"Perspicuity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... revolve round the sun by an analogous movement. The mind instantly grasped at an explanation of so palpable a character and which required for its development neither the exercise of patient thought nor the aid of mathematical skill. The talent and perspicuity with which the Cartesian system was expounded, and the show by which it was sustained, contributed powerfully to its adoption, while it derived a still higher sanction from the excellent character and the unaffected ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... telling of tortures without count, of unfathomable melancholy, of morbid desires, endless compassion, passionate envy. An epileptic genius whose very exterior speaks of the stream of mildness that fills his heart, of the wave of almost insane perspicuity that gets into his head, finally the ambition, the greatness of endeavour, and the envy that small-mindedness begets.... His heroes are not only poor and crave sympathy, but are half imbeciles, sensitive creatures, noble drabs, often victims of hallucinations, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... himself with Titanic intellectualities, but who is a readable dramatic critic.... Mr. Hale is a modest and sensible, as well as an acute and sound critic.... Most people will be surprised and delighted with Mr. Hale's simplicity, perspicuity and ingenuousness." ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... that the language of an heroic poem should be both perspicuous and sublime. In proportion as either of these two qualities is wanting, the language is imperfect. Perspicuity is the first and most necessary qualification; insomuch that a good-natured reader sometimes overlooks a little slip even in the grammar or syntax, where it is impossible for him to mistake the poet's sense. Of this kind is that passage in Milton, wherein ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... moments Raymond felt uneasy at the relations he had established with the workers, and Mr. Best did not hesitate to warn him again and again that discipline was ill served by such easy terms between employer and employed; but his moments of perspicuity were rare, for now his mind and soul were poured into one thought and one only. He was riotously happy in his love affair and could not pretend to his fellow creatures anything he did not feel. Always amiable and accessible, ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... both employ images, but with a very different object, as you are well aware. The poetical image is designed to astound; the oratorical image to give perspicuity. Both, however, seek to ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... interest; the gentlemen subscribing to buy a flag, the United States having none before in Rome, and the ladies meeting to make it. The same distinguished individual, indeed, who at Florence made a speech to prevent "the American eagle being taken out on so trifling an occasion," with similar perspicuity and superiority of view, on the present occasion, was anxious to prevent "rash demonstrations, which might embroil the United States with Austria"; but the rash youth here present rushed on, ignorant how to value his Nestorian prudence,—fancying, hot-headed simpletons, that the cause of Freedom ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... in German, too often obscure the acquired abstract signification. Whoever has dealt in English and German metaphysics will not fail to recognize the prodigious superiority of English in force and perspicuity, arising mainly from the causes here stated. But while this homogeneity of structure in German injures it for philosophical purposes, it is the very thing which makes it so excellent as an organ for poetical expression, in the opinion of ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... very advantageously and at the same time very justly of this work. "That great man (says he, speaking of Grotius[487]) has discovered in this work all the capacity, accuracy, judgment, solidity, industry, perspicuity, honesty, and integrity, of a true historian. His impartiality would almost make him pass for a foreigner, who had no interest in what he relates: he appears a Dutchman, only by his thorough knowledge of the causes, motives, ends, and ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... vulgar eyes, that are indications of a sudden turn of good fortune in the lottery of wives, and promise a great beauty and great fortune reserved alone for me, by a private intrigue of destiny, kept secret from the piercing eye of perspicuity, from all astrologers, ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... him before the theft, he might be suspected of theft himself, and in this case a double conviction of the parties would ensue; that is, of him who did not take what he ought, and of him who had more than he was entitled to. This opinion, which is remarkable for its perspicuity and soundness, is to be found in the one hundred and second folio of Logerhedius, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... him to the veracious statements of Maldonado, De Fonte, the later voyages of La Perouse and Anson, and the charts of 1640. In the charts of that day Spanish navigators reckoned longitude E. 360 degrees from the meridian of the Isle of Ferro. For the sake of perspicuity before a modern audience, the more recent meridian of Madrid was substituted. The custom of dropping a day at some arbitrary point in crossing the Pacific westerly, I need not say, remains unaffected by any change of meridian. ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... effort to be clear are often wordy, and those who aim at brevity often lack perspicuity. The latter applies to Abraham Ibn Ezra, who might have said with the poet, "I avoid long-windedness, and I become obscure." Samuel ben Meir, on the other hand, grandson and pupil of Rashi, is, at least in his Talmudic commentaries, so long-winded and prolix that at first glance one ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... published about seven years ago; and by his Hebrew Grammar, which has since appeared. In each of these works, in a masterly manner, he treats of every matter proper for the student to know. Each subject is displayed, in a new method, with perspicuity, conciseness, simplicity, and classic taste. His Greek Grammar, we may suppose, will exhibit the same traits, when it shall meet the public eye. This last labor he had finished, and committed to the printer a few months before ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... amount of perspicuity to see that the three elders would be glad if Miss Colfax and he were to "make a match of it," and why. It would be a means—and a means they could approve—of keeping their little girl among them. As matters stood, she was only a visitor, ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... have already attained a high standard of culture, but rarely foster a passion sufficient to rouse all the faculties to aid in winning or retaining its beloved object—to convert indolence into activity, indifference into ardent partisanship, dulness into perspicuity. ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... he refused, not thinking it well, as he says, 'to quarrel with myself.' He also adds that Maria continues writing for children under the persuasion that she cannot be more serviceably employed; and he sends (with his usual perspicuity) affectionate messages to the Doctor's 'good amiable lady and his giant brood.' But this long friendly correspondence was coming to an end. The Doctor's letters, so quietly humorous and to the point, Mr. Edgeworth's answers with all ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... more nations than the sword. He abounds in several frugal maxims, amongst which the greatest favourite is, "A penny saved is a penny got." A general trader of good sense is pleasanter company than a general scholar; and Sir Andrew having a natural unaffected eloquence, the perspicuity of his discourse gives the same pleasure that wit would in another man. He has made his fortunes himself; and says that England may be richer than other kingdoms, by as plain methods as he himself is richer than other men; though, at the same time, I can say this of him, that there is not ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... preceding chapters, every great man was definite until the seventeenth century. John Bellini, Leonardo, Angelico, Durer, Perugino, Raphael,—all of them hated fog, and repudiated indignantly all manner of concealment. Clear, calm, placid, perpetual vision, far and near; endless perspicuity of space; unfatigued veracity of eternal light; perfectly accurate delineation of every leaf on the trees, every flower in the fields, every golden thread in the dresses of the figures, up to the highest point of calm brilliancy ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... essential to salvation, but the very meaning of which is scarcely comprehended by modern ecclesiastics. With his mental acumen and with his never-failing common sense, Mr. Lincoln declined to take part in the discussion. In his last public speech he treated this question with admirable perspicuity, and with his wonted felicity of homely illustration: "I have been shown what is supposed to be an able letter," said he, "in which the writer expresses regret that my mind has not seemed to be definitely fixed upon the question whether the seceded ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Source of all order; correct, nay stern in his taste; hard to please, and easily offended, impetuous and irritable in his temper, but of a most humane and benevolent heart; having a mind stored with a vast and various collection of learning and knowledge, which he communicated with peculiar perspicuity and force, in rich and choice expression. He united a most logical head with a most fertile imagination, which gave him an extraordinary advantage in arguing; for he could reason close or wide, as he saw best for the ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... a written description of the character of an individual, giving all the minute points and shadings of character in the language of the examiner, and its value depends upon the perspicuity and literary expression of the writer not less than upon ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... nature, I shall now proceed to a description of the people who inhabit and cultivate it, and shall endeavour to distinguish the several species or classes of them in such a manner as may best tend to perspicuity, and to furnish ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... may fairly be said that no one now living could have expounded Hume with more sympathy or with equal perspicuity."—Athenaeum. ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... grave. Glennard could not even remember at what season she had been buried; but his mood indulged the fancy that it must have been on some such day of harsh sunlight, the incisive February brightness that gives perspicuity without warmth. The white avenues stretched before him interminably, lined with stereotyped emblems of affliction, as though all the platitudes ever uttered had been turned to marble and set up over the unresisting dead. Here and there, no doubt, a frigid urn or an insipid ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... into prose," of which Lyttelton bade him beware, was the grand aim; and in their eagerness to leave prose as far behind them as possible, the poets were in danger of outstripping the understanding and feelings of their readers. It was this want of ease and perspicuity in his longer pieces, which prevented Mickle from being as much a favourite with the public, as many who were far his inferiors in the other qualities of a poet. When a writer is obscure, only ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... despair of any future excellence. The rank and file of boys would not be aroused by it to overcome the difficulty and go up higher. But Benjamin was aroused, and he resolved that his composition should yet be characterized by elegance and perspicuity. He set about that improvement at once. We shall see, in another chapter, how he purchased an old copy of the Spectator for a model, and set about ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... were in the press MONSIEUR DELILLE has given the world another proof of the powers of his mind, and displayed the French language to vast advantage, in a more arduous strain of poetry that it had yet attempted. The perspicuity for which it has always been remarked, and to which it owes its charms in conversation as perhaps also the dificulty with which it is adapted to works of poetical imagination, is strongly exemplified in his translation of Paradise Lost. If he has not always ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... any want of perspicuity in Mistress Winter's admonitions, though there might occasionally be a little lack of elegance and gentleness. But plainly told or not, Agnes remained silent, scraped the wooden trenchers, a process which answered to the washing of earthenware, and duly mopped the walls, and ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... congratulating both the reader and the author. New matter now presents itself. A considerable part of the foregoing chapters had been related before, either by others or myself. I was however, unavoidably compelled to insert it, in order to preserve unbroken that chain of detail, and perspicuity of arrangement, at which books professing to convey ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... writing, he would have been as successful in the one art as in the other. From early life it was his great ambition to be not merely a fine but a forcible writer. He did not seek splendor of diction, but that perspicuity, that transparency of expression which would convey the thought most ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... text of his own earlier editions. Webster's well-known complaints of Murray's unfairness, had a far better cause than requital; for there was no generosity in ascribing them to peevishness, though the passages in question were not worth copying. On perspicuity and accuracy, about sixty pages were extracted from Blair; and it requires no great critical acumen to discover, that they are miserably deficient in both. On the law of language, there are fifteen pages from Campbell; which, with a few exceptions, are well written. The rules for spelling are the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... "Lord, open the King of England's eyes!" Upon Tyndale's version of the Bible the King James translation is solidly based. "It is astonishing," says Dr. Geddes, a profound scholar, "how little obsolete the language of it is, even at this day; and, in point of perspicuity and noble simplicity, propriety of idiom, and purity of style, no English version has yet surpassed it." Of course our language has changed greatly in 400 ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... confusion increased, as regards scientific subjects, by the mass of memoirs written by parties, who, however acute their mental perceptions may be, yet, from want of early education, do not assign to words that accuracy of signification, and do not possess that perspicuity of style, which is absolutely necessary for the communication of ideas! Those, therefore, who, with different notions of language, read the writings of such as we are alluding to, either fail to attach to them any definite meaning, or attach one different from that which the authors ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... said the young man, who had divined her thought, thanks to that marvelous perspicuity of which fortune was from that time about to allow him the exercise, "my sister, I am expecting a most distinguished man, a most able counselor, whom I wish to present to you all, recommending him to your good graces. Ah! ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the philosopher, little of the artist, in Mr. Grote; nor are the charms of style those which he has sedulously cultivated, or by which he is anxious to obtain attention. He writes in a manly, straightforward manner, and expresses his meaning with sufficient force and perspicuity: but there is no sustained elegance of diction; there is often all apparent disdain of it. At least we meet occasionally with quite conversational expressions, introduced—not, be it remarked, with that dexterous ease and felicitous taste which render them so effective ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... of Abraham Lincoln's speeches will be very helpful. Two or three of Roscoe Conkling's arguments after he left the Senate are models of perspicuity. Mr. Potter's argument in the legal tender cases is a model—it is Euclid stated in terms of the law. Webster's arguments you will study, of course. Blackstone is one of the clearest writers who ever illustrated the great science to which you and I are devoted. Perhaps as great a logician ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... which have occasioned these reflections, whose titles are placed at the head of this article, appear to us to present more than ordinary claims to public consideration. The perspicuity of their style, the force of their arguments, and especially the thoroughly Christian temper which pervades them throughout, cannot fail, if they be read, to secure commendation, even where they fail to convince. We can easily suppose it possible to find persons who may affect to despise what is ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... novelty, to read a production of inordinate length, when so many others are demanding attention, seems to me useless and ridiculous, ... The most noteworthy instance of what I say is seen in the celebrated English novelist, Richardson, who, in spite of his admirable genius and exquisite sensibility and perspicuity, added to the fact of his being the father of the modern Novel, is scarcely read nowadays, at least in Latin countries. Given the indisputable beauties of his works, this can only be due to their extreme length. And the proof of this, that in France and Spain, to encourage ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... especially the Enchiridion. They admire its artistic and perfect form; its harmonious grouping, as of the petals of a flower, the melody and rhythm of its language, notably in the explanation of the Second Article, its clarity, perspicuity, and popularity; its simplicity, coupled with depth and richness of thought; the absence of polemics and of theological terminology, etc. However, with all this and many other things which have been and might ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... complete idea of the one, without being acquainted with the others; or of treating of the one, without mentioning the others at the same time.—This, therefore, must be my excuse, if I am taxed with want of method, or of perspicuity in the descriptions; and this being premised, I shall proceed to give an account of the various objects and operations which yet ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... I last had the honor of addressing your Lordships, I endeavored to state with as much perspicuity as the nature of an intricate affair would admit, and as largely as in so intricate an affair was consistent with the brevity which I endeavored to preserve, the proofs which had been adduced against Warren Hastings upon an inquiry instituted by an order of the Court ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... himself to the greatest advantage; and that is the best kind of talk where each speaker is most fully and candidly himself, and where, if you should shift the speeches round from one to another, there would be the greatest loss in significance and perspicuity." ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... here is somewhat pleonastic for the sake of perspicuity; the original is clear in itself, but not to us who have no such practice. Twelve stakes were fixt in the earth, each having a ring at the top; the order in which they stood was so exact, that an arrow sent with an even hand through the first ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... beneficial purposes, this performance, which, in all probability, was at first designed only to illustrate and vindicate the sentiments contained in the aforementioned letter; and it is but justice to say, the applause it has found among the learned, as well for the elegance of its diction, as the perspicuity of its precepts, is no more than what is truely due to it.——To this discourse is subjoin'd a latin translation, from the arabic of Rhazes's treatise on the small pox and measles, a copy of the original ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... to be a good man in order to divine what in certain circumstances a good and pure spirit will do. The Bishop of Beauvais had entertained no doubt as to what would happen. He knew exactly, with a perspicuity creditable to his perceptions at least, that, notwithstanding the effect which his theatrical mise en scene had produced upon the imagination of Jeanne, no power in heaven or earth would induce that young soul to content itself ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... was William Dobbin's task to muse upon these movements of Amelia's, and to watch her heart; and if his love made him divine almost all the feelings which agitated it, alas! he could see with a fatal perspicuity that there was no place there for him. And so, gently, he bore his fate, knowing it, and content to ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... strain upon the mind,—that it hardly can answer the purposes of relaxation. If you play, by all means read Franklin's Essay on the Morals of Chess. For clearness of head, for truth-telling simplicity and honesty of purpose, and for perspicuity and liveliness of style, Franklin has, perhaps, ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens |
