"Sagacious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hour, St. Gingoulph, or the village through which the dividing line between the territories of Switzerland and those of the King of Sardinia passes, was abeam, and the excellent calculations of the sagacious Maso became still more apparent. He had foreseen another shift of wind, as the consequence of all this poise and counterpoise, and he was here met by the true breeze of the night. The last current came out of the gorge of the Valais, sullen, strong, and hoarse, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... this yere, seen' we're settin' round the O. K. dinin' table feedin' at the time; but we stubbornly refooses to be drawed into any views, Enright settin' us the example. That sagacious old warchief merely reaches for the salt-hoss, an' never yeeps; wharupon we ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... and conscious desires could be exposed, the most of us would almost die of shame. True, we do not clearly understand ourselves and our conflicts and explanation is often necessary, but that is not equivalent to the subconsciousness; it merely means that introspection is not sagacious. ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... the Doctor, taking Lenny by the hand, and looking at him with the sagacious eye of a wizard, "I knew you would come! and Giacomo is already prepared for you! As to wages, we'll talk ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... along the fifth day, painfully through the sand, the mules began to manifest a strange excitement. They pricked up their ears, snuffed the air, then began to rush forward with all the speed their exhausted strength would allow. The sagacious animals had scented water at the distance of nearly a mile. It was a clear running stream, fringed with grass and shrubs. When the first mule reached the water, the remainder were scattered for a great distance along the trail. Here the party encamped and ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... the nobility of England, like that of France, had not concentrated their treasures of art, etc. in London houses. Had he lived a few years longer he would probably have altered his views, which were such as his sagacious and manly father, who dearly loved his Norfolk home, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... self-importance, should give out that they are come into the world for the manifestation, at last, of true Christianity, which the divine revelation has failed, till their advent, to explain to any of the numberless devout and sagacious examiners of it,—what is there in the minds of the most ignorant class of persons desirous to secure the benefits of religion, that can be securely relied on to certify them, that they shall not forego the greatest blessing ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... wrongs suffered or done, knowing that their confidence will be preserved inviolate, and that their statements will be received with sympathy. I propose to attempt to meet this want. I shall establish a department, over which I shall place the wisest, the pitifullest, and the most sagacious men and women whom I can find on my staff, to whom all those in trouble and perplexity shall be invited to address themselves. It is no use saying that we love our fellow men unless we try to help them, and it is ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... thoughtfully through the emerald green of his liqueur, "interests me. Our friend Dolinski here thinks that he will not come because he will be afraid. De Brouillac, on the contrary, says that he will not come because he is too sagacious. Felix here, who knows him best, says that he will not come because he prefers ever to play the game from outside the circle, a looker-on to all appearance, yet sometimes wielding an unseen force. It is ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a man was an event in itself: to enter it on an errand of life and death—Well, it is under the inspiration of such opportunities that life is reawakened in old veins, especially when those veins connect the heart and brain of a sagacious, if octogenarian, detective. ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... laymen contribute on a small one, alas for its solvency! Such were our views, and such our inferences, on this occasion; and to Thomas Chalmers, at once our wisest and our humblest man—patient to hear, and sagacious to see—we determined on ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... continue as such. There was one, the learned head of a comparatively new educational institution, with great resources ultimately behind it. This man was building it on a sure and splendid foundation, in the hope that countless generations of youth would have cause to be grateful for the sagacious energy he was expending ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... in his second exile, bore the name of the Count de Neuilly in this country, and who lately was Louis Philippe, King of the French, figured in the French lines at Valmy, as a young and gallant officer, cool and sagacious beyond his years, and trusted accordingly by Kellerman and Dumouriez with an important station in the national army. The Duc de Chartres (the title he then bore) commanded the French right, General Valence was on the left, and Kellerman himself took his post in the centre, which was ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... show so exact a knowledge of the current of events in America as well as England ("knows every step of it, as if he were there himself, the Arch-Enemy of honest neighbors in a time of stress!")—but it does appear they had got it into their sagacious heads that the bad neighbor at Berlin was, in effect, the Arch-Enemy, probably mainspring of the whole matter; and that it would be in the highest degree interesting to see clearly what Lee and he had on hand. Order thereupon to Elliot: "Do it, at any price;" and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... investigation of the subject? But if slavery is the reverse of all this—if it is a moral poison, contaminating and blighting everything connected with it, and containing the seeds of its own dissolution sooner or later—why should wise, sagacious politicians, prudent and honest men, and conscientious Christians, shut their eyes and turn away from a fact so appalling and so dangerous. No man of intelligence can hope, in this age of the world, to perpetuate that which is wrong and destructive, by bravado and threatening—by ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... light on this reply and brought a flush to the Creole's very brows. "Alas! Greenleaf," it cried, "we search in vain! He is not here! We are even more alone than we seem! Ah! where is that peerless chevalier, my beloved, accomplished, blameless, sagacious, just, valiant and amiable uncle? Come let us press on. Let not the fair sex find him first and snatch ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... or wrath, to know that the eye never expresses the sentiment experienced, but simply indicates the object of this sentiment! Cover the lower part of your face with your hand, and impart to your look all the energy of which it is susceptible, still it will be impossible for the most sagacious observer to discover whether your look expresses anger or attention. On the other hand, uncover the lower part of the face, and if the nostrils are dilated, if the contracted lips are drawn up, there is no doubt that anger is written on your countenance. An observation ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... still beloved, not indeed with the fires of old, but with a deep, undying, and holy tenderness, speak not thus to me. Let me not believe you unhappy; let me think that, wise, sagacious, brilliant as you are, you have employed your gifts to reconcile yourself to a common lot. Still let me look up to you when I would despise the circles in which you live, and say: 'On that pedestal an altar is yet ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... under such restrictions, it cannot well be, as the world is constituted, more than once or twice in the course of an existence, the rest of the sojourn upon earth being devoted to a sublimation of our thought. But always wise, sensible, sagacious, rational; always in wig and spectacles; always algebraic and mathematical; doctrinal and didactic; ever to sit like FRANKLIN'S portrait, with the index fixed upon 'causality;' one might as well be a petrified 'professor,' or a WILLIAM PENN bronzed upon a pedestal. There ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... of a mile from the pit, the sagacious elephants turned, and, seeing an army of men and dogs advancing towards them, broke through the fence and were free. Several zebras—much to the delight of the hunters—followed through the breach they had made. The camelopards were too far ahead to avail themselves of this means of escape. They ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... a most benevolent smile on his sagacious visage, all purple as it was with the cold, this very well-meaning gentleman took the snow-child by the hand, and led her towards the house. She followed him, droopingly and reluctant; for all the glow and sparkle was gone out of her figure; and whereas just before she had resembled a bright, ...
— The Snow-Image - A Childish Miracle • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Quintus, not much, we gather from the letters, to the happiness of either of them. Cicero could not have had a better confidant. He was full of sympathy, and ready with his help; and he was at the same time sagacious and prudent in no common degree, an excellent man of business, and, thanks to the admirable coolness which enabled him to stand outside the turmoil of politics, an equally excellent ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... immortal works, Johnson has stood forth in the foremost rank of his admirers. By the testimony of such a man, impertinence must be abashed, and malignity itself must be softened. Of literary merit, Johnson, as we all know, was a sagacious but a most severe judge. Such was his discernment, that he pierced into the most secret springs of human actions; and such was his integrity, that he always weighed the moral characters of his fellow-creatures in the "balance of the sanctuary." He was too courageous to propitiate a rival, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... his eye as he tried to follow their flight. Two kingfishers shot suddenly up on to their supper station, on a stunted willow stump, some twenty yards below him, and sat there in the glory of their blue backs and cloudy red waistcoats, watching with long sagacious beaks pointed to the water beneath, and every now and then dropping like flashes of light into the stream, and rising again, with what seemed one motion, to their perches. A heron or two were fishing about the meadows; and he watched them stalking about in ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... sacrifice : ofero. saddle : selo. sagacious : sagaca. sage : salvio; sagxa. sail : velo; nagxi. salad : salato. salmon : salmo. salt : salo, "—meat," peklajxo. saltpetre : salpetro, nitro. same : sama. sample : specimeno, sanction : sankcii. sap : suko. sapphire : safiro. sarcasm : ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... denied, that the chance of war is uncertain, that men are inclined to make fallacious calculations of the probabilities of future events, and that our enemies may sometimes be as artful, as diligent, and as sagacious as ourselves? ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... placed near him. But so short-sighted is human Artifice, that what she imagined would be the Basis of her Power, was the very Thing which overthrew it. A crafty Mollak having insinuated himself into her Confidence, made Use of it to gain that of the young King; and being too sagacious a Politician not to foresee what he had to fear from this enraged Woman, if he left her any Degree of Power or Opportunity of hurting him, he compelled her to leave the Kingdom in a disgraceful Manner; and by this successful ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... urging is indeed undeniable. In the case of any question of honour, or of moral honesty, we are sagacious in discerning and inexorable in judging the offence. No allowance is made for the suddenness of surprise, or the strength of temptations. One single failure is presumed to imply the absence of the moral or honourable principle. ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... have forged a later will in Lord Southminster's favour and run the risk of detection; Higginson had the acuteness to forge a will exactly like the real one, and to let your husband bear the burden of the forgery. It was as sagacious as ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... explication: this difficulty is not less, nor perhaps greater, in English, than in other languages. I have labored them with diligence, I hope with success; such at least as can be expected in a task, which no man, however learned or sagacious, has ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... likely passed between them, for Thomas Newcome took a new banker at this time, and, as Clive informed me, was in very great dudgeon because Hobson Brothers wrote to him to say that he had overdrawn his account. "I am sure there is some screw loose," the sagacious youth remarked to me; "and the Colonel and the people in Park Lane are at variance, because he goes there very little now; and he promised to go to Court when Ethel was presented, and he ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... own half an hours driving; & this in order to have the advice & assistance of the Lord Justice Clerk. I am persuaded your Grace will think, you could not have wished him to choose a more judicious adviser, or a more sagacious Inspector into his conduct. Upon examination your Grace will find, that the Lawyers here will reckon Mr. Carre rather to have stretched a point to get over the provision in our Act of Parliament, in order ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... began Henry, first recovering. "The pig is a very sagacious animal, especially in Hampshire, and so he smells out wherever the bags of money are sown underground, and digs them up with his nose. Then he swings them on his back, and gives a curl of his tail and a wink of his eye, and lays ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fact the danger of public resentment over such a course has been the chief cause of the sagacious strategy which has characterized the policy of the Government; or perhaps one should rather say, the Anti-Saloon League, for it is the League, and not the Government, that is the predominant partner in this matter. For the present, the League has been "lying low" in the matter ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... without effecting his purpose. Here he completely overlaid the art of Ungque, turning his own defeat into an advantage. After the matter had been discussed for fully an hour, and this mysterious chief perceived that it was useless to adhere to his new resolution, he gave it up with as much tact as the sagacious Wellington himself could manifest in yielding Catholic emancipation, or parliamentary reform; or, just in season to preserve an appearance of floating in the current, and with a grace that disarmed ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... fish before you fry 'em," replied the sagacious apprentice-boy. "This scrummage with the Revenge will be no dancin' heel-and-toe. A bigger ship, more guns and men, and a Blackbeard who will fight like a demon when he's cornered. Crazy though he may be, he is the ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... of friends" should set all right. But, poor Jenks, he reckoned indeed without his host; to-morrow came, but not "a friend in need;" they saw, in their far-reaching wisdom, a sinking ship, and like sagacious rats, they deserted it! ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... checking the alarming desire for food which has begun to spread amongst the poorer classes of society. The crime of eating has latterly been indulged in to such an immoderate extent by the operatives of Yorkshire and the other manufacturing districts, that we do not wonder at our sagacious Premier adopting strong measures to suppress the unnatural and increasing appetites of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Christians, and a fixed resolution to consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for the public service, can enable me in any degree to comply with your wishes, it shall be my strenuous endeavor that this sagacious injunction of the two Houses shall not be ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... case of Shakspeare. His surpassing greatness was never acknowledged by the learned, until the nation had ascertained and settled it as a foregone and questionless conclusion. Even now, to the most sagacious mind of this time, the real ground and evidence of its own assurance of Shakspeare's supremacy, is the universal, deep, immovable conviction of it in the public feeling. There have been many acute essays upon his minor characteristics; but intellectual ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... it; and old elephants have been known to precede the herd and whisk off the coverings of the pitfalls on each side all the way down to the water. We have known instances in which the old among these sagacious animals have actually lifted the young out of ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... it so rapidly that no one could question the tale they told. But the relish of his life had outlived its more than usual share of sorrows; and quaint sly humour, love of jest and merriment, capital knowledge of books, and sagacious quips at men, made his companionship delightful. Like his life, his genius was made up of alternations of mirth and melancholy. He would be immersed, at one time, in those darkest Scottish annals from which he drew his tragedies; and overflowing, at another, into Sir Frizzle Pumpkin's ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... building a protecting shield for happiness and well-being, by that much is the mother indebted to her babe. Why is one man more successful than another in the street's fierce conflict? Because he has more resources; is prudent, thrifty, quick to seize upon opportunity, sagacious, keen of judgment. All these qualities are birth-gifts. The ancestral foothills slope upward toward the mountain-minded. And what do these distinguished ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... collies have is not well grounded. They are excitable, it is true, and apt to snap if you romp too long and wildly with them, and they do not take correction kindly; but people who have owned many specimens of this beautiful breed testify to having found them always loving and sagacious. A collie should always belong to one person; many masters make him too universal in his affections, and under these circumstances he does not develop intelligently. The collie at work is the wisest of dogs, he knows each individual sheep in his care, and in snow or mist will bring every one ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... banks dotted with Portuguese missions under the direction of the monks of Mount Carmel, were successively surveyed. The first reliable information on the important geographical fact of the communication between the two great rivers, is to be found in the works of Condamine, and his sagacious comments on the journeys of the missionaries who preceded him. It was in these latitudes that the golden lake of Parime and the fabulous town of Manoa del Dorado are said to have been situated. Here, too, lived the Manaos Indians, who so long ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... had been undreamed of an hour ago. But she held her natural agitation under good control and only a round red spot Upon each cheek betrayed her inward excitement as she prettily accepted the invitation. Beneath their drooping lashes Diana's sagacious eyes read the thoughts of the girl quite accurately. Miss Von Taer enjoyed disconcerting anyone in any way, and Louise was so simple and unsophisticated that she promised to afford considerable amusement in ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... up Luella for any more Car Fare she went out looking for Work, and hoping she wouldn't find it. The sagacious Proprietor of a Lunch Room employed her as Cashier. In a little While she learned to count Money, and could hold ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... he was too sagacious to admit such a treacherous horde into his army. He treated them with great consideration and kindness, and dismissed them with presents, that they might all go to their respective homes, charging them to exert their influence in his favor among the tribes ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... clearly forward, will, however high and honourably he stands, say, that if such riches lie in knowledge, they would long since have been made available by great and immortal bards, who had a clear and sagacious eye for the discovery of truth. But let us remember that when Thespis spoke from his car, the world had also wise men. Homer had sung his immortal songs, and yet a new form of genius appeared, to which a Sophocles and Aristophanes gave birth; the Sagas and mythology of the North were as an unknown ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... was a man called Shims[FN56] who was then[FN57] two and twenty years old, a statesman of pleasant presence and noble nature, sweet of speech and ready in reply; shrewd in all manner of business, skilful withal and sagacious for all his tender age, a man of good counsel and fine manners versed in all arts and sciences and accomplishments; and the King loved him with exceeding love and cherished him by reason of his proficiency in eloquence and rhetoric and the art of government and for that which Allah ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... fisheries. They are indebted for all these advantages not only to their national genius but to the poverty of their soil; and as proof of what I have so often advanced, look at the Vineyard (their neighbouring island) which is inhabited by a set of people as keen and as sagacious as themselves. Their soil being in general extremely fertile, they have fewer navigators; though they are equally well situated for the fishing business. As in my way back to Falmouth on the main, I visited this sister island, permit me to give you as concisely ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... found) was waiting on them, and by the table sat Darkie, the black retriever, his long, curly back swaying slightly from the difficulty of holding himself up, and his solemn hazel eyes fixed very intently on each and all of the breakfast bowls. He was as silent and sagacious as Sarah was talkative and empty-headed. The expression of his face was that of King Charles I. as painted by Vandyke. Though large, he was unassuming. Pax, the pug, on the contrary, who came up to the first ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... that I will live long enough to see Dr. Yerkes develop the mind of a young grizzly bear in a four-acre lot, to the utmost limits of that keen and sagacious personality. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... no urging to the attack. Nor did the boys. They disembarked carefully and made a detour so as to get at the rear of the herd. The sea lion is not a very sagacious beast. ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... and after turning us around until I at least had lost all sense of direction, he placed thongs in our hands, and then we discovered that we were to be led by some sort of animals, presumably wolves. Whatever else they were, they proved to be careful and sagacious leaders. ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... upon blocks of wood, although it is probable that some of them were smoking pipes—tobacco being vastly conducive to that concentration of thought by which alone great mental efforts can be followed by equivalent results. Short work was made by the sagacious detectives, when they saw the graphic malefactors engaged in their diabolical toil. Some of the officers seized the implements of the gang, while others collared the delinquents, and marched them through the streets ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... leading to the city passed. He rode off on his black horse and left him at the place where he took the cars. On arriving at the city station, he took a coach and drove to one of the great hotels. Thither drove also a sagacious-looking, middle-aged man, who entered his name as "W. Thompson" in the book at the office immediately after that of "R. Venner." Mr. "Thompson" kept a carelessly observant eye upon Mr. Venner during his stay at the hotel, and followed him to the ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to the difference between the patrician and plebeian, the rich and the poor; a difference which had now grown so great as to threaten seriously the very existence of the state. The most sagacious of all the plans which had been proposed to stop this evil, was that set forth by Spurius Cassius, a noble patrician now acting as consul for the third[l] time. In the year 268, he submitted to the burgesses[2] a proposal to have the ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... Canterbury, while the wrath of Rome was yet hanging poised in the air, ready to be hurled against him, he would not have left the work he undertook but half begun. The nett result of his expedition, of his great fleet, mighty army, and sagacious counsels, was the infusion of a vast number of new adventurers (most of them of higher rank and better fortunes than their precursors), into the same old field. Except the garrisons admitted into Limerick and Cork, and the displacing ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... memories of his great and long career were awakened at the sight of that narrow tenement of so great a man.... The voice which had cried "Up, Guards, and at them!" at the critical moment on the afternoon of that rainy Sunday at Waterloo, thirty-seven years before, was silent for ever. The sagacious and skilled brain which had planned so well the defence of London from the threatened outbreak of the Chartists, would plan no more for Queen and country. No longer would the shouting crowd press round him on every gala, and strangers watch patiently near the Horse Guards for one of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... priest. I am not even an Irish priest. Therefore politics do not interest me so keenly as they might another. But even to my slow mind the suitability of Eustis was apparent. Of an honored name, just, sure, kind, sagacious, a builder, a teacher, a pioneer, the plainer people all over the state leaned upon his judgment. A sane shrewd man of large affairs, other able men of affairs respected and admired him. The state, knowing what ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... indignation gained its end. Above all else, Gustavus knew the character of his people. They were particularly prone to sentiment. A few sham tears or an exuberant display of wrath had more effect upon them than the most sagacious argument that the monarch could employ. His policy, therefore, was to stir their feelings, and then withdraw to watch their feelings effervesce. It is not too much to say that no monarch has ever in so short a time effected greater change in ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... Nevertheless, next morning, upon awakening, I had my doubts,—I had somehow slept off the fumes of vanity. One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning. My procedure seemed as sagacious as ever.—but only in theory. How it would prove in practice—there was the rub. It was truly a beautiful thought to have assumed Bartleby's departure; but, after all, that assumption was simply my own, and none of Bartleby's. ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville
... combination, no comparison, no judgment. Mere instinct, and that not an instinct of the noblest kind, may produce this false economy in perfection. The other economy has larger views. It demands a discriminating judgment, and a firm, sagacious mind. It shuts one door to impudent importunity, only to open another, and a wider, to unpresuming merit. If none but meritorious service or real talent were to be rewarded, this nation has not wanted, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... The sagacious courtiers observed the first symptoms of this disgust: Somerset's enemies seized the opportunity, and offered a new minion to the king. George Villiers, a youth of one-and-twenty, younger brother of a good family, returned ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... the Kid. "I'm havin' some cards made up with that on it. The sagacious, sanguine and scandalous Scanlan, welterweight walloper of the world! Where's ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... established aristocracy. The first step in this measure of counter-revolution and reform was to take from the inhabitants of the township the power of electing the officers, and to greatly curtail, where they did not destroy, the power of such officers. It had been observed by these sagacious statesmen that in not a few instances incapable men had been chosen to administer the laws, as justices of the peace and as trustees of the various townships. Very often, no doubt, it happened that there was no one of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... dramatist that in 'Troilus and Cressida' he cynically invested the Greek heroes of classical antiquity with contemptible characteristics is ill supported by the text of the play. Ulysses, Nestor, and Agamemnon figure in Shakespeare's play as brave generals and sagacious statesmen, and in their speeches Shakespeare concentrated a marvellous wealth of pithily expressed philosophy, much of which has fortunately obtained proverbial currency. Shakespeare's conception of the Greeks followed traditional lines except in the case of Achilles, whom ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... I must again thank my friend Charles Michel, who undertook the tedious task of rereading the proofs of this book, and whose scrupulous and sagacious care has saved me from many and ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... my girl are duly and truly in love, in all the proper moods and tenses; but as to this work they have in hand of being householders, managing fuel, rent, provision, taxes, gas- and water-rates, they seem to my older eyes about as sagacious as a pair of this year's robins. Nevertheless, as the robins of each year do somehow learn to build nests as well as their ancestors, there is reason to hope as much for each new pair of human creatures. But it is one of the fatalities of our ill-jointed life that houses ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... eye, the crow would do the same. If he winked his other eye, the crow also winked with his other eye. Once when Cupid was on his shoulder, he pointed to a snake lying in the road, and said "Cu! Cu!"—The sagacious bird pounced on the head of the snake and killed him instantly; then flew back to his friend's shoulder, cawing with all his might, as if delighted with his exploit. If a stranger tried to take him, he would fly away, screaming with terror. ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... fault that what happened happened. She is the bull-dog, and very stout and heavy. She had just been let loose and she came bounding along in her clumsy way, and jumped up on Oswald, who is beloved by all dumb animals. (You know how sagacious they are.) Well, Martha knocked the ball out of Oswald's hands, and it fell on the grass, and Noel pounced on it like a hooded falcon on its prey. Oswald would scorn to deny that he was not going to stand this, and the next moment the two were rolling over on the grass, and ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... Mr. Winkle. 'Hush, can't you! Don't you see they are making a point?' said Wardle. 'Making a point?' said Mr. Winkle, glaring about him, as if he expected to discern some particular beauty in the landscape which the sagacious animals were calling special attention to. 'What are they pointing at?' 'Keep your eyes open,' said Wardle, not heeding the question in the excitement of the moment. 'Now then.'" How natural and humorous ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... convinced am I (after a long life and intercourse with my fellow-men of all classes) of the truth 'that the happiness of this life is altogether on the side of the virtuous and industrious poor,' that had I children, (which I have not,)' [how lively and sagacious the apprehension of the old millionaire lest some putative offspring might come forward to disturb his darling bequests!] 'and a fortune to leave behind me at death, I would bequeath, after a virtuous education, (to effect which nothing should be spared,) a very small amount to each, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... eyes on Nejdanov and seemed to listen to him with the greatest attention, but they had evidently not understood a word he had said, for no sooner was his back turned, shouting for the last time "Freedom!" as he rushed away, when one of them, the most sagacious of the lot, shook his head saying, "What a severe one!" "He must be an officer," another remarked, to which the wise one said: "We know all about that—he doesn't talk for nothing. We'll have ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... by no means the intention of this sagacious youth to walk all the way to the sea-coast. There was a much more convenient way at that time of accomplishing the distance, even to a young man with only two dollars in his pocket. The Black Forest is partly in Astor's ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... knight mention a company of licensed thieves, "What else," cried he, "is the majority of the nation? What is your standing army at home, that eat up their fellow-subjects? What are your mercenaries abroad, whom you hire to fight their own quarrels? What is your militia, that wise measure of a sagacious ministry, but a larger gang of petty thieves, who steal sheep and poultry through mere idleness; and were they confronted with an enemy, would steal themselves away? What is your . . . but a knot of thieves, who pillage the nation under colour of ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... fairest provinces. Babylonia, under Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar, was no unworthy successor of the mighty power which for seven hundred years had held the supremacy of Western Asia. Her citizens were as brave; her armies as well disciplined; her rulers as bold, as sagacious, and as unsparing. Habakkuk's description of a Babylonian army belongs to about this date, and is probably drawn from the life—"Lo, I raise up the Chaldaeans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... "Your sagacious mind, honoured lady, has saved us from great persecution. We only exercise the right of the stronger over the weak and the cowardly in order to appropriate to ourselves treasures that would else be disgracefully squandered. Kindly ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Our sagacious author believes that the air and even the purest aether have their denizens as well as the water and the earth. But supposing that there were places without animals, these places might have uses necessary for other places ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... necessary. Less than that and the bullet will come through and impinge with great violence on the warrior behind. This fact is well known to all whose path in life leads them to the trenches; but for all that Tommy is a feckless lad. In some ways he bears a marked resemblance to that sagacious bird, the ostrich; and because of that resemblance, I have remarked on this question of disposing sandbags in terms of pain and grief. The easiest thing to do with a sandbag in a trench, if you don't want it, is to chuck it out. Human nature being what it is, ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... and I cannot forbear at this point to press it upon the attention of my young reader. Of all schemes of gaining wealth, about the most foolish is spending money for lottery tickets. It has been estimated by a sagacious writer that there is about as much likelihood of drawing a large prize in a lottery as of being struck by lightning and that, let us hope, is ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... into one of the Mahas families, became the favourite wife of the chief warrior of the nation. Great was the love and affection which the White Crane bore his beautiful wife, and it grew yet stronger in his soul, when she had brought him four sons—a gift the more highly prized by the wise and sagacious chief, because, as my brother can see, for he is not a fool, it was the pledge of continued power and importance in the tribe, when his own strength and vigour should have passed away, when the hand of age should no more find joy in bending the bow, and the trembling knee be ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... that Molly was intentionally talking at cross purposes with her pastor; and that while he clung to the old signification of sensible, namely, to be aware of, or sensitive to, a thing, she was using it in the new, now universally accepted, sense of sagacious. The fun, of course, was enhanced by the fact that poor Mr Edmundson was totally unacquainted ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... licensers, those sworn officers to destroy learning, liberty, and good sense, expunged several passages of it, wherein he exposed the superstition, pride, and cunning of the Popish monks in the Saxon times, but applied by the sagacious licensers to Charles IId's bishops. In 1681 a considerable passage which had been suppressed in the publication of this history, was printed at London in 4to under this title. Mr. John Milton's character ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... pity, for the Colonel is so handsome." But even the most critical agreed that no woman could be more charming. She had spent a great deal of her life abroad, and her easy, well-bred manner, her savoir-faire and broad, sagacious views on every subject, had been gained in the world's academy. In spite of her goodness of heart and real unselfishness, she was essentially a woman of the world. Little as Malcolm guessed it at that time, she was Elizabeth Templeton's greatest friend; indeed, both the sisters were devoted ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... really think that the sagacious Captain of the Secret Service would walk into the trap some fine evening, there to meet with certain destruction? Evidently, for the house was ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... carefully prepared sermons,—for they connect religion with life. Nobody can read the volume without feeling the moral and religious purpose which underlies its graceful and genial exhibition of human character and manners. The common objection to clergymen is, that they are ignorant of the world. No sagacious reader of the present book can doubt that this parson, at least, is an exception to the general rule; for he palpably knows more of the world than most men who have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... as a propitiation for all crimes; and the most enormous disorders were, during the course of those expeditions, committed by men inured to wickedness, encouraged by example, and impelled by necessity. The multitude of the adventurers soon became so great, that their more sagacious leaders, Hugh, Count of Vermandois, brother to the French king, Raymond, Count of Toulouse, Godfrey of Bouillon, Prince of Brabant, and Stephen, Count of Blois, became apprehensive lest the greatness itself ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... and had carried off the body, and also much of gold; wherefore they needs must make diligent research and find out who the man ever might be. They then took counsel and determined that one amongst them, who should be sagacious and deft of wit, must don the dress of some merchant from foreign parts; then, repairing to the city he must go about from quarter to quarter and from street to street, and learn if any townsman had lately died and if so where he wont to dwell, that with this clue they might be enabled to find ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... much more exacting as regards evidence than was formerly the case. The criticism of what purports to be proof is more searching. At the same time, what is called "historical divination" can not be altogether excluded. Learned and sagacious scholars have conjectured the existence of facts, where a gap in recorded history—"the logic of events"—seemed to presuppose them; and later discoveries have verified the guess. This is analogous to ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Paris. His enthusiasm was aroused to boiling pitch by the proclamations of Gambetta, who had left Paris by balloon on the 7th of October and two days later established his headquarters at Tours, calling on every citizen to fly to arms, and instinct with a spirit at once so virile and so sagacious that the entire country gave its adhesion to the dictatorial powers assumed for the public safety. And was there not talk of forming another army in the North, and yet another in the East, of causing soldiers to spring from the ground by sheer force of faith? It was to be the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... and Chillicothe, were founded by a sagacious man of the name of Zane, one of the earliest of the settlers. They are admirably placed, geographically, but with little regard to the health of their future inhabitants. The local advantages of Zanesville might have been equally secured, had the site of ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... it had actually taken place that the panic of the Republicans lasted. But during that time the alarm among them was very great, whether it was wholly due to the discouragement of the people about the war or originated among the leaders and was communicated to their flock. Sagacious party men reported from their own neighbourhoods that there was no chance of winning the election. In one quarter or another there was talk of setting aside Lincoln and compelling Grant to be a candidate. About August 12 Lincoln was told by Thurlow Weed, the greatest ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... records of his eventful life, demonstrate how great to him was the value of the medical knowledge with which he entered on missionary life. There is abundant evidence that on various occasions his own life was preserved through his courageous and sagacious application of his scientific knowledge to his own needs; and the benefits which he conferred on the natives to whose welfare he devoted himself, and the wonderful influence which he exercised over them, were in no small degree due to the humane and ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... selling of land and theatrical shares, and such-like commonplace transactions; and his last will and testament, with which everybody is familiar, is as plain and prosaic as if it had been the production of a pig-headed prerogative lawyer. Now, in all this we see a sensible, sagacious, cautious, persevering man, who certainly was free from the rashness and (excepting the closing scene, if old Aubrey is to be believed) rakish extravagance too often characteristic of genius at any time, and perhaps particularly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... most important reasons for this conviction, which are based upon, elements that prevail so generally in the moral and physical characters of men, and which we have so often seen developed in the excitement of hunting large game, that we can readily appreciate the motives which have made sagacious military men very shy of trusting miscellaneous bodies of soldiers with a weapon whose possible advantages are more than counterbalanced by the probable mischief that must ensue from the want of such instinctive power of manipulation as could result only from constant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... matter, and in a long and able letter to Benjamin Harrison, then governor of Virginia, written in October, 1784, he set forth the advantages to be expected by such a system of inland navigation. This letter was "one of the ablest, most sagacious, and most important productions of his pen," says Mr. Sparks, "presenting first a clear statement of the question, and showing the practicability of facilitating the intercourse of trade between the East and the West, by improving and extending the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... enough. "Will without power," said the sagacious Casimir to Milor Beefington, "is like children playing at soldiers." The people will always be desirous to promote their own interests; but it may be doubted, whether, in any community, they were ever sufficiently educated to understand ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... alternating between A decent and professional gravity And an irreverent mirthfulness, which often Laughed in the face of his divinity, Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite unshrined The oracle, and for the pattern priest Left us the man. A shrewd, sagacious merchant, To whom the soiled sheet found in Crawford's inn, Giving the latest news of city stocks And sales of cotton, had a deeper meaning Than the great presence of the awful mountains Glorified by the sunset; and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... immortality. Showily bound they make a favourite school prize and have given entertainment to generations of cultured refined persons, who have never paused in their reading to give a thought to the author of their enjoyment, the sagacious Prince to whose action they owe their emotional treat. His royal Highness's reward was his own aesthetic satisfaction. "By Heaven, this is more like," he rapturously exclaimed as he laid down the last volume of the collected works; "this verse has got some stuff ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... fearful obscurity of the ocean, and a roar, like that of a sudden burst of thunder, bellowed along the waters. The seamen turned their startled looks on each other, standing aghast, as if a warning of what was to follow had come out of the heavens themselves. But their calm and more sagacious commander put a different construction on the signal. His lip curled, in high professional pride, and ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... an act, and of forming an estimate of its relations to moral law, we find a faculty in man that makes him differ in kind from the brute. No brute animal, however high up the scale, however ingenious and sagacious he may be, can ever look back and think of what he has done, "his thoughts the meanwhile ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... argute[obs3]; quick-witted, nimble- witted, needle-witted; sharp as a needle, sharp as a tack; alive to &c (cognizant) 490; clever &c. (apt) 698; arch &c (cunning) 702; pas si bete[Fr]; acute &c 682. wise, sage, sapient, sagacious, reasonable, rational, sound, in one's right mind, sensible, abnormis sapiens[Lat], judicious, strong-minded. unprejudiced, unbiased, unbigoted[obs3], unprepossessed[obs3]; undazzled[obs3], unperplexed[obs3]; unwarped judgment[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... man who is the most sagacious and energetic will never lose a chance to take advantage of opportunities, and there is no doubt that what many complain of as being ill luck, is simply the result of their failure to grasp the situation that a shrewder man would have ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston |
