"Insight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to him, but also see Jack and me creeping amongst the marine shrubbery at the bottom, like, as—he expressed it,—"two great white sea-monsters." During these excursions of ours to the bottom of the sea, we began to get an insight into the manners and customs of its inhabitants, and to make discoveries of wonderful things, the like of which we never before conceived. Among other things, we were deeply interested with the operations of the little coral insect which, I was ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... more of a smaller size. I was ready to have attended them to Oparre; but, soon after, a resolution was taken by the chiefs, that they should not move till the next day. I looked upon this to be a fortunate delay, as it afforded me a good opportunity to get some insight into their manner of fighting. With this view, I expressed my wish to Otoo, that he would order some of them to go through the necessary manoeuvres. Two were accordingly ordered out into the bay; in one of which, Otoo, Mr King, and myself, embarked; and Omai went on board the other. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... stage-frightened walk, Caradoc turned down another flight of stairs. Here Madden discovered the secret of the cool air. On this deck was a big refrigerating plant, with frost-covered pipes leading in all directions. The sight of this plant gave Madden some faint insight into the thorough preparation made by the German government to carry on their struggle by sea. Long before war was declared, Germany must have planned a naval base in the Sargasso, and have foreseen the use of her submarines in evading the blockade. She had chosen these ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... long and useful lives are to be attained. We see her sons doing duty for years in the ranks of the common sailor and soldier, enduring the privations and hardships incident to such service, and they thus secure not only health, but an insight into human life and thought and nature more valuable than any of the lessons learned ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... flies so quickly in his house that it passes quite imperceptibly. He seems fond of me, and I like very much being with him, for he is a most friendly, sensible person, possessing excellent judgment and a true insight into music, I was there again to-day with Raaff. I took some music with me, as the Count (long since) asked me to do so. I brought my newly completed symphony, with which, on Corpus Christi day, the Concert Spirituel is to commence. The work pleased them both ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... him, indignant tears smarting in her eyes. Another long look passed between them, on her side bewildered, pained, aghast at being so misunderstood, on his penetrating, melancholy, full of compassionate insight, that look which seems to herald the parting between two unequal natures, but which is in reality a perception that they have ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... at him now, she had a flash of insight and prescience. She had, from little things said or done, from newspapers marked and a hundred small indications, made up her mind that her mistress's mind dwelt much upon "the Egyptian." The thought flashed now that she might serve this man, after all; that a day might come ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... said not a word. Three months before and my father had been the happiest, free-from-care man in the city; now the little insight he had gained into domestic affairs—the peep behind the curtain given him by my mistaken maiden aunt, had served to embitter his existence, surrounding his path with those nettles of life, household trifles, vulgar cares and petty annoyances. I almost echoed Biddy's ejaculation ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... words of the singers are the hours or minutes of the light or dark—but the words of the maker of poems are the general light and dark; The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality, His insight and power encircle things and the human race, He is the glory and extract, thus far, of things and ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... is said and done the illustrator's strongest asset is spirit. Technique and a grain of insight will help a man over many a rut in portraiture, and a knowledge of patting clay and using a chisel has saved many a sculptor, but technical equipment alone never made an illustrator, because he deals too directly with life in action. Slack drawing ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... player began Chopin's Ballade in G Minor. Mrs. De Peyster listened contemptuously; then with rebellious interest; then with complete absorption. That person below could certainly play the piano—brilliantly, feelingly, with the touch and insight of an artist. Mrs. De Peyster's soul rose and fell with the soul of the song, and when the piano, after its uprushing, almost human closing cry, fell sharply into silence, she was for ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... mind of Joseph Livesey, and a short consideration of the circumstances and surroundings of his useful career will give us the best insight into the necessities and influences which gave it birth. He was born near Preston, in Lancashire, in the year 1795; the beginning of an era in English history which scarcely has a parallel for national suffering. ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... was insolent enough to say that she would pray for me. I am not a furious old man with a long white beard, and I don't curse my daughter and rush out into a thunderstorm afterward—but I know what King Lear felt, and I have struggled with hysterics just as he did. With your wonderful insight into human nature, I am sure you will sympathize with and forgive me. Mr. Penrose, as my daughter tells me, behaved in the most gentleman-like manner. I make the same appeal to your kind forbearance. The ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... has no sufficient consciousness of his capacity to awake a due reaction of his thought upon the matter received from his teachers. Again, the decline of the sovereignty of the people would be the negation of all rule, if it meant that the uninstructed many should govern themselves by their own insight, and that the instructed few should simply be their servants and their instruments. But where the people are not recognized as the ultimate source of power, where their consent is not in any regular way made necessary to the proceedings of their governors, they ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... whose power, like the locusts in the Revelation, is "in their tails"—they have stings, and there lies their scorpion power. De Quincey's vigor is evenly and equally diffused through his whole being. It is not a partial palpitation, but a deep, steady glow. His insight hangs over us and the world like a nebulous star, seeing us, but, in part, remaining unseen. In fact, his deepest thoughts have never been disclosed. Like Burke, he has not "hung his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at." He has profound reticence ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... very curious, but you will let me come and see you, and perhaps you will kindly show me the railway works, and we will talk things over at leisure. And about all old friends and old times," added Pagett, detecting with quick insight a look of disappointment in ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... as in the United States. All that is necessary is that the courts as a whole should exercise this power with the farsighted wisdom already shown by those judges who scan the future while they act in the present. Let them exercise this great power not only honestly and bravely, but with wise insight into the needs and fixed purposes of the people, so that they may do justice and work equity, so that they may protect all persons in their rights, and yet break down the barriers of privilege, which is the foe ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... village. We always drew attention to her one treasure, the fine Sheraton sideboard that had belonged to her great-grandfather, old Priest Perkins; and, when we walked away from the orderly and empty house, we were sure that our friends from the city would always exclaim with great insight into character, "What a charmingly picturesque ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... the transparent artifice has been penetrated, the familiar substance underneath will be greeted none the less kindly; nay, the observer will perhaps regard the disguise as an oblique compliment to his powers of insight, and his attention may thus be better secured than had the subject worn its every-day dress. Seriously, the most matter-of-fact life has moods when the light of romance seems to gild its earthen chimney-pots into fairy minarets; and, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... from ours," and further defining it thus: "God has, in fact, erected another and higher system, that of spiritual being and government for which nature exists; a system not under the law of cause and effect, but ruled and marshaled under other kinds of laws."[9] Few men have shown more insight than Bushnell in illustrating Spiritual truth from the Natural World; but he has not only failed to perceive the analogy with regard to Law, but ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... words with which the dialogue opens; or the clumsy joke about man being an animal, who has a power of two-feet—both which are suggested by the presence of Theodorus, the geometrician. There is political as well as logical insight in refusing to admit the division of mankind into Hellenes and Barbarians: 'if a crane could speak, he would in like manner oppose men and all other animals to cranes.' The pride of the Hellene is further humbled, by being compared to a Phrygian or Lydian. ...
— Statesman • Plato
... of God floweth into and actuates the will of man, so that it willeth the things of God, and the understanding is enlivened, and thenceforward useth the materials supplied to it by the senses symbolically; that is, with an insight into the true ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... time I didn't realize the innocence that went with Jimmy's wisdom. I think I credited him with insight that I know now he never had. I know now that, even afterwards—at the very worst—he had no misgivings. All the Hampstead time, all through the Edwardes Square time he was happy. And afterwards—well—happiness wasn't the word for it; he ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... subjects that help to make a woman a better citizen must be taken more seriously," she says. "It can no longer be the proper aim of history teaching to foster and strengthen in women a sentimental attachment to her country and its national character: its aim must be to give her the insight that will enable her to understand the forces at work, and ultimately play an active part in them. Many branches of our social life await the work of women, civic philanthropy to begin with; and as our public life becomes more and more constitutional, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... in this volume is nothing less than an applied psychology of the judicial processes,—a critical survey of the procedures incident to the administration of justice with due recognition of their intrinsically psychological character, and yet with the insight conferred by a responsible experience with a working system. There is nothing more significant in the history of institutions than their tendency to get in the way of the very purposes which they were devised ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... way the student obtains an insight into the earlier conditions of the life under examination that is invaluable, especially when there is, as will be found in many cases, no Line of Destiny visible in the ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... "M's"—Mitford, Murdoch, Munro, Morse, Maclaren, "Murray" and McGovern—there are many volumes of fervid "pro-Japanese" or determined "anti-Japanese" romanticism. The pictures of Japan which such easily perused books present are incredible to readers of ordinary insight or historical imagination, but they have had their part in forming ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... express herself without dogmatism." So much for the first part of the thesis. Having thus "gained accuracy, would woman bring this force to bear throughout morals and justice, then she must find in active labor the promptings and inspirations that come from growing insight." I was quite certain that by following these directions carefully, in the end the contemporary woman would find "her faculties clear and acute from the study of science, and her hand upon the ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... Barkilphedro's talents as a spy, reposed such confidence in him that she had not hesitated to entrust him with one of the master-keys of her apartments, by means of which he was able to enter them at any hour. This excessive licence of insight into private life was in fashion in the seventeenth century. It was called "giving the key." Josiana had given two of these confidential keys—Lord David had one, Barkilphedro the other. However, to enter straight into a bedchamber was, in the old code of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... move. True! Ivy's money! Gone in this wreck. Again he had a flash of insight. He was indeed at the ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... freedom and animation. His reflections are piquant, and often rise to a philosophic tone, which discards the usual trammels of the age; and the progress of the story is varied by a multiplicity of personal anecdotes, that give a rapid insight into the characters ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... strength of the British fleet," said the Lieutenant-Colonel, who had communicated the above report to Heideck. "Sometimes I am really inclined to believe that this fleet is not so effective as all the world has hitherto assumed. It is almost impossible for outsiders to get a clear insight into the condition of the English navy. So far as I can remember, false reports are systematically published about the fleet—officially, semi-officially, and privately. From time to time a speaker is put up in Parliament ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... man of singular insight and fine feeling," he said. "At the time of his outburst I was giving evidence against him for cruelty to a bullock. And now, for goodness' sake, somebody collect Jill and let's have ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... the ordinary "shop," who is learning there at present, to our regret, only a portion of his craft, and who should be given an insight into the whole, and ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... husband was afraid of him. She liked his blunt, sturdy, unaffected ways, and many a time and oft she had held him up to her submissive lord as the sort of soldier he ought to be. She knew nothing of the affair at the store as yet, and Wilkins was afraid to tell her. With her keen insight she had long since discovered that her husband's associates and intimates in the regiment were not the strong or the good men, and she had warned him at Sandy that whatever he might have against such men as Truscott or Ray, he ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... the man's words had shown her. It was wonderful to her the thought of this—this "scallawag." The word flashed through her mind, and with it came an even fuller realization of Mrs. Ransford's stupidity. The man's thought was the poet's insight into Nature's wonderlands. He was speaking of that great mountain world as though it were a religion to him, as if it represented some treasured poetic ideal, ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... realized to the full the titanic character of the struggle between man and nature in the forest, and has reproduced it in his pages with an enthusiasm and strength of insight worthy of his theme."—The St. ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... appropriate that the new lyceum should provide facilities for the Alexandria Library Company, the city's first organization for the advancement of learning dating back to 1794. Insight into the early efforts to establish a library and the bid made for its public support is revealed through announcements of the type which follow. This one appeared in the local gazette ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... still the most important, although to one branch of it, constitutional history, he was totally blind. So were almost all Englishmen then, even Shakespeare, whose King John contains no allusion to Magna Charta. In his work On the Inventors {582} of Things Vergil showed the depth of his insight into the importance in history of culture and ideas. While his treatment of such subjects as the origin of myths, man, marriage, religion, language, poetry, drama, music, sciences and laws is unequal to his purpose, the intention itself ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... a warning would not have had to be translated into action, for in due course things were bound to come your way by the very force of cause and effect. With a little skill and tact and insight (which traits, as you will probably admit, have hardly been outstanding features of German diplomacy since Bismarck), together with a little patience, everything you could reasonably ask would have been yours in the course of the next ten ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... whole." In a lightning flash his inner sense had associated the words and the glance, divining that the one had caused the other. That pause provided the opportunity.... If Imagination, then it was creative imagination; if true, it was assuredly spiritual insight of ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... whose mercies are fathomless, and whose knowledge is immense and inexhaustible; next to my creation and redemption I render thee most humble thanks from the very bottom of my heart and bowels, for thy vouchsafing me (the meanest in understanding) an insight in soe great a secret of nature, beneficent to all mankind, as this my water-commanding engine. Suffer me not to be puffed up, O Lord, by the knowing of it, and many more rare and unheard off, yea, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... minds have contributed to these pages. Such sources of suggestion and insight have been indicated wherever they could be identified. In especial I must record my grateful sense of obligation to Professor Irving Babbitt's Rousseau and Romanticism. The chapter on Naturalism owes much to ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... the national pantheon. There must have been a great sense of loss, especially among the lower classes, and it does not require much psychological insight to realise that it was the lack of female deities which more especially roused a feeling of anxiety and distress. The masses were yearning for a goddess, and it was at Ephesus, the classical seat of the hundred-breasted Diana, that the stolen divinity ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... but it was a concise, and well constructed story, full of beautiful scenes and admirable portraits. The theme is akin to that of Daudet's L'Evangeliste; but Kielland, as it appears to me, has in this instance outdone his French confrere as regards insight into the peculiar character and poetry of the pietistic movement. He has dealt with it as a psychological and not primarily as a pathological phenomenon. A comparison with Daudet suggests itself constantly ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... selves. If the children could combine the result of their observations and bring out a manual of "Teacher Study" we should have strange revelations as to how it looks from the other side. We should be astonished at the shrewdness of the small juries that deliberate, and the insight of the judges that pronounce sentence upon us, and we should be convinced that to obtain a favourable verdict we needed very little subtlety, and not too much theory, but as much as possible of the very things we look for as the result and crown ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... he would suddenly swing their horses' heads about and guide them home with the accuracy of the wild goose on its nights to the nesting grounds. He read every sign of footprint, leaf, water, and sky with unfailing insight. He had no knowledge of books, and she had at first thought him ignorant, but as the days went by she had found in him a mine of wisdom which ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... he was not yet a national figure, Lincoln was locally accredited with keen political insight, and was, regarded in Illinois as a strong lawyer. The story is told of him that, while he was attending court on the circuit, he heard the news of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in a tavern and sat up most of the night talking about ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... too, like Pender, would soon be riding to a soldier's grave. And then were Doubleday and Newton and Hancock, a great soldier, a man of magnificent presence, whose air and manner always inspired enthusiasm, soon to be known as Hancock the Superb; Sedgwick, a soldier of great insight and tenacity; Howard, a religious man, who was to come out of the war with only one arm; Hunt and Gibbon, and Webb and Sykes, and Slocum and Pleasanton, who commanded the cavalry, and ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... have given you the best insight into her feelings since we came here. It has been the most fortunate thing for us all. Fanny herself, Addy, Georgy, Miss Lister, and indeed all of us, have had means of fitting and cementing here, which no London or visiting life could have given ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... embarrassed. "Constable," said he, "I would fain have you in my company to-day; you know well that my lord my father loved you and trusted you more than any other; in the name of God and St. Denis do whatever you think best. You have a clearer insight into the matter than I and those who have advised me. Only attend my mass to-morrow." The battle began with spirit the next morning, in the midst of a thick fog. According to the monk of St. Denis, Van Artevelde was not without disquietude. He had bidden one of his people go and observe ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... true view. For them life means good; they find strength and joy in this wholesome and cheerful faith, and if they are in error, it can never be known, for if death end all, with it knowledge ceases. Perceiving this, they strive to gain spiritual insight, they look to God; toward him they turn the current of their thought and love; the unseen world of truth and beauty becomes their home; and while matter flows on and breaks and remakes itself to break again, they dwell in the presence of the Eternal, ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... long run the value of an author depends on two factors, the nature of his insight and his power of expression. Burns's insight into his own nature was deep and on the whole just, and that nature was itself rich enough to teach him much. He found there the great struggle between impulse and will—fiery, surging impulse and a stubborn will. This experience, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... von Hofen wrote Zwingli from Geneva that he would do all he could to exalt the gospel in that city but that he knew it would be vain, for there were seven hundred priests working against him. This letter gives an insight into the methods by which new territory was evangelized, the quarters whence came the new influences, and the forces with which they ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... His Majesty King Charles II were reviewing the affairs of the American Plantations. One of the commissioners was Sir George Carteret, and when he sailed for England in August 1665 he was accompanied by the two French explorers. It gives one a curiously graphic insight into the conditions of ocean travel in those days to learn that the royal commissioner's ship was attacked, boarded, and sunk by a Dutch filibuster. Carteret and his two companions landed penniless in Spain, but, by pawning ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... that fire burns itself. And at the same time you refuse to accept the common and altogether rational opinion that we are conscious of the external thing by means of the idea different from the thing! Indeed a proof of extraordinary philosophic insight!—It cannot, moreover, be asserted in any way that the idea apart from the thing is the object of our consciousness; for it is absurd to speak of a thing as the object of its own activity. Possibly you (the Bauddha) will rejoin that, if the idea is to be apprehended by something different ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... anything to make a living, but in his hours of freedom he would keep a little kingdom of his own. The road to it might lie through the cellar of a grocer's shop, but he would not flinch. He would strive and struggle as a naturalist. When he had won the insight he was seeking, the position he sought would follow, for every event in the woodland life had shown him—had shown them all, that his was the kingdom of the Birds and Beasts and the ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and comprehension. The conflicting claims of applicants for appointments to offices in his gift were carefully weighed, and no action was taken until all parties interested had a hearing. The President had a remarkable insight into men, promptly estimating character with an accuracy that made it a difficult matter to deceive him, or to win his favor either for visionary schemes, corrupt attacks upon the Treasury, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... that—the thing, and the only thing, that, in the long run, appeals. It is because of the absence of it that one can read so few modern writers twice! They have flexibility, originality, cleverness, insight—but they lack distinction—they ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... have lived with this man, and who have made his nature a serious study, apart from racial bias, I am perplexed with conundrums which cannot be solved. Some of the conundrums are perhaps superficial, and disappear with a deeper insight into his life; others are wrought into his being. Yet he has a fixedness of character, reaching in some directions to absolute crystallization; he possesses the virility of young manhood and many of the mutually inconsistent traits ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... should tell you to-night or to-morrow about the appointment. Dick—Dick," said Austin, deeply moved by the great fellow's collapse, "if I have wronged you all these years, it was through want of insight, not want of affection. If I have taunted you, as you say, it was merely a lifelong habit of jesting which you never seemed to resent. I was unconscious of hurting you. For my blindness and carelessness I beg your forgiveness. ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... boating, swimming, fishing and tramping to their heart's content. There were a great many surprises, but in the end the boys managed to clear up a mystery of long standing. Incidentally, the volume gives a clear insight into the workings of the now justly popular summer camps of the Y. M. C. A., ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... calling itself Orthodoxy. Then Private Judgment comes forth again to criticise and reform. It thus becomes the duty of each individual to judge the Church; and out of innumerable individual judgments the insight of the Church is kept living and progressive. We contribute one such private judgment; not, we trust, in conceit, but in the hope of provoking other ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... could render welcomest companionship; at one time she conversed earnestly with those older and wiser than herself, at another she was the willing playmate of laughing girls. She was loved by those who could by no possibility have loved one another, and in turn she seemed to discover with sure insight what there was of strength and beauty in the most diverse characters. With this breadth of sympathy she developed a self-consciousness of the kind to which most women never attain; habitually studying herself, and making comparison of herself with others, ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... asunder as the poles in many respects, possessed in their different ways—to a greater degree than the rest of the family—that essential quality of tenacious and prudent insight into 'affairs,' which is the highwater mark of their great class. Either of them, with a little luck and opportunity, was equal to a lofty career; either of them would have made a good financier, a great contractor, a statesman, though ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... define a blunder, probably the best illustration of what it is will be found in the answers of the boys under examination. All classes of blunders may be found among these. There are those which show confusion of knowledge, and those which exhibit an insight into the heart of the matter while blundering in the form. Two very good examples occur to one's mind, but it is to be feared that they owe their origin to some keen spirit of mature years. "What is Faith?—The quality by which we are enabled to believe that which we know is untrue.'' Surely ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... There are seven medicinal springs. It is strange to have the luxuries of life in my room. It will be only the fourth night in Colorado that I have slept on anything better than hay or straw. I am glad that there are so few inns. As it is, I get a good deal of insight into the homes and modes ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... strike even the most indifferent. The careful arrangement of the visitors who are to compose what is termed the 'circle;' the nice balancing of positive natures with negative natures, wherein the Medium is guided by her delicate spiritual insight; the quiet hush; the whispered conversation; the darkened room; the darker drapery of the mysterious Cabinet, with its untold possibilities; the subdued chords of the dim melodeon; the soothing tones of familiar hymns, in which all voices join; the words full ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... Greeks was due to a poetry which flattered their national pride and enchained their taste, and not to the serious doctrines of their religion. Constantly bearing this distinction in mind, we shall gain considerable insight, not only into their religion, but into seeming contradictions in their literary history. They allowed Aristophanes to picture Bacchus as a buffoon, and Hercules as a glutton, in the same age in which they ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to live with, however, this obstinate English country gentleman, although without sympathetic insight, and liable to become a petty domestic tyrant at any moment. "Sound" was what he would have called himself. And he was a man to be envied upon the whole, for his family loved him, and his friends knew no ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... beginning to its simple end. But Pete—. His language had all Honey's simplicity lined terseness and, in addition, he had the literary touch, both the dramatist's instinct and the fictionist's insight. His stories always ran up to a psychological climax; but this was always disguised by the best narratory tricks. He was one of those men of whom people always say, "if he could only write as he talks." In point of fact, he wrote much better than he ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... been in the habit of taking the booklet home in order to read it aloud to Mabel. He never did it now. It was hopeless. No insight. No sympathy. No appreciation. No anything. Blind and deaf to beauty. But she really was ...
— If Winter Don't - A B C D E F Notsomuchinson • Barry Pain
... healthiness of the climate, and a fertility of the soil, capable of producing useful exportable commodities, more than sufficient to pay for tropical productions of luxury, raised at an increased expense of life and slavery; and a very little insight into foreign trade will show with what ease ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various
... the subject, I have realised what a wealth of interesting facts my Father had gathered together, and that not only the gathered facts, but his own contributions, his chapter on "The Ghost That Dwelleth in Each One of Us" and his comments on the stories, show what an insight he had into and what an understanding he had of this vast ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... get a closer insight into the causes of this confused condition of ordinary races, Rimpau made some observations on Rivett's wheat. He found that it suffers from frost during winter more than the local German varieties, and that from various causes, alien seeds may accidentally, ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... so whenever he could lay hold of him alone; but the stedfast silence of his sister Faith (to whom one of his loftiest odes was addressed), and of his lively father, irked him far more than a thousand low parodies. Dolly alone was some comfort to him, some little vindication of true insight; and he was surprised to find how quickly her intelligence (which until now he had despised) had strengthened, deepened, and enlarged itself. Still he wanted some one older, bigger, more capable of shutting up the mouth, and nodding (instead of showing such a lot of red ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... provocative and contentious elements, the mingled dogmatism and incompleteness which any worked-out system contains. It is so foolish in the preacher to turn himself into a lay philosopher. Let him keep his insight clear, through moral discipline keep his intuitions high, his spirit pure, and then he can furnish the materials ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... her from gloom, and save him from the reproach of having plunged her into it. For when a man is at the foot of the hill in his fortunes, he may stay a long while there in spite of professional accomplishment. In the British climate there is no incompatibility between scientific insight and furnished lodgings: the incompatibility is chiefly between scientific ambition and a wife who objects to ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... be only apparent and not real, we shall surely, having gained this insight, be too wise to waste indignation upon the non-existent; if what we call misdeeds in reality fulfil God's own "requirements," a thoroughly enlightened public opinion will not seek to interfere with the sacred activities ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... works have little critical value, and yet they have much of charm and suggestiveness as religious expositions of the Gospels. Of somewhat the same nature was Dr. Edmund H. Sears's The Fourth Gospel: The Heart of Christ, 1872, a work of deep spiritual insight. ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... not come to him all at once. His intellect at first stood in his way. His love of paradox, his deep observation, his insight—all made him inherently satirical, though not cruelly so; but satire had become pure whimsicality at last; and he came to see that, on the whole, the world was imperfect, but also, on the whole, was moving toward perfection rather than imperfection. He grew to realize that what seemed ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... doubtless made up of ordinary branches and stems; but is it not vast, is it not as it should be, seeing that it is the forest? Not by the exceptional shall the last word ever be spoken; and indeed what we call the sublime should be only a clearer, profounder insight into all that is perfectly normal. It is of service, often, to watch those on the peaks who do battle; but it is well, too, not to forget those in the valley below, who fight not at all. As we see all that happens to ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... as abroad; finance in Alexander Hamilton and Robert Morris; law in James Wilson of Pennsylvania; the philosophy of government in James Madison, called the "father of the Constitution." They were not theorists but practical men, rich in political experience and endowed with deep insight into the springs of human action. Three of them had served in the Stamp Act Congress: Dickinson of Delaware, William Samuel Johnson of Connecticut, and John Rutledge of South Carolina. Eight had been signers of the Declaration of ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... most disgusting, and a very bad compliment to the judgment, the morals or the taste of our acquaintance. Yet, with all his splendid genius, this sort of vanity certainly distinguished Lord Byron, and that among many other things proves how deeply a man may be read in human nature, what an insight he may acquire into the springs of action and feeling, and yet how incapable he may be of making any practical application of the knowledge he has acquired and the result of which he can faithfully delineate. He gives a list of the books ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... would," he admitted, wondering at her insight into human nature and admiring her devotion to the ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... Not that he ever lost his admiration of the former, or ceased to value the incalculable services they rendered to the Scottish nation; but that he regarded Knox and Melville as men occupying a yet higher platform,—as gifted with a yet deeper insight into their country's wants,—as, in short, carrying forward and consummating the glorious task which Wallace and Bruce had but begun. He saw that unless our reformers had come after our heroes, planting schools, founding colleges, and, above all, imparting to their countrymen a scriptural ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... observes—"Those who remember that gentleman (of the 70th regiment, then stationed in Canada) will readily grant, that, with general talent at least equal to those of his elder brother, he added a power of social humour, and a deep insight into human character, which rendered him an universally delightful member of society, and that the habit of composition alone was wanting to render him equally successful as a writer. The Author of Waverley was so persuaded of the truth of this, that he warmly pressed his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... the thoughts of mankind, and this insight better enabled him to direct those thoughts aright; but what would be said at this period of an in- 94:27 fidel blasphemer who should hint that Jesus used his in- cisive power injuriously? Our Master read mortal mind on a scientific basis, that of the omnipresence of Mind. 94:30 An approximation ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... attributed to Caedmon is the so-called Paraphrase. It is the story of Genesis, Exodus, and a part of Daniel, told in glowing, poetic language, with a power of insight and imagination which often raises it from paraphrase into the realm of true poetry. Though we have Bede's assurance that Caedmon "transformed the whole course of Bible history into most delightful poetry," no work known certainly to have been composed by him has come down to ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... never know the upshot. Ours to be Wasted with longing, shattered in the throes, The agonies of splendid dreams, which day Dims from our vision, but each night brings back; We strive to hold their grandeur, and essay To be the thing we dream. Sudden we lack The flash of insight, life grows drear and gray, And hour follows hour, ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... finally, after staring first at Rebecca and then at the porcupine quills, as if to gain some insight into the situation, "well, I never, sence I was born int' the world, heerd such a speech as you've spoke, an' I guess there probably never was one. You'd better tell the minister what you said and see what he thinks of his prize Sunday-school scholar. But I'm too old and tired to scold ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of the Earl's dark scheme was cleared up to Wilton's eyes in a moment; and the secret of his own fate was only given to him in conjunction with an insight into that black and base transaction, of which he had ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... insight or inspiration is best tested by whether it guesses these hidden malformations or surprises. If our mathematician from the moon saw the two arms and the two ears, he might deduce the two shoulder-blades and the two ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... Dr. Neil McDonnell was a dapper mystical little specialist, who was renowned for his applications of psychotherapy to raging militants and weary society leaders. He was a Scottish Highlander, with a rare gift of intuitive insight. He, too, had the agreeable quality of personal charm. Like all to whom the gods have been good, he looked with a favoring eye on ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... fundamental principles. In three chapters the nature of criticism, the relation of the author to his work, and the aesthetic principles underlying literary art are briefly discussed. The facts and principles here presented are designed to give a clearer and deeper insight into the nature and ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... be a self-determining unit, is less easy to decide. There is no doubt that the general tendency of Liberalism is to favour autonomy, but, faced as it is with the problems of subdivision and the complexity of group with group, it has to rely on the concrete teaching of history and the practical insight of statesmanship to determine how the lines of autonomy are to be drawn. There is, however, one empirical test which seems generally applicable. Where a weaker nation incorporated with a larger or stronger one can be governed ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... characters is introduced (like the prologue in an old play) to recount the previous adventures of the others, is in itself at all times defective; since it injures the effect of the relation by depriving it of those accessory touches which the author, from his conventionally admitted insight into the feelings and motives of his characters, is privileged to supply: whereas a speaker in the first person must necessarily confine himself, unless when narrating his own adventures, to the points which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... have naturally become interested in these ancient people, and have written the following volume of short stories simply to show the nature, traditions and legends of the In-u-pash.