"Shrewd" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... continued sympathetic and quite unobtrusive scrutiny of him, his ways, his tastes, his thoughts, on the part of his aunt—her questions were subtle, penetrating, provocative enough for him to wish to express an opinion. He did not dislike it, and used no diplomacy himself; he found his aunt's mind shrewd, fresh, unaffected, and at the same time inspiring. She habitually spoke with a touch of irony—not bitter irony, but the irony that is at once a compliment and a sign of affection, such as Socrates used to the handsome boys that came about him. ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that their choice was aided by miracle. In those days miracles were "as plentiful as blackberries," but many of these seem to have been what we may speak of as "miracles made to order," designed by shrewd individuals to gain some personal or other advantage. St. Leo is said to have told the electors to seek a husbandman named Wamba, whose lands lay somewhere in the west, asserting that he did this under direction of the heavenly powers. However that be, scouts ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... triumvirate was composed of Mr. Fillet, a country practitioner in surgery and midwifery, Captain Crowe, and his nephew Mr. Thomas Clarke, an attorney. Fillet was a man of some education, and a great deal of experience, shrewd, sly, and sensible. Captain Crowe had commanded a merchant ship in the Mediterranean trade for many years, and saved some money by dint of frugality and traffic. He was an excellent seaman, brave, active, friendly in his way, and scrupulously honest; but as little acquainted with the ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... there were no other reason to allege, that is enough to condemn them. What is a man to do in another world if all his life long he has only cultivated tastes which want this world for their gratification? What is the sensualist to do when he gets there? What is the shrewd man of business in Manchester to do when he comes into a world where there are no bargains, and he cannot go on 'Change on Tuesdays and Fridays? What will he do with himself? What does he do with himself now, when he goes away from home for a month, and does not get his ordinary work ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... life of the province. Colonel Thomas Talbot of Malahide, "a fierce little Irishman who hated Scotchmen and women, turned teetotallers out of his house, and built the only good road in the province," made the beginnings of settlement midway on Lake Erie. A shrewd Massachusetts merchant, Philemon Wright, with his comrades, their families, servants, horses, oxen, and 10,000 pounds, sledded from Boston to Montreal in the winter of 1800, and thence a hundred miles beyond, to found ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... writer and the possible romancer, who suddenly and without warning flashes over his pages of quiet description a far, fleeting light of delicious imagination. It is as if two brothers, one a dreamer, and one a well-developed, intellectual, but slightly stoical and even shrewd American, dealing exclusively in common-sense, had gone abroad together, agreeing to write their opinions in the same book and in a style of perfect homogeneity. Sometimes one has the blank sheet to himself, sometimes the other; and occasionally ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... been published that morning postponing his execution until the return of the regiment. Just what was in the Marquis' mind no one could absolutely say, but he was shrewd enough to recognize the possibility of an outbreak or an attempted mutiny among the troops, when the sentence of execution was being carried out. He did not want any difficulties of that kind then. Not because he feared them or felt unequal to them! Oh, no. But because such an outbreak would make ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... frontiersmen, somewhat after the manner of Daniel Boone or Simon Kenyon, both of whom I had seen at General Clarke's; but they were very far from that. Auguste, the elder, and who, almost more than his step-father, Laclede, was the founder of St. Louis, was the graver of the two, with keen, shrewd eyes that betokened the successful man of business. Pierre (as everybody called the younger) looked not at all like his brother: taller and slenderer of build, his flashing dark eyes and gay manners must have been inherited from his father, Laclede, for Madame Chouteau (whom I came ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... be an iron-grey autumnal day, with a shrewd east wind blowing—a day in keeping with the proceedings. Mr Dombey represented in himself the wind, the shade, and the autumn of the christening. He stood in his library to receive the company, as hard and cold as the weather; ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... others had hastened to the border of the lake to fill their cups with water, the shrewd Giraffe had simply stepped over to a tiny little spring which he had noticed not ten feet away, and there managed to get all ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... said to myself every morning: "Now I have escaped thus far, and so the chances are just that much increased that I shall catch it this time. I will be shrewd, and buy an accident ticket." And to a dead moral certainty I drew a blank, and went to bed that night without a joint started or a bone splintered. I got tired of that sort of daily bother, and fell to buying accident ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the first half of the sixteenth century, wrote these shrewd words: "Whether the object of your faith is real or false, you will nevertheless obtain the same effects. Thus, if I believe in St. Peter's statue as I would have believed in St. Peter himself, I will obtain ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... his sister's popularity; it seemed she should make a brilliant marriage. Live brilliantly. It was the thing to which she was adapted. Katie was unique. Distinctive. Secretly, unadmittedly, he was very ambitious for her. And with a little smile he considered that seemingly Katie was just shrewd enough to be ambitious for herself. She had steered her little bark safely past the place where she would be likely to marry a lieutenant. Was ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... perspicacity was remarkable. He could and did break the conventionalities and the political principles sacred in that epoch, to formulate those which were better for the condition of the country. He was a shrewd judge of men, and knew how to honor them and please them for the good of the cause they defended. All his intellectual power was necessary to become a master of men like Pez and Bermdez. His mental alertness was exceptional. He could make a decision promptly without showing ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... character which make the book so attractive to the English, who enjoy these more than the Americans,—the latter delighting rather in what is grotesque and extravagant, like the elaborate absurdities of "Mark Twain." But this humor is more than that of a shrewd and thrifty English farmer's wife; it belongs to human nature. We have seen such voluble sharp, sagacious, ironical, and worldly women among the farm-houses of New England, and heard them use language, when excited ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... Walford between his set teeth, "I suspected as much. And I can form a pretty shrewd guess as to who it is, too. It is that sneaking ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... is never willingly resigned by him who excels in it. Sometimes he wrote criticisms upon the action and elocution of the players, and published them in the prints. These sudden effusions of his mind generally comprehended judicious observations and shrewd remarks, unmixed with that illiberality which often disgraces the instructions of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... to make a kingdom of their own, and once more the Great Powers met to consider what was to be done with them this time. The meeting was in London, where five very shrewd and wily gentlemen, from England, France, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, sat and talked to each other for week after week about what they should do with this broken kingdom, which was, as it were, thrown on their hands. They were far too polite to quarrel openly; but Russia, Prussia, ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Belgium • George W. T. Omond
... truth, a study, To mark his spirit, alternating between A decent and professional gravity And an irreverent mirthfulness, which often Laughed in the face of his divinity, Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite unshrined The oracle, and for the pattern priest Left us the man. A shrewd, sagacious merchant, To whom the soiled sheet found in Crawford's inn, Giving the latest news of city stocks And sales of cotton, had a deeper meaning Than the great presence of the awful mountains Glorified by the sunset; ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... "seem, strangely, not attracted strongly by these views." And the same might be said of everyone who judged, not by the glow of prophetic insight, but by a cold examination of facts. When Asia Minor was first mentioned to the Greek Minister in London, that shrewd diplomat answered: "Greece would not commit such a folly, for the day she set foot in {26} Asia Minor she would find herself up against Great Powers as well as against Turkey." [5] At Athens to this objection ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... learnt of the character of the original and untitled Robert Peel, he must have been a remarkable man—shrewd, sagacious, and far-seeing. But little is known of him excepting from traditions and the sons of those who knew him are fast passing away. His son, Sir Robert, thus modestly spoke of him:- "My father may be truly said to have been the founder of our family; and he ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... been begun. They had been forbidden to coin money, to maintain armies, and to tax their subjects, and the powers of the king's judges had been extended over all the realm. But the task of consolidating France was reserved for the son of Charles VII, the shrewd and treacherous ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... is a piece of shrewd common sense. It sets before us two men, one reticent, and the other skilful in worming out designs which he wishes to penetrate. The former is like a deep draw-well; the latter is like a man who lets down a bucket into it, and winds it up full. 'Still waters are deep.' The ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... informant was a boy, shrewd and communicative, who could tell us the traditions of the place; and, of course, young as he was, nothing more. It was he who showed us where the additional stove was placed when winter came on. He pointed to a spot beside the fireplace, where he said the straw was spread on which Toussaint ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... a secret service. We do not know who these people are, though sometimes shrewd guesses may be made. I often think that sometimes we pass some plain-looking woman quietly slipping out of church; gown been turned two or three times; bonnet fixed over more than once; hands that ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... shrewd and curious thought, a real correspondence, and they help us to see the men who surrounded the poet in Ravenna. They do not, however, give us so extraordinary an impression of the strength and keenness ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... figure and face commonly given to Sancho Panca—very shrewd in his farming matters, and not unfrequently stumbles on what may be called a strong thing rather than a good thing. Mrs. Scott all the sense, taste, intrepidity of face, and bold, critical decision, which ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... every bit of its interest. And so we put it off, in a sort of general way, till next day—and that was the last we ever thought of it. We dined with some hospitable Gentiles; and visited the foundation of the prodigious temple; and talked long with that shrewd Connecticut Yankee, Heber C. Kimball (since deceased), a saint of high degree and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... themselves, made no effort to revert to personal matters. He turned instead to the topic always most congenial to him: the humours and ironies of the human comedy, as presented by his own particular group. His malicious commentary on life had always amused Susy because of the shrewd flashes of philosophy he shed on the social antics they had so often watched together. He was in fact the one person she knew (excepting Nick) who was in the show and yet outside of it; and she was surprised, as the talk proceeded, to find herself so little interested in his scraps of ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... olive, with a pair of shrewd gray eyes, and a clever, clean-shaven mouth. He was well-dressed, and was continually probing with a quill tooth-pick at his gold-filled front teeth, evidently desirous of excavating some of ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... satisfied. He was beginning to grow old. This lad had the makings of a good partner in him by and by. No hurry; he must serves long apprenticeship first and prove his mettle; no use spoiling him by hinting at future partnerships before need was. That would all come in due time. David White was a shrewd man. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... found those who poured contempt upon the project of the trans-continental railway, and even those who favoured the scheme based their support upon political rather than upon economic grounds. It was all so far away and all so unreal that men who prided themselves upon being governed by shrewd business sense held aloof from western enterprises, waiting in calm assurance for their certain collapse. Still, here and there men like Bompas, McLean, McDougall, and Robertson were holding high the light that fell upon prairie and foothill, ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... very day." Summers looked hard at me as I spoke, and I am convinced—for he was a very shrewd fellow—that he had guessed the true state of the case. He paused for a moment as if awaiting a confidence from me, but I could not see what was to be gained by ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... there will instantly be found shrewd Chinese business men backed by a plentiful supply of native capital, and the Westerner will get but ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... ones these spirits be. Hark! with shrewd intelligence, How they recommend to thee Action, and the joys of sense! In the busy world to dwell, Fain they would allure thee hence: For within this lonely cell, Stagnate sap of ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... similar wagons, heavily laden with goods bound for Santa Fe. Most of the drivers were shrewd; all of them civil. They were of various nationalities; some comfortably clad, others in tatters, and a few in picturesque threadbare costumes of Spanish finery. Those hardy wayfarers gave us much valuable information regarding the route before us, and the Indian ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... Bellew had found his way to Dapplemere, a week which had only served to strengthen the bonds of affection between him and his "nephew," and to win over sharp-eyed, shrewd little Miss Priscilla to the extent of declaring him to be: "First a gentleman, Anthea, my dear, and Secondly,—what is much rarer, now-a-days,—a true man!" A week! and already he was hail-fellow-well-met with everyone about the place, ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... feigning a distressed reluctance. It had learned also to hide its consternation at the prices which this behaviour would eventually induce the newcomers to pay for such junk. Indeed, it learned very soon to be a shrewd valuer of old mahogany, pewter, and china; even to suspect that the buyers might perceive beauties in it that ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... there had not been that advertisement for a private secretary? How then should he have gained a footing in this house? Well, here he was, and speculation was of no value, save in a congratulatory sense. The fly in the amber was the presence of the young American; Fitzgerald, shrewd and clever, might stumble upon something. Well, till ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... your happy lot to blend Sound brain and sympathetic heart; The loyal service of a friend, With worldly wisdom keen and tart. Shrewd advocate and councillor keen, You knew the world, yet pitied it; Compassion mild, not cynic spleen Tempered the edge of caustic wit. Farewell! It dims much pomp and state, Your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... Asia, or North America, are invariably represented by travelers as holding their flock in subjection, and never being doubted as to power or skill. But there are skeptics or Agnostics among the men of the woods as well as among those of civilized cities. There are shrewd fellows who cannot only detect impostors, but turn their tricks to their own advantage. An amusing illustration of this is ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... wrong," replied the abbe. "You should always fear a coward, because he strikes from behind while you are expecting him in front. If John Mauprat were not a Trappist, if the papers he showed me were lies, the prior of the Carmelites is too shrewd and cautious to have let himself be deceived. Never would he have espoused the cause of a layman, and never would he mistake a layman for one of his own cloth. However, we must make inquiries; I will write to the ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... gratitude and affection could reverse them, for he could have had no pride but in rendering some service to her who had rendered so much to him. "All curious to see," thought Mr. Lorry, in his amiably shrewd way, "but all natural and right; so, take the lead, my dear friend, and keep it; it ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... refused to have me come to his wigwam. So Shakoona and I had to meet when we could, and that was not often, for the father was cruel and Oosahmekoo had many spies. Still, we had many friends. Miskoodell, the little sister, was sharp and shrewd, and helped us greatly by warning us of danger. So did her brother, Netahwatee. He was a good hunter, and had friends who had seen the furs. He had been on the alert, and had found out that the young ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... form of a square, when, happening to look into it, she saw something that for the moment caused her heart to stop beating and paralysed her with fear. It was a great gaunt cinnamon bear, which, seated on its haunches, was watching her with a look of comical surprise upon its preternaturally shrewd, ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... now?" returned the little man, gazing off through the sunny, velvet air to a world which had been painted clean, new green. His shrewd, blue eyes returned ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... entertaining, even to the verge of fascination, are the very ones who are the greatest bores. But we women do our best. We are hampered by our supposed amiability, and bound up by a thousand invisible cords of tact and policy to a line of action which dupes the cleverest of men. And we are shrewd enough to know that if we should become what they now, in the smart of their wounded vanity, would call honest, they would simply turn their broadcloth backs upon our uncalled-for frankness and seek ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... was not merely a keen man of business and successful tradesman. He was, in addition, an idealist and a dreamer of dreams; but so shrewd and level-headed was he, that he kept the two things quite apart. His business was never neglected, and he returned to it all the fresher, inasmuch as in his off times his mind was ardently concerned with ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... call hurriedly, thinking at first that it must be Mrs. Redfield. The booth was in the little sitting-room of a private cottage, and the mistress of the place, a shrewd little woman with inquisitive eyes, said: "Sounds to me like Ross ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... quandoque noverca est. Vbj non sis qui fueris non esse cur velis viuere. Compendiaria res improbitas. It is in action as it is in wayes; comonly the nearest is the fowlest. Lachrima nil citius arescit. woorke when God woorkes. A shrewd turn comes vnbidden. Hirundines sub eodem tecto ne habeas. A thorn is gentle when it is yong. Aut regem aut fatuum nasci oportet (of a free jester). Exigua res est ipsa Justitia. Quae non posuistj ne tollas. Dat veniam coruis vexat Censura columbas. Lapsa lingua ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... altercation lasted half-an-hour, but they got no farther than this. Mr. Pericles was either hopeless of protecting himself from such shrewd assailants, or indifferent to their attacks, for all his defensive measures were against the cold. He was muffled in a superbly mounted bearskin, which came up so closely about his ears that Arabella had to repeat ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the full case to Mr. John Stanton yesterday—Mr. Stanton is our local authority on cases of this type. He has informed me that there is a single ray of hope. Frankly, I find this claimant a dubious person, but a shrewd one. He knows that he has the advantage now, but should we gain the upper hand, we could, I believe, rid ourselves of him. Our chance lies in the past. This was first a French and then a Spanish colony. Under both rules the law of primogeniture sometimes held force. That is, an estate passed ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... would not have met all our needs, nor gone with us into all regions of our experience, if it had not had this book of shrewd, practical common-sense. Christianity is the perfection of common sense. 'Godliness hath promise of the life which now is.' The wisdom of the serpent, which Jesus enjoins, has none of the serpent's venom in it. It is no sign of spirituality of mind to be ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... acting on instructions from their colonies, tried to dissuade him from his purpose. Chief among them was Benjamin Franklin, then agent for Pennsylvania, a New Englander by birth, not a puritan either in religion or morals, a wise politician, shrewd, public-spirited, inventive, and full of schemes of practical usefulness. He proposed that the money should be voted by the provincial assemblies, but could not say that the colonies would agree as to the amount which each should ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... exclaimed. "All is I know he wouldn't do it if I'd married him," she added mentally, resuming her walk. Martha Lacey's sense of humor was not keen, but suddenly the mental picture of Judge Trent's shrewd, thin countenance, as it might appear in pillowed slumber surmounted by the high hat, overwhelmed her and she laughed silently. Then she frowned with reddening cheeks. "Hannah's impertinent," ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... at the newcomer with a smiling interest, thinking secretly that he was a very youthful and ingenuous being to have written a play which Bassett Oliver, a shrewd critic, and by no means easy to please, had been eager to accept, and was about to produce. Mr. Richard Copplestone, seen in the flesh, looked very young indeed, and very unlike anything in the shape of a professional author. In fact he very much reminded Stafford of the fine and healthy ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... post in the Desert. His name was Dominique, and I shall always look upon him as the most remarkable man I ever knew. He was as witty as Sydney Smith, as clever at expediences as Robinson Crusoe, as shrewd a politician as Machiavelli, as apt at languages as Mezzofanti, and as brave as Garibaldi. Being a bachelor, Dominique was none the less ready to receive us, and, with the help of an old Corsican named Napoleon, ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... personal opinion, and the influences which might have guided him were divided. If Hosius of Cordova leaned to the Athanasian side, Eusebius of Nicomedia was almost Arian. If Constantine had any feeling in the matter—dislike, for example, of the popularity of Arius—he was shrewd enough not to declare it too hastily. If he tried to force a view of his own on the undecided bishops, he might offend half Christendom; but if he waited for the strongest force inside the council to assert ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... ... A shrewd blow has been dealt to the British by our abandonment, in agreement with the prospectus, of the Beckmesser Line. All has gone according to our hopes, our longings and our prayers. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... on, grinning like a shrewd little ape. His joy in the torment of the patient was natural, for the world he lived in was a world of pain. He had endured his share of it, and inflicted far more than his share on others. When the ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... me a chance of living for a few years. I don't flatter myself that I could make a figure in the House of Commons; but I want to sit there, and be in the full current of existence. I had never dreamt of such a thing until Stark suggested it. But he's a shrewd fellow, and he has ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... novels, The Bondwoman's Son, vol. iii: In the Red Room.] "As an idealist he was to be represented by Olof; as a realist by Gustaf; and as a communist by Gert." Farther on in the same work, he continues his revelation as follows: "The King and his shadow, the shrewd Constable, represented himself [the author] as he wished to be; Gert, as he was in moments of aroused passion; and Olof, as, after years of self-scrutiny, he had come to know himself: ambitious and weak-willed; unscrupulous when something was at stake, ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... the early morning of a rainy day, and I will tell by their words and their faces who among them is rich and who is poor,—who has much goods laid up for just such times of want, and who has been spend-thrift and foolish. That curious, shrewd, underlying instinct, common to all ages, which takes shape in proverbs recognized this long ago. Who knows when it was first said of a man laying up money, "He lays by for a rainy day"? How close the parallel is between the man who, having spent on each day's living the ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... and arrange riband-knots with taste, and even change the fashion of a gown. The hard- worked tirewoman was but too glad to be relieved, and kept her secret well, being praised many times for the set or fashion of a thing into which she had not so much as set a needle. Being a shrewd baggage, she was wise enough always to relate to Anne the story of her mistress's pleasure, having the wit to read in her delight that she would ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... have a high opinion of your teachers," says the shrewd old philosopher; "you know that knowledge is the first ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... necklace and a superb new gown at the garrison ball not long after Frost and his shrinking bride left for their honeymoon, people looked at her and then at each other. Nita Terris was sold to "Jack" Frost was the verdict, and her shrewd elder sister was the dealer. Mrs. Frank knew what people were thinking and saying just as well as though they had said it to her, yet smiled sweetness and bliss on every side. Frankly she looked up into the faces of her sisters in arms: "I know you like my necklace. ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... think, could grasp the central principles of Russian finance. All that one needed to know was what M. Touchusoff and such people were going to say, and who would be thrown into the Neva, and the rise and fall of the rouble could be foreseen to a kopeck. In speculation by shrewd people with proper judgment as to when to buy and when to sell the rouble, large fortunes could be made, or even ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... mounted and again took up the trail, soon leaving behind their halting-place, which the boys named Lake Christopher, much to the vain little darky's chagrin. He had a shrewd suspicion that he would not hear the last of his fright for many ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... said Henry. He thought: 'My shrewd, capable girl has to sacrifice herself—and me—in order to look after incompetent persons who can't look ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... always agree, and quarrels and entanglements arise, and everything is referred to the decision of the manager, who, besides all things else, must know the exact amount of work which ought to be performed, both in the fields and factory, and see that it is done. Mr. A. is a keen, shrewd man of business, kind without being weak, and with an eye on every detail of his plantations. The requirements are endless. It reminds me very much of plantation life in Georgia in the old days of slavery. I never elsewhere heard of so many headaches, sore hands, and ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... the form in which we make them involve very grave fallacies, the realization of which will shortly become essential to the wise direction of this country's policy. If our policy, in other words, is to be shrewd and enlightened, we must realize just how both the views of international relationship that I have ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... and had enlisted two years ago. Before that he had been professional murderer and provider of human flesh to the great chief. Now he was a useful and quiet foreman on the plantation, always cheerful, very intelligent, strong, brutal, with small, shrewd eyes and a big mouth, apparently quite happy in civilization, and devoted to George. He was one of the few natives who openly admitted his liking for human flesh, and rapturously described its incomparable ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... reason best known to herself, Madame de Castro looked angry. She was a shrewd old person, with strong whims of her own, even at seventy. She quite glared at the pretty American from under ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... syndicate saw its long deferred opportunity and grasped it. Long purses might be lacking, but not shrewd heads. The unfinished Plug Mountain was immediately bonded for more than it ever promised to be worth, and in the hottest heat of the forwarding strife it was extended at the rate of a mile a day until the welcome screech of its locomotive whistles was ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... image of Doctor Minoret, whose green old age resembled that of those celebrated personages. Their heads coined in the same mint (for each had the characteristics of a medal) showed a stern and quasi-puritan profile, cold tones, a mathematical brain, a certain narrowness about the features, shrewd eyes, grave lips, and a something that was surely aristocratic—less perhaps in sentiment than in habit, more in the ideas than in the character. All men of this stamp have high brows retreating at the summit, the sigh of a tendency to materialism. You will find these leading ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... the certificate on the table as he spoke, and for a moment Maxwell sat staring at it, speechless. He knew Hubbard—a rich, shrewd financier, and no leader of forlorn-hopes. If Hubbard was in the thing the thing was all right. But a hat-pin! Maxwell looked at the certificate and thought of the hat-pin, and reviewed the Harrington of the past two years, and felt a horrible ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... qualities depress, Save those that grace the excelling patroness; Trophies to her on others' follies raise, And, heard with joy, by defamation praise; To this collect each faculty of face, And every feat perform of sly grimace; 170 Let the grave sneer sarcastic speak thee shrewd; The smutty joke ridiculously lewd; And the loud laugh, through all its changes rung, Applaud the abortive sallies of her tongue; Enroll'd a member in the sacred list, Soon shalt thou sharp in company at whist; Her midnight rites ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... whom even Time's iron hands scarcely bent, as she merely stooped at the shoulders. She had a drooping snuffy nose, a long turned-up chin, small quick gray eyes, and her face projected far beyond her figure, with an expression of shrewd restless curiosity. She wore a mode (not a-la-mode ) bonnet, and cardinal of the same, a pair of clogs over her shoes, and black ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... separatist section is a very small one either in Ireland or in America, and that it has become sensibly smaller since, and in consequence of, the proposed concession of a limited statutory constitution. The Irish are quite shrewd enough to know that Separation, if it were attainable—and they are well aware that it is not—would do no good to their markets; and to that knowledge, as well as to many other internal considerations, we may confidently look for the victory of strong centripetal over very weak centrifugal tendencies. ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... affair his uncle had to speak of was not urgent; Mr. Deane was too shrewd and practical a man to allow either his reminiscences or his snuff to impede the progress of trade. Indeed, for the last month or two, there had been hints thrown out to Tom which enabled him to guess that he was going to hear some proposition for his own benefit. With the beginning of the ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... helped the author to develop incidents that could not otherwise, perhaps, have been so effectively managed. To my thinking, the only attractive character in the story is that of O-Yone: type of the old-time loyal and loving servant,— intelligent, shrewd, full of resource,—faithful not only unto death, but beyond death.... Well, let us ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... be rich was denounced as a dangerous and ruinous temptation in St. Paul's times, that was not the slightest reason why it should be so now. All these concessions were made with a freedom which caused the good banker to suspect at times that his shrewd nephew was laughing at him in his sleeve, but he could not but subscribe to them for the sake of consistency; though as a staunch Protestant, it puzzled him a little at times to find it necessary to justify himself by getting his 'infidel' nephew to explain away so much of the Bible ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... evening Press Lays quite unnecessary stress Upon the fact that youthful scholars, Residing in the land of dollars, Where men are shrewd and level-headed, Sing songs to PINDAR'S verses wedded. Yet why this wonder, when you think How strongly welded is the link That binds Columbia and its glory To lands renowned in classic story? There's hardly any town of note Mentioned by MOMMSEN or by GROTE Except Byzantium, perhaps— Which doesn't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... believe, Send straight for the shrieve, For he is one too, or would be; But he drinks no wine, Which is a shrewd sign That all's not so well as ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... to my Lord's owne hand at Portsmouth, which I did undertake. Here my Lady did begin to talk of what she had heard concerning Creed, of his being suspected to be a fanatique and a false fellow. I told her I thought he was as shrewd and cunning a man as any in England, and one that I would feare first should outwit me in any thing. To which she readily concurred. Thence to Mr. Povy's by agreement, and there with Mr. Sherwin, Auditor ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... lesson. He discovered there were people in New York just as quickwitted, as keen, and as shrewd as he was himself. This did not alarm him. Not a bit. He was only the more ready to appreciate the truth of Mr. Bennett's remark, that he had yet ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... bearing, and attributing it to jealousy, sought to soothe her supposed uneasiness by increasing his chivalrous attentions. Her change of behaviour, however, proceeded from another cause. The fair Stuart, though childlike in manner, was shrewd at heart; and was moreover guided invariably by her mother, a lady who reaped wisdom from familiarity with courts. Therefore the maid of honour, seeing she had given the world occasion to think she had lost her virtue, declared she was ready to "marry any gentleman of ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... this writer's business to preach new, revolutionary ideas and views. He narrates typical cases with the dignified reserve of the skeptical man of the world, who knows how to weave in everywhere the comments of a shrewd philosophy of life, who bridles passion with strict self-control, and in the representation of the most tempestuous crises maintains sure mastery over expression and form. The writer himself may share with his creations their longing for fresh elemental power; but he is ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... conciergedom melted before her. In this wholesome, practical child's experience she naturally avoided or overlooked what would not have interested a child, and so kept her freshness and a certain national shrewd simplicity invincible. There is a story told of her girlhood that, one day playing in the Tuileries gardens, she was approached by a gentleman with a waxed mustache and a still more waxen cheek beneath his heavy-lidded eyes. There was an ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... was at this time discussed with our Advisory Committee in the Senate and met not only with their approval as an amendment but they considered it a very shrewd political move on the part of our organization. At the next meeting of the National Suffrage Board I presented the amendment, and, after nearly two months' consideration and discussion with some of the leading suffragists ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... world to his views of the Will. It adds greatly to the interest of the volume itself, in our view, and we trust will do so in the view of our readers, to know that he is no studious recluse nor professional philosopher, but active, shrewd, and keen-sighted, both in his mills, when at home in a fitly named valley, and upon Change, when in Boston or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Turner, Sir W. Walker, and Sir Ellis Layton being our counsel against Sir Robert Wiseman [D.C.L. King's Advocate 1669.] on the other. The second of our three counsel was the best, and indeed did speak admirably, and is a very shrewd man. Nevertheless as good as he did make our case, and the rest, yet when Wiseman come to argue (nay, and though he did begin so sillily that we laughed in scorn in our sleeves at him,) he did so state the case, that the Judge [Sir Leoline ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... He was shrewd and a good judge of character, provided it were Protestant character, and could hold his own with a Jew or a Gypsy. He was fully justified in his boast of being able to take "precious good care of" himself, and "drive a precious hard bargain"; yet these qualities were not to find a market until ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... disorganised populace under the factory system. The difference is that while Chalmers enthusiastically adopted Malthus's theory as indicating the true remedy for the evil, Southey regards it with horror as declaring the evil to be irremediable. Chalmers, a shrewd Scot actively engaged in parochial work, had his attention fixed upon the reckless improvidence of the 'excrescent' population, and welcomed a doctrine which laid stress upon the necessity of raising the standard of prudence and morality. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... in the form of Lord Lidhurst's tutor? I never saw any of these cold moralists who were real, warm-hearted, good friends. I have a notion I see more of Russell's play in the house where he has got than he thinks I do; and I can form a shrewd guess why he was so zealous in warning you of the report about Lady Sarah Lidhurst—he had his own snug reasons for wanting you away—Oh, trust me for scenting out self-interest, through all the doublings and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... whites was poor, bitter because of persecution, ill-educated, overworked, without a bright future, and shadowed by the race problem. Though their new political leaders were shrewd, narrow, conservative, honest, and parsimonious, the constant fighting of fire with fire scorched all. In the bitter discipline of reconstruction, the pleasantest side of Southern life came to an end. During ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... tell you that? Well, she's pretty shrewd. It's quite likely, Betty, quite likely. It seems to me you are not so quick witted as you used ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... youthful eyes, although her years were only about sixty. She wore a dark brown dress and a black silk apron, and had on a cap with thick frilled borders, under which her grey hair was neatly snooded away. She looked ruddy and full of health. A shrewd, sensible woman, evidently; yet with a motherly kindness about her that made me cling to her with ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... also saw the notice. At first he was both surprised and perplexed. Then a shrewd, cunning look came ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... Boston and Chicago the Church is "Democratic"; so in the Elaine campaign it was possible for a Republican clergyman to describe the issue as "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion." But the Holy Office was shrewd and socially ambitious, and the Grand Old Party was desperately in need of votes, so under the regime of Mark Hanna, the President-Maker, there began a rapprochement between Big Business and the New Inquisition. ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... and sanctified by faith? In what did the prime virtue of resignation consist? Would not obedience without faith be merely a debasing superstitious submission to the will of the believing? Her reflections were not suggested by a shrewd guess. She knew that the lot had been resorted to, and that the letters had been written to Elise and Albert which acquainted them with the result; and the peace of her prayerful soul was rent by the thought that a joyless surrender of human will to a higher was, perhaps, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... confuse the brilliant excursion of some solitary thinker with the well-grounded proposals of those who are concerned with the sober possibilities of actual life in our own time. People who are incapable of exercising a little shrewd commonsense in the affairs of life, and are in the habit of emptying out the baby with the bath, had better avoid touching the delicate ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... the sable-skinned George of to-day, give a passing thought to the Pullman itself. The first George of the Pullmans—George M. Pullman—was a shrewd-headed carpenter who migrated from a western New York village out into Illinois more than half a century ago and gave birth to the idea of railroad luxury at half a cent a mile. There had been sleeping cars before Pullman ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... we sometime the wretch who, while he layed Snares for another, wrought his proper doom; And turn we to the damsel he betrayed, Who had nigh found at once her death and tomb. She, after rising from the rock, dismayed At her shrewd fall, and gazing through the gloom, Beheld and passed that inner door, which gave Entrance to other and ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... listened graciously to this petition, and gave Gaston full encouragement to hope to regain his fathers' lost inheritance. But of Basildene no word was spoken then; for the shrewd Master Bernard had warned Raymond that the time had not yet come to prosecute that claim — and indeed the neglected old house, crumbling to the dust and environed by an evil reputation which effectually kept all men away from ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... that to-day the Masai look upon themselves as an unconquered people, and bear themselves—towards the other tribes—accordingly. The shrewd common sense and observation evidenced above must have convinced them that war ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... understood, he lowered his talents to the most humble situations, and to the minutest things. From them he drew his examples and his comparisons; and the one and the other never failed of success." Marville says, that "his expressions were full of shrewd simplicity. He made very free use of the most popular proverbs. His comparisons and figures were always borrowed from the most familiar and lowest things." To ridicule effectually the reigning vices, he would prefer quirks or puns to sublime thoughts; and he was little solicitous of his ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... lively, and sparkled with all the fire of youth; his mouth curved upward in a pleasant, though half-satiric, smile; and his appearance on the whole was prepossessing and commanding, indicating rather the high blood, the shrewd wit, and the gallant valour of the patrician, than his craft, hypocrisy, and habitual but disdainful spirit ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... as to what the pirate must be thinking, or what his feelings must be, now that it was borne in upon him that people had been on the island, though he had not found them. He would, of course, be able to make a shrewd guess as to Gomez's fate, and Roger could picture to himself the fellow's disappointment and anger. For, having failed to find the papers, in search of which he had returned to the sand-bank, he would almost certainly arrive at the conviction that the unknown people on the island, who ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... therefore soon after Mr. Lincoln's election, a shrewd and clear-sighted politician, Gen. Walsh, from New York, visited Springfield, and made his bow to the rising sun. On his return from the Illinois Medira, I asked the general what was his opinion concerning the new President. "Well, sir," was the general's ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... more congenial subject of Oldfield, it is strange that so shrewd a Thespian as Cibber (who seems to have been clever in all things but poetry) was so long in coming to a real appreciation of her genius. He is manly enough to confess that not even the silvery tone of that honeyed voice could, "'till after some time incline my ear to any hope ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... for the prisoners constituted one of the greatest scandals of the camp during its early days, inasmuch as it acted unfairly against those who were "broke." Who pocketed this money we never learned, but there was a very shrewd suspicion that certain persons were far from being scrupulous and did not hesitate to pursue their usual shark tactics, ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... was peaceful, prosperous, and contented. For the most part, she was free from the harassing danger of Indian war. She readily contributed her share for the common defense of the colonies, and sent her loyal quotas to fight for England's territorial claims. For many years, Connecticut was shrewd enough to steer clear of the disastrous inflation of paper currency which overtook her sister colonies. Many strangers were attracted by her prosperity, so that, notwithstanding frequent emigrations of her people, she trebled her population about ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... sir," said Joe, "to ax yer advice, an' to offer ye my sarvice, it it's of any use," said the porter, who was a shrewd straightforward man, and had originally been ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... critical atmosphere plays about his mind: there are no cleansing doubts and fruitful alternatives. The work of Bryan has been to express a certain feeling of unrest—to embody it in the traditional language of prophecy. But it is a shrewd turn of the American people that has kept him out of office. I say this not in disrespect of his qualities, but in definition of them. Bryan does not happen to have the naturalistic outlook, the complete humanity, or the deliberative ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... thank me for the following eloquent passage from Mrs. Cunninghame Graham, which so felicitously characterises this great book, and that in language such as I could not command. 'To my thinking Teresa is at her best in her Way of Perfection with its bursts of impassioned eloquence; its shrewd and caustic irony; its acute and penetrating knowledge of human character, the same in the convent as in the world; above all in its sympathetic and tender instinct for the needs and difficulties of her daughters. The ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... your demand," replied the agent with a shrewd smile. "And if I spoke of this amiable widow it was rather to acquit my conscience than with any hope of succeeding. However free from prejudices one may be, one always retains a few. I understand yours, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... should like to know, and I mean to find her sooner or later. I know a man named Clarke, a dry fellow, in fact a man of business, but shrewd enough. You understand my meaning; not shrewd in the mere business sense of the word, but a man who really knows something about men and life. Well, I laid the case before him, and he was evidently impressed. ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen |
