"Shrewd" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thoroughly appreciated the good feeling of Mr. Roosevelt's speech. Only true friends speak as he spoke.... The barrel-organs, of course, grind out the old tune about Mr. Roosevelt's tactlessness. In reality he is a very tactful as well as a very shrewd man. It is surely the height of tactfulness to recognize that the British people are sane enough and sincere enough to like being told the truth. His speech is one of the greatest compliments ever paid to ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... the sombre twilight of the staircase. One of Rembrandt's portraits might have stepped down from its frame to walk in an appropriate atmosphere of gloom, such as the great painter loved. The older man gave the younger a shrewd glance, and knocked thrice at the door. It was opened by a man of forty or thereabout, who seemed to ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... darkly weathered, framed in hair whose jet already boasted an accent of silver at either temple—the face of a man inured to hardship, seasoned in suffering, strong in self-knowledge. The incandescence of an intelligence coldly dispassionate, quick and shrewd, lighted those dark eyes. Distinctively a face of Gallic cast, three years of long-drawn torment had served in part to erase from it wellnigh all resemblance to both the brilliant social freebooter of ante-bellum Paris and that ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... Serbs could now no longer, as in days gone by, look hopefully towards Cetinje. Rumours and something more than rumours were circulating as to Nikita's character. For many years that very shrewd person was going to gull the Western world which, meeting him on the Riviera, was enchanted by his picturesque costume. But if Queen Victoria and Mr. Gladstone had gone to ask the Montenegrins they would have found that he was hated, and not only in the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... dressing, in order to have it firmly implanted in her mind that Frank—whom she had known from a boy—was simply and solely in the middle of a walking-tour all by himself. She understood the situation perfectly in a minute and a half—(she was a very shrewd woman who did not say much)—but Jack was not content. He hovered about her room, fingering photographs and silver-handled brushes, explaining over and over again how important it was that Frank should be made to feel at his case, and that ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... bereavement?—Called long ago to higher dignities and wider usefulness in distant fields. Oh for the presence and counsel of Bonaventure! It is true, here was Mr. Tarbox, so kind, and so replete with information; so shrewd and so ready to advise. She spurned the thought of leaning on him; and yet the oft-spurned thought as often returned. Already his generous interest had explored her pecuniary affairs, and his suggestions, too ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... and rocked to sleep at sunset. Preciosa had gone upstairs at the same time. I saw her lying upon the foot of our bed after supper, her eyes narrowed to slender slits with sleep or slyness. I had a shrewd impression that if I were to go upstairs now I should not find her in the same place. Instead of verifying the surmise in this way I stole noiselessly out of the family group, sauntering along carelessly until I turned the ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... under General Bols at the seat of government on the Mount of Olives, were certainly not narrowed by any military professionalism, and had if anything the mark of quite different professions. One was a very shrewd and humorous lawyer employed on legal problems about enemy property, another was a young schoolmaster, with keen and clear ideas, or rather ideals, about education for all the races in Palestine. ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... South was rich. His lands had been claimed when tracts could be had for the taking, and, though he had to make his cross mark when there was a contract to be signed, his instinctive mind was shrewd and far seeing. The tinkle of his cow-bells was heard for a long distance along the creek bottoms. His hillside fields were the richest and his coves the most fertile in that country. His house had several rooms, and, except for those who ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... me, "you don't find it very easy to get tenants for houses of this kind." "Very easy!" said Mr. M'Craw, with somewhat of a Highland twang, and, as I thought, with also a good deal of Highland hauteur—as was of course quite natural in so shrewd and extensive a house-agent, when dealing with the owner of a domicile that would not let, and who made foolish remarks—"No, nor easy at all, or it would not be locked up in this way: but if we took off the shutters you would soon get tenants enough." "Oh, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... stocks of tinned goods are in reserve—are as cheap as water and fuel. Our unsullied appetites demand few condiments. Why olives, when if need be—and the need has not yet manifested itself—as shrewd a relish and as cleansing a flavour is to be obtained from the pale yellow flowers of the male papaw, steeped in brine—a decoration and a zest combined? Our mango chutney etherealises our occasional salted goat-mutton—and ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... shrunk from the thoughts of playing to empty boxes at his benefit. He resolved to have a full house, and hit upon an expedient which showed that, young as he was, he knew something of the human heart, and that, though a stranger, he had made a very shrewd estimate of the public taste, for which he had the skill to cater more appropriately and successfully than he could by merely dishing up a play of Shakspeare's in his own rough cookery. Fortunately for his purpose there had lately ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... a note" of sundry young members of his flock who had met for a drive and a supper, with a dance fringed upon the outskirts. The fame thereof being noised abroad, a sturdy old farmer, with a good deal of shrewd sense and mother-wit in his brains, and a fine, indirect way of hitting the nail on the head with a side-stroke, was questioned in a neighboring village as to the facts of the case. "Yes," he said, surlily, "the young folks had a party, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... temple-like in the paling lights, he felt a clutch on his arm, and heard the cry: "There are things THERE that I want so desperately to see!" and all the way back to the hotel she continued to question him, with shrewd precision and an artless thirst for detail, about the theatrical life of Paris. He was struck afresh, as he listened, by the way in which her naturalness eased the situation of constraint, leaving to it only a pleasant savour ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... some weeping, all grieving, could be the fiend who had committed the crimes. One by one, I looked in their faces—at Burns, youngest member of the crew, a blue-eyed, sandy-haired Scot; at Clarke and Adams and Charlie Jones, old in the service of the Turner line; at McNamara, a shrewd little Irishman; at Oleson the Swede. And, in spite of myself, I could not help comparing them with the heavy-shouldered, sodden-faced man below in his cabin, the ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... but the need for a story-teller abides. In most villages he is a bigger man than the chief—they're all 'ol' chiefs,' the few that are left—and when they die there will be no more. So the tribal story-teller comes to be the most important character"—the Jesuit smiled in that shrewd and gentle way of his—"that is, of course, after the Shaman, as the Russians call him, the medicine-man, who is a teller of stories, too, in his more circumscribed fashion. But it's the Story-teller who helps his people through the long winter—helps ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... supervision—or rather, in mutual study—it becomes at once a series of vivid pictures of primitive Eastern life—for all allusions should be explained, where possible, pictorially—while at the same time the memory will be insensibly stored with shrewd common sense and knowledge of the world, to be turned to, ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... would be useless to her. She could not man them. It would be a severe strain to her finances even to put them into commission. I am of opinion that the order to build them was given as a speculation by a few shrewd men in the Brazilian Government who foresaw unsettled times ahead, and they are there to be disposed of to the highest European or ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... It needed no denial from Julianna, however, to know that her convictions about the power of inherited tendencies had come from her own thought. Her mind, unlike her manner, had little submissiveness, and, furthermore, she recited several cases from her own shrewd observation. ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... to trace an excellent illustration of the natural affinity between the fondness for feudalism and the love of law-breaking in Sir WALTER SCOTT. Whatever his head and his natural common sense dictated (and as he was a canny Scot and a shrewd observer, they dictated many wise truths), his heart was always with the men of bow and brand; with dashing robbers, moss troopers, duellists, wild-eagle barons, wild-wolf borderers, and the whole farrago of autocratic scoundrelism. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... peer, that mighty man of muscle, Is on his legs, what slender pegs! "ye noble Earl" of Russell; Thus might he speak, did not of speech his shrewd reserve the folly see, And thus unfold the subtle plan ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... to his own guidance, very soon displayed a remarkable prudence in his pecuniary affairs, and a desire to repair by good management the fortunes of his family,—a point which he accomplished, to a certain extent. His dawning character shewed him to be shrewd and wary, but possessing no extended views, and disposed to rest his hopes of elevation and distinction upon petty intrigues, rather than to look upon probity and exertion as the true basis of greatness. His ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... a cause of deep amazement to Savinien. What! Cayrol! The shrewd close—fisted Auvergnat! A girl without a fortune! Cayrol Silex as he was called in the commercial world on account of his hardness. This living money-bag had a heart then! It was necessary to believe it since both money-bag and heart had been ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... She was too shrewd to deny it outright, for in that case she, the daughter of the old man at the Tore Peak farm, would have been going with the tourists solely to carry ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... sufficed for Cameron to close the deal with Fraser, a reckless and gallant young Highlander, whose chivalrous soul, kindling at Cameron's romantic story, prompted a generous reduction in the price of the ranch and its outfit complete. Hence when Mandy's shrewd and experienced head had scanned the contract and cast up the inventory of steers and horses, with pigs and poultry thrown in, and had found nothing amiss with the deal—indeed it was rather better than she had hoped—there ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... a man and such a piece of armament, one gray Friday morning in the edge of winter, Mrs. Fanny Tobin was traveling from Sanscrit Pond to North Kilby. She was an elderly and feeble-looking woman, but with a shrewd twinkle in her eyes, and she felt very anxious about her numerous pieces of baggage and her own personal safety. She was enveloped in many shawls and smaller wrappings, but they were not securely fastened, and kept getting undone and flying loose, so that the bitter December cold ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... and counting-house to the poet and story-teller who possessed a wealth of words and a knowledge of how to use them greater than any Englishman who had lived before him. And it is rather through his works than through the scanty facts of his life that we learn to know the real man, full of shrewd knowledge of the world, of ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... asleep, and, for aught I know, dreaming about the exploits of the day. You will no doubt smile, and wonder what exploits such a cur is able to perform; but I assure you that if he is at all like some of the gipsy dogs I have heard of, he has been taught a good many very shrewd tricks. The dogs of the gipsies are sometimes trained to steal for their masters. The thief enters a store with some respectably dressed man, whom the owner of the dog will commission for the purpose, and—the man ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... sometimes turned upon the affairs of his own country, and its relations with the rest of the world, especially with England; and Middleton could not help being struck with the accuracy of the old man's knowledge respecting that country, which so few Englishmen know anything about; his shrewd appreciation of the American character,—shrewd and caustic, yet not without a good degree of justice; the sagacity of his remarks on the past, and prophecies of what was likely to happen,—prophecies which, in one instance, were singularly verified, ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... house had been Rafael's grandfather, the shrewd don Jaime, who had established the family fortune by fifty years of slow exploitation of ignorance and poverty. He began life as a clerk in the Ayuntamiento of Alcira; then he became secretary to the municipal judge, then assistant to the city clerk, then assistant-registrar of deeds. ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... mounted and again took up the trail, soon leaving behind their halting-place, which the boys named Lake Christopher, much to the vain little darky's chagrin. He had a shrewd suspicion that he would not hear the last of his fright ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... strait-jacket," which is placed upon the inward man. The unformed and pliable novice, usually between the ages of sixteen and twenty, is subjected to "a skillful, energetic and unremitting assault upon personal independence." Every device that a shrewd and powerful intellect could conceive of is employed to break up the personal will. "The Jesuit scheme prescribes the gait, the way to hold the hands, to incline the head, to direct the eyes, to ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... furnace shone two gray eyes rayed with green lines starting from the pupils, and speckled with brown spots,—two implacable eyes, full of resolution, rectitude, and shrewd calculation. Graslin's nose was short and turned up; he had a mouth with thick lips, a prominent forehead, and high cheek-bones, coarse ears with large edges discolored by the condition of his blood,—in short, he was an ancient satyr in a black satin waistcoat, brown frock-coat, and white cravat. ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... the country who was fitter than he for the kind of work he was thus called on to do; but there was one very serious obstacle in his way. He had his commission; he had full authority to conduct the campaign; he had everything in fact except an army, and it does not require a very shrewd person to guess that an army is a rather important part of a general's outfit for defending a large territory. He called for volunteers and accepted any kind that came. He even published a special address to the free negroes within the threatened district and asked them to ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... after my father and mother. The coyote is very wise, the moon is very old; but who ever heard much of anything of credit to the grasshopper and the ring- tailed cat? The Nishinam are always right. The mother of all women had to be a cat, a little, wizened, sad-faced, shrewd ring-tailed cat." ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... took my team and we started, went to Detroit, drove down to the wharf and waited for the large ferry boat to come to her wharf. Mr. Tompkins was a shrewd man. He thought that he would cross on the little ferry boat, that was then in, and see what he could learn on the other side, and got aboard and went over. While I was waiting I spoke to a mulatto and asked him if he was acquainted in Canada, and what they called the reservation back of Windsor, ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... level-headed, shrewd observer," he said—"one of the few men whom I can trust to do exactly what I want, neither more nor less. I think when we return to London we must endeavour to get that chain taken off the invalid lady's door, or, at any rate, ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... something," he rejoined obstinately, "and what's more I can make a pretty shrewd guess what it ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... tour of the European capitals. In Berlin, at what was falsely called a Charity Ball, she had met a young Russian Count who was understood to be rich and related to one of the Grand Ducal families. Against the protests of her father (a shrewd American banker), she had married the Count, and they had returned to New York, where her mother had ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... obvious description of Mr. Brady just at that moment. There was only friendly amusement in the Judge's drawling voice and shrewd eyes, but back of it, unmistakably there, was something that made every careless word worth listening to. Mr. Brady was resisting it. ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... one knew that he opposed it from the heart out. He said so and he meant it. And, being opposed to the dreadful heresy of equal suffrage, no reader of the Whitewater Sentinel that morning could say, as the shrewd so often say of our older ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... shadowy image of the man may be seen in the Book; a practical man, brave, shrewd, prudent, keen in affairs, and never losing his interest in mercantile details, very fond of the chase, sparing of speech; with a deep wondering respect for Saints, even though they be Pagan Saints, and their asceticism, but a contempt for Patarins and such like, whose consciences would not ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... of the building, amid the crowd of brokers and speculators, I saw a tall, broad-shouldered man of fifty or fifty-five, his face keen, shrewd and hard, broad at the temples and tapering to a strong jaw, a yellow-gray mustache and imperial half-hiding and half- revealing the firm lines of the mouth, with the mark of the wolf strong upon the whole. It was a face never to be forgotten as long as I should ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... public, who snarl at the carpenter and shoemaker if the fitness of things be not observed; we, the shrewd critics, who pillory the luckless painter who dresses a gentleman of the Restoration in the ruff of James First's court, gaze calmly on the most ridiculous anachronisms and impossibilities, and smite our perfumed gloves in approbation. ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... that which in 1867 was called Liberal-Conservative. This centre he hoped to create out of moderate Conservatives who had enlarged their earlier views, and moderate Reformers who anxiously desired to see Sydenham's proposed improvements carried out.[40] A shrewd observer, himself a member, and appreciatively critical of Sydenham's work, counted at least five parties in the new parliament. Three of these groups came from Upper Canada—the Conservatives under Sir Allan MacNab; the Ministerialists, that is the Reformers and moderate Conservatives, under ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... with me at Paris?" I remarked, in wonder at this strange revelation. "He certainly never struck me as an assassin. He was a shrewd man—a swindler, no doubt, but his humorous bearing and his good-nature were entirely opposed to the belief that his was a ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... the stupid money system, which these laborers them selves help to keep in force, the results of their combined efforts were either usurped by an unproductive class fortunate enough to be born rich, or those shrewd enough to accumulate money, such as trust managers, bankers, real estate speculators, stock jobbers, and brokers, gamblers, burglars, money loan swindlers, ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... new friend's life. He might even break the acquaintanceship altogether. But Garratt Skinner would surely discover who had been at work. And then? Why, then, Mr. Jarvice would have upon his heels a shrewd and watchful enemy; and in this particular business, such an enemy Mr. Jarvice could not afford to have. Jarvice was not an impressionable man, but his hands grew cold while he imagined Garratt Skinner watching the development ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... of other indisputable evidence at his back, secured by the shrewd Leonard, Bernard entered the contest for his seat. The House of Representatives was democratic by a small majority. The contest was a long and bitter one. The republicans were solidly for Bernard. The struggle was eagerly watched from day to day. It was commonly believed ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... shoulders. She was reading the "Popular Science Monthly." This and the "Geographic" and "Current Events" were regularly taken by her and most thoroughly digested. She read with keen intelligence; her comments were as shrewd as a knife-edge. The chair she sat in was made from elk-horns and looked like the throne of some Norse chieftain. Behind her on the wall hung the stuffed head of a huge walrus, his tusks gleaming, the ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... of his love for music, or the continued development of his genius in that direction. Abraham clearly perceived that Felix had in him the makings of a man of business; he was methodical, quick, and shrewd, and possessed that infinite capacity for taking pains which is the accompaniment of true genius. These were qualities pre-eminently fitting him for a successful business career, and hence the doubtings as to whether such a rare combination of qualifications ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... duchess made answer, "that worthy Sancho is droll I consider a very good thing, because it is a sign that he is shrewd; for drollery and sprightliness, Senor Don Quixote, as you very well know, do not take up their abode with dull wits; and as good Sancho is droll and sprightly I here set him ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... evils we have enumerated. Publicity, pitiless publicity, alone can lead to redress. These large- scale, impersonal sins must not be so nonchalantly tolerated; instead of applauding and envying the shrewd financier who rakes in unearned profits by clever manipulation, by unscrupulous use of inside information, and disregard of the welfare of workers, competitors, and public, we must brand him as a selfish ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... subject shall suit him best. The host will travel with them as master of ceremonies, and whoever tells the best story shall be given a fine supper at the general expense when they all come back again,—a shrewd bit of business and a fine idea, as the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... a source of entertainment she was to Lady Maria, and how the shrewd, worldly old thing liked her. Lady Maria Bayne was the cleverest, sharpest-tongued, smartest old woman in London. She knew everybody and had done everything in her youth, a good many things not considered highly ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... found life extremely interesting. They were cheery, happy-go-lucky youngsters, with an immense capacity for enjoyment; and Aunt Margaret, while much too shrewd an old lady to spoil children, delighted in giving them a good time. They found plenty of friends in the little English community in Paris, as well as among their French neighbours. Paris itself was full of fascination; then there were wonderful excursions ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... not be attained without making enemies, perhaps without making mistakes. But the more we study George Buchanan's history, the less we shall be inclined to hunt out his failings, the more inclined to admire his worth. A shrewd, sound-hearted, affectionate man, with a strong love of right and scorn of wrong, and a humour withal which saved him—except on really great occasions—from bitterness, and helped him to laugh where narrower natures would have only snarled,—he ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... This moment I will make you a purge to the purpose." And then the learned man, half-doctor, half-divine, chanted again the sacred incantation as he bent over his pestle and mortar, saying: Ex carne et sanguine Christi! Those shrewd old eyes soon saw that, in spite of all their defences and all their denials, damage had been done to the conscience and the heart that nothing would set right but a frank admission of the evil that had been done, and a prompt submission to ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... more free. He was by so much the more free to do the mad, romantic, quixotic thing, which might seem to be a contradiction of his past, but was not so much a contradiction of himself as people who knew him imperfectly might suppose. He was taken to be ambitious, calculating, shrewd; when all the while he knew himself to be—as most Englishmen are at heart—quixotic, romantic, and even a little mad, when madness can ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... man who was nearest to him swelled as though he were lifting a great weight with his head; no doubt he was battling with shrewd temptations to spring to one side and drive a bullet at the robbers above him. But prudence conquered. He began to deal, laying out the cards with mechanical, ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... the administration of justice, a matter on which, as an upright lawyer, Lauder was keenly sensitive, that he was an ill-natured critic of his professional brethren or of public men. On the contrary, the tone of his observations, though shrewd and humorous, is kindly and large-minded. He admired Lockhart, who was his senior at the bar, and whom he perhaps regarded more than any other man as his professional leader and chief, though he does not ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... opposite intent, Bearing a sword, whose glitterance and keen edge, E'en as I view'd it with the flood between, Appall'd me. Next four others I beheld, Of humble seeming: and, behind them all, One single old man, sleeping, as he came, With a shrewd visage. And these seven, each Like the first troop were habited, but wore No braid of lilies on their temples wreath'd. Rather with roses and each vermeil flower, A sight, but little distant, might have sworn, That they were all on fire ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... son, therefore, was an antagonist, and it was his duty to get the better of him. The transformation of sentiment into self-seeking, ordinarily slow, tortuous, and veiled by hypocrisy in better educated people, was swift and direct in the old "bear," who demonstrated the superiority of shrewd ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... Turan. "We know not where we are, or the way from these pits; for I know not east from west; but he doubtless knows and if we are shrewd we may learn from him that which we would know. At least we cannot afford to arouse his suspicions"; and so they followed him—followed along winding corridors and through many chambers, until they came at last to a room in which there were several marble ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... as forming so curious a part of the scenery of Chile. In the evening we reached the mines of Jajuel, situated in a ravine at the flank of the great chain. I stayed here five days. My host, the superintendent of the mine, was a shrewd but rather ignorant Cornish miner. He had married a Spanish woman, and did not mean to return home; but his admiration for the mines of Cornwall remained unbounded. Amongst many other questions, he asked me, "Now that George Rex is dead, how many more of the family of Rexes ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... and its lands were granted to a man of the name of Monk by Henry VIII., of course for a consideration. Others held, and evidence existed in favour of this view, that on the dissolution of the monastery the abbot of the day, a shrewd man of easy principles, managed to possess himself of the Chapter House and further extensive hereditaments, of course with the connivance of the Commissioners, and, providing himself with a wife, to exchange a spiritual for a temporal ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... nothing in all the world that more rejoiced his heart than to hear the pleasant sound of war, and see the soldiers brandish forth their steeled weapons." Casting his eye more kindly, therefore, upon the sturdy Van Corlear, and finding him to be a jovial varlet, shrewd in his discourse, yet of great discretion and immeasurable wind, he straightway conceived a vast kindness for him, and discharging him from the troublesome duty of garrisoning, defending and alarming the city, ever after retained him about his person as his chief favorite, confidential ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... shrewd to be wanting in politeness. "Welcome, Colonel Philibert," said he; "you are an unexpected guest, but a welcome one! Come and taste the hospitality of Beaumanoir before you deliver your message. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Jakoff was silent. Then his fingers began to twitch with extraordinary rapidity, and, changing the expression of deferential vacancy with which he had listened to his orders for one of shrewd intelligence, he turned ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... report, dated June 8, 1577, Sande furnishes some information additional to that in the preceding document. The Moros of Luzon are very shrewd traders, and are skilful in alloying the gold which they obtain in that island. This practice causes the governor much perplexity regarding the currency question. He has succeeded, during the past two years, in putting "the affairs of the royal estate into as good order as in Mexico;" ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... But he had a shrewd eye for the follies of travellers, and speaks of their tendency to come home "full of disguisements not only of apparel but of our countenances, as though the credit of a traveller stood all upon his outside". He then adds a curious prophecy, which Shakespeare made haste to ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... however, was not merely a keen man of business and successful tradesman. He was, in addition, an idealist and a dreamer of dreams; but so shrewd and level-headed was he, that he kept the two things quite apart. His business was never neglected, and he returned to it all the fresher, inasmuch as in his off times his mind was ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... and to keep through all Close to the sunny side of the wall; Not like a pictured block to be, Standing always in one position; Nay but to veer, with expedition, And ever to catch the favouring breeze, This is the part of a shrewd tactician, This is to be a—THERAMENES! DIO. Truly an exquisite joke 'twould be, Him with a dancing girl to see, Lolling at ease on Milesian rugs; Me, like a slave, beside him standing, Aught that he wants to his lordship handing; Then as the damsel fair he hugs, Seeing me all on fire ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... now in the light it could be perceived that he bore the stamp of many years of vagabondage. He had none of the tidiness of the calculating and shrewd professional tramp. His wardrobe represented the cast-off specimens of half a dozen fashions and eras. Two factories had combined their efforts in providing shoes for his feet. As you gazed at him there passed through your mind vague ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... of the above we read that Shemuel said to Rav Yehudah, "Shrewd fellow, open thy mouth when thou readest, etc., so that thy reading may remain and thy life may be lengthened; as it is written in Prov. iv. 22, 'For they are life unto those that find them;' read not, 'that ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... familiarly vnto them, to dally and lye with them, in token of their more neere coniunction, and as it were marriage vnto him.'[689] 'Witches confessing, so frequently as they do, that the Devil lies with them, and withal complaining of his tedious and offensive coldness, it is a shrewd presumption that he doth lie with them indeed, and that it is not a ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... horse looking after her straight, slender figure as she walked toward the gate. His face was still sphinx-like but there was a speculative look in his shrewd eyes. Bruce's success "meant so much to her," did it? That, then, was why she had come. The distance she had travelled for the purpose of seeing him had not impressed him in ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... that keeping Christmas in the German sense was coming to be very general in England; but her shrewd, practical turn of mind induced her to hope that the English would never go "such lengths in foolery." At Hanover, she wrote, the tradespeople had been for many weeks in full employ, framing and mounting the embroideries of the ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... orchard of old derelict fruit trees behind the stable two men dug a grave in the sun, while from the shade the old sergeant smoked and watched them; and a little apart lay a stretcher, a tattered and stained blanket outlining the shape upon it. Jovannic was aware of the old man's shrewd eye measuring him and his temper as he stopped ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... to a standstill. He had thought it all out beforehand, and so arranged it that it should lead up, in a shrewd, dignified way, to the matter itself. But now it was all in a muddle like a slattern's pocket-handkerchief, and the farmer did not look as if he had understood a single word of it. He lay there, taking a cake ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the public, now that the one is dead, and the other dormant. The voice of all the age acknowledges Byron to have been the greatest poetical genius of his time. Mr Jeffrey, though still enjoying the renown of being a shrewd and intelligent critic of the productions of others, has established no right to the honour of being an original ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... little; exclaimed a little: he was more wonder-struck than horrified. But Mr. Cazalette's mask-like countenance remained immobile; only, a gleam of sudden, almost pleased interest showed itself in his black, shrewd eyes. ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... time meeting Craig's eye frankly. "No. I wish I had. Why—the fact is, I don't know who did—no one seems to know, yet, evidently. But," he added, leaning forward and speaking rapidly, "I think I could give a shrewd guess." ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... these remarks with an impenetrable face. He neither defended Marsham, nor did he join in Lady Felton's denunciations. But that good lady, who though voluble was shrewd, told her husband afterward that she was certain Sir James believed Marsham to be responsible for ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... think you have some reason for your curiosity, if you ask so many questions," observed the shrewd Maltese. "I was joking about our captain, and, if you want to see him, I can take ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... a shrewd thought. She was but a girl after all, and, under illness and exhaustion, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... rhyming letters of Burns is astonishingly high. They bear, as such compositions should, the impression of free spontaneity, and indeed often read like sheer improvisations. Yet they are sprinkled with admirable stanzas of natural description, shrewd criticism, delightful humor, and are pervaded by a delicate tactfulness possible only to a man with a genius for friendship. They are usually written in the favorite six-line stanza, the meter that flowed ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... what Dunbar argued, and he, being the eldest of the party, was finally allowed his way, and that was to pay the shrewd trader his price, delivering to him the supplies agreed to on the next day before they started out upon their stampede to ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... might be extensive and profitable, and are not astonished to find Cicero asking Atticus to see that copies of his Greek book on his own consulship were to be had in Athens and other Greek towns.[100] This shrewd man also invested in gladiators, whom he could let out at a profit, as no doubt he would let out his library slaves.[101] Lastly, he owned houses in Rome; in fact he must have been making money in many different ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... infancy. Similarly, moral tendencies are transmitted, and the Bible gives us many examples of the fact. The luxury-loving Isaac, who must have his savoury food, just as his son, Esau, who would sell his birthright for a mess of pottage, Rebekah, who, like her brother Laban is shrewd and cunning, sees her tendency repeated in her son Jacob, who needed a life of discipline and prayer to ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... by this and the neighboring residences has changed less than any place I can remember. Our kindly, polite, shrewd, and humorous old neighbor, who in former days has served the town as constable and auctioneer, and who bids fair to become the oldest inhabitant of the city, was there when I was born, and is living there to-day. By and by the stony foot of the great University will plant itself on this ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... given you many a shrewd nip and gird since that time, but either my eyes are grown dimmer, or my old friend is the same who stood before me three-and-twenty years ago—his hair a little confessing the hand of Time, but still shrouding the same capacious ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... not disturbed because of the fact that he had been arrested on a charge of passing counterfeit money; already he had a shrewd suspicion as to the value of his discoveries, and felt quite certain he would receive a warm and friendly reception from ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... usual wisdom, and "the shrewd application of a wide experience so peculiar to yourself," as some one has since insulted me by saying, I instantly gave myself up as lost. The bridge would run into some other bridge, or dash into a steamer, or do something horrible, and I should be killed, and none would know of my ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... daughter sharply as he said this, but did not question her farther, though he would have liked to do so. He had a shrewd suspicion that this visit of Lady Laura's bore some reference to George Fairfax. Had there been a row at the Castle? he wondered, and had my lady ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... illustrious colleague too well to follow him down any of those by-paths of knowledge in which he delighted to wander. To his intensely shrewd and practical mind there was something repellent in the waste of energy involved in a discussion upon the Early Church or the twenty-seven principles of Mesmer. It was his custom to slip past such conversational openings with a quick step and an ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... looked with bright, shrewd eyes at Kieran. "You are quite the sensation already, Mr. Kieran. The whole community of starworlds is already aware of the illegal resuscitation of one of the pioneer spacemen, and of course there is great interest." He paused. ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... that they have never a light of their own, but are always the reflectors of some other light which you cannot see. He would allow that they were extraordinarily quick in assimilating another person's views, but that was all. I quoted some very shrewd remarks which a lady had made to me at dinner. 'Those are the traces of the last man,' said he. According to his preposterous theory, you could in conversation with a woman reconstruct the last man ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... you M. de Rastignac? I am very glad to see you," she said, but there was something in her manner that a shrewd observer would have taken ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... this country appreciates the wonderful and valuable services of Luther Burbank, and no one doubts that if his method could be extended the whole nation would benefit in an economic way. Yet Burbank has been unable to teach the rest of us how to apply his shrewd "common-sense" and his keen intuition to the improvement of useful and ornamental plants. It was necessary for scientists to study what he had done in order to make available for the whole world those principles that make his practice ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... a bad man, he was either a fool or very shrewd, I have never known which. It is certain that he had reason to hate me and that he treated me as meanly as possible. Madame Pierson, who had the greatest friendship for the cure, had almost come to think equally well of the nephew. He was proud of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... father's daughter' and 'your father's son'! Faith, but it was a shrewd and nimble phrase, And left me with no fitting word at tongue. The wench hath wit and matter of her own, And beauty, that doth seldom mate with wit, Nature hath painted her a proper brown— A russet-colored wench that knows her worth. And mincing, too—should have ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... sister State in the Northwest, and an undeveloped wealth that will far exceed any one of those named. This is not a random statement, originating in State pride or self-interest, but the simple truth which is slowly being found out by the shrewd among men. We propose to speak of some of the advantages which we possess in the northern half of our lower peninsula, as yet almost ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... in long files, one boy after the other, up the five spiral staircases of stone, each class to its destination; and well do I remember how we of the third sat hushed and still, watched by the eye of the dux, until the door opened, and in walked that model of a good Scotchman, the shrewd, intelligent, but warm- hearted and kind ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... in the air on the Golden Bough from that very first day or the voyage. I was soon to learn that there was plenty of rebellious spirit forward, and shrewd, daring fellows eager to lead, because of piratical greed. Also, she was a hell-ship. It was part of a hell-ship's routine to thump the crew to the raw edge of mutiny, and ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... themselves, or agents employed to solicit contributions among their brethren of Granada and Africa; at the same time, it so far deluded their hopes, that they gave in a full inventory of their effects to the treasury. By this shrewd device, Ferdinand obtained complete possession both of the persons and property ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... Some, who are shrewd, think of the more substantial and look out for the future. Foremost among these is Tallien, the king of robbers, but prodigal, whose pockets, full of holes, are only filled to be at once emptied; Javogues, who makes the most of Montbrison; Rovere, who, for eighty thousand ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... said: "Well, this may be important, or it may not. But it is very important that you should keep it to yourself." He looked hard again at William, decided that an appeal to his vanity would be best, and added: "You're pretty shrewd, I fancy, and you can see that it is most important not to put the criminal on his ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... more or less consciously elaborated by the "finance editors," consciously initiated and encouraged by the shrewd business men of the Manderson group, who knew that nothing could better help their plans than this illusion of hero-worship—knew also that no word had come from Manderson in answer to their messages, and that Howard B. ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... does it signify? Anne Boleyn also mourned for Catharine of Aragon, whom she had pushed from the throne. For eight weeks she was seen in yellow mourning on account of Henry's first wife; but Anne Boleyn was a shrewd woman, and she knew very well that the yellow mourning dress was exceedingly becoming ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... brief account of his business, and Stirling, who asked one or two very shrewd questions, sat apparently reflecting ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... those were days in which her Majesty's service was as little overridden by absurd rules of seniority as by that etiquette which is at once the counterfeit and the ruin of true discipline. Under Elizabeth and her ministers, a brave and a shrewd man was certain of promotion, let his rank or his age be what they might; the true honor of knighthood covered once and for all any lowliness of birth; and the merchant service (in which all the best sea-captains, even those of noble blood, were more or less engaged) ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... very little himself. Jim was better than a theater to him. He spent so much of his time in the conflicts of his profession, that in his vacations he simply opened heart and mind to entertainment. A shrewd, frank, unsophisticated nature was a constant feast to him, and though he was a keen sportsman, the woods would have had few ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... this is something of the same kind," Venner said; "though I am bound to say that my guess was somewhat in the nature of a shot. Still, putting two and two together, I felt that I could not have been far wrong. Since I have been here this evening, I have begun to form a pretty shrewd opinion as to ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... hats, to look as much like English people as possible; while their valet marshals them forward with a stream of guttural information, unbroken by a single punctuation point. These wise cats know the real English by their "Murrays;" and I think they make a shrewd guess at the nationality of us Americans by the speed with which we pass from one thing to another, and by our national ignorance of all languages but English. They must also hear us vaunt the superiority of our own land in unpleasant comparisons, and I ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... She was shrewd enough to see that the best way to capture Alce was to make herself as unlike her sister as possible. With him she was like a little soft cat, languid and sleek, or else delicately playful. She appealed to his protecting strength, ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... heat, the wind and the rain of long years. They are angular, bold, defiant, and unsuited to the pastoral and agricultural scenes of middle life. The grind of life with its slow accomplishment and failure has not as yet imparted caution and discretion. Shrewd calculation and niggardliness too are normally absent. Generous estimates prevail. Idealism is passionate and turns its eye to summits that a life-time of devotion cannot scale. Honor is held in high regard and select friendships may have the ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... rang in the lower regions—quick, shambling footsteps pattered on the stone corridor outside—the door opened suddenly—and a tall lean yellow old man, sharp as to his eyes, shrewd as to his lips, fussily restless as to all his movements, entered the room, with two huge Labrador dogs at his heels, and took his seat in a violent hurry. The dogs followed him, and placed themselves, with the utmost gravity and composure, one on each side ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... change passed over her face. Her eyes twinkled a moment, with a shrewd appreciation of my guess. She drew herself up, with a gleam of pride and pleasure; she nodded an assent, and wrapping her shawl ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... considered as a high-coloured picture, the author quotes the original of the courtly and shrewd Sir James Melville, being then Queen Mary's envoy at the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... the captors were, and how the coup had been brought about, was drawn up and signed, and, in high glee at the shrewd blow struck against Schenk and his Germans, they returned once more to the lodging of ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... while making the circuit, he paused, and, shading his eyes with his hands, examined the desert to the extremest verge of vision; and always, when the survey was ended, his face clouded with disappointment, slight, but enough to advise a shrewd spectator that he was there expecting company, if not by appointment; at the same time, the spectator would have been conscious of a sharpening of the curiosity to learn what the business could be that required transaction in a place so far ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... any important principle or policy, and was singularly wanting in the qualities of a party leader. No one questioned his personal integrity, but in later years he was prompt and zealous in the defense of the worst abuses which found shelter in his party. Mr. Sherman was shrewd, wiry and diplomatic, but gave little promise of the career he has since achieved through ambition, industry and favoring conditions. Shellabarger was one of the ablest men in the House, and was so rated. He was ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... the old mariner, in a subdued tone, and with a shrewd and suspicious glance of his eye after the old sibyl, "it's a word that may not very well be uttered, but there are many mistakes made in evening stories if old Moll Moray there, where she lives, knows not mickle more than she is willing to tell of the Haunted Ships and their ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... because the landlord would keep nothing in repair; gardener after gardener leaving for want of a shilling increase in weekly wages. In case Sir Peter should turn out to resemble his father, we had best not let the grass grow under our feet, Mr. Crewys," said the shrewd gentleman, chuckling, "but take full advantage of the powers entrusted to you for the next two years and a quarter. Sir Peter, luckily, does not come of ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... know? Had he guessed? Had Betty told him? He wondered. It was not like Betty to have spoken of what had passed between them. Yet he did not know how close a bond might exist between this father and daughter, who were, MacRae was beginning to perceive, most singularly alike. And this was a shrewd old man, sadly wise in human weaknesses, and much more tolerant than MacRae had conceived possible. He felt a little ashamed of the malice with which he had fought this battle of the salmon around Squitty Island. Yet Gower ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... strength which they had gained by loch and moor. But it is not so with their sons. Their business habits are learnt in the counting-house; a good school, doubtless, as far as it goes: but one which will expand none but the lowest intellectual faculties; which will make them accurate accountants, shrewd computers and competitors, but never the originators of daring schemes, men able and willing to go forth to replenish the earth and subdue it. And in the hours of relaxation, how much of their time is thrown away, for want ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... moreover, he had an inferior job—there seemed to their minds to be something humiliating and comic about the task of tending mules. These urchins came from a score of nations of Southern Europe and Asia; there were flat-faced Tartars and swarthy Greeks and shrewd-eyed little Japanese. They spoke a compromise language, consisting mainly of English curse words and obscenities; the filthiness which their minds had spawned was incredible to one born and raised in the sunlight. They alleged obscenities of ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... was a boy, shrewd and communicative, who could tell us the traditions of the place; and, of course, young as he was, nothing more. It was he who showed us where the additional stove was placed when winter came on. He pointed to a spot beside the fireplace, where he said the straw was ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... letters from the notorious Harriette Wilson, who, in spite of the terror into which her "Memoirs" had thrown society, desired to add the author of Pelham to the aviary of her conquests. But the snare was set in vain before the eyes of so shrewd a bird as Bulwer-Lytton; he declined to see the lady, but he kept her amazing letters. This was in 1829, when the novelist seems to have had no literary or political associates. But by 1831, we find him editing the New Monthly Magazine, and attaching himself to Lord Melbourne ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... so indispensable was his presence in the great temple, that such a deprivation would be little short of a calamity. In this dilemma, he called to his aid the general of his forces, an able warrior and a shrewd designing man, conferred on him the hereditary title of shio-goon, or tycoon, and despatched him at the head of the army to carry fire and sword into the coasts of China. This prince's name was Tycosama, ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... and the prince wrote as only dutiful children might write to the most affectionate and wisest of parents. They sought his advice and followed it. They reared their children to do him honour. What this friend was, may be gathered from what shrewd people thought of him. Lord Palmerston, no partial critic, declared, 'I have come in my life across only one absolutely disinterested man, and that is—Stockmar.' Subtle aphorisms on the conduct of life may be culled, almost ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... from his hands, in which he had hidden it, and, behold! all alone as Perseus had supposed himself to be, there was a stranger in the solitary place. It was a brisk, intelligent, and remarkably shrewd-looking young man, with a cloak over his shoulders, an odd sort of cap on his head, a strangely twisted staff in his hand, and a short and very crooked sword hanging by his side. He was exceedingly light and active in his figure, like a person much accustomed to gymnastic exercises, and ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... chain corslet, still an Irishman was so ugly a foe, that it was not worth while to fight with him unless he could be robbed afterwards. The Danes, who, like their descendants of Northumbria, the Lowlands, and Ulster, were canny common-sense folk, with a shrewd eye to interest, found, somewhat to their regret, that there were trades even more profitable than robbery and murder. They therefore concentrated themselves round harbors and river mouths, and sent forth their ships to all the western seas, from Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... did I sign a bill. Your father pursued a different policy—he signed many bills—and lost many friends." Lionel, much distressed, looked down, and evidently desired to have done with the subject. Not so the Colonel. That shrewd man, though he did not preach, had a way all his own, which was perhaps quite as effective as any sermon by a fashionable layman can ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... associate it with mere coal, as strangers have a way of doing, because of the trite remark about "taking coals to Newcastle." Why, the very names of the streets in the old part chime bell-like with the romance of history! And I like the people of Northumberland—those I have met; the shrewd, kindly townsfolk, and the country folk living in gray villages, who love old, old ways, and emit quaint wit with ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... ride past Cressida's house, he will find his mistress and his friend sitting at a window. Saluting Pandarus, and not tarrying, his passage will give occasion for some talk of him, which may make his ears glow. With respect to the letter, Pandarus gives some shrewd hints: ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... asked Kennedy, "can photography be considered as irrefutable evidence? The realism may convince all, except the expert and the initiated after careful study. A shrewd judge will be careful to insist that in every case the negative be submitted and examined for possible alterations by a ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... sailing beetles across it on linden leaves, or lolling full-fed and lazy, smoking contraband cigarettes of caporal! I knew well how pleased he would be when he saw that battered dolphin that threw the water and the funny little stone frogs at each corner, and I had a shrewd idea that old Mrs. Y—— would not object to parting with it, moss and lichen and all, if one made it worth ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... the position of the enemy, he thought he might without danger initiate the vidame into the secrets of his situation. The old commander loved Auguste as a father loves his wife's children; he was shrewd, dexterous, and very diplomatic. He listened to the baron, shook his head, and they both held counsel. The worthy vidame did not share his young friend's confidence when Auguste declared that in the time in which they ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... agricultural labour, when he attained fame and fortune he maintained his interest in his farm, and wrote his De re rustica in green old age. It tells what sort of farm manager he himself was, or wanted to be thought to be, and, though a mere collection of random notes, sets forth more shrewd common sense and agricultural experience than it is possible to pack into the same number of English words. It remains today of much more ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... was shrewd enough to turn what some persons might call his ill fortune, in one way, into gain in another. He was one of those happily constituted, thrifty philosophers who hold that even misfortune should not be wasted, and that no evil is so great but the alchemy of ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... Marquis of Argyle, to mould his youthful mind to the precepts of the Puritans and Covenanters. Sir Ewan Dhu combined a commanding personal appearance with a suitable majesty of deportment, and with a shrewd, dauntless, honourable, generous mind. His very sirname had an influence upon the good will of his superstitious and devoted followers. It denoted that he was dark, both in hair and complexion; ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... him of a shrewd device by which they could still further get the better of him. He ran into the forest here and there, and when he had gone about five miles it fell out as he wished; he came across the sheriff himself hunting with hound and ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... Fame thinks his worried eyes, His wrinkled, shrewd, pathetic face, His shop, and all he sells ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... secession of knife and fork, and a resort to the less tasteful amusement of speech-making. Souley, however, had all the while said all manner of things about, and brought all sorts of charges against Louis Napoleon, whose government he denounced in very general terms, not dreaming that that shrewd sovereign had introduced two spies in the capacity of waiters. The cloth being removed, Monsieur rose, considering he was in duty bound, and commenced throwing off the rounded sentences of the first part of a very ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... father within the past year. The grandmother, a Southern woman in birth and training, had all the traditions and feelings that accompany the possession of wealth and social standing that have never been disturbed. She was a shrewd, careful business woman of more than average ability. The family property and wealth were invested, in large measure, under her personal care. Virginia's portion was, without any restriction, her own. She had been trained by her father to understand the ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... invasion of Russia just beginning, when the United States navy was "fourteen pendants," what would they not have been in 1807, had the nation possessed even one half of the twenty ships of the line which Gouverneur Morris, a shrewd financier, estimated fifteen years before were within her competency? While entirely convinced of the illegality of the British measures, and feeling keenly—as what American even now cannot but feel?—the humiliation and outrage to which his country was at that period ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... a rustic shelf, Rakish and shrewd, with his collar awry, Sang impolitely, as though by himself, Drowning with his bellowing the nightingale's cry: "Back through a hundred, hundred years Hear the waves as they climb the piers, Hear the howl of the silver seas, Hear the thunder. Hear the gongs of holy ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... a personal incident, a local "hit," or, best of all, a quick, shrewd caricature of some feature of the opposing party, will gain attention and half win the battle. A speaker was once called upon to make an address after a political opponent had taken his seat. This man at one ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... Billy found it difficult to keep awake, and, in proportion as this difficulty increased, his staring at the captain became more direct and intense. Of course Graddy perceived this, and the sneering smile that crossed his visage showed that he had made a shrewd guess at the ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... restless, lean man with bulging fishlike eyes and a face altogether like a pike—an uncanny fellow, in whom exaggerated reserve often alternated with affability no less affected—who would have liked to pass for a shrewd intellect but was considered disagreeable instead. He was a quarrelsome chap, and everybody grew more anxious to avoid him the farther he advanced toward that age when persons of limited intellect are apt to make up in pretensions for what they lose in usefulness. Nevertheless ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... only five nights, Strafford had won a success which might well have dazzled a young and untried aspirant, and which was sufficiently impressive to shrewd men of business like Messrs Longman to induce them to undertake its publication free of cost. It appeared in April, with an interesting preface, subsequently withdrawn, from which a significant sentence has already ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... We had much in common in our religious faith, our hatred of war and oppression. His great genius seemed to me to be always held firmly in hand by a sense of duty, and by the practical common sense of a shrewd man of business. He fought through life like an old knight-errant, but without enthusiasm. He had no personal ideals. I remember once how he remonstrated with me for my admiration for General Gordon. He looked upon that wonderful personality as a wild fighter, a rash adventurer, doing ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... real than the name of the ship that was leaving the harbour or the sunlight on the incoming sail. And I would answer at random and amiss, and earn reproof. Yet there were things which I knew well enough, too, and could have given him shrewd and precise answers ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... said Loki, smiling maliciously. "He is a shrewd giant, and a mighty. Even you, great Thor, cannot go to him and pluck the hammer from his hand as one would slip the rattle from a baby's pink fist. Nay, you must use craft, Thor; and it is I who will teach you, if ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... capacity of hostess, giving him the much-needed opportunity to secure safe footing in the dark area of uncertainty. He believed himself capable of diverting the youthful Miss Rodney and his discreet sister-in-law, but he was consumed by an unholy dread of Rodney pere; something told him that this shrewd American business man was not the kind who would have the wool pulled over his eyes by anyone. Brock felt that the support of Constance was of greater value than that of Edith at any stage or ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... of admiration is intended for me," I remarked, "I am sure I am only too sensible of the honor. But flattery has never succeeded in making me talk against my better judgment. I may be shrewd, but a fool could see what you are after this morning. Compliment me when I have deserved ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... animalibus, Mantua, 1479, Lib. xxiv. At the same place however is given a description of the whale-fishery grounded on actual experience, but with the shrewd addition that what the old authors had written on the subject did ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... a present of L100,000 and 20,000 rifles, was all that the Ameer gained; his own shrewd sense had shown him long before that Britain must in any case defend Afghanistan against Russia. What he wanted was an official recognition of his own personal position as ruler, while he acted, so to speak, as the "Count of the Marches" of India. The Gladstone Government held out no hopes of assuring ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... the emergency. With a shrewd application of humble auxiliary devices, he at once erected above the bones of his benefactor a costly monument, overtopping every rough headboard in the cemetery, and on this he judiciously caused to be inscribed an epitaph of his own composing, eulogizing the honesty, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... more celebrated modern fortune-tellers, the managers of the oracles were frequently shrewd fellows, and could often pick up the materials of a very smart and judicious answer from the appearance of the customer and his question. Very often the answer was sheer nonsense. It was, in fact, believed by many that as a rule you couldn't ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... man of no mean sagacity, quite up to the average standard of Scottish common sense, not a low one; and, though incapable of understanding any manner of lofty thought or passion, is a shrewd measurer of weaknesses, and not without a spark or two of kindly feeling. See first his sketch of his master's character to Mr. Hammorgaw, beginning: "He's no a'thegither sae void o' sense, neither"; and then the close of the dialogue: "But the lad's no a bad lad after a', and ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... will be complete, as constituted at present. The first was the youngest son of the aged man at the head of the table. He had inherited his father's features, but there was a dash of recklessness blended with the manifest frankness of his expression, and in his blue eyes there was little trace of shrewd calculation or forethought. Even during the quiet midday meal they flashed with an irrepressible mirthfulness, and not one at the table escaped his aggressive nonsense. His brother, two or three years his senior, was of a very different type, and seemed somewhat ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... was declining, and the profit somewhat less. Everybody pared the margin to the mere skin. Winston had a little luck, however. Two sales of some note were effected, and a barter, that only a man with a shrewd eye for bargains, and a glib tongue, could have managed. Flour, apples, and potatoes were the stock this time. The workmen took them gladly, at a little less than store prices. They knew how full the wareroom kept all ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas |
