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More "Clear-sighted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 publication, said, "Its passion has the indispensable merit that though to the ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... "Then you are clear-sighted indeed, Miss Nevil. If you have seen any wit in what he has just said you must certainly have put ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... Gordon always worked; not, it is true, with any real measure of success, for he had rather got out of the habit of grinding at the classics, but at any rate with energy. And during these hours he began to perceive vaguely what a clear-sighted, unprejudiced mind the Chief had. To the boy in the Fourth and Fifth forms any headmaster must appear not so much a living person as the emblem of authority, the final dispenser of justice, the hard, analytical sifter of evidence, "coldly ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... revenue, he was laying large and comprehensive plans for a system of oppression, which should yield the revenue,—and for Arsenals and Forts—and a standing Army, and a rule of terror which should hold the nation in subjection while these things were preparing. He was clear-sighted enough to see that "absolutism" was not to be accomplished by a system of reasoning. He would not urge it as a dogma, ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... Britain. The people saw their old oppressor and enemy engaged in war with their old ally France, and the popular cry went up for a union of France and the United States against England. Happily, the statesmen of the time—Washington, Hamilton, and Jay—were too firm of purpose, and too clear-sighted, to be led away by popular clamor; and they wisely kept the United States Government in a position of neutrality between the two nations. Deep and loud were the murmurs of the people at this action. Could true-hearted Americans desert their friends in such a manner? Never! And so, whatever ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Rebekah was more clear-sighted. She knew her sons as they really were, and therefore her love for Jacob was exceeding great. The oftener she heard his voice, the deeper grew her affection for him.[33] Abraham agreed with her. He also loved his grandson Jacob, for he knew that in him his name and his seed would be called. And ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... continued to deceive itself into believing that a great stretch of mere water rendered the country immune from taking its honest part in its own war. "Oh, my God," he had said in his heart, as all clear-sighted Americans had been saying, "has commercialism eaten into our very vitals? Has the good red blood of the early pioneers turned to water? Are we without the nerve any longer to read the writing on the wall?" And the only times that his national pride had been able to raise ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... the taste for your pathos, and your 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 as ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... novels, but soon 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
... as to the impression made by his son, could hardly suppose it likely that the boy would make a name for himself, and thereby confer distinction upon the family of which he was an irregular offshoot. A respectable diplomatic career, with an interval in the House of Commons, was the most that so clear-sighted a man could anticipate for the young Stanhope. Was it literary fame for himself? This, of course, assumes that subsequent publication was contemplated by the writer. The dodges and devices of authors are well-nigh infinite and quite beyond conjecture, ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... mission was not actually official, it was semi-official at all events; and we were obliged to await his return. To give some colour to our delay, M. de Nion sent a fresh summons to Sidi Bousselam, pasha of Larrache, a clear-sighted and intelligent man, whom the Sultan had deputed to negotiate with us. A fresh extension of time was granted. I took advantage of it to get our consuls withdrawn, and went myself to Tangier to see to the sudden removal of our consul-general and his family. If this had been attempted ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... Like the angel in the Revelation, he will call you up to heaven, hale you to the abyss and show you things to come. And, though you may not believe it, it is the man's intense and simple piety that makes him so clear-sighted and practical; he lives so close to God that God's works and methods, so perplexing to you and me, are plain ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... justify; but the pulse was very extraordinary and exceedingly menacing. This was a deceptive day. The marks on the Dauphin's face extended over all the body. They were regarded as the marks of measles. Hope arose thereon, but the doctors and the most clear-sighted of the Court could not forget that these same marks had shown themselves on the body of the Dauphine; a fact unknown out of her chamber until ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... King Christian VIII. increased my annual stipend, so that with this and that which my writings bring in, I can live honorably and free from care. My king gave it to me out of the pure good-will of his own heart. King Christian is enlightened, clear-sighted, with a mind enlarged by science; the gracious sympathy, therefore, which he has felt in my fate is to ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... degree the qualities his 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; he instantly tears off his helmet and shows ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... is a conclusion which the more clear-sighted of the idealists have expressly recognized. That subtle and most entertaining thinker, for example, the late Professor Green of Oxford, has said that the self-conscious volition of man 'does not consist in a series of natural events, ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... Pear on the occasion of Willan Blaycke's second visit. Pierre had not shown himself at the inn for some weeks, and Victorine was uneasy about him. Spite of her plans about a much finer bird in the bush, she was by no means minded to lose the bird she had in hand. She was too clear-sighted a young lady not to perceive that it would be no bad thing to be ultimately Mistress Gaspard of the mill,—no bad thing if she could not do better, of which she was as yet far from sure. So she had inveigled her aunt into ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... all love 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 ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... the lamented Keats was the harbinger; and let us take this occasion to sing our palinode on the subject of 'Endymion.' We certainly did not[O] discover in that poem the same degree of merit that its more clear-sighted and prophetic admirers did. We did not foresee the unbounded popularity which has carried it through we know not how many editions; which has placed it on every table; and, what is still more unequivocal, familiarized it in every mouth. All this splendour of fame, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... hand, And held it for a moment, and Took up the other—held them both— As might a friend, I will take oath: Spoke leisurely, as might a man Praying for no thing other than He thinks Heaven's justice;—She was blind, I said, and yet a noble mind Most truly loved her; one whose fond Clear-sighted vision looked beyond The bounds of her infirmity, And saw the woman, perfectly Modeled, and wrought out pure and true And lovable. She quailed, and drew Her hands away, but closer still I caught them. "Rack me as you will!" She cried out sharply—"Call ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... was a dignity in his manner, springing doubtless from the consciousness 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 ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... watched Nella-Rose with new and far-seeing interest—not always 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 most sacred memories of his life, but gradually he grew to believe ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... artistic matters, which, so far as I can learn, the President has not; but both are ambitious in the noblest sense; both are young men of deep beliefs and high aims; earnest, vigorous, straightforward, clear-sighted; good speakers, yet sturdy workers, and anxious for the prosperity, but above all things jealous for the honor of the people whose affairs they are called to administer. The President's accounts of difficulties in ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... against the bars, or learn to eat from his hand, to sing presently at his whistle. Had passion urged her, this hesitancy would have been impossible. Then she would either have seen none of these things, or, having seen them, she would have dared greatly. She was too cool, too clear-sighted, perhaps, for a heroine of romance. The single virtue that has fed vampire-like on the blood of the others, the abject attitude of the heart, the moral chicanery of sex—she would have none ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... 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
... hopeful state of things is owing, in no slight degree, to the self-sacrificing exertions of a few faithful and clear-sighted men, foremost among whom was the late William Leggett; than whom no one has labored more perseveringly, or, in the end, more successfully, to bring the practice of American democracy into conformity ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... good laws, but of men strong enough and courageous enough to administer them. He would see: if the good to be accomplished were great enough to over-balance the evil ... it was a temptation to compromise—a sharp temptation; and he found himself longing for Patricia, for her clear-sighted comment which, he felt sure, would go straight to the ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... zest and power of rectitude. Christianity has liberated the world, not as a system of ethics, not as a philosophy of altruism, but by its revelation of the power of pure and unselfish love. Its vital principle is not its code, but its motive. Love, clear-sighted, loyal, personal, is its breath and immortality. Christ came, not to save himself, assuredly, but to save the world. His motive, his example, are every man's key to his own gifts and happiness. The ethical code he taught may no doubt be matched, here a piece and there a piece, out of other religions, ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... 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 splendor in the situation of the crown, which usually adds to government strength and authority at ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... clear-sighted, discriminating, penetrative, shrewd, crafty, keen, perspicacious, subtile, cunning, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... affected deeply a man just risen from a bed of sickness. Lieutenant D'Hubert's hand, which grasped the knob of a stick, trembled slightly. But his northern temperament, sentimental but cautious and clear-sighted, too, in its idealistic way, predominated over his impulse to make a clean breast of the whole deadly absurdity. According to the precept of transcendental wisdom, he turned his tongue seven times in his mouth ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... will follow its own course, and that they 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 organ so long bent on the petty ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a 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, as to be shown by him his curious collection of books. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... this, to be sure, is in the mind of the Saint, but a long remorse for this great sin, which he earnestly analyses. Nor is he so penitent but that he is clear-sighted, and finds the spring of his mis- doing in the Sense of Humour! "It was a delight and laughter which tickled us, even at the very hart, to find that we were upon the point of deceiving them who feared no such thing ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... criticism, but an exact one. And yet public opinion, less punctilious or more clear-sighted, would say that the signature was ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... can make it, and whose religious usages are as stiff as such thoroughbred old-school men can wish them." (L. 4, 30.) But while B. Kurtz and his compeers indulged in mockery and ridicule, the men of Missouri were clear-sighted, serious, and determined. The consequence was that a decade later the hearts of the General Synod's anti-confessionalists were filled with fear and consternation. Schmucker's chief object in writing the Definite Platform, as appears from this document ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... themselves totally 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 applied in alien "matter," ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... them. Those who are exceptionally gifted as poets or thinkers—that is, those who are endowed with creative power—have much difficulty in adapting themselves to the technical drudgery of preparatory criticism: they are far from despising it; on the contrary, they hold it in honour, if they are clear-sighted; but they shrink from devoting themselves to it, for fear of using a razor, as is said, to cut stones. "I have no mind," wrote Leibnitz to Basnage, who had exhorted him to compile an immense Corpus of unpublished and printed documents relating to the ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... 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 its utmost reach ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... 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 ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... not seem to justify, but the pulse was very extraordinary and exceedingly menacing. This was a deceptive day. The marks in the Dauphin's face extended all over the body. They were regarded as the marks of measles. Hope arose thereon, but the doctors and the most clear-sighted of the court could not forget that these same marks had shown themselves on the body of the Dauphine, a fact unknown out of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... not neglect any of his tasks. Like the least of our parish priests, he prepared the neophytes for the Sacraments. He was an incomparable catechist, so clear-sighted and scrupulous that his instructions may still be taken as models by the catechists of to-day. Neither did he, as an aristocrat of the intelligence, only trouble himself with persons of culture, and leave to his deacons the care of God's common people. All had a right to his lessons, the simple ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... to, and always thus. The clear-sighted, great old man, already perceives how much his fame will owe to such an apostle and preacher of his faith—for he sees also what Carlyle himself will become. The mention of Lockhart is also ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... constituency and a more stable following. The error in judgment is excusable in one who had never veiled his sympathy with the Italian cause, and had hitherto found it no hindrance to his popularity; but so clear-sighted a man as Gracchus must have felt at times that he was staking, not only his own career, but the fate of the programme and the party which he had built up, on the chance of securing an end, which had ceased to be regarded as the mere removal ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... strength. On the whole, however, in 1862 the more powerful element had rallied to and upheld the government. The court and the army were so loud in their admiration of the profound policy of the Emperor that those who heeded the croakings of the few clear-sighted men composing the opposition ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... the bottom of a volcano. She has little weaknesses, but is a real generous-hearted woman, which I suppose is the finest thing in the world.' Though neither mother nor son could be called beautiful, they make a pretty picture; the ugly, generous, ardent woman weaving rainbow illusions; the ugly, clear-sighted, loving son sitting at her side in one of his rare hours of pleasure, half- beguiled, half-amused, wholly admiring, as he listens. But as he goes home, and the fancy pictures fade, and Stowting is once more burthened with debt, and the noisy companions ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was 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 things ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... say I don't," Hammond interrupted him. "Very likely I do: I don't pretend to be any better than my neighbors. But that doesn't matter. If you are so clear-sighted that there's no sending you off under a happy delusion, it would be mere brutality to urge you to undergo sea-sickness in the search for such a fate. As you say, it is attainable here. Will you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Cecil's secret, and say nothing about it." Whereupon the damsel ran merrily off, humming the air, "I told them they needn't come wooing to me." But, arrived in her own room, her evanescent high spirits vanished, and a bitter and clear-sighted mood succeeded. "Bertie," she thought, "your evil influence is over us all. Mamma, till now the truest of step-mothers, is only thinking of ensuring you my fortune. I disoblige papa, send away a true love, hate Bluebell for her too attractive soft eyes, am harassed ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... of teachers—misfortune. Cast upon her own resources at the age of thirteen, she had learned to look upon everybody and everything with distrust; and by relying only on herself, she had become strangely cautious and clear-sighted. She knew how to watch and how to listen, how to deliberate and how to act. Two men, the Marquis de Valorsay and M. de Fondege's son, coveted her hand; and one of the two, the marquis, so she believed, was capable of any crime. Still she felt no fears. She ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... mattered not how dreadful life might appear, it must be great and good, since it was lived with so tenacious a will, for the purpose no doubt of this will itself, and of the great work which it unconsciously accomplished. True, he was a scientist, a clear-sighted man; he did not believe in any idyllic humanity living in a world of perpetual peace; he saw, on the contrary, its woes and its vices; he had laid them bare; he had examined them; he had catalogued them for thirty years past, but his passion for life, his admiration ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... vi. 230. May. Guthrie, 194. Baillie, ii. 156, 157, 273. This defeat perplexed the theology of that learned man. I confess I am amazed, and cannot see to my mind's satisfaction, the reasons of the Lord's dealing with that land.... What means the Lord, so far against the expectation of the most clear-sighted, to humble us so low, and by his own immediate hand, I confess ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... reached headquarters, and had to face, as he supposed, an opposition. Stannard was the only man who really knew very much about him as a cavalry officer, and Stannard's opinion was what brought it all about. They had served for some months at the same post, and both the major and his clear-sighted wife had taken a fancy to the young officer, whose first appearance in "citified garb and a pince-nez" gave little promise of future usefulness in the field. Pelham and Stannard knew that it had ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... look round the room, which had become all at once so interesting to him. Mr. May was too clear-sighted not to see it. He thought, quite impartially, that perhaps it was an excusable weakness, even though it was his own society that was the counter attraction. They were two nice-looking girls. This was how he put it, being no longer young, and father ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... no choice but to withdraw. He did so; and a moment later Sir George, after paying his respects, followed him. Dr. Addington was clear-sighted enough to fear that his friend had gone after the lawyer, and, as soon as he decently could, he went himself in pursuit. He was relieved to find Sir George alone, pacing the floor of the ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... Gorm Smallin! My own brother, Gorm Smallin!" When he finds his brother he says to him: "Ef ye had been killed in a fa'r battle, I mought ha' been able to fight hard enough for both of us; for every time I cried a-thinkin' of you, I'd ha' been twice as strong, an' twice as clear-sighted as I was buffore. But — sich things as these burns me an' weakens me and hurts my eyes that bad that I kin scarcely look a man straight furard in the face. Hit don't make much difference to me now whether we whips the Yanks or they whips ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... closely. Meshes were closing around Ramona. Three watchers of her 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 ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... a coward, he might also be a traitor but he was a clever and clear-sighted man too. Consequently Hortebise shivered as he heard these words, but Mascarin smiled disdainfully, basking in ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... 