|
|
|
More "Cleverness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the cleverness displayed by this would-be Chatterton, in his attempt to sell the unwary with an Ossian dodge.—Lit. World, Vol. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... affairs were political matters treated; but in order to avoid a prosecution, these questions had to be cautiously approached in parable fashion. Never was greater cleverness shown in this respect than at Shakspere's time. Every poet, every statesman, or otherwise highly-placed person, was 'heckled' under an allegorical name—a circumstance which at present makes it rather difficult for us to fully fathom the meaning ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... out-of-the-way personages into his stories— characters that represent nothing but themselves, or possibly some eccentricity of invention on their author's part, will gain the latter a reputation for cleverness higher than his fellow's who portrays mankind in its masses as well as in its details. But the finest imagination is not that which evolves strange images, but that which explains seeming contradictions, ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... only to buy all the evening papers, which he "thought that Mademoiselle would like to see, as they were sure to be filled with praise of her great acting." It was on my tongue to scold him for stopping even one moment, when he had been told to hurry, but he looked so pleased at his own cleverness that I hadn't the heart to dash his happiness. I would, however, have pushed the papers aside without so much as glancing at them, if it hadn't suddenly occurred to me that, if any accident had befallen Ivor, news of it might possibly have got into print ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... you my word, I was such an ass that I did open the case and looked all through it. She must have thought I was a Juggins. I get hot all over whenever I remember it. But in spite of my dulness, and her cleverness, she couldn't gain anything by sending me away, because what she wanted was in the hand bag and every time she sent me away the hand ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... should not bilk me of free movement. But the issue might, on the face of it, appear to be she. As I tugged at the harness, under breath I cursed the scurvy turn of events; and in seeking to place the blame found amazing cleverness in her. Just the same, I was not going to kill him for her account; never, never! And I wished to the deuce that she'd kept clear ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... had been in and out of water almost daily since early childhood, and, though there had never been a test, was confident that, among all the Shell People, there was none he could not overtake, despite what he had heard and knew of their wonderful cleverness in the water. Were not his arms and legs longer and stronger than theirs and his chest deeper? He felt that he could outswim easily any bold fisherman among them, and as for this girl, he would overtake her very quickly and draw her to ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... secret against the royalists. He now returned to his old opinions, and became the leader of the liberal party in Alencon, the invisible manipulator of elections, and did immense harm to the Restoration by the cleverness of his underhand proceedings and the perfidy of his outward behavior. Du Bousquier, like all those who live by their heads only, carried on his hatreds with the quiet tranquillity of a rivulet, feeble apparently, but inexhaustible. His hatred was that of a negro, ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... no further overtures to her during the ride, but he was neither sulky nor sheepish. He feigned an anxiety as to the threatened strike, and related at great length and with extreme cleverness of invention his ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... fool. I admit that to have a fund of conceptions, and not form, is only a half possession. For the most splendid knowledge in a head incapable of giving them form is like a treasure buried in the earth. But form without substance is a shadow of riches, and all possible cleverness in expression is of no use to him who ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... found himself watching for Audrey, always. She had, with a sort of diabolical cleverness, succeeded in losing herself. Her house was sold, he knew, and he had expected that she would let him know where to find her. She had said she counted on him, and he had derived an odd sort of comfort from the thought. ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... muttered, "she did it on purpose," and even with his hatred and malice was mingled a gleam of admiration at the cleverness that had outwitted him. He hurried on towards the cliff path, but the sunset light was already fading into dusk, and he had to choose his footing more carefully. When he reached the point where the rope began, Marie had already gone down and was leaning on the rock beside her father. Had he been ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... "Lady" anybody. He was perfectly well aware, also, that his companion had suspected this. The consideration of these facts left him, however, unaffected. He was disposed, if anything, to admire the cleverness of the young man who had realized ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he knew she laughed at him. Yes, laughed at him, for she had more than human intelligence. There was something demoniac in her cleverness, her immunity from harm, her prodigious energy, her malevolent mischief, her raillery. Actually, he had grown morbid about the beast; he had a superstitious feeling that in the end she would bring him bad ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... dismissed; the firmness with which the oar was held while in the reach forward, its bending under the push, were proofs of the force applied; not that only, they as certainly proved the rower's art, and put the critic in the great arm-chair in search of the combination of strength and cleverness which was the central ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... illustrations than those which Frank Reynolds drew for Keble Howard's idyll of Suburbia, entitled "The Smiths of Surbiton." The author constructed out of the petty doings and humdrum habits of suburban life a charming little story of simple people, and with equal cleverness the artist built up, out of these slight materials, a series of exquisitely natural pictures, which revealed the almost incredible fact that semi-detached ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... be his name—and then to his companion, pronouncing the word "Vati", which was as certainly the name of the other. So evident was this that even Murdock understood it, and, proud of his quick comprehension, hastened to display his cleverness by prodding the first native ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... dumfoundered at this cleverness. So I said, more on my guard—"True, true, Saunders, but ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... not accuse you,' he returned, unbendingly. 'You chose your path some ten or twelve years ago, and you must take the consequences. I foresaw it; but this I will say, I did not credit the man with his infernal cleverness. If I speak to you at all, I must speak my mind. I thought him a mere buffoon and spendthrift, flying his bar-sinister story for the sake of distinction. He has schemed up to this point successfully: he has the prince in his toils. I would ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... active temperament, combined with a strong turn for enthusiasm. He once saw me study Beethoven's music with an orchestra, and conduct it, and devoured what could be acquired with genuine astonishment, making it his own with so much cleverness that later on at Freiburg he produced the music to "Egmont," which he had heard me do, with very great success, as competent witnesses have assured me. It was the same afterwards with the "Flying Dutchman," which he grasped completely as a conductor. But beyond his specific ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... its appearing a happy token of something else. In the major part of the annual soarings into Cloud-land which alarm the world, we seem to see the sum total of the aspirant's power. We feel that he has shown us all, and done his best; that the force of his cleverness could go no farther; and we are willing to give him his penny of praise, and thereby purchase a pleasant oblivion of him and his forevermore. In this attempt of Mr. LOWELL'S it was impossible not to see that there lay more beyond. We felt that however boldly he might have dived, he did not yet ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... much pleased with my successful teaching, as he had been with my successful learning; and when young Reichardt turned out a remarkably handy and intelligent lad, to whose assistance in some of his avocations he could have recourse with perfect confidence in his cleverness and discretion, he grew extremely partial to him. Dr Brightwell also proved his friend, and in a few years, the condition of the friendless workhouse boy was so changed, he could not have been taken for ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... tell you: I was here last night, and saw my Lord Walpole,(1328) for the first time, but such a youth! I declare to you, I was quite astonished at his sense and cleverness; it is impossible to describe it; it was just what would have made you as happy to observe as it did me: he is not yet seventeen, and is to continue a year longer at Eton, upon his own desire. Alas! how few have I seen of my countrymen half so formed even at their ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... who was wiser than the King and all his councilors; there never was anything like it. Her father was so proud of her that he boasted about her cleverness at home and abroad. He could not keep his tongue still about it. One day he was boasting to one of his neighbors, and he said, "The girl is so clever that not even the King himself could ask her a question she couldn't answer, or read her a riddle ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... of an obscure family, of the name of Dyves. Her portrait represents her as handsome, and her history vouches for her cleverness. It was probably owing to both that she was married to Mr Clayton, then holding an appointment in the treasury, and also the agent for the great Duke of Marlborough's estate, both of them appointments which implied a certain degree of intelligence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... would determine, nor would preponderance of weapons determine. It was not yet perceived that such clan-people were not Tribe-People, and thus could not know the meaning of Council, nor weigh consequence, nor realize in their new-found cleverness that a single arrogant act would trigger the ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... Preston, who was eating candy, were art students, and their homes were too far away to visit. As for Jean Lawrence, she was an orphan, and had no home of her own. She worked on the staff of one of the big city newspapers and the other girls were a little in awe of her cleverness, but her nature was a "chummy" one and her room was a favourite rendezvous. Everybody liked frank, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... but it has a certain cleverness as a satire on the music-hall song of the day, and the Gordons carried it gaily with them to their battlefields, blending it in that odd mixture of humor and tragedy that makes up the soldier's life. The bravest, ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... "One-sidedness is the mother of virtuosity. The work of the spider is wonderful, but the spider can do nothing else. Man makes a bow and arrow when he can get no prey in his net, the spider goes hungry.'' This distinguishes mechanical cleverness from conscious wisdom completely. Of the same illuminating character are such salse dicta as: "The fool never does what he says, the wise man never says what he does.'' "You can fool one man, but you can not fool all men.'' "Stupidity is natural, wisdom is a product of art.'' ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... and senseless changes in fashion render this practice hard to follow. No woman likes to look out of style. However, by a little cleverness garments and hats may be adapted to the prevailing mode (although the arbiters of fashion, in the interests of manufacturers, try by violent changes of style to render this impracticable). These adaptations may not be in the height of fashion, but they will be in good form ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... Hunt, would not be Maggie's forte if she developed her possibilities. With her looks, her boldness, her cleverness, she had the makings of a magnificent adventuress. As he painted, he wondered what she was going to do, and become; and he watched her not only with a painter's eye intent upon the present, but with keen speculation ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... of discomfort not lightened by seeing, as she looked back, that the others were walking down the hill together to the village; nor did her attendant do her much good by his comments on Miss Crawford's great cleverness as a horse-woman, which he had been watching with an interest almost ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Had he followed us back from the mountain? Hardly: we had come too quickly. Had he seen us coming in the early morning, and, making a circuit out of our sight, lain in wait for us as we returned? Such uncanny cleverness seemed hardly possible, even for Big Reuben, clever as he ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... benevolent, half selfish, as some of the thoughts of the best of men are apt to be. Social conditions mingle elements of evil with the promptings of natural goodness of heart, and the mixture of motives underlying a man's intentions should be leniently judged. Castanier had just cleverness enough to be very shrewd where his own interests were concerned. So he concluded to be a philanthropist on either count, and at first ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... can hardly be understood, Deerfoot stood in the background and watched the antics of the warrior who had wrapped the bear-skin about his shoulders and body. He could not avoid a feeling of admiration for the cleverness with which the front was arranged, so as to resemble that of the beast, but he felt not the slightest fear that the trick would succeed. It was such an antiquated stratagem that he wondered it was attempted, especially after the defenders ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... dressing, in entertaining, in eating, could be saved by a sensible economy, with no appreciable loss in enjoyment. We must not forget that everything we consume has been produced by the labor and time of others. What fortune, or our own cleverness, has put into our hands that we do not need for making fair and free our own lives, and the lives of those dependent upon us, we should pass on to those whose need is greater than ours. Is it wrong to gamble, bet, or speculate? A corollary to our discussion ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... he drew 13, "all ye've got ter do is this—313." I gasped in amazement, not at his cleverness as a brand-destroyer, but at his honest abandon. With a horrible operatic laugh, such as is painted in "The Cossack's Answer," he again laboriously drew () (the circle cross), and then added some marks which made it look like this: S()S. And again breaking into ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... little conversant with turf matters will no doubt be scandalized to hear of these tricks of the trade, and will be apt to conclude that good faith is no more the fashion at Longchamps than at the Bourse, and that cleverness in betting, as in stockjobbing, consists in knowing when to depreciate values and when to inflate them, as one happens to be a bull or a bear in the market. The truth is, that no rules can be devised, either ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... remote, or trifling facts in geography, topography, natural history, chronology, &c., or acquisitions in art, or accomplishments which the child makes by rote, and which are quite beyond its age; things of no value in themselves, but as they show cleverness; things hurtful to any temper, but to a child like yours absolute poison. Having said thus much, it seems almost impertinent to add that your child, above all, should, I might say, be chained down to the severest attention to truth,—I mean ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... present. It was not to be so with her; she would no longer be sacrificed to creatures worth less than herself, but would make the very best of the chances that life offered her, and conquer circumstances by her exceptional cleverness. Certainly, to be settled at Offendene, with the notice of Lady Brackenshaw, the archery club, and invitations to dine with the Arrowpoints, as the highest lights in her scenery, was not a position that seemed to offer remarkable chances; but Gwendolen's confidence ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... case, however, the cost was partially recouped by the cleverness of his son; who was a noted "nigger-catcher," and kept dogs for the especial purpose. He had a natural penchant for this kind of chase; and, having little else to do, passed a good deal of his time scouring the country in pursuit of his ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... to be alone when he is in this mood," she would say sometimes. Her tact and cleverness in managing him were wonderful; she never seemed to watch him, she never let him feel that his morbid fits were noticed and humored, but all the same she knew when to leave him alone, and when to talk ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... our wit, in its old meaning of good sense, or cleverness and the expression "having one's wits about one," &c.); or ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various
... not rank himself among the impressionists. And he would not like to hear his work called clever; I warn you of that. He has a horror of cleverness. It was not a clever picture, but sober, strange, beautiful. Well, I know Belot and his wife quite intimately. They are great friends of the Lippheims, too, and call themselves the Franco-Prussian alliance. Madame Belot is a dear little woman. ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... and over pronounced him to be the most brilliantly witty person she had ever in the whole course of her life encountered. But his talent as a supposed wit was nothing at all to the cleverness with which he now managed to keep the large white boat by the side of the small green one for the remainder of the evening. It was entirely managed by the superior will of one person, for certainly none of the Bells wished ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... which promise neither better nor worse. Here are paintings of merit, good in color and good in drawing, but empty of any meaning. Scattered through the exhibition are the works of a group of able men, imitating themselves, each trying to outdo the others by a display of cleverness in solving some "painter's problem" or by some startling effect of subject or handling. But it is a sad day for any artist when he ceases to find his impulse and inspiration either in his own spirit or in nature, and ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... straightforward, an' then that she should say: 'Hilton did it, the black beast. He always hated Bob an' me, because we were white, an' the jungle strain has come out at last.' Oh, it was somethink dreadful to hear her laughin' at her cleverness. I——" ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... consummate cleverness with which the false apostles went about to bring Paul into disrepute. They combed Paul's writings for contradictions (our opponents do the same) to accuse him of teaching contradictory things. They found that Paul had circumcised Timothy according ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... Lady's Own Novelist from the table into the broken armchair, and proceeded to sketch together the tea-things with various such interpolations as: "Law, if I ain't forgot the butter!" All the while she talked of Annie's good spirits and cleverness with her millinery, and of Minnie's affection and Miriam's relative love of order and management. Mr. Polly stood by the window uneasily and thought how good and sincere was the Larkins tone. It was ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... Bates, with a sympathetic thoughtfulness; "that's bad—bad. I'd sooner have a boy of mine dead than a mere gentleman. And I shouldn't want him too clever, either. My Billy, before we sent him off to college, showed signs of cleverness; it worried me a good deal. He wanted to write; and there was one time when he thought he wanted to paint. Of course we couldn't allow anything like that. I was willing enough that he should be posted on the best books, and be able to tell a good painting from ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... on the rug, two dogs, Ami and Finette, lay asleep. They were well-trained, obedient dogs, clean-limbed and civil, expert in many clever tricks, but not quite a match for the parrot in cleverness and cunning. ...
— The Nursery, No. 103, July, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... flatterer and the friend, if they differ neither in the pleasure they give nor in the praise they bestow; for as to services and attentions you may often see friendship outstripped by flattery. Certainly it is so, I should reply, if we are trying to find the genuine flatterer who handles his craft with cleverness and art, but not if, like most people, we consider those persons flatterers who are called their own oil-flask-carriers and table-men, men who begin to talk, as one said, the moment their hands have been washed ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... men's actions from a speculative plane. He excels in sharp etchings which bring the outline of a character into bold prominence. He is happy in defining isolated traits and in throwing a new light on much used words. "Cleverness," he writes, "is a certain knack or aptitude at doing certain things, which depend more on a particular adroitness and off-hand readiness than on force or perseverance, such as making puns, making epigrams, making extempore ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... however small it be, in the magnificent pageant of life and work, for he has not been sent into it 'on chance.' Inasmuch as if there is chance in one thing there must be chance in another, and the solar system is too mathematically designed to be a haphazard arrangement. With all our cleverness, our logic, our geometrical skill, we can do nothing so exact! As part of the solar system, you and I have our trifling business to enact, Monsignor,—and to enact it properly, and with satisfaction to our Supreme Employer, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... they could see, emerging likewise, the cocked ears, the shaggy head and eager brown eyes of Whitefoot as he turned at every other yard to make sure that Jean was following, and appreciating all his cleverness. At the edge of the clump of dull green alders he drew back to let her pass, as much as to say, "There now—you can do the rest—go on and see for yourself if I have not ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... Cleverness and cunning are incompatible. I never saw them united. The latter is the resource of the weak, and is only natural to them; children and fools are always cunning, but clever ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... fifty." Said the Sultan, "Thou sayest sooth," presently adding, "Hast thou knowledge as to the points of excellence in beauty?" "Yes," answered Badr al-Din Hasan, "Beauty consisteth in brightness of face, clearness of complexion, shapeliness of nose, gentleness of eyes, sweetness of mouth, cleverness of speech, slenderness of shape and seemliness of all attributes. But the acme of beauty is in the hair and, indeed, al-Shihab the Hijazi hath brought together all these items in his doggrel verse of the metre Rajaz, [FN489] ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... nod and bow as though they knew how to pray. Enan weeps as they near a town. "Here," says he, "my dear friend died, a man of wisdom and judgment. I will tell thee a little of his cleverness." ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... the eldest son of Dr. Johnson's Boswell. The inimitable biographer was fortunate in his offspring. His sons inherited all the virtues of their father, and none of his foibles. The social good humor, the cleverness, the appreciation of learning, the joviality,—every good quality, in fact, of Bozzy was reflected in his children, who had the sense to discern and avoid the frailties that had rendered the sire ridiculous in his own day, and illustrious for all time. James Boswell, the youngest son of the biographer, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... how poor a woman may be she may be original in her ideas. At first, of course, she must use the ideas of others, until she can show her cleverness through her adaptations, and employing her powers and gifts will add until larger powers ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... rarely acted like other people; their hearts were in the right place, but their heads seemed to be doing anything but what they ought."—"They were remarkable," says another statement, "for their worth, but of no cleverness in the ways of the world." Oliver Goldsmith will be found faithfully to inherit the virtues and weaknesses of ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... dropped casually in on Mrs. Popper. She was a woman of great brilliance and delicacy, both in her physical and mental perceptions, of exceptional vivacity and cleverness. She must have studied me more closely than I was aware of, for I believe she relied on diverting my attention whenever she desired to produce one of her really wonderful results. Needless to say, I was completely mystified by her performance. She did spirit writing that would have done ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... conscientiousness may enable him to rise in his profession without them. Again in the case of clergymen: that they are sorely tempted to display their eloquence or wit, none who know their own hearts will deny, but then they know this to be a temptation: they never would suppose that cleverness was all that was to be expected from them, or would sit down deliberately to write a clever sermon: even the dullest or vainest of them would throw some veil over their vanity, and pretend to some profitableness of purpose ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... fidgety habit, for it's none of the longest yet) I count my real start from the evening George Corvick, breathless and worried, came in to ask me a service. He had done more things than I, and earned more pence, though there were chances for cleverness I thought he sometimes missed. I could only however that evening declare to him that he never missed one for kindness. There was almost rapture in hearing it proposed to me to prepare for The Middle, the organ of our lucubrations, ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... Moss declared she was almost afraid to have such a wonderfully intelligent animal in the house. Praises of his dog pleased Ben more than praises of himself, and when the confusion had subsided he entertained his audience with a lively account of Sancho's cleverness, fidelity, and the various adventures in which he had nobly ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... display of sentiment! And both sentiment and buffoonery could have been made very good too, in a way accessible to the meanest intelligence, at the cost of truth and honesty. Here it is where Maupassant's austerity comes in. He refrains from setting his cleverness against the eloquence of the facts. There is humour and pathos in these stories; but such is the greatness of his talent, the refinement of his artistic conscience, that all his high qualities appear inherent in the very things of which he ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... business. I'm very fond of Mrs. Russell. She hasn't the obnoxious ways of most progressive women, and she certainly has executive ability and common sense. Being such an indolent person myself, I have always been fascinated by her spirit and cleverness. I'm glad she has been given a chance. They are getting ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... condescended to learn, because learning came easy to them. But common caution they did not learn, because it did not seem to them either interesting or necessary. So it was often just luck that got them out of scrapes, though they always thought it was their own cleverness. ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the coast offered its feast of inexhaustible pleasure to the children, who never wearied of its charm. The moon shone with the most unusual brightness, it seemed to Otto, who, at last, had the cleverness to suggest that all the children should collect on the hillside at seven o'clock to take advantage of its beauty ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... me up to a little man, with a high tuft of hair on his forehead and moustaches, in a cinnamon-coloured frock-coat and striped cravat. His yellow, mobile features were certainly full of cleverness and sarcasm. His lips were perpetually curved in a flitting ironical smile; little black eyes, screwed up with an impudent expression, looked out from under uneven lashes. Beside him stood a country gentleman, ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... her crowning cleverness. He didn't know how much permanence she attached to matrimony, or to Mr. Higginson, but he knew that she had considered him in that preposterous relation. She faced him and his awful knowledge and floored him with just that—the thing's inherent, ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... Then you can have no idea what a girl she is. Such character! Such sense! And her cleverness! Oh, my eye, Praed, but I can tell you she is clever! And—need ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... akin to love in Molly, or her affections had been too starved to take root after the immediate impulse of mercy was passed. The girl was not popular in the village, although, unlike Mrs. Carteret, her poorer neighbours had a great idea of Molly's cleverness. Needless to say that when, after some unmeasured effort at relieving suffering, Molly would come home with a sense of joy she rarely knew after any other act, it hurt her to the quick and roused her deepest anger to find herself treated like a naughty, inconsiderate ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... Roy exulted shamelessly, marvelling at his father's cleverness, wondering how much he had told. "I hammered hard. And I'm not sorry a bit. Nor ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... world. A palpable proof this, given by the head of its Foreign Office, of the vitality of the Portuguese nation! Some days later the Duke, a diplomatist of the old school, who added to his own considerable wit and cleverness the advantage of having rubbed shoulders with the greatest diplomatists of the century, such as Talleyrand and Metternich, asked me to dine with him. It was a splendid banquet. On our arrival we found the royal archers (so called because they carried ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... squarely on the chair that it did not overturn. He kept his place, instantly securing the scuttle against the entrance of the white man, whom he had baffled with such cleverness. Probably he had some idea of taking a shot at him, but the little manoeuvring in which he indulged told him the danger was too great, and he ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... certain definite assumptions. The inhabitants of the manor house were informed that a friend of Sir Walter's had come to visit Chadlands, and they saw nothing to make them doubt it. For Peter was a great actor. He had mixed with all classes, and the detective had the imitative cleverness to adapt himself in speech and attire to every society. He even claimed that he could think with the brains of anybody and adapt his inner mind, as well as his outer shape, to the changing environment of his activities. He appreciated the histrionics ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... sophisticated. There was about him an atmosphere of cold preparedness that discouraged encroachment on his privacy. Men did not trifle with him, because they feared him. Around Durango, where he had ridden for the Bar S outfit, it was known that he possessed Satanic cleverness with ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the primordial energies of the complex vision may be felt and realized without being expressed in words. The curse of what we call "cleverness" is that it hastens to find facile and fluent expression for what cannot be easily and fluently expressed. Education is too frequently a mere affair of words, a superficial encouragement of superficial expression. It is for this reason that many totally uneducated persons achieve, unknown to all ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... you, with an earnestness which you will understand, to authorize me to pursue the investigation. Cosmo Mornington's will makes it my duty and, allow me to say, gives me the right to do so. M. Fauville's enemies have given proofs of extraordinary cleverness and daring. I want to have the honour of being at the post of danger to-night, at M. ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... situation was different. Toddy was so nicknamed because of his diabolical cleverness in concocting toddies. So I brought whisky along—a couple of gallons. Alas! Many another gallon I bought, for Cloudesley and I got into the habit of drinking a certain hot toddy that actually tasted delicious going down and that carried ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... horns and the bells, and they rejoiced; 'For,' said they, 'THIS time the old woman will be on the watch, and let him be as clever as he likes, the bells on the horns are sure to warn her.' So when, as before, the king came down to the stables and praised the cleverness of their brother, the young men told him of that other marvel possessed by the witch, the goat ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... circumstances, but it always provokes an intellectual appreciation. Thus, Nero made a pun on the name of Seneca, when the philosopher was brought before him for sentence. In speaking the decree that the old man should kill himself, the emperor used merely the two Latin words: "Se neca." We admit the ghastly cleverness of the jest, but we do not chuckle ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... refinement, and no pretension. The father was the most polished, with the scholarly courtesy of the dignified clergyman; the mother was the most simple and caressing; the daughter somewhat uncouth, readily betraying both her feelings and her cleverness and drollery in the style of the old friend whom Lucilla was amused to see treated as a youth and almost a contemporary of her pupil. What chiefly diverted her was the grotesque aspect of Dr. Prendergast and his daughter. Both were on a large scale, with immense ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... part was hardly to be wondered at, seeing that she had been spoiled and petted all her life. Everything that she said and did was extravagantly praised by her adoring mother, and she had grown up with exaggerated ideas of her cleverness, her looks, and her own importance. What wonder, then, that the poor child held her head high and waggled her skirts? But Marjory knew nothing of these causes, and, seeing only their effects, her ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... impression—ah that there is no room for improvement, but the thing was very well done, for an undergraduate. I must confess I never should have suspected it in Peters, and it's most interesting what you say about his cleverness in conversation." He twirled the head of his stick, apparently lost in reflection. "I may be wrong," he went on presently, "I have an idea it is you—" I must literally have jumped away from him. He paused a moment, without apparently ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... for private secretary one Verrier, whom he had unfrocked from the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, the business of which he had conducted for twenty years, with much cleverness and intelligence. He soon accommodated himself to the humours of the Cardinal, and said to him ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... reaching the ground by perhaps ten feet—a trifle which man or boy may drop without injury. All is safe, therefore, for him: which is more than one can be sure of for miscreant in the parlor. Miscreant, however, takes it coolly enough: the reason being, that, with all his cleverness, for once in his life miscreant has been over-reached. The reader and I know, but miscreant does not in the least suspect, a little fact of some importance, viz., that just now through a space of full three minutes he has been overlooked and studied by one, who (though reading ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... you ever were to see them. I do not know which you would like best. Nora is a very sweet little girl, or at least, by the bye, she must have grown since I left home a good deal. She is older than I am rather, and so fair and gentle, but she has not the spirit of Sophy, or her cleverness; Sophy is a wonderfully clever girl, she draws so well. She used to make such beautiful portraits of people. However, I must not praise her too much, or you may ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... age in which he lived. 14. The wise teacher should not aim to repress, but to encourage his pupils. 15. Such rules are useless both for teachers and pupils. 16. Her success is neither the result of cleverness nor ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... up, his personal appearance became less prepossessing, his quickness and cleverness, however, rather increased; and I may say of him, that with respect to everything which he took in hand he did it better and more speedily than any other person. Perhaps it will be asked here, what became of him? Alas! alas! his was an early and a ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... simple. Dear innocents, how easily they are fooled! A little make-up, a touch of rouge, a dash of henna—and you are an angel. Some women seem really to think this; for, naturally, they know nothing of their own mystery, and imagine that it resides in a few feminine tricks, the superficial cleverness with which some of them know how to make the most of the strange something about them which they understand even less than ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... you leading out yonder in that strange land? Do you never get weary or feel bored? Have you anything to amuse you? I have become satiated with my life—lying, cheating, deceiving every day in order to live! While I was a little girl I was proud of the praises heaped upon me for my cleverness. But a day came when everything disgusted me. It is an infamous trade, this of ours, little mama, and I have given it up. I have begun to lead a different life—one with which I am satisfied; and if you will take the advice ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... daughter of that Montessuy, who, at first a clerk in a Parisian bank, founded and governed two great establishments, brought to sustain them the resources of a brilliant mind, invincible force of character, a rare alliance of cleverness and honesty, and treated with the Government as if he were a foreign power. She had grown up in the historical castle of Joinville, bought, restored, and magnificently furnished by her father. Montessuy made life give all it could yield. An instinctive and powerful ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... presented as a claimant of authority to Nathaniel. Suppose him to be a poor Spaniard, surrounded by false miracles, false erudition, and all the apparatus of reigning and unopposed Romanism. He cannot cope with the priests in cleverness,—detect their juggleries,—refute their historical falsehoods, disentangle their web of sophistry: but if he is truehearted, he may say: "You bid me not to keep faith with heretics: you defend murder, exile, imprisonment, fines, on men who will not submit their consciences to your authority: ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... express and enforce with earnestness, sincerity and fire, the sentiments of a poetic soul, a generous heart, and an immense intelligence, on subjects of consequence to humanity, have a higher value than can attach to skillful development of plot and intrigue, mere display of literary cleverness, or of the ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... with the intelligence left out. I know nothing more distressing than the attempt to follow any German argument concerning the War. If it were merely wrong-headed, cunning, deceitful, there might still be some compensation in its cleverness. There is no such compensation. The statements made are not false, but empty; the arguments used are not bad, but meaningless. It is as if they despised language, and made use of it only because ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... impossible to seize, she could not analyze it, but there it was; certainly there seemed to be some change. He was brilliant, and had been even empresse before lunch, but it was not spontaneous, and she was not perfectly sure that it was not assumed. It was his cleverness which attracted her. She could not see the other side of his head—not that she would have understood what that meant, if she had heard ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... to enjoy the popularity that Isabelle had known. But any woman might run away with a rich admirer. Harriet's admiration for the cleverness with which Isabelle conducted this pretty playing with fire disappeared, and in its place came the sharp conviction that old-fashioned women like Linda had some justification, after all; it was "dangerous," it did "lead to sin," it could ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... she found her pleasure in doing many things, and in the fact that there were so many. She rejoiced daily that she was free, and her own mistress in everything; free to do these many things denied to other young women, and that she had the health and position and cleverness to carry them on and through to success. She did them all, and equally well and gracefully, whether it was the rejection of a too ambitious devotee who dared to want to have her all to himself, or the planning of a woman's luncheon, ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... I mean is: if any one would make a collection of all the vilest and most damaging slanders ever vented against Pythagoras—things whose truth I would not accept for a moment—, the sum of them would not come within measurable distance of Alexander's cleverness. You are to set your imagination to work and conceive a temperament curiously compounded of falsehood, trickery, perjury, cunning; it is versatile, audacious, adventurous, yet dogged in execution; ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... the buffet of a large restaurant on the Boulevard Sebastopol. She was widely known for her cleverness and her ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... ago; she had worked then with pleasure and interest, and taken examinations with easy triumph. As Kay did now at Cambridge, only more so, because she had been cleverer than Kay. She was a vain creature, and had believed that cleverness of hers to be unimpaired by life, until she came to try. She supposed that if she had spent her married life in head work, her head would never have lost the trick of it. But she hadn't. She had spent it on Rodney and Gerda and Kay, and the interesting, amusing life led by the wife of a ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... of the four bombs and their immediate consignment to the sea saved the ship from being blown to bits. With another hour to spare, it is more than probable the remaining four would have been found, notwithstanding the amazing cleverness with which they were hidden, so thorough and so dogged was the search. Confusion, terror, stupefaction and finally panic followed the successive blasts. The decks were strewn with people prostrated by the violent upheavals, and many there were who never got up again. Stunned, dazed, ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... the side like a monkey for cleverness, and as soon as he saw what was doing, "So ho, mates!" says ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to include more intricate tricks than a performing elephant and a troupe of circus dogs could hope to learn in a lifetime. They became sworn chums. Dick talked to Lass as if she were human. She amazed the enraptured boy by her cleverness and spirits. His initiation to the dog-masters' guild ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... entertaining, in eating, could be saved by a sensible economy, with no appreciable loss in enjoyment. We must not forget that everything we consume has been produced by the labor and time of others. What fortune, or our own cleverness, has put into our hands that we do not need for making fair and free our own lives, and the lives of those dependent upon us, we should pass on to those whose need is greater than ours. Is it wrong to gamble, bet, or speculate? A corollary to our discussion of the duties appertaining ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... beginning to chatter about the friendship existing between a Cabinet Minister and a beautiful Hungarian lady of title, etc., etc. The fact of it is that Brott is in deadly earnest. He gives himself away every time. If Lucille has not lost old cleverness she will be able to twist him ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... dangerous in his rude bulk and strength, the knitted brute power that the sea and his hard life had given him; to Guthrie, Claud was dangerous in the highbred beauty and finish of his person, clothes and manners, and in the astounding "cleverness" that he displayed. Each man feared the force of those qualities which he lacked himself, and ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... children who to your eyes seem so perfect, and have no inclination to act as inquisitors over their little talents and accomplishments. Spare your friends the thousand-and-one anecdotes of the extraordinary cleverness, vivacity, or piety of the little people you love so blindly: do not excoriate their ears by making them listen to recitations or the strumming of sonatos; or weary their eyes by requesting them to watch the leaping and kicking of small stick-like legs.' You only render your boys and girls conceited, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... Captain Len Guy would not spare him if he tried to get up insubordination amongst his comrades. It was a pity that his bad instincts had induced him to play such a part, for his strength, skill, and cleverness made him a very valuable man, and he had never proved more ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... had the palm of cleverness conceded to her ever since she could recollect, when she read better at three years old than her sister at five, and ever after, through the days of education, had enjoyed, and excelled in, the studies that were a toil to Grace. Subsequently, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Your cleverness is in vain, Messieurs Protectionists, it is useless to lower your tone, to boast of your latent generosity, or to deceive your opponents by sentiment. You cannot prevent logic from ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... companions! Many and many a time had the younger man come down to these lodgings, with all his troubles and wild impulses and pangs of contrition ready to be revealed; and then Ingram, concealing the liking he had for the lad's generous waywardness, his brilliant and facile cleverness and his dashes of honest self-depreciation, would gravely lecture him and put him right and send him off comforted. Frank Lavender had changed much since then. The handsome boy had grown into a man of the world; there was less self-revelation in his manner, and he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... Rankin. "Why, he's a very fiend of cleverness when it comes to a case of this kind. We're not in the same class with him. He's a fancy fellow—just the Record kind. You're sure you didn't tell him anything else, Mr. Lester?" he added anxiously. "Godfrey's capable of getting a story out of ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... you have no business whatever to have. I suppose this will account for the correctness of your work during the past half-year? Do you feel very proud of your performance," he added, sneeringly, "when none of it was your own labour or cleverness?" ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... in his work: there, be sure, you have him to the inmost. All that he likes, all that he sees,—all that he can do,—his imagination, his affections, his perseverance, his impatience, his clumsiness, cleverness, everything is there. If the work is a cobweb, you know it was made by a spider; if a honeycomb, by a bee; a worm-cast is thrown up by a worm, and a nest wreathed by a bird; and a house built by a man, worthily, if he is worthy, and ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... themselves to my memory, and perhaps may do so to some of yours. I may say farther, that some whose change from childhood to manhood had been, in St. Paul's sense of the terms, the most remarkably advanced, were so far from being distinguished for their cleverness or proficiency in their school-work, that it would almost seem as if their only remaining childishness had been displayed there. What I mean, therefore, by the change from childhood to manhood, is altogether distinct from a premature advance in ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... you admit the point. As for cleverness it isn't that I've so much of that, but I use what I've got. Well, have you ...
— Plays of Near & Far • Lord Dunsany
... nothing to do. Therefore, I suppose she went in for the torturing business as a profession. Her Frenchmen did not mind; that was the secret of her charm with them— so clever, they called her, but it nearly killed me, her cleverness. I grew pale and worn—sleep—I never slept. All my life I had lived without natural affection, and now I was pouring forth upon this woman the love I might have rendered friends, sister, brother, mother, as well as the passion of a young man. I say to you ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... the men as well, that this was only the lull before the storm. Their enemy was desperate and resourceful, and though the cleverness of the American engineers had carried through the mine operation without detection, it was certain that the ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... off of his shoulders,—meet it with a smile and some swaggering comment. And I knew as well that, if by any hook or crook he could prevent the contract from being carried out, he would do it with the devil's cleverness. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... cleverness is considered, are singularly ignorant of the habits, institutions, and civilization of other countries. This is in part owing to their being little addicted to travelling. Their commercial enterprise is not great; for though we occasionally ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... than anybody, at him and at herself. It was a revelation to her, his cleverness, his brilliant social gift. She was only intimate with one kind of cleverness, the kind that feeds itself on lectures and on books. She had not thought of Walter as clever. She had only thought of him as good. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... and little or no moral sense, who might be made a tool of. It seems no one at New York was taken in by him, but having wandered over to London, the booksellers found him a good subject for a book, and some hack there, with considerable cleverness, made him a pack-horse for carrying a load of stuff about America's treatment of the Indians. It was called a "captivity," and he was made to play the part of an adventurer among the Indians—somewhat after the manner of John Tanner. C. reviewed the book, on our route and at the Prairie, for the ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... justice. Every people, it is true, have resorted to the habit of mutilating or changing in their oaths the letters which form the Creator's name; but we question if any have surpassed the Irish in the cleverness with which they accomplish it. Mock oaths are habitual to Irishmen in ordinary conversation; but the use of any or all of them is not considered to constitute an oath: on the contrary, they are in the mouths of many who would not, except upon a very solemn occasion indeed, swear by the name of ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... Otto chattered excitedly. He told of the dog, dilating on its cleverness, but passing politely over the manner of its return. Now and then Hedwig glanced at Nikky, when he was not looking, and always, when they dared, the young soldier's eyes ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a while even the smartest people are caught napping. Yes, Sir, that does happen. They will be careless sometimes. It was just so with Old Granny Fox. With all her smartness and cleverness and wisdom she grew careless, and all the smartness and cleverness and wisdom in the world is useless if the ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... Hamlet's cleverness in simulating madness is dwelt upon in the old story. See 'Hystorie of ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... the stamp of the culture of the Nicolai school. Utterly unsympathetic, narrow beyond the dreams of the narrowest of modern schoolmasters, they were frankly, virulently hostile to any one in whom they perceived—as they always did perceive with the unerring instinct of stupidity to detect cleverness—the smallest trace of originality of character, thought or outlook on life. As a rule they seem to have been successful in achieving their aim. An old German friend of mine told me he had calculated that the Nicolai school turned out in ten years more complete, complacent blockheads ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... which had been received from noted societies and eminent men and women in the United States and Europe.[116] The New York Sun said: "In ordinary hands this task would have been dull enough, but Miss Anthony enlivened it with her wit and cleverness and made a success of it." It may be truly said that not one woman in that audience, not even Mrs. Stanton herself, was prouder or happier than Miss Anthony over ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... is dominated by three portraits by Antonio Mancini, of unusual cleverness and very fine psychological characterization. Mancini's work grows on one. While seeming at first rather loose and superficial, these portraits disclose on more intimate study a fine constructive quality. They are not particularly interesting in colour; as a matter of fact they are very monochromatic. ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... altogether wise. Hitherto we fooled her for all her cleverness. Her price of silence was education in our mysteries, and we have made ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... entertaining and dramatic pages of Headley, with their impassioned, stirring pictures of war and heroism, than the tame, tedious biographies that then filled the libraries. Headley's History of the War of 1812 immediately preceded his entrance to the Assembly in 1854, where his cleverness attracted the attention of his party and led to his selection for secretary of state. George F. Comstock, now in his forty-first year, had already won an enviable reputation at the Onondaga bar. Like Headley he was a graduate of Union College. In 1847, Governor ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... ought to say, not chiefly, to be assimilated through our brains. The best preparation for the doing of the will of God and the progressive entering into His mind, is an obedient life. Purity of character will carry us farther on this path than cleverness of brains. Our Lord's own rule is: He that doeth the will shall know of the doctrine. In other words, we understand the mind of God and attain to the illumination of the conscience, through sympathetic response to the will ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... before they found themselves in a crowd of people, all going toward the castle ruin, for there, they told Hulda, the pedlar, the famous pedlar from the north, who sold such fine wares, was going to perform some feats of jugglery of most surprising cleverness. ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... think——Of course as our pastor said once, at Baptist Church——By the way, we haven't seen you there yet, and of course your husband was raised up a Baptist, and I do hope he won't drift away from the fold, of course we all know there isn't anything, not cleverness or gifts of gold or anything, that can make up for humility and the inward grace and they can say what they want to about the P. E. church, but of course there's no church that has more history or has stayed by ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... her to wind, but he made up to me for the disappointment that evening by sitting by me while I pinned out my few but far from rare captures, taking great pleasure in holding the pins for me, and praising what he called my cleverness in ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... can never prosper. If ever there was a woman fitted to meet the difficulty and danger which threatened them, it was Mrs. Campbell, for she had courage and presence of mind, joined to activity and cleverness. ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... quietly into the house, licks the lips of the sick man and eats the food which has been prepared for him. The sick man soon gets worse and dies. They say it is very difficult to catch the cat, as it has all the nimbleness of its nature and the cleverness of a bhut. However, they sometimes succeed, and then something wonderful happens. The woman out of whom the cat has come remains insensible, as it were in a state of temporary death, until the cat re-enters her body. Any wound inflicted on the cat will be inflicted on her; if they ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... surgeon, as you might be without derogation to your high rank, you'd be ready to faint if you saw him cut off a leg or an arm, as he would have to do every day for his livelihood; but you'd be proud of his cleverness in being able to do it. That's how I feel with regard to Ned. I tell you the truth, ma'am, I shouldn't like to see him in the ring no more than the lady of an officer in the Guards would like to see her husband in the field of battle running his sword into ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... certainly did manage it—and then went down the stone stair-way backward, as though he had been trained to be a trick donkey from his youth up. When the feat was accomplished, and he stood safely out in the canon, the expressions of love, and of congratulation upon his cleverness, which Pablo lavished upon him were enough to have turned completely a ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... to the rider, reflected his admiration. "If you're in the right," he said, "I'll say it for you, Asgill, you're the match of the old one for cleverness. But do you think she'll come to it, ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... easy to them. But common caution they did not learn, because it did not seem to them either interesting or necessary. So it was often just luck that got them out of scrapes, though they always thought it was their own cleverness. ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... fair-haired, blue-eyed, country-looking maiden at his side, as well as the hale old rustic by whom they were attended. All three were delighted with their position, and Dick Taverner took full credit to himself for his cleverness in procuring it for them. As to pretty Gillian, nothing could please her better, for she could not only see all that was going forward, but everybody could see her—even Prince Charles himself; and she flattered ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that 'the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we shall be set ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... of things then existing, a ministry could be best kept together, not by parliamentary capacity, but by social arrangements, such as his Duchess, and his Duchess alone, could carry out. She and she only would have the spirit and the money and the sort of cleverness required. In such a state of things he of course, as her husband, must be ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... you from doing all this with Sir Philip? He is a baronet—a man of rank, property, connections far above yours. If you talk of intellect, he is a poet—he writes verses; which you, I take it, cannot do, with all your cleverness." ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Juana,[167-3] and of all the other islands, are much afraid of the inhabitants of Bohio, because they say that they eat people. The Indians relate other things, by signs, which are very wonderful; but the Admiral did not believe them. He only inferred that those of Bohio must have more cleverness and cunning to be able to capture the others, who, however, are very poor-spirited. The wind veered from N.E. to North, so the Admiral determined to leave Cuba, or Juana, which, up to this time, he had supposed to be the mainland, on account of its size, having coasted ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... had not been surprised when Duncan had mentioned Dakota as being a probable tool, for he had thought over the occurrence of the shooting in Lazette many times, and had been much impressed with Dakota's coolness and his satanic cleverness with a six-shooter, and it seemed that it would be a simple matter to arrange with him for the removal of Doubler. Yes, it had seemed simple enough when he had planned it, and when Duncan had told him that Dakota was not on ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the storm till it passes over. Anything I do during the time it lasts, even household work, is badly done. The brain seems to become addled for the time being, while after gratification of desire it seems to attain an additional quickness and cleverness. Perhaps this cause contributes to the small amount of intellectual and artistic work done by women, admitting their natural inferiority to men in artistic impulse. A woman whose passions are satisfied generally has her strength sapped by maternity, while her attention is drawn from ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... is, that there is so much CLEVERNESS standing betwixt me and the public . . . Richard Wagner is sixty years old and over, and one-half of the most cultivated artists of the most cultivated art-land, quoad music, still think him an absurdity. Says Schumann in ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... not think of it particularly at the time, but it was probably owing to this utilitarian occupation that he did not again see the attractive Jess on his way out. For, with all her cleverness, ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... had of course gone long before. The man who was there was another type of Carlist altogether, and his temperament was that of a trader. He was the chief purveyor of the Legitimist armies, an honest broker of stores, and enjoyed a great reputation for cleverness. His important task kept him, of course, in France, but his young wife, whose beauty and devotion to her King were well known, represented him worthily at Headquarters, where his own appearances were extremely rare. The dissimilar but united loyalties of those two people had ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... look came into his mother's eyes and sent a glow of self-satisfaction through his whole being. The look was familiar to him and meant that his mother was annoyed by the question but pleased with his cleverness ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... especial cleverness, because no especial cleverness is needed, lead the reader into contempt for the amateur of Orgeres, and forgetfulness of Leverrier—and some other subject is ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... of our dogs that I must tell you of one, just to show that I have not altered in my devotion to our "true first friend." This dog's name was "Black," and he lived many years ago at Mistaken Cove. The tales of his beauty, his cleverness at tricks, and his endurance of difficulties are still told, but chiefly of his devotion to his master. After years of this companionship the beloved master died and was buried in the woods near his lonely little house. Black was inconsolable. ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... Kara say?" said Pine, and his eyes flashed, for the idea of getting rid of Lambert in this way appealed to him. The girl was beautiful, and with her added cleverness she might be able to gain her ends, and these accomplished, would certainly place a barrier between Agnes and her cousin, since the woman would never forgive the man for ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... household effects we now decided to take small lodgings in the so-called 'hinteren Escherhausern' in the Zeltweg. With great cleverness Minna had succeeded in selling the Dresden furniture to advantage, and out of the proceeds of this sale she had brought three hundred marks with her to Zurich to help towards setting up our new home. She told me that she had saved my small but very select library for me by giving it into the ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... before my mother; she had taken a great dislike to Zinaida, and kept a hostile eye upon us. My father I was not so much afraid of; he seemed not to notice me. He talked little to her, but always with special cleverness and significance. I gave up working and reading; I even gave up walking about the neighbourhood and riding my horse. Like a beetle tied by the leg, I moved continually round and round my beloved ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... a fortnight, what with my own cleverness, and the diligence of him I had chosen for my patron, I learned to jump for the king of France, and not to jump for the good-for-nothing landlady; he taught me to curvet like a Neapolitan courser, to move in a ring like a mill horse, and other things ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... or alluvial, occurs only as an oxide, termed cassiterite, and yet you can well appreciate the compliment one Cornish miner pays to another whose cleverness he wishes to commend, when he says of him, "Aw, he do know tin," when you look at a representative collection of tin ores. In various shapes, from sharp-edged crystals to mammillary-shaped nuggets of wood-tin; from masses of 30 lbs. weight to a fine sand, like gunpowder, in colour black, brown, ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... and when she showed him the stranger's arrangements, or repeated to him, in a wondering, blundering way, with constant appeals to her attendant, the new tales she had heard, he used to listen with a pleased awkward amazement at his little Ermentrude's astonishing cleverness, joined sometimes with real interest, which was evinced by his inquiries of Christina. He certainly did not admire the little, slight, pale bower-maiden, but he seemed to look upon her like some ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but, as he always changed his name and his localities, this fact was not known officially. He was an avowed infidel, and seemed to delight in spreading his opinions among the prisoners, who were generally too willing to listen to him. If he keeps out of prison, it will be his cleverness in escaping detection and not his principles that will save him. His prison influence was most pernicious, and afforded another striking and painful illustration of the evils of indiscriminate association of ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... retribution would be so swift that his friends would not be able to save him. This time his enemy would take no chances. He would be wiped out like a troublesome insect. The thing was diabolic in the simplicity of its cleverness. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... to be more cautious, or it may drive him to desperate measures at once. Like most clever criminals, he may be too confident in his own cleverness and imagine that ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... his public school and University education had been able to do for Theobald! Nevertheless for his own part he thought his letter rather a good one, and congratulated himself in particular upon his cleverness in inventing the story of a previous attachment, behind which he intended to shelter himself if Christina should complain of any lack of fervour ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... the contrivance in his pocket. He pulled out his watch. The hour, to his amazement, was nearly ten. He realized he must have lain a considerable time unconscious in the wet. Halting to wonder what cleverness might suggest as the best possible thing to be done, he somewhat grimly determined to ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... "Maggie's cleverness lies in being able to pretend she understands what she knows nothing about; I have often caught ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... followed for her prodigious transformations in the panorama of Nature. Seen from the standpoint of his great, overwhelming lie to her, the philosophy which this man had professed changed in its appearance, and that mightily. He had used his cleverness like a net to trap her, and now, though she could not prove his words untrue save in one particular, yet that crowning act of faithlessness much tended to vitiate all the beauties of imagination which had gone before it. They were ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... did them," said Challoner with dry amusement. "I can see their cleverness, but I'll admit that I think them rather a ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... whole; self-interest, that great motor of the mind, had failed in his case to instruct him. He was often aghast when his sister ordered some article to be sold below cost, foreseeing the end of its fashion; later he admired her idiotically for her cleverness. He reasoned neither ill nor well; he was simply incapable of reasoning at all; but he had the sense to subordinate himself to his sister, and he did so from a consideration that was outside of the business. "She is my elder," he said. Perhaps an existence like his, always solitary, reduced ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... much as old people are sorry for the young, knowing the end to all their enthusiasms. It was as though he had travelled ahead, and had found out how meaningless everything was, even his clever friend's strength and cleverness. ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... never conquer his own sins by arguing with himself, or by any other means, till he got to know God, and to see that God was the Lord. And when his spirit was utterly broken; when he saw himself, in spite of all his wonderful cleverness and learning, to have been a fool and blind all along, though people round him were flattering him, and running after him to hear his learning; then the old words which he learnt at his mother's knee came up in his ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... He, too, was silent for a long time. "They say that French cleverness..." he babbled suddenly, as though in a fever... "that's false, it always has been. Why libel French cleverness? It's simply Russian indolence, our degrading impotence to produce ideas, our revolting parasitism in the rank of nations. Ils sont tout ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to drive an ordinary mortal crazy. The successful scenario writers, who conceive our best plays, are the real heart of this business, and the next to them in importance are the directors, or producers, who exercise marvelous cleverness in staging ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... skill, cleverness, cunning: device, trick, snare, ambuscade, plot, treachery, , AO, CP: work of art, cunning device, ...
— A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary - For the Use of Students • John R. Clark Hall
... the least doubt that, though to the casual observer the majority of Coreans appear depressed and unintelligent, they are, as a matter of fact, far from stupid. I have met people in the land of Cho-sen, whose cleverness would have been conspicuous in any country, Western or otherwise. When they set their mind to learn something they never cease till their object is attained, and I can vouch for their quick comprehension, even of matters of which they have never ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... ultra-violet light may have blinded Mr. Haswell, even to the recognition of his own daughter, but you can rest assured, Prescott, that the very cleverness of your scheme will penetrate the eyes of the blindfolded goddess of justice. Burnham, if you will have the kindness to summon the police, I will take all the responsibility for the ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... uncle, William Pitt, with whom she remained until his death in 1806. Pitt became deeply attached to his handsome, high-spirited niece. He believed in her sincerity and affection for himself, admired her courage and cleverness, laughed at her temper, and encouraged her pride. She seems to have gained a considerable influence over her uncle, and contrived to have a finger in most of the ministerial pies. When reproached for allowing her such unreserved liberty of action in state affairs, Pitt was accustomed ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... dressed well, talked well, and played excellent bridge. The fact of their not marrying was an eternal mystery to their friends, to their wiry, nervous little father, and their large, fat, serene mother; perhaps to themselves as well. They met life, as they saw it, with great cleverness, making it a rule to do little entertaining at home, where the preponderance of women was most notable, and refusing to accept invitations except singly. The Vanderwall girls were rarely seen together; each had her pose and kept ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... to amuse herself by going to the Opera, French and Italian. Twice a week she appeared there with her mother and Madame de Clagny, who was made by her husband to visit Dinah. Still, in spite of her cleverness, her charming manners, her fashionable stylishness, she was never really happy but with her children, on whom she lavished ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... pursuers to believe that they had gone far out into the native country; whereas, in fact, their hiding place was somewhere among the settlements. Should this be so, the only way to find them was to search for their back track. This he had now found and, with a shout of triumph at his own cleverness, Jim forded the river and followed ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... of our circle has been, and still is, stronger than the man, not by virtue of her fascinations, not through her cleverness in performing the same pharisaical semblance of work as man, but because she has not stepped out from under the law that she should undergo that real labor, with danger to her life, with exertion to the last degree, from which the man of the wealthy ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... so bright and clever and says such smart things, and can write. I adore cleverness. I'm not a bit clever. I work dreadfully hard to keep up in my classes. But Kathleen is actually brilliant, and, besides, she took me to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... adopted tortoise-shell spectacles as badges of their slickerhood, and this made them so easy to recognize that Amory and Rahill never missed one. The slicker seemed distributed through school, always a little wiser and shrewder than his contemporaries, managing some team or other, and keeping his cleverness carefully concealed. ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... specially interesting as the haunt of half the painters of the early Georgian era. There are anecdotes of Hogarth and his friends to be picked up here in abundance, and the locality generally deserves exploration, from the quaintness and cleverness of its former inhabitants. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... your training before I let you into the regular game and for the sake of the little Burrows girl, whom I fell in love with when she was so friendless. I believed things would reach a climax in the Hathaway case, in this very spot, but I couldn't foresee that your cleverness would ferret out that letter, which the girl Irene intended to keep silent about, nor did I know that the Chief would send me here in person to supervise Hathaway's capture. Mighty queer things happen ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... away a gold piece as another man would take a stimulant. Gradually, without really thinking about it, I came to see this, and then went on to sabe why Denton picked up the coins; and a great admiration for Denton's cleverness seeped through me like water through the sand. He was saving the coins to keep Schwartz going. When the last coin went, Schwartz would give out. It all sounds queer now, but it seemed all right then—and ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... necessary to remove the strange shapelessness that had incrusted her, and reveal the grace and loveliness of a divinity. Imperfect as the design, the attitude, the costume, and especially the face of the image still remained, there was already an effect that drew the eye from the wooden cleverness of Drowne's earlier productions and fixed it upon the tantalizing mystery of this ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... forty-five degrees." Jukes was a civil engineer, and Condy held that it was a capital bit of realism on the part of the author to have him speak of the pitch of the hills in just such technical terms. At first he thought he would call Travis' attention to this bit of cleverness; but as he read he abruptly changed his mind. He would see if she would find it out for herself. It would be a test of her quickness, he told himself; almost an unfair test, because the point was extremely subtle and could easily be ignored by the most experienced of fiction ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... made to include, but which they are beginning to recognise as playing some part in production. We must remember, however, that we are using it in a strictly technical sense, which will in some respects be narrower than the ordinary, and in some more comprehensive. It will exclude all kinds of cleverness unapplied to economic production; and will include many powers, in so far as such production is affected by them, to the expression of whose scope and character it ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... the thread of what the Persian, in tones as soft and unruffled as ever, was saying in reply to his words. He gathered himself up to hear and to answer, and there followed a discussion in which a number of those present joined; a discussion full of cleverness and the adroit handling of words, yet which left Philip in the confusion of being made to realize that what to him were vital truths were to those about him merely so many hypotheses upon which to found argument. There were more women ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... agility. Though, when one says lack of agility, it is fair to add that only a very swiftly moving creature could have escaped the two hounds at all; and, once it reached a tree-trunk, this reptile showed simply wonderful cleverness in climbing, running up fifty feet of iron-bark trunk as quickly as it could cover the level ground, and keeping always on the far side of the tree from the dogs, its long, ugly, wedge-shaped head constantly turning from ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... great skill and cleverness in criminal investigation, Mr. Colwyn," continued Phil earnestly, "and wish to avail myself of your help. That is the object ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... we expected to pass the frontier again in the afternoon, on our return to Orbe. Whether they believed us, or, believing, thought us very foolish, is best known to themselves; but I suspect the latter, by their compliments on our cleverness, on our return. At Jougne we supplied ourselves with provisions, and then proceeded through valleys, each narrower than the last, more dismal with pines, and more chequered with snow. The air of desolation, here and there rendered move ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... anxiety and attention were concentrated on my Mother. An old woman who happened to be there, and who was unemployed, turned her thoughts to me, and tried to awake in me a spark of vitality. She succeeded, and she was afterwards complimented by the doctor on her cleverness. My Father could not—when he told me the story—recollect the name of my preserver. I have often longed to know who she was. For all the rapture of life, for all its turmoils, its anxious desires, its manifold pleasures, and even for its sorrow and suffering, I bless ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... cried Alyosha, completely carried away. "They have no such great cleverness and no mysteries and secrets.... Perhaps nothing but Atheism, that's all their secret. Your Inquisitor does not believe in God, that's ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the position in which they are develops a kind of cunning rather than acuteness or cleverness?-Yes; it fosters a sort of low cunning. The system having been continued, one might almost say, for centuries has fostered that ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... other people," said Rosalind shrewdly. "We both gave ourselves airs, and the wesult was the same, whatever caused it. I was pwoud of my face, and you were pwoud of your—your—er—family—and your cleverness, and—the twicks you played; so if I confess, you ought to confess too. I'm sorry I aggwavated you, Mawiquita, and took all the pwaise for the decowations. It was howwibly mean, and I don't wonder you were angwy. I'm ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... widens the field of its application; art is a mill whose thirlage, in different ages, widens and contracts; but, in any case and under any fashion, the great man produces beauty, terror, and mirth, and the little man produces cleverness (personalities, psychology) instead of beauty, ugliness instead of terror, and jokes instead of mirth. As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be ever, world without ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Caesar, riding at anchor at a distance from shore, was forced to wait the sentence of this tribunal. It seems they were so far different in their opinions that some were for sending the man away, and others again for inviting and receiving him; but Theodotus, to show his cleverness and the cogency of his rhetoric, undertook to demonstrate, that neither the one nor the other was safe in that juncture of affairs. For if they entertained him, they would be sure to make Caesar their enemy, and Pompey their master; or if they dismissed him, they might render themselves hereafter ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... slowly but surely moving upward. The honest man's chances for success in business are better than ever before, and the dishonest man's chances for lasting commercial success are less than ever before. To grow rich by failing in business is no longer regarded as an act of cleverness. The professional bankrupt finds it more and more difficult to get credit. He soon discovers that even his cash will not win for him the attention that his poorer neighbor ...
— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw
... against him, and crush every enemy, even those of the most exalted position. Mazarin has no such antecedents. He is not even a Frenchman; he does not even look like a noble. That he is clever we may be sure, or Richelieu would not have recommended him as his successor. But I fancy that it is the cleverness of an adventurer, and however adroit, an adventurer, and especially a foreign adventurer, will not hold power in France very long without exciting the hatred of the community and the hostility of the nobles. However, I suppose you are ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... dinner in Cleveland Square. And people liked to go to his house. They knew they would not be bored and not be poisoned there. Men appreciated him as well as women, despite the reminiscence of Brick Lane discoverable in him. His directness, his cleverness, and his apparent good-will soon overcame any dawning instinct summoned up in John ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... the more useless to relate the conversation which took place between the three confederates at the "Cheval Rouge," because the arrangements there concluded were the basis of certain confidences made, as we shall see, by Theodose to Mademoiselle Thuillier; but it is necessary to remark that the cleverness displayed by la Peyrade seemed almost alarming to Cerizet and Dutocq. After this conference, the banker of the poor, finding himself in company with such powerful players, had it in mind to make sure of his own stake at the first chance. To win the game at any price ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... the Vedas he never, as far as I recollect, defended the divine origin of his own sacred writings in the abstract, but he displayed great casuistic cleverness in maintaining that every argument that had ever been adduced in support of a supernatural origin of the Bible could be used with equal force in favor of a divine authorship of the Veda. His own ideas of the Veda were chiefly derived from the Upanishads, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... often do things in that way, in order to be odd. It is a sign of cleverness to be odd, you know.—But I, too, am sent into these seas on a ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... what are they doing now down there?" he asked, pointing to the floor with fantastic precautions of voice and gesture, whose meaning, borne upon my mind in a lurid flash, made me very sick of my cleverness. "They are all asleep," I answered, watching him narrowly. That was it. That's what he wanted to hear; these were the exact words that could calm him. He drew a long breath. "Ssh! Quiet, steady. I am an old stager ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... add that no shallow or petty person can paint. Mere cleverness or special gift never made an artist. It is only perfectness of mind, unity, depth, decision, the highest qualities, in fine, of the intellect, which ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... of narrow minds and dishonest natures, who pride themselves upon their jesuitical cleverness in equivocation, in their serpent-wise shirking of the truth and getting out of moral back-doors, in order to hide their real opinions and evade the consequences of holding and openly professing them. Institutions or systems based upon any such expedients must necessarily prove ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... to the horizon in a diplomatic silence. I did not know whether to be angry, amused, or alarmed that the man estimated my cleverness so slightly. Why, the hook was barely concealed, and the bait of the coarsest. That I would go safe to a sight of San Salvador I did not doubt: that I would never enter the harbour I was absolutely certain. The choice offered me was practically whether I preferred being thrown overboard now or ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... very spirit and avatar. Personally, he is often sad; his own life has been hard; and yet the heart of him is all hope and courage, all delight too in the daily planning and wrestling, the contrivance and the cleverness, the rifling and outwitting of Nature—that makes a Canadian—at any rate a Western Canadian. I suppose he doesn't know anything about art. Mr. Arthur seems to have nothing in common with him; but there is in him that rush and ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... him, "what Goethe says of the boys in Venice? He explains their cleverness, grace, and self-possession as children by the possibility of any one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... that influence is multiplied. We are aroused to new seriousness of thought. The frivolity and selfish pleasure-seeking that have marked our life for recent decades are decreasing. We may reasonably hope that the literature of superficial cleverness and smart cynicism, which has been in vogue for the last period, will have had its day, that the perpetrators of such literature will be, measurably speaking, without audience at ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... longing for a favourable turn of the card, but still affects to solace himself with philosophy, and wraps himself in dignified reflections upon the blessings of retirement, contrast with Swift's downright avowal of indignant scorn for himself and mankind. And yet we have a sense of the man's amazing cleverness, and regret that he has no chance of trying one more fall with his antagonists in the open arena. Pope's affectation is perhaps the most transparent and the most gratuitous. His career had been pre-eminently successful; his talents had found their natural outlet; and he had only to be what he ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... wife with no man's interference, that's all; for ne'er a penny will you get from me, my lad, unless you marry to please me a little, as well as yourself a great deal. That's all I ask of you. I'm not particular as to beauty, or as to cleverness, and piano- playing, and that sort of thing; if Roger marries this girl, we shall have enough of that in the family. I should not much mind her being a bit older than you, but she must be well-born, and the more money she brings the better for the ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Sydney, surely—with your cleverness! Listen to this, then; perhaps you like it better that I call you ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... the true. Take that little sketch, 'Trapped,' you sent me out to see last week. A more sophisticated audience might have mistaken its brittle epigrammatic quality for brilliancy and its flippancy for cleverness. But not your ten-twenty-thirty's. In real life a husband doesn't psychanalyze his wife's lover. He horsewhips him. And that lovely blank-verse fantasy that you attempted on your own. That is the sort of thing you are going to stand for some day in the theater. I loved your ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
