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More "Insight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... proprieties and discretions demanded by his position as he had himself. And yet each, before the close of the interview, understood the point of view of the other. What he recognised was that, though she had not seen Sir Nigel since her childhood, she had in some astonishing way obtained an extraordinary insight into his character, and it was this which had led her to take her present step. She might not realise all she might have to contend with, but her conservative and formal action had surrounded her and her sister with a certain barrier of conventional protection, at once ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to seek where she is not guided by Prudence, the mean of virtue must be defined, not by the reason of the buffoon Pantolabus, or of Nomentanus the spendthrift, but as a prudent man would define it, given an insight into the case. ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... Indians, insight into the character of, acquired by Washington while surveying, i. 58; their views of French and English claims, i. 66; necessity of conciliating, urged by Washington, i. 193; power of, for mischief, i. 207; necessity of employing, to oppose Indians, i. 210; anecdote ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... one of relief to hear—for she did not dare to see—that he was departing. Her consciousness was in a delicious confusion, with the one definite thought in it that she had won her lover at last. The tone of Trefusis's voice, rich with truth and earnestness, his quick insight, and his passionate warning to her not to heed him, convinced her that she had entered into a relation destined to influence her ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... legitimate, that of knowledge, grows into the illegitimate authority of prescription, calling itself Orthodoxy. Then Private Judgment comes forth again to criticise and reform. It thus becomes the duty of each individual to judge the Church; and out of innumerable individual judgments the insight of the Church is kept living and progressive. We contribute one such private judgment; not, we trust, in conceit, but in the hope of provoking other ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... He was admittedly {179} a good physiognomist. Abulfazl wrote of him that 'he sees through some men at a glance,' whilst even Badauni admits the claim, though with his usual inclination to sneering at all matters bearing on the Hindus, he declares that Akbar obtained the gift of insight from the ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... weak, for those who, in the barbarous and semi-barbarous state—and out of that last we are only just emerging—how much has she done; an earnest of much more which she will do? She has delivered the insane—I may say by the scientific insight of one man, more worthy of titles and pensions than nine-tenths of those who earn them—I mean the great and good Pinel—from hopeless misery and torture into comparative peace and comfort, and at least the possibility of cure. For children, she has done much, or ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... beauty grace and dignity. Competent teachers instructed her daughter's intellect, while the mother cultivated her heart. Early accustomed to care and want, this child had not the giddy, thoughtless disposition usually characteristic of girls of her age. She had too early gained an insight into the uncertainty and emptiness of all earthly magnificence, not to appreciate the littleness of those things upon which young girls usually place so high an estimate. Her thoughts were not occupied with the ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... conscious truth, which renders even egotism respectable and delightful: whether he describes the fervent and tender emotions of his juvenile fancy, or delineates his situation in the decline of life, when he had to struggle with calamity and peril, the more insight he affords us into his own sentiments and feelings, the more reason we find both to ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... a worthless element in life when idle, but when otherwise, is it not the mainspring of the watch? Think of the manifold results of "mere curiosity," when rightly persevered in! But then we change the name—it becomes insight—research—it becomes a power which can climb the dizziest height, and dive the deepest depths, to bring to ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... tune came into his head. But when he recognized that they were serenading the little harness maker, and that so far as they thought of John Barclay and his power and his achievements, it was with scorn, he had a flash of insight into his relations with the world that illumined his soul for a moment and then died away. The great Mr. Barclay, alone, sitting in the dingy little harness shop, can hear the band strike up the old familiar tune again, and hear the crowd cheer and roar its applause at the little harness maker, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... anything else established the truth of the assertion that he had not become weaker in Alexandria and had not delayed there out of voluptuousness. For how could he have won that victory so easily without employing a great store of insight and great force? When now Pharnaces had fled he was preparing to conduct a campaign at once against the Parthian, but as certain quarrels were taking place there he withdrew rather unwillingly, but settled this dispute, ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... insight of a man of the world, from one glance at this lady's appearance Vronsky classified her as belonging to the best society. He begged pardon, and was getting into the carriage, but felt he must glance at her once more; not that she was very beautiful, not on account ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... nature even at its worst has tracts other than those on which there has been careless sowing among thorns, moral possibilities below those of its abused or neglected surfaces. Let us mark this depth, which the Prophet's insight has already reached. Much will come out of it; this is the matrix of all developments by himself and others of the doctrine of man and his possibilities under God. And for all time the truth is valid that ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... sacred authority which bid us "die to ourselves," and which proclaim the necessity of a veritable new birth. This mystic death and birth is the key-note of all profound religious teaching; and that which distinguishes the ordinary religious mind from spiritual insight is just the tendency to interpret these expressions as merely figurative, or, indeed, to ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... special providence. God bless her, and spare her to us and her many friends. She is a noble creature, all tenderness and strength. When I first became acquainted with her, I saw at once that her heart was of the very finest, richest quality, and her wisdom and insight are, as ever must be in such a case, exactly correspondent' (ibid. p. 397). Such words from one so penetrative, so indeceivable, so great in the fullest sense as was the daughter of the COLERIDGE, makes every one long to have the same service done for Miss FENWICK ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... concatenation of effects. I would be able by some means to render my soul transparent to the eyes of the reader, and for this purpose endeavor to show it in every possible point of view, to give him every insight, and act in such a manner, that not a motion should escape him, as by this means he may form a judgment of the principles that ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... me," he assured her, "an insight into many things in life which I had found most perplexing. You see, you have traveled and I haven't. You have mixed with all classes of people, and I have gone steadily on in one groove. You have told me many things which I shall find very ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... course she might gain what she wished without endangering her safety. All this had occurred to her long before, and she had regarded it in all its bearings. Nevertheless, she had decided against it, and had chosen rather to encounter the risk of her present action. It was from a certain profound insight into the future. She thought that it was best for Lady Chetwynde to go to Chetwynde Castle, not to Pomeroy Court. By such an act scandal would be avoided. If Lord Chetwynde did not come, well and good; if he did, why then he must be met face ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... least, I do not at present see into Shakespeare's motive, his rationale, or in what point of view he meant Brutus' character to appear. For surely—(this, I mean, is what I say to myself, with my present quantum of insight, only modified by my experience in how many instances I have ripened into a perception of beauties, where I had before descried faults;) surely, nothing can seem more discordant with our historical preconceptions of Brutus, or more ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... he was still unable to perceive the meaning of his insight and his misery. He did not know, and there was nobody to tell him, that this emptiness of his was the emptiness created by the forerunners and servants of Love, who sweep and purify the death-chamber where a soul has died and another soul is waiting to be born. For in the house of Love there is ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... acquaintance the girl had interested him—and yet it was more than mere interest or feminine attraction. Her culture, her keen analysis of events and men, her knowledge of conditions informed and instructed him. Her subtle humor and droll insight into the characters of those who attempted to pose in the public eye entertained him, for he lacked humor. But, most of all, her satire gave him a truer perspective. Fresh from the north country, where his knowledge of public men had been limited to the information which newspapers ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... comprehensive, subtle spirit. He probably was crushed by the powerful individuality of his father. As he is closely in touch with the people, and knows their aspirations, Alexis judges the work of his father with delicate insight: "My father hopes," he says, "to do everything in a great hurry. One, two, three, and the affair is settled. He does not realize that things done hastily do ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... Lincoln listened for hours one night, speaking only at rare intervals to tell a pithy story, until the clock struck one. Then, after a long silence, he said: "I can't spare this man. He fights." It was Lincoln's marvelous insight and sagacity that saved Grant from the storm of popular passion, and gave us the greatest ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... disinterested goodwill carried through with more tenacity and sincerity and skill, and with less thanks either asked or given. The ungrateful Governments of Europe owe much more to the statesmanship and insight of Mr. Hoover and his band of American workers than they have yet appreciated or will ever acknowledge. The American Relief Commission, and they only, saw the European position during those months in its true perspective and felt towards it as men should. It was their efforts, ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... to repress a living interest and appreciation of living literary text. How much more effective the hour in English literature would have been if the entire act had been assigned with a view to giving the students an insight into the dramatic structure of each scene in this act and of the act as a whole. All the questions would then bear on dramatic movement, on the dramatist's technique, on his way of arousing interest in his story, on devices for giving the cause and the development of the action. ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... general disposition of the town, namely, the nature and spirit of its individuals, forming, so to say, the town's own soul. This is a point that should not be overlooked, as the Dutch character and demeanour are two things often misunderstood, which certainly require some insight and explanation in order to ...
— Rembrandt's Amsterdam • Frits Lugt
... the theater, on the performance of the previous day; she at once began herself to discuss Motchalov, and did not confine herself to sighs and interjections only, but uttered a few true observations full of feminine insight in regard to his acting. Mihalevitch spoke about music; she sat down without ceremony to the piano, and very correctly played some of Chopin's mazurkas, which were then just coming into fashion. Dinner-time came; Lavretsky would ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... keen insight foresaw a time when oil, timber, coal, and iron must become the stay of a vastly expanding industrial system, and bent their energies to secure the chief sources of supply. From the nature of their work the men who built railways first became aware of the riches ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... truths in Nature. In the first two respects, which are merely practical, the drawing-book, if judiciously prepared, might do somewhat to assist us; but in the last and most important, only the experienced and thoughtful artist, standing with us before Nature, can give us further insight into her system of expression. A good picture may do a little, but it is Nature's own face we need to study, and that neither book nor picture can very deeply interpret for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... felt for him was all the more genuine from its being my first friendship with a man of my own age. The pleasure which I derived from this intimacy gave me a new insight into life, and revealed capacities and needs of the soul of which I had hitherto been ignorant. As I could never wholly break away from that love of chivalry which had been implanted in me in early childhood, it pleased me to look upon him as my "brother in arms," and I expressed a wish that ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... protest. Yet she feared him too. It was from him that she fled. She admitted this to her honest mind while she watched the spreading radiance of the new day. She feared the candor of his steady eyes more than the wiles and hypocrisies of Bower and her false friend, Millicent. By a half miraculous insight into the history of recent events, she saw that Bower had followed her to Switzerland ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... beauty and sacredness of an ideal home life should receive emphasis, so that the pupils may be impressed with the importance of conscientious work in the performance of their daily household duties. They should have some insight into the sanitary, economic, and social problems that are involved in housekeeping, so that they may develop an increased appreciation of the importance of the ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... deeper insight into human nature than the beggar's. Their knowledge of the passions of men is so extensive, that I have often thought it would be of no little service to a politician to have his education among them. ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... might," he conceded. "Trevor wouldn't—being a man of considerable insight. Tell you what, though, if you want to satisfy yourself on the score of Chris's happiness, we will get them to put us up for a night when we leave here for town three weeks hence. How will ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... consciousness of the effect of his words, but it needed a subtler insight, a finer imagination than his, to interpret the pale, beautiful, harassed face which studiously avoided looking towards him as he paused before stepping out on to the pavement. The rest of the evening, the hours of night that followed, passed for Clara in ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... to tell us something about Grayson," said Mr. Goodnight, in a most kindly tone; "not what all the world knows, those superficial facts which the most careless observer may glean, but something intimate and personal; we want you to give us an insight into his character, from which we may judge what he is likely to do or become. You know that he is from the West, the Far West, likely to be afflicted with local and provincial views, not to say heresies, and great vested interests within ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... drink from a cup too large for it, and they saw how the water spilt; they saw its hopes that were never realized; they saw its hours of intellectual blindness, men call sin; they saw its hours of all-radiating insight, which men call righteousness; they saw its hour of strength, when it leaped to its feet crying, "I am omnipotent;" its hour of weakness, when it fell to the earth and grasped dust only; they saw what it might have been, but never ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... because you know nothing of the case," answered I. "You simply visit this place for a half hour each day, at a time that everything is moving along smoothly, and merely get a surface view of matters. It is my earnest hope that you may never get a practical insight into these things by being placed in the same position as myself or these other poor fellows all around me. If all the poor unfortunates I have seen carried out of this ward, corpses, have died for want of the same kind of will power I require, then all I can say is that the doctors here ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... of heroes. Thou art unable to understand truly the sense of the scriptures. If thou wert really acquainted with duty, then thou couldst have understood that words such as these ought not to have been addressed to me by even one possessed of the clearest insight into the meaning of the scriptures and acquainted with the truths of religion. That, however, which thou hast said unto me, induced by fraternal affection, has been fit and proper, O son of Kunti! I am, for that, pleased with thee, O Arjuna! There is no one equal to thee in the three worlds in all ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... life, despite his trend towards caricature, Jonson has shown himself a genuine realist, drawing from the life about him with an experience and insight rare in any generation. A happy comparison has been suggested between Ben Jonson and Charles Dickens. Both were men of the people, lowly born and hardly bred. Each knew the London of his time as few men knew it; and each represented it intimately and in ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... in 1685 and the scene at his deathbed encouraged in England suspicions of Catholic policy and in France hope that this policy was near its climax of success. Though indolent and dissolute, Charles yet possessed striking mental capacity and insight. He knew well that to preserve his throne he must remain outwardly a Protestant and must also respect the liberties of the English nation. He cherished, however, the Roman Catholic faith and the despotic ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... his arraignment, for if sin be under the view of an eye that hates it, and loves God, much of its power and virtue, which be in darkness, is taken away. I press this the more because I verily apprehend it to be the plague of many Christians, who have some general insight into the matter of good and evil, and espy some more gross corruption in themselves, and have some affection to good. Yet this estrangedness to our own hearts, and the vein or strain of them, the not unbowelling ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... eugenics. It is not wholly new. The early Greeks gave much thought to it, and with the insight which characterized them, they rightly put the emphasis on the constructive side; they sought to breed better men and women, not merely to accomplish a work of hygiene, to lessen taxes, and reduce suffering, by reducing the number of unfortunates among them. As early as the first ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... there had been nothing said or done to prevent this consummation so devoutly to be wished until the advent of Seymour. Then, too, Talbot, calm and confident in the situation, had not noticed Seymour's infatuation, and was entirely ignorant that the coveted prize had slipped from his grasp. The insight of the confident lover was not so keen as that of the ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Government was able to quench. He was besides beginning to understand the perplexities which beset the administration, to appreciate the problem which confronted the great statesman who was at the head of the nation. He was getting a clear insight into the workings of Lincoln's mind, and into the causes which gave to his political pilotage an air ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... creed by ROLAND G. USHER, an American Professor of History. With an almost cynical candour and detachment the author analyses the origins, assumptions, justifications and pretensions, and foreshadows with some insight the miscalculations, of those who have essayed to direct the destinies of modern Germany. It is as well that this essay comes from a neutral pen; it would else be discredited as a freak of prejudice. Pan-Germanism, as here seen, is the reductio ad absurdum ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... to Richard Travis, as it comes in the great crises of life and death, to every strong man, and he saw dimly, ghostily, into the shadow; and the shadow stopped at the terrible abyss which now barred his ken; and he felt, with the keen insight of the dying eagle on the peak, that ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... the overweening pride, generosity, courage, and fervent heat of the "Great Commoner," as well as his indomitable will. Like him, she despised difficulties, and ignored the word "impossibility." Her romantic ideas were also combined with keen insight into character, and much practical sagacity. These were the qualities which made her for many years a power among the wild tribes of Lebanon, with whom she was in 1810 proceeding to take up ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... was a man of real insight; he divined that Mery was a heaven-inspired dancer, and devoted himself to the development of her genius. She did not say he had taught her to dance; she said he encouraged and developed her natural ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... engrossing and constantly increasing interest to citizens of the United States as the first philosophic and comprehensive view of our society, institutions, and destiny. No one can rise even from the most cursory perusal without clearer insight and more patriotic appreciation of the blessings of liberty protected by law, nor without encouragement for the stability and perpetuity of the Republic. The causes which appeared to M. de Tocqueville to menace both, have gone. The ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Dramatick, but all other Poets must yield to him in that Point. For these are drawn exactly to the Life, perfectly just, truly proportionably, and fully kept up to the last; and as for their being natural, Rapin says, That no Man living had a greater insight into Nature than he. The more a Man looks into 'em, the more he must admire 'em; he'll find there not only such Beauty in his Images, but also such excellent Precepts of Morality, such solid Sense in each Line, such depth of Reasoning in each Period, and such close arguing between ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... to-night was to apply the law of self-interest by which this man had lived and waxed mighty, and to-morrow he could take the woman be loved in his arms, move into his palace its master and hers. There could be no mistake about Nan's feelings. He had read the yearning of her heart with unerring insight. Visions of a life of splendour, beauty and power with her by his side swept his imagination. A sense of fierce, exultant triumph filled his soul. But most alluring of all whispered joys was the dream of their love-life. The years of suffering and denial, of grief and ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... to block your game when you thought you had me down and out—not through any particular kindness of heart or chivalry, but because he had the gift of insight into character—the discernment to recognize a safe loan—will take your place. Abram Pantin, if he wants it, will be this bank's ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... had made no mistake; his keen insight was well nigh infallible; but his triumph was costly. The luscious fruit of professional success left an acrid flavor; the pungent dead sea ashes sifted freely. He set his heel on the embroidered butterfly, and in his heart cursed the hour he had first seen it. His coveted bread was petrifying ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... fiction. The book takes its name from the heroine, a charming type of the gentle-born Irish-woman. In the development of the romance, the attempts for Ireland's freedom, and the dire failures that culminated at Ballingary, are told in a manner which give an intimate insight into the history of the Young Ireland movement. If the book cannot be considered autobiographical, the reader will not forget that the author was contemporary with the events described, and will have little difficulty in perceiving that many of the principal characters are strongly ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... of detail. But, though easy, it would be a thankless task. It is scarcely too much to say that the dominant impression of most readers after perusing this book will be one of astonishment and admiration at the insight and breadth of view displayed by the author. When it was written the subject was a particularly thorny one to handle, and it undoubtedly required much courage to tackle the origin and development of the human race ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... Young Captain's Pluck. This story of stirring doings at one of our well-known forts in the Wild West is of more than ordinary interest. The young captain had a difficult task to accomplish, but he had been drilled to do his duty, and does it thoroughly. Gives a good insight into army ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... breakdown. It is for this reason that, thanks largely to the stimulus of the war—which has created a practical demand for such machines—aeroplanes are now being built, and flown with success, which are fitted with duplicate motors. With such machines, which give us a first insight as to the aircraft of the future, engine failure begins to lose its perils—particularly in regard to war. More than once during the great campaign, when flying a single-engine machine, an aviator has found his motor fail ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... induced Bartolozzi to write a letter of persuasion, partly dictated by himself; and, confident of its effect, he set out for Italy to bring Schiavonetti over. During his absence Bartolozzi gained an insight into his real character and interested views, and, on his return with his protege, told him that his house was no longer open to him, but that Schiavonetti was welcome to consider it his home. Testolini, however, having found a house in Sloane Square, soon ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... sympathies with humanity, from its proudest to its humblest forms. It will be read with great avidity by his admirers—and there are few at this day who do not belong to that class—as affording them a deeper insight into the mind of Wordsworth than any of his other works. It is divided into several books, named from the different situations or stages of the author's life, or the subjects which at any period particularly ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... the beauty remained. The spoken words of protest made her a woman. Never again would she, nor any other creature of the earth, appear to Thorpe as she had in the silver glade or the cloistered pines. He had had his moment of insight. The deeps had twice opened to permit him to look within. Now they had closed again. But out of them had fluttered a great love and the priestess of it. Always, so long as life should be with him, Thorpe was destined to see in this tall graceful girl with the ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... service from the fields and workshops. Remember that the veritable bravery also, as the philosopher sees it, is a form of that "knowledge," which in truth includes in itself all other virtues, all good things whatever; that it is a form of "right opinion," and has a kind of insight in it, a real apprehension of the occasion and its claims on one's courage, whether it is worth while to fight, and to what point. Platonic knighthood then will have in it something of the philosophy which resides in plenitude in the class above it, by which indeed ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... of insight is his Heart among the gods. Ho to me! Heart of mine; I am in possession of thee, I am thy master, and thou art by me; fall not away from me; I am the dictator whom thou ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... in his pen, a magnetic attraction in his descriptions, a fertility in his literary resources which are characteristic of Dumas alone, and the seal of the master of light literature is set upon all his works. Even when not strictly historical, his romances give an insight into the habits and modes of thought and action of the people of the time described, which are not offered ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... from a more general cause: simply an underfeeling I have that at the most propitious moment the distance to the possibility of sorrow is so short that a man's spirits must not rise higher than mere cheerfulness out of bare respect to his insight. ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... readers, they are placed above his works of fiction. They certainly constitute the most original portion of his entire literary output. It is astonishing that this young Scotchman should have been able to make so many actually new observations on a game so old as Life. There is a shrewd insight into the motives of human conduct that makes some of these graceful sketches belong to the literature of philosophy, using the word philosophy in its deepest and broadest sense. The essays are filled with whimsical ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other people into their fathers' houses, specially in the old age of the latter; but John Mortimer was not only confident of his own supreme influence, but he was more than commonly attached to his father, and had long been made to feel that on his own insight and forethought depended almost all that ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... order of Alexander are still extant; we allude to the voyage of Nearchus. Of this voyage we are now to speak; and as it is curious and important, not merely on account of the geographical knowledge it conveys, but also from the insight it gives us into the commercial transactions of the countries which he visited, we shall give rather a full abstract of it, availing ourselves of the light which has been thrown upon it by the learned and judicious researches ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... as I wrote, and I remember speaking to Horne about his good points. Phrenologists look gravely at that great scull, by the way, and hope, in their grim manner, that its owner made a good end. He looks quietly, now, out at the green little hill behind. I have no little insight to the feelings of furniture, and treat books and prints with a reasonable consideration. How some people use their pictures, for instance, is a mystery to me; very revolting all the same—portraits obliged to face each other for ever,—prints put together ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... stock in trade for securing subsequent tourists. Yet it cannot be doubted that this system has robbed the Eastern tour of some of its most salient and striking peculiarities, and has deprived the traveler of much opportunity for insight into the real life of the Oriental, only to be seen while he is journeying from place to place, since his own house is generally closed against the stranger, and it is only in the khan that a glimpse of his mode of life ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... has its roots deep down in the heart of humanity.... The actions of the Deity make no appeal to any special sense. We are deaf and blind, therefore, to the imminent grandeur around us unless we have insight enough to appreciate the whole and to recognize the woven fabric of existence flowing steadily from the loom of an infinite ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... indispensable attribute to a well-rounded life. "No man can be a gentleman," he once declared, "who does not have a sense of humour." Only he who possessed this gift, Page believed, had an imaginative insight into the failings and the virtues of his brothers; only he could have a tolerant attitude toward the stupidities of his fellows, to say nothing of his own. And humour with him assumed various shades; ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... judgment can at this instant be formed of the intended movements of the enemy. A course of Dunlap's papers will convey to you a general insight into the posture of our military affairs. It is not probable that any considerable decision in the field will take place this fall; and the councils in Britain appear to be for relinquishing the mad project of ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... artistic culture than her own. This was the civilisation of Greece. We need not dwell upon the character of Hellenic culture. Anyone who has made acquaintance with the richness of Greek literature, the clear sureness of Greek art, the keen insight of Greek science and philosophy, and the bold experiments of Greek society—especially as represented by Athens—will understand at once what is meant. When the Romans, more than two hundred years before our date, conquered Greece, in so far as they were ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... wits, and where, to readers and critics of a mystical and transcendental turn, his peculiar genius strongly commended him. To form a notion of what manner of man Calderon was, we must imagine a writer hardly inferior to Shakespeare in fertility of invention and dramatic insight, inspired by a religious fervour like that of Doune or Crashaw, and endowed with the wild and ethereal imagination of Shelley. But the religious fervour is Catholic, not Protestant, Southern, not Northern: ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... stolidity, the Indian is not so stupid as to be misled by talk like this. With a full knowledge of the situation— forced upon him by various events—the badinage of the brilliant militario does not for a moment blind him. Circumstances have given him enough insight into Uraga's character and position to know that the tatter's motives should somewhat resemble his own. He has long been aware that the Lancer colonel is in love with his young mistress, as much as he himself with her maid. Without this knowledge ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... by the repeated avowal of the unfaithfulness of the woman he loved, it was because he had always made the observation and experience of others give way to the dominance of his own insight. No array of contradictory facts ever shook his belief or unbelief; like all egotists, he accepted them as truths controlled by a larger truth of which he alone was cognizant. His simplicity, which was but another form of his egotism, was so ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... impressive words, Mr Pecksniff passed over to the bedside, where, after patting the counterpane once or twice in a very solemn manner, as if by that means he gained a clear insight into the patient's disorder, he took his seat in a large arm-chair, and in an attitude of some thoughtfulness and much comfort, waited for his waking. Whatever objection the young lady urged to Mrs Lupin went no further, for nothing more was said to Mr Pecksniff, and Mr Pecksniff ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... pay a small tribute to my father by way of personal gratitude for this, his first prose work, which was published nearly fifty years ago. Though unknown to many lovers of his greater writings, none of these has exceeded it in imaginative insight and power of expression. To me it rings with the dominant chord of ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... Falkirk. And yet this supervision was generally pleasant. As he wrought, nothing had the air of espionage—merely of care; and so I think, Wych Hazel liked it, and felt all the more free for all sorts of undertakings, secured against consequences. Sometimes, indeed, his quick insight was so astonishing to the young mischief-maker, that she was ready to cry out treachery!—and the suspected person in this case was always Gotham. Yet when she charged upon Gotham some untimely frost which had nipped her budding plans, ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... trouble and excitement. Grant found his duties at the office increased, and it was pleasant to see that his employer reposed confidence in him. His relations with others in the office were pleasant, now that Willis Ford was away, and every day he seemed to get new insight into the details of the business. Whether Jim Morrison and Tom Calder were in the city, he did not know. At all events, they were never seen in the neighborhood of Wall Street. Grant was not sorry to have them pass out of his life, for he did not ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... concentration, which ever lifts the thinker into the special soul atmosphere of each separate mentality, by the power of attraction and repulsion, verily, by the cosmic law of life, gaining thereby deeper insight into what seemeth best to think and to do for self and ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... portraitures of character, sketched with freedom and animation. His reflections are piquant, and often rise to a philosophic tone, which discards the usual trammels of the age; and the progress of the story is varied by a multiplicity of personal anecdotes, that give a rapid insight into the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... recalled her evident excitement and preoccupation when she came in from her walk with Leigh. If her interview with the young man had been what he feared, it was natural she should have lain awake long into the night, and his heart misgave him at this additional confirmation of his insight. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... him, that unlike Charlemagne and Alfred he could not draw his lessons from a past whose evening glow was still visible in the horizon, we are tempted to treat as exaggerated the history of his times, and to be sceptical of so much political insight having been born ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... us an insight into the main political and social principles that actuated House in his companionship with President Wilson. Through it runs the note of social democracy reminiscent of Louis Blanc ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... minute or two Bell did not speak. Then, with deeper insight into her daughter's heart than her husband, in spite of his greater knowledge of the events that had happened ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... understandable human creatures. All others were merely objective. As we, to a certain extent, happened to fall in the former category, he was as pleasant to us as possible—that is, he was pleasant to us in his way, but had not insight enough to guess at how to be pleasant to us in our way. But as soon as he got out of his own class, or what he conceived to be such, he considered all people as "outsiders." He did not credit them with prejudices to rub, with feelings ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... of the unity of all life. When Goethe in a flash of insight saw the structure of the entire tree in a single leaf, and of the complete skeleton of the animal in the skull of a sheep, he gave the mind of man a new assurance of the unity that pervades the whole creation. And when scientific men asserted the universality of law, they made ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... Mr. McCunn was what is known as a great reader. He read slowly and fastidiously, and sought in literature for one thing alone. Sir Walter Scott had been his first guide, but he read the novels not for their insight into human character or for their historical pageantry, but because they gave him material wherewith to construct fantastic journeys. It was the same with Dickens. A lit tavern, a stage-coach, post-horses, the clack ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... upon neither criticism nor comment, whose role throughout all these pages is but that of a showman, although I trust one not altogether devoid of insight into the ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... amiable inertia. Albemarle, the baby, had spilled bacon gravy over her dress that very morning, and I had heard her console him immediately with the assurance that there was "a plenty more in the dish." But possessed though she was with that peculiar insight which discerns in every misfortune a hidden blessing, in stepmothers, I found, and in stepmothers alone, she could discern nothing ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... almost involuntary submission to his will.... Then her thoughts passed on to their walk home from the hospital—she recalled his sober yet unsparing summary of the situation at Westmore, and the note of insight with which he touched on the hardships of the workers.... Then, word by word, their talk about Dillon came back...Amherst's indignation and pity...his shudder of revolt at ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... plenipotence in so ordering and moving the several characters of a play as that they may best draw out each other by mutual influences, and set off each other by mutual contrasts. The persons are thus assorted and attempered with perfect insight both of their respective natures and of their common fitness to his purpose. And not the least wonderful thing in his works is the exquisite congruity of what comes from the persons with all the circumstances and influences under which they are represented as acting; ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... portraits. Hogarth carried this native tradition to a high point of excellence. He painted plain, good-natured-looking people in an unaffected and straightforward way. But he was a humourist in paint, and as great a student of human nature as he was of art. His insight into character and his great skill with the brush, combined with his sensitiveness to fun, make him in certain respects a unique painter. In the National Gallery there is a picture of the heads of his six servants in a double ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... of us have ever got to know a wild animal? I do not mean merely to meet with one once or twice, or to have one in a cage, but to really know it for a long time while it is wild, and to get an insight into its life and history. The trouble usually is to know one creature from his fellow. One fox or crow is so much like another that we cannot be sure that it really is the same next time we meet. But once in awhile there arises an animal ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... is struck, when Christian and Hopeful are seen coming, shoulder-high, through a thicket of green shrubs—box, perhaps, or perfumed nutmeg; while behind them, domed or pointed, the hills stand ranged against the sky. A little further, and we come to that masterpiece of Bunyan's insight into life, the Enchanted Ground; where, in a few traits, he has set down the latter end of such a number of the would-be good; where his allegory goes so deep that, to people looking seriously on ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... plays. That is apparently what he means by this peroration, which once closed an article in the Nineteenth Century: "O human life! so varied, so vast, so complex, so rich and subtle in tremulous deep organ tones, and soft proclaim of silver flutes, so utterly beyond our spell of insight, who of us can govern the thunder and whirlwind of thy ventages to any utterance of harmony, or pluck out the heart of thy eternal mystery?" Does Mr. Jones, I wonder, or the distinguished critic, really hear any ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... furnish a parallel in the material order. They are the house of God and the home and possession of every member of the Church militant without distinction of age or rank or learning. But they are not the same to each. Every one brings his own understanding and faith and insight, and the great Church is to him what he has capacity to understand and to receive. The great majority of worshippers could not draw a fine of the plans or expound a law of the construction, or set a stone in its place, ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... it must be to write that which will do good. A Raphael may boast of inspiration when he paints a Madonna, but not when his brush stoops to a Cyprian or a Satyr. The Pharisees of old prayed unctuously in the market-places: so the George Sands of our day boast of their superior insight into the beautiful and true. We doubt whether both are ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... Pantheism that seems to have been imperfect. But in Spinoza we have a man who, inheriting by birth the tradition—I might even say the apostolic succession—of the Jewish prophets, and gifted with an insight into the consummation of that tradition in Jesus Christ, was driven by a commanding intellect to divorce the spiritual life he prized from creeds that had become to him Impossible, and to enshrine ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... reaction of his thought upon the matter received from his teachers. Again, the decline of the sovereignty of the people would be the negation of all rule, if it meant that the uninstructed many should govern themselves by their own insight, and that the instructed few should simply be their servants and their instruments. But where the people are not recognized as the ultimate source of power, where their consent is not in any regular way made necessary to the proceedings of their ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... life quite conservative and academic, it should not be thought that these essays show no sympathy with liberal ideas. He was also appreciative of the first works of new writers, and had good and prophetic insight. His favorable reviews of the first works of Howells and James, and the subsequent career of these two men, indicate the sureness of Lowell's critical mind. Many readers will enjoy, in these days of the ouija board and messages from the dead, the raps at spiritualism here ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... insurance; subscribing to Liberty bonds; telling what you would like to be in the army; where you wanted your remains shipped; getting your finger-prints taken, and also getting your first jab in the arm which gave the first insight into ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... which may suffice to inspire you with caution, until you can come here and examine for yourself. No other information can give you a true insight into the state of things; but you will have no difficulty in understanding them when on the spot. In the mean time, accept my friendly salutations and cordial ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... his experience in the Edinburgh courts was of immense benefit to him. In the first place, his study of the Scotch statutes, statutes which had taken form very gradually under the pressure of changing national conditions, gave him an insight into the politics and society of the past not otherwise to have been obtained. Of still more value, perhaps, was the association with his young companions in the profession, and daily contact with the racy personalities which traditionally haunt ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... a dead stop in the middle of the street. In one sudden flash of insight, all the pieces of the case he'd been looking at for so long fell together and formed one consistent picture. The pattern ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... Morris, "she has a wonderful spiritual insight, if I may call it so. She often shocks me by her remarks, but if I lay a subject before her upon which I have been pondering deeply but have not succeeded in elucidating, she grasps its meaning at once and explains it to me in simple ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... a flash of chilling insight that in future many problems would be thus negatively solved for him; but as he paid the hansom and followed his wife's long train into the house he took refuge in the comforting platitude that the first six months were always the most difficult in marriage. "After that I suppose ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... The insight into this higher truth did not come by inspiration, but was gradually imparted during long summer days, when I wandered from dawn to dark among the fields and woods. Hoping at first no more than to tire the mind with the body and so win a whole repose, I became by degrees receptive of a new learning ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... licenses to teach. My sister's fat baby taught me things about the origin and ultimate destiny of dimples that were not in any of my school-books. Mr. Casey, of the second floor, who was drunk whenever his wife was sober, gave me an insight into the psychology of the beer mug that would have added to the mental furniture of my most scholarly teacher. The bold-faced girls who passed the evening on the corner, in promiscuous flirtation with the cock-eyed youths of the neighborhood, unconsciously revealed ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... fellow-students, who had sought in vain a great awakening light in those sacred precincts of learning, but, their confidence betrayed, were now floundering in the devouring morass of materialism. To her keen insight the University stood revealed as the great panderer to this latest century's obsessing idea that the true function of education is expressed in the imparting of changing, human information and a training for the business of earning one's daily bread according to the infamous code of the world's ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... does make one different; I saw that clearly in Dora; when she was madly in love with Viktor, and the way she's relapsed now!! She is learning Latin again, to make up for lost time! Ada does not speak to her about her plans because Dora lacks true insight! Only to-day she mentioned before Dora that whatever happened she wanted to come to Vienna in the autumn so that she could often go to the theatre. And Dora said: You are making a mistake, even people who live in Vienna don't go to the theatre ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... poultry and his dogs. It was a long hour's ramble that they took there, well improved on both sides, for Andrew of course knew it to be for his interest to please the brig's owner; and Mr. Maurice, who prided himself on having a singularly keen insight into character, studied the young man's every word and gesture, for it was not often that he came across such material as this out of which to make his captains; and to what farther effect in this ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... in the ordinary "shop," who is learning there at present, to our regret, only a portion of his craft, and who should be given an insight into the whole, and into the fairyland ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... convenient for Sydney to join our school-room party. I was very glad also, that these last two summers, there have been visits at Fordham. Staying there has given Mrs. Brownlow and the younger ones some insight into what the life at Belforest might be, but never has been; and they will not be kept out of ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... see in each barrier-reef a proof that the land has there subsided, and in each atoll a monument over an island now lost. We may thus, like unto a geologist who had lived his ten thousand years and kept a record of the passing changes, gain some insight into the great system by which the surface of this globe has been broken up, and land and ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... his astuteness and perseverance he was enabled to lay the foundations of an excellent position. Indeed, but few years had elapsed (during which time he had frequently resided with us) ere he had acquired considerable wealth and we a clearer insight into his true disposition. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... much. Well, it needed but this. I don't see how things could possibly be worse than they are, but no doubt you will succeed in making them so. Your genius and insight will find the way. Carry on, Bertie. Yes, carry on. I am past caring now. I shall even find a faint interest in seeing into what darker and profounder abysses of hell you can plunge this home. Go to it, lad.... What's that stuff ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... could be out of the house a good deal, and there was the regiment. He began to see his way through marriage as a man sees his way through a gap in an awkward fence. The unfortunate part of it was that he couldn't get through the gap unless Estelle shared his insight. ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... for being the residence of Christ. The town was situated on the western shore of the Lake of Gennesareth. Quite in opposition to his custom elsewhere, Matthew describes the situation of the town 80 minutely, because this knowledge served to afford a better insight into the fulfilment of the prophecy of the Old Testament. The designation [Greek: ten parathalassian] stands in reference to [Greek: hodon thalasses], in ver. 15. [Greek: En horiois], &c., may either mean: ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... that these States are held together, they must be held together on right principles—principles of justice, of equity, of fair play, of equality before the law for all alike. Whether there is patriotism, political wisdom, moral insight and stamina enough to lead men to forget their differences on minor matters and to unite their forces for the attainment of this greater and more important end, remains to be seen. There are so many who are controlled by their petty ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... is a blessed thing; it is as comforting as the touch of a mother's hand. So lovely did it seem that it put me into a mind when, for a little kindly encouragement, I would have said, "You have opened your doors to welcome me in. God bless you for your insight. ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... youth. He spoke, moreover, like a practical man, in simple, straightforward language, which made the emptiness of the other's declamatory style painfully conspicuous. His term of official service as a prefect in the provinces had endowed him with keen insight; and it was in an easy way that he propounded and unravelled the most intricate questions. Active and courageous, confident in his own star, too young and too shrewd to have compromised himself in anything so far, he was steadily marching towards the future. He had already ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... and Paul Veronese, and Bonifazio. Look at this Musical Party by Giorgione, this landscape by Titian, this portrait of the vile Duke of Alva by the same great master, the greatest master of all in portraiture. It is the Duke himself, not merely in his outward presence, but such as the insight of one as profoundly versed in human as in external nature beheld him. The portrait is a biography of the man, and one may read in the narrow, hard, and wily face the history of his cruel life. The same qualities of inward vision are displayed by Tintoret in his more hasty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... higher respect to the attractions and affinities; to the plan and power of growth; to the wisdom of the ant; the geometry of the bee; the migrating instinct that rises and stretches its wings toward a provided South—for it is all God's present wisdom and power. Let us come to that true insight of the old prophets, who are fittingly called seers; whose eyes pierced the veil of matter, and saw God clothing the grass of the field, feeding the sparrows, giving snow like wool and scattering hoar-frost like ashes, and ever standing on the bow of our ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... eyes were open to the perils that beset the Church from sectaries who from within were for casting off her divine authority. Wretches who questioned the very creeds and rejected the Sacraments, yet perversely insisted that they were Christian men and women, with a clearer insight into Gospel mysteries than Bishops and Cardinals or the Holy Father himself. Here was heresy rampant, and immortal souls, all astray, beguiled by evil men and deceivers, "whose word doth eat as doth a canker." Dominic "saw that there was no man, ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... image of Madeleine; what he had lost and what he had never possessed. And, again, he tormented himself with imaginings of her own suffering and despair; alternated with visions of Madeleine enthroned, secure, impeccable, admired, envied—and with other men in love with her! Some depth of insight convinced him that she loved him immortally, but he knew her need for mental companionship, and the thought that she might find it, however briefly and barrenly, with another man, sent ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... let them come to me; if there is a youth that wishes to learn whether the heart of his mistress is made of flesh or of stone—a maiden that would see into a youth's faith and constancy, while her long eyelashes cover her sight like a modest silken veil—or a noble, that would fain have an insight into the movements of his rivals at court or council, let them all put their questions to Pippo, who has an answer ready for each, and an answer so real, that the most expert among the listeners will be ready to swear that a lie from his mouth is worth more than truth ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... good of the women concerned. For only by honest purity, and moral courage superior to that of the many, is that dangerous post earned; and women will listen to the man who will tell them the truth, however sternly; and will bow, as before a guardian angel, to the strong insight of him whom they have once learned to trust. But it is a dangerous office, after all, for layman as well as for priest, that of father-confessor. The experience of centuries has shown that they must needs exist, wherever fathers neglect their daughters, husbands their wives; wherever the average ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... adherents of this new school of realistic art: we had found our aesthetic creed.' But the maker of this creed, the creator of this school of realistic art, was not able to be content with what he had done, though this was the greatest thing he was able to do. It is with true insight that he boasts, in one of his letters, of what he can do 'if I am only careful to do what I am quite capable of, namely, combine this relentlessness of mind with deliberateness in the choice of ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... peculiar notions about the object, and by degrees Petrea herself began to have a clearer foreknowledge, and to think that perhaps, after all, the true object might be no other than "our eldest" herself. After this insight into things, which Petrea was not slow in circulating among her sisters, Louise was called, in their jocular phraseology, "the object." All this while, however, "the object" herself appeared to pay very little attention to the speculations which had thus reference to ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... am pretty, she always talks like that when I am," thought the child, who had a very keen insight into character. "Mother will kiss me to-night, I am so glad. I wonder if Jesus ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... fertilized by thought The facts must be collected, but their mere accumulation will never advance the sum of human knowledge by one step;—it is the comparison of facts and their transformation into ideas that lead to a deeper insight into the significance of Nature. Stringing words together in incoherent succession does not make an intelligible sentence; facts are the words of God, and we may heap them together endlessly, but they will teach ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... understanding which is a gift of the Holy Ghost, is a quick insight into divine things, as shown above (Q. 8, AA. 1, 2). It is in another sense that it is accounted a part of prudence, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... growing out of his fish's tail, similar to those of a man; also human speech, and his image is preserved to this day. This being used to spend the whole day amidst men, without taking any food, and he gave them an insight into letters, and sciences, and every kind of art; he taught them how to found cities, to construct temples, to introduce laws and to measure land; he showed them how to sow seeds and gather in crops; in short, he instructed them in everything that softens manners and makes up civilization, ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... aloud with Olga A latter day romance discreet, Whose author truly painted nature, With cunning plot, insight complete; Oft he passed over a few pages, Too bald or tasteless in their art— And coloring, began on further, Not to disturb the maiden heart. Again, they sat for hours together, With but a chess board to divide; She with her arms propped on the ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... Natural Right and the Exclusive Commercial State, but, in his posthumous Theory of Right, 1812, he makes it the chief duty of the state to lead men, by the moral and intellectual training of the people, to do from insight what they have hitherto done from traditional belief. Through the education of the people the empirical state is gradually to transform itself into ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... matter of a systematic attempt to improve the mind. They form part of a beautiful and inspiring poem, but I gravely fear that they run counter to the vast mass of earthly experience. More often than not I have found that a task willed in some hour of insight can not be fulfilled through hours of gloom. No, no, and no! To will is easy: it needs but the momentary bright contagion of a stronger spirit than one's own. To fulfil, morning after morning, or evening after evening, through months and years—this is the very dickens, and there ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... a good physician who can appreciate and estimate accurately the temperament of his patient, and the need for this insight is nowhere greater than in dealing with the disorders of childhood. It can be acquired only by long practice and familiarity with children. In the hospital wards we shall learn much that is essential, but we shall not learn this. The child, who is so sensitive to his environment, shows but ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... cannot analyse; or we introduce into new and similar cases relationships in things which we have observed to be amusing. Some forms are so general that they will produce a vast number of jests, and we thus seem to have some insight into the influences that awaken humour, but we see only approximately and superficially, and can merely produce good results occasionally—rather by an accident than with ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... democratic movement of the time. At bottom his democracy was of the sensible, practical American type, but he had come home badly bitten by many of the wild notions which at that moment pervaded Paris. A man of much less insight than Jefferson would have had no difficulty in perceiving that Hamilton and his friends were not in sympathy with these ideas. They hoped for the establishment of a republic, but they desired for it a highly energetic and centralized government not devoid of aristocratic tendencies. This fundamental ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... afternoon several refugees told stories that gave an insight into conditions in East Dayton, hitherto unexplored. The flood victims declared they knew of no loss of life in this section, because a great number of people had availed themselves ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... establishing the Cosmopolitan Club, which later met in Watts's studio, but began its existence in Morier's own rooms. He enjoyed greatly a meeting with Tennyson and Browning, and wrote with enthusiasm of the former to his father, as 'one who gave men an insight into the real Hero-world, as one from whom he could catch reflected something of the Divine'. But Morier's spirits were mercurial, and between moments of elation he was apt to fall into fits of melancholy, when he could find no outlet for his energies. Waiting for his true profession ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... barrier of his own reserve; but he met Carew's advances with an icy front which could be thawed neither from outside nor from within. It was not his will to be ungrateful; it was beyond his present power to show the gratitude which he really felt. And Carew, with the supreme insight which marks the friendship of men at times, interpreted Weldon's mood aright ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... his character now, no matter how keenly he might realize his defects. Poor little Nannie's wilfulness was at last forgiven, but the forgiveness was fifteen years too late. Why could not that moment of insight have come earlier to Colonel Gaylord, have come in time to save him ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... Gwendolen speculated on the probability that the men of coldest manners were the most adventurous, and felt the strength of her own insight, supposing the question had ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... to the fifteenth verse of something,' and a being called 'Miss Rider.'" So thinking she hastily concluded and folded her letter, ready for the afternoon mail, without a thought or care as to the seed that she had been sending away in it, or as to the fruit it might bear; without the slightest insight into the way she was being led through seeming mistakes and accidents up to a point that was to influence all ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... Lillie a little practical insight into his business,—show her exactly what his income was, and make some estimates of his expenses, just that she might have some little idea how ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... such as the intellect of Aristotle, or of St. Thomas, or of Newton, or of Goethe (I purposely take instances within and without the Catholic pale, when I would speak of the intellect as such), is one which takes a connected view of old and new, past and present, far and near, and which has an insight into the influence of all these one on another; without which there is no whole and no centre. It possesses the knowledge, not only of things, but also of their mutual and true relations; knowledge, not merely considered as acquirement ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... into his gardens, among his grapehouses, his poultry and his dogs. It was a long hour's ramble that they took there, well improved on both sides, for Andrew of course knew it to be for his interest to please the brig's owner; and Mr. Maurice, who prided himself on having a singularly keen insight into character, studied the young man's every word and gesture, for it was not often that he came across such material as this out of which to make his captains; and to what farther effect in this instance be pursued his studies ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... With the rapid insight for which he was known, Monsieur de Granville had judged it necessary, for the honor of the families concerned, to have the certificate of Lucien's death deposited at the Mairie of the district in which the Quai Malaquais lies, as the deceased had resided there, and ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... of man was Alfred Russel Wallace? Who were his forbears? How did he obtain his insight into the closest secrets of nature? What was the extent of his contributions to our stock of human knowledge? In which directions did he most influence his age? What is known of his inner life? These are some of the questions which most present-day readers ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Effie. "Just let Ruggles here look over some of the notes you have made," and she handed me a notebook of ruled paper in which there was a deal of writing. I glanced, as bidden, at one or two of the paragraphs, and confess that I, too, was amazed at the fluency and insight displayed along lines in which I should have thought the man entirely uninformed. "This choice work represents the first or formative period of the Master," began one note, "but distinctly foreshadows that later method which made him at once the hope and despair of ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... been that her mother was a dry limited person, clever and determined in small ways, that affected her own family, but on the whole characterless as compared with other people of strong feelings and responsive susceptibilities. But her own character had been rapidly maturing of late, and her insight sharpening. During these recent weeks of close contact, her mother's singularity had risen in her mind to the dignity at least of ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... love as the foundation of the very existence of a people who are His. Like an orchid growing on a block of dry wood and putting forth a gorgeous bloom, this singer, with so much less to feed his faith than we have, has yet borne this fair flower of deep and devout insight into the secret of things and the heart of God. 'He loved the people'— therefore He formed them for Himself; therefore He brought them out of bondage; therefore He came down in flashing fire on Sinai and made known His will, which to know and do is life. All begins ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... taken, showed an advance over her earlier work. Two of the stories from this volume were selected by Mr. O'Brien for his volume, Best Short Stories, for 1916 and 1917. Humoresque, her latest work, continues her studies of city types, drawn from New York and St. Louis. The stories show her insight into character and her graphic descriptive power. Miss Hurst is also the author of two plays, The Land of the Free ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... and high insight, Th'eternall Makers maiestie wee viewe, His love, his truth, his glorie, and his might, And mercie more than mortall men can vew. O soveraigne Lord, O soveraigne happinesse, 515 To see thee, and thy ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... themselves into harmony with the national will, and may justly demand readmission to their former political relations in the Union. Each State has some citizens, who, wiser than the great majority, comprehend the meaning of Southern defeat with praiseworthy insight. Seeing only individuals of this small class, a traveller might honestly conclude that the States were ready for self-government. Let not the nation commit the terrible mistake of acting on this conclusion. These men are the little leaven in the gross body ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... the art of Literature as viewed from the table-land of authority. And, as inevitably the most famous reviews are those which attend the birth of genius, we must include more respectable errors of judgment, if we find also several remarkable appreciations which prove singular insight. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... all—such of us, I mean, who were possessed of the least sensibility or insight, knew how that sentence sounded as finished in her heart "and I loved him who asked this ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... Colombe is almost as grateful as the young Prince could desire, for she assumes that he has fallen in love with her, whether he says so or not; and here, too, Valence must speak the truth. "The Prince does not love her." "How does he know this?" "He knows it by the insight of one who does love." Astonished, vaguely pained, Colombe questions him as to the object of his attachment, and, in probably real ignorance of who it can be, draws him on to a confession. For a moment she is disenchanted. "So much unselfish devotion to turn out merely ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... defence is essential. We must realise that in certain cases, provided always we preserve the aggressive spirit, the defensive will enable an inferior force to achieve points when the offensive would probably lead to its destruction. But the elements of strength depend entirely on the will and insight to deal rapid blows in the enemy's unguarded moments. So soon as the defensive ceases to be regarded as a means of fostering power to strike and of reducing the enemy's power of attack it loses all its strength. It ceases to be even a suspended ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... be taken more seriously," she says. "It can no longer be the proper aim of history teaching to foster and strengthen in women a sentimental attachment to her country and its national character: its aim must be to give her the insight that will enable her to understand the forces at work, and ultimately play an active part in them. Many branches of our social life await the work of women, civic philanthropy to begin with; and as our public ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... Master's apartments is opened and Albert Crilly enters. Albert Crilly is a young man, who might be a bank clerk or a medical student. He is something of a dude, but has a certain insight and wit. ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... extra-ordinarily clever. Those who knew him intimately sometimes shrugged their shoulders. He was possessed undoubtedly of a certain flashy sort of cleverness, but some of his greatest skill existed in imposing it upon others as strenght and insight. ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... had in fact a deeper insight into affairs than the most wary diplomatists.[19] In 1815, the same persons, as in 1814, met in Paris, and similar interests were agitated. Foreign jealousy again effected the conclusion of this peace at the expense of Germany and in favor of France. Blucher's influence at first ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... people at the Park—they made their pile over copper—good chaps. Avery's Farm, Sishe's—what they call the Common, where you see that ruined oak—one after the other fell in, and so did this, as near as is no matter. "But Henry had saved it; without fine feelings or deep insight, but he had saved it, and she loved him for the deed. "When I had more control I did what I could: sold off the two and a half animals, and the mangy pony, and the superannuated tools; pulled down the outhouses; drained; thinned out I don't know how many guelder-roses and elder-trees; ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... weapon than intelligence. This was his game, and it was fixed; he could not lose if he could arouse enough interest in a man to hold him to the end of the argument. He continued to drive, to crowd. "What right have you to think so? What right have you to judge them? Have you divine insight? Are you inspired? 'Judge not lest ye be judged,' saith the Lord, and you dare to fly in the face ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... never out-of-date. And as we sometimes seek rest from the brilliant audacities and complex passions of Wagner or Tschaikowsky in the tender simplicity of some ancient English air, so we occasionally turn with relief from the wit and insight and subtlety of our modern novelists to the old uncomplicated tales of faerie or romance, and find them after all more moving, more tender, even more real, than all the laboured realism of these photographic days. And here before us ...
— Aucassin and Nicolette - translated from the Old French • Anonymous
... was afforded for Gordon to reveal his tactical skill than his strategical insight, and in this respect the only trammels he experienced were from the military value and efficiency of his force, which had its own limitations. But still it would be unjust to form too poor an estimate of the fighting efficiency and courage of either Gordon's ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... that to diagnose a case at a distance of several hundred miles requires considerable skill; but still greater is the insight into obscure maladies of our Quaker lady, who bridges over the centuries and tells us just what disease afflicted Francis II in the year of grace 1560; and he ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... are the workings of Truth, and none may judge what best teaches the law. None may know what has given this or that insight into a broader truth, but all at once some one has the new light, and hastens ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... his reminiscences, embodied in a volume entitled Old New Zealand, still form the best book which the Colony has been able to produce. Nowhere have the comedy and childishness of savage life been so delightfully portrayed. Nowhere else do we get such an insight into that strange medley of contradictions and caprices, the ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... she had realised, by the insight of a moment, the madness of what they had done, the gulf to which they were rushing—because, at one and the same instant, there had been revealed to her the fatality under which she must still ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I will. Not from actual knowledge, then, but from a certain insight I have acquired in my long dealing with such matters, I have come to the conclusion that Franklin Van Burnam did not in the beginning plan to kill this woman ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... Mr. Hobby, as everybody called him, that George was indebted for his first insight into the mysteries of book-learning; and although he was in due time to become the greatest man of this or any other age or country, yet he began his education by first learning his A B C, just as did ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... all the wonders I had described to him, but also see Jack and me creeping amongst the marine shrubbery at the bottom, like, as—he expressed it,—"two great white sea-monsters." During these excursions of ours to the bottom of the sea, we began to get an insight into the manners and customs of its inhabitants, and to make discoveries of wonderful things, the like of which we never before conceived. Among other things, we were deeply interested with the operations of the little ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... (1) drew together representatives of various projects and interest groups to compare ideas, beliefs, experiences, and, in particular, methods of placing and presenting historical textual materials in computerized form. Most attendees gained much in insight and outlook from the event. But the assembly did not form a new nation, or, to put it another way, the diversity of projects and interests was too great to draw the representatives into a cohesive, ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... it is instructive to take a retrospective glance at the days of our forefathers of the nineteenth century, and to meditate upon the political struggles and events of the past hundred years, that by so doing we may gain a clear insight into the causes which have led to the present wonderful developments. We, in the year of Grace 1983, are too apt to take for granted all the blessings of moral, political and physical science which ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... instead of touting for briefs in society, and so harmed himself, such misadventure was counterbalanced by his industry and his prudence. Thirdly, his sweetness and geniality made him a favourite with the bench. He had much insight into human nature, he studied it, and could detect almost at once the two leading spirits on a jury; and he was always aware of the idiosyncrasies of the judge he was pleading before, and knew how to respect and ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... Mrs. M'Collop that we owe our chief insight into technical church matters, although we seldom agree with her 'opeenions' after we gain our own experience. She never misses hearing one sermon on a Sabbath, and oftener she listens to two or three. Neither does she confine herself ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... still more surprising, and tended to impart a new and strange insight into the character of sailors, and overthrow some long-established ideas concerning them as a class, was this: numbers of men who, during the cruise, had passed for exceedingly prudent, nay, parsimonious persons, who would even refuse you a patch, or a needleful of thread, and, from their ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... opened to him a deeper glimpse into the corruptions of the Church, and its need of reformation in the head and in the members, than ever he had before obtained. His preaching, with the new accesses of insight which now were his, more than ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... his head resting between his paws, and just turned up his eyes to his master for approval. Then, if that warning was not sufficient, he rose and barked vociferously. Possessed, I believe, of more insight than Bumpkin, he got into the most tremendous state of excitement whensoever anyone came from Prigg's, and he cordially hated Prigg. But most of all was he angry when "the man" came. There was no keeping him quiet. I wonder if dogs know more about Bills of Sale than ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... and called them Kripa and Kripi, in allusion to the fact that he brought them up from motives of pity (Kripa). The son of Gotama having left his former asylum, continued his study of the science of arms in right earnest. By his spiritual insight he learnt that his son and daughter were in the palace of Santanu. He thereupon went to the monarch and represented everything about his lineage. He then taught Kripa the four branches of the science of arms, and various other branches of knowledge, including all their mysteries ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... is one to do? Unless one closes an eye to these things, the supply of students is bound to come to an end. During the summer Theodore remained at home, spending much of his time in the garden. He brooded over the problem of his future; what profession was he to choose? He had gained so much insight into the methods of the huge Jesuitical community which, under the name of the upper classes, constituted society, that he felt dissatisfied with the world and decided to enter the Church to save himself ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... knowledge; cognizance, cognition, cognoscence^; acquaintance, experience, ken [Scot.], privity^, insight, familiarity; comprehension, apprehension; recognition; appreciation &c (judgment) 480; intuition; conscience, consciousness; perception, precognition; acroamatics^. light, enlightenment; glimpse, inkling; glimmer, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... interested him, and appealed to something sub-conscious, as music did. But when he passed from picturing her to thinking about her, about her origin and environment and future, it was with much the same lucid and unmoved insight with which he would have examined some unfortunate ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... quickly. It was just that flaw in his character that had been the ruin of him, that had blighted what otherwise might have been a brilliant career. Astute and wily as a fox, brave as a lion, and active as a panther, gifted with intelligence, insight and resource, he had carried a dozen enterprises up to the very threshold of success, there to have ruined them all by giving way to some ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... number of settlements in the county with a like result save that no more violence was needed. At one place there were men in the crowd who knew Harry's record in the war. They called on him for a speech. He spoke on the need of the means of transportation in Sangamon County with such insight and dignity and convincing candor that both Abe and the audience hailed him as a coming man. Abe and he were often ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... again to the Antipodes, life could not have been more completely changed to Nettie. She recognised it at once with some surprise, but without any struggle. The fact was too clearly apparent to leave her in any doubt. Nobody but herself had the slightest insight into the great event which had happened—nobody could know of it, or offer Nettie any sympathy in that unforeseen personal trial. In her youth and buoyant freshness, half contemptuous of the outside troubles which were no match for her indomitable heart, Nettie had been fighting against ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... is rather more than a simple soldier. He is a writer of great gifts—narrative power, humour, tenderness, and philosophical insight. Moreover, his exceptional knowledge of Germany gives special value to his account of his experiences as a prisoner ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... celestial, with merely might enough to hold his heart, swelling with a sense of wrong, in her hand, and squeeze it very hard. His consolation was that he suffered for the truth's sake, for to decline action upon such insight as he had had, was a thing as impossible as to alter the relations between the parts of a sphere. Dorothy longed for peace, and the return of the wandering chickens of the church to the shelter of her wings, to be led by her about the paled yard of obedience, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... She had never lived in the South, and her knowledge was obtained from observation in the border town of Cincinnati, from acquaintance with fugitives, and from the reports of Northern travelers—all interpreted with the insight of genius and the impulse of philanthropy. Her avowed purpose was not to make a literal or merely artistic picture, but to show the actual wrongs and legalized possibilities of wrong which called for redress. It did not lessen the justice of her plea, that ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... Barkilphedro's talents as a spy, reposed such confidence in him that she had not hesitated to entrust him with one of the master-keys of her apartments, by means of which he was able to enter them at any hour. This excessive licence of insight into private life was in fashion in the seventeenth century. It was called "giving the key." Josiana had given two of these confidential keys—Lord David had one, Barkilphedro the other. However, to enter straight into a bedchamber was, in the old code of manners, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... however, of the use to which the notes can be put is provided by Professor E. L. McAdam's Dr. Johnson and the English Law (1951) in which are recorded notes showing Johnson's familiarity with various legal terms. Further insight into Johnson's knowledge of books of esoterica, histories, ballads, etc., can be gleaned from the comments on Shakespeare. A subject in which I must confess an interest possibly out of proportion to its worth is that of Johnson's reading. Some day we will have a list, probably never complete, ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... find strength and joy in this wholesome and cheerful faith, and if they are in error, it can never be known, for if death end all, with it knowledge ceases. Perceiving this, they strive to gain spiritual insight, they look to God; toward him they turn the current of their thought and love; the unseen world of truth and beauty becomes their home; and while matter flows on and breaks and remakes itself to break again, they dwell in ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... rest, what sort of mind it is that has passed through this change, that has gained this victory; how rich and high a mind; how learned by study in all that is wisest, by experience in all that is most complex, the brightest as well as the blackest, in man's existence; gifted with what insight, with what grace and power of utterance, we shall not for the present attempt discussing. All these the reader will learn, who studies his writings with such attention as they merit; and by no other means. Of Goethe's dramatic, lyrical, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the ceiling as though trying to remember, he played two pieces of Tchaikovsky with exquisite expression, with such warmth, such insight! His face was just as usual—neither stupid nor intelligent—and it seemed to me a perfect marvel that a man whom I was accustomed to see in the midst of the most degrading, impure surroundings, was capable of such purity, of rising to a feeling so lofty, ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... looking round, anxious to be amiable without making a fool of himself. We're at a great disadvantage. A girl who isn't an idiot can very soon know all about the men who interest her; but it's devilish difficult to get much insight into them—until you've hopelessly committed yourself—won't you smoke? I've something to tell you, and I can't talk to a man who isn't smoking, when my own ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... to practical studies and the most impractical and dreamy fancy, an affectionate nature lonely and misunderstood, a spirit of the most sturdy and uncompromising independence, a mind of keen and scientific insight—a character made up, in short, of all the warring elements of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... "I mean to be very industrious, and devote a whole day to giving you an insight into the business; after which I expect you'll pull away, while I only steer, which will suit me to a T—, ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... consoles itself for the disillusionments of life. This it is that gives a peculiar appropriateness to the title of Mr. Graham's pictures of childhood in The Golden Age, a work of the profoundest insight and genius, as delightful as it is unique. I am not aware that there has ever been another author in English who could have written thus intimately of children without once ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... the full-length of Captain Coram at the Foundling. On the other hand, he says a great deal about Hogarth which has no very obvious connection with History Painting. He discusses the Analysis and the serpentine Line of Beauty with far more insight than many of its author's contemporaries; refers feelingly to the Act by which in 1735 the painter had so effectively cornered the pirates; and finally defines his satirical pictures succinctly as follows:—"M. Hogarth has given to England a new class ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... circumstances of each case. But as Reason herself is to seek where she is not guided by Prudence, the mean of virtue must be defined, not by the reason of the buffoon Pantolabus, or of Nomentanus the spendthrift, but as a prudent man would define it, given an insight into the case. ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... began to question Joan. One of them, named Marguerie, who was a man with more insight than prudence, remarked upon Joan's change of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... will have to find some secret spring of inspiration, some point of vantage from which you can get your outlook and your insight." ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... to be, it was evident that they were mere children of impulse, scarcely knowing right from wrong. The greater number were pertinacious thieves, and addicted besides to many vices. Though not apparently bloodthirsty, they were accustomed to offer up human sacrifices. But little insight at that time was gained into ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... a very serious face, and said aloud, "Your scruples do your heart credit. They have given me an insight into your deep and sweet character, which emboldens me to make ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... incomprehensible. No one seemed to doubt the city's future now. Sometimes the abnormal basis upon which our great new industries had been established struck the stranger with distrust, if he happened to have the insight to notice it; but the concerns were there most undeniably, and had shifted population in their coming, and were turning out products for the markets ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... susceptibility to the emotions of others makes a man what is variously called "mellow," "humane," "large-hearted," "generous-souled." The possession of such susceptibility is an asset, first, in that it enriches life for its possessor. It gives him a warm insight into the feelings, emotions, desires, habits of mind and action of other people, and gives to his experiences with them a vivid and personal significance not attainable by any hollow intellectual analysis. It is an asset, moreover, in the purely utilitarian business ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... back than about three centuries. To read anything earlier than Shakespeare would require us to delve too deeply into linguistic bygones. And to read Shakespeare himself requires effort—but rewards it. Let us see how an insight into words will help us to interpret the Seven Ages of Man ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... of the negotiations for the Treaty of Union, the Earl of Mar formed an alliance with the celebrated Duke of Hamilton. In the consideration of public affairs at this period, it may not appear a digression to give some insight into the character of one who headed the chief party in the Scottish Parliament, and with whom the Earl of Mar was, at this period of ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... Coventry) had then, as now, very quick parts, and early insight into beautiful composition. Whatever good thing he met with, he was always ready with an immediate parallel; Latin, Greek, or from honesty into English, nothing came amiss to him. He had a quick sense of the ridiculous; and could scout a character at all absurd and ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... inspire this natural greatness, make it immense and world-swaying by bringing out the best of women, and yet how few have this chivalry! Here was the anguish, the failure. With his mind filled with these illimitable possibilities, Bedient was overcome with his insight of New York, the awfulness of ignorance and cruelty in the ordinary relations ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... often thought that much insight into the principles of balance of masses, and of mass and line, could be gained by thinking of it analogously to equilibrium in leverage. A small mass, or a simple line or accent, may be made to balance a very ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... said to give you some insight into the facilities with which your new employment abounds. I will only mention one more, because of its extensive and almost universal application to all Branches of Literature; the topic, I mean, which by the old Rhetoricians was called [Greek: ex enantion], That is, when a ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... destiny, in the sufficiency of conduct of a certain sort to secure success and good fortune, both national and personal. This faith was partly an experience and partly a demand; it turned on history and prophecy. History was interpreted by a prophetic insight into the moral principle, believed to govern it; and prophecy was a passionate demonstration of the same principles, at work in the catastrophes of the day ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... Macaulay, R. L. Stevenson, Matthew Arnold, and how many others! The journalistic touch, when it is good, means the preservation of a work. And Chesterton has that most essential part of a critic's mental equipment—what we call in an inadequately descriptive manner, insight. He was no mean critic, whatever the tricks he played, who could ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... Auldastone and Selialandsmull. Her son was Holt-Thorir, the father of Thorleif Crow, from whom the Wood-dwellers are sprung, and of Thorgrim the Tall, and Skorargeir. (2) This means that Njal was one of those gifted beings who, according to the firm belief of that age, had a more than human insight into things about to happen. It answers very nearly to the Scottish ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... the throne, Frederik's position was somewhat improved, and his free association with officials and commoners made him very popular. It was found that he could show at times surprisingly clear and sure insight into practical conditions. His interest continued active in archaeological investigations, sea- voyaging, and fishing. During the increasing national and political difficulties Frederik, because of his pronounced Danish feeling and sympathy ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... soldier, but the bearing of the man was so modest, so genial and lovable, that every one was greatly attached to him. He liked best of all to talk with John Stark, and to get him to tell of Indians and their habits and ways of fighting. And here he showed his keen insight. For Captain Stark was the best man in the Rangers. Rogers got the credit for what the Rangers did. But much of their success was due to Stark. He was a man whose judgment was sure, who did ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... his position much clearer. "Revolutionary myths ..." we read, "enable us to understand the activity, the feelings, and the ideas of a populace preparing to enter into a decisive struggle; they are not descriptions of things, but expressions of will." The italics are mine: they set in relief the insight that makes M. Sorel so important to our discussion. I do not know whether a quotation torn from its context can possibly do justice to its author. I do know that for any real grasp of this point it is necessary to read ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... not also in the sober facts of life? When the transparent artifice has been penetrated, the familiar substance underneath will be greeted none the less kindly; nay, the observer will perhaps regard the disguise as an oblique compliment to his powers of insight, and his attention may thus be better secured than had the subject worn its every-day dress. Seriously, the most matter-of-fact life has moods when the light of romance seems to gild its earthen chimney-pots into fairy minarets; and, were the story-teller but sure of laying his hands upon ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... himself, but not false testimony in his own favor. His own record has been taken sometimes as meaning what it has not meant—and sometimes as implying much more that the writer intended. A word which has required for its elucidation an insight into the humor of the man has been read amiss, or some trembling admissions to a friend of shortcoming in the purpose of the moment has been presumed to refer to a continuity of weakness. He has been injured, not by having his own ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... Katie an insight into much of Billy Towler's history, especially dwelling on that part of it which related to his being sent to the Grotto, in the hope of saving him from the evil influences that were brought to bear upon him in ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... This Oxford period may be said to have culminated in the work of George Hickes, Nonjuror and Saxonist (b. 1642—d. 1715), the author of the massive "Thesaurus Linguarum Septentrionalium," Oxford, 1705, a monument of diligence and insight, to which was appended a work of the greatest utility and necessity,—the idea was Hickes's, as was also much of the sustaining energy,—Humphrey Wanley's catalogue of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. We must not omit Edmund Gibson ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... upon her like a flood, and a bitter insight followed. Between the lines of the letter she read the reluctance, the regrets of the man who had written it. She saw that he would be faithful to her if he could, but that in her own concentration of love she had accepted what Oliver had not in truth ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... provisionally, the present work, the author cherishes the hope that it will be of assistance not only to teachers and to students in American colleges, but also to citizen-readers seeking to gain a better and a non-partisan insight into the great economic problems now claiming the ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... by some divine insight, he knew himself in the remaking—tried, found wanting; but stronger, better, surer—and he wheeled to Jane Withersteen, eager, joyous, passionate, wild, exalted. He bent to her; he left tears ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... that versatile little book of short stories, "The Lower Bureau Drawer" is Emma Upton Vaughn, a Kansas City, Kansas teacher. These heart stories, showing keen insight of human nature—especially woman nature—deal with every day life, each one a fascinating revelation, of character ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker
... naturalist would find many specimens of the same breed now in that region. But let us not be too critical on the tradition, which has led us into a quest through which I have been able to supply what I hope will be found to be a pleasant insight into that little world of action and passion,—with its people, its pursuits, and its gossips,—that, more than one hundred and seventy years ago, inhabited the beautiful banks of St. Mary's River, and wove the web of our early ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... Christian Tahaitians; and the comparison naturally arising in my mind, between what I had seen and the descriptions of the early travellers, had introduced reflections which became less and less agreeable, in proportion as I acquired a greater insight into the recent ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... Buddhism. Those are large enough. Can you imagine a science which would have[1] foretold such movements as those? The state of things out of which they rose is obscure; but, suppose it not obscure, can you conceive that, with any amount of historical insight into the old Oriental beliefs, you could have seen that they were about to transform themselves into those particular forms ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... head, grasping every point quickly, electrically, sympathetically. His slight awkwardness in speaking of his own work passed away. He expatiated, was coherent and convincing. More than once she interrupted him. Her insight was almost miraculous. She penetrated with perfect ease beneath his words, analysed his motives with him, showed him a psychological weakness in the workings of one of his characters. She was liberal with her praise, called his characters by their christian ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... Italy, the greater part of Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland,—almost half of Europe. But Charlemagne was more than a successful warrior, a conqueror of nations. He was a man of powerful intellect, whose keen insight, sound judgment, and iron will enabled him to rule wisely and well the various races of his vast empire. Charlemagne was an earnest student and a man of extensive learning for those days, familiar with Latin and Greek, proficient in logic, rhetoric, music, ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... man's presence I noticed a change in his face. Like the rest of us I had always set this fellow down as a mere poltroon and windbag, a blower of his own trumpet, as Oliver had called him. Now I got an insight into his real nature which showed me that although he might be these things and worse, he was also a very determined and dangerous person, animated by ambitions which he meant to ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... portal of some infernal subterranean structure; and far within the portal we could see the mist and the falling water; and it looked as if, but for these obstructions of view, we might have had a deeper insight into a ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... remember, Gloria," he said, "how unhappy you were over the thought of laboring among the rich instead of the poor? And yet, contemplate the result. You have not only given some part of your social world an insight into real happiness, but you are enabling the balance of us to move forward at a pace that would have been impossible without your aid." Gloria flushed with pleasure at his generous praise and replied: "It is good ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... eyes brightened and they made an effort to straighten themselves, as if "the old time came o'er them." They lingered at the window as long as they could catch the sound, and long after the volunteers had turned the corner of the street. Perhaps, if we had possessed sufficient mental insight, we might have been with those old men in the scenes that came back to their minds like a tide that had seemed to have ebbed away for ever. We might have been with them where the drum and fife were as strong drink to the warriors, firing their ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... under the head of sports and daydreams, that interests of a more objective kind are also gratified by a good work of fiction. A story that runs its logical course to a tragic end is interesting as a good piece of workmanship, and as an insight into the world. We cannot heartily identify ourselves with Hamlet or Othello, yet we should be sorry to have those figures erased from our memories; they mean something, they epitomize world-facts that compel ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... drawn her to such a person, and to keep her, even now that she knew the worst, unwilling to relinquish the thought of him. His depravity loomed to her enormous; but was that all there was to be said of him? Did his delicacy, his insight, his tempered fineness, count for nothing beside it? Must their talks, their walking through the trees, the very memory of his ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... of criticism is a science. It necessitates a thorough comprehension of each work, a lucid insight into the tendencies of the age, the adoption of a system, and faith in fixed principles—that is to say, a scheme of jurisprudence, a summing-up, and a verdict. The critic is then a magistrate of ideas, the censor of his time; he fulfils a sacred function; while in the ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... of course, he is Holmlock Shears, that is to say, a sort of miracle of intuition, of insight, of perspicacity, of shrewdness. It is as though nature had amused herself by taking the two most extraordinary types of detective that fiction had invented, Poe's Dupin and Gaboriau's Lecoq, in order to build up one in her own ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... arch-bishop Law, who had promised that place to another.——But neither the principal nor regents giving place to his motion, Mr. Blair was admitted. After his admission, his elder colleagues, perceiving what great skill and insight he had in humanity, urged him to read the classical authors; whereupon he began and read Plautus, but the Lord, being displeased with that design, diverted him from this, by meeting with Augustine's confession, wherein he inveighs sharply ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... next evening but one I had another lesson, which gave me further insight into the habits and customs of these gay and gladsome Parisians. We were completing a round of the all-night cafes and cabarets. There were four of us. Briefly, we had seen the Dead Rat, the Abbey, the Bal Tabarin the Red Mill, Maxim's, and ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... mine; as being in common to all lovers of truth. But whereas they contend that Moses did not mean what I say, but what they say, this I like not, love not: for though it were so, yet that their rashness belongs not to knowledge, but to overboldness, and not insight but vanity was its parent. And therefore, O Lord, are Thy judgements terrible; seeing Thy truth is neither mine, nor his, nor another's; but belonging to us all, whom Thou callest publicly to partake of it, warning ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... great number of those who enter early upon the practical business of life, to whom the primary school has offered a start there awakens, sooner or later, the desire to share in the stores of knowledge which human intelligence has won, in the insight into the working of the forces of nature, which it has acquired and applied to industry, in the arts which ennoble and support human action; in short to participate in the spiritual treasures which are, as it were, the birthright of those born under a luckier star. This ...
— The Condition and Tendencies of Technical Education in Germany • Arthur Henry Chamberlain
... farther in these researches than his hermit, though he always maintained that the royal anchorite and prisoner saw farther into heavenly things than any other whom he had known, and that his soul and insight rose the higher with his outward troubles ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
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