"Smartness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the room. "You may be right. God has given me a face which only arouses comical thoughts in others. I'm a buffoon. But excuse an old man's cackle. You, Rodion Romanovitch, you are in your prime, and, like all young people, you appreciate, above all things, human intelligence. Intellectual smartness and abstract rational deductions entice you. But, to return to the SPECIAL CASE we were talking about just now. I must tell you that we have to deal with reality, with nature. This is a very important thing, and how admirably ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... of the armistice and terms, signed by all parties, for surrendering and accepting the surrender of the town. Having therefore seen the deputation of the town off for Turin, my next most anxious endeavour was to cause the battle to cease, which had been carried on at the advanced posts with great smartness. I therefore once more took to my boat to begin the arduous duty of separating the combatants. General La Marmora sent aide-de- camps, but it took time before they could reach all points from which cannon were firing, not on the town but all the points of attack. The first stop I put on the ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... to the cross-trees, clambering up the shrouds with a smartness no sailor has ever come to, her yellow body, cut by the moving shadows of the ratlines, a queer sight against the mat of the night. McCord closed his mouth and opened it again for two words: "By gracious!" The following instant ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... as one may say, had completed his apprenticeship to the sea; and in his blue shirt loosely knotted round the throat, his leather belt and canvas trousers, he had such a look of smartness and energy that it required no very great amount of discernment to perceive in him a sailor from top to toe. He had, sooner than most, risen superior to the dangers and temptations to which young sailor lads are exposed during the years of their ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... and of this school William Dean Howells is a conspicuous example. Judging him by his novels alone it would be difficult to determine his rank; but judging him by his high aim and distinguished style (a style remarkable for its charm and purity in an age too much influenced by newspaper slang and smartness) he is certainly one of the best of our recent prose writers. Since his first modest volume appeared in 1860 he has published many poems, sketches of travel, appreciations of literature, parlor comedies, novels,—an immense variety of writings; ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... kept her beauty through some very severe experiences, suddenly lost it. It is idle as literary, though not as historical, criticism to say, as has been often said about the Byng passage, that Voltaire's smartness rather "goes off through the touch-hole," seeing that the admiral's execution did very considerably "encourage the others." It is superfluous to urge the unnecessary "smuts," which are sometimes not in the least amusing. All these and other sought-for ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... insinuating eyes, a battered countenance, and a nervous twitch about the mouth. He spent his whole life hanging about the aristocratic world; frequented the English clubs of both capitals, and had the reputation of a smart, not very trustworthy, but jolly good-natured fellow. In spite of his smartness, he was almost always on the brink of ruin, and the property he left his son was small and heavily-encumbered. To make up for that, however, he did exert himself, after his own fashion, over his son's education. Vladimir Nikolaitch spoke French very well, English well, and German badly; ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... ambition—his great and constant and secret ambition—went far farther than that. It was to be of man's estate, broad-shouldered and heavy-bearded; to wear huge black boots up to his thighs, and a blue flannel jersey; to have a peaked cap (not forgetting a brass button on each side by way of smartness); and then to come along, in the afternoon, with a yellow oilskin tied up in a bundle, to the wharf where the herring fleet lay, the admiration and the envy of all the miserable creatures condemned ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... should be safer under their eye at Norwich than with no one to look after me at home. At any rate, be that as it may, the change was not a little welcome, and much did I see to wonder at in the old Castle, the new Gaol, the size of the city, the extent of the Market Place, the smartness of the people, and the glare of the shops. It well repaid me for the ride of twenty-six miles and the jolting of the carrier's cart ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... in Alexander's ear, as the curtain fell on the first act, "one almost never sees a part like that done without smartness or mawkishness. Of course, Hilda is Irish,—the Burgoynes have been stage people for generations,—and she has the Irish voice. It's delightful to hear it in a London theatre. That laugh, now, when she doubles over at the hips—who ever heard it out of Galway? She saves her hand, too. She's ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... idea that Sybil could have a hand in it did not occur to him. He had made up his mind that Sybil was a silly, frivolous girl, who counted for nothing in her sister's actions. He had fallen into the usual masculine blunder of mixing up smartness of intelligence with strength of character. Sybil, without being a metaphysician, willed anything which she willed at all with more energy than her sister did, who was worn out with the effort of life. Mr. Ratcliffe missed this point, and was left to wonder who it was ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... a poet who devoted himself to the one class of poetry which, apart from satire, the conditions of the Silver Age were qualified to produce in any real excellence—the epigram. In a period when rhetorical smartness and point were the predominant features of literature, the epigram was almost certain to flourish. But Roman poets in general, and Martial in particular, gave a character to the epigram which has clung to it ever since, and has actually ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... we had ten persons; but the ten, in a pecuniary point of view, were only eight and a half. The night was fearfully dark, and the roads were altogether unworthy of the name. Yet there is an immense traffic on this route, which is the highway from East to West. The Americans, with all their "smartness," have not the knack of making either good roads or good streets. About 11 P.M. we arrived at Uniontown, 12 miles from Brownsville. There the horses were to be changed, an operation which took about an hour to accomplish. Three coaches were there together. The passengers ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... very brisk indeed, and would be kept up with a smartness rendering such an encounter as this quite tame. But the Billickin almost invariably made by far the higher score; and would come in with side hits of the most unexpected and extraordinary description, when she ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... thin shaky voice quite twenty years too old for him. His humour was thrown away upon the rising generation of Waddy, and might have been supposed to be the cat-like pawing of a vicious mind; but Joel Ham was not cruel, and although when occasion demanded he could use the cane with exceeding smartness, he frequently overlooked misdemeanours that might have justified an attack, and was never betrayed into administering unmerited cuts even when his black bottle was empty ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... take Mr Hunt's own account of the matter, they appear to have become pretty well tired of each other. He had found out that a peer is, as a friend, but as a plebeian, and a great poet not always a high-minded man. His Lordship had, on his part, discovered that something more than smartness or ingenuity is necessary to protect patronage from familiarity. Perhaps intimate acquaintance had also tended to enable him to appreciate, with greater accuracy, the meretricious genius and artificial tastes of his copartner in The Liberal. It is ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... for himself, and that was good. I went to change the guard, for some of our men were put on sentry-go that night outside the officers' quarters, in spite of our utter weariness. We were smarter than the Kurds, and German officers like smartness. ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... this piece of would-be "smartness" was seen by Beau Lovelace. He had a wholesome contempt for the Snake—and all its class,—he would never have looked at it, or known of the paragraph, had not a friend of his at the Garrick pointed it out to him with half a smile and half ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... went back to the dawn of their acquaintance, and to a certain Florio Montaigne. Rickman had got the better of him over that Florio Montaigne. Hitherto, whenever Jewdwine had thought of that little transaction he had smiled in spite of himself; he really could not help admiring the smartness of a young man who had worsted him in a bargain. Jewdwine was a terror to all the second-hand booksellers in London and Oxford; he would waste so much of their good time in cheapening a book that it was hardly worth their while ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... think of about my dresses, is that they should make people admire me—not my dressmaker," said Bertha candidly. "I don't care for much variety, and I leave real smartness to Madeline and the other tall, slim girls. My figure is so wrong! How dare I be short and tiny, ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... was hardly out of sight when two men turned aside beneath the maple shade. Both had dark faces set off by cloth caps, which were drawn down aslant over their brows. Their dresses were shabby, yet had a certain smartness. These were a couple of rascals who got their living by whatever the devil sent them, and now, in the interim of other business, had staked the joint profits of their next piece of villainy on a game of cards which was to have been decided here under the trees. ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stopping-places are called) to allow three vessels to pass. One was a fine steamer belonging to the Ducal Line; the others were a Dutch and a German boat (one, the Friesland, has been since wrecked off Cape Finisterre, in December 1877). The cleanliness and general smartness of the former presented a great contrast to her companions, on which the passengers looked very hot and uncomfortable. The centre part of each vessel was crowded with a large number of Dutch or German boys, going out as soldiers to Acheen, who ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... rat-tail, and cow-hocks. The Drummer detested that animal, and the best of the Band-horses put back their ears and showed the whites of their eyes at the very sight of him. They knew him for an upstart and no gentleman. I fancy that the Colonel's ideas of smartness extended to the Band, and that he wanted to make it take part in the regular parade movements. A Cavalry Band is a sacred thing. It only turns out for Commanding Officers' parades, and the Band Master is one degree more important than the Colonel. He is a High Priest and the "Keel Row" is his holy ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... least there is six feet more of valour, and Mrs. Blanche for my chaperon. Bonnie Blanche is little changed by her four months' matrimony, and only looks prettier and more stylish, but she is painfully meek and younger-sisterish, asking my leave instead of her husband's, and distressed at her smartness in her pretty shady hat and undyed silk, because I was in trim for lias-grubbing. Her appearance ought to be an example to all the brides in the place with skirts in the water, and nothing on to keep off eyes, sun, or wind from their faces. I give Flora infinite ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... much underestimated by a great number of young men. They seem to put more emphasis upon smartness, shrewdness, long-headedness, cunning, influence, a pull, than upon downright honesty and integrity of character. Yet why do scores of concerns pay enormous sums for the use of the name of a man who, perhaps, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... advantage from the calamities of others. I led weakness and negligence into difficulties, only that I might divert myself with their perplexities and distresses; and violated every law of friendship, with no other hope than that of gaining the reputation of smartness and waggery. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... captive who called to him for assistance he recognised the Devonshire wrestler—the strange portrait of himself. And even now, if it were possible, the resemblance between them was more striking than before; for, in the stranger, the awkwardness of the peasant had given place to the smartness of the soldier. Charles had felt an interest in him from the first moment he beheld him; he had wished to meet him again, and had resolved to seek for him should he return to England; and now the interest that he had before felt for him was increased tenfold. The offence and the fate of the doomed ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... endeavour to take the canoe over the immense boulders and over the hill range. One faint hope, involving very great danger, loomed in my mind. If we could only cross the river just above the fearsome channel we could perhaps on the other side take down the canoe by water. This plan required great smartness, as, had we miscalculated the speed of the river and the rate at which we could travel across that dangerous water, it ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... rather restless, then agog to see her and her clothes, and then somehow allayed by her appearance and quite amiably attentive to what she had to say. A majority were young girls dressed with the cheap smartness of the suburbs, the rest were for the most part older and dingier, and here and there were dotted young ladies of a remarkable and questionable smartness. In the front row, full of shy recognitions and a little disguised ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... bravura, were forgiven, in consideration of the exalted rank of their producer. Her success seemed now to be assured, and even the muttered discontent of a neglected husband, who was foolish enough to prefer comfort to smartness, began to subside. In the following year her entertainments became even more splendid, and less comfortable. She took a house at Ascot, and, triumph of triumphs! a scion of Royalty deigned to accept ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 18, 1891 • Various
... feller, much as I believe in you and Gus, seein' your smartness, I got to doubt all that there bunk you give them young people 'bout that there what you call radier. I been borned a long time—goin' on to seventy year now,—an' I seen all sorts of contraptions like reapers an' binders, ridin' plows, typewritin'-machines, telephones, phonygraphs, flyin'-machines, ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... nothing when you are used to it," said Ben Boltrope, the man-o'-war's-man, who was pretty well king of the forecastle by reason of his service in the navy and general smartness as a seaman. "What is eight days in a boat without grub, when you've got to go ten, as I've done, besides wandering about on a sandy shore after swimming for a day and night to save ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... eager as if he felt sure they would catch Quacker. Now old Granny Fox is very wise in the ways of the Great World, and if Reddy could have known what was going on in her mind as she led the way to the Big River, he might not have felt quite so sure of his own smartness. Granny was ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... ambition in his youthful breast, And he worked hard, scarce taking time for rest. His pride was somewhat humbled when he found That he could make but thirty each day round. Yet courage took from this, that their's were made Of soft pine wood, which did their smartness aid. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... of the Grenadier Guards became adjutant of the Military Wing of the Royal Flying Corps he made a vow that the corps should combine the smartness of the Guards with the efficiency of the Sappers. In spite of difficulties and disasters, the corps went far, in the first two years of its existence, towards attaining that ideal. In the summer of 1912 the Central Flying School at Upavon got to work, and thenceforward ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... competition. The country shops are flooded with what he calls 'shoddy.' An army of eager commercial travellers pushes showy goods on the shopkeepers and the public at half his price. Even the farmers in remote districts are beginning to acquire a taste for smartness. Some things in which he used to do a useful trade are now scarcely worth making. There is hardly any demand for the checked head-kerchiefs. The women prefer hats and bonnets, decked with cheap ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... where she tried on a number of absurdly impossible hats. She bought one at last, to realise immediately as she left the shop that she would never persuade herself to wear it because she felt that it gave her an air of Gerty's "smartness" which sat like an impertinence upon her own individual charm. Glancing at her watch she found that only two hours had gone since she left the house, and turning up the street she walked on with a step which seemed striving to match in energy ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... old days very much longer than they do now. The smartness of children like my grandsons, Shem, Ham and Japhet, for instance, who at the age of two hundred and fifty arrogate to themselves all the knowledge of the universe, was comparatively unknown when I was a child. To begin with we were of a different breed from the boys of to-day, and life itself ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... imposed on and exercised by the ruling classes, and symbolically imaged in their code of honour, took an effective shape in the banning of cowardice and of cowardly crime. So far as positive values go, the ethics of nobility degenerated into smartness, the claim for "satisfaction" and the exclusiveness of rank; a Prussian and Kantian abstraction, the conception of duty, a conception at bottom unproved and incapable of generating conviction, became a rule of life, made effective by training and control. The ruling powers and their controls ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... have just crossed the road, and are following this happy couple down the street, are a fair specimen of another class of Sunday—pleasurers. There is a dapper smartness, struggling through very limited means, about the young man, which induces one to set him down at once as a junior clerk to a tradesman or attorney. The girl no one could possibly mistake. You may tell a young woman in the employment ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... "Too much smartness is Marian's trouble," replied Miss Waring. "There's nothing in the gymnasium she can't do; she's become the best French scholar we ever had, but that's about all. She's worked hard at French because she thinks it gives her a grand air. I can't ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... instance, "The Man Who Was"—the mere chance that these Americans should tumble upon the very ground and estate that had belonged to the English ancestors of one of them. It is written in a curiously tortured idiom, largely borrowed from the Bible, and all the characters are continually given to verbal smartness or peculiarity of one kind or another. The characters are not individualized. Each is a type, smoothed out by sentimental handling into something meant to be sympathetic. Moreover, the real difficulties of the narrative are consistently, ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... kitchen floor to which Hollingsworth's kindly hand had impelled her. The cloak falling partly off, she was seen to be a very young woman dressed in a poor but decent gown, made high in the neck, and without any regard to fashion or smartness. Her brown hair fell down from beneath a hood, not in curls but with only a slight wave; her face was of a wan, almost sickly hue, betokening habitual seclusion from the sun and free atmosphere, like a flower-shrub that had done its best to blossom in too scanty light. To complete the pitiableness ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the "swaggerist" of the gun tribe, has his own private car built especially for him. Such of the cavalry's former part as the planes do not play he plays. He keeps off the enemy's scouts. Do you seek team-work, spirit of corps, and smartness in this theatre of France, where all the old glamour of war is supposed to be lacking? You will find it in the attendants of Archibald. They have pride, elan, alertness, pepper, and all the other appetizers and condiments. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... point my two yaks, which I noticed had been marching with more than usual smartness, bolted while I was ordering Chanden Sing and Mansing to take down the loads, and went ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the pale lady-doctor, turning uneasily away from the little things that lay squirming and making such grimaces, as only very young babies can make, in the face of Mrs. Pimble. The alleged father stood there, chuckling over the smartness of his progeny. Mrs. Pimble darted one withering glance upon him, and walked away without another word. She roused old Dr. Potipher, and took him home with her. Well she did so, for Garrison was much worse than when she left him, and ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... and the clanking of windlass-pawls, as the fleet of merchantmen constituting the convoy began to get under weigh. There was a considerable amount of emulation displayed among the merchant-skippers—those of them, at least, whose ships or crews had any pretensions to smartness, and in half an hour a good many of the craft were under weigh and standing out to sea with a light air of wind from the eastward. The old Tremendous, 74, led the van, closely followed by the Torpid, 50; while the frigates Andromeda ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... half-open above the dull eyes, with lips drawn back to show the gums, was little change. Beneath the chin a large white bow of coarse muslin had been tied. It was designed to hide the thinness of the throat, but gave, besides, a dreadful air of smartness to the poor corpse. Above the sunken chest the arms were crossed, but, over them, and over the thin hands, in a burning, shining mass of ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... from one whom he had learned to consider as a man of unlimited means and unusual smartness, quite set him up in ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... finally said, with a touch of embarrassment, "but I've a good mind to tell you exactly what she said, Alfred, so that you won't think it is worse than it really was. It wasn't such an awful thing, and she was laughing more at her own smartness than at you. She said—she said you was the only man under the sun who had gone so far as to adopt a step-father-in-law. Now, that wasn't so terrible, ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... not a question of smartness," replied the Doctor. "He is too smart; but Henry has steadiness, and bottom, and purpose, and power, and will, and industry. But Bart, if you start him on a thing, runs away out of sight of you in an hour. ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... a pink-spotted muslin dress and a straw hat, with pink ribbon. She certainly looked extremely pretty, and not at all what she had such a dread of before Mrs. Foster, smart. Mrs. Foster had a horror of smartness in ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... hoarsely. "If that don't lick creation for smartness!" he cried. "And how are we to get to this safe? It would serve him right if we collar the lot. It'll teach him that if he ain't honest by nature he's got to be when he deals with the like of us. I like straightness, and by the Lord I'll ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a thousand times to every truant, and it would have very little effect, because he thinks that he will be an exception. He never sees beyond his own boyish smartness. Few men and women realize how true it is that these smart rascally fellows, who persist in remaining in ignorance, are to be the vicious, pauper, criminal class who are to fill the dens of vice, the poorhouses, and the prisons; who are to be burglars, highwaymen, and murderers. In place of ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... pilgrimage to Rome, have taken rank among the professors of the art. I don't know a more pleasing exhibition; for there are not a dozen really bad pictures in the collection, some very good, and the rest showing great skill and smartness of execution. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for that I don't suppose the captain would object to put you ashore. He has evidently taken a fancy to you, and is pleased with the way in which you have taken things and with your smartness and willingness. Beside, I don't think he considers you altogether as a prisoner. Running you down in the way we did in the channel wasn't like capturing you in a prize, and I think if the captain could see his way to ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... doubt, she felt that if charm were once admitted as the criterion, smartness and capability must go to the wall; and she hated—with a hatred the deeper that at times this so-called charm seemed to disturb all calculations—the subtle seductiveness which she could not altogether overlook ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... best, with which consolation the couple together with Frau Willmers take their departure. In a humorous monologue Gertrude decides to accept the Burgomaster. She is interrupted in her soliloquy by Lampe, the Beadle, who is a regular old Paul Pry, and boasts to the widow of his smartness and sagacity. According to himself he can ferret out anything, or any one, from a defrauder of the revenue to a thief, an anarchist or a murderer. Then he goes on to say that he intended to serve notice of distraint on Frau Willmers, but had found her door locked. ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... country and friends I had left for ever, a slight tap at the door roused me from my painful reveries, and Mrs. C—- entered the room. Like most of the Canadian women, my friend was small of stature, slight and delicately formed, and dressed with the smartness and neatness so characteristic of the females of this continent, who, if they lack some of the accomplishments of English women, far surpass them in their taste in dress, their choice of colours, and the graceful and becoming manner ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... 'Browning,'" she told Mavis, "he's so old-fashioned to up-to-date people. Now I'm going to be Mrs Napper, when the Littlehampton season comes round, I'm going in exclusively for smartness and fashion." ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... heard—"ego verbum audivi"—and with greater abundance those he had said, including a great many puns. Thus it happens that certain chapters of his "De Nugis Curialium," a title that the work owes to the success of John of Salisbury's, are real novels, and have the smartness of such; others are real fabliaux, with all their coarseness; others are scenes of comedy, with dialogues, and indications of characters as in a play[286]; others again are anecdotes of the East, "quoddam mirabile," told on their return by ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... and cheat them, but he would do it so smoothly that they never once suspected that they were being cheated. Mr. Snake would go about all day cheating everybody he met. At night he would go home and chuckle over his smartness. It wasn't long before he began to look down on his neighbors for being so honest that they didn't suspect other people of being dishonest, and for being ...
— Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... sentiment into satire as the following is rather jarring, and is a good specimen of that "laborious smartness," as Mr. R.H. Hutton justly calls it, which is found in all ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... a landlocked stretch of smooth water. To-morrow, when we steam out to face the tempest which is shaking the foundations of the world, we shall see what we shall see. Some of us, who at present are exalted for our smartness and efficiency, will indubitably be found wanting—wanting in stamina of body or soul—while others, hitherto undistinguished, will come to their own. Only War itself can discover the qualities which count in War. But we silently pray, in our dour and inarticulate ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... lacks, and which is so largely the attraction of Italy and Spain. Instead of adapting and modifying the houses and homes that the climate suggests, the new American comers have brought here from the East the smartness and prettiness of our modern nondescript architecture. The low house, with recesses and galleries, built round an inner court, or patio, which, however small, would fill the whole interior with sunshine and the ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... sighed the tax-collector, who had served in the guards at Potsdam, and had always been accustomed to carry everything before him on account of his smartness. "Absolutely nothing to be done, gentlemen. I've already had a try; but, to tell you the truth, she has sent me to [Pg 54] the right about. Ah, the fair Sophia!" He stroked his moustache and tilted his chair as far back as he could, in ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... some smartness and sharpness of speech may sometimes be used in defence of truth, and impugning errors of bad consequence; especially when it concerneth the interest of truth, that the reputation and authority of its ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... Moliere is that he does not exaggerate; his fools are never overwitty, his buffoons too grotesque, his men of wit too anxious to display their smartness, nor his fine gentlemen too fond of immodest and ribald talk. His satire is always kept within bounds, his repartees are never out of place, his plots are but seldom intricate, and the moral of his plays is not obtruded, but follows as a natural consequence of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... old-fashioned peace in the land. The swaggering conqueror, the arrogant Berliner type of all that is unpleasant, modern and insolent now overruns Germany. The ingenuousness, the naive quality that made dear the art of the Fatherland, has disappeared. In its place is smartness, flippancy, cynicism, unbelief, and the critical faculty developed to the pathological point. I thought of Schubert, and sighed in the presence of all this wit and savage humor. Bayreuth is full of doctrinaires. They eagerly dispute Wagner's meanings, and ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... much fear, on the decline; we no longer see the vigour of handling and smartness of conception formerly apparent in his works: or, "A little stricter attention to drawing, as well as composition, would render this ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... beetles, bottling them, setting them, cataloguing them, making no mistake about them, and arranging them neatly in museums for the dust to settle on. Organized alertness of that sort is only less depressing than the smartness of those Italians who pounced so promptly on the journalistic possibilities of the movement as a means of self-advertisement. All I ask for in the public is a little more intelligence and sensibility, and a more critical attitude. Surely, by ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... counsel. The case for the United States was not presented in a manner worthy of the occasion. According to Adams the American contentions "were advanced with an aggressiveness of tone and attorney-like smartness, more appropriate to the wranglings of a quarter-sessions court than to pleadings before a grave international tribunal." The American counsel were instructed to insist not, indeed, on indemnity for the cost of two years of war, but on compensation because of the ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... extravaganza. All this was amusing and original; but every one of these things is fatal to sustained and serious art. If an active politician seeks to galvanise a new party by a series of novels, the romances cannot be works of literary art. If a young man wants only to advertise his own smartness, he will not produce a beautiful thing. And if a statesman out of office wishes to amuse himself by alternate banter and laudation of the very society which he has led and which looks to him as its inspiration, the result will ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... parlor a group of natty officers stood lightly chatting while they covertly listened. At the other end, with Irby and Mandeville at his two elbows, General Brodnax conversed with Kincaid and Bartleson, the weather-faded red and gray of whose uniforms showed in odd contrast to the smartness ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... Mohammedans, Hindus, and a few Parsees arrived, some in smart carriages, a few in hired conveyances, and others on foot. Another motor car with an Indian owner drove up. At present the dash, and go, and smartness of a motor-car seem strangely out of keeping with the spirit of leisure, and delay, and general shabbiness ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... cruiser was soon caught in a maze of cross currents. Hither and thither she was borne, a creature bereft of volition. Order followed order like the rattle of quick-fire, and was obeyed with something more than the Wolverine's customary smartness. From the bridge Captain Parkinson himself directed his ship. His face was placid: his bearing steady and confident. This in itself was sufficient earnest that the cruiser was in ticklish case. For ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... been a fool; there was no doubt as to that; the only thing now was how he could best retrieve his folly. He had walked blindly into a trap, suspecting nothing, confidently relying on his own smartness, believing himself unknown. Now he must find his way out. It angered him to realize how easily it had been accomplished; not so much as a blow struck; no opportunity even for him to cry out an alarm—only that dark cabin, and the threatening revolver shoved against his cheek. He wondered ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... required a great quantity of persuasion to induce him to advance. At length there sauntered up, on the opposite side of the way—with a bad pretense of passing by accident—a figure conspicuous for its dirty smartness, which after a great many frowns and jerks of the head, in resistance of the invitation, ultimately crossed the road and was brought ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... it's all right, gov'nor. He built that place down in Wales for the Duke. Caernarvon Castle they call it. You must have heard of it. [He winks with lightning smartness at Mrs Warren, ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... and smiled. I snatched a quick look at the lady again. She was dressed with an amount of care and a smartness of detail that seemed somewhat uncalled for on the Indian Ocean. A cruise on a P. and O. steamer is not a garden party. Her chair was most luxurious, and had her name painted on it, back and front, in very large ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... He replied, 'I don't know; I never buy a ticket; I can't say.' When remonstrated with, he just said: 'I pay whatever is handy, sometimes more and sometimes less!' Another individual, in the habit of travelling in the same way, and boasting of his smartness, casually remarked: 'My trip this time was a failure, for Conductor —— was on the train, and you know I could not work him.' It did me good to hear that, for the conductor in question is a well-known gospel and temperance worker, ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... over the Pass?" asked the Mormon. "Her own smartness, I suppose, or chance, anything but the ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... man be constituted as Solomon was and his "smartness" grows on him. He has an idea that every house he buys from is trying to get unfair advantage of him, and that he must present a bold front or he will be imposed upon. He always magnifies his importance as a buyer, ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... presents of clothes, finery, books, or flowers, appear to have been substituted. Advantage was taken of these presents to bedeck the child in every variety of smartness. At one time she had a victorine about her neck and a wreath about her hair, then again, ornaments and a jacket on, and her hair neatly dressed with ribbons. At another time she had a silk shawl, a victorine ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... sweet, pretty mamma" is of the very spirit of the redundancy by which children hope in heaping words together to express accumulation of emotion. Du Maurier's children never make the nasty pert answers upon which, for their nearly impossible but always vulgar smartness, the providers of jokes about children for the comic papers generally depend. He is simply going on with his "novel"—The Tale of the House it might be called—when he affords us realistic glimpses ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... houses, the shops and the vehicles, the blazing blue sky and the muddy crossings, the hurrying men and the slow-strolling maidens, the fresh red bricks and the bright green trees, the extraordinary mixture of smartness and shabbiness. From one hour to another the day had grown vernal; even in the bustling streets there was an odor of earth and blossom. Felix was immensely entertained. He had called it a comical country, and he went about laughing at everything ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... command, imagine that they can command obeisance and popularity. Woe betide other women who arouse their jealousy, for they will scandalise and blight the reputation of the purest of their sex in the suburban belief that the invention of scandal is the hallmark of smartness. ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... pretty evenly distributed over the country As wealth is attained the capacity of enjoying it departs Assertive sort of smartness that was very disagreeable Attention to his personal appearance is only spasmodic Boy who is a man before he is an infant Bringing a man to her feet, where he belongs Chief object in life is to "get there" ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... a cup of tea and brandy with Dame Tremblay, had dressed herself with some appearance of smartness in a clean striped gown of linsey. A peaked Artois hat surmounted a broad-frilled cap, which left visible some tresses of coarse gray hair and a pair of silver ear-rings, which dangled with every motion of her head. Her shoes displayed broad buckles ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Claudia's smartness, showed up rather ingloriously. She wore the stubbed russet shoes, a not too fresh cotton frock of pale yellow, and ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... face fell at the retort; then he broke into a laugh. He adored Undine's "smartness," which was of precisely the same quality as his own. "Oh, that's another thing: you can always trust me to ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... deserve, I lack eloquence; and feel unequal to the task. Yes, sufficiently to commend this lofty effort, this fine stratagem of war achieved before our eyes, this grand and rare effect of a mind which plans as many tricks as any man, which for smartness yields to none alive, my tongue wants words. I wish I had the abilities of the most refined scholars, so that I might tell you in the noblest verse, or else in learned prose, that you will always be, in spite of everything that may be done, the very same you have been all ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... I was not dissatisfied. His dress waistcoats, it is true, no longer permit the inhalation of anything like a full breath, and his collars clasp too closely. (I have always held that a collar may provide quite ample room for the throat without sacrifice of smartness if the depth be at least two and one quarter inches.) And it is no secret to either the Honourable George or our intimates that I have never approved his fashion of beard, a reddish, enveloping, brushlike affair ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the presiding spirit of the scene, if a smart officer, has never a better opportunity for showing his smartness than when a ship is fitting for sea; all the burthen of the work then falls upon his shoulders, for he has to be here and there and everywhere, directing a hundred different jobs at ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... musket; but it was a fatal invasion of the principle of beauty to adopt a permanent cock. There is no doubt that the flat cocked hat, the small three-cornered pinched hat of the days of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., gave much smartness to the soldier, and much neatness to the civilian; the change, too, corresponded with other alterations of dress, from the loose and flowing, to the tight and succinct principle; but picturesque effect was entirely lost; all the sentimentality, all the romance of the hat, evaporated in the formal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... the clear stream of his sentences was diverted into muddy channels, the airy creatures of his imagination were weighted with lead and made to perform hideous antics. Never had there been so riotous a jargon of distorted affectation and ponderous balderdash. Smartness—of a sort—these gentlemen, no doubt, possessed. It is easy to be accounted smart in a certain circle, if only you succeed in being insolent. Merit of this order the band could ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... her skirts genteelly, spoke again. "I guess my bill has been running fully as long as anybody's here," she said, in her small, shrill voice. She eyed the two stenographers as she spoke, with jealous suspicion. There was a certain smartness about their attire, and she suspected them of being City dress-makers. She also suspected the strange young man with them of being a City lawyer, whom they had brought with them to urge their claims. Madame Stella ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the needful smartness as ready as I could have wished, I tried to gain time by asking him what cottage he wanted ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... how smart you are, ma'am! I wish I had some smartness in me. But my husband had all that. He was ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... air of smartness, the cock of the hat to which John Willet had objected, and the spring nosegay, all betokened some little errand of his own, having a more interesting object than a vintner or even a locksmith. So, indeed, it turned out; for when he had ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... of her "smartness" but of her pathetic loveliness. All night her sobs had echoed in his heart. When he had driven his gay party home after their stop at Anthony's, he had ridden for miles alone in the storm. He had welcomed the beat of the rain in his face. He had yearned for some adventure ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... person, looked at him and wondered. He would have been more at home, she thought, out in the storms of life than in her uncle's drawing-rooms. Yet what was he? He lacked the trimness of the soldier; of the debonair smartness of the modern fighting man there was no trace whatsoever in his speech or appearance. The politicians who were likely to be present she knew. What was there left? An explorer, perhaps, or a colonial. Her ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... father's death and the sale of that home, she had watched with immense gratification his success in school. When he ran away to sea she had defended him when others condemned. Later, when tales of his "smartness," as sailor or mate, or by and by, a full rated captain, began to drift back, she had gloried in them. He came to see her semi-occasionally when his ship was in port, and his yarns of foreign lands and strange ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... a little smartness in the dialogue, and in the "Careless Husband," Lord Foppington uses such strange expletives as "Sun burn me," "Stop my breath," "Set my blood." But the greater part of any amusement that there is, depends, as in the Roman Comedy, upon the tricks ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... peculiar hardness of youth; a hardness which in those who have in any way been unfairly treated reaches even to impudence. It is a terrible thing for any man to find out that his elders are wrong. And this almost unkindly courage of youth must partly be held responsible for the smartness of Dickens, that almost offensive smartness which in these earlier books of his sometimes irritates us like the showy gibes in the tall talk of a school-boy. These first pages bear witness both to ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... fixed as the hour at which Mr. Blyth was to present himself at the lodgings in Kirk Street. He arrived punctual to the appointed time, dressed jauntily for the occasion in a short blue frock coat, famous among all his acquaintances for its smartness of cut and its fabulous old age. From what Zack had told him of Mat's lighter peculiarities of character, he anticipated a somewhat uncivilized reception from the elder of his two hosts; and when he got to Kirk Street, he certainly found ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... declaration; and all but the two youngsters appeared more than usually intent upon whatever they were employed about before the Rabbi's entrance. Youth is a bad courtier, ever preferring frolic and amusement to sobriety and attention. They had been at once piqued and pleased by Robin's smartness, and resolved to whet their own wit upon so ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... hard young officer, but many of his watch used to say they liked him well enough because he had "such a gentlemanly way of damning us up and down the deck." Others unable to discern such fine shades of refinement, respected him for his smartness. For the first time since the ship had gone on her beam ends Captain Allistoun gave a short glance down at his men. He was almost upright—one foot against the side of the skylight, one knee on the deck; and with the end of the vang ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... public are not inclined to attach much weight. He forestalls in a few months what ought to be the effect of years; namely, the wearying a world soon nauseated with the toujours perdrix. With respect to the last, it induces a man to write for momentary effects; to study a false smartness of style and reasoning; to bound his ambition of durability to the last day of the month; to expect immediate returns for labour; to recoil at the "hope deferred" of serious works on which judgment is slowly formed. The man of talent who begins young ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... summer the snow will be gone, and the ground will be all brown. Then I will be able to find you anywhere!" Little White Fox gave a hop, skip and jump that ended in a somersault, so tickled was he with his own smartness. ...
— Little White Fox and his Arctic Friends • Roy J. Snell
... up from the country) interesting and stimulating, but far too strongly charged with the suggestion of his own fate to be really joyful. There were men in all degrees between confidence and distress, and in every stage between extravagant smartness and the last stages of decay. There were sunny young men full of an abounding and elbowing energy, before whom the soul of Polly sank in hate and dismay. "Smart Juniors," said Polly to himself, "full of Smart Juniosity. The Shoveacious Cult." There were hungry looking individuals ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... rude of him. Mary V had several other little suggestions to make—but men never do want to be told anything, especially by a woman. Mary V was glad she had not been permitted to say that the sheriff would of course receive an especially attractive reward. He could go without, now, just for his smartness. ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... Sancho, "your worship knew how to hit the right point with your pike, aiming at my head and hitting me on the shoulders, thanks be to God and my own smartness in dodging it. But let that pass; all will come out in the scouring; for I have heard say 'he loves thee well that makes thee weep;' and moreover that it is the way with great lords after any hard words they give ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of Countenance, all the Wagg-Wits in the High-way are grinning in applause of the ingenious Rogue that gave him the Tip, and the Folly of him who had not Eyes all round his Head to prevent receiving it. These things arise from a general Affectation of Smartness, Wit, and Courage. Wycherly somewhere [2] rallies the Pretensions this Way, by making a Fellow say, Red Breeches are a certain Sign of Valour; and Otway makes a Man, to boast his Agility, trip up a Beggar on Crutches ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... fully a mile; her skipper, therefore, having given the unsuccessful experiment a fair trial, suddenly took in all his studding-sails again, reduced his canvas once more to a couple of reefs, and braced sharp up to the wind, as before. But here again we had the advantage of him through the superior smartness of our own crew, for he no sooner began to shorten sail than we did the same, handling our canvas so quickly that we were ready nearly five minutes before him, the result being that we had gained another half-mile upon him and had placed ourselves ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... lives of scores whose greatest fault is an inability to oppose them successfully. Tricks so mean and contemptible that their perpetrator would not be tolerated in social life, are resorted to, and if successful are applauded as evidences of smartness. Every man's hand is against his neighbor. Clerks are bribed to betray the secrets of their employers. The baser their treachery, the larger their reward. We do not propose, however, to discuss the morality of Wall street transactions, and so ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... smart boy—perhaps he is too smart; but his smartness is not worldly cunning; it is made up of those elements of character which constitute a noble and true man—good judgment, quick perception, and manly decision, mingled with those moral and religious ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... twenty-seven flights of steps—thus securing a measure of light and air to the twenty-seven basements. The front doors were set in couples, alternating with couples of bay windows. There was a determination of cheap smartness, a smirking self-consciousness about the little houses, a suggestion of having put on their best frocks and high- heeled shoes and standing very much on tiptoe to attract attention. The balconies, narrow where the upper bays encroached on them, wide where the house ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... at the same hour Doodles came and was shown up into her room. He had scrupulously avoided any smartness of apparel, calculating that a Newmarket costume would be, of all dresses, the most efficacious in filling her with an idea of his smartness; whereas Archie had probably injured himself much by his polished leather boots, and general newness of clothing. Doodles, therefore, wore a ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... out of the lodge, looking over his shoulder as he went through the door. Then he ran away as fast as he could go. Over hills and valleys, across rivers and creeks, toward the east. He wasted much breath laughing at his smartness as he ran, and soon he ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... the same ungracious stiffness that I had shown him on the preceding day. Well, I will do my best to obliterate the bad impression I have apparently made. They are good people, these Creoles—not particularly bashful or discreet; but yet I like their forwardness and volatility better than the sly smartness of the Yankees, in spite of their ridiculous love of dancing, which even the first emigrants could not lay aside, amidst all the difficulties of their settlement in America. It must have been absurd enough to see them capering about, and dancing minuets and gavottes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... 599[obs3]; broad farce, broad humor; fun, espieglerie[Fr]; vis comica[Lat]. jocularity; jocosity, jocoseness[obs3]; facetiousness; waggery, waggishness; whimsicality; comicality &c. 853. banter, badinage, retort, repartee, smartness, ready wit, quid-pro- quo; ridicule &c. 856. jest, joke, jape, jibe; facetiae[Lat], levity, quips and cranks; capital joke; canorae nugae[Lat]; standing jest, standing joke, private joke, conceit, quip, quirk, crank, quiddity, concetto[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... would alarm and caution even the political and business reader, and to the utmost extent, against the prevailing delusion that the establishment of free political institutions, and plentiful intellectual smartness, with general good order, physical plenty, industry, &c., (desirable and precious advantages as they all are,) do, of themselves, determine and yield to our experiment of democracy the fruitage of success. With such advantages at present fully, or ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... is not destined, neither wisdom nor strength nor smartness are of any avail. Listen to ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... ostentatious pin. This is both vulgar and foolish. If we want a stock, it should be perfectly plain—a la militaire, for it is, in truth, an article of military attire, worn for the express purpose of giving stiffness and smartness to the figure. If we want a scarf, do not let us misconceive the nature of its form, the law of its curves, and huddle it up into an untidy, unmeaning mass, fit for nothing but to serve as a field of display for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... the streets, the tram-roads, the lights of the town, the smartness of his flock, the delights of their ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... been peculiar," he thought. "She comes from no common stock. If I've ever seen a Southern gentleman, her father's one, and her plump little body is full of hot Southern blood. She's a thoroughbred, and that accounts for her smartness and fearlessness. Where other girls would whine and toady to your face, and be sly and catlike behind your back, she'd look you in the eyes and say all she meant point-blank. I'm glad indeed things are taking their present course, for these people could ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... transformed an earldom into a marquisate and which, incidentally, was responsible for the new family Christian name that Queenie herself bore. She was young, tall, slim and pale, and dressed with the utmost smartness in black—her half-brother having gloriously lost his life in September. She nodded to the secretary, who blushed with pleasure, and she nodded to several members, including G.J. Being accustomed to ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... As regards smartness, the officers were not much better than the men, who did not appear to take the slightest notice of the words of command, but straggled about as they pleased, like a flock of sheep. Some peasants beside me were looking on. "Sons of dogs!" said one; "they ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... them some recognition. I was out for a scamper yesterday afternoon inspecting my transport. This latter, by-the-by, has been very favourably reported on as the best looked after in the division (I am told). It is flattering, but one never knows! My Brigadier also complimented me on the smartness of my guards at Brigade Headquarters. If you saw the poor dears crawling out of the trenches, caked with mud and numbed with wet and cold, you could not understand how they could turn themselves out fairly decently twenty-four hours later, when they only have the one suit they are actually ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... word and gesture, and there is not a day passes but puts me in mind of Mr. Wycherley's character of a coxcomb: "He is ugly all over with the affectation of the fine gentleman." Now though the women may put on softness in their looks, or affected severity, or impertinent gaiety, or pert smartness, their self-love and admiration cannot, under any of these disguises, appear so invincible as that of the men. You may easily take notice, that in all their actions there is a secret approbation, either in the tone of their voice, the turn ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... very day he did; at least he tried. He put on his hat and he took his cane in his hand and as he started down the street he sought to put smartness and springiness into his gait. If the attempt was a sorry failure, he, for one, did not appreciate the completeness of the failure. He meant, anyhow, that his step no longer should be purposeless and mechanical; ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... habited in a coarse, blue coat, which, without being either a greatcoat or a surtout, partook of the nature and qualities of both, had about him that sort of slovenly smartness, and swaggering gait, which is peculiar to young gentlemen who smoke in the streets by day, shout and scream in the same by night, call waiters by their Christian names, and do various other acts and deeds of an equally facetious description. He wore a pair ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... to once more set aflame the embers of dying passion; and he threw himself into the fight over Lord Wolmer's amendment at the moment when all life seemed to have gone out of it. His speech was full of cleverness—of what the Americans call smartness, and it had all that point, personal and party, which sets your friends in a roar. The Tories cheered him vociferously, and point after point of brilliant and effective invective pleased the House—always ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... took out his wallet, and handed Bobby the dollar, probably quite as much because he had a high appreciation of his smartness, as from any desire to ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic |