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 ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the most clear-sighted do not see well at night. At any rate my hope was that they had not done so, and that is why I waded out to prick the eyes of Houman. Moreover, as I had hoped, so it was; there beneath his robe I saw the chain. Then I spoke to ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... truth. He and she had changed places. She who had used to be so practical—she was the dreamer now; had come thither following a dream, walking in a dream. He, the dreaming boy, had become the practical man, firm, clear-sighted, direct of purpose; with a dream yet in his heart, but a dream of great action, a dream he hid from her, certainly a dream in which she had neither part nor lot. And yet she had made him what he was; not willingly, not by kindness, but by injustice. What she had given he had taken; ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... compromise. In 1767 Carleton exchanged several important dispatches with them; and in 1768 they sent out Maurice Morgan to study and report, after consultation with the chief justice and 'other well instructed persons.' Morgan was an indefatigable and clear-sighted man who deserves to be gratefully remembered by both races; for he was a good friend both to the French Canadians before the Quebec Act and to the United Empire Loyalists just before their great migration, when he was Carleton's secretary at New York. In 1769 the official correspondence ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... 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 de l'esprit, discouraged among the highest ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... odious—one of the worst imposture and blights to which a youthful imagination could be subjected. It is chiefly against the incubus of this celestial monster that Mr. Moore dared to lift up his eyes; and many a less courageous or less clear-sighted person was thankful to him for it. But a man with such a mission requires a certain narrowness and concentration of mind; he has to be intolerant and to pound a good deal on the same notes. We need not wonder if Mr. Moore ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... agree with you," said Ursula. "I think your cousin is too clear-sighted not to see the merits of Benedick." "He is the one man in Italy, ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... debasing prejudices, and distrust of national progress,—sparing no tyrant, however wealthy or high in station; pleading for the downcast, however lowly; hoping for the fallen, however scorned. Thanks to this clear-sighted moralist, he gave me, in his own example, a standard of generous Optimism too sun-bright ever to be eclipsed. Let it not be inferred from these hasty outlines, however, that Dr. Dewey was habitually grave, or intent on serious topics ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... disillusionment which some prophets have discerned as the first harvest of Home Rule, because she is already disillusioned. Looking into the future we see no hope for rhetoricians; what we do see is a strong, shrewd, indomitable people, at once clear-sighted and idealistic, going about its business "in the light of day in the domain of reality." No signs or wonders blaze out a trail for them. The past sags on their shoulders and in their veins, a grievous burden and a grievous malady. They ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... 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
... "incompatible" Johnson.[20] His letters of travel are admirable: his accounts of public affairs, though sometimes extremely prejudiced, very clever; those of University society and squabbles among the very best that we have in English; those touching "the picturesque" extremely early and remarkably clear-sighted; those touching literature among the least one-sided of their time. If there are, as observed or hinted above, some unamiable touches, his persistent protection of the poor creature Mason; his general attitude to his friends the Whartons; and his communications with younger men like Norton ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... 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
... 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 is worthless, I shall indeed bow before ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... intellect so colored with the hues of practical interest without limiting its own flight; nowhere are labor and executive power so receptive of pure intellectual suggestion. The union of what is deepest and most recondite in thought with clear-sighted sagacity has been well hit by Lowell in his description of the typical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... a second of indecision which did not escape so clear-sighted an observer as M. Desmalions. He swayed from side to side, his eyes ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... was superfluous, however, for a single glance sufficed the sagacious and clear-sighted doctor to read the minds of his heirs by the expression of their faces. Zelie's irruption into the church, her glance, which the doctor intercepted, this meeting of all the expectant ones in the public ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... a very brave young woman, Miss Lawton, and I am glad that you are taking such a clear-sighted view of this double catastrophe which has come upon you. Ah, I had almost forgotten; here is a duplicate of the mortgage which I hold upon this house, which your father made out to me some ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... called on his sister-in-law about three o'clock in the afternoon he was rather disgusted to find Mark at home. He knew that Mark was much more clear-sighted than his mother, and he feared that he would influence her ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... great building was declared open and another important project initiated by the Prince of Wales had reached completion. The London Times of the succeeding day referred with accuracy, in this connection, to his "clear-sighted initiative and untiring energy" and a member of the Executive Committee, which had the enterprise in hand, wrote to the same paper that during the past six years "every important step in connection with the Institute ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... ambiguity of the oracle to which he appeals. The 'blessed mood' in which we get rid of the burden of the world, is too easily confused with the mood in which we simply refuse to attend to it. He finds lonely meditation so inspiring that he is too indifferent to the troubles of less self-sufficing or clear-sighted human beings. The ambiguity makes itself felt in the sphere of morality. The ethical doctrine that virtue consists in conformity to nature becomes ambiguous with him, as with all its advocates, when we ask for a precise definition of nature. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... more a man of facts, one less under the influence of his own imagination; had it been his good fortune to live even in contact with those he now so devoutly worshipped, in a political sense at least, their influence over a mind as just and clear-sighted as his own, would soon have ceased; but, passing his time at sea, they had the most powerful auxiliary possible, in the high faculty he possessed of fancying things as he wished them to be. No wonder, then, that ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... constrained to recollect that its claim to be inspired has of late years been repeatedly called in question. It has even become the fashion to cavil at almost everything which the Bible contains. We are grown so exceedingly wise, have made so many strange discoveries, and have become so clear-sighted, that the more advanced among us are kindly bent on disabusing the minds of their less gifted brethren of that most venerable delusion of all,—(for it is coeval with Christianity,)—that the Bible is in any special sense the Word of GOD. I do not say that ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... West Lodge, but even then we felt that a new misfortune was lurking in the silent house, for the health of Jane Hamerton, who had never been very strong, now began to disquiet her friends, particularly my husband, whose affection for her was very true and tender. Aunt Susan, who was her devoted but clear-sighted nurse, wrote to us in the course of the summer that her case was very serious, notwithstanding the short periods of improvement occurring at intervals. The poor girl had grown very weak and lost her appetite; almost constantly feverish, she longed for fruit to refresh ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... that all is singularly to de good, as Comrade Maloney would put it. Advices from Comrade Windsor inform me that that prince of blighters, Waring, was rejected by an intelligent electorate. Those keen, clear-sighted citizens refused to vote for him to an extent that you could notice without a microscope. Still, he has one consolation. He owns what, when the improvements are completed, will be the finest and most commodious tenement houses ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the shadow they have cast upon it in part remains. But of this be sure, that no selfish, loveless egoist could have had and retained such friends. The man whom the saintly Fraulein von Klettenberg chose for her friend, whom clear-sighted, stern-judging Herder declared that he loved as he did his own soul; the man whose thoughtful kindness is celebrated by Herder's incomparable wife, whom Karl August and the Duchess Luise cherished as a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... independence of the Irish. In any case, I think there can be no doubt of the main historical fact. The Scotch were tempted by the enormous but unequal opportunities of industrialism, because the Scotch are romantic. The Irish refused those enormous and unequal opportunities, because the Irish are clear-sighted. They would not need very clear sight by this time to see that in England and Scotland the temptation has been a betrayal. The industrial system ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... I replied, making an effort to bring the glass steadily to my lips, "you are a capital fellow—a clear-sighted, sensible, capital fellow. ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... which caused him to turn pale. He tore open the letter; but it was not the one for which he would have given half his fortune. Oh! sagacious, wily, clear-sighted Mr. Flint! ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... in turn. The conflicts, which in other parts of the Bible are confined to a single verse or a single chapter, are here expanded into a whole book." And after quoting a few of the darker and more cynical utterances, this clear-sighted teacher goes on: "Their cry is indeed full of doubt and despair and perplexity; it is such as we often hear from the melancholy, skeptical, inquiring spirits of our own age; such as we often refuse to hear and regard as unworthy even a good man's thought or care, ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... efforts he made, 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, and, judging Julien by himself, came to the conclusion that ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... that there may not be a third solution to the mystery?" asked Roger, who was clear-sighted and somewhat matter-of-fact. "There being a good many people who desire to have it supposed that the Duke is the rightful heir to the throne of England, it is possible that the paper was a bold forgery, drawn up for the purpose of influencing ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... quitted his refuge in Susiana to present himself before Esar-haddon's foot-stool at Nineveh. This judicious step had all the success that he could have expected or desired. Esar-haddon, having conquered the ill-judging Nebo-zirzi-sidi, made over to the more clear-sighted Nahid-Marduk the whole of the maritime region that had been ruled by his brother. At the same time the Assyrian monarch deposed a Chaldaean prince who had established his authority over a small town in the neighborhood of Babylon, and set up another in his place, thus pursuing the same system ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... making an effort to bring the glass steadily to my lips, "you are a capital fellow—a clear-sighted, sensible, capital ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... possessed in the highest degree the qualities his 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 ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... incident also shows simple folk made clear-sighted by kindness of heart: "On another occasion Christine and one of the ladies in our hotel went into a shop to buy some beautiful lace which was being sold at half-price. 'We have to sell it cheaply because of the war,' explained the assistant: 'ach! it ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... 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
... star of that galaxy or milky way of poetry of which the lamented Keats was the harbinger; and let us take this occasion to sing our palinode on the subject of 'Endymion.' We certainly did not[O] discover in that poem the same degree of merit that its more clear-sighted and prophetic admirers did. We did not foresee the unbounded popularity which has carried it through we know not how many editions; which has placed it on every table; and, what is still more unequivocal, familiarized it in every mouth. All this splendour ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... the alien point of view of the speaker, who suspects without understanding either the greatness of the poet's spiritual personality and mission, or the nature of his life, which is withdrawn from that of the commonalty, yet spent in clear-sighted universal sympathies and kindly mediation ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... that it was only his romantic youth and that he never had been and never would be more youthful than he was for that three-quarters of an hour. On the contrary, to her youth he seemed to have left youth behind him, and to have grown suddenly serious and clear-sighted ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... 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. It is not unusual to find these coincidences amongst ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... 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 its ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... his ear, were soon extinguished by death; but they vibrated long in the heart which they had comforted. The artist associated their dear memory with every success which recalled to him their sympathetic accents and their clear-sighted prediction. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... three stage, and that is where we are. We may find, as stage number four, that the good spirit is only a muscle in our brain or a fluid in our nerves, which we strengthen, and become masters of ourselves—greater, stronger, more clear-sighted— without any OUTSIDE Great Spirit. That we are all things in ourselves, and that we are, in making ourselves, making the God. I fancy that is Pfeiffer's idea. It is Mezes', I believe. Then comes in the mystery of transmitting that highly developed spirit. A woman of such a super-soul ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... marriage, and he was too thorough a gentleman to annoy her by alluding to their political difference of opinion, except occasionally, when his temper got the better of him, which, to do him justice, was seldom. But Clarissa's very love for him rendered her too clear-sighted not to perceive the state of his mind, and the unspoken agitation which she suffered on this score had been partly the cause of her homesickness and longing for her sister's companionship. He had ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... not pass without opposition from clear-sighted men. LOPE DE VEGA (1562-1635) attacked it whenever opportunity offered, and his verse seldom shows signs of corruption. It page xxv is impossible to consider the master-dramatist at length here. He wrote over 300 sonnets, many excellent eclogues, epistles, ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... 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 can judge the wrongs that she hath done, That she hath done, the ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... that a nation ever attempted, we required a leader, whose mind was on an equality with so great an event. We accepted you; the pliability of your features, your studied orations, your premeditated axioms—all those productions of art that nature disavows, seemed suspicious to the more clear-sighted patriots. The boldest of them followed you, tore the mask from your visage, and cried—Citizens, this hero is but a courtier, this sage but an impostor. Now, thanks to you, the Revolution can no longer bite, you have cut the lion's claws; the people is more formidable to its ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... "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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... were the only thing to be regarded. But I need not stop to expose such an atrocious rule of action, which would justify whatever is base or criminal. It is urged, however, in vindication of methods of acquiring influence which offend a clear-sighted conscience, that if a party cannot prevail but by using the weapons with which it is attacked, it must resort to these means of self-preservation. What is this but another way of expressing the doctrine on ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... Hungarian fellow sufferers, uttering such whimpers of expectancy, exchanging such gestures of hope. Soon they shall be brought forward to be examined by the doctor and the interpreting officer; the one shall pry their purses, the other their eyes. For in this United States of America we want clear-sighted citizens at least. And no cold-purses, if the matter can be helped. But neither the eyes, alas, nor the purses of our two emigrants are conformable to the Law; the former are filled with granulations of trachoma, the latter have been emptied by the sharpers of Marseilles. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... regret that so clear-sighted, so urbane and so truly Aristophanic a satirist had not a wider field to work in. Seventeenth-century Italy was all too narrow for his genius; and if the Secchia Rapita has lost its savor, this ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... vulgar Put to the question ordinary and extraordinary So much a lover that love imposed silence on ambition The last thing I should desire would be to be as dead as he To draw back was to acknowledge one's guilt Too commonplace ever to arrive at a high position Vanity and self-satisfaction Very clear-sighted we can be about things that don't touch us Without fear ...
— Quotes and Images From "Celebrated Crimes" • Alexander Dumas, Pere
... aesthete at all; he is too Voltairian for that. As a critic he is learned, scholarly, clear-sighted and acute; but his sense of the humorous inconsistencies of normal flesh and blood is too habitually present with him to admit of that complete abandonment to the spirit of his author, which, accompanied by interpretative subtlety, secures ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... from the testimony given above, that he was a strong believer in the supernatural, and here if anywhere we find a relationship between him and his more celebrated descendant. Nathaniel Hawthorne was too clear-sighted to place confidence in the pretended revelations of trance mediums, and he was not in the least superstitious; but he was remarkably fond of reading ghost stories, and would have liked to believe them, if he could ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... said, "my life, wholly domestic, can offer nothing of interest to the public." Incidents indeed, in that quiet happy home existence, there were none to narrate, nothing but the ordinary joys and sorrows which attend every human life. Yet the letters of one so clear-sighted and sagacious—one whom Macaulay considered to be the second woman of her age—are valuable, not only as a record of her times, and of many who were prominent figures in them: but from the picture they naturally give of a simple, honest, generous, high-minded character, filled from ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... powerful element had rallied to and upheld the government. The court and the army were so loud in their admiration of the profound policy of the Emperor that those who heeded the croakings of the few clear-sighted men composing the ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... lively style than either of the preceding novels, but soon 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 Andersen ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... sovereignty of the rest of Italy. This has been their policy for centuries. It is their policy still; and that policy has been the curse of Italy. This fatal gift of the patrimony of St. Peter—as Dante saw—as Machiavelli saw,—as all clear-sighted Italians have seen,—as we are seeing it now in these very days—has kept her divided, torn by civil wars, conquered and reconquered by foreign invaders. Unable, as a celibate ecclesiastic, to form his dominions into a strong hereditary kingdom; unable, as the hierophant ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... their teeth set on edge because their parents had eaten sour political grapes. Then think of the young men themselves! Many of them had no illusions about the policy that led to the war: they went clear-sighted to a horribly repugnant duty. Men essentially gentle and essentially wise, with really valuable work in hand, laid it down voluntarily and spent months forming fours in the barrack yard, and stabbing sacks of straw ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... yonder, to guess 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 it? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... "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
... respects wise and good have clung to as the corner-stone of their faith in immortality and a divine ordering of the world, may we not suspect that those who now maintain political or other doctrines which seem to us barbarous and unenlightened, may be, for all that, in the main as virtuous and clear-sighted as ourselves? While we maintain our own side with an honest ardor of conviction, let us not forget to allow for mortal incompetence in the other. And if there are men who regret the Good Old Times, without too clear a notion of what they were, they should at least be thankful that we are ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... 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 ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... youth. For twenty-one years he passed from honor to honor in the Colony, living in much state, though personally always abstemious and restrained, and growing continually in the mildness and toleration, from which his contemporaries more and more diverged. Clear-sighted, and far in advance of his time, his moderation hindered any chafing or discontent, and his days, even when most absorbed in public interests, held a rare severity and calm. No act of all Bradstreet's life brought him more public honors than his action against Andros, whose tyranny had roused ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... prized his letters of encouragement and advice, I shall give extracts from her replies, as their dates occur, because they will indicate the kind of criticism she valued, and also because throughout, in anger, as in agreement and harmony, they show her character unblinded by any self-flattery, full of clear-sighted modesty as to what she really did well, and what she failed in, grateful for friendly interest, and only sore and irritable when the question of sex in authorship was, as she thought, roughly or unfairly treated. As to the rest, the letters speak for themselves, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Fournichon, like most women, was more clear-sighted than her husband, and called out, "If monsieur desires solitude, he will ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... I was not dealing with a booby, but with a sensible clear-sighted man, and so studied to express myself in a way which would not for an instant give him the impression that I was promising to marry him because—what I don't know and it doesn't matter much, but ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... place where the catastrophe occurred?" continued Glenarvan. "Does not the name Patagonia seem apparent even to the least clear-sighted individual?" ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... 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 massing themselves together, so the mental atoms, ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... child-like simplicity,' 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
... face, as he supposed, an opposition. Stannard was the only man who really knew very much about him as a cavalry officer, and Stannard's opinion was what brought it all about. They had served for some months at the same post, and both the major and his clear-sighted wife had taken a fancy to the young officer, whose first appearance in "citified garb and a pince-nez" gave little promise of future usefulness in the field. Pelham and Stannard knew that it had to be Billings or a second lieutenant, but ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... 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 life to ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... begging their charity in doleful strains, and telling dismal stories of their distress. Among these they found some upon crutches, who had danced very nimbly at the wedding, others stone-blind, who were perfectly clear-sighted at the feast. The Doctor distributed among them the money which he had received as his pay; but the Dean, who mortally hated these sturdy vagrants, rated them soundly; told them in what manner he had been present at the wedding, and was let into their roguery; and assured ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... to destroy that machine, it will very soon destroy your trade." He saw at a single glance of the press, the downfal of priestly dominion in the general diffusion of knowledge that would be occasioned by it, and had the rest of the clergy been equally clear-sighted, it is probable the dark ages of superstition and ignorance had still continued, or at least had been ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... 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 Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Commission Extraordinary formed to distribute food to the poor of his neighborhood, just when he had planned to move from the Rue du Fouarre, which he as little liked to live in as his wife did. The great lawyer, the clear-sighted criminal judge, whose superiority seemed to his colleagues a form of aberration, had for five years been watching legal results without seeing their causes. As he scrambled up into the lofts, as he saw ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... a parody of L'Esprit des Lois, is yet full of originality, of lively anecdote and keen observation. Nobody but Beyle could have written it; nobody but Beyle could have managed to be at once so stimulating and so jejune, so clear-sighted and so exasperating. But here again, in reality, it is not the question at issue that is interesting—one learns more of the true nature of Love in one or two of La Bruyere's short sentences than in all Beyle's three ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... the Voltairean ideas was a circumstance independent of the state of the surrounding atmosphere, and was what in the phraseology of prescientific times might well have been called providential. If Voltaire had seen all that he saw, and yet been indolent; or if he had been as clear-sighted and as active as he was, and yet had only lived fifty years, instead of eighty-four, Voltairism would never have struck root. As it was, with his genius, his industry, his longevity, and the conditions of the time ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... would have been intolerable; they were not universally tolerated as it was: but the gifts and graces of the critic made them—so far—inoffensive, even rather fascinating, to all save the least accommodating or the most clear-sighted, and to some even ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... powerful agents at the command of the practitioner, and should no more he trifled with than arsenic or opium. Used by a blundering, shallow-pated empiric it may be worse than useless—may do, as in many cases it has done, incalculable mischief to a patient. In the hands of a clear-sighted, experienced, scientific man, who administers it according to well-known laws of physiology and therapeutics, it is an inestimable remedy, often capable of accomplishing cures without the assistance of any other medicine, and, ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... and the note of earnest remonstrance in the Graaf Reinet speech is apparent enough. The despatch is dated June 23rd, 1897; the speech was delivered on March 3rd, 1898. What had happened in this interval of nine months to produce so marked a change in the mind of the genial, clear-sighted Englishman, who, as Mr. Asquith said, took with him to South Africa "as sympathetic an imagination" as any man of his acquaintance? Nemo repente fuit turpissimus. Whether the diagnosis of his Graaf Reinet speech was right or wrong, something ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... creative power—have much difficulty in adapting themselves to the technical drudgery of preparatory criticism: they are far from despising it; on the contrary, they hold it in honour, if they are clear-sighted; but they shrink from devoting themselves to it, for fear of using a razor, as is said, to cut stones. "I have no mind," wrote Leibnitz to Basnage, who had exhorted him to compile an immense Corpus of unpublished and printed documents relating to the history of the ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... Marx had the higher thought, but his disciple Lassalle had the more attractive way of presenting it. It is odd that Marx, today, should lie in a squalid cemetery, while the whole western world echoes with his praises, and that Lassalle—brilliant, clear-sighted, and remarkable for his penetrating genius—should have lived in luxury, but should now know nothing but oblivion, even among those who shouted at his eloquence and ran beside him in the ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... are too acute and clear-sighted to fall into such a palpable contradiction as this. It is a common accusation against them, that they believe one to be three, and three one; but this charge is, in most cases, unjust. This would be only true in case they affirmed that God is three in the same way ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... said 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 ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... 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 ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... felt as if I ought to go; but how could I? The pain to myself I could have borne; but how could I leave her to all the misery of her bleak, ungenial position? She, poor thing, was so unconscious of what I knew,—for I was made clear-sighted by love. I tried the more strictly to keep to the path I had marked out for myself, but I fear I did not always do it; in fact, many things seemed to conspire to throw us together. The sisters, ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... you," said Ursula. "I think your cousin is too clear-sighted not to see the merits of Benedick." "He is the one man in Italy, except Claudio," ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... any thing, father, he is clear-sighted for his own interest. He knows the road he is going to take, ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... faiths, between Louis XVIII., who saw only the present, and Charles X., who looked too far into the future; it was moreover bound to accept the will of the king, though the king was deceiving and tricking it. This unfortunate youth, blind and yet clear-sighted, was counted as nothing by old men jealously keeping the reins of the State in their feeble hands, while the monarchy could have been saved by their retirement and the accession of this Young France, which the old doctrinaires, the emigres ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... in his sympathy for his Belgian provinces, the emperor had been more clear-sighted than his subjects, for we know that he entertained, in 1527, the idea of forming the Low Countries into a separate kingdom. If this project had been realized, Belgian independence might have been maintained. But the very prosperity of the Low Countries made such realization impossible. ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... lee of the Coombe Hills, on the extreme southern edge of Berkshire, and not far removed from the great highway leading from Bath to London, lies the farmery where this restless, petulant, suffering, earnest, clear-sighted Tull put down the burden of life, a hundred and twenty years ago. The house is unfortunately largely modernized, but many of the out-buildings remain unchanged; and not a man thereabout, or in any other quarter, could tell me where the former occupant, who fought so bravely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... (Ripton's most clear-sighted citizen) had made the statement that Hilary Vane—away down in the bottom of his heart—was secretly proud of his son, the professor would probably have lost his place on the school board, the water board, and the library committee. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... its occurrence at a moment of unprecedented success. Resolute not to recur to his ancient Orangeism, yet desperate after his discomfiture of rallying a moderate party around his ministry, his practical mind, more clear-sighted than foreseeing, was alarmed at the absence of all influences for the government of Ireland. The tranquillity which might result from a reformed tenure of the soil, must, if attainable, be a distant ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... the most restless little beings, darting hither and thither, scarcely even halting except to turn back. And yet though there are so many of them, and as far as we know they have no organs of sight, they never run up against each other, but glide past more cleverly than any clear-sighted fish. These creatures are mostly to be found among decaying seaweed, and though they are so tiny, you can still see distinctly the clear space contracting and expanding ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... virtually carried Catholic emancipation, for it reduced Ireland to a state in which it was impossible long to resist it. Clear-sighted men had no difficulty in perceiving that the policy of Peel had failed to avert it, though it had succeeded in making impossible the securities which Grattan and the wisest men of his generation had pronounced indispensable for ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... willed everything; a prodigious phenomenon of will, conquering an illness by a battle, and yet doomed to die of disease in bed after living in the midst of ball and bullets; a man with a code and a sword in his brain, word and deed; a clear-sighted spirit that foresaw everything but his own fall; a capricious politician who risked men by handfuls out of economy, and who spared three heads—those of Talleyrand, of Pozzo de Borgo, and of Metternich, diplomatists whose death would have saved ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... hypothesis of a further evolution in cool suspense or in grave suspicion. In respect to very many questions a wise mans mind rests long in a state neither of belief nor unbelief. But your intellectually short-sighted people are apt to be preternaturally clear-sighted, and to find their way very plain to positive conclusions upon one side or the other ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... becomes positively odious—one of the worst imposture and blights to which a youthful imagination could be subjected. It is chiefly against the incubus of this celestial monster that Mr. Moore dared to lift up his eyes; and many a less courageous or less clear-sighted person was thankful to him for it. But a man with such a mission requires a certain narrowness and concentration of mind; he has to be intolerant and to pound a good deal on the same notes. We need not wonder if Mr. Moore has written rather meagerly, and ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... pathos, and your 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 as heartily as ever ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... 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 race has ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the Middle Ages as the British workman, except perhaps the British business man who employs him. Yet all who know even a little of the Middle Ages can see that the modern Trade Union is a groping for the ancient Guild. It is true that those who look to the Trade Union, and even those clear-sighted enough to call it the Guild, are often without the faintest tinge of mediaeval mysticism, or even of mediaeval morality. But this fact is itself the most striking and even staggering tribute to ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... A less 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 disappointed Jacob by his apparent indifference ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... AEschylus Barrett, 'as he called her. 