"Shrewd" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Deputy, with a shrewd leer of recognition, and smoking an imaginary pipe, with his head very much on one side and his eyes very much out ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... Grandfather's Memoirs were published, twenty years ago, they met with a most favourable and gratifying reception at the hands of the public. Interest was aroused by the struggle and success of a man who had few advantages at the outset save his own shrewd sense and generous nature, and who, moreover, was thrown on his own resources to fight the battle of life when he was little more than ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... the Greeks could hardly proceed much farther with their researches. Modern scientists are perhaps no better thinkers than were those of antiquity, but they have infinitely better apparatus and can make careful experiments where the Greeks had to rely on shrewd guesses. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... puzzling. He reports to Cicero[123] that Clodius's main object in running for the tribunate is to repeal the legislation of Caesar. It is strange that a man who had been in the counsels of Clodius, and was so shrewd on other occasions in interpreting political motives, can have been so deceived. We can hardly believe that he was double-faced toward Cicero. We must conclude, I think, that his strong dislike for Caesar's policy and political methods colored his view of ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... deceive nobody; but still he would be thought a fool, because he would either get very little for his property, or else fail to sell it at all. By concealing these defects, on the other hand, he will be called a shrewd man—as one who has taken care of his own interest; but he will be a rogue, notwithstanding, because he will be deceiving his neighbors. Again, let us suppose that one man meets another, who sells ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... was the thing to which she was adapted. Katie was unique. Distinctive. Secretly, unadmittedly, he was very ambitious for her. And with a little smile he considered that seemingly Katie was just shrewd enough to be ambitious for herself. She had steered her little bark safely past the place where she would be likely to marry a lieutenant. Was she heading for ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... her mind that Frank—whom she had known from a boy—was simply and solely in the middle of a walking-tour all by himself. She understood the situation perfectly in a minute and a half—(she was a very shrewd woman who did not say much)—but Jack was not content. He hovered about her room, fingering photographs and silver-handled brushes, explaining over and over again how important it was that Frank should be made ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... bread alone doth man live. In The Foundations of International Polity (HEINEMANN), a series of lectures developing phases of the argument of the Great Illusion, Mr. NORMAN ANGELL incidentally deals with this greengrocery business. Nobody with knowledge of his shrewd and vigorous method will be surprised that without bluster or rhetoric he establishes a very clear verdict of acquittal. One has always the impression that the rationalist in him is deliberately repressing the mystic, lest his case be weakened by a suspicion of sentimentalism. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... feeling of unutterable chagrin came over the lad who witnessed the maneuver, for, just a breath too late, he comprehended the shrewd trick by which be had been outwitted. Confused by the unexpected sight, he failed to note that the creature was not a bear at all, but a Shawanoe warrior ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... the letter, colored somewhat by the diplomacy of a shrewd mother, one would say who read it carefully. The neighbors had heard of its arrival and many of them dropped in that evening, but they went home none the wiser. After the company had gone, Jack showed the letter to ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... was a study. Some great shock, resembling apoplexy, seemed to have invaded his system. Being a shrewd business man, he presently recovered his composure, and then in the most indifferent manner remarked that a person who could change the color of his eyes at will ought to be able, perhaps, if he should get started right, to make a little money, possibly, out of the accomplishment; and then ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... are a shrewd guesser," cries the author. "I am glad the booksellers have not your sagacity. But how should it be otherwise, considering the price they pay by the sheet? The Greek, you will allow, is a hard language; and there are few gentlemen that write who can read ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... again at this shrewd answer, and said, "you shall have supper, no doubt; but you must sing a song for the company first, and ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... task on which I am not inclined to enter. Suffice it that the foremost and the loudest in these expressions of admiration was young St. Germain; and that the King, after glancing from face to face in puzzled perplexity, began to make a shrewd ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... be. Social conditions mingle elements of evil with the promptings of natural goodness of heart, and the mixture of motives underlying a man's intentions should be leniently judged. Castanier had just cleverness enough to be very shrewd where his own interests were concerned. So he concluded to be a philanthropist on either count, and at ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... perceived which went in front, the most profound silence prevailed, and everyone fell on his knees; thus a supreme calm followed the tumult and uproar which had been heard a few minutes before, and which at each appearance of the smoke had assumed a more threatening character: there was a shrewd suspicion that the procession, as well as having a religious end in view, had a political object also, and that its influence was intended to be as great on earth as in heaven. In any case, if such had been the design of the Cardinal Camerlengo, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a given signal, the combat was suspended, and the gladiators were led away, not through anything like mercy or admiration, but simply through a shrewd understanding of the best mode of satisfying the Roman public. It was well understood that they would ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... after the tension of the crisis and the first counter-stroke. So it is with the reconciliation of Brutus and Cassius, and the arrival of the news of Portia's death."—Bradley. While the shadow of her tragic passing overhangs the spirits of both, Brutus overhears the shrewd, cautious counsel of Cassius and persuades him to assent to the fatal policy of offering battle at Philippi. That night the ghost of ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... threshold: a man of medium height, with sandy hair and mustache slightly tinged with gray. His face was alert and keenly intelligent. His eyes shrewd, but kindly, the brows sloping downward toward the nose, with the peculiar look of concentration of one given to quick decisions and instant, ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... value of "dust," was submitted for his decision. It cannot be asserted that his enviable position was due either to perfect impartiality or to infallible wisdom. But every one knew that his judgments would be informed by shrewd sense and good-humour, and would be followed by a story, and woe betide the disputant whose perversity deferred that pleasure. So Garotte became a sort of theocracy, with Judge Rablay as ruler. And yet he was, perhaps, ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... bell. A servant appeared. "Send Toby here," he said. A moment afterward a man made his appearance, with an anxious restless look, shrewd expression of the mouth, with short arms, and his back somewhat bent. Aramis fixed a ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... expense of advertising. Lindsay would lose much more by adopting the methods of quackery than he could ever make: he would lose hospital connections, standing in the professional journals, and social prestige. Lindsay was quite shrewd in sticking to the conventions of ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the shrewd Bat, "I know the old fellow is not asleep. This is his prowling hour, and but that it is a stormy night he would be abroad hunting.—What ho, Master Owl!" he squeaked, "will you let in two storm-tossed ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... had become rich in copra (the dried kernels of cocoanuts from which oil is made), he in his turn beat and trampled. It was the only law he knew. He was without refinement, never having come into contact with that state of being long enough to fall under its influence. He was a shrewd bargainer; and any who respected him did so for two reasons, his strength and his wallet. Such flattery sufficed his needs. He was unmarried; by inclination, perhaps, rather than by failure to find an agreeable mate. There were many women ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... letters. The first volume was published in 1741, and was no less a work than Pamela. The author was then fifty years old; and he presents in this work a matured judgment concerning the people and customs of the day,—the printer's notions of the social condition of England,—shrewd, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... prosecution began to weave its web of circumstantial evidence about Job. How shrewd it was! How carefully each suspicious incident was told and retold! How meanly everything bad in his life was emphasized, everything good forgotten! They brought the tales of long-ago years when he was a mere boy. They proved that the passionate ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... had been watching with interest the cheerful bustle in the High Street, and the new type of country people: the men with their carts bringing in calves, pigs, and grain, fine-looking fellows, with tall sturdy figures, and shrewd, clean-shaven faces above the blue cotton white-embroidered blouses and severely stiff snow-white shirt collars; and the women in round dark-brown cloaks reaching to their feet; the drum-beating, yelling tooth-drawers and ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... parting of the ways, and she knew it, with a shrewd suspicion as to which she would choose. She had asked for a week to decide, and her heart-searching had told her nothing new. It was characteristic of Virginia Balfour that she did not attempt to deceive herself. If she married ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... hearse plumes that nodded over him from the side gallery at his back, spoke in funereal note. In the Commons so frank a confession, so ample an apology, would have been accepted with burst of general cheering. Shrewd Members know that an assured method of gaining temporary popularity is to commit a breach of order and take early opportunity of withdrawing anything offensive that may have been said, apologising for anything ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... hand over her eyes, glanced round the room, and noticing the Venosta in dressing-robe and slippers, staring with those Italian eyes, in seeming so quietly innocent, in reality so searchingly shrewd, she whispered pleadingly, "May I speak to you a few minutes alone?" This was not a request that Isaura could refuse, though she was embarrassed and troubled by the surmise of Madame Rameau's object in asking it; accordingly she led her visitor into the adjoining ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... remember, boy," he said, with his shrewd smile, "never brag of catching a fish until he is on dry ground. I've seen older folks doing that in more ways than one, and so making fools of themselves. It's no use to boast of anything until it's done, nor then, either, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... silent. Susie was invariably shrewd and sensible, if inclined, Anna thought, to be over suspicious, in matters where money was concerned. Dellwig's face was not one to inspire confidence: and his way of shouting when he talked, and of talking incessantly, was already intolerable ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... said a little, withered man, passing around the chair and facing the old woman with an humble, deprecating air. He was clothed in black, and his smooth-shaven, deeply lined face was pleasant of expression and not without power and shrewd intelligence. The eyes, however, were concealed by heavy-rimmed spectacles, and his manner was somewhat shy and reserved. However, he did not hesitate to speak frankly to his old friend, nor minded in the least if ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... "You are shrewd in your opinions, Allan," he said; "but dogmatic and paradoxical in one breath, besides being too censorious in your sweeping analysis of character. I should like you to show more charity in your estimate of others. Your diffidence in ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... fresh discussion and there were some, including Elihu Root, who thought that Mr. Edison had never sent this message. It was a shrewd trick of the Germans to prevent the America from sailing. If Mr. Edison could tell us so much why did he not tell us more? Why did he not say where he was a prisoner? And explain on what he rested his hopes of communicating ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... proportion of the shrewd retorts and witty replies attributed to great men are very old. 'What do you think of soldiers who can endure such wounds?' remarked Napoleon, when, showing a frightfully scarred grenadier to an Englishman. 'What does your majesty think of the men ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a week, recite the daily rosary, confess herself, take the sacrament. Nor do I remember a single man of those whom I met in various houses of call or thieves-kitchens in the town who was without his mental activity of some honest kind, who had not a shrewd interest in politics, a passion for this or that science— as botany, mineralogy, or optics, or an appreciation keenly critical of the fine arts. Philosophers, too, some of them were, acute reasoners, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... doubtings, attended with a shrewd, suspicious, yet satirical look, had the effect intended; for the man became doubly anxious to do what he had come to do, and what he thought would be esteemed a great favor by Mr. Tyson. Accordingly, after a word or ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... Cheke, and M. Watson, of this fault, not onely in the olde Latin Poets, but also in our new English Rymers at this day. They wished as Virgil and Horace were not wedded to follow the faultes of former fathers (a shrewd mariage in greater matters) but by right Imitation of the perfit Grecians, had brought Poetrie to perfitnesse also in the Latin tong, that we Englishmen likewise would acknowledge and vnderstand right- fully our rude beggerly ryming, brought first into Italie by Gothes and Hunnes, whan ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... citizens had seen him hastening toward the woods and noted his skulking air, but as he had grinned in his old good-natured way they had, at the time, thought nothing of it. Now, however, the diabolical reason of his slyness was apparent. He had been shrewd enough to disarm suspicion, and by now was far away. Even Mrs. Daly, who was visiting with a neighbour, had seen him stepping out by a back way, and had said with a laugh, 'I reckon that black rascal's a-running off somewhere.' Oh, if she had ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Dow, Colonel Alexander von Shrader, Lieut.-Colonel Joseph F. Boyd, and Colonel Harry White, having been selected by the Confederates to supervise the distribution of the donation, Colonel White had, by a shrewd bit of finesse, "confiscated" a fine rope by which one of the bales was tied, and this he now presented to Colonel Rose. It was nearly a hundred feet long, an inch thick, ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... northern and the southern shore each had a king, whose consent, after a careless fashion, was considered decorous. His Majesty of the North was old King Glass[FN1] and his chief "tradesman," that is, his premier, was the late Toko, a shrewd and far-seeing statesman. His Majesty of the South was Rapwensembo, known to the English as King William, to the French as ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... rough-handed, hard-headed, semi- articulate gabbling Negro; and of the horriblest phasis that "Sansculottism" can exhibit, of a Black Sansculottism, a musical Opera or Oratorio in pink stockings! It is very beautiful. Beautiful as a child's heart,—and in so shrewd a head as that. She is now writing express Children's-Tales, which I calculate I ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... critic. With Hazlitt, with Coleridge, with Wilson, with Carlyle, with Macaulay, we very soon fall into step, so to speak, with our author. If we cannot exactly prophesy what he will say on any given subject, we can make a pretty shrewd guess at it; and when, as it seems to us, he stumbles and shies, we have a sort of feeling beforehand that he is going to do it, and a decided inkling of the reason. But my own experience is, that a modern reader of Jeffrey, who takes ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... bestowed on him, his incorrigible belief that all the world took as much interest in himself and all that appealed to him as he did himself, the readiness with which he adapted himself to all sorts of men and of circumstances, his credulity in matters of faith and his shrewd common sense in things of the world, his wit and lively fancy, his eloquence of tongue and pen, his acute rather than accurate observation, his scholarship elegant rather than profound, are all characteristic ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... comment, the long descriptions and the nervous pathology, are omitted by Miss Mayor's method, which is all for the swift movement and against the temptations to delay which obstruct those whose eyes are not upon life; she condenses her opportunities for psychology and platitude into a couple of shrewd lines and goes on with her story, keeping her freshness and the reader's interest unabated. The method is to draw the central figure rapidly past a succession of bright lights, keeping the lights various and of many colours and allowing none of them to shine too long. This comparatively passive ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... of fashionable songs, talked with familiarity of high play, boasted of his achievements upon drawers and coachmen, was often brought to his lodgings at midnight in a chair, told with negligence and jocularity of bilking a tailor, and now and then let fly a shrewd jest at ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... shrewd nose, He quests from door to door; Their grace they say—his shadow gray Is instant on the floor, Humblest of all the dogs there be, A ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... Bernadotte's shrewd penetration made him one of the first to see clearly into Bonaparte's designs. He was well convinced of his determination to overthrow the constitution and possess himself of power. He saw the Directory divided into two parties; the one duped by the promises and assurances ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... not gone in his married life as the financier had wished. One of the most objectionable was the unexpected change in his father- in-law, who had lapsed quite abruptly into troublesome dotage. From a shrewd business man old Mitchell had become a querulous child, subject to fits of suspicion and violent outbursts of anger. At the most embarrassing moments he would totter into the bank, approach his son- in-law, ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... would have required a most analytical observer to determine the actualities of her loveliness. Her form was disguised by the droop of exhaustion. Her complexion showed the pallor of sorrowful vigils. Her face was no more than a mask of misery. Yet, the shrewd observer, if a lover of beauty, might have found much for delight, even despite the concealment imposed by her present condition. Thus, the stormy glory of her dark hair, great masses that ran a riot of shining ripples and ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... had been superbly rebuked for her frivolous existence, she had forgotten that they were her husband's brokers. Moreover the lack of perturbation in his manner was not calculated to inspire alarm. But the news that Lyons had been shrewd enough to escape at the twelfth hour without a dollar's loss heightened the justice of the situation. She listened with throbbing pulses to the particulars. She could scarcely credit her senses that her irrepressible and light-hearted enemy had been confounded at last—confronted ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... one glance, shrewd and steady, before looking aloft and again raising his hat. The thrust did not ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the City for the disaster 168 of the Romans, was a man of moderate height and lame in consequence of a fall from his horse. He was a man of deep thought and few words, holding luxury in disdain, furious in his anger, greedy for gain, shrewd in winning over the barbarians and skilled in sowing the seeds of dissension to arouse enmity. Such was he who, 169 as we have said, came at the solicitous invitation of Boniface to the country of Africa. There he reigned for a long time, ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... passed to the De la Poles with her. But some offshoots of the old Wingfield stock lingered in the neighbourhood, perchance there was a bar sinister on their coat of arms, I know not and do not care to know; at the least my fathers and I are of this blood. My grandfather was a shrewd man, more of a yeoman than a squire, though his birth was gentle. He it was who bought this place with the lands round it, and gathered up some fortune, mostly by careful marrying and living, for though he had but one son he was twice married, ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... Baptiste, who appears to have conducted the negotiations in place of the real envoy, obtained Hideyoshi's consent to his shrewd proposal that, pending the reference to Manila of Hideyoshi's claim to the sovereignty of the Philippines, he and his brother missionaries should remain as hostages. Hideyoshi, while consenting, made their residence conditional on their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... challenge had its effect. Bill Brudenell stirred uneasily in his chair. His shrewd eyes widened with a shade of trouble. Nor did he ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... A shrewd old gipsy, seeing him evidently on the search for some one, assured him before he had asked any questions, that she had seen those ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... Satan would not thus easily be dispossessed or driven out. Old conjurers and medicine men, faithful followers of the enemy, quickly began their opposition. Their selfish natures were aroused. They were shrewd enough to see that if I succeeded, as I was likely to do, they, like Demetrius, the shrine-maker of Diana, would soon be without an occupation. So at this afternoon gathering they were there to oppose. But they were in such a helpless minority that they dared do no worse than storm ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... rather daring. The pupils of her eyes are pale sea-green, floating on their white balls under thin lashes and lazy eyelids. Her eyes have dark rings around them often; her nose, which describes one-quarter of a circle, is pinched about the nostrils; very shrewd and clever, but supercilious. She has an Austrian mouth; the upper lip has more character than the lower, which drops disdainfully. Her pale cheeks have no color unless some very keen emotion moves her. Her chin is rather fat; mine is not thin, and ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... to laugh very heartily. The constable was staggered, and it was evident that he was not smart enough to deal with one so shrewd and clever as ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... this speech every voice cried out for Nanamakee. All were satisfied when they found that the Great Spirit had done what they had suspected was the work of Nanamakee, he being a very shrewd young man. ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk
... mechanics has not gained a grain's weight. The spiritual fact remains unalterable, by many or by few particulars; as no mountain is of any appreciable height to break the curve of the sphere. A shrewd country-boy goes to the city for the first time, and the complacent citizen is not satisfied with his little wonder. It is not that he does not see all the fine houses and know that he never saw such before, but he disposes of them as easily ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... differently. Being of a sentimental turn, she regarded this as a sort of declaration of love—in fact, almost an offer of marriage—and, if not so altogether, at least an approach to it. Still, she was a shrewd woman, and waited until Russell had explained ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... things that people should learn, and act upon, namely, to take such things as suit them, and avoid such as do not. It is said that Mithridates could live and flourish on poisons, and if it be true that tea or coffee is a poison, so do most of us. William Hutton, the shrewd and humorous author of the histories of Birmingham and Derby, and also of a life of himself, scarcely inferior to that of Franklin in lessons of life-wisdom, said that he had been told that coffee was a slow poison, and, he added, that ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... coax shrank thrash thigh oats hoax shrewd threat fight boat oath shrift throng light oak coach shrike throve flight foal float shrunk thrust fright goat poach thrill throat tight ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... Catholic owners of their property on the ground of defective titles, and though in many districts the Protestant bishops and ministers created considerable difficulties for their Catholic neighbours, still the religious persecution was carried out only in a half-hearted manner. The king was shrewd enough to recognise the important part that might be played by the Irish Catholics in the civil struggle that he foresaw, and he was anxious not to antagonise their leaders. This period of comparative calm was providential for the Church in Ireland, by enabling it to organise its forces ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... three weeks. The doctor, who was also a personal friend, was shrewd enough to suspect that the brandy was the effect, rather than the ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... man of shrewd insight, who knows when that point is reached, is the leader who saves the face, so to speak, of these nations ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... doing things," which had been the butt of her shrewd old father, had brought upon Anne a customary air of half-readiness, so that going in suddenly, she might be found with her bonnet on and her handkerchief on the table, but one perceived she was still in her petticoat, and was making a pie for dinner. Meals, indeed, she considered ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... at Whitehall towards the close of 1604. "Macbeth," written in 1605 and 1606, was clearly intended as a compliment to the king, who was a descendant of the unfortunate Banquo whose royal line Macbeth saw "stretch to the crack of doom." Dr. Lee makes the shrewd suggestion that inasmuch as this is the shortest of Shakespeare's tragedies, we may have no more than an abbreviated acting version. Other critics of note find certain corrupt passages in the text that go far to justify this contention. We may be ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... shekels. There was also a scale of fees for treating domesticated animals, and it was not over-generous. An unfortunate surgeon who undertook to treat an ox or ass suffering from a severe wound had to pay a quarter of its price to its owner if it happened to die. A shrewd farmer who was threatened with the loss of an animal must have been extremely anxious to engage the services of ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... disorganised populace under the factory system. The difference is that while Chalmers enthusiastically adopted Malthus's theory as indicating the true remedy for the evil, Southey regards it with horror as declaring the evil to be irremediable. Chalmers, a shrewd Scot actively engaged in parochial work, had his attention fixed upon the reckless improvidence of the 'excrescent' population, and welcomed a doctrine which laid stress upon the necessity of raising the standard of prudence and morality. He recognised and pointed out with great ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... believed that this most charming of women was at last leaning to the side of her native land. And so he sat down and wrote a long letter to Argyll. He went to Dumfries, and on making enquiry, he found that the Queen was right in her shrewd estimate of the proposed superintendent, and took means to prevent the election. It turned out, too, that she had kept her promise about citing offenders, and no fewer than forty-eight persons, one of them an Archbishop, had been indicted. ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... dimensions of her work; and, secondly, by mentioning that somebody sent a "flask of genuine potteen," to her Ladyship's great delight, "with Mr. Somebody's compliments to Sir C. M." As there is an individual designated once or twice also as "my husband," we have shrewd suspicions that he and this Sir C. M. are one and the same being. The first thing that Miladi does at Calais, is to experience a "burst of agreeable sensations;" and the next, to feel a considerable degree of surprise at being delighted again with that renowned place—renowned ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... to himself. Pete was shrewd and in no way inclined to commit himself carelessly. Horse-trading had sharpened his wits to a razor-edge and dire necessity and hunger had kept those wits keen. Annersley was amused and at the same time wise enough in his patient, slow way to hide his amusement and talk ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... let Charlotte;' for with her troubled feelings, she could better answer talking girls than parry the remarks of her shrewd, observant brother. ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shrewd hunter and a successful merchandiser of golf balls but slightly used. Newbern's better sort denounced the scandal of this, but bought of him clandestinely, for even in that far day, when golf balls in price were yet within reach of the common people, few of them liked ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... high places of life, where he is a stranger, to write of "Discourse" or "Gardens" or "Seeming Wise" that his essays begin to strike home by their vigor and vitality. Though seldom profound or sympathetic, they are notable for their keen observation and shrewd judgment of the ambitious world in which the author himself lived. Among those that are best worth reading are "Studies," "Wisdom for a Man's Self," "Riches," "Great ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... The shrewd chief cook also assumed the appearance of having only accidentally passed that way without the intention ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... resolution which make her the worthy daughter of her father. Upon the whole she is the most lovable of all the heroines of Schiller. It is her tragedy of the heart which renders 'Wallenstein' perennially interesting to the young. And this is much; for does not Goethe's shrewd Merry-Andrew declare that the great object of dramatic art is to please the young,—that die Werdenden are the ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... Max, who was watching him closely, saw a peculiar gleam in his eye which put him on his guard. Neil Chase was nothing if not shrewd and sharp to the point where the man who dealt with him must look ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... the beverage, a lump of sugar was laid beside each cup, and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with great decorum, until an improvement was introduced by a shrewd and economical old lady, which was to suspend a large lump directly over the tea-table, by a string from the ceiling, so that it could be swung from mouth to mouth—an ingenious expedient, which is still kept up by some families ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... arms, a born leader of warriors, and the field of battle was his life-element.' The nobility of his bearing, another says, and his winning manner enabled him to secure the affection of his soldiers, whilst his readiness to serve, his piety and benevolence, and his shrewd policy, gained for him the confidence of his superiors, the leadership of armies, and the highest offices of the State. At his death he was universally mourned. Pope Nicholas ordered the cardinals to perform a magnificent requiem in his memory, as the pious ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... under calamities too terrible and too depressing to admit of the frequent display of the humor or the satire of Pasquin. The siege and sack of the city by the army of the Constable de Bourbon wrought too much misery to be set in verse or to be sharpened in epigram. One shrewd jest of this time has, indeed, been preserved. Clement was for months a prisoner in the Castle of Sant' Angelo, unable to stir abroad. "Papa non potest errare" said Pasquin, or one of his friends, with a play on the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... along without a master. In the past, for lack of another, he had made an exacting tyrant out of a very mild and loving wife; but since the masterful opening of the new skipper's reign he had snapped his fingers at his wife, who had ruled him for close upon twenty years. He was shrewd, though weak, and his heart was full of the stuff in which personal loyalty is bred and fostered. If the hand that beat him was the hand that fed him—the hand of his master—then the beating seemed an honorable and reasonable thing to him. True, the skipper had not yet lifted ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... character belonging—as far as I have seen—exclusively to the class of Westmoreland and Cumberland statesmen—just, independent, upright; not given to much speaking; kind-hearted, but not demonstrative; disliking change, and new ways, and new people; sensible and shrewd; each household self-contained, and its members having little curiosity as to their neighbours, with whom they rarely met for any social intercourse, save at the stated times of sheep-shearing and Christmas; having a certain kind of sober pleasure in amassing money, which occasionally made them miserable ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... band of Green Mountain Boys, and often joined them in their operations against the Yorkers, on the other side of the mountains. Very little however, was known about the man, except that he was a shrewd resolute fellow, extremely eccentric, and perfectly impenetrable to all but the few ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... goods to another; your gauge as to price is adroitly discovered; and finally, with consummate judgment, a certain article, characterized by fineness, beauty, and quality, is placed before you. The moment your eyes rest upon it you are charmed. The shrewd old merchant has mentally taken your measure for this myriad-threaded beauty, and you are captivated. The price is named. "Too much," say you. But you are told that this establishment is conducted on the fixed-price principle; if cheaper goods ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... for I had a shrewd suspicion that the horses would play their present riders the same trick they had served us; and sure enough, in about ten minutes, we heard a clattering of hoofs behind us, and, looking round, saw the knowing old steeds coming, galloping ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... topics while she was present, and I must say that I have seldom heard a bad case better argued. On the other hand, Mrs. Abel's presence served to rob his lectures of much of the force which opinions, when condemned by the rich, invariably have among the poor. She was shrewd enough to perceive that active repression of Hankin, who she well knew could not be repressed, would only swell his following and strengthen ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... cousins, and something alike in face and manner, though the spirituality in Miss Prue's visage became a sort of shrewd good-humor in that of Mrs. Norris; and now each proceeded in a characteristic way to ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... party arrived on the field of battle. It was the husband of the Alsation lady, also an Alsation.... A tavern keeper and a shrewd man of business. When he saw with whom he was dealing and that the assassin was willing to pay for his crime, he disarmed his spouse and took her to one side. Tartarin gave two hundred francs. The donkey was worth at least ten, which is the going price for bourriquots in the Arab market. ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... aroused Sir Rupert's admiration. Sir Rupert was a good talker, a master of the manipulation of words, knowing exactly how much to say in order to convey to the mind of his listener a very decided impression without actually committing himself to any pledged opinion. Ericson was a shrewd man, but in such delicate dialectic he was not a match for ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... taken her family, even her adored mother, entirely into her confidence, having a shrewd conviction that her ambition would meet with slight encouragement from them. Of late, since the disturbance about Philip's father, both Jemima and her mother were too distrait, too absorbed in their own affairs, to pay much attention to Jacqueline. Whatever confidences trembled ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... Medici; though Francois I. always repelled it. Consequently, the Gondi, Strozzi, Ruggieri, Sardini, etc.,—in short, all those who were called distinctively "the Italians,"—were compelled to employ greater resources of mind, shrewd policy, and courage, to maintain themselves at court against the weight of disfavor which ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... Italy most probably would have preferred to remain neutral. I cannot believe that Salandra or the King really wanted war. They were sincerely struggling to keep their nation out of the European melting-pot as long as they could. But they were both shrewd and patriotic enough not to content themselves with present security at the price of ultimate danger. And if they had been as weak as the King of Greece, as subservient as the King of Bulgaria, they would have had to reckon with a very ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... at the rather superior air of the expert, whose habit of bedside authority was apt to creep into his social conversation; but, while he longed to give him a shrewd thrust, he forbore. It was hard to tell how much he might have to do to prevent the man from making mischief. The compliment had been ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... done his work, however, under the keen eye of the shrewd Yankees, and these were quick to see the immense commercial importance of the step he had accomplished. One of these bought the patent and all of the stock that he could find of the company organized by Matzeliger. This fortunate purchase laid the foundation for the organization of ...
— The Colored Inventor - A Record of Fifty Years • Henry E. Baker
... these matters in English, under the nose of the civil guard, as I drove on to Jerez; and shrewd Yankee as he was, for once he accepted the Spanish point of view. If we were to "get even with Carmona and pay him out for this," it must be in some less clumsy way, ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Abbot's hall: The Knight went forth, and kneeled down, And salued them, great and small. "Do gladly, Sir Abbot!" said the Knight, "I am come to hold my day!" The first word the Abbot spake, "Hast thou brought my pay?" "Not one penny!" said the Knight, "By God that maked me!" "Thou art a shrewd debtor!" said the Abbot; "Sir Justice, drink to me! What doest thou here," said the Abbot, "But thou hadst brought thy pay?" "For God!" then said the Knight, "To pray of a longer day!" "Thy day is broke!" said the Justice; "Land gettest thou none!" "Now, good Sir ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... wind was driving him back, George caught sight of the branch of the Beaver that flows almost due south directly into Grand Lake, forming the island's western shore. Standing on this shore, he made a shrewd guess. "I'll bet," he said, "my dream was right, and here we have the same river we were on when we said good-bye to the canoe." What interested him the most, however, was a row boat he espied a little south of the island on the opposite shore. Apparently it had been abandoned. ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... their minds to be something humiliating and comic about the task of tending mules. These urchins came from a score of nations of Southern Europe and Asia; there were flat-faced Tartars and swarthy Greeks and shrewd-eyed little Japanese. They spoke a compromise language, consisting mainly of English curse words and obscenities; the filthiness which their minds had spawned was incredible to one born and raised in the sunlight. ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... horse and two villeins—if they were not in pawn to a Jew for moneys to buy velvet mantelines and a chain of gold. By birth, he comes from Mallet [59], a bold Norwegian in the fleet of Rou the Sea-king; his mother was a Frank woman, from whom he inherits his best possessions—videlicet, a shrewd wit, and a railing tongue. His qualities are abstinence, for he eateth nowhere save at the cost of another—some Latin, for he was meant for a monk, because he seemed too slight of frame for a warrior—some courage, for in spite of ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that their choice was aided by miracle. In those days miracles were "as plentiful as blackberries," but many of these seem to have been what we may speak of as "miracles made to order," designed by shrewd individuals to gain some personal or other advantage. St. Leo is said to have told the electors to seek a husbandman named Wamba, whose lands lay somewhere in the west, asserting that he did this under direction of the heavenly powers. However that be, scouts were sent through the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... in the bush he wants," said his shrewd old mother. "The bird in the bush: he will never ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... oddly, a little on one side; it was said at the time that this was due to his having once attempted suicide by cutting his throat. His visage—heavy, long, and noticeable—had the typical traits of the American politician of that epoch; his eyes were small, shrewd, and twinkling; there was a sort of professional candor in his bearing, but he looked like a sad and weary old man. He talked somewhat volubly to my father, who kept him going by a question now and then, as his way generally was with visitors. There was a flavor of ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... more than one hundred yards from the Old Cross. We should be inclined to think the devisor entertained a singular predilection for the Old Cross, then in the pride of youth. But if we unfold this whimsical clause, we shall find it contains a shrewd intention. The choice was limited within one hundred yards, because the town itself, in his day, did not in some directions extend farther. Fentham had spent a life in Birmingham, knew well her inhabitants, and like some others, had found honour as well as riches ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... the art of printing was first introduced into England, and carried on in Westminster Abbey, a shrewd churchman is said to have observed to the Abbot of Westminster, "If you don't take care to destroy that machine, it will very soon destroy your trade." He saw at a single glance of the press, the downfal ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... the listeners that Pomona had given a shrewd guess as to the moral of the story Jonas had read, if, indeed, he had had in his mind any moral at all—and that her own was an offset to it, or so intended. So the Next Neighbor came to ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... and spread below the level of his strong jaw, he had a patriarchal look, and in spite of lean cheeks and hollows at his temples, seemed master of perennial youth. He held himself extremely upright, and his shrewd, steady eyes had lost none of their clear shining. Thus he gave an impression of superiority to the doubts and dislikes of smaller men. Having had his own way for innumerable years, he had earned a prescriptive right to it. It would never have occurred to old Jolyon that it ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the leading physician of Rockland, was a shrewd old man, who looked pretty keenly into his patients through his spectacles, and pretty widely at men, women, and things in general over them. Sixty-three years old,—just the year of the grand climacteric. ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... opportunity of Raymond of Toulouse. Besides being an accomplished technician in all forms of writing he was a man of shrewd and lively apprehension, and his wound had by no means injured his wits. As he lay upon the litter engaging the sympathy of the ladies and the leniency of the judges he had divined rightly the reason of the discomforture of each of ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... swollen teats, and marked their passage along the road-side. In barnyards near calves were waiting, frantic to get at those same swollen teats. The black boy who had them in charge opened the avenue gate for them, then stood and looked after the soldiers, the very embodiment of shrewd, impish humor. Hands burrowing in his pockets; his body, from the waist up, thrown back; his mouth stretched in a broad grin, and indeed every feature replete with fun. When they passed out of ear-shot, he put ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... that her sovereign dignity had been trifled with, and that her reputation demanded the return of Prentiss to Congress. Crowds followed him from place to place, making a gala time of weeks together. Among the shrewd worldlings who take advantage of such times "to coin money," was the proprietor of a traveling menagerie, and he soon found out that the multitude followed Prentiss. Getting the list of that remarkable ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... not, and it cannot," answered Aldrovand; "and we must expect a shrewd attack, which I should mind little, but that their numbers are great, ours few; the extent of the walls considerable, and the obstinacy of these Welsh fiends almost equal to their fury. But we will do the best. I will to ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... slight man rose. He had narrow eyes, shrewd and calculating and the sinuous motions of a contortionist. Linking his arm with Benito's, he smiled, disclosing small, discolored teeth. There was something ratlike about him, infinitely repellant. "Come, I'll tyke ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... the Peelites. He (Lord Lansdowne) would certainly decline to have anything to do with it, as it could receive its support only from the extreme Radical side, which was not favourable to Lord John, but shrewd enough to perceive that to obtain a Government that would have to rest entirely upon themselves would be the surest mode of pushing their own views. Lord John, although not intending it, would blindly follow this bias, excusing ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... a grin. "That's awfully decent of you. As a matter of fact, I don't believe even Chris could manage to deceive you. You're so beastly shrewd. But we'll call it a bargain if you like. You won't catch me trying to jockey ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... a great deal of Mr. Hyatt, and much of it lay directly behind his clasped hands. He had a large, round face in the centre of which a small, sharp nose surmounted a wide mouth and was flanked by a pair of pale brown eyes at once innocent and shrewd. Steve counted three chins and was not certain there wasn't another tucked away behind the collar of the huge shirt. Mr. Hyatt had a deep and mellow voice, and his words rolled and rumbled out like the reverberations of a good-natured thunder storm. From the windows of the bright, breeze-swept office ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... illicit activity that continuous intelligence which marked the conduct of those who stood ready to combat it. Society, he declared, owed its safety to the fact that the criminal class, as a rule, was made up of its least intelligent members. When criminality went allied with a shrewd mind and a sound judgment—and a smile curled about Keenan's melancholy Celtic mouth as he spoke—it became transplanted, practically, to the sphere and ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... simple folk talk of a Pope Angelico, who was to come by-and-by and bring in a new order of things, to purify the Church from simony, and the lives of the clergy from scandal—a state of affairs too different from what existed under Innocent the Eighth for a shrewd merchant and politician to regard the prospect as worthy of entering into his calculations. But he felt the evils of the time, nevertheless; for he was a man of public spirit, and public spirit can never ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... but it occurred to me that Ptolemy was a shrewd little fellow, and that there had been wisdom back of his strategic speeches to Beth and Rob, for he had taken the one sure course to ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... resisting the cruel invasions of the Dutch, without doubt he could have made great ravages in the villages of the Pintados Islands; and therefore this must be attributed to an especial providence of the divine mercy. All [these dealings with the envoys] were cunning measures of the shrewd Moro to lull [91] our vigilance with feigned appearances of peace, for never was he further from pursuing it—partly through greed for the booty of slaves, a great part of which belonged to him; partly because his captains and other persons interested in these piratical raids persuaded ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... of our fanatic nobles and the ignorant populace to persecute their fellow-countrymen, they might have lived together on friendly terms; and, for the life of me, I cannot see why people should not be allowed to worship God according to the dictates of their consciences," added the shrewd Scotchman, with ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... passion, he said with a trembling voice, sighing deeply, and gazing at his lady with eyes full of tenderness: "S'amor non e, che dunque e quel ch' io sento?"[9] Hearing this, the lady, who had a shrewd wit, answered, in order to show him his error: "A louse, perhaps." Which answer was heard by many, so that the saying ran through all Bologna, and he was held to scorn ever afterwards. Truly, if Alfonso had ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... pretend to understand the people who served him; but having been hard driven himself in his day, he had a pretty shrewd notion of the power he could safely exercise over them, and of the duties, supplementary to the office routine, which he could reasonably induce them to fulfil. To make fourths at tennis or at bridge, to ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici |
