"Clear-sighted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... another class of subject. Except for the limitations which his national characteristics and upbringing impose upon him (and for the fact that he seems to be unacquainted with the West) the Professor has written a just and clear-sighted estimate of the American character. We do not look to a German for a proper understanding of the sporting instinct, as British and Americans understand it, nor perhaps for views that will coincide with ours on the subject of ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... looked upon her principles of social life as the ballast that steadies the ship on heaving seas. To make the Church a spiritual ally, to recognize her moral power and her far-reaching influence has always been considered good diplomacy and clear-sighted statesmanship. ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... new subjects most lacked. He knew neither doubts nor vain hesitations; he was an optimist, always sure of success: not with the certitude of the blind who walk confidently to the river, but with the assurance of clear-sighted people, who leave the goddess Fortune so little to do, it were a miracle if she did less for them. His lucid and persistent will is never at fault. In the most critical moment of the battle a fatal report is circulated that the duke has been killed; ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... interfere in the Serbo-Albanian question. "Are we not all," said he, "one large Balkan family? And if the Powers intervene they will not act in our interests, but in their own." He said that it used to be Austria which grasped at Albania, now it was Italy. So the delegate showed that he was a clear-sighted man; he also showed that in Tirana they are not unanimous in loving the Italians. But alas! the Great Powers, urged by Italy, made a most disastrous plunge; they actually, at least Great Britain, charged the Serbs, their allies, on November 7, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... from this our friends of the morning were expected to be within shot. Not a sign of a living creature appeared, however, to enliven the solitude around us, and we began to think that our guides were a little TOO clear-sighted this time, when what should suddenly come upon us but a solitary old markore, slowly and leisurely rounding a rugged point of rock below. We were all squatted in a bunch upon a space about as large as a good-sized towel; but, hidden as we thought ourselves, I could discern that our ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... friend of Serbia! Thy clear-sighted spirit was to have but a glimpse of one of the most essential necessities of the Serbian people. Thy frail and fragile body has not permitted thee to enjoy the pleasure to which thou hast devoted so much love. For the ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... reason. Let us therefore examine her solutions to problems within her powers. If there be anything to which her own interest must have made her apply herself most seriously, it is the inquiry into her own sovereign good. Let us see, then, wherein these strong and clear-sighted souls have placed it, ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... hazed with delight. He had forgotten the moment in the timeless joy of his love for her. Ellen, in the shadows, stirred and coughed. He broke out again: "Well, supposing all that's true! Are you going to be honest and be as clear-sighted about what happened after she ran away? Mother, think of the things that have been done to her, think of the ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... individual, are separated one from the other by differences more or less minute, and wherever two human beings are placed together one must inevitably begin to assert mastery over the other. The method of self-assertion may be that of the athlete, or that of the intriguer, or that of the clear-sighted over the purblind, or that of the subtle over the simple; it matters not, the effort for mastery may be made either roughly or gently, or subtly, or even clownishly, but made it ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... "She is clear-sighted and honest enough to see the truth about youth and age, and makes no bones about it. She doesn't pretend that there's any particular beauty in old age. God!—she's ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... destroyed, by these patriots. Peace could be restored only by the King's silencing them. So she wished the Spaniards a speedy success, and detested the efforts of independent minds; above all, of William of Orange, their only too clear-sighted, cautious, devoted leader, also skilled in the arts of dissimulation, in whom she recognised the most dangerous foe of Spanish sovereignty and the unity ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... trust themselves to speak. I shall endeavour to extract, from the midst of insult and contempt and maledictions, those admonitions which may tend to correct whatever imperfections such censurers may discover in this my first serious appeal to the Public. If certain Critics were as clear-sighted as they are malignant, how great would be the benefit to be derived from their virulent writings! As it is, I fear I shall be malicious enough to be amused with their paltry tricks and lame invectives. Should the Public judge that my composition ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... every look and act,—Alessandro in pure love, Margarita in jealous hate, Felipe in love and perplexity. Only the Senora observed her not. If she had, matters might have turned out very differently, for the Senora was clear-sighted, rarely mistaken in her reading of people's motives, never long deceived; but her observing and discriminating powers were not in focus, so far as Ramona was concerned. The girl was curiously outside of the Senora's real life. Shelter, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... from the lack of the world's hearty give-and-take? He gets criticism, but not of a just or all-round kind. Small things may be pecked at, trifles may be made mountains of by the disgruntled, but where does he get a clear-sighted, whole-hearted estimate of himself and his work? Who tells him of his real virtues, his real faults? Among all his friends, who is there, man or woman, who is brave ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... too clear-sighted not to perceive the cause, and hastened, by her little attentions, to remove the feeling: not that she had any definite ideas upon the subject any more than Joey; but she could not bear to see him ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... Archdeacon was expected by King Henry to lead the same life when Archbishop, and thus to secularize the Church. But Henry had mistaken his man. Clever and clear-sighted as the King was, seven years of transacting business together, and of familiar intercourse with the frank-hearted, free-spoken Thomas a Becket, had failed to make him conscious of the inner life and deep devotion, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... just the same; for I belong to the family of the thin-skinned. But then I do not tell it, I do not show it; I conceal it very well, I think. Without any doubt, I am thought to be one of the most indifferent men in the world. I am sceptical, which is not the same thing, sceptical because I am clear-sighted. And my eyes say to my heart, Hide yourself, old fellow, you are grotesque, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Her steps were rapid and agitated; she scarcely felt the weakness which reminded her of having sprained her foot when very young, and which obliged her to limp slightly. At any other hour in the day her countenance would have awakened the suspicions of the least clear-sighted persons, or have attracted the attention of the most indifferent passers-by. But at half-past two in the morning, the streets of Paris are almost, if not quite, deserted, and scarcely any one is to be seen but the hard-working artisan on his way to earn his ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... Allow me to tender to you the same explanations which satisfied one whom philosophy itself has made as open to truth as he is clear-sighted to imposture." ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... allow him to be troublesome to people who do not appreciate him. For I have observed that there are people who (having no children of their own) hold very just and severe views about spoiled boys and girls, but who (having dogs of their own) are much less clear-sighted on the subject of spoiled terriers and Pomeranians. And I do not want to be like that—dear as the dear ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of regret at Eugene's absence; but, truth to tell, he was not sorry to escape the scrutiny of his clear-sighted cousin, who, for his part, was happy beyond expression in the devotion of his men, and ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... and however firmly he adhered to his resolution of silence, the hypochondria from which he suffered could not escape the notice of the 'grand chasserot'. He was not clear-sighted enough to discern the causes, but he could observe the effects. It provoked him to find that all his efforts to enliven his cousin had proved futile. He had cudgelled his brains to comprehend whence came these fits of terrible melancholy, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the Railway line between Halifax and Quebec must be transparent to every clear-sighted politician. And had I remained in office, I should have urged upon my colleagues—I do not doubt successfully—the justice and expediency, both for Imperial interests, commercial and military, and for the vindication ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... government, I leave nothing but dishonest men behind. An act may be sin to me, which another may sincerely think right—and if so, let him do it, till he changes his mind. I leave government in the hands of those whom I do not think as clear-sighted as myself, but not necessarily in the hands of the dishonest. Whether it be so in this country now, is not, at present, the question, but whether it would be so necessarily, in all cases. The real question is, what is the duty of those who presume to think that God has given ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... me to be. You know so perfectly well," he laughed, "how rotten I am; you are astonished if you find me do any sort of good—you can't help it, how can you, when it's just and true? Do you know I sometimes have had absurd dreams of what I might have been if you had not been so terribly clear-sighted. You stood in your white frock under the old mulberry tree—your first long skirt—and you saw that I was no good, and you were perfectly right, but, after all, what is your ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... among the grown-up people who had not seen some of these fabulous creatures, or who had not seen some other people who had either seen them themselves or had seen individuals who said they had seen them! There were also many "clear-sighted" or "fore-sighted" old men and women, who not only saw goblins and supernatural appearances occasionally, and, as it were, accidentally, like ordinary folk, but who also had the gift—so it is said—of seeing such things when they pleased—enjoyed, ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... this popular view is, in the first place, that it attributes to Iago what cannot be found in the Iago of the play. Its Iago is impelled by passions, a passion of ambition and a passion of hatred; for no ambition or hatred short of passion could drive a man who is evidently so clear-sighted, and who must hitherto have been so prudent, into a plot so extremely hazardous. Why, then, in the Iago of the play do we find no sign of these passions or of anything approaching to them? Why, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... the range of any accidental disclosure. It did not lie on the surface of any Elizabethan document. The most diligent explorers of these documents, in two centuries and a quarter, had not found it. No faintest suspicion of it had ever crossed the mind of the most recent, and clear-sighted, and able investigator of the Baconian remains. It was buried in the lowest depths of the lowest deeps of the deep Elizabethan Art; that Art which no plummet, till now, has ever sounded. It was locked with ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... will return to their drawing-room, expressly rebuilt for them, and freshly gilded, to begin over again the pleasant conversation which an accident, some tumult in the street, had interrupted.[2323] Clear-sighted in society, they are obtuse in politics. They examine everything by the artificial light of candles; they are disturbed and bewildered in the powerful light of open day. The eyelid has grown stiff through age. The ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... to help them. I think, if women would only not be quite so afraid of being thought unwomanly, they would be a great deal more womanly than they are. To be brave, and single-minded, and discriminating, and judicious, and clear-sighted, and self-reliant, and decisive, that is pure womanly. To be womanish is not to be womanly. To be flabby, and plastic, and weak, and acquiescent, and insipid, is not womanly. And I could wish sometimes that women would not be quite so patient. They often exhibit a degree of long-suffering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... who had been made intendant in 1663, but, for some unknown reason, had never come to Canada to perform the duties of his office. The triumvirate on whom was imposed the noble task of saving and reviving New France was thus complete. The Marquis de Tracy was an able and clear-sighted commander, the Sieur de Courcelle a fearless, straightforward official. But the part of Jean Talon in the common task, though apparently less brilliant, was to be in many respects the most important, and his influence the most far-reaching ...
— The Great Intendant - A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 • Thomas Chapais
... But, at least, they should keep silence, and before the horror of crimes to be judged especially by the tribunal of the elite they should not have shown their miserable enthusiasm. "You see," as a clear-sighted Dutch professor[5] has well written on this point, "if these intellectuals were not blinded they would rather have asked themselves if, in this war that stains Europe with blood, the Prussian military authorities were not losing for centuries the reputation of the great ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... emotion, which inevitably must have become the love he had so quietly declared it to be. He had never before felt as he felt then, cared as he cared then. Anything had been possible for him at that time—any degree of love, any devotion, any generous renunciation. Clear-sighted, master of himself, he saw love before him, and knew it when he saw it; recognised it, was ready for it, offered it, emboldened by her soft ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... not only powerful but formidable to the hour of the total ruin of the monarchy. This fall of the monarchy was far from being preceded by any exterior symptoms of decline. The interior were not visible to every eye; and a thousand accidents might have prevented the operation of what the most clear-sighted were not able to discern, nor the most provident to divine. A very little time before its dreadful catastrophe there was a kind of exterior splendour in the situation of the Crown, which usually adds to government strength and authority at home. The Crown seemed then to have obtained ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... June the league demanded a royal decree, forbidding the practice of all religion but the Roman Catholic, on pain of death. In vain had the clear-sighted Bishop of Acqs uttered his eloquent warnings. Despite such timely counsels, which he was capable at once of appreciating and of neglecting, Henry followed slavishly the advice of those whom he knew in his heart to be his foes, and authorised the great conspiracy against Elizabeth, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... marriage is a lottery! By what aberration of the intellect do they come to admit that a being's whole life should be voluntarily subjected to chance? Not one of us would consent to such a degradation, if women in general were not absolutely ignorant! And that is why many, too clear-sighted to submit to a ridiculous law and lacking the courage to infringe it, die without having known the flavour and the goodness of life. Oh, what injustice! Is youth not short enough as it is? Is the circle in which our poor intelligence moves not sufficiently limited? And is it necessary, in addition, ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... resolution on account of this very course of action, namely, that he assisted the enemies of Florence to extricate themselves from their dilemmas. Such criticism fails entirely to understand both the aim and the scope of his policy. He desired to keep Italy for the Italians. His clear-sighted sagacity saw nothing but danger in the plans of Ludovico of Milan to invite the French King into Italy, or in those of Venice to encourage the Duke of Lorraine to press his claims upon Milan. The intervention of either France or Spain in Italy ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... many who didn't. Henry James, for instance, wrote a review of "Drum Taps" in the Nation, November 16, 1865. In the lusty heyday and assurance of twenty-two years, he laid the birch on smartly. It is just a little saddening to find that even so clear-sighted an observer as Henry James could not see through the chaotic form of Whitman to the great vision and throbbing music that seem so plain to us to-day. Whitman himself, writing about "Drum Taps" before its ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... and, longo intervallo, Meyerheim and Meyer von Bremen. Not a breath of the broad humor of Teniers and Van Ostade in these masters; scarcely a hint of the robust animality and clownish jollity with which the clear-sighted Dutchmen endowed their rural revellers. Though pictorial art has not, outside of Russia (where the great and unrivalled Riepin paints the peasant with the brush as remorselessly as Tolstoi and Dostoyefski with the pen), kept pace with the realistic movement in literature, yet there ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Principles of Political Economy. The System of Logic owed little to her except in the minuter matters of composition, in which respect my writings, both great and small, have largely benefited by her accurate and clear-sighted criticism.[5] The chapter of the Political Econonomy which has had a greater influence on opinion than all the rest, that on 'the Probable Future of the Labouring Classes,' is entirely due to her; in the first draft of the book, that chapter did not exist. She pointed ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... to himself. "Uncommonly clear-sighted woman, Louisa. But a trifle hard. Wonder if Barking ever feels that, now? Not very sensitive man, Barking, though. Suppose that hardness in Louisa comes of her having no children. Always plenty of children in our family—except my poor brother Archibald and Lady Jane, they ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... administration seemed to enter upon an era of tranquillity in which some good might be accomplished; and three months before the opening of our story a new reign had begun without any apparent opposition; for the liberalism of the Left had welcomed Charles X. with as much enthusiasm as the Right. Even clear-sighted and suspicious persons were misled. The moment seemed propitious for Rabourdin. What could better conduce to the stability of the government than to propose and carry through a reform whose beneficial results were to be ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... developed. Many persons have quite a well-developed power of this kind, who do not mention it to their acquaintances for fear of ridicule, or of being thought "queer." In addition to these persons, there are here and there to be found well-developed, clear-sighted, or truly clairvoyant persons, whose powers of psychic perception are as highly developed as are the ordinary senses of the average individual. And, the reports of these persons, far apart in time and space though they may be, have always agreed on the main points of psychic ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... obscure, are dragged forward to account for obscure Greek mythical phenomena. Such are the accusations brought by the regretted Mannhardt against the school to which he originally belonged, and which was popular and all-powerful even in the maturity of his own more clear-sighted genius. Proofs of the correctness of his criticism will be offered abundantly in the course of this work. It will become evident that, great as are the acquisitions of Philology, her least certain discoveries have been too hastily ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... what he thinks should be shunned. Wherefore, beings endowed with reason possess also the faculty of free choice and refusal. But I suppose this faculty not equal alike in all. The higher Divine essences possess a clear-sighted judgment, an uncorrupt will, and an effective power of accomplishing their wishes. Human souls must needs be comparatively free while they abide in the contemplation of the Divine mind, less free when they pass into bodily form, and ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... significance of Sir Walter Raleigh consists in the clairvoyance with which he perceived and the energy with which he combated this monstrous assumption. Other noble Englishmen of his time, and before his time, had been clear-sighted and had struck hard against the evil tyranny of Spanish dynastic militarism, but no other man before or since was so luminously identified with resistance. He struts upon the stage of battle with the limelight full upon him. The classic writing of the crisis is contained ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... felt almost convinced; and yet, fond as he was of his friend, fond as he was, too, of the girl with whom he had worked during these weeks of spring, Barry was clear-sighted enough to feel assured that such a marriage ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... Hence a perpetual effort to make every day outshine the one before, and first to equal, then to surpass, the splendors of the oldest and most famous dynasties. This insatiable thirst for action and for renown was to be the source of Napoleon's strength and also of his weakness. But only a few clear-sighted men made these reflections when the Empire began. The masses, with their easy optimism, looked upon the new Emperor as an infallibly impeccable being, and thought that since he had not yet been beaten, he was invincible. Josephine ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... Province, been the object of minute enquiries and copious and innumerable reports. But the incidents which I have just mentioned and which are vouched for by such men as Professor Mackenzie and M. Duchatel, the learned and clear-sighted vice-president of the Societe Universelle d'Etudes Psychiques,[1] who went to Mannheim for the express purpose of studying them, appear to be no more controvertible than the Elbenfeld occurrences, of which they are a sort of replica or echo. ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... succeed, not only for himself, but, first of all, for her. He loved his work for the work's sake. He cared nothing for fame in the sense of popularity, or its equivalent, notoriety. In that respect he was a clear-sighted man—he knew what the thing was worth. For himself he cared nothing for the material products of success. His own tastes were of the simplest kind. He desired to achieve success simply that he might pour the fruits of success into her lap. He wished her to owe nothing to anyone but ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... by compulsion it is true, into an industrial being, and held him in the habit of industry for several generations. Perhaps only force could do this, for it was a radical transformation. I am glad to see that this result of slavery is recognized by Mr. Booker Washington, the ablest and most clear-sighted leader the negro ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... becomes in fact the dullest and most wearisome of the three. During a portion of this novel he seems to have taken for his model of narrative the "Wilhelm Meister" of Goethe; but the calm domestic manner which is tolerable in the clear-sighted man, who we know can rise nobly from it when he pleases, accords ill enough with the bewildered, most displeasing, and half intelligible story which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... mean by those words? How would the letter that she was charged to put in the place of the diary, contribute to bring about this result? she did not know—but she understood that the clear-sighted devotion of the hunchback justly alarmed the enemies of Mdlle. de Cardoville, and that she (Florine) herself daily risked having her perfidy detected by the young needlewoman. This last fear put an end to the hesitations of Florine; she placed ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... door and slept there and awoke not till the morning. Meanwhile the mouse came out and fell to carrying the dinars into her hole, till not one was left; and when it was day, the merchant began to accuse the folk and imagine all manner of things. And know, O wise, clear-sighted and experienced crow (continued the fox), that I only tell thee this to the intent that thou mayst reap the recompense of thy goodness to me, even as the mouse reaped the reward of her kindness to the flea; for see ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... who married Because he couldn't see; And all his days he carried The mark of his degree. But you—you came clear-sighted, And found truth in my eyes; And all my wrongs you've righted With lies, and ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... opposed the bill in the House, and with clear-sighted sense (though the stock had risen from 130 to 300 in one day) denounced "the dangerous practice of stock-jobbing, and the general infatuation, which must," he said, "end in general ruin." Rumours ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... rest of the army looked on with the utmost indifference. Bohemund, animated himself by a worldly spirit, did not know the true character of the Crusaders, nor understand the religious madness which had brought them in such shoals from Europe. A priest, more clear-sighted, devised a scheme which restored all their confidence, and inspired them with a courage so wonderful as to make the poor sixty thousand emaciated, sick, and starving zealots put to flight the well-fed and six times as numerous legions of ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... patois that is often of varying inflections, but is always full of racy poetry, illiterate and yet possessed of a vast oral literature, sharing brains with other classes more equally than education, humorous, nimble-witted; clear-sighted, astute, cynical, not too virtuous, and having a lofty, contempt for ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... said the unhappy woman, with heroic courage, "these creatures do not know what love means—such pure and devoted love as you deserve. How could you, so clear-sighted as you are, dream ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... his sermons, and they were, of course, induced by his fearing the progress of liberal thought in our midst. We had ourselves received a sermon evidently directed at us, which described the act of going to hear Mr. Ballou as a wrong step. Even if we had not been clear-sighted enough to have taken the sermon to ourselves, we should have been reminded of it by the looks of some of the congregation, who sought out our pew with strong reproof in their eyes; among those whose eyes met mine in this manner, ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... been accepted as positive evidence that the Queen was a party to the crime at Cumnor, which was to set her lover free to marry again. Far from that, however, I account it positive proof of Elizabeth's innocence of any such part in the deed. Elizabeth was far too crafty and clear-sighted not to realize how her words must incriminate her afterwards if she knew that the murder of Lady Robert was projected. She must have been merely repeating what Dudley himself had told her; and what he must have told her—and she believed—was ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... may compromise in its excesses the tranquillity, the property, the lives of individuals, is obvious to the narrowest and most unthinking minds. But, on the contrary, none but attentive and clear-sighted men perceive the perils with which equality threatens us, and they commonly avoid pointing them out. They know that the calamities they apprehend are remote, and flatter themselves that they will only fall upon future generations, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... fervor in this florid sentiment. But as she was honest and clear-sighted, she could not accept a statement which seemed so plainly in contradiction with his common teachings, without bringing his flattering assertion to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ever remain incomprehensible that a monarch so clear-sighted, himself the daily witness of my demeanour, one well acquainted with mankind, and conscious I wanted neither money, honour, nor hope of future preferment; I say it is incomprehensible that he should really suppose me guilty. I take God to witness, and all those who knew me in prosperity and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... advantage of getting out of the beaten track, our dialect offered others hardly inferior. As I was about to make an endeavor to state them, I remembered something that the clear-sighted Goethe had said about Hebel's 'Allemannische Gedichte,' which, making proper deduction for special reference to the book under review, expresses what I would have said far better than I could hope to do: 'Allen diesen innern guten ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... patter of soft feet, the converts, the doubtful, and the open scoffers, troop up to the veranda. You must be infinitely kind and patient, and, above all, clear-sighted, for you deal with the simplicity of childhood, the experience of man, and the subtlety of the savage. Your congregation have a hundred material wants to be considered; and it is for you, as you believe in your personal responsibility to your Maker, to pick out of the clamouring ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... that Lena put all this into words, even to herself: but such thoughts were there, or those very much like them. She was given to reasoning and pondering over things in the recesses of her own mind, and she was uncommonly clear-sighted for a girl of her age. Probably the child was not the ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... Nugent; "but if you mean that she was vain, and apt to fancy people in love with her, I can assure you that you are mistaken. Never was woman, young or old, more clear-sighted to the views of those by whom she was addressed. No flattery, no fashion, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... with love and passion-blinded eyes. He felt that she could, with his devotion and training, develop into a rarely sweet and fine woman. He was not always a fool in his madness; at times he was wonderfully clear-sighted. He meant to return home, when once his health was restored, and take the Kendalls into his confidence; but the thought of Lynda gave him a bad moment now and then. He could not easily depose her from ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... been able to do anything for him beyond educating him; the younger son who, after years of uncongenial drudgery had emerged, tough, stringy, professional, his boyish dreams dead and his boyish tastes atrophied; a useful hard-working, clear-sighted member of society. And there was truth in this conception of himself. There was truth, too, in Madame von Marwitz's probe. He had more than the normal English sensitiveness where ideals were concerned and more than the normal English instinct ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... establishing a Catholic despotism, and who trusted that their system would be restored by a reconciliation of James with the Tory Parliament they expected to be returned. Halifax however, though he had long acted with the Tories, was too clear-sighted for hopes such as these. He had taken no part in the invitation or revolt, but now that the revolution was successful he pressed upon William the impossibility of carrying out a new system of government with such a sovereign ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... hap this offspring of my care, These fatal anthems, lamentable songs, Come to their view, who like afflicted are; Let them yet sigh their own, and moan my wrongs. But untouched hearts with unaffected eye, Approach not to behold my soul's distress; Clear-sighted you soon note what is awry, Whilst blinded souls mine errors never guess. You blinded souls, whom youth and error lead; You outcast eaglets dazzled with your sun, Do you, and none but you, my sorrows read; You best ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... it from me," said the cunning Bishop, "to point the way to one so clear-sighted as Your Majesty; but, were I the King of England, I should look upon the matter in this wise: I have promised my Queen, let us say, that for forty days the cunningest rogue in all England shall have freedom to come and go; but, lo! I find this outlaw in my grasp; shall ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... Certain it is that, with the intuition of genius, Elizabeth Barrett understood, appreciated, and made allowances for the unhappy man more completely than was possible to any other of his contemporaries. Clear-sighted to his faults and weaknesses, her chivalrous spirit took up arms in defence of his conduct, even against the strictures of her poet-lover. 'The dreadful death of poor Mr. Haydon the artist,' she wrote to her friend Mrs. Martin, a few days ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... said Theodora, 'I must speak the truth. I see how it is. Men are not clear-sighted in judging of a pretty woman of engaging manners. They are under a fascination. I don't blame you—it is exactly the same with papa ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... political reason; we have political passions—sometimes. What is a conviction? A particular view of our personal advantage either practical or emotional. No one is a patriot for nothing. The word serves us well. But I am clear-sighted, and I shall not use that word to you, Antonia! I have no patriotic illusions. I have only the supreme ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... with Voltaire, Walpole, and others, did not satisfy her. She wished to appeal to the heart, and she appealed only to the head. Of all ills she most dreaded ennui, and the very dread of it made her unhappy. She became more and more insufficient to herself, until at eighty-three she died with clear-sighted indifference. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... something already, in her tentative delineation, of that "piercing and overpowering tenderness which glorifies the poet of Pompilia." Festus, Michal's husband, the friend and adviser of Paracelsus, is a man of simple nature and thoughtful mind, cautious yet not cold, clear-sighted rather than far-seeing, yet not without enthusiasm; perhaps a little narrow and commonplace, as the prudent are apt to be. He, like Michal, has no influence on the external action of the poem. Aprile, the Italian poet whom ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... each; which effectually checked the progress of such banks, for few new ones were established for many years, or till that act had been repealed. But in this, as in many other cases, perhaps Sir R. Peel will be found to have been clear-sighted rather than far-sighted. He was afraid of certain joint stock banks which he saw rising around him; but the effect of his legislation was to give to these very banks, if not a monopoly, at any rate an exemption from new rivals. No one now founds or can ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... her! how I have suffered through her—enough to be our united portions of future pain—suffer you no more, therefore. You are too young, tender and credulous to try a fall with that creature. She must have divined long ago that you were enamored of her. She is not too clear-sighted in all things, but she sees such effects by intuition. It is very probable that she has returned to this house on your account, so suddenly. I could guess that she was on the eve of flight, but not that she would return. ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... came back," he continued, "I was almost a fanatic. I worked not from the ranks of the Labour Party itself, because I flatter myself that I was clear-sighted enough to see that the Labour Party as it existed after the war, split up by factions, devoted to the selfish interests of the great trades unions and with the taint of Miller retarding all progress, had nothing in it of the real spirit of freedom. ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Oh, there is Johnny standing at the foot of my bed; my but hasn't he grown! The living relatives may feel shocked and uneasy, thinking the mother suffering from hallucinations, while in reality she is more clear-sighted than they; she perceives those who have passed beyond the veil who have come to greet and help her to make herself at home in the ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... evolution is to work smoothly, consciousness in some shape must have been present at the very origin of things. Accordingly we find that the more clear-sighted evolutionary philosophers are beginning to posit it there. Each atom of the nebula, they suppose, must have had an aboriginal atom of consciousness linked with it; and, just as the material atoms have formed bodies and brains by ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... broke out, "there is no delusion like your own. On all points but one you are a man, frank, healthful, right-thinking, clear-sighted: on this exceptional point you are but a slave. I declare, where Miss Fanshawe is concerned, you merit no ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... and its cunning, the little creature laughs at the anger of man. The gardener curses it, but the weevil is not disturbed; it imperturbably continues its trade of levying tribute. Happily we have assistants more patient and more clear-sighted than ourselves. ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... quickly; has a full, clear, dark eye; has a youthful clerical countenance; has given way a little to facial sadness; is sharp and serious; has a healthy biliary duct, and has carried dark hair on his head ever since we knew him; is clear-sighted, shy unless spoken to, and cautious; is free and generous in expression if trotted out a little; is no bigot; dislikes fierce judgments and creed-reviling; likes visiting folk who are well off; wouldn't object to tea, crumpet, and conversation with the better end of his flock any day; visits fairly ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... allowed; for though no gentleman intends to train his son to be a great artist, the study will enable him to appreciate good sculpture and painting. Above all the schoolmaster, who, despite his brutal austerity, ought to be a clear-sighted and inspiring teacher, must lose no opportunity to instill moral lessons, and develop the best powers of his charges. Theoginis, the old poet of Megara, states the ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... of Political Economy." The "System of Logic" owed little to her except in the minute matters of composition, in which respect my writings both great and small have largely benefited by her accurate and clear-sighted criticism. The chapter of the "Political Economy" which has had a greater influence on opinion than all the rest, that on "The Probable Future of the Laboring Classes," is entirely due to her: in the first draft of the book, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... frequently stow away flat stones and pieces of coral. Such things may be abomination in the eyes of the conscientious oyster-getter, but with Hamed they helped to fill the "beg." Vain old Arab! He deceived no one—in the end not even himself, for none of his fakes passed the final inspection of clear-sighted "Dorphy," with whom the moralities of the firm rested, but who in Hamed's ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... was oftentimes a magnifying-glass which he used when he had to appreciate certain merits. No doubt Gifford was a judicious, clear-sighted, and impartial critic, but Byron extolled him as an oracle of good taste, and submitted like a child to ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... life, but with more patience in waiting upon it, watching it, noting its surprises, we have a simple and sufficient commentary upon the books and upon the man. The narrative has warmth and reserve, and is at once tender and clear-sighted. J'entrevois nettement, she says with truth, combien seront precieux pour les futurs historiens de la litterature du xix^e siecle, les memoires traces au contact immediat de l'artiste, exposes de ses faits et gestes particuliers, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... the people may be free to act, without violating that respect for its fundamental law upon which national stability ultimately depends. It is a curious feature of our current journalism that it is clear-sighted and prompt to see the unfortunate trammels in which certain of our religious bodies are held, by the cast-iron tenets imposed upon them by a past generation, while at the same time political tenets, similarly ancient, and imposed with a like ignorance of a future which is our present, are ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... reason to guess so soon at the queen's passion; she being a person so much above him, and, by the suffrages of all her people, already destined to Lysimantes: Besides, that he was prepossessed (as the queen somewhere hints it to him) with another inclination, which rendered him less clear-sighted in it, since no man, at the same time, can distinctly view two different objects; and if this, with any shew of reason, may be defended, I leave my masters, the critics, to determine, whether it be not much more conducing to the beauty of my plot, that Philocles ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... of another founded upon the love of self?" he asked her, startling her with a question that revealed to her clear-sighted mind a truth undreamed of. "When some day—please Heaven—I come to find favour in your eyes, and you come to love me, what will it mean but that you have come to find me necessary to yourself and to your happiness? Would you deny me now your love if you felt that you ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... compact political and social organization, hard-headed, clear-sighted, iron-hearted, steel-clad Cortes precipitated himself. His was a mind at the same time capable of vast and comprehensive designs and a most minute attention to small details. For instance, he laid out the city of Vera Cruz at the place of his landing. ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... used, not for the specious purpose of maintaining the balance of Europe, but for that of subduing the parliament and people who should give them; and the great antipathy of the bulk of the nation to popery caused many to be both more clear-sighted in discovering, and more resolute in resisting the designs of the court, than they would probably have shown themselves, if civil liberty ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... policy of the administration as a whole, for all civil business centred in the office of the secretary of state. He was a man of extraordinary ability. It is true that he made a strange blunder or two, at the outset, odd episodes in his intelligent, clear-sighted, cool-headed career,—psychologically interesting, as has been suggested; but he immediately recovered himself and settled down to that course of wise statesmanship which was justly to be ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... was not entirely revolting to Helen, though she had a small opinion of the elegant young trifler who pursued her so persistently, for she, too, had social aspirations, though being more clear-sighted than her mother, she dreamed of wider circles than those of Chicago. Her husband, whoever he was to be, should take her to Paris, or at ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... He said not a word to David. While youth bears a child's heart, it is capable of sublime reticence. Perhaps, too, Lucien began to dread the Phocion's axe which David could wield when he chose, perhaps he was afraid to meet those clear-sighted eyes that read the depths of his soul. But when he read Chenier's poems with David, his secret rose from his heart to his lips at the sting of a reproach that he felt as the patient feels the probing of ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... clear-sighted man than he might during a ten days' visit to Gershom have seen enough of the state of affairs there, and enough of Jacob Holt himself, to prevent him from entering into any serious business relations with him. He had ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... melodrama, and plots constructed after your favourite fashion ("Great Expectations" and the "Tale of Two Cities" are exceptions) may go by and never be regretted. Were people simpler, or only less clear-sighted, as far as your pathos is concerned, a generation ago? Jeffrey, the hard- headed shallow critic, who declared that Wordsworth "would never do," cried, "wept like anything," over your Little Nell. One still laughs ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... the denouement of the history. The appropriate label for their box would be the title of one of Paul de Kock's last novels; la Femme, le Mari, el l'Amant. Magnian is a cunning dog, and has very ingenious ideas. Fearing, doubtless, that the husband might be too clear-sighted, he threatened him with an ophthalmia, and made him wear blue spectacles. Clever, wasn't ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... ascendant, sometimes the Conservative party was crushing the Republic. The echoes of the squabbles which were rending the Legislative Assembly reached the depths of the provinces, now in an exaggerated, now in an attenuated form, varying so greatly as to obscure the vision of the most clear-sighted. The only general feeling was that a denouement was approaching. The prevailing ignorance as to the nature of this denouement kept timid middle class people in a terrible state of anxiety. Everybody wished to see the end. They were sick of uncertainty, and ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... was more than worthy of you; that, although he might have espoused one infinitely your superior in rank and wealth in Madrid, since his arrival here, he had no heart to give, and still remained true to you! Know that by his daring bravery, his manliness, his modest bearing, and above all, his clear-sighted and brilliant mental capacity he has challenged our own high admiration; but you, alas! must turn in scorn your proud lip upon him! Think not we have these facts from him, or that he has reflected in the least upon you; he ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... in Norfolk, which ought to have been established as the central point to attract and to organize contrabands? Is not Virginia the first in the slave States for the number of slaves? In the hands of a clear-sighted man, Norfolk ought to have been used as a glue to which the slaves would have wandered from all parts of Virginia, and even from North Carolina. Norfolk ought to have to-day an army of fifty thousand Africo-Americans born in Virginia, and not a few regiments ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... spent in shaping and culturing, but to what end? Could he call him back from his pleasure now, and have him take up this struggle grown too heavy to fight single-handed? and would he be manful, brave, clear-sighted, and unrepining? No. He felt the change would be too great. The soul so used to ease and luxury, fine linen and soft couches, delicate appetites, indolent habits, intellectual pursuits and graces, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... southern men and ourselves? Briefly this, I think. In mundane matters, where the personal equation dominates, their judgment is apt to be turbid and perverse; but as one rises into questions of pure intelligence, it becomes serenely impartial. We, on the other hand, who are pre-eminently clear-sighted in worldly concerns of law and government and in all subsidiary branches of mentality, cannot bring ourselves to reason dispassionately on non-practical subjects. "L'esprit aussi a sa pudeur," says Remy de Gourmont. Well, this pudeur ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... ways. I hereby vow and declare that I will stick to my colours, and set an example to those old things who ought to know better. Lady Mary must be twenty-five if she is a day. I don't expect she will ever be married now. With the clear-sighted gaze of youth, I can see that she is hiding a broken heart beneath the mask of mirth. Life is frightfully exciting when you have the gift of ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... connexion with this statue. Cellini, whatever one may think of his veracity, is a diverting and valuable writer, and the picture of Cosimo I which he draws for us is probably very near the truth. We see him haughty, familiar, capricious, vain, impulsive, clear-sighted, and easily flattered; intensely pleased to be in a position to command the services of artists and very unwilling to pay. Cellini was a blend of lackey, child, and genius. He left Francis I in order to serve Cosimo and never ceased to regret the change. The Perseus was ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... sight of the consequences, but I can trust Fitzjocelyn. He is too indifferent to everything apart from duty to be caught by flattering projects, and you may fully confide in his right judgment. I believe it is the absence of selfishness or conceit that makes him so clear-sighted.' ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... being. I felt confidence in myself, my eyes were opened all at once as it were to the heartlessness of the world; the more I considered the almost hopeless condition in which I was in, the more my energy was roused. I sat down on the sofa a confiding, clinging girl. I rose up a resolute, clear-sighted woman. ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... Prophaneness, as of Popery and Superstition. And I defy all the Powers of Priestcraft to name such another, a practicable Remedy, of which there is any Probability, that it would go down or could be made use of in a clear-sighted Age, and among a knowing People, that have a Sense of Liberty, and refuse to be Priest-rid. It is amazing, that so many fine Writers among the Clergy, so many Men of Parts and Erudition should seem very earnestly to enquire into the Causes of Libertinism ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... impossible to discern the lamps in the streets, even when they were directly over-head. Had the fog occurred twenty-four hours earlier, the effect of the illuminations would have been entirely lost; and the blind would have had the advantage over the clear-sighted. This assertion experience has proved: for, some years ago, when there was, for several successive days, a duration of such fogs in Paris, it was found necessary, by persons who had business to transact out of doors, to hire the blind men belonging to the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... made Durer blush. He did not say a word in answer. The little man, who was very clear-sighted, said—"This young fellow is ashamed to own that he belongs to a poor shepherd in the village hard by. Bad heart—strong head—detestable nature! This boy will never make anything but a diplomatist." Then, after a moment's reflection, he ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... he has himself observed,[39] 'which genius impresses on its works, it shows also in its private life and manners. It is bashful, for nature is ever so; but it is not prudish, for only corruption is prudish. It is clear-sighted, for nature can never be the contrary; but it is not cunning, for this only art can be. It is faithful to its character and inclinations; but not so much because it is directed by principles, as because after all vibrations nature constantly reverts ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... the teepee village that Uncheedah intended to give a feast in honor of her grandchild's first sacrificial offering. This was mere speculation, however, for the clear-sighted old woman had determined to keep this part of the matter secret until the offering should be completed, believing that the "Great Mystery" should be met in ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... Church's clear-sighted interpretations of the mind and life of Dante, and of the history-making Commedia, attest the importance of including the poet and his work in this record of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... before their bewildered eyes, and trampling under foot the old customs, along with morality itself at times, the Raskolniks were at no loss to recognize in him the coming Antichrist. Nations are not always clear-sighted: the creator of modern Russia was regarded by a considerable portion of his subjects as an envoy or representative of hell; and his empire has never ceased to hold the unexampled position of a government cursed by a part of its own people as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... visit such as to leave a deep impression on Norman's mind. Sixty years ago, old Mr. Wilmot had been what he now was himself—an enthusiastic and distinguished Balliol man, and he had kept up a warm, clear-sighted interest in Oxford throughout his long life. His anecdotes, his recollections, and comments on present opinions had been listened to with great eagerness, and Norman had felt it an infinite honour to give the venerable old man his arm, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... brutal criticism, but an exact one. And yet public opinion, less punctilious or more clear-sighted, would say that the signature was well ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... connected with the worship of Esculapius. But quacks and charlatans were much in evidence, even in that remote epoch. Francis Bacon, in his "Advancement of Learning," chapter 2, says that "the poets were clear-sighted in discerning the credulity of men in often preferring a mountebank, or a cunning woman to a learned physician. Hence they made Esculapius and Circe brother and sister, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... Women should now be clear-sighted enough to see that the world needs from them not the same but different contributions to the upreach and onward march of the race from those elements in which man has excelled. If society-at-large is to become truly a family of those who love and ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... silence" about it was straining phraseology; but it was not easy to formulate the idea, offhand. It was easier to hold his tongue. The Countess might have done better to hold hers, at this point. But she must needs be discriminating, to show how clear-sighted she was. "Of course, it is quite a different thing to try to bring about a marriage. That is certainly taking a grave responsibility." She stopped with a jerk, for she caught herself denouncing the very course of action which well-meaning friends had adopted successfully in the case of herself and ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... disregard of all those political facts which do not fit in with his theories. No other part more conclusively proves how the tyrannical dogma of Prussian nationalism can blind even a profound and clear-sighted thinker to the most vital historical realities. It must be apparent a priori to any student of politics that the life of small communities must gain in concentration and intensity what it loses in ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... am mad. As I was walking just now in the sun by the riverside, doubts as to my own sanity arose in me; not vague doubts such as I have had hitherto, but precise and absolute doubts. I have seen mad people, and I have known some who were quite intelligent, lucid, even clear-sighted in every concern of life, except on one point. They could speak clearly, readily, profoundly on everything; till their thoughts were caught in the breakers of their delusions and went to pieces there, were dispersed and swamped in that furious and terrible sea ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... forty-five of his courte keeping, he permitted them to wall in their towne."[269] The pleasure of replacing stale, commonplace expressions by rare, picturesque, live ones, and in lieu of a plain sentence to give an allegorical substitute, has so much attraction for Nash, that clear-sighted as he is, he cannot always avoid the ordinary defects of this particular style, defects which he has in common with many of his contemporaries, not excluding Shakespeare himself, namely, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... had been dreading the inevitable interview with Mr. Armstrong. He knew him to be a sharp man of business, clear-sighted and keen, and he felt that this part of the conference would be an awkward and embarrassing one. He had tried to nerve himself for the interview, and thought he had succeeded, but when the servant brought Mr. Armstrong's ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... of a purpose that filled his life, a dignity which made him unapproachable. He had the expression of a thinker, meditation dwelt on the fine nobly carved brow. You could tell from the dark bright eyes, so clear-sighted and quick to observe, that their owner was wont to probe to the bottom of things. He gesticulated very little, his demeanor was grave. Lucien felt an ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... elements which belong to the notion of happiness are altogether empirical, i. e. they must be borrowed from experience, and nevertheless the idea of happiness requires an absolute whole, a maximum of welfare in my present and all future circumstances. Now it is impossible that the most clear-sighted, and at the same time most powerful being (supposed finite), should frame to himself a definite conception of what he really wills in this. Does he will riches, how much anxiety, envy, and snares might he not thereby draw ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... which then dwelt alive in every heart, have now in a manner died out of all hearts." Only the cant of them dwells alive with us. The same clear-sighted author, who sees the Christian doctrines so beautifully and pre-eminently developed in the Ironsides of Cromwell, in the troopers of Lambert and Harrison, sacking, pillaging, slaughtering, and in all that tribe ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... "This clear-sighted man has mentioned a suspicion which I myself had already felt. A worldly-minded young Christian of your rank is not so ready to give up earthly joys and happiness for the doubtful bliss of your Paradise and when you do so and are prepared to forego all that a man holds most dear: Honor, temporal ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... life before. He had a large share of pride, which had hitherto found itself very comfortable in the world, despising Old Goggles, and reposing in the sense of unquestioned rights; but now this same pride met with nothing but bruises and crushings. Tom was too clear-sighted not to be aware that Mr. Stelling's standard of things was quite different, was certainly something higher in the eyes of the world than that of the people he had been living amongst, and that, brought in contact with it, he, Tom Tulliver, ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... clear-sighted and courageous "Old Commoner"—followed up Spalding, and struck very close to the root and animus of the Democratic ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan |
