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More "Cleverness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was much disgusted; he had looked upon gold-finding as the simplest thing in the world—and so it is if you happen to look in the right place! and when you do so it's a hundred to one that you think your own cleverness and knowledge guided you to it! Chance? Oh dear, no! From that time forth your reputation is made as "a shrewd fellow who knows a thing or two"; and if your find was made in a mine, you are an "expert" at once, and can command a price ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... generally successful in all that they attempted in this way. The Greeks, it is true, surpassed them in refinement and beauty of detail, and in the class of sculpture with which they ornamented their buildings, while the Gothic architects far excelled them in constructive cleverness; but with these exceptions, no other styles can be put into competition with them. At the same time, neither Grecian nor Gothic architects understood more perfectly all the gradations of art, and the exact character that should be given to every form and every detail.... They understood also ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... from anything upon which Gertrude's eyes had rested for long, that tears would rise unbidden in them, though they were tears of happiness and gratitude. The dog Fido took to her at once, and showed her many intelligent attentions, and was so useful altogether in fetching and carrying that his cleverness and docility were a constant source of amusement and wonder to all, and gave endless delight to the boys, who spent all their ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Talent may be a matter of cultivation and perseverance. A man of ordinary intelligence may, by determined resolution, push his way to power in many directions, and the one talent may become ten talents. But genius is not mere cleverness, however well directed and carefully developed. Genius is creative and inventive; it has insight, it has imagination, it "bodies forth the forms of things unknown," and "gives to airy nothings a local habitation ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... privileges all in Anna's name, she exercised her authority quite as Lady Chichele's proxy. She went to the very limit. 'Anna Chichele,' she said actually in his presence, 'is a fortunate woman. She has all kinds of cleverness, and she has her tall son. I have only one little talent, and I have no tall son.' Now it was not in nature that she could have had a son as tall as Somers, nor was that desire in her eyes. All civilization ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... accompanied by it. Indeed, it is rather the breadth of the waters than the force of the current that we look to, to fulfil our idea of greatness. There is no doubt that energy acting upon a nature endowed with the qualities that we sum up in the word cleverness, and directed to a few clear purposes, produces a great effect, and may sometimes be mistaken for greatness. If a man is mainly bent upon his own advancement, it cuts many a difficult knot of policy for him, and gives a force and distinctness to his mode ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... she spoke in a loud voice, easily collecting people about her wherever there were any to collect. Her conversation was not brilliant, but it was so abundant that its noisy vivacity passed current for cleverness; she had a remarkably keen judgment of people, and a remarkably bad taste in her opinions of things artistic, from beauty in nature to beauty in dress, but she maintained her point of view obstinately, and admitted no contradiction. It was a singular ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... mother to him, "all your cleverness, your breaking away from old things, and taking life in your own hands, doesn't seem to ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... from Mrs. Brownlow's house; and now, as they wandered about the lawn and shrubberies of Popham Villa, she took care not to be with him out of earshot of the others. In all of which there was ten times more of womanly cleverness,—or cunning, shall we say,—than had yet come to the possession ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... of it! I think it must be a national characteristic. You saw it in the war again and again—a wonderful plan brought to naught by some piece of over-cleverness on the ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... walk with me is only another way of making use of your material. You are an artist and I happen to be the bit of colour you are using today. It's a part of your cleverness to be able to produce premeditated ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... epistle to Lord Cobham, On the Knowledge and Characters of Man, and an Imitation of the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace. In this last, he attacks, in the most brutal style, his former love Lady Mary W. Montague, who replied in a piece of coarse cleverness, entitled, "Verses to the Imitator of the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace,"—verses in which she was assisted by Lord Harvey, another of Pope's victims. He wrote, but was prudent enough to suppress, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... interfere with the present government not at all, if you choose, provided only that my own commands are obeyed when relayed through you. I choose you because you have courage, and resource, and because you have the Yanqui cleverness which will understand your nation ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... the Sentimental Journey: the obvious Sterne of Tristram Shandy, and the more insidiously concealed creator of the Journey could hardly be characterized discriminatingly by such a statement. Sterne's cleverness consists not in suggesting his own innocence of imagination, but in the skill with which he assures his reader that he is master of the situation, and that no possible interpretation of the passage has escaped his intelligence. To ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... that he cannot hit safely. This may be accomplished in many ways, though the particular way best suited to each case can only be determined at the time by the pitcher himself. It depends, therefore, upon his own cleverness and wits, and it is not possible for any one else to supply these for him. An intelligent catcher may help him greatly, but there will still remain many points which he himself must decide. I may be able, however, to furnish ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... said this good father, "you have made a few guineas for yourselves; and here are a few more for you, all that I can spare: let us see what you can do with this money. I shall take a pride in seeing you get forward by your own industry and cleverness; I don't want you to slave for me all your best days; but shall always be ready, as a father should be, to ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... frequently be much at a loss," he says, "in stupid company." One has seen this embarrassment of a wit in a company of dullards. It is Rochefoucauld's own position in this world of men and women. We are all, in the mass, dullards compared with his cleverness, and so he fails to understand us, is much at a loss among us. "People only praise others in hopes of being praised in turn," he says. Mankind is not such a company of "log-rollers" ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... more heterogeneous atoms than the little pools into which society usually runs. The reaction from the chief episode of his earlier life had bred in Glennard an uneasy distaste for any kind of personal saliency. Cleverness was useful in business; but in society it seemed to him as futile as the sham cascades formed by a stream that might have been used to drive a mill. He liked the collective point of view that goes with the civilized uniformity ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... bringing her fifteenth child into the world. A palpable proof this, given by the head of its Foreign Office, of the vitality of the Portuguese nation! Some days later the Duke, a diplomatist of the old school, who added to his own considerable wit and cleverness the advantage of having rubbed shoulders with the greatest diplomatists of the century, such as Talleyrand and Metternich, asked me to dine with him. It was a splendid banquet. On our arrival we found the royal archers (so called because they carried ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... "Blue Boar". Sheen got out and ran upstairs to the gymnasium. Joe Bevan was sparring a round with Francis. He watched them while he changed, but without the enthusiasm of which he had been conscious on previous occasions. The solid cleverness of Joe Bevan, and the quickness and cunning of the bantam-weight, were as much in evidence as before, but somehow the glamour and romance which had surrounded them were gone. He no longer watched eagerly to ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... others. This fact favours the phrenological opinion that size of brain is evidence of superior power. He has a dog possessing a remarkably large head, and few dogs can match him in intelligence. He is a cross with the Newfoundland breed, and besides his cleverness in the field as a retriever, he shows his sagacity at home in the performance of several useful feats. One consists in carrying messages. If a neighbour is to be communicated with, the dog is always ready to be the bearer of a letter. He will take orders to the workmen who reside at a short ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... which Columbus had already given to Long Island when he sighted it from Santa Maria; and he reached it in the evening of Tuesday, October 16th. The man in the canoe had arrived before him; and the astute Admiral had the satisfaction of finding that once more his cleverness had been rewarded, and that the man in the canoe had given such glowing accounts of his generosity that there was no difficulty about his getting water and supplies. While the barrels of water were being filled he landed and strolled about in the pleasant groves, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... Therefore, the greater part of his wealth lay buried in the cellars of his palace at Ferrara, whither he seldom went. The rest of his fortune was invested in a life annuity, so that his wife and children might be interested in keeping him alive. This was a species of cleverness which his father should have practiced; but this Machiavellian scheme was unnecessary in his case. Young Philippe Belvidero, his son, grew up a Spaniard as conscientiously religious as his father was impious, on the principle of the proverb: "A ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... extra had screamed in its biggest head type: SECOND BRIDGE DUMMY MURDER! and had carried, in detail, Captain Strawn's comforting theory that Dexter Sprague's erstwhile friends had again been made the victims of a New York gunman's fiendish cleverness in committing his murders under circumstances which would inevitably involve Hamilton's most highly respected and socially prominent citizens in ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... soon became evident that Mousie was Junior's favorite. She never said much to him, but she looked a great deal. To the little invalid girl he seemed the embodiment of strength and cleverness, and, perhaps because he was so strong, his sympathies went out toward the ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... of Light, who always brought brightness with her. Let the Children only go hunting by themselves, in the dark, and they would soon find all the Blue Birds that make men's happiness. The traitress displayed such cleverness that, before long, Tyltyl's disobedience became a very fine thing in his own eyes. Each of Tylette's words provided a good excuse for his action or adorned it with a generous thought. He was too weak to set his will against trickery, allowed himself to be persuaded ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... whose bust of brass I lately saw between the images of yourself and your ancestors, (a proof, I suppose, of your fondness for him,) when I was with you at your Tusculan villa, does not yield at all to Lysias in acuteness, nor in shrewdness and cleverness to Hyperides, nor in gentleness or brilliancy of language to Aeschines. Many of his orations are very closely argued, as that against Leptines; many are wholly dignified, as some of the Philippics; many are of varied style, as those against Aeschines, the one ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... myself on my own cleverness—for it was evident that, just as I had suspected from Rene's reticent manner, even by him our existence at Pulwick had not been mentioned ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Overdene, when a lot of us were there. We never could make out why she was included in one of the duchess's 'best parties,' except that the dear duchess vastly enjoyed taking her off, and telling stories about her; and we could not appreciate the cleverness of the impersonation, unless we had seen the original. She was rather pretty, in a fussy, curling-tongs, wax-doll sort of way; but she never could let her appearance alone, or allow people to forget it. Almost every sentence she spoke, drew attention ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... of sight as much as possible, and none knew how he lived or where he lived or anything about him save that he had a mean disposition. Patiently he watched the other people, especially those of nimble wits who lived largely by their cunning and cleverness—Mr. Fox, Mr. Coyote, Mr. Lynx and his own cousins, Mr. Mink and Mr. Weasel. From each one he learned something, and at last he was more cunning and more clever than any of them or even than all of them, for ...
— Mother West Wind "Where" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... way, and succeeds in it, by introducing a real man, and endowing him with the sentiments of a fiend. The fault of the one is exaggeration; of the other, miscreation: redeemed in the first by extraordinary cleverness; in the other, by wonderful belief. What a contrast between La Motte Fouque and Balzac! how national and characteristic both! No one can read a chapter of the Magic Ring without seeing that the Baron believes in all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... Until then I felt that it was my duty to live, and to do what might be necessary for the triumph of truth; but I was plunged in such a state of stupor that I did not even think of ascertaining what was to be done. Had it not been for the cleverness and zeal of my counsel, and the sublime devotion of Marcasse, my listlessness would have left me to ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... the fire Joan again grew witchy. She insisted upon proving her cleverness at palm-reading. Raymond dared not refuse, but he ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... clasp about his milk-white neck. Then she lined the ark with roses, laid a little pillow in the bottom, put the baby softly in, partly closed the top to shield him from too much light and air, and laid it among the flags by the river's brink; and then the cleverness that had designed the scheme and the bravery that had executed it so far, was overwhelmed by a mother's love and she fled, and hid herself among the foliage and the reeds, too frightened to watch the result; "but his sister stood afar ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... there is a youngster, Paul," Mayenne interrupted himself to point out, "who has not a tithe of your cleverness; but he has the advantage of being on the spot when needed. Desiring a word with mademoiselle, he betook himself to her chamber. She was not there, but Mar was ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... demand something more from our heroes these days than susceptibility, or indifference, to emotion. Was the purpose of life, one wonders, ever as delicately elusive as these bewildered young men seem to find it? I kept longing for Lord DERBY. Perhaps, again, this is but part of the cleverness of the writer, and Miss MEYNELL, like the child in the poem, only does it to annoy. But I hardly think so. Her tenderness and sympathy for Victor especially are obvious. He, I take it, is Narcissus (though Narcissi would have been ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... cleverness and originality. She never talked much. So far today she had not said a word. She was sitting on the sill of the window across from Lucy Knox. She swung her hat on her knee, and loose, moist rings of dark hair curled around her dark, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... cried the young prince with a pun, which would have delighted Padmavati. "Surely you are jealous of her!" he resumed, anything but pleased with the dead silence that had received his joke; "jealous of her cleverness, and of her love for me. She is the very best creature in the world. Even you, woman-hater as you are, would own it if you only knew all the kind messages she sent, and the little pleasant surprise that ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... very terrible in the sudden destruction of your confidence in some one you have loved and trusted. Anthony is greatly changed now, although there is still a little of his old charm left. Yet you would not think of him as some one who had been an intimate part of our lives, a comrade whose cleverness we admired and whose honesty we had never doubted. And then he was suddenly blotted out of our existence. The wrong he had done was hushed up, he disappeared somewhere in the West, and it seemed that we were never to hear of him again. The years went by, Jasper's ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... The cleverness of these two firms has, however, made it impossible for the Government to manufacture this kind of armor for itself. If it is to be used, it must be bought from the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 58, December 16, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... yes? You are thinking it over? Take your time—you have three minutes more. Or perhaps you are sulky, resenting that our cleverness has found you out? Be reasonable, my good man. Think: you cannot be insensible to the honour ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... deceived by the minister; in fact, he rather admired the other's cleverness in beating him on the post. He gave a little laugh as he said: "I should not have succeeded very well in a bank. I am more at home with the horses than I am with figures; but I expect I would have gone fairly straight, and hope the boy will do the same. I fancy one of the great troubles about banking ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... take to me for myself? I'm as good a man, better as a man, than he, if I do blow my own horn.... You side with me, little woman, and—and all that—and I'll treat you square. I never went back on a pal yet. Why," brightening with enthusiasm as his gaze appraised her, "with your looks and your cleverness and my knowledge of the business, we can sweep ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... one of the most popular of fallacies," she answered me crushingly. "Why can't clever women marry, and make just as good wives as the others? Why can't a woman bend her cleverness to see that her house is in order, and her dinners well cooked, and buttons sewed on, as well as to discuss new books and keep pace with her husband intellectually? Do you suppose because I know Greek that I cannot be in love? Do you suppose because I went through higher mathematics that ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... Miss Sydney, surely—with your cleverness! Listen to this, then; perhaps you like it better that I ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... "As it seems you and Harry have had words about it, you had better not; but I'll call—I'll have her. And it shall be such an elegant, select little affair that it will show her off to charming advantage," she continued, with much animation, delighted with her own cleverness in the scheme. "He can't help but be ashamed of her. Don't ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... home by the celebrated "Economist," his father—his very childhood presaged the disorders of his youth and manhood; and his father, mysteriously reverting to early crimes and calamities as the blight of his life, made it matter of complaint that Honore Gabriel, as a boy, had more cleverness "than all the devils in h—l," and seemed destined from his childhood "to disturb the monarchy, as a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... deck—mutiny hotly smouldering—the unreason of fear and of wrath were beaten in fair fight by the unreason of mirth, and men's, women's, children's lives—no telling how many—were saved, through the cleverness of some play-actors and first the youngest of all the Hayles and then the youngest of all the Courteneys singing a nonsense ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... suppose that the Gospel of Jesus Christ cannot satisfy the keenest intellect, nor dominate the strongest will. It has come to be a mark of narrowness and fossilhood to be a devout believer in Christ and His Cross. Some of you young men make an easy reputation for cleverness and advanced thought by the short and simple process of disbelieving what your mother taught you. Here is a man, probably as great as you are, with as keen an intellect, and he clung to the Cross of Christ, and had for his ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... Her cleverness raised such a demon in me that I locked away her letter at once and have seldom read it since. No married lady should have indited such an epistle to a single man. It said, with other things which ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... for genius, common to the vulgar, which forgets all crime in the cleverness of committing it, or from that sagacious disposition peculiar to the English, which makes a hero of any person eminently wicked, no sooner did Crauford's trial come on than the tide of popular feeling experienced a sudden revulsion. ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... but it was not for such facile cleverness as The Candidate that the lovers of poetry were impatient. Up to this point Crabbe shows himself wholly unsuspicious of this fact. It had not occurred to him that it was possible for him safely to trust his own instincts. ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... intellectual world of the eighteenth century was Francois Marie Arouet, or, as he called himself, Francois M. A. de Voltaire (1694-1778). Even from his boyhood he had been a clever hand at turning verses, and had fully appreciated his own cleverness. His businesslike father did not enjoy the boy's poetry, especially if it was written when young Francois should have been studying law. But Francois had a mind of his own; he liked to show his cleverness in gay society and relished making witty rhymes about the foibles of public ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... work," answered Hawthwaite half-carelessly. "Unless she and Mallett have laid their plans with extraordinary cleverness, they can't get out of the country. A noticeable pair too! Went out very early this morning, cycling, did she? I must have a talk to the servants. And that companion, now—Mrs. Elstrick—where's she got to? ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... the skin into small strips, and with them encircled the whole hill upon which he had saved his prince's life. The Duke was highly pleased with this proof of Bruno's cleverness as well as courage, made him into a knight, and put him in a position of honour at his court. Bruno became dearer to his master every day, and rendered him many and great services. In later times he built a castle on the hill, which, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... a sufficient number of men to prevent that. If, however, he displays too much cleverness, ma foi, so much the worse for him! As to his band of robbers, since the chief refuses to speak, ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... under the influence of the corrupt cleverness of Cardinal du Bois, celebrated the few years of his regency by bankrupting France with John Law's financial fallacies (this was the time of the South Sea Bubble and the Mississippi scheme) and by returning to Spain her princess as unsuited for the boy king's mate—with ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... possess great knowledge of the Indian character, and I have seen enough of the red man to estimate at its real worth the possession of this knowledge. Knowledge of Indian character has too long been synonymous with knowledge of how to cheat the Indian—a species of cleverness which, even in the science of chicanery, does not require the exercise of the highest abilities. I fear that the Indian has already had too many dealings with persons of this class, and has now got a very shrewd idea that those ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... the office; when he was neither fagged nor disturbed he worked at home. During this week of incertitudes he rose late, lunched with friends at the Sign of the Indian Chief, a restaurant where the cleverest of them—and those who were so excitedly sure of their cleverness that for the moment they convinced others as well as themselves—foregathered daily. Then he went to the office and wrote or talked to other men until it was time to dine. He could always be sure of companionship for the evening. On his ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... blameless, and who has been an exceptionally faithful husband, has, in at least two instances, permitted himself to be swayed in his role of sovereign by ladies, who for a time figured as his "Egerias." One of them was a woman of extraordinary cleverness, and an American by birth, who while she has long since ceased to exercise any influence upon him, has retained the affection and the regard of both his consort and himself. She is the Countess Waldersee, daughter of the late David Lee, a wholesale ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... sometimes have a reading lesson in morals. That is, that it should apply its principles to practical living issues and questions of the day. And I plead to the lawyers to come out once in awhile from the technicalities of practice, and from their worship of cleverness and success, and look to the mission which is laid on them, namely, to bear witness to justice and righteousness. [Applause.] My toast would be "Common sense in the Pulpit and a love of righteousness at ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... flew off on a gay little story about a dog that bade fair to rival Grandma Bascom's cat for cleverness. He belonged to Mr. Atkins who kept store in Badgertown, and the Pepper children used to see a good deal of him, when they took home the sacks and coats that Mamsie sewed for the storekeeper. And in the midst of the story, when the stolid steerage children were actually laughing ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... interesting, and a delightful place to live. I have met in the old days, sometimes in strategy, sometimes in open warfare, the most crafty and daring seamen the world could send to the Caribbean. All, to the last man, I have overmatched in strength and cleverness. A ship has at last changed hands beneath my feet. It is well. I have lived long and am content. Only, I wish to say that it is a bright pleasure to think that no man, however brilliant or daring, outgeneraled me—but a delightful ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... seat, as he spoke, and sat down. Henry had a quick sense of shame. He had spoken insincerely, for effect ... in order to impress them with his cleverness, and their answer to him filled him with a sense of inferiority. He felt that they must despise him, and feeling that, he ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... suddenly resigned and had thereby broken up the Ministry, he had found himself compelled to place his resignation in the hands of her Majesty. Then that House was also adjourned. On that afternoon all the clubs were alive with admiration at the great cleverness displayed by Sir Timothy in this transaction. It was not only that he had succeeded in breaking up the Ministry, and that he had done this without incurring violent disgrace; but he had so done it as to throw all the reproach upon his late unfortunate colleague. It was thus that Mr. Lupton ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... temporary superior the agent, having gone to Edinburgh a few days after my arrival, gave expression, in the head bank, to the conviction that it would be in vain attempting making "yon man" an accountant. Altogether deficient in the cleverness that can promptly master isolated details, when in ignorance of their bearing on the general scheme to which they belong, I could literally do nothing until I had got a hold of the system; which, locked up in the ponderous tomes of the agency, for some little time eluded my grasp. At length, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... introduction: "The skill, the zeal and good fortune of this officer in these cases, is well known; they were proved in a similar affair, and I ask you to welcome him as he deserves to be welcomed." The prefet was quite willing; he knew too well the habits of the Chouans, and their cleverness in disappearing to have any personal illusions as to the final result of the adventure, but he said nothing and on the contrary showed the greatest confidence in the dexterity of a man who stood ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... was ashamed of her physical imperfections, he admired her cleverness. Often he said to Popova: "I tell you, she might make some man a sprightly and entertaining companion, even ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... Simpleton did not even answer; he only waved his hand. The three brothers continued to live their usual life, the two with cleverness and the younger with foolishness. They lived a day in and an equal day out. But one morning there came quite a different day from all others. They learned that big men were going all over the country ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various
... it is true, as he says, that not one is unhappy over the whole earth. But there is another truth, that this world is not a place for the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, and that when a creature has not armour or weapons or cleverness it must find some path of safety or go back. One of these paths of safety is disguise, and ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... Oh, don't misunderstand me. I quite appreciate Miss Bride's cleverness and seriousness. But one couldn't help thinking that a man of Mr. Lashmar's promise—. Perhaps you don't ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... of both quilting and applique was made during the Middle Ages in Spain. Spanish women have always been noted for their cleverness with the needle, and quite a few of the stitches now in use are credited to them. At the time of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, applied work had long been known. Whether it developed from imitating garments brought home by the returning Crusaders, or was adopted from the Moors, who ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... in agreement and talking of Dumas as one less than Eugene Sue and not much bigger than Gaillardet? Of course the ultimate issue of the debate is not doubtful. Dumas remains to the end a prodigy of force and industry, a miracle of cleverness and accomplishment and ease, a type of generous and abundant humanity, a great artist in many varieties of form, a prince of talkers and story-tellers, one of the kings of the stage, a benefactor of his epoch and his kind; while of those who assisted him in the production ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... her frequently with regard to literary help, once asking her to use all her cleverness in writing out fully her ideas on the subject of the Deux Rencontres, about which she had told him, for he wished to insert them in the Femme de trente Ans. As early as 1822 she received a similar request asking her to prepare for him a manuscript of the Vicaire des ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... out what made Mr. WILLIAM HEWLETT persist in Introducing William Allison (SECKER). Probably a nice general conviction (rather infectious; I caught it) of his own cleverness. If his work wants a good deal of pulling together separate bits of it are confoundedly well done. The schoolboy conversations (William is a Winchester man, thrown into a lawyer's clerkship straight from the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... think it will. After you have been at St. Benet's a little longer you will know that we not only appreciate cleverness and studious ways, but also obliging and sociable and friendly manners; and— and— pretty rooms— rooms with easy-chairs, and comfortable lounges, and the thousand and one things which give one a feeling of home. Take my advice, Miss Peel, there's no use fighting ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... the necessary capacity for acquiring knowledge. It is very usual to find among the general public—women in particular—an idea that a tremendous amount of a vague quality which they describe as "cleverness" is necessary in order to follow one of the learned professions. Certainly this is not so in medicine. It is, however, necessary to be possessed of average intelligence and a good memory, and it is difficult for people to pass the qualifying examinations ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... I could think she were in earnest," Lady Mary said again. "But he is such a boy. She has three times his cleverness in some ways, and three times his experience, though she is younger than he. I suppose women mature much earlier than men. It galls my pride when she orders him about, and laughs at him. But he—he ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... admired her superior style and aristocratic calm, they were more or less uneasy under the dominance of her intelligence and education, and were afraid to attempt either confidence or familiarity. They were also singularly jealous of her, for although the average young man was equally afraid of her cleverness and her candor, he was not above paying a tremulous and timid court to her for its effect upon her humbler sisters. This evening she was surrounded by her usual satellites, including, of course, the local notables and special guests of distinction. She had been discussing, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... my neck, and feed me with kisses, and let me take other liberties with you, and that for a year together; and that you do all this not out of love, or liking, or regard, but go through your regular task, like some young witch, without one natural feeling, to shew your cleverness, and get a few presents out of me, and go down into the kitchen to make a fine laugh of it? There is something monstrous in it, that I cannot believe ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... be told that. And I'm not going to be a tyrant. But I had no idea you were such a silly! For all your cleverness, you've positively never asked me what wages I ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... simple and easy as you tell it, but, believe me, Hanlon, I appreciate the cleverness of the thing and the real work you went through in preparation for it all," Hendricks said, heartily, and the other men added ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... of Minerva and her yellow ribbon. The great poets would have been indifferent, the little poets jealous, the funny men furious, the philosophers satirical, the historians supercilious, and, finally, the jobs without end. Say, ingenuity and cleverness are to be rewarded by State tokens and prizes—and take for granted the Order of Minerva is established—who shall have it? A great philosopher? no doubt we cordially salute him G.C.M. A great historian? G.C.M. of course. A great engineer? G.C.M. A great poet? received with ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mess boy on one of Uncle Sam's big ships, Tom's cleverness enables him to be of service in locating a disloyal member of the crew. On his homeward voyage the ship is torpedoed and Tom is taken aboard a submarine and thence to Germany. He finally escapes and resolves to reach the ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... EDITOR,—I thought you would like to hear of a trick played by a Newfoundland dog of whom its owner was very fond. One day my grandpapa, whilst out walking with another gentleman, was boasting rather of the cleverness of Victor, his dog, in finding things which he had not seen. His friend asked if he would hide something now, and not show the dog. My grandfather agreed, and while Victor was not looking placed his stick in the gutter. The two gentlemen then walked on for about a mile and a half; the dog was ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the muslin blind on the window was starched like a child's pinafore. Bell was brave, too, as well as energetic. Once Thrums had been overrun with thieves. It is now thought that there may have been only one, but he had the wicked cleverness of a gang. Such was his repute that there were weavers who spoke of locking their doors when they went from home. He was not very skilful, however, being generally caught, and when they said they knew he was a robber he gave them their things back and went away. If they had given him time there ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... using the word in Norman churches. Your photographs of Bayeux or Boscherville or Secqueville will show you at a glance whether the term "adresse" applies to them. Even Vendome would rather be praised for "droiture" than for "adresse."—Whether the word "adresse" means cleverness, dexterity, adroitness, or simple technical skill, the thing itself is something which the French have always admired more than the Normans ever did. Viollet-le-Duc himself seems to be a little uncertain whether to lay most stress ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... overjoyed to have the golden opportunity of congratulating our worthy townsman Mr. Cornelius John Michael O'Crowley on the great distinction that has befallen him. We all have heard of that Englishman who said one time, with all the cleverness of an Irishman and a native of Ballybraggan at that: "Some are born great, others acquire greatness, and more have greatness thrust upon them." Now to say that Mr. O'Crowley had greatness thrust upon him would not be a fact, and whether or not he was born great we don't ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... heard of your great skill and cleverness in criminal investigation, Mr. Colwyn," continued Phil earnestly, "and wish to avail myself of your help. That is the ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... was of horror and indignation, mingled with frank admiration for the cleverness with which Charley had reasoned the matter ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... case, however, the cost was partially recouped by the cleverness of his son; who was a noted "nigger-catcher," and kept dogs for the especial purpose. He had a natural penchant for this kind of chase; and, having little else to do, passed a good deal of his time scouring ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... Charleston? Couldn't you buy the Rhetts twice over if you wanted to buy such rubbish? Aren't you the top man in Charleston in name and position and character? Why, they'll be laughing at the jokes in the N'York papers next—They'll be appreciating their own good sense and cleverness and personal beauty next thing—They'll ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... disagreeable that he was feared by all his subjects, and with good reason, as for the most trifling offences he would have their heads cut off. This King Grumpy, as he was called, had one son, who was as different from his father as he could possibly be. No prince equalled him in cleverness and kindness of heart, but unfortunately he was most terribly ugly. He had crooked legs and squinting eyes, a large mouth all on one side, and a hunchback. Never was there a beautiful soul in such a frightful little body, but in spite of his appearance everybody ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... her visit. A healthy and active young woman, the mere prospect of an open-air life gave her pleasure. Also she liked the people. Mentally she epitomized each of the inmates of the house. Lady Manorwater was all she had pictured her—a dear, whimsical, untidy creature, with odd shreds of cleverness and a heart of gold. She liked the boy Arthur, and the spectacled people seemed harmless. Bertha she was prepared to adore, for behind the languor and wit she saw a very kindly and capable young woman fashioned after her own heart. But ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... tirade against our countryman, and then joked him on the cleverness of his disguise, and promised to pay him in his own coin. He dared us to the experiment, and we mentally promised that ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... buffoonery, the first for an unmeasured display of sentiment! And both sentiment and buffoonery could have been made very good too, in a way accessible to the meanest intelligence, at the cost of truth and honesty. Here it is where Maupassant's austerity comes in. He refrains from setting his cleverness against the eloquence of the facts. There is humour and pathos in these stories; but such is the greatness of his talent, the refinement of his artistic conscience, that all his high qualities ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... remembering. With the best intention, therefore, to serve me, you have done me an injury, Aaron. I shall be afraid to see our favourites in the spring, because I shall fall infinitely short of their ideas of cleverness. Pray, do you recollect the opinion which Judge Candour solemnly pronounced upon us both, in a court of reason held at the Indian King? Why, then, will you expose my weakness by ascribing to me imaginary excellences? If you persist in such cruel conduct, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... wondered how he would see the maiden of whose beauty and of whose cleverness he had so ...
— Stories from the Ballads - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor
... whimsical, but satirical. Tennyson is a man of talent, who happened to strike a lucky vein, which he has worked with cleverness. The adventurer with a pickaxe in Washoe may happen upon like good fortune. The world is full of poetry as the earth is of "pay-dirt;" one only needs to know how to "strike" it. An able man can make himself almost anything that he will. It is melancholy to think ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... it," he said. "But I did! His cleverness is a little too marked. He overacts his parts, and even Shakespeare will tell you how foolish a proceeding that is. If you doubt my word concerning my stay in Paris, let him continue to watch me. You know where I am living, and for that reason you can come ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... takes it as unmoved as a child. It's just as if you said to a little thing of three, "What a clever baby you are!" or, "You've got the most beautiful eyes in the world." The child would realize that you meant well, that you were being pleasant, but it wouldn't think about either its cleverness or its eyes. It's like that with Ernestine. When I said to her, "You made an astoundingly good speech to-night. The best I've heard even you make," she looked at me with a sort of half-absent-minded, half-wondering expression, without a glimmer of ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... the most popular and most enterprising daily paper of the kingdom published some articles on the German elections, which were justly rousing a great deal of attention in this country. I was very much impressed by the cleverness of those articles, but my admiration knew no bounds when the author confessed that he was writing without knowing a word of German, and that when attending political meetings he had to make out the meaning of ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... but admire his coolness and resource. He had known how to take in Michel, because Michel had arrested Juve when disguised as Vagualame at de Naarboveck's house.... Michel would naturally think his chief had again assumed the Vagualame disguise for a purpose! Oh, it was the devil's own cleverness! ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... long mornings in the pines, and cool, quiet afternoons in Miss Craydocke's pretty room. It was wonderful the cleverness the Josselyns had come to with little frocks. One a skirt, and the other a body,—they made nothing of finishing the whole at a sitting. "It's only seeing the end from the beginning," Martha said, when Leslie uttered her astonishment. "We know the way, right through; and no way seems ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... meddling law-dogs in Britain than any amount of mere innocence and purity of character. But instead of doing the natural thing, the officer took me at my word, and followed my instructions. And so, as I came trotting out of that cul de sac, full of satisfaction with my own cleverness, he turned the corner and I walked right into his handcuffs. If I had known it was a cul de sac—however, there isn't any excusing a blunder like that, let it go. Charge it up ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... forbidden Naggeneen to trouble them any more. Naggeneen asked what for at all he had come over all the sea, if he was not to trouble the Sullivans. The King was always ready enough to have Naggeneen's help, when he thought that his cleverness would be of use; but there were times when he would be obeyed, and this was one of them, so Naggeneen had to do ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... through Tray's strange cleverness The pair a country home have found, Where all things dogs and children love About ...
— My Dog Tray • Unknown
... foremost of victorious men ever devoted to the good of all, conversant as thou art with the timeliness of everything, followest thou religion, wealth, pleasure and salvation dividing thy time judiciously? O sinless one, with the six attributes of kings (viz., cleverness of speech, readiness in providing means, intelligence in dealing with the foe, memory, and acquaintance with morals and politics), dost thou attend to the seven means (viz., sowing dissensions, chastisement, conciliation, gifts, incantations, medicine and magic)? Examinest ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... was born in 1721. There were five daughters: Anne, Amelia or Emily, Caroline, Mary, and Louisa. The Princess Caroline seems to have been by far the most lovable of the whole family. She inherited much of her mother's cleverness without her mother's coarseness. "Princess Caroline," says Lord Hervey, "had affability without meanness, dignity without pride, cheerfulness without levity, and prudence without falsehood." Her figure indeed ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... jamais employe tant d'esprit a vouloir nous rendre betes; il prend enviede marcher a quatre pattes quand on lit votre ouvrage." Lessing from the first was something far better than a wit. Force was always much more characteristic of him than cleverness. Sometimes Herr Stahr's hero-worship leads him into positive misstatement. For example, speaking of Lessing's Preface to the "Contributions to the History and Reform of the Theatre," he tells us that "his eye was directed chiefly to the English theatre and Shakespeare." Lessing at that ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... more cleverness in thee, Master Stefano, than I had thought; though thy readiness with the ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... girl, with all your cleverness, you're only a baby child about some things. Don't you see what's ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... invention ever new," appear in high perfection amongst even the youngest inhabitants of an Irish cottage. The word wit, amongst the lower classes of Ireland, means not only quickness of repartee, but cleverness in action; it implies invention and address, with no slight mixture of cunning; all which is expressed in their dialect by the single word 'cuteness (acuteness). Examples will give a better notion of this than can ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... this respect, the agitation led by his lordship against the papal aggression was the chief means of carrying him safely through the session, in which the parliamentary tactics of his party and of his government were without consistency or cleverness, and the financial management of his chancellor of the exchequer as clumsy in detail, and what might be called manipulation, as destitute of invention, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... almost daily since early childhood, and, though there had never been a test, was confident that, among all the Shell People, there was none he could not overtake, despite what he had heard and knew of their wonderful cleverness in the water. Were not his arms and legs longer and stronger than theirs and his chest deeper? He felt that he could outswim easily any bold fisherman among them, and as for this girl, he would overtake her very quickly and ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... convoking an international conference to solve (this is the infantile idea of the decree) the problems of labor, and the famous Encyclical on "The Condition of Labor" of the very able Pope, Leo XIII, who has handled the subject with great tact and cleverness.[65] But these imperial rescripts and these papal encyclicals—because it is impossible to leap over or suppress the phases of the social evolution—could only result abortively in our bourgeois, individualist and laissez faire world. Certainly ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... came into his mother's eyes and sent a glow of self-satisfaction through his whole being. The look was familiar to him and meant that his mother was annoyed by the question but pleased with his cleverness in thinking ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... St. Petersburg, where he united against Austria persons so opposed to concord as Napoleon and Alexander, each for his own part determined to do nothing which might increase the power of Germany, surpassed in cleverness everything ever achieved in celebrated combinations by such diplomats as Talleyrand and Metternich, the two illustrious models of political strategy. The inclusion of Austria in the incidents of the duchies of the River Elbe and the jugglery done with the territory acquired ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... in an obscure Hong Kong paper, but so painfully outspoken that she had shown it to no one, not even to her husband; and then rose up before her the vision of him writing similar articles for London journals, and of the world, her world, knowing him to be the author. She recognised her brother's cleverness, and it never entered into her head to doubt that he could get his work into print; she knew nothing of the financial side of journalism, and, for the moment, what had formerly seemed the all-important question, Jimmy's method of ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... consider and an infirm father. Meanwhile she gave the Symford post-office as an address, assuring the Countess that it was at least fifty miles from the Princess's present hiding-place, the address of which would only be sent on the conditions named. Then, immensely proud of her cleverness, she trotted down to the post-office, bought stamps, and put the ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... is this a time for cleverness? It's settled, isn't it, that you're going to be nice and good, and that you'll brazen it out to Teddy that you have some ...
— How He Lied to Her Husband • George Bernard Shaw
... to separate Stevenson from his work, because of the imperious personal element in it; and so I shall not now strive to gain the appearance of cleverness by affecting any distinction here. The first thing I would say is, that he was when I knew him—what pretty much to the end he remained—a youth. His outlook on life was boyishly genial and free, despite all ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... Lord?' hearts was meant; if 'Wine or punch?' clubs. If I blew my nose, it was to indicate that there was another confederate employed by the adversary; and THEN, I warrant you, some pretty trials of skill would take place. My Lord Deuceace, although so young, had a very great skill and cleverness with the cards in every way; and it was only from hearing Frank Punter, who came with him, yawn three times when the Chevalier had the ace of trumps, that I knew we were Greek ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... must have been doing mendacious gymnastics simply to keep themselves in practice; but they will hardly ever steal. If they do, it will be sometime when you are looking squarely at them, carrying a thing off from under your very nose with a cleverness which they seem to think, and you can hardly help feel yourself, makes them deserve praise instead of blame. I have repeatedly left much valuable property with them, as I did in this case with Mateo, and have come back to find every article ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... about her that any attention on her part gave a thrill of pride and pleasure. Every guest and stranger admired her and tried to win her favor: while we of the household hid our wounds and delighted in her cleverness ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... freshness, and the simple frankness of her nature, with its deep emotions, gave him infinitely more surprise and thrill than any woman he had met before. "Wisdom wanting absolute honesty," he told himself, "is only craft: I discover that a monstrous deal of cleverness I have seen in her sex is only another kind of cosmetic daubed ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... architecturally superposed, of course not, the word presents in Lounger's language an indescribable idiom.—Here the Lounger, a spare man with an agreeable smile, a sayer of pretty nothings with more acquired cleverness than native wit, stoops to your ear and adds, with a shrewd glance: "I have never seen Monsieur Firmiani. His social position is that of looking after property in Italy. Madame Firmiani is a Frenchwoman, and spends her money like a Parisian. She has excellent tea. It is ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac
... am going to pay you a compliment. We have suffered heavily through your cleverness; and although Lord Wellington may choose to call you a scouting officer, you must be aware (and will forgive me for reminding you) that I might well be excused for calling you by an ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... position. The essential difference between the two men and the operations of their minds was made clear in the campaign. No one would wish to minimize the unusual abilities of Mr. Hughes, but they are the abilities of an adroit lawyer. He makes "points." He pleases those minds which like cleverness and finesse. He deals with international affairs like an astute lawyer drawing a brief. But has he ever quickened the nation's pulse or stirred its heart by a single utterance? Did he ever make any one feel that behind the formalities of law, civil or international, he ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... had more cleverness in him than people gave him credit for, smiled outright at this eminently feminine way of covering an ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... if instead of Simon in person, a huge thing called a Church is presented as a claimant of authority to Nathaniel. Suppose him to be a poor Spaniard, surrounded by false miracles, false erudition, and all the apparatus of reigning and unopposed Romanism. He cannot cope with the priests in cleverness,—detect their juggleries,—refute their historical falsehoods, disentangle their web of sophistry: but if he is truehearted, he may say: "You bid me not to keep faith with heretics: you defend murder, exile, imprisonment, fines, on men ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... thing," cried Bunny, delighted with his cleverness, and smiling through her tears, "if you hadn't bit me I'd have said you were the best and dearest little pony alive;" and forgetting her anger at him for hurting her, she jumped up and patted and kissed his soft ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... thought unperceived, to break the string of his rosary, and as he returned he dropped one bead, then another, hoping thus to trace his way by means of them back to the mine. At last he reached home, congratulating himself on his cleverness. Of what use, he thought, is all that silver to the Indians? They are not the better for it, but I shall know how to spend it. He was eager to set out the next morning, when just as he was leaving his house, the Indian stepped ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... extravagances of human passion—all these he dexterously uses for the purpose of involving his hero in perilous scrapes from which he no less dexterously extricates him by expedients which, however far-fetched they may appear to the unimaginative, are certainly not lacking in originality of device, or cleverness of construction.... This is a specimen incident—those which succeed it derive their special interest from the action of Rontgen rays, subterranean torrents, and devastating inundations. The book is very readable throughout, and ends happily. What more can the ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... not only beautiful, but well made. "Here is an easy matter!" I said, smiling. "Will mademoiselle see how they mend shoes in my country?" A hammer was soon found, and sitting down on a low bench, I tapped away, and soon had the pretty thing in order again. Mademoiselle Valerie cried out upon my cleverness. "But, you can then do anything you choose, monsieur?" she said. "To play the violin, to save a life, to mend a shoe,—do they teach all these things in your country? and to what wonderful school ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... lightly, and with the air of one who appreciates an intended jest so subtile that only cleverness would have comprehended it, "that is one of the advantages I have always found in being one. I think I needn't keep you tied down to that chair any longer to-day. Come here and see how you think ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... boy; I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that 'the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... Your cleverness is in vain, Messieurs Protectionists, it is useless to lower your tone, to boast of your latent generosity, or to deceive your opponents by sentiment. You cannot ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... letter was read to Mr. Morris, he said, "Malta is on her way home. Cats have a wonderful cleverness in finding their way to their own dwelling. She will be very tired. Let us go out and ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... to bring himself in any way under the arm of the law. All he meant to do was to dig his trench and to lay his mine, to place the fuse in Vera Nevill's hands—leave her to set fire to it—and then retire himself, covered with satisfaction at his cleverness, to his own ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... but that irreverence and grossness were tabooed as boorish. Mere obscenity is especially condemned, though it must be admitted that many jests approved of at that time would now appear intolerable. But the essential point to be aimed at then, as now, was the promotion of mirth by cleverness, and not by mere tricks and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... slightly. "Oh, it was hateful in a way, but I didn't care. I knew George was hiding something that might help to get you out of prison, and what did my feelings matter compared with that! Besides—" she smiled mockingly—"for all his cleverness and his wickedness George is a fool—just the usual vain fool that most men are about women. It's been easy enough to ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... and he wished every one of his warriors to remain while he was absent. It cannot be said that he was afraid of such an insignificant force, but there was a strong vein of superstition in his nature, which caused a vague fear of the men that had escaped him with such wonderful cleverness. Individuals who could do that sort of thing, were capable of doing things still more marvellous, and to use homely language, King ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... to my mother. But in this beautiful house, which seemed so fitting a place for my lovely princess, and which was of late the object of her dreams, I felt moved to be her ambassador and to plead her cause as well as I might. I spoke not only of her beauty and her cleverness, but of the drawbacks to her success in life. I anticipated criticism, and disarmed it. "Oh, Helen!" I burst out at length, "you would love her so dearly—I am sure ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... all Dalmain's portraits:—the more you look at them, the more you see in them. They are such extraordinary character studies. With your increased knowledge of the person, grows your appreciation of the cleverness of the portrait." ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... fair-haired, blue-eyed, country-looking maiden at his side, as well as the hale old rustic by whom they were attended. All three were delighted with their position, and Dick Taverner took full credit to himself for his cleverness in procuring it for them. As to pretty Gillian, nothing could please her better, for she could not only see all that was going forward, but everybody could see her—even Prince Charles himself; and she flattered herself that she attraeted no little ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... one has called dull. There were many facets in Hester's character, and Lady Susan had managed to place her where they caught the light. Was she witty? Was she attractive? Who shall say? Man is wisely averse to "cleverness" in a woman, but if he possesses any armor wherewith to steel himself against wit it is certain that he seldom puts it on. She refused several offers, one so brilliant that no woman ever believed that it was ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... too; but surely nobody can expect that the soul of the watchman should understand it. Be that as it may, it did comprehend it; for in our souls there germinate far greater powers than we poor mortals, despite all our cleverness, have any notion of. Does she not show us—she the queen in the land of enchantment—her astounding dramatic talent in all our dreams? There every acquaintance appears and speaks upon the stage, so entirely in character, ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Dowie was Elias the Second, or Elias the Third (if John the Baptist were considered to be the Second), but Dowie himself went further still. He was too modern to base his influence on religion alone, and he actually had the cleverness to become not only a banker, manufacturer, hotel-keeper, newspaper proprietor, editor and multi-millionaire, but also the principal of a college and the "boss" of a political party which acknowledged him as spiritual and temporal ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... left ankle, and a dim consciousness of my situation began to glimmer through my mind. But, strange to say! I was neither astonished nor horror-stricken. If I felt any emotion at all, it was a kind of chuckling satisfaction at the cleverness I was about to display in extricating myself from this dilemma; and I never, for a moment, looked upon my ultimate safety as a question susceptible of doubt. For a few minutes I remained wrapped in the profoundest meditation. I have a distinct recollection ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... his face, and become pulpy and pretentious. Even his power of persuasion, which was certainly very surprising, stood in some danger of being lost or neutralised by over-confidence. He lied in an aggressive, brazen manner, like a pert criminal in the dock; and he was so vain of his own cleverness that he could not refrain from boasting, ten minutes after, of the very trick by which he had deceived you. 'Why, now I have more money than when I came on board,' he said one night, exhibiting a sixpence, 'and yet I stood myself a bottle of beer before I went to bed yesterday. And as ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... maze of dancers, who were spinning easily round to the lively melody of one of Strauss's most fascinating waltzes. Presently I also found myself circling the room with an amiable young German, who ambled round with a certain amount of cleverness, considering that he was evidently ignorant of the actual waltz step; and I caught a glimpse now and then of Amy's rubies as they flashed past me in the dance—she was footing it merrily with a handsome Austrian Hussar. The room was pleasantly ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... Persians had fancied his message before the battle of Salamis was really meant to serve them, and that he was suffering for his attachment to them, so the new king, Artaxerxes, the "Long-armed," who had a great esteem for his cleverness, was greatly delighted, offered up a sacrifice in his joy, and three times cried out in his sleep, "I have got ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... much better that it seems as if they must have been doing mendacious gymnastics simply to keep themselves in practice; but they will hardly ever steal. If they do, it will be sometime when you are looking squarely at them, carrying a thing off from under your very nose with a cleverness which they seem to think, and you can hardly help feel yourself, makes them deserve praise instead of blame. I have repeatedly left much valuable property with them, as I did in this case with Mateo, and have come back to find every article just ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... Carmen better. Carmen had charm and knew how to use it to her advantage, while he could not imagine Alice's employing her beauty to gain an object. She was proud, with an essentially clean pride, and sincere, while Carmen had a talent for intrigue. The latter enjoyed using her cleverness to put down a rival or secure a prominent place; she was a hustler, as they said in the West. Alice, he thought, would not even claim what was hers; it must be willingly offered or she would let it go. Yet he ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... who made it practically their life's work, to overcome the difficulties, and must admire the cleverness with which they left certain items for the ...
— Bremen Cotton Exchange - 1872/1922 • Andreas Wilhelm Cramer
... is a native of Oajaca, one of the Pacific States, and the same that contained the vast estates bestowed upon Cortes, to whom the Valley of Oajaca furnished his title of Marquis. A poor Indian boy, and a fruit-seller, Juarez found a patron, who saw his cleverness, and gave him an education, and so enabled him to play no common part in his country,—the independence of which he seems prepared to destroy, in the hope, perhaps, of securing for it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... John Milton wrote." Not long ago Mr. Crosland became involved in a trial in the courts in connection with Oscar Wilde, Lord Alfred Douglas and Robert Ross. He defended himself with much spirit and considerable cleverness. Among other things he said, as reported in the press: "What is this game? This gang are trying to do me down. Here I am a poor man up against two hundred quid (or ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... of their colour and quality—so silent is he upon everything that could throw light upon the motives of their wearer. In fact, granting the writer every desire to be impartial, he is too foolish to be so. It requires some cleverness to judge accurately of a very clever man in very difficult circumstances; and the worthy biographer is utterly incapable of giving us any clue to the actions of Rienzi—utterly unable to explain the conduct of the man by the circumstances of the time. The weakness of his vision causes ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a full-blown speech, intended to prove Pompilia's innocence, though really in every word a confession of her utter depravity. His sole purpose is to show off his cleverness, and he brings forward objections on purpose to prove how well he can turn them off; assumes guilt for the purpose of arguing ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... the position in which they are develops a kind of cunning rather than acuteness or cleverness?-Yes; it fosters a sort of low cunning. The system having been continued, one might almost say, for centuries has fostered that element ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... not indeed that this would make him like any better her having had the innocence to invite such a person as Mrs. Saltram on such an occasion. It could only strike me that I had never seen a young woman put such ignorance into her cleverness, such freedom into her modesty; this, I think, was when, after dinner, she said to me frankly, with almost jubilant mirth: "Oh you don't admire Mrs. Saltram?" Why should I? This was truly a young person without guile. ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... idiom upon a great many American heiresses—addressed her a great deal of very polite nonsense; he was extremely urbane, and the young American, who said nothing, reflected upon that profundity of Italian cleverness which enables people to appear more gracious in proportion as they are more acutely disappointed. Giovanelli, of course, had counted upon something more intimate; he had not bargained for a party of three. But ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... is discernible, even unto this day, in their characters; witches occasionally start up among them in different disguises, as physicians, civilians and divines. The people at large show a keenness, a cleverness and a profundity of wisdom, that savors strongly of witchcraft; and it has been remarked, that whenever any stones fall from the moon, the greater part of them is sure ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... reverses when all the other members of the Court were intent only upon winning the good graces of the monarch and his favourite. The time was now come, as he at once saw, to profit by so signal a proof of policy and forethought; and Richelieu was prepared to use it with the craft and cleverness which were destined to shape out his future fortunes. To his active and ambitious spirit a residence in the capital in the character of a deposed minister was impossible; while he equally deprecated the ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... their shortcomings; and she heard them whisper: "Isn't she pretty? What black eyes! What lovely curls!" But she was not proud, and by her ladylike manners soon made them feel at home with her, even though they stood agape at her cleverness: none of THEM could claim to have absorbed the knowledge of a whole house. With one of her admirers she had soon formed a friendship that was the wonder of all who saw it: in deep respect the others drew back, forming a kind of allee, down which, ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... great prudence on this occasion, and that her language was so dignified and proper that some may think it apocryphal, if there were not the very best authority for all that is related here, and if we did not know, besides, the wonders the natural cleverness of a woman may work when she is spurred on by interest or by some ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... (Porte St. Martin, 1847); 'La Vieillesse de Richelieu' (Theatre Francais, 1848); 'York' (Palais Royal, 1852). Some of them are written in collaboration with Paul Bocage. They are dramas of the Dumas type, conventional, not without cleverness, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... curiosity as one of my own townswomen who has weathered cape forty without a husband, and her tongue goes like a dog-vane in a calm, first one way and then another. But here is her dictionary. Now own, Griff, in spite of your college learning and sentimentals, that a woman of ingenuity and cleverness is a very good sort ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... "Perhaps I am wrong. The young chief may be an enemy of Cetchwayo, and he it is who has sent the army to destroy him. He knows the bravery and cleverness of Mangaleesu, who, had he gained an inkling of what is intended, would have made his escape into Natal. There may be some other cause for the intended attack, but I am not far wrong, master, you ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... men are very dull," replied the other voice. "Now I should have suspected at once that the man was not a German. But he shall answer for his cleverness. Let him be removed at once. We have word from the vessel outside that they are short of oxygen, and you must be locked out and ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... had been going along conversing in this fashion, the curate observed to Dorothea that she had shown great cleverness, as well in the story itself as in its conciseness, and the resemblance it bore to those of the books of chivalry. She said that she had many times amused herself reading them; but that she did not know the situation of the provinces or seaports, and so she had said at haphazard ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... literary lesser lights from London, and they enjoyed all this, envying the richer and more ostentatious families of the city as little as they despised the poor of Hester Street. The one quality which they insisted upon in their guests was intellectual cleverness. Perhaps they were a ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... inhabitants of the manor house were informed that a friend of Sir Walter's had come to visit Chadlands, and they saw nothing to make them doubt it. For Peter was a great actor. He had mixed with all classes, and the detective had the imitative cleverness to adapt himself in speech and attire to every society. He even claimed that he could think with the brains of anybody and adapt his inner mind, as well as his outer shape, to the changing environment of his activities. He appreciated the histrionics that operate out of sight, ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... the naughtiness of the antique nineties than anything belonging to these more vigorous days. I am far from suggesting that, as a study in super-sensibility, the book lacks skill. There are indeed scenes of almost painful cleverness. My complaint is that it is out of date, or (I should perhaps better say) conspicuously out of harmony with the present time. But if you hanker for these pictures of the past that is another matter. I will ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... that trick. I can tell Sweetheart more than she could have found out herself if she had come. Now for something that's a little more fun." He chuckled at his cleverness as he stepped on a car to go the faster to his ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... ankle, and a dim consciousness of my situation began to glimmer through my mind. But, strange to say! I was neither astonished nor horror-stricken. If I felt any emotion at all, it was a kind of chuckling satisfaction at the cleverness I was about to display in extricating myself from this dilemma; and I never, for a moment, looked upon my ultimate safety as a question susceptible of doubt. For a few minutes I remained wrapped in the profoundest meditation. I have a distinct recollection of frequently ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Mrs. Brownlow's house; and now, as they wandered about the lawn and shrubberies of Popham Villa, she took care not to be with him out of earshot of the others. In all of which there was ten times more of womanly cleverness,—or cunning, shall we say,—than had yet come to the possession ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... affairs were political matters treated; but in order to avoid a prosecution, these questions had to be cautiously approached in parable fashion. Never was greater cleverness shown in this respect than at Shakspere's time. Every poet, every statesman, or otherwise highly-placed person, was 'heckled' under an allegorical name—a circumstance which at present makes it rather difficult for us to fully fathom the meaning ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can't go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... could this be known? Without doubt it has the advantage of making one rely on the essential interest of a situation and not cocker up and validify feeble intrigue with incidental fine writing and scenery, and pyrotechnic exhibitions of inappropriate cleverness and sensibility. I remember Bob once saying to me that the quadrangle of Edinburgh University was a good thing and our having a talk as to how it could be employed in different arts. I then stated that the different doors and staircases ought to be brought before a reader of a story ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his finger at you in any such manner and say, "I need you." And besides, there is the moral side of it. Imitation is the sincerest flattery, but the dividing line between it and dishonesty is not always clear. And the law cannot every time prosecute the offender, for there is a kind of cleverness that enables a man to pilfer the ideas of another and recast them just sufficiently to "get by." It would be very stupid for a man not to profit by the experience of other men, but there is a vast difference between intelligent ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... resounded with the plaint. Thereupon the brigand, fiery with fury, rose straight in his shovel-stirrups and struck fiercely at Khudadad with his huge sword and, but for the Prince's cunning of fence and the cleverness of his courser, he would have been sliced in twain like unto a cucumber. Though the scymitar whistled through the air, the blow was harmless, and in an eye-twinkling Khudadad dealt him a second cut and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... with as little noise as possible. But it seemed a question which was most deceived, the general or the city fathers. The latter found the former a shallow pated man, who from mere joking, had been made to believe himself a great politician, and by a singular cleverness in committing to memory the altered speeches of others, had created for himself a respectability that always vanished on an acquaintance with him; while the former declared that the population of a city was no proof of the amount of moral rectitude by which its government was conducted, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... that Woodford would meet the loss, if it stripped the coat off of his shoulders,—meet it with a smile and some swaggering comment. And I knew as well that, if by any hook or crook he could prevent the contract from being carried out, he would do it with the devil's cleverness. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... he published the first of his works on Bismarck—a book entitled Bismarck und seine Leute, waehrend des Krieges mit Frankreich, in which, under the form of extracts from his diary, he gave an account of the chancellor's life during the war. The vividness of the descriptions and the cleverness with which the conversations were reported ensured a success, and the work was translated into several languages. This was followed in 1885 by another book, Unser Reichskanzler, chiefly dealing with the work in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... you suppose that the dog would have got those birds by himself?" he asked. "You give him credit for more cleverness than he possesses." ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... has a very agreeable song, which is soft and musical, and he often shows cleverness as a mocker of other birds. He has been taught to whistle parts of tunes, and is as readily tamed as any of ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... is that "the purposes of heaven are not to be served by a lie; and that the simplicity of the young son of truth-loving Achilles is better in the sight of heaven, even when it seems to lead to failure, than all the cleverness ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... believe that the sun didn't set. That fellow's a fox for cleverness and a bulldog for persistence. Yet I don't see that we need feel bad, even if he does know where your camp is. We've learned more than he has. We know he's back in these parts and that he is making a secret visit to this timber; for you may be very sure he intended it to be ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... his mother's eyes and sent a glow of self-satisfaction through his whole being. The look was familiar to him and meant that his mother was annoyed by the question but pleased with his cleverness in thinking ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... held captive in his home by the softest chains. He lived, almost in spite of himself, under the influence of his wife, who made herself gay and amusing to cheer him, who used the resources of feminine genius to attract and seduce him to a love of virtue, but whose ability and cleverness did not go so far as ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... little flat cap by a means at once simple and ingenious. All the time he was working the women's eyes literally absorbed him; only those of Grace flashed vivid curiosity, Jael's open orbs were fixed with admiration and awe upon his supernatural cleverness. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... answered. "I've named you one ace already. Ace number two is the fact that these German officials are brutes pure and simple—brutes who don't understand how to be anything else, with brutal low cunning and no other cleverness." ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... another word, outside, Locke leaped into the waiting car and the four were off, leaving the false turnkey chuckling over his cleverness and ready to ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... political ability. Few generations had passed without a Dartmouth distinguishing himself, and those members of the family less gifted were not in the habit of having their fine intellectual qualities called to account. The consequence was that their young descendant, who inherited all the family cleverness, although as yet he had betrayed the possession of none of its higher gifts, paid the penalty of his mental patrimony. His brain was abnormally active, both through conditions of heredity and personal incitement; and the cerebral excitation necessarily produced ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... At college Lemercier was never considered Alain's equal in ability or book-learning. What a stride beyond his school-fellow had Lemercier now made! How dull and stupid the young provincial felt himself to be as compared with the easy cleverness and half-sportive philosophy ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... However lacking in cleverness, in merit, or in imagination a man may be, there are in our Western world, if his existence there be so much as noticed at all, three occasions on which he appears in print. His birth, his marriage, and his death are all duly chronicled in type, perhaps as sufficiently typical of the general ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... a phase when he smuggled his food under the bedclothes, pretending with diabolical cleverness to eat it; when the milk left by his side was poured out of the window the moment he had been left alone. But Joyselle, discovering these crimes, had taken to sitting by the boy when his meals were brought, and with him Tommy was almost painfully ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... ability his intermittent disposition to make a figure in orchids. She wondered whether they mightn't have a few people at Brinton; but when she mentioned the idea he asked what in the world there would be to attract them. It was a confoundedly stupid house, he remarked— with all respect to HER cleverness. Beatrice and Muriel were mystified; the prospect of going out immensely had faded so utterly away. They were apparently not to go out at all. Colonel Chart was aimless and bored; he paced up and down and went back to smoking, which was bad for him, and looked drearily out of windows ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... a close transcript of them from memory,—the substance of them is identical, and in many instances the words also. The extraordinary power shown by Lina Dale in maintaining the character she had assumed and sustained during two years and a half was fully carried out by the skill and cleverness of her pretended correspondence; and in reading over these piles of letters, so full of originality, one could not but feel regret at the perversion of powers so remarkable,—powers which might have been developed by healthy action into means of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... imprudent in the king to forget her was—that she was awfully clever. In fact, she was a witch; and when she bewitched anybody, he very soon had enough of it; for she beat all the wicked fairies in wickedness, and all the clever ones in cleverness. She despised all the modes we read of in history, in which offended fairies and witches have taken their revenges; and therefore, after waiting and waiting in vain for an invitation, she made up her mind at last to go without one, and make the whole family miserable, like a princess ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... loved, she was bound to rejoice once more; and rejoice she did, not even allowing herself to be hindered by Mr. Harrison's too obvious failures to comprehend her best remarks. Helen argued that she was not engaged to the man because of his cleverness, and that when she had come to the infinite happiness towards which she was traveling so fast, she would have inspiration enough for two. She had enough for the present to keep them both happy throughout the drive, and when she returned she found that some of the neighbors had driven over to see ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... his lady, who loves the pleasures of the town, balls in the Strand, and masques; Device, the fantastic gallant,—these are well-known figures in Shirley's plays. No other playwright of that day could have given us such exquisite poetry as we find in Captain Underwit. The briskness, too, and cleverness of the dialogue closely recall Shirley; but it must be owned that there are few plays of Shirley's written with such ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... many charming women, perfectly natural and perfectly at her ease, and full of receptive interest. When she talked it was always to draw out her interlocutor and never to show off her own cleverness. She was quite as popular, indeed I had almost said more popular, with women as with men, and had as great a fascination for young people as for old. I remember well our pleasure in being told of a letter written by one of the big London ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... half enough to content him. I confess I felt piqued that he only looked on me as a sort of pythoness to solve enigmas about you. I had a grim satisfaction in leaving his curiosity irritated, but not satisfied. I praised your beauty, goodness, and cleverness up to the skies, however. I was not untrue to old friendship, Amelie!" Angelique kissed her friend on the cheek, who silently allowed what, in her indignation a few moments ago, she ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... with his fear, Corrigan had felt a slight disgust for himself in yielding to his sudden panic. He had never been in the habit of running. He had been as proud of his courage as he had been of his cleverness and his keenness in planning and plotting. It had been his mental boast that in every crisis his nerve was coldest. But now he nursed a vagrant, furtive hope that waiting for him at Manti would be ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... indirect steps the pious Agaric was put into communication in a room in the Moulin de la Galette, with comrades Dagobert, Tronc, and Balafille, the secretaries of three unions of which the first numbered fourteen members, the second twenty-four, and the third only one. Agaric showed extreme cleverness at this interview. ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... said, "I don't know which to admire most—your cleverness and pluck, my stupidity, or Miss Bartlett's acuteness of observation. Can we ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... companions! Many and many a time had the younger man come down to these lodgings, with all his troubles and wild impulses and pangs of contrition ready to be revealed; and then Ingram, concealing the liking he had for the lad's generous waywardness, his brilliant and facile cleverness and his dashes of honest self-depreciation, would gravely lecture him and put him right and send him off comforted. Frank Lavender had changed much since then. The handsome boy had grown into a man of the world; there was less self-revelation in his manner, and he was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... ones—amongst which we were not numbered. Poor Driffield was much disgusted; he had looked upon gold-finding as the simplest thing in the world—and so it is if you happen to look in the right place! and when you do so it's a hundred to one that you think your own cleverness and knowledge guided you to it! Chance? Oh dear, no! From that time forth your reputation is made as "a shrewd fellow who knows a thing or two"; and if your find was made in a mine, you are an "expert" at once, and can command a price for your report on other ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... rot—proverbs standing on their heads and grinning like dwarfs in a condemned street-fair! Who wants to be told that impropriety is the spice of life and that a roving eye gathers remorse? You may call that sort of thing cleverness, if you like; I call it damn' foolishness." And the emphasis with which he said this left no doubt that the Colonel spoke his ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... besides flies. So one day, after several weeks of thinking, he crawled out of his house in the sunshine, which he did not like at all, and went across the grass to the iron railings, where the spider had then got his web. The spider saw him coming, and being very proud of his cleverness, began to ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... an out and out street dog, a rascally little cur that Buffon himself would have been puzzled to classify. He was ugly, but his features were uncommonly mobile and sparkled with cleverness. He seemed to understand what was told him, and his expression would change according as the words addressed to him, in the same tone of voice, were flattering or injurious. He rolled his eyes, turned up his lips, indulged in the wildest of nervous twitchings, or else grinned and showed his ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... amazement. I had insulted him; I had sent him away alone; now, if ever, he would take what was the only sensible resource, and fetch the constable. But there was something instinctively treacherous about the man which shrank from plain courses. And, with all his cleverness, he missed the occasion of fame. Rowley and I were suffered to walk out of his door, with all our baggage, on foot, with no destination named, except in the vague statement that we were come "to view the lakes"; and my friend only ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Yankee stands for a peculiar sort of closeness in money matters and a shrewdness which has even given its slang name to a neighboring New England State, the "Nutmeg State." Perhaps we have both done too much in the past to deserve this reputation for super-cleverness. One of you has referred to the fact that there are Jews who do not like to acknowledge their race. In that respect we are alike, for there are many Yankees who are ashamed of being known as such. Long years ago, when I was a student ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... and though the girls felt a little chagrined at being taken in, they were generous enough to appreciate Dolly's cleverness and be ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... on the first appearance of "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," I found the author, who was then generally understood to be Lord Byron, not only jesting on the subject—and with sufficiently provoking pleasantry and cleverness—in his verse, but giving also, in the more responsible form of a note, an outline of the transaction in accordance with the original misreport, and, therefore, in direct contradiction to my published statement. Still, as the Satire was ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... quite up to the mark that evening, I cannot tell why. If John flatters himself it was because he behaved so brutally in disappointing me, he is very much mistaken; and as for Captain Lovell, I am sure he may ride with anybody he likes for what I care. I wonder, with all his cleverness, he can't see how that woman is only laughing at him. However, it's no business of mine. So I went into my boudoir, drank some tea, and then locked myself in ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... competitors did their turn round the ring, some propping and bucking over the jumps, others rushing and tearing at their fences; not one jumped as a hunter should. Some got themselves into difficulties by changing feet or misjudging the distance, and were loudly applauded by the crowd for "cleverness" in getting themselves out of the ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... often do things in that way, in order to be odd. It is a sign of cleverness to be odd, you know.—But I, too, am sent into these seas on a ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... heart; but she possesses some warmth, much honesty, and great hospitality. She has acquired the character of being—oh, odious thing!—a clever woman! There are two descriptions of clever women, observe; the one is endowed with corporeal cleverness—the other with mental; and I don't know which of the two is the greater nuisance to society; the one torments you with her management—the other with her smart sayings; the one is for ever rattling her bunch ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... self-contained, better instructed and stronger, a lover of moral dissertations, a counsellor of the public, a sort of lay preacher, less bent on defending the poor, more bent on censuring man; brought to the aid of satire a sustained common-sense, great knowledge of the heart, consummate cleverness, powerful reasoning, a store of meditated hatred, and persecuted vice with all the weapons of reflection... His novels are a war against the upper classes ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of her cleverness. From Ben's description of the man who had won the shooting match she had been able to lead Ferguson to the admission that he had been the central character in that incident, and now it had transpired that Leviatt was the man ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... on the Vedas he never, as far as I recollect, defended the divine origin of his own sacred writings in the abstract, but he displayed great casuistic cleverness in maintaining that every argument that had ever been adduced in support of a supernatural origin of the Bible could be used with equal force in favor of a divine authorship of the Veda. His own ideas of the Veda were chiefly derived from the Upanishads, and ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... guard and possibly have led to his escape; for he is a man of no common boldness and resource. Those facts I shall now set forth. But I have, I confess, no liking for the story of treachery and perverted cleverness which I have to tell. It leaves an evil taste in the mouth, a savor of something revolting in the deeper puzzle of motive underlying the puzzle of the crime itself, which ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... betrayed itself in their slightest word; and doubtless Amedee thought it legitimate and even worthy of praise. However, he did not believe—must we admit his lack of confidence?—that so many glorious efforts were ever crowned with success. He went so far as to ask himself whether the character and cleverness of these bourgeoisie would not lead them to ignore not only the works, but even the existence, of the authors who sought to "astonish" them; and he thought, not without sadness, that when La Guepe ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... her actual standard? Why is it that, speaking of this friend or that, we say in the tender mercies of our hearts, "No, she is not quite so bad as Becky?" We fear not only because she has more heart and conscience, but also because she has less cleverness. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... that it was a perfect likeness. He was surprised at Paul's cleverness at drawing, and for the first time in his life saw that he cut a ridiculous figure wearing that long, loose, swallow-tailed coat, with great, flaming brass buttons, and resolved upon the spot that his next coat should be a frock, and that he would ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... the news-agents and booksellers of both Great Britain and America are entirely at the disposal of any hostile power which chooses to buy them up quietly and systematically. It is merely a question of wealth and cleverness. And if the failure of the Germans to grip the Press of the French and English speaking countries has been conspicuous, she has been by no means so unsuccessful in—for example—Spain. At the present time the thought and feeling of the Spanish speaking world is being educated ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... A 1, but he was afraid you wouldn't get your First in Greats. He said you had a lot of difficulty in expressing yourself and didn't seem to get the lead of their philosophy and stuff—and—and generally wanted cleverness." ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... with moments of hideous pessimism, enthusiasts at various stages of Parnassus, the peak of which is lighted with a huge dollar sign. A friendly, kindly lot, hard-working and temperamental, with some brilliance and a rather high level of cleverness—slaves of the magazine, probably, and therefore not able to throw stones farther into the future than the end of the month. This is not a country in which literature and art can ever grow big; the cost of living is too high. The modern Chatterton detests garrets and must drive something ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... should say it is an excellent likeness, possessing, to a large degree, the peculiar quality of all Dalmain's portraits:—the more you look at them, the more you see in them. They are such extraordinary character studies. With your increased knowledge of the person, grows your appreciation of the cleverness of the portrait." ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... said the third. And the Queen nodded her head and smiled, for though she esteemed beauty and cleverness, she knew that neither was of any ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... King, with great success-the result, in no small measure, of his posing as a puritan; for the boy had all the uncompromising partisanship natural to the morbid precocity which his ill-health and Tudor cleverness combined to develop. If Edward had lived, no doubt the Tudor penetration would have unmasked Northumberland in due course; but this the Duke would hardly have anticipated in any case, and, as it was, he laid his plans on the hypothesis that Edward ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... unconscious she assumed with charming cleverness a pose of artistic contemplation. One would have said that she was really absorbed in the music, or that she was following the advice of the ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... stopping, and had beaten his wife till he'd half killed her. He listened, and read his book, and recalled the whole train of ideas suggested by his reading. It was Tyndall's Treatise on Heat. He recalled his own criticisms of Tyndall of his complacent satisfaction in the cleverness of his experiments, and for his lack of philosophic insight. And suddenly there floated into his mind the joyful thought: "In two years' time I shall have two Dutch cows; Pava herself will perhaps ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... dost not know thine own Lord, whereof art thou so proud? Put thy cleverness away: mere words shall never unite thee to Him. Do not deceive thyself with the witness of the Scriptures: Love is something other than this, and he who has sought it ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... had the palm of cleverness conceded to her ever since she could recollect, when she read better at three years old than her sister at five, and ever after, through the days of education, had enjoyed, and excelled in, the studies that were a toil to Grace. Subsequently, while Grace had contented herself with the ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... discriminations, doubtless of the invidious kind, for which that language was the most apt. The girl had taken this, she let him know, as a reflection on her own French, which she had always so dreamed of making good, of making better; to say nothing of his evident feeling that the idiom supposed a cleverness she was not a person to rise to. The Prince's answer to such remarks—genial, charming, like every answer the parties to his new arrangement had yet had from him—was that he was practising his American in ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... it impossible to resist the fascination of her conversation, and few declined to share in the banquet of gossip which she was always ready to spread. She was quick witted, and possessed of many resources and much cleverness of a certain sort; but it must be confessed that she had done mischief in her day, having been the murderer of more than one neighbor's peace of mind and the assailant of many a reputation. But if she were a dangerous inmate of one's household, few were so attractive or entertaining ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... to see this marvellous monkey, and they flocked down to the Santa Maria in such numbers, and so often, that at last the sailors got tired of them. A mob of schoolboys invading the deck every afternoon, and paying uproarious homage to the cleverness of a monkey, was more or less of a nuisance. Accordingly, by way of a gentle hint, the rope ladder, by which easy access was had to the vessel, was removed, and a single rope put in ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... thoroughly competent for the work. Everything went on prosperously; and, in the midst of all my engagements, I found time to woo and win the hand of Miss Rosa Wann, of Vermont, Belfast, to whom I was married on the 26th of January, 1860, and by her great energy, soundness of judgment, and cleverness in organization, I was soon relieved from all sources of care and anxiety, excepting those connected ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... intercourse with him I saw the god, or lord—the native word bears either meaning—Oro genuinely astonished. He started and stepped back, and for a moment or two seemed a little frightened. Then muttering something as to the cleverness of this light-producing instrument, he motioned to his daughter to take it from Bickley and hold it in a certain position. She obeyed, and in its illumination he began to study the engraved plates, holding one of them in ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... the book, and displayed a head, sketched, it is true, with admirable spirit and cleverness, but—the head of an ass, with a thistle ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... figure delighted his artistic eye, while the white topee hat, with the long blue veil, failed to hide the attractive carriage of her head. He felt impatient to see her unhatted and unveiled. Certainly she was not dowdy, nor had she any aggressive cleverness about her. Indeed, there was something which suggested a man's directness of mind and a simplicity which was quite unusual and fascinating. He could almost have laughed aloud when he thought of the picture which he had conjured ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... good editorial work," she said mendaciously, "but, after all, you are only playing at journalism. The real journalist—as I know him—is a Bohemian; a font of cleverness running to waste; a reckless, tender-hearted, jolly, careless ne'er-do-well who works like a Trojan and plays like a child. He is very sophisticated at his desk and very artless when he dives into the underworld ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... faculty connected with it. In many cases, as between the best individual minds of both sexes, the difference is no doubt very slight. There have been women of a very high order of genius; there have been very many women of great talent; and, as regards what is commonly called cleverness, a general quickness and clearness of mind within limited bounds, the number of clever women may possibly have been even larger than that of clever men. But, taking the one infallible rule for our guide, judging of the tree by its fruits, we are met by the fact that the greatest ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... you you are silly, Alyosha. You know nothing about it, with all your cleverness. I am not offended that he is jealous of a girl like me. I would be offended if he were not jealous. I am like that. I am not offended at jealousy. I have a fierce heart, too. I can be jealous myself. Only what ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... however, was on her guard, for she feared they would rush her, and try to take away her weapon, the unexpected display of which, as much as her cleverness in shooting away the hat of Paz, had held the Indians at bay for the ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... humanity had made in its movement heavenwards. That is the way with us; never to be concerned with the newest clever trick of our enterprising fellow-men till a sudden turn of affairs shows us, by the immediate threat to our own existence, that that cleverness has added to the peril of civilized society, whose house has been built on the verge of the pit. War now would be not only between soldiers. In future wars the place of honour would be occupied by the infants, in their cradles. For war is not murder. Starving children ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... than scientific. Yet the Pomfrets, as a result of family pride and over-specialization, had become a sufficiently queer lot to warrant a normal girl in any violence of house-breaking to be free of them. Therein of course lies the cleverness of the book; it is full of atmosphere, and the atmosphere is full of dust, Pomfret dust. You can feel how heavy to rebellious lungs must have been the air of the Pomfret houses, where lived Philip, the intriguing father, and his sons Anthony ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... but our author is far more ambitious—more venturesome in aim—which is nothing less than to lift the veil of ISIS, and solve the phenomena of universal nature. With what success remains to be considered. That great skill and cleverness, that a very superior mastery is evinced, we have conceded, and, we will also add, great show of fairness in treatment ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... dog, Viper, partly fox-terrier; though not very "well bred," his manners were unexceptionable and his cleverness extraordinary. One summer afternoon Mrs. Bell was greatly surprised by Viper coming to her house much distressed and trying to tell her the reason; he was not to be put off or comforted, and, seizing her skirts, ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... Raphael is nearly as much overrated as Shakespeare; that it is all nonsense for people to pretend to admire headless trunks and dingy canvases. To them I have nothing to say: they find consolation in their own cleverness. But a great many are left with a mingled sense of disappointment and yearning: they cannot get rid of the thought that they have missed a great pleasure—that a precious secret has remained hidden from them, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... safety to Caesar, riding at anchor at a distance from shore, was forced to wait the sentence of this tribunal. It seems they were so far different in their opinions that some were for sending the man away, and others again for inviting and receiving him; but Theodotus, to show his cleverness and the cogency of his rhetoric, undertook to demonstrate, that neither the one nor the other was safe in that juncture of affairs. For if they entertained him, they would be sure to make Caesar their enemy, and Pompey their master; or ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... is to inculcate joyousness in thought and feeling, in opposition to the sickly, sentimental seriousness which is so much affected in literature and in society. That a volume based on this one idea should be filled with reading that is never tiresome, is a proof of great cleverness. But Mr. Leland's varied learning, and his extensive acquaintance with foreign as well as English literature, combine with his native talent to qualify him for such a work. He has done nothing so well, not even his admirable translation of Heine's Reisebilder. He is thoroughly ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... accustomed to disregard all pretense of diplomatic technique; their discussions had been straightforward man-to-man talks; there had been nothing suggestive of pose or finesse, and no attempts at cleverness—merely an effort to get to the bottom of things and to discover a common meeting ground. The Ambassador, moreover, represented a nation for which the Foreign Secretary had always entertained the highest respect and even affection, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... talent whenever you find it in others! " cried the young prince with a pun, which would have delighted Padmavati. "Surely you are jealous of her!" he resumed, anything but pleased with the dead silence that had received his joke; "jealous of her cleverness, and of her love for me. She is the very best creature in the world. Even you, woman-hater as you are, would own it if you only knew all the kind messages she sent, and the little pleasant surprise that she has prepared for you. There! take and eat; they are made by her own dear hands!" ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... has called dull. There were many facets in Hester's character, and Lady Susan had managed to place her where they caught the light. Was she witty? Was she attractive? Who shall say? Man is wisely averse to "cleverness" in a woman, but if he possesses any armor wherewith to steel himself against wit it is certain that he seldom puts it on. She refused several offers, one so brilliant that no woman ever believed that it was ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... the fixed idea of these men, who seemed to enjoy so much the cleverness of their suspicions. It was the most dangerous of tempers to deal with. It made them as untrustworthy as so many lunatics. They were capable of anything, of decoying us alongside, and stoving the bottom out of the boat, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... observed the tobacco traveller, inclined to be genial even under difficulties. "She'll be full tomorrow night. Queer thing that them there prohibitionists can't keep the moon from getting full!" He laughed in hearty appreciation of his own cleverness. ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... cut the skin into small strips, and with them encircled the whole hill upon which he had saved his prince's life. The Duke was highly pleased with this proof of Bruno's cleverness as well as courage, made him into a knight, and put him in a position of honour at his court. Bruno became dearer to his master every day, and rendered him many and great services. In later times he built a castle on the hill, which, in memory of the Duke's deliverance, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... I want to say a word against Clifford," he added quickly. "He's a very clever man of business, and I admire him for it. But a woman wants more than cleverness." ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... my brother should not have been pleased with this nation. For one who, like him, knows how to estimate men, must have seen that, in spite of the exceeding levity which is inveterate in the people, there is a manliness and cleverness in them, and, speaking generally, an excellent heart, and a desire to do right. The only thing is to manage them properly.... I have this moment received your dear letter by the post. What goodness yours is, at a moment when you have so much ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... day afterwards we kept upon high grounds, to avoid meeting any of the Beni Sukh'r—thus greatly increasing the length of the day's march, and having to scramble over rocky hills without visible paths. All this had been brought upon us by over-cleverness in bargaining with Shaikh Yusuf, our guide. We had stipulated that, in case of meeting with Bedaween Arabs, whatever should be demanded as ghufur, or toll for crossing their ground, should be deducted from his 500 piastres. He had informed us that the toll would be but a trifle; but ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... meant catsup at once to others. An infant in a high chair yelling for dear life, was of course ice cream, but the medical student was the only one to guess the meaning of a calf reposing on the grass. He explained his cleverness by saying that his mother often made veal loaf, and he was very ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... many an occasion; but if this was remarkable—a rabbit being reckoned one of the quickest of all animals for a hundred yards—his curious behaviour exhibited itself in quite another way. He was a dog of great character and cleverness, as well as perfect manners. It was the custom in the family at that date to have prayers on Sunday evenings. This Graf never failed to resent. There had been service in the church during the day, and Sundays were dull days for dogs: why have prayers ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... cried Alyosha, completely carried away. "They have no such great cleverness and no mysteries and secrets.... Perhaps nothing but Atheism, that's all their secret. Your Inquisitor does not believe in God, that's ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... derived from mere novelty in the reader, and the desire of exciting wonderment at his powers in the author. Oftentimes since then, in pursuing French tragedies, I have fancied two marks of admiration at the end of each line, as hieroglyphics of the author's own admiration at his own cleverness. Our genuine admiration of a great poet is a continuous undercurrent of feeling! it is everywhere present, but seldom anywhere as a separate excitement. I was wont boldly to affirm, that it would be scarcely more difficult to push a stone out from the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Cresswell expanded under the genial influences, and while his head still protested his heart was glad. He had to respect John Taylor's undoubted ability; and Mary Taylor was certainly lovely, in spite of that assumption of cleverness of which the ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... country, whose name I had perhaps better withhold, "Is a Paradise for women." Quite a considerable fortune, either in money or jewels, may be reaped in a few months and sometimes in a few weeks. But the woman must keep her head; cleverness is more important even than beauty. I learnt that it was considered foolish to remain with the same partner for more than two nights, the oftener a change was made the greater the chance of gain. The richest presents are given as a rule ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... golden horns and the bells, and they rejoiced; 'For,' said they, 'THIS time the old woman will be on the watch, and let him be as clever as he likes, the bells on the horns are sure to warn her.' So when, as before, the king came down to the stables and praised the cleverness of their brother, the young men told him of that other marvel possessed by the witch, the goat ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... serious reason for alarm in the fact that Clarisse Mergy thought that she was shadowing and watching Daubrecq at a time when, on the contrary, Daubrecq was watching her, having her shadowed and dragging her, with diabolical cleverness, toward the places selected by himself, far from all help or ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... amazement doubled. Sinking into a chair he looked from his mother to Herr Kreutzer, from Herr Kreutzer to his mother, with an expression of bewilderment so genuine that, for the first time, his mother was a bit in doubt about her cleverness, for the first time Herr Kreutzer wondered if there might not, somewhere, be a ray of hope for him and ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... interrupted by some wonder 'How will he bring it off'? And when he has searched and contrived to 'ask us,' are we responsive to the ecstacy? Has he not—if I may employ an Oriental trope for once—let in the chill breath of cleverness upon the garden of beatitude? No man can be clever and ecstatic at ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... a natural Abolitionist, with a dark complexion. He is a remarkable youth in other respects, though I should first consider the enormous fact of George's master appropriating to himself the benefit of his servant's cleverness. Even with a show of right this may be a mean trick, but it is the way of the world. A large portion of New England men are at this time claiming each other's patents. I know of an instance down East, for Southerners can sometimes "tak notes, ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... butler, bringing his left hand from behind the small of his back, produced the bottle with the corkscrew already inserted; uncorked it at a jerk; and placed the magnum and the cork before his master with the dignity of conscious cleverness. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... that part of the Marais, which was at certain hours enveloped by its smoke and its din, Risler's enthusiasm, his fabulous tales concerning his employer's wealth and goodness and cleverness, had aroused that childish curiosity; and such portions as she could see of the dwelling-houses, the carved wooden blinds, the circular front steps, with the garden-seats before them, a great white bird-house with gilt stripes glistening in the sun, the blue-lined ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... reply to an entreaty from Father Uria to tell them more of his mission and of the strange picture-book country they had never hoped to hear of at first hand, assumed a tone of great frankness and intimacy. "We were, with astounding cleverness, treated from the first like an audience in a new theatre. After we had solemnly been towed by a string of boats to anchor, under the Papen mountains, all Nagasaki appeared to turn out, men, women and children. Thousands of little ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... in the midst of sheep. Yet he is of friendly disposition, and it must be insisted that he is by no means so destitute of intelligence as he is often represented to be. On the contrary, he is capable of being trained into remarkable cleverness, as circus ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... feel a great interest in you; you are very handsome, and very clever; indeed, with your beauty and cleverness, I only wonder that you have not long ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... was terrified as he saw me; one word revealed to him all. Post horses were immediately fetched. I took only one of my people with me, an arrant knave, called Rascal, who had contrived to make himself necessary to me by his cleverness and who could suspect nothing of today's occurrence. That night I left upward of thirty miles behind me. Bendel remained behind me to discharge my establishment, to pay money, and to bring me what I most required. When he overtook me next day, I threw myself into his arms, and swore to him never ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... lively, fashionable people,—very much at home with books. Thanks to my uncle's care, I was well educated, even scholarly, for my age and sex. My studious habits, far from being discouraged, were praised by all the household, and I was looked upon as a prodigy of cleverness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... add that no shallow or petty person can paint. Mere cleverness or special gift never made an artist. It is only perfectness of mind, unity, depth, decision, the highest qualities, in fine, of the intellect, which will ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... as the aborigenes of Australia throw their boomerang with inimitable dexterity and security, the Sakai manages his blowpipe with a cleverness it is impossible to imitate or learn. The Malays, who have studied to make themselves masters of this weapon, are but poor shooters ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... not emphasized in the flattering portrait by Gerard—and her hair was unbecomingly dressed. There are reasons for thinking that Germaine bitterly hated her mother, and was intensely jealous of her charm of person. It may be also that Mme. Necker envied the daughter's cleverness, even though that cleverness was little more, in the end, than the borrowing of brilliant things from other persons. At any rate, the two never cared for each other, and Germaine gave to her father the affection which her mother ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... Challoner with dry amusement. "I can see their cleverness, but I'll admit that I think them rather a ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... There it is! You can do something with it, but not much. And what you do not do with it, it must do with you, if there is to be the contact which is essential to the artistic function. This contact may be closened and completed by the artist's cleverness—the mere cleverness of adaptability which most first-class artists have exhibited. You can wear the fashions of the day. You can tickle the ingenuous beast's ear in order to distract his attention while you stab him in the chest. You can cajole ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... uses for the purpose of involving his hero in perilous scrapes from which he no less dexterously extricates him by expedients which, however far-fetched they may appear to the unimaginative, are certainly not lacking in originality of device, or cleverness of construction.... This is a specimen incident—those which succeed it derive their special interest from the action of Rontgen rays, subterranean torrents, and devastating inundations. The book is very readable throughout, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... Amenemaupit had in turn all pronounced him innocent. Pharaoh himself, after citing him to appear in Egypt to give an explanation of his conduct, had allowed himself to be won over by his fair speaking, and had dismissed him uncondemned. Other princes, who lacked his cleverness and power, tried to imitate him, and from north to south the whole of Syria could only be compared to some great arena, in which fighting was continually carried on between one tribe or town and another—Tyre against Sidon, Sidon against Byblos, Jerusalem against Lachish. All ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... showed itself in his ineradicable love of jewellery and in a transparent habit of fibbing; the something possessed showed itself in his easy grace of movement, his delightful readiness to amuse and to be amused, and in a certain cleverness and rapidity of idea rarely, if ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... said quietly, and eyeing me with a sinister smile, 'and with cause you think, no doubt. Wat 'av you done to injure poor Madame? Well, I think I know, little girl, and have quite discover the cleverness of my sweet little Maud. Eh—is not so? Petite ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... that Tenniel and he were a well-matched pair, in kindliness, cleverness, and good looks; and I never can think of one without the ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... noble men in that hell. But little by little conviction of a deeper, less understandable, horror creeps upon the reader, only to be explained and confirmed on the last page. To be honest, The Romantic is an ugly, a detestably ugly book, but of its cleverness there ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... profound quiet, as if she could not move. She was held in a trance like those dreadful night-dreams when one is locked in deadly inertia, helpless. The net which had been weaving in Courtrey's fertile brain was finished, flung, and closing in upon her before she knew of its existence. An awe of his cleverness, his trickery, gripped her in a clutch of ice. The whole fabric of her own desires and plans and purposes seemed to crumple like the white ash in a dead fire, leaving her nothing. She had been out-witted instead of outfought. ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... this disease is of wonderful cleverness, for from it Hercules, Scotus, Socrates, Callimachus, and Mahomet ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
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