"Cleverness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so. For she found her pleasure in doing many things, and in the fact that there were so many. She rejoiced daily that she was free, and her own mistress in everything; free to do these many things denied to other young women, and that she had the health and position and cleverness to carry them on and through to success. She did them all, and equally well and gracefully, whether it was the rejection of a too ambitious devotee who dared to want to have her all to himself, or the planning of a woman's luncheon, or the pushing ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... and pasture divided by hairy bullfinches, or, again, over light plough and stone walls; and to this fact may be attributed the exceptional number of good performers over a country that this district turns out. Both men and horses have always appeared to us to reach a very high standard of cleverness. ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... the ring were feeling better too. Only one peep she would take, hopeful that at last its strange enchantment might be past. If she could look into its depths without the blackness coming close she would know, with utter certainty, that Dr. Callandar's cleverness had circumvented the power of her old enemies. "They" would trouble her ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... and characteristic part of the conventional Italian lyric apparatus which Wyatt transplanted was the 'conceit.' A conceit may be defined as an exaggerated figure of speech or play on words in which intellectual cleverness figures at least as largely as real emotion and which is often dragged out to extremely complicated lengths of literal application. An example is Wyatt's declaration (after Petrarch) that his love, living in his heart, advances to his face and ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... at a furious pace, both of them sledging heavily, the advantage of reach and height sparing Morgan much of the heavy punishment his opponent lacked the cleverness to avoid. While the fellow doubtless was a champion among the men of his range, he had little chance against Morgan, imperfect as he was at that game. In a few minutes of incessant hammering, no breathing spell to break the fierce encounter, Morgan had chopped the cowboy's face ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... for this man's cleverness overwhelmed her. At every step he contrived to put her in the wrong; moreover she was crushed by the sense that he had justice on his side. She had bought and she must pay. Why had she bought? Not for any advantage of her own, but from an impulse of human pity—to ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... put down the letter. Its mixture of defiance, patronage and persuasion—its young angry cleverness—would have tickled a naturally strong sense of humour at any other time. But really the matter was too serious to ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... immigrant not many years earlier. From this professor, Michael J. Pupin, came the idea of "loading" a telephone line, in such a way as to reinforce the electric current. It enabled a thin wire to carry as far as a thick one, and thus saved as much as forty dollars a wire per mile. As a reward for his cleverness, a shower of gold fell upon Pupin, and made him in an instant as rich as one of the grand-dukes of his ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... the cleverness of the boy's idea, I stretched out my arms, seized a branch overhead, and in spite of my numbness, swung myself up and stood on it, holding by the branch of the great pine close behind the two small trees to which ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... will by this method express 6 or 60 by stretching out the thumb and little finger and closing the rest of the fingers. The addition of the fourth finger to the two thus used signifies 7 or 70; and so on. "It is said that between two brokers settling a price by thus snipping with the fingers, cleverness in bargaining, offering a little more, hesitating, expressing an obstinate refusal to go further, etc., are as clearly indicated as though the bargaining were being carried ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... make out what made Mr. WILLIAM HEWLETT persist in Introducing William Allison (SECKER). Probably a nice general conviction (rather infectious; I caught it) of his own cleverness. If his work wants a good deal of pulling together separate bits of it are confoundedly well done. The schoolboy conversations (William is a Winchester man, thrown into a lawyer's clerkship straight from the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... obscure family, of the name of Dyves. Her portrait represents her as handsome, and her history vouches for her cleverness. It was probably owing to both that she was married to Mr Clayton, then holding an appointment in the treasury, and also the agent for the great Duke of Marlborough's estate, both of them appointments which implied a certain degree ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... not a commonplace girl whom Corbett was to marry. On the contrary, she was exceptionally gifted, and a young woman whose cleverness had been supplemented by an elaborate education. There was, however, running through her character a vein of what might be called emotionalism. The habit of concentration, acquired through study, seemed rather to intensify ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... sir!" from Frank Scherman, was brought properly to pass. Done with cleverness and quickness from beginning to end, and taking the audience utterly by surprise, Leslie's little combination of wit and sagacity had been throughout a signal success. The actors crowded round her. "We'd no idea of it!" "Capital!" ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... object of pity. The damage he had received in the imagination of his supporters was incalculable, and while they burned with indignation, they instinctively paid a treacherous tribute to Cobbens's amazing cleverness and audacity. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... Miss Sydney, surely—with your cleverness! Listen to this, then; perhaps you like it better that I call you ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... his parishioners. Zora disliked to be called a parishioner. She disliked many things in Nunsmere. Her mother, Mrs. Oldrieve, however, loved Nunsmere, adored the Vicar, and found awe-inspiring in his cleverness ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... bridges," said Hetta, to whose clever eyes the dodge was quite apparent. But in spite of her cleverness Mrs. Bell and Susan had soon moved their chairs round to the table, and were looking through the contents of Aaron's portfolio. "But yet he may be a wolf," thought the poor widow, just as she was kneeling down to say ...
— The Courtship of Susan Bell • Anthony Trollope
... his powers in the author. Oftentimes since then, in pursuing French tragedies, I have fancied two marks of admiration at the end of each line, as hieroglyphics of the author's own admiration at his own cleverness. Our genuine admiration of a great poet is a continuous undercurrent of feeling! it is everywhere present, but seldom anywhere as a separate excitement. I was wont boldly to affirm, that it would be scarcely more difficult to push a stone out ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Chinaman, and was reputed to be one of the shrewdest dealers in the Flowery Land. If making money fast be the test of cleverness, there was not a merchant in the province of Kwang Tung who had earned a better right to be called clever. Who owned so many fields of the tea-plant, who shipped so many bales of its leaves to the little island in the west, as did Chang Wang? It was whispered, ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... you must know." Lanyard dropped for the moment his tone of raillery and bent forward, emphasizing his points by tapping the table with a forefinger. "Through some oversight of mine or cleverness of yours—I can't say which—perhaps both—you have succeeded in penetrating my secret. What then? You become envious of my success. In short, I stand in your light: I'm always getting away with something you might have lifted ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... down on their funny little descendant in his sailor-suit, with his short-cropped, dark head. A quaint little figure against the gleaming white fur, dreaming—what?—he could not have told you, for he had not much cleverness in telling what he thought. But his music-dreams were very charming nevertheless, and in after life, whenever anything beautiful or exquisite came in his way, Basil's thoughts always flew back to the old library and ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... system of torment, and made up for it as far as they could by respect and kindness, which always, however, took more or less the form of banter. It is not to be expected that boys will ever be made to see that steady, strenuous industry, even when it fails, is a greater and a better thing than idle cleverness, but those few who were so far in advance of their years as to have some intuition of this fact, felt for the character of Daubeny, a value which gave him an influence of a rare and important kind. For nothing could ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... not merely, perhaps one ought to say, not chiefly, to be assimilated through our brains. The best preparation for the doing of the will of God and the progressive entering into His mind, is an obedient life. Purity of character will carry us farther on this path than cleverness of brains. Our Lord's own rule is: He that doeth the will shall know of the doctrine. In other words, we understand the mind of God and attain to the illumination of the conscience, through sympathetic response to the will so far ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... power. We shall show you also that sufficient time elapsed to enable M. Godin, by great skill and celerity, to make away with the evidences of his guilt in time to enable him to be present with Messrs. Osborne and Allen at the examination. In short, we shall unravel before you a crime which, for cleverness of conception and adroitness of execution, has never been equalled in the ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... charming little book; and whether we regard its subject, cleverness, or delicacy of sentiment and expression,—to say nothing of its type and orthography,—it is likely to be a most acceptable present to young or old, be their peculiar taste for religion, morals, ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... the speed and prompt regularity with which they were produced; and the fertile ingenuity with which the pill of political economy is wrapped up in the confectionery of a tale, may stand as a marvel of true cleverness and inventive dexterity. Of course, of imagination or invention in a high sense there is not a trace. Such a quality was not in the gifts of the writer, nor could it in any case have worked within such limitations as those set by the matter and ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... cleverness, and promised to be ready in good season. "Perhaps I had best wear my brown silk to do credit to Mrs. Merrill's birthday party," she said, and wondered why Ruth became so silent and looked so sober. For a moment Ruth was tempted ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis
... expect good things from the writer of 'Concerning Isabel Carnaby,' and we are not disappointed. Her present venture has all the cleverness and knowledge of life that distinguished its predecessor."-London ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... insignificance in presence of Jack. His admiring follower went after him with a swell of pride. He was a poor enough rogue himself, hustled and abused by everybody, an unsuccessful and shabby vagabond, notwithstanding his new fortune; but Jack was the glorified impersonation of cleverness and wickedness and triumph to Wodehouse. He grew insolent when he was permitted to put his arm through that of his hero, and went off with him trying to copy, in swagger and insolence, his careless step and well-bred ease. Perhaps Jack Wentworth felt a little ashamed of himself as he emerged ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... nation. You may interfere with the present government not at all, if you choose, provided only that my own commands are obeyed when relayed through you. I choose you because you have courage, and resource, and because you have the Yanqui cleverness which will understand your nation and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... view of the confusion Westermarck has already created in recent scientific literature by his specious pleading, I need not apologize for the frequency of my polemics against him. His imposing erudition and his cleverness in juggling with facts by ignoring those that do not please him (as e.g., in case of the morality of the Kaffirs and Australians, and the "liberty of choice" of their women) make him a serious obstacle to the investigation of the truth regarding man's sexual ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... point. As for cleverness it isn't that I've so much of that, but I use what I've got. Well, have you anything more ...
— Plays of Near & Far • Lord Dunsany
... head upon her clenched hands. How empty, empty her hopes had been! Even his boyhood had disappointed her, in spite of his cleverness at his books. The irritability of his childhood had become moroseness, and he had alienated more often than he had attached his friends. A certain passionate sincerity, however, had never been lacking in his worst ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... when she was in England. She was one of my most intimate friends, warm-hearted and kind, a charming companion, with all the liveliness and originality of an Irishwoman. For seventeen years I was in constant correspondence with her. The cleverness and animation as well as affection of her letters I cannot express; certainly women are superior to men ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... snatching them away, and running, and being caught, was tame to her eager longing for greater adventure. And now she walked rapidly about the roads, her eyes full of despair, her heart heavy, her brain active and contemptuous. She knew her own cleverness. She knew it too well. And it was smarting now at being proved such an ignominiously valueless possession. She might be clever, she might have brains enough to despise May Pearcey; but she had not the power ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... for many things: for his physical courage as he approaches the bear in single combat, for his uncomplaining endurance of hardships, for his unceasing industry, the cleverness of his handicraft, his unsullied integrity, sunny good-humour, and simple dignity. But, most of all, he claims my respect for the way he brings up his children. "A babe in the house is a well-spring of pleasure," is a pretty theory, but Charles Lamb reminds us that each ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... egregious muff he is!" she said to herself, contemptuously. "There is no cleverness in fooling such an imbecile as that. I am going on velvet so far; I only hope my lady may be as easily dealt with as my lady's ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... the dwarf, promised even to outstrip his father in cleverness. Between the hunger that he often suffered, and the persistent tertian fevers, he was very thin and his complexion was citreous. He was not, like his father, deformed, but slender, delicate, with sparkling eyes and rapid, jerky motions. He looked, as the ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... only his cleverness; he knew how eager you were and he simply led you on to almost propose to him yourself! That was good stuff about not knowing he cared for you down in Mexico until you were leaving. What would you say if I were to tell you that he ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... you don't mean it for an epigram, I'll forgive you,—but don't let it happen again. Now, as to Christine Farley. I'll let you be clever for once, if you'll turn your cleverness to devising some way to aid her to an art education. Can you ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... Unanimism. The name is remembered; perhaps the books are read. But it will not be found in the books. They are childish, just as the English novels which endeavoured to portray the soul of the generation were coarse and conceited. Behind all the conscious manifestations of cleverness and complexity lay a fundamental candour of which only a flickering gleam can now be recaptured. It glints on a page of M. Romains's Europe; the memory of it haunts Wilfred Owen's poems; it touches Keeling's letters; it hovers over these letters of Charles Sorley.[14] ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... not to be denied the touchdown so urgently needed. Sheer weight carried Chester back, as it seemed, helplessly. Plainly the only way to counteract this advantage on the part of Harmony was through cleverness and swiftness. Captain Winters unbottled another of the tricks which old Joe Hooker had taught them, and the crowd gasped in wonder as they saw the tide again turn in Chester's favor, since they had possession ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... Bodagh, "but upon my credit, Biddy, you wor a pop afore him for all that. Divil a thing I, or John, or the others, could do wid only one gun an' a case o' pistols against so many—still we would have fought life or death for poor Una anyhow. But Biddy, here, good girl, by her cleverness and invention saved us the danger, an' maybe was the manes of savin' some of our lives or theirs. God knows I'd have no relish to be shot myself," said the pacific Bodagh, "nor would I ever have a day or night's pace if I had the blood of a fellow-crathur ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... but he was no fool, and with all his gentleness he wasn't one to be imposed upon. Flynn had understood him. He was polite and very gentle, but Sagorski, the White Hope, knew what he was when aroused. I wondered if Marcia Van Wyck with all her cleverness might ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... superfluous advice, we can readily pardon a man living in the atmosphere of the old French salons, for falling somewhat under the special charm of their leaders. It was a charm full of subtle flattery. These women were usually clever and brilliant, but their cleverness and brilliancy were exercised to bring into stronger relief the talents of their friends. It is true that many of them wrote, as they talked, out of the fullness of their own hearts or their own intelligence, and with no thought of a public; but it was only an incident in their lives, another form ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... not speak. He, too, was silent for a long time. "They say that French cleverness..." he babbled suddenly, as though in a fever... "that's false, it always has been. Why libel French cleverness? It's simply Russian indolence, our degrading impotence to produce ideas, our revolting parasitism in ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... no doubt a Wolf's first and best guide, but gifted parents are a great start in life. The dusky-maned cub had had a mother of rare excellence and he reaped the advantage of all her cleverness. He had inherited an exquisite nose and had absolute confidence in its admonitions. Mankind has difficulty in recognizing the power of nostrils. A Gray-wolf can glance over the morning wind as a ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... times, it always happened to rain, except once; and that once the Shrewsbury mail carried me so rapidly away, that I had not time to examine the sunshine, or see whether it might not be some gilt Birmingham counterfeit; for you know, men of Birmingham, that you can counterfeit—such is your cleverness—all things in heaven and earth, from Jove's thunderbolts down to a tailor's bodkin. Therefore, the gloom is to be charged to my bad luck. Then, as to the noise, never did I sleep at that enormous Hen ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... She beats all the women I have ever seen in the course of all my well-spent life! They are babies compared to her. I am a green-horn myself and a fool in her hands—an old fool. She is unsurpassable in lies." His lordship's admiration for Becky rose immeasurably at this proof of her cleverness. Getting the money was nothing—but getting double the sum she wanted and paying nobody—it was ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... attainment; art, science; technicality, technology; practical knowledge, technical knowledge. knowledge of the world, world wisdom, savoir faire [Fr.]; tact; mother wit &c (sagacity) 498; discretion &c (caution) 864; finesse; craftiness &c (cunning) 702; management &c (conduct) 692; self-help. cleverness, talent, ability, ingenuity, capacity, parts, talents, faculty, endowment, forte, turn, gift, genius; intelligence &c 498; sharpness, readiness &c (activity) 682; invention &c 515; aptness, aptitude; turn for, capacity for, genius for; felicity, capability, curiosa felicitas ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... He smoothed the coverlet over the tiny form, while Mary and Humpy huddled in the doorway. Mary wept; Humpy was awed into silence by his old friend's perversity. For years he had admired The Hopper's cleverness, his genius for extricating himself from difficulties; he was deeply shaken to think that one who had stood so high in one of the most exacting of professions should have fallen so low. As The Hopper imperturbably buttoned his coat and walked toward the door, ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... concealed with such cleverness that their position could not be detected by the Belgians. Against such methods and against the terrible power of the German guns the Belgian artillery seemed quite ineffective. Firing came to an end at 9.30 on Friday, and the garrison escaped, ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... blooming cleverness. She's a caulker, Sissie is; you don't take a rise out of Sissie in a hurry. She knows that if I knew who the other bloke was, I'd blow upon her little game to him and put him off her. And I WOULD, s'ep me taters; for I'm nuts on that girl. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... early in his career man discovered that mutual aid, or team work, is, on the whole, in the struggle for existence and the pursuit of happiness, a more effective factor than physical strength or individual cleverness. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... hideous pessimism, enthusiasts at various stages of Parnassus, the peak of which is lighted with a huge dollar sign. A friendly, kindly lot, hard-working and temperamental, with some brilliance and a rather high level of cleverness—slaves of the magazine, probably, and therefore not able to throw stones farther into the future than the end of the month. This is not a country in which literature and art can ever grow big; the cost of living is too high. The modern Chatterton detests garrets and must drive something with an ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... language too; but surely nobody can expect that the soul of the watchman should understand it. Be that as it may, it did comprehend it; for in our souls there germinate far greater powers than we poor mortals, despite all our cleverness, have any notion of. Does she not show us—she the queen in the land of enchantment—her astounding dramatic talent in all our dreams? There every acquaintance appears and speaks upon the stage, so entirely in character, ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Macnulty to sit at the open window of the drawing-room and look out upon the "glittering waves." In giving Miss Macnulty her due, we must acknowledge that, though she owned no actual cleverness herself, had no cultivated tastes, read but little, and that little of a colourless kind, and thought nothing of her hours but that she might get rid of them and live,—yet she had a certain power of insight, and ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... looked from one young face to the other, enjoying the friendly bickering and feeling happy that he was no dampener to their fun, for they accepted him as one of themselves. Mrs. Williams' hearty laugh urged them on to further efforts at cleverness. ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... game to keep a store in the bush, ef you be a smart man,' observed Zack, with a leer, after a few minutes' devotion to the contents of his tin plate. By this adjective 'smart' is to be understood 'sharp, overreaching'—in fact, a cleverness verging upon safe dishonesty. 'I guess it's the high road to bein' worth some punkins, ef a feller has sense to ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... of political economy, of statesmanship, of art and literature, finance and religion. I knew nothing about all these things, but, thanks to an animated air of attention, I steered safely between the rocks and won a reputation for cleverness. ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... men are very dull," replied the other voice. "Now I should have suspected at once that the man was not a German. But he shall answer for his cleverness. Let him be removed at once. We have word from the vessel outside that they are short of oxygen, and you must be locked out and ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... I have done my little span? What new adventures lie in store for it? Across the Ponte Vecchio in Florence runs a gallery of portraits: at the south end of this gallery there is or was a corner given over to a copyist. He strikes you dumb with the cleverness of his work, but he has only an eye and a hand—he hasn't a soul. A copy is to the original what a dummy is to a live man, no matter how amazingly well done the copy is. The original, the dream; nothing else satisfies the ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... years played such an important role, was the son of an employee of the Dataria, who, thanks to skilful financial operations, had left a fortune of a million francs. Monsignor Folchi inherited his father's cleverness, and revealed himself to be a financier of the first rank in such wise that the commission gradually relinquished its powers to him, letting him act exactly as he pleased and contenting itself with approving the reports which he laid before it at each meeting. The Patrimony, however, yielded scarcely ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... as our pastor said once, at Baptist Church——By the way, we haven't seen you there yet, and of course your husband was raised up a Baptist, and I do hope he won't drift away from the fold, of course we all know there isn't anything, not cleverness or gifts of gold or anything, that can make up for humility and the inward grace and they can say what they want to about the P. E. church, but of course there's no church that has more history or has stayed by the true principles of Christianity better than ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... this gentleman," said Grassini, breaking in upon the conversation in his slow and stately manner; "and I cannot say that what I have heard is much to his credit. He undoubtedly possesses a certain showy, superficial cleverness, though I think his abilities have been exaggerated; and possibly he is not lacking in physical courage; but his reputation in Paris and Vienna is, I believe, very far from spotless. He appears to be a gentleman of—a—a—many adventures and unknown antecedents. It is said that he ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... how a great scandal threatened to affect the kingdom of Bohemia, and how the best plans of Mr. Sherlock Holmes were beaten by a woman's wit. He used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it of late. And when he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always under the honourable title ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... this man,—I knew that Woodford would meet the loss, if it stripped the coat off of his shoulders,—meet it with a smile and some swaggering comment. And I knew as well that, if by any hook or crook he could prevent the contract from being carried out, he would do it with the devil's cleverness. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... feelings passed through my mind as I read these lines. But they were all lost in my wonder at Fida's cleverness in being able to read my face, as if it had been a book. I was grateful to her for the good advice she gave me, and now felt ashamed for having been ashamed before. The best way I thought to prove my thankfulness would be to act openly and naturally as Fida had pointed out, ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... Nevertheless the people there (although the snow was fifty feet deep, and all their breath fell behind them frozen, like a log of wood dropped from their shoulders), yet they managed to get along, and make the time of the year to each other, by a little cleverness. For seeing how the snow was spread, lightly over everything, covering up the hills and valleys, and the foreskin of the sea, they contrived a way to crown it, and to glide like a flake along. Through the sparkle of the whiteness, and the wreaths of windy tossings, and the ups ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... nature, and her lack of betrayed fear, in that. With her, you know, you've never broken, quite the contrary, and she likes you as much as ever. We're leaving town; it will be the end; just now therefore it's nothing to ask. I'll ask to-night," Kate had wound up, "and if you'll leave it to me—my cleverness, I assure you, has grown infernal—I'll make ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... quality to be dilated upon; it would not repay ambition or curiosity. It is a quality mostly attributed to the saints, and a biographer prefers dilating upon the defects of his hero, upon some adventure or scandal—means by which it is easy, with a spark of cleverness, to make a monster of a saint: for, alas! the most rooted convictions are often sacrificed for the sake of amusing a reader who is difficult to please, and ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... things up with a parrot-like sharpness, but haven't intelligence enough to make any practical application of them. A woman closely resembles a parrot in her mental processes, and in the use she makes of fine phrases which she does not understand to produce an effect of cleverness—such ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... was very happy in the society of a companion who seemed really to have a natural taste for the manufacture of pretty little head-dresses from the merest fragments of material in the way of lace and ribbon. Diana had all that versatile cleverness and capacity for expedients which is likely to be acquired in a wandering and troubled life. She had learned more in her three years of discomfort with her father than in all the undeviating course of the Hyde-Lodge studies; she had improved her French at one table d'hote, her ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... that touch a most odd feeling came to Dickie—the last feeling he would have expected—a feeling of pride mixed with a feeling of shame. Pride in his own cleverness, and another kind of pride that made that cleverness seem shameful. He had a feeling, very queer and very strong, that he, Dickie, was not the sort of person to open doors for the letting in of burglars. He felt as you would ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... and powerful invisible spirits at this place. We shall, however, pass it, through the merit of our asceticism and Agnihotra sacrifices. O son of Kunti, do thou therefore, restrain thy hunger and thirst by collecting thy energies, and also, O Vrikodara have recourse to thy strength and cleverness. O Kunti's son, thou hast heard what the sage (Lomasa) had said regarding mount Kailasa. Ascertain, therefore, after deliberation, how Krishna will pass the spot. Or, O mighty Bhima of large eyes, do return from hence, taking with thee Sahadeva, ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... which England had played during and immediately after the German-French War was typical of England's cleverness in playing foreign politics. Intimate as at that time were the Prusso-English relations, and inactive as England remained during the war, it still managed to impress the French nation with a strong feeling of gratefulness for the apparently friendly attitude which England felt toward ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... and has great Indian experience, does not find any fault with the Proclamation, however seemingly it may sound at variance with these opinions, and this on account of the peculiar position of affairs in Oudh. It is a great pity that Lord Ellenborough, with his knowledge, experience, activity, and cleverness, should be so entirely unable to submit to general rules of conduct. The Queen has been for some time much alarmed at his writing letters of his own to all the most important Indian Chiefs and Kings explaining his ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... archaeological mania, he could not possibly keep possession of the mummy without someone learning that he possessed it. Meanwhile the thief and his plunder had vanished as completely as if the earth had swallowed both. Great was the wonder at the cleverness of the criminal, and many were the solutions offered to account for the disappearance. One enterprising weekly paper, improving on the Limerick craze, offered a furnished house and three pounds a week for life to the fortunate person who could solve the mystery. ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... has to get a decree. The tenants know of it as soon as he, and they set sentinels. When the police are signalled the cattle are driven away and mixed with those of other farmers—every difficulty that Irish cleverness can invent is placed in the way. Then the landlord, whether or not successful in distraining, is boycotted, and the people reckon it a virtue to shoot him down on sight. Conviction is almost, if not quite, impossible, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... milliner, modiste, and her own maiden cleverness kept her immaculate—the true Gotham model found ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... in cleverness, in merit, or in imagination a man may be, there are in our Western world, if his existence there be so much as noticed at all, three occasions on which he appears in print. His birth, his marriage, and his death are all duly chronicled in type, perhaps ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... said, and then being pleased with his cleverness, danced on his little feet and said ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... obese old ruffian; "cannot you with all your cleverness guess that, O Macumazahn? Perhaps it is he who needs the tall white maiden, and not I. Perhaps if he does certain things for me, I have promised her to him in payment. And perhaps," he added, laughing quite loud, "I shall trick ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... he COUNTS. Don't you recollect how before we knew him—when he was abroad so long—people used to bring him into their talk as if they couldn't help remembering him and what he was like. I knew quite a lot about him—about his cleverness and his manners and his way of keeping women off without being rude—and the things he says about royalties and the aristocracy going out of fashion. And about his clothes. I adore his clothes. And I'm convinced he ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... said Ellen; "I admired him exceedingly for his cleverness and perseverance; but what other works? ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... rapid accomplishment of this plan, he ventured, using precautions that seemingly set suspicion at defiance, to engage in smuggling-adventures on a large scale, for which his proximity to the coast afforded a local opportunity. Notwithstanding all his pettifogging cleverness, the ex-attorney was detected, however, in his illegal traffic, and fined to an amount which swept away half his real property. Driven to desperation by the publicity of his failure, as well as by the failure itself, he tried another grand effort to retrieve his fortune; was again surprised by ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... at the right-hand window and look out through the third pane from the bottom on the left side, yon can see the spired turrets of the castle and the tall chimney of the county jail.—And now I hope you see that it's your own stupidity rather than my cleverness which has made ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... by luck or by cleverness, Maitre Tapin himself who, in the Rue des Bourdonnais and in the hotel Muids d'Amour, found La Jonquiere, who was then a nightmare ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... will read, I promise you, anything decently written in a fictional way about 'master' crooks, 'master' killers, kings, queens, princes, and a whole peerage of crime, knowing very well that never yet has a 'master' criminal had any cleverness but what a novelist gave him. But in works on crime that pretend to seriousness I would eschew, pace Mr Leonard R. Gribble, all 'queens' and other honorifics in application to the lost men and women with whom such works must treat. There is no romance ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... chanced to make the acquaintance of a rich manufacturer, Montmorot by name, whose daughter Ernestine was pleased with the devotion of a charming young fellow, who mingled the rather reckless grace of French cleverness with a reserved style and refined pride gained from the English blood of the Maldens. For his part, Felix really loved the girl, and had let his impatience, that very day, carry him into a step that failed to move the elder Montmorot's inflexibility. ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... cleverly—Winterbourne afterward learned that he had practiced the idiom upon a great many American heiresses—addressed her a great deal of very polite nonsense; he was extremely urbane, and the young American, who said nothing, reflected upon that profundity of Italian cleverness which enables people to appear more gracious in proportion as they are more acutely disappointed. Giovanelli, of course, had counted upon something more intimate; he had not bargained for a party of three. But he kept his temper in a manner ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... of the clever men who waged war on the Agrarians been addressed to the dust of the Teutones whom Marius exterminated in Provence, they could not have been more completely thrown away than they were. Some of these men, however, were less distinguished for cleverness than for malignity, and shrieked for blood and the display of brute force in terms that would have done dishonor even to a St. Bartholomew assassin or anti-Albigensian crusader. Monsieur Romieu held up Le Spectre ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... bright to him now. He wondered whatever could have put such a thought into his head. Impossible as it was, he could not help smiling at its cleverness. It showed how she loved him. There was no doubt in his mind now, and he would find a ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... been surprised when Duncan had mentioned Dakota as being a probable tool, for he had thought over the occurrence of the shooting in Lazette many times, and had been much impressed with Dakota's coolness and his satanic cleverness with a six-shooter, and it seemed that it would be a simple matter to arrange with him for the removal of Doubler. Yes, it had seemed simple enough when he had planned it, and when Duncan had told him that Dakota was not on ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... several weeks past a mysterious friend of yours has been seen in the neighbourhood of your chateau. He has been staying in Commercy and in Longuyon. I gave orders for his arrest, but, with his usual cleverness, he escaped from Commercy." ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... was such a fool about people—such a dear, nice, but sometimes inconvenient fool! Just mother's disposition over again, with a touch of father's cleverness splashed in here and there where you'd least expect it—but never in the place where it would be ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... retreated from his chest to his throat and nasal passages, so there is danger that his contribution to literature will soon cease to imply any blood or viscera, or healthful carnality, or depth of human and manly affection, and will be the fruit entirely of our toploftical brilliancy and cleverness. ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... even upon the severest of his judges. Owing, perhaps, to these attributes rather than to any positive merit of his own, he scrambled through life at school, at a tutor's, at a military college, without any irreparable disgrace, his aptitude for getting into scrapes being equalled only by his cleverness in getting out of them. Richard, indeed, had at times received reports of his conduct which made him speak angrily and threaten condign punishment, but not until this day, when the discovery of the lost bank-notes in Hugo's possession betokened an absence of principle ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... say a word against Clifford," he added quickly. "He's a very clever man of business, and I admire him for it. But a woman wants more than cleverness." ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... industrious, and that kingdom suffered a great loss in consequence of their being expelled from it. In whatever country they established themselves, the Jews carried on most of the mechanical and manual industries with cleverness and success; but they could not hope to become landed proprietors in countries where they were in such bad odour, and where the possession of land, far from offering them any security, could not fail to excite the envy ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... not the sole cause of your ruin—if ruin you will call it. I am sorry to say that I do candidly think Ministers believe that Sir George Gorgon has lost his influence in Oldborough as much through his own fault as through Mr. Scully's cleverness." ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which I've been wanting to give ever since I received your letter. But actually, till yesterday, I never got a chance. I "made" several, but they always went to bits, like a child's house of cards. Poor me! That is part of the creature's cleverness. I think she knew by instinct that I had something nasty to say, and she kept dodging about, preventing me from laying hands (I ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... gate, Percival rested his arms on it and looked at Robin. The boy was not big for his age, but there was a good deal of cleverness in his upturned freckled face. "I've a message for you," said the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... doubt remains in regard to the professional cleverness of the architect and the thoroughness of his study, we had best return to the great hall, and pass through a low door in its extreme outer angle, up a few steps into a little room some thirteen feet ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... not afraid. This and her cleverness gave her moral power over her mother; she had no fear of answering her back now. She was quicker with her fingers than her mother, both in making baskets and brooms, and ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... there that has grown so famous by its hospitality to our successors. The journey across was particularly enlivening. My special guard was a gentlemanly young lawyer, one of the Kennedys of that ilk; and to his cleverness I think I owed my safe arrival at the end of our journey. Every turn in the road brought us face to face with an angry crowd, gathering from far and near, armed and ready to do instant justice on a helpless victim. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... Herr Officer. The whole ground seems to be burning!" said the old man, completely disarmed by the cleverness of the lad's impersonation. "How much petrol ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... the fixed idea of these men, who seemed to enjoy so much the cleverness of their suspicions. It was the most dangerous of tempers to deal with. It made them as untrustworthy as so many lunatics. They were capable of anything, of decoying us alongside, and stoving the bottom out of the boat, and drowning us before they discovered their mistake, if they ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... sub-agent in Cuba who turned evidence on Clyde at last, for a gunboat missed us by only a few miles coming down by St. Christopher, as I heard afterward. Then a Spanish cruiser ran us down, at last, under a corner of a little island among the Windwards, about thirty miles east of Tobago, where Clyde's cleverness ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... they're getting on—that pretty creature, with her cleverness, and poor Mrs. Leighton? I was afraid they were venturing on a rash experiment. Do ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a girl-chase, he had toured with a theatrical company for a few months while his father thought he was at the hospital working. Her sponge-like eagerness for all the Romance, the Adventure he could give her was insidious in its effect on him; she was flattered that he, with all his cleverness, his "grown-up-ness" that went so queerly with his babyishness, should have so thrown himself on her mercy; to her nineteen years it seemed a wonderful and beautiful thing that a man of twenty-seven should find in her an anchor. Of the ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... by his animation and pungent wit, set a narrow and rather disastrous type for later literature. He appealed strongly to all that was worst in Roman taste—its heavy-handedness, its admiration of verbal cleverness, its tendency towards brutality. Half a century later, Verus Caesar, that wretched creature whom Hadrian had adopted as his successor, and whose fortunate death left the Empire to the noble rule of Antoninus Pius, ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... of which one cannot reconcile one's self, yet from which one cannot get free. With this mode of thinking and feeling, he was, indeed, often compelled to seek other employments, which, on account of his great cleverness, were never wanting. I remember him as a pleasing, active, and, at the same ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... thoughts. Much money was won and lost; everybody betted. I won L55, for on the whole I thought (though quite a toss-up) that the chances were rather in favour of Abercromby. I had a better opinion of the cleverness of the managers on his side, and their amazing confidence staggered me, so that after at first believing Sutton to be sure, I finished by leaning the other way. The debate seems to have been dull—Sutton ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... to the lycee—that is, the lay public school—of Cahors, and here he immediately won golden opinions by his cleverness, his industry, and the happy vivacity of his character. One of the half-yearly bulletins of the lycee, which has been preserved in his family, records that he was "passionate without being vindictive, and proud without arrogance." In ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... was kept by the blind woman, whose name was Mrs. Lloyd. Many stories are related of her wonderful cleverness in managing her business, and it is said that no customer was ever able to cheat her with a bad coin. Her blindness was the result of an attack of small-pox when twelve years ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... the other islands, are much afraid of the inhabitants of Bohio, because they say that they eat people. The Indians relate other things, by signs, which are very wonderful; but the Admiral did not believe them. He only inferred that those of Bohio must have more cleverness and cunning to be able to capture the others, who, however, are very poor-spirited. The wind veered from N.E. to North, so the Admiral determined to leave Cuba, or Juana, which, up to this time, he had supposed to be the mainland, ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... arm, and the fair-haired, blue-eyed, country-looking maiden at his side, as well as the hale old rustic by whom they were attended. All three were delighted with their position, and Dick Taverner took full credit to himself for his cleverness in procuring it for them. As to pretty Gillian, nothing could please her better, for she could not only see all that was going forward, but everybody could see her—even Prince Charles himself; and she flattered herself that she attraeted no little attention. And now that the whole of the procession ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... the same way as beans and gourds. I also believed it once, and to-day I am suffering for it. To-day—but it is too late—I have at last learnt that to put a few pennies honestly together it is necessary to know how to earn them, either by the work of our own hands or by the cleverness of our own brains." ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... we know, never says witty things unless under strong provocation, she rarely says them, for she is of an amazingly even temperament. She often says she considers cleverness a very dangerous gift. It is not one I seek for either myself or my children. It is so easy to say clever, unkind things. Every one can do it if they choose; the difficulty is ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... They that work for the sake of fruit are miserable. He also that hath devotion throws off, even in this world, both good actions and bad actions. Therefore, apply thyself to devotion. Devotion is only cleverness in action. The wise, possessed of devotion, cast off the fruit born of action, and freed from the obligation of (repeated) birth, attain to that region where there is no unhappiness. When thy mind shall have crossed the maze of delusion, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... charming women, perfectly natural and perfectly at her ease, and full of receptive interest. When she talked it was always to draw out her interlocutor and never to show off her own cleverness. She was quite as popular, indeed I had almost said more popular, with women as with men, and had as great a fascination for young people as for old. I remember well our pleasure in being told of a letter ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... the Bridge, Mr. Slick stopped his horse, to shake hands with Porter, whom he recognized as an old acquaintance and customer. He enquired after a bark-mill he had smuggled from the States for him, and enlarged on the value of such a machine, and the cleverness of his countrymen who invented such useful and profitable articles; and was recommending a new process of tanning, when a female voice from the house was heard, vociferating, "John Porter, come here this minute." "Coming, my dear," said the ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... she appeared to him not as herself alone, but as the embodied essence of all former loves of which he had dreamed—of all the enchanting dead women of whom the poets wrote. Then he thought of Arnold Kemper, with his exhausted emotions, his superficial cleverness, his engrossing middle-age, and especially of his approaching baldness. Was love, after all, he questioned, only a re-quickened memory in particular brain cells as modern scientists believed? Was physical heredity, in truth, the fulfilling of the law of life? and was the soul merely a series of vibrations ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... laughed Bee. "I never used to be accused of such a thing as cleverness. I must tell ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... of Dolokhov for his cleverness and audacity. Dolokhov, who needed Anatole Kuragin's name, position, and connections as a bait to draw rich young men into his gambling set, made use of him and amused himself at his expense without letting the other feel it. Apart from the advantage he derived from Anatole, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the excellence of the acting as to the careful attention of the author to the most minute details of the stage picture. Fitch could make an act out of a wedding or a funeral, a Cook's tour or a steamer deck, a bed or an automobile. The extraordinary cleverness and accuracy of his observation of those petty details that make life a thing of shreds and patches were all that distinguished his method from that of the melodramatist who makes a scene out of a buzz-saw or a waterfall, a locomotive or a ferryboat. Oftentimes ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... is its wont, came suddenly and from the most unexpected quarter. As has been said, when he was skulking beneath the archway, his movements were noted by the portress. They were suspicious, and she, with a woman's cleverness, divined his secret. Accordingly, when she was relieved at her post by another maid, she not only pointed him out to this companion and communicated to her what she thought about him, but, in passing to her room, she ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... Caroline had ferreted out the secret remained a mystery to the Brands. But they never gave her half enough credit for her remarkable cleverness. When she saw Wyvis Brand, she had been struck almost at once by his likeness to John Wyvis, the man who married her old favorite, Mary. She leaped quickly to the conviction that he was not Mark Brand's son. And when ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... has the Hermit suffered for this cheap, but real solution of a practical difficulty? Whether its laziness costs it any moral qualms, or whether its cleverness becomes to it a source of congratulation, we do not know; but judged from the appearance the animal makes under the searching gaze of the zoologist, its expedient is certainly not one to be commended. To the eye of Science its sin is written ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... quality—so silent is he upon everything that could throw light upon the motives of their wearer. In fact, granting the writer every desire to be impartial, he is too foolish to be so. It requires some cleverness to judge accurately of a very clever man in very difficult circumstances; and the worthy biographer is utterly incapable of giving us any clue to the actions of Rienzi—utterly unable to explain the conduct of the man by the circumstances of the time. ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... told Heller, a singer at the chapel who was boasting of his professional cleverness, that he would engage, that very day, to put him out, at such a place, without his being aware of it, so that he should not be able to proceed. He accepted the wager; and Beethoven, when he came to a passage that suited his purpose, ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... substantial piece of furniture as the table of the House between himself and his energetic opponent. In May 1867 Lord Houghton writes thus: "I met Gladstone at breakfast. He seems quite awed with the diabolical cleverness of Dizzy, who, he says, is gradually driving all ideas of political honour out of the House, and accustoming it to the most revolting cynicism." Was it cynicism, or some related but more agreeable quality, which suggested Mr. Disraeli's reply to the wealthy manufacturer, newly arrived in the House ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... many different ways it was possible to spell out her name, always passing from one letter to another that was adjacent. Diagonal steps are here allowed. Whether she did this merely to tease him or to test his cleverness is not recorded, but it is satisfactory to know that he succeeded. Would you have been equally successful? Take your pencil and try. You may start from any of the H's and go backwards or forwards and in any direction, so long as all the letters in ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... was at work on some distant part of the farm, and she saw him very seldom, for her new office kept her more within doors than usual. The good-natured Molly was, however, delighted with the change, and full of wonder at Lilac's cleverness. ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... been brought up to revere Pope. Then he surrendered to Wordsworth and Keats and Shelley, and his earlier verses, like the early work of Tennyson, are full of echoes of other men's music. It is also true that in spite of his cleverness in versifying, or perhaps because of it, he usually showed little inventiveness in shaping new poetic patterns. His tastes were conservative. He lacked that restless technical curiosity which spurred Poe and Whitman to experiment with ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various |