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 ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... know 'tis asking a good deal of you) While I for your instruction nominate Some certain wrongs you suffer. Men like you Imperfectly are sensible of all The miseries they actually feel. Hence, Providence has prudently raised up Clear-sighted men like me to diagnose Their cases and inform them where they're hurt. The wounds of honest workingmen I've made A specialty, and probing ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... Loftus!" there's somebody cries;— Nay, friend, not so fast, if you please; His wisdom was that of the self-deceived fool Who quits the clear fount for the foul, stagnant pool, Who puts out his eyes lest the light he descry, Then shouts 'mid the gloom "how clear-sighted am I!" Who turns from the glorious fountain of Day, To follow the wild ignis fatuus' ray Through quagmire and swamp, ever farther astray, With every ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... in progress, which their world was to take, to make this their aim, and to expend their energy in promoting it. World-historical men—the heroes of an epoch—must, therefore, be recognized as its clear-sighted ones; their deeds, their words are the best of that time. Great men have formed purposes to satisfy themselves, not others. Whatever prudent designs and counsels they might have learned from others would be the more limited and inconsistent features in their career; for it was they who best understood ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... its claim to be inspired has of late years been repeatedly called in question. It has even become the fashion to cavil at almost everything which the Bible contains. We are grown so exceedingly wise, have made so many strange discoveries, and have become so clear-sighted, that the more advanced among us are kindly bent on disabusing the minds of their less gifted brethren of that most venerable delusion of all,—(for it is coeval with Christianity,)—that the Bible is in any special sense the Word of GOD. I do not say that Theologians talk ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... deserving of punishment if ever man was; with his ridiculous metaphors, and talk of organs and pianos, orchestras and despotisms, and flying to the sun! How could Nevil listen to the creature! Shrapnel must be a shameless, hypocrite to mask his wickedness from one so clear-sighted as Nevil, and no doubt he indulged in his impudence out of wanton pleasure in it. His business was to catch young gentlemen of family, and to turn them against their families, plainly. That was thinking the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 that his wife was at the point of a natural ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... inference is repeatedly pointed out and insisted upon in a great variety of ways; and it has been chiefly for the sake of showing the pernicious influence which preformed opinion may exert—viz., even to blinding the eyes of one of the most clear-sighted and thoughtful men that ever lived to a glaring contradiction repeated over and over again in the course of a few pages,—it has been chiefly for this reason that I have extended this Appendix to so great a length. I shall now conclude it ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... 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, obscurity and ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... to a wonder in all our operations; until our career was unfortunately checked by the indiscretion of my ally, who, being detected in the very act of conveying a card, was immediately introduced to a magistrate. And this minister of justice was so curious, inquisitive, and clear-sighted, that Count Maurice, finding it impossible to elude his penetration, was fain to stipulate for his own safety, by giving up his friend to the cognisance of the law. I was accordingly apprehended, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... motives, which subsequently disfigured the poetry of Corneille, and which is not only repulsive, but also for the most part both clumsy and unsuitable. He flattered himself, that in knowledge of men and the world, in an acquaintance with courts and politics, he surpassed the most shrewd and clear-sighted observers. With a mind naturally alive to honour, he yet conceived the design of taking in hand the "doctrine of the murderous Machiavel;" and displays, broadly and didactically, all the knowledge which ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... continuing, "Providence could not be more powerful, love more ingenious, motherhood more clear-sighted than your friends have been for us. I bless the chance that has brought you here to-day; for Monsieur Joseph has disappeared forever; he has evaded all the traps I set to discover his true name and residence. Here, read his last letter. But perhaps ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... move forward to new issues and new responsibilities. Grave dangers are now upon us. God grant that they may not need to be met and settled in the rude shock of war. The time for wisdom, for clear-sighted patriotism is—now. Labor and capital, the foundations of law and order; the complex civilization of a nation which now talks by lightning, and is hurled by steam over plains and mountains, and which, doubtless, will soon fly through the air—all these ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... bent of his mind, which prevented him from thinking of half a dozen things at a time, and not thinking thoroughly of any one of them, as is the manner of your more energetic people, made him remarkably clear-sighted upon any point to which he ever gave his ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... apparent in every sentence; and M. Gosselin, who set great value upon the divinity of the schools, quietly endeavoured to counteract his teaching. But fanaticism does not always prevent people from being clear-sighted. M. Gottofrey noticed something peculiar about me, and he detected that which had escaped the paternal optimism of M. Gosselin. He stirred my conscience to its very depths, as I shall presently explain, and with an unrelenting hand tore asunder all the bandages with which ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... certain patriotic members, who had entered the society in all good faith with the idea of studying occult science, raised an energetic protest and a schism took place. Thus, just as in the case of Co-Masonry, the more clear-sighted recognized the imprudence of placing themselves under foreign control. That this was no imaginary danger is shown by a correspondence which had taken place some years earlier and has recently been brought to light. It will be remembered ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... favorable to his best personal development? Does he not miss much 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
... most intimate and dearest confidant; he gradually went on to consult and trust him, not alone with regard to the immediate subject of his situation, as affected by the conspiracy, but upon a thousand other matters; and as Wilton's advice, clear-sighted and vigorous, was always judicious, and generally successful, the Duke, one of whose greatest weaknesses was the habit of putting his own judgment under the guidance of others, learned to lean upon his young companion, as he had at first done ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... as done in the overthrow of the king's design of 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 ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... own claims in abeyance to those of the slaves of the South, and labored to inspire the people with enthusiasm for the great measures of the Republican party, they were highly honored as "wise, loyal, and clear-sighted." But when the slaves were emancipated, and these women asked that they should be recognized in the reconstruction as citizens of the Republic, equal before the law, all these transcendent virtues vanished like dew before the morning sun. And thus it ever is: so long as woman labors ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... it comes to the worst we must try strategy," answered Karlsefin. "I will call Hake to our council; the youth, I have observed, is a deep thinker, and clear-sighted." ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... doubtless, the wide distinction that exists between modesty and shyness. Modesty is always self-possessed, and therefore clear-sighted and cool-headed. Shyness, on the contrary, is too confused either to see or hear things as they really are, and as often assumes the appearance of forwardness as any other disguise. Depriving its victims of the ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... misunderstanding, is called "culture" in Germany, then all hope of a really genuine German "culture"—the reverse of that "cultivation"—would not be entirely lost. For the Germans have never known any lack of clear-sighted and heroic leaders, though these, often enough, probably, have lacked Germans. But whether it be possible to turn German bravery into a new direction seems to me to become ever more and more doubtful; for I realise how fully ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... pleasure — if not unselfishness, at all events a selfishness which marvellously conceals itself; it has in it a certain diffidence. These were not traits which I could imagine in Strickland. Love is absorbing; it takes the lover out of himself; the most clear-sighted, though he may know, cannot realise that his love will cease; it gives body to what he knows is illusion, and, knowing it is nothing else, he loves it better than reality. It makes a man a little more than ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... be that of his deepest humiliation. Atahuallpa was not one of those to whom, in the language of the Grecian bard, "the Gods are willing to reveal themselves." 17 He had not read the handwriting on the heavens. The small speck, which the clear-sighted eye of his father had discerned on the distant verge of the horizon, though little noticed by Atahuallpa, intent on the deadly strife with his brother, had now risen high towards the zenith, spreading wider and wider, till it wrapped the skies in darkness, and was ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... split upon formalities, preliminaries, and never even tried to meet: but France and England are actually busy. Each Country has sent its Envoy: the Sieur de Bussy, a tricky gentleman, known here of old, is Choiseul's, whom Pitt is on his guard against; "Mr. Hans Stanley," a lively, clear-sighted person, of whom I could never hear elsewhere, is Pitt's at Paris: and it is in that City between Choiseul and Stanley, with Pitt warily and loftily presiding in the distance, that the main stress of the Negotiation lies. Pitt is lofty, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... extraordinary and exceedingly menacing. This was a deceptive day. The marks in the Dauphin's face extended all over the body. They were regarded as the marks of measles. Hope arose thereon, but the doctors and the most clear-sighted of the court could not forget that these same marks had shown themselves on the body of the Dauphine, a fact unknown out of her chamber ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • 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 ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... 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 have been quite intelligent, lucid, even clear-sighted in every concern of life, except on one point. They spoke clearly, readily, profoundly, on everything, when suddenly their thoughts struck upon the breakers of their madness and broke to pieces there, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... 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 applied in alien "matter," that is, in the region of myth. ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... word, one of them starts; the rifles, with unerring aim, are fired, and under cover of the smoke a man falls dead. They reload; the word is given, and another starts, with a bound, for home; but, ah! the aim of those clear-sighted, blood-thirsty men is too deadly; and so, one after another, till four ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... was reputed to be an excellent judge, a man of no softnesses,—able to wear the black cap without convulsive throbbings, anxious also that the law should run its course,—averse to mercy when guilt had been proved, but as clear-sighted and as just as Minos; a man whom nothing could turn one way or another,—who could hang his friend, but who would certainly not mulct his enemy because he was his enemy. It had reached Caldigate's ears that he was unfortunate in his judge; by which, they who ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... matures in the mind and soul of a statesman, there is need for some evolution, which cannot be accomplished in a few moments," he said. Since October, this idea had had time to evolve in his mind and soul. But his hate of "tyranny" was not blind. It was peculiarly clear-sighted, and he judged the difficulties with precision: "Such a step would not have been favoured by the Entente Powers, whose support would have been indispensable for its success." Then again: "If before the Bulgarian invasion ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... Amherst's sense of humour would have preserved him from such a view of his father-in-law's advice; but just then it fell like a spark on his smouldering prejudices. He was clear-sighted enough to recognize the obstacles to legal retaliation; but this only made him the more resolved to assert his will in his own house. He no longer paused to consider the possible effect of such a course on his already strained relations with his ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... perform. Other mobs are dull masses; which roll onwards with a dull fierce tenacity, a dull fierce heat, but emit no light-flashes of genius as they go. The French mob, again, is among the liveliest phenomena of our world. So rapid, audacious; so clear-sighted, inventive, prompt to seize the moment; instinct with life to its finger-ends! That talent, were there no other, of spontaneously standing in queue, distinguishes, as we said, the French People from ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... in the inquest-room, was one of these. His experience of human nature was tolerably keen, and he felt sure the boy was keeping something behind that he did not dare to tell. The coroner and jury were not so clear-sighted, and dismissed him with the remark that he ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... in the public square, so that every one could hear it, and then began to discuss whether they should send any help. As was always the case, some were for, and others against, the plan, and there was much talking. Among the best speakers of the city was the orator De-mos'the-nes, a very clear-sighted man, who suspected Philip's designs. He therefore warmly advised the Athenians to do all they could to oppose the Macedonian king, so as to prevent his ever getting a foothold in Greece. Indeed, he spoke so eloquently and severely against Philip, and told the people so plainly that the king ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... of Ireland's glorious youth were being corrupted and perverted. The cry of "Up the Mollies!" became the watchword of the new movement and the creed of selfishness and sectarianism supplanted the evangel of self-denial and self-sacrifice. It was a time when clear-sighted and earnest men almost lost hope, if they did not lose faith. To be held in subjection by the tyranny of a stronger power was a calamity of destiny to be resisted, but that the people should themselves bind the chains of a more sordid tyranny of selfishness around their spirits ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... to himself, "it looks as if this good man were really going to let himself be taken in and done for. It is singular how very clear-sighted we can be about things that don't touch us. This poor fly is going to let himself be caught by a very clever spider, or I'm much mistaken. Very likely my widow is quite of my opinion, and yet in what concerns ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... 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 penetrating below ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... though you have not even scratched its glossy surface: you have placed your hand upon the croup of the most ferocious and savage, the most wakeful and clear-sighted, the most restless, the swiftest, the most jealous, the most ardent and violent, the simplest and most elegant, the most unreasonable, the most watchful chimera of the moral world—THE ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... believe that," he murmured, a little dazed by her clear decisiveness; he often felt Imogen to be so much more clear-sighted, so much more clever than himself when it came to judgments and insights, that he could only at the moment acquiesce, through helplessness. "I suppose that is ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... his departure, endeavoured to conceal her anxiety from her niece; but in vain. Mabel was too clear-sighted; and it was a relief, as much as an astonishment to her aunt, to see how bravely she bore up against the evil news. Miss Bond did not remember that the knowledge of the power of wealth does not belong to sixteen summers. Mabel knew and thought so little of its ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... 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 splendor in the situation of the crown, which usually adds ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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 ...
— Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals • Immanuel Kant
... sentimental note in the corresponding German scenes of Knaus and Huebner, 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 is no ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... 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 said to ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... interpretation of various passages of the Kuran, but regarding the moral character of Muhammad himself. The storm raised by Abulfazl's motion was, therefore, terrible. There was not a doctor or lawyer present who did not recognise that the motion attacked the vital principle of Islam, whilst the more clear-sighted and dispassionate recognised that the assertions made in their previous discussions had broken through 'the strong embankments of the clearest law and the ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
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