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More "Astute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... off the marriage with Ferruci, by revealing his true character to Mrs. Vrain, he by no means made a confidant of the little man, or entrusted him with the secret of his plans. Clyne, as he well knew, was dominated in every way by his astute daughter, and did he learn Lucian's intentions, he was quite capable—through sheer weakness of character—of revealing the same to Lydia, who, in her turn—since she was bent upon marrying Ferruci—might retail them to the Italian, and so ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... it appears most probable certain," said the astute Oriental within his soul, "that inhabitants of these wilderness places have much madness within ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... and sometimes three days before the trips, Mayer always signed a receipt for the breakfast, but on his return he again paid in cash. Through a bellboy, who had admitted Jim to a patronizing intimacy, the astute Oriental had extended his field of observation. One of this boy's duties was to carry the mail to the rooms of the guests. For some weeks after his arrival Mayer had received almost no mail. After that letters had come for him, but all had borne the local postmark. The boy never remembered ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... things slide, and was doing nothing to save the estate and to provide for you, he was speculating and investing; and doing it with a skill and a shrewdness which could not have been surpassed by the most astute and business-like of men. His judgment was almost infallible; he seems scarcely ever to have made a mistake. It was one of those extraordinary cases in which everything a man touches turns to gold. There are mining shares there which I would not have ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... fury among the buccaneers when Morgan's escape was known. The French pirates were for putting to sea in pursuit, to blow his ships out of the water, but Morgan had been sufficiently astute to escape in the provision ships. The pirates left behind had not food enough to stock their ships, and could not put to sea till more had been gathered. While they cursed and raged at Chagres, Morgan sailed slowly to Port Royal, where he furled his sails, and dropped ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... Krishna's character remains to be noted. Besides being a bold warrior, he is above all an astute and able ally. During the Pandavas' final exile in the forest, he urges them to repudiate their banishment and make war. When the exile is over and war is near, he acts as peace-maker, urging the Kauravas to make concessions. When he is foiled by Duryodhana, the blind ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... slightest in the world,—but the keen eye of the astute lawyer noted it, and his tone grew in severity and assurance. "You have known for two years that this woman whom you called yours was within your reach, if not under your very eye, and you forbore to claim her. Has this delay ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... libraries. Too few can see 'sermons in stones' and 'books in the running brooks,' because they are so used to seeing merely sermons in books and only stones in running brooks. Sir Philip Sidney had a saying, 'Look in thy heart and write;' Massillon explained his astute knowledge of the human heart by saying, 'I learned it by studying myself;' Byron says of John Locke that 'all his knowledge of the human understanding was derived from studying his own mind.' Since multiform nature is all about ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... do not cross the paths of high political society. It lay behind him far and forgotten. His position was secure. Here and there an anxious mother may have been worried as to his precise antecedents; but Paul was too astute to give mothers over-much cause for anxiety. He lived under the fascination of the Great Game. When he came into his kingdom he could choose; not before. His destiny was drawing him nearer and nearer to it, he thought, with slow and irresistible force. In a few years ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... manner. Perhaps here was an "angel" waiting to be plucked in the holy name of art; at least, he appeared well dressed, looked intellectually promising, and expressed himself as totally indifferent regarding salary. Such visitors were indeed few and far between, and the astute manager sufficiently understood his business to permit his heavy features to relax into a hearty, welcoming smile. "Oxactly, young man. Sit down, und I vill see yoost vat vos pest for us both. You vould be an actor; you haf ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... will instruct you, be assured of that, What discipline and what obedience be! He sent me words, at least, of other pitch Than this astute idea of liberty You have rehearsed here like ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of persons, and do equal right to the poor and the rich. Hence the disposition, which we are not ashamed to confess we have, to guard jealously the rights of the poor and friendless and despised, and to be astute as far as we properly may, against injustice, whether proceeding from ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... a sovereign international state, and that it was therefore superfluous in that Convention to specify or define its rights. Into this answer, which is not only juridically and historically correct, but which rests on the basis of common sense, the astute High Commissioner was able to read a menace to Her Majesty's Government, although the Government of the Republic distinctly stated in that reply that it adhered to the Convention of London, an assurance which it had already made ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... which did not escape the astute Wayne the Worthy. "Aunt Kate," he called excitedly, "Aunt Kate—Miss Ann's eyes go such a long ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... genuine thing in rank or reputation, how frightfully difficult it is to send an astute vulgar old millionaire the one present which will open his ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... out on February 3d. Real had taken the precaution to have an escort of gendarmes for the prisoner whom Georges and his followers might try to rescue. The detachment was commanded by a zealous and intelligent officer, Lieutenant Manginot, assisted by a giant called Pasque, an astute man celebrated for the sureness of his attack. They left Paris at dawn by the Saint-Denis gate and took the road ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... laudable industry of spinning wool, and affect a life of chastity and solitude in a small house, which she afterwards changed into a magnificent temple." Magdalens have been converted, no doubt, from immoral living, but not by considerations of astute prudence suggested by day-dreams of imperial greatness. Gibbon might have thought of the case of Madame de Maintenon, and how her reputation fared in the hands of the vindictive courtiers of Versailles; how a woman, cold as ice and pure as snow, was ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... not easy, for he had long since learned to use his grievances as a pretext for keeping the offender at his beck with a continuous supply of stories, songs and games. "You'd better be careful never to put yourself in the wrong with Geordie," the astute Junie had warned Susy at the outset, "because he's got such a memory, and he won't make it up with you till you've told him every ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... to that question appeared on the handbills, which were, in each case, signed by Wrychester solicitors. To one of these Glassdale, on arriving in the old city, promptly proceeded—selecting the offerer of the larger reward. He presently found himself in the presence of an astute-looking man who, having had his visitor's name sent in to him, regarded Glassdale with very ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... answer, her head very high in the air but her heart in her shoes. Jim Turner would be sure to tell of Lockwood Hale, and Mr. Peabody would be astute enough to guess ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... by Popova, was carried away to the secret police of Morovenia, said to be the most astute in the world. They were instructed to watch all trains and guard the frontier and, as soon as they had their prisoner safely put away in the lower dungeon of the municipal prison, they were to notify the Governor-General, ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... and distant. He was so used to being frowned upon, reproved, and held at the point that he was quite blind to the change it signaled. He bent his eyes on his horse's mane. He thought of the King's words as to the kerchief and longed for a bit of his astute penetration and wonderful tact, that he might solve this provoking riddle beside him and lead up to what was beating so fiercely in his breast. In his perplexity he looked appealingly ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... discussed the matter with Judge Atkins without telling the details of the jollification, which doubtless he was astute enough to guess at. The result was that messages were sent to all the police precincts, and a detective was ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... of the colonel (who now displayed to Sylvie the graces of a courtier, in marked contradiction to his usual military brusqueness), together with that of the astute Vinet, was soon to harm the Breton child. Shut up in the house, no longer allowed to go out except in company with her old cousin, Pierrette, that pretty little squirrel, was at the mercy of the incessant cry, "Don't touch that, child, let ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... This astute sentence, however, missed fire completely. Zeb answered it with a point-blank stare of bewilderment. The others took no ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... brought to Trinidad a reputation for all the vulgar colonial prejudices which, discreditable enough in ordinary folk, are, in the Governor of a mixed community, nothing less than calamitous. More than amply did he justify the evil reports with which rumour had heralded his coming. Abler, more astute, more daring than Sir James Longden, who was, on the whole, only a constitutionally timid man, Governor Irving threw [64] himself heart and soul into the arms of the Sugar Interest, by whom he had been helped into his high office, and whose belief he evidently shared, that ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... the retrocession of the Transvaal, the Boers, encouraged by the hesitating policy of the British Government, sent a deputation to London of a few of their most astute statesmen, to put fresh claims before Mr. Gladstone, and Lord Derby, then Colonial Minister. They did not ask the repeal of the stipulations of the Convention of 1881—that was hardly necessary, ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... discovery of this new method of scientific murder. The astute criminal, whoever he might be, had planned to leave not even the slender clue that might be afforded by disease germs. He was operating, not with disease itself, but with something showing the ultimate effects, perhaps, of disease with none of the preliminary ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... Bluegrass, and school closed, the little girl was glad to go, and she waited for her father's coming eagerly. Miss Anne was still there, to be sure, and if she, too, had gone, June would have been more content. The quiet smile of that astute young woman had told Hale plainly, and somewhat to his embarrassment, that she knew something had happened between the two, but that smile she never gave to June. Indeed, she never encountered aught else than the same silent searching gaze from the strangely mature little creature's ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... man of strong will, of boundless personal ambitions, and in politics he was regarded as the most astute, powerful and unscrupulous leader in the state. His personal habits were simple and clean to the point of aceticism. His political enemies declared in disgust that he had no redeeming vices. He was a teetotaler, and yet the champion of the saloon and the ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... renowned commander kept away for awhile. He went, however, of his own accord. Perry was an astute diplomatist. He knew that time was needed for the impressions which he and his magnificent fleet had made upon the country to produce their ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... dwelt on Glyndon; and the mouth was twisted into a grin that displayed rows of jagged, black, broken teeth. Yet over this frightful face there still played a kind of disagreeable intelligence, an expression at once astute and bold; and as Glyndon, recovering from the first impression, looked again at his neighbour, he blushed at his own dismay, and recognised a French artist, with whom he had formed an acquaintance, and who was possessed of no ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... himself should retire. But President du Ronceret, in underhand ways, was thwarting the old man's plans, and working indirectly upon the Blandureaus. Indeed, if it had not been for this affair of young d'Esgrignon's, the astute President might have cut them out, father and son, for their rivals ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... for not selling out to the astute Mr. Cohen he had kept to himself. His wife's hints concerning Scarford and her discontent in Trumet were his reasons. These were what troubled him most. He liked Trumet; he liked its quiet, easy-going atmosphere; he liked ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... "The astute Mr. Steinmetz may be removed to some other sphere of usefulness. There is a new spoke in his ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... band of elegant scholars and connoisseurs, everything but Christian, to whom Rome owes so much of her external beauty and splendor, it is pathetic to stand by this kind and gentle spirit as he pauses on the threshold of a higher life, subduing the astute and worldly minded churchmen around him with the tender appeal of the dying father, their Papa Niccolato, familiar and persuasive—beseeching them to be of one accord without so much as saying it, turning his own weakness to account to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... own extermination. They did not face the English in the field, but hovered round the border, and, with sudden surprise, overwhelmed detached posts and settlements in a horrible destruction. The astute colonists soon adopted the policy of forming alliances, and taking advantage of ancient enmities to stir up hostilities among them. By this means they accomplished the destruction of the warlike ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... from the Pope, was and is systematically hostile to the Allies. Its press organs, inspired by an astute and influential Italian ecclesiastic named Tedeschini, by Koeppenberg, a rabid German convert, and by the Calabrian Daffina, organized a formidable campaign against the King's Government and their supposed interventionist leanings. Its agents, including the priest Boncampagni ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... purpose could now be supplied by means of the very danger with which the Papacy was threatened by the great German heresy, and against which Rome so sorely needed the aid of a temporal power. At the same time, Charles was far too astute to allow his regard for the Pope, and his desire for the unity of the Church, to entangle his policy in measures for which his own power was inadequate, or by which his authority might be shaken, and possibly destroyed. Strengthened as was ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... lucky for Horace that this swaggering upstart, who was not likely to be scrupulous as to his means of revenge, went over the very next year to his former master, whom he again abandoned within a year to sell himself once more to Augustus. That astute politician put it out of his power to play further tricks with the fleet, by giving him a command in Pannonia, where he was killed, B.C. 36, at the siege of Siscia, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... them and draws from them the conclusions they will bear. The limitation that vitiates many of his deductions is his taking into account only low and selfish motives. Before idealists he stands helpless; he leaves the reader uncertain whether Savonarola was a prophet or an extremely astute politician. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... under that astute and tactful statesman, John A. Macdonald, was a sort of composite organization which needed careful handling to prevent explosions, and some vast new problems such as the construction of a transcontinental ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... or low, has there been who has not looked up to her with regard: with the result that Mr. Lien himself has, in fact, had to take a back seat (lit. withdrew 35 li). In looks, she is also so extremely beautiful, in speech so extremely quick and fluent, in ingenuity so deep and astute, that even a man could, in no way, come up ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Ratapoil abounds in the promiscuous drawings that I have looked over, and is always very strong and living, with a considerable element of the sinister, so often in Daumier an accompaniment of the comic. There is an admirable page—it brings the idea down to 1851—in which a sordid but astute peasant, twirling his thumbs on his stomach and looking askance, allows this political adviser to urge upon him in a whisper that there is not a minute to lose—to lose for action, of course—if he wishes to keep his wife, his house, his field, his heifer and his calf. The canny scepticism ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... wily monarch, and sent to Sohrab two astute counsellors, Haman and Barman with instructions to watch the young leader carefully and to keep from him all ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... expected it is doubtful if the most inventive could have put into words. The general opinion expressed—out of Minky's hearing, of course, but to the accompaniment of deep libations of his most execrable whisky—was that, personally, that astute trader was, for some unaccountable reason, rapidly qualifying for the "bug-house," and that the only thing due from them was to display their loyalty to him by humoring him to the extent of discounting all the "dust" they could lay hands on, and wishing him well out of the trouble he seemed ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... and shrewd, who consorted with Calandrino for that they ofttimes had great diversion of his fashions and his simplicity. There was then also in Florence a young man of a mighty pleasant humor and marvellously adroit in all he had a mind to do, astute and plausible, who was called Maso del Saggio, and who, hearing certain traits of Calandrino's simplicity, determined to amuse himself at his expense by putting off some cheat on him or causing him believe some strange thing. He chanced one ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... away from it when she had once gained its cool sanctuary aisles. After that she got better and more her old self. The relief was as delicious as the grief had been; she was really happy. Then she found that she was beginning to dread his return. This was exactly what he had desired: he was a most astute young man. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... when they met a small vessel having on board the governor of the island. She made a desperate fight, but was taken at last, and with her a rich booty. They thought to put the governor to ransom but the astute official deceived them, and, on pretence of negotiating for the sum demanded,—together with "four or six parrots, and as many monkeys of the sort called sanguins, which are very beautiful," and for which his captors had also bargained,—contrived ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... once more, astute and suave politician again, and passing about the table he bowed over her ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... passed during the greater part of which I have not been engaged, personally, in ransacking the D—— Hotel. My honor is interested, and, to mention a great secret, the reward is enormous. So I did not abandon the search until I had become fully satisfied that the thief is a more astute man than myself. I fancy that I have investigated every nook and corner of the premises in which it is possible that the ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... All this, however, was not an idle pose on Felix's part. He merely applied to a dry-goods store the business principles of the successful virtuoso, and he had found them so efficacious that personally he sold more garments than any six of his clerks. He was no less astute in the buying end of the business; for in pitting Sammet Brothers, Klinger & Klein, and Potash & Perlmutter against one another he not only secured better terms of credit, but he found that it materially added to the quality ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... at Sara's door by the astute Patrick, announced by the sedate Watson and interrogated by the intelligent Murray, who seemed surprised to hear that he would NOT have anything cool to drink. Sara sent word that she would be down in fifteen minutes, but, ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... there'll soon be an end to that. The Irish Parliament is slipping into disrepute. It wouldn't surprise me if the astute English bribe them into a union, to the ruin of Irish Independence. Yet maybe, before that comes, the French will have a try for power here. And upon my word, if I have to live under foreign rule, I'd as leave have a French whip over me as an English!" He came a step nearer, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... above fictions. He comforted his vanity with the thought that Claudia had, by a conscious effort, checked a nascent affection for him, which, if allowed unimpeded growth, would have developed into a passion. Again, that astute young lady had very accurately conjectured his state of mind, while her pledge of secrecy disposed of the difficulty in the way of a too rapid transfer of his attentions. If Claudia did not complain, nay, counseled such action, who had a right to object? It was true she had eagerly disclaimed any ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... to surprise and bully rag the most astute police detective of whom he had any knowledge; he found himself surprised and ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... one of those dignified, astute, tall, gray-bearded, and keen-eyed men, whom we find in the picture galleries of the middle ages, dressed in a suit of stately black, with the golden chain of his order, and riband of the Fleece, "I was very anxious to see you, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... confusion, a young man, the younger son of a chief of no high lineage, and belonging to a small tribe, gathered around him a number of minor clans and fugitives from various quarters, and by his policy—astute, firm and tenacious—built them up into what soon became a powerful nation. Moving hither and hither along the foot of the great Maluti range, his skilful eye fixed on Thaba Bosiyo as a place fit to be the headquarters of the nation. There was good land all round, the approaches ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... civil war, until, in 1485, Henry Tudor came in after his victory at Bosworth, pledged to destroy the whole reactionary class which incarnated feudalism. For the feudal soldier was neither flexible nor astute, and allowed himself to be caught between the upper and the nether millstone. While industrial and commercial capital had been increasing in the towns, capitalistic methods of farming had invaded the country, and, as police improved, private and predatory ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... fortune," said the Regent, turning to a man seated at another table at some distance, whose wily, astute countenance, piercing eye, and licentious expression of lip and brow, indicated at once the ability and vice which composed his character. "So like my good fortune, is it not, Dubois? If ever I meet ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... speak of, and confident that the ship they were attacking carried no guns—for how could even the most astute of the Malays have supposed, with all their prying and peeping, that the Hankow Lin had a set of Armstrongs on board her, headed up in hogsheads?—the pirates were stupefied by the first broadside they received; and, after that, their resistance amounted to nil, especially the more ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... regard them) that his power of resistance to the Princess is limited, and at each fresh stretch of authority persuades them, with specious reasons, to postpone the hour of insurrection. Thus (to give some instances of his astute diplomacy) he salved over the decree enforcing military service, under the plea that to be well drilled and exercised in arms was even a necessary preparation for revolt. And the other day, when it began to be rumoured abroad that a war was being forced ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of twenty-five Henry de Croisenois affected the airs and manners of a lad of twenty, and so found many who looked upon his escapades with lenient eyes, ascribing them to the follies of youth. Under this youthful mask, however he concealed a most astute and cunning intellect, and had more than once got the better of the women with whom he had had dealings. His fortune was terribly involved, because he had insisted on living at the same rate as men who had ten times his ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... uncommon manual ability, Ned Land was a Canadian who had no equal in his dangerous trade. Dexterity, coolness, bravery, and cunning were virtues he possessed to a high degree, and it took a truly crafty baleen whale or an exceptionally astute sperm whale to elude the thrusts of ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... I accused the Emperor and the military chiefs. I was not content with putting my questions to the French Ambassador, whose unerring judgment always carried great weight with me. I also visited his Italian colleague, an astute diplomat, thoroughly versed in German statecraft. He had always put me in mind of those dexterous agents employed by ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... spurred on to hospitality, murmured something about a glass of ale, and retired to the back to draw it. He came back with a jug and a couple of glasses, and draining his own at a draught, hoped that the example would not be lost upon his visitor. That astute person, however, after a modest draught, sat still, anchored to the ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... came to the camp and the great chief of the Ottawas, haughty, shrewd, politic, ambitious, met face to face the bold, self-possessed, clear-headed Major of the British Rangers. It is interesting to note how calmly the astute ally of the French accepted the new order of things and prepared for an alliance with his former enemies. He and Rogers had several interviews and in the end smoked the pipe of peace. With dignified courtesy the ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... the cabinet is M. Petronevich, now minister for foreign affairs. He was at one time in a commercial house at Trieste, and subsequently for nine years a hostage for Servia at Constantinople—"he is astute by nature and education, but has a good heart and a capacious intellect; and, in the course of a very tortuous political career, has kept the advancement of Servia constantly in view. He is one of the very few public men in Servia, in whom the Christian and Western love of community has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... made a poor show of eating his breakfast, on the ease with which he could get away from Highmarket and from England. Being a particularly astute man of business, Mallalieu had taken good care that all his eggs were not in one basket. He had many baskets—his Highmarket basket was by no means the principal one. Indeed all that Mallalieu possessed in Highmarket was his share ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... see the Worn-out-Old-Cow—not because I had any particular interest in her, for, to tell the truth, she was a very disagreeable and antique person, the cast-off wife of some chief whom at an unknown date in the past the astute Umbezi had married from motives of policy—but because I hoped to hear more of Miss Mameena, in whom I ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... place my inclinations and my duty would—were I to become an active member of the detective force—nearly always be in direct conflict. As often as not my sympathies go to the criminal who is clever and astute enough to lead our entire ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... the history of mankind, the corrupt and unprincipled agents of undefined power became the servants, friends, protectors, agents, and promoters of the poor and weak and the oppressors of the rich, the strong, the learned, and the astute. ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... emperors had long been so haughty that the presence of their ambassadors at a Latin Council was a sufficient proof of their humiliation. The pope seconded their requests and prayers with all the force of speech and authority; yet the Council concluded nothing. It seems probable that the astute pope passed the word that no conclusion should be formulated, as he was not yet ready to indicate all that was in his mind. It may well be that the danger to Constantinople was not yet so evident to Alexius ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... excellent woman has faults, owing to a defective education," said Mr. Dudley with his usual dry, half-smile. "We must make allowances for them. I am more curious to know whether she got the better of my astute brother-in-law." ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... the most injurious form of special taxation which could be devised; it proves that a considerable portion of their wages will be taken from them under due process of law without power of redress on their part, while the rich and astute advocates of the present system will reap wealth which they nave not earned by taking from the laborer apart of that which is his rightful due. It is therefore of inestimable importance as giving the general reader a clear understanding of the real ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... is not a fair fight, for the weak to be set against the strong, and the ignorant against the astute. But men are weak and ignorant, whereas the demons are strong and astute. It is not therefore to be permitted by God, the author of all justice, that men should be ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... " 'Quite so,' some astute people will tell me, 'but what if they were in agreement? What if they murdered him together and shared the money—what then?' A weighty question, truly! And the facts to confirm it are astounding. One commits the murder and takes all the trouble while his ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... plans—he! he!—but I confess I begin to doubt of their being successful here—you put me out; old Fraser of Lovat! I have heard my father talk of him; he had a gold-headed cane, with which he once knocked my grandfather down—he was an astute one, but, as you say, mistaken, particularly in himself. I have read his life by Arbuthnot, it is in the library of our college. Farewell! I shall come no more to this dingle—to come would be of no utility; I shall go and labour elsewhere, though . . . how you came to know my name, is ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... finished seemed to lack continuity, so to speak. As an architectural effort it displayed evidence of many excellent intentions, but could not be called a brilliant success as a whole—although one astute Parliamentary candidate did secure an overwhelming majority of votes in Waddy after declaring the schoolhouse to be an ornament to the township. The public-spirited persons who contributed windows, ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... boldness (which, as you know, is never displeasing to you women), led captive by the conqueror's glance, by the astute yet candid air which Charles Edward can assume when he chooses, the lady rose, took the arm of her self-constituted escort, and went downstairs, but on the threshold she stopped to speak ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... with a narrow forehead, small grey eyes, and that peculiar expression of countenance which the vice of indulged avarice seems generally to produce. Though his lips denoted sensuality, their total want of firmness showed the astute Father Mendez that he would be easily moulded to his will. The marquis was perfectly well aware of the way in which the church was at times apt to bleed those whom she designated her most devoted ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... voice to the charm of 'Lady Betty across the Water', and the reason for this was a special one. The sudden breath of a world of warmth and colour, richness and vivacity and astute, American freshness amid the somewhat grim attractions of an Antarctic winter was too much for every one. Lady Betty, in the realm of bright images, had a host of devoted admirers. Her influence spread beyond the Hut to the plateau itself. Three ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... all that is happening," she replied, in some agitation. "There is a very astute lady detective who has a room near mine, and a man who shadows me every time I come in or go out. I am expecting every moment that the manager will ask me to ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... coach to herself. Jack Hamlin, a gambler, having once silently ridden with her in the same coach, afterward threw a decanter at the head of a confederate for mentioning her name in a bar-room. The over-dressed mother of a pupil whose paternity was doubtful had often lingered near this astute Vestal's temple, never daring to enter its sacred precincts, but content to worship the ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the heavy weight of millenarian ideas, which do not harmonize well with his occasional spiritual insights of an ever-growing revelation to man through the eternal Word who in all ages voices Himself within the soul. He was an extraordinary complex of vague mysticism and astute statesmanship. ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... for them; yet they would give us but slight encouragement. They may allow us just to hear their voices, but when we approach them they will speak with subdued breath, and almost inaudibly. Beware, however, lest among these you chance to encounter some astute artiste, who, under a surface that is smooth, conceals a current that is deep. This sort of lady, it is true, generally appears quite modest; but often proves, when we come closer, to be of a very different temperament ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... the inevitable consequence of being sunk, probably with all on board. The agent, having in mind his own considerable interest, played discreetly on the vanity of the commander, and laughed at the notion of an astute person like him allowing himself to be trapped; appealed to his nationality, and the glory of having run out of a port that was severely blockaded. The captain cut this flow of greasy oratory short by stating that for the moment he was thinking of the amount of hard cash he ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... consummate care. Did Higgins know a sailor of the name of Scarlett? Of course—did a lot of business with him; as honest a fellow as ever breathed. Honest—oh! Dent raised his eyebrows, and contrived by various innuendoes to convey a contrary impression to the astute Higgins. They talked a little longer. Suddenly ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... took the outstretched hand and shook it quite limply. There had been a momentary contraction of the brows while he asked himself if astute rivals might not have been tampering with this young fellow and trying to buy the firm's secrets. An instant's reflection, however, reassured him. Alban had no secrets worth the name to sell, and did he possess them, money would not buy them. "Half mad but entirely honest," was Mr. Tucker's ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... of Turkey, son of Sultan Mahmud II., was born on the 9th of February 1830, and succeeded his brother Abd-ul-Mejid in 1861. His personal interference in government affairs was not very marked, and extended to little more than taking astute advantage of the constant issue of State loans during his reign to acquire wealth, which was squandered in building useless palaces and in other futile ways: he is even said to have profited, by means of "bear'' ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and Sookdee declared it to be a rare extravagance,—was not so much as reward for Bootea's nautch as a desire on the part of the astute Prince to prepare for the greater ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... I feel highly flattered," he declared, as they walked down the garden path together. Then, as he opened the gate for her, he asked, with a knowing twinkle in his eye, for he was an astute business man, and accustomed to divining people's motives, "Now, what do you want to wheedle out of me this morning? You've been for a trip already, and it ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... sweetness, half of deprecation, that she bestowed upon each one of them in turn; but she never made the slightest effort to separate them, one from another, in her mind, or to return any of their calls. To Catia's astute brain, the duty of a rector's lady consisted in helping her ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... more than once, for her success had excited her and she had never looked lovelier. She was at the other end of the table and Mrs. McLane and Mrs. Ballinger sat beside him. She interested him for the first time and he adroitly drew her history from his mentor (not that he deluded that astute lady for an instant, but she dearly ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... woman in Glen St. Mary church whom he positively detested. Unfortunately, she was also the richest, and his board of managers had warned Mr. Meredith against offending her. Mr. Meredith seldom thought of such a worldly matter as his stipend; but the managers were more practical. Also, they were astute. Without mentioning money, they contrived to instil into Mr. Meredith's mind a conviction that he should not offend Mrs. Davis. Otherwise, he would likely have forgotten all about her as soon as Aunt Martha ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... some mysterious manner certain scenes in his life which were now very rarely brought back to him. The event of to-day he knew to be the culmination of a success as rapid as it had been surprising. He was a millionaire. This deal to-day, in which he had held his own against the shrewdest and most astute men of the great city, had more than doubled his already large fortune. A few years ago he had landed in England friendless and unknown, to-day he had stepped out from even amongst the chosen few and had planted his feet in the higher lands whither ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the whole thing profoundly impressed the listeners. Astute as they were, it never occurred to them that the girl was acting a part; furthermore, with their intimate knowledge of Fenwick's past, they knew well enough that Vera had no cause to shield the man of whom ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... Presbyterians had been frowned upon and pushed away by the Puritan townsmen.[109:2] In Pennsylvania, the coming of the Germans and the Scotch-Irish in such numbers caused grave anxiety. Indeed, a bill was passed to limit the importation of the Palatines, but it was vetoed.[109:3] Such astute observers as Franklin feared in 1753 that Pennsylvania would be unable to preserve its language and that even its government would become precarious.[109:4] "I remember," he declares, "when they modestly declined intermeddling in our elections, ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... must excuse me from answering; I am not a politician, but a soldier." (The general is considered one of the most astute politicians in Italy.) ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... Hall has dozens of just such men, and all political capitals swarm with them. They are the sons of good families, and have to be taken care of—Remittance-Men, Astute Persons, Clever Nobodies, Good Fellows! They are more to be pitied than slaving peasants. God help the rich—the poor ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... crumble away. She herself was familiar with the traditions and the oracles which with one consent foretold this doom; she had learnt them as an infant from her nurse, from the slave-women at the loom, from learned men and astute philosophers—and to her the horrible prophecy meant a solution of every contradiction and the bitter-sweet hope of perishing with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... courage, with slowly increasing forces, against rapidly increasing forces, they did, until the brisk and pliant skirmish which opened the business of the day had grown so in weight and ferocity that it was evident to the least astute that the decisive battle of the ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... of the Moon had been thus so strangely divided, yet, as man to woman, though divided still united, and thus forming even in the cold regions of space a perfect image of our terrestrial existence? Who can say that our romantic French friend was altogether wrong in thus explaining the astute fancies of ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... his influence proved distasteful. That man was the Duke of Perse. On more than one occasion the cabinet had chosen to be guided by the sagacity of John Tullis in preference to following the lines laid down by the astute minister of finance. The decision to offer the new bond issue in London and Paris was due to the earnest, forceful argument of John Tullis—outside the cabinet chamber, to be sure. This was but one instance in which the plan of the treasurer was overridden. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... from the perspicacity of the astute Annas? You have pierced to the very heart of Judas. Yes, they insulted poor Judas. They said he had stolen from them three denarii—as though Judas were not the ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... pouring in from competitors everywhere, some even surreptitiously borrowing "whoppers" from the Persians, who are well known as the greatest economizers of the truth in all Asia; but they were one and all adjudged by the astute monarch-who was himself a most experienced prevaricator - probably the noblest Roman of them all - as containing incidents that might under extraordinary circumstances have been true. The coveted golden ball still remained unawarded, when one day there appeared before the gate of the Sultan's ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... be nothing more outrageous than "Do you speak Swedish?" My astute little wife discovered this intuitively. I left them together, my mental excuse being that women understand each other and that a man is unnecessary, under the circumstances. I had some misgivings on the subject of Letitia and svensk, but the universal language of femininity is ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... my physical construction, were an analysis practicable, small would be the amount of heroic proportions which the most astute operator would detect. I may confess the truth, and say, that in "lang syne," any transient ebullition of military ardor vanished at a glance from Constance's black eye. The stream of time swept on, and those that were, united their dust with those that had been. In a short ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... staff ten years ago had given him the fields he wanted, the capital itself, for the play of his abilities. His vital energy, his impressive personality, his gift for courting the influences that counted, whether man's or woman's, his astute readiness in stooping to some measures that were in keeping with the times but not with army precedent, had won for him the goal of his ambition. He had passed over the heads of older men, whom many thought his betters, rather ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... busy morning with the astute Lilienthal, and the sudden arrival of the "big fish," a wary "customer" from the Schuylkill, caused the dealer to temporarily forget Randall Clayton. He scented only an ordinary amorous intrigue ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... the storekeeper—a lean, astute-looking Englishman, with the un-English name of Sweeney—who made a pretty good thing of selling his motley merchandise to the poor natives, on the good old business principle of supplying goods of the poorest possible quality at the highest ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... It didn't seem astute. And Herman achieved simply no persuasion whatever with me by stocking in that "only." He could have put only all over the rock and it would still have been thirty-two miles, wouldn't it? Only indeed! You might think the man was saying "Only ten minutes' walk ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... him more about my foster-cousin Manetho? Egyptians are more astute than affectionate. Would he cleave to my poor uncle for these last eighteen years merely for love? Why did he transfer that money so soon after we sailed? Ten to one, he has in his own hands the future ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... from the governorship of Florida, in 1821, his star steadily rose in the political horizon. His canvass was conducted by his neighbor, Major Lewis, who was one of the most astute politicians in American history, able subtly to influence the attitude of his volcanic candidate and to touch the springs of political management. On July 20, 1822, the legislature of Tennessee formally nominated the general for the presidency. ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... had wreathed about his big head. The slim, dark Captain's smile took on an amiable expression. Might he know why I was addressed as "Young Ulysses" by my friend? and immediately he added the remark with urbane playfulness that Ulysses was an astute person. Mills did not give me time for a reply. He struck in: "That old Greek was famed as a wanderer—the first historical seaman." He waved his pipe vaguely ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... from what she has been able to learn about him; the names of the productions in which he has appeared, his age, the color of his automobile, his favorite novel. Her interest may be said actually to consist, at least in part, of these facts. The astute press agent knows the force of this law, and at well-timed intervals he lets slip through bits of information about the star, which fan the interest of the fair devotee to ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... the hour when such of the dwarfs as have a dairymaid for sweetheart go in her stead to milk the cows while she sleeps in her white bed with folded hands, little King Loc again sought the astute Nur in the depths of ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... I see makes me think more highly of the "Madonna della Sacco," in the cloisters of SS. Annunziata. Van Dyck, who painted much in Italy before settling down at the English court, we find in this room with a masterly full-length seated portrait of an astute cardinal. But the room's greatest glory, as I have said, is the ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... was not only a great statesman, but he was one of the ablest, most astute, and shrewdest politicians whom I have ever known. From my earliest recollection of him he took keen interest in public affairs and was the foremost public man or politician in his section of the State. He was not among the first to join the Republican ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... with a lightning movement of which the most astute observer could never have supposed him capable, Sam Tuk whipped a loaded rubber tube from his sleeve and struck Kerry a shrewd blow across the back of ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... years he had lived this quiet life; but, though he turned his eyes from many signs, the astute and silent man saw danger growing like a malarial weed beneath the waters of the social and ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... cleaned might show the touch of some great Master, but which in their sad condition of long neglect, present nothing to the view but a dark blur of indistinct outlines. The rooms in their entirety composed the business, or town dwelling of Monsignor Gherardi, one of the cleverest, most astute, and most unscrupulous of men, to whom Religion was nothing more than a means of making money and gaining power. There was scarcely a Roman Catholic "community" in the world, in which Gherardi had not a share,—and he was particularly concerned in "miraculous shrines", which were to him exactly ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... had chosen to please herself by selecting a handsome young doctor whom she met at the house of a cousin in the country. He was of some local eminence in his profession, it is true, although as time went on he gave less attention to it; he was handsome, and astute, and amusing; but he was a man without ancestors or traditions. He seemed born to justify the saying that nothing subdues the feminine imagination like force; and although the stormy times which were liberally predicted at the ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... was snatched away by the first crow the instant his head was turned. Two well-authenticated instances of the recurrence of this device came within my knowledge at Colombo, and attest the sagacity and powers of communication and combination possessed by these astute ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... for a sensible man (to say nothing of the astute philosopher and the erudite theologian), you certainly do indulge in the most remarkable spasms of wilful, obstinate, premeditated blindness. You need not stare so desperately at that page, for I intend to talk to you, and it is useless to try to snub either me or my facts. Regina is young, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... being frowned upon, reproved, and held at the point that he was quite blind to the change it signaled. He bent his eyes on his horse's mane. He thought of the King's words as to the kerchief and longed for a bit of his astute penetration and wonderful tact, that he might solve this provoking riddle beside him and lead up to what was beating so fiercely in his breast. In his perplexity he ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... suitable firm that would make a suitable offer. The ruse would hardly have succeeded in the case of any ordinary piece of work, but the book itself was of too exceptional a quality to be passed over, and the firm to which it was first offered recognised this and accepted it without parley, astute enough to see its possibilities and to risk its chances of success. And now she realised that her little plot might be discovered any day, and that she would have to declare herself as the writer of a strange and brilliant book which was the ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... to the camp and the great chief of the Ottawas, haughty, shrewd, politic, ambitious, met face to face the bold, self-possessed, clear-headed Major of the British Rangers. It is interesting to note how calmly the astute ally of the French accepted the new order of things and prepared for an alliance with his former enemies. He and Rogers had several interviews and in the end smoked the pipe of peace. With dignified courtesy the politic Indian gave to his new ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... puffing slowly at his cigar, watching Otway keenly through his half-closed eyelids, and wondering what that astute young gentleman was driving at. "I guess that you, Mr. Otway, will do all that is right ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... Blaine, that they anticipate possible trouble—exposure, even? Surely such astute, far-seeing men as Mallowe and Rockamore are, at least, would not have attempted such a gigantic fraud if they'd anticipated the possibility of being discovered! Carlis has weathered so many storms, so many attacks ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... determined to seize upon the North American railroads and promote their own interests at the expense of the people.' 'If ever all the facts should be brought to light, I believe it will be shown that by some astute manipulation the British provinces on that occasion were sold for the benefit of English contractors and ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... dramatist is become the chorus to his plot, and the impression it all makes on his newly active spirit comes out in soliloquy after soliloquy, which hamper as much as they explain the action. In the old prose story, the astute barbarian takes a curiously circuitous course to his revenge, but at last attains it. In the intermediate tragedy of blood, the circuitous action had been preserved, and withal the revenge was attained only in the general catastrophe, by that ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... acknowledged and respected. No sooner had Hawley vanished than Keith found occasion to enter into casual conversation with the door-keeper, asking a number of questions, and leaving impressed upon the mind of that astute individual the idea that he was dealing with a "gent" enamored of one of the stage beauties. A coin slipped quietly into the man's hand served to deepen this impression, and unlocked discreet lips otherwise sworn to secrecy. Out of much general information ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... two horses on a certain work and charges for twenty, then John and some other backers support the transaction. Billy buys land to a heavy extent, and refuses to build on it; houses are risky property, and Billy can wait. An astute company meet at William's house and take supper in luxurious Roman style; then James casually suggests that the east end of the town is a disgrace to the council. Until the block of houses in Blank Street is pulled down and a broad road is run straight to join the main street, ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... escape the astute Wayne the Worthy. "Aunt Kate," he called excitedly, "Aunt Kate—Miss Ann's eyes go such a long ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... the feminine part of the school. With the boys Master Horner still had many a battle, and whether with a view to this, or as an economical ruse, he never wore his coat in school, saying it was too warm. Perhaps it was an astute attention to the prejudices of his employers, who love no man that does not earn his living by the sweat of his brow. The shirt-sleeves gave the idea of a manual-labor school in one sense at least. It was evident that the master worked, and that afforded a probability ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... by a host whose ambition his present performance may have dashed—even expressed in this truly Venetian manner, the expectation and prophecy of his success in those about him make it easier for a painter to soar, and may touch his work with an indefinable glow that the approval of honest and astute electors or solid burghers may have been ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... underlay his tone did not escape the astute ears of Miss Prudence Cowley, known to her intimate friends for some mysterious reason as "Tuppence." She ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... Marneffe to be, or not to be, Coquet's successor?" Exactly as the question might have been put to the Chamber, "Will the estimates pass or not pass?" The smallest initiative on the part of the board of Management was commented on; everything in Baron Hulot's department was carefully noted. The astute State Councillor had enlisted on his side the victim of Marneffe's promotion, a hard-working clerk, telling him that if he could fill Marneffe's place, he would certainly succeed to it; he had told ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... laugh! I'm more dead in earnest than I ever was before in my life. This means more to me—to her—than you can by any possibility conceive, astute officer of the ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... the astute Cockerell had "touched the spot"—and was turning away, when suddenly the billeting officer's eye encountered an illegible scrawl at the very foot of ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... (SMITH, ELDER) was the title. But to allow yourself to be put off by this will be to miss one of the pleasantest books of the season. What I might call true fiction has always held a peculiar charm for me. In the present work that clever writer, KATHARINE TYNAN, has been lucky and astute enough to find an ideal heroine, ready made to her hand, in the person of the charming woman who married DEAN DELANY. Upon the basis of her diaries and letters the romance has been built up, with the excellent result of a blend of art and actuality that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... seeress is hard," she commented humorously as she finished the removal of her veil, which the astute Julia had begun. "No more gloomy, ghostly grottos for Emily Elizabeth. Let the past and the future take care care of itself. Hurrah for the glorious present! I hope you giddy, gorgeous creatures can appreciate my noble, self-sacrificing spirit. While you have been engaged in wearing ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... astute leaders of the Rebellion were well aware that the end had not yet come, and that, unless some bold, paralyzing blow was struck, the struggle was but fairly begun. In response to the request for more men new armies were springing ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... she was astute—as most pretty women are. John Fiske, in his lecture on "Communal Life," says that astute persons add nothing of value to the community in which they live—their mission being to be the admired glass of fashion for the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... about it, but I'll find it yet," said that astute child. Breaking off the limb of a buckeye, he extemporized a lever. The first attempt failed. The second succeeded, and the long roots of the tree again, ascended. But as it required prolonged effort to keep the tree up, before ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... upon his personal appearance.—A fine head and clever face, the nose astute, slightly Jewish in type, so she thought. His eyes were disappointing, too thickly brown in colour, too opaque. They told you nothing, were indeed curiously meaningless; and, though well set under an ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... master here is dying. If I have watched a bird a little while stealing my cherries, I have a thought of disappointment when he flies away over my garden wall, and I see him steer for the forest and vanish. How much more a creature such as this, so strong, so astute, so richly endowed with faculties! When I think that, in a few hours, the speech will be silenced, the breath extinct, and even the shadow vanished from the wall, I who never saw him, this lady who knew him only as a guest, are ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... good fortune," said the Regent, turning to a man seated at another table at some distance, whose wily, astute countenance, piercing eye, and licentious expression of lip and brow, indicated at once the ability and vice which composed his character. "So like my good fortune, is it not, Dubois? If ever I meet with a ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... edge of her bed and he sat on Gwinnie's, elbows crooked out, hands planted on wide parted knees; he leaned forward, looking at her, his face innocent and yet astute; his thick, expressionless eyes clear now and penetrating. He seemed to be fairly humming with activity left over from the excitement of the day. He was always either dreamy and withdrawn, or bursting, bursting with energy, ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... special authorization of the President, was then in preparation for a descent of the Mississippi. An examination of this plan by Miss Carroll showed its weakness, and the inevitable disaster it would bring to the National arms. Her astute military genius led her to the substitution of another plan, upon which she based great hopes of success, and its results show it to have been one of the profoundest strategic movements of the ages. Strategy and generalship are two entirely distinct forms of the art of war. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... that is happening," she replied, in some agitation. "There is a very astute lady detective who has a room near mine, and a man who shadows me every time I come in or go out. I am expecting every moment that the manager will ask me to leave ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... raise a peasant army of a million of men, from the ages of sixteen to sixty, to assault Warsaw and other Polish cities held by the Russians. They treat with scorn the offered emancipation, and determine to resist 'the odious, fierce, greedy, and astute Muscovite, and to organize en masse under their own captains, while their own National Government will designate the day upon which the general movement will take place.' Having accomplished their object—the deliverance of Poland—the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... light weight, and his manner was a little ridiculous, so that even Mrs. Lee, who was herself a warm reformer, sometimes went over to the other side when he talked. No sooner had he now shot his little arrow at the Senator, than that astute man saw his opportunity, and promised himself the pleasure ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... Naval Appropriation bill contained a number of most nutritious jobs (as indeed it turned out that it did.) Upon this hint SCHENCK agreed to let the tariff "pass" for the present, though he reserved the right to order it up at any time. Thereupon the astute DAWES moved to postpone it indefinitely, to the huge disgust of Mr. SCHENCK, who said he ought to be ashamed of himself. Here was the oyster pining for protection, the peanut absolutely shrivelling on its stalk under the neglect of Congress, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... by such boldness (which, as you know, is never displeasing to you women), led captive by the conqueror's glance, by the astute yet candid air which Charles Edward can assume when he chooses, the lady rose, took the arm of her self-constituted escort, and went downstairs, but on the threshold she stopped ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... Her object attained in astute secrecy, the heroic old woman had made a clean breast of it to Mrs Verloc. Her soul was triumphant and her heart tremulous. Inwardly she quaked, because she dreaded and admired the calm, self-contained character of her daughter Winnie, whose displeasure ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... the only possible way in which the astute Mr. Dobson could have persuaded his wife to try his ideas. They both agreed, and he gave her a hundred dollars in bright, new bills. Taking the same amount himself, ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... of Professor Marcks' essay is to prove on historical and scientific lines the lessons which have been taught in German schools for nearly half a century, i.e., England is an astute but ruthless robber who respects no right, and no nation which stands in ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... and misunderstandings, the private letters of, as well as the interviews with, the accredited Austrian envoys that appeared at one Burgundian camp after another. Probably there was nothing more] valuable in the store of learning carried by the astute historian from his first patron to his second than all ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... to the ruffled mind of Ralph the powerful, and in Mrs. Cliffs eyes the imperative, reasons for the sudden and unpremeditated matrimonial arrangements of the morning. But before she had finished, the boy grew quieter, and there appeared upon his face some expressions of astute sagacity. ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... passion and self-deception, and acting upon the same astute calculus of probabilities, Thurston often contrived to meet Marian in places where his presence might be least expected, and most often in paths that she had taken for the express purpose of ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... An astute observer might have found O-liver cynical about women. If he said nothing against them he certainly never said anything for them. And he kept strictly away from everything feminine in Tinkersfield, in spite of the fact that his good looks won him more than one glance ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... as beautiful as ever in spite of her loss of flesh and color. Any one would be with eyes that were like stars when they looked at you and a Murillo madonna's when she lifted them the fraction of an inch. Astute as she was she had never penetrated below the surface of Alexina, nor suspected the use she made of those pliable orbs. Alexina had such an abundance of surface it occurred to few people that she might be both subtle ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... information and then left the house. Once more I had missed Gideon Hayle by a few minutes, but I had received some information that might help me to find him again. Unfortunately, however, he was now well on his way to Southampton, and in a few hours might be out of England. My respect for that astute gentleman was increasing hourly, but it did not deter me, only made me the more resolved to beat him in the end. Making my way to Waterloo, I inquired when the next train left for Southampton. Finding ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... had been frowned upon and pushed away by the Puritan townsmen.[109:2] In Pennsylvania, the coming of the Germans and the Scotch-Irish in such numbers caused grave anxiety. Indeed, a bill was passed to limit the importation of the Palatines, but it was vetoed.[109:3] Such astute observers as Franklin feared in 1753 that Pennsylvania would be unable to preserve its language and that even its government would become precarious.[109:4] "I remember," he declares, "when they modestly declined intermeddling ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... begins after the adventures have finished. We are to contemplate a condition, not to watch the events that ultimate in it. Our detective, or anyone else, may of course meet with haps and mishaps on his way to the solution of his puzzle; but an astute writer will not color such incidents too vividly, lest he risk forfeiting our preoccupation with the problem that we came forth for to study. In a word, One thing at ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Britain. Many went, though the British governors did much to hinder removal. This irritated the French authorities, and the Indian atrocities of 1723-24 at Dover and in Maine are known to have been stimulated from Montreal. Father Rasle, an astute and benevolent French Jesuit who had settled among the Indians at Norridgewock, became an agent of this hostile influence. In an English attack, August 12, 1724, Rasle's settlement was broken up and himself killed. The Indians next year made a treaty, and peace ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... sheltered Lydie, daughter of his friend, Peyrade, after the death of the old police-agent. About 1840 he brought about her marriage with Theodose de la Peyrade, nephew of Peyrade, after having upset the plans of the very astute young man, greatly in love with Celeste Colleville's dowry. Corentin—M. du Portail—then installed the chosen husband of his adopted child into his own high official duties. [The ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... He fought all the kings of Europe, and half the world was his, 'the sun never set on his dominions,' we Spaniards were masters of the world; you cannot either deny this. And still we have said nothing of Don Philip II., a king so wise and so astute that he made all the monarchs of Europe dance at his pleasure, as though he were pulling them with a string. Everything was for the greater glory of Spain and the splendour of religion. Of his victories and greatness we have said nothing; if his father was victorious at Pavia, he overturned ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... present forthcoming. Very different is the "Paul III." of the Hermitage, which even in a reproduction loudly proclaims its originality.[33] This is by no means identical in design with the Naples picture, but appears much less studied, much more directly taken from the life. The astute Farnese Pope has here the same simiesque type, the same furtive distrustful look, as in the great unfinished group now to be described.[34] This Titian, which doubtless passed into the Hermitage with the rest of the Barbarigo pictures, ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... of the coming storm, had, as mentioned, discreetly disappeared. As an offering to righteous indignation he left behind him on the Treasury Bench the body of ATTORNEY-GENERAL. That astute statesman avoided difficulty and personal disaster by meekly undertaking to lay before the PRIME MINISTER the views so eloquently and pointedly set forth by the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... pieces. He saw a great part of its vote lodge temporarily among the Know-Nothings, but before the end of the year even they began to lose their prominence. In the autumn, from the obscurity of his provincial life, he saw, far off, Seward, the most astute politician of the day, join the new movement. In New York, the Republican state convention and the Whig state convention merged into one, and Seward pronounced a baptismal oration upon the ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... be sure: in London!" Archer grasped his hand with curiosity and sympathy. "So you DID get here, after all?" he exclaimed, casting a wondering eye on the astute and haggard little countenance of young ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... said things that made his pilots' ears tingle. It was all gospel truth. Finding themselves followed and being steadily pressed onward toward the fort and the settlements, the astute warriors had left a goodly sized party ambling along in front, to lead the cavalry on; had dropped away all afternoon by twos and threes as though looking for antelope or black tail, not northward where the valley of the upper Chaduza was ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... spirit and magnitude of the canvass nothing need be said. The appeal was to the people, and the verdict was worthy of the tribunal. Upon an occasion of his own selection, with the advice and approval of his astute Secretary, soon after the members of the Congress had returned to their constituents, the President quitted the executive mansion, sandwiched himself between two recognized heroes,—men whom the whole country delighted to ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... he but known it—made a great mistake. Instead of going into Murgatroyd's shop after he had watched Byner and Prydale away from it—he should have followed those two astute and crafty persons, and have ascertained something of their movements. Had he done so, he would certainly not have troubled to return to Peel Row, nor to remain in Barford an hour longer than was absolutely necessary. For Pratt was sharp-witted enough when it came to a question ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... when he surmised that Brencherly must inevitably connect the murder with the sequence of events. But the conclusion reached with relentless finality by that astute young man was far from being what Gard had feared. To the detective's mind the answer was ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... now that they drank his health a hundred times in his own whiskey and cider, were simmering with desire for a public reproval of Constantine Jopp's conduct. Though it was pointed out to them by the astute Gow Johnson that Fergus and Holden had participated in the colossal joke of the play, they had learned indirectly also the whole truth concerning the past of the two men. They realized that Fergus and Holden had been duped by Jopp into the escapade. Their primitive sense of justice ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... sold out their interest in the alleged silver mine to Wiles and Pedro for a few hundred dollars,—succumbing to what they were assured would be an active opposition on the part of the Americanos. The astute reader will easily understand that the accomplished Mr. Wiles did not inform them of its value as a quicksilver mine, although he was obliged to impart his secret to Pedro as a necessary accomplice and reckless coadjutor. That Pedro felt no qualms of conscience in thus ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... to the Holy Church.' The words were, doubtless, spoken in good faith, for the great leader of the Oxford Movement naturally expected that those who had espoused his views, like honest men, would follow his example. Dr. Pusey, however, was a more astute ecclesiastical statesman than Cardinal Wiseman. He was in favour of a 'very moderate' declaration against Rome, for the resources of compromise were evidently in his eyes not exhausted. The truth was, Pusey and Keble, by a course of action which to this day remains ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... object. Not only does the more facile conduct of business permit industry and extra-industrial life to go on with less perturbation; but the resulting elimination of disturbances and complications calling for an exercise of astute discrimination in everyday affairs acts to make the pecuniary class itself superfluous. As fast as pecuniary transactions are reduced to routine, the captain of industry can be dispensed with. This consummation, it is needless to say, lies yet in the indefinite future. ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... characteristics of his native Cote d'Or; that, however, may be simply a desire to frame the picture appropriately. Legrand might have hailed from the south, from Daudet's country; he is exuberant as he is astute. The chief thing is that he has abundant brains and in sheer craftsmanship fears few equals. Like Whistler, his principal preoccupation is to suppress all appearance of technical procedures. His method ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the discussion was animated and prolonged,—it was the last party debate of the session. The astute Opposition did not neglect to bring prominently, though incidentally, forward the question on which it was whispered that there existed some growing difference in the Cabinet. Lord Vargrave rose late. His temper was excited by the good ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... tall and bent and beetle-browed. He had been recommended to Anthony as an astute ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... water used in the waterless town, had of course to conform to the same rule. Like most men who are constantly exposed to danger, the shepherds became careless or foolhardy, and wandered rather far with their herds. Osman was too astute to neglect his opportunities. On this occasion an old shepherd, who was well-known at Sphinx Redoubt, had strayed too far. The Soudanese swept down, cut off his retreat, killed him, and, as we have ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... openly to assist him in his enterprises, with the expectation that both Rustum and Sohrab would fall in battle and Persia be at his mercy. He accordingly sent an army of auxiliaries to Sohrab, accompanied by two astute courtiers, Houman and Barman, who, under the guise of friendship, were to act as counsellors to the young leader. These he ordered to keep the knowledge of their relationship from father and son and to seek to bring about an encounter between ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... satisfaction at the result of his spirit-breaking. The explanation was probably the correct one. He was in the habit of wearing flowers in his coat and it was impossible that the convict should have obtained one by any other means. Had it been a fig of tobacco now, the astute Commandant knew plenty of men who would have brought it into the prison. But who would risk a flogging for so useless a thing as a flower? "You'd better not pick up any more, Jack," he said. "We don't grow flowers for your amusement." And contemptuously flinging ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... patent to The astute That a very big to-do Is en route. There's a million men, I'm told, Sailing round to land at—Hold! Doucement! Les ennemies oreilles ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... for all the different forces that are now at work to make or mar China issue from, or converge towards, the capital. There, on the dragon throne, beside, or rather above, the powerless and unhappy Emperor, the father of his people and their god, sits the astute and ever-watchful lady whose word is law to Emperor, minister and clown alike. There dwell the heads of the government boards, the leaders of the Manchu aristocracy, and the great political parties, the drafters of new constitutions and imperial decrees, and the keen-witted diplomatists ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... of this class might still be to the signs of the times, they found an astute leader in Disraeli, who had few principles and could trim his sails to any wind. The Tory Reform Bill, which he put forward in February 1867, came out a very different Bill in July, after discussion in the Cabinet, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... of my friends has compelled me to seek the advice of an astute detective, for very clever rogues, real and dangerous criminals, have been my companions and have boasted of my friendship, whilst pursuing a deplorably criminal course. But I never had the slightest compunction with regard to ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... skillful, astute, smart; hence, superior; applied to language, clear, well-sounding, whence (perhaps) ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... station he met a very charming widow, with a young step-daughter, who was shortly to return to England. Cecil Trafford admired him with a girl's unreason, and at last committed such an imprudence that the astute step-mother, seeing her opportunity, proposed the only reparation possible,—marriage. Cecil was a bright, pretty, wilful girl, and he liked her, yet he had a strong ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... fought a hard fight at Seven Pines; and the constant interference of Jackson had kept him waiting for McDowell. But, at the same time, he had displayed an excess of caution which was perfectly apparent to his astute opponent. He had made no attempt to use his superior numbers; and Lee had come to the conclusion that the attack on Richmond would take the same form as the attack on Yorktown,—the establishment ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... convinced a man less astute that all his suspicions were unworthy. But, even then, the sequel would very quickly have undeceived him. For very soon thereafter his fall was brought about by the Concinis and their creatures, so that no obstacle should remain between ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... saddle-horses with him as well as a carriage. Those musical, gun-firing, flag-flying cavalcades from township to township in the pleasant autumn weather of 1840 enliven the background of a political struggle. 'What is of more importance,' continues the astute and businesslike little man, 'my candidates everywhere taken for the ensuing elections.' This western tour had an important reaction upon public opinion in Toronto, bringing the {54} divers factions into something like harmony for a time. Thomson ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... February 3d. Real had taken the precaution to have an escort of gendarmes for the prisoner whom Georges and his followers might try to rescue. The detachment was commanded by a zealous and intelligent officer, Lieutenant Manginot, assisted by a giant called Pasque, an astute man celebrated for the sureness of his attack. They left Paris at dawn by the Saint-Denis gate and ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... Morris was not one of the founders of great fortunes. Turn we to the earliest and perhaps most successful of these, John Jacob Astor, the very type of the astute, large-minded, and far-sighted financier. Born at Waldorf, Germany, in 1763, the son of a poor butcher in whose shop he worked until sixteen years of age, there was nothing in his life or circumstances to indicate the future which lay before him. One of his brothers, however, ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... is never out of season. The omission of this, which is almost the omission of wisdom from philosophy, warns us that in M. Bergson's thought we have something occasional and partial, the work of an astute apologist, a party man, driven to desperate speculation by a timid attachment to prejudice. Like other terrified idealisms, the system of M. Bergson has neither good sense, nor rigour, nor candour, nor solidity. It is a brilliant attempt ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... died. All this had happened in the interval of two months since the last manor court was held. The steward of the manor claimed a heriot from Wyninge's land and another from Oberward's. But the astute Peter was equal to the occasion: he pleaded that, according to the custom of the manor, no heriot could be levied from a widow till she had survived her husband a year and a day, and he demanded that ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... offices in 1877, those of the Collector, Police Commissioners, Fire Commission, Treasurer, and the City Works Commissioners, were under the control of one Patrick Shannon, owner of two gin mills. Wearing the mask of reformers the most astute and villainous politicians piloted themselves into power. They were all elected, and it was necessary. It was necessary that New York should elect the foremost gambler of the United States for State Senator, before the ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... retire to the recesses of his cave, where he tranquilly sleeps through the remaining six. The shell of the ostrich's egg is about the thickness of an antique china cup, but the iguana finds no difficulty in breaking it open with a slash of his tail This wily animal is more astute than the bird, which lays its eggs in the open spaces, for the lizard, with her claws, digs a hole in the ground, in which hers are dropped to the number of dozens. The lizard does not provide shells for her eggs, but only ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... affairs in the way that she believed would be best for him, she forgot that the boy whom she had brought up was no longer a child, and thus she unpardonably ignored his rights as a man. And now Miss Josephine's disapproval was vindicated, and her own casuistry was doubly punished. Miss Rieppe's astute journey of investigation—for her purpose had evidently become suspected by some of them beforehand—had forced Miss Eliza to disclose the truth about the phosphates to her nephew before it should be told him by the girl herself; and the intolerable ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... way over the path followed the Sunday before until again they sat by the rushing water. Dave had again been filled with a sense of Reenie Hardy, and his conversation was disjointed and uninteresting. She tried unsuccessfully to draw him out with questions about himself; then took the more astute tack of speaking of her own past life. It had begun in an eastern city, ever so ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... managers was to omit it in the contest of 1844 against Mr. Clay. Mr. Tyler's advocacy of Texas annexation had injured rather than promoted it in the estimation of the Democratic party; but when Mr. Calhoun, with his astute management, and his large influence in the slave-holding States, espoused it, the whole tenor of Southern opinion was changed, and the Democracy of that section received a ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... recognition, a look of wide-eyed amazement; then the blood left the cheeks and the lips, and the face grew very pale. No doubt he saw at a flash that some great danger overhung him in this sudden coming of his old enemy, for he was as keen and as astute a politician as he was a famous warrior. At least he knew that the eyes of most of those present were fixed keenly and searchingly upon him. After the first start of recognition, his left hand, hanging at his side, gradually closed ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... give out that, being indisposed, the Caliph had retired for a short time to one of his palaces in the provinces, and had confided the government meanwhile into the hands of his old and trusty Vizier. In this way, and with the connivance of Zobeideh, the astute Giafer managed to retain without question the government of the country during ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... stand out definitely on one political side or the other. He was urged, at the end of September, to receive the inevitable torchlight procession planned in his honor by the Union of Norwegian Students. He was astute enough to see that this might compromise his independence, but he was probably too self-conscious in believing that a trap was being laid for him. He said that, not having observed that his presence gave the Union any great pleasure, he did not care to ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... waged during the session. Sixteen men stood solidly with them in all parliamentary tactics in hopes of killing the bill. Nineteen men could delay it but they were destined to defeat when 78 men, led by the astute floor leader, J. O. Johnson of Sebastian county, were determined that it should pass. After several hours' debate the House passed the bill February 15 by 71 ayes, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... jury of their self-esteem by this means, Mr. Middleheath would proceed to put them on good terms with themselves again by insinuating in persuasive tones that the case was one calculated to perplex the most astute legal brain. He would frankly confess that it had perplexed him at first, but as he had mastered its intricacies the jury were welcome to his laboriously acquired knowledge in order to help them in arriving at a right decision. Mr. Middleheath's ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... of money," said Butler, thinking of the amazing audacity of Stener, but failing at the moment to identify it with the astute machinations of Cowperwood. "That's something to think about. There's no time to lose if there's going to be a panic in the morning. How much good will it do ye if ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... sounding lead, the gunboat then cautiously groped her way into the harbour and came to an anchor about half a mile from the beach upon which lay the four big war canoes and our apology for a boat. The sight of these not only suggested to the astute commander that at last he had got upon our track, but also confirmed his surmise as to the state of affairs ashore; and no sooner was the anchor down than he dispatched a heavily-armed boat, the officer of which was instructed to make his way instantly to the cave and investigate. The meeting ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... many years, an army of spies and secret agents; yet not one of them informed her of this important truth. Perhaps the radical difference between the German and the English political systems blinded the astute agents. In England nothing really important is a secret, and the amount of privileged political information to be gleaned in barbers' shops, even when they are patronized by Civil servants, is distressingly small. Two hours of sympathetic conversation with ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... my duty to know something further of this suddenly-generous Flint Jackson, though how to set about it was a matter of considerable difficulty. There was no legal pretence for a search-warrant, and I doubted the prudence of proceeding upon my own responsibility with so astute an old fox as Jackson was represented to be; for, supposing him to be a confederate with the burglars, he had by this time in all probability sent the stolen property away—to London in all likelihood; and should I find nothing, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... memoirs, Anne of Austria, and Cardinal Mazarin. The Italian, having won a pile of golden louis from the soldier, was smiling amiably and building yellow pyramids, forgetful for the time being of his gouty foot which dozed on a cushion under the table. This astute politician was still a handsome man, but the Fronde and the turbulent nobility had left their imprint. There were many lines wrinkling the circle of his eyes, and the brilliant color on his cheeks was the effect ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... a lightning movement of which the most astute observer could never have supposed him capable, Sam Tuk whipped a loaded rubber tube from his sleeve and struck Kerry a shrewd blow across the ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... has scrawled negligently across this paper; the sly, astute Gaston. My name is here, and so is yours, Madame. My name would never have been here but for your beauty, which was a fine lure. Listen. As for my name, there lives in the Rue Saint Martin a friend who plays at alchemy. ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... Yet the astute man of the world knows more than one way of ruining and disgracing simple-hearted, true-souled young fellows. Not even Satan is credited with appearing often in ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... describes—these facts convince me that he was in all probability a native of the Troad, or country round Troy. His plausibly concealed Trojan sympathies, and more particularly the aggravated exaggeration with which the flight of Hector is described, suggest to me, coming as they do from an astute and humorous writer, that he may have been a Trojan, at any rate by the mother's side, made captive, enslaved, compelled to sing the glories of his captors, and determined so to overdo them that if his masters cannot see through the irony others sooner or later shall. This, however, is highly ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... in Cairo, seeking to acquire the shares, were amazed to learn that they had been outwitted. A well-posted newspaper correspondent at the French capital had informed Britain's ambassador of the purpose of the bankers' visit to Egypt—and astute Disraeli ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... many cases, of framing the charge with perfect legal certainty and precision. Look for a striking illustration at the sixth and seventh counts of this very indictment. Few practical lawyers, we venture to think, would have pronounced them insufficient, before hearing those numerous astute and able arguments which have led the judges to that conclusion; and what if these had been the only counts, or one of them the sole count? Of course, justice would have been defeated. Now the rule, custom, or practice—call ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... as it is to the citizen's life, and pregnant as it is with evils to society, has but little or no application to this case. Too uncertain and intangible for the practical consideration of juries, and unsafe in the hands of even the most learned and astute jurist, it should never be resorted to for exemption from responsibility save on the most irrefragable evidence, developing unquestionable testimony of that morbid or diseased condition of the affections or passions, so as to control and overpower ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... notice. Reference is made elsewhere to the surpassing intelligence of the megapode in taking advantage of the heat caused by the fermentation of decaying vegetation to hatch out huge eggs. Long before the astute Chinese practised the artificial incubation of hens' and ducks' eggs, these sage birds of ours had mastered it. Several birds seem to co-operate in the building of a mound, which may contain many cartloads of material, but each bird appears to have a particular area in which ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... mental life of a people chiefly through the medium of their economic and social life; hence its ultimate effects should be traced through the latter back to the underlying cause. But rarely has this been done. Even so astute a geographer as Strabo, though he recognizes the influence of geographic isolation in differentiating dialects and customs in Greece,[25] ascribes some national characteristics to the nature of the country, ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... later I learned, by piecing together certain facts, that old Morley Tarrant was an expert photographer and maker of printer's "blocks." Slowly it became plain that Rayne, having been betrayed by the astute American crook, had met him in Edinburgh and with devilish malice aforethought, had contrived to get him to handle the glass cube which served as a paper-weight, and which I had quite innocently conveyed to the old hunchback, who had succeeded in taking the finger-prints ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... government to whom his popularity and his influence proved distasteful. That man was the Duke of Perse. On more than one occasion the cabinet had chosen to be guided by the sagacity of John Tullis in preference to following the lines laid down by the astute minister of finance. The decision to offer the new bond issue in London and Paris was due to the earnest, forceful argument of John Tullis—outside the cabinet chamber, to be sure. This was but one instance in which ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... they fell in with a small vessel having on board the governor of the island. She made desperate fight, but was taken at last, and with her a rich booty. They thought to put the governor to ransom; but the astute official deceived them, and, on pretence of negotiating for the sum demanded, together with certain apes and parrots, for which his captors had also bargained, contrived to send instructions to his wife. Whence it happened that at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... appeal which the astute little woman knew to be very powerful with her son. She buried her head in the smoke again, and left the ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... great emergency. He had chosen this town for two reasons. First, because he knew all about it, having had a young man from there in his employ; secondly, because of its neighborhood to the inlet where an old launch of his had been docked for the winter. Always astute, always precautionary, he had given orders to have this launch floated and provisioned, so that now he had only to send word to the captain, to have at his command the best possible ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... was not astute. Her nobility made it a condition of her mind to be unsuspecting. She knew the hidden causes of Jeffrey's downfall. She was sure his father knew, and it never seemed to her that these two sisters were less than sisters to him. What she herself knew, they too must have ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... things are never attempted in this age of the world. Captain Dugald was far too astute to break the laws. I will tell you just how it was, as it came to my knowledge. My town house fronted immediately on Prince's Street. You know what a thoroughfare that is? My bedroom and dressing room were on the second floor—the bedroom being ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... mechanism are taken off, and the conduits are opened by means of iron handles operating on small valves of the same metal. In the great droughts the fountain of Marabout Yusef-ben-Khouia may be seen surrounded with a throng of astute, white-nosed asses, waiting in philosophic calm amid the excitement and struggle ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... committed, not by Rangitaake himself, but by another Maori with whom this chief had formed an alliance. Who can judge in such a case, especially when the tangled skein is still further complicated by the action of an astute Maori whose affections had been wounded by a damsel who deserted him in order to become the daughter-in-law of Te Rangitaake? But it is no pleasant thought that the decision to seize the Waitara was made ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... notoriously slender, he feared that if he, the Messiah, were confined in captivity, than it, the stomach-pump, would be no longer required and therefore he, the physician, a family man, deprived of a small but regular source of income. Again the astute judge relented. This is how the Messiah and ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... is of course absurd. Buckingham, indeed, was almost the only man in the Lords who said anything for Bacon, and, alone, he voted against his punishment. But considering what Buckingham was, and what he dared to do when he pleased, he was singularly cool in helping Bacon. Williams, the astute Dean of Westminster, who was to be Bacon's successor as Lord Keeper, had got his ear, and advised him not to endanger himself by trying to save delinquents. He did not. Indeed, as the inquiry went on, he began to take the high moral ground; ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... of a younger, but opulent branch of the Colonna, Adrian had been brought up under the care and guardianship of his kinsman, that astute, yet valiant Stephen Colonna, who, of all the nobles of Rome, was the most powerful, alike from the favour of the pope, and the number of armed hirelings whom his wealth enabled him to maintain. Adrian ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Hohenstaufens were trickling out until the luckless Conradin lost his head at Naples, while fierce Welfs like Otto of Brunswick wrecked themselves on the rock of papal insistence, Bohemia's rulers were profiting. Ottokar I seems to have been particularly astute in this line of business. He supported two rival Emperors in turn and got something useful out of both, he upheld the cause of Pope Innocent III against one or other imperial rival and induced that pontiff to recognize the P[vr]emysl's title to royalty. Ottokar even found himself sufficiently ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... "fusion," or assimilation, of the Jews became the watchword of the highest official circles, the astute convert found that he could make his way by exposing the influences which in his opinion checked the endeavors of the Government. A memorandum presented by him to Alexander II., when the latter was passing through Minsk in 1858, opened to him the doors of ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... de Valois, a more astute politician than his predecessor, felt the necessity of gaining the affections of the people by sparing their private fortunes. In order to establish the public revenue on a firm basis, he assembled, in 1330, the States-General, composed of barons, prelates, and deputies from the principal towns, ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... officers called "kings," who buy and sell; indeed, Africa knows no other. The title is prostituted throughout the West Coast, but it is nowhere so degraded as in the Congo regions; the whites abuse it to flatter the vanity of the astute negro, who accepts it with a view to results—a "king- dash" must, of course, be greater than that of a subject. Every fellow with one black coat becomes a "preese" (prince), and if he has two he styles himself a "king." Without permission ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... is the foil of the political, as Eglamor of the literary, Sordello, and the dramatic interest of the whole poem focusses in those two scenes. He had enough of the lonely inspiration of genius to vanquish the craftsman, but too little of its large humanity to cope with the astute man of the world. When Salinguerra, naturally declining his naive entreaty that he should put his Ghibelline sword at the service of the Guelph, offers Sordello, on his part, the command of the imperial forces in Italy if he will remain true to the Ghibelline ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... more than once had he had the faintest suspicion that we were not telling the exact truth. But we strove, rather successfully as it now appears, to twist the truth to suit ourselves without actually telling a downright lie, and we did it in a way that seemed to satisfy him, astute though he was. I told him but one lie that evening, though as a matter of fact it was much nearer the truth than anything else I had said, so strangely ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... likeness of a gentleman in black, and made her sign her name in blood to a document conveying over to him her soul, in exchange for certain conditions to be performed by him. Such diabolical bargains have always appeared to me unworthy of the astute personage who is supposed to be one of the parties to them; and who would scarcely be fool enough to pay dearly for that which he can have in a few years for nothing. It is not, then, to be supposed that a demon of darkness ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... she was not only beautiful but exceedingly well-to-do likewise, since her dead father and her husband also had provided for her amply; and Lichfield sniggered in consequence, and as a matter of course assumed my devotion to be of astute and mercenary origin. But I had, in this period, a variety of reasons to know that Lichfield was for once entirely in the wrong; and that what Lichfield mistook to be the begetter of, was in reality—so ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... a man cannot be modest, as the above quotation would indicate, and at the same time preening with vanity; a Sir Philip Sidney and a Jew peddler; a careless, dashing cavalry officer or proud Prussian squire, and at the same time a wary and astute insurance agent for the empire; a preacher of duty and honor, and belief in God, and at the same time a political comedian deceiving his rivals abroad, and hoodwinking his ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... English colonists awakened to the importance of the valley of the Ohio, and adventurous frontiersmen of Virginia and Pennsylvania were already forcing their way into its wilderness, when France's ambition barred the way to their further progress. That astute Canadian, Governor La Galissonniere, in 1749, recognised the importance of the Ohio in relation to the Illinois and Mississippi, and sent Celoron, a captain in the French service, to claim possession of the valley of the former river and its tributaries. This officer made a long and ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... small, astute eyes, in a saffron face, fixed alternately upon the speakers, with an appraising grimace but half-veiled. And as he sipped his grenadine syrup and soda water, he admired his three-inch thumbnail, the token of his rise from the estate of a half-naked coolie in Quan-tung to equality with these ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... into Tuscany under pain of imprisonment, and yet, in spite of Governor Ricasoli's decree, came to Florence incognito, it was Dall' Ongaro who knew his hiding-place, and who conferred with him much to the disgust and mortification of the Governor and his police, who were outwitted by the astute republican. Mazzini is an incarnation of the Sub Rosa, and we doubt whether he could live an hour, were it possible to fulminate a bull for the abolition of intrigue and secret societies. Dall' Ongaro was a co-laborer of Mazzini's in Rome in '48; and when the downfall of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Much of the battle's spell had gone from her, and she observed everything, most of all Lucia Catherwood. She had noticed how the girl's eyes dwelled upon Prescott, the singular compound of strength and tenderness in her face, a character at once womanly and bold, and the astute Mrs. Markham began to wonder where these two had met before; but she said ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... the assistance desired by Baron Cahorn! Who could baffle the schemes of Arsene Lupin better than Ganimard, the patient and astute detective? He was ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... World." This is plain enough. What will be the final form of settlement we do not even conjecture. It is probable that the Emperor does not himself know. With our fortunes so unsettled, and with so many European jealousies to conciliate, even his astute genius may well be puzzled as to the wisest policy. But it is of no consequence what particular government France may impose upon the conquered State,—monarchical, vice-regal, or republican,—Maximilian, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
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