"Sapient" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and to offer thereby an occasion for a grave and twilit elegy by Matthew Arnold. Clough's life-work was a continual asking of the question, "Life being unbearable, why should I not die?"—while echo, that commonplace and sapient commentator, mildly answered, "Why?": and this was precisely the impression that I gathered from my initial vista ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... hid, now seen Among thick-wov'n Arborets and Flours Imborderd on each Bank, the hand of Eve: Spot more delicious then those Gardens feign'd Or of reviv'd Adonis, or renownd 440 Alcinous, host of old Laertes Son, Or that, not Mystic, where the Sapient King Held dalliance with his faire Egyptian Spouse. Much hee the Place admir'd, the Person more. As one who long in populous City pent, Where Houses thick and Sewers annoy the Aire, Forth issuing on a Summers Morn, to breathe Among the pleasant ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... situation at Fort Whipple, away up in "the hills." Major Plume, eager on his wife's account to get her to the seashore—"Monterey or Santa Barbara," said the sapient medical director—and ceaselessly importuned by her and viciously nagged by Elise, found himself bound to the spot. So long as Mullins stuck to his story Plume knew it would never do for him to leave. "A day or two more and he may abate or amend his ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... an ocean, 'way out yonder (As all sapient people know), Is the land of Wonder-Wander, Whither children love to go; It's their playing, romping, swinging, That give great joy to me While the Dinkey-Bird goes singing In ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... sapient discourse on the part of Henri was summarily put an end to by his mother's ordering him to kneel down and say his prayers, and afterwards bundling him into bed,—where, being sleepy, he speedily forgot all that he had been trying to talk about. Babette took more time in retiring to rest. ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... sapient public, and, being well disposed to be duped, the whole job is complete. Practise away, worthies, and ye shall see with what open eyes and wide gullet I am ready to admire and swallow all ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... observe that I did get through somehow, as you shall learn, which is more than you might have done, Mr. Wisdom, though I admit, not without help from another quarter. It is all very well for you to sit in your armchair and be sapient and turn up your learned nose, like the gentlemen who criticise plays and poems, an easy job compared to the writing of them. From all of which, however, you will understand that I am, to tell the truth, rather ashamed of what ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... conceivably compromise on a boy. But how is he going to make sure that it will not be a girl? The thing, as yet, is a medical impossibility—but medicine is making rapid strides. Why not wait until the secret is discovered? This sapient compromise pleases the bridegroom, and he proceeds to a consideration of various problems of finance. And then, of a sudden, the organist swings unmistakably into "Lohengrin" and the best man grabs him ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... like the plant itself it has developed into a great and increasing industry and its culture become a source of wealth unprecedented in agricultural history. Could the sapient James I. and his successors the Stuarts, now look upon this cherished production of the world, they would discover a commercial prosperity connected with those nations which have fostered and encouraged its growth far in advance of those who have frowned upon ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... only knit the issue with them in a fair and square fight. This, however, was the thing of all others he wished to avoid. Perhaps if he could have foreseen how barren in any alternative policy his sapient critics were to be he might have acted otherwise, but the credit is due to him of making dissension impossible by leaving no second party to ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... satanic majesty under the influence of a cold, and receiving, as he enters, the usual deprecation on such occasions. I rather suspect that the adventures of Punch, and his fickle lady, who are always attended by a dancing demon, have afforded the materials for this sapient observation. ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... read my compositions to them,' said Percy. 'Pallas acts sapient judge to admiration, and Puss never commits herself, applauding only her own music—like other critics. We reserve our hisses ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Well, thou sapient counsellor—but, I tell you beforehand, the chances are ten to one I sha'n't follow ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... boldness to prolong his childhood and be happy, in spite of years and conviction. Give him a boar to stab, and a pigeon to shoot at, a battledore or an angling rod, and he is better contented than Solomon in all his glory, and will never discover, like that sapient sovereign, that all is vanity ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... on American soil. Another Chinese merchant and wife, of unquestioned standing in San Francisco, made a trip to China, and while there a child was born. On returning to their home in America, the sapient officials could interpose no objection to the readmission of the parents, but peremptorily refused to admit the three-months old baby, as, never having been in this country, it had no right to enter it! Neither of these preposterous decisions could be charged to the stupidity or malice of the ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... restricted, as yet," replied the Cardinal-Bishop with a sapient smile. "Nor is there any restriction upon the inspiration, political as well as spiritual, which the American Government draws from Rome—an inspiration much more potent, I think, than our Protestant brethren would ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... than they know what to do with, are seldom very fortunate in their selection, or happy in their eventual lot. Miss Bruce was one of these witches, far more mischievous than the old conventional hags we used to burn under the sapient government of our first Stuart, and she knew a deal better than any old woman who ever mounted a broom-stick the credulity of her victims, the dangerous power of her spells. These she had lately been using freely. It was time to turn ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... the animal past. For Ernest Bloch, the primeval forest with its thick spawning life, its ferocious beasts, its brutish phallic-worshiping humanity, is still here. Before him there still lie the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years of development necessary to make a sapient creature of man. And he writes like one who has been plunged into a darkness and sadness and bitterness all the greater for the vision of the rainbow that has been given him, for the glimpse he has had of the "pays du soleil," the land of man lifting himself at last from the brute ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... "Sure!" she said, sapient. "Sure! How could you? But there are other men besides these here—" She waved her hand to ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... forward a little as she sat, clasping her hands together in her lap and keeping her eyes on him. The lamp, in a corner, was so thickly veiled that the room was in tempered obscurity, lighted almost equally from the street and the brilliant shop-fronts opposite. "Therefore why be sapient and solemn about it, like an editorial in a newspaper?" Nick ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... was going to do something! As soon as it was dark I was going right on up there. Frontal attack, you understand. As to details, those would take care of themselves as the affair developed. Having come to which sapient decision I shoved the whole irritating mess over the edge of my mind and rode on quite happy. I told you at the start of this yarn that ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... Evidently, it was neither from you nor Mary Taylor, my only correspondents. Having opened and read it, it proved to be a declaration of attachment and proposal of matrimony, expressed in the ardent language of the sapient young Irishman! Well! thought I, I have heard of love at first sight, but this beats all. I leave you to guess what my answer would be, convinced that you will not do me the injustice of guessing wrong. When we meet I'll show you the letter. I hope you are ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Penthesilea. On the other side Old King Latinus, seated by his child Lavinia, and that Brutus I beheld, Who Tarquin chas'd, Lucretia, Cato's wife Marcia, with Julia and Cornelia there; And sole apart retir'd, the Soldan fierce. Then when a little more I rais'd my brow, I spied the master of the sapient throng, Seated amid the philosophic train. Him all admire, all pay him rev'rence due. There Socrates and Plato both I mark'd, Nearest to him in rank; Democritus, Who sets the world at chance, Diogenes, With Heraclitus, and Empedocles, And Anaxagoras, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... lions,'" observed the Old Cattleman, wearing meanwhile the sapient air of him who feels equipped of his subject, "is plenty furtive, not to say mighty sedyoolous to skulk. That's why a gent don't meet up with more of 'em while pirootin' about in the hills. Them cats hears him, or they sees him, an' him still ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... The Northern papers announce the capture of Wilmington. No doubt the city has fallen, although the sapient dignitaries of this government deem it a matter of policy to withhold such intelligence from the people and the army. And wherefore, since the enemy's papers have a circulation here—at least their items of news are ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... letter, the direction of which puzzled me, it being in a hand I was not accustomed to see. Evidently, it was neither from you nor Mary, my only correspondents. Having opened and read it, it proved to be a declaration of attachment and proposal of matrimony, expressed in the ardent language of the sapient young Irishman! I hope you are laughing heartily. This is not like one of my adventures, is it? It more nearly resembles Martha's. I am certainly doomed to be an old maid. Never mind. I made up my mind to that fate ever since I ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... having disappeared, another drollery was exhibited, called the "Fool and his Five Sons," the names of the hopeful offspring of the sapient sire being Pickle Herring, Blue Hose, Pepper Hose, Ginger Hose, and Jack Allspice. The humour of this piece, though not particularly refined, seemed to be appreciated by the audience generally, as well as by the monarch, who laughed heartily ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... sapient sister is so curious, I will confess that once—and only once in my life—I was in dire danger of falling most desperately in love. The frigate was coaling at Palermo, and I went ashore. One afternoon, in sauntering through the orange and lemon groves which ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... wisdom, wit and lore * To sapient, reverend, clever counsellor: Tell me what was't you saw that bird bring forth * When wandering Arab-land and Ajam o'er? No flesh it beareth and it hath no blood, * Nor down nor any feathers e'er it wore. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... would note that an old Irish apple-woman in a grimy English town left her basket, with all her stock-in-trade, outside in the street while she went into a church to commune with her heavenly friends; the conversation between a sapient publican, a friendly constable and a group of dubious bona fide travellers—such things were materials for his insight or his fancy or his delightful humour. Often when he returned in the evening full of his day's observations one wished there had been a shorthand-writer present to ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... the would-be solver fails to master the difficulty he boldly introduces a rope to pull the boat across. You say that a rope is forbidden; and he then falls back on the use of a current in the stream. I once thought I had carefully excluded all such tricks in a particular puzzle of this class. But a sapient reader made all the people swim across without using the boat at all! Of course, some few puzzles are intended to be solved by some trick of this kind; and if there happens to be no solution without the trick it is perfectly legitimate. We ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... conduct on the part of the gentler sex, bad feminine manners. Just now he sees the man's side of the shield, a few years later he will see the woman's side also. He ungallantly concludes "to lead the 'single life,' and not," as he puts it, "trouble myself about the ladies." A most sapient conclusion, considering that this veteran misogynist was but sixteen years old. During the year following the publication of this article, he plied his pen with no little industry—producing in all fifteen articles on a variety of topics, such as "South American Affairs," "State ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... breathed this free, exhilarating, vitalizing atmosphere, and the convention-laden air of Paris would stifle me. I have written to my father and announced that I propose remaining in Charleston. That is not all: he forbade my studying law in Paris, because his sapient Breton neighbors would have been scandalized by a viscount's taking so sensible a step; but possibly I may prepare myself for the bar at this distance, without subjecting my father to the annoyance of their disapproval. The period required for study is shorter, and ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... with the angel's command, she at once returned to her lord, as the holy spirit-messenger of God 2295 bade her, in sapient speech. Thus was Ismael born to Abraham, even when he had [lived] 86 winters in the world. The son grew and flourished, as the angel, the 2300 true minister of peace, had promised to the woman by ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... constantly speak of the "Messiah" as the most popular oratorio ever written; but even in the provinces only selections from it are sung, and in the metropolis the selections are cut very short indeed, frequently by the sapient device of taking out all the best numbers and leaving only those that appeal to the religious instincts of Clapham. I cannot resist the suspicion that but for the words of "He was despised," "Behold, and see," and "I know that my Redeemer liveth," Clapham would have tired ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... a sapient French statesman, writing from Louisiana to his royal master in Paris, advised the French government to cultivate a close and intimate alliance with the Cherokee Indians, who, occupying as they did the defiles of the Alleghanies, would form a permanent bulwark between the young Anglo-Saxon ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... upon a little steed, unmeet for such a course, Appeared the honoured veteran; but weak seemed man and horse. Then shook their ears the sapient peers,—'That joust will soon be done: My Lord of Brougham, I'll back Fitzball, and give ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... to obtain the additional comfort of a letter from Minnie, which, although it did not throw much light on the proceedings of Captain Ogilvy (for that sapient seaman's proceedings were usually involved in a species of obscurity which light could not penetrate), nevertheless assured him that something was being done in his behalf, and that, if he only kept quiet for a time, all would ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... not for the wine and the good cheer which we have had in yonder old man's house, my lord," said this sapient follower, "and that I ken him by report to be a just living man in many respects, and a real Edinburgh gutterblood, I should have been well pleased to have seen how his feet were shaped, and whether he had not a cloven cloot under ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... was not a Drouet, interested to praise. There she heard a different voice, with which she argued, pleaded, excused. It was no just and sapient counsellor, in its last analysis. It was only an average little conscience, a thing which represented the world, her past environment, habit, convention, in a confused way. With it, the voice of the people was ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... Sapient I was not, although I Sapia Was called, and I was at another's harm More happy far than at my ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... usually allowed the wisdom of his lady to flow by him like the wind, did not choose to answer this sapient appeal, but observed curtly, that he had some writing to do, and should like, as soon as convenient, to be left to himself. Upon this the lady folded her white gloves spitefully and left the room, tossing her head till the marabouts on each side ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... seventeenth century it occurred to the sapient mind of one Puseygur, a native of Bayonne, in France, that it would be a grand thing to have a sharp point on which to receive an advancing adversary after one had missed him, or the fizzling matchlock had failed to go off. The weapon devised was a sharp-bladed knife, about eighteen inches long, ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... "The falsehoods which we spurn today were the truths of long ago"—and although men part reluctantly with favorite—and lucrative—fallacies, and "Faith, fantastic Faith, once wedded fast to some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last," nevertheless this false belief, like so many other sapient pronouncements of human wisdom, must ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... something different. The Terran Federation is a government of and for—if occasionally not by—all sapient peoples of all races. The Federation Constitution guarantees equal rights to all. Making slaves of people, human or otherwise, is a direct blow at everything the Federation stands for. No wonder they kept hunting fifteen ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... throat with the most heartfelt satisfaction, as he grinned and exclaimed, by way of answer to its screams, "Poor feller! I guess I wouldn't hurt you for de world;" I could not help thinking with Leibnitz, that most sapient of philosophers, that this is the best ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... reply to this sapient observation. His lordship, however, who seemed to feel that he had started upon a wrong principle, if not a disagreeable ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... him. The first did not dazzle him; but as to the second, he did not conceal from himself the imperfections of a provincial education which he should have to unmake, but this was no serious objection to his sapient conjugal pedagogy. ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... pretty until Jack Holloway turned up with a family of Fuzzies and the claim that they were not just nice little animals, but human. If he was right and the Fuzzies were declared the 9th extrasolar sapient race, there went the Company, ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... thing was that when the settler, who had given the escaping prisoner the file and stood by to see him use it to make his escape more certain, was brought up before two magistrates for helping a prisoner to elude his sentence, these sapient administrators of law dismissed the charge. This miscarriage of justice so disgusted both the constable and his superintendent that in, contemplation of it they seemed to forget the astonishing feat with the hand-car. But we dig it up proudly from the old report. ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... unsanctioned, proved too weak To bind the roving appetite, and lead Blind nature to a God not yet revealed. 'Tis Revelation satisfies all doubts, Explains all mysteries, except her own, And so illuminates the path of life, That fools discover it, and stray no more. Now tell me, dignified and sapient sir, My man of morals, nurtured in the shades Of Academus, is this false or true? Is Christ the abler teacher, or the schools? If Christ, then why resort at every turn To Athens or to Rome for wisdom short Of man's occasions, when in Him reside Grace, knowledge, comfort, an unfathomed store? How ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... writer and statesman may not have selected the supposed best authorities for his dates, but the sapient critic indulges in a strange admixture of misconception. However, Egyptian chronology is not fully agreed upon, even Manetho and Herodotus differ some 120 years as to the time of Sesostris, and Bishop Warburton, we read, was ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... listening very suspiciously to Professor Crooklyn. My dear, it is her passion to foretell disasters—her passion! And when they are confirmed, she triumphs, of course. We shall have her domineering over us with sapient nods at every trifle occurring. The county will be unendurable. Unsay it, my Middleton! And don't answer like an oracle because I do all the talking. Pour out to me. You'll soon come to a stop and find the want of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... upon Berlin—for he exercises everywhere a sapient observation on men and things—are of dim tumidly insignificant character, reminding us of an extinct Minerva's Owl; and reduce themselves mainly to this bit of ocular testimony, That his Prussian Majesty rides much about, often at a rapid rate; with a pleasant ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... condone, and, though abhorring the Kaiser and my mother's compatriots for their share in that horror going on abroad, I can also pity the hot-headed, imperfect mere man going to war under a carefully incited and fostered misapprehension, and need no longer glorify the cool-headed, sapient policy which so cleverly ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... mentioned Carlotta's needlework. This was undertaken at the sapient instigation of Antoinette, who in her turn, I am sure, neglected the ladle for the scissors, and cast many of her duties upon the silent but sympathetic Stenson. Carlotta herself delighted in these preparations. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... flat there as well as here aren't they—eh?" And the red-haired youth said "Yea." "Factories arn't doing much now, are they?" said she next, and the rejoinder was "They arn't; bin round by Bowton, and its aw alike." This slightly refreshing prelude was supplemented by sapient remarks as to the weather &c.; and we were beginning to wonder whether the general service was simply going to amount to this kind of conversation or be pushed on "properly" when in stepped a strong- built ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... I do believe!" said he; "He's only a cow-boy, I dare say!" And with this sapient, but unsatisfactory conclusion, he opened his book, and read aloud, to keep ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... claim: for, if the verdict be given in your favour, you are bound by our bargain; and if it be given against you, you are bound by the decision of the jurors.' The pupil, however, was equal to the occasion, and rebutted the dilemma as follows. 'Most sapient master, whatever be the issue of this suit, I shall not pay you what you claim: for, if the verdict be given in my favour, I am absolved by the decision of the jurors; and, if it be given against me, I am absolved by our bargain.' ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... mention may be made,[Sec.c][Sec.6] Who for the Junta modelled sapient laws, Taught them to govern ere they were obeyed: Certes fit teacher to command, because His soul Socratic no Xantippe awes; Blest with a Dame in Virtue's bosom nurst,— With her let silent Admiration pause!— True to her second husband ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... mightily, to make obeisance to The one so honored by his native land. As captain of a vessel may be judged By those subordinate to his command, So do I quick conception of thee form. By the broad mental gifts of Seldonskip Who were the hose, through which thy mind doth squirt Most sapient thought, for mankind's betterment. Seldonskip: You bet his wisdom squirts until I feel As if my think tank were about to bust. Francos: Good captain, greatly hast thou honored me And from such worthy source, I doubly feel The compliment ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... three or four feathers of a pheasant's tail are stuck, apparently with no ulterior purpose than that of ornament; but beside the bunch of ribbands there is also fixed a piece of wolf's skin, to give strength to the jaded animal, for, remarks the sapient Pliny, "a wolf's skin attached to a horse's neck will render him proof against all weariness." Personally, we should think a little more consideration and some elementary knowledge of farriery would have been of more service to the ill-used ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... said Cary, turning disdainfully from the contemplation of the battlements of Ehrenbreitstein. "Just catch on to the cut of those Dutch trousers, will you?" indicating by a nod of his sapient head the tight-fitting, creaseless garments in which were encased the martial lower limbs visible below the long, voluminous skirts of their double-breasted frock-coats. Flo gazed with frank animation in her eyes, but Forrest never saw her ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... may be pardoned for these recurring quotations and saws. The intolerably fervent solar heat of the Soudan at that season did not admit of much originality in thought, expression, or act. One of my companions was a veritable modern Sancho Panza, and in one's limp, mental, noontide condition his sapient "instances" were catching. When he left Cairo, as he confided to me, though it was warm enough there, he decided not to buy too thin clothing lest he might catch cold. He therefore purchased articles that even in England would be called woolly and comfortable. Later on, as he ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... circumscribed view of the surface—green countryside, veined by rivers and wrinkled with mountains; little towns that were mere dots; a scatter of white clouds. Nothing that looked like roads. There had been no native sapient race on this planet, and in the thirteen centuries since it had been colonized the Terro-human population had never completely lost the use of contragravity vehicles. In that screen, farther down, the four destroyers, Irma, Irene, Isobel ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... some old West India hogshead on the wharf, the whole chamber buzzed with flies. But the sapient inmate sat still and cool in the midst. Absorbed in some other world of his occupations and thoughts, these insects, like daily cark and care, did not seem one whit to annoy him. It was a goodly sight ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... dangerous trees, the elms, people sat and took the sun—cheek by jowl, generals and nursemaids, parsons and the unemployed. Above, in that Spring wind, the elm-tree boughs were swaying, rustling, creaking ever so gently, carrying on the innumerable talk of trees—their sapient, wordless conversation over the affairs of men. It was pleasant, too, to see and hear the myriad movement of the million little separate leaves, each shaped differently, flighting never twice alike, yet all obedient to the single spirit ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... about the very time, when the presumption against the revivication of poetry shall have attained the appearance of absolute certainty, to witness a Tenth Avatar of Genius—and to witness its effect, too, upon the sapient personages who had been predicting that it was ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Clifford,—and his main supporter, the sapient Augustus, shouted out, "Hear!"—"gentlemen, you all know that when some months ago you were pleased, partly at the instigation of Gentleman George—God bless him!—partly from the exaggerated good opinion expressed of me by my friends, to elect me to the high honour of the command ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... finding gold all the way, but not in quantities sufficiently large to warrant working. At the place, however, which they subsequently named Chihuahua (pronounced in the vernacular Chee-waw-waw) the perspicacious Jones had given it as his opinion, formed after mature deliberation and a sapient examination of some two or three shovelsful of dirt, that there was a satisfactory "color in that ar bank." Some hard work of about a week demonstrated that there were excellent diggings there, and then work was commenced upon it in good earnest. The cabin was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... herself, much as she would miss her, empty as the house would be without her. Nannie Slade Hunter, though she disapproved, was too deeply engulfed in the real business of life to be much concerned over the vagaries of a just-about-to-be-engaged girl, and Martin Wetherby, coached, Jane knew, by the sapient father of the Teddy-bear, was presently able to translate her exodus into something very soothing to his own piece of mind. Jane could watch his mental processes as easily as she could watch the activities of a goldfish in a glass globe; he was concluding that it was the regular old startled ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... in love with Rose? Why did not he, O most sapient senate of womanhood? why did not your brother fall in love with that nice girl you know of, who grew up with you all at his very elbow, and was, as everybody else could see, just the ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was in truth comparing Columbia with my dream of Oxford and Cambridge, to her disadvantage. I was capable of saying to myself: "All this is terribly new. All this lacks tradition." Criticism fatuous and mischievous, if human! It would be as sapient to imprison the entire youth of a country until it had ceased to commit the offense of being young. Tradition was assuredly not apparent in the atmosphere of Columbia. Moreover, some of her architecture was ugly. On the other hand, some of it was beautiful to the point of nobility. ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett |
