"Acumen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lies". According to Boaden's 'Life of Kemble', 1825, i. 438, Mrs. Piozzi rightly regarded this portrait as wholly ironical; and Bolton Corney, without much expenditure of acumen, discovers it to have been written in a spirit of 'persiflage'. Nevertheless, Cumberland himself ('Memoirs', 1807, i. 369) seems to have accepted it in good faith. Speaking of Goldsmith he says — I conclude my account ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... advice, with the results that have been seen; and her respect for the acumen of her elder child became ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... improve things in England at such a break-neck pace that we require the assistance of Lord Salisbury and Lord St. Leonards to prevent us from rushing straight down a steep place into the sea, like the swine of Gadara? If they do, I congratulate them on their psychological acumen and their political wisdom. ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... will obtain some notion of the difficulties alluded to, and the best mode of grappling with them, by consulting the recent Cambridge edition, published with English notes (Iph. in Aulide, 1840, in Tauris, 1846), performances of great critical acumen, attributed to the present Bishop ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... drunk enough to be audacious, he had not all his faculties at his perfect command, and his usual acumen was a little at fault. Still, accustomed to brave public opinion, and to carry himself through the failures of his exhibitions by heavier drafts on the patience and credulity of his audience, he determined to persevere as the most likely way of extricating ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... a moderately grammatical sentence, Mrs. Merillia, Lady Enid and the Prophet experienced a sense of extraordinary relief, and no longer felt the stern necessity of laughing. But this was not the miracle worked by Mrs. Fancy. Had she, even then, rested satisfied with her acumen, maintained silence and awaited the immediate fulfilment of her prediction, what must have happened can hardly be in doubt. But she was seized by that excess of bravery which is called foolhardiness, and driven by it to that peculiar and thoughtless vehemence of action ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... of those 1819 enthusiasms had to be abandoned: but the objectives were not. Most of them were eventually to be translated into action and actuality. It was in their modification, perhaps, that the author was to display most of all his foresight and acumen. From 1848 onwards he recognised the true nature of "the spectre which haunted Europe"—and which still haunts the world. From then onwards he was not to write in the way which ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... Lola, was much impressed by her political acumen, and employed her on "secret service" for the Government, entrusting her as a preliminary with a "mission to St. Petersburg." The story is an obvious concoction, if merely because Dujarier, being little beyond a penny-a-liner hack, had no power to employ anybody on such a task. Still, Lola ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... everybody," he stammered, for a moment abandoning his attitude of individual acumen; "it's the talk ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... attention upon the poet's actual life, has eschewed the larger task of literary criticism and has also avoided the subject of Vergil's literary sources—a theme to which scholars have generally devoted too much acumen. The book is therefore of brief compass, but it has been kept to its single theme in the conviction that the reader who will study Vergil's works as in some measure an outgrowth of the poet's own experiences will find a new meaning in not a ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... residences, the most luxurious clubs, the largest shops, the handsomest motor cars. I was shown a row of warehouses extending along the canal for one long block which are the property of a single Chinese. Wherever I traveled in the Indies I was impressed by the business acumen and success of these impassive, industrious sons of the Flowery Kingdom. They are the Greeks of the Far East but without the Greek's unscrupulousness and lack of dependability. A Chinese will not hesitate to take advantage of you in a business deal, but if he once gives you ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... devotion, and the instinctive good sense which is one of the secrets of feminine influence. Women seldom fail to rise to the occasion when opportunity is vouchsafed them. The late Maharani Surnomoyi of Cossimbazar managed her enormous estates with acumen; and her charities were as lavish as Lady Burdett-Coutts's. Toru Dutt, who died in girlhood, wrote French and English verses full of haunting sweetness. It is a little premature for extremists to prate of autonomy while their ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... glanced down the ravine and saw the Assiniboines still coming with their horses on a walk. This pointed to the probability that the Shawanoe had really entered a pocket and his enemies saw no need of haste, since they felt sure of their victim. And yet with all his acumen the Shawanoe erred in explaining the ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... condition. This individual was a finely educated, very intelligent man, who was an excellent linguist, had considerable musical ability, and was in the employ of a firm whose business was such as to demand on the part of its employes considerable legal acumen, clerical ability, and knowledge of real-estate transactions. This man stated that at the age of puberty, without any knowledge of perversity of sexual feeling, he was thrown intimately in contact with males of more advanced years, who took various ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... over this, being of the opinion that I was paying a just tribute to his histrionic acumen and judgement in things theatrical, on which he prided himself on account of his having appeared once behind the footlights in a theatre in Liverpool, as a "super," I believe, and in a part where he had nothing ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... well-known writer on the science of music, and for nearly twenty-five years editor of the Leipzig "Allgemeine Musikzeitung," a man who, notwithstanding his entire lack of historical acumen and his limited acquaintance with the technicalities of music, did very much towards liberating the art from its mechanical condition, and promoting its intellectual appreciation by the public. He was in Vienna in the year 1822, where he became personally acquainted ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... wearied with Dr Douglas's minute comparisons of Kerguelen's and Cook's accounts of the lands in question, which indeed seem unworthy of so much concern. It was of consequence, however, to guard our navigator's reputation; and some persons may relish the discussion, as exhibiting the acumen and good sense which the detector of the infamous Lauder, and the author of "The Criterion," ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... had been a man of rare cultivation and literary taste. Deena, among all his children, was the only one whose education he had personally superintended, and she brought to her passion for poetry some critical acumen. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... both divisions of this one great subject: and having so lately seen how successfully Dr. Latham had pursued his researches into the languages of the earth, we were quite prepared to find, as we have done, the same learning, acumen, and philosophical spirit of investigation leading to the same satisfactory results in this kindred, but new field of inquiry. In paying a well-deserved tribute to his predecessor, Dr. Prichard, whom he describes as "a physiologist among physiologists, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... unsuspected. It appeared indeed that certain teeth and skeleton bones previously discovered by Professor Cope were related to this new type of dinosaur, but the fragments known to the Philadelphia professor gave him no idea of what the animal was like, although with his usual acumen he had discerned that they differed from any animal known to science and registered them as new under the names of Agathaumas 1873 and Monoclonius 1876. Professor Marsh re-named his supposed bison "Ceratops" (i.e. "horned face") and gave to the closely related skulls discovered by Mr. Hatcher ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... good verbal memory; their genealogies, lists of kings and places generally prove to be correct and they have a passion for catalogues of names. Also they take a real interest in describing doctrine. If the Buddha has been misrepresented, it is not for want of acumen or power of transmitting abstruse ideas. The danger rather is that he who takes an interest in theology is prone to interpret a master's teaching in the light of his ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... figure already seated at a long table near the empty chair that the Mayor was to occupy. He was dressed in black, almost like an English clergyman, and the theological spirit of the Puritan shone from his face. Yet there was too much worldly acumen, too much cold determination in his impressive features for a clergyman. He held his eye-glasses in his hand and now and then turned over the pages of his notes. Mr. Samuelson and Mr. Lilienfeld ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... on your lips, Flint, since the year of the big coal strike, when you prayed God the gun-men might 'get' the strikers before they could organize. Come, come, man, brace up! Your book will turn up all right; and even if it doesn't there's no cause for alarm. It would take a man of extraordinary acumen to read your hieroglyphics! Cheer up, Flint. There's really nothing ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... Still less have we scattered in the writings of Cicero, who, "though he seems to have had little native taste for painting and sculpture, and even less than he had taste for poetry, had a conception of nature; and with his usual acumen, comparing the principles of one art with those of another, frequently scattered useful hints, or made pertinent observations. For many of these he might probably be indebted to Hortensius, with whom, though his rival in eloquence, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... man, so upright and modest, so simple and amiable, who has won for himself the veneration of posterity as much by the qualities of his heart as by those of his intellect, as much by his goodness and kindliness as by the subtlety and acumen of his mind, in a word, as much by his character as by his knowledge? Nevertheless his knowledge was extraordinary and productive of great works, which we shall consider ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... I had not thought of that theory it seems to me so plausible, now that you mention it, that I think the officers will show rare acumen if they adopt it. Very properly may they hold that some projectile might have been shot through the partly opened window and none of us have detected ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... the critical acumen with which I canvassed him, the very beau-ideal of a gentleman rider; indeed, although a very heavy man, his powerful English thorough-bred, showing not less bone than blood, took away all semblance of overweight; his saddle was well fitting and ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... framing of Bill Carmody, Stromberg had no part. Moncrossen could not fathom the big Swede, upon whose judgment and acumen he had come to rely in the matter of handling and disposing of ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... do, in such society. My experience is different from yours. I always pretend to know twice as much as I do, when they are about; it bluffs them off, and they are credulous sometimes as well as ignorant, notwithstanding their boasted acumen." ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... relations. If this were a type and instance of hopeless love he had certainly misread all the songs and sayings. He kept the idea in his mind and went on regarding her in the light of it with a pondering smile, turning it over and finding a lively pleasure in his curious acumen in such an unwonted direction. It was a very flower of emotional naivete, though a moment later he cast it from him as a weed, grown in idleness; and indeed it might have abashed him to say what concern it had in the mind of ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... occasional quartos of acting versions of single plays, Shakespeare could find a place in libraries and could be intimately known by hundreds who had hitherto known him only in the theater. Tonson's business acumen made Shakespeare available to the general reader in the reign of Anne; Rowe's editorial, biographical, and critical work helped to make him comprehensible within the framework ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... to Lady Mount-Rhyswicke. Already Mellin was forming sentences for his next letter to the Cranston Telegraph: "Lady Mount-Rhyswicke said to me the other evening, while discussing the foreign policy of Great Britain, in Comtesse de Vaurigard's salon..." "An English peeress of pronounced literary acumen has been giving me rather confidentially her opinion of ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... number of dead sparrows may be the embryo man of the future, and you may praise his energy and his smartness, but give me the boy who took the trouble to adjust the nose-bag every time. A little less business acumen, a good bit less greed and cruelty, will tell on future character to the comfort ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... the digamma, that crux of critics, that quicksand upon which even the acumen of Bentley was shipwrecked, seems to prove beyond a doubt, that the pronunciation of the Greek language had undergone a considerable change. Now it is certainly difficult to suppose that the Homeric poems could have suffered by this change, had written ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... Nor does its interest consist solely in its associations with the men and manners of a by-gone epoch. Despite its antique architecture and its quaint observances, the Temple still maintains its reputation for scholarship and legal acumen. Its virility is fitly symbolized in the venerable and vigorous trees whose branching boughs wave above its walls: sound to the core, it sends forth ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... if the knowledge and acumen of prejudged scientific opponents, or the subtlety of orthodox special pleaders, have yet exerted their full force in mystifying the real issues of the great controversy which has been set afoot, and whose end is hardly likely ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Court of Chancery to them, in order that such steps might be taken as seemed desirable to it, either by contesting the capacity of the testator or otherwise, to safeguard the interests of the infant. As it is, knowing that the testator was a gentleman of the highest intelligence and acumen, and that he has absolutely no relations living to whom he could have confided the guardianship of the child, we do not feel justified ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... of horse-whipping a too rash pretender to his daughter's hand; and, moreover, he had three tall sons: it was clear that a suitor would be at a disadvantage with such a family, unless travel and natural acumen had given him a countervailing power of contrivance. And the first idea that occurred to him in the matter was, that Mr. Palfrey would object less if he knew that the Freelys were a much higher family than his own. It had been foolish modesty in him hitherto to conceal the fact that a branch ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... I said, "I remember him well; in that and other cases, for I have benefited several times by his skill and acumen. He has a mind that works as truly as any that I know. When I have been for the defence, and believed my man was innocent, I was glad ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... was, and it is necessary to insist on it, that Mr Racksole, owner of the Grand Babylon Hotel, was by no means in a state of self-satisfaction. A mystery had attached itself to his hotel, and with all his acumen and knowledge of things in general he was unable to solve that mystery. He laughed at the fruitless efforts of the police, but he could not honestly say that his own efforts had been less barren. The public was talking, for, ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... brethren, Mr. Douglass proposed a comparison of views in the matters of the relations and duties of 'our people;' he holding that prejudice was the result of condition, and could be conquered by the efforts of the degraded themselves. A gentleman present, distinguished for logical acumen and subtlety, and who had devoted no small portion of the last twenty-five years to the study and elucidation of this very question, held the opposite view, that prejudice is innate and unconquerable. He terminated a series of well dove-tailed, Socratic ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... have shown great acumen in mustering evidence, of all kinds, that would bear upon the question. I say frankly that, without this royal rescript, and the influence of these two noblemen, your chance, as James O'Carroll's son, of wresting your patrimony from the hands ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... career of this excellent magistrate was distinguished by an example of legal acumen that gave flattering presage of a wise and equitable administration. The morning after he had been installed in office, and at the moment that he was making his breakfast from a prodigious earthen dish filled with milk and Indian pudding, he ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... other women, could not help admiring him for his forceful handling of other men, for his keen business acumen, for his ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... development of the country but also to the mental vigour of the people. The statesmen who met in council in the ancient city of Quebec during the October of 1864 gave a memorable illustration of their constitutional knowledge and their practical acumen in the famous Resolutions which form the basis of the present Constitution ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... beggar can bear anything but banter. He is a keen physiognomist, and selects his victims with unerring acumen. If you storm or scowl at him, he knows he is making you uncomfortable, and hangs on like a burr. But if you laugh at him, with good humor, he is disarmed. A friend of mine reduced to confusion one of the most unabashed mendicants in Castile by replying ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... the truth as these statements usually are. Lord Pinkerton had, in fact, with his usual acumen, sensed the existence of a great Fourpenny Weekly Public, and given it, as was his wont, more than it desired or deserved. The sixpenny weekly public already had its needs met; so had the penny, the twopenny, the threepenny, and the shilling public. Now the fourpenny public, a shy and modest ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... Gazette" of the following week, a notice of Mr. Lansdowne's plea before the jury, in the great case of "The Commonwealth vs Jenkins," in which he was eulogized in the highest terms. He was said to have displayed "great acumen, extensive legal acquirements, and magnificent powers of oratory." So, Aunt Esther's confidence, about the "splen'id talk," was not without a ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... again to Mr. Colvin, who criticises always with modesty and often with acumen. We do not agree with him when he accepts Mrs. Owens's theory of a symbolic and allegoric meaning underlying Endymion, his final judgment on Keats as 'the most Shaksperean spirit that has lived since ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... A reader of acumen and critical faculty following a writer in an inquiry of this nature places himself in the position of a lawyer who will not accept the interpretation of an Act of Parliament, or even a clause in it, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... opulently colored though they are, are still eminently of the romantic school. The person who declared ecstatically that assisting at a performance of the string sextet, "Verklaerte Nacht," resembled "hearing a new 'Tristan,'" exhibited, after all, unconscious critical acumen. The great cantata, "Gurrelieder," the symphonic setting of Jens Peter Jacobsen's romance in lyrics, might even stand as the grand finale of the whole post-Wagnerian, ultra-romantic period, and represent the moment at which ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... the medical fraternity, upheld by a few doubting Thomases among the more abstract followers of the science, on one side of the field, by far the greater number of those who peer into the human mechanism with mere scientific acumen on the other. Doctors, notoriously as conservative as kings and as jealous as opera singers, found themselves threatened with the loss of elderly patients whose steady degeneration was a source of respectable income. When it was discovered that New York actually held a practicing ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the representative art of actions in time, and painting as the representative art of bodies in space, he did not give due value to lyric feeling or landscape painting.[1] They belong to a region in which his sharp, critical acumen was not ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... assassination. And some of these assorted gentlemen maintained extensive stables and drove tandems, spikes, and fours; and some were celebrated for their yachts, or motors, or prima-donnas, or business acumen, or charitable extravagances.... Yes, truly, Valerie West was beginning to have many opportunities in this generously philanthropic world. And she was making a great deal of money—for her—but nothing like what she might very ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... but nothing more would he say. The loss to American science in his death can never be estimated, for his mind was of that subtle and inductive nature which is needed for such a study, fine to poetic delicacy, penetrating with all the acumen of a true scientific imagination, but modest to excess, and personally so attached to Agassiz that he would with reluctance give expression to a difference from him, though that he did differ was no occasion for abatement of their mutual regard. Wyman's was ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... quiet, in its neighborhood the restless Sarmatians prowled and threatened. Hadrian, who had already written a book on tactics, knew at once how to act. Domitian's policy was before him; he followed the precedent, and paid the Sarmatians to be still. It requires little acumen to see that when Rome permitted herself to be blackmailed ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... do not appear in Selden, nor in Luder's brief paper in the 19th vol. of the Archaeologia, is conceded; but I think it might have occurred to the mind of one of less acumen than MR. GIBSON, that it was precisely because the allegations do not appear in these or any other writers or authorities that I considered them not unworthy of the attention of the readers of the "NOTES ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... Barrister, "and rather a rising one." DICK (why not RICHARD?) talked about County Courts with condescending tolerance; even the High Court Judges seemed (according to his own account) to habitually quail before his forensic acumen. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... MR. WILKINSON has traced with singular acumen the manner in which the spirit of geometrical research was diffused amongst the operative classes, and the class immediately above them—the exciseman and the country schoolmaster. Still it is not to be inferred, that even ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... problems as: What is the chance of the number of aces lying between a million x and a million - x, when six million of throws are made with a die? I have not gone into any detail of all those cases in which the paradoxer finds out, by his unassisted acumen, that results of mathematical investigation cannot be: in fact, this discovery is only an accompaniment, though a necessary one, of his paradoxical statement of that which must be. Logicians are beginning to see that the notion of horse is inseparably connected with that of non-horse: that ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... the Detroit lawyer mastered himself and sought the seclusion of his room. In ten minutes he had recovered his legal acumen. The two columns of the extra gave a list of the new officers of the company, and the statement that Mr. Hugh Worthington was at Tacoma with his invalid daughter, was supplemented by the statement that Arthur Ferris of Heath & Ferris, 105 Broad Street (the recently ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... the Jews who were drafted during the late war were put into the Quartermaster's Department on account of their extraordinary business acumen. ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... from the Hotel Strathmore just as she was leaving the office, so she had not stopped to answer it. He had made several trips from Bartlesville since their first meeting, under the pretext of business, but it did not require any great acumen to discover that he came chiefly to ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... produced a difference in practice from his fellow Christians of ALL denominations, the reasons for which are added to this confession; with a defence of his principles and practice, proving them to be peaceable and true. In all this an unlettered man displays the acumen of a thoroughly educated polemical theologian. The author was driven to these publications to defend himself from the slanders which were showered down upon him, by all parties, for nearly eighteen years, and by the attempts which were ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was standing near, thereupon interposed with a smile. "During the few years that have gone by since I've come here, I've carefully noticed that sister-in-law Secunda, cannot, with all her acumen, outwit our venerable ancestor." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... aspiring to every sort of celebrity and to every honor, constantly presenting himself as a candidate and as constantly rejected,—too great a disproportion between his faculties and ambition! Without talents,[3105] possessing no critical acumen and of mediocre intelligence, he was fitted only to teach some branch of the sciences, or to practice some one of the arts, either as professor or doctor more or less bold and lucky, or to follow, with occasional slips on one side or the other, some path clearly marked out for him. "But," he says, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... temples. His pale and finely-cut features stamped him as a man of education and refinement. The venerable patriarch had for more than thirty years filled the position of Chief Rabbi of Kief, and his reputation as a Talmudist and a man of great mental acumen was not confined to ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... Mohammedan writers with "the true and genuine monuments of ancient Persia." Unfortunately the so-called genuine monuments of ancient Persia were nothing more than recent Persian compilations or refacimenti. But notwithstanding this defect, which could hardly be avoided then, and a distortion of critical acumen, the book of Thomas Hyde was the first complete and true picture of modern Parsiism, and it made inquiry into its history the order of the day. A warm appeal made by him to the zeal of travellers, to seek for and procure at any price ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... epithet in place of an argument! But I know of old that on this subject your intellectual acumen deserts you, as it deserts nearly all men. You sink suddenly to lower spiritual rank, and employ reasoning that you would laugh to scorn in connection ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... I was a bachelor, aged thirty-two, and if golf be a vice I was greatly addicted to it. I occupied a cosy set of chambers, half-way up Albemarle Street, and am thankful to say that in consequence of my father's business acumen, my balance at my bankers was increasing annually. At the works at Greenwich nearly two thousand hands were employed, and it had always been the firm's proud boast that they laboured under the most healthy conditions possible to secure ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... all cases of concealment, a disposal of the article concealed, a disposal of it in this recherce manner, is, in the very first instance, presumable and presumed; and thus its discovery depends, not at all upon the acumen, but altogether upon the mere care, patience, and determination of the seekers; and where the case is of importance, or, what amounts to the same thing in the policial eyes, when the reward is of magnitude, the qualities in question have never been known to fail. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... discovered all his acumen in the solemn investigation of "Which was the upper end of the table?" Arguments and inferences were deduced from precedents quoted; but as precedents sometimes look contrary ways, this affair might still have ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... point out the delusion, had no wish to give offence, by attacking the fond conceit of a friendly and prosperous prelate. But when the scene changed, and when the Empire found another capital, the acumen of the bishop of the rival metropolis soon discovered a sounder exposition; and Chrysostom of Constantinople, at once the greatest preacher and the best commentator of antiquity, ignored the folly of Tertullian and of Cyprian. "Upon the rock," says he, "that is, upon the faith of the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... thoroughness, of system; a habit of putting your best into everything you do, which means the ultimate attainment of your maximum efficiency. In other words, if you give your best to your employer, the best possible comes back to you in skill, training, shrewdness, acumen, and power. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... and subsequently restored to her father. Her hostility was, however, directed far more against the Valois than against France. Widow of Philibert of Savoy, she was the type of the great princess of the Renaissance, and combined an intense interest in Art and Letters with great diplomatic acumen. During the twenty-three years that she governed Belgium, she remained a foreigner to the people. She did not know either Flemish or German, and her culture as well as her surroundings remained entirely French. ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... system was pretty well "shot up"—it had never been case-hardened. A weight of apprehension had become constantly present, and he let its burden depress him miserably. One of his professors, noting his appearance, talked with him earnestly, and with lay acumen decided his digestion was "out of fix" and told him of a "fine New York doctor." The stomach specialist worthily stood high in his profession. The examination was painstaking and exhaustive; the diagnosis seemed ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... gracious. He was a short gentleman, with a sloping forehead, a prominent nose, a clean-shaven, High-Church face, narrow, dogmatic views, and small, twinkling eyes; not the sort of person whom one would naturally associate with financial acumen, but endowed with an air of self-confidence, and a pretension to private information, which would have done credit to ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... aloft and even enter heaven at times and feign themselves angels of light. But when they are deprived of truths and are cast out, they fall down to hell. Eagles also signify rapacious men with intellectual acumen, and wings signify spiritual truths. Such, we said, are those who have not looked to God in their lives. To look to God in life means simply to think that a given evil is a sin against God, and for that reason not to ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... 1590, one of the Spanish officers in the Philippines, commenting on the climate of the Islands, declared, with considerable acumen, that Europeans could stand life and work here if they observed continence in regard to ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... pp. 27. 61.), I think I may safely say that no archaeologist of the present day would allow, after seeing the original, that it was of the date 1084, even if it were not so certain that these numerals were not in use at that time. I fear "the acumen of Dr. Murray" was wasted on the occasion referred to in Mr. Bloom's work. It is a very far-fetched idea, that the visitor must cross himself to discover the meaning of the figures; not to mention the inconvenience, I might say impossibility, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... predicable! Names which are met with but once in the annals of science, and there, dimly seen as a star of the least magnitude, have perhaps earned that remote and obscure corner by painful self-denial, by unwearied toil! And yet not only these, but others who have added to diligence high mental acumen or profundity, whose wells of thought are, compared with those of the general mass, unfathomable, earn but a careless, occasional notice—are known but to few of those who daily reap the harvest which they have sown, and who even boast ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... of genius, learning, character, logical acumen, and eloquence, Patrick Henry held the field as protagonist for twenty-three days,—his chief lieutenants in the fight being Mason, Grayson, and John Dawson, with occasional help from Harrison, Monroe, and Tyler. Upon him alone fell the brunt ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... of Pontou because he hates me, and then would have me trust this fellow?" Gervais demanded with some acumen. ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... venerable ex-President JAMES MADISON, departed life at Montpelier, Va., in the eighty-sixth year of his age. He had filled a prominent place in the history of our Government, from its first organization. As a statesman, he was unsurpassed in critical acumen, in profundity of knowledge, in an understanding of constitutional Government, and its adaptation to the rights and interests of the people. His writings are an invaluable legacy to his countrymen, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... with the life of Saint Dodekanus the Italian had displayed more than his usual erudition and acumen. He had sifted the records with such incredible diligence that little was left for the pen of an annotator, save words of praise. In two small matters, however, the Englishman, considerably to his regret, was enabled or rather obliged to ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... person, a vagabond, or incorrigible rogue, the reader may perhaps incline to think that many of the offences specified in this Act, and in subsequent statutes, on the same subject, are of a very dubious nature, and that it must require nice legal acumen, to distinguish whether a person incurs any, and what, penalty, under the ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... only a few publications, with little acumen. Of these, the "Memoirs of Literature," and the "Present State of the Republic of Letters," are the best. The Monthly Review, the venerable (now the deceased) mother of our journals, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the guarded city of Kulan Tith, Jeddak of Kaol, were two very different things. No man enters a Martian city without giving a very detailed and satisfactory account of himself, nor did I delude myself with the belief that I could for a moment impose upon the acumen of the officers of the guard to whom I should be taken the moment I applied at any ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... walking or in other modes of locomotion. This is the elephant, whose nose and upper lip have developed into an enormous and highly flexible trunk, with delicate grasping powers. The possession of this organ may have had much to do with the intellectual acumen of the elephant. Yet it is far inferior in its powers to the arm and hand of man; while the form, size, and food of the elephant stand in the way of the progress which might have been made by an animal possessed of such an organ in connection with a ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... a word much affected by the learned Aristarchus in common conversation, to signify genius or natural acumen. But this passage has a further view: [Greek: Nous] was the Platonic term for mind, or the first cause, and that system of divinity is here hinted at which terminates in blind nature without a ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... Dilution is being introduced as fast as convenient. For this we have largely to thank an admirable Commission (Sir Croydon Marks, Mr. Barnes, and Mr. Shackleton) which was sent down to interview employers and employed. Their tact and acumen were remarkable. Speaking personally, I cannot help believing that there is a better understanding between masters and men now than has existed ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... can find the first interviews which Richter had with Goethe and Schiller in Lewes's "Life of Goethe," Vol. II. p. 269. Of Goethe, Richter said, "By heaven! we shall love each other!" and of Schiller, "He is full of acumen, but without love." The German public, which loves Richter, has reversed his first impression. And indeed Richter himself, though he could not get along with Schiller, learned that Goethe's loving capacity, which he thought he saw ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... stood there a fraction of a second against the wall, knowing not which way to turn, the girl wished with all her heart that big Jim Westcott, strong, cool, collected, the master of any situation requiring force, tact, and acumen, were there by her side to take her arm and guide her out of this terrible predicament. But Jim was elsewhere—where, ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... seemed plausible enough, when lo! a metaphysical giant rescues Reid; tells her that Brown was an ignoramus; utterly misunderstood the theory he set himself to criticise, and was a wretched bungler; after which he proceeds to show that although Brown had not acumen enough to perceive it, Reid had himself fallen into grave errors and culpable obscurity. Who was right, or who was wrong, she could not for her life decide. It would have been farcical, indeed, had she not been so anxiously in earnest. Beginning to distrust herself, and with ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... neither a sober nor a weighty statesman. The popular proverb, "Egmont for action and Orange for counsel," well characterized the difference between the two leading members of the Council of State. William, prince of Orange, lacking the brilliant qualities of Egmont, far surpassed him in acumen and in strength of character. From his father, William Count of Nassau-Dillenburg, [Sidenote: William the Silent, 1533-84] he inherited important estates in Germany near the Netherlands, and by the death of a cousin he became, at the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... of this lieutenant of rangers, who was the terror of all Arizona "bad men." Her father, Jack Flatray, the range riders whom she knew—game men all—hailed Bucky O'Connor as a wonder. For coolness under fire, for acumen, for sheer, unflawed nerve, and for his skill in that deadly game he played of hunting down desperadoes, they called him chief ungrudgingly. He was a daredevil, who had taken his life in his hands a hundred times. Yet always he came ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... rule the nation when the most skilful steering of the ship of state was requisite—when the government of the country, owing to dismemberment, foreign intrigues, foreign invasion, internal disunion, was in a condition of chaos. The soundest political acumen, the most unerring tact, was exacted of him. He must needs adopt whatever political measures he deemed necessary, no matter how hard of execution: many of these were innovations that he daringly carried out against every prejudice and tradition, because it was the innermost conviction ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... run out of doors, to close her ears to this maddening discussion. She felt that it was either that or deliberately slap Sanchia Murray's face. Now, however, she sat down again, deciding with a degree of acumen that Sanchia would prefer nothing to a ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... much it might be abashed momentarily, the Captain's acumen would not have been without a refuge. Who was the elderly man with stooping shoulders and small keen eyes, who sat on the other side of the fire, and had been engaged in persuading Paul that he too ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... live with me. I am fond of things pretty and young and I am greatly pleased with what a kind chance put in my way," she said. In her discussion of the situation with Coombe she measured it with her customary fine acumen. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hundred thousand to the Red Cross, and a hundred thousand to the party funds. Total net profit on the war, one million seven hundred thousand pounds, not counting the peerage which is now bestowed upon him, and which it must be admitted is a just reward for his remarkable business acumen.' ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett
... against the moral character of Susannah Martin; and nothing was brought to bear upon her, but the most ridiculous and shameful tales of blind superstition and malignant credulity. The extraordinary acumen and force of mind, however, exhibited in her defence, to the discomfiture of the examining Magistrates and Judges, excited their wrath and that of all concerned in the prosecution. Mather finishes the account of her trial in these words: "NOTE. This woman was ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... a recoil on his own wits, for had he not once saved the Gringo's life, feeling that one day he might be a beneficiary of the Gringo's singular aversion to shooting people? And now here was the Gringo in quite another of his unexpected humors. But what bothered Don Tiburcio most was the acumen that tempered the American's mercy. The facts indeed stood as Driscoll casually laid them before General Regules. Tibby, for instance, had neglected to call himself a "loyal" Republican. Asked ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... in the ignorance of the people,—not the kind of ignorance that reflects upon their intelligence, but real, honest ignorance regarding the true character and merit of the patent medicine business. It would be an unwarranted reflection upon the intelligence and acumen of the American people to assert that they would wittingly support a fraudulent proposition, especially a proposition whose success meant their own physical degeneration. The reflection is rather an indictment of the ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... Nisbet in England), who attempt to prove that Michelangelo was the subject of neurotic disorder. The most important and serious essay in this direction is a little book of great interest and almost hypercritical acumen published recently at Naples. Signor Parlagreco lays great stress upon Michelangelo's insensibility to women, his "strange and contradictory feeling about feminine beauty." He seeks to show, what is indeed, I ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... had conquered his kith and kin. He nevertheless applied himself with energy to his favourite studies, especially mathematics. Defective in languages he still was, and ever remained; for his critical acumen in literature ever fastened on the matter rather than on style. To the end of his days he could never write Italian, much less French, with accuracy; and his tutor at Paris not inaptly described his boyish composition as resembling molten granite. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... external occupations of the active life, however, make a man see more clearly in his judgment on a course of action—and this is a question of prudence—for he has experience, and his mind is attentive: "When you are attentive," says Sallust,[421] "then mental acumen avails." ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... Jarvis declared, "known Mr. Weatherley to display so much acumen and zest in business as during the last few days. Some of his transactions have been most profitable. Every one in the ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Hodge is a very conservative gentleman. Sits still and lets others do the talking. Has gained quite a reputation for business acumen with this one attribute. Spent $500 last year. Holding his breath preparatory ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... Ypocras should dispute, Cum viris sapientibus, Good wine before was his pursuit, Acumen praebens sensibus. ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... in spite of these ignoble tastes and pursuits, the King was by no means deficient in natural abilities. He was much superior to even Louis XIV. in logical acumen and sprightly wit. He was an agreeable companion, and could appreciate every variety of talents. No man in his court perceived more clearly than he the tendency of the writings of philosophers which were then fermenting the germs of revolution. "His sagacity kept ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... of an Athenian in love with a free-born woman and marrying her because of a strong attachment, declares that Sparta was somewhat different, personal attachments having been possible there because the young men and women were brought together at festivals and dances; but he has the acumen to see that this love was "not of ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... in trust for the child, and of the writer's desire that it might be used, when turned into money, for her education. There were two pages of rambling references to stocks and investments, the very vagueness of these references proving the weakening shrewdness and lack of business acumen of Captain Hall in his later ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... all moral distinctions vanish before the iron scheme of necessity. They are swept away as the dreams of vulgar prejudice by the force of Spinoza's logic; yet little praise is due, we think, on that account, to the superiority of his acumen. The wonder is, not that Spinoza should have drawn such an inference, but that any one should fail to draw it. For if our volitions are necessitated by causes over which we have no control, it seems to follow, ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... saying that we must "give the devil his due," and the cloven foot did not appear at first. On the other hand, a man of business acumen and legal knowledge was greatly needed at this stage of the enterprise, and Smith possessed them both. Morse was so grateful to find any one with faith enough to be willing to invest money in the invention; and to devote his time and energy to its furtherance, that he ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... first discerned the possibility of making the cause of Italian liberty serve her brother's ambitious imperialism, and the marvellous finesse with which she had vanquished Murat's gascon envy and resentment and made him once more a tool in the hand of the Emperor. Still more he admired Napoleon's acumen and resource as he saw order coming out of chaos and all things working together for the success of his stupendous undertaking. The Emperor had planned to first secure Paris, and then, proclaiming the independence of Italy, to make common cause with her against Austria and at the head of ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... Jack Carleton. Altogether at a loss as to their significance, it was fortunate (as will appear hereafter), that the lad was able to recall and describe the motions to another, who had a hundred fold more woodcraft and mental acumen ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... characteristics are its subtlety and thin abstractions, it may naturally be inferred that argument and casuistry held prominent place in the curriculum of instruction. In the story of Mahindo, and the conversion of the island to Buddhism, the following display of logical acumen is ostentatiously paraded as evidence of the highly cultivated intellect ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... possessed with the love of reducing political transactions to one rigid scale of cause and effect, and at the same time of exhibiting their acumen by threading the mazes of events up to remote circumstances, pretend to trace the design of the partition of Poland for more than a century back. Rulhiere seems to plume himself on the idea. "The projects ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... see nothing in my friend's book myself to suggest that the author was, of necessity, anything over eighteen. The mistake appeared to me to display want of acumen, but it had ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... full tide of success. The edge of the wedge had been set with singular acumen, and the two or three smart blows that followed had opened up society to her in a twinkling. She had appeared at a few of the best houses, and had at once entered upon a vogue. Her mirror was always full of cards, her cards were ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... to any other; but in the poetry which they have inspired there is at times a delicacy and bloom of moral sentiment which the Western world has never seen outside of Christianity. Nowhere else, perhaps, do we meet with an equal wealth of fine sentences." Of their intellectual acumen Dr. Matheson says: "It is not too much to say that the mind of the West, with all its undoubted impulses towards the progress of humanity, has never exhibited such an intense amount of intellectual force as is to be found in the religious speculations of India.... These have been the ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... my boy is saying to your girl, Mrs. Fenwick." This is delivered with exemplary sweetness by the Octopus, who then guesses with diabolical acumen at almost the exact wording of her son's speech. Apparently, no amount of woollen wraps, no double thickness of green veil to keep the glare out, no smoked glasses with flanges to make it harmless if it gets in, can obscure the Goody's penetrative powers when invoked ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... noble bit of writing, sympathetic in touch, and striking as a portrait. It was written in 1866. And then there are papers in the volumes on Lessing, Swinburne's Tragedies, Rousseau, and the Sentimentalists, and Josiah Quincy, which bring out Mr. Lowell's critical acumen even stronger. Every one who has read anything during the last fifteen years or so, must remember that bright Atlantic essay on "A Certain Condescension in Foreigners." It is Mr. Lowell's serenest vein, hitting right and left skilful blows, and asserting constantly his ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... temptation that leads those who are first in the field to magnify its marvels, and he is equally free from that tendency to belittle them which betrays the desire of later explorers to display their own superior acumen. He makes no attempt to reconstruct the past by piecing together accumulated details and calling to his aid the imaginative faculty, which, in history and science as well as in art, gives form and life to its material. But his conclusions, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... a human being on trial for life, except it be an execution; there is no display of human ingenuity, wit and power so fascinating as that made by trained lawyers in the trial of an important case, nowhere else is exhibited such subtlety, acumen, address, eloquence. ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Church. By chance, one day, in the presence of the presbyters and the rest of his clergy, he was discussing too ambitiously the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, teaching that there was a unity in the Trinity. But Arius, one of the presbyters under his jurisdiction, a man of no inconsiderable logical acumen, imagining that the bishop was subtly introducing the doctrine of Sabellius the Libyan, from the love of controversy took the opposite opinion to that of the Libyan, and, as he thought, vigorously responded to the things said by the bishop. ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... court has shown as little ability as could be expected from soldiers, placed in unenviable publicity, and upon a duty for which they are disqualified, both by education and acumen. Witness the lack of dignity in Hunter, who opened the court by a coarse allusion to "humbug chivalry;" of Lew. Wallace, whose heat and intolerance were appropriately urged in the most exceptional English; of Howe, whose tirade against the ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... quite other than the mere story that the author has in view, and which has impelled him to write. In one, he is desirous of illustrating La Place's doctrine of probabilities as applied to human events. In another, he displays his acumen in unravelling or in constructing a tangled chain of circumstantial evidence. In a third, ("The Black Cat") he appears at first to aim at rivalling the fantastic horrors of Hoffman, but you soon observe that the wild and horrible invention in which he deals, is strictly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, with less urbanity, but more acumen, said of these verses that they ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... men of a literary turn of mind, he combines fine business acumen with his intellectual ability, and has accumulated property, real and personal, to the amount of ten thousand dollars, situated in Columbia, S. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... the career of this excellent magistrate was distinguished by an example of legal acumen, that gave flattering presage of a wise and equitable administration. The morning after he had been installed in office, and at the moment that he was making his breakfast from a prodigious earthen dish, filled with milk and Indian pudding, he ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... the preface, the author vindicates himself with great spirit against his literary adversaries; makes his usual strong and forcible remarks on the genius of the authors whom he had imitated; and, in this his last critical work, shows all the acumen which had so long distinguished his powers. The Fables were dedicated to the last Duke of Ormond, the grandson of the Barzillai of "Absalom and Achitophel," and the son of the heroic Earl of Ossory; friends both, and ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... his own acumen. The late Mrs. W. had not been in the least that sort of lady, and he had never been engaged to anybody else; yet here he was laying down the law with the serenest confidence. Some divine instinct must be ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... horns of this eternal dilemma shivers all the mystery of the jolly visible world, and of that still jollier world which is invisible. And it is because Mr. Shaw and the writers of his school cannot, with all their splendid sincerity and, acumen, perceive that he and they and all of us are impaled on those horns as certainly as the sausages I ate for breakfast this morning had been impaled on the cook's toasting-fork—it is for this reason, I ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... a farm implement business in Frankfort, and though he was still under thirty he had made a very considerable financial success. Perhaps Wheeler was proud of his son's business acumen. At any rate, he drove to town to see Bayliss several times a week, went to sales and stock exhibits with him, and sat about his store for hours at a stretch, joking with the farmers who came in. Wheeler had been a heavy drinker in his day, ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... feet thrust far under the table. The show business was going to the bad. Why? Because nobody connected with it knew anything about human nature. He formulated a plan, compounded of liquor and real business acumen, of dressing a chorus, of suggesting the feminine form instead of showing it, of veiling it in chiffons of soft colours and sending a draft of air from electric fans in the wings to set the chiffons ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... letter addressed to Judge Cassody, March 28, 1888, by Mrs. Brown, in regard to this decision, was pronounced by the best lawyers as unsurpassed in logic, legal acumen, keen sarcasm and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Eleanor tried to make good play; but she could not bring to it the same coolness or the same acumen that had fought with Miss Broadus. The well-formed, well-knit hand with the coat sleeve belonging to it, which was all of her adversary that came under her observation, distracted Eleanor's thoughts; she could not forget whose it was. Very different from the weak flexile fingers ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... station. Consider for a little while: your description was, after all, not too elaborate—a little vague, absolutely deficient in the case of one of the fugitives. Is it not due in some small measure to my acumen that you are on the track of these people? Come now, Inspector, be fair. If there is honour to be won, apportion it out, and do not forget the assistance ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... With the acumen for which he was noted, Lakely had touched the key-stone of the situation on that morning; and succeeding events, each fraught with its own importance, had established the precision ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... entered into conversation, he found her so modest and unaffected, yet with a mind so well furnished—seeming to have an intelligent conception of every topic upon which they touched, as they ranged at will in their conversation, evincing such acumen of intellect and such practical comprehension of subjects of which many of her sex, who made much greater pretentious, were entirely ignorant, that Ashton, concluded she was a treasure, indeed, which he would ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... understand and to know more. A form of this kind frequently accompanies a question, and if, as is sometimes unfortunately the case, the question is put less with the genuine desire for knowledge than for the purpose of exhibiting the acumen of the questioner, the form is strongly tinged with the deep orange that indicates conceit. It was at a theosophical meeting that this special shape was encountered, and it accompanied a question which showed considerable thought and penetration. ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... Washington's interest in this property was very real. Those who attempt to explain his early concern with the West as purely altruistic must misread his numerous letters and diaries. Nothing in his unofficial character shows more plainly than his business enterprise and acumen. On one occasion he wrote to his agent, Crawford, concerning a proposed land speculation: "I recommend that you keep this whole matter a secret or trust it only to those in whom you can confide. If the scheme I am now proposing to you were known, ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... here also to discover dogmatic purposes led him astray. The Tendenzkritik had its own tendencies. The chief was to exaggeration and one-sidedness. Baur had the kind of ear which hears grass grow. There is much overstrained acumen. Many radically false conclusions are reached by prejudiced operation with an historical formula, which in the last analysis is that of Hegel. Everything is to be explained on the principle of antithesis. Again, the assumption of conscious purpose in everything which ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... otherwise. Therefore, I published my Disputation;[13] in other words, I brought upon my head all the curses, high, middle and low, which these lovers of money (I should say "of souls") are able to send or to have sent upon me. For these most courteous men, armed, as they are, with very dense acumen, since they cannot deny what I have said, now pretend that in my Disputation I have spoken against the power of ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... wild weird words: "The wolf has slept in the lair of the forest deer—the yellow fawn will be his victim!" Now knew I the wolf—a wolf disguised in the clothing of the lamb? It needed no remarkable acumen to tell to whom the figure referred. The writing itself revealed him—all but the name; and that was manifest by implication. The man with whom "Marian went away"—he whom I had seen in clerical garb ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... expectations of crossing the borders into Hampshire before sunset. Morsfield and Cumnock shrugged at the bumpkin artifice. They left their line of route to be communicated to the chariot, and chose, with practised acumen, that very course, which was the main road, and rewarded them at the end of half an hour with sight of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that this public recantation had cost a proud man, jealous of his reputation for professional tact and skill, as well as for individual acumen, Beryl began to realize the depth and fervor of the love that prompted it; and the merciless ordeal to which he would subject her. Inflicting upon himself the smarting sting of the keenest possible humiliation, could she hope that in the attainment of his aim he would spare her? If she threw ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... rest for their acceptance entirely upon Mr. Blount's honesty and ability as a man, nor upon his acumen and impartiality as an investigator. They are accompanied by the evidence upon which they are based, which evidence is also herewith transmitted, and from which it seems to me no other deductions could possibly be reached than those ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... fully equipped, many-sided mass of splendid manhood he was! What a complete combination of philosopher, theologian, preacher, scholar, and college president all rolled into one! During the twenty years of his brilliant career at Princeton he displayed much of Jonathan Edwards' metaphysical acumen, of John Witherspoon's wisdom, Samuel Davies' fervor and Dr. "Johnny" McLean's kindness of heart; the best qualities of his predecessors were combined in him. He came here a Scotchman at the age of fifty-seven, and in a year he became, as Paddy ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... this plan was a stroke of inspiration. He was not an intelligent scoundrel. All his acumen, though bent to the one point of roguery, had barely sufficed hitherto to commit murders and escape hanging. He had never prospered financially, because he lacked financial ability. He was a beast, with all a tiger's ferocity, but with hardly more than a tiger's intelligence. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... consent to forego the use of logic any longer. For a decade or two it was all well enough, but when it comes to fourscore years, one's patience gets exhausted. Carlyle's celebrated Essay, 'Characteristics,' in which this transitional period is diagnosed with unrivalled acumen, is half a century old. Men have been born in it—have grown old in it—have died in it. It has outlived the old Court of Chancery. It is high time the spurs of logic were ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... structure, they would not have been so significant if they had not been accompanied by a lack of business ability among some of the younger Tidewater planters. The sons did not seem to have inherited the same business acumen and hard-driving business instincts of their fathers and grandfathers. Having grown up in a period of affluence, they were eternally optimistic that it would continue, that their setbacks were temporary, and their social positions were secure. Like men everywhere when their private world ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... last Emperor but one, less than twenty years ago, there was an official of this stamp employed as "second Prefect" in the department of Han-yang. Many and wonderful are the stories told of his unerring acumen, and his memory is still fondly cherished by all who knew him in his days of power. We will quote one from among numerous traditions of his genius which have survived to the ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... one of the underlying arguments of his story—namely, that it was King James himself who had ultimately engineered the death of Sir Thomas Overbury. It is an argument which I would not attempt to refute. I do not think that Mr Sabatini's acumen has failed him in the least. But the point for me in the paragraphs is the indication they give of how much Coke did to suppress all evidence that did not ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... that they are Shakespeare's, as well as the others, excepting LOCRINE, but he speaks of all of them with great contempt, as quite worthless productions. This condemnatory sentence is not, however, in the slightest degree convincing, nor is it supported by critical acumen. I should like to see how such a critic would, of his own natural suggestion, have decided on Shakespeare's acknowledged masterpieces, and what he would have thought of praising in them, had the public opinion imposed on him the duty of admiration. THOMAS, ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... day, I had an interview with the old solicitor, and rather pleased him by my industry in the matter. Well, the week slipped by, and everything was in readiness for the approaching trial. All had been satisfactorily arranged between myself and leader, a man of considerable acumen, and the eventful morning at length arrived. I had passed a restless night, and felt rather feverish, but was determined to exert myself to the utmost, as, in all probability, my future success hung on the way I should ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... me was written just about the time of my acquaintance with Coralie Mansoni and of the events which led to a sudden break in it. The judgment of me seems very fair and marked by considerable acumen. I have quoted it because it may serve in some degree to explain my conduct at the time. It also appears to have an interest of its own as an independent appreciation formed by a fair-minded and competent observer. I wish that the same hand had painted an adequate portrait ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... siege of Amiens in 1597, and returned home when it ended, having, though barely of age, already gained distinction as a soldier, and acquired the courtesy of manner which distinguished him till later life, and the blandness of which often blinded unfamiliar acquaintances to the penetration and acumen, the honesty and courage that were the foundations of his character. As his belief changed, and the necessity for free speech was laid upon him, he ceased to disguise his real feelings and became even too out-spoken, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... human sympathy, the keen critical acumen of this essay, make one wish that the author had spared us a "Sludge the Medium" or a "Pacchiarotto," or even a "Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau," and given us more of such honourable work ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... the whole town," he remarked with a sort of admiring unction. I evidently went up in his estimation as he recognised the acumen I had shewed in my choice. I was a visitor worthy of his guidance, and he was put ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... therefore, as having passed finally to England. But the other disputant insisted that it referred to the Brazilians and had no relation to the question with which we had to deal. During two whole sessions this ground was fought over in a legal way by these gentlemen, with great acumen, the rest of us hardly putting in ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... survey his unruly flock. It was plain that they were baiting their overlord. Presson's acumen in politics enlightened him. An angry man may be made to antagonize the neutrals and even to insult his friends—and Thelismer Thornton was not patient when provoked. There was shrewd ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... legal wits began. Before the building was done Joshua Kent had succeeded in making the owners meet part of the additional cost of the foundation, and Robert had developed an acumen that stood by him the rest of his life. But there was something for him in this job bigger than financial gain or loss. Week after week, as he overcame one difficulty after another, he was learning, learning, just as he had done at Weil & Street's. His ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the particularissima, or those excessive minutenesses and distinctions into which one may go without end in any subject whatsoever. So, at large, with very competent learning, no small philosophical acumen, much logical formality and numeration of propositions and paragraphs, but a frequent liveliness of style, and every now and then a crashing shot of practical good sense, Comenius reasons and argues for a new System of Education, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... secret of her husband's aversion to his son and of his oath a month ago to see that same son hang if Mr. Caryll succumbed to the wound he had taken. With some women, to suspect a thing is to believe that thing. Her ladyship was of these. She set too high value upon her acumen, upon the ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini |
