"Insight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... things, the supply of students is bound to come to an end. During the summer Theodore remained at home, spending much of his time in the garden. He brooded over the problem of his future; what profession was he to choose? He had gained so much insight into the methods of the huge Jesuitical community which, under the name of the upper classes, constituted society, that he felt dissatisfied with the world and decided to enter the Church to save himself from despair. And yet the world beckoned to him. It lay before him, fair and bright, ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... that the courts as a whole should exercise this power with the farsighted wisdom already shown by those judges who scan the future while they act in the present. Let them exercise this great power not only honestly and bravely, but with wise insight into the needs and fixed purposes of the people, so that they may do justice and work equity, so that they may protect all persons in their rights, and yet break down the barriers of privilege, which is the foe ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... a perversion to ascribe the success of such individuals to circumstances alone, and to what they say, and the inflexible virile courage with which they say it. Talent, genius, the why and wherefore, are all factors. In Russia there are not a few who share the experiences and insight of Gorki. But they lack means of expression; they ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... the people described in it are unique. With the most artful simplicity Mr. Synge gives you first a just idea of the alternate beauty and bleakness of that wonderful coast, and then makes you see the inhabitants in their daily struggle for existence.... This book, with its sympathetic insight, is the best possible return that Mr. Synge could have made to his friends on the ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... the new life, "to make ready the way of the Lord" (Mark i. 3). The clearness of his perception of truth is not the least of his claims to greatness. His knowledge of the simplicity of God's requirements in contrast with the hopeless maze of pharisaic traditions, and his insight into the characters with whom he had to deal, whether the sinless Jesus or the hypocritical Pharisees, show a man marvellously gifted by God who made good use of his gift. This greatness appears in superlative degree in the self-effacement of him who possessed these powers. Greatness ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... other so great. The earl n'as not therewith ypayed[3], when he it under get. After meat he nome his wife myd[4] sturdy med enow, And, without leave of the king, to his country drow. The king sente to him then, to byleve[5] all night, For he must of great counsel have some insight. That was for nought. Would he not, the king sent yet his sond, That he byleved at his parlement, for need of the lond. The king was, when he n'olde not, anguyssous and wroth. For despite he would a-wreak be he swore ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... doubt—its top set with stones—so that his appearance was altogether a contrast to that of the girl. She was a peasant, he a gentleman! Her bare head and yet more her bare feet emphasized the contrast. But which was by nature and in fact the superior, no one with the least insight ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... there in associating my change of mood with her absence. I brooded. Steele's keen insight betrayed me to him, but all his power and his spirit availed nothing to cheer me. I pretended to be cheerful; I drank and ate anything given me; I was patient and quiet. But I ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... Incorporated in 1982. PostScript gets its leverage by using a full programming language, rather than a series of low-level escape sequences, to describe an image to be printed on a laser printer or other output device (in this it parallels {EMACS}, which exploited a similar insight about editing tasks). It is also noteworthy for implementing on-the fly rasterization, from Bezier curve descriptions, of high-quality fonts at low (e.g. 300 dpi) resolution (it was formerly believed that hand-tuned bitmap fonts were ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... of the loss of the lugger, declaring that, come what might, she would rather have Dan'l with all his Christian virtues than a fellow like Phoby Geen with all his riches and splay feet. Moreover—and such is the wondrous insight of woman—she maintained that Phoby Geen must be at the ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... period of his own imagined life, or that he fails to act consonantly with the extreme youth imputed to him: I mean that he is the creation of a more mature mind, a deeper philosophy, a more probing insight into the implications of things. A given youth of twenty-five will be very differently interpreted by an observer of thirty and by the same observer at forty, very much as a given era of the past will be understood ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... strategic insight of Marshal Foch, who assumed complete control of the Allied Armies in France and Belgium on March 26th, combined with the experienced and cool-headed leadership of the British Commander-in-Chief, refused to dissipate the French reserves, so important to the future course of the war, in any small ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... high value of the beautiful—that it solves the contradiction of mind and matter, of the moral and sensuous world, in harmony. Thus the beautiful and its representation in art procures for intuition what philosophy gives to the cognitive insight and religion to the believing frame of mind. Hence the delight with which Schiller's wonderful poem on the Bell celebrates the accord of the inner and outer life, the fulfilment of the longing and demands of the soul by the events in nature. The externality of phenomena is removed ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Tacitus, like me, is only melancholy; but he's more—he's ugly. A vast difference, young sir, between the melancholy view and the ugly. The one may show the world still beautiful, not so the other. The one may be compatible with benevolence, the other not. The one may deepen insight, the other shallows it. Drop Tacitus. Phrenologically, my young friend, you would seem to have a well-developed head, and large; but cribbed within the ugly view, the Tacitus view, your large brain, like your large ox in the contracted field, will but starve the more. And don't dream, as ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... tedious to you and so useless, if only you will carry it on, as you may carry it on here at Cambridge better than anywhere else, will open before you large layers of literature, as yet almost unknown and unexplored, and allow you an insight into strata of thought deeper than any you have known before, and rich in lessons that appeal to the deepest sympathies of ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... only apparent and not real, we shall surely, having gained this insight, be too wise to waste indignation upon the non-existent; if what we call misdeeds in reality fulfil God's own "requirements," a thoroughly enlightened public opinion will not seek to interfere with the sacred ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... name and rank of the man who, at sight of the locket in question, had swooned in the farm-house at Dahme; and to put the finishing touch to the tumult of excitement into which this discovery had thrown him, he needed only an insight into the secrets contained in the paper which, for many reasons, he was determined not to open out of mere curiosity. He answered that, in consideration of the ungenerous and unprincely treatment ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... arose at Ur, and claimed sovereignty over the rest of Chaldaea. One of its kings, Ur-Bau, was a great builder and restorer of the temples, and under his son and successor Dungi (B.C. 2700), a high-priest of the name of Gudea governed Lagas, the monuments of which have given us an insight into the condition of the country in his age. His statues of hard diorite from the Peninsula of Sinai are now in the Louvre; one of them is that of the architect of his palace, with a copy of its plan upon his lap divided according ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... to me. He rarely addresses me directly, except when short of matches, but he often gives me an insight into things by talking to himself aloud. He does this partly to teach me the reasoning processes by which he arrives at the momentous decisions expected of a G.S.O.3, and partly because he values my ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various
... position to live from his work, in the Natural Right and the Exclusive Commercial State, but, in his posthumous Theory of Right, 1812, he makes it the chief duty of the state to lead men, by the moral and intellectual training of the people, to do from insight what they have hitherto done from traditional belief. Through the education of the people the empirical state is gradually to transform itself ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... imagine a science which would have[A] foretold such movements as those? The state of things out of which they rose is obscure; but suppose it not obscure, can you conceive that, with any amount of historical insight into the old Oriental beliefs, you could have seen that they were about to transform themselves into those particular forms and ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... rich olive skin, large dark eyes, brilliant as diamonds and as cold, but which could become luminous with tenderness or fiery with passion, as occasion required. To those whom she sought to entertain she could be extremely charming, but to a few even of these, gifted with deeper insight than the others, it seemed that beneath that fascinating manner was a dangerous nature, a will that would brook no restraint, that never would be thwarted; and that this was, in reality, the power ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... and antiquities of the Culinary Art among the Greeks are handled with his usual care and skill by M.J.A. St. John in his "Manners and Customs of Ancient Greece," 1842; and in the Biblia or Hebrew Scriptures we get an indirect insight into the method of cooking ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... literature are the men who fill the air with smoke, relieved by no clear blaze of light. There have been schools of thought that were as smoky as Pittsburg. We have had 'seers' who made others see nothing, men of 'insight' with no outlook, scientists who in every critical argument jumped the track of true science, and preachers whose hazy thoughts and utterances flickered between truth and error. Pity there were not some intellectual Sing-Sing ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... but said not a word. Three months before and my father had been the happiest, free-from-care man in the city; now the little insight he had gained into domestic affairs—the peep behind the curtain given him by my mistaken maiden aunt, had served to embitter his existence, surrounding his path with those nettles of life, household ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... and Tad, fell ill with typhoid fever. By day and by night the grief-crazed father divided his time between watching the bedside of his boys and watching over the struggling nation. Though always religious in the deepest sense, the death of Willie seemed to strengthen his insight into the mysteries of the spiritual life. For awhile he seemed grief-crazed, and ever after, the great soul that had always been compassionate was even more tender in its broodings over all the people of the nation, both South and North, ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... and insight; it's so awfully subtle and delicate,' he answered. 'A little of it travels down on every ray and soaks down into you. It makes you feel inclined to stick to other people ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... and impulsive in her second half-century, was more prone to err in crises than her daughter. In spite of the deeper passions of her nature, Rachael, except when under the lash of strong excitement, had a certain clearness of insight and deliberation of judgement which her mother lacked to ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... women as Mrs. Newton, Mrs. Boinville, and Cornelia Turner, Shelley gave good proof of his insight and discrimination." That is the fabulist's opinion—Harriet Shelley's is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... out into the country. "A sudden glory," he said, "a flare of insight. There's no ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... documents could pretend to be representative which ignored the famous "Memoirs" of the Duc de Saint-Simon. They stand, by universal consent, at the head of French historical papers, and are the one great source from which all historians derive their insight into the closing years of the reign of the "Grand Monarch," Louis XIV: whom the author shows to be anything but grand—and of the Regency. The opinion of the French critic, Sainte-Beuve, is fairly typical. "With the Memoirs of De Retz, it seemed that perfection ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... qualified as a legislator ever occupied a seat in Congress. A man cast in the largest mould, and incapable of a petty sentiment, his grasp of public affairs was rarely equaled, and his insight into the effects of legislation was of the deepest. But on what the author of the Autocrat calls the arithmetical side,—in the power of judging particular men and not general principles; in deciding ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... intuition tells me so. I pride myself on having a natural intuition. It takes me only a few seconds to understand a situation that other men have to puzzle over for hours. I seem to see every side of a question at once. I assure you, I am gifted in this way. I have wonderful insight." ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... little beauty in so grave and colourless a scene, but to-day as she looked upon it a peace such as she had never known possessed her thoughts. The wisdom of experience was hers now, and with it she had gained something of the deeper insight into nature which comes to the soul that is reconciled with the unknown ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... intervention. He preferred to speak for himself. "I'll disown the dog. He shall not enter my house again. You shall not be reminded of what has happened here. Gad! You were shrewd to have smoked his motives so!" he cried in a burst of admiration for her insight. "Gad, child! Shouldst have been a lawyer! ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... inflicted on them by Esarhaddon, and their king, Akhsheri, in spite of his advancing years, believed that his own energy and resources were sufficient to warrant him in anticipating a speedy revenge. Perhaps a further insight into the real character of Assur-bani-pal may have induced him to venture on hostilities. For the king's contemporaries had begun to realise that, beneath his apparent bravery and ostentation, he was by nature indolent, impatient of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... foreign commerce introduced among them, the familiarity with strange customs and manners, engendered by daily intercourse with the Greeks, the acquisition (on the part of some) of the Greek language, the sight of Greek modes of worship, of Greek painting and Greek sculpture, the insight into Greek habits of thought, which could not but follow, produced no inconsiderable effect upon the national character of the Egyptians, shaking them out of their accustomed groove, and awakening curiosity and inquiry. The effect was scarcely beneficial. ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... the magnitude of his gift. Her name, her secure position, her happiness, the hopes that the coming years were to transform into realities—oh, I like to think that Mary Virginia saw all this, in one of those lightning-flashes of spiritual insight that reveal more than all one's slower years; I like to think she saw it given her freely, nobly, with joy, a glorious love-gift from the limping man into whose empty hand she had one day put a ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... was a man of great experience, and with a fairly clear insight into the ways of the wicked. When Kate and her uncle had left him and he paced the floor, with the memory of the beautiful eyes of the pirate's daughter as they had been uplifted to his own, he felt assured that he could see rightly into the designs of the unscrupulous Captain Vince. Of what avail ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... poem. I suppose what one expects from a poem as distinguished from a romance—even though the poem incorporates a story—is that it should not rest for its chief interest on the mere development of the story; but rather that the narrative should be quite subordinate to that insight into the deeper side of life and manners, in expressing which poetry has so great an advantage over prose. Of The Lay and Marmion this is true; less true of The Lady of the Lake, and still less of Rokeby, or The Lord of the Isles, and this is why The Lay and Marmion seem ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... Prussia drink of the same cup, and remained nominally neutral. Andreossy reported, however, that Austria's strength was being rapidly recruited, and that her preparations foreboded a renewal of hostilities. There was a new prime minister, Count Stadion, remarkable for his energy and insight. Napoleon immediately began to make propositions for an alliance, intended merely to gain time. As he had the previous year called for the boy conscripts of 1807, so he now demanded those for 1808, who were even somewhat younger. The Confederacy of the Rhine was ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... tickled me most was the boy's peroration. It gave me a pretty clear insight into his "innard workings." He led up to it in his favourite way: stepping backward a pace or two and sinking his voice to a kind of Edwin Booth quiet; gradually growing a little louder; then suddenly turning on ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... diligent attendance at certain of the evening-classes at King's College, he had developed a true insight into and sympathy with what is best in our literature—chiefly in that of the sixteenth century: from this grew an almost peculiar regard for old books. With three or four shillings weekly at his disposal, he laid himself out to ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... I am yours entirely (TOUT A VOUS). I wait in great impatience to hear your news upon all this: for I inform you accurately how the land lies here; so that it only depends upon yourself to shine, and to pass for a miracle of just insight,'—"SORCIER," or witch at guessing mysteries, Grumkow calls it again. ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... advantages of the study of old Norse or Icelandic literature is the insight given by it into the origin of world-wide superstitions. Norse tradition is transparent as glacier ice, and ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... clever little story, written with some humour. The authoress shows a great deal of insight into children's feelings and ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... the gaoler was wont to say that his departing guest gazed on the flower with almost religious fervour and mumbled over it a prayer; and the gaoler's insight was true, for in comparison with a flower, the masonic emblem, the pride of Tsing Hi's life was to ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... never a misgiving about Himself. Only, I think, moments of a dreadful insight when he heard behind him the creeping of the tide of oblivion, and it frightened him. He was sensitive to every little fluctuation in his vogue. He had the fear of its vanishing before his eyes. And there ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... is even more interesting than the first. It may be that the solution of the one may prove to be the solution of the other. You will excuse me, Musgrave, if I say that your butler appears to me to have been a very clever man, and to have had a clearer insight than ten ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... that, doubtless, in the wreck of the creature's brain, there were fragments of some artistic insight that made her thus rise above the level of her daily life, drunk with the mere beauty of form and colour. I do not know,—not knowing how sham or real a thing you mean by artistic insight. But I do know that the clear light I told you ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... hands have touched it, and unmusical voices have made it sound almost common in our ears. Yet none the less is it for him to tell us of the marvel of this man whose art he has analysed with such exquisite insight, whose life he knows as no one else can know it, whom he so loyally loved and tended, and by whom he was so loyally beloved in turn. As for the others, the scribblers and nibblers of literature, if they indeed reverence Rossetti's memory, let them pay him the one homage ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... close relationship between a cowman and his herds. My insight into cattle character exceeds my observation of the human family. Therefore I wish to confess my great love for the cattle of the fields. When hungry or cold, sick or distressed, they express themselves intelligently to my understanding, ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... on the way, and the old man turned back with him down the street again. There was always something the squire wanted to say to his son about business, and Jacob owed more than he acknowledged—and he acknowledged that he owed much—to the keen insight of his father. He seemed to be able to see all sides of a matter at once, and though Jacob liked to manage his affairs himself, and believed that he did so, yet there had been occasions when a few words from his father had modified his plans, and changed the character ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... Sunday school simplicity and practicality prevailed, the 'Yankee' (citizen of the New England States) was hated with a splendid energy. But religion had nothing to do with it. In a trade, the Yankee was held to be about five times the match of the Westerner. His shrewdness, his insight, his judgment, his knowledge, his enterprise, and his formidable cleverness in applying these forces were frankly confessed, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... not require any deep insight, I can assure you, to see how delighted this burgher was that we were safely out ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... thicket of green shrubs—box, perhaps, or perfumed nutmeg; while behind them, domed or pointed, the hills stand ranged against the sky. A little further, and we come to that masterpiece of Bunyan's insight into life, the Enchanted Ground; where, in a few traits, he has set down the latter end of such a number of the would-be good; where his allegory goes so deep that, to people looking seriously on life, it cuts like satire. The true significance ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Hold on, now," exclaimed Jack, when his brother turned away with an ejaculation indicative of the greatest annoyance and vexation. "It helped bring it, and a little common sense, backed by an insight into darkey nature, did the rest. Now, don't break in on me any more. Mother will begin to ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... modest, so genial and lovable, that every one was greatly attached to him. He liked best of all to talk with John Stark, and to get him to tell of Indians and their habits and ways of fighting. And here he showed his keen insight. For Captain Stark was the best man in the Rangers. Rogers got the credit for what the Rangers did. But much of their success was due to Stark. He was a man whose judgment was sure, ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... conscious only when stimulated. A sketch finished, he always wanted to take it to Miriam. Then he was stimulated into knowledge of the work he had produced unconsciously. In contact with Miriam he gained insight; his vision went deeper. From his mother he drew the life-warmth, the strength to produce; Miriam urged this warmth into ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... Jackson Street humming a lazy song, known at every shop and street stand, cropful of easy greeting and local wit, sad sometimes for only the sake of sadness and the flight of time—that Jelly-bean was suddenly vanished. The very name was a reproach, a triviality. With a flood of insight he knew that Merritt must despise him, that even Nancy's kiss in the dawn would have awakened not jealousy but only a contempt for Nancy's so lowering herself. And on his part the Jelly-bean had used for her a dingy subterfuge ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... adjectives! How acquit Bonamy of sentimentality of the grossest sort; of being tossed like a cork on the waves; of having no steady insight into character; of being unsupported by reason, and of drawing no comfort whatever from the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... He paused, and spoke again. 'Thank Heaven, it did not last long; but the insight it gave me into the unsubdued evil about me was a ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the time of the discovery of gold in Australia, and after much discussion he and his elder brother joined the stream of adventurers and sailed in 1852 for Victoria. In this rough "school of mines" he acquired that insight into the building-up of the earth's crust and that practical knowledge of minerals which served him so well in after-life as a mining engineer. But although the whole colony was in the grip of the gold-fever, Belt retained the same ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... K'o Ching, to be given to you as your wedded wife. To-night, the time will be propitious and suitable for the immediate consummation of the union, with the express object of letting you have a certain insight into the fact that if the condition of the abode of spirits within the confines of Fairyland be still so (imperfect), how much the more so should be the nature of the affections which prevail in the dusty world; with the intent that from this time forth you ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... not be misinterpreted: it was an irreverence which bubbled up from a deep, passionate insight into the well-springs of human nature. In 1601, as in 'The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,' and in 'The Mysterious Stranger,' he tore the masks off human beings and left them cringing before the public view. With the deftness of a master surgeon Clemens ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... such as he could get rid of without much trouble to himself; but he thought it would be easier to watch them if they did not know who he was; for, as he said to himself, "they are quite cunning enough to deceive me—town children always are." And now having given you this little insight into the old man's mind, let us return to the widow's room and make acquaintance with ...
— The Boy Artist. - A Tale for the Young • F.M. S.
... fishmarket or the piazza of these little industrial towns of the Vesuvian shore. For to regard Southern Italy from the majestic isolation of a railway compartment or a hired carriage cannot possibly give the traveller the smallest insight into the ordinary phases of local life; for he is ever looking, as it were, into a picture from which all trace of ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... oratory. Perhaps the most significant and valuable critical treatise after Aristotle is that golden pamphlet On the Sublime erroneously ascribed to Longinus, which, anonymous and mutilated as it is, still holds our attention by its sincerity, insight, and enthusiastic love ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... professional anecdote and piscatorial prophecy with which he entertained me, now and then rushing across the carriage to get a glimpse of a salmon-pool in some river over which we happened to be passing, gave me an amusing insight into the character of one whom I have since learned to regard as a very brilliant and charming man. When we arrived at the landing-stage at the Lodge, the General greeted him ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... kissing the Pope's feet, which, in a grievously mutilated form, endures to this day. The stupefaction of the Cardinals on discovering that the Holy Father had lost his hoof surpasses all description, and they went to their graves without having obtained the least insight into ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... us to do that which but a few years before its introduction was taken for the very type of the impossible, viz., to study the chemical composition of the stars; and it is giving us clearer and clearer insight every day into the condition of the great luminary which forms the center of our system. Still, however beautiful and interesting such results may be, it might well be thought that they could never have any practical ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... their sad tears flow. Was he not ever good and kind,— That hero of the duteous mind? Skilled in all filial duties, he As a dear mother treated thee. Kausalya too, the eldest queen, Who far foresees with insight keen, Did she not ever show thee all A sister's love at duty's call? And hast thou from the kingdom chased Her son, with bark around his waist, To the wild wood, to dwell therein, And dost not sorrow for thy sin? The love I bare to Raghu's son Thou knewest not, ambitious one, If thou hast wrought ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... known of him and much as there was worth knowing. England has had at least three or four such secret statesmen. An aristocratic polity produces every now and then an aristocrat who is also an accident, a man of intellectual independence and insight, a Napoleon born in the purple. His vast work was mostly invisible, and very little could be got out of him in private life except a crusty and rather cynical sense of humor. But it was certainly the accident of his presence at a family dinner of ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... splendours, of worldly success. Colombe is almost as grateful as the young Prince could desire, for she assumes that he has fallen in love with her, whether he says so or not; and here, too, Valence must speak the truth. "The Prince does not love her." "How does he know this?" "He knows it by the insight of one who does love." Astonished, vaguely pained, Colombe questions him as to the object of his attachment, and, in probably real ignorance of who it can be, draws him on to a confession. For a moment she is disenchanted. ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... the king, rising hastily, and pacing the room. "I have listened to you to the end, because I wished to see how far your audacity would go, and to gain a clear insight into your whole character. I was already prejudiced against you. It is true, I knew you were a thoughtful, talented, and bold man, but, at the same time, I believed you to be somewhat eccentric; in short, I regarded you as a man who, because he ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... CHRISTIAN WORLD.—"This is a notable book. Thoughtful people will be fascinated by its actuality, its fearlessness, and the insight it gives into the influence of ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... prepare many hundreds of chemicals of exceptional purity; he will write a number of dry and very accurate memoranda, will make some dozen conscientious translations, but he won't do anything striking. To do that one must have imagination, inventiveness, the gift of insight, and Pyotr Ignatyevitch has nothing of the kind. In short, he is not a master in ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... tone in Gray's voice when he spoke of the Briskows that gave Barbara Parker a wholly new insight into his character; it was with a feeling that she knew him and liked him better that ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... over in a moment. The foreman would utter the refusal. Red Perris would be in his saddle and bound towards the mountains. And that thought gave Marianne sudden insight into the fact that the Valley of the Eagles would be a drear, lonely place ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... preached in Baltimore, taught school in St. Louis, and among other things, organized churches and lectured in Mississippi. The wide experiences of both gentlemen offered to them unusual opportunities to develop the power, keenness of insight, and knowledge of human nature so essential to the leadership ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... years beforehand must necessarily be deeply interested in the problems relating to the various directions which the course of that improvement may possibly take. Meanwhile their estimates of the future, although based upon an intimate knowledge of the past and aided by naturally clear powers of insight, must be hypothetical and conditional. Unfortunately for the vast majority of manufacturing experts, the thoroughness with which they have mastered the details of one particular branch of industry too often blinds ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... with this, there is one circumstance which makes your recollections peculiarly valuable, and renders your early insight the more remarkable. You come from that part of the country where we are told slavery appears with its fairest features. Let us hear, then, what it is at its best estate—gaze on its bright side, if it has one; and then imagination may task her powers to add dark lines ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... which will give young readers an unsurpassed insight into the customs of the Egyptian people. Amuba, a prince of the Rebu nation, is carried with his charioteer Jethro into slavery. They become inmates of the house of Ameres, the Egyptian high-priest, and are happy in his service until the ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... enough to live with, however, this obstinate English country gentleman, although without sympathetic insight, and liable to become a petty domestic tyrant at any moment. "Sound" was what he would have called himself. And he was a man to be envied upon the whole, for his family loved him, and his friends knew no ill ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... came into possession of several of his early commonplace books filled with sketches for articles; some of these are more developed than others, but they are all of them fragmentary. I do not think that the reader will fail to be interested with the insight into my brother's spiritual and intellectual progress which a few extracts from these writings will afford, and have therefore, after some hesitation, decided in favour of making them public, though well aware that my brother ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... destiny of the two artists who have worked together to give it this exquisite setting forth to make its actual worth clear to every reader. They have put nothing into the lines which was not there already, but they have shown fine insight in their choice of subjects and in conveying delicate and far-reaching meanings. They have subordinated—as designers do not invariably do—their instinctive methods and capricious inclinations to a careful study of their subject. The result is—instead ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... In her own circle she was more or less of a queen, and although she was no better and no richer than the poorest of the Liverpool girls, yet her smallest word of approbation was treasured almost as if it had been a royal gift. She had a great insight into character; she had large tact, ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... the most distinguished figure therein. The consciousness of being the first augments the keenness of his impressions, and a mind that can see and report in advance of others a new order of things may claim a finer organization than the ordinary. The vitality of nature animates him who has insight to discern her at first hand, whereas his followers miss the freshness of the morning, because, instead of discovering, they must be content to illustrate and refine. Those of our writers who betray Turguenieff's influence are possibly his superiors in finish and culture, but their faculty ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... world in the middle of the nineteenth century, the other being Russia. England embodied "l'esprit de commerce, de ruse et d'aventure". He developed this theme with a nervous and forcible eloquence, if not with great political insight, in Le Rhin: Conclusion (published ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... question of the human characters whose names are writ large on this page of religious history, the Dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla towers above all others. To his political insight is largely owing the harnessing of the state religion to the chariot of the politician, now and hereafter; and it was he who was the foremost leader of Roman armies to the Orient, and the man who, because ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... the ordinary "shop," who is learning there at present, to our regret, only a portion of his craft, and who should be given an insight into the whole, and ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... With keen insight he realized at the very beginning of his term of office that the great and basic need of the University was material expansion. He saw the need of a more extensive plant with modern equipment and served by a larger faculty. With ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... reason. But do you ask me whether such verse proceeds from men with an adequate poetic criticism of life, from men whose criticism of life has a high seriousness, or even, without that high seriousness, has poetic largeness, freedom, insight, benignity? Do you ask me whether the application of ideas to life in the verse of these men, often a powerful application, no doubt, is a powerful poetic application? Do you ask me whether the poetry of these men has either the matter or the inseparable ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... of common-sense, some acquaintance with the United States Statutes, an insight into character, a tact of management, a general knowledge of the world, and a reasonable but not too inveterately decided preference for his own will and judgment over those of interested people,—these natural attributes and moderate acquirements will enable a consul to ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a superhuman task. I believed him innocent, and if others failed to prove him so, I would undertake to clear him myself,—I, the little Rita, with no experience of law or courts or crime, but with simply an unbounded faith in the man suspected and in the keenness of my own insight,—an insight which had already served me so well and would serve me yet better, once I had mastered the details which must be the prelude ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... to prove him unfit for the very work to which he was drawn: that yearning to help the world forward that, in some natures, sets the measure to which the personal adventure must keep step. Amherst had hitherto felt himself secured by his insight and self-control from the emotional errors besetting the way of the enthusiast; and behold, he had stumbled into the first sentimental trap in his path, and tricked his eyes with a Christmas-chromo vision of lovely woman dispensing coals and blankets! ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... you, I'm sure," Sogrange answered. "Our friend here," he added, indicating their guide, "found us trying to gain a little insight into the more interesting part of New York life. He was kind enough to express a wish to introduce ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... illimitable West as to his power to tell an absorbing story. When "The Choir Invisible" appeared, this perhaps most fascinating period of early American history had not been used as a background of his story by any great master of fiction, and it requires no very keen literary insight to discover the sources of the popularity which has been accorded to the four or five recent novels, each of which has for its setting a period in our history whose glamour has touched our hearts and ...
— James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and Work • Macmillan Company
... positions on the canal to L., in the belief that mighty forces were being assembled here for a further tremendous blow. The object of our assignment would in that case already have been for the most part accomplished. But all of us subordinate officers—who neither possess nor should possess an insight into the strategic movement—we have ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... seq.) Like 'Othello,' the play ranks with the noblest tragedies either of the modern or the ancient world. The characters of hero and heroine—Macbeth and his wife—are depicted with the utmost subtlety and insight. In three points 'Macbeth' differs somewhat from other of Shakespeare's productions in the great class of literature to which it belongs. The interweaving with the tragic story of supernatural interludes in which Fate is weirdly personified is not exactly matched in ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... describes to be the examination and signature of the "writings which served to commence a suit in any of the Courts of justice." His book embodies a truthful and generally accurate account of the northern portion of the island, with which alone he was conversant, and his narrative gives a curious insight into the policy of the Dutch Government, and of the condition of the ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... On a sudden, a storm-flash may reveal to him that he is on the very edge of a precipice or already ankle-deep in some bottomless morass. The sight of his own face, interpreted with all Morewood's penetrating insight and mastery of hand, had been a revelation to him. No more mercilessly candid messenger could have been found. Arguments he would have resisted or confuted; appeals to his own consciousness would have failed for want of experience; he could ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... Dwight. The memoranda from Edwards's note-books, quoted by his editor and biographer, exhibit a remarkable precocity. Even as a school-boy and a college student he had made deep guesses in physics as well as metaphysics, and, as might have been predicted of a youth of his philosophical insight and ideal cast of mind, he had early anticipated Berkeley in denying the existence of matter. In passing from Mather to Edwards we step from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century. There is the same difference between them in style and turn of thought ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... early astir the next morning. He knew that a man such as Marcos, possessing the instinct of the chase and that deep insight into the thoughts and actions of others, even into the thoughts and actions of animals, which makes a great hunter or a great captain, would never have let slip the feeble clue that he had of the incident in the Calle San Gregorio. ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... Dooley with his usual wit and insight tells the American people why they spend over two hundred million dollars annually on patent medicines. Americans consume more drugs and use more patent medicines than the people of any other country on the civilized ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... have just read, we may judge of the incredible insight by which his Majesty was enabled to choose, among the most distinguished persons of the different classes of society, those most popular and most influential from their positions. By the side of the names which had gained glory under the eyes of the Emperor, and by seconding him in his great ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... up with alacrity. From the first of their acquaintance the girl had interested him—and yet it was more than mere interest or feminine attraction. Her culture, her keen analysis of events and men, her knowledge of conditions informed and instructed him. Her subtle humor and droll insight into the characters of those who attempted to pose in the public eye entertained him, for he lacked humor. But, most of all, her satire gave him a truer perspective. Fresh from the north country, where his knowledge of public men had been limited to the information which newspapers ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... 'hangings' mellowed,—time mellowed,—ready to fall unshaken. Built on that 'foundation,' rises now this fair structure, the doctrine of the state. That knowledge of nature in general, that interior knowledge of her, that loving insight, which is not baffled with her most foreign aspects; but detects her, and speaks her word, as from within, in all, is that which meets us here, that which meets us at the threshold. Our guide is veiled, but his raiment is priestly. It is great nature's stole that he wears; he will alter our—Persian. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... is the Cardinal's description of a gentleman. Here there is no flight of poetical imagination, but a manifestation of felicitous intuition and penetrating insight as rare as it is convincing, and the generous wide vision of a man of the world, undimmed by ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... to take some account of every interesting or charming spot in a large tract of country, there must be certain omissions. To the stranger the survey may seem adequate; but it is a hundred to one that a reader whose home is in Sussex will detect a flippancy or a want of true insight in the treatment of his own village. Nor (rightly) does he ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... state of anarchy and incipient violence, Mirabeau, whose power in the Assembly was still unimpaired, wished to halt. He foresaw the future. No man in France had such clear insight and sagacity as he. He saw the State drifting into dissolution, and put forth his hand and raised his voice to arrest the catastrophe which he lamented. "The mob of Paris," said he, "will scourge the corpses of the King ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... of this latter assertion are very convincing; but before we give extracts from the poetical declarations of her connubial bliss, let us see what a curious insight this gives us, into the style of life among French poetasters and their wives in the middle of last century. We have seen that the irate Lebrun had a settled income of about a hundred and eighty pounds a-year, equal, with little pickings and stealings, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... are a store-house well-stocked with moral educative materials, properly suited to children at different ages, if only sorted, selected, and arranged. But this requires broad knowledge of our best literature and clear insight into child character at different ages. This problem will not be solved in a ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... Hazlitt, who saw the pictures in the above-mentioned exhibition in 1814, devotes much of his criticism to the tragedy of the Squanderfields, chiefly, it would seem, because Lamb had left the subject untouched. Hazlitt's own studies as an artist, his keen insight and his quick enthusiasm, made him a memorable critic of Hogarth, whose general characteristics he defines with admirable exactitude. Much quotation has made his description of the young Lord and Counsellor ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... be most interesting if one could get at the actual history of this part of the world and gain an insight into its former prosperity and civilisation. It is quite probable that Alexander, in his progress through Beluchistan and Sistan, must have come through this country. No army—not even with a new Craterus at its head—could, of course, march elephants, camels and horses ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... like this work exceedingly, and our fair countrywomen will admire it still more than we do. It is written in the true spirit, and evinces extensive observation of society, a clear insight into the evils surrounding and pressing down her sex, and a glorious determination to expose and remove them. Read her work. She will win a willing way to the heart and home of woman, and her mission will be found to be one of beneficence and love. ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... life of Lewis Carroll as it should be written would tax the powers of a man of far greater experience and insight than I have any pretension to possess, and even he would probably fail to represent adequately such a complex personality. At least I have done my best to justify their choice, and if in any way I have wronged my ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... comprehension and insight the author shows a terrific contrast between the woman whose love was of the flesh and one whose love was ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... and entertaining, being filled with descriptions, opinions, and facts in regard to the many distinguished musicians and artists of the present day. A little insight into the home life of the German people is presented to the reader, and the atmosphere of art seems to give a brightness and worth to the picture, which imparts pleasure with the interest it creates."—Dwight's Journal ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases. To this must be added, industrious and select reading, steady observation, and insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs; till which in some measure be compast, I refuse not to sustain this expectation." From a promise like this, at once fervid, pious, and rational, might be expected ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... introduction from Mr. Hampton, the secretary of the Conservative Club, to the Secretaries of the Reform and the Athenaeum, and begged their permission to inspect their complaint-books—a fact which has not before been recorded; and from them he gained such an insight into the failings of the snobbish clubman, that that portion of the work is unsurpassed for its truth to life. It is generally understood that he took Mr. Stephen Price, of the Garrick Club, as the model for Captain ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... alarm, and an abundance of provisions was offered for sale. Their friend Tubourai Tamaide even brought his wife and family to the fort, and did not hesitate to throw himself down and sleep on Mr Banks's bed. The voyagers were gradually gaining an insight into the manners and customs of the people. Mr Monkhouse, in one of his walks, learned their mode of treating their dead. He found the body of the poor man who had been shot. It was wrapped in cloth, and placed ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... it is dislocation and detachment from the life of God that makes things ugly, the poet, who re-attaches things to nature and the Whole,—re-attaching even artificial things and violations of nature, to nature, by a deeper insight,—disposes very easily of the most disagreeable facts. Readers of poetry see the factory-village and the railway, and fancy that the poetry of the landscape is broken up by these; for these works of art are not yet consecrated in their ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... for a great purpose. But suppose she had to submit again hereafter—always henceforth? And what made the thought more poignant was, her knowledge that he was right; that he knew what to do, and how to do it. She could not help admiring him for his address, his quickness, his clear practical insight: and yet she despised, mistrusted, all but hated him. But what if his were the very qualities which were destined to succeed? What if her purer and loftier aims, her resolutions—now, alas! broken—never to act but on the deepest and ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... only against himself. The great dark, bloated face had a meaning that could not be mistaken even by eyes for whom its meaning was written in a strange language. Innocence read guilt by a strange insight of heredity which came to her from the old beginning of things. She dared not stir. She felt petrified. She realized that her one hope was in the passing of some one on the road. She made up her mind that if she heard wheels she would risk everything. She would spring ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... arithmetic, and with whom he studied Latin and read the works of Shakespeare. It was due to this greater knowledge that Millet became something more than a mere peasant. It was this that gave him such perfect sympathy with and keen insight into the peasants' lives. His own knowledge of the world made him more conscious of the great contrast between their narrow, hard-working lives so full of privation, and those of the men and women in the great world outside ...
— Stories Pictures Tell - Book Four • Flora L. Carpenter
... with him all the afternoon, waiting till the tide had turned, and getting a good insight at last into ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... greater independence, boys, especially the older boys, were made to realize that they also had a deep responsibility in the welfare of the School. The great features in Mr. Vaughan's character were his insight into the best qualities of all who surrounded him and the generous optimism of his judgment. It was a difficult task for any man to succeed to the work of Mr. Style, who had built up the School afresh through many arduous difficulties, but ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... observed with our eyes may be set forth in words, and thus find its way to the understanding through the ears; also that in many instances the sense of touch conveys information which extends our perceptions in many important ways; but science rests practically on sight, and on the insight that comes from the training of the mind ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... hearts of his hearers. He was of a deeply affectionate nature, hence his style was that of tender persuasiveness rather than of declamation. He had remarkable spiritual insight and knowledge of the human heart, and was himself deeply moved by the truths which he proclaimed to ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... more technical in their subjects and style than Darwin's "Journal," the books here reprinted will never lose their value and interest for the originality of the observations they contain. Many parts of them are admirably adapted for giving an insight into problems regarding the structure and changes of the earth's surface, and in fact they form a charming introduction to physical geology and physiography in their application to special domains. The books themselves cannot be obtained for many ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... finally went up and the entertainment ended, perhaps the most surprised, almost dumbfounded, man in the room was Jones. He now had his first insight into the stupendous amount of work that had been done by his friend, and was completely overcome by the seriousness of the situation. He understood at last many things which had been lost on him before, as for instance the insinuating remarks of the Chancellor at their various ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... in every sense a votaress to the world's caprice, yet she was not devoid of insight. She could see the noble traits of character in Phillip Lawson; but she must bow to ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... keen insight upon the difficulties met with among the trade-unions and labor people, and successfully overcome, and explains in full what they call over there the work of the Dilution Commissioners, which is a wholly ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... something of fish life, of frogs, and of birds, and a chapter on human life, form the subjects of this book,—all told in the graceful manner of a womanly woman, whose love for nature has given her a keener insight into nature's secrets, and a greater ability to impart those secrets to others with the ease of face-to-face talks than is vouchsafed to many people."—The ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 23, June 9, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... in pay, to attend Ballard in his journey to France, and had thereby got a hint of the designs entertained by the fugitives. Polly, another of his spies, had found means to insinuate himself among the conspirators in England; and, though not entirely trusted, had obtained some insight into their dangerous secrets. But the bottom of the conspiracy was never fully known, till Gifford, a seminary priest, came over and made a tender of his services to Walsingham. By his means, the discovery became of the utmost importance, and involved the fate ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... be much the same thing as if your sex weren't gifted with such extraordinary insight," ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... was a great admirer of the works of Charles Kingsley, which, he said, in speaking of Two Years Ago, showed "profound knowledge of human nature, and insight into the relations between man, his actions, his destiny, and God." The Queen was also one of his admirers, and in 1859 she appointed him one of her chaplains. Later on he delivered a series of lectures on history to ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... cases the Seedlings afford us an interesting insight into the former condition of the plant. Thus the leaves of the Furze are reduced to thorns; but those of the Seedling are herbaceous and trifoliate like those of the Herb Genet and other allied species, subsequent ones gradually ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock |
