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More "Clear-sighted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and letting them drop again when they met the other's steady gaze, is too conscientious, too honourable, too manly, I am sure, to attach unworthy motives to an honest change of opinions, even though it implies a doubt of those he holds himself. Mr Haredale is too just, too generous, too clear-sighted in his moral ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... would accept, Barry felt almost convinced; and yet, fond as he was of his friend, fond as he was, too, of the girl with whom he had worked during these weeks of spring, Barry was clear-sighted enough to feel assured that such a marriage ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... If his mission was not actually official, it was semi-official at all events; and we were obliged to await his return. To give some colour to our delay, M. de Nion sent a fresh summons to Sidi Bousselam, pasha of Larrache, a clear-sighted and intelligent man, whom the Sultan had deputed to negotiate with us. A fresh extension of time was granted. I took advantage of it to get our consuls withdrawn, and went myself to Tangier to see to the sudden removal of our consul-general and his family. If this had been attempted ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... of getting out of the beaten track, our dialect offered others hardly inferior. As I was about to make an endeavor to state them, I remembered something that the clear-sighted Goethe had said about Hebel's 'Allemannische Gedichte,' which, making proper deduction for special reference to the book under review, expresses what I would have said far better than I could hope to do: 'Allen diesen innern guten Eigenschaften kommt die behagliche ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... withdrew from public life on the outbreak of war with Austria, and remained in retirement during the dictatorship of Kossuth and the struggle of 1849. As a loyal friend to the Hapsburg dynasty, and a clear-sighted judge of the possibilities of the time, he stood apart while Kossuth dethroned the Sovereign and proclaimed Hungarian independence. Of the patriotism and the disinterestedness of Deak there was never the shadow of a doubt; a distinct political ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... unselfish, affectionate, and most industrious woman, with great capacity for enjoyment and high physical gifts. She was endowed too, with much creative power, with considerable humour, and a genuine feeling for romance. But she was neither clear-sighted nor accurate; and in her attempts to describe morals, manners, and even facts, was unable to ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... behold once more the benefactress who could still secure to him the enjoyment of an income of forty thousand livres. "I did not know him," exclaimed the woebegone Princess, shortly after his release, "and my sole consolation is that the King, who is more clear-sighted than I am, did not know him either." Tardy clear-sightedness! M. de Lauzun had then made himself known unmistakably—by beating her. But, if the truth must be told, she had first scratched ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... only repulsive, but also for the most part both clumsy and unsuitable. He flattered himself, that in knowledge of men and the world, in an acquaintance with courts and politics, he surpassed the most shrewd and clear-sighted observers. With a mind naturally alive to honour, he yet conceived the design of taking in hand the "doctrine of the murderous Machiavel;" and displays, broadly and didactically, all the knowledge ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... men as well as to God and Nature, and direct them from action to perception and thought. For action he takes special degrees, capacity, skill, trustworthiness; for perception, consciousness, insight, clearness. Only the practical and clear-sighted man can maintain himself as a thinker, opening out as a teacher new trains of thought, and comprehending the basis of what is already acquired and the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and advancement; his ambition was more scholarly than political or personal. He graduated with the highest honors on the fifteenth of May, 1764, and delivered the Latin salutatory. His family had gained wealth and position in commerce, and it is probable that, with his clear-sighted perseverance, John Jay would have been a most successful merchant; but his tastes were intellectual; he determined to study law—at that period, in this country, when Blackstone's 'Commentaries' had not appeared, before Chancellor Kent had written, or a law school ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... back of the industrious toilsman. And according to this whimsical belief, he writes and talks jocosely, but with covert common sense. His warm and catholic humanity runs up and down the whole social scale with a clear-sighted equity. His philanthropy is what the word literally signifies,—the love of man as man, and because he is a man. Without being an impracticable fanatic, advocating impossible theories, or theories that can grow into realities only with the gradual progress of the race,—without ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... upon earth to men. Elise listened to the good counsellors; she conversed long with them, and the more pure recollections they sent into her soul the lighter it became therein. The light of love was kindled in her, and in its light she became clear-sighted in many directions. She saw now what it was right for her to do respecting her novel, and this revelation warmed her heart. She knew also that this was the only one she should ever write, and that her ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... pointed out to the young man the evil of his ways. "In one sense all my sympathies are with you," he said; "but, my dear fellow, if you don't read your books you may be as learned as ——, and as clear-sighted as ——" (the historian, being unlearned, does not know what names were here inserted), "but you will never get to the head of the lists, where we have hoped to ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... by the riverside, doubts as to my own sanity arose in me; not vague doubts such as I have had hitherto, but precise and absolute doubts. I have seen mad people, and I have known some who were quite intelligent, lucid, even clear-sighted in every concern of life, except on one point. They could speak clearly, readily, profoundly on everything; till their thoughts were caught in the breakers of their delusions and went to pieces there, were dispersed and swamped in that furious and terrible sea of fogs and squalls ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... revenue, he was laying large and comprehensive plans for a system of oppression, which should yield the revenue,—and for Arsenals and Forts—and a standing Army, and a rule of terror which should hold the nation in subjection while these things were preparing. He was clear-sighted enough to see that "absolutism" was not to be accomplished by a system of reasoning. He would not urge it as a dogma, but ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... course, induced by his fearing the progress of liberal thought in our midst. We had ourselves received a sermon evidently directed at us, which described the act of going to hear Mr. Ballou as a wrong step. Even if we had not been clear-sighted enough to have taken the sermon to ourselves, we should have been reminded of it by the looks of some of the congregation, who sought out our pew with strong reproof in their eyes; among those whose eyes met mine in this manner, I remember most distinctly Jane North and Deacon Grover. I smiled ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... pious fervor in this florid sentiment. But as she was honest and clear-sighted, she could not accept a statement which seemed so plainly in contradiction with his common teachings, without bringing his flattering assertion to the test of ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... various passages of the Kuran, but regarding the moral character of Muhammad himself. The storm raised by Abulfazl's motion was, therefore, terrible. There was not a doctor or lawyer present who did not recognise that the motion attacked the vital principle of Islam, whilst the more clear-sighted and dispassionate recognised that the assertions made in their previous discussions had broken through 'the strong embankments of the clearest law and ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... young woman, Miss Lawton, and I am glad that you are taking such a clear-sighted view of this double catastrophe which has come upon you. Ah, I had almost forgotten; here is a duplicate of the mortgage which I hold upon this house, which your father made out to ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... Veda, themselves totally obscure, are dragged forward to account for obscure Greek mythical phenomena. Such are the accusations brought by the regretted Mannhardt against the school to which he originally belonged, and which was popular and all-powerful even in the maturity of his own more clear-sighted genius. Proofs of the correctness of his criticism will be offered abundantly in the course of this work. It will become evident that, great as are the acquisitions of Philology, her least certain discoveries have been too hastily applied in alien "matter," that is, in the region ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... that union imperative at whatever sacrifice of happiness to himself? The two years to which Richard King had limited the suspense of research were not yet expired. Then, too, that letter of Lady Janet's,—so tenderly anxious for his future, so clear-sighted as to the elements of his own character in its strength or its infirmities—combined with graver causes to withhold his heart from its yearning impulse, and—no, not steel it against Isaura, but forbid it to realise, in the fair creature ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... state of things is owing, in no slight degree, to the self-sacrificing exertions of a few faithful and clear-sighted men, foremost among whom was the late William Leggett; than whom no one has labored more perseveringly, or, in the end, more successfully, to bring the practice of American democracy into ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... establishing a Catholic despotism, and who trusted that their system would be restored by a reconciliation of James with the Tory Parliament they expected to be returned. Halifax however, though he had long acted with the Tories, was too clear-sighted for hopes such as these. He had taken no part in the invitation or revolt, but now that the revolution was successful he pressed upon William the impossibility of carrying out a new system of government with such a sovereign as James. The Whigs, ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... more in his chair. He crumpled up between his fingers the letter of M. Moses Guldenthal, saying to himself as he did so, that the Guldenthals are often very clear-sighted folks. "Ay, to be sure," thought he, "this Hebrew is right, I have lost three valuable years. I have had fever, and my eyes have been clouded; but, Heaven be praised! The charm is broken, the illusion fled, I am cured—saved! Farewell, my chimera, I ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... this? It can't be! My good creature, you're oddly deceived, I imagine. What is the man's name? I can understand that she has lost her will and distinct sight; but you are clear-sighted, and can estimate. What ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... always in view—the employment of sane and humanitarian methods in the treatment of redeemable criminals, and he strove towards it with completely untiring devotion. He was of those who never insist beyond the limits of their own understanding, clear-sighted in discipline, frank in relaxation, an ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... the recollection of citizens of the United States—one, too, that involves none of those offensive associations that cluster round the names of, let us say, Grenville and North. For in looking at Lord Shelburne's career we see a man whose clear-sighted judgment from the first, and consistently, protested against that system of high-handed imperialism which drove thirteen reluctant colonies into a war of independence; who both in office and out of office did his utmost, first to avert, by a policy never of cowardly concession, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... was a sofa-bed, and they parted for the night. The new life upon which Philip Morton entered was so odd, so grotesque, and so amusing, that at his age it was, perhaps, natural that he should not be clear-sighted as ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... It is this clear-sighted, non-combative humour which Americans love and prize, and the absence of which they reckon a heavy loss. Nor do they always ask, "a loss to whom?" Charles Lamb said it was no misfortune for a man to have a sulky temper. It was his friends who were unfortunate. ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... before. When he had gone through the streets of any city and observed the ways of its people, and had seen the way that the sunlight struck its towers, he would proclaim himself King there, and then ride on in fancy. So he passed from city to city and from land to land. Clear-sighted though Mr. Shap was, I think he overlooked the lust of aggrandizement to which kings have so often been victims; and so it was that when the first few cities had opened their gleaming gates and he saw peoples prostrate before his ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... 15, 1870, a stray projectile from a Prussian gun mortally wounded the Colonel of the 10th Regiment of the Line. The obscure gunner never knew that he had done away with one of the most intelligent officers of our army, one of the most forceful writers, one of the most clear-sighted philosophers whom sovereign genius had ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... consider it Cecil's secret, and say nothing about it." Whereupon the damsel ran merrily off, humming the air, "I told them they needn't come wooing to me." But, arrived in her own room, her evanescent high spirits vanished, and a bitter and clear-sighted mood succeeded. "Bertie," she thought, "your evil influence is over us all. Mamma, till now the truest of step-mothers, is only thinking of ensuring you my fortune. I disoblige papa, send away a true love, hate Bluebell for her too attractive soft ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... effectually checked the progress of such banks, for few new ones were established for many years, or till that act had been repealed. But in this, as in many other cases, perhaps Sir R. Peel will be found to have been clear-sighted rather than far-sighted. He was afraid of certain joint stock banks which he saw rising around him; but the effect of his legislation was to give to these very banks, if not a monopoly, at any rate an exemption from new rivals. No one now ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... enthusiasm, but on another class of subject. Except for the limitations which his national characteristics and upbringing impose upon him (and for the fact that he seems to be unacquainted with the West) the Professor has written a just and clear-sighted estimate of the American character. We do not look to a German for a proper understanding of the sporting instinct, as British and Americans understand it, nor perhaps for views that will coincide with ours on the ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... arrangements for the establishment of a course of scientific lectures, which our colored friends were particularly invited to attend." The phraseology of this statement implies that white persons were not to be excluded from these lectures, and indicates a clear-sighted purpose, on the part of the Society, to bear its testimony against distinctions founded on color. In this year it published an Address to the Women of Pennsylvania, calling their attention to the claims of the slave, and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... a wonderful person," he said with conviction, "but like all people who are clear-sighted and who have imagination, you are also a theorist. I believe your idea is the true one, but to stand for Parliament as a Labour member you have to belong to one of the acknowledged factions to be sure of any support at all. ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... virtually carried Catholic emancipation, for it reduced Ireland to a state in which it was impossible long to resist it. Clear-sighted men had no difficulty in perceiving that the policy of Peel had failed to avert it, though it had succeeded in making impossible the securities which Grattan and the wisest men of his generation had pronounced indispensable for its safe working, in kindling religious ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... gratuitous residences were well furnished and provided with all the requisites procurable on the spot. For a whole century the Spaniards were lulled with this easy-going and felicitous state of things, whilst the insidious Mongol, whose clear-sighted sagacity was sufficient to pierce the thin veil of friendship proffered by his guest, was ever prepared for another opportunity of rising against the dominion of Castile, of which he had had so many sorry experiences since 1603. The occasion at last arrived during the British occupation ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... to the hour of the total ruin of the monarchy. This fall of the monarchy was far from being preceded by any exterior symptoms of decline. The interior were not visible to every eye; and a thousand accidents might have prevented the operation of what the most clear-sighted were not able to discern nor the most provident to divine. A very little time before its dreadful catastrophe, there was a kind of exterior splendor in the situation of the crown, which usually adds to government strength and authority at home. The crown seemed then to have obtained some of the most ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... regret that so clear-sighted, so urbane and so truly Aristophanic a satirist had not a wider field to work in. Seventeenth-century Italy was all too narrow for his genius; and if the Secchia Rapita has lost its savor, this is less the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... five fair daughters of Thomas Welbore Percival, East India Merchant in The Poultry, Philippa, the eldest, the trenchant and clear-sighted, lived in Bryanston Square, mother of three children. Her husband, Mr. Tompsett-King, was a solicitor, but he was much more than that, An elderly, quiet gentleman, who talked in a whisper, and seemed to walk in one too, he presided over more than ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... of Lord Baltimore's faith or magnanimity or political wisdom; but we have failed to find evidence of his rising above the plane of the smart real-estate speculator, willing to be all things to all men, if so he might realize on his investments. Happily, he was clear-sighted enough to perceive that his own interest was involved in the liberty, contentment, and ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... his words in the shop in Brunford. Perhaps because he had roused some personal antipathy. Anyhow, in her heart of hearts was the longing to see him beaten. And yet she was afraid. She did not like the idea of spending so much time at Howden Clough. She was too clear-sighted to be blind to Wilson's intentions, and she felt sure as to what his ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... at the same time, after lending ear to the advocate's exordium and a favourite sentence, that, judged by the Powers (to them only can he expose the whole skeleton-cupboard of the case), judged by those clear-sighted Powers, he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... springing doubtless from the consciousness of a purpose that filled his life, a dignity which made him unapproachable. He had the expression of a thinker, meditation dwelt on the fine nobly carved brow. You could tell from the dark bright eyes, so clear-sighted and quick to observe, that their owner was wont to probe to the bottom of things. He gesticulated very little, his demeanor was grave. Lucien felt an ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... portions of future pain—suffer you no more, therefore. You are too young, tender and credulous to try a fall with that creature. She must have divined long ago that you were enamored of her. She is not too clear-sighted in all things, but she sees such effects by intuition. It is very probable that she has returned to this house on your account, so suddenly. I could guess that she was on the eve of flight, but not that she would return. ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... the qualities his new subjects most lacked. He knew neither doubts nor vain hesitations; he was an optimist, always sure of success: not with the certitude of the blind who walk confidently to the river, but with the assurance of clear-sighted people, who leave the goddess Fortune so little to do, it were a miracle if she did less for them. His lucid and persistent will is never at fault. In the most critical moment of the battle a fatal report is ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... others, did not satisfy her. She wished to appeal to the heart, and she appealed only to the head. Of all ills she most dreaded ennui, and the very dread of it made her unhappy. She became more and more insufficient to herself, until at eighty-three she died with clear-sighted indifference. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... I was not dealing with a booby, but with a sensible clear-sighted man, and so studied to express myself in a way which would not for an instant give him the impression that I was promising to marry him because—what I don't know and it doesn't ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... them in a tearless grave, For lack of consecrating song. 'Twixt worth and baseness, lapp'd in death, What difference? YOU shall ne'er be dumb, While strains of mine have voice and breath: The dull neglect of days to come Those hard-won honours shall not blight: No, Lollius, no: a soul is yours, Clear-sighted, keen, alike upright When fortune smiles, and when she lowers: To greed and rapine still severe, Spurning the gain men find so sweet: A consul, not of one brief year, But oft as on the judgment-seat You bend the expedient to the right, Turn ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... ineffectively. If the one has learnt by prolonged practice in attack, the other should also have learnt by prolonged practice in defence, for attack and defence possess a like merit in the fight for life. Among the theorists of the day, is there one clear-sighted enough to solve ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... extraordinary and exceedingly menacing. This was a deceptive day. The marks in the Dauphin's face extended all over the body. They were regarded as the marks of measles. Hope arose thereon, but the doctors and the most clear-sighted of the court could not forget that these same marks had shown themselves on the body of the Dauphine, a fact unknown out of her ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... in the dark, was sacred to Minerva; this is symbolical of a wise man, who, scattering and dispelling the clouds of error, is clear-sighted ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... distinction that exists between modesty and shyness. Modesty is always self-possessed, and therefore clear-sighted and cool-headed. Shyness, on the contrary, is too confused either to see or hear things as they really are, and as often assumes the appearance of forwardness as any other disguise. Depriving its victims of the power of being themselves, it leaves them ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... turned round again, and looked into his daughter's eyes. Perhaps he read there a spirit equal to, and not unlike, his own—a nature calm, resolute, clear-sighted; the strong will and decision of a man, united to the tenderness of a woman. From that hour father and daughter understood ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... helped," said James. Then, laying his hand on the youth's shoulder: "And what is My wrapt John dreaming of? I was not yonder in the mist; I was here with you, I tell you, friends: He is blind who sees without believing, and clear-sighted who ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... that he assisted the enemies of Florence to extricate themselves from their dilemmas. Such criticism fails entirely to understand both the aim and the scope of his policy. He desired to keep Italy for the Italians. His clear-sighted sagacity saw nothing but danger in the plans of Ludovico of Milan to invite the French King into Italy, or in those of Venice to encourage the Duke of Lorraine to press his claims upon Milan. The intervention of either France or Spain ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... permit him to regret his marriage, and he was too thorough a gentleman to annoy her by alluding to their political difference of opinion, except occasionally, when his temper got the better of him, which, to do him justice, was seldom. But Clarissa's very love for him rendered her too clear-sighted not to perceive the state of his mind, and the unspoken agitation which she suffered on this score had been partly the cause of her homesickness and longing for her sister's companionship. He had been both kind and considerate in sending for Betty; his conscience approved the action; and now to ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... of the Scriptures, his enigmatic visions, and his false certitude about the Divine intentions, never ceased, in his own large soul, to be ennobled by that fervid piety, that passionate sense of the infinite, that active sympathy, that clear-sighted demand for the subjection of selfish interests to the general good, which he had in common with the greatest of mankind. But for the mass of his audience all the pregnancy of his preaching lay in his strong assertion of supernatural claims, in his denunciatory visions, in the false certitude ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... make every day outshine the one before, and first to equal, then to surpass, the splendors of the oldest and most famous dynasties. This insatiable thirst for action and for renown was to be the source of Napoleon's strength and also of his weakness. But only a few clear-sighted men made these reflections when the Empire began. The masses, with their easy optimism, looked upon the new Emperor as an infallibly impeccable being, and thought that since he had not yet been beaten, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... mental disease, the witchcraft epidemic, as it has been justly called by a high authority on such matters,[1] we moderns are, by the nature of our education and prejudices, completely incapacitated for sympathizing with either the persecutors or their victims. We are at a loss to understand how clear-sighted and upright men, like Sir Matthew Hale, could consent to become parties to a relentless persecution to the death of poor helpless beings whose chief crime, in most cases, was, that they had suffered starvation ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... voice in his cowl, took pains to send for him and bring him to S. Mark's, the convent upon which his father had lavished so much wealth. He hoped to add luster to his capital by the preaching of the most eloquent friar in Italy. Clear-sighted as he was, he could not discern the flame of liberty which burned in Savonarola's soul. Savonarola, the democratic party leader, was a force in politics as incalculable beforehand as Ferrucci the hero. On August 1, 1490, the monk ascended the pulpit of S. Mark's, and delivered a tremendous sermon ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... everything; a prodigious phenomenon of will, conquering an illness by a battle, and yet doomed to die of disease in bed after living in the midst of ball and bullets; a man with a code and a sword in his brain, word and deed; a clear-sighted spirit that foresaw everything but his own fall; a capricious politician who risked men by handfuls out of economy, and who spared three heads—those of Talleyrand, of Pozzo de Borgo, and of Metternich, ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... only embittered those who knew that the young men were having their teeth set on edge because their parents had eaten sour political grapes. Then think of the young men themselves! Many of them had no illusions about the policy that led to the war: they went clear-sighted to a horribly repugnant duty. Men essentially gentle and essentially wise, with really valuable work in hand, laid it down voluntarily and spent months forming fours in the barrack yard, and stabbing sacks of straw in the public eye, so that they might go ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... over truth, which these defections implied. Neither the censures of Convocation nor the falling off of his friends had any power to move him. He still continued for some time a member of the Church of England. But his character was far too honest and clear-sighted to enable him to shut his eyes to the fact that the Liturgy of the Church was in many points sadly unsound on the principles of primitive Christianity. To remedy this defect he put forth a Liturgy which he termed 'The Liturgy of the Church of England reduced nearer to the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the true. That which universal suffrage has effected in its liberty and in its sovereignty cannot be undone by the street. It is the same in things pertaining purely to civilization; the instinct of the masses, clear-sighted to-day, may be troubled to-morrow. The same fury legitimate when directed against Terray and absurd when directed against Turgot. The destruction of machines, the pillage of warehouses, the breaking ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and Flora, I am sure, is much obliged to you," said Dr. Campbell, smiling, "for being so clear-sighted to the dangers of female vanity. You would not then, with a safe conscience, trust the completion of her education to her ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... thing would be extremely difficult. She is one of those persons who acquire the ascendency wherever she goes. She is far better educated, far more accomplished, and far more clever than I am, or can ever hope to be. She is clear-headed and clear-sighted, with a large store of common-sense. To impose upon her would be difficult, if not impossible. She is ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... of the crew, well armed, active, light, and vigorous, also stood motionless. Toil had hardened, and the sun had deeply tanned, those energetic faces; their eyes glittered like sparks of fire with infernal glee and clear-sighted courage. Perfect silence on the upper deck, now black with men, bore abundant testimony to the rigorous discipline and strong will which held these ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... sudden chance frequently brings about." While affecting to be deeply engaged in examining the ladder, the mind of Dantes was, in fact, busily occupied by the idea that a person so intelligent, ingenious, and clear-sighted as the abbe might probably be able to solve the dark mystery of his own misfortunes, where he himself could ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the Kit Raynham affair until it was found that he had betaken himself off to Australia. But when the whole of the facts were evident, she allowed nothing—neither the romantic dreams of the episode nor her own warm affection for her god-daughter—to obscure her clear-sighted vision. ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... with you," said Ursula. "I think your cousin is too clear-sighted not to see the merits of Benedick." "He is the one man in Italy, ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... critical position; to extricate myself I must be calm and clear-sighted; it has come to this, either I can never speak to her again, or ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... of the Coombe Hills, on the extreme southern edge of Berkshire, and not far removed from the great highway leading from Bath to London, lies the farmery where this restless, petulant, suffering, earnest, clear-sighted Tull put down the burden of life, a hundred and twenty years ago. The house is unfortunately largely modernized, but many of the out-buildings remain unchanged; and not a man thereabout, or in any other quarter, could tell me where the former occupant, who fought so bravely his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they found it. He may be right or wrong in his opinion: but he is too clear-sighted to be unjust. He is simple as he is forcible, and as brief ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... involved other people in his own ruin, but he had gone a little farther than a man altogether brave, and honourable, and clearsighted would have ventured, and he knew that some would suffer with him. He might have made arrangements to go a little farther still if he had been courageous, clear-sighted, and dishonest, and might have held his head up for another matter too, perhaps. But he had lacked the nerve for that, and had never consciously been a rogue. He felt even now a pride of honesty. He had been unfortunate, and his creditors would ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... eye; has a youthful clerical countenance; has given way a little to facial sadness; is sharp and serious; has a healthy biliary duct, and has carried dark hair on his head ever since we knew him; is clear-sighted, shy unless spoken to, and cautious; is free and generous in expression if trotted out a little; is no bigot; dislikes fierce judgments and creed-reviling; likes visiting folk who are well off; wouldn't object to tea, crumpet, and conversation with the better end of his ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... lasted; and grace of dress and mien, and all else that was connected with chivalry. Then came the ages which, when they have taken their due place in the depths of the past, will be, by a wise and clear-sighted futurity, perhaps well comprehended under a common name, as the ages of Starch; periods of general stiffening and bluish-whitening, with a prevailing washerwoman's taste in everything; involving a change of steel armour into cambric; of natural hair into ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... is primarily humorous. He avowedly imitates the manner of Cervantes in 'Don Quixote' and repeatedly insists that he is writing a mock-epic. His very genuine and clear-sighted indignation at social abuses expresses itself through his omnipresent irony and satire, and however serious the situations he almost always keeps the ridiculous side in sight. He offends some modern readers by refusing to take his art in ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... was expected by King Henry to lead the same life when Archbishop, and thus to secularize the Church. But Henry had mistaken his man. Clever and clear-sighted as the King was, seven years of transacting business together, and of familiar intercourse with the frank-hearted, free-spoken Thomas a Becket, had failed to make him conscious of the inner life and deep devotion, the mortification ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... compensations. These voices which sounded so sweetly in his ear, were soon extinguished by death; but they vibrated long in the heart which they had comforted. The artist associated their dear memory with every success which recalled to him their sympathetic accents and their clear-sighted prediction. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... it will very soon destroy your trade." He saw at a single glance of the press, the downfal of priestly dominion in the general diffusion of knowledge that would be occasioned by it, and had the rest of the clergy been equally clear-sighted, it is probable the dark ages of superstition and ignorance had still continued, or at least had ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... communication with,all the nations (as they go to all parts for their advantage), and because of their method of living—which is so in the manner of traders, enjoying the fruits of the land—and by the alertness of their intelligence, they are the most capable, the most clear-sighted, and the most crafty people of these islands. Therefore, they maintain the supremacy in everything, and, although they are the smallest in number, and everywhere the most foreign [of all these peoples], they are today the kings, and hold the rulers as their slaves; for now ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... Seward represents the policy of the administration as a whole, for all civil business centred in the office of the secretary of state. He was a man of extraordinary ability. It is true that he made a strange blunder or two, at the outset, odd episodes in his intelligent, clear-sighted, cool-headed career,—psychologically interesting, as has been suggested; but he immediately recovered himself and settled down to that course of wise statesmanship which was justly ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... be said that Lena put all this into words, even to herself: but such thoughts were there, or those very much like them. She was given to reasoning and pondering over things in the recesses of her own mind, and she was uncommonly clear-sighted for a girl of her age. Probably the child was not ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... of the Railway line between Halifax and Quebec must be transparent to every clear-sighted politician. And had I remained in office, I should have urged upon my colleagues—I do not doubt successfully—the justice and expediency, both for Imperial interests, commercial and military, and for the vindication of the Imperial good faith which seems to me indisputably pledged to it, ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... that all the elements which belong to the notion of happiness are altogether empirical, i. e. they must be borrowed from experience, and nevertheless the idea of happiness requires an absolute whole, a maximum of welfare in my present and all future circumstances. Now it is impossible that the most clear-sighted, and at the same time most powerful being (supposed finite), should frame to himself a definite conception of what he really wills in this. Does he will riches, how much anxiety, envy, and snares might he not thereby ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... even halting except to turn back. And yet though there are so many of them, and as far as we know they have no organs of sight, they never run up against each other, but glide past more cleverly than any clear-sighted fish. These creatures are mostly to be found among decaying seaweed, and though they are so tiny, you can still see distinctly the clear space contracting and ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... and three months before the opening of our story a new reign had begun without any apparent opposition; for the liberalism of the Left had welcomed Charles X. with as much enthusiasm as the Right. Even clear-sighted and suspicious persons were misled. The moment seemed propitious for Rabourdin. What could better conduce to the stability of the government than to propose and carry through a reform whose beneficial results were to ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... want of sincerity to himself; Adeline, for such unjustifiable management and manoeuvring; and young Taylor, for what he called his "presumption and puppyism." And to think that he, Harry Hazlehurst, who prided himself upon being clear-sighted, had been so completely deceived by others, and what was worse, by himself! He was obliged to remember how sure he had felt himself of Jane; it was humiliating to think what a silly part he had been playing. Then came a twinge or two, from the consciousness ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... and classification, which gives it the air of being a parody of L'Esprit des Lois, is yet full of originality, of lively anecdote and keen observation. Nobody but Beyle could have written it; nobody but Beyle could have managed to be at once so stimulating and so jejune, so clear-sighted and so exasperating. But here again, in reality, it is not the question at issue that is interesting—one learns more of the true nature of Love in one or two of La Bruyere's short sentences than in all Beyle's three hundred pages of disquisition; but what is absorbing is the sense that comes ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... was a total lack of rancour. Clear-sighted as he was, he realized how desperately difficult a choice was imposed on Nationalists by Parnell's situation, and he knew how honestly men had differed. He could command completely his intellectual judgment of their action, and there were many whom in later stages of the movement ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... ignorant of the Middle Ages as the British workman, except perhaps the British business man who employs him. Yet all who know even a little of the Middle Ages can see that the modern Trade Union is a groping for the ancient Guild. It is true that those who look to the Trade Union, and even those clear-sighted enough to call it the Guild, are often without the faintest tinge of mediaeval mysticism, or even of mediaeval morality. But this fact is itself the most striking and even staggering tribute to mediaeval morality. It has all the clinching logic of coincidence. If large numbers of the most hard-headed ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... make peace for them, they would make peace for themselves. "These," pursued Carheil, "are the reasons they give us to prove the necessity of their late embassy to the Senecas; and by this one can see that our Indians are a great deal more clear-sighted than they are thought to be, and that it is hard to conceal from their penetration any thing that can help or harm their interests. What is certain is that, if the Iroquois are not stopped, they will not fail ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... no loss to give this dictum its true interpretation. His own scheme had secured the party's legitimate rights sufficiently—he was too clear-sighted to overlook that. It was the party's illicit greed for spoils which he had failed to satisfy—the greed which the Boss had framed his makeshift to meet. The opportunity for jobbery was left as wide as before, perhaps wider; for while under color of economy the ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... intelligence of the people may be free to act, without violating that respect for its fundamental law upon which national stability ultimately depends. It is a curious feature of our current journalism that it is clear-sighted and prompt to see the unfortunate trammels in which certain of our religious bodies are held, by the cast-iron tenets imposed upon them by a past generation, while at the same time political tenets, similarly ancient, and imposed with a like ignorance of a future which is our present, are ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... Goodwin, that Brewster was "hiding in England" when the SPEEDWELL sailed from Delfshaven. There can be no doubt that, with his ever ready welcome of sound amendment, he will, on examination, revise his opinion, as would the clear-sighted Goodwin, if living and cognizant of the facts as marshalled against his evident error. As the leader and guide of the outgoing part of the Leyden church we may, with good warrant, believe—as all would wish—that Elder Brewster was the chief figure the ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... of encouragement and advice, I shall give extracts from her replies, as their dates occur, because they will indicate the kind of criticism she valued, and also because throughout, in anger, as in agreement and harmony, they show her character unblinded by any self-flattery, full of clear-sighted modesty as to what she really did well, and what she failed in, grateful for friendly interest, and only sore and irritable when the question of sex in authorship was, as she thought, roughly or unfairly treated. As to the rest, the letters speak for themselves, to those ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... could not easily make a wrong use of either their feelings or conclusions. On the other hand, the value of the critic's observations mainly depends upon the correctness of their application to the individual case, and since for one clear-sighted critic there have always been fifty ingenious ones, it would have been a wonder if this application had always been applied with all that caution which is required to hold the balance equally between ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... box would be the title of one of Paul de Kock's last novels; la Femme, le Mari, el l'Amant. Magnian is a cunning dog, and has very ingenious ideas. Fearing, doubtless, that the husband might be too clear-sighted, he threatened him with an ophthalmia, and made him wear blue spectacles. Clever, wasn't ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... than intrenched camps, fortified places, where the population shut themselves up in case of necessity. "They, as a general rule, straggled about the country," says Polybius, the most correct and clear-sighted of the ancient historians, "sleeping on grass or straw, living on nothing but meat, busying themselves about nothing but war and a little husbandry, and counting as riches nothing but flocks and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... dare not trust themselves to speak. I shall endeavour to extract, from the midst of insult and contempt and maledictions, those admonitions which may tend to correct whatever imperfections such censurers may discover in this my first serious appeal to the Public. If certain Critics were as clear-sighted as they are malignant, how great would be the benefit to be derived from their virulent writings! As it is, I fear I shall be malicious enough to be amused with their paltry tricks and lame invectives. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... his head against various regulations of the bureaucracy; and this let him know, with all the amenities of official censure, that if they could not recognize what he had done well, they were perfectly clear-sighted as to where ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... aunt and the prayers of my children. Why are you not here to help me by your advice, and to tell me whether I ought or not to consent to a union which certainly seems calculated to relieve me from the discomforts of my present situation? Your friendship would render you clear-sighted to my interests, and a word from you would suffice to bring ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... insulting him by her researches, and that he perceived them. She felt absolutely ashamed to see him the next day, and even in her dreams was revolving speeches that might prove that though cautious and clear-sighted, she was ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... really an aesthete at all; he is too Voltairian for that. As a critic he is learned, scholarly, clear-sighted and acute; but his sense of the humorous inconsistencies of normal flesh and blood is too habitually present with him to admit of that complete abandonment to the spirit of his author, which, accompanied by interpretative subtlety, secures ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... shared her good graces with the buccaneer, without the latter being jealous in the slightest degree?" The Gascon asked himself still further what could be the object of Blue Beard in offering her hand to him, and what price she would put upon this union. He was too clear-sighted not to have noticed the lively emotion, sincere on the part of the widow, when she showed such indignation that the adventurer should believe her capable of playing a comedy in offering her hand. On ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... Church's clear-sighted interpretations of the mind and life of Dante, and of the history-making Commedia, attest the importance of including the poet and his work in this ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... now first come into our hands. As it is, we can only say they are new to us. It requires time to reconcile this. In the meanwhile we must take it for granted, that they actually do represent those in Mr Mulready's vision, and he is a clear-sighted man, and has been accustomed to look into character well. His name as the illustrator, gave promise of success. Well do we remember an early picture by him—entitled, we believe, the Wolf and the Lamb. It represented two schoolboys—the bully, and the more tender fatherless ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... should interfere in the Serbo-Albanian question. "Are we not all," said he, "one large Balkan family? And if the Powers intervene they will not act in our interests, but in their own." He said that it used to be Austria which grasped at Albania, now it was Italy. So the delegate showed that he was a clear-sighted man; he also showed that in Tirana they are not unanimous in loving the Italians. But alas! the Great Powers, urged by Italy, made a most disastrous plunge; they actually, at least Great Britain, charged the Serbs, their allies, on November ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... without a corresponding offer of concessions on a large scale. The Earl of Salisbury in his proposal formally invited the Parliament to adduce the grievances which it had, and promised in the King's name to redress all such so far as lay in his power. It is affirmed that his clear-sighted and vigorous speech made a favourable impression. Parliament in turn acceded to the proposal, and alleged its most important grievances. They affected both ecclesiastical and financial interests: among the latter ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... is prized, and the man of virtue taxed. Nay, we see [the] weakness and credulity of men is such, as they will often refer a mountebank or witch before a learned physician. And therefore the poets were clear-sighted in discerning this extreme folly when they made AEsculapius and Circe, brother and sister, both children of the sun, ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... AEschylus Barrett, 'as he called her. Certain it is that, with the intuition of genius, Elizabeth Barrett understood, appreciated, and made allowances for the unhappy man more completely than was possible to any other of his contemporaries. Clear-sighted to his faults and weaknesses, her chivalrous spirit took up arms in defence of his conduct, even against the strictures of her poet-lover. 'The dreadful death of poor Mr. Haydon the artist,' she wrote to her friend ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... of the most favouring circumstances, she had taken Francis Hogarth's heart into her possession, at least for time, and this was her one prize in the strange lottery of love. No other attachment she was likely to inspire, as she felt herself, but her lover was not so clear-sighted. Dr. Vivian Phillips had a great respect for her, and enjoyed her society now and then as a pleasant change from the more insipid company of his sisters or their female acquaintances, but to spend a life with her would be too fatiguing. She seemed always ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... than he had ever been in his life before. He had a large share of pride, which had hitherto found itself very comfortable in the world, despising Old Goggles, and reposing in the sense of unquestioned rights; but now this same pride met with nothing but bruises and crushings. Tom was too clear-sighted not to be aware that Mr. Stelling's standard of things was quite different, was certainly something higher in the eyes of the world than that of the people he had been living amongst, and that, brought in contact with it, he, Tom Tulliver, appeared uncouth and stupid; he was ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... a visit such as to leave a deep impression on Norman's mind. Sixty years ago, old Mr. Wilmot had been what he now was himself—an enthusiastic and distinguished Balliol man, and he had kept up a warm, clear-sighted interest in Oxford throughout his long life. His anecdotes, his recollections, and comments on present opinions had been listened to with great eagerness, and Norman had felt it an infinite honour to give the venerable old ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Communism would be but as dust in the balance."—John Stuart Mill, "Principles of Political Economy." Mill strove diligently to "reform" the bourgeois world, and to "bring it to reason." Of course, in vain. And so it came about that he, like all clear-sighted men, became a Socialist. He dared not, however, admit the fact in his life time, but ordered that, after his death, his auto-biography be published, containing his Socialist confession of faith. It happened to him as with Darwin, who cared not to be known in his life as an atheist. The bourgeoisie ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... no very clear-sighted prophet to prophesy that you will have to let your wheels run ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... conceited as yourself. You are too conceited to be sociable; he is not. I am an obscure, weak-minded woman,—weak-minded, you know, compared with men. I can be patronized,—yes, that's the word. Would you be equally amiable with a person as strong, as clear-sighted as yourself, with a person equally averse with yourself to being under an obligation? I think not. Of course it's delightful to charm people. Who wouldn't? There is no harm in it, as long as the charmer does not sit up for a public benefactor. If I were a man, a clever man like yourself, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... never so indirect; they cannot see so far as to the remote Consequences of a steady Integrity, and the vast Benefit and Advantages which it will bring a Man at last. Were but this sort of Men wise and clear-sighted enough to discern this, they would be honest out of very Knavery, not out of any Love to Honesty and Virtue, but with a crafty Design to promote and advance more effectually their own Interests; and therefore the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... quackeries altogether; as mere diseases, corruptions, with which our and all men's sole duty is to have done with them, to sweep them out of our thoughts as out of our practice. Man everywhere is the born enemy of lies. I find Grand Lamaism itself to have a kind of truth in it. Read the candid, clear-sighted, rather sceptical Mr Turner's Account of his Embassy to that country, and see. They have their belief, these poor Thibet people, that Providence sends down always an Incarnation of Himself into every generation. At bottom some belief in a kind of Pope! At bottom still better, belief that there ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... is about beginning to feel that he is a man. At this difficult and critical period the teacher no longer suffices. Then, above all things, is needed all the influence of the family; the father's example, the mother's clear-sighted tenderness, worthy friendships, an environment of meritorious people, of upright minds animated by lofty ideas, who attract within their orbit this ardent and inquisitive being, eager for novelty, for ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... offspring of my care, These fatal anthems, lamentable songs, Come to their view, who like afflicted are; Let them yet sigh their own, and moan my wrongs. But untouched hearts with unaffected eye, Approach not to behold my soul's distress; Clear-sighted you soon note what is awry, Whilst blinded souls mine errors never guess. You blinded souls, whom youth and error lead; You outcast eaglets dazzled with your sun, Do you, and none but you, my sorrows read; You best can judge the wrongs that she hath done, That she hath done, the ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... he sometimes seems a little odd," said poor Laura, wishing her guest were less clear-sighted: and yet before he came she had been hoping that Lawrence would divine the less obvious aspects of the situation, and perhaps, since a man can do more with a man like Bernard than any woman can, succeed in easing it. "But can you wonder? Struck down like this at five and twenty! and he never ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... authority, the softening influence of the kindness affected deeply a man just risen from a bed of sickness. Lieutenant D'Hubert's hand, which grasped the knob of a stick, trembled slightly. But his northern temperament, sentimental but cautious and clear-sighted, too, in its idealistic way, predominated over his impulse to make a clean breast of the whole deadly absurdity. According to the precept of transcendental wisdom, he turned his tongue seven times in his mouth before he spoke. He made then only a speech ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... triumph was destined to be that of his deepest humiliation. Atahuallpa was not one of those to whom, in the language of the Grecian bard, "the Gods are willing to reveal themselves." 17 He had not read the handwriting on the heavens. The small speck, which the clear-sighted eye of his father had discerned on the distant verge of the horizon, though little noticed by Atahuallpa, intent on the deadly strife with his brother, had now risen high towards the zenith, spreading wider and wider, till it wrapped the skies in darkness, and was ready ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... Republic. The echoes of the squabbles which were rending the Legislative Assembly reached the depths of the provinces, now in an exaggerated, now in an attenuated form, varying so greatly as to obscure the vision of the most clear-sighted. The only general feeling was that a denouement was approaching. The prevailing ignorance as to the nature of this denouement kept timid middle class people in a terrible state of anxiety. Everybody wished to see ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... he said, continuing, "Providence could not be more powerful, love more ingenious, motherhood more clear-sighted than your friends have been for us. I bless the chance that has brought you here to-day; for Monsieur Joseph has disappeared forever; he has evaded all the traps I set to discover his true name and residence. Here, read his last letter. But perhaps ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... it was almost impossible to discern the lamps in the streets, even when they were directly over-head. Had the fog occurred twenty-four hours earlier, the effect of the illuminations would have been entirely lost; and the blind would have had the advantage over the clear-sighted. This assertion experience has proved: for, some years ago, when there was, for several successive days, a duration of such fogs in Paris, it was found necessary, by persons who had business to transact out of doors, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... himself was not more regular at church, or Alice more devout, than Dr. Richards. The children, whom he had denominated "ragged brats," were no longer spurned with contempt, but fed with peanuts and molasses candy. He was popular with the children, but the parents, clear-sighted, treated him most shabbily at his back, accusing him of caring only for ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... suppose is the finest thing in the world." Though neither mother nor son could be called beautiful, they make a pretty picture; the ugly, generous, ardent woman weaving rainbow illusions; the ugly, clear-sighted, loving son sitting at her side in one of his rare hours of pleasure, half-beguiled, half-amused, wholly admiring, as he listens. But as he goes home, and the fancy pictures fade, and Stowting is once more burthened with debt, and the noisy companions and the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... (which he will shun like the plague), and will therefore predispose him to frivolity. Being fully persuaded, owing to his lack of imaginative sympathy, that his own outlook on life is alone compatible with mental sanity, and yet being too clear-sighted to accept that outlook as satisfactory, he will mingle with his frivolity a strain of bitterness and discontent,—the bitterness of self-corroding scepticism, and the discontent which grows apace through its very effort ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... which we find ourselves on this, the last night of the session, should make us pause. We are apt to be dim-sighted to our own failings, and clear-sighted to the faults of others; but I ask you in all candor, do the men who have so nearly elected a United States senator believe that he is the choice of the State for that high office, or that he would be considered by that legislative body if it were not for the influence ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... less under the influence of his own imagination; had it been his good fortune to live even in contact with those he now so devoutly worshipped, in a political sense at least, their influence over a mind as just and clear-sighted as his own, would soon have ceased; but, passing his time at sea, they had the most powerful auxiliary possible, in the high faculty he possessed of fancying things as he wished them to be. No wonder, then, that he heard this false assertion of Sir Reginald with a glow ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Emma was too clear-sighted not to perceive the cause, and hastened, by her little attentions, to remove the feeling: not that she had any definite ideas upon the subject any more than Joey; but she could not bear ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... Spaniard. This eminent personage might be supposed to have thus received permission to come to the Netherlands, despite all that had been urged by the war-party against the danger incurred, in case of a renewal of hostilities, by admitting so clear-sighted an enemy into the heart of the republic. Moreover, the terms of the secret note would authorize the appointment of another foreigner—even a Spaniard—while the crafty president Richardot might creep into the commission, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... glance. I just looked at Frank, who blushed like a girl, took it back, vowing he had spelt it wrong, and gave her another. Did he think to throw dust in my eyes? There is a stage of mental suffering at which we grow naturally clear-sighted. I had arrived at it long ago. Watching every action of my neighbours, I had yet ears for all that was going on around. Sir Guy, occupying a position on the hearth-rug, with his coat-tails over his arms, was haranguing the clergyman of the parish, a quiet, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... "and then he is so clear-sighted, intelligent, and energetic; so conscientious in regard to what he owes to his employer that he takes just as much interest in the business as if ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... system was doubtless connected with the worship of Esculapius. But quacks and charlatans were much in evidence, even in that remote epoch. Francis Bacon, in his "Advancement of Learning," chapter 2, says that "the poets were clear-sighted in discerning the credulity of men in often preferring a mountebank, or a cunning woman to a learned physician. Hence they made Esculapius and Circe brother and sister, and both ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... reigned in the intellectual field, we should be unable to conceive the form of madness which would present itself to our eyes. There are confusions in the moral field which it is impossible to imagine in any other domain of life. If some day the youth of the nations, more clear-sighted than those of to-day, hear that the Christmas feast was kept on the battlefields of the European war, they will understand the origins of the war itself. In such a situation, David (to whom indeed it would have been inconceivable) ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... June the league demanded a royal decree, forbidding the practice of all religion but the Roman Catholic, on pain of death. In vain had the clear-sighted Bishop of Acqs uttered his eloquent warnings. Despite such timely counsels, which he was capable at once of appreciating and of neglecting, Henry followed slavishly the advice of those whom he knew in his heart to be his foes, and authorised ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... astonished if you find me do any sort of good—you can't help it, how can you, when it's just and true? Do you know I sometimes have had absurd dreams of what I might have been if you had not been so terribly clear-sighted. You stood in your white frock under the old mulberry tree—your first long skirt—and you saw that I was no good, and you were perfectly right, but, after all, what is your life ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... completely out of breath, we did at last arrive, and from this our friends of the morning were expected to be within shot. Not a sign of a living creature appeared, however, to enliven the solitude around us, and we began to think that our guides were a little TOO clear-sighted this time, when what should suddenly come upon us but a solitary old markore, slowly and leisurely rounding a rugged point of rock below. We were all squatted in a bunch upon a space about as large as a good-sized towel; but, hidden as we thought ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... that in fact her name is Mrs. Harris, and that in fine there is no such person, and that I was merely talking hypothetically, in abstractions; I must draw a herring across the trail, I must raise a dust, and throw a lot of it into your amazingly clear-sighted little eyes. Now, is it definitely impressed upon you that her name is not—the thrice-adorable name ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... made great pretence of regret at Eugene's absence; but, truth to tell, he was not sorry to escape the scrutiny of his clear-sighted cousin, who, for his part, was happy beyond expression in the devotion of his men, and the companionship of ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... piety, laws, reputation, and every thing that can serve to conduct him to virtue; but superstition destroys all these things, and erects itself into a tyranny over the understandings of men: this is the reason why atheism never disturbs the government, but renders man more clear-sighted, as seeing nothing beyond the bounds of this life." The same author adds, "that the times in which men have turned towards atheism, have been the most tranquil; whereas superstition has always inflamed their minds, and carried them on to the greatest ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... reaction and disillusionment which some prophets have discerned as the first harvest of Home Rule, because she is already disillusioned. Looking into the future we see no hope for rhetoricians; what we do see is a strong, shrewd, indomitable people, at once clear-sighted and idealistic, going about its business "in the light of day in the domain of reality." No signs or wonders blaze out a trail for them. The past sags on their shoulders and in their veins, a grievous burden and a grievous malady. They ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... succumb to the temptation to write to her, probably because in his inmost heart he knew too well that if she wanted him she would write—on some other excuse. He had been in a curious way clear-sighted about her from the first; he had always acknowledged that strain of insincerity, but he had fallen into the error of believing that underneath all those shifting sands there was at last bedrock and that it was his hand which was to discover ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... aberration of the intellect do they come to admit that a being's whole life should be voluntarily subjected to chance? Not one of us would consent to such a degradation, if women in general were not absolutely ignorant! And that is why many, too clear-sighted to submit to a ridiculous law and lacking the courage to infringe it, die without having known the flavour and the goodness of life. Oh, what injustice! Is youth not short enough as it is? Is the circle in which our poor intelligence moves not sufficiently limited? And is it necessary, ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... accepting the position in which it found itself. For Faircloth inspired her with deepening faith. He needed no guiding, as she told herself; but was strong enough, as his words convincingly testified, clear-sighted and quick-witted enough, to play his part in the complicated drama without prompting. Hadn't he done just what she asked?—Stayed until, by operation of some quality in himself or—could it be?—simply through ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... faith that helped," said James. Then, laying his hand on the youth's shoulder: "And what is My wrapt John dreaming of? I was not yonder in the mist; I was here with you, I tell you, friends: He is blind who sees without believing, and clear-sighted who ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... with the utmost indifference. Bohemund, animated himself by a worldly spirit, did not know the true character of the Crusaders, nor understand the religious madness which had brought them in such shoals from Europe. A priest, more clear-sighted, devised a scheme which restored all their confidence, and inspired them with a courage so wonderful as to make the poor sixty thousand emaciated, sick, and starving zealots put to flight the well-fed and six times as numerous legions of the Sultan ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... tried, was reputed to be an excellent judge, a man of no softnesses,—able to wear the black cap without convulsive throbbings, anxious also that the law should run its course,—averse to mercy when guilt had been proved, but as clear-sighted and as just as Minos; a man whom nothing could turn one way or another,—who could hang his friend, but who would certainly not mulct his enemy because he was his enemy. It had reached Caldigate's ears that he was unfortunate in his judge; by which, they who had so said, had intended ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... blind on occasions that did not seem to him to warrant any close attention, he was clear-sighted on those that did. He understood that something was amiss; and though her exclamation had, indeed, made him angry for a moment, he was now sorry; he felt that she was unhappy, and he couldn't bear people to be unhappy. 'I've done something ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... written by one who has inherited a not less passionate curiosity about life, but with more patience in waiting upon it, watching it, noting its surprises, we have a simple and sufficient commentary upon the books and upon the man. The narrative has warmth and reserve, and is at once tender and clear-sighted. J'entrevois nettement, she says with truth, combien seront precieux pour les futurs historiens de la litterature du xix^e siecle, les memoires traces au contact immediat de l'artiste, exposes de ses faits ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... the squabbles which were rending the Legislative Assembly reached the depths of the provinces, now in an exaggerated, now in an attenuated form, varying so greatly as to obscure the vision of the most clear-sighted. The only general feeling was that a denouement was approaching. The prevailing ignorance as to the nature of this denouement kept timid middle class people in a terrible state of anxiety. Everybody wished to see the end. They were sick of uncertainty, and ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... thorough a gentleman to annoy her by alluding to their political difference of opinion, except occasionally, when his temper got the better of him, which, to do him justice, was seldom. But Clarissa's very love for him rendered her too clear-sighted not to perceive the state of his mind, and the unspoken agitation which she suffered on this score had been partly the cause of her homesickness and longing for her sister's companionship. He had been both kind and considerate in sending for Betty; his conscience approved the action; and ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... principle, the necessary, directly sequent step in progress, which their world was to take, to make this their aim, and to expend their energy in promoting it. World-historical men—the heroes of an epoch—must, therefore, be recognized as its clear-sighted ones; their deeds, their words are the best of that time. Great men have formed purposes to satisfy themselves, not others. Whatever prudent designs and counsels they might have learned from others would be the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... entirely revolting to Helen, though she had a small opinion of the elegant young trifler who pursued her so persistently, for she, too, had social aspirations, though being more clear-sighted than her mother, she dreamed of wider circles than those of Chicago. Her husband, whoever he was to be, should take her to Paris, or ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... quietly and quickly; has a full, clear, dark eye; has a youthful clerical countenance; has given way a little to facial sadness; is sharp and serious; has a healthy biliary duct, and has carried dark hair on his head ever since we knew him; is clear-sighted, shy unless spoken to, and cautious; is free and generous in expression if trotted out a little; is no bigot; dislikes fierce judgments and creed-reviling; likes visiting folk who are well off; wouldn't object ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... people,—not persons imbruted by exile among slaves upon solitary islands, but who had lived in large Northern cities and the most accomplished society, subject to all the influences of the highest civilization. It is the journal of a hearty, generous, clear-sighted woman, who went to the plantation, loving the master, and believing, that, though Slavery might be sad, it might also be mitigated, and the slave might be content. It is the record of ghastly undeceiving,—of the details of a system so wantonly, brutally, damnably ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... answer, that the public sympathises with the poor, who are oppressed by the rich, because the last do not wish to let the first rob them of their estates! We hear a great deal of the strong robbing the weak, all over the world, but few among ourselves, I am afraid, are sufficiently clear-sighted to see how vivid an instance of the ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... derangement which, as a continued habit of his deranged vision, presented the subject of our last tale with the successive apparitions of his cat, his gentleman-usher, and the fatal skeleton, may occupy, for a brief or almost momentary space, the vision of men who are otherwise perfectly clear-sighted. Transitory deceptions are thus presented to the organs which, when they occur to men of strength of mind and of education, give way to scrutiny, and their character being once investigated, the true takes the place of the unreal representation. But in ignorant times those instances in which any ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... but pious fervor in this florid sentiment. But as she was honest and clear-sighted, she could not accept a statement which seemed so plainly in contradiction with his common teachings, without bringing his flattering assertion to the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... thinkers—that is, those who are endowed with creative power—have much difficulty in adapting themselves to the technical drudgery of preparatory criticism: they are far from despising it; on the contrary, they hold it in honour, if they are clear-sighted; but they shrink from devoting themselves to it, for fear of using a razor, as is said, to cut stones. "I have no mind," wrote Leibnitz to Basnage, who had exhorted him to compile an immense Corpus of unpublished and printed documents relating to the history of the law ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... doubtless, the wide distinction that exists between modesty and shyness. Modesty is always self-possessed, and therefore clear-sighted and cool-headed. Shyness, on the contrary, is too confused either to see or hear things as they really are, and as often assumes the appearance of forwardness as any other disguise. Depriving its victims of the power of being themselves, it leaves them little freedom of choice, as to the sort ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... Italy in the ninth century. Rashi knew the first of these collections; and his citations aided Zunz in the reconstruction he made of this Midrash before the discovery of a manuscript by Buber confirmed his clear-sighted suppositions. ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... had watched with increasing alarm the fatuous complacency of Congress which continued to deceive itself into believing that a great stretch of mere water rendered the country immune from taking its honest part in its own war. "Oh, my God," he had said in his heart, as all clear-sighted Americans had been saying, "has commercialism eaten into our very vitals? Has the good red blood of the early pioneers turned to water? Are we without the nerve any longer to read the writing on the wall?" And the only times that his national pride had been able ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... womanly work in her fingers, were over and gone. She was very kind and gentle still, and the smile that always greeted him was very bright and sweet, but that heavenly past was gone forever. Doctor Frank, about as clear-sighted as his sex generally are, of course never guessed within a ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... remain incomprehensible that a monarch so clear-sighted, himself the daily witness of my demeanour, one well acquainted with mankind, and conscious I wanted neither money, honour, nor hope of future preferment; I say it is incomprehensible that he should really suppose ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... than ever!" exclaimed Bressant, who would not dare to entertain a hope until the full depth of his sin had been brought forward for the pure and clear-sighted eyes of his companion to look upon and judge. "When I found out my shameful secret—when I learned what a thing I was, even with no sin of my own to drag me down—I didn't care what crime I committed! A kind of evil intelligence seemed ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... share was conspicuous was the "Principles of Political Economy." The "System of Logic" owed little to her except in the minute matters of composition, in which respect my writings both great and small have largely benefited by her accurate and clear-sighted criticism. The chapter of the "Political Economy" which has had a greater influence on opinion than all the rest, that on "The Probable Future of the Laboring Classes," is entirely due to her: in the first draft of the book, that chapter ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... accomplished; and three months before the opening of our story a new reign had begun without any apparent opposition; for the liberalism of the Left had welcomed Charles X. with as much enthusiasm as the Right. Even clear-sighted and suspicious persons were misled. The moment seemed propitious for Rabourdin. What could better conduce to the stability of the government than to propose and carry through a reform whose beneficial results were to ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... that Lena put all this into words, even to herself: but such thoughts were there, or those very much like them. She was given to reasoning and pondering over things in the recesses of her own mind, and she was uncommonly clear-sighted for a girl of her age. Probably the child was ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... nuns perceived how matters stood, at which they were much displeased. Nevertheless, to avoid scandal, they said not a word to the monk, but gave a good scolding to the nun, who made many excuses, but the abbess, who was clear-sighted, knew by her replies and excuses that ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... for himself in his need." The deep strain here shudders out its passion of repressed resentment and grief, which after this darkly underlines Wotan's misery. "You created the need, as you created the sword," she follows him up with clear-sighted accusation, almost voluble. "For him you drove it into the tree-trunk. You promised him the goodly weapon. Will you deny that it was your own stratagem which guided him to the spot where he should find it?" The effect of her words upon Wotan—to whom this mirror held up to him reveals the weakness ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... Professor Muensterberg without enthusiasm, but on another class of subject. Except for the limitations which his national characteristics and upbringing impose upon him (and for the fact that he seems to be unacquainted with the West) the Professor has written a just and clear-sighted estimate of the American character. We do not look to a German for a proper understanding of the sporting instinct, as British and Americans understand it, nor perhaps for views that will coincide with ours on the subject of morality in the youth of either sex. But the laws ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... "Then you are clear-sighted indeed, Miss Nevil. If you have seen any wit in what he has just said you must certainly have put ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... personal development? Does he not miss much from the lack of the world's hearty give-and-take? He gets criticism, but not of a just or all-round kind. Small things may be pecked at, trifles may be made mountains of by the disgruntled, but where does he get a clear-sighted, whole-hearted estimate of himself and his work? Who tells him of his real virtues, his real faults? Among all his friends, who is there, man or woman, who is brave enough ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... and clear-sighted deduction from the lessons of history, which revolutionary politicians in Asia, where no nationalities have yet been formed, may well take to heart. Parliamentary institutions, as Lord Acton has well said, presuppose unity of ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... unconsciously, the cause of the Bourbons. I, on the contrary, used all my endeavours to dissuade him from that measure, which I clearly saw must, in the end, lead to the restoration, though I do not pretend that I was sufficiently clear-sighted to guess that Napoleon's fall was so near at hand. The kindness I showed to M. Hue and his companions in misfortune was prompted by humanity, and not by mean speculation. As well might it be said that hernadotte, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Oriana regarded her adopted brother, and personal jealousy made him more clear-sighted as to the possibility of her affection ripening into love than her father had as yet become; and gladly would the rival of the unsuspecting Henrich have blackened him in the eyes of the Chieftain, and caused him to be banished ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... represent man's self-devised attempts to explain the reality answering to his religious and moral cravings. Revelation is but a divine interpretation of the same; as though one with dim vision were to supplement his defect by the testimony of another more clear-sighted. ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... Clear-sighted critics, perceiving that the impression produced by her works is not one to induce men and women to defy the laws of their country, nor likely to undermine their religious faith, have gone more to the heart of the matter. The dangerous tendency is more insidious, they say, and more general. ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... temper stood in marked contrast to that of his father. Well read, accomplished, easy and fluent of speech, the lord of a harem of mistresses, the centre of a gay court where poet and jongleur found a home, Henry remained cool, self-possessed, clear-sighted, hard, methodical, loveless himself, and neither seeking nor desiring his people's love, but wringing from them their gratitude and regard by sheer dint of good government. His work of order was necessarily a costly work; ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... second expedition, awarding credit, for all that was accomplished, to the men of his first wonderful voyage of 1869. And these men surely deserved all that could be bestowed on them. They had, under the Major's clear-sighted guidance and cool judgment, performed one of the distinguished feats of history. They had faced unknown dangers. They had determined that the forbidding torrent could be mastered. But it has always seemed to me that the men of ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... Coombe Hills, on the extreme southern edge of Berkshire, and not far removed from the great highway leading from Bath to London, lies the farmery where this restless, petulant, suffering, earnest, clear-sighted Tull put down the burden of life, a hundred and twenty years ago. The house is unfortunately largely modernized, but many of the out-buildings remain unchanged; and not a man thereabout, or in any other quarter, could tell me where ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... penetrating, sharp, clear-sighted, discriminating, penetrative, shrewd, crafty, keen, perspicacious, subtile, cunning, knowing, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... themselves totally obscure, are dragged forward to account for obscure Greek mythical phenomena. Such are the accusations brought by the regretted Mannhardt against the school to which he originally belonged, and which was popular and all-powerful even in the maturity of his own more clear-sighted genius. Proofs of the correctness of his criticism will be offered abundantly in the course of this work. It will become evident that, great as are the acquisitions of Philology, her least certain discoveries have been too hastily applied in alien "matter," that is, in the region ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... altogether miserable deceivers, yet at any rate such contemptible men that they practised usury in shameful fashion with all that was most holy and venerable in the world. It will be seen presently how Wacht, who in all other relations of life was an intelligent and clear-sighted man, resembled in this particular the coarsest-minded amongst the lowest of the people. The further prejudice that he would not admit there was any piety or virtue amongst the adherents of the Roman Catholic Church, and that he trusted no Catholic, might perhaps be pardoned ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... he said. "I've been frightfully stupid. That's what puzzles me. I'm clear-sighted enough about the people I make up in my books. The critics insist on my understanding of human motives, and I know that I have that understanding. I can get right inside my characters, and I know them through and through ... but I'm as stupid as a sheep about myself and about you and ... living people. ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... which sudden chance frequently brings about." While affecting to be deeply engaged in examining the ladder, the mind of Dantes was, in fact, busily occupied by the idea that a person so intelligent, ingenious, and clear-sighted as the abbe might probably be able to solve the dark mystery of his own misfortunes, where he ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Amherst's sense of humour would have preserved him from such a view of his father-in-law's advice; but just then it fell like a spark on his smouldering prejudices. He was clear-sighted enough to recognize the obstacles to legal retaliation; but this only made him the more resolved to assert his will in his own house. He no longer paused to consider the possible effect of such a course on his already strained ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... mainly derived. Meanwhile the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore, who is also a political supporter of President Cleveland, has not yet been confronted by the supreme authority at Rome with such a final sentence upon the true nature of Mr. George's "exclusive taxation of land," as the clear-sighted Archbishop of New York is said to be seeking to obtain from the Holy Office. What the end will be I have little doubt. But for the moment, it will be seen, the situation in America is only less confused and troublesome than the situation in Ireland. It is confused and ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... but regarding the moral character of Muhammad himself. The storm raised by Abulfazl's motion was, therefore, terrible. There was not a doctor or lawyer present who did not recognise that the motion attacked the vital principle of Islam, whilst the more clear-sighted and dispassionate recognised that the assertions made in their previous discussions had broken through 'the strong embankments of the clearest law and the ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... too acute and clear-sighted to fall into such a palpable contradiction as this. It is a common accusation against them, that they believe one to be three, and three one; but this charge is, in most cases, unjust. This would be only ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... scenes of Knaus and Huebner, and, longo intervallo, Meyerheim and Meyer von Bremen. Not a breath of the broad humor of Teniers and Van Ostade in these masters; scarcely a hint of the robust animality and clownish jollity with which the clear-sighted Dutchmen endowed their rural revellers. Though pictorial art has not, outside of Russia (where the great and unrivalled Riepin paints the peasant with the brush as remorselessly as Tolstoi and Dostoyefski with the pen), kept pace with the realistic movement in literature, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... friend, I will take oath: Spoke leisurely, as might a man Praying for no thing other than He thinks Heaven's justice;—She was blind, I said, and yet a noble mind Most truly loved her; one whose fond Clear-sighted vision looked beyond The bounds of her infirmity, And saw the woman, perfectly Modeled, and wrought out pure and true And lovable. She quailed, and drew Her hands away, but closer still I caught them. "Rack ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... actually official, it was semi-official at all events; and we were obliged to await his return. To give some colour to our delay, M. de Nion sent a fresh summons to Sidi Bousselam, pasha of Larrache, a clear-sighted and intelligent man, whom the Sultan had deputed to negotiate with us. A fresh extension of time was granted. I took advantage of it to get our consuls withdrawn, and went myself to Tangier to see to the sudden removal of our consul-general and his family. If this had been attempted ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... round again, and looked into his daughter's eyes. Perhaps he read there a spirit equal to, and not unlike, his own—a nature calm, resolute, clear-sighted; the strong will and decision of a man, united to the tenderness of a woman. From that hour father and daughter understood ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... count," said Raoul, fixing a penetrating look upon him, "what has happened to render you so clear-sighted?" ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... such as to leave a deep impression on Norman's mind. Sixty years ago, old Mr. Wilmot had been what he now was himself—an enthusiastic and distinguished Balliol man, and he had kept up a warm, clear-sighted interest in Oxford throughout his long life. His anecdotes, his recollections, and comments on present opinions had been listened to with great eagerness, and Norman had felt it an infinite honour to give the venerable old man his arm, as to be shown by him his curious collection of books. His parish, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... occasion of Willan Blaycke's second visit. Pierre had not shown himself at the inn for some weeks, and Victorine was uneasy about him. Spite of her plans about a much finer bird in the bush, she was by no means minded to lose the bird she had in hand. She was too clear-sighted a young lady not to perceive that it would be no bad thing to be ultimately Mistress Gaspard of the mill,—no bad thing if she could not do better, of which she was as yet far from sure. So she had inveigled her aunt into taking the notion into her head that she needed ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... in the highest degree, believed that another learned man, his friend and greatest admirer, was his bitter enemy. All efforts to convince him to the contrary were fruitless, for although remarkably clear-sighted on most other subjects, he obstinately refused on this to listen to the truth. Indeed, the remonstrances of his friends had the effect of strengthening his conviction that the reptile, as he called the supposed enemy, assumed the appearance of friendship, the better ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... "This clear-sighted man has mentioned a suspicion which I myself had already felt. A worldly-minded young Christian of your rank is not so ready to give up earthly joys and happiness for the doubtful bliss of your Paradise and when you do so and are ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... types;—the younger son whose father hadn't been able to do anything for him beyond educating him; the younger son who, after years of uncongenial drudgery had emerged, tough, stringy, professional, his boyish dreams dead and his boyish tastes atrophied; a useful hard-working, clear-sighted member of society. And there was truth in this conception of himself. There was truth, too, in Madame von Marwitz's probe. He had more than the normal English sensitiveness where ideals were concerned and more than the normal English instinct for a protective ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... refuge in Susiana to present himself before Esar-haddon's foot-stool at Nineveh. This judicious step had all the success that he could have expected or desired. Esar-haddon, having conquered the ill-judging Nebo-zirzi-sidi, made over to the more clear-sighted Nahid-Marduk the whole of the maritime region that had been ruled by his brother. At the same time the Assyrian monarch deposed a Chaldaean prince who had established his authority over a small town in the neighborhood of Babylon, and set up another in his place, thus pursuing the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... Railway line between Halifax and Quebec must be transparent to every clear-sighted politician. And had I remained in office, I should have urged upon my colleagues—I do not doubt successfully—the justice and expediency, both for Imperial interests, commercial and military, and for the vindication ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... and not very clear-sighted, they permitted themselves to be dazzled by modernity and promises of light and liberty, and forswore the ideal of the re-nationalization of Israel, so placing themselves outside the fellowship bond that united, by a common hope, ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... conceited to be sociable; he is not. I am an obscure, weak-minded woman,—weak-minded, you know, compared with men. I can be patronized,—yes, that's the word. Would you be equally amiable with a person as strong, as clear-sighted as yourself, with a person equally averse with yourself to being under an obligation? I think not. Of course it's delightful to charm people. Who wouldn't? There is no harm in it, as long as the charmer does not sit up for a public benefactor. If I were a man, a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... he been more a man of facts, one less under the influence of his own imagination; had it been his good fortune to live even in contact with those he now so devoutly worshipped, in a political sense at least, their influence over a mind as just and clear-sighted as his own, would soon have ceased; but, passing his time at sea, they had the most powerful auxiliary possible, in the high faculty he possessed of fancying things as he wished them to be. No wonder, then, that he ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... felt the weakness which reminded her of having sprained her foot when very young, and which obliged her to limp slightly. At any other hour in the day her countenance would have awakened the suspicions of the least clear-sighted, attracted the attention of the most indifferent. But at half-past two in the morning, the streets of Paris are almost, if not quite, deserted, and scarcely is any one to be seen but the hard-working artisan on his way to earn his daily bread or the roistering idlers of the streets, ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... discerned as the first harvest of Home Rule, because she is already disillusioned. Looking into the future we see no hope for rhetoricians; what we do see is a strong, shrewd, indomitable people, at once clear-sighted and idealistic, going about its business "in the light of day in the domain of reality." No signs or wonders blaze out a trail for them. The past sags on their shoulders and in their veins, a grievous ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... easy. Allow me to tender to you the same explanations which satisfied one whom philosophy itself has made as open to truth as he is clear-sighted to imposture." ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... He was far too clear-sighted to think that statesmanship consists in decisions between very definitely stated alternatives of right and wrong. "My choice," he wrote in characteristic words, "was not between a clearly right and clearly wrong course—how easy is it to deal with ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... I'd like a dear, dainty thing with a soft voice and pretty, womanly ways. I hereby vow and declare that I will stick to my colours, and set an example to those old things who ought to know better. Lady Mary must be twenty-five if she is a day. I don't expect she will ever be married now. With the clear-sighted gaze of youth, I can see that she is hiding a broken heart beneath the mask of mirth. Life is frightfully exciting when you have the gift ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... belong to the notion of happiness are altogether empirical, i.e., they must be borrowed from experience, and nevertheless the idea of happiness requires an absolute whole, a maximum of welfare in my present and all future circumstances. Now it is impossible that the most clear-sighted and at the same time most powerful being (supposed finite) should frame to himself a definite conception of what he really wills in this. Does he will riches, how much anxiety, envy, and snares might he not thereby draw upon his shoulders? Does he will knowledge and discernment, perhaps ...
— Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals • Immanuel Kant
... courage of the Jean Bart order, that will smoke cigars on a barrel of powder (perhaps by way of keeping up their character), with a quizzing humor that outdoes the minor newspapers, sparing no one, not even themselves; clear-sighted, wary, keen after business, grasping yet open handed, envious yet self-complacent, profound politicians by fits and starts, analyzing everything, guessing everything—not one of these in question as yet ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... knew him, through and through. She knew that he desired to succeed, not only for himself, but, first of all, for her. He loved his work for the work's sake. He cared nothing for fame in the sense of popularity, or its equivalent, notoriety. In that respect he was a clear-sighted man—he knew what the thing was worth. For himself he cared nothing for the material products of success. His own tastes were of the simplest kind. He desired to achieve success simply that he might pour the fruits of success into her lap. He wished her to owe nothing ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... superior in rank and wealth in Madrid, since his arrival here, he had no heart to give, and still remained true to you! Know that by his daring bravery, his manliness, his modest bearing, and above all, his clear-sighted and brilliant mental capacity he has challenged our own high admiration; but you, alas! must turn in scorn your proud lip upon him! Think not we have these facts from him, or that he has reflected in the least upon you; he is far too delicate for such conduct. No, ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... I, 'I do not think they even wanted to see on the other side. There were some few tolerably good and clear-sighted ones among them, you know: and these all agreed in pointing out how, by changing one or two of their old man-in-the-moon Bedlam arrangements, they could greatly better themselves: but they heard with listless ears: I don't know that they ever made any considerable effort. For they had become ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... development." After some brief words from Her Majesty the great building was declared open and another important project initiated by the Prince of Wales had reached completion. The London Times of the succeeding day referred with accuracy, in this connection, to his "clear-sighted initiative and untiring energy" and a member of the Executive Committee, which had the enterprise in hand, wrote to the same paper that during the past six years "every important step in connection ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... they never suspected that, beneath that mass of herbs which the current bore onward, there was a little boy who would have exactly served to amuse them. The preparations, designed by Dick Sand, were very well conceived, because these clear-sighted ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... "one large Balkan family? And if the Powers intervene they will not act in our interests, but in their own." He said that it used to be Austria which grasped at Albania, now it was Italy. So the delegate showed that he was a clear-sighted man; he also showed that in Tirana they are not unanimous in loving the Italians. But alas! the Great Powers, urged by Italy, made a most disastrous plunge; they actually, at least Great Britain, charged the Serbs, their allies, on November 7, with being guilty of overstepping ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... manner, springing doubtless from the consciousness of a purpose that filled his life, a dignity which made him unapproachable. He had the expression of a thinker, meditation dwelt on the fine nobly carved brow. You could tell from the dark bright eyes, so clear-sighted and quick to observe, that their owner was wont to probe to the bottom of things. He gesticulated very little, his demeanor was grave. Lucien felt an involuntary respect ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... accomplishments, more especially in artistic matters, which, so far as I can learn, the President has not; but both are ambitious in the noblest sense; both are young men of deep beliefs and high aims; earnest, vigorous, straightforward, clear-sighted; good speakers, yet sturdy workers, and anxious for the prosperity, but above all things jealous for the honor of the people whose affairs they are called to administer. The President's accounts of difficulties in finding men for responsible positions ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... said, and now that they were alone it seemed necessary to bring themselves still more near, and to surmount a barrier which had grown up since they had last spoken. It was difficult, frightening even, oddly embarrassing. At one moment he was clear-sighted, and, at the ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... that the fault of the government lay in the fact that it did not govern, and he deplored that his own function, in a decadent age, was but "to prop up mouldering institutions." He was not constitutionally averse from change; and he was too clear-sighted not to see that, sooner or later, change was inevitable. But his interest was in the fascinating game of diplomacy; he was ambitious of playing the leading part on the great stage of international politics; and he was too consummate ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... honor in the Colony, living in much state, though personally always abstemious and restrained, and growing continually in the mildness and toleration, from which his contemporaries more and more diverged. Clear-sighted, and far in advance of his time, his moderation hindered any chafing or discontent, and his days, even when most absorbed in public interests, held a rare severity and calm. No act of all Bradstreet's life brought him more public ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... tentative delineation, of that "piercing and overpowering tenderness which glorifies the poet of Pompilia." Festus, Michal's husband, the friend and adviser of Paracelsus, is a man of simple nature and thoughtful mind, cautious yet not cold, clear-sighted rather than far-seeing, yet not without enthusiasm; perhaps a little narrow and commonplace, as the prudent are apt to be. He, like Michal, has no influence on the external action of the poem. Aprile, the Italian poet whom Paracelsus encounters ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... present Advantage, nor forbear to seize upon it, tho by Ways never so indirect; they cannot see so far as to the remote Consequences of a steady Integrity, and the vast Benefit and Advantages which it will bring a Man at last. Were but this sort of Men wise and clear-sighted enough to discern this, they would be honest out of very Knavery, not out of any Love to Honesty and Virtue, but with a crafty Design to promote and advance more effectually their own Interests; and therefore the Justice of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... remembered his words in the shop in Brunford. Perhaps because he had roused some personal antipathy. Anyhow, in her heart of hearts was the longing to see him beaten. And yet she was afraid. She did not like the idea of spending so much time at Howden Clough. She was too clear-sighted to be blind to Wilson's intentions, and she felt sure as to ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... of triumph was destined to be that of his deepest humiliation. Atahuallpa was not one of those to whom, in the language of the Grecian bard, "the Gods are willing to reveal themselves." 17 He had not read the handwriting on the heavens. The small speck, which the clear-sighted eye of his father had discerned on the distant verge of the horizon, though little noticed by Atahuallpa, intent on the deadly strife with his brother, had now risen high towards the zenith, spreading wider and wider, till it wrapped the skies in darkness, and was ready to burst in thunders ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... a coward, he might also be a traitor but he was a clever and clear-sighted man too. Consequently Hortebise shivered as he heard these words, but Mascarin smiled disdainfully, basking in his ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... the league demanded a royal decree, forbidding the practice of all religion but the Roman Catholic, on pain of death. In vain had the clear-sighted Bishop of Acqs uttered his eloquent warnings. Despite such timely counsels, which he was capable at once of appreciating and of neglecting, Henry followed slavishly the advice of those whom he knew in his heart to be ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... he had answered each of them in particular. They frequently took notice of this prodigy; and were so much amazed at it, that they looked on one another like men distracted, and regarded the Father with admiration, as not knowing what to think or say. But as clear-sighted and able as they were, for the most part, they could not conceive that it was above the power of nature. They ascribed it to I know not what secret kind of science, which they imagined him only to possess. For which ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... Queen the following morning, as he sat in the cabin; "I'm a lawyer myself, and I want to tell you, the law is a strange thing. It will, and it won't. It can, and it can't. It does, and it doesn't. It's blind, crosseyed and clear-sighted all at the same time. It offers a precedent for everything, right or wrong. Now, as you say, it is unlawful for us to stop the delivery of these mails. I know it—big penalty for non-delivery. But let's talk ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... "imprudent," "fanatical," "impracticable." During the six years they held their own claims in abeyance to the slaves of the South, and labored to inspire the people with enthusiasm for the great measures of the Republican party, they were highly honored as "wise, loyal, and clear-sighted." But again when the slaves were emancipated and they asked that women should be recognized in the reconstruction as citizens of the Republic, equal before the law, all these transcendent virtues vanished like dew before the morning sun. And thus it ever is so long as woman labors ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... need of counsel and guidance, but had no one else of her own sex to whom she could so naturally look for information or advice. They were, as she explained to Mercy, her only society; and, though she was too clear-sighted not to see their faults, and not at times to be aware that she was suffering from their perverseness, she, like other people, was often compelled to tolerate what she could not mend, and to shut her eyes to disagreeable qualities ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... reason. Let us therefore examine her solutions to problems within her powers. If there be anything to which her own interest must have made her apply herself most seriously, it is the inquiry into her own sovereign good. Let us see, then, wherein these strong and clear-sighted souls have placed it, and whether ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... easily make a wrong use of either their feelings or conclusions. On the other hand, the value of the critic's observations mainly depends upon the correctness of their application to the individual case, and since for one clear-sighted critic there have always been fifty ingenious ones, it would have been a wonder if this application had always been applied with all that caution which is required to hold the balance equally between ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... almost impossible to discern the lamps in the streets, even when they were directly over-head. Had the fog occurred twenty-four hours earlier, the effect of the illuminations would have been entirely lost; and the blind would have had the advantage over the clear-sighted. This assertion experience has proved: for, some years ago, when there was, for several successive days, a duration of such fogs in Paris, it was found necessary, by persons who had business to transact out of doors, to hire the blind ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... do not appreciate him. For I have observed that there are people who (having no children of their own) hold very just and severe views about spoiled boys and girls, but who (having dogs of their own) are much less clear-sighted on the subject of spoiled terriers and Pomeranians. And I do not want to be like that—dear as the ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... coral. Such things may be abomination in the eyes of the conscientious oyster-getter, but with Hamed they helped to fill the "beg." Vain old Arab! He deceived no one—in the end not even himself, for none of his fakes passed the final inspection of clear-sighted "Dorphy," with whom the moralities of the firm rested, but who in Hamed's eyes was ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... on philosophy were an absolute travesty, as his contempt for philosophy was made apparent in every sentence; and M. Gosselin, who set great value upon the divinity of the schools, quietly endeavoured to counteract his teaching. But fanaticism does not always prevent people from being clear-sighted. M. Gottofrey noticed something peculiar about me, and he detected that which had escaped the paternal optimism of M. Gosselin. He stirred my conscience to its very depths, as I shall presently explain, and with an unrelenting hand tore asunder all the ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... man of cold, clear-sighted, self-seeking temperament. In almost all English histories dealing with this period his steadiness and solid unshowy qualities are contrasted with Essex's flightiness and failure, to the natural disadvantage of the latter. This, however, is not perhaps quite the last ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... he had deep and intricate roots in the past of his race and in the soil of his fatherland. But yet, how far are all the influences which we can trace, from accounting for the forceful energy, the clear-sighted sagacity, and the dominant genius of the man! As far as we can judge at this distance, his personality was the mightiest element that entered into the denouement of that bloody world-drama, the Thirty Years' War. Had he been other than he was, had he been a man of less heroic mould, it ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... with the rage and terror of a bird which belongs to the free air. Shelley, Matthew Arnold held, was not quite sane. Sanity is a capacity for becoming accustomed to the monstrous. Not time nor grey hairs could bring that kind of sanity to Shelley's clear-sighted madness. If he must be compared to an angel, Mr. Wells has drawn him for us. He was the angel whom a country clergyman shot in mistake for a buzzard, in that graceful satire, The Wonderful Visit. Brought to earth by this mischance, he saw our follies and our crimes without the dulling influence ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... with the worship of Esculapius. But quacks and charlatans were much in evidence, even in that remote epoch. Francis Bacon, in his "Advancement of Learning," chapter 2, says that "the poets were clear-sighted in discerning the credulity of men in often preferring a mountebank, or a cunning woman to a learned physician. Hence they made Esculapius and Circe brother and sister, and ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... ditch into which the clear-sighted falls. Fools advance themselves to honours, by discourses which signify nothing, while men of sense and eloquence live in poverty and contempt. The Mussulmaun with all his riches is miserable. The infidel triumphs. We cannot hope things will be otherwise. The Almighty ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... she will exclaim joyously: Oh, there is Johnny standing at the foot of my bed; my but hasn't he grown! The living relatives may feel shocked and uneasy, thinking the mother suffering from hallucinations, while in reality she is more clear-sighted than they; she perceives those who have passed beyond the veil who have come to greet and help her to make herself at home in the new world ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... a relief to speak to a fellow man of the hopes and fears that are in my heart. You are the one person to whom I could speak, Lord Dorminster. You have not wished my suit well, but at least you have been clear-sighted. I think it has never occurred to you that a prince of China might venture to compete with ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ice, though you have not even scratched its glossy surface: you have placed your hand upon the croup of the most ferocious and savage, the most wakeful and clear-sighted, the most restless, the swiftest, the most jealous, the most ardent and violent, the simplest and most elegant, the most unreasonable, the most watchful chimera of the moral world—THE VANITY OF ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... never looked upon his face—his 'dear AEschylus Barrett, 'as he called her. Certain it is that, with the intuition of genius, Elizabeth Barrett understood, appreciated, and made allowances for the unhappy man more completely than was possible to any other of his contemporaries. Clear-sighted to his faults and weaknesses, her chivalrous spirit took up arms in defence of his conduct, even against the strictures of her poet-lover. 'The dreadful death of poor Mr. Haydon the artist,' she wrote to her friend Mrs. Martin, a few days after the event, 'has quite ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... with his administration of the State. Persia is said to have been in a most flourishing condition during his reign. He may not have gained all the successes that are ascribed to him; but he was undoubtedly an active prince, brave, energetic, and clear-sighted. He judiciously brought the Roman war to a close when a new and formidable enemy appeared on his north-eastern frontier; he wisely got rid of the Armenian difficulty, which had been a stumbling block in the way of his predecessors ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... on the tree, and thinking for a little while about himself rather than about her, he endeavored to survey his situation in the logical clear-sighted way that had once been customary with him. To what a blank no-thoroughfare he had brought himself. What a damnable mess he had made of his peaceful, ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... has since been justly proud; but in regard to what he was, Gerard was a man of genius, who had in many ways few superiors. Few men, even in France, have so highly deserved the reputation of un homme d'esprit. He was as spirituel as Talleyrand himself, and almost as clear-sighted and profound. Add to this that nothing could surpass the impression made by Gerard at first sight. He was strikingly like the first Napoleon, but handsomer; with the same purity of outline, the same dazzlingly lustrous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... if you know just the sort of woman you are marrying, Jim? Jemima is very intelligent, and like many intelligent people she is a little—ruthless. Honorable, clear-sighted; but hard. She is more her father's child than mine. I do not always understand her, but—I do know that she is not sentimental, ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... there may not be a third solution to the mystery?" asked Roger, who was clear-sighted and somewhat matter-of-fact. "There being a good many people who desire to have it supposed that the Duke is the rightful heir to the throne of England, it is possible that the paper was a bold forgery, drawn up for the purpose of influencing the populace. Either the woman may have been hired ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... his labyrinthine allegorical interpretations of the Scriptures, his enigmatic visions, and his false certitude about the Divine intentions, never ceased, in his own large soul, to be ennobled by that fervid piety, that passionate sense of the infinite, that active sympathy, that clear-sighted demand for the subjection of selfish interests to the general good, which he had in common with the greatest of mankind. But for the mass of his audience all the pregnancy of his preaching lay in his strong assertion of supernatural claims, in his denunciatory visions, in the false certitude ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... nature of the position which he offered Bartley. They talked a long time, and in becoming better acquainted with each other's views, as they called them, they became better friends. Bartley began to respect Witherby's business ideas, and Witherby in recognizing all the admirable qualities of this clear-sighted and level-headed young man began to feel that he had secretly liked him from the first, and had only waited a suitable occasion to unmask his affection. It was arranged that Bartley should come on as Witherby's assistant, and should do whatever he was ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... "She is clear-sighted and honest enough to see the truth about youth and age, and makes no bones about it. She doesn't pretend that there's any particular beauty in old age. God!—she's ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... instincts of Ireland's glorious youth were being corrupted and perverted. The cry of "Up the Mollies!" became the watchword of the new movement and the creed of selfishness and sectarianism supplanted the evangel of self-denial and self-sacrifice. It was a time when clear-sighted and earnest men almost lost hope, if they did not lose faith. To be held in subjection by the tyranny of a stronger power was a calamity of destiny to be resisted, but that the people should themselves bind the chains of a more sordid tyranny of selfishness ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... to his work in an uneasy frame of mind. He saw that he had not succeeded in imposing upon his father, and that the clear-sighted old gentleman strongly suspected where the missing articles had gone. Eben might have told, had he felt inclined, that the five-dollar bill had been mailed to a lottery agent in New York in payment for a ticket in a Southern lottery, ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... and many Frenchmen of note who were less clear-sighted. Livingston encountered rebuff after rebuff, and delay after delay. Talleyrand met him with his usual front of impenetrable duplicity. He calmly denied everything connected with the cession of Louisiana until even the details became public property, and then admitted them ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Serbia! Thy clear-sighted spirit was to have but a glimpse of one of the most essential necessities of the Serbian people. Thy frail and fragile body has not permitted thee to enjoy the pleasure to which thou hast devoted so much love. For the well-being of this dear people thou hast given ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... alien to his temperament. After serving in Batthyany's Ministry, he withdrew from public life on the outbreak of war with Austria, and remained in retirement during the dictatorship of Kossuth and the struggle of 1849. As a loyal friend to the Hapsburg dynasty, and a clear-sighted judge of the possibilities of the time, he stood apart while Kossuth dethroned the Sovereign and proclaimed Hungarian independence. Of the patriotism and the disinterestedness of Deak there was never the shadow of a ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... which the life of any individual or any nation can be possessed, is a promise determined by an ideal. Such a promise is to be fulfilled, not by sanguine anticipations, not by a conservative imitation of past achievements, but by laborious, single-minded, clear-sighted, and fearless work. If the promising career of any individual is not determined by a specific and worthy purpose, it rapidly drifts into a mere pursuit of success; and even if such a pursuit is successful, whatever promise it may have had, is buried in the grave of its triumph. So it is with ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... to, and always thus. The clear-sighted, great old man, already perceives how much his fame will owe to such an apostle and preacher of his faith—for he sees also what Carlyle himself will become. The mention of Lockhart ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... namely, that he assisted the enemies of Florence to extricate themselves from their dilemmas. Such criticism fails entirely to understand both the aim and the scope of his policy. He desired to keep Italy for the Italians. His clear-sighted sagacity saw nothing but danger in the plans of Ludovico of Milan to invite the French King into Italy, or in those of Venice to encourage the Duke of Lorraine to press his claims upon Milan. The intervention ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... heart into her possession, at least for time, and this was her one prize in the strange lottery of love. No other attachment she was likely to inspire, as she felt herself, but her lover was not so clear-sighted. Dr. Vivian Phillips had a great respect for her, and enjoyed her society now and then as a pleasant change from the more insipid company of his sisters or their female acquaintances, but to spend a life with her would be too fatiguing. She seemed always to require him ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... with shares of 100 L. with 50 L.; paid up on each; which effectually checked the progress of such banks, for few new ones were established for many years, or till that act had been repealed. But in this, as in many other cases, perhaps Sir R. Peel will be found to have been clear-sighted rather than far-sighted. He was afraid of certain joint stock banks which he saw rising around him; but the effect of his legislation was to give to these very banks, if not a monopoly, at any rate an exemption ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... Stop to, or to hinder and obstruct the Encrease as well of Atheism and Prophaneness, as of Popery and Superstition. And I defy all the Powers of Priestcraft to name such another, a practicable Remedy, of which there is any Probability, that it would go down or could be made use of in a clear-sighted Age, and among a knowing People, that have a Sense of Liberty, and refuse to be Priest-rid. It is amazing, that so many fine Writers among the Clergy, so many Men of Parts and Erudition should seem very earnestly to enquire into the Causes of Libertinism and Infidelity, ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... to Chopin's later compositions; but his peculiarities are already distinctly traceable in many of his earlier works; and Elsner, his teacher, was sufficiently clear-sighted and frank to write the following words: "The achievements of Mozart and Beethoven as pianists have long been forgotten; and their pianoforte compositions, although undoubtedly classical works, must give way to the diversified artistic ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... lenses suddenly she saw the truth. He and she had changed places. She who had used to be so practical—she was the dreamer now; had come thither following a dream, walking in a dream. He, the dreaming boy, had become the practical man, firm, clear-sighted, direct of purpose; with a dream yet in his heart, but a dream of great action, a dream he hid from her, certainly a dream in which she had neither part nor lot. And yet she had made him what he was; not willingly, not by kindness, but by injustice. ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... not dealing with a booby, but with a sensible clear-sighted man, and so studied to express myself in a way which would not for an instant give him the impression that I was promising to marry him because—what I don't know and it doesn't ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... Corneille, and which is not only repulsive, but also for the most part both clumsy and unsuitable. He flattered himself, that in knowledge of men and the world, in an acquaintance with courts and politics, he surpassed the most shrewd and clear-sighted observers. With a mind naturally alive to honour, he yet conceived the design of taking in hand the "doctrine of the murderous Machiavel;" and displays, broadly and didactically, all the knowledge which he had acquired of these arts. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... me to be. You know so perfectly well," he laughed, "how rotten I am; you are astonished if you find me do any sort of good—you can't help it, how can you, when it's just and true? Do you know I sometimes have had absurd dreams of what I might have been if you had not been so terribly clear-sighted. You stood in your white frock under the old mulberry tree—your first long skirt—and you saw that I was no good, and you were perfectly right, but, after all, what is your life ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... befallen Scotland; and on that day the good Baillie, walking in London to and from church, was in the deepest despondency. Never, "since William Wallace's days," he wrote, had Scotland been in such a plight; and "What means the Lord, so far against the expectation of the most clear-sighted, to humble us so low?" But he adds a piece of news, "On Tuesday was eight days" (i.e. Aug. 27), in consequence of letters from Scotland, David Leslie, the Major-general of Leven's Scottish army in England, had gone in ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... perhaps the British business man who employs him. Yet all who know even a little of the Middle Ages can see that the modern Trade Union is a groping for the ancient Guild. It is true that those who look to the Trade Union, and even those clear-sighted enough to call it the Guild, are often without the faintest tinge of mediaeval mysticism, or even of mediaeval morality. But this fact is itself the most striking and even staggering tribute to mediaeval morality. It has all the clinching logic of coincidence. If large numbers of the most ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... triumph of interest over truth, which these defections implied. Neither the censures of Convocation nor the falling off of his friends had any power to move him. He still continued for some time a member of the Church of England. But his character was far too honest and clear-sighted to enable him to shut his eyes to the fact that the Liturgy of the Church was in many points sadly unsound on the principles of primitive Christianity. To remedy this defect he put forth a Liturgy which he termed 'The Liturgy ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... said to himself. "Uncommonly clear-sighted woman, Louisa. But a trifle hard. Wonder if Barking ever feels that, now? Not very sensitive man, Barking, though. Suppose that hardness in Louisa comes of her having no children. Always plenty of children in our family—except my poor brother Archibald and Lady Jane, they ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Rashi present the most vivid contrast. Though Ibn Ezra was open-minded and clear-sighted, he was restless and troubled. He led an adventurous existence, because his character was adventurous. Rashi's spirit was calm, without morbid curiosity, leaning easily upon the support of traditional religion, frank, throughout his life ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... forty-five of his courte keeping, he permitted them to wall in their towne."[269] The pleasure of replacing stale, commonplace expressions by rare, picturesque, live ones, and in lieu of a plain sentence to give an allegorical substitute, has so much attraction for Nash, that clear-sighted as he is, he cannot always avoid the ordinary defects of this particular style, defects which he has in common with many of his contemporaries, not excluding Shakespeare himself, namely, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... had been and never would be more youthful than he was for that three-quarters of an hour. On the contrary, to her youth he seemed to have left youth behind him, and to have grown suddenly serious and clear-sighted ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... ridden hard across a formidable piece of Asia at the behest of their Empress and who entered the capital in great clouds of dust. It was in that year of 1898 also that Legation Guards reappeared in Peking—a few files for each Legation as in 1860—and it was then that clear-sighted prophets saw the beginning of the ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... Henry James, for instance, wrote a review of "Drum Taps" in the Nation, November 16, 1865. In the lusty heyday and assurance of twenty-two years, he laid the birch on smartly. It is just a little saddening to find that even so clear-sighted an observer as Henry James could not see through the chaotic form of Whitman to the great vision and throbbing music that seem so plain to us to-day. Whitman himself, writing about "Drum Taps" before its publication, said, "Its passion has the indispensable merit that ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... out of it! Do not let us in jurisprudence be like critics in the classics, and change whatever can be changed, right or wrong. No statesman will take your advice. Supposing that any one is liberal in his sentiments and clear-sighted in his views, nevertheless love of power is jealous, and he would rejoice to see you fleeing from persecution or turning to meet it. The very men whom you would benefit will treat you worse. As the ministers of kings wish ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... out of the beaten track, our dialect offered others hardly inferior. As I was about to make an endeavor to state them, I remembered something that the clear-sighted Goethe had said about Hebel's 'Allemannische Gedichte,' which, making proper deduction for special reference to the book under review, expresses what I would have said far better than I could hope to do: 'Allen diesen innern guten Eigenschaften kommt die behagliche naive Sprache sehr ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... fact was one of those visionaries who are the despair of more clear-sighted persons who are in sympathy with their objects. He suffered from a permanent incapacity for realising the immense difficulties in his way, and the infinite tact necessary to the accomplishment of his aims. Hence the methods he adopted were invariably calculated ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... there was a sofa-bed, and they parted for the night. The new life upon which Philip Morton entered was so odd, so grotesque, and so amusing, that at his age it was, perhaps, natural that he should not be clear-sighted as to ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not so fast, if you please; His wisdom was that of the self-deceived fool Who quits the clear fount for the foul, stagnant pool, Who puts out his eyes lest the light he descry, Then shouts 'mid the gloom "how clear-sighted am I!" Who turns from the glorious fountain of Day, To follow the wild ignis fatuus' ray Through quagmire and swamp, ever farther astray, With every ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... above the tilled upland and the land was rough and the ways steep, there lay before them a dark wood swallowing up the road. Thereabout Ralph deemed that he saw weapons glittering ahead, but was not sure, for as clear-sighted as he was. So he stayed his band, and had Ursula into the rearward, and bade all men look to their weapons, and then they went forward heedfully and in good order, and presently not only Ralph, but all of them could see men standing in ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... innovation could not pass without opposition from clear-sighted men. LOPE DE VEGA (1562-1635) attacked it whenever opportunity offered, and his verse seldom shows signs of corruption. It page xxv is impossible to consider the master-dramatist at length here. He wrote over 300 sonnets, many excellent eclogues, epistles, and, in ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
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