"Tactician" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a soldier. He was not only the consummate knight, the mirror of chivalry, but a capable tactician with a general's eye that took in the essential points of the situation at a glance. His restless energy ensured the rapidity of movement and alertness of action which won him many a triumph over less mobile and less highly trained antagonists; while they ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... hours old Brax had been mad as a hornet. He was not much of a drillmaster or tactician, but he thought he was, and it delighted him to put his battalion through the form of review, the commands for which he had memorized thoroughly and delivered with resonant voice and with all proper emphasis. What he did not fancy, and indeed could not do, was the drudge-work of teaching ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... sandy-haired, undersized boy, who was two or three years younger than Ike, and not strong enough for work at the anvil, was a great tactician. It was his habit, in doing a favor, rigorously to exact a set-off, and that night when the blacksmith had left ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... encamped. They were at once attacked on either flank by skirmishers from the hostile camp; but the vanguard of the English army advanced gallantly to the charge, and were soon in possession of the first entrenchments of the enemy. Although Bagnal's personal valour is unquestionable, he was a bad tactician. His leading regiment was cut to pieces before a support could come up; his divisions were too far apart to assist each other. Bagnal raised the visor of his helmet for one moment, to judge more effectually of the scene of combat, and that moment proved his last. A musket ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... matter over with his father-in-law, whose confidence in him was now restored. Stolpe, who was an old experienced tactician, advised him not to convoke any meeting on this occasion, but to settle the matter with each man face to face, so that the Union could not be attacked. "You've got plenty of time," he said. "Go first of all to the trustworthy fellows, and make them understand what ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... had attempted in vain to overcome by skill and patriotism the thousand difficulties placed in their way by successive unstable, insincere Ministers of War, General Vincente occupied an honoured place. This mild-mannered tactician enjoyed the enviable reputation of being alike unconquerable and incorruptible. His smiling presence on the battlefield was in itself worth half a dozen battalions, while at Madrid the dishonest politicians, ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... jack jargon, the gigantic guardsman; And General Fireface, famous in the field, A great tactician, and no less a swordsman, Who ate, last war, more Yankees than he kill'd. There was the waggish Welsh Judge, Jefferies Hardsman, In his grave office so completely skill'd, That when a culprit came far condemnation, He had his judge's joke ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Lauderdale over his rivals was assured; but before Clarendon's life ended he might have learned to what a height of self-aggrandizement, and of unscrupulous oppression, the popular wiles of that astute tactician had helped him to attain. Had Clarendon been blessed with agents wiser than Middleton and more honest than Archbishop Sharp, the Government of Scotland might have been consolidated; the bitterness, to which her religious fanaticism was ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... tells us, "was to command a line-of-battle ship; as for prize money," for which frigates offered the best chances, "it never entered his thoughts." A few months later, while still in the "Albemarle," it was said of him by Lord Hood, the most original tactician of the day, that he knew as much about naval tactics as any officer in the fleet. When this high encomium was bestowed, Nelson had barely passed his ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... that the conductor of the future, even more than of the past, must possess not only those qualities of the artist needed by the solo performer, but must in addition be a good business manager, an organizer, a tactician, a diplomat, a task-master—in plain English, a good boss. It is primarily because of the lack of these last-mentioned qualities that most musicians fail as conductors. A writer in the Canadian Journal of Music, signing ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... ability has been much underrated. He was hardly more First in Peace than First in War. That he had physical courage and could give orders calmly while bullets whizzed all about, one need not repeat. He was strategist and tactician too. Trenton and Yorktown do not cover his whole military record. With troops inferior in every single respect except natural valor, he out-generalled Howe in 1776, and he almost never erred when acting upon his own good judgment instead of yielding to Congress or to his subordinates. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... persons who have acquired fame in literature and the arts have been Dibil Alkoffay, an Arabian poet of the eighth century; the tactician, Folard; the German poet, Engelshall; Le Sage; La Condamine, who composed an epigram on his own infirmity; and Beethoven, the famous musician. Fernandez, a Spanish painter of the sixteenth ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... citizens, and received a good education. He was also favored with the society of Pelopidas and Epaminondas, and witnessed with great interest the training of the Theban forces by these two remarkable men—one the greatest organizer, and the other the greatest tactician of the age. When transferred from Thebes to a subordinate government of a district in his brother's kingdom, he organized a military force on the principles he had learned in Thebes. The unexpected death of ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... into a profound reverie. The drama was about to begin. What the Count hitherto had done, was as it were but a prelude, an exposition, or rather a skilful introduction. On the eve of the event he did not quail, but like a sagacious tactician asked himself if he had been guilty of no neglect, if he had taken advantage of all the circumstances. One thing alone made him uneasy. When he returned to the Etruscan villa, to assume the clothes of the assistant-jailer, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... only a much younger man, but one whose gallantry and competence had been eminently proved as a captain in several hard fought battles, while as an admiral in chief command he later acquired considerable reputation as a tactician. ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... Geer, who was a thorough tactician. Like Napoleon, she was never more elated than after a defeat. Before consulting her husband at all, she had contemplated the subject in all its bearings, and had deliberately decided that Ivy was to go to school. The consent of the senior partner of the firm was a secondary matter, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... unfitted. But from the moment of separation he appears in the light of a rival and a critic, and not too friendly as either. In the beginning Washington had looked up to Lee. Lee now looked down upon Washington. Unquestionably the abler tactician of the two, Lee seemed to have looked forward to Washington's fall as certain, and to so have shaped his own course as to leave him master of the situation. In so doing he cannot be acquitted of disloyalty to the cause he served, if ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... the poor, depraved representatives of the race has any knowledge of the event in which Blue Shirt showed himself to be a successful plotter, a bold strategist, an original tactician, and a brave fighter. His son is dust. His grandson, though true in complexion, knows more about engines than he does of wooden swords and how to use them. The zest of life was with his ancestor, who during a long life had but ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Muro was a tactician. The scouts stated the situation, with the impassible ravine to the north, and the attackers to the south of their position. His force was on the eastern side of the river, and moving back a sufficient distance to prevent knowledge ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... appeal to high motives, flattered by it, and by the confidence of the Italians, he thought that he could educate his party, and by his personal influence induce it to do justice to Italy. But this conservative advocate of reform was not wily enough tactician for the times in which he lived, or the changes which he meditated. His attempts to improve on the devices of Saturninus and Gracchus were miserable failures; and the senators who used him, or were influenced by him, shrank from his side when they saw him follow ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... shook, handled her troops with the skill of a perfect tactician, and hurled in the ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... a most consummate tactician. From the moment Miss Riddle entered the room, his air and manner became that of a most polished gentleman; and after bowing to her when introduced, he cast, from time to time, a glance at her, which told her, by its significance, ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... passions, became fully manifest. His subsequent conduct showed undoubtedly great ability, but not ability of the sort for which he had formerly been so eminent. He was now headstrong, sanguine, full of impetuous confidence in his own wisdom and his own good luck. He, whose fame as a political tactician had hitherto rested chiefly on his skilful retreats, now set himself to break down all the bridges behind him. His plans were castles in the air: his talk was rhodomontade. He took no thought for the morrow: he treated the Court as if the King were already a prisoner in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... favourable to Lord George Murray, that, being unprepared by an early military education, he was unfettered by its formal rules, and therefore was more calculated to lead an undisciplined army of Highlanders, whose native energies he knew how to direct better than a skilful tactician would have ventured to do.[33] During his stay at Perth, the Highlanders, so prone to irregularities when not in active service, were tranquil under ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... again and most important, she loves them tenderly, and from love flows wisdom. Usually the mother gives her own children a love far beyond that given by anyone else, and this deeper love sharpens her intellectual faculties and makes her both a keen observer and a good tactician. Giving her children some simple lesson on Sunday afternoon, she finds a hundred opportunities to make the lesson living and vital to them ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... what and how important events have been evolved! America! Southey! Miss Fricker!... Pantisocracy! Oh! I shall have such a scheme of it! My head, my heart, are all alive. I have drawn up my arguments in battle array: they shall have the "tactician" excellence of the mathematician, with the enthusiasm of the poet. The head shall be the mass; the heart, the fiery spirit that fills, informs and agitates the whole. SHAD GOES WITH US: HE IS MY BROTHER!! I am longing to be with you: ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... all sorts of naughty Mabille oaths, most villainously pronounced, at the ascendancy of her haughty, unapproachable patrician rival—she did do all these things—but Bertie would not have been the consummate tactician, the perfect flirt, the skilled and steeled campaigner in the boudoirs that he was, if he had not been equal to the delicate task of managing both the peeress and the ballet-dancer with inimitable ability; even when they placed him ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... was relieved after one reverse, leads one to wonder what might have been the fate of even Grant had he commanded at this time. However, it is not for us to say, but certain it is, that no greater military tactician was to be found among the generals of our late war, and ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... your father," he began curtly. It was not in his nature to be a tactician, and he knew that his blunt reference to the trouble between them hurt her; ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... basic quality of his character as a General. General Foch is today in command of the northern armies of France, besides being the chief Lieutenant and confidant of Joffre. Joffre conceives; Foch, master tactician, executes. He finds the weak point; if there is no weak point, he creates or seeks ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... read these comments as well as what had gone before, and was ready with her magnanimity. It was this which constituted her a truly able tactician. She shifted her tack before the shout of malicious exultation and ridicule could have been raised at her discomfiture. By a dexterous sleight of hand, she shuffled her cards and altered her suit. In a moment Mrs. Spottiswoode was winking and nodding with the matrons ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Marville, as a clever tactician, had something very particular to say to her cousin, that Cecile and her Werther might be left together for a moment. Cecile chattered away volubly, and contrived that Frederic should catch sight of a German dictionary, a German grammar, and a volume of Goethe ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... and marched against his skilful but unpresuming antagonist. Paz secretly evacuated Cordova, and, moving westward, hazarded a feat which is alone sufficient to establish his character as the best tactician of the New World,—San Martin alone, perhaps, excepted. Splitting his little army into a dozen brigades, he occupied the entire mountain-range behind the town, operated, with scarce five thousand men, upon a front of two hundred miles in extent, held in his own unwavering grasp the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... my good fellow," said he, addressing an insignificant corporal just about to eat his stew, as if he were questioning an old tactician or a man skilled like Turenne or Davoust; "do you see? you hit it in this affair of day before yesterday. Give us your opinion. Are the positions occupied by Ducrot as strong as they pretend? Is ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the writers appears to be to round off their letters gracefully. Having no more to say, I will now draw to a close, is the accepted formula. Private Burke, never a tactician, concludes a most ardent love-letter thus: "Well, Kate, I will now close, as I have to write ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... won imperishable renown as a military leader. All Germany seemed to lie open before him and it appeared as if nothing could prevent a triumphant march upon Vienna. He had proved himself the ablest captain and tactician of the age, his device of small, rapidly moving brigades and flexible squadrons being the death-blow of the solid and unwieldy columns of previous wars. And his victory formed an epoch in history as saving the cause ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... narrowly this approach of her two proteges, with an interest quite uncommon to her; and now, with a policy that would have honored a more adroit tactician, she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... the public conception of his character. Dignified reserve is a luxury in which it is not permitted to him to indulge; and when he comes to defend himself, it must not be with the calculating shrewdness of the strategist or tactician. The only rules of evidence of which he can claim the benefit are the laws of the human mind. The tribunal, too, before which he seeks reparation should not be what the state supplies only, but the very best he ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... man who has had to do with political and financial affairs invariably shows him that nothing ever happens of itself. Thunderbolts do descend from clear skies, but an enemy and not nature has hurled them. A clever tactician will always look for his antagonist's hand behind any isolated or detached fluctuation of public feeling which bears in the slightest degree upon his problem. In going over the circumstances, looking for the correct interpretation of the appearance in our field of this second Richmond, I ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... knowledge or solicitation, he was appointed a captain in the U.S. Regular Army, on recommendation of General Grant, and has since been promoted colonel in this service. During his subsequent career he has won the reputation of being a fine tactician and of being thoroughly versed in military law, as is indicated by Major Hancock's ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... Luella were both sitting on the sofa, when Mr. Sealy and Stanley Ginsling came in, much to Mrs. Sealy's disgust, and she managed to separate them several times during the evening by resorting to the manoeuvres which never fail an accomplished female tactician; but as her daughter invariably returned to her seat near Barton, she was determined to make a final effort ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... regiments were called which upwards of a century before the new Protestant enthusiasm of England had raised to support Holland against the tyranny of Spain. He was a good man, a brave if not a dashing soldier, a prudent tactician, and well skilled in all the machinery ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... a sound tactician without the strategic brilliance of Parke. He is a fine match player and dogged fighter. Witness his 5-set battle with me in the Championships, after being match point down in the fourth set, and his 5-set struggle with Johnston in the Davis Cup. It is a slight ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... best-known corps commanders in the Pacific War made it a rule that if any man serving under him, or any man he knew in the service, however unimportant, was promoted or given any other recognition, he would write a letter to the man's wife or mother, saying how proud he felt. He was not a great tactician or strategist but, because of the little things he did, men loved him and would ride to hell for him, and their collective moral strength became the bastion of ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... mutinous sentiments on the one hand, a longing for restitution on the other, Laura grew very sly—a regular little tactician. In these days, she was for ever considering what she ought to do, what to leave undone. She learnt to weigh her words before uttering them, instead of blurting out her thoughts in the childish fashion that had exposed her to ridicule; she learnt, too, at last, to keep her real opinions ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... of "blood" with them; eastward stand the 'Anezah and the warlike Shararat-Hutaym, who ever covet their two thousand camels: westward lie in wait their hereditary foes, the Huwaytat. Shaykh Furayj, the tactician, has long ago proposed a general onslaught of his tribesmen by a simultaneous movement up the Wadys Surr, Sadr, Urnub, and 'Afal: they seemed to have some inkling of his intentions, as they hastened to conclude with him a five months' 'Altwah or "truce." ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Confederation might have been delayed for a generation or never have come at all. His enthusiasm inspired the willing and carried the doubting. In the somewhat rare combination of courage, force, and breadth of view no one excelled him. As a political tactician he was not so successful, and to this defect may be traced the entanglements in which he was prone to land both himself and his party. His resignation from the coalition in 1865 was a mistake. It could not be explained. In leaving the ship before it reached the haven of safety ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... circumstance; while in the melee of a battle at night, there must always be greater risk of separation, and of ships receiving the fire of their friends as well as their foes." It is obvious to every comprehension, that a night action must preclude all manoeuvring, and prevent the greater skill of the tactician from having any advantage over the blunderer who turns his ships into mere batteries. The only officer who coincided with Jervis was Admiral Barrington, who gave as an additional and a just argument for the attack by day, that it would give an opportunity ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... as a leader of the Boston patriots in their resistance to British oppression, as a member of the Continental Congress and in other public offices. We are shown Samuel Adams as a man without great business or professional talents but wonderful in counsel, a cool headed patriot, an adroit tactician, and above all a thorough democrat. To mingle with the common people was his delight; he was a frequenter of the Caulkers' Club, popular with blacksmiths, ship carpenters, and mechanics. He was not a great orator; ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... enemy to encounter far more terrible than Black Hawk and his adherents—an enemy that bid defiance to military prowess and baffled all the skill of the tactician. ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... in Finland. When the Russian attacks first commenced, all party divergences were sunk into oblivion, and the country provided the spectacle of a completely united nation. General Bobrikoff was too much of a tactician to be pleased with this state of affairs, and he began to play up to the Old-Finns, not without success. Among other things, he filled all public posts, vacated by their former occupants, who had either resigned on constitutional grounds or had been dismissed, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... side of the cause he esteemed just—that to which the most respectable of the inhabitants to a man adhered—as he had taken up arms before for the party of law and order, amongst whom he was looked up to, not only as a skilled soldier and tactician, but a stalwart partisan, his very name ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... government in parliamentary annals, he believed he had at length achieved his emancipation, when he declared to his late colleagues, after the overthrow of 1830, that he would never again accept a secondary position in office. But the Duke of Wellington was too old a tactician to lose so valuable an ally. So his Grace declared after the Reform Bill was passed, as its inevitable result, that thenceforth the Prime Minister must be a member of the House of Commons; and this aphorism, cited ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... Ulugh Ali's movements, steering on a parallel course in the hope of eventually closing and meeting him fairly ship to ship. Doria was an old sailor, perhaps the most experienced leader in the fleet, except the veteran Veniero. If he had been less of a tactician, perhaps he would have come into action sooner. And it is strange that, while playing for position against Ulugh Ali, he did not realize that if, instead of continually increasing his own distance from the ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... and, to relate in some sequence the honest sailor's tortures in love with a tactician, I have necessarily omitted concurrent incidents of a still tamer character; but the reader may, by the help of his own intelligence, gather their general results from the following dialogues, which took place on the afternoon and evening of ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... through various parts of Germany, and visited the courts of Vienna and Berlin. He became acquainted with Frederick II. the greatest royal tactician of Europe; and probably availed of the opportunity of attending his reviews, to increase his knowledge of military discipline. Soon after his return to France, we find him uniting his influence and efforts with the celebrated philosopher, Malesherbes, who was zealously ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... assent, and the surgeon murmured his thanks. As yet he had looked little at the baronet's beautiful wife. He had come to Yorkshire with the intention of studying this woman as a man studies an abstruse and difficult science; but he was too great a tactician to betray any unwonted interest in her. The policy of his life was patience, and in this as in everything else, he ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... his qualities came to an end. Rough, cruel, imperious, brutal, he imposed himself upon those who became his followers; but in him were to be found none of the statesmanlike qualities which distinguished his far greater younger brother. His was the absolutely finite intellect of the tactician as opposed to the strategist, who, seeing his objective, was capable of dealing with circumstances as they immediately arose; but, partly no doubt from defective education, but principally from the lack of intellectual appreciation of the problems of the time in which he lived, could never rise ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... strategist than tactician. He excelled in the arts which enable a commander to make successful campaigns and gain advantages without much fighting, rather than in ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke |
