"Sagacious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to his favourite animals while working at the Water-row Pit. Like his father, he used to tempt the robin-redbreasts to hop and fly about him at the engine-fire, by the bait of bread-crumbs saved from his dinner. But his chief favourite was his dog—so sagacious that he almost daily carried George's dinner to him at the pit. The tin containing the meal was suspended from the dog's neck, and, thus laden, he proceeded faithfully from Jolly's Close to Water-row Pit, quite through the village of Newburn. He turned neither to left nor right, nor ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... the bull (Taur, vol. i. 16) are the Moslem emblems of stupidity, as with us are the highly intelligent ass and the most sagacious goose. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... have known, the character of their prospects. They all expected unusual profits under the circumstances, and might possibly have got them. Under this pleasant result they would have credited chiefly their own sagacious courage. But instead they realized most severe loss, and then, with angry unanimity, they condemned, and would have prosecuted, Boyd. Wrath fell upon the younger brother, Mark, who had stayed at home, ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... and sagacious, and years away from loch and mountain, gave account. Horses, weapons, clothing, all correct for Dr. Robert Bonshaw and his servant, riding under high protection from Paris to Dunkirk, where a well-captained ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... expert in arms, and who could fight his way through The Desert." And such is the absurd character of men, and some people pretending to be friends of African discovery, that, on hearing of my safe return after nine months' absence, they felt chagrined their sagacious vaticinations were not verified. Like a man who writes a book, and ever so bad a book, he cannot afterwards adopt a right sentiment, or course of action, because he has written his book. It is true, the fate of Davidson, in Western ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... of his staying to dinner made me stay and dine with the —th mess. Very sagacious—eh, Pheebe?' said he, turning, as if he liked to look into her ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fault that what happened happened. She is the bull-dog, and very stout and heavy. She had just been let loose and she came bounding along in her clumsy way, and jumped up on Oswald, who is beloved by all dumb animals. (You know how sagacious they are.) Well, Martha knocked the ball out of Oswald's hands, and it fell on the grass, and Noel pounced on it like a hooded falcon on its prey. Oswald would scorn to deny that he was not going to stand this, and the next moment the two were rolling over on the ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... notice certain marks of sagacity, in so far as they have a natural inclination to set about their actions in a most orderly manner through being ordained by the Supreme art. For which reason, too, certain animals are called prudent or sagacious; and not because they reason or exercise any choice about things. This is clear from the fact that all that share in one nature, invariably act in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... thoroughly understand his composition to appreciate him. His educational advantages were limited. From a street car conductor to an auctioneer, showman and capitalist, were the gradations of his career. He was conservative and sagacious, a faithful friend, and, like Uncle Henry, and most men who have tasted of the bitter and prospered by their own exertions, a candid hater. The after years of his life were made unpleasant by a heartless robbery perpetrated by those near him. The loss of the money, some thirty thousand ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... cried the baker. "He's no the first youngster I've seen the wiseacres o' the world wagging their sagacious pows owre; and, eh, but he was this waster!—according to their way of it—and, oh, but he was the other waster! and, ochonee, but he was the wild fellow. And a' the while they werena fit to be his doormat; for it was only the fire in ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... lap in which the child was comfortably nestling, and in that attitude had a faint consciousness that Mrs. Horncastle was mischievously breathing into his curls a silent laugh. Barker lifted his firstborn with proud skillfulness, but that sagacious infant evidently knew when he was comfortable, and in a paroxysm of objection caught his father's curls with one fist, while with the other he grasped Mrs. Horncastle's brown braids and brought their heads into contact. Upon which humorous ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... that it was a barefaced forgery, entirely due to Flinders himself, and that Dolores could show that she had no knowledge of it, and he had gone down in the fly expecting to come home triumphant, and confute his sister Jane, who persisted in being mournfully sagacious. And he was indignant in proportion to the confidence he had misplaced; grieved, too, for his brother's ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... records his fame, showed us of the present day the high-road to the west; and did more; for he saw more of that coast than we modern seamen have yet been able to accomplish. Lastly, in that olden time, we have the sagacious and quaint Nor-West Fox, carrying our flag to the head of Hudson's Bay; whilst James's fearful sufferings in the southern extreme of the same locality, completed, for a while, the labours of British seamen in ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... not rely for a moment upon the inviolability of his own house. La Corne St. Luc would demand to search, and he, bound by his declarations of non-complicity in the abduction of Caroline, could offer no reason for refusal without arousing instant suspicion; and La Corne was too sagacious not to fasten upon the remotest trace of Caroline and follow it up to a ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... and abrupt interrogations, that I believe she fancied I was going to fight a duel; for about that time there had been a fatal duel, which furnished a topic of general conversation, and which, I suppose, put the sagacious suspicion into ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... as a bear, patient as an ox, faithful as a mastiff, affectionate as a Newfoundland dog, sagacious as a crow, talkative as a magpie, and withal as cheery and full of song as a sky-lark. Such was the inward man ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... difficulties of the time, the priests of St. Sulpice preserved an equally neutral and sagacious attitude, the only occasions upon which they betrayed anything like warmth of feeling being when the episcopal authority was threatened. They soon found out the spitefulness of M. de Lamennais, and would have nothing to do with him. The theological romanticism of Lacordaire and of Montalembert was ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... angry passions which have been exasperated during the Adams administration, by the close contest of nearly balanced parties. As to the old general, with all his hickory characteristics, I suspect he has good stuff in him, and will make a sagacious, independent, and high-spirited president; and I doubt his making so high-handed ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... side, and to lay his hand, now and then, in a careless manner upon the box. He has also a peculiar shuffle with his feet, calculated to induce suspicion of collusion with the machine in minds which are more cunning than sagacious. These peculiarities are, no doubt, mere mannerisms of M. Maelzel, or, if he is aware of them at all, he puts them in practice with a view of exciting in the spectators a false idea of the pure ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... orchestra. In spite, however, of his anxiety to keep out of the stalls, suggestive as they were (but only in name) of the stable, some little alarm was created in the neighbourhood of the Conductor, which did not entirely subside until the fall of the curtain. But the sagacious steed knew its business thoroughly well, and was indeed an admirable histrion. Only once, at the initial performance, did this intelligent creature remember its personality, and drop the public actor in the private individual. The occasion was when it had to put its head out of a loose-box ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... achieved immortality. Showily bound they make a favourite school prize and have given entertainment to generations of cultured refined persons, who have never paused in their reading to give a thought to the author of their enjoyment, the sagacious Prince to whose action they owe their emotional treat. His royal Highness's reward was his own aesthetic satisfaction. "By Heaven, this is more like," he rapturously exclaimed as he laid down the last volume of the collected works; "this verse has got some stuff in it." And on the occasion of his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... preternaturally wise? Wherefore be so eager to jump out of one religion, for the purpose of jumping into another? See what good this philosophical friskiness has done you, and on what sort of ground you are come at last. You are so wonderfully sagacious, that you flounder in mud at every step; so amazingly clear-sighted, that your eyes cannot see an inch before you, having put out, with that extinguishing genius of yours, every one of the lights that are sufficient for the conduct of common men. And for what? Let our friend ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sagacious Tyler, Whom the loafers all obey; What reward will Congress give me, If I ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... skipper with a deeply sagacious look; "a difficult letter to write in my opinion. How d'ye mean ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... stupid countryman, this policeman, but he was visibly impressed—even flurried—by Hewitt's elaborate bumptiousness. He saluted, tried to look unnaturally sagacious, and confessed that he couldn't exactly say where the inspector was, things being put about so just now. He might be in Throckham village, but more likely he was ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... our good fortune to overhear a dialogue between Gissing (our dog) and Mike, the dog who lives next door. Mike, or Crowgill Mike II, to give him his full entitles, is a very sagacious old person, in the fifteenth year of his disillusionment, and of excellent family. If our humble Gissing is to have a three-barrelled name, it can only be Haphazard Gissing I, for his ancestry is ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... Bonabari, and is now in the hands of our troops. A similar fate is reserved, at no distant date, for German South Africa, against which General Botha—a man no less brave and dashing as a soldier than sagacious as a statesman—is preparing to lead a conquering force. Having stamped out the rebellion within the Union itself—crushing it literally like a beetle—he is now addressing himself to the task—a harder one, perhaps, but still certain of achievement—of making ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 21, Dec. 30, 1914 • Various
... rest; and there was sometimes that in her countenance when she returned, and in the tone of her prophesying about the destruction of the enemy, which caused the whisper to go round that she met her lover there, just under the clouds. Monsieur Pascal— the rational, sagacious Monsieur Pascal—was of opinion ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... the synagogue after its own desire, he seemed to have become primitive, conscious of the human creature in him. Now, though he rode through a bewitching air through an enchanted land, he did not ride in a dream. All his being was alert and sagacious. Though the confusion of footprints in the dust showed plainly where men had passed by thousands, he did not follow their lead. Over the tangle of marks lay a slim paw-printed, confident, careless trail of a jackal, following the scent to a well. The Maccabee was obedient to the instinct of the ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... of the sagacious advice which Jethro, the father-in- law of Moses, gave him about the sort of men that he should pick out to be his lieutenants in civic government. Its old-fashioned, simple phraseology may hide ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... sings like her, laughs like her, talks like her, caresses like her, and alternately softens and animates just like her. Her conversation is not merely like that of a woman already, but like that of a most uncommonly informed, cultivated, and sagacious woman; and at the same time that her understanding is thus wonderfully premature, she can, at pleasure, throw off all this rationality, and make herself a mere playful, giddy, romping child. One moment, with mingled gravity and sarcasm, she discusses characters, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... they have not overlooked the castle?" said one; "or if they have courage to attack us?" suggested another; while a sagacious tailor proved, by a clever resume of the different reports received, that all the Polish frocks were by this time far beyond Rosmin. Yet, eagerly as each asserted that the danger must now be over, all listened anxiously to the step of the sentinels, and looked constantly ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... the California would discharge its obligations on a parity with the largest and strongest insurance companies in the world. Indeed the public announcement that the company would pay in full was regarded as ridiculous and unbelievable and was generally considered in the light of an extremely sagacious bluff. ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks
... Dupin, amid a perfect whirlwind of smoke, "no more sagacious agent could, I suppose, be desired, ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... an amateur doctor; Charley promulgates his views of tilings in general to Kate; and Kate waxes sagacious. ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... till a splash behind her put an end to her merriment, and, turning, she found that this friend in need was her acquaintance of the day before. The gentleman seemed pausing for permission to approach, with much the appearance of a sagacious Newfoundland, ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... wrongs suffered or done, knowing that their confidence will be preserved inviolate, and that their statements will be received with sympathy. I propose to attempt to meet this want. I shall establish a department, over which I shall place the wisest, the pitifullest, and the most sagacious men and women whom I can find on my staff, to whom all those in trouble and perplexity shall be invited to address themselves. It is no use saying that we love our fellow men unless we try to help them, and it is no use pretending to sympathise with the heavy burdens which darken their lives ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Philip, in co-operation with Thebes, the enemy of Athens, presently threw off the mask and disgracefully renewed the war with Athens, He had gained his object by bribery and falsehood. It is mournful that the Athenians should not have listened to the warnings of the most sagacious patriot who adorned those degenerate times, but the influence of AEschines was then paramount, and he was sold to Philip. He cried peace, when there was no peace. The great error of Athens was in not rendering timely ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... that the nations (and especially Great Britain) who allied themselves against this man of the people and sent him to an inhuman death might have saved themselves the eternal condemnation of future ages had they made their peace with him, as the sagacious Charles James Fox would have done had he lived. Had they been wise, they would have made use of his matchless gifts and well-balanced mind to help forward the regeneration of the human chaos which was both the cause ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... stated the general programme of their policy, and introduced one measure in especial that had lifted them at once to the dizzy height of popular power. But it became clear that this measure could not be carried without a fresh appeal to the people. A dissolution of parliament, as Audley's sagacious experience had foreseen, was inevitable. And Audley Egerton had no chance of return for his own seat, for the great commercial city identified with his name. Oh, sad, but not rare, instance of the mutabilities of that same popular favour now enjoyed by his successors! ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... excess I had seen throughout the winter now at an end. I did not wonder at my aunt's anger. Her fears were but the vague anticipations of a wise old woman who had seen the world and used good eyes and a sagacious brain. How little did she or I dream of the tragedy of dishonour into which the mad waste, the growing debts, the bitterness of an insulted and ambitious spirit, were to lead the host ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... various other points. It is very note-worthy how, all along, she shapes her action from step to step, not by any long-headed planning, but merely as events suggest and invite her onward. Helena is indeed brave, wise, prudent, sagacious, quick and clear of perception, swift and steadfast in resolution, prompt, patient, and persevering in action; but there is nothing of a crafty or designing mind in what she does. She displays no special forecast, no subtle or far-sighted ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... The sagacious old bachelor was right. Mr. Preston was 'after' something more than mere popularity. He went wherever he had a chance of meeting ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a very sagacious and knowing proceeding,' said your grandfather, 'and I do not wonder you are so much ...
— Georgie's Present • Miss Brightwell
... can, in the fractional fraction of a second, strike the furious blast of gas into a chill grayish-green liquid that drains (you can hear it trickle) from the far end of the vacuum through the eduction-pipes and the mains back to the bilges. Here it returns to its gaseous, one had almost written sagacious, state and climbs to work afresh. Bilge-tank, upper tank, dorsal-tank, expansion-chamber, vacuum, main-return (as a liquid), and bilge-tank once more is the ordained cycle. Fleury's Ray sees to that; and the engineer with the tinted spectacles ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... Therefore the sagacious men, who watched and directed the interests of the order, were never so anxious to incorporate able and zealous sons and send them forth to win back ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... was himself a shrewd and sagacious man; and he recognized in the abilities evinced by the youthful secretary, those elements which, if properly developed, would form a great politician. The Turkish Minister accordingly resolved to leave ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... At first these sagacious animals stopped, and refused to go any farther. Hemstead waited a few moments, in hope that the gust or gale would expend itself, and, in the mean time, instinctively put his arm around Lottie, to keep her from being blown off ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... two Elephants living a long time since who were remarkably sagacious. They were married and it was their earnest desire that their son, if they ever had any, should be the one who should climb the sky and live among the stars. They often talked over the best way of securing this ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil, the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... I am not even an Irish priest. Therefore politics do not interest me so keenly as they might another. But even to my slow mind the suitability of Eustis was apparent. Of an honored name, just, sure, kind, sagacious, a builder, a teacher, a pioneer, the plainer people all over the state leaned upon his judgment. A sane shrewd man of large affairs, other able men of affairs respected and admired him. The state, knowing what he ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... mouse, how sagacious an animal it is which never entrusts his life to one hole only.—PLAUTUS: Truculentus, act ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... will tame a lion. If I had let him stay three or four days without food, and then have carried him some water to drink and then a little corn, he would have been as tame as one of the kids; for they are mighty sagacious, tractable creatures, where they are ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... other, they neglected their mission at a crisis of supreme importance, we must recall that few of us believed that a great war would occur until we actually heard the declaration. No indictment of the clergy is valid which presupposes that they are more sagacious or far-seeing than the rest of us. Yet, however much we may have doubted the actual occurrence of war, we have known for years, and have quite complacently commented upon, the danger that half of Europe would sooner or later be involved in the horrors of the greatest war in history. ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... billowy sea became agitated; and Helios, the sun-god, arrested his fiery steeds in their headlong course to welcome this wonderful emanation from the godhead. Athene was at once admitted into the assembly of the gods, and henceforth took her place as the most faithful and sagacious of all her father's counsellors. This brave, dauntless maiden, so exactly the essence of all that is noble in the character of "the father of gods and men," remained throughout chaste in word and deed, and kind at heart, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... sagacious to sell. In a year his father's mortgage would be payable, and he wanted to ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger
... besides many lambs and kids wounded. This havoc was committed by a she-wolf, which, with her annual whelps, had for several years infested the vicinity. The young were commonly destroyed by the vigilance of the hunters, but the old one was too sagacious to come within reach of gunshot. Upon being closely pursued she would generally fly to the western woods, and return the next winter with another litter of whelps. This wolf at length became such an intolerable nuisance that Farmer ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... his head screwed on straight, and you the same, too, Haldane," said he approvingly, with a sagacious nod as he bent over the pile of sacks in the corner. "Come and see the poor fellow, me bhoy. There doesn't seem much loife lift in ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... sxtofego. Sacrament sakramento. Sacred sankta. Sacredness sankteco. Sacrifice oferi. Sacrilege malpiajxo. Sad malgxoja. Sadden malgxojigi. Saddle selo. Sadness malgxojeco. Safe (money) monkesto. Safe sendangxera. Safety sendangxereco. Saffron safrano. Sagacious sagaca. Sagacity sagaceco. Sage sagxa. Sage (botany) salvio. Sail (of a ship) velo. Sail surnagxi. Sailing-ship velsxipo. Sailor maristo. Sails velaro. Sainfoin sanfojno. Saint sanktulo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Another active and sagacious worker in the cause of popularising the reform was Mr. John George Fordham (the vice-chairman of the Board), who did not hesitate to pay repeated visits to all parts of the district during the riots already described, and endeavoured by every reasonable means ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... were imbued with the stay-at-home tendencies enforced by Nature upon the newly-arrived ram; and they advised Wright to kill the old patriarch of his fold, and install the Ancon ram in his place. The result justified their sagacious anticipations, and coincided very nearly with what occurred to the progeny of Gratio Kelleia. The young lambs were almost always either pure Ancons, or pure ordinary sheep.[Footnote: Colonel Humphreys' statements are exceedingly explicit on this point:—. "When an Ancon ewe is impregnated ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... ourselves, as they lay around, asleep or indulging in the quaint antics which often made me wonder whether they were not in some way distantly allied to the human race. For the Siberian sled-dog is unquestionably the most sagacious animal in existence, and many a time have his comical vagaries lightened my hours of despondency. In appearance the Siberian differs essentially from the Eskimo dog, and is a stronger though smaller animal, seldom of a uniform colour, being generally black and white, black ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... was still standing with her fine features exposed, which expressed feeling that eloquently seconded the request of her father. Leather-Stocking stood, in the mean time, leaning upon his long rifle, with his head turned a little to one side, as if engaged in sagacious musing; when, having apparently satisfied his doubts, by revolving the subject in his mind, he broke silence. It may be best to go, lad, after all; for, if the shot hangs under the skin, my hand is getting too old to be cutting into human flesh, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... that Molly was intentionally talking at cross purposes with her pastor; and that while he clung to the old signification of sensible, namely, to be aware of, or sensitive to, a thing, she was using it in the new, now universally accepted, sense of sagacious. The fun, of course, was enhanced by the fact that poor Mr Edmundson was totally unacquainted with ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... the opposition to me were concentrated upon that district. I believe Tammany and the lofty coterie of Republican gentlemen in this city (New York) threw money into my district to carry it against me.... Had we been sufficiently aroused and sagacious we could have defeated this manoeuvre, but we found out too late. We sent the tickets to the polls, in the ward in which I live, at daylight, as did the Democrats. Not one of our tickets was found ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... water, and watering-pots, were kept in secret places ready to be discharged on the offending boys; sticks were laid in ambush behind the door; sallies were made at all hours; and incessant war prevailed. Perhaps this was an agreeable excitement to the donkey-boys; or perhaps the more sagacious of the donkeys, understanding how the case stood, delighted with constitutional obstinacy in coming that way. I only know that there were three alarms before the bath was ready; and that on the occasion of the last and most desperate of ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... only one public mistake in his life, but it was on the largest scale, and every one wondered that a man so sagacious should have deliberately entered into a feud with the boys of the Seminary. The Bailie had battled in turn with the Licensed Victuallers, who as a fighting body are not to be despised, and with the Teetotalers, whom every wise man who loves peace of mind leaves alone; with the Tories, who ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... you see here looking quite maternal with her family around her, is the sheep dog, the shepherd's faithful and invaluable friend. It is the most sagacious and intelligent of all dogs, and volumes of anecdotes might be written of ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... House into his confidence. With the King's consent, he disclosed all the communications, hitherto kept secret, which had passed between the Sovereign and his Ministers. He rightly claimed that all the transactions had been "correct, considerate, and constitutional." Mr. Asquith's brilliant and sagacious leadership impressed even his bitterest opponents. It only remained for the Lords not to insist on their amendments. Unparalleled excitement attended their final decision. The uncompromising opponents among the Unionist Peers, rather than yield ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... beast stood firm, only lowering its head, and swinging it right and left, as it kept its little sagacious-looking eyes fixed upon the great bulls in front, while its great tusks were ready to meet the ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... gifted with extraordinary powers of memory that would hardly be compatible with a great understanding, nobody would think of committing Thucydides to memory. That Demosthenes should be a perfect master both of the narrated facts, and of the sagacious theorisings of Thucydides in those facts, we may take for granted. And, farther, the orations delivered by opposing speakers in the great critical debates, might very well have been committed verbatim by a young orator; ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... heap of crushed over-ripe figs that I have seen in Italy! And this detestable Morgue comes back again at the head of a procession of forgotten ghost stories. This will never do. I must think of something else as I lie awake; or, like that sagacious animal in the United States who recognised the colonel who was such a dead shot, I am a gone 'Coon. What shall I think of? The late brutal assaults. Very good ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... the summons and the assembling of the clerical and lay notables at Mantes was employed by the Leaguers in frantic and contradictory efforts to retrieve a game which the most sagacious knew to be lost. But the politicians were equal to the occasion, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... petrified almost, by blindly accepted rules and unintelligent traditions, a new impulse, which transforms men from within, breaking through the letter of the law in order to realize its forgotten intent; the other gives to the spirit, thus freed from old limitations, a fresh and sagacious direction, but needs nevertheless to impose its own methods by constraint from without. It is the old struggle, ever renewed, between liberty and law; in the due, but difficult, combination of which consist ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... it is a very sagacious one; but the character has been given to the animal more on account of its obstinacy and untractableness, than on any other account. It is usual to say, as stupid as an ass, or as stupid as a pig, or a goose. Now, these three animals are very much maligned, for they are all ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... dear friend? nay, it is," ticked my watch, persistently. "It is the inevitable penalty of national deterioration which any people must pay that in its haste to be rich forgets to secure its actual independence. Thus Richard Cobden, the most sagacious of English statesmen, is the most unflinching apostle of peace, because he knows that England has put it out of her power to go to war. I saw you reading his late argument against a blockade. Did you reflect ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... child did not run, he was sagacious enough to avoid any look of haste. He affected, on the contrary, a lounging air. But as he drew nearer the Boulevard Haussmann, a mad desire to run took possession of him, and his little feet, in spite of himself, went faster and faster. Would the house be closed? And if Labassandre were ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... claim. It was decided to draw lots to settle the question. Lots were drawn, and the place of honour fell to the Camerons and Stewarts. An ominous cloud gathered on the brows of the Macdonald chiefs, but Locheil, as sagacious as he was courteous, induced the other chiefs to waive their right, and, well content, the clan Macdonald marched on ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... way, "Aurora all over," as Estelle pronounced it; but an Aurora whose imperfections had been smoothed out of existence, and with them her humor; an Aurora whose good working complexion, as she called it, had been turned to lilies and roses, her hair of mortal gold to immortal sunshine, and those sagacious orbs of blue, which made friends for her by their ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... maintaining that crimes of the imagination may be punished with death;[4]—The detector of Vulgar Errors, and the most humane of physicians,[5] giving the casting weight to the vacillating bigotry of Sir Matthew Hale;[6]—Hobbes, ever sceptical, penetrating and sagacious, yet here paralyzed, and shrinking from the subject as if afraid to touch it;[7]—The adventurous explorer, who sounded the depths and channels of the "Intellectual System" along all the "wide watered" ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... "Mother Hubbard and her Dog"—the slow old lady and the knowing beast that was always getting one step ahead of her. The possibility had occurred to Leslie Goldthwaite as she and Dakie Thayne amused themselves one day with Captain Green's sagacious Sir Charles Grandison, a handsome black spaniel, whose trained accomplishment was to hold himself patiently in any posture in which he might be placed, until the word of release was given. You might stand him on his hind legs, with paws folded on his breast; you ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... of the lower orders of society, and devoted to the interests of commerce, as opposed to the narrow demands of the agricultural interest, have, owing in a great degree to Mr. Bright's exertions, become pillars of his party. Lord Palmerston, than whom a more sagacious politician does not or has not existed, testified his knowledge of the influence of the Bright party, by offering Mr. Cobden a seat in the Cabinet, and afterward by sending him as special agent of England to negotiate a commercial treaty ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... conviction, at the line where reason begins to falter. Take the case of Shakespeare. His surpassing greatness was never acknowledged by the learned until the nation had ascertained and settled it as a foregone and questionless conclusion. Even now, to the most sagacious mind of this time, the real ground and evidence of its own assurance of Shakespeare's supremacy, is the universal, deep, immovable conviction of it in the public feeling. There have been many acute essays ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... most benevolent smile on his sagacious visage, all purple as it was with the cold, this very well-meaning gentleman took the snow-child by the hand, and led her towards the house. She followed him, droopingly and reluctant; for all the glow and sparkle was gone out of her figure; and whereas just before she had ...
— The Snow-Image - A Childish Miracle • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... evenly poised on the wheels by the trucks in the hands of its driver, enabled him by this movement to cunningly throw the center of gravity and the greater weight on the man,—a fact which that less sagacious brute never discerned. Perhaps I am using a strong expression regarding his driver. It may be that the purely animal wants of the dog, in the way of food, care, and shelter, are more bountifully supplied in servitude than in freedom; becoming a ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... came to perfection thirty years later, was a measure of such vital importance to the State, that its successful settlement under the extraordinary circumstances which attended its discussion, entitled him to rank with the ablest ministers of his time; but eminently sagacious and beneficial as was this measure, it was thrown into the shade by the success of subsequent calculations of Lord Castlereagh, first as Secretary-at-War, and then as Foreign Secretary, which effected the overthrow ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... carried along. He struggled with his white paws, and moaned to us, but we could do nothing, and we thought to have seen him dashed to pieces before our eyes, when, somehow, his own struggles I fancy—he is so sagacious—brought him up in a lot of weeds and stuff against the post of the flood-gates, and that checked him. But we saw it could not last, and his strength was exhausted. Poor Birdie rushed down to beg them to stop the mill, but that could never have been done in time, and the dear dog was ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of prestige, of sentiment, of superstition, of dependent interest, while the new man must slowly and painfully create all these out of the unwilling material around him, by superiority of character, by patient singleness of purpose, by sagacious presentiment of popular tendencies and instinctive sympathy with the national character. Mr. Lincoln's task was one of peculiar and exceptional difficulty. Long habit had accustomed the American people to the notion of a party in power, and of a President as its creature and organ, while the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Grecian army, highly prized and consulted by all the wounded chiefs. Their medical renown was further prolonged in the subsequent poem of Arktinus, the Iliou Persis, wherein the one was represented as unrivalled in surgical operations, the other as sagacious in detecting and appreciating morbid symptoms. It was Podaleirius who first noticed the glaring eyes and disturbed deportment which preceded the suicide ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... Cranmer, with his tolerant spirit, he despised. Here was an archbishop who might rack and burn for discipline's sake, and he did nothing.... And all these New Learning men with their powers of language, these dark bearded men with twinkling and sagacious eyes, he detested. He went clean shaved, lean and yellow-faced, with a hooked nose that seemed about to dig into his chin. It was he who said first: 'It was merry in England before ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... truth which was soon to become obvious to all the world, he let the insidious foe steal across his threshold, and guessed not how soon that dark and hidden enemy was to drive him from the hearth by which he sat, secure in self-approval and sagacious schemes for ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... particular cleverness to a child who, with his hands behind his back, asks the old conundrum, "Right or left?" "It is all a matter of guess," said Nelson, "and the world attributes wisdom to him who guesses right;" but all the same, by unremitting watchfulness, sagacious inference, and diligent pursuit, he ran the French fleet down. At Martinique, Admiral Cervera had all the West Indies before him where to choose, and the United States coast too, conditioned by coal and other needs, ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... I answered; "but, after all, would not a sagacious officer be likely to annoy his flank, in ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... nothing should induce him to go there till the Friday. He surmised that he knew a thing or two, and as the trial wouldn't come off before Friday at the earliest, he wouldn't show his face in Salisbury before that day. He strongly urged Carry to be equally sagacious, and used some energetic arguments to the same effect on his father, when he found that his father was also to be at the assizes; but the miller did not like to be taught by his son, and declared that as the legal document said ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... on just such a spot as sagacious men, considering how best they might enjoy this world's comforts, would select;—a gentle stream, an ample supply of water, a warm situation, extensive meadow and pasture land, sheltered from keen blasts ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... sees a hole, he carefully avoids it; and old elephants have been known to precede the herd and whisk off the coverings of the pitfalls on each side all the way down to the water. We have known instances in which the old among these sagacious animals have actually lifted the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... half an hours driving; & this in order to have the advice & assistance of the Lord Justice Clerk. I am persuaded your Grace will think, you could not have wished him to choose a more judicious adviser, or a more sagacious Inspector into his conduct. Upon examination your Grace will find, that the Lawyers here will reckon Mr. Carre rather to have stretched a point to get over the provision in our Act of Parliament, in order to grant his Warrant, than to have affected any doubt, or dilatoriness upon the occasion. ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... those who have thought otherwise, it is determined, by infinite odds of authority, that there is such a case, both of nouns and of pronouns. Many a common reader will wonder, who can have been ignorant enough to deny it. "The learned and sagacious Wallis, to whom every English grammarian owes a tribute of reverence, calls this modification of the noun an adjective possessive; I think, with no more propriety than he might have applied the same to the Latin genitive."—Dr. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... more. He found himself on the side of the law for the first time, and felt he owed a duty to Downy, whom he regarded as almost as great a man as Sam Sagacious. Downy had come to his rescue in an hour of dire peril, Downy had trusted him and taken him into his confidence to some extent, and he was determined to do the fair and square thing by the detective, at least so far as he could do so without interfering with his sacred ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... very sagacious lady, Mrs. Delaney; but I must leave you, and wait your own time to make these mysterious revelations. My respects to Mr. Delaney. ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... conjectures; he at one time gives the authour more profundity of meaning than the sentence admits, and at another discovers absurdities, where the sense is plain to every other reader. But his emendations are likewise often happy and just; and his interpretation of obscure passages learned and sagacious. ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... served as Sergeant-at-Arms of the first State Senate after the Reconstruction Period, and Commissioner of Elections in a county that was reputed as being the most lawless in the State. In all these positions, Senator Bruce had displayed such integrity of purpose, sagacious statesmanship, and tireless industry that his election to the United States Senate followed as a logical and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... give a detailed account of the next few hours: it would be an unpleasant task to describe how, at a signal from the principal Persian doctor, every one, except Nebenchari and Croesus, hastily left the room; how dogs were brought in and their sagacious heads turned towards the corpse in order to scare the demon of death;—how, directly after Nitetis' death, Kassandane, Atossa and their entire retinue moved into another house in order to avoid defilement;—how fire was extinguished ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the milk-saucer of the household cat, which sagacious creature had wisely taken to flight at ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... the lieutenant drew an unpleasant picture of the country people, and his wife became so grave at the proposal, that Mr. Andrew said he wanted to marry the lady and not the 'country people,' and if she would have him, there he was. There he was, behaving with a particular and sagacious kindness to the raw lieutenant since Harriet's arrival. If the lieutenant sent her away, Mr. Andrew would infallibly pursue her, and light on a discovery. Twice cursed by Love, twice the victim of tailordom, our excellent ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was a strong, brave, sagacious man, and struggled and fought to the last, but finally in silence he rejoined his silent wife. At about three in the morning, and while the storm was at its height, she turned from the blank window where she stood, with a softened look in her eyes, from which full tides were ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... protocol of the ceremony heedfully expressed it, "not of vassalage." By the king's side stood an Ethiopian slave, recently sent to Richard by Saladin, holding a noble dog in a leash, who watched the ranks with a sagacious look as they passed. King Richard looked more than once at the Nubian and his dog, and at ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... amicable and sagacious management, one of the most extensive provinces of the island was brought into cheerful subjection, and had not the wise policy of the Adelantado been defeated by the excesses of worthless and turbulent men, a large revenue might have been collected, without any recourse to violence ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... convenient intervals. It was unfortunate, in their view, that they could not always be at war; but they recognized that there must be breathing times and that it was important to choose the right moment for massacre and pillage. Daring but sagacious, they followed an opportunist policy. At times their warriors delighted to lurk in the outskirts of Montreal with tomahawk and scalping-knife and to organize great war-parties, such as that {89} which was arrested by Dollard and his heroic companions at the Long Sault in 1660. ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... colors again for his sake,—why, she felt that it was in her nature to make the sacrifice. By a singular coincidence it happened that a gentleman was now living in Rockland who united in himself all these advantages. Who he was, the sagacious reader may very probably have divined. Just to see how it looked, one day, having bolted her door, and drawn the curtains close, and glanced under the sofa, and listened at the keyhole to be sure there was nobody ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... subscription to orthodox formulas? Benedetto is persecuted not by an obviously brutal or sanguinary persecution,—although it might have come to that except for a catastrophe of another sort,—but by the very finesse of persecution. The sagacious politicians of the Vatican, inheritors of the accumulated craft of a thousand years, know too much to break a butterfly on a wheel, to make a martyr of an inconvenient person whom they can be rid of quietly. Therein lies the tragedy of Benedetto's experience, so far at least as we regard him, or ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... has found Friends In the friends of Science, and true pray'r Has flow'd from lips wet with Castalian dews. Such was thy wisdom, Newton, childlike sage! Sagacious reader of the works of God, And in his word sagacious. Such too thine, Milton, whose genius had angelic wings, And fed on manna. And such thine, in whom Our British Themis gloried with just cause, Immortal Hale! for ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, took up his father's work. This young man, likewise able and sagacious, and at every step in his father's confidence, could and did proceed even in detail according to what had been planned. All his father's rights had descended to him; in Maryland he was Proprietary with as ample power as ever ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... in the kitchen, which is on the ground floor, the dogs are usually all put out. There are four of them, three young and not experienced, and this old, sagacious brach hound. He insists on coming in, and, to gain his purpose, tries to have the door opened. Although no person may be coming up the walk, he dashes down it barking, all the others going along too and yelping with him; then he stops, remains a little behind after having got the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... Abbey, we commenced the ascent of Mangerton, a mountain some 2,550 feet high. We were now all mounted on ponies, who were very sagacious and sure-footed, and climbed the rocky, narrow path like goats. We were followed every step of the way by a host of lads and girls, carrying jugs and cups of milk and whisky, which they offered to us at almost every ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... unusually plausible and imaginative yarn it was, when I turned back for possible enlightenment, and found a note to the effect that it was a transcription of an Icelandic saga. Those old fellows knew their business. I am not sagacious enough to guess where Mr. MAURICE HEWLETT has passed beyond transcription to creation, but I can tell you that he offers his readers a very charming and finished piece of work. Boys of all ages should delight in this record of the fights and wanderings ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... conducting a party of pleasure. When a seat is to be surveyed, he has a peculiar talent in selecting some shady bench in the park, where the company may most commodiously refresh themselves with cold tongue, chicken and French rolls; and is very sagacious in discovering what cool temple in the garden will be best adapted for drinking tea, brought for this purpose, in the afternoon, and from which the chaise may be resumed with the greatest convenience. In viewing the house itself, he is principally attracted by the chairs and beds, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... does not, however, give anything like an adequate idea of the number of comets really in existence. When Kepler was asked how many comets he thought there were, he answered: 'As many as there are fishes in the sea.' And modern science seems determined, that the sagacious German shall not be at fault even in this predication. Two or three fresh telescopic comets are now usually found out every year. In 1847, 178 comets were known to be moving in parabolic orbits, and therefore to be in some way permanent connections ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... deep and sagacious observation on the mysteries of human nature, "Men's judgments are a parcel of their fortunes," receive a more striking or melancholy illustration than in the case of Zerubabel Endicott. With his falling fortunes, his judgment and discretion fell also; his mind, maddened by a sense ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... signified its willingness to do. Then began an activity at the North, East and West, such as was never before witnessed. The loyal heart was again aroused by the President's call for troops, and all realized the necessity of a more sagacious policy, and the importance of bringing the war to a close. The lion of the South must be bearded in his lair, and forced to surrender Richmond, the Confederate Capitol, that had already cost the Government millions of dollars, and the North ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... for some unknown reason—and for a time enjoyed the relief from the toil of walking. He became quite cheerful, and was disposed to congratulate himself upon his success, when an unfortunate fit of obstinacy came over Solomon. It dawned upon the sagacious animal that it would be much easier to travel without a load, and, turning his head, he looked thoughtfully at ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... prove that he lacked what is called the ecclesiastical bent of mind. Reading between the lines, one soon discovers that his is not so much a priest as a statesman and philosopher, a student curious in the lore of mankind and of nature—alert, sagacious, discriminating. He tells us, for example, that this legend of the visions and martyrdom of Saint Dodekanus, which he was the first to disentangle from its heterogeneous accretions, was vastly to his liking. Why? Because of its churchly flavour? Not so; ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... examples. Iventure to suggest, therefore, to students of Illumination the study both of the Herald's Art and his Science, as no unimportant part of their preparation for the practice of the Art of Illumination on the principle of the sagacious maxim of a great modern painter, quoted by Mr. RUSKIN in his "Seven Lamps of Architecture"—"Know what you have to ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... her she had resolved to see the boy, and examine him herself; therefore bid her send him up. This wavering in her mistress's temper probably put something into the waiting-gentlewoman's head not necessary to mention to the sagacious reader. ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... the critical spirit, and produced works of little value either for their substance or their literary style, the chroniclers, who told the story of their own times, Villehardouin, Joinville, Froissart, Commines, and others, have bequeathed to us, in living pictures or sagacious studies of events and their causes, some of the chief treasures of the past. History at first, as composed for readers who knew no Latin, was comprised in those chansons de geste which happened ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... the dissatisfaction of the English, who, justly enough, considered themselves sacrificed to the ambition of the queen-mother, Isabella, and of her favorite, Mortimer. But this momentary promise of health and vigor soon passed away, and it became plain to all that the life of this brave and sagacious monarch was drawing rapidly to a close. In expectation of the final event he had given orders to have a magnificent tomb made at Paris; which was brought to Bruges, thence through England into Scotland, and on its arrival erected in the church ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... That sagacious officer's reply was vague. A boy had run up to him crying that a man was lying dead in the street. He had straightway followed the boy, and discovered the stranger. That was all ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... ministry— It would not have seemed stranger, no, nor been More strange to me, as now I estimate, Than what did happen—sober truth, no dream. I saw my wonder of a woman,—laugh, I'm past that!—in Commemoration-week. A plenty have I seen since, fair and foul,— With eyes, too, helped by your sagacious wink; But one to match that marvel—no least trace, Least touch of kinship and community! The end was—I did somehow state the fact, Did, with no matter what imperfect words, One way or other give to understand That woman, soul and body were her slave Would she ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... are many men, and perhaps more women, cautious enough and wise enough to think of this beforehand, and, thinking of it, to guard themselves from the dangerous attractions of casual companions by a composed manner and unenthusiastic conversation. Who does not know the sagacious lady who, after sitting at table with the same gentleman for a month, can say, 'Good-bye, Mr. Jones,' just as though Mr. Jones had been a stranger under her notice but for a day. But others gush out, and when Mr. Jones takes his departure, hardly know how not to throw ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope |
