"Acumen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... putty. The mouth was rather small, thick-tipped, and put in at an odd angle; the brown eyes were large, and from their habit of looking up at one lent to the round face an incongruous solemnity. But withal there was a perceptible acumen about the man which was puzzling in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... near, thereupon interposed with a smile. "During the few years that have gone by since I've come here, I've carefully noticed that sister-in-law Secunda, cannot, with all her acumen, outwit our venerable ancestor." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... decade or two it was all well enough, but when it comes to fourscore years, one's patience gets exhausted. Carlyle's celebrated Essay, 'Characteristics,' in which this transitional period is diagnosed with unrivalled acumen, is half a century old. Men have been born in it—have grown old in it—have died in it. It has outlived the old Court of Chancery. It is high time the spurs of logic were applied ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... added, very truly, that with all his haste and petulance, Pinkerton's critical acumen was far from inconsiderable. Now, there appears to me to have been a very simple solution of the above words, so simple that perhaps it was beneath the critical acumen of the said commentators. My note on the subject is, that Mirry-land ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various
... intelligently, and have an earnest desire to understand and to know more. A form of this kind frequently accompanies a question, and if, as is sometimes unfortunately the case, the question is put less with the genuine desire for knowledge than for the purpose of exhibiting the acumen of the questioner, the form is strongly tinged with the deep orange that indicates conceit. It was at a theosophical meeting that this special shape was encountered, and it accompanied a question which showed considerable thought and penetration. The answer at first ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... him? How far was it going to go? He lived the life of a recluse, restraining his healthy passion, keeping a chaste fidelity out of habit and respect, seeking an outlet in the ardent vagaries of his fancy, and even that was a crime! With the acumen of a sick woman, she saw within him, divining his ideas, following their course, tearing off the veil behind which he concealed those feasts of fancy with which he passed his solitary hours. This persecution reached even his brain. ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... took her advice, with the results that have been seen; and her respect for the acumen of her elder child became somewhat akin ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... to associate it with a class of rude post-Roman monuments, of which we have a good many examples in different parts of the kingdom; and it may be remarked that Mr. Skene, who has made this period of our history a special study, after investigating, with his usual acumen, the evidence which exists to show that the Frisians had formed settlements in Scotland at a period anterior to that usually assigned for the arrival of the Saxons in England, has established the fact of the early settlement on our ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... partners served, somehow, to divert a relation between them which might otherwise have developed into a first-class friendship. Not that they quarreled or even disappointed each other in the close contacts of the day's work. They were admirably complementary. Alice had the business acumen, the executive grasp, the patient willingness to master details, which were needed to set Rose free for the more imaginative part of the enterprise. Both were immensely determined on success. Alice couldn't have been keener about it if every cent she ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... of great integrity and considerable acumen, but he passed an innocent and exemplary life in studious seclusion; he mixed little with the world at large, resided remote "from courts, and camps, and strife of war or peace;" and there appears ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... annoying, but it was not, to Hugo, alarming. He suspected that Peter Ledgard was in some way mixed up in it; that he, himself, had been shadowed and that Peter had stolen Tony in the crowd. In his mistrustful wrath he endowed Peter with such abnormal foresight and acumen as he ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... at length, was always personally agreeable to Thorpe. Latterly, since the erection of the mill, he had developed unexpected acumen in the disposal of the season's cut to wholesale dealers in Chicago. Nothing could have been better for the firm. Thereafter he was often in the woods, both for pleasure and to get his partner's ideas on what the firm would have to offer. The entire responsibility ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... such society. My experience is different from yours. I always pretend to know twice as much as I do, when they are about; it bluffs them off, and they are credulous sometimes as well as ignorant, notwithstanding their boasted acumen." ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... 189). Mr. Lane's studies upon the subject were painfully perfunctory. He distinctly states (Preface, p. xii.) that "the work was commenced and completed by one man," or at least that "one man completed what another commenced." With a marvellous want of critical acumen he could not distinguish the vast difference of style and diction, treatment and sentiments, which at once strikes every intelligent reader, and which proves incontestably that many hands took part in the Great Saga-book. He speaks of "Galland's very imperfect MS.," but he never took the trouble ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... to Silesia had been doubtful, all the acumen of his officials was now needed to make a show of some uncertain right to portions of the new acquisition. About this the King himself was little concerned. He had defended before the world with almost superhuman heroism the occupation of Silesia. This province was ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... controversy precipitated by the teaching of Arius, who denied the true divinity of Christ. The council was attended by 318 bishops and their assistants, among whom the young deacon Athanasius of Alexandria gained special prominence as a theologian of great eloquence, acumen, and learning. "The most valiant champion against the Arians," as he was called, Athanasius turned the tide of victory in favor of the Homoousians, who believed that the essence of the Father and of the Son is ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... mortals, or granted by heaven, or will ever be given as a gift; in order that we may possess this too, we choose as our guide Aristotle, whom we cause to be commended for his knowledge of facts, the number of his works, his ability in speaking, and the acumen of his intellectual powers. Nor will we interpret the visions and involved questions of his interpreters, since it is characteristic of a very poor intellect to grow wise from commentaries only, in which, neglecting Aristotle's meaning, the Sophists dispute about empty trifles. But his ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... to touch, unless their hands were covered with some robe. What could have been the cause of this senseless fear, it is impossible to imagine. The same men on other subjects would reason with great logical acumen. ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... was in no hurry; his mood was rather one contemplative and genial. He was a round and cherubic little man, with the face of a guileless child, the acumen of a successful counsel for soulless corporations (that is to say, of a high order), no particular sense of humor, and a great appreciation of good eating. And Maitland was famous in his day as one thoroughly conversant with the art of ordering ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... Civil war threatened: the medical fraternity, upheld by a few doubting Thomases among the more abstract followers of the science, on one side of the field, by far the greater number of those who peer into the human mechanism with mere scientific acumen on the other. Doctors, notoriously as conservative as kings and as jealous as opera singers, found themselves threatened with the loss of elderly patients whose steady degeneration was a source of respectable income. When it was discovered that New York actually held a practicing ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... shown considerable acumen. He had himself destroyed all the suburbs of the town which lay without the walls, so that the English might find no shelter there, and when they had effected a lodgment on the south side of the river, he had destroyed the greater part of the bridge, thus making it impossible ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Strathmore just as she was leaving the office, so she had not stopped to answer it. He had made several trips from Bartlesville since their first meeting, under the pretext of business, but it did not require any great acumen to discover that he came chiefly to ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... of the great of other countries, she has amply repaid the debt. She sent her Casaubon to the court of James I. of England, to be the defender of the faith. Later, she lent to England her De Lolme, who added to his distinguished political acumen such affluent philological knowledge, that he wrote one of the best works ever written on the British Constitution in the English and the French languages. She lent to Russia Le Fort, the famous general and admiral, the counsellor of Peter the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... the court has shown as little ability as could be expected from soldiers, placed in unenviable publicity, and upon a duty for which they are disqualified, both by education and acumen. Witness the lack of dignity in Hunter, who opened the court by a coarse allusion to "humbug chivalry;" of Lew. Wallace, whose heat and intolerance were appropriately urged in the most exceptional English; of Howe, whose tirade against the rebel General Johnson was ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... over me whenever I approached it. Often in those first two months I used to lean against the Mansion House in a familiar sort of way; once I struck a match against the Royal Exchange. And what an impression of financial acumen I could make in a drawing-room by a careless reference to my "block of Jaguars!" Even those who misunderstood me and thought I spoke of my "flock of Jaguars" were startled. Indeed life was very ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... of legal wits began. Before the building was done Joshua Kent had succeeded in making the owners meet part of the additional cost of the foundation, and Robert had developed an acumen that stood by him the rest of his life. But there was something for him in this job bigger than financial gain or loss. Week after week, as he overcame one difficulty after another, he was learning, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a combination beats down to his knees a man with a million dollars is not a club. The man who walks in his sleep says it is not a club. So say all of his kind with which he herds. They gather together and solemnly and gloatingly make and repeat certain noises that sound like "discretion," "acumen," "initiative," "enterprise." These noises are especially gratifying when they are made backward. They mean the same things, but they sound different. And in either case, forward or backward, the spirit of the dream is ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... acumen, in administrative and executive capacity Bismarck measures up with Csar. The smallest facts about such as Bismarck are of more than ordinary interest. Too much time cannot be spent on this great character, in an endeavor to understand the secret ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... oligarchical government with a minimum participation of popular representatives. The grandiloquent feudalism of the scheme appealed so strongly to the aristocratic Lords Proprietors that in spite of their usual acumen in politics they were blinded to its conflicts with their charter and to its utter top-heaviness. They rewarded Locke with the first patent of Carolina nobility, which carried with it a grant of forty-eight thousand acres. For forty years they clung to the fundamental constitutions, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... and persuasive extempore speaker. He possest in high degree faculties essential to great oratory—a capacious mind, retentive memory, logical acumen, vivid imagination, deep concentration, and wealth of language. He had an extraordinary personal fascination, largely due to his ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... not only possesses the right, but the power to maintain its position upon the same basis as other smaller and less powerful organizations. Speaking for myself alone, I am amazed that Robert Gorham, with his exceptional and acknowledged business acumen, should take a position with his Executive Committee which is as disadvantageous to his own interests as it ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... of business resource and acumen were beginning to assert themselves. "Oh, fiance! I see. Romance will help your article. Well, there isn't any. Captain Merrithew and my daughter were engaged before we started on this Tampico jaunt." ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... much affected by the learned Aristarchus in common conversation, to signify genius or natural acumen. But this passage has a further view: [Greek: Nous] was the Platonic term for mind, or the first cause, and that system of divinity is here hinted at which terminates in blind nature without a ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... fitness for the Enterprise, to which we have such title and vocation, it were perhaps uninteresting to say more. Let the British reader study and enjoy, in simplicity of heart, what is here presented him, and with whatever metaphysical acumen and talent for meditation he is possessed of. Let him strive to keep a free, open sense; cleared from the mists of prejudice, above all from the paralysis of cant; and directed rather to the Book itself than to the Editor of the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Cowes and Mr. Cullen of course started up simultaneously. The former gentleman got the ear of the meeting. With preliminary swaying of the hand, he looked round as one about to propound a question which would for ever establish his reputation for acumen. In his voice of quiet malice, with his frequent deliberate pauses, with the wonted emphasis on absurd ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... exceptional opportunities for making observations and comparing their results. In his several capacities as captain in the service of the Company, political agent to the Nawab of the Carnatic, or private traveller, his critical acumen was never at fault; and his wide knowledge of Oriental character and Oriental manners, enabled him to recognize the true significance of many an event and many a revolution which would have escaped the notice of less ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... purpose. After a careful reconnaissance he discovered that it possessed several doors. Here was a poser. Which would be the ribbon door? Supposing he entered the wrong one and found himself compelled to purchase a roll of muslin or a wash-hand-stand? With natural acumen he finally selected a door flanked by windows containing lace and ribbon; and waiting for a moment when the surging crowd was thickest, attempted to slip in with them. He got safely past a hero in a medal-sown uniform, but immediately after this encountered an imposing ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... was unable to do, even if it were true, which he doubted. The Bines fortune was now hanging, as to all but some of the Western properties, on the turning of the three stocks. Yet the old man's confidence in the young man's acumen was invulnerable. No shaft that Percival was able to fashion had point enough to pierce it. And he was both to batter it down, for he still had the gambler's faith in ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... business acumen. One was chastely, severely elegant, holding a single hat poised on ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... McPhail, greatly relieved. "Your acumen has pierced to the root of the matter. They do exist, but nowadays we put them into asylums. We must excuse the author for living in the psychological obscurity of the eighteenth century. It's ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... may perhaps incline to think that many of the offences specified in this Act, and in subsequent statutes, on the same subject, are of a very dubious nature, and that it must require nice legal acumen, to distinguish whether a person incurs any, and what, penalty, under the ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... wait for him. Lance remained, but the burthen of two secrets rendered him uncommunicative, when Wilmet tried to understand the cause of Cherry's delay at St. Faith's; and Alda was curious about Vale Leston and Mrs. Fulbert, whom she had seen at Kensington Palace Gardens. It did not take much acumen to exclaim, 'Still no children! Then there must ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Refugee committee set about distributing the fund to the best advantage. The ladies came out strong here, and gave yeomen service—scooping out flour, meal, tea, and sugar to the needy, and in sifting and rejecting, with rare acumen, the bogus claims of the "Heaps" who ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... concealment, a disposal of the article concealed—a disposal of it in this recherche manner, is, in the very first instance, presumable and presumed; and thus its discovery depends, not at all upon the acumen, but altogether upon the mere care, patience, and determination of the seekers; and where the case is of importance—or, what amounts to the same thing in the policial eyes, when the reward is of magnitude—the qualities in question have never been known to fail. You will ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... be well for those girls who are to lead the opposing sides of the spelling match to-day to choose with exceptional acumen—Annabel, spell that word!" So suddenly had the command been sprung upon her that, whatever knowledge poor Annabel might have possessed five seconds before, promptly flew straight out of her head, ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... coal strike, when you prayed God the gun-men might 'get' the strikers before they could organize. Come, come, man, brace up! Your book will turn up all right; and even if it doesn't there's no cause for alarm. It would take a man of extraordinary acumen to read your hieroglyphics! Cheer up, Flint. There's really nothing to ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... after the organization of the diamond trust Rhodes gave another evidence of his business acumen. He saw that the disorganized marketing of the output would lead to instability of price. He therefore formed the Diamond Syndicate in London, composed of a small group of middlemen who distribute the whole Kimberley ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... the number of aces lying between a million x and a million - x, when six million of throws are made with a die? I have not gone into any detail of all those cases in which the paradoxer finds out, by his unassisted acumen, that results of mathematical investigation cannot be: in fact, this discovery is only an accompaniment, though a necessary one, of his paradoxical statement of that which must be. Logicians ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... sciences, he advanced remarkably in religion. The abstruse depths of philosophy, which are the torture of slow engines and weak capacities, he dived into without any trouble or pain. And notwithstanding his surprising attainments and improvements, his great acumen and ready apprehension of things, whereby he was able to do more in one hour, than others in some days by hard study and close application, and though on these accounts he was much respected by the eminent ministers of the city, and learned professors of the university, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... it might be abashed momentarily, the Captain's acumen would not have been without a refuge. Who was the elderly man with stooping shoulders and small keen eyes, who sat on the other side of the fire, and had been engaged in persuading Paul that he too was a fisherman, ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... expression, have witnessed to a susceptibility in the English mind itself, in spite of the Reformation, to what is affecting in religious ceremony. Only, in religion as in politics, Browne had no turn for disputes; was suspicious of them, indeed; knowing, as he says with true acumen, that "a man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender," even in controversies not [132] necessarily maladroit—an image in which we may ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... dawn on the poor creature that she had been basely deserted by him who was sworn to be her friend and protector and she became almost demented, she tried to account for his silence in many ways but her intellectual acumen as too great and her reasoning always brought her to the one sad conclusion. However, as nothing better could be done the spirited creature made up her mind to earn her own living and that of her child, and setting her wits to work she soon obtained a situation as governess at the house of ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... nothing of what is thus told you is really true, or ever happened in fact. For can it be imagined that it is the dog[FN290] itself which is reverenced by them under the name of Hermes[FN291]? It is the qualities of this animal, his constant vigilance, and his acumen in distinguishing his friends from his foes, which have rendered him, as Plato says, a meet emblem of that god who is the chief patron of intelligence. Nor can we imagine that they think that the sun, like ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... motor cars. I was shown a row of warehouses extending along the canal for one long block which are the property of a single Chinese. Wherever I traveled in the Indies I was impressed by the business acumen and success of these impassive, industrious sons of the Flowery Kingdom. They are the Greeks of the Far East but without the Greek's unscrupulousness and lack of dependability. A Chinese will not hesitate to take advantage of you ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... that Huang Chow never checked—indeed, openly countenanced—her friendship with the many chance acquaintances she had made, even when her own instincts told her that the men were crooked; so that, knowing the acumen of her father, she was well aware that he must know ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... discovery of so many fine lines, we also owe to the acumen of Professor Lowell a reasonable explanation of what they really are. Schiaparelli termed them 'canali,' an Italian term for 'channels,' but, popularly, this soon became corrupted into the term 'canals,' and this has turned ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... of the career of this excellent magistrate was distinguished by an example of legal acumen that gave flattering presage of a wise and equitable administration. The morning after he had been installed in office, and at the moment that he was making his breakfast from a prodigious earthen dish, filled with milk and Indian pudding, he was interrupted by the appearance of Wandle ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... erit Haec amat obscurum; vult haec sub luce videri, Judicis argutum quae non formidat acumen. Et quae Desperat, tractata ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... wint,' but entirely agin' the whole-hog system." Under this perfect assumption there appeared a series of really familiar epistles, either remonstrating with or speaking of the "Gineral," or, as the Major latterly styled the President, "the Govermint;" no less admirable for the political acumen they display than for a caustic drollery, which is enforced with shrewd Yankee humour, and in the singular phraseology current amongst 'Uncle Sam's' kindred. These letters have been collected, and are published both in America and in England; and although ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... Secretaryship of State. "These scandals," observes the Spectator, "cannot, however, hide from us the fact, that of all public men in America, perhaps with one exception, Mr. Webster is he who has evinced the greatest knowledge of public affairs, the greatest acumen in administration, and the greatest common sense in emergency. High intelligence is probably the best of all substitutes for high honor—if, indeed, it does not ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... of a human being on trial for life, except it be an execution; there is no display of human ingenuity, wit and power so fascinating as that made by trained lawyers in the trial of an important case, nowhere else is exhibited such subtlety, acumen, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... of the country but also to the mental vigour of the people. The statesmen who met in council in the ancient city of Quebec during the October of 1864 gave a memorable illustration of their constitutional knowledge and their practical acumen in the famous Resolutions which form the basis of the ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... house was changing, and the reign of petty bullying, in which he had so much delighted, approaching its end. With Basterga exposed to arrest, and the girl's help become of value to the authorities, it needed little acumen to discern this. He still feared Basterga; nay, he lived in such terror, lest the part he had played should come to the scholar's ears, that he prayed for his arrest night and morning, and whenever during the day an especial fit of dread seized him. But he feared Anne also, for she might ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... science—still more remarkable, I say, is the fact that Mr. Herbert Spencer should have missed what now appears so obvious an idea. But most remarkable of all is the fact that Dr. Whewell, with all his stores of information on the history of the inductive sciences, and with all his acumen on the matter of scientific method, should not only have conceived the idea of natural selection, but expressly stated it as a logically possible explanation of the origin of species, and yet have so stated it merely ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... of the gendarmerie was unexcelled; they were everywhere they were needed; had it not been for their lightning-like acumen and prompt service, the Lord only knows what would have become of us poor Britishers in that country, as we were practically at the mercy of the spies, ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... member of the legal firm of Rae & Macpherson was perplexed and annoyed, indeed angry, and angry chiefly because he was perplexed. He resented such a condition of mind as reflecting upon his legal and other acumen. Angry, too, he was because he had been forced to accept, the previous day, a favour from a firm—Mr. Rae would not condescend to say a rival firm—with which he for thirty years had maintained ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... even the Jewish Industrial Capitalist may see in the nationalization of industry a preferable alternative to the limitation of profits under private enterprise. The same financial acumen and skill in management which has enabled him to control rings and trusts in the past would ensure him a place at the head of nationalized industries, which in effect would be nothing but gigantic trusts nominally under State control but really, like all ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... farce and a failure. The Quarterly Review, in the course of a savage diatribe, declared that it was "as dull as ditch-water and as flat as a flounder," and in a graver mood reproved it as a mere "bid for the bigoted voices of Exeter Hall." Some of the criticisms were not wanting in acumen. It was perceived at once that, as Theodora Campion is the heroine of the book, it was an error in art to kill her off in the middle of it. Moreover, it is only fair to admit that if the stormy Parliamentarian ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... laurel-garland pant, Content with my rich meed, I'll sit me down, Nor ask for fame, nor heroes' high renown, Nor wine. And ye, ye airy sprites, Born of the Morning's womb, sired of the Sun, Who cull with nice acumen, one by one, All gentle influences from the air, And from within the earth what most delights The tender roots of springing plants, whose care Distils from gross material its spirit To paint the flower and give the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... property was very real. Those who attempt to explain his early concern with the West as purely altruistic must misread his numerous letters and diaries. Nothing in his unofficial character shows more plainly than his business enterprise and acumen. On one occasion he wrote to his agent, Crawford, concerning a proposed land speculation: "I recommend that you keep this whole matter a secret or trust it only to those in whom you can confide. If the scheme I am now proposing ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... am not entitled to question either the learning or the "acumen" of the Bishop of Rochester; but I am entitled to question the interpretation which E. S. T. tells us (Vol. ii., p.27.) he puts upon the Castleacre inscription. My title to do so is this:—that in the year of grace 1084 the Arabic numerals were not only of necessity ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... the attitude of the French government appeared to me in a most unfavourable light. Ollivier, the Premier, I had long despised; it did not need much political acumen to see that he was an ambitious and conceited phrase-monger, who would let himself be led by the nose by those who had disarmed him. The Emperor himself was a wreck. I had had no doubt of that since I had one day seen him at very close quarters in the ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... that the general proposition on which this conclusion rests is too wide: it would extend to antecedent non-existence itself, of which it is evident that it comes to an end, although it does not originate. In qualifying the changes as changes of 'Being,' you manifest great logical acumen indeed! For according to your own view Nescience also (which is not 'Being') does not originate, is the substrate of manifold changes, and comes to an end through the rise of knowledge! Perhaps you will say ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... human life and vulgar nature, the sensualities and frivolities of the century, to help him. Chiabrera claimed none of these advantages. What had Tassoni for his outfit? Sound common sense, critical acumen, the irony of humor, hatred of tyrants and humbug, an acrid temper mollified by genial love of letters, a manly spirit of independence. Last, but not least, he inherited something of the old Elysian smile which played upon the lips of Ariosto, from which Tasso's ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... signalised by the presentation of the much-coveted testimonial umbrella. In the reign of the last Emperor but one, less than twenty years ago, there was an official of this stamp employed as "second Prefect" in the department of Han-yang. Many and wonderful are the stories told of his unerring acumen, and his memory is still fondly cherished by all who knew him in his days of power. We will quote one from among numerous traditions of his genius which have ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... the audience were passed out another door in the rear, where they were forced to go through the main offices of the Company. Here were stationed the gray man and all his younger assistants. Bob paused by the door. He could not but admire the acumen of the barker in selecting his men. The audience was made up of just the type of those who come to California with agricultural desires and a few hundred dollars—slow plodders from Eastern farms, ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... which arose, rendered important services to all subsequent generations, since never, probably, were those subtle questions pertaining to the Trinity, and the human nature of Christ, and predestination, and other kindred topics, discussed with so much acumen and breadth. They occupied the thoughts of the whole age, and emperors entered into the debates on theological questions with an interest exceeding that of the worldly matters which claimed their peculiar attention. It is not ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... the popular thought, on the other hand, were chiefly noted for their religious zeal and theological acumen. They represented the outgrowth of that spirit which in the Maccabean time had risked all to defend the sanctity of the temple and the right of God's people to worship him according to his law. They were known as Pharisees, because, as the name ("separated") ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... largely consisted of German-speaking Jews, akin in language and blood to a most important element in her own population. 'In a certain sense,' says Dr. Treitsch, 'the Jews are a Near Eastern element in Germany and a German element in Turkey.' He goes on with unerring acumen to lament the exodus of German-speaking Jews to the United States and to England. 'Annually some 100,000 of these are lost to Germany, the empire of the English language and the economic system that goes with it is being enlarged, while a German asset is being ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... found himself in pleasant enough quarters, surrounded by friendly faces, and made much of by all in the fort. He, being able to speak French fluently, made himself a great favorite with the men, and he enjoyed many long conversations with the Abbe, who was a man of much acumen and discernment, and saw more clearly the course which events were likely to take than did those amongst whom ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... title, place or date of printing. If we are to accept all these statements as incontrovertible, how can the apparent contradictions be reconciled? The answer had already been hinted at, but Retana solved the problem with amazing acumen, and arrived at four conclusions, which are here printed in his ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... Plano Carpini (1246) and William Rubruquis (1253), who had not indeed reached its frontiers, but had met with its people at the Court of the Great Kaan in Mongolia; whilst the latter of the two with characteristic acumen had seen that they were identical with the Seres of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... bones previously discovered by Professor Cope were related to this new type of dinosaur, but the fragments known to the Philadelphia professor gave him no idea of what the animal was like, although with his usual acumen he had discerned that they differed from any animal known to science and registered them as new under the names of Agathaumas 1873 and Monoclonius 1876. Professor Marsh re-named his supposed bison "Ceratops" ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... one picture of wifely devotion, and the instinctive good sense which is one of the secrets of feminine influence. Women seldom fail to rise to the occasion when opportunity is vouchsafed them. The late Maharani Surnomoyi of Cossimbazar managed her enormous estates with acumen; and her charities were as lavish as Lady Burdett-Coutts's. Toru Dutt, who died in girlhood, wrote French and English verses full of haunting sweetness. It is a little premature for extremists to prate of autonomy while their ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... By chance, one day, in the presence of the presbyters and the rest of his clergy, he was discussing too ambitiously the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, teaching that there was a unity in the Trinity. But Arius, one of the presbyters under his jurisdiction, a man of no inconsiderable logical acumen, imagining that the bishop was subtly introducing the doctrine of Sabellius the Libyan, from the love of controversy took the opposite opinion to that of the Libyan, and, as he thought, vigorously responded to the things said by the bishop. ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... the critical acumen with which I canvassed him, the very beau-ideal of a gentleman rider; indeed, although a very heavy man, his powerful English thorough-bred, showing not less bone than blood, took away all semblance of overweight; his ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the fathers of the new Fatherland in a sense, but we need among us lawgivers and statesmen—men who love men straight and not through the arts—men who have the same zeal for men that the arts give us when we are pure, but who are conservers and constructors, men of great force and acumen ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... unconsciously to judge all standards by his own; he is likely to be rather intolerant of any opinions but his own; it is easier for a great critic to be a great writer. In the case of Chesterton, because he is a great and original writer he has a brilliant critical acumen that probes deep into the minds of other authors and sees what is stored there in a way that other critics have, perhaps, failed to see, not because they did not choose to look for it, but rather because, almost without knowing it, critics who set out to ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... superior acumen, also, we owe two readings of Shakespeare that have made intelligible what was previously "a contradictory inconceivable." Did it ever occur to dealers in familiar quotations that there was a deal of nonsense in the following ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... desire to penetrate into some of these kennels for crushed humanity; and Finn, with the happy acumen of his tribe, seizing the first plausible pretext, was relentless, and insisted on doubting the word of the Buster. That unfortunate with the puffy face, who seemed to know his man too well to protract resistance, puffed ahead of us up the black, oozy court, with myriads ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... on "Reading," which we heard him deliver before the Lyceum at Hallowell more than forty years ago. With his lamented friend Judge B.F. Thomas, he believes that a man cannot be a great lawyer who is nothing else,—that exclusive devotion to the study and practice of the law tends to acumen rather than to breadth, to subtlety rather than to strength. "The air is thin among the apices of the law, as on the granite needles of the Alps. Men must find refreshment and strength in the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... the Saviour was born. The Augustan is, undoubtedly, the most intellectual and refined age, in point of literary and artistic taste, that the world has ever seen. A few centuries before, Greece had reached the summit of science and art. No country, in ancient or modern times, has surpassed the acumen of her philosophical writers and the aesthetic perfection of her poets and artists. Rome made use of her to embellish her cities, and inherited her taste for science and ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... caps and looks malign; Some marriageable maids behold, Blank, unapproachable and cold. Lo, the ambassador who speaks Economy political, And with gray hair ambrosial The old man who has had his freaks, Renowned for his acumen, wit, But now ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... celebrated or their style elegant, the majority of readers entirely neglected them. Nevertheless they formed a rich material for the diligent and capable historian. In using them, however, we could not expect him to show the same critical acumen, the same impartiality, as a modern writer trained in scientific criticism and the broad culture of international ideas; to expect this would be to expect an impossibility. To look at events from a national instead of a party point of view was hard; to look at ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Wood (Athen. Brit., vol. ii., col. 980, ed. 1721), all which authorities are referred to by Mr. Nichols, are sufficiently founded upon truth. He was a violent and wrong-headed writer in many respects; but he had acumen, strength, and fancy. The Bibliotheca Literaria of WASSE (although his name does not appear as the professed editor) is a truly solid and valuable publication; worthy of the reputation of the learned editor of Sallust. The work was published in numbers, which were sold at one shilling ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... subject he treats, in that Essay, with his usual learning and acumen, and with remarkable directness and condensation. It will form but one volume of the series of that extraordinary ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... scholarly attainments, legal acumen, political sagacity and oratorical power, Robert Brown Elliott stands out as the most brilliant ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... 1829, summed up in most wonderful way the work of all his predecessors and the mycologic science of his time. In reading Fries the modern student hardly knows which most to admire, the author's far-reaching, patient research, the singular acumen of his taxonomic instinct, the graceful exactness of the Latin in which his conclusions are expressed, or the delicate courtesy with which he touches the work even the most primitive, of those his predecessors or contemporaries. Nevertheless in our particular group even the determinations ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... 1836, and came to Birmingham in 1854. We took him in and he did for us. His father joined the well-known firm of Nettlefold, the wood screw makers, and in the course of time his eldest son, Joseph, succeeded him. Mr. Joseph Chamberlain soon found his feet in trade, and by his business acumen, his foresight, capacity, and shrewdness he advanced the business, which had already been highly successful, to ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... Moreover, for the training of the intellectual faculties as such, the Romans had no better resource than grammatical and literary study. Science was purely empirical, mathematics was mainly arithmetic and mensuration, and there was no room in these subjects for that exercise of discernment and acumen as well as of taste which was provided by well-directed study of the best authors. In the secondary education, therefore, the chief object sought was "the knowledge of right expression," and the acquirement of "correct, clear, and elegant diction." This was to be achieved by the most ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... near a minute. During this interval, he was thinking of the improbability of any but a bona-fide Englishman's dreaming of giving a vessel an appellation so thoroughly idiomatic, and was fast mystifying himself, as so often happens by tyros in any particular branch of knowledge, by his own critical acumen. Then he half whispered a conjecture on the subject to Vito Viti, influenced quite as much by a desire to show his neighbor his own readiness in such matters, as by any other feeling. The podesta was less struck by the distinction than his superior; ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... many musicians—professed, not really held—that the public can do no wrong, unquestionably grows out of a depreciation of the critic rather than an appreciation of the critical acumen of the masses. This depreciation is due more to the concrete work of the critic (which is only too often deserving of condemnation) than to a denial of the good offices of criticism. This much should be said for the musician, ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... was witness to an exhibition of the same spirit. A kinsman of his was a zealous Abolitionist, although not particularly gifted with controversial acumen. He and his minister, as often happened, were discussing the slavery question. The minister, like many of his cloth at that time, was a staunch supporter of "the institution," which, according to his contention, firmly rested ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... will be broader, our critical acumen shrewder, if we at once accept the thing as a part of us and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... you have found a prince of the church, pale as alabaster, sitting in his red robe, who put together the indicatory evidence of the crime that baffled you with such uncanny acumen that you stood aghast ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... business in Frankfort, and though he was still under thirty he had made a very considerable financial success. Perhaps Wheeler was proud of his son's business acumen. At any rate, he drove to town to see Bayliss several times a week, went to sales and stock exhibits with him, and sat about his store for hours at a stretch, joking with the farmers who came in. Wheeler had been ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... books of the Old Testament, and finally removed from the chair; became joint-editor of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," and finally professor of Arabic at Cambridge; he was a man of versatile ability, extensive scholarship, keen critical acumen, and he contributed not a little to vindicate the claims of the scholar in regard ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to win her. Mr. Palfrey was capable of horse-whipping a too rash pretender to his daughter's hand; and, moreover, he had three tall sons: it was clear that a suitor would be at a disadvantage with such a family, unless travel and natural acumen had given him a countervailing power of contrivance. And the first idea that occurred to him in the matter was, that Mr. Palfrey would object less if he knew that the Freelys were a much higher family than his own. It had been foolish modesty in him hitherto ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... the prose of action to which he was hurried forward. He no longer opposed Dick Avenel when that gentleman represented how detrimental it would be to his business at Screwstown if he devoted to his country the time and the acumen required by his mill and its steamengine; and how desirable it would be, on all accounts, that Leonard Fairfield should become the parliamentary representative of the Avenels. "If, therefore," said Dick, "two ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... one of those famous and lucky wits of the auspicious reign of Queen Anne, whose name it behoves us not to pass over. Mat was a world-philosopher of no small genius, good nature, and acumen.(108) He loved, he drank, he sang. He describes himself, in one of his lyrics, "in a little Dutch chaise on a Saturday night; on his left hand his Horace, and a friend on his right," going out of town from the Hague to pass that evening and the ensuing Sunday, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is harmful to the community and what is due to healthy, individual enterprise—the energy which is the sap of American citizenship. We capitalists have no fear of an honest man, provided he has the desire and the ability to protect legitimate business acumen against the slander of mere demagogues. I have a bill here," he added, drawing a printed document from his pocket, "which I am desirous to see passed by the next legislature. It embodies a charter authorizing the acquisition and merger in one ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... canvassing the editorial offices of the various magazines Eleanor had admired in the hope of discovering that she had applied for some small position there; following every clue that his imagination, and the acumen of the professionals in his service, could supply;—but his patient search was unrewarded. Eleanor had apparently vanished from the surface of the earth. The quest which had seemed to him so simple a matter when he first undertook it, now began to assume ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... to survey his unruly flock. It was plain that they were baiting their overlord. Presson's acumen in politics enlightened him. An angry man may be made to antagonize the neutrals and even to insult his friends—and Thelismer Thornton was not patient when provoked. There was shrewd management behind ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... returned home when it ended, having, though barely of age, already gained distinction as a soldier, and acquired the courtesy of manner which distinguished him till later life, and the blandness of which often blinded unfamiliar acquaintances to the penetration and acumen, the honesty and courage that were the foundations of his character. As his belief changed, and the necessity for free speech was laid upon him, he ceased to disguise his real feelings and became even too ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... twenty-two lots, all in the heart of the city, for practically a song. Six of these lots were situated where now is a big planing mill. Several lots I sold to a German for a span of mules. The German is alive today and lives in Phoenix a wealthy man, simply because he had the foresight and acumen to do what I did not do—hang on to his real estate. If I had kept those twenty-two lots until now, without doing more than simply pay my taxes on them, my fortune today would be comfortably up in the six figures. However, I sold the lots, and there's no use ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... pleasant. The fact was, and it is necessary to insist on it, that Mr Racksole, owner of the Grand Babylon Hotel, was by no means in a state of self-satisfaction. A mystery had attached itself to his hotel, and with all his acumen and knowledge of things in general he was unable to solve that mystery. He laughed at the fruitless efforts of the police, but he could not honestly say that his own efforts had been less barren. The public was ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... given to larvae salamanders of the genus Amblystoma. It required the extraordinary acumen of the great Cuvier at once to recognize, when the first specimens [v.03 p.0069] of the Gyrinus edulis or Axolotl of Mexico were brought to him by Humboldt in the beginning of the 19th century, that these Batrachians were not really related to the Perennibranchiates, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... the purpose of centering attention upon the poet's actual life, has eschewed the larger task of literary criticism and has also avoided the subject of Vergil's literary sources—a theme to which scholars have generally devoted too much acumen. The book is therefore of brief compass, but it has been kept to its single theme in the conviction that the reader who will study Vergil's works as in some measure an outgrowth of the poet's own experiences will find a new meaning in not ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... hopeless love he had certainly misread all the songs and sayings. He kept the idea in his mind and went on regarding her in the light of it with a pondering smile, turning it over and finding a lively pleasure in his curious acumen in such an unwonted direction. It was a very flower of emotional naivete, though a moment later he cast it from him as a weed, grown in idleness; and indeed it might have abashed him to say what concern it had in the mind of the Order of St. Barnabas. It was gratifying, ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... which would otherwise escape the ear. The discovery of these remarkable and subtle properties of a delicate contact had indeed confronted Edison; he had held them in his grasp, they had stared him in the face, but not-withstanding all his matchless ingenuity and acumen, he, blinded perhaps by a false hypothesis, entirely failed to discern them. The significant proof of it lies in the fact that after the researches of Professor Hughes were published the carbon transmitter was promptly modified, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... interference—the tactless kind—might merely render it worse. It would be awfully difficult, if not impossible, to explain to Myra. If an open rupture were to be avoided (and he had profound faith in his father's acumen), then Myra must remain in ignorance. But was she to be allowed ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... ablest commentaries on the Germania and Agricola have appeared within a comparatively recent period, some of them remarkable examples of critical acumen and exegetical tact, and others, models of school and college editions. It has been the endeavor of the editor to bring down the literature pertaining to Tacitus to the present time, and to embody in small compass the ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... trace unsympathetically; he was unable to simulate any enthusiasm on the subject of poor Freddie, whom he had sized up with passable acumen as a spoiled and coddled child completely under the thumb of ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... the true secret of her husband's aversion to his son and of his oath a month ago to see that same son hang if Mr. Caryll succumbed to the wound he had taken. With some women, to suspect a thing is to believe that thing. Her ladyship was of these. She set too high value upon her acumen, upon ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... an exemplary lawyer, delivered in a style that was like the trickling of sawdust, would succeed in rousing emotions which the glorious rhetoric of the Orient had failed to awaken; but Page Wood had been a Sunday School teacher for thirty years, and my Father was always unduly impressed by the acumen of pious barristers. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... element in Firmstone's anxious mind. Responsive to every mood, fiercely unsparing of herself, yet every attempted word of grateful appreciation from him had been anticipated and all but fiercely repelled. With all his acumen, Firmstone yet failed to comprehend two very salient features of a woman's heart, that, however free and spontaneous she may be, there is one emotion instinctively and jealously guarded, that she will reject, with indignation, gratitude offered as a ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... ages had worshipped. The captivating power of ancient Babylon. The mighty prowess of the Medo-Persian, the power that held all the world in subjection and awe. The Grecian polish. The Roman legal acumen, and martial perfection. All these things seemed combined in this one notable man. And added to all this, there was his resistless attractiveness, his beauty of face, his grace of form, his wondrous voice, his regal air—"all the ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... citizens and residents of those islands, that the royal Council of the Indias—which, as it were a crucible for the new world, estimates services, approves merits, and deliberates as to rewards, with so much acumen, equality, and justice—allow the claims of Filipinas before those of others who, by serving in Flandes, Italia, and Alemania, try to get hold of the best posts, not alone of the Indias, but even of the islands themselves which they never entered. For, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... and you dream of annihilating the centuries with a little dubious popular science!" Then he turned to the other critics of Indian administration—his quondam supporters. He analysed the character of these "members for India" with a vigour and acumen which deprived them of speech. The East, he said, had had its revenge upon the West by making certain Englishmen babus. His honourable friends had the same slipshod minds, and they talked the same pigeon-English, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... what he perceived to be so uncongenial to Arthur's mind. It was however to be regretted, that he never paid the least attention to mathematical studies. That he should not prosecute them with the diligence usual at Cambridge, was of course to be expected; yet his clearness and acumen would certainly have enabled him to master the principles of geometrical reasoning; nor, in fact, did he so much find a difficulty in apprehending demonstrations, as a want of interest, and a consequent inability ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... The Yellow Room has been cleared up, this is not the time to tell of Rouletabille's adventures in America. Knowing the young reporter as we do, we can understand with what acumen he had traced, step by step, the story of Mathilde Stangerson and Jean Roussel. At Philadelphia he had quickly informed himself as to Arthur William Rance. There he learned of Rance's act of devotion and the reward he thought himself entitled to for it. A rumour of his ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... and a copy of this very "Last Supper," done by Rubini the younger, at Florence, I had known, for some time, to be in the possession of Nicolino. This point, therefore, I considered as sufficiently settled. I chuckled excessively when I thought of my acumen. It was the first time I had ever known Wyatt to keep from me any of his artistical secrets; but here he evidently intended to steal a march upon me, and smuggle a fine picture to New York, under my very nose; expecting me to know nothing of the matter. I resolved to quiz him ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... 1850 was Creuzer's Mythology. In 1845 he denounced the rationalism of Lobeck in investigating the Mysteries; but in 1857 he preferred him as a guide to those who proceed by analogy. With increase of knowledge had come increase of restraining caution and sagacity. The critical acumen was not greater in the Vorhalle that when he wrote on the Philosophumena, but instead of being employed in a chosen cause, upon fixed lines, for welcome ends, it is applied impartially. Ernst ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... lucem proferre hactenus distuli, judicii tui acumen subveritus magis quam bipennis. Tandem aliquando oden hanc ad te mitto sublimem, teneram, flebilem, suavem, qualem demum divinus (si musis vacaret) scripsisset Gastrellus: adeo scilicet sublimem ut inter legendum dormire, adeo flebilem ut ridere velis. Cujus elegantiam ut melius inspicias, versuum ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... which American antiquarianism has been so prolific. He was not open to the temptation that leads those who are first in the field to magnify its marvels, and he is equally free from that tendency to belittle them which betrays the desire of later explorers to display their own superior acumen. He makes no attempt to reconstruct the past by piecing together accumulated details and calling to his aid the imaginative faculty, which, in history and science as well as in art, gives form and life to its material. But his conclusions, if general in nature and limited in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... modification," whichever came first, as though the one meant much the same as the other. I observe that most of the leading writers on the subject are still unable to catch sight of the distinction here alluded to, and console myself for my want of acumen by reflecting that, if I was misled, I was misled in ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... selection of Alloa shows their acumen. Which of us was likely to speak to him about tonight? Or was he likely ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... that they are Shakespeare's, as well as the others, excepting LOCRINE, but he speaks of all of them with great contempt, as quite worthless productions. This condemnatory sentence is not, however, in the slightest degree convincing, nor is it supported by critical acumen. I should like to see how such a critic would, of his own natural suggestion, have decided on Shakespeare's acknowledged masterpieces, and what he would have thought of praising in them, had the public opinion imposed on him the duty of admiration. THOMAS, ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... figured upon a week at least there before the second officer of the Halfmoon could ingratiate himself sufficiently into the goodwill of the Hardings to learn their plans, and now they were congratulating themselves upon their acumen in selecting so fit an agent as the Frenchman for the work he had handled so expeditiously and ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Jones is a member of the Stock Exchange and, amongst other trivial failings, he possesses one which is not altogether unknown in his profession. He cannot resist a small wager. On several occasions he has gambled with me and shown himself to be a gentleman of considerable acumen. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... I got up early and am ready to go with you! I can tell them about what my great-grandmother really wore when it all happened, and it will be such a help to them!" Miss Adair exclaimed with great business acumen shining in her eyes. Mr. Vandeford gave up the fight, piloted her into his car, and gave the command, "Office!" to the very decorous, but very much ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... definition of him. When he read his play "The Street Walker" in drawing rooms and one lady told him it had the poetic symbolism of Tchekhov, and another said that it suggested the biting realism of Brieux, he never, in his most secret thoughts, questioned the acumen of either lady. Harold's speech, even if you heard it in the next room and could not see him, told you that he had no sense of the absurd,—a throaty staccato, with never a downward ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... because—as he since owned in excuse for a simplicity which, I dare say, weighed on his conscience more than any of the thousand-and-one crimes he may have committed in the course of his illustrious life—he had been employed by the marchesa as a spy upon Leonard, and, with an Italian's acumen in affairs of ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... prose writer before he was widely known as a poet. His works in prose comprise such subjects as literary criticism, education, theology, and social ethics. As a critic of literature, he surpasses all his great contemporaries. Neither Macaulay nor Carlyle possessed the critical acumen, the taste, ana the cultivated judgment of literary works, in such fullness ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... cited will serve to show the spirit in which Darwin entered upon his geological studies, and the perusal of the following pages will furnish abundant proofs of the enthusiasm, acumen, and caution with which ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... them, and I went to see him as he requested for that purpose. He told me at the same time that though he did not usually read the "Times," he had taken it to read my letters. He asked me many questions about the principality, showing his great interest, as well as his political acumen, and amongst the questions was one which, at the time, gave me great thought, and still retains its significance. It was, "Have the Montenegrins any institutions on which a national future can be built?" He was desirous of knowing if Montenegro could be made the ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... not have committed himself to a lie thus easily disproved, I thought. Only necessary lies were worth the risk for a man of acumen such as his. But even the most crafty of mortals is fallible, I reflected, and liable to make some insignificant mistake, which, like one stone wrongly placed in the foundation of a vast building, renders the whole structure unstable. Possibly Wildred had found a ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... 'coffee bery' in small cups at his own establishment in Devereux Court, Strand. Some two years later we have news of 'Will's,' the most famous, perhaps, of the coffee-houses. Here Dryden held forth with pedantic vanity: and here was laid the first germ of that critical acumen which has since become a distinguishing feature in English literature. Then, in the City, one Garraway, of Exchange Alley, first sold 'tea in leaf and drink, made according to the directions of the most knowing, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... were suggested to his legal acumen. Contrary to his usual secretive habit, Sir Donald suggests these to Oswald, who in turn comments upon them to Alice and Esther, with all ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee |
