the intrigues of hostile courts, the breaking up of the confederacy, the jealousy of the leaders, and the dislike of princes of the empire to submit to foreign authority. But even this deep insight into the existing state of things, which revealed the whole extent of the evil, showed him also the means by which it might be overcome. It was essential to revive the drooping courage of the weaker states, to meet the ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... to make him not only prominent but formidable in the House for many years. He was distinguished by habits of industry, had the patience and the power required for thorough investigation, and seemed to possess a keen insight into the personal defects, the motives, and the weaknesses of his rivals. He was audacious in assault, apparently reckless in his modes of defense, and in all respects a debater of strong and notable characteristics. Usually merciless in his treatment of an aggressive adversary, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... road-ready to plunge into immensity again. Not for nothing it dawns out of everlasting peace, this great discontent, this self-accusing reflection. The very time sees for us, thinks for us. It is a microscope such as philosophy never had. Insight is for us which was never for any, and doubt not, the moment and the opportunity are divine. Wondering we come into this lodge of watchmen, this office of espial; let us not retreat astonished and ashamed. ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... set aside, and consequently all recruits were uniformly trained. Connected, doubtless, with this change were the various improvements which Marius introduced in the armament, the carrying of the baggage, and similar matters, and which furnish an honourable evidence of his insight into the practical details of the business of war and of his care for his soldiers; and more especially the new method of drill devised by Publius Rutilius Rufus (consul 649) the comrade of Marius ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... slender thread of narrative, but was a concise and well-constructed story, full of beautiful scenes and admirable portraits. The theme is akin to that of Daudet's "L'Evangeliste;" but Kielland, as it appears to me, has in this instance outdone his French confrere, as regards insight into the peculiar character and poetry of the pietistic movement. He has dealt with it as a psychological and not primarily as a pathological phenomenon. A comparison with Daudet suggests itself constantly in reading Kielland. Their methods of workmanship and their ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... writing this, as I have had more insight into Africa by travelling from Kaze to Egypt down the whole length of the Nile, I would be sorry to leave this opinion standing without making a few more remarks. Of all places in Africa, by far the most inviting to missionary enterprise are the ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... movement in France. The letters which he wrote during its progress all show that he looked upon it with the utmost suspicion: arguing from the bloody deeds with which it was consummated, deeds still more bloody and fearful. But the keen insight into the French character which Burke possessed was not common to the public at large, or even to his own party and the friends of his bosom: the general impression was, that the French people, after the first ebullitions of vengeance, would return to their senses; and that then they ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to give you a little insight to the character of one or two priests that I have personally known, and if I dared and if it was possible to print the nasty history of a number of priests that I have been acquainted with, I could fill this volume with their depravity; but should I ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... she'd expected. Then the player began Chopin's Ballade in G Minor. Mrs. De Peyster listened contemptuously; then with rebellious interest; then with complete absorption. That person below could certainly play the piano—brilliantly, feelingly, with the touch and insight of an artist. Mrs. De Peyster's soul rose and fell with the soul of the song, and when the piano, after its uprushing, almost human closing cry, fell sharply into silence, she was for ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... mother doubted whether attendance at the Professor's lectures would give Dorothy much insight into the affair, she had her way. Anthony was too weak to resist her. He pushed the letters towards her without a word. He would rather she had been left out of it. And yet somehow the sight of her, coming ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... when the Wardens of the Scottish and English Marches met to redd up accounts, not only had they to work out knotty arithmetical problems with regard to the value of every sort of live stock, of buildings, of "insight," and the payment of such bills, but they had to have expert knowledge in fair exchange of a Scottish for an English life, an English for a Scotch. Little wonder if their patience sometimes ran short, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... over draft age, was a tremendous testimony to his power. If his offer had been accepted when it was first made, there would have been an American force on the field in France long before one actually arrived there. It was widely believed, among men of intelligence and insight, not only in America but in Great Britain and France, that the arrival of such a force, under the command of a man known, admired, and loved the world over, would have been a splendid reinforcement to the Allied morale and a sudden blow to the German confidence. But the Administration would ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... ye gods, full liberty to pass on our way indifferent. Give us even the illuminating insight of unbounded hate. But deliver us—that at least we pray—from the hypocrisy of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... to the palace, requested to see the lord chamberlain. His appearance at once gained his request; and the lord chamberlain, being a man of some insight, perceived that there was more in the prince's solicitation than met the ear. He felt likewise that no one could tell whence a solution of the present difficulties might arise. So he granted the prince's prayer to ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... shows a literary talent unusual in colonial writers. The Introduction by the editor consists of a sketch of the Byrd family. This is ably written, and the observations made upon Virginia politics and life show keen insight into the unique conditions that were moulding the character of the colony. It is, perhaps, a more valuable contribution to Virginia history than the writings ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... double rhyming—not with the bald duplications of primitive Hebrew poetry. Intellectually he divined things like a woman—with marvellous rapidity, shrewdness and inaccuracy. He saw into people's souls through a dark refracting suspiciousness. The same bent of mind, the same individuality of distorted insight made him overflow with ingenious explanations of the Bible and the Talmud, with new views and new lights on history, philology, medicine—anything, everything. And he believed in his ideas because they were his and in himself because of his ideas. To himself his stature ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... people more or less remotely connected with one another and designated by the term "kindred." This is shown either in the narrow limits of what may be named the family or in the larger bounds of what is called the clan or gens. I attempted to get full insight into the system of relationships in which Seminole kinship is embodied, and, while my efforts were not followed by an altogether satisfactory result, I saw enough to enable me to say that the Seminole relationships ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... dominant reality—the Father and His will. From the first sight given to us of Him as a boy and onwards He was rich in one thing—He was rich towards God. He looked at the world without insensibility to its pain, without evasion of its evil—rather with uniquely sensitive insight into both—as God's world and the scene of God's sovereign activity. And He expected others to share His view. He was repeatedly astonished to find those around Him heedless of the air which He drew in with open mouth, blind to what He saw, deaf to what He heard, ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... at last. By fair induction (as I believe) did man discover, more or less clearly, those eternal laws: by repeated verifications of them in every age, man has been rising, and will yet rise, to clearer insight into their essence, their limits, their practical results. And if it be these, the old laws of right and wrong, which this author and his school call invariable and immutable, we shall, I trust, most heartily agree with ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... girls is a very serious question. Homes for working-girls require skillful management and a matron of insight and sympathy. The bedrooms may be small, but well lighted and ventilated. There should be a sunny dining-room, a library, several small parlors, attractively furnished, a gymnasium which could be used for ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... he had learned from Wycliffe's writings. By these there had been opened to him a deeper glimpse into the corruptions of the Church, and its need of reformation in the head and in the members, than ever he had before obtained. His preaching, with the new accesses of insight which now were his, more ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... this she returned to the piano; whilst the General, who seemed to gloat over his gains, remained silent during this little scene. It gave me a painful insight into his character. I pitied the old man, who played not for amusement but for the sake of money, and would take it in large or small sums from a poor relation or a ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... suit. There was no real support for Burr anywhere. All his plot had been but a dream; at the last he could not do anything which justified, in even the smallest degree, the alarm and curiosity he had excited. The men of keenest insight and best judgment feared his unmasked efforts less than they feared Wilkinson's dark and tortuous treachery. [Footnote: E. G. Cowles Meade; see Gayarre, IV., 169.] As he drifted down the Mississippi with his little flotilla, he was ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... of that period who has not been indebted to him for many particulars of which no other trustworthy record existed. Walpole had in a great degree a historical mind; and perhaps there are few works which show a keener critical insight into the value of old traditions than the "Historic Doubts," directed to establish, not, indeed, Richard's innocence of the crimes charged against him, but the fact that, with respect to many of them, his guilt has never been proved by any evidence which is not ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... confided these perplexities to his wife, without, however, receiving much comfort from her. Nor did the Baroness confess to her husband all her own fears. In secret she often asked herself, with the keen insight of a woman of the world well trained in artifice and who possessed a thorough knowledge of mankind, whether there might not be women capable of using a young girl so as to put the world on a wrong scent; whether, in other ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... on Friday evening at a conference which he held with some delegates of the Social Democrats. From an account written by one of these delegates immediately after the meeting we get an insight into the worthy priest's character and motives. In the morning he had written to them: "I have 100,000 workmen, and I am going with them to the Palace to present a petition. If it is not granted, we shall make a revolution. Do you agree?" They did not like the idea, because ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... dark hair about them, and on other parts of their bodies. I wondered also at seeing one or two, with the red tip showing fully, so different from mine. All this was much talked over by us afterwards, it was to me an insight into the male make and form. Fred told me, he had often seen men's pricks in their fields, and in those days, living in the country as he did, I dare say it was true, but I don't recollect ever having seen the pricks ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... years; but this afternoon the lines about his mouth and in his brows warranted every gray hair of his pointed short beard. There was a reason. Nelson was having one of those searing flashes of insight that do come occasionally to the most blindly hopeful souls. Nelson had hoped all his life. He hoped for himself, he hoped for the whole human race. He served the abstraction that he called "PROgress" with unflinching and unquestioning loyalty. Every new scheme of increasing ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... expressing with accuracy and speed what everybody thinks and says more slowly, without new information, or precision of thought,—but the same thing, neither less nor more. It requires no special insight to edit one of our country newspapers. Yet whoever can say off currently, sentence by sentence, matter neither better nor worse than what is there printed, will be very impressive to our easily-pleased population. These talkers are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... girls were all sorted out in Sally's mind. There was not one of them into whose nature she had not some biting insight. She had become so practised that she knew all their dresses (as of course all the others did, so that a new one was an event), and knew what everything they owned had cost. She could recognise anything that ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... prologue in an old play) to recount the previous adventures of the others, is in itself at all times defective; since it injures the effect of the relation by depriving it of those accessory touches which the author, from his conventionally admitted insight into the feelings and motives of his characters, is privileged to supply: whereas a speaker in the first person must necessarily confine himself, unless when narrating his own adventures, to the points which have fallen under his personal observation. In the present instance it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... Regensburg to the Swede He was plunged down upon by Gallas' agent, Who had been long in ambush, lurking for him. There must have been found on him my whole packet To Thur, to Kinsky, to Oxenstiern, to Arnheim: All this is in their hands; they have now an insight Into the whole—our measures and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a man who had behaved as he had behaved their force should not have been sharp. Nevertheless, what he said had its force, she mused; partly because he seemed unconscious of his own lapse in the case of Mary Datchet, and thus baffled her insight; partly because he always spoke with force, for what reason she did not ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... would have given up their home and all they possessed, and become poor and homeless and wanderers with joy, if God, as they said, would have but spared their child. She saw into their hearts and read all this there; and knowing them, she knew it without even that insight. Everything they would have given up and rejoiced, if but they might have kept him. And there he lay, and was about to die. The little Pilgrim forgot all but the pity of it, and their hearts that were breaking, and the vacant place that was soon to be. She cried out aloud upon the ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... religious education had given Dilawur more than the average insight into the intricacies of Mahomedan doctrine, and being possessed of ready wit, and considerable ability in debate, he was ever anxious to enter into doctrinarian discussions with the mullahs. Their superstitions especially came in for his lively ridicule, and a good story is told ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... magno se corpore miscet;" that "matter, the most cold and indifferent, is full of life, capable of engendering thought, and containing mind in it, at least potentially;" and that, to every man who has true insight, "the world feels, moves, speaks, and thinks."[132] The author of "The Purpose of Existence" makes it his grand object to show that "the evolvement of mind out of matter" is the primary law and final cause of the universe; that "this process commences ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... some extent, how he saw, without pre-arrangement, just those phenomena which could stimulate his mind, already fit, to its highest flights. We have seen, too, how universal was Darwin's interest in nature, and how sympathetic a heart went with his scientific insight. He had yet to show how masterly was his patience, to work for yet twenty years, in order that he might not by premature publication of a crude theory risk defeat and throw science backward rather than forward. This long patient work was to be the ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... In the heart of the parent who is a seer, the mere closing of the door or putting away of the toy in response to a request is not the thing most desired, for that is external and true obedience is internal. The father, possessing insight, wants the heart as well as the hand of the boy to close the door or put away the toy. Without this, no victory is gained. The act itself is the least of all. "Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire. ... Then said I, Lo, I come. ... I delight to do Thy will, O my God; yea, Thy ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... am more indebted to his writings than to those of any other uninspired writer, for the insight which I have been enabled to attain into the motives of the Divine Economy and the grounds ...
— Some Remains (hitherto unpublished) of Joseph Butler, LL.D. • Joseph Butler
... part of the social edifice in every city and every state." He authorized the torture of witnesses. "These provisions are not the wild imaginings of a nightmare, but sober, matter-of-fact legislation, shrewdly and carefully devised to accomplish a settled policy, and it affords us a valuable insight into the public opinion of the day to find that there was no effective resistance to its acceptance." There is evidence, twenty years later, that the Inquisition "had not been universally accepted with alacrity, but the few instances which we find recorded of refusal show how generally ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Chant-Royal. Graceful vers de societe and bits of witty epigram flowed from him without effort. But it was not to this often dangerous facility that Bunner owed his poetic fame. His tenderness, his quick sympathy with nature, his insight into the human heart, above all, the love and longing that filled his soul, have infused into his perfected rhythms the spirit of universal brotherhood that underlies all genuine poetry. His 'Airs from Arcady' ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... not blind, but with a deep, keen insight looks through the encasing garment of human imperfections, and sees within the divine ego, and because it recognizes the true inner self that is worthy, hopeth all things, believeth all things, endureth ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... now proceed to give an account of the appearance, habits, mode of life, means of subsistance, social relations, government, ceremonies, superstitions, numbers, languages, etc. etc. of the natives of Australia, so as to afford some insight into the character and circumstances of this peculiar race, to exhibit the means hitherto adopted for, and the progress made in attempting, their civilization, and to shew the effects produced upon them by a ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... convention delegates that the State did not abolish it by providing for the gradual emancipation of slaves over a period of twenty years, when all should have been emancipated.[10] So significant is the public opinion of that time in Tennessee history, and so well calculated to give large insight into the Negro's condition then in the State, that it will hardly be amiss in this paper to enter into a somewhat detailed discussion of the work of the convention, and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... rude and even grotesque the rhymes that served in the various churches as a vehicle of worship, it seems that the coming of those melodious stanzas, in which the meaning of one poet is largely interpreted by the sympathetic insight of another poet, and the fervid devotion of the Old Testament is informed with the life and transfigured in the language of the New, must have been like a glow of sunlight breaking in upon a gray and cloudy day. Few pages of biography ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... he pronounced these words gave me a deep insight into his feelings. He was of the Saxon party. The same day, that is on Easter Day, I dined at ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... or not, the letters and speeches of Cromwell should be read by every one desirous of obtaining an insight into the character of not the least extraordinary, nor the least misrepresented personage in history. If there is any one who still believes that Cromwell was a thorough hypocrite, that his religion was a systematic feint to cover his ambitious designs, the perusal of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... that crimes are always pondered. A closer insight into the behavior of criminals testifies, however, in many cases that even when there is a long period of indecision, a single encouraging word from the environment, an example with a suggestive ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... yielded to no discouragement or despondency. As a presiding officer she discharged her duties with a self-possession, courtesy, skill, and method, that commanded universal admiration. She had a quick and judicious insight into the various ways and means by which the meetings of the Association would be rendered interesting and attractive. The business part of the work was constantly under her eye. No woman ever labored in a sphere more honorable; and but few ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... information for the history of the Jews in post-Biblical times. His style is clear and attractive, and his power of grasping the events of long periods is comparable with that of Polybius. He was no mere chronicler; he possessed some faculty for explaining as well as recording facts and some real insight into the meaning of events passing ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... some of the unkind philosophy given to the world by her liege. But the talk in the "Conversations" is of an old man in whose heart was a tinge of bitterness. Yet the thought is often lofty and the comment clear and full of flashing insight. It is the book of Ecclesiastes over again, written in a minor key, with a little harmless gossip added for filling. Meissonier died in Paris on the Twenty-first of January, Eighteen Hundred ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... doubt is: but to the Cordillera the Himalaya offers no parallel. The results of Dr. Thomson's study of the north-west Himalaya and Tibet, and my own of the north-east extreme of Sikkim and Tibet, first gave me an insight into the true structure of this chain. Donkia mountain is the culminant point of an immensely elevated mass of mountains, of greater mean height than a similarly extensive area around Kinchin junga. It comprises Chumulari, and many ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... did not suddenly create the world in a week or in a hundred thousand years. It is a story of continuous and eternal creation. As Jesus said, with fine and noble insight, "My father worketh hitherto." He did not recognize that God was resting on any day or through ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... the Doctor knocked, summoning Israel to his own apartment. Here, after a cup of weak tea, and a little toast, the two had a long, familiar talk together; during which, Israel was delighted with the unpretending talkativeness, serene insight, and benign amiability of the sage. But, for all this, he could hardly forgive him for the ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... the victim of this man's caprice, the slave of impulses which might or might not be her destruction. It was as if he watched her trying to walk on a quicksand. And he was powerless to help her. Saltash had defeated him, and he had no insight into his motives. Unstable, baffling, irresponsible as a monkey that swings from tree to tree, he had snatched his prize, and even Jake, who knew him better than most, could only speculate as to whether he would carry it high above ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... the persistently absurd report of the late Earl of Derby being the author of the "First Book of Nonsense," I may relate an incident which occurred to me four summers ago, the first that gave me any insight into the origin of ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... These poor wretches, ruthlessly torn from life, moved helplessly in the void, too feeble to cling to the passions of yesterday or dreams of tomorrow. Some asked themselves blindly, and others with a cruelly clear insight, why they had ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... it. We shall not describe Mr. Taylor with the epithet. We see nothing to justify it in his volume, on every page of which there is actual performance. Maturity may indeed add to his powers, and further increase his poetical insight; but there is no necessity for waiting, lest we commit ourselves by a favorable opinion, and no fear that such an opinion will ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... an uneasiness at the direction taken by his companion's insight, but he played a little at uncertainty. "Behind my ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... immediately brought into touch with the leading authors of the day, their works as they were discussed in the correspondence dictated to him, and the authors' terms upon which books were published. In fact, he was given as close an insight as it was possible for a young man to get into the inner workings of one of the large publishing houses in the United States, with a list peculiarly noted for the distinction of its authors and the broad scope of ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... of politicians, when they would affect any person very much by a matter of fact, of which they intend to inform him, first to excite his curiosity; delay as long as possible the satisfying it; and by that means raise his anxiety and impatience to the utmost, before they give him a full insight into the business. They know that his curiosity will precipitate him into the passion they design to raise, and assist the object in its influence on the mind. A soldier advancing to the battle, is ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... of her life as the arbiter of what must not be done. Although she had defied Caroline ten years ago, and had been punished for her defiance, she still had a deep belief in Caroline's strength of character and clear insight. And she knew that Caroline ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... with asceticism, with thinking and meditation, was searching for Brahman, worshipped the eternal in the Atman. But as a young man, I followed the penitents, lived in the forest, suffered of heat and frost, learned to hunger, taught my body to become dead. Wonderfully, soon afterwards, insight came towards me in the form of the great Buddha's teachings, I felt the knowledge of the oneness of the world circling in me like my own blood. But I also had to leave Buddha and the great knowledge. ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... funeral sermons as the Archbishop of Vienne, which led to his preferment from his class of theology at Meaux to the presidency of the Seminary of Magloire at Paris. His conferences at Paris showed remarkable spiritual insight and knowledge of the human heart. He was a favorite preacher of Louis XIV and Louis XV, and after being appointed bishop of Clermont in 1719 he was also nominated to the French Academy. In 1723 he took final leave of the capital and retired to his see, ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... suspicious of each other, and the one who can deceive another woman is entitled to her laurels for cleverness. With the keen insight and quick intuition of the woman on either side of him, when these women are violently opposed to each other, no man need look ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... explain, if I can," he went on. "To be a successful politician, from the standard which you or I would aim at, a man needs not only political insight, but he needs to be able to adopt his views to the practical programme of one of the existing parties, or else to be strong enough to form a party of his own. That is where I have come to the cul-de-sac in my career. It was my ambition to guide the working classes of the country into their rightful ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... prejudices which previously concealed or distorted a free and true view of the world, have been dissipated and put to flight; with the result that a man can now get a juster and clearer view, and see things as they are, and also in a measure attain more or less insight into the nullity of all things on ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... which follows no severe rule. The men of the sea understand each other very well in their view of earthly things, for simplicity is a good counsellor and isolation not a bad educator. A turn of mind composed of innocence and scepticism is common to them all, with the addition of an unexpected insight into motives, as of disinterested lookers-on at a game. Mr Powell took me aside to say, "I ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... to figure Innocence as playing with a serpent or with a sharp arrow. These old sages had made a deep study of the human heart; and whatever discoveries modern science may have made, the old symbols may still be profitably studied by those who wish to gain a deep insight into the working of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... though it should fail to captivate the highest. But we say of Lincoln's writing, that for all true manly purposes there are passages in his state papers that could not be better put; they are absolutely perfect. They are brief, condensed, intense, and with a power of insight and expression which make them worthy to be inscribed in letters ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... as a legislator ever occupied a seat in Congress. A man cast in the largest mould, and incapable of a petty sentiment, his grasp of public affairs was rarely equaled, and his insight into the effects of legislation was of the deepest. But on what the author of the Autocrat calls the arithmetical side,—in the power of judging particular men and not general principles; in deciding who were ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... over in a moment. The foreman would utter the refusal. Red Perris would be in his saddle and bound towards the mountains. And that thought gave Marianne sudden insight into the fact that the Valley of the Eagles would be a drear, lonely place ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... his daughter Elizabeth, who had threatened judgments upon him because of his refusal to save the King; whilst his body was grievously racked with a tertian fever, and a foul humour which, beginning in his foot, worked its way steadily to his heart. Moreover, some insight regarding his future seemed given to him in his last days, for he appeared, as Ludlow, his contemporary, states, "above all concerned for the reproaches he saw men would cast upon his name, in tramping upon his ashes ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... symbol in order to give us what we need must represent the ultimate reach of insight to which humanity has attained. It must be something that, once having come into existence, remains independent of our momentary subjective fancies and our passing moods. It must be something of clearer ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... course of lectures on this and every kindred Art subject is not made compulsory at the Victoria and Albert Museum is one of the burning questions of the hour among the cultured collectors of the day. The custodians are supposed to be men of special insight in the branches over which they preside, yet for all the advantage to the public they might as well be waxwork dummies. What we want as a nation is "culture while we wait," and writ so large that those who run may read, and until this consummation is attained ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... mind of Joseph Livesey, and a short consideration of the circumstances and surroundings of his useful career will give us the best insight into the necessities and influences which gave it birth. He was born near Preston, in Lancashire, in the year 1795; the beginning of an era in English history which scarcely has a parallel for national suffering. The excitement of ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... no," cried Hobson, "I don't mean to intrude, I am going directly. So you can give me no insight, ma'am," addressing Cecilia, "as to where I ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... M'Collop that we owe our chief insight into technical church matters, although we seldom agree with her 'opeenions' after we gain our own experience. She never misses hearing one sermon on a Sabbath, and oftener she listens to two or three. Neither does she confine herself to the ministrations of a single preacher, but ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... often said that this is the "age of the child," in that our civilization is more largely shaped by a desire to give our children the best possible advantages. We have come to appreciate, thanks to the insight of such philosophers as John Fiske,[58] that the advancement of the human race has been very largely due to the prolongation of the period of infancy. Ordinarily we think of play as an attribute of childhood, but as an incident rather than as a fundamental reason for the prolongation of childhood. ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... that Evelyn had said something to the same effect; but he had already discovered that Carroll possessed a keen insight in certain matters. ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... desertion. This society, when it has had occasion to print copies of a deserter's photograph to use in seeking to discover his present whereabouts, often presents his wife with an enlargement of the picture suitable for framing. The procedure displays, nevertheless, a profound insight not only into human nature but into the ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... when common and dead things had a meaning beyond the power of any dictionary to utter." Mr. Chesterton, it is true, speaks of this "astonishing realism" in relation to Browning's love-poetry, and Pippa Passes is not a love-poem; but the insight of the comment is no less admirable when we use it to enhance a passage such as this. Who has not caught the sunbeam asleep in the mere washhand basin as water was poured out for the mere daily toilet—and felt that heartening gratitude for the symbol of captured joy, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... it does not to-day. That was a day of Warwicks. The nominal rulers did not hold the greatest titles. Naturally, I knew something of these things, from the nature of my work in Calhoun's office. I have had insight into documents which never became public. I have seen treaties made. I have seen the making of maps go forward. This, indeed, I was in part to see that ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... VI. the idealism of Books I., II., VII., and VIII. is never reconciled. Aristotle is content to call existing constitutions perversions of the true form. But we cannot read the Politics without recognising and profiting from the insight into the nature of the state which is revealed throughout. Aristotle's failure does not lie in this, that he is both idealist and realist, but that he keeps these two tendencies too far apart. He thinks too much of his ideal state, as something ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... at present. He confided the fact that he had put all his savings into the stock of the present company at its greatly depressed present value. The company was not paying dividends; he had bought at forty. His air of financial success, of shrewd speculative insight impressed them all. Miss M'Gann evidently knew all about this; she smiled as if the world were ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... I should not dream of repeating it. But all that you say interests me very much, for it gives me an insight into your way of looking at things, which is entirely different from mine, for I have seen so little of life. And now you want to know about my new catacomb. There's no use my trying to describe it, for you would never find it by that. ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... elaborate locking-frame of any one type. But if we confine ourselves to the simplest combination of a stud-locking apparatus, such as is used in small boxes on the Great Western Railway, the reader will get an insight into the general principles of these safety devices, as the ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... aware that the Queen's fury, unless checked, would produce his and his client's ruin, determined to divert this flood of emotion into a new channel. With the insight of genius, the fat knight realized that only a woman's curiosity could avert a queen's rage, and with what speed he could he stumbled backward to where Droop had left his exhibits. He lifted the box containing the phonograph ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... influence in his pen, a magnetic attraction in his descriptions, a fertility in his literary resources which are characteristic of Dumas alone, and the seal of the master of light literature is set upon all his works. Even when not strictly historical, his romances give an insight into the habits and modes of thought and action of the people of the time described, which are not offered in ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr |
