"Cleverness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who had always been gallantly called "the beautiful Madame Anserre" looked out each evening for some devotee to take the knife, and each time the same movement took place around her, a general flight, skillfully arranged and full of combined maneuvers that showed great cleverness, in order to avoid the offer that ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... some sort," said Mr Vladimir in somewhat Oriental phraseology. But in his heart he was almost awed by the miraculous cleverness of the English police. The change of his opinion on the subject was so violent that it made him for a moment feel slightly sick. He threw away his cigar, and ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... most was Ali Baba's cleverness in egging on Ayisha to advertise Grim as Ali Higg. Again and again on the march that day, in spite of the grilling heat, and thirst and flies, they burst into roars of laughter over it, chaffing Ayisha's four ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... habitual liar will put more of it into his lies than an undecided man into his statement of what he believes to be the truth. Energy of affirmation does not always mean strength of conviction, but sometimes only cleverness or effrontery.[147] Similarly, abundance and precision of detail, though they produce a vivid impression on unexperienced readers, do not guarantee the accuracy of the facts;[148] they give us no information about anything but the imagination of the author when ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... that in the state of things then existing, a ministry could be best kept together, not by parliamentary capacity, but by social arrangements, such as his Duchess, and his Duchess alone, could carry out. She and she only would have the spirit and the money and the sort of cleverness required. In such a state of things he of course, as her husband, must ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... acquaintance with them with fresh zest. He had a good voice, and would sing to the revellers at harvest homes and other rural festivities as they sipped their ale, and delighted in their applause and wonder at his cleverness, and in the deference they paid him. When he went to Weston his ambition took at first a higher flight, and he dreamed of dominating the school. With this idea he began to study with some ardour, and his natural ability enabled him to make good progress. At all the ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... too bad to be introduced upon the stage, though a vice might be described in detail. A man who has broken through all moral laws might be allowed a little free-thinking. We might add that Lovelace, in spite of the cleverness attributed to him, is really a most imbecile schemer. The first principle of a villain should be to tell as few lies as will serve his purpose; but Lovelace invents such elaborate and complicated plots, presenting so many chances of detection and introducing so ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... the 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
... her idea, and was glad she had had the cleverness to invent it and the ability to keep her head cool and think of it in that tight place. The ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... hinted at, improprieties. Bellequeue, as noted above, is by no means a fool, and achieves as near an approach to a successful "character" as Paul de Kock has ever drawn; while Rose plays the same part of piebald angel as Lucile in Andre, with a little more cleverness in her espieglerie and at ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... reading his mind like a familiar tongue, wondered whether after all it was true, and he hadn't a genius for the affairs of wool. Was he doing the thing that seemed so dull to him with such mechanical and yet consummate cleverness that he was worth all this unripe advancement, or was it indeed Anne's white hand that was turning the wheel of power, her wand that was keeping the augmented vision of him ever before her father's credulous eyes? But he could not retard the wheels of his progress ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... work before the people. At several corps she converted her hall into an Indian village, the soldiers into Oriental villagers and invited missionary officers to explain our work amongst the peoples of the East. One of her city treasurers recalls the cleverness by which she engineered her plans, and got all that was needed for such ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... hell. But little by little conviction of a deeper, less understandable, horror creeps upon the reader, only to be explained and confirmed on the last page. To be honest, The Romantic is an ugly, a detestably ugly book, but of its cleverness there ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... as long as I have and seen as much of men, you would cease to be surprised at the reputations men of essentially commonplace powers—aided by circumstances and some amount of cleverness—obtain. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... into the merry maze of dancers, who were spinning easily round to the lively melody of one of Strauss's most fascinating waltzes. Presently I also found myself circling the room with an amiable young German, who ambled round with a certain amount of cleverness, considering that he was evidently ignorant of the actual waltz step; and I caught a glimpse now and then of Amy's rubies as they flashed past me in the dance—she was footing it merrily with a handsome Austrian Hussar. ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... said the third. And the Queen nodded her head and smiled, for though she esteemed beauty and cleverness, she knew that neither was of any worth without ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... action of any sort, we get the feeling of witnessing a show of stuffed figures whose mechanical movements have been suddenly arrested by some clog in their wires; in his fresco of the "Deluge," he has so covered his space with demonstrations of his cleverness in perspective and foreshortening that, far from bringing home to us the terrors of a cataclysm, he at the utmost suggests the bursting of a mill-dam; and in the neighbouring fresco of the "Sacrifice of Noah," just as some capitally constructed figures are about ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... thieves away, above all, the jays, who spoiled everything, he would study their habits, and took delight in watching with what grace they came and went, flew off loaded, and returned, watching with a quick eye the snares and nets; and he would laugh heartily at their cleverness in avoiding them. Tryballot senior went into a passion when he found his grain considerably less in a measure. But although he pulled his son's ears whenever he caught him idling and trifling under a nut tree, the little ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... to Tom, who accepted it. Surely, he could not embarrass the girl, nor could he seem to refuse to add to her fortune by any means within his power. Don Luis had brought about the climax with great cleverness, for he felt certain of ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... John settling down as a farmer!" she said; "John, who for cleverness might be prime minister. And there is no hope of his getting away from ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... and in addition to bagatelle we had puzzles, conundrums, and conjuring tricks. One of these "neighbours" was a young married lady, the prettiest person I had seen in America. She was a French Canadian, and added to the graces of person and manner for which they are famed a cleverness and sprightliness peculiarly her own. I was very much pleased with the friendly, agreeable society of the neighbourhood. There are a great many gentlemen residing there, with fixed incomes, who have adopted Canada as their home because of the comforts which they can enjoy in an untaxed ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... not so altogether wise. Hitherto we fooled her for all her cleverness. Her price of silence was education in our mysteries, and we ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... really implies a peculiar tact of woman, a kind of cleverness, not so frequently found in men, and very seldom met with in boys. When a woman sees her guests are led by a monopolizer along unsafe channels of thought, she can easily, by that happy faculty of hers, bring ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... passes over. Anything I do during the time it lasts, even household work, is badly done. The brain seems to become addled for the time being, while after gratification of desire it seems to attain an additional quickness and cleverness. Perhaps this cause contributes to the small amount of intellectual and artistic work done by women, admitting their natural inferiority to men in artistic impulse. A woman whose passions are satisfied generally has her strength sapped by maternity, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... such comic parts as those of stupid servants, for everywhere that we went I became the public's Benjamin. I made the people laugh, and they asked for nothing better. All were surprised that, young and inexperienced as I was, I should have so much cleverness of manner and such sureness of delivery. My father was more surprised than anybody, for he had expected far less of my immaturity and total lack of practice. It is certain that from that time I began to feel that I was somebody. I had become useful, or at least I thought ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... my own cleverness—for it was evident that, just as I had suspected from Rene's reticent manner, even by him our existence at Pulwick had not been mentioned to ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Monsignor Folchi was appointed secretary. This prelate, who for twelve 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 ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... individual note. There is perhaps no more genuine poet living, bar the Big Guns. In case I cannot overtake an acknowledgment to himself by this mail, please let him hear of my pleasure and admiration. How poorly Kipling compares! He is all smart journalism and cleverness: it is all bright and shallow and limpid, like a business paper—a good one, s'entend; but there is no blot of heart's blood and the Old Night: there are no harmonics, there is scarce harmony to his music; and in Henley—all ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it; but his mother shook her head at him as one who well deserved the little rebuke for self- sufficiency. There was certainly a wonderful winning way about her- there was a simplicity of manner almost like that of Babie herself, and yet the cleverness of a highly-educated woman. Mary Ogilvie did not wonder at what Mr. and Mrs. Acton had said of the charm of that unpretending household, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... crime, thought Hunt, would not be Maggie's forte if she developed her possibilities. With her looks, her boldness, her cleverness, she had the makings of a magnificent adventuress. As he painted, he wondered what she was going to do, and become; and he watched her not only with a painter's eye intent upon the present, but with keen ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... was an originator in this direction no one doubts. And no one disputes, as a rule, "his devilish cleverness," as Wagner scornfully called it, or remains insensible to his skill and mastery in the mechanism of expression, and his power over sonorous matter, which make him, apart from his creative power, a sort of magician ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... exile, was liberally supplied with money by his brother, kept the most brilliant establishment in Naukratis, and was as famous for his extravagant hospitality as for his strength and cleverness. Syloson was a very handsome man too, and so remarkable for the good taste and splendor of his dress, that the youth of Naukratis prided themselves on imitating the cut and hang of his robes. Being unmarried, he spent many of his evenings at Rhodopis' house, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Cleverness and eloquence on both sides certainly had their share in producing the very great and general disturbance of men's minds in the early days of Darwinian teaching. But by far the greater part of that disturbance was due to the practical novelty and the profound importance ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... to touch her. She might have been wrapped in white fire. He found that though she had not stirred a finger, his hand had shrunk away from hers. He got to his feet, all the cleverness which all day long he had been weaving like a silk net to catch, to bewilder, to draw away her brain from the anguish of full comprehension, was shriveled. He stood and stared helplessly at her, dumb as a youth. And, obedient, he went out and shut the door, taking ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... point! Millionaires can well afford to wear ragged coats. Second-rate man Boswell may have been, as he himself so oft admits, yet as a biographer he stands first in the front rank. But suppose his extreme ignorance was only the domino disguising a cleverness so subtle that it was not discovered until after his death! And what if he smiles now, as from out of Elysium he looks and beholds how, as a writer, he has eclipsed old Ursa Major, and thus clipped the claws that were ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... of his capture at Lurin and of his all night ride on mule back. The Dictator sent for the officer, who, thinking he was going to be rewarded for his cleverness, entered the reception room with a peacock strut that was admirable. By the time Don Nicholas finished a reprimand, he slunk away like a whipped cur and it is likely he was more careful to investigate ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... whatever of good you want and will." Quoth he, "How shall we do?" and quoth she, "I have by me a white slave-girl the very likeness of myself and at this time I have dressed her in my dresses and decorations and have cut her throat, and by my cleverness and force of heart I have caused her to be carried to a ruin hard by the Kazi's house and have had her buried therein and have set over her a slab. So do thou fare hence and taking the Wali seek the Sultan and say to him, 'We have wandered about Misr, the whole ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... devotion. 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 ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... thereby broken up the Ministry, he had found himself compelled to place his resignation in the hands of her Majesty. Then that House was also adjourned. On that afternoon all the clubs were alive with admiration at the great cleverness displayed by Sir Timothy in this transaction. It was not only that he had succeeded in breaking up the Ministry, and that he had done this without incurring violent disgrace; but he had so done it as to throw all the reproach upon his late ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... power and skill that made the retrogression much faster than was the progress in the other direction. When the deepest portion of the channel was reached, Lena-Wingo used the implement with a great deal more cleverness than Ned Clinton had displayed, and it was crossed in considerably less time than before. Then, as the more shallow water came, and the craft was quite manageable, the Mohawk stopped work, and holding the pole motionless and motioning his friends ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... cannot be denied, and the fact surprised no one so much as herself. The nuns, accustomed to all sorts of children of every variety of temper, of every shade of docility and wilfulness, of cleverness and stupidity, found nothing astonishing in one more perverse little specimen, but Madelon could not understand it at all. She was not used to feeling naughty, and did not know what it meant at first. In her life hitherto, when she had been as happy as the day is long, she ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... the least doubt that, though to the casual observer the majority of Coreans appear depressed and unintelligent, they are, as a matter of fact, far from stupid. I have met people in the land of Cho-sen, whose cleverness would have been conspicuous in any country, Western or otherwise. When they set their mind to learn something they never cease till their object is attained, and I can vouch for their quick comprehension, even of matters of which they ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... there lived an elderly millionaire who had four nephews. Desiring to make one of these his heir, he tested their cleverness. ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... surprised at himself because he ceased to believe so easily, and, not knowing that he felt as he did on account of the subtle workings of his inmost nature, he ascribed the certainty he had reached to his own cleverness. He was unduly pleased with himself. With youth's lack of sympathy for an attitude other than its own he despised not a little Weeks and Hayward because they were content with the vague emotion which ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... of both sexes, the difference is no doubt very slight. There have been women of a very high order of genius; there have been very many women of great talent; and, as regards what is commonly called cleverness, a general quickness and clearness of mind within limited bounds, the number of clever women may possibly have been even larger than that of clever men. But, taking the one infallible rule for our guide, judging of the tree by its fruits, we are met by the fact ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... sometimes called me so," he answered—"but my 'cleverness,' or whatever it may be, is not of the successful order. And I'm getting old now, so that most of my activity is past. I have ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... and do you, logs, come of yourselves in the stove!" Instantly the axe jumped up, ran out into the yard, and began to cut up the wood; and the logs came of themselves into the house, and laid themselves in the stove. When the sisters saw this, they wondered exceedingly at the cleverness of the fool; and, as the axe did of its own accord the work whenever Emelyan was wanted to cut wood, he lived for some time in peace and harmony with them. At length the wood was all finished, and they said to him: "Emelyan, we have no more wood, so you must go to the ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... brief survey of the situation in which the Comte Ferraud and his wife now found themselves is necessary for a comprehension of the lawyer's cleverness. ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... further overtures to her during the ride, but he was neither sulky nor sheepish. He feigned an anxiety as to the threatened strike, and related at great length and with extreme cleverness of invention his ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... on the necessary means to that end; it will need all our cleverness to manage our forces. I will give you some instructions on my arrival this evening; follow them carefully, and I think I may promise you a successful issue. Is the Comte de Manerville in love with Mademoiselle Natalie?" he asked as ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... while he could not imagine Alice's employing her beauty to gain an object. She was proud, with an essentially clean pride, and sincere, while Carmen had a talent for intrigue. The latter enjoyed using her cleverness to put down a rival or secure a prominent place; she was a hustler, as they said in the West. Alice, he thought, would not even claim what was hers; it must be willingly offered or she would let it go. Yet he ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... from me," he went on, "there's just one thing you can be certain of—an' that is that I am certain." He was pleased with the cleverness of his idea and laughed approvingly. "When I go after anything I get it, an' if anything gets in between it gets hurt. D'ye get that? It's me for you, an' that's all there is to it, so you might as well make up your mind and go to workin' in my home instead of the laundry. Why, it's a snap. There ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... were asked to name the three authors writing in English to-day to whom the highest rank of cleverness and brilliancy might be accorded, we would not hesitate to place among them Vernon ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... had the palm of cleverness conceded to her ever since she could recollect, when she read better at three years old than her sister at five, and ever after, through the days of education, had enjoyed, and excelled in, the studies that were a toil to Grace. Subsequently, while Grace had contented ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the amiable amusement of acting charades had come among us from France, and was considerably in vogue in this country, enabling the many ladies amongst us who had beauty to display their charms, and the fewer number who had cleverness to exhibit their wit. My Lord Steyne was incited by Becky, who perhaps believed herself endowed with both the above qualifications, to give an entertainment at Gaunt House, which should include some of these little dramas—and we must take ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and highway robbery, and other things worse than they. He knew that he was very near; he peered over into the pit and did not wish to descend. He was not a bad man, and had he not believed himself to be a clever one all might yet have been well. The temptation of his cleverness lured him on. A stroke of the pen ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... Mrs. Boodels, perfectly satisfied. "I was sure he never could have said that." Then she considers for a few seconds. After this she remarks, "Cleverness, is not one ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... meddling law-dogs in Britain than any amount of mere innocence and purity of character. But instead of doing the natural thing, the officer took me at my word, and followed my instructions. And so, as I came trotting out of that cul de sac, full of satisfaction with my own cleverness, he turned the corner and I walked right into his handcuffs. If I had known it was a cul de sac—however, there isn't any excusing a blunder like that, let it go. Charge it up ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... this has had no influence upon our interest in the animal, for the human fashion of dancing with us is quite different from that in Europe. What has lent interest to the creature for us are its prettiness, its cleverness in tricks, and its activity. It is liked, therefore, as an amusement for children. For this purpose it is kept in a small cage, usually fifteen centimeters square, sometimes in a somewhat broader wooden box one of whose walls is of ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... intruder dropped so squarely on the chair that it did not overturn. He kept his place, instantly securing the scuttle against the entrance of the white man, whom he had baffled with such cleverness. Probably he had some idea of taking a shot at him, but the little manoeuvring in which he indulged told him the danger was too great, and ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... I am not nearly as strong as Malines or Morris, or the Binneys. Besides, you forget that 'the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and as to cleverness, that does not consist in a superior education or a head crammed full of knowledge, but in the right and ready application of knowledge. No; I have no ambition to be a king. But it won't do for us to stand here talking, else we ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... 8. The cleverness, astuteness, energy, and business capacity of Aurangzeb are undoubted, and yet his long reign was a disastrous failure. The author reflects the praises of Muhammadans who cherish the memory of the 'namazi'. The ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... heard, with comfort in the thought of its literary possibilities, the following dialogue on the cleverness of women. It occurs in the last chapter of The Woodlanders. A man who is always spoken of as the 'hollow-turner,' a phrase obviously descriptive of his line of business, which related to wooden bowls, spigots, cheese-vats, and ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... shapelessness that had incrusted her, and reveal the grace and loveliness of a divinity. Imperfect as the design, the attitude, the costume, and especially the face of the image still remained, there was already an effect that drew the eye from the wooden cleverness of Drowne's earlier productions and fixed it upon the tantalizing ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a little while to be sure that they could adapt themselves, and then leave; for if there is anything dampening to the ardour of children at play it is a group of elders with minds divided between admiration and correction, punctuating unwise remarks upon beauty and cleverness with "Maud, you are overheated." "Tommy, don't! Use your handkerchief!" "Billy, your stocking is coming down!" "Reggie, you must wait, ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... to have been very fortunate for the Israelites that so many misfortunes should happen to fall upon their oppressors, all in one season, and just at the time that men of such cleverness as Moses and Aaron were among them; and that the Egyptians should luckily have imbibed the superstition, that all nature was under the direction of a Supreme Moral Governor, who was able and willing to wield all the elements for ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... in his hind legs; from these the powerful beast could not free himself, first because he could not conveniently reach his hind legs with his trunk, and again because he evidently feared to wound the finger with which the trunk ended and without which he would lose his skill and cleverness. Nell was not at all aware that such thorns in the feet are a real plague to elephants in India and still more in the African jungles composed mainly of thorny plants. As, however, she felt sorry for the honest giant, without any thought, having squatted near his foot, she began to extract delicately ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... she? I was not sure, and yet there could be little or no doubt about it. Wilfred was capable of winning any woman's affection, and I felt certain she would not resist his wishes. The very first day of his return they had gone away together, and no doubt he would impress her with his cleverness ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... given up the popular stage when he turned to the amusement of King James. In 1605 "Volpone" was produced, "The Silent Woman" in 1609, "The Alchemist" in the following year. These comedies, with "Bartholomew Fair," 1614, represent Jonson at his height, and for constructive cleverness, character successfully conceived in the manner of caricature, wit and brilliancy of dialogue, they stand alone in English drama. "Volpone, or the Fox," is, in a sense, a transition play from the dramatic satires of the war of the theatres to the purer comedy represented in the plays named above. ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... stately school of old-world politeness, the unhappy man was a model of decorum and urbanity. He took reasonable pride in the perfection of his tone and manner; and the marchioness—whose malice did not lack cleverness—was never more happy than when she was gravely expostulating with him, in the presence of numerous auditors, on his lamentable want of style, tact, and gentlemanlike bearing. It is said that, like Coke and Holt under similar circumstances, Sir William preferred the quietude of his chambers to ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... jamais employe tant d'esprit a vouloir nous rendre betes; il prend enviede marcher a quatre pattes quand on lit votre ouvrage." Lessing from the first was something far better than a wit. Force was always much more characteristic of him than cleverness. Sometimes Herr Stahr's hero-worship leads him into positive misstatement. For example, speaking of Lessing's Preface to the "Contributions to the History and Reform of the Theatre," he tells us that ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... some dire unpleasantness. But what did I know of her real character? What of my first doubts and suspicions? She had by no means dispelled them. She had only bamboozled me by her insinuating ways, had drawn me on by her guileful cleverness to pity and promises to befriend her. I had accorded her an active sympathy which in my more sober moments I felt she did not, could not, deserve; if I were not careful she would yet involve ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... the second column, which begins with the jackal ideograph expressing slyness or cleverness. Under it is the hieroglyph meaning 'to run away,' 'to escape.' And under that, Mr. Burke, is one of the rarest of all Egyptian symbols; a symbol seldom seen ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... bulk and strength, the knitted brute power that the sea and his hard life had given him; to Guthrie, Claud was dangerous in the highbred beauty and finish of his person, clothes and manners, and in the astounding "cleverness" that he displayed. Each man feared the force of those qualities which he lacked himself, and ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... because 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
... quite an honoured guest of her. But outside enjoying the dinner Margret did not seem to respond. Young Jack was brought forward to display his accomplishments, which he did in the most hang-dog fashion. The cleverness and good-looks and goodness of the girls were expatiated upon, but Margret gave no sign of interest. Once Fanny caught her looking at her with a queer saturnine glance, that made her feel all at once hot and uncomfortable, though she had felt pretty secure of her ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... retained their beauty and fragrance after the lapse of time. The letters were tender, intimate, sacred. To Anne, the sweetest of all was the one written after her birth to the father on a brief absence. It was full of a proud young mother's accounts of "baby"—her cleverness, her brightness, her ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... uneasy under the dominance of her intelligence and education, and were afraid to attempt either confidence or familiarity. They were also singularly jealous of her, for although the average young man was equally afraid of her cleverness and her candor, he was not above paying a tremulous and timid court to her for its effect upon her humbler sisters. This evening she was surrounded by her usual satellites, including, of course, the local notables ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... she past seventy-six; and what is more, much worse than I was, for, added to her deafness, she has been confined these three weeks with the gout in her eyes, and was actually then in misery, and had been without sleep. What spirits, and cleverness, and imagination, at that age, and under those afflicting circumstances! You reconnoitre her old court knowledge, how charmingly she has applied it! Do you wonder I pass so many hours and evenings with ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... 'Breakfast-Table' who was on duty at the place, looking for paragraphs as to the conduct of electors, gave an account of the speech in that paper, and made more of it, perhaps, than it deserved. It was asserted afterwards, and given as a great proof of Melmotte's cleverness, that he had planned the thing and gone to Covent Garden all alone having considered that in that way could he best regain a step in reputation; but in truth the affair had not been pre-concerted. It was while in Whitehall Place that ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... on the part of Harmony, seemingly determined 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 of ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... however, the latter triumphed; and Cocorico deserved its fate in spite of the actors. Mrs. Grattan played the chief character with much tact and cleverness, singing the vaudevilles charmingly—a most difficult task, we should say, on account of the adapter, in putting English words to French music, having ignorantly mis-accentuated a large majority of them. Miss Terrey infused into a simple country ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... aghast, 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 save a fellow creature's ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... astonished to see Miss Mercy's alpine hat rising, as it were, from the earth at his feet to crowd him from his desirable position. As she stood up she jabbed him in the nostril with the quill, and Mr. Stott gave ground before he realized it. Miss Mercy snickered in appreciation of the cleverness ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... temper, like that of a child," and when he died, in 1865, Ibsen mourned him. The sexton at Skien, who helped in the lessons, described the poet afterwards as "a quiet boy with a pair of wonderful eyes, but with no sort of cleverness except an unusual gift for drawing." Hansen taught Ibsen Latin and theology, gently, perseveringly, without any striking results; that the pupil afterwards boasted of having successfully perused Phaedrus in the original is in itself significant. So little was talent expected ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... the cleverness of it?' I said. 'You were too interested in other things to have any eyes. You took Lord Alloa for granted. If it had been anybody else you might have looked more closely, but it was natural for him to be here, and that put you all ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... possible. Mrs. Tabby White was very glad—because no lady can wish for the visits of a person who throws boots at her. But the Mistress of the house said sadly, 'Oh, Tabby!—you have lost us a fortune!' And Tabby for all her cleverness didn't understand what the Mistress meant, but went on purring proudly, and wondering what clever thing she could do next. And I don't know what it meant either, so don't you interrupt ...
— Pussy and Doggy Tales • Edith Nesbit
... that there was another confederate employed by the adversary; and THEN, I warrant you, some pretty trials of skill would take place. My Lord Deuceace, although so young, had a very great skill and cleverness with the cards in every way; and it was only from hearing Frank Punter, who came with him, yawn three times when the Chevalier had the ace of trumps, that I knew we were Greek ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said "yes," took the bag and hurriedly opening it felt for the letter. To her dismay it was gone. I saw her eyes narrow a little and then I marveled at time cleverness of ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... nay," Lisbeth burst out in an eager, wailing tone; "thee wotna let nobody make thy feyther's coffin but thysen? Who'd make it so well? An' him as know'd what good work war, an's got a son as is the head o' the village an' all Treddles'on too, for cleverness." ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... occasions he found himself watching for Audrey, always. She had, with a sort of diabolical cleverness, succeeded in losing herself. Her house was sold, he knew, and he had expected that she would let him know where to find her. She had said she counted on him, and he had derived an odd sort of comfort from the thought. It had warmed him to think ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Vendredi-Saint' (Porte St. Martin, 1847); 'La Vieillesse de Richelieu' (Theatre Francais, 1848); 'York' (Palais Royal, 1852). Some of them are written in collaboration with Paul Bocage. They are dramas of the Dumas type, conventional, not without cleverness, but making ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... did he desire, by any anonymous libel, to bring himself in any way under the arm of the law. All he meant to do was to dig his trench and to lay his mine, to place the fuse in Vera Nevill's hands—leave her to set fire to it—and then retire himself, covered with satisfaction at his cleverness, to his ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... boards, to enrich his collection. He once showed me the remains of a fine copy of "Theurdanck," which he had served so, and I have now before me several of the leaves which he then gave me, and which, for beauty of engraving and cleverness of typography, surpasses any typographical work known to me. It was printed for the Emperor Maximilian, by Hans Schonsperger, of Nuremberg, and, to make it unique, all the punches were cut on purpose, and as many as seven or eight varieties of each letter, which, together with ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... However lacking 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 as sufficiently typical of the general ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... of a superior order to compare him with; but, as a matter of fact, she was perfectly satisfied with Montjoie. Mr. Derwentwater and Jock were more ridiculous to her than he was, and were less in harmony with everything she had previously known. Their work, their intellectual occupations, their cleverness and aspirations were out of her world altogether. The young man-about-town who had nothing to do but amuse himself, who was always "knocking about," as he said, whose business was pleasure, was the kind of being with whom she was acquainted. ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... to enliven, not unsuccessfully, notwithstanding his English objection to the pitch of the converse she led, and a suspicion of effort to support it:—just a doubt, with all her easy voluble run, of the possibility of naturalness in a continuous cleverness. But he signified pleasure, and in pleasing him she was happy: in the knowledge that she dazzled, was her sense of safety. Percy hated scandal; he heard none. He wanted stirring, cheering; in her house he had it. He came daily, and as it was her wish that new themes, new flights ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... even the meanest criminal of his time knew what was expected of him, so long as he wandered within the walled yard, or listened to the ministrations of the snuff-besmirched Ordinary. He might show a lamentable lack of cleverness in carrying off his booty; he might prove a too easy victim to the wiles of the thief-catcher; but he never fell short of courage, when asked to sustain the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... idyll of Suburbia, entitled "The Smiths of Surbiton." The author constructed out of the petty doings and humdrum habits of suburban life a charming little story of simple people, and with equal cleverness the artist built up, out of these slight materials, a series of exquisitely natural pictures, which revealed the almost incredible fact that semi-detached villadom is ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... good-natured boy who swore at the deck hands on the river steamer and chewed uncured tobacco when he was three years old. Thoroughly likeable as a good fellow, but impossible as a man of letters. It is an unfortunate feature of American literature that a hostler with some natural cleverness and a great deal of assertion receives the same recognition as a standard American author that a man like Lowell does. The French academy is a good thing after all. It at least divides the sheep from the goats and gives a sheep the consolation of knowing ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... 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, poetry, ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... critical and the ideal. They seize us at their pleasure, and we can never tell which is to take its turn. The critical mood, oddly, is the genial one, the friendly, the condescending. It relishes the pretty trivialities of art, its vulgar cleverness, its conscious graces. It has a kindly greeting for anything which looks as if, according to his light, the painter had enjoyed doing it—for the little Dutch cabbages and kettles, for the taper fingers and breezy ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... the young man. The calm effrontery of him, the cleverness of him, to ask a favor of her! She turned from him to the distant ranges. She did not realize how much she turned from the roughness of the camp to the far desert views! Brooding, aloof, how big the ranges were, how free, how calm! For the first time her keeping Kut-le in Coventry seemed ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... bee may scorn thy merits, In cleverness a worm thy teacher be; Thy knowledge thou must share with happier spirits, But Art, O Man, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... changes in fashion render this practice hard to follow. No woman likes to look out of style. However, by a little cleverness garments and hats may be adapted to the prevailing mode (although the arbiters of fashion, in the interests of manufacturers, try by violent changes of style to render this impracticable). These adaptations may not be in the height of fashion, but they will be in good form and taste. Indeed, ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... more favorably impressed with Zibeline's appearance than he cared to show. The generous action of this beautiful girl, her frankness, her ease of manner, her cleverness in repartee, were likely to attract the attention of a man of his character. He reproached himself already for having allowed himself to be influenced by the rancorous hostility of the Desvanneaux, and, as always happens with just ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... learn in the City, much of cleverness, of politeness, and of knowledge of seemly behaviour amid surroundings to which ...
— Rollo in Society - A Guide for Youth • George S. Chappell
... 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 saying ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... Gorham himself had adopted them for any other reason than their intrinsic business value. The whole scheme of the Consolidated Companies, when first unfolded before him, appealed to his appreciation of business cleverness, and he instinctively recognized Gorham as his master. During the few years they had been associated in the same corporation, Covington had seen his chief's genius demonstrated in organization and administration ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... enormously rich and nothing to do. Therefore, I suppose she went in for the torturing business as a profession. Her Frenchmen did not mind; that was the secret of her charm with them— so clever, they called her, but it nearly killed me, her cleverness. I grew pale and worn—sleep—I never slept. All my life I had lived without natural affection, and now I was pouring forth upon this woman the love I might have rendered friends, sister, brother, mother, as well as the passion of a young man. I say ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... 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 ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... broad-minded and amusing. (Gallio is often a most attractive person!) It takes courage then to side with the tiresome one, instead of saying something rather clever. In youth one has a great horror of belonging to the tiresome side. Cleverness counts for so much, and it is hard in early life to put goodness first! One does not realize the beauty of the strength and principle shown by the tiresome people, and it takes real principle to show ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... unwilling, to draw up any other than an irregular and valueless proces-verbal. On this, an accused party objected and refused to sign. "Take care, you," exclaims Coudert in a rage, "with your damned cleverness, you are playing the stubborn. You are nothing but a bloody fool! You are getting into a bad box! If you don't sign, I'll have you guillotined." Frequently, there are no papers at all. (De Martel, "Fouche," p.236. Memorial by the authorities ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... sober after three in the afternoon, and having begun to drink at ten was uncertain after twelve. He knew a side of business life that his father had never seen; he associated with men whom the stiff Mark would have disdained to recognize. But his reputation for cleverness carried him on in spite of the club ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... Bristol, lighting a cigarette, "that even Dexter's cleverness has failed to save him. He's probably a dead man by now, which accounts for our failing to find him; and Hassan of Aleppo has recovered the slipper and returned to the East, taking his gruesome company with ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... a most skilful worker, and the Huberts were astonished at her cleverness and taste. In addition to what they had taught her, she carried into all she did her personal enthusiasm, which gave life to flowers and faith to symbols. Under her hands, silk and gold seemed animated; the smaller ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... interesting and beautiful monsters. They render depravity attractive, sometimes by the polish of its manners, and sometimes by its very extravagance; and study to show off crime under all the advantages of cleverness and dexterity. Gentlemen, this is an extraordinary murder, but it is still a murder. We are not to lose ourselves in wonder at its origin, or in gazing on its cool and skilful execution. We are to detect and to punish it; and while we proceed with ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... Gregory Gipples by name, who set himself up as a sort of leader among the other boys as soon as he came on board, though he had never before been at sea. He was a big hulking fellow; and as he had a certain amount of cleverness about him, he tried to make it appear that he knew a great deal more about things than he really did. True Blue instinctively discovered that he was a braggart and ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... recollection of her promise, and of the triumphant boldness with which Hiram had said 'Won,' as if he meant—as he did mean—that something more than her father's case had been won—something much more; admiration, too, of Hiram's cleverness, capacity, tact—such admiration as the sex always bestow on real ability. All these, commingled served to produce in Sarah Burns a state of feeling—I should rather say of being—different from what she ever ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... frauds. Their dupes are puzzled, and sometimes won over, in the name of Spiritualism, either by the tricks familiar to all "conjurers," or else by the psychology of deception (see page 280). Some of the cleverness displayed is marvelous, as the following pages show. The passages by Hereward Carrington are copyrighted by Herbert B. Turner & Co., 1907, and those by David P. Abbott are copyrighted by the Open Court Publishing ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... rays of the ultra-violet light may have blinded Mr. Haswell, even to the recognition of his own daughter, but you can rest assured, Prescott, that the very cleverness of your scheme will penetrate the eyes of the blindfolded goddess of justice. Burnham, if you will have the kindness to summon the police, I will take all the responsibility for the arrest of ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... a perfect master of Italian; his manners were popular and insinuating. He was richly endowed with all those secondary gifts which often carry a man along faster, though less far, than the highest endowments. If he had not power, he had elasticity; if not judgment, cleverness. He always drifted, which made him always appear the politician up to date. His name was then associated with one catastrophe; before he died it was to be linked with two others, Aspromonte and ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... flatterer and the friend, if they differ neither in the pleasure they give nor in the praise they bestow; for as to services and attentions you may often see friendship outstripped by flattery. Certainly it is so, I should reply, if we are trying to find the genuine flatterer who handles his craft with cleverness and art, but not if, like most people, we consider those persons flatterers who are called their own oil-flask-carriers and table-men, men who begin to talk, as one said, the moment their hands have been washed for dinner,[356] ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... we may say of Literature. If you ask me whether it will pay you to employ the superfluities of your cleverness in writing reviews and sketches and stories,—why, certainly, do so by all means. I have no fear of your ultimate success in money and in the laughing honours of society. But if you mean literature in any sober sense ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... lunacy of it! I think it must be a national characteristic. You saw it in the war again and again—a wonderful plan brought to naught by some piece of over-cleverness on ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... very good to him," said Lance, "and those three years were not wasted. He is a far better sub-editor and reporter than I was at his age, with his French wit and cleverness. The only fault I find with him is that he longs for plate-glass and flummery instead of old ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the head of the stairs, and then shut the door on her with a click. Alston was conscious of having, for the joy of the moment, really made a fool of himself. But he didn't let it depress him. He needed his present cleverness too much to spend a grain of it on self-reproach. He went to his safe and took out a paper that had been lying there ready to be used, slipped it into his pocket and went, before his spirit had time to ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... succeeds in it, by introducing a real man, and endowing him with the sentiments of a fiend. The fault of the one is exaggeration; of the other, miscreation: redeemed in the first by extraordinary cleverness; in the other, by wonderful belief. What a contrast between La Motte Fouque and Balzac! how national and characteristic both! No one can read a chapter of the Magic Ring without seeing that the Baron believes in all the wonders of his tale; a page of the other suffices to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... He entered upon his duties, accordingly with a force and patience of application which soon made him master of what are called business habits, and, once in possession of the details, his natural cleverness gave him a speedy insight to all the scope and tactics of his particular field of trade. Under his guidance, the affairs of the house were soon in a much more prosperous train, and, after a year's residence at Lyons, Philip saw his way very clear to manage ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... goodness on our part beyond the goodness of other persons who are without it, though striving? No. Is it because of some work for God that we do in this world, charitable or social? No. Is it, then, nothing but an arbitrary favouritism on His part? No. Is it a sagacity or cleverness, a height of learning, a ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... poverty of ideas rather than abundance of feeling, that his limited vocabulary was due less to reticence than to the simple inarticulateness of the primitive mind. Through the golden glamour of her honeymoon there had loomed suddenly the discovery that George was not clever—but cleverness mattered so little, she told herself, as ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... this disease is of wonderful cleverness, for from it Hercules, Scotus, Socrates, Callimachus, and ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... likely to rebel in the most healthy but brutal manner, so much so that the aesthetic reformer shrinks back from the consequences of the propagation of his own ideas. Of course, the brutality of the proletariat is not nearly so subtle as that of the aristocracy, and it takes some cleverness to discover that the latter is brutality at all. It requires time and patience to drive into the thick heads of the workers that they are downtrodden, and that their oppressors are worthless parasites. When they finally ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... with Dr. Johnson, the curiosities of art with Lord Orford, Roman history with Gibbon, and the state of the Church with Bishop Porteus. Not that she pretended equality of learning with such men, but she had just sufficient knowledge of various subjects to provoke a conversation, and enough cleverness to sustain it by "drawing out" the scholar who might be seated at her side. But this was not all. Her conversation sparkled with wit and repartee. "The mind laughed," says her friend Zachary Macaulay, "not the muscles; the countenance sparkled, ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... of joy, and Patty scarcely knew whether to laugh or cry. But in a moment they were all congratulating each other and showering praises on Patty for her cleverness in the matter. ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... lameness does not come of natural infirmity, but from my own ingenious contrivance, whereby I get my bread, asking alms for the love of God. In this way, and with the help of my music, I lead the merriest life in the world, where others, with less cleverness and good management, would be starved to death. Of this you will be convinced in ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... her portraits half effaced by the centuries; that the attractive power of a woman emanates not only from corporal beauty, but also—and yet more—from her spirit. The taste of Cleopatra, her vivacity, her cleverness, her exquisite art in ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... wondered how he would see the maiden of whose beauty and of whose cleverness he had so ...
— Stories from the Ballads - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor
... on his heel and walked out of the dining-room, leaving us to sit there. I was so dumbfounded by the harangue our pseudo-cleverness had released that I could scarcely speak. My appetite was gone and I felt wretched. To think of having been the cause of this unnecessary tongue-lashing to the others! And I felt that we were, and justly, the target for ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... had never seen it, pronounced to be frivolous, worldly, profane, but which no one has called dull. There were many facets in Hester's character, and Lady Susan had managed to place her where they caught the light. Was she witty? Was she attractive? Who shall say? Man is wisely averse to "cleverness" in a woman, but if he possesses any armor wherewith to steel himself against wit it is certain that he seldom puts it on. She refused several offers, one so brilliant that no woman ever believed that it was ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... to enjoy the popularity that Isabelle had known. But any woman might run away with a rich admirer. Harriet's admiration for the cleverness with which Isabelle conducted this pretty playing with fire disappeared, and in its place came the sharp conviction that old-fashioned women like Linda had some justification, after all; it was "dangerous," it did "lead to sin," it could indeed ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... grown accustomed to disregard all pretense of diplomatic technique; their discussions had been straightforward man-to-man talks; there had been nothing suggestive of pose or finesse, and no attempts at cleverness—merely an effort to get to the bottom of things and to discover a common meeting ground. The Ambassador, moreover, represented a nation for which the Foreign Secretary had always entertained the highest respect and even affection, and he and Page could find no happier common meeting-ground ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... 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 ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... blame in reference to the disaster. The fitting up of temporary steering gear, which was begun on the Sunday when the storm moderated, was a work of great difficulty and danger. It was accomplished chiefly through the courage and cleverness of two men—John Carroll and Patrick Grant—who volunteered for it, and were let down over the stern at the imminent risk of their lives; and an American gentleman, Mr Towle, a civil engineer, rendered great assistance in ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... never felt quite sure that mademoiselle had not known all the time where it was. But I admired so much the cleverness that could contrive to accomplish her end (for myself, I could never plan or scheme, though quick enough to act if occasion presented) that I forgave the little deceit, if there was any—maidens not being like men, who must be true and straightforward ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... alien to the spirit of the New Testament than to turn this round the other way, and, assuming that what Paul saw was only a vision, argue that the other appearances of Christ, because they are put on the same level, may have been only visions too. This is a mere stroke of dialectical cleverness, which shows no regard to the ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... things in that way, in order to be odd. It is a sign of cleverness to be odd, you know.—But I, too, am sent into these seas ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... man who has perfected wisdom! Everything is happiness for him. Behold Aeschylus; thanks to the talent, to the cleverness he has shown, he returns to his country; and his fellow-citizens, his relations, his friends will all hail his return with joy. Let us beware of jabbering with Socrates and of disdaining the sublime notes of the tragic Muse. To pass ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... assurance that he was especially competent to write the history of these events, if for no other reason, because it fell to his lot, when appointed adviser to the general Belisarius, to be an eye-witness of practically all the events to be described. It was his conviction that while cleverness is appropriate to rhetoric, and inventiveness to poetry, truth alone is appropriate to history. In accordance with this principle he has not concealed the failures of even his most intimate acquaintances, ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... my own valour with amazement. I had insulted him; I had sent him away alone; now, if ever, he would take what was the only sensible resource, and fetch the constable. But there was something instinctively treacherous about the man which shrank from plain courses. And, with all his cleverness, he missed the occasion of fame. Rowley and I were suffered to walk out of his door, with all our baggage, on foot, with no destination named, except in the vague statement that we were come 'to view the lakes'; and my friend only ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... indefinable charm. Many other women possessed more regular features, but none of them had a greater power of seduction. We must add that she owed that power entirely to her physical perfections, for except in regard to the devices necessary to her calling, she showed no cleverness, being ignorant, dull and without inner resources of any kind. As her temperament led her to share the desires she excited, she was really incapable of resisting an attack conducted with skill and ardour, and if the Duc de Vitry had not been so madly in love, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... complacent sex to believe this statement—unless I add that the men did not fancy my society, which would not be strictly true; but, even if not so intellectual as I had feared, the women of our town were far more charming than I had hoped, and when you cannot have both cleverness and kindness the latter makes a more agreeable atmosphere for a permanent home. I still consider them the loveliest women in ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... as much objection as might have been expected. So the lad went to the war. He had now become a particular protege of General Mitchell, who had taken him into his own service as an assistant secretary—a position in which George had already shown much natural cleverness. ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... adoring brindle mule, declined to be rounded up. We chased her up hill and down; along creek-beds and through the spiky chaparral. Always she dodged craftily, warily, with forethought. Always the brindled mule, wrapt in admiration at his companion's cleverness, crashed along after. Finally we teased her into a narrow canon. Wes and the Tenderfoot closed the upper end. I attempted to slip by to the lower, but was discovered. Dinkey tore a frantic mile down the side hill. Bullet, his ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... training, all her natural caution and splendid common sense, could not keep her away from the gaming table. This is a kind of international novel, where the English, French, German, and Russian temperaments are analysed, perhaps with more cleverness than accuracy. The Englishman, Astley, is utterly unreal, Paulina is impossible, and the Slavophil attacks on the French are rather pointless. Some of the characters are incomprehensible, but none ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... but admire his coolness and resource. He had known how to take in Michel, because Michel had arrested Juve when disguised as Vagualame at de Naarboveck's house.... Michel would naturally think his chief had again assumed the Vagualame disguise for a purpose! Oh, it was the devil's own cleverness! ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... your great skill and cleverness in criminal investigation, Mr. Colwyn," continued Phil earnestly, "and wish to avail myself of your help. That is the object of ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... earnestness, sincerity and fire, the sentiments of a poetic soul, a generous heart, and an immense intelligence, on subjects of consequence to humanity, have a higher value than can attach to skillful development of plot and intrigue, mere display of literary cleverness, or of the storings ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... it is, hell itself is defiled by the fouler presence of John." The terrible verdict of his contemporaries has passed into the sober judgement of history. Externally John possessed all the quickness, the vivacity, the cleverness, the good-humour, the social charm which distinguished his house. His worst enemies owned that he toiled steadily and closely at the work of administration. He was fond of learned men like Gerald of Wales. He had a strange gift of attracting friends and ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... 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
... who shone so beautifully, and yet seemed so discontented. Then the first began to relate how he had been a child too, and how, as he grew up, it had always been his greatest delight to deceive people and play them tricks, to show his wit and cleverness. He had always, he said, poured such a stream of smooth words over people, and encompassed himself with such a shining mist, that men had been attracted by it to their own hurt. But once on a time there appeared a plain man, who only spoke ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... and the retribution would be so swift that his friends would not be able to save him. This time his enemy would take no chances. He would be wiped out like a troublesome insect. The thing was diabolic in the simplicity of its cleverness. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... Whatever might have been the case in this respect, the agitation led by his lordship against the papal aggression was the chief means of carrying him safely through the session, in which the parliamentary tactics of his party and of his government were without consistency or cleverness, and the financial management of his chancellor of the exchequer as clumsy in detail, and what might be called manipulation, as destitute ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... overcome 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 ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... in 1803, Lady Hester was offered a home by her uncle, William Pitt, with whom she remained until his death in 1806. Pitt became deeply attached to his handsome, high-spirited niece. He believed in her sincerity and affection for himself, admired her courage and cleverness, laughed at her temper, and encouraged her pride. She seems to have gained a considerable influence over her uncle, and contrived to have a finger in most of the ministerial pies. When reproached for allowing her ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston |
