"Insight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in arrangement, and that true philosophy of statesmanship which can attach to each incident a fitting moral, from which every honest politician can derive instruction. The work is one equally useful in the double aspect in which it may be regarded—first, an insight into the causes of past transactions; second, as a warning to guide mankind amid the many perplexing political questions of the day. The spirit of impartiality animates every page of this work. It is deserving of a place in every ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... with my friends till the ensuing spring, and to get a little insight into Canadian farming, clearing land, &c., that I might have some experience before commencing operations on my ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... only care being to tie the neck of the tumour firmly with strong string, sew up the wound, and trust to nature, was an operation very easy to perform, and requiring free cutting rather than dexterity, and rashness more than true surgical insight. ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... times and seasons when we are engrossed in a train of deep and unconscious thought. Suddenly recalled to ourselves, we start from our mental aberration, and a clearer insight into the immediate purposes and machinery of our lives, is afforded us. We seem endowed with a more accurate knowledge of self; the inmost workings of our souls are abruptly revealed—feeling's mysteries stand developed—our weaknesses stare us in ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... husband that the Honorable William Moore had been at considerable pains to interest her in the coming struggle, even prolonging his frequent calls unduly, in giving her an insight (so far as he thought necessary) into the workings of practical politics as expounded and promulgated by Mr. Burroughs and himself. So delicately had he broached what had been in his mind since the night of Eva's dinner party that before she was aware she had promised that she would do what she ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... memory with a mist of tears tending to obscure the true outlines of events, so that while Yoritomo is execrated as an inhuman, selfish tyrant, Yoshitsune is worshipped as a faultless hero. Yet, when examined closely, the situation undergoes some modifications. Yoritomo's keen insight discerned in his half-brother's attitude something more than mere rivalry. He discovered the possible establishment of special relations between the Imperial Court and a section of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... a goodly tale or two, On which he may disport him at night. His high prudence hath insight very To judge if it be well made or nay. Write him nothing that soweneth to vice. Look if find thou canst any treatise Grounded on his ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... the people who worship her are in earnest. They believe what is told them. Their forefathers did the same. It was good enough for them, so they follow—follow like dogs their master. Now and again those with keener insight step aside and utter protest, sniffing danger. Most of them are whipped into their place again, and all goes on as before.... The priests know their work, and are clever. The people may believe the myths and accept them as truths, but their teachers know they are fables, ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... was not that. Salome had too clear a spiritual insight not to know that her father was more alive than he had been while on earth, and that he was bending down and ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... of my vision, and stimulating me to aspire, and to teach others to aspire. He had been angered at first—he confessed—by my ambition to soar to Dimensions above the Third; but, since then, he had received fresh insight, and he was not too proud to acknowledge his error to a Pupil. Then he proceeded to initiate me into mysteries yet higher than those I had witnessed, shewing me how to construct Extra-Solids by the motion of Solids, and Double Extra-Solids by the motion of Extra-Solids, and all "strictly ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... especially how 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 can be found more vividly ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... to cruise soon after Misson's Arrival. Nothing could be more agreeable to the Inclinations of our Voluntier than this Cruize, which made him acquainted with the most noted Ports of the Mediterranean, and gave him a great Insight into the practical Part of Navigation. He grew fond of this Life, and was resolved to be a compleat Sailor, which made him always one of the first on a Yard Arm, either to Hand or Reef, and very inquisitive in the different Methods of working a Ship: His ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... insight into the Spanish character on more than one point," said L'Isle. "As to their love of dancing, and of the fandango in particular, it is said, though I do not vouch for it, that the Church of Rome, scandalized ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... successful bluff to disconcert his opponent. The serious objection to relying upon moral effect alone to overcome resistance is that moral forces do not admit of as close knowledge and measurement as do material conditions. The insight and moral strength of the enemy may be greater than you have means of knowing, and to assume that they are less is to fall into the dangerous error of despising your enemy. To attribute to so dubious a hope, alone, the daring act of ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... moral courage superior to that of the many, is that dangerous post earned; and women will listen to the man who will tell them the truth, however sternly; and will bow, as before a guardian angel, to the strong insight of him whom they have once learned to trust. But it is a dangerous office, after all, for layman as well as for priest, that of father-confessor. The experience of centuries has shown that they must ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... General Sir Frederick Maurice, in his essay on the Balance of Military Power in Europe, but Maurice based his scheme on the assumption of a Continental alliance which Dilke thought impracticable. It had also been treated with great insight as early as 1880 by Sir John Colomb in his Defence of Great and Greater Britain. His brother Admiral Philip Colomb had more recently expounded the view that the right plan was to make the enemy's coasts our frontier, and to blockade ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Missouri. For some time he preached in Baltimore, taught school in St. Louis, and among other things, organized churches and lectured in Mississippi. The wide experiences of both gentlemen offered to them unusual opportunities to develop the power, keenness of insight, and knowledge of human nature so essential to ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... was awed by Mr. Effingham's manner, and Eve saw that her father's fine face had flushed. This interruption, therefore, suddenly changed the discourse, which has been recreated at some length, as likely to give the reader a better insight into a character that will fill some space in our narrative, than a ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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, digging into, and uncovering these sources of depravity have that privilege, ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... guard his life. He was the greatest patron of gladiatorial shows and signalized his accession to power by magnificent scenes of carnage in the arena—a strange dawn for the day of a new civilization. Must we not a little doubt the consistency of his policy and even his insight when we find him after all ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... living creature could be brought near enough to keep him warm. For these two beings, however, he had felt, in its greatest intensity, the sort of interest which always allied him to the subjects of his pencil. He had pried into their souls with his keenest insight, and pictured the result upon their features, with his utmost skill, so as barely to fall short of that standard which no genius ever reached, his own severe conception. He had caught from the duskiness of the future—at ...
— The Prophetic Pictures (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... most delightful little book, valuable for the student, as also for those desirous of gaining some insight into this art."—CHAS. J. ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... exactitude, and decent customs, deeply penetrated with a sense of the dignity of his position, and accustomed to struggle with special zeal against indolence of body and spirit—was disgusted with the slothful life and fraudulent dealings of his subordinates; and the deeper insight which yesterday's experience had given him into the poverty and sorrow of human existence, made him resolve with increased warmth that he would awake them ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a danger of discovery. I had to realize now that the Lady of the Shroud might indeed be a Vampire—one of that horrid race that survives death and carries on a life-in-death existence eternally and only for evil. Indeed, I began to expect that Aunt Janet would ere long have some prophetic insight to the matter. She had been so wonderfully correct in her prophetic surmises with regard to both the visits to my room that it was hardly possible that she could fail to take cognizance of this ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... lost for hours he would suddenly swing their horses' heads about and guide them home with the accuracy of the wild goose on its nights to the nesting grounds. He read every sign of footprint, leaf, water, and sky with unfailing insight. He had no knowledge of books, and she had at first thought him ignorant, but as the days went by she had found in him a mine of wisdom which shamed her ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... satisfactory marriage for his son or daughter under his favourite loggia in the evening cool; he loved his game at chess under that same loggia, and his biting jest, and even his coarse joke, as not beneath the dignity of a man eligible for the highest magistracy. He had gained an insight into all sorts of affairs at home and abroad: he had been of the "Ten" who managed the war department, of the "Eight" who attended to home discipline, of the Priori or Signori who were the heads of the executive government; he had even risen to the supreme office of Gonfaloniere; he had made one ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... prescription, calling itself Orthodoxy. Then Private Judgment comes forth again to criticise and reform. It thus becomes the duty of each individual to judge the Church; and out of innumerable individual judgments the insight of the Church is kept living and progressive. We contribute one such private judgment; not, we trust, in conceit, but in the hope of provoking ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... was to old Mr. Hobby, as everybody called him, that George was indebted for his first insight into the mysteries of book-learning; and although he was in due time to become the greatest man of this or any other age or country, yet he began his education by first learning his A B C, just as did other boys of that day, just as they are now doing, ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... abound in portraitures of 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 characters of ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... previous births was seen by him. If their several incidents had left no trace behind, this could not have been so, as there would have been nothing for him to see. And any one who attains to the fourth state of Dhyana (psychical insight) can thus retrospectively trace the line of ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... and which he had said, in Captain Alec's hearing, were good and "went well." It was Beaumaroy, of course, who had called them poems; the Captain had merely repeated the description. But with her newly found insight Doctor Mary knew better. What Mr. Saffron declaimed in that vibrating, metallic voice, were ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... losing an ornament. She explained to him how an accomplished and experienced woman could help a man to gain admittance into the tiptop circles, which, according to her, were just thirsting for him. As a waiter, he had his share of brains, and it's a business that requires more insight than perhaps you'd fancy, if you don't want to waste your time on a rabbit-skin coat and a paste ring, and give the burnt sole to the real gent. But in the hands of this swell mob he was, of course, just the young man from the country; and the end of it was that ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome
... "in their tails"—they have stings, and there lies their scorpion power. De Quincey's vigor is evenly and equally diffused through his whole being. It is not a partial palpitation, but a deep, steady glow. His insight hangs over us and the world like a nebulous star, seeing us, but, in part, remaining unseen. In fact, his deepest thoughts have never been disclosed. Like Burke, he has not "hung his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at." ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... has come to be quite a complaint among farmers' wives, in many places, that servants are not to be obtained. Those that are available are mere children, whose mothers like them to go out anywhere at first, just to obtain an insight into the duties of a servant. The farmer's wife has the trouble and annoyance of teaching these girls the rudiments of household work, and then, the moment they are beginning to be useful, they leave, ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... have appeared strange and queer then," he thought, "but I was not so mad as I seemed. On the contrary I was then wiser and had more insight than at any other time, and understood all that is worth understanding in life, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... exercise a serene faith, and you shall acquire wonderful power and insight; its results are sure and illimitable, moulding and moving to its purposes equally spirit, mind, and matter. It is the power-endowing essential of ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... of fish life, of frogs, and of birds, and a chapter on human life, form the subjects of this book,—all told in the graceful manner of a womanly woman, whose love for nature has given her a keener insight into nature's secrets, and a greater ability to impart those secrets to others with the ease of face-to-face talks than is vouchsafed to many people."—The ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 23, June 9, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... sail for Italy, where his ferocity was aided by a cunning which gives us a deeper insight into his character. Rome, a famous but mystical city to the northern pagans, whose imaginations invested it with untold wealth and splendor, was the proposed goal of the enterprising Norseman, who hoped to make himself fabulously wealthy from ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... practice all the combinations until they can carry them through with a greater or less degree of unconsciousness of brain and fingers; but there is something needed beside even drill and experience; every student of medicine should be fitted by nature with a power of insight, a gift for his business, for knowing what is the right thing to do, and the right time and way to do it; must have this God-given power in his own nature of using and discovering the resources of medicine ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Cherry's words, though spoken in some temper and despite, contained certain elements of shrewd insight and sound common sense, which she had doubtless inherited from her father. She had something of the boldness and independence of mind that a spoiled child not unfrequently acquires, and she was not accustomed to mince her words ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... him that I have wandered from the true faith—that I have knelt in confession to him who cursed our common father! He will despise me for my weakness: for only yesterday he said he first loved me for my clear insight into right and wrong, and my scorn of deceit and hypocrisy! Yet I deceived you; at least, tacitly—you who have ever loved me so truly, you who have saved me at last, and pointed out the road to heaven. Mary, forgive me! I ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... his stockings, and hems his pocket-handkerchiefs, and aspires to make his shirts all herself. Whatever book Moses reads, forthwith she aspires to read too, and though three years younger, reads with a far more precocious insight. ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... As we are convinced that he who studies the intellectual world, and perceives the beauty of the true intellect, can also realise the Father of them, who is supreme above all sense, let us therefore seek as best we may to achieve insight into the beauty of the mind and of the world, and to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... life to meet the necessities of modern expansion. They are serviceable in departments. They go as they are driven, or they resist. In either case, they explain how it is that we have a world moving so sluggishly. They are not the men of brains, the men of insight and outlook. Often enough they are foes of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... on, now," exclaimed Jack, when his brother turned away with an ejaculation indicative of the greatest annoyance and vexation. "It helped bring it, and a little common sense, backed by an insight into darkey nature, did the rest. Now, don't break in on me any more. Mother will begin to wonder ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... can fancy the young soldier laying, in his obscurity, the foundation for that practical military knowledge which so eminently distinguished his late brilliant career. During his years of service in the Everglades of Florida, and on our Western frontier, he had ample opportunity to gain a thorough insight into his profession. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a modern audience, is obliged to sound every word and every syllable as correctly as possible, even if the tone suffer somewhat thereby. It is wonderful how fully the best poets have, with the insight of genius, adapted their words (vowels) to the ideas they wish to convey, and had all composers of vocal music done the same, the path of the singer would not have been strewn with so many thorns. The difficulties in the ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... palpable sin since last entreating his pardoning grace. I understand not your allusions about lines and angles; and I leave expounding to those who have been called and set apart for that holy office. I lay claim to no higher gift than a small insight into the glorious art of petitioning and thanksgiving, as ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... demagogue of the camp. In either case authority must be maintained at the cost of civil war. But the material helplessness of the senate was only one factor in the problem. More fatal flaws were its lack of insight to discover that there were new problems to be faced, and lack of courage in facing them. This moral helplessness was due partly to the selfishness of individuals, but partly also to the fixity of political tradition. In spite of the brilliancy and culture of some of its members, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... said Platzoff 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
... the thought of the people moves with them unconsciously to fulfil the purposes of God. Government can do little, perhaps, in controlling them; but it has no right to the power it holds, if it has not the insight and the courage to make use of them at the right moment. If the supreme question should arise of submitting to rebellion or of crushing it in a common ruin with the wrong that engendered it, we believe neither the Government nor the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... to devote his entire attention to his profession. But he preferred curing beef and pork to curing human bodies, and, so far as financial results are concerned, probably made a wise choice, though the judgment of human nature and insight into men's motives to which he attributes his success, would have served him in good stead in either line. At the age of fifty-eight, Dr. Robison is found in possession of a handsome competency, although ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... former, or ceased to value the incalculable services they rendered to the Scottish nation; but that he regarded Knox and Melville as men occupying a yet higher platform,—as gifted with a yet deeper insight into their country's wants,—as, in short, carrying forward and consummating the glorious task which Wallace and Bruce had but begun. He saw that unless our reformers had come after our heroes, planting schools, founding colleges, and, above all, imparting ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... whether mental or physical, the average woman is inferior to the average man, in the sense of having that character less in quantity, and lower in quality. Tell these persons of the rapid perceptions and the instinctive intellectual insight of women, and they reply that the feminine mental peculiarities, which pass under these names, are merely the outcome of a greater impressibility to the superficial aspects of things, and of the absence of that restraint upon expression, which, in men, is imposed ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... events and students of political questions probably were given their first insight into the tendency of the times through the resignation from the Senate of Honorable John C. Spooner, of Wisconsin, which was tendered March 30, 1907. I have made frequent reference to Mr. Spooner's connection ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... he shows him to us in this moment of suppressed agony; the blood choking his heart, the veins swollen, and every muscle quivering with the grief to which he will not give way. O, for this wonderful and deep conception, this almost divine insight into the mysteries of that hour, one might love Rubens. This picture cannot be engraved. No engraving is more than a diagram, to show the places of the figures. For, besides its mesmeric life, which no artist can reproduce, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... glimpses and disclosures of what merely affects the writer, all advantages from an appeal, disguised and indirect perhaps, to the opinion of his own side. But though the work is not rhetorical, it is not the less eloquent; but it is eloquence arising from a keen insight at once into what is real and what is great, and from a singular power of luminous, noble, and expressive statement. There is no excitement about its close subtle trains of reasoning; and there is no affectation,—and therefore no affectation ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... in his cell, a dry, quiet smile came over his face. He had not expected such a keen opinion from his shallow, easy-going wife: he did not think there was so much insight in her. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... who was predisposed to homosexuality, and slowly realizes the fact, the central motive of his wonderful romance, Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835). He approached the subject purely as an artist and poet, but his handling of it shows remarkable insight. Gautier based his romance to some extent on the life of Madame Maupin or, as she preferred to call herself, Mademoiselle Maupin, who was born in 1673 (her father's name being d'Aubigny), dressed as a man, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... heroes. Thou art unable to understand truly the sense of the scriptures. If thou wert really acquainted with duty, then thou couldst have understood that words such as these ought not to have been addressed to me by even one possessed of the clearest insight into the meaning of the scriptures and acquainted with the truths of religion. That, however, which thou hast said unto me, induced by fraternal affection, has been fit and proper, O son of Kunti! I am, for that, pleased with thee, O Arjuna! There is no one equal to thee in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... in nothing more public duties, especially for the than in seeking[32] out capable courts of law. In nothing did he and worthy men for all employments, show more clearly his great but most particularly for the natural insight, and nothing courts of law, (43) (30 a) contributed more to his popularity. (10 a) which gave ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... way from the seat of darkness to immortal life. On each side of this aisle are seats for the laity, with room for standing and kneeling. The nave was usually divided from the chancel by an open screen of wood or stone, signifying that although the Christian might have some insight into the mysteries of the priest's office, at the same time these were to be partly concealed from his view. The rood screen was so called from the fact that the great Rood, or Crucifix, stood above it, not always on the screen itself, but on a separate beam, to which was often attached a rood ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... pleased and flattered was evident, and yet there was a certain reserve in his manner. Possibly he suspected that she wished to provoke an announcement of his plans; perhaps an even deeper insight led him near to a fuller conception of ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... slightly unscrupulous, feat gave Gethryn an insight into his uncle's character which up till now he had lacked. He began to see that the moral advice with which he had primed himself would be out of place. Evidently this youth could take quite good care of himself on his own account. Still, even a budding Professor ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... the first to extricate myself and come to the surface, and, not seeing my companion, I thought she was surely lost. I might save her yet, though, and was just about to dive under the boat again, when her head appeared insight, only a little way from me, her eyes wide open and, really, a smile on ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... them. This was not Florio's case; he found that three hundred a-year was but a poor estate for Leontine and himself to live upon, so that he studied without intermission till he gained a very good insight into the constitution ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... the packet that offered the Saturday after my arrival,) I took a morbid and eager pleasure in awaiting the visits and observing the motions of those inscrutable beings. Sainsbury and his son were amused, but not surprised, at the anxiety I evinced to obtain a nearer insight into Maunsell's history. My curiosity and vigilance were, however, fruitless. The Pair performed their revolutions with a cold uniformity, a silent perseverance, that I found sufficiently monotonous; and at length, after one or two baffled attempts ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... unreasonably cheerful person which he evidently appeared to his companion. A mere ignorant enthusiast, banished for ever from the realm of pure knowledge by certain original and incorrigible defects—after a few hours' talk with Langham Robert's quick insight always showed him some image of himself resembling this in ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... justified by a number of reasons, to which he never yet vouchsafed any answer.' Gassendus, in a letter to Sorbiere, tells us, that our author's Book de Cive, deserves to be read by all who would have a deep insight into the subject. Puffendorf observes, that he had been much obliged to Mr. Hobbs, whose hypothesis in this book, though it favours a little of irreligion, is in other ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... made a very good voyage, and I got so much money by the first adventure, and such an insight into the method of getting more, that, had I been twenty years younger, I should have been tempted to have stayed here, and sought no farther for making my fortune: but what was all this to a man on the wrong side of threescore, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... us; that it is not, like all works of genius, like the very Sun, which, though the highest published creation, or work of genius, has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid its effulgence,—a mixture of insight, inspiration, with dulness, double-vision, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... who enabled me to block your game when you thought you had me down and out—not through any particular kindness of heart or chivalry, but because he had the gift of insight into character—the discernment to recognize a safe loan—will take your place. Abram Pantin, if he wants it, will be this ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... double-first at old Trinity. Gentlemen, there are, I think, five, six Trinity men here including myself. It will be a point of honour with you to drink health and prosperity to our friend Bertram with all the honours. We have many men of whom we can boast at Trinity; but if I have any insight into character, any power of judging what a man will do"—it must be remembered that Mr. Harcourt, though a very young man in London, was by no means a young man at Oxford—"there have been very few before him who have achieved a higher place than will fall to his lot, or ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... foregoing details concerning birth, childhood, sickness, and death, seem to give us an insight into the Tinguian conception of life and death. For him life and death do not appear to be but incidents in an endless cycle of birth, death, and re-incarnation ad infinitum, such as pictured by Levy-Bruhl; [114] yet, in many instances, his acts and beliefs fit in closely with the theory ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... majesty of the creation; he celebrates the productions of nature and human art with an astonishment always joyful and always new, as if he saw them for the first time in an unworn festal splendour. It is the first awaking of Adam, and an eloquence withal, a skill of expression, and a thorough insight into the most mysterious affinities of nature, such as high mental culture and mature contemplation can alone bestow. When he compares the most remote objects, the greatest and the smallest, stars and flowers, the sense of all ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... she was being asked to answer her own question, Aunt Caroline considered. Then, with a flash of shrewd insight, "Well," she said, "if there were any possible excuse for it, I should say ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... unless I can gain some insight into these hidden things, in spite of your husband and in spite of my mother, ruin ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... agree. It is the rarest little oracle! Apollo himself might envy its adroitness in the utterance ambiguities. One man says that the doctrine of "future life" is undoubtedly a dictate of the "religious sentiment,"—one of the few universal characteristics of all religion; another declares his "insight" tells him nothing of the matter; one affirms that the supposed chief "intuitions" of the "religious faculty"—belief in the efficacy of prayer, the free will of man, and the immortality of the soul—are at hopeless variance with intellect and logic; others exclaim, and ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... on the way, and the old man turned back with him down the street again. There was always something the squire wanted to say to his son about business, and Jacob owed more than he acknowledged—and he acknowledged that he owed much—to the keen insight of his father. He seemed to be able to see all sides of a matter at once, and though Jacob liked to manage his affairs himself, and believed that he did so, yet there had been occasions when a few words from his father had modified his plans, and changed the character ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... of course, mere romance; its only values are 1) the insight it give into ancient speculations about Homer; 2) a certain amount of definite information about the Cyclic poems; and 3) the epic fragments included in the stichomythia of the "Contest" proper, many of which—did we possess the clue—would have to be ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... know what was thought of him by Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Byron, and Tennyson. Critics differing as widely in other matters as Macaulay, John Henry Newman, Mr. Swinburne, and Dr. Gore, have found in Crabbe an insight into the springs of character, and a tragic power of dealing with them, of a rare kind. No doubt Crabbe demands something of his readers. He asks from them a corresponding interest in human nature. He asks for a kindred ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... outlook at all. He is a man with a delicate but shallow vein of literary capacity, who never did more than tremble upon the verge of success, and hardly, if at all, went beyond promise. He was unlucky in marrying Amy, a rather heartless woman, whose ambition was far in excess of her insight, for economic position Reardon had none. He writes books to please a small group. The books fail to please. Jasper in the main is right—there is only a precarious place for any creative litterateur between the genius and the swarm of ephemera or journalists. A man writes either to please ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... man of real insight; he divined that Mery was a heaven-inspired dancer, and devoted himself to the development of her genius. She did not say he had taught her to dance; she said he encouraged and developed her natural genius for dancing. She made her debut ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... as serenely contemptuous of the world's imputation—and an imputation so galling as this one of being irresponsible for his actions—and deliberately continuing his even way without taking the trouble to refute it, has given me an insight into his nature, that fills me with admiration, and yet, at the same time, with a sort of longing to see him reinstated in his proper place, and casting ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... equally beautiful speaking of the prose lines of the play. This part of Cathleen ni Houlihan is sufficiently removed from the other parts of the play, folk-parts, and from the parts of the other folk-plays, to give us an insight into the versatility of Miss Allgood; and we saw enough of Mr. Sinclair and Mr. O'Donovan and Mr. Kerrigan to realize that they, too, could worthily bear parts ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... frivolous Choiseul, the extravagant Pompadour, and the debauched Sardanapalus of his age, did not perceive the truth which the King of Prussia recognized in his latter days. Nor would it have availed any thing, if they had been gifted with the clear insight of Frederic the Great. The stream, on whose curious banks the great and the noble of France had been amusing themselves, soon swelled into an overwhelming torrent. That devastating torrent was the French Revolution, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... put on canvas his idea of peasants at prayer and if Millet had phrased in pictorial terms his feeling about war, there is little doubt that Millet's painting would be the more telling and beautiful. The degree of beauty is fixed by the depth of the man's insight into life and the corresponding ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... they extended considerably the knowledge of the northern regions through the discovery, or at least through the first passage of, Yogor Schar, and, like Barents, these seafarers must get the credit of carrying out the task assigned to them with skill, insight, resolution, and resource. ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... culture to other peoples has been the theme of much painstaking investigation. The history of German literature is, in large measure, the story of its successive periods of connection with the literatures of other lands, and hence scholars have sought with industry and insight to bound ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... the insight of Shakespeare may have been into the hearts of his high-born characters, he had no conception of the unity of the human race. For him the prince and the peasant were not of the ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... letter to a rapid close, for it must be posted a day earlier than we expected. We intend to start in two days for St. Louis, and there I will finish my account of Cincinnati. To-day we have seen a great many schools, which have given us considerable insight into the state of education in America. My next letter will probably bring us to our most western point, though we have not yet quite settled whether we shall go to the Falls of St. Anthony, or to Chicago. Papa says I must close, and I ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... spoil Nicholas's chances out of spite was one of these. And although Dan knew very well that he had spoken from an altogether different impulse, he was conscious of having had feelings which seemed to give him a cruelly clear insight into the possible workings of Nicholas's mind. "Consaitin' that it was because I was invyin' him, that's what he's thinkin' agin me," he said to himself as the days went by, and he perceived, or fancied, that Nicholas in his disconsolate ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... to the Grape Vine, some of its various products are mentioned, as Raisins, wine, aquavitae or brandy, claret (the "thin potations" forsworn by Falstaff), sherris-sack or sherry, and malmsey. But none of these passages gives us much insight into the culture of the Vine in England, the whole history of which ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... have sight, but few have insight; and as I looked into the clear blue eyes of my friend I had a sudden swift inspiration, and before I could repent of it I had said to him in the most serious voice ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... through the carnage of uncounted wars, through plagues which struck whole multitudes down to a disastrous death, through civil discord and sedition and domestic treachery, the work went on. It was not always marked by special insight or intelligence. The men who carried it out were not for the most part first-rate statesmen or first-rate generals. Their successes were those of character, not of genius. But their phlegmatic courage saved the civilized ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... analytical statement, which I published some years ago, will give an insight into the nature ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... a creature taken in a net. And how useless it had all been! He found himself horribly inferior to her. Her behaviour at this critical moment had proved to him that in his almost fantastic conception of her he had shown real insight. Then why had his heart betrayed his intellect? Why had his imagination proved true metal, his affection false? He asked himself these questions. He searched his own nature, as many a man has done in moments when he has found himself unworthy. And he was met by mystery, by the "It ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... him if he had found it hard to give up the lucrative law for a poor ministry, and his reply gave a delightful impression of his capacity for humorous insight into human nature, for he said, ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... it seems, that too great an insight into futurity, or the revelation of more than was expedient, was prevented ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... was wont to say that his departing guest gazed on the flower with almost religious fervour and mumbled over it a prayer; and the gaoler's insight was true, for in comparison with a flower, the masonic emblem, the pride of Tsing Hi's life was to Hu Dra ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... own purposes, however, I am content to accept the definition of matter formulated by Duns Scotus, which takes over the earlier definition of Plotinus, purges it of its elements of pagan error, and redeems it by Christian insight. ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... after going out, some of the Indians took and tied them until morning; it was a most strange procedure. I could go on enumerating incident after incident, but I have, I think, given sufficient to give the reader an insight into their character. ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... interesting or worth reading;) nothing, in short, to occupy his attention? "No," said Snap to himself; "I will do as I would be done by; I will come and draw him out of his dull hole; I will show him life—I will give him an early insight into the habits and practices of the great world, in which he is so soon to cut a leading figure! I will early familiarize him with the gayest and most exciting modes of London life!" The very first taste of this cup of pleasure ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... insight Rosemary divined the truth. The gold hidden behind the loose brick in the chimney was hers, given to her by her dead father. And she had not ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... ethics is but a reflection of a divine personality." All the religions this world has ever known, have been but the aftermath of the ethics of one or another holy person; "as soon as character appears be sure love will"; "the intuition of the moral sentiment is but the insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul"; but these laws cannot ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... is, whether any insight into this doctrine is to be found as early as in the Books of the Old Testament. Sound Christian Theology has discovered the outlines of such a distinction betwixt the hidden and the revealed God, in many passages of the Old Testament, in which mention is made of the Angel or Messenger ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... ideas and in words recently spoken, where he claimed responsibility for fifty-eight million people, converted these ideas into a formula that, while unconstitutional, is yet moral and deeply earnest. These words were doubly valuable as giving insight into the soul of a man who can be mistaken in his conclusions and means, but not in his motives, since these are directed to the general weal. Here, too, we find the explanation of the fact that at one time he comes before us surrounded with the blue ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... IV., V., and 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 to be ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... Now, actual insight or inspiration is best tested by whether it guesses these hidden malformations or surprises. If our mathematician from the moon saw the two arms and the two ears, he might deduce the two shoulder-blades and the two halves ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... this amatory botany that he seemed to forget my existence. While I, as glad as he, tagged along, running up and down with him, asking now and then a question, learning something of plant life, but far more of that spiritual insight into Nature's lore which is granted only to those who love and woo her in her great outdoor palaces. But how I anathematized my short-sighted foolishness for having as a student at old Wooster shirked botany for the ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... Buddhism. Those are large enough. Can you imagine a science which would have[A] foretold such movements as those? The state of things out of which they rose is obscure; but suppose it not obscure, can you conceive that, with any amount of historical insight into the old Oriental beliefs, you could have seen that they were about to transform themselves into those ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... patient study with regard to every point connected with its regulation. So varied are these instruments in construction and constitution, that before their powers can be successfully developed they must be humoured, and treated as the child of a skilful educator, who watches to gain an insight into the character of his charge, and then adopts the best means for its advancement according ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... know nothing of the case," answered I. "You simply visit this place for a half hour each day, at a time that everything is moving along smoothly, and merely get a surface view of matters. It is my earnest hope that you may never get a practical insight into these things by being placed in the same position as myself or these other poor fellows all around me. If all the poor unfortunates I have seen carried out of this ward, corpses, have died for want of the same kind of will power I require, then all I can ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... scenes. Mr. Maxwell's drawings are full of the right touch and insight, all faithfully conveyed and put into a sumptuous book."—Pall ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... in the present volume, reveals a true insight into the personality of this unfortunate and great artist, and removes any false misconceptions which unsympathetic and superficial handling may have engendered. Indeed, the same introspective faculty is displayed in all the other ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... Crow, from whom the Wood-dwellers are sprung, and of Thorgrim the Tall, and Skorargeir. (2) This means that Njal was one of those gifted beings who, according to the firm belief of that age, had a more than human insight into things about to happen. It answers very nearly ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... "a great original thinker" whose "mind acted upon other minds of a certain constitution with wonderful magnetism, and drew many men upon long pilgrimages to speak with him face to face. Young visionaries—to whom just so much of insight had been imparted as to make life all a labyrinth around them—came to seek the clew that should guide them out of their self-involved bewilderment. Gray-headed theorists—whose systems, at first air, had finally imprisoned them in an iron framework—travelled painfully to his door, not to ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... things to illustrate the merit of the piece of biography which you are about to lay before the American world. It is a great act of justice to the memory of a distinguished man, whose character has not been sufficiently known. It gives an insight into his domestic as well as his literary life, and lays open the springs of all his actions and the causes of all his contrariety of conduct. We now see the real difficulties he had to contend with in the earlier part of his literary career; the worldly ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... dare say it's difficult for a man like you, genius, insight, and all, thoroughly to understand how an ugly woman regards beauty, an ugly woman like me, who's got intellect and passion and intense feeling for form, color, every manifestation of beauty. When I look at beauty I feel rather like a dirty little beggar staring ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... affectations and puerilities it is still readable to Americans. Of course, if it were offered now to the complex and sophisticated society of New York, it would fail to attract anything like the attention it received in the days of simplicity and literary dearth; but the same wit, insight, and literary art, informed with the modern spirit and turned upon the follies and "whim-whams" of the metropolis, would doubtless have a great measure of success. In Irving's contributions to it may be traced the germs of nearly everything that he did afterwards; in it he tried ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... fancy; or scarlet and ashy-white mixed; and—Let us draw a veil over it! He is next seen shirtless, the once very haughty, blustery, and now much-humiliated man; still conscious of supreme acumen, insight and pure science; and, though an Austrian prisoner and a monster of rags, struggling to believe that he is a genius and the Trismegistus of mankind. What a pickle! The sage Maupertuis, as was natural, keeps passionately asking, of gods and men, for an Officer with some tincture of philosophy, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... with our eyes may be set forth in words, and thus find its way to the understanding through the ears; also that in many instances the sense of touch conveys information which extends our perceptions in many important ways; but science rests practically on sight, and on the insight that comes from the training of the mind which ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... to be Puck, because with quick perception she caught the importance of that character; but when she learned that the costume must be a quiet hood and skirt of green and brown she scorned it, and chose, at last, to be Titania, queen of the fairies. So, with a sigh of relief, and a keen insight into the shallow nature, Margaret began to teach the girl some of the fairy steps, and found her quick and eager to learn. In the first lesson Rosa forgot for a little while her animosity and became almost as one of the other pupils. The play was going to prove a great ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... church and a school, particularly a school for the children." His dwelling so much with benevolent aspect on the children of the tribe showed, I think, that he truly loved them and had a right intelligent insight concerning their welfare. We spent the night under his roof, the first we had ever spent with Indians, and I never felt more at home. The loving kindness bestowed on the little ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... entirely (TOUT A VOUS). I wait in great impatience to hear your news upon all this: for I inform you accurately how the land lies here; so that it only depends upon yourself to shine, and to pass for a miracle of just insight,'—"SORCIER," or witch at guessing mysteries, Grumkow calls it again. ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle |
