"Sagacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... barrister now dead and gone said to Dr. Hosack, the same sheet anchor to the advocate which mercury or bark is to the physician), was ready in attack or defence, and possessed great eloquence of expression. As an advocate he showed a sagacity of perception which no intricacy of detail could blind, no suddenness of attack confuse, and which afterwards so distinguished him as a Judge. He was thrown among the leading lawyers; and undaunted as all young lawyers ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... courtesy to him will be the cause of my destruction. Wherefore the folk will think slightly of me and belittle my wit and I shall be of those of whom it is said, 'He whose science excelleth his sense perisheth by his ignorance.'" When the King heard the boy's words, he was assured of his sagacity, and the excellence of his merit was manifest and he was certified that deliverance would betide him and his subjects at the boy's hands. So presently he resumed the colloquy and asked him, "Whence art thou and where is thy home?"; and the boy answered, "This is the wall of our house." The King ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... most to have engaged his love, Langton his respect, and Burke his admiration. The first was conspicuous for wit, liveliness of feelings, and gaiety; the next for rectitude of conduct, piety, and learning; the last for knowledge, sagacity, and eloquence. His praise of Reynolds, that he was the most invulnerable of men, one of whom, if he had a quarrel with him, he should find it the most difficult to say any ill, was praise rather of the negative kind. The younger Warton, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... Esquimos, the dogs are the most interesting subjects in the Arctic regions, and I could tell lots of tales to prove their intelligence and sagacity. These animals, more wolf than dog, have associated themselves with the human beings of this country as have their kin in more congenial places of the earth. Wide head, sharp nose, and pointed ears, thick wiry hair, and, in some of the males, a heavy mane; thick bushy tail, curved ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... view the effectual relief of the reduced or neglected, the planting of a Colony, and the promotion of its progressive improvement and welfare, it is the appropriate praise of the founder of Georgia, that, with a sagacity and foresight which are never sufficiently to be admired, a zeal and fortitude never exceeded, and a devotedness to the object which never relaxed, he commenced and carried ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... fortunate in her large minded trustees, fortunate in the loyal devotedness of her faculty and supremely fortunate has our College been in the consecrated creative genius of her illustrious president. Bringing to his task a noble ideal, with rare sagacity as an administrator; with financial and economic skill rarely found in a scholar and idealist, but necessary to foster into fullest fruitfulness the slender pecuniary resources then at hand; with tact and suavity which made President ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... trusted him absolutely; but only because she had long since proved him. He on his part yielded her the deepest respect, both for her sagacity in business and for the fine self-command with which she, an actress of obscure birth, had put the stage behind her, assumed her rank, and borne it through all these years with something more than adequacy. ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... suspicious of some direful project being hidden beneath assumed insanity, he tried by different stratagems to penetrate the truth. One of these was to draw him into a confidential interview with a young damsel, who had been the companion of his infancy; but Hamlet's sagacity, and the timely caution of his intimate friend, frustrated this design. In these two persons we may recognise the Ophelia and Horatio of Shakspeare. A second plot was attended with equal want of success. It was concerted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... with all Mad. de 's friends who were yet at liberty, and finding no one willing to make an effort in her behalf, for fear of involving themselves, he discovered an old acquaintance in the "femme de chambre" of one of Fleury's mistresses.— This, for one of Fleury's sagacity, was a spring to have set the whole Convention in a ferment; and in a few days he profited so well by this female patronage, as to obtain an order for transferring us hither. On our arrival, we were informed, as usual, that the house was already full, and ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... "Mully of Mountown," a poem; by which, though fanciful readers in the pride of sagacity have given it a poetical interpretation, was meant originally no more than it expressed, as it was dictated only by the author's delight in ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... said Bruce, in a tense voice. Unwillingly she advanced, picking her steps with cat-like sagacity. Once her foot went through, Bruce pulled her up with hands that did not tremble. The next moment she was scrambling up the opposite bank. Glancing back, Bruce saw the ice parting in her footprints and the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to be effected; but the former would scarcely have been a Cecil had he not also read his royal master. His Majesty must have the matter so communicated to him that he should be able to believe that his own supernatural sagacity had solved a mystery impenetrable to the commonplace brains of the Lords of the Council. It might be reasonably anticipated that such a warning should be no mystery to the son of Lord Darnley—that his thoughts would fly rapidly to that house ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... of fair conference and equitable settlement of disputed claims, he possessed himself of their persons, and had them strangled—two upon December 31, and two upon January 18, 1503. Of all Cesare's actions, this was the most splendid for its successful combination of sagacity and policy in the hour of peril, of persuasive diplomacy, and of ruthless decision when the time ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... favourite dog of the Poet's, a bull terrier of extraordinary sagacity. He is introduced in Raeburn's portrait of Sir Walter ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... was one Antonello da Messina, a person of good and lively intelligence, of great sagacity, and skilled in his profession, who, having studied design for many years in Rome, had first retired to Palermo, where he had worked for many years, and finally to his native place, Messina, where he had confirmed by his works the good opinion that his countrymen had of his excellent ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... encouragement of white laborers, and hinting at the ultimate abolition of slavery "if it should ever be thought desirable." More boldly still, a pamphlet appeared in Charleston, under the signature of "Achates," arguing with remarkable sagacity and force against the whole system of slave-labor in towns; and proposing that all slaves in Charleston should be sold or transferred to the plantations, and their places supplied by white labor. It is interesting to ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... present themselves to Hugh Morgan for solution from time to time, as he pursued his onward way; but it can be set down as certain that a lad of his sagacity and determination was bound to attain his goal, once he ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... sagacity the founders of the American Republic reared, without prototype or precedent, its solid walls and stately columns on the broad basis of human equality, and of certain inalienable rights, such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, to which they declared all men entitled. Deep ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... 'published by authoritie for the suppression of false reports, ymprinted at London by Christopher Barker, her Highness's Printer.' Writer after writer exulted in the fact, and was loud in the praises of the sagacity and wisdom of Burleigh, under whose direction it was supposed to have been issued. But unfortunately for antiquaries and literati, the matter was carefully investigated by Mr. Watts, of the British Museum, and he pronounced on unquestionable evidence the copies of the English ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... display a cautious temperament, and evince deep acquaintance with human nature; you see through my little veil of mystery, and I own your sagacity; now I will be honest with you—with a man like you, lying is mere folly. It is true, I am to have four hundred dollars if I can find out where you have been. I swear to you by the holy Virgin of Guadalupe, I am making a clean breast of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... subsistence and clothing. His labor had no compensation, and his balance-sheet at the end of the month or year was the same, whether he had been idle or industrious. It was plainly to his personal interest to do nothing he could in any way avoid. The negro displayed his sagacity by deceiving the overseer whenever he could do so. The best white man in the world would have shunned all labor under such circumstances. The negro evinced a pardonable weakness in pretending to be ill whenever he could hope to make ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... Quin, Mrs. Clive, Mr. Cibber, Sir Charles Pomander, Mrs. Woffington, and Messrs. Soaper and Snarl, critics of the day. This pair, with wonderful sagacity, had arrived from the street as the haunch came from the kitchen. Good-humor reigned; some cuts passed, but as the parties professed wit, ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... Dick, I have read of the same; and these wolves, being of the canine breed, and having the properties of blood-hounds, no doubt are possess'd of a more acute sense of smelling, more reason, instinct, sagacity, or what shall I call it? than all other brutes. It might have been a piece of cunning of theirs, peculiar to them, to make themselves pass for shepherds, and decoy our flocks; for, as you know, Dick, all our shepherds both play and sing Yankee Doodle, our sheep ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... shelter and repose to the whole family of man. These things are most remarkable about this memorable trans-migration of one faith into another, of an imperfect into a perfect religion, viz., that the early stage had but a slight resemblance to the latter, nor could have prefigured it to a human sagacity more than a larva could prefigure a chrysalis; and, secondly, that whereas the product, viz., Christianity, never has been nor will be in any danger of ruin, the germ, viz., the Judaic idea of God, the great radiation through which the Deity kept open His communication with man, apparently must ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... a grant of land possessed of rare and diversified natural beauty, extreme fertility, mineral wealth and richness of all kinds, but he showed great sagacity in encouraging ambitious men of education and affluence, and artisans of skill and taste in many lines, to colonize it. To these facts are due the quick prosperity which came to Philadelphia and which has made it to this day one of the foremost manufacturing ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... the yard-arm, where they sit laughing, though the spar be more than half sprung through, they accomplish their purpose of shaming the others into greater exertions. It is well known that one of the ablest, if not the very ablest, of the distinguished men whom the penetrating sagacity of Nelson discovered and brought forward, owed his first introduction to the notice of that wonderful commander by an exploit of ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... the professors year after year, course after course, the interlarded witticisms included. The high ministry of education becomes with many, an ordinary trade; nor need the students be endowed with great sagacity to find this out. Furthermore, tradition regarding University life sees to it that the young folks do not take their years of study too seriously, and many a youth, who would take them seriously, is repelled by the pedantic ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... you to throw your selves upon the mercies of your stockholders. Stockholders are hard-hearted people. Each one of you will, in case this matter is discovered, find his financial credit and his reputation for sagacity much impaired; and, besides this, there will be incurred the dangers of a 'run' upon you, to say nothing of the actual loss to the institution, which will have to be made good to the last dollar. But let us see if we cannot ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... thirty-four years since he carefully described and figured the coin-shaped bodies, or larger sacs, as I have called them, in a note appended to the famous paper "On the Coalbrookdale Coal-Field," published at that time, by the present President of the Geological Society, Mr. Prestwich. With much sagacity, Professor Morris divined the real nature of these bodies, and boldly affirmed them to be the spore-cases of a plant allied ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Man's sagacity No less than ours, O tribes in treen! Men know but little more than we How happy days ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... the huge mattress itself, and here, he finally concluded, must of necessity be the solution. The surface of the mattress he knew to be unbroken; nevertheless the book was there. He had recently stimulated his deductive powers with a narrative of French journalistic sagacity in a similar case; and he applied French reasoning. The ledger existed. It was somewhere in the room. He had searched everything except the interior of the mattress. The ledger was in ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... organized. At first a share in a company represented a running foot on the lode's length. In 1871, Mr. Cornelius O'Connor bought ten shares of Consolidated Virginia at eight dollars a share. When it had been divided into one thousand shares and he was offered $680 a share, he had the sagacity to sell, realizing a profit of $679,920 on his investment of $80. At the time he sold, a share represented one-fourteenth of an inch. In six years the bonanza yielded $104,000,000, of which ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... really noble proportions, a certain disreputable white man fastened upon him an epithet. Putting down with a shaking hand a long glass emptied of its contents—paid for by Heyst—he said, with that deliberate sagacity which no mere ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... self-deception, the half self-conscious hypocrisy towards ourselves, with which even noble minds attempt to disguise the almost inevitable influence of selfish motives in human nature. This secret irony of the characterization commands admiration as the profound abyss of acuteness and sagacity; but it is the grave of enthusiasm. We arrive at it only after we have had the misfortune to see human nature through and through; and when no choice remains but to adopt the melancholy truth, that "no virtue or greatness is altogether pure and genuine," or the dangerous error that "the highest ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... this disaster, the British generals in Northern Afghanistan formed a decision commendable alike for its boldness and its sagacity. They decided to despatch at once all available troops from Cabul to the relief of the beleaguered garrison at Candahar. General Sir Frederick Roberts had handed over the command at Cabul to Sir Donald Stewart, and ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... much; but it is yet more, when you have fully achieved the superiority which is due to you, and acquired the wealth which is the fitting reward of your sagacity, if you solemnly accept the responsibility of it, as it is the helm and guide of labor far and near. For you who have it in your hands, are in reality the pilots of the power and effort of the State. It is entrusted to you as an authority to be used ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... imperfect drainage are sapping the health; and the occupation of the suburbs by houses, manufactories, workshops, and stores, is destroying the beauty of the city. Will the merchants of Boston, whose reputation for intelligence, sagacity, and enterprise has gone out to the ends of the world, permit a false economy to blind them to the ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... society. The elephant and the beaver show the greatest signs of this when united; but when man intrudes into their communities they lose all their spirit of industry and testify but a very small share of that sagacity for which, when in a social state, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... of Shakespeare's Plays came from the personality, the inmost, secretest life, of the man Shakespeare. We might, with the most alert sagacity, note and tabulate and aggregate his myriad phenomenal merits as a dramatic writer, but we might still be very far from that something back of them all, or rather that IMMANENT something, that mystery of personality, that ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... word "officers," the Major drew back his hand, and hastily apologised. He did not understand us even then, I could plainly see; but he had sufficient sagacity to understand that his money would not be accepted. We were invited to sit ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... fool! He was without sense. Such was her brilliant and godlike husband, the man who had given her the right to call herself a married woman! He was a fool. With all her ignorance of the world she could see that nobody but an arrant imbecile could have brought her to the present pass. Her native sagacity revolted. Gusts of feeling came over her in which she could have thrashed him into ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... embarrassed me very much; but, I, you see, do not believe on principle. Just as others begin by believing, I begin by doubting; and when I don't at all understand, I continue to deny that there can be any telegraphic communication between souls, certain that my own sagacity will be enough to explain it. Well, I have gone on inquiring into the matter, and I have ended, by dint of questioning all the wives of the absent seamen, in convincing myself that not a week passed ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... is a log hut, built by the wayside, and the "schoolmarm" is not a pretentious person. But, what the school cannot supply, a long line of intelligent, independent ancestors have supplied, robust, common sense and sagacity. ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... the lion seeking shelter in so unusual a place; but it showed his sagacity. There was no other cover within convenient distance, and to have reached any bush that would have afforded him concealment, since the passage of the locusts, would have been difficult. The mounted hunters could easily have overtaken him, had he attempted to run off. He was aware that ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... any of these senses or faculties; and thus by appropriate cases to shew the difference between;— 1. a man having lost his reason but not his senses or understanding—that is, when he sees things as other men see them,—adapts means to ends as other men would adapt them, and not seldom, with more sagacity,—but his final end is altogether irrational: 2. his having lost his wits, that is, his understanding or judicial power; but not his reason or the use of his senses,—(such was Don Quixote; and, therefore, we love and reverence him, while we despise Hudibras): 3. his being out of his senses, as ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... business at the lead mine, I consented to wait until his return. Wanting amusement, I engaged in hunting. Among other game I wounded a parrot, an uncommonly handsome bird, with rich plumage. It appeared to possess all the sagacity of the tame parrot. When it was first wounded it made every effort to defend itself, but after remaining a captive for a short time it appeared pleased with every kind attention, as do the domesticated parrots of the ...
— Narrative of Richard Lee Mason in the Pioneer West, 1819 • Richard Lee Mason
... anticipating great danger if he should turn the points, determined on the instant upon letting the train take its course, and not turning them. Most fortunate was it that he exercised so much judgment and sagacity, for, in consequence of the acuteness of the curve at Warrington junction and the tremendous rate at which the train was proceeding—not less than forty miles an hour—it does not appear that anything could ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... Her fur, very long and thick, was of a cloudy brown; and the black rings on her gray tail stood out sharply in the moonlight. Both in expression and in movement, she showed that strange mixture of gaiety, ferocity, mischievousness, and confident sagacity, which makes the raccoon unlike in character to all the other ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... States and Spain have been more than a year suspended. I shall, on any proper occasion that may occur, renew the conciliatory recommendations which have been already made. Brazil, with enlightened sagacity and comprehensive statesmanship, has opened the great channels of the Amazon and its tributaries to universal commerce. One thing more seems needful to assure a rapid and cheering progress in South America. I refer to those peaceful habits ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... to excite the notice of an attentive observer; the sagacity and ingenuity they display in their buildings, their industry, and the plunder and devastation they commit, is incredible to those who have not witnessed their communities and empires. They are divided into innumerable ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... arrangement which is "singular" in the strictest sense of that word, English inquirers need not concern themselves. The broad outlines of the Dual system, invented by the ingenuity of Deak, and accepted under the stress of necessity by the sagacity of the Emperor, may, for our present purpose, be roughly sketched in short, and it is hoped ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... pounder of drugs, delirious from smallness of profits—but it is the sober, deliberate, and systematic scheme of a man to whom the public safety is entrusted, and whose appointment is considered by many as a masterpiece of political sagacity." ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... utterly conscienceless. She had known all this; and yet, in her proud, youthful confidence, and in her need, every hour more desperate and urgent, to know the truth, she had dared risk herself with him. Withal, the man was shrewd and observant and had divined her mental condition with remarkable sagacity. She had failed with him; but the girl now knew that she could never rest till she found an answer to her questions. She MUST kill this suspicion that ate into her so. She thought tenderly of her uncle's goodness to her, clung with despairing faith to the last of her ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... assume that at the end of the war, as at the beginning, Mr. Asquith will control the foolish, and that common sense will prevail in the Cabinet when a treaty is the subject of converse. Still further, I will assume that, contrary to nearly all precedent, the collective sagacity of the Ministry has not been impaired, and its self-conceit perilously tickled, by the long exercise of absolute power in face of a Parliament of poltroons. And, lastly, I will abandon my old argument that the discussion of peace terms might shorten ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... old Catch—my dog—whom I had so loved, had died in my absence; not from old age, for he was but young, having only seen his fifth birthday; but, "full of honours," as every one liked him and respected him who knew of his sagacity and faithfulness, and saw his honest brown eyes and ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Forsyteism. For it is written that a Forsyte shall not love beauty more than reason; nor his own way more than his own health. And something beat within him in these days that with each throb fretted at the thinning shell. His sagacity knew this, but it knew too that he could not stop that beating, nor would if he could. And yet, if you had told him he was living on his capital, he would have stared you down. No, no; a man did ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... forecastle, and, wonder upon wonder! the cooking apparatus with its moveable jack, and its particular copper for hot water,—all these things, and a thousand others too minute to tell, acted so impressively on their minds, that I could hear them extolling, in barbarous grammar, to the cook the singular sagacity of an English mechanic, and the collective greatness of the English nation. They remained on board nearly three hours; and, after conversing with R——, P——, and myself as well as they could, they presented each of us with their ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... some faint idea may be formed from our sketch and extracts; but of the beauty of his thoughts, his soundness, sagacity, the perfect simplicity of his whole style of character, a large acquaintance with his free outpourings to his friends can alone give an adequate notion. We regard them as among the very best private letters we know—of their kind, we mean—for ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... Monmouth Judge [Mr. Breese] on the birth of a grandson.... As to the child, I saw him asleep, so can say nothing of his eye or his genius peeing through it. He may have the sagacity of a Jewish rabbi, or the profundity of a Calvin, or the sublimity of a Homer for aught I know. But time will show forth ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... et les alarmes, Discerner les attraits, les appas et les charmes.'] Such were originally 'discernment' and 'discretion,' and such in great measure they are still. And in words is a material ever at hand on which to train the spirit to a skilfulness in this; on which to exercise its sagacity through the habit of distinguishing there where it would be so easy to confound. [Footnote: I will suggest here a few pairs or larger groups of words on which those who are willing to exercise themselves in the distinction of synonyms might perhaps profitably exercise their skill;—'fame,' 'popularity,' ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... his business with rare sagacity, with unblemished integrity, and with an eye to the welfare of his employees, as well as to his own personal interests. If it were not like praising a man to his face, since he still lives, many instances might be cited to prove that it has not been his policy ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... the consumption of the Court, and for the religious festivals and sacrifices. But these were only the males, as no female was allowed to be killed. The regulations for the care and breeding of these flocks were prescribed with the greatest minuteness, and with a sagacity which excited the admiration of the Spaniards, who were familiar with the management of the great migratory flocks of merinos ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... itself rather in the outlining of matters relating to organization and broad policy with a sagacity arising from a shrewd perception and appreciation of general business requirements and conditions, to which should be added his intensely comprehensive grasp of manufacturing possibilities and details, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... constantly of the work in the southern hills. Truedale was, indeed, a strong if silent and unsuspected force there. As once he had been an unknown quantity, so he remained; but the work went on, supervised by Jim White, who used with sagacity and cleverness the ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... living in it, see how comparatively meagre and superficial his "wise saws" are compared with the counsel that Polonius gives to his son and to his daughter, and to the King and Queen; although Polonius, with all his sagacity, is garrulous and a bore; in Hamlet's words, a tedious old fool. As to Hamlet's character, Shakespeare did not mean it to be altogether admirable or otherwise, but simply to be Hamlet—a perfectly natural and not very uncommon man, although he expresses natural and not uncommon ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... burnish'd, he so ply'd the gate, As to content me well. 'Whenever one Faileth of these, that in the keyhole straight It turn not, to this alley then expect Access in vain.' Such were the words he spake, 'One is more precious; but the other needs Skill and sagacity, large share of each, Ere its good task to disengage the knot Be worthily perform'd. From Peter these I hold, of him instructed, that I err Rather in opening than in keeping fast, So but the suppliant at my feet implore.' Then of that hallow'd ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... did wrong, like a very elderly man, and like one abundantly able to understand what was fit to be done; and what he found they had well done, he observed all the country over, and imitated the same. And thus he acted in following the wisdom and sagacity of his own nature, and in compliance with the advice and instruction of the elders; for by following the laws it was that he succeeded so well in the order of his government, and in piety with regard to the Divine worship. And this happened because the transgressions ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... But of what consequence is the subject? Is it not the idea which is developed through it, the emotion with which it vibrates, which expands, elevates and ennobles it? What tender melancholy, what subtlety, what sagacity in the master-pieces of La Fontaine, although the subjects are so familiar, the titles so modest? Equally unassuming are the titles and subjects of the Studies and Preludes; yet the compositions of Chopin, so modestly named, are not the less types of perfection ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... Cossack, or Republican." So prophesied the most sagacious of modern politicians, by the inspiration of genius, calculating the prospects of the future by the light of his past experience. This prediction of Napoleon's is a very fair specimen of the oracles of human sagacity; which always overlooks the most stupendous facts—such as the conversion of an empire—and the commonest experiences—such as the birth of a brace of conflicting twins from the womb of the Rachel of ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... to his partial biographer, recommended the Cardinal of Geneva, were rather those of a successor to John Hawkwood or to a duke of Milan, than of the apostles. Extraordinary activity of body and endurance of fatigue, courage which would hazard his life to put down the intrusive pope, sagacity and experience in the temporal affairs of the Church; high birth, through which he was allied with most of the royal and princely houses of Europe; of austerity, devotion, learning, holiness, charity, not a word. He took the name of Clement VII; the Italians bitterly taunted ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the sagacity of the horses, who seemed, with human intelligence, to divine our approach to the spot where their toils were to cease. While still remote from the point of woods which foretold a halt, they pricked up their ears, accelerated their pace, and finally arrived ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... and his mind all in a whirl as to what he should say; for Mr. Carden's sagacity terrified him, and the worst of it was, he felt sure that ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... subject I have learned the following particulars. There was a certain spirit above my head who spoke with me, and from the tone of his voice he was apperceived to be as it were in a state of sleep. In this state he spoke many things, and with a sagacity (prudentia) that he could not have surpassed when awake. It was given me to perceive that he was a subject through whom angels spoke, and that in that state he apperceived [their speech] and produced it[ll]; for he spoke nothing but what was true; if anything ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... devotion and appreciation from all parties and all sections of the country. Every leading statesman among her councillors dwelt on the extraordinary penetration of her mind, her wide political knowledge, her great practical sagacity, her grasp of principle, and they combined to acclaim her as the most trusted of all the constitutional monarchs whom the world had then seen. How could she be all that they justly claimed for her, if the whole female sex laboured under the disabilities which, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... the money was missing. I at once desired him to be seated, and proceeded to ask him certain questions, in a chatty way, about the habits of his household, the amount lost, and the like, expecting thus to get some clew which would enable me to make my spirits display the requisite share of sagacity in pointing out the thief. I learned readily that he was an old and wealthy man, a little close too, I suspected; and that he lived in a large house, with but two servants, and an only son about twenty-one years old. The servants ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... is a mysterious bank robbery, which fills the community with excitement. There is likewise a flood on the river; and through all this whirl of events the young telegraph messenger exhibits a pluck and sagacity sure to win the admiration and approval ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... in his book. For once, however, the narrative failed to entertain him. Beautiful spies lavished their witchery in vain; the sagacity of the hero ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... was wise. She had the sagacity which comes from great tenderness and loyalty, combined with a passionate nature. In such a woman's soul there is sometimes an almost supernatural instinct. She will detect danger and devise safety with a ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... religion is of the highest necessity to man and society, infinitely more important than political freedom and social well-being, I am unable to conceive how the Catholic party, under the circumstances, could well have acted differently. Their error was in their want of vigilance and sagacity in the beginning, in suffering the political Caesarism to revive and consolidate itself in the State, or the sovereigns, in the outset, to force upon the Catholic world so false an issue, or to place them ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... devours the pollen greedily from the pyrethrum, which, as we know, will prove fatal to him, it becomes clear at once that flies have no more innate sagacity than men. When we listen to a conservative orator defending the past with salvos of rhetorical fireworks, we are overwhelmed by a realization of the ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... extensive observations of the Crypt and other parts of the Minster during the restoration, which gave him opportunities for investigation now impossible. He also brought to these observations a learning and sagacity probably greater than those of any other writer on English Gothic Architecture, and his little book remains the standard work on the history of ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... Solon's sagacity ran round, and some one asked what could be done in such a case to stop the ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... Sir Alexander Campbell was John Henry Pope, sometime minister of Agriculture and later of Railways and Canals. Pope was a man of small education and less culture, but of great natural ability, and was {152} gifted with remarkable political sagacity. Macdonald used to say that Pope could have been anything he desired had he only received a good education in his youth. He added that he had never known Pope's judgment to be at fault. In times of stress and difficulty ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... gallery, had made several years previously an ineffectual attempt to set on foot a project for the recovery of the lost treasure. Here was a new vein of inquiry, which Mr. Wilde followed up with his usual energy and sagacity. He soon satisfied himself, by reference to Vasari, and to the still more ancient and decisive authority of Filippo Villari, who lived shortly after the poet, that Giotto, the friend and contemporary ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... that the courtier was a man of stamina and ability, and began to consult him on matters of state. Don Sebastian opined that the pleasure of the prince must always come before the welfare of the nation, and the king was so impressed with his sagacity that one day he asked his opinion on a question of precedence—to the indignation of the most famous councillors in ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... didn't stop to smell weather," admitted the master, bracing himself to meet a fresh list of the heeling Polly. He evidently felt that he ought to defend his own sagacity and absolve himself from ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... had a great dancing-man among us, an art in which the chief in his sagacity must be aware the Dutch did not excel, and he hinted that not only to the dancing-man but to the rest of us some food would be very acceptable. The Rajah in reply told him, if we would sit down, our wants should soon be supplied. By this time the messes over the ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... fortresses which impeded his marches, we are amazed at his skill and intrepidity, to say nothing of his battles with forces ten times more numerous than his own. His fertility of resources, his lightning rapidity of movement, his sagacity and insight, his perfection of discipline, his careful husbandry of forces, his ceaseless diligence, his intrepid courage, the confidence with which he inspired his soldiers, his brilliant successes (victory after victory), with the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... perfect than themselves, till they produce a sexual progeny, or flowers. To which may be added, the rapid improvement of our domesticated dogs, horses, rabbits, pigeons, which improve in size, or in swiftness, or in the sagacity of the sense of smell, or in colour, or other properties, by ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... point in the logic of Mr. Freeman was, that other professions also acquire property without paying an equivalent, and therefore gamblers were not criminal! We marvelled that a man of his sagacity should venture on so gross a sophism. He alluded to speculators and stock-jobbers, who gained their thousands without an exchange of values, and exulted that the gambler was no worse. But could this make the gambler an honest man, because other men were rogues? How desperate ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... but only perceptibly drunkish; raised into a kind of cloudy narcotic Olympus, and opaquely superior to the ills of life; in which state he walks uncomplainingly to bed. Government, when it can by any art be avoided, he rarely meddles with; shows a rugged sagacity, where he does and must meddle: consigns it to Walpole in dog-latin,—laughs at his "MENTIRIS." This is the First George; first triumph of the Constitutional Principle, which has since gone to such sublime heights among us,—heights which we at last begin to suspect ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... President Pierce, written by his friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne, before me, I can appreciate his ability, integrity and agreeable social qualities, and only regret that he was President of the United States at a time when the sagacity of a Jefferson, the determined courage of a Jackson, or the shrewdness and wisdom of a Lincoln, were needed to meet the difficulties and dangers which he ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the whole human species, and which are confined to the contrivance of means to relieve those wants, may well be supposed to bear a strong resemblance, without warranting the conclusion, that they who use them have copied each other, or have derived them from one common source; human sagacity being the same every where, and the means adapted to the relief of any particular natural want, especially in countries similarly uncultivated, being but few. Thus the most distant tribes, as widely separated as the Kamtschadales are ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... of Normandy on the fall of Chateau Gaillard at a later time proved Richard's foresight; but foresight and sagacity were mingled in him with a brutal violence and a callous indifference to honour. "I would take it, were its walls of iron," Philip exclaimed in wrath as he saw the fortress rise. "I would hold it, ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... trusty information of the intentions or the movements of the British army. Information was imperatively necessary to save us from destruction, and it could only be obtained by one skilled in military and scientific knowledge and a good draughtsman, a man of quick eye, cool head, tact, sagacity, and courage, and one whose judgment and fidelity could be trusted. Washington applied to Lieutenant-Colonel Knowlton, who summoned a conference of officers in the name of the commander-in-chief, and laid the matter before them. No one was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... foulness pleases us, and rests the soul. When one has passed one's time in enduring upon earth the spectacle of the great airs which reasons of state, the oath, political sagacity, human justice, professional probity, the austerities of situation, incorruptible robes all assume, it solaces one to enter a sewer and to behold ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Readily accepting the cue of informality, they grew communicative, and told of the troubles they had encountered in launching the gigantic combination, joking over the obstacles that had threatened to wreck it, and complimenting each other upon their persistence and sagacity. ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... these, on account of his extraordinary sagacity and fierceness, received the full allowance of a soldier. His name ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... of his spirit had compelled him, more than once since his departure, to regret that he had not invited Mrs. Melmoth to a share in the adventure; this being an occasion where her firmness, decision, and confident sagacity—which made her a sort of domestic hedgehog—would have been peculiarly appropriate. In the absence of such a counsellor, even Edward Walcott—young as he was, and indiscreet as the doctor thought him—was a substitute not to be despised; ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... discreet and tactful, dropped the subject. Not so with the men. They rolled the idea about until it grew into immense proportions. A week passed, and yet they talked. If there had been one among them fitted to lead, there would have been open trouble. There was no one. Bruno had daring and sagacity enough, but he was an Italian—a Dago, in common parlance, and the Slavs and Poles hated the Dagos worse than they hated ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... sidewise down the aisle as he always walked when he was excited. Chillingworth was a good sort at heart, too; but given, as the bishop had once said of some one else, to spending right royally a deal of sagacity under the obvious impression that this is ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... existence of some such perturbation had not escaped the sagacity of Newton, and he mentions something about it in the Principia, but thinks it too small to be detected by observation. He was thinking, however, of a solar disturbance rather than a lunar one, and this is certainly very small, though it, too, ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... campaign by which Japan had her secret treaty with China hall-marked by the puritanical President of the United States, whose sense of morality could not brook the secret treaties concluded by Italy and Rumania with the Greater and Greatest Powers of Europe. Again, it was with statesman-like sagacity that the Japanese judged the Russian situation and made the best of it—first, shortly before the invitation to Prinkipo, and, later, before the celebrated eight questions were submitted to Admiral Kolchak. I was especially struck by an occurrence, trivial in appearance, which demonstrated ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Lea stands aloft, in his own domain, as an accumulator, his credit as a judge of testimony is nearly as high. The deciding test of his critical sagacity is the masterly treatment of the case against the Templars. They were condemned without mercy, by Church and State, by priest and jurist, and down to the present day cautious examiners of evidence, like Prutz and ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... here and there. This entire hypothesis is the most important in the domain of literary studies that antiquity has exhibited; and the acknowledgment of the dissemination of the Homeric poems by word of mouth, as opposed to the habits of a book-learned age, shows in particular a depth of ancient sagacity worthy of our admiration. From those times until the generation that produced Friedrich August Wolf we must take a jump over a long historical vacuum; but in our own age we find the argument left ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Discreet play with her eyelids in our encounters Dogmatic arrogance of a just but ignorant man Excellent is pride; but oh! be sure of its foundations Faith works miracles. At least it allows time for them Habit of antedating his sagacity He clearly could not learn from misfortune He thinks or he chews He would neither retort nor defend himself He whipped himself up to one of his oratorical frenzies He put no question to anybody I can't think brisk out of my breeches I can pay clever gentlemen for doing Greek ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... administration of the Admiralty in Pitt's Government was distinguished by his selection of Nelson as the admiral to frustrate the schemes of the French in sea warfare; and it stands as an additional tribute to his sagacity that he at once recognised Flinders to be the right man to maintain the prowess of British ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... violation of his promises, in order to make himself supreme.] I shudder, and it may seem a duty to hate him. Yet I am bound to say, not only has he been wholly faithful to us, but every time I have been closeted with him I have come away with a higher opinion, not only of his talents and sagacity, but also of his morals." The italics are mine. It seems difficult for the outsider to-day quite to sign to this point of view, when one remembers Louis Napoleon's deception and his broken honour and cruelty. There is a very enlightening ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... member. The first commenced on the 12th of October, 1784. He was in the house only a small portion of the time, and never interfered in what might be considered the ordinary business of the day. On great questions he took an active and decided part. His character for sagacity, discrimination, and firmness, was well established; and he would, therefore, have possessed great influence, if such had been his object; but his ambition, at this time, was not political; or, if it was, he had determined to smother it "until ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... coerced and not won. We are not insensible to the nature of the ties which bind a partisan to his leader. Their relative strength or weakness are the tests of the personal excellence of the latter—of the regard which his talents inspire—of the veneration which his sagacity commands. Strong indeed must be the necessity which on any occasion can unloose them; nor can it, in the ordinary case, arise except from the fault of the leader. For the leader and the follower, if we consider the matter rightly, are ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... He fixed upon Dr. Thompson, and the letter in which he wrote to the Doctor to prepare for becoming a witness was the beginning of a ten years' copious correspondence, the first in a series of many hundreds of very lengthy letters, in which Mr. Childs, with great shrewdness, sagacity, and vigour, and with perfect confidence of always being in the right, acted as universal censor, pronouncing oracularly upon all ecclesiastical and political men and organs, expressing unqualified contempt for the House of Lords, and very ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... frequently in the course of our history virtues are forsaken during long periods, when it seems that the entire race is hopelessly abased. The mass perceives too late in rare individuals certain wasted talents—treasures of sagacity, spiritual vigor, heroic and almost supernatural comprehension. Such men are prodigious exceptions in times of material decadence and mental laxness. They inherit all the qualities that have long since ceased ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... himself of two such colleagues as Callistratus and Chabrias—the former a popular orator but no great friend of himself politically, (18) the other a man of high military reputation. Either he looked upon them as men of unusual sagacity, and wished to profit by their advice, in which case I commend the good sense of the arrangement, or they were, in his belief, antagonists, in which case the determination to approve himself a consummate general, neither indolent nor incautious, was bold, I ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... language. "There was in my pet greyhound 'Brenda,' there was in my dear lurcher 'Smoker,' and there is now in my dear lurcher 'Bar,' and in my three setters 'Chance,' 'Quail,' and 'Quince,' a refinement of feeling and sagacity infinitely beyond that existing in multitudes of the human race, whether inhabiting the deserts or ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... the dog you saw on the carpet, in the Lodge? A. The dog of the stranger, through whose sagacity Akirop ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... no time in lifting our canoe into the water and getting on board. Bouncer, observing the careful way in which we stepped into our canoe, imitated our example, his sagacity showing him that if he were to leap on the gunwale he ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... mother, who was sitting there, and to whom all the affairs of the bank were confided. For over thirty years this woman had given, to her husband first and then to her sons, such proofs of business sagacity that she had long been a managing partner in the ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... sentences of my own, and garnished with the usual formularies, was actually printed and laid before the Lords of Session[578], but without success. My respected friend Lord Hailes, however, one of that honourable body, had critical sagacity enough to discover a more than ordinary hand in the Petition. I told him Dr. Johnson had favoured me with his pen. His Lordship, with wonderful acumen, pointed out exactly where his composition began, and where it ended[579]. But that I may do impartial ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... essay in which these words appear could for a moment misconceive their author's meaning. He is vindicating natural theology from the objections of some of its opponents, and in the course of his argument he takes occasion to dwell on the wonderful instincts, and almost rational sagacity of the inferior animals. We must, however, lament that, although he does full justice to the 'half-reasoning elephant,' to the aptitude and fidelity of the dog, to the marvellous economical arrangements of the bees, and even ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... advertise throughout the country the goods that he manufactures, but send nothing except rubbish. The "original Doctor Jacobs" excoriates unmercifully the whole tribe of swindlers whose rascalities debauch and bring odium upon the trade. He exhorts the gentleman of great reputed "shrewdness and sagacity" to observe the utmost caution in conducting operations, and gives him explicit directions ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... HORSE is the noblest of quadrupeds, whether we view him in his strength, his sagacity, or his beauty. He is also the most useful to man of all the animal creation; but his delicacy is equal to his power and usefulness. No other animal, probably, is so dependent on man in the state of domestication to which he has been reduced, or deteriorates so rapidly under exposure, bad feeding, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... foreign yoke, take service under their conquerors, become soldiers, custom-officers, police, men of business, attaches, statesmen, working their way up from the ranks and from the masses into influence and power; but, whether from skill in the Saracens, or from far-reaching sagacity in the Turks (and it is difficult to assign it to either cause), so it was, that a process of this nature followed close upon the Mahometan conquest of Sogdiana. It is to be traced in detail to a variety of accidents. Many of the Turks ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... person's situation in life, his success in his undertakings depends not more, after all, upon his own personal ability to do what is required to be done, than it does upon his sagacity and the soundness of his judgment in selecting the proper persons to co-operate with him and assist him in doing it. In all great enterprises undertaken by men, it is only a very small part which they can execute with their own hands, and multitudes of most excellently ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... simple and plain way (such as reason teacheth and proveth things by), which by a pretty surprising uncouthness in conceit or expression doth affect and amuse the fancy, stirring in it some wonder, and breeding some delight thereto. It raiseth admiration, as signifying a nimble sagacity of apprehension, a special felicity of invention, a vivacity of spirit, and reach of wit more than vulgar: it seeming to argue a rare quickness of parts, that one can fetch in remote conceits applicable; a notable skill, that he can dexterously ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... him with cat-like patience and hound-like sagacity, and seeing he had forgotten his cigar-case, he instantly produced a box. Mike helped himself without daring to ask where the cigars came from, nor did he comment on their fragrance. He smoked in discomfort; the presence of the servant irritated ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... through the hot summer Miss Anthony remained at her post in Cooper Institute, scattering her letters far and wide, pushing into the field every woman who was willing to work, sending out lecturers to stir up the people, directing affairs with the sagacity of an experienced general, sparing no one who could be pressed into service, and herself least of all. On July 15, during the New York Draft Riots, she writes home: "These are terrible times. The Colored Orphan Asylum which was burned was ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... a collision between Russian and Afghan troops at Panjdeh, over a disputed point in the demarcation of the north-western frontier of Afghanistan. Abdur Rahman's attitude at this critical juncture is a good example of his political sagacity. To one who had been a man of war from his youth up, who had won and lost many fights, the rout of a detachment and the forcible seizure of some debateable frontier lands was an untoward incident; but it was no sufficent reason for ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... concerning the wonderful performances of the trained animals. The Old Dear said that some of them had as much sense as human beings, and the manner with which he made this statement implied that he thought it was a testimonial to the sagacity of the brutes. He further said that he had heard—a little earlier in the evening—a rumour that one of the wild animals, a bear or something, had broken loose and was at present at large. This was what he had heard—he ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Delvile, "your affairs will not much miss him! Since I have heard of the excess of his extravagance, I have extremely rejoiced in the uncommon prudence and sagacity of his fair ward, who, in such dangerous hands, with less penetration and sound sense, might have been drawn into a thousand difficulties, and perhaps ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... belonged to a family that had already given one of its members to Sir John Franklin's fatal expedition, to find a martyr's grave among the eternal icebergs of the north, was somewhat younger, and perhaps less enthusiastic, but was endowed with a rare discretion and far-seeing sagacity that peculiarly fitted him to be the friend and counselor of the enthusiastic Burke in such an undertaking. All Melbourne was in excitement: the government gave fifty thousand dollars, various ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... of Romulus seems to be of this latter kind. He founded a city. A thousand other men have founded cities; and in doing their work have evinced perhaps as much courage, sagacity, and mental power as Romulus displayed. The city of Romulus, however, became in the end the queen and mistress of the world. It rose to so exalted a position of influence and power, and retained its ascendency so long, that now for twenty centuries ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... journalish, so sanguine, so pretending, so everything. I satisfied all your fears in my last: all is gone well, as you say; yet you are an impudent slut to be so positive; you will swagger so upon your sagacity that we shall never have done. Pray don't mislay your reply; I would certainly print it, if I had it here: how long is it? I suppose half a sheet: was the answer written in Ireland? Yes, yes, you shall have a letter when you come from Ballygall. I need not tell you again who's out and who's ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... before the Delphic Oracle strictly questions for prophetic functions. Ninety-nine in a hundred respected marriages, state-treaties, sales, purchases, founding of towns or colonies, &c., which demanded no faculty whatever of divination, but the nobler faculty (though unpresumptuous) of sagacity, that calculates the natural consequences of human acts, cooperating with elaborate investigation of the local circumstances. If, in any paper on the general civilization of Greece (that great mother of civilization for all the world), we should ever attempt to ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... guaranty that it shall contain many thoughts in not over-many words. It is a pledge that we shall be emancipated from all narrow technicalities and officinal idols, while following his guidance. As a man of rare sagacity and wide range of knowledge, a man of science before he became a leading practitioner in the highest range of his profession, a philosopher whom his fellows have thought worthy to preside over their deliberations, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... when he perceived that he had unwittingly exposed the momentous secret. He had not given Tom credit for so much sagacity as he had displayed in his inquiries; and as he had fairly reached his conclusion, he was willing he should have the benefit ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... and herein there is naught to excuse of harm or hindrance, and the day's engagement between us if it be not to-morrow will come after to-morrow." So he farewelled his host and left him and returned homewards. Now that Yuzbashi was a man of honour and sagacity and pluck and spunk and by nature a brave. He ceased not wending until he had reached his home where he found the Barber standing at the house door and the fellow came up to him and said, "Allah upon thee, O my lord, when thou goest within do thou send me down a handsome youth ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... you consider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, you cannot but respect their cause, and wish to make it your own. For myself, I must avow that in all my reading—and I have read Thucydides, and have studied the master-states of the world—for solidity of reason, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion under a complication of difficult circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in preference to the General Congress of Philadelphia. The histories of Greece and Rome give us nothing equal to it, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... the opinions of my ancestor. From this moment his ambition expanded, his views enlarged in proportion to his means, and his contemplations on the subject of his great floating capital became more profound and philosophical. A man of my ancestor's native sagacity, whose whole soul was absorbed in the pursuit of gain, who had so long been forming his mind, by dealing as it were with the elements of human weaknesses, and who already possessed four hundred thousand pounds, was very likely to ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... like that," said Monsieur de Camier, with the sagacity of a professional hunter; "if it were a wolf, they could not make a greater uproar. Is it by chance some wild boar who is taking a bath, in order to receive us ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... son of this Constantius, Valentinian, a child just weaned, was being reared in the palace of Theodosius, but the members of the imperial court in Rome chose one of the soldiers there, John by name, as emperor. This man was both gentle and well-endowed with sagacity and thoroughly capable of valorous deeds. At any rate he held the tyranny five years[20] and directed it with moderation, and he neither gave ear to slanderers nor did he do any unjust murder, willingly at least, nor did he set his hand to robbing men of money; but he did not ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius |
