"Shortsighted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... manufactures so well at home, she diminishes her imports from France and England year by year. She has not only become their rival in manufactured goods in Asia and in Africa, but also in London and in Paris. Shortsighted people in France may cry out against the Frankfort Treaty; English manufacturers may explain German competition by little differences in railway tariffs; they may linger on the petty side of questions, ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... does look pretty sordid. Yet there is a soul in this giant. Consider its power to call forth the keenness in men and to give endless zest to their toil and sharp trials to their courage. It is grimy, shortsighted, this ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... inability to develop indefinitely, as the brain ceases to grow about the age of forty-five; and by the claims of actual life, which demand that even a reformer must live as man, mate, head of a family, and citizen. But those who crave that the individual continue his progress indefinitely are the shortsighted—particularly those who think that the cause must perish because the individual deserts it.... It is an open question, for that matter, whether Olof did not have a better chance to advance his cause ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... and darkness looked with anxious interest, who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away. Events which shortsighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes, had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the Evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. He had been wrested by no common deliverer from the ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... that is far off." Columbus like, he steers his barque toward the new world his faith has gazed upon, and, as with Columbus, the passion of the coming victory holds him, heart in tune and head erect, while others mournfully prophesy the disasters always by shortsighted people seen. ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... if you once begin this sort of thing, there's no end to it. It's so insidious. The more they have, the more they want; and all the time they're losing fighting power. I've thought pretty deeply about this. It's shortsighted; it really ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of more than three million readers in all parts of the country, has of late become even much more friendly as a result of the English boycott of the International News Service and the exclusion of all the Hearst publications from circulation in Canada. Mr. Hearst has replied to the inconceivably shortsighted policy of the British authorities towards his news service in a series of forcible, full-page leading articles against the British censorship which must have seriously shaken the confidence, apart from this already weakened long ago, of the American ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... the Bishop mildly, putting on his spectacles and gazing down. 'I am a little shortsighted, you know. It is the size ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... and thus avoid a thousand dangers that formerly slew it, so it is evolving to-day a mind's eye that shall see, not the physical world, but the purpose of Life, and thereby enable the individual to work for that purpose instead of thwarting and baffling it by setting up shortsighted personal aims as at present. Even as it is, only one sort of man has ever been happy, has ever been universally respected among all the ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... leaves others to judge, that his readers will perform theirs he by no means feels assured. The vulgar—among whom I would not be understood to mean merely the rabble—the vulgar I say (between ourselves) extend their influence far around, and unfortunately—set the fashion. Too shortsighted to reach my full meaning, too narrow-minded to comprehend the largeness of my views, too disingenuous to admit my moral aim—they will, I fear, almost frustrate my good intentions, and pretend to discover in my work ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... had learnt to judge such things rather differently; but nevertheless it was the right way for youth to regard them. Such enthusiasm was a little exaggerated, at any rate as things stood at present, and also a trifle shortsighted. It was now no longer as in the days of 1870 and after, when the watch on the Rhine had to be kept for fear of vengeance. He could not join as heartily as he might then have done in the proud joy of the ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... eve of his departure, in response to a delicate hint from Kirilla Matveitch, had answered coldly that he had no intention of deceiving any one, and no idea of marrying, had risen, made his bow, and that was all.... Next day I set off to the Ozhogins'. The shortsighted footman leaped up from his bench on my appearance, with the rapidity of lightning. I bade him announce me; the footman hurried away and returned at once. 'Walk in,' he said; 'you are begged to go in.' I went into Kirilla Matveitch's study.... ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... from his chair, "I am glad, personally, that you take the matter so well. As you say, the young ladies of France, and their fathers, will not all be so shortsighted." ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... Mr. Glennie, being shortsighted, did not see who 'twas; but as his visitor drew near, rose ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... Chamber of Deputies. As, in the event of the new Civil List being discussed, I was particularly anxious to avoid the question of the continuation of the court theatre being treated in the ignorant and shortsighted radical fashion, which was to be feared above all, I did not despair of making the acquaintance of some of the most influential among the new members of parliament. In this wise I found myself suddenly plunged into quite a new and strange world, and became acquainted with ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... knew the world better than Lucy. She remained in the background into which the Contessa was looking with eyes which she called shortsighted. "How do you do, Madame di Forno-Populo!" she said. "It is a long time since we met. We have both grown older since that period. I hope you have recovered ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... religion and all poetry have taken for granted. And to three of these it is that I desire to call attention, persuaded as I am that the scientific progress of our day will make short work of all the spurious aestheticism and all the shortsighted utilitarianism which have cast doubts upon the intimate and vital connection between beauty and every other noble object of ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... Have some bread and butter. You won't? then I will. I want it, after your father's lavish hospitality. (HEDVIG goes to fetch bread and butter.) My daughter—a poor shortsighted little ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... held the book rather close to her face, being shortsighted; but, without even lifting her eyes, she had become aware of the entrance of Mrs Griffith and George. She glanced significantly at Mrs Howlett. Mr Griffith hadn't come, although he was churchwarden, and Mrs Howlett gave an ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... the Austrian authorities toward their unwilling subjects of the Trentino was characterized by a vindictiveness as savage as it was shortsighted. Like the Germans in Alsace, they made the mistake of thinking that they could secure the loyalty of the people by awing and terrorizing them, whereas these methods had the effect of hardening the determination of the Trentini to rid themselves of Austrian rule. Caesare ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... progress, people must be struck, from one end of Europe to the other, by the remarkably prosperous state of France. Her Navy, formed in two years, after a ruinous revolution, and assuming at last a menacing attitude after so long, excited the scoffs of a shortsighted enemy." ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... symptoms are ever in harmony with nature. If there are convulsive attacks, they are the result of used-up matter returning into the circulation, and reaching even the brain and central parts of the nervous system. The cure is gained when the defective organs are brought to act well. It is shortsighted action to deal with the kidneys alone in this trouble. They often fail because they are overloaded through the failure of lungs and skin to do their part. First, it is well to act on the lungs by gentle rubbing with hot olive ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... "Lawks, sir, I'm shortsighted, though I never lets on. Rhoda, 'ow can you 'ave let on to the gentleman as I'm deficient? As to knowing Mr. Wrent, I'd do so well enough," said Mrs. Bensusan, tossing her head, "with his long white beard and white 'ead, let alone his ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... means the only religious impostor who has flourished among us. In 1831 Joseph Smith, the first of the Mormon prophets and the founder of Mormon-ism, came to Portage County, with one of his disciples, and began to preach. They made so many converts that some shortsighted people of Hiram thought to stop their work by tarring and feathering them. This only drove them from the place; but the next year, they settled in Kirtland, Lake County, where, in 1834, their followers built the first Mormon temple, for the worship ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... That just shews the wisdom of Providence and the Lord's mercy. God fulfils himself in many ways: ways we little think of when we try to set up our own shortsighted laws against his Word. When does the Devil catch hold of a man? Not when he's working and not when he's drunk; but when he's idle and sober. Our own natures tell us to drink when we have nothing else to do. Look at you and me! When we'd both earned a pocketful of money, what did we do? ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... and the loutish companions to whom she had always persuaded herself poor Nan was akin. And it was by no means sure that the last of the Princes was not the best of them; she was very proud of her brother's daughter, and was more at a loss to know how to make excuses for being shortsighted and neglectful. Miss Prince hated to think that Nan had any but the pleasantest associations with her nearest relative; she must surely keep the girl's affection now. She meant to insist at any rate upon ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... suffering and death—are, as we know, the consequences, just and equitable, of original sin, it is a shortsighted faith and a defective vision that find in these crosses only chastisement for sin. Truly, they should not have been, had we never sinned; but as God, in His mercy, draws good out of evil, so has He made these ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... not only beautiful and quaint in design, but also adapted for every-day service, and decorous in humble and secluded life. And you must remember always that your business, as manufacturers, is to form the market, as much as to supply it. If, in shortsighted and reckless eagerness for wealth, you catch at every humour of the populace as it shapes itself into momentary demand—if, in jealous rivalry with neighbouring States, or with other producers, you ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... Barty's face. His dark, shortsighted eyes, that were set on Larry, had a sudden glow in them. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... for man and beast as well as producing many other useful products, and much of the work of your Association seems to be along the same line. I am sure we can live easier and better on this earth when we learn to use the trees in their proper place. Man often acts in a shortsighted way by depending largely on annual crops for the main source of food for himself and his animals and neglects the long lived trees which may not have to be planted but once in a lifetime and which, if given a little intelligent ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... . Ah! heaven,—what is rash or wise, shortsighted or far-seeing, too fast or too slow, upon the profound and terrible question, "What is to be done with slavery?" You have been saying something about it, and I rather think, if I could see it, that I should very much agree with you. Bryant and I had some correspondence ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... adventuress. That belongs to yellow-backed penny-dreadfuls and Sunday supplement tales of breach-of-promise suits. More often the daughter of the business man is both the victim and the vampire of his own shortsighted neglectfulness. The business man expresses it as "working like a slave to give her the best in the land." And sometimes, as in the case of Steve O'Valley, it is his own wife instead of a blonde soul mate who lures him to destruction ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... had suggested to her was cherished all her life; and I do not doubt that these early lessons on the right relation of human beings to each other—the social science which regards human happiness as depending on justice and toleration—is even now bearing fruit in the Fatherland. Shortsighted mortals see the immediate failures, but in the larger eye of the Infinite and the Eternal there is always progress towards better things from every honest attempt to remedy injustice, and ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... fact, except in those personal relations which are governed by the affections, what is morality but the mandate of policy, and what is policy but the mandate of necessity? My criticism of Roebuck and the other "high financiers" is not upon their morality, but upon their policy, which is shortsighted and stupid and base. The moral difference between me and them is that, while I merely assert and maintain my right to live, they deny the right of any but themselves to live. I say I criticise them; but that does not mean that I sympathize with the public at large in its complainings against ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... he did not feel the cold. It was here, he remembered, that he used to come with little Christine to see the Korrigans dance at the rising of the moon. He had never seen any, though his eyes were good, whereas Christine, who was a little shortsighted, pretended that she had seen many. He smiled at the thought and then suddenly gave a start. A voice behind ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... see beyond one's nose; dare pondus fumo[Lat]; get the wrong sow by the ear &c. (blunder) 699. give a bias, give a twist; bias, warp, twist; prejudice, prepossess. Adj. misjudging &c. v.; ill-judging, wrong-headed; prejudiced &c. v.; jaundiced; shortsighted, purblind; partial, one-sided, superficial. narrow-minded, narrow-souled[obs3]; mean-spirited; confined, illiberal, intolerant, besotted, infatuated, fanatical, entete[Fr], positive, dogmatic, conceited; opinative, opiniative[obs3]; opinioned, opinionate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... time which encouraged James to make a more decided attempt to restore Catholicism. Henry IV of France had granted the Protestants of his kingdom liberty of worship, by the Edict of Nantes (1598). Louis XIV deliberately revoked it (1685). By that shortsighted act the Huguenots, or French Protestants, were exposed to cruel persecution, and thousands of them fled to ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... Macedonian camp was stormed. Thereupon Philip passed from partial action to total inaction, and notwithstanding all the complaints of Hannibal, who vainly tried to breathe into such a halting and shortsighted policy his own fire and clearness of decision, he allowed some years ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... paying the whole tribute out of my own pocket, and of disestablishing in Neopalia what seems to be the only institution in no danger of such treatment here—the tax-gatherer. If they understood that intention of mine, they would hardly be so shortsighted as to set me adrift in my shirt like a second Baron d'Ezonville, or so unjust as to kill poor old Stefanopoulos as they had killed his ancestor. Besides, as I comforted myself by repeating, they were a good-hearted race; unsophisticated, of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... Shortsighted people, however, who do not realize how inexorably the time of payment arrives, who do not know how rapidly tools wear out and have to be replaced, or do not keep accounts in order that they may ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... in such a case a duel was customary, and in fact necessary; if he wished to avoid it, he would be forced to leave the academy. The challenged did not refuse the challenge, but said that as he was of weak constitution, shortsighted and without practice with any kind of weapons, he chose the American duel ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... shortsighted," I rejoined, "and I thought you did. It is our foolish little vanities which prevent us acting as we should. But let me know if I can do anything for you. If you want me, I'll ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... what I have imperfectly written, for you ever trusted my faith, if you have blamed my faults. I am now comparatively happy—a word from you will, make me blest. And Fate has, perhaps, been more merciful to both, than in our shortsighted and querulous human vision, we might, perhaps, believe; for now that the frame is brought low—and in the solitude of my chamber I can duly and humbly commune with mine own heart, I see the aspect of those faults which ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... when a shortsighted crowd, incapable of judgment, and with their minds clouded with a few cheap phrases, expected from a quick and victorious war the strengthening of all the elements of Force, and feared to be left stranded. Even the most threadbare kind of liberalism appeared ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... reference to his own head rather than to the heads of some odd millions of fellow citizens. The story is told of his standing bare-headed in a hatter's shop, awaiting the return of a salesman who had carried off his own beloved head-gear, when a shortsighted bishop entered, and, not recognizing the peer, took him for an assistant, and handed him his hat, asking him if he had any exactly like it. Lord Ailesbury turned the bishop's hat over and over, examined ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... so selfish as to be unwilling to part with their daughter, preferring their own happiness to hers. Others are so silly as to think no ordinary man good enough for her, and therefore, if they had their own way, would have her to become an old maid. Fortunately, such shortsighted people are not ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... Plymouth more than seven years. Paul received his early education at the Hoe Preparatory School in that town. He was a lively and vigorous child overflowing with health. When he was in his sixth year we discovered that he was shortsighted—a physical defect inherited from me. The discovery caused us acute distress. I knew from personal experience what a handicap and an embarrassment it is to be afflicted with myopia. Regularly thenceforward his eyes had to be examined by oculists. For several years, in fact until he was 16, the ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... the happy results of our unique system of free enterprise was the rewarding of men in exact proportion to their merits and abilities. The war, bringing disruption and bankruptcy to so many shiftless and shortsighted people, made of Consolidated Pemmican one of the country's great concerns. The organization welcoming General Thario was far different from the one which had hired his son. I now had fourteen factories, stretching like a string of lustrous pearls from Quebec down to Montevideo, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... he was attacked. When Mme. de Bargeton called him "M. Chatelet," he swore to himself that he would possess her; and now he entered into the views of the mistress of the house, came to the support of the young poet, and declared himself Lucien's friend. The great diplomatist, overlooked by the shortsighted Emperor, made much of Lucien, and declared himself his friend! To launch the poet into society, he gave a dinner, and asked all the authorities to meet him—the prefect, the receiver-general, the colonel in command of the garrison, the head of the Naval ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... you may well ask such questions. War is always wrong; going to war is necessarily a phase of a shortsighted policy; every wrong act is, of ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... learned to find rest, health, and recreation in the splendid forests and flower-clad meadows of our mountains. The forest reserves should be set apart forever for the use and benefit of our people as a whole and not sacrificed to the shortsighted greed of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... government increased those of the diplomatic and military isolation which she underwent in Europe. At the moment of the conclusion of the Treaty of Union, Pitt had entered upon engagements with the Irish Catholics which he felt himself bound to fulfil. The conscientious but shortsighted and narrow-minded George III. opposed every act of toleration with respect to his Catholic subjects: he refused to give his assent, and Pitt by resigning his post sacrificed, at a perilous crisis for his country, foreign policy to the duties and obligations of ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... perhaps his hand had dealt the first decisive blow at the tottering house where, so long as it stood, his wife and the twins would under any circumstances find shelter. Resentment against the Swiss, hatred, and jealousy, had made him a knave, and at the same time the most shortsighted of fools. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... one man, would be able to obtain from the legislature full admission to civil privileges; and all hope of obtaining such admission must be relinquished if Nottingham should, by the help of some wellmeaning but shortsighted friends of religious liberty, be enabled to accomplish his design. If his bill passed, there would doubtless be a considerable defection from the dissenting body; and every defection must be severely felt by a class already outnumbered, depressed, and struggling ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... shows a curious contrast between the political stagnancy and the great industrial activity. The great constitutional questions seemed to be settled; and the statesmen, occupied mainly in sharing power and place, took a very shortsighted view (not for the first time in history) of the great problems that were beginning to present themselves. The British empire in the East was not won by a towering ambition so much as forced upon a reluctant ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... distinguished by hook or by crook, and the only way left now was always to go on foot. So they walked the pavement—wet or dry, nothing could induce them to enter the door of a carriage. Item: they gave up being shortsighted; the few who for reasons distinct from fashion could not resign the habit concealed it, as if it was a defect instead ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... damaging blow was dealt to Philip's naval schemes, the war had given ample occasion for stirring deeds of valour and brilliant feats of arms, but the scheme of operations throughout had been narrow and shortsighted. Though the honours still lay unmistakably with England, Spain had in fact been gaining ground, slowly remedying those defects in her organisation which had been so glaringly exposed by the breakdown of the Armada: and when Frobisher fell at Crozon, she was more formidable than at any time since ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... in bed upstairs. She wrung her hands. 'I couldn't. I couldn't. He keeps on saying something—I don't know what.' With the memory of all the talk against the man that had been dinned into her ears, I looked at her narrowly. I looked into her shortsighted eyes, at her dumb eyes that once in her life had seen an enticing shape, but seemed, staring at me, to see nothing at all now. But I ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... nothing, I know nothing, all through your fault, the fault of your maternal selfishness. I feel that I am incapable of working, of making something of myself, and yet I was not intended for a secluded, simple life, lonely enough to kill one, to which I have been condemned by your shortsighted affection.'" ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... regions have been hitherto unknown from the same cause which Dr Livingstone has so ably explained in regard to the western side of Africa—the jealousy of the shortsighted people who live on the coast, who, to preserve a monopoly of one particular article exclusively to themselves (ivory), have done their best to keep everybody away from the interior. I say shortsighted; for it is obvious that, were the resources of the ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke |
