"Shrewdness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disjointed, fragmentary, began to creep in. Finally the two came to know each other, less by what was actually said, than by the attitude of mind such confidences presupposed. One topic they avoided. Sam, for all his shrewdness, could not determine to what degree had persisted the young man's initial attraction for the girl. Of her devotion there could be no question, but in how much it depended on the necessity of the moment lay the puzzle. Her demeanor was ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... of the Dublin Evening Post, was full of shrewdness and eccentricity. Several prosecutions were instituted against him by the government, and many "keen encounters of the tongue" took place on these occasions between him and John Scott, Lord Clonmel, who was at that period Chief Justice of the King's Bench. In addressing ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... "Saucy Nick." This fellow, a sort of half-outcast from his own people, had early attached himself to the whites, had acquired their language, and owing to a singular mixture of good and bad qualities, blended with great native shrewdness, he had wormed himself into the confidence of several commanders of small garrisons, among whom was our captain. No sooner was the mind of the latter made up, concerning his future course, than he sent for Nick, who was then in the fort; when the following conversation ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... page. To them, however, whose first care is for rare work, the series of novels that began with Vivian Grey and ended with Endymion is one of the pleasant facts in modern letters. These books abound in wit and daring, in originality and shrewdness, in knowledge of the world and in knowledge of men; they contain many vivid and striking studies of character, both portrait and caricature; they sparkle with speaking phrases and happy epithets; they ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... Your lover is amply endowed with brains, and moreover has a vast amount of shrewdness, all that is requisite to secure success and eminence in his profession; but to-day, it seems as much a matter of astonishment to me—as it certainly was six months ago, when first you told me of your engagement—that ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... legally empowered to meet treason at home, the wasteful expense of canvassing distant battle-fields for the soldiers' votes might have been saved. And it would have been easier for these women to vote than to pay their proportion of the tax incurred. Yankee thrift and shrewdness would have been vindicated if Connecticut had provided for the enfranchisement of her women by constitutional amendment, instead of wasting her money and butting her dignity against judicial vetoes in legislating for ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... history had surrounded her in his mind, almost from his cradle, with circumstances of unusual interest; or from his attachment towards the young gentleman, into whose confidence he had, through his shrewdness and alacrity, and the rendering of sundry important services as a spy and messenger, almost imperceptibly glided; whether they had their origin in either of these sources, or in the habit natural to youth, or in the constant badgering and worrying of his venerable ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... that worthy function was entirely lost sight of, that spirit wholly cast aside, and the new institution entered upon its second period, becoming a mere political machine which, in its utter disregard of rights and justice, in the shrewdness and daring of its schemes, and in the blackness of its methods, almost surpassed even our own most skilful efforts in those directions. "My kingdom is not of this world," Christ had said, and yet the church, founded ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... while he went ahead to arrange for the night's shelter. Antoine Lecorbeau had lost his home, his farm, his barns, his orchards, and his easy satisfaction with life; but thanks to Pierre's promptitude and his own shrewdness he had saved all his household stuff, his cattle, his hay and grain, and the little store of gold coin which had been hidden under the great kitchen hearth. His house was the last to be fired, and even now, as Pierre and ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... was not interested. Not so some of the others who went out to see, and among them was "King" Plummer, who began at once to calculate the number of cattle, their value, and how far they had come, all of which he did with great shrewdness. ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... slender and very lean. He had a curious teetering gait, and he took ridiculously short steps in marching, as if he were a monkey who had not learned to feel at ease on his hind legs. His small, wilted, wrinkled face, and his expression of mingled simplicity and shrewdness, were also monkey-like. At Thurstane's reprimand he trotted close up to him with exactly the air of a circus Jocko who expects a whipping, but who hopes to escape it ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... nearer the surface of life than is common in average humanity—a look of vitality, zest, ardour—I fumbled for a more significant superlative as I returned his stare. And yet behind that ardour there was, in Arthur Banks, at least, a hint of determination and shrewdness that I felt must be inherited from the sound yeoman ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... formed with much elegance; piercing dark eyes, and jet-black hair of great length, corresponded with the vivacity and intelligence of features in which were blended a little haughtiness, and a little bashfulness, a great deal of shrewdness, and some power of humorous sarcasm. 'I shall not like her,' was the result of Lucy Bertram's first glance; 'and yet; I rather think I shall,' was the thought excited by ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... have escaped this time by a chance of fortune, not because your wits are keen, not because of your own shrewdness; simply because Fate willed it. It will not be ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with us, and his brother," replied Philippe. "But now I ask you to bear witness to the shrewdness of your friend Philippe in entertainment. I bethought me that, as we were to have with us the master of the Messasebe, it were well to have with us also the typified genius of that same Messasebe. 'Twas but a little conceit of my own. And ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... destroy, they first make mad," has a wide application in the commercial world. Duxbury Farley had resources! a comfortable fortune as country fortunes go, amassed by far-seeing shrewdness, a calm contempt for the well-being of his business associates, and most of all by a crowning gift in the ability to recognize the psychological moment at which to ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... are absurdly contrasted with the sententious solemnity of the despairing hero, crossed in the prosecution of his love-suit. His clumsy interference with the intrigues of his friend, only serves to augment his difficulties, and occasions many an awkward dilemma. On the other hand, the shrewdness of the heroine's confidantes never seem to fail them under the most trying circumstances; while their sly jokes and innuendos, their love of fun, their girlish sympathy with the progress of the love-affair, ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... collection in any way approaching completeness, of the pamphlets this contention has produced in England, would contain tens of thousands of volumes; full of curious learning and anecdotes, of wide reading and conjecture, of shrewdness and wit; yet these books are certainly the last we would seek to save from fire or water. Could they be piled into scales of moral measurement a single copy of the Imitatio, of the Holy Dying, of the Saint's ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... daughters, and his Highness's sons, and drank, in moderation, with his Highness's servants: so, stand off, good mother, stand off!——'honour to whom honour.'" And Robin laid his finger on his nose, while a remarkable expression of cunning and shrewdness passed along his sharp and ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... rhetoric and medicine at Alexandria and at Athens. He began as a teacher of rhetoric in Rome, but, although he was the friend of Cicero, he was not very successful, and abandoned this study for the practice of medicine. He had a great deal of ability and shrewdness, but no knowledge of anatomy or physiology, and he condemned all who thought that these subjects of study were the foundation of the healing art. He specially inveighed against Hippocrates, and with some reason, for the disciples of Hippocrates had elevated the teaching of their master almost into ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... years. Dressed in khaki trousers, with blue flannel shirt, sombrero and well-worn puttee leggings, he might have been mistaken for a soldier. Though his eyes were pleasant to look at, there was an expression of great shrewdness in them. The lines around his mouth bespoke the man's firmness. He was about five-feet-eight in height, slim and had the general bearing of a strong ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... of pride in Nicholas Frye's nature was his absolute belief in his own shrewdness. "They can't get the best of me," he would say to himself when he had won an unusually knotty case, and winking one of his cat-like eyes he would say, half aloud, "I'm shrewd, I'm shrewd as the devil!" He knew he was both hated and feared by his fellow-members ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... and he thinks further that those who do not deserve cohabitation with the more beautiful women, should be deceived whilst the lots are being led out of the city by the magistrates, so that at all times the women who are suitable should fall to their lot, not those whom they desire. This shrewdness, however, is not necessary among the inhabitants of the City of the Sun. For with them deformity is unknown. When the women are exercised they get a clear complexion, and become strong of limb, tall and agile, and with them beauty ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... came to an end which was undeserved by him. His character appeared to be that of a man of a mild and moderate disposition, and suffered the administration of affairs to be generally done by others under him. He was averse to much meddling with the public, nor had shrewdness enough to govern a kingdom. And both Antipater and Herod came to their greatness by reason of his mildness; and at last he met with such an end from them as was not agreeable either to ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... different from the rest. Whereas, they had one and all a peculiarly unhealthy effect upon Andy, this newcomer was a cheery fellow, with an eye as clear as crystal, and color in his tanned cheeks. He had one of those long faces which invariably imply shrewdness, and he canted his head to one side while he watched Andy. "You're him that put the pinto in the ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... le Maire," replied Scaufflaire; then, scratching a speck in the wood of the table with his thumb-nail, he resumed with that careless air which the Flemings understand so well how to mingle with their shrewdness:— ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Puna fishers to the vigour of his body. He was skilled in single combat; as a general, he was almost invariably the victor. Yet it is not as a soldier that he remains fixed upon the memory; rather as a kindly and wise monarch, full of sense and shrewdness, like an old plain country farmer. When he had a mind to make a present of fish, he went to the fishing himself. When famine fell on the land, he remitted the tributes, cultivated a garden for his own support with his own hands, and set all his friends to do the like. Their ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the better. I shall provide you with ample funds to defray your expenses. As to instructions, I have none to give. You must be guided by circumstances, and fall back in times of perplexity upon your natural shrewdness. Now let us address ourselves to ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... climax, witty, ingenious, and so plausibly presented that we forget its departures from the possibilities of life. In "The Alchemist" Jonson represented, none the less to the life, certain sharpers of the metropolis, revelling in their shrewdness and rascality and in the variety of the stupidity and wickedness of their victims. We may object to the fact that the only person in the play possessed of a scruple of honesty is discomfited, and that the greatest scoundrel of all is approved in the end and rewarded. ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... the world around him, and afar on the world of thought—-their greatness reconciled all the contradictions of life. And in pure submission to their control all the various activities of his versatile nature, its irony and its earnestness, its shrewdness and its fancy, its piety and its free-thinking, harmonized like sweet bells not yet jangled or untuned. He lived at peace with all, in fellowship with all; he could rally Polonius without malice, and ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... a pretty obvious move, I should think. You know, these fellows have plenty of shrewdness in spite of their Irish oddity. [Hodson comes from the house. Larry sits in Doran's chair and reads]. ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... several thousand dollars' worth of furs he shipped them to London and embarked as a passenger in the steerage. The trip showed him that ability to sell was quite as necessary as the ability to buy—a point which with all of his shrewdness ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... curious message on the wire, Shirley did not propose to expose his hand. Walking leisurely to the Avenue, he hailed a passing hansom. He directed the driver to carry him to an address on Central Park West. His shrewdness was not wasted, for as he stepped into the vehicle, he espied a slinking figure crossing the street diagonally before him, to disappear into the shadow of an adjacent doorway. This was the house ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... was noted through the town for his stuttering as well as for his shrewdness in making a bargain, stopped ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... officers were convinced that Ruiz was mad. How do you say that?—tile loose—eh? But the doctor, an observant Scotsman with much shrewdness and philosophy in his character, told me that it was a very curious case of possession. I met him many years afterwards, but he remembered the experience very well. He told me, too, that in his opinion ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... out every single, solitary, uncomplimentary thing about Ella that she could find, and 'a' fetched 'em to me as pleased and proud as a puppy, expecting, for all the world, to be petted and patted for her astonishing shrewdness. And there would sure have been gloom ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... cow is the most valuable thing on earth, while a sheep is only a medium of exchange. With such notions it is easy to see that the white man can make an advantageous exchange, in spite of the Masai's well-known shrewdness at a bargain. Each side is satisfied. There remains only to find a market for the sheep—an easy matter. A small herd of cows will, in the long run, bring quite ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... more secretive, more self-assured, more at ease with his guilt. He looked the Wishbone men squarely in the eye, and it seldom occurred to him that he was a thief; or if it did, the word was but a synonym for luck, with shrewdness behind. Sometimes he regretted his timidity. Why three calves only? In a deep little coulee next the river—a coulee which the round-up had missed—had been more than three. He might have doubled the number and ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... gifts and graces necessary to sustain him in that artificial sphere. He can neither play the learned sage with Johnson, nor the fine gentleman with Beauclerc, though he has a mind replete with wisdom and natural shrewdness, and a spirit free from vulgarity. The blunders of a fertile but hurried intellect, and the awkward display of the student assuming the man of fashion, fix on him a character for absurdity and vanity which, like the charge of lunacy, it is hard to disprove, however weak the grounds of ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... your spirit, Mrs. Brace," he was saying, in ingratiating tone; "and your shrewdness. I've followed all you said, in the papers. And I'm in hopes that ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... friendly fellow!" exclaimed Mrs. Phillips, on receiving her refreshment. "Both kinds of sandwiches," she continued, peering round her cup. "Were there three?" she asked with sudden shrewdness. ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... was unique. An express car had never been looted in this manner before. "Therefore," said Mr. Pinkerton, "it was done by a new man, and although this new man had the nerve, brains and shrewdness necessary to successfully terminate his plans, yet he will lack the cunning and experience of an old hand in keeping clear of the detectives and the law, and will do some one thing which will put us ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... path, his bridle was caught by a half-naked lad, whom the rider at once recognized as an emissary he had often before employed to be the bearer of secret intelligence, and who, under an affectation of being half-witted, concealed much shrewdness of observation and unimpeachable ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... open the gala season with a fresh artist, who supplied the place of the departing vocalist, whether a soprano or tenor. Her predecessor, a tenor, was piqued at his dismissal, and tried to prejudice the public against her by representing her as alike-ugly in person and faulty in art. Mara's shrewdness of resource turned the tables on the Italian. On her first appearance her manner was purposely full of gaucherie, her costume badly considered and all awry, her singing careless and out of time. The maligner was triumphant, and said to all, "Didn't I say ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... soon, thanks to his habitual civility, made familiar acquaintance with the shopwoman. She was a little sickly old lady, her head shaking, as with palsy, somewhat deaf, but still shrewd and sharp, rendered mechanically so by long habits of shrewdness and sharpness. She became very communicative, spoke freely of her desire to give up the shop, and pass the rest of her days with a sister, widowed like herself, in a neighbouring town. Since she had lost her husband, the field and orchard attached ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Abijah Witherpee had kept, in East Hampton, the largest country store for miles around, and by more than ordinary shrewdness had accumulated a snug little fortune, and with it the reputation among the country folk of being an immensely rich man. It is no trifle, as every one knows, in a small village, to be accounted its richest man, but that was the least of Abijah's ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... her experience of life was as of three to Sidney's one. The product of a curious marriage,—when Tommy Harrison of Harrison's Minstrels, touring Spain with his troupe, had met the pretty daughter of a Spanish shopkeeper and eloped with her,—she had certain qualities of both, a Yankee shrewdness and capacity that made her a capable nurse, complicated by occasional outcroppings of southern Europe, furious bursts of temper, slow and smouldering vindictiveness. A passionate creature, in reality, smothered under ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... into the saucer. And they chatted on, and fed Jessie into joy and peace. Gradually Julian drew the conversation round to the photographs. The lady was expansive. She gave short histories of some of the men, summing them up with considerable shrewdness, kodaking their characters with both humour and sarcasm. Julian and she progressed along the mantelpiece together. Presently they arrived at the ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... legs after the birds which threatened the new-tilled crops. By such means—common to all his neighbours at a time when cultivation was slow and such luxuries as meat, white bread, bedding, and coal were unknown to the poor, and by a shrewdness peculiar to himself—did James Ruan manage to make his property contribute to his private income, a condition of affairs by no means inevitable in farming, although at that time the hated Corn Law, only repealed soon after Ishmael's birth, had for thirty years been in ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... was all that Sir Philip stated; but it was something more. It was a very artful epistle, drawn up by the joint shrewdness of Mr. Shanks, Mr. John Ayliffe, and Mrs. Hazleton. It concisely stated the claims of the young man who signed it, to all the property of the late Sir John Hastings and to the baronetcy. It made no parade of proofs, but assumed ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... deputies; French conversation is no longer what it was. Brilliancy of mind needs leisure and certain social inequalities to bring it out. There is, probably, more real conversation in Vienna or St. Petersburg than in Paris. Equals do not need to employ delicacy or shrewdness in speech; they blurt out things as they are. Consequently the dandies of Paris did not discover the great seigneur in the rather heedless young fellow who, in their talks, would flit from one subject to another, all the more intent upon amusement because he had just escaped ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... gossiping English to have been a second simultaneous Mistress of his Majesty's; but seems, after all, to have been his Half-Sister and nothing more. Half-Sister (due to Gentleman Ernst and a Countess Platen of bad Hanover fame); grown dreadfully fat; but not without shrewdness, perhaps affection; and worth something in this dull foreign country, mere cataract of animal oils as she has become. These Two are the amount of his Britannic Majesty's resources in that matter; resources ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... forgetting everything but the joy of atmosphere and light—the pleasure of his physical strength. Near one of the highest crags he came upon a shepherd-boy and his dog collecting some sheep. The collie ran hither and thither with the marvellous shrewdness of his breed, circling, heading, driving; the stampede of the sheep, as they fled before him, could be heard along the fell. The sun played upon the flock, turning its dirty grey to white, caught the ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... contemporaries, elevated, it may be, but not essentially changed? A dreamer, with the clouds of the visionaries and apocalyptists ever in his head? When we look at the ancient world, the great men are not archaic figures. Matthew Arnold found in Homer something of the clearness and shrewdness of Voltaire. There is thing archaic about Plato or Virgil or Paul—to keep abreast of their thinking is no easy task for the strongest of our brains, so modern, eternal, and original they are. They have shaped the thinking of the world and are still shaping it. How much ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... thought the quartermaster was right; and, in my heart, I admired the shrewdness of the old drunkard. We kept on toward the wood, Poitevin leading, and the others following, with our pieces cocked. We marched slowly, stopping every hundred paces to listen. The shots grew nearer; they were fired at intervals, ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... at the mirror, and dusted her face with oatmeal For everything you lose you get something No trouble like that which comes between parent and child Old clock in the corner "ticking" life, and youth, and hope away She had not much brains, but she had some shrewdness Take the honeymoon himself, and leave his wife to learn cooking The laughter of a ripe summer was upon the land Thought all as flippant as herself Turned the misery of the world into a game, and grinned at it When the ...
— Quotations From Gilbert Parker • David Widger
... resources of the country have been fairly tested during the past two weeks. Under the circumstances, the shrewdness and energy of both municipal and national detectives have been proven good. The latter body has had a too partial share of the applause thus far, while the great efforts of our New-York and other officers have ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... peculiarly fierce and almost unearthly expression. The mouth drawn to one side, the wide flat forehead, projecting cheek-bones, and pointed chin, sufficiently characterised him as labouring under that sort of imbecility not seldom unmixed with a tact and shrewdness that seem to be characteristic of this species of disease and deformity. He set one foot on the mattock, ceasing from his labours whilst he cried out, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... was introduced to me the first week I was here," replied Mrs. Potter. "He seems to me to be a Southern gentleman with a good deal of real Yankee shrewdness." ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... of a fine tan complexion, with a snub nose, and a slit for a mouth, is nearly as comical as that matchless performer's. When aided by Ben's singular mobility of feature, his knowing winks and grins and shrugs and nods, together with a certain dry shrewdness, a habit of saying sharp things, and a marvellous gift of impudence, it forms as fine a specimen as possible of a humorous country boy, an oddity in embryo. Everybody likes Ben, except his butts (which may perhaps comprise half his acquaintance); and of them no one ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... Character, because he blunders out Proverbs upon all occasions, tho never so far from the purpose—and merrily drolls upon me for making blundering and talking nothing to the purpose, an argument of shrewdness—Why truly, I must confess to the Doctor, there is no great matter in that Argument, and not much whither there be or no—But, as unperforming as I am, I fancy I shall find as great a Blunder in his performance presently— We ought to be just in our Looks, as well as in our Actions, ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... and practical character of his mind are about to show themselves. He has settled to a steady occupation; he is industrious and thrifty; he has gathered much information, and may be regarded as a well-educated man; he writes a plain, forcible style; he has enterprise and shrewdness in matters of business, and good sense in all matters,—that is the chief point, his sound sense has got its full growth and vigor, and of sound sense no man ever had more. Very soon he not only prospers financially, but begins to secure at first that attention and soon afterward that influence ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... desire for conquest; and if this inexplicable husband chose to leave his wife in an equivocal position, he must be prepared to accept the consequences, which are, in general, the last things that any average man is prepared to accept. Shrewdness and vanity alike convinced Garth that Quita's attitude on Dynkund, viewed in the light of her subsequent disclosure, counted for nothing; while the fact that for six months she had readily accepted his companionship counted for much. Her fine sense of honour had naturally compelled her to ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... way. I remember one case that I had that old Corbin told me I'd be sure to win, and I took eleven different exceptions, and the judge decided against me on every single one. I thought I was gone sure—but, by thunder, he instructed the jury in my favour! It took me a long time to see the shrewdness of that; you see, it goes to the higher courts, and they see that the judge has given the losing side every advantage, and has decided purely on the evidence. And of course they haven't the witnesses before them, and don't feel half so well able to ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... irregularities of that 'old riotous form of military government,' which the long civil wars had generated, seemed of themselves to threaten speedy dissolution, this old Gascon prophet, with his inexhaustible fund of English shrewdness, and sound English sense, underlying all his Gasconading, by no means considers the state as past the statesman's care: 'after all, we are not, perhaps, at the last gasp,' he says. 'The conservation of states is a thing that in all likelihood surpasses ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... With the shrewdness that distinguishes them, the Officers of the Army have discovered that the practice of vegetarianism is a wonderful enemy to the practice of alcoholism. The vegetarian, it seems, conceives a bodily distaste to spirituous ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... expectations. She always tried hard to hold on to the original image, even if it did not in the least coincide with what her friends proved to be in reality and this brought on numberless fights with Kurt, who, with his usual shrewdness, could not help revealing to her the real state of affairs. This always disillusioned her finally, for it was hard to deny his proofs. Whenever another girl woke a passionate love in her, she was bound to ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... English bride critically; she was such a perfect specimen of that estimable race—well-shaped, refined and healthy. Chock full of temperament too, he reflected—when she should discover herself. Temperament and romance and even passion, and there were shrewdness ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... luck and shrewdness of Ramin, for the old man every day was reported worse; and it was clear to all that the first quarter of the annuity would never be paid. Marguerite, in her wrath, told the story as a grievance to every one; people listened, shook their ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... dexterity; as, for instance, in hunting, the knowledge of the habits of animals and their places of abode; in architecture, of mathematics; in painting, of harmonies of color; in music, of those of sound; all this pure science being joined with readiness of expedient in applying it, and with shrewdness in apprehension of difficulties, either ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... kindled, a splendid blaze shot up, and for a while they stood contemplating it, with faces strangely disfigured by the peculiar light first emitted when bog-wood is thrown on; after a short pause, the ground was cleared in front of an old blind piper, the very beau ideal of energy, drollery, and shrewdness, who, seated on a low chair, with a well-replenished jug within his reach, screwed his pipes to the liveliest tunes, and the ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... Chia nodded her head. "Albeit I'm fond of her," she sighed, "I can't, on the other hand, help distrusting that excessive shrewdness of hers, for it isn't ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... the charms of their conversation may efface the marks of the crows' feet; but 'all these I passen by, and nameless numbers moe.' And now comes the Hon. Mrs. Downe Wright, a person of considerable shrewdness and penetration—vulgar, but unaffected. There is no politeness, no gentleness in her heart; but she possesses some warmth, much honesty, and great hospitality. She has acquired the character of being—oh, odious thing!—a ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... do, Margaret, mark my words for it. It takes a woman of shrewdness, caution, and knowledge of the world, and one thoroughly versed in household economy, to get along in this pursuit. Even if you possessed all these prerequisites to success, you have just the family that ought not to come in contact with anybody and everybody that find ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... much uncurbable, her garboils, Caesar, Made out of her impatience,—which not wanted Shrewdness of policy too,—I grieving grant Did you too much disquiet: for that you must But say ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... business shrewdness and how it paid, and how mean and tricky in little deals we Rubes was, and yet we didn't appreciate how to manage big things, till I got ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Commons, after the strength and acumen of Mansfield had been employed to sustain the prerogative against the colonies and the voice of Burke had championed the colonies against the prerogative, after Grenville had defended himself with shrewdness and Pitt had added to the splendor of his fame, the Stamp Act was formally {104} repealed. Unhappily, the new Ministry was only permitted to do good by halves. The same session that repealed the Stamp Act promulgated ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... in the city, for she earns her bread by selling cakes, fruits, and other light articles which may be vended in the street with chances of profit. Although "Aun' Sheba," as she was familiarly called, had received no training for mercantile pursuits, yet her native shrewdness had enabled her to hit upon the principles of success, as may be discovered by the reader as the story progresses. She had always been so emphatically the master of the house and the head of the ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... what Mercier was afraid of too. That was why he had bolted with her to Paris. They must have had that in their minds, they must have planned it months before. He must have been trying for the post he'd got there. Ransome could see further, with a fierce shrewdness, that it was Mercier's "funk" and not his loyalty that accounted for his "holding off." "He held off because I was his friend, did he? He held off to save ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... began its testimony by placing Scott Jackson on the stand. All the man's natural shrewdness came to his aid while on the stand. His words were clear, frankly spoken and there was no hesitation in his manner. He acted the innocent ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... and a half he removed to Leeds, finished his apprenticeship, and at once started in business for himself. He was always a most assiduous student, and quickly became known as a man of great practical shrewdness and ability, who took a keen interest in political and social movements. His political opinions led him to sympathize with nonconformity and he soon joined the Independents. In 1801 the assistance of party ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... the "nimble servitors" of genius and passion. In conclusion we may say, that, in the combination of accurate observation, strong sense, and delicate spiritual perception,—in the union of humor and pathos, of shrewdness and sentiment,—and in the power of seizing character in its vital inward sources, and of portraying its outward peculiarities,—"The Pearl of Orr's Island" does not yield to any book which Mrs. Stowe has heretofore contributed to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... by no means an idler; he had developed a great business shrewdness, and two or three times in the week drove over to a neighboring river-town to look after the shipments to the West Indies in which he was now interested in company with the Squire. But this had not forbidden a little cursory reading ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... into contact, not merely a man whom he disliked and distrusted, but one who, if allowed to pursue his plans unchecked, would in the end form a greater danger to the imperial authority than even the Taepings. It is not possible to deny Li's shrewdness in reading the character of the man with ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... our belief, or by our parents' belief, or by public opinion, there is no formula to be adopted, but every one must be reached in his particular case. Therefore it requires great shrewdness or wisdom to get the better of the error. Disease is our error and the ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... extent is the wisdom of strategy and is full of mottoes and proverbs inculcating non-generous ideals. When people have been "fooled" or misled, the most valuable of the social cementing qualities, faith in one's fellows, is weakened. Despite the disintegrating effect of unscrupulous shrewdness, it is common enough to hear men say of a successful votary of the art, "Well, I give him credit. He is a very clever fellow, and he has brought home the bacon." Success is so highly prized and admired that the means of obtaining ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... occasion for action presented itself we talked about war in peace. The man in the street—omniscient being!—discussed it threadbare on the pavement. A man who knew the Boers was the man in the street. He knew the British army, too, though; and was sanguine of its ability to go one better—the shrewdness of which view was loudly applauded. And he really did much to make morbid people easy, and to lighten the burden of weak minds. The man in the street was respected. It was deemed a privilege to chat on the situation with this exalted ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... in all this world most confident in his sagacity and shrewdness; the man in all this world most proud of his distrust of other men, and having most to show in gold and silver as the gains belonging to his creed; the meekest favourer of that wise doctrine, Every man for himself, and God for us all (there being high ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Senator was hopelessly enmeshed in the golden net which had been so skilfully and genially woven by Anne during the summer. He believed himself to be the coming man, all his natural shrewdness and rich experience going for naught before the witchery of his sister's imagination. In her mind the climax of the drama was a Dillon at the top of the heap in the City Hall. Alas, the very first orders of the chief to his secretary ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... armed guard, in making himself master of the citadel. Twice driven out of the city, he at length returned (538 B.C.), and gained permanent control by force of arms. He managed his government with shrewdness and energy. Industry and trade flourished. He decorated Athens with buildings and statues. Religious festivals he caused to be celebrated with splendor. He ruled under the legal forms by having archons chosen to suit him. He died 527 ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Ward. Why did he make some people laugh till they cried, while others were all untouched? His secret probably was almost entirely one of manner, a trick of almost idiotic naivete, like that of Lord Dundreary, covering real shrewdness. He had his rustic chaff, his Puritan profanity; his manner was the essence of his mirth. It was one of the ultimate constituents of the ludicrous, beyond which ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... The two men looked at one another, while the knot of beggars, gathered round the gate and just out of earshot, watched them—in the dark as to all else, but aware with Irish shrewdness that they were at grips. Asgill was not only taken by surprise, but he lay under the disadvantage of ignorance. He did not know precisely how things stood, much less could he explain this sudden attack. Yet if the tall, lean man, serious and growing ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... this story, the shrewdness with which the reporter plays up the probable cause of the accident, adding to the actual facts and promising possible further ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... harangue. He knew whom his mother had in mind—Remedios, the daughter of the richest man in town—a rustic, the latter, with more luck than brains, who flooded the English markets with oranges and made enormous profits, circumventing by instinctive shrewdness all the commercial combinations ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... gracious and beautiful Sunday school simplicity and practicality prevailed, the 'Yankee' (citizen of the New England States) was hated with a splendid energy. But religion had nothing to do with it. In a trade, the Yankee was held to be about five times the match of the Westerner. His shrewdness, his insight, his judgment, his knowledge, his enterprise, and his formidable cleverness in applying these forces were frankly confessed, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of ignominy rather than the stamp of worth,—the epitaph of culture, if not of character. I look on with a profound and regretful pity. You successful,—YOU! with half your powers lying dormant,—you, with your imagination stifled, your conscience unfaithful, your chivalry deadened into shrewdness, your religion a thing of tithes and forms;—you successful, in whom romance has died out; to whom fidelity and constancy and aspiration are nothing but a voice; who remember love and heroism and self-sacrifice only as ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... decide upon the method of carrying out the agreement, and again the wily Wygwind displayed his shrewdness. When the Texan referred in his offhand manner to himself and friends as bringing forward the animals to be passed to these two representatives, the Comanche replied that no one but Gleeson himself must act in the transaction. His appearance on the crest of the ridge, with the string ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... man met the launch at each landing, the merchant, a democrat in his shirt-sleeves and without a tie. His voice was always a flat, weary drawl, but his eyes, wrinkled against the sun, usually held the shrewdness of those who make their ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... was "The Book of Life," and it attempted to show how much an observant man might learn by an accurate and systematic examination of all that came in his way. It struck me as being a remarkable mixture of shrewdness and of absurdity. The reasoning was close and intense, but the deductions appeared to me to be far-fetched and exaggerated. The writer claimed by a momentary expression, a twitch of a muscle or a glance of an eye, to fathom a man's inmost thoughts. Deceit, ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... linger on the sounds that delight it, or avail itself of the same brilliant coincidence and unexpected recurrence of syllables, that have been displayed in the invention and collocation of images. It is allowed that rhyme assists the memory; and a man of wit and shrewdness has been heard to say, that the only four good lines of poetry are the well-known ones which tell the number of days in the months of ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... unprophetic utterance:—"We passed the mill where the Mother-Bank paper is made! Thank God! this mill is likely soon to want employment. Hard by is a pretty park and house belonging to 'Squire' Portal, the paper-maker. The country people, who seldom want for sarcastic shrewdness, call it ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... man in the midst of the crowd stops and looks around. He is a short young man, in whose face there is a strange mixture of innocence and shrewdness. He is pulling a baby-carriage, containing a small specimen of French nationality, and behind him ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... treasures—how to get them? crept the question through her mind, Since keen enemies were watching for what prizes they might find: And she paused a while and pondered, with a pretty little sigh; Then resolve crept through her features, and a shrewdness fired her eye. ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... evangelical as anything to be heard in the Independent Chapel; and he made a High-Church assertion of ecclesiastical powers and functions. Clearly, the Dissenters would feel that 'the parson' was too many for them. Nothing like a man who combines shrewdness with energy. The wisdom of the serpent, Mr. Barton considered, was ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... ploughed into the dust. The cane stamped along in company with the sabots, all three in a fury of impatience. The cure's step and his manner might have been those of a boy, burning with haste to discover a playmate in hiding. All the keenness and shrewdness on the fine, ruddy face had melted into sweetness; an exuberance of mirth seemed to be the sap that fed his rich nature. It was easy to see he had passed the meridian of his existence in a realm of high spirits; an irrepressible fountain ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... fact that many men who have shown remarkable shrewdness in conducting a business in which a fortune may have been accumulated, exhibit the judgment of children when it ...
— Business Hints for Men and Women • Alfred Rochefort Calhoun
... to other topics; and the whole day was a gentle entertainment to Eleanor. The perpetual good sense, information, and shrewdness of her hostess was matter of constant surprise and interest. Eleanor had never talked with anybody who talked so well; and she felt obliged unconsciously all the time to produce the best of herself. That is not a disagreeable exercise; and on the whole the day reeled off on silver ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... part in concert. It was necessary, by all means, to guard against such an idea. This may be the key to interpret the arrest and proceedings against Mary Warren. If it is, the affair, it must be confessed, was managed with great shrewdness and skill. She conducted the stratagem most dexterously. All at once she fell away from the circle, and began to talk against the "afflicted children," and went so far as to say, that they "did but dissemble." Immediately, they cried out upon ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... position with the Count as to be honest in his own interest. He hoped to get some place by his master's influence, and he made the Count's fortune his first care. His conduct so effectually gave the lie to his former life, that he was regarded as a slandered man. The Countess, with the tact and shrewdness of which most women have a share more or less, understood the man's motives, watched him quietly, and managed him so well, that she had made good use of him for the augmentation of her private fortune. She had contrived to make Delbecq believe that she ruled her husband, ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... pronounced the introductory survey of England's social condition at the opening of the sixteenth century to be just what it ought to have been. Carlyle's marginal notes upon the first two chapters are extremely interesting, and doubly characteristic, because they illustrate at the same time his practical shrewdness and his intense prejudice. For these reasons, and also because in many instances his advice was followed, it may be worth while to give some account of his pencil jottings, written when Carlyle's hand was still firm, and as legible as they were fifty years ago. Upon the first ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... but the abstraction in his voice and an accompanying failure of invention in his compliments had not escaped unnoticed by her, and there was playing about her dear obstinate mouth and fierce-coloured eyebrows the most delicious look of shrewdness, as if she had his secret by the coat-tail and would deliver it up to justice; and over all there was the sweetest, most playful smile, which showed that she would make a jest of his negligence, that she was one of those who exclude ugliness ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... politics; they lay subterranean mines, as it were, and deal blows in the dark, following a prudent tactical system, which hardly allows of a step in advance or retreat even in the course of ten years. The secret intrigues of men who desire above all things to avoid noise requires special shrewdness, a special aptitude for dealing with small matters, and a patient endurance such as one only finds in persons callous to all passions. It is thus that provincial dilatoriness, which is so freely ridiculed in Paris, is full of treachery, secret stabs, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... opposite the small Frenchman who sat on the right hand of my Gouverneur Faulkner, and opposite to me sat my Uncle, the General Robert. No business was in discussion at that time but I could see those eyes of French shrewdness make a darting from one face to another and ever they came back to me with a great puzzle which gave to ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... affairs of the country. The founding of Norman power there was largely the work of a noble named Robert Guiscard ("the Crafty"), a man almost as celebrated as William the Conqueror. He had set out from his home in Normandy with only a single follower, but his valor and shrewdness soon brought him to the front. Robert united the scattered bands of Normans in Italy, who were fighting for pay or plunder, and wrested from the Roman Empire in the East its last territories in the peninsula. Before his death (1085 A.D.) ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... last summer he came in to tell us about a great bargain in a cemetery lot in a new cemetery being laid out in Kansas City; he bought it on the installment plan, a dollar down and twenty-five cents a month, to be paid until he died, and he bragged a great deal about his shrewdness in getting the lot on those terms. He chuckled as he said that he would be dead in five years at the most and would have a seventy-five dollar lot for a mere song. He made us promise that when that time does come we will write up his obsequies ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... all the distinguishing, though shallower, virtues of character. He had the merit, too, of a proper appreciation of his own capacity; and his aims never rose above that capacity. As a superficial man he dealt with superficial things, and his dealings were marked by tact and shrewdness. In his sphere he was proficient, and he kept his wits upon the alert for everything that might be turned to professional and profitable use. Thus it was that, as he sauntered along one of the main thoroughfares of Cincinnati, as has been written, his attention was suddenly arrested by a voice ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... sense of warmth. He looked at the skin and tongue and the secretions, and formed conclusions, more or less just in proportion to the educated acuteness of his senses and the use he made of these accumulations of experience. The shrewdness of the judgments thus formed shows us, to our wonder, how sharply he must have trained his senses, and has led some to suspect that our easier and more exact methods and means may have led us to bestow less ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... stores came and left most of their meagre surplus in her shop and other girls who didn't work came in, throwing dollars about and talking about "gentlemen friends." Edith hated the bargaining but attended to it with shrewdness and with a quiet disarming little smile on her face. What she liked was to sit quietly in the room and trim hats. When the business grew she had a woman to tend the shop and a girl to sit beside her and help with the hats. She had a friend, the ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... words were not lost upon him, for Grichka was nothing if not the very acme of shrewdness. Not an adventurer or escroc in Europe could compare with him ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... sincere in his praise. Although the prisoner had disappointed his plans, and had even insulted him, he could not help admiring his shrewdness and courage. He—Lecoq—had prepared himself for a strenuous struggle with this man, and he hoped to conquer in the end. Nevertheless in his secret soul he felt for his adversary, admiring that sympathy which a "foeman worthy of ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... dozen town lots in the various additions to the town, made the mother thankful for the Grandfather Barclay's blood in him. But she saw a soul growing into the boy's face that frightened her. What others admired as strength she feared, for she knew it was ruthlessness. What others called shrewdness she, remembering his Grandfather Barclay, knew might grow into blind, cruel greed, and when she thought of his voice and his curly hair, and recalled Uncle Leander, the curly-headed, singing ne'er-do-well of her family, and then in the boy's ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... lane, furnished with a tawdry affectation of finery, with some old family pictures hanging on walls which their own cobwebs would better have suited. I was struck with a secret dread at entering, nor was it lessened by the appearance of the landlady, who had that look of selfish shrewdness, which, of all others, is the most hateful to those whose feelings are untinctured with the world. A girl, who she told us was her niece, sat by her, playing on a guitar, while herself was at work, with the assistance of spectacles, and had a prayer-book with the ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... happy-go-lucky indifference to persons and events, Cheyenne had a sort of intuitive shrewdness in reading humans. And he read in Bartley's glance a half-awakened desire to outfit and hit the trail himself. But Cheyenne departed without suggesting any such idea. Every man for himself was his motto. "And as for ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... excitedly. "I—I congratulate you upon your shrewdness. If you find out this girl's address, you will place me under everlasting obligations ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... it, and departed weeping for him; Then, tho' she mourn'd his absence as his grave, Set her sad will no less to chime with his, But throve not in her trade, not being bred To barter, nor compensating the want By shrewdness, neither capable of lies, Nor asking overmuch and taking less, And still foreboding 'what would Enoch say?' For more than once, in days of difficulty And pressure, had she sold her wares for less Than what she gave in buying what she sold: She fail'd ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... the part of spokeswoman, gave her tale, interrupted now and again by a long whistle with which the Major signified his shrewdness, or by an energetic nod which meant that the difficulty was ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... D'Artagnan, who has stood his ground with true Gascon tenacity, at length obtains an audience. The loss of his letter of recommendation now proves a great disadvantage to him. In those days of court intrigue and espionage, men were naturally suspicious of each other, and the mingled naivete and shrewdness of the young Bearnais, are causes for Monsieur de Treville at first suspecting him of being a spy of the Cardinal's. His suspicions, however, are wearing off, and he is disposed to be useful to D'Artagnan, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... outside of Athens, and I noticed that the peasantry, in point of picturesqueness of dress and color of complexion, were not unlike the gypsies we see at times in America. They had also much of the same shrewdness, and, as far as I could learn, were generally wholly uneducated, ignorant, indeed, except as to one subject—politics—which I was told came to them intuitively, they taking to it, and a scramble for office, as naturally as a duck to water. In ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... poets have carried the New England spirit into poetry,—its sense of fitness, order, propriety, its shrewdness, inventiveness, aptness, and its aspiration for the pure and noble in life. They have finely exemplified the best Yankee traits; but in no instance were these traits merged in a personality large enough, bold enough, and copious ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... individuals? In other words, is their inferiority a quantitative or qualitative one? Taking pure intelligence into consideration we find that they show no deficiency in this particular sphere. On the contrary, most or all of them show a degree of shrewdness and keenness which absolutely precludes the existence of an intelligence defect per se. Their recidivism is not due to an inability to distinguish between right and wrong. They know very well what is and what is not right, at any rate, as well as the average person, but they feel decidedly ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... trap. At the battle of Courtrai the knights charged into an unsuspected ditch, and as they fell the burghers with huge clubs beat out such brains as they could find within the helmets. It was subtlety against stupidity, the merchant's shrewdness asserting itself along new lines. King Philip had to create for himself a fresh nobility to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... one of the most successful men on the Levee. Long, his senior partner, was a western man of hard, keen business sense, who had come to New Orleans fifty years before, a barefooted deck-hand on an Ohio schooner. By shrewdness, dogged industry and some little luck, he made "Long's" the best known and richest house in the South-west, until in the crash of '37 it threatened to topple down forever. Then Mr. Staple came forward with his great credit and ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... could be done with a man who was trying to show off his shrewdness to his listening superiors. He said disgustedly: "That's the last straw. Go ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... returned Mignon. Her black eyes sparkled with triumph. At last she had found a way to even her score with Marjorie Dean. With almost uncanny shrewdness she had divined what Marjorie herself had not discovered. This blue-eyed baby of a girl, for Mignon mentally characterized her as such, was jealous of Marjorie's friendship with the Stevens girl. Very well. She would take a hand and help matters along. Of ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... Revolt was crushed in the summer of 1525. Before this end was accomplished, the Good Elector passed away—a wise, kindly, tolerant man who had exercised an immense moderating influence by simple benignity, shrewdness, and force of character. A little earlier, the ambitious schemes of Francis I. had been shattered by the disaster of Pavia. In effect, the whole European situation was changed completely since the death of ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... his poverty and achieved his own independence, so bravely he went in and won the great City prize with a fortune of a quarter of a million. And every one of his old friends, and every honest-hearted fellow who likes to see shrewdness, and honesty, and courage succeed, was glad of his good fortune, and said, "Newcome, my boy" (or "Newcome, my buck," if they were old City cronies, and very familiar), "I give ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... forehead indicated only extreme energy. Life seemed to centre in his chest, which was rather hollow. More nervous than sanguine, Cristophe's bodily appearance was thin and threadlike, but wiry. His pointed noise expressed the shrewdness of the people, and his countenance revealed an intelligence capable of conducting itself well on a single point of the circumference, without having the faculty of seeing all around it. His eyes, the arching brows of which, scarcely ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... that this "fortunate provision" was due solely to the shrewdness and probity of Judge Orcutt; that if he and the trust company's president had had their way she would have been obliged to content herself with a much more modest income than she now enjoyed. But doubtless Mr. Crane ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... looked at him with a surprised face, which gradually reverted to its original shrewdness when he saw that Ellis was in earnest. "You must be hard up for a ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sat his old wife, and on the other side of the fireplace was the old overseer, his head also white, his face strong and thoughtful. He was clean shaven, save a patch of short white chin-whiskers, and his big straight nose had a slight hook of shrewdness in it. ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... moodily thinking. She did not like the way in which her cousin assumed superiority over her. The difference in their ages did not account for the greater worldly wisdom Louise had acquired, and in much that she said and did Beth recognized a shrewdness and experience that made her feel humbled and, in a way, inferior to her cousin. Nor did she trust the friendship Louise expressed ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... "Southern Literary Messenger," a monthly magazine, published by Mr. Thomas W. White, in the city of Richmond. He strongly advised me, among others, to prepare at once a full account of what I had seen and undergone, and trust to the shrewdness and common-sense of the public-insisting, with great plausibility, that however roughly, as regards mere authorship, my book should be got up, its very uncouthness, if there were any, would give it all the better chance of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... I haven't shrewdness enough to discover a good trait; I can recognize only the bad, for they are always clearly in view. It is a wonder that you can respect so stupid a creature as I am, and I know that you have ceased to have ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read |
