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Sagacious

adjective
1.
Acutely insightful and wise.  Synonyms: perspicacious, sapient.  "Observant and thoughtful, he was given to asking sagacious questions" , "A source of valuable insights and sapient advice to educators"
2.
Skillful in statecraft or management.



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"Sagacious" Quotes from Famous Books



... the great and sagacious statesman, has always insisted that whatever the result, the Christians in Turkey should be protected by Christian Europe; and that the British policy should be a straightforward and resolute dealing ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... burgomasters, were so blind to the necessities and interests of a new and sparsely populated country, as to forbid bundling within their borders? Indeed, it would be but a sorry compliment to the wisdom of that sagacious and far-sighted body of merchants comprised in the High and Mighty West India Company, to believe that they were unwilling to introduce under their benign auspices, a custom so intimately connected with their own national social habits, and so promising to the prospective interests and enlargement ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles

... fact remains that this pretended indignation gained its end. Above all else, Gustavus knew the character of his people. They were particularly prone to sentiment. A few sham tears or an exuberant display of wrath had more effect upon them than the most sagacious argument that the monarch could employ. His policy, therefore, was to stir their feelings, and then withdraw to watch their feelings effervesce. It is not too much to say that no monarch has ever in so short a time effected greater change in sentiment than Gustavus effected among ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson

... the haunts of men, Like him renouncing vanity, His friendship I acquired just then; His character attracted me. An innate love of meditation, Original imagination, And cool sagacious mind he had: I was incensed and he was sad. Both were of passion satiate And both of dull existence tired, Extinct the flame which once had fired; Both were expectant of the hate With which blind Fortune oft betrays The very morning of ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... very quiet. Bruno, the great dog, comes forward and studies him with sagacious, penetrating eyes. He pats ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... which was defeated in an engagement near Brescia, and pursued by the Gallic legions as far as the gates of Verona. The necessity, the importance, and the difficulties of the siege of Verona, immediately presented themselves to the sagacious mind of Constantine. [57] The city was accessible only by a narrow peninsula towards the west, as the other three sides were surrounded by the Adige, a rapid river, which covered the province of Venetia, from whence the besieged derived ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... for some reason or other, they neglected their mission at a crisis of supreme importance, we must recall that few of us believed that a great war would occur until we actually heard the declaration. No indictment of the clergy is valid which presupposes that they are more sagacious or far-seeing than the rest of us. Yet, however much we may have doubted the actual occurrence of war, we have known for years, and have quite complacently commented upon, the danger that half of Europe would sooner ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe

... same image from glory to glory." And thus it happens that men of the lowest class and the humblest education may know fully the ways and works of God; fully, that is, as man can know them; far better and more truly than the most sagacious man of this world, to whom the Gospel is hid. Religion has a store of wonderful secrets which no one can communicate to another, and which are most pleasant and delightful to know. "Call on Me," says ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... things which she thinks exceedingly flattering, but which cause a sagacious husband to ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac

... from the time he was in petticoats, or could talk!—"As I know there is a trust, though one of no great moment; I presume Lucy has some contingent interest, subject, most probably, to her marrying with her brother's approbation, or some such provision. The old lady was sagacious, and no doubt ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... take leave of the actual and possible. Fielding disavows all claim to this faculty; he writes histories, not romances. But, in his sense, poetic invention means, not creation, but 'discovery;' that is, 'a quick, sagacious penetration into the true essence of all objects of our contemplation.' Perhaps we may say that it is chiefly a question of method whether a writer should portray men or angels—the beings, that is, of everyday life—or beings placed under a totally different set of circumstances. The more vital ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... were entertained for the safety of Walsingham himself, who had not dared to transmit any account of the event except one by a servant of his own, whose passage had been by some accident delayed. Even this minister, cautious and crafty and sagacious as he was, assisted by all the spies whom he constantly kept in pay, had been unable to penetrate any part of the bloody secret;—he was completely taken by surprise. But of his personal safety the perfidious young king and his detestable mother were, for their ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... thought of any present formulation of a future. I would rest, recover poise, and win back that optimism that belongs with health and youth. This was wisdom; I was jaded beyond belief; and fatigue means dejection, and dejection spells pessimism, and pessimism is never sagacious nor excellent in any of ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various

... ferocity by the Shawnees, the Wyandots, and the Miamis whom the backwoodsmen met in a thousand fights, a century or a century and a half ago. The Ohio Indians were unspeakably vicious, treacherous, and filthy, but they were as brave as they were vile, and they were as sagacious as they were false. They produced men whom we must call orators, statesmen, and generals, even when tested by the high standards of civilization. They excelled us in the art of war as it was adapted to the woods, ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... the Flying Fish. What remains to be told may be said in a very few words. Will the sagacious reader be very much surprised to learn that Sir Reginald Elphinstone suddenly discovered, in the aunt who had kindly taken Olivia D'Arcy under her protection, an old lady whose good graces were worth the most assiduous cultivation? ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... burgeon into blossom than the flowers of spring. Allan Dunlop's fame as a politician had grown concurrently with the growth of his love. In the Legislature he had won for himself a prominent position, and was known as a sagacious counsellor, a persuasive speaker, a ready and effective debater, and a good steady worker on Committees. No name carried more weight in Parliament than his, and his influence in the country was as marked ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... the little mouse, how sagacious an animal it is which never entrusts his life to one hole only.—PLAUTUS: Truculentus, act ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... ulterior purposes. Disdaining the advice of Mrs. Peachum to her daughter Polly, to be "somewhat nice" in her deviations from virtue, they have advanced bravely and flagrantly to their nefarious object. They have been reckless, defiant, aggressive; but, unfortunately for them, they have not been sagacious. The thin disguise of principle under which they masked their designs at the outset—as it were a bit of oiled paper—was soon torn away; the plot betrayed its inherent wickedness from step to step; the instruments selected ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... mind, his more sagacious insight, his stronger judgment had unravelled the dangerous errors in which Fenelon had allowed himself to be entangled. The Archbishop of Cambrai, however, had grown in the estimation of good men on account of his moderation, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... small circle of sounding trifles, in which the dwellers of a court are condemned to live, and which he brightened by his abilities and graced by his accomplishments, the sagacious and far-sighted mind of Lord—comprehended the vast field without, usually invisible to those of his habits and profession. Men who the best know the little nucleus which is called the world, are often the most ignorant ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... particularly of the export trade. "Trade follows the Flag." And this larger trade and enhanced profit is presumed to inure to the joint benefit of the citizens. Such is the profession of faith of the sagacious statesmen and such is also the unreflecting ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... points our American experience would somewhat modify the rules commonly accepted in Paris. The nurse from the French provinces is evidently a different being from our Milesian milky mothers. So, too, the rules given by our own venerable and sagacious observer, Dr. James Jackson, as to the period of separating the infant from its mother or nurse, should be borne in mind, as laid down in his admirable "Letters to a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... after Benjamin worked in Palmer's printing-office, he visited England in the service of his country, widely known as a sagacious statesman and profound philosopher. He took occasion to visit the old office where he once laboured with the beer-drinkers, and, stepping up to the press on which he worked month after month, he said: "Come, my friends, we will drink together. It is now forty years since I worked, like you, ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer

... custom"—the good custom of Gibbon's Latinity grown fatally popular—could at any time hold up her head amongst her reviewers; for her there was no sensitive interior solitude in that society. She who cowered was the Charlotte who made Rochester recall "the simple yet sagacious grace" of Jane's first smile; she who wrote: "I looked at my love; it shivered in my heart like a suffering child in a cold cradle"; who wrote: "To see what a heavy lid day slowly lifted, what a wan glance she flung upon the hills, you ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell

... is as incontestable as your very charming amiability. With a sagacious eye you observed my predilection for the silent "compatriot," apparently rather sombre, but of excellent composition at bottom. [A box of caviare, which Madame Rubinstein had sent to Liszt.] Doubtless the advantages which appertain to it in its own right were peculiarly ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... bottle full, And, being thirsty, took a vigorous pull, Put back the "Elixir" where 't was always found, And had old Dobbin saddled and brought round. —You know those old-time rhubarb-colored nags That carried Doctors and their saddle-bags; Sagacious beasts! they stopped at every place Where blinds were shut—knew every patient's case— Looked up and thought—The baby's in a fit— That won't last long—he'll soon be through with it; But shook their heads before the knockered door Where some old lady told the story o'er Whose ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the intolerant spirit of the original body. It is one of the commonplace sneers of the unreflecting to say that religious toleration has always been the dogma of the weaker party. The saying, if it were true, which it is not, yet would not be especially sagacious. Toleration, like other things, has been most sought by those whose need of it was greatest. But they have not always recognized its value. It was no small step in the progress of the human mind that was taken when men came ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... viewed by sagacious and practical minds in Britain, is clear from the following sentences, taken from the ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... ministers was a man called Shims[FN56] who was then[FN57] two and twenty years old, a statesman of pleasant presence and noble nature, sweet of speech and ready in reply; shrewd in all manner of business, skilful withal and sagacious for all his tender age, a man of good counsel and fine manners versed in all arts and sciences and accomplishments; and the King loved him with exceeding love and cherished him by reason of his proficiency in eloquence and rhetoric and the art of government and for that which Allah had ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... ferocious as Wully was to the world, he was always gentle with Dorley's sheep. Many were the tales of rescues told of him. Many a poor lamb that had fallen into a pond or hole would have perished but for his timely and sagacious aid, many a far-weltered ewe did he turn right side up; while his keen eye discerned and his fierce courage baffled every eagle that had appeared on the moor ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton

... was said by a very sagacious person, whose authority I am sure my friend of many years will not impugn, seeing that he was named Augustus Tomlinson, the kind friend and philosopher of Paul Clifford—it was said by that remarkable man, "Life is short, and why should speeches be ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... despised, they raised a cloud of derision, and presently noticing that henceforth he invariably clad himself in lower garments of a dark blue material (to a set purpose that will be as crystal to the sagacious), they greeted his appearance with cries of: "Behold the sombre one! Thou dark leg!" so that this reproach continues to be hurled even to this day at those in a like case, though few ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... there were numbers of sagacious old men—men versed in Latin, who from their youth up had practised at the bar; there were numbers of richer men: but of all the family the poor and simple Maciek was the most highly honoured, not only as a swordsman made famous by his switch, but as a man of wise and ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... appearance, an affectionate husband, a hospitable host; in short, the very model of a landed proprietor. His means were not, indeed, very large, but he might have sold his property over and over again for a far higher sum than the sagacious Itzig had surmised, had he felt any inclination to do so. Two healthy, intelligent children completed his domestic happiness; the boy was about to enter the military career, which had been that of all his ancestors; the girl was to remain yet a while under her mother's wing. Like ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... crust of our globe, and the division of its surface into land and water, was a fertile theme for conjecture; and many learned and otherwise sagacious writers, assigned imaginary causes for the results which they ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey

... the great bay which records his fame, showed us of the present day the high-road to the west; and did more; for he saw more of that coast than we modern seamen have yet been able to accomplish. Lastly, in that olden time, we have the sagacious and quaint Nor-West Fox, carrying our flag to the head of Hudson's Bay; whilst James's fearful sufferings in the southern extreme of the same locality, completed, for a while, the labours of British seamen in ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn

... dear friend? nay, it is," ticked my watch, persistently. "It is the inevitable penalty of national deterioration which any people must pay that in its haste to be rich forgets to secure its actual independence. Thus Richard Cobden, the most sagacious of English statesmen, is the most unflinching apostle of peace, because he knows that England has put it out of her power to go to war. I saw you reading his late argument against a blockade. Did you reflect that it was really an argument against war? 'How absurd,' he cries, 'that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... exchanged a smile with her and gave her a glance full of gentle meaning. However uncertain the future might seem, however ephemeral their union, the promises of their sudden love were only the more endearing to them. Rapid as the glance was, it did not escape the sagacious eye of Madame du Gua, who instantly understood it; her brow clouded, and she was unable to wholly conceal her jealous anger. Francine was observing her; she saw the eyes glitter, the cheeks flush; she thought she perceived a diabolical spirit in the face, stirred by some sudden and terrible revulsion. ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... Panther, times are mended well, Since late among the Philistines[108] you fell. The toils were pitch'd, a spacious tract of ground With expert huntsmen was encompass'd round; The enclosure narrow'd; the sagacious power 5 Of hounds and death drew nearer every hour. 'Tis true, the younger Lion[109] 'scaped the snare, But all your priestly Calves[110] lay struggling there, As sacrifices on their altar laid; While you, their careful mother, wisely fled, 10 Not trusting destiny to save your head; For, whate'er ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... its support; and if our leaders lay it down on a large scale, and our laymen contribute on a small one, alas for its solvency! Such were our views, and such our inferences, on this occasion; and to Thomas Chalmers, at once our wisest and our humblest man—patient to hear, and sagacious to ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... the man who is the most sagacious and energetic will never lose a chance to take advantage of opportunities, and there is no doubt that what many complain of as being ill luck, is simply the result of their failure to grasp the situation that a shrewder ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston

... had overflowed the usual footpath leading to that conical eminence which forms the summit of the mountain and the exterior of the crater, we were obliged to alight from our sagacious steeds; and, trusting to our feet, walked over the ashes for about a quarter of a mile. The path, or the ground rather, for there was no path, was now dangerous to the inexperienced foot; and Salvador gallantly took me under his peculiar care. He led me on before the rest, and I followed with ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... were moved to admiration at the plucky conduct of the sagacious monkey, and their gratitude knew no bounds when the faithful monkey brought the child ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki

... to thy cradle, Resourceful, sagacious, serene, 10 And said, "The girl must have knowledge, To lend her freedom ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman

... sagacious animals stopped, and refused to go any farther. Hemstead waited a few moments, in hope that the gust or gale would expend itself, and, in the mean time, instinctively put his arm around Lottie, to keep her from being blown off ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... down, put into Calais for some slight necessary repairs, and was arriving at its destination nearly four hours late. Her mercurial spirits rose again. A minute ago she was regarding herself as no better than a ninny engaged in a wild-goose chase. Now she felt that after all she had been very sagacious and cunning. She was morally sure that she would find the Zerlinski woman on this second steamer, and she took all the credit to herself in advance. Such ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... This sagacious warning caused a general movement in the party, for the intelligence of a hot press was among the rumors of the times. The husbandmen collected their implements of labor, and retired homewards; though many a curious eye was bent on the movements ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... made to open; moreover that some one beside him had cognizance the spell and had carried off the body, and also much of gold; wherefore they needs must make diligent research and find out who the man ever might be. They then took counsel and determined that one amongst them, who should be sagacious and deft of wit, must don the dress of some merchant from foreign parts; then, repairing to the city he must go about from quarter to quarter and from street to street, and learn if any townsman had lately died and if so where he wont to dwell, that with this clue they might be enabled ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... young, and teach them. As for the older generation, I fear it is too late to do much with it. There are in and around Canton about five thousand Chinese Catholics, mostly recruited, I understand, from among the young, taken by these sagacious workers into their schools and orphanages and other institutions, and educated as ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... discover one where, seeing, he failed to proclaim it, or, proclaiming, failed to give it force and power. He lived his life much as he walked the streets of Boston,—not quite gracefully, nor yet statelily, but with quick, strong, solid step, with sagacious eyes wide open, and thrusting his broad shoulders a little forward, as if butting away the throng of evil deeds around him, and scattering whole atmospheres of unwholesome cloud. Wherever he went, there went a glance of sleepless vigilance, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... our cattle. If an ox sees a hole, he carefully avoids it; and old elephants have been known to precede the herd and whisk off the coverings of the pitfalls on each side all the way down to the water. We have known instances in which the old among these sagacious animals have actually lifted the young ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... of Independence! If he had lived now he would have been a sharp competitor with a countryman of mine, of whom I am told in Chauny that he came here only a few years ago, inspected the chemical works, looked into the composition of certain heaps of rubbish thrown aside even by the sagacious managers of these works, and setting up near one of the canals a genuine wooden American shed, so applied to what he found in this rubbish certain processes for the vulcanisation of indiarubber as to produce at very low cost certain articles for which a great and increasing demand exists, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... a sagacious breed! If the United Provinces had but ground to stand on, they would, like the philosopher who boasted of his lever, move the world! The sly rogues think that the Amsterdammers have naturally an easy seat, and they wish to persuade ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... time is worth remembering, as showing that Rousseau was not wholly blind to social circumstances, and as illustrating, too, how it was that his way of dealing with them was so much more real and passionate, though so much less sagacious in some of its aspects, than the way of the other revolutionists of the century. One day, when he had lost himself in wandering in search of some site which he expected to find beautiful, he entered the house of a peasant, half dead with hunger and thirst. ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... the imponderable. Therefore, an object just as large but lighter Declares infallibly its more of void; Even as the heavier more of matter shows, And how much less of vacant room inside. That which we're seeking with sagacious quest Exists, infallibly, commixed with things— ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... Conservative, member of Peel's administration in 1834-35, sent special ambassador to the United States in 1842; concluded the boundary treaty of Washington, known as the Ashburton Treaty; in his retirement "a really good, solid, most cheery, sagacious, simple-hearted ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... great masters of English geology, who preceded Lyell, in which the works of Hutton and his followers are scarcely ever mentioned. This is true even of the "Researches in Theoretical Geology" and the other works of the sagacious De la Beche. (Of the strength and persistence of the prejudice felt against Lyell's views by his contemporaries, I had a striking illustration some little time after Lyell's death. One of the old geologists who ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... of the narrow question of the political and military situation in Kentucky, and the extent of force necessary to redeem the State from rebel thraldom, forecasting in his sagacious intellect the grand and daring operations which, three years afterward, he realized in a campaign, taken in its entirety, without a parallel in modern times, General Sherman expressed the opinion that, to carry the war to the Gulf of Mexico, and destroy all armed opposition to the Goverment, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... who was then Governor of Western Australia, was Mr. John Hutt, a man of enlightened mind, firm, sagacious, and benevolent. From the first, he adopted an admirable policy with ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... Baron Sonnino, transcending his country's mortifications, exerted himself tactfully and not unsuccessfully to lubricate the mechanism of the alliance, to ease the dangerous friction and to restore the tone. And he seems to have accomplished in these respects everything which a sagacious statesman could do. But to arrest the operation of psychological laws is beyond the power of any individual. In order to appreciate the Italian point of view, it is nowise necessary to approve the exaggerated claims put forward by her press in the spring of 1919. It is enough to admit that in the ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... But as yet Turpin and Bradshaw were not. The great road from York to London however lay always under an evil reputation. It was by this line that Jeannie Deans walked to London, and verified the remark of her sagacious host, the Boniface of Beverley, that the road would be clear of thieves when Groby Pool was thatched with pancakes—and not till then. The example of Robin Hood was, for centuries after his death, zealously followed by the more adventurous spirits of Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, and Yorkshire; ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne

... [190] This sagacious, though crude suggestion of the origin of birds and mammals from the reptiles is now, after the lapse of nearly a century, being confirmed by modern ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... horror of man, and a child can put a hundred of them to flight by passing at a quarter of a mile to windward; and when thus disturbed, they go a long way before they halt. It is surprising how soon these sagacious animals are aware of the presence of a hunter in their domains. When one troop has been attacked, all the other elephants frequenting the district are aware of the fact within two or three days, when they all forsake it, and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... opposition had been countered by a wide and sagacious philanthropy. I think Mr. Smith first got the idea of that on the night when the steam merry-go-round came to Mariposa. Just below the hostelry, on an empty lot, it whirled and whistled, steaming forth ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock

... practise holiness and virtue. Their own vices, and the temptations of the Evil One, have made them such as they now are. Oh, take the lesson home to thine own heart of adamant! Heaven made thee wiser than thy fellows, gave thee eyes to look into the secrets of nature, a sagacious heart, and a skilful hand; but thy pride has poisoned all these fair gifts, and made an ungodly atheist of one who might ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... too, for those who like that sort of thing—the head of his table, his left hand when he drove in the Park, etc. To this he proposed to promote Mrs. Woffington. She was handsome and witty, and he liked her. But that was not what caused him to pursue her; slow, sagacious, inevitable as a beagle. ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade

... autumn woods. I see the squirrel leap from branch to branch. I hear the woodpecker tapping the trunk with sagacious beak, watching when the sound shall indicate that a worm has hidden himself below the bark. All else is calm and still. I look up and see the white clouds drifting through the deep ocean of blue above. Then there ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... registrar, had a dog named Bob, and a sagacious dog he was; but he was a pusillanimous dog, in a word, an arrant coward, and above all things he dreaded the fire of a gun. His master having taken him once to the enclosed part of Hyde Park next to Kensington Gardens, when the guards were ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... decided not to make any change in his father's appointments to the great offices of state, but to let all the departments of public affairs go on in the same hands as before. How sagacious a line of conduct was this! Most ardent and enthusiastic young men, in the circumstances in which he was placed, would have been elated and vain at their elevation, and would have replaced the old and well-tried ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... The more sagacious opponents of the administration believed true policy as well as true honesty to demand rigid and pronounced adherence to the letter of the French treaty. They were convinced from the outset that France would vanquish her enemies, and that close ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... hair, which was less white than discolored, and worn flattened to the head, was a fine, sagacious forehead, the yellow tones of which harmonized well with the scanty tufts of thin hair. His face, with the features set close together, bore some likeness to that of a fox, all the more because his nose was short and pointed. In speaking, he spluttered at the mouth, ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... village experience. A great deal of native sense; no bookish cultivation, no refinement; honest at heart, and thoroughly so, and yet, in some sort, sly,—at least, endowed with a sort of tact and wisdom that are akin to craft.... But on the whole, I liked this sallow, queer, sagacious visage, with the homely human sympathies that warmed it; and, for my small share in the matter, would as lief have Uncle Abe for a ruler as any man whom it would have been practicable to put in his place." [Footnote: "Yesterdays ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... it. Nevertheless, next morning, upon awakening, I had my doubts—I had somehow slept off the fumes of vanity. One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning. My procedure seemed as sagacious as ever—but only in theory. How it would prove in practice—there was the rub. It was truly a beautiful thought to have assumed Bartleby's departure; but, after all, that assumption was simply my own, and none of Bartleby's. The great point ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... . . he observed only in so far as suited with his own particular interest, but still he had the address to make them bear the blame, while he carried the profits and honour. To conclude, he was brave, loyal, and wonderfully sagacious and long-sighted; and was possessed of a great many shineing qualities, blended with a few vices, which, like patches on a beautifull face, seemed to give the greater eclat ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... not carefully read the Narrative of Mr. Muller and the subsequent Reports issued year by year, have any idea of the large amount of wisdom which there finds expression. We give here a few examples of the sagacious and spiritual counsels and utterances with which these ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... while ago. For although it be necessary for an historian to write the truth, yet is such a one not bound severely to animadvert on the wickedness of certain men; not out of any favor to them, but out of an author's own moderation. How then comes it to pass, O Justus! thou most sagacious of writers, [that I may address myself to him as if he were here present,] for so thou boastest of thyself, that I and the Galileans have been the authors of that sedition which thy country engaged in, both against the Romans and ...
— The Life of Flavius Josephus • Flavius Josephus

... Our sagacious author believes that the air and even the purest aether have their denizens as well as the water and the earth. But supposing that there were places without animals, these places might have uses necessary for other places which are inhabited. So for example the mountains, which render the surface ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... slate-pencil were our educational implements: to which Joe always added a pipe of tobacco. I never knew Joe to remember anything from one Sunday to another, or to acquire, under my tuition, any piece of information whatever. Yet he would smoke his pipe at the Battery with a far more sagacious air than anywhere else,—even with a learned air,—as if he considered himself to be advancing immensely. Dear fellow, I ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... family is the one that came most in contact and conflict with our forefathers. The Indians who figure most frequently on the bloody pages of our early story were Algonquins. This tribe has produced intrepid warriors and sagacious leaders. ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson

... long time. Well educated, of good address, and with a quiet, gentlemanly air about him that induced a favorable opinion at a glance. Frequently, prior to this, occasions had presented themselves for testing his abilities, and I had always found him equal to any emergency. Sagacious and skillful as I knew him to be, I felt that I could implicitly rely upon him to glean all the information that was required in order to enable me to devise an intelligent plan of detection, and which would, as I ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... a mile from the pit, the sagacious elephants turned, and, seeing an army of men and dogs advancing towards them, broke through the fence and were free. Several zebras—much to the delight of the hunters—followed through the breach they had made. The camelopards were too ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid

... impression, throughout the meal, not been wholly deprived of Miss Theale's participation. Mrs. Lowder had made dear Milly the topic, and it proved, on the spot, a topic as familiar to the enthusiastic younger as to the sagacious older man. Any knowledge they might lack Mrs. Lowder's niece was moreover alert to supply, while Densher himself was freely appealed to as the most privileged, after all, of the group. Wasn't it he who had in a manner ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... great value, in the treasuries and art collections of that time, and that they gave rise to many a romantic story in the folk-lore both of the West and East. Even in this century Hedenstroem, the otherwise sagacious traveller on the Siberian Polar Sea, believed that the fossil rhinoceros' horns were actual, "grip-claws." For he mentions in his oft-quoted work, that he had seen such a claw 20 verschoks (0.9 metre) in length, and when he visited St. Petersburg ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... spiced with perils, surprises, and suspenses; and that anything else is the sign of a poor and tepid imagination. And not only people who seem cultivated, but are not so, suppose this, but there are sensible persons, and even sagacious and intelligent critics, who sometimes allow themselves to be hoodwinked by the dramatic mystery and the surprising and fantastic scenes of a novel. They own it is all false; but they admire the imagination, what they call the 'power' of the author. Very ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... and quartz. Cultivation partial, and very bad; and population extremely scanty. We passed close to a village, in which the children were all at play; while upon the bushes over their heads were suspended an immense number of the beautiful nests of the sagacious 'baya' bird, or Indian yellow- hammer,[2] all within reach of a grown-up boy, and one so near the road that a grown-up man might actually look into it as he passed along, and could hardly help shaking it. It cannot fail to strike a European as singular to see so many birds' nests, situated ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... illustration of the high training and faithful disposition of the Kamschatkan dogs; but it has its origin in a fur different motive than that of mere fidelity. Their return to the snug shelter of the balagan is simply an instinct of self-preservation: for the sagacious animals well know, that in winter the lakes and streams will be completely frozen over, and were they to remain abroad, they would absolutely perish either from hunger or cold. Even the wretched winter ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... horizon, a larger intellect, a greater moral courage, than most of his contemporaries. It is probably true that, like a mountain, he appeared best at a distance, but having confidence in his ability and integrity, people easily overlooked his rough, unpopular manners. The shrewd, sagacious Yankee farmers who were filling up the great western counties of Ontario and Genesee believed in him. The Bucktails did not know, until the eastern and western districts responded with five thousand eight hundred and four majority for ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... national in his convictions; foreign service and patriotic instincts had made him thoroughly American in his sympathies and sentiments; no one of our diplomatic agents sent home such comprehensive and sagacious despatches, having in view 'the honor and welfare of the whole country;' and no one who knew Henry Wheaton doubts that, were he living at this hour, all his influence, hopes, and faith would be identified with the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... inland sea, 20 Raised by his hand who smote thee; as if thus His mighty mind were swayed to recompense The evil of his march through cities stormed, And regions wet with blood! and still had flowed The tide of commerce through the destined track, Traced by his mind sagacious, who surveyed The world he conquered with a sage's eye, As with a soldier's spirit; but a scene More awful opens: ancient world, adieu! Adieu, cloud-piercing pillars, erst its bounds; 30 And thou, whose aged head once seemed to prop ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... represent madness or wrath, to know that the eye never expresses the sentiment experienced, but simply indicates the object of this sentiment! Cover the lower part of your face with your hand, and impart to your look all the energy of which it is susceptible, still it will be impossible for the most sagacious observer to discover whether your look expresses anger or attention. On the other hand, uncover the lower part of the face, and if the nostrils are dilated, if the contracted lips are drawn up, there is no doubt that anger is written on your countenance. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... man who dealt in compliments, even in a modified form; he was sagacious, abrupt, straightforward, and at times spoke his mind rather sharply. He had been impressed by Madeleine's unremitting care of his patient, and, in declaring that the count's convalescence was, in a large degree, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... as though both Bridgeford and the Banks were doomed, for Bridgeford was heart and soul with the Banks. Hanky, it appeared, though under thirty, and not yet a Professor, grasped the situation, and saw that Bridgeford must either move with the times, or go. He consulted some of the most sagacious Heads of Houses and Professors, with the result that a committee of enquiry was appointed, which in due course reported that the evidence for the Sunchild's having been the only child of the sun was conclusive. It was about this time—that ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... participated. Thus was completed his 'Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva Espana.' For some reason this valuable manuscript lay neglected in a private library for about sixty years. Finally it fell into the hands of Father Alonso Remor, a sagacious priest, who published ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... round the tremendous mountain called Cruachan Ben, which rushes down in all its majesty of rocks and wilderness on the lake, leaving only a pass, in which, notwithstanding its extreme strength, the warlike clan of MacDougal of Lorn were almost destroyed by the sagacious Robert Bruce. That King, the Wellington of his day, had accomplished, by a forced march, the unexpected manoeuvre of forcing a body of troops round the other side of the mountain, and thus placed them in the flank ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... says Mr. G.L. Craik, by far the most acute and sagacious of all the commentators on Spenser, "to a very remarkable passage. Having thus disposed of Turpin, the poet suddenly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... noses? They are all physical subjects, and fall within the province of a medical writer, which it is to be supposed the author of the proposals is, otherwise he cannot be equal to the task he has undertaken. But our admirable and sagacious inspector thus addresses the public, 'Tis palpable, 'tis evident, says he, that this man means to tell you, the Saviour of the world did not die upon the cross; that he did not rise from the dead; that he did ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous

... danger of public resentment over such a course has been the chief cause of the sagacious strategy which has characterized the policy of the Government; or perhaps one should rather say, the Anti-Saloon League, for it is the League, and not the Government, that is the predominant partner in this matter. For the present, the League has been ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin

... warmth as much as ourselves, as they lay around, asleep or indulging in the quaint antics which often made me wonder whether they were not in some way distantly allied to the human race. For the Siberian sled-dog is unquestionably the most sagacious animal in existence, and many a time have his comical vagaries lightened my hours of despondency. In appearance the Siberian differs essentially from the Eskimo dog, and is a stronger though smaller animal, ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... fifteen poor Tradesmen from three years to three years, changing the Parties every third Year, at the Rate of fifty Shillings per Annum, the Increase to be distributed to the Almes-poor there."—The Donation has all the Air of a rich and sagacious Usurer. ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald

... martyrdom of the renowned Archbishop of Canterbury, while the wrath of Rome was yet hanging poised in the air, ready to be hurled against him, he would not have left the work he undertook but half begun. The nett result of his expedition, of his great fleet, mighty army, and sagacious counsels, was the infusion of a vast number of new adventurers (most of them of higher rank and better fortunes than their precursors), into the same old field. Except the garrisons admitted into Limerick and Cork, and the displacing of Strongbow's commandants by his ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... to many in my admiration of the courage and calmness of Melville; but I could no more think of placing him, scholarly and bold, yet calm, as he generally was, nor the Book attributed to him, more logical and unimpassionately didactic though it be, before the eager, impetuous, yet sagacious Knox, with his wealth of rude eloquence and thrilling tenderness, and his Book in which these qualities of head and heart are so clearly mirrored, than I would think of placing Calvin, highly as I honour him, before Luther, or his Catechism ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... has sometimes destroyed more than half of them before they reach the age of five; so that, enormously high as the Russian birth-rate is, the death-rate has sometimes exceeded it.[5] Nor is it found, as some would-be sagacious persons confidently assert, that the high birth-rate is justified by the better quality of the survivors. On the contrary, there is a very large proportion of chronic and incurable diseases among the survivors; ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... an attempt to bribe the old beau into permitting him a glance at the letters, he abandoned the thought with sagacious alacrity. He must think of something safer. A letter to Van Buren and one to Glen was more than he had counted on discovering. It ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... endowment of King's College, Cambridge, and Eton. Waynfleete appears to have been a man of great piety and learning, and, as Milman observes, his actions, in advancing non-monastic institutions, reveal a sagacious fore-knowledge of the coming changes in the temporal power of the church, and were planned to maintain its supremacy in ways better adapted to the new spirit which soon after his death caused the downfall of the religious houses. The effigy of this bishop, in his chantry in ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant

... have been collected from all quarters,—examined, sifted, winnowed. Theories have been raised upon these facts under every angle of aspect; and yet, after all, we profess ourselves to be dissatisfied. Amongst much that is sagacious, we feel and we resent with disgust a taint of falsehood diffused over these recent speculations from vulgar and even counterfeit incredulity; the one gross vice of German philosophy, not less determinate or less misleading than ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... presence of an intruder, but the sagacious animal, when he had carefully snuffed out a recognition, fawned and whined upon him, running round and round towards the house, with gambols frolicsome and extravagant enough to have excited the smiles of any ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... fantastic and conceited in most of the threnodies; but, as is natural, that on his old friend, Sir Henry Rainsford, is least artificial and fullest of true feeling. The epistle to Henery Reynolds. Of Poets and Poesie shows Drayton as a sane and sagacious critic, ready to see the good, but keen to discern the weakness also; perhaps the clearest evidence of his critical skill is the way in which nearly all of his judgements on his contemporaries coincide with the ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton

... at once acknowledged; and though twenty-six years have passed since it appeared, it has been superseded by no later work. The book has a double character, which has given to it an equal authority on both sides of the Atlantic. For while it is a profound and sagacious analysis of the spirit and methods of the American social and political system, it is intended at the same time—more, however, by implied than open comparison—to exhibit the relations of the principles established here to the development ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... Sagacious people will be inclined to conclude that so much anger must be due to being touched on the raw, and that Mr. Lamont, if he had had nothing to conceal, would not have spoken of a distinguished writer and one of China's best friends as "this ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell

... Boone, captain U.S.A., anything else than he is—his father's pride and his sister's joy. No, dear, my delight is to see you gay and open and frank and manly, self-dependent, grateful for the consideration shown you, and recognizant of the constant admonition of your sagacious sister." ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... outrages such as the above were looked upon with complacency, and the perpetrators treated as respected and worthy citizens, and that he was realizing the great truth, that, however man might endeavor to guide this war to the advantage of a favorite idea or a sagacious policy, the Almighty was directing it surely and steadily for the purification of our country from this greatest ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... hall, I found old Peter Barnett awaiting me. As I appeared, his stiff features lighted up with a most sagacious grin of intelligence, and ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... excellent thing if all his sheep were imbued with the stay-at-home tendencies enforced by Nature upon the newly-arrived ram; and they advised Wright to kill the old patriarch of his fold, and install the Ancon ram in his place. The result justified their sagacious anticipations, and coincided very nearly with what occurred to the progeny of Gratio Kelleia. The young lambs were almost always either pure Ancons, or pure ordinary sheep.[62] But when sufficient Ancon sheep were obtained to interbreed with ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... be at a loss for plans or tasks. Once settled at Bauerbach, he immediately resumed his poetical employments; and forgot, in the regions of fancy, the vague uncertainties of his real condition, or saw prospects of amending it in a life of literature. By many safe and sagacious persons, the prudence of his late proceedings might be more than questioned; it was natural for many to forbode that one who left the port so rashly, and sailed with such precipitation, was likely to make shipwreck ere the voyage had extended far: but the lapse of a few ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... true, some wholly unforeseen and unforeseeable occurrence will scatter dangers that were very real and give a new complexion to events. The rise of some pre-eminently great or of some pre-eminently mischievous personage among the guiding influences of a nation will derange the most sagacious calculations, and the reckless gambler or the obtuse obstructionist may prove more right than the most cautious, the most skilful, ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... becomes worthless because it has its appropriate parry. The chances were that by heading off the rear ships, while the van stood on, the French fleet would be badly divided; and the move was none the less sagacious because the two fragments could have united sooner than they did, had they been well handled. With the alternative action suggested, of tacking after passing the enemy's rear, the pursuit became a ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He sailed as commissioner to France at the age of seventy-one, and gave all his money to his country on the eve of his departure, yet died wealthy for his time. Serene, even-tempered, philosophical, he was yet far-seeing, care-taking, sagacious, and intensely industrious. He acquired a knowledge of the Italian and Spanish languages, and was a proficient French speaker and writer. He possessed, in an extraordinary degree, the power of gaining the regard, even the affection, of his fellow-men. He was even a competent musician, mastering ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele

... counterpoise of the powers in which the supreme authority was vested, that, according to him, there had been no instance from the foundation of the city, of any popular commotions sufficient to disturb its tranquillity; nor, on the other hand, of any tyrant, who had been able to destroy its liberty. This sagacious philosopher foresaw the circumstance which would destroy the constitution of Carthage; for when there was a disagreement between the two branches of the legislature, the suffetes and the senate, the question in dispute was referred to the people, and their resolve ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... good fortune to overhear a dialogue between Gissing (our dog) and Mike, the dog who lives next door. Mike, or Crowgill Mike II, to give him his full entitles, is a very sagacious old person, in the fifteenth year of his disillusionment, and of excellent family. If our humble Gissing is to have a three-barrelled name, it can only be Haphazard Gissing I, for his ancestry is plainly miscellaneous and impromptu. He is, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... the "Christian Examiner," headed "Transcendentalism," and published in the January number for 1837. The acute and learned Professor meant to deal fairly with his subject. But if one has ever seen a sagacious pointer making the acquaintance of a box-tortoise, he will have an idea of the relations between the reviewer and the reviewed as they appear in this article. The professor turns the book over and over,—inspects ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... Here was an archbishop who might rack and burn for discipline's sake, and he did nothing.... And all these New Learning men with their powers of language, these dark bearded men with twinkling and sagacious eyes, he detested. He went clean shaved, lean and yellow-faced, with a hooked nose that seemed about to dig into his chin. It was he who said first: 'It was merry in England before this ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... do not love me will be swift to allege that in the preparation of these memoirs I have set down only such things as redound to my credit, and have suppressed the many experiences not so propitious which fall to the lot of the most sagacious while in power, I take this opportunity of refuting that calumny. For the truth stands so far the other way that my respect for the King's person has led me to omit many things creditable to me; and some, it may be, that place me in a higher light than any I have set down. And ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman

... intelligent, sagacious, straight-forward, methodical, and strictly honourable; and his cordial manner made him a universal favourite both among manufacturers and customers. He was much beloved by his clerks and assistants, many of whom grew gray in his service. ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... order looking toward the establishment of a national navy was given by Gen. Washington in the latter part of 1775. The sagacious general, knowing that the British forces in Boston were supplied with provisions and munitions of war by sea, conceived the idea of fitting out some swift-sailing cruisers to intercept the enemy's cruisers, and cut off their ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... of this intimation, Pickle went to his house, and appeared before him with a very cloudy aspect, which signified to whom it might concern, that his temper was at present too much galled to endure reproof; and therefore the sagacious peer forbore taking him to task for his behaviour during the audience he had obtained; but gave him to understand, that the minister, in consideration of his services, had sent him a bank-note of three hundred pounds, with a promise of the like sum ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... the memory, and the will, as well as of man in society. He speaks of the principles of government and of the fountains of law; of universal justice, of eternal spiritual truth. So that Playfair judiciously observes (and he was a scientist) "that it was not by sagacious anticipations of science, afterwards to be made in physics, that his writings have had so powerful an influence, as in his knowledge of the limits and resources of the human understanding. It would be difficult to find another writer, prior to Locke, whose works are enriched with so many just observations ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... am not even an Irish priest. Therefore politics do not interest me so keenly as they might another. But even to my slow mind the suitability of Eustis was apparent. Of an honored name, just, sure, kind, sagacious, a builder, a teacher, a pioneer, the plainer people all over the state leaned upon his judgment. A sane shrewd man of large affairs, other able men of affairs respected and admired him. The state, knowing what he stood for, what he had accomplished for her farmers, what he meant to her ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... Hind-land a king illustrious of worth, endowed with understanding and policy, and his name was Shah Bakht. He had a Minister, a godly man and a sagacious, right prudent in rede, conformable to him in governance and just in judgment; for which cause his enviers were many and many were the hypocrites who sought faults in him and set snares for him, so that ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... to the discussion, and then asked the parson if he had read Captain Morris's or George Stephens's or Anacreon Moore's bacchanalian songs; on the other replying in the negative, "Oh, then," said the general, with a sagacious nod, "if you want a drinking song, I can furnish you with the latest collection—I did not know you had a turn for those kind of things; and I can lend you the Encyclopaedia of Wit into the bargain. I never travel without them; they're ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... rooms," he said, "must be my study, for, you see, Mary, I'm going to write a book." Here he withdrew his arm from hers, lit his pipe, and they tramped on in a sagacious kind of comradeship, the most complete they had attained ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... eloquent harshness, manners of the same vivacious cordiality, are to be found in Hawaii and amongst Italian fisher-folk or whose people, in the midst of life, retain more charm. I recall faces, both of men and women, with a certain leonine stamp, trusty, sagacious, brave, beautiful in plainness: faces that take the heart captive. The tougher struggle of the race in these hard isles has written history there; energy enlivens the Hawaiian strength—or did so once, and the faces are still eloquent of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Richelieu wrote from Paris to inquire whether revolution was breaking out. The King of Prussia sent Hardenberg to Weimar to make investigations on the spot. Metternich, who saw conspiracy and revolution everywhere and in everything, congratulated himself that his less sagacious neighbours were at length awakening to their danger. The first result of the Wartburg scandal was that the Duke of Weimar had to curtail the liberties of his subjects. Its further effects became only too evident as ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... The acute and sagacious editor of T. Clarkson's vindication, has given his reasons for suspecting that this criticism, in the Edinburgh Review, must have proceeded from some party directly concerned in the publication of Wilberforce's life. We enter into no discussion of the circumstantial evidence ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... common antagonist, the most efficient support of his arms. Under these circumstances religious differences were impotent to prevent the union. Accordingly, in May, 1532, through his ambassador, the sagacious Du Bellay, Francis promised the discontented Elector of Saxony and his associates the contribution of a large sum to enable them to make a sturdy resistance. But the peace shortly concluded with Charles rendered the proffered aid for ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... saw any of her works which I admired throughout (even Consuelo, which is the best, or the best that I have read, appears to me to couple strange extravagance with wondrous excellence), yet she has a grasp of mind, which, if I cannot fully comprehend, I can very deeply respect; she is sagacious and profound;—Miss Austen ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... Pardon'd Rebels, Kinsmen to the Throne, Were raised in Pow'r and publick Office high: Strong Bands, if Bands ungrateful men coud tie. Of these the false Achitophel was first: A Name to all succeeding Ages curst. For close Designs, and crooked Counsels fit; Sagacious, Bold, and Turbulent of wit: Restless, unfixt in Principles and Place; In Pow'r unpleas'd, impatient of Disgrace. A fiery Soul, which working out its way, Fretted the Pigmy-Body to decay: And o'r inform'd the Tenement of Clay, A daring Pilot ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... remark'd it, and desired, Myself, to tell thee, but he, ever-wise, Compressing with both hands my lips, forbad. Come, follow me. My life shall be the pledge. If I deceive thee, kill me as thou wilt. To whom Penelope, discrete, replied. 90 Ah, dearest nurse, sagacious as thou art, Thou little know'st to scan the counsels wise Of the eternal Gods. But let us seek My son, however, that I may behold The suitors dead, and him by whom they died. So saying, she left her chamber, musing much In her descent, whether to interrogate Her Lord apart, or whether to imprint, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... That sagacious person John Wesley, is reported to have replied to some one who questioned the propriety of his adaptation of sacred words to extremely secular airs, that he did not see why the Devil should be left in possession of all the best tunes. And I do not see why science ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... Caroline did not quite appreciate the effect of her voice and face, and how between them they made otherwise ordinary words seem—well, encouraging. But these words were not quite ordinary; she had not, he feared, sufficiently pondered them. Indeed and indeed she needed an adviser—some sagacious, objective counselor like himself. There she was, standing before Briggs almost holding out her hand to him. Briggs of course ought to be thanked, for they were having a most delightful holiday in his house, but not thanked to excess and not by Lady Caroline alone. That ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... case of Shakspeare. His surpassing greatness was never acknowledged by the learned, until the nation had ascertained and settled it as a foregone and questionless conclusion. Even now, to the most sagacious mind of this time, the real ground and evidence of its own assurance of Shakspeare's supremacy, is the universal, deep, immovable conviction of it in the public feeling. There have been many acute essays upon his minor characteristics; but intellectual criticism ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... colorless, tasteless, and almost if not entirely odorless. It is claimed that it can, by proper manipulation, be made to resemble and perform the office of any and all oils, and be produced at a cheaper rate than the cheapest of the originals. Sagacious people shipped it to Italy, doctored it, labeled it, and brought it back as olive oil. This trade grew to be so formidable that Italy was obliged to put a prohibitory impost upon it to keep it from working serious injury to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... sagacious English saw that the policy of the French had undergone a revolution; that the policy of paltering and dawdling was ended; that in place of taking blows, blows were ready to be struck now; therefore they made ready for the new state of things by transferring heavy reinforcements to the bastilles ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... all. She had begun to take charge of Musa, and she intended to carry the affair through. He had the ability to succeed, and he should succeed. It would be ridiculous for him not to succeed. From certain hints, and from a deeply sagacious instinct, she had divined that money and management were the only ingredients lacking to Musa's triumph. She could supply both these elements; and she would. And her reward would be the pride of ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... the regulars' defense, found it impossible to make any decisive gains. Vigor and rocklike endurance marked the clashes, and both regulars and scrubs had to punt and punt again. Fake plays were riddled by swift and sagacious end rushes, for one side or the other, hurling attacks against the center were crushed and flung back; and, more and more as the battle raged, it became evident that the regular eleven, while good, were no ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish

... street surrounded by a large portion of the population of Reykjavik, who had every possible variety of horses to sell—horses shaggy and horses shaved, horses small and horses smaller, into the mouths of which the sagacious travelers were intently peering in search of teeth—occasionally punching the poor creatures on the ribs, probing their backs, pulling them up by the legs, or tickling them under the tail to ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... century, the simplicity and ignorance of the generality in those times furnished the most favorable occasion for the exercise of fraud; and the impudence of impostors in contriving false miracles was artfully proportioned to the credulity of the vulgar; while the sagacious and the wise, who perceived these cheats, were overawed into silence by the dangers that threatened their lives and fortunes if they should expose the artifice." Thomas Burnet, D.D., who flourished about the beginning of the 18th century, in his treatise entitled De Statu Mortuorum, purposely written ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill

... subject, then, we naturally turn to Butler. Bunyan will people the house for us once it is built, but Butler lays bare for us the naked rock on which men like Bunyan build and beautify and people the dwelling-place of God and man. What exactly is this thing, character, we hear so much about? we ask the sagacious bishop. And how shall we understand our own character so as to form it well till it stands firm and endures? 'Character,' answers Butler, in his bald, dry, deep way, 'by character is meant that temper, taste, disposition, whole frame of mind from whence ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... silken lap in which the child was comfortably nestling, and in that attitude had a faint consciousness that Mrs. Horncastle was mischievously breathing into his curls a silent laugh. Barker lifted his firstborn with proud skillfulness, but that sagacious infant evidently knew when he was comfortable, and in a paroxysm of objection caught his father's curls with one fist, while with the other he grasped Mrs. Horncastle's brown braids and brought their heads into contact. Upon which humorous ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... stone which stands at its head; for I do not wish you to be sure of the resting-place of one who could not bear to think that he should be known as a cripple among the dead, after being pointed at so long among the living. There is one sign, it is true, by which, if you have been a sagacious reader of these papers, you will at once know it; but I fear you read carelessly, and must study them more diligently before you will detect the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... picture we have ever had of a nature that seems equally to court and to baffle comprehension. Lord Houghton has little to add, on this subject, from his personal recollections; but his comments upon it evince perhaps as close a study and sagacious criticism, if not as much subtlety of thought, as Matthew Arnold's famous essay. The following passage, for example, sums up very felicitously the social aspect of Germany, and its influence on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... and ere we part he is a kindred soul. Magnetic attraction is sudden. So with these two, who, by a kind of free-masonry, knew that each had met his affinity. The Watt engine was exhaustively canvassed and its inventor was delighted that the great, sagacious, prudent and practical manufacturer should predict its success as he did. Shortly after this, Professor Robison visited Soho, which was a magnet that attracted the scientists in those days. Boulton told ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... and sagacious management, one of the most extensive provinces of the island was brought into cheerful subjection, and had not the wise policy of the Adelantado been defeated by the excesses of worthless and turbulent men, a large revenue might have been collected, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... quite ad rem.—What would do for a beefsteak does not help his mistake; for it is quite evident that sprote applies to fish-swimming and not to fish-catching; and I presume that "useful and sagacious" auxiliary, Dr. Kitchener himself, would hardly have ventured to deny that fish ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various

... mind to the subject, and the man who improves his opportunities in these wilds can soon attain the knowledge possessed by the redskins. I have met with many white trappers and hunters who were fully equal to the most sagacious ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston

... that we could not escape. Our pursuer was hardly a gunshot off, and slowly but surely lessening the space between us. The sagacious Mr. Campbell regarded our capture as inevitable, and, true to his characteristics, repeated the stratagem which had served him so successfully when we were molested by the Patriot privateer. He doffed his old garments, which were not worth stealing, and clad ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... for depending upon private enterprise for devising and providing the means for popular education, would apply equally well to matters of police, and to the protection of property. The strong-armed and the sagacious can take care of themselves. The stout-hearted and the good, by due concert and combination, could keep criminals in some check, even in a country where there were no courts of justice, or prisons, or detective police. But this is not the ordinary ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... of cattle-shooting. Lobbing shrapnel at grazing cows was always quite a favourite game with Brounckers. But his gunners hit oftener than they used to. And the Government forage won't hold out for ever." He patted the brown Waler, who pricked his sagacious ears and threw up his handsome bluntish head in acknowledgment of his master's caress. "Presently we shall be killing our mounts to save their lives—and ours. Oats and horseflesh will keep life in men—and in children and women.... The devil of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... their wives, and daughters, not to hesitate before they receive——. But never mind," said Crony; "you know the rest. You must have heard of a recent calamity which threatened the lady; and on which that mad wag, John Bull, let fly some cutting jokes. A very sagacious police magistrate, accompanied by one of his indefatigables, went to inspect the premises, accompanied by a gentleman of the faculty; but, after all their united efforts to unravel the mystery, it turned out a mere scratch, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... equally surprised and equally confounded; while the sagacious reptile, assuming the air of a philosopher, thus admonished them: "Ye children of men, learn diffidence and moderation in your opinions. 'Tis true, you happen in this present instance to be all in the right, and have only considered the subject under different circumstances, ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various



Words linked to "Sagacious" :   perspicacious, wise, sagaciousness, sagacity, politic, sapient



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