[1] I have also introduced a few brief sketches, hoping to give a little insight into the simplicity of these primitive people who have been isolated from the outside world from the most remote time. There has been no attempt made ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... in those rooms who had not his insight. And it came finally to the remembrance of Madame Dravikine, in the midst of a most amusing tete-a-tete, that she was no longer a free agent at balls: that she was chaperoning a daughter who appeared to be alarmingly unconventional. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... also or anye other written, thei liued holily, hundred of yeares before: atteininge to the truthes hidden from other, by a singuler gifte aboue other. That Philosophre of Philosophers, and deuine of deuines, Moses the marueilous, waienge in his insight, that no multitude assembled, coulde be gouerned to continuaunce without ordres of equitie and lawes: when with rewardes to the good, and reuenge vpon the euill, he had sufficiently exhorted, and trained his people to the desire of vertue, and the hate ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... experience far from restricted, for, as I have already mentioned, he had travelled much, and in the company of persons of high position; and had Joan been less ignorant of things belonging to her proper station, she would have found yet more to interest her in him. But being a man of some insight, and possessed also of considerable versatility, so that, readily discovering any perculiarity, he was equally ready to meet it, he laid himself out to talk to her of the things, and in the ways, which he thought she would like. To discover, however, is not ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... magnetic attraction in his descriptions, a fertility in his literary resources which are characteristic of Dumas alone, and the seal of the master of light literature is set upon all his works. Even when not strictly historical, his romances give an insight into the habits and modes of thought and action of the people of the time described, which are not offered in any other ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... DE BERLIN, tome iii. of OEuvres de Mirabeau: Paris, 1821, LETTRE v. p. 37.] vastly diligent in picking up news, opinions, judgments of men and events, for his Calonne;—and amazingly accurate, one finds; such a flash of insight has he, in whatever element, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... reverently, as though he touched something ethereal. He little dreamed that, even then, that suffering heart was uplifted to the Throne of Grace, praying the Father that she might so live and govern herself that he might come to believe the Bible, which her clear insight too surely ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... goodly tale or two, On which he may disport him at night. His high prudence hath insight very To judge if it be well made or nay. Write him nothing that soweneth to vice. Look if find thou canst any treatise Grounded ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... of Archie Weir's?' said one to Frank Innes; and Innes replied, with his usual flippancy and more than his usual insight: 'I know Weir, but I never met Archie.' No one had met Archie, a malady most incident to only sons. He flew his private signal, and none heeded it; It seemed he was abroad in a world from which the very hope of intimacy was banished; and he looked round about him on the concourse ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... upon Visigothic, and had finally chosen Lombard rather than the others because the material was not merely defective but also delightfully vague, affording a wide opportunity for genuine philological insight. And indeed to classify a language on the basis of a phrase scratched on a brooch, the misquotations of alien chroniclers, the shifting forms of misspelled proper names, is a task compared with which the fabled reconstruction of leviathan ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... faculties, he requires others which, in their higher developments, are no less rare—namely, a quick discernment of popular wants as they arise or an imagination which enables him to anticipate them, an instinctive insight into character which enables him to choose best men as his subordinates, promptitude to seize on opportunities, courage which is the soul of promptitude, and finally a driving energy by which the whole of his moral and intellectual ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... and detachment from the life of God that makes things ugly, the poet, who re-attaches things to nature and the Whole,—re-attaching even artificial things and violations of nature, to nature, by a deeper insight,—disposes very easily of the most disagreeable facts. Readers of poetry see the factory-village and the railway, and fancy that the poetry of the landscape is broken up by these; for these works of art are not yet consecrated in their reading; but the ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of having long since discovered and verified them without assistance or suggestion from any but Shakespeare himself, I should be disposed to claim but little credit for a discovery which must in all likelihood have been forestalled by the common insight of some hundred or more students in time past. The difficulty begins with the really debatable question of subdivisions. There are certain plays which may be said to hang on the borderland between one period and the next, with ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... remarkable fact, and one which gives us a deep insight into the character of the Athenians, that the central figure in their religion, the most perfect representative of their feelings, thoughts, and aspirations, was not Zeus or Hera (Juno), nor the most popular gods of all times and nations, Ares (Mars) and Aphrodite (Venus), but Athena, ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... it," said Platzoff drily. "The intellects of you English have been nourished on beef and beer for so many generations that there is no such thing as spiritual insight left among you. We must not expect too much." This was said not ill-naturedly, but in that quiet jeering tone which was ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... Great new aspirations were springing up in her heart. She had submitted to a well-known magazine her little verses, born of that night of moonrise and sunset, when the boys said good-by. They had not been accepted, but the reviewer, a lady of some insight, had written the young poetess a long and encouraging letter. Miss Gordon must read and study nature, she advised, and she would do something some day. So Elizabeth tried to obey. Studying nature was like breathing and came very easily, and reading was always a ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... or both as honorable and excellent as she, neither had the filbert tree sorrowed in the death of despairing Phyllis, nor the stars been graced with Ariadne, but Demophoon and Theseus had been trusty to their paragons. I will tell thee, swain, if with a deep insight thou couldst pierce into the secret of my loves, and see what deep impressions of her idea affection hath made in my heart, then wouldst thou confess I were passing passionate, and no ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... either be a man of weak intellect, of great ignorance, or of low moral perception; for he cast on the memory of a man already more to be pitied than any, a weight of obloquy such as it were hard to believe anyone capable of deserving. A being with Shakespeare's love of human nature, and Bacon's insight into essential truth, guilty of the moral and social atrocities into which his lordship's eagerness after money for scientific research betrayed him, would be a ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... cast me off now? What if he had obtained an insight into my character which had cured him entirely of any regard he might previously have entertained for me? What if I should find that I had all my life been neglecting the gem which I was too ignorant to appreciate, and now, when I knew its real value and would ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... and which in a geological sense it no doubt is: but to the Cordillera the Himalaya offers no parallel. The results of Dr. Thomson's study of the north-west Himalaya and Tibet, and my own of the north-east extreme of Sikkim and Tibet, first gave me an insight into the true structure of this chain. Donkia mountain is the culminant point of an immensely elevated mass of mountains, of greater mean height than a similarly extensive area around Kinchin junga. It comprises Chumulari, and many other mountains much above 20,000 feet, though none ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... to do it," I argued; "I have come to sea to learn to be a sailor and an officer, and the captain says we should lose no opportunity of gaining knowledge; and I could not find a better occasion than the present for gaining an insight into what, I fancy, is of ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... fade from the countenance of Mary as she listened to the conversation. Her quick insight, and acquaintance with her father's surly temper, enabled her to see what was withholden from ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... friends to the topmost wave of prosperity. One of the most striking portions of the story is that of Cinq Mar's conspiracy; the method of conducting criminal cases, and the political trickery resorted to by royal favorites, affording a better insight into the state-craft of that day than can be had even by an exhaustive study of history. It is a powerful romance of love and diplomacy, and in point of thrilling and absorbing interest has never ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... you read it through—will give you some insight into the condition, value, and vicissitudes of the light-vessels, or floating lighthouses, which guard the shores of this kingdom, and mark the dangerous shoals lying off some of our harbours and roadsteads. It will also convey to you—if ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... Veronese, and Bonifazio. Look at this Musical Party by Giorgione, this landscape by Titian, this portrait of the vile Duke of Alva by the same great master, the greatest master of all in portraiture. It is the Duke himself, not merely in his outward presence, but such as the insight of one as profoundly versed in human as in external nature beheld him. The portrait is a biography of the man, and one may read in the narrow, hard, and wily face the history of his cruel life. The same qualities of inward vision are displayed by Tintoret in his more hasty portraits, and one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... other things. It was difficult for a man of such mercurial, restless temperament to stay constant to any one occupation; in fact, had he been less visionary he would have been more prosperous, but might not have had a son so gifted with insight and imagination. One instance of the optimistic vagaries which led him incessantly to spend time and money on projects that would not have appealed to a man less sanguine was the construction on his property of a wooden ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... inspiration when he paints a Madonna, but not when his brush stoops to a Cyprian or a Satyr. The Pharisees of old prayed unctuously in the market-places: so the George Sands of our day boast of their superior insight into the beautiful and true. We doubt whether both ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... in my Irish, my Scotch and English 'Regiments of the New Era,'—which I have been concocting, day and night, during these three Grouse-seasons (taking earnest incessant counsel, with all manner of Industrial Notabilities and men of insight, on the matter), and have now brought to a kind of preparation for incipiency, thank Heaven! Enlist there, ye poor wandering banditti; obey, work, suffer, abstain, as all of us have had to do: so shall ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... now to religious phenomena, take the melancholy which, as we shall see, constitutes an essential moment in every complete religious evolution. Take the happiness which achieved religious belief confers. Take the trancelike states of insight into truth which all religious mystics report.[8] These are each and all of them special cases of kinds of human experience of much wider scope. Religious melancholy, whatever peculiarities it may have qua religious, is at any rate melancholy. Religious ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... the Government was able to quench. He was besides beginning to understand the perplexities which beset the administration, to appreciate the problem which confronted the great statesman who was at the head of the nation. He was getting a clear insight into the workings of Lincoln's mind, and into the causes which gave to his political pilotage an air of timidity ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... very early example of a string of nonsensical incongruities, possessing, however, no further value, except perhaps as affording an insight into what was regarded at that time ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... bush. Should such be the case, we have the wind of the animals and ought to have no great difficulty in stalking them; a proceeding which, if patiently and cautiously executed, ought to enable us not only to secure a specimen or two, but also to obtain a slight insight into ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... see you. Poor man, he doesn't seem able to get the run of the hours you keep; I told him he could always find you here between four and eight in the morning. I must say this little insight into your domestic habits appeared to distress him, but I tried to comfort him,—I told him you would probably outlive us all." She laughed softly. "Andy was here this afternoon, Marsh," she ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... "I feel it. Yours is the genius; your generosity confounds your insight; all I could offer you was the position, was this throne, to be a fulcrum. But I offered it without reserve; I entered at least warmly into all your thoughts; you were sure of me—sure of my support—certain ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Bābīs, it is true, were capable of such insight. From the Bābī account of the night-action, ordered on his arrival at Sheykh Tabarsi by Ḳuddus, we learn that some Bābīs, including those of Mazandaran, took the first opportunity of plundering the enemy's camp. For this, the Deputy reproved them, ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... can at this instant be formed of the intended movements of the enemy. A course of Dunlap's papers will convey to you a general insight into the posture of our military affairs. It is not probable that any considerable decision in the field will take place this fall; and the councils in Britain appear to be for relinquishing the mad project ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... these pale people is our cause; their interests are our interests; they have mingled their flesh and blood with ours; we shall be their faithful brothers to the death." It was this fact, not the wisdom of government Indian agents, nor the heaven-born insight of government itself into the management of tribes that so long preserved peace and good will throughout our North-West Territories. It was for this reason that enemies of government in the Republic could ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... history has to show; and it is a pity that Southey's biography—so good in its superficial way, and yet so inadequate as regards any real delineation of the man—should have taken the subject out of the hands of some writer endowed with more delicate appreciation and deeper insight ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... not be misinterpreted: it was an irreverence which bubbled up from a deep, passionate insight into the well-springs of human nature. In 1601, as in 'The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,' and in 'The Mysterious Stranger,' he tore the masks off human beings and left them cringing before the public view. With the deftness of a master surgeon Clemens dealt with human emotions and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... judgment that he seldom, if ever, opposed her decisions. The Princesse de Lamballe used to say, "Though Marie Antoinette is not a woman of great or uncommon talents, yet her long practical knowledge gave her an insight into matters of moment which she turned to advantage with so much coolness and address amid difficulties, that I am convinced she only wanted free scope to have shone in the history of Princes as a great Queen. Her natural tendencies ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... histories of American literature which will prove profitable and pleasant reading. Mr. W. P. Trent's is written with a refreshing humor and insight. The "American Men of Letters" series gives carefully written biographies of about twenty-five of our most famous authors—all that anyone need know about in detail. There is a great mass of other material on the shelves of every public library, which will take one as far ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... observed a change in the thermometer, which brought him on deck. He scanned the water and the sky, and as these experienced commanders have a subtle insight into the weather, especially in familiar latitudes, he remarked to the first lieutenant that it looked rather unsettled; and, as a matter of prudence, ordered a reef in the topsails, and the royal yards to be sent down: ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... proceeded as far in the theory of Deduction as we can advance in the present stage of our inquiry. Any further insight into the subject requires that the foundation shall have been laid of the philosophic theory of Induction itself; in which theory that of Deduction, as a mode of Induction, which we have now shown it to be, will assume spontaneously the place which belongs to it, and will receive its share of whatever ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... movement's folk-plays, and her equally beautiful speaking of the prose lines of the play. This part of Cathleen ni Houlihan is sufficiently removed from the other parts of the play, folk-parts, and from the parts of the other folk-plays, to give us an insight into the versatility of Miss Allgood; and we saw enough of Mr. Sinclair and Mr. O'Donovan and Mr. Kerrigan to realize that they, too, could worthily ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... his friend, Barry experienced at times flashes of almost uncanny insight; and as he contemplated the possibility of this marriage he had a sudden clear conviction that it would not, could not, ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... perhaps already too familiar to require more than a word. Their possibilities for good are numberless. In them many children get their first insight into the joys of making things grow and are led by this joy to undertake the care of a home garden and to beautify the home surroundings as they had never thought of doing before. School-garden work leads to beautifying ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... business we have to do here. We are able, by our senses, to know and distinguish things: and to examine them so far as to apply them to our uses, and several ways to accommodate the exigences of this life. We have insight enough into their admirable contrivances and wonderful effects, to admire and magnify the wisdom, power and goodness of their Author. Such a knowledge as this which is suited to our present condition, we want not faculties to attain. But it appears not ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... all—such of us, I mean, who were possessed of the least sensibility or insight, knew how that sentence sounded as finished in her heart "and I loved him who asked this ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... abnormal channels of activity, so destroying the harmony and balance of life. The essential glory of human beings lies in the fact that in them body and spirit may be so wedded that their activities are woven into one harmonious whole. It was in a moment of real insight that Robert Browning cried— ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... ascribe the success of such individuals to circumstances alone, and to what they say, and the inflexible virile courage with which they say it. Talent, genius, the why and wherefore, are all factors. In Russia there are not a few who share the experiences and insight of Gorki. But they lack means of expression; they ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... rich olive skin, large dark eyes, brilliant as diamonds and as cold, but which could become luminous with tenderness or fiery with passion, as occasion required. To those whom she sought to entertain she could be extremely charming, but to a few even of these, gifted with deeper insight than the others, it seemed that beneath that fascinating manner was a dangerous nature, a will that would brook no restraint, that never would be thwarted; and that this was, in reality, the power which dominated ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... is a man with a delicate but shallow vein of literary capacity, who never did more than tremble upon the verge of success, and hardly, if at all, went beyond promise. He was unlucky in marrying Amy, a rather heartless woman, whose ambition was far in excess of her insight, for economic position Reardon had none. He writes books to please a small group. The books fail to please. Jasper in the main is right—there is only a precarious place for any creative litterateur ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... visible product of a hidden but always present reality. A month ago and I was ignorant, even, of your name. Now, you seem the best known to me, the best understood, of God's creatures. One afternoon of perfect companionship—one flash of strong emotion, with its deep, true insight into each other's soul, and the miracle was wrought. We had met, and henceforth, parting would mean separation only, and not the severing of a mutual bond. One hand, and one only, could do that now. I will not name that ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... with Leigh. If her interview with the young man had been what he feared, it was natural she should have lain awake long into the night, and his heart misgave him at this additional confirmation of his insight. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... intense interest and impassioned zeal, which called forth and strained every faculty of my intellect for the organization and defence of this scheme, I owe much of whatever I at present possess,—my clearest insight into the nature of individual man, and my most comprehensive views of his social relations, of the true uses of trade and commerce, and how far the wealth and relative power of nations promote ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... by a freedom of conversation on a great variety of topics that could scarce fail, under the ingenuousness and frankness of his manner, to put me in possession of his views, principles, and feelings upon most points that give insight to character. ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... man are passengers on the King of Asia. I brought them ashore to give them an insight ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... part, or the whole, of these Novels to the late Thomas Scott, Esq., of the 70th Regiment, then stationed in Canada. Those who remember that gentleman will readily grant that, with general talents at least equal to those of his elder brother, he added a power of social humour and a deep insight into human character which rendered him an universally delightful member of society, and that the habit of composition alone was wanting to render him equally successful as a writer. The Author of Waverley was ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... visitor had become aware of arousing a queer reaction in Allegheny Briskow. He had overcome her diffidence early enough; he had unsealed her lips; he had obtained an insight into her character; but once that was done, the girl retired within herself again and he could get nothing more out of her. He would have believed that she actually disliked him, had it not been for the fact that whatever he said, she took as gospel, that wherever ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... of the compiler was attracted by a very remarkable article in Harper's Magazine for August, 1867, entitled, "What Shall They Do to be Saved?" The graphic vividness of the story, as well as the profound insight and wide experience with which it was written, led me to solicit from the unknown author the addition of it to the pages of my own book. It proved to be from the pen of Fitz Hugh Ludlow, already recognized by the public ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... Luther had become a different man. In the first place he had acquired prudence and self-reliance in his intercourse with the most exalted personages, and at heavy cost had won insight into the policies and the private character of the rulers. Nothing was at heart more painful to the peaceable nature of his sovereign than this bitter theological controversy, which sometimes furthered his political ends but always disturbed his peace ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... altogether platonic; his affection for the poor girl for whom he has won her father's tolerance if not forgiveness becomes a tender affection, but not possibly more; and there is as little dramatic incident as love interest in the book. The extraordinary power of it lies in its fealty to the truth and its insight into human nature. The reader of course perceives that it is intensely anti-ecclesiastical, but he could make no greater mistake than to imagine it in any wise Protestant. The author shares this hate or slight of ecclesiasticism with all ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez |
