"Shrewdness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tawdry affectation of finery, with some old family pictures hanging on walls which their own cobwebs would better have suited. I was struck with a secret dread at entering, nor was it lessened by the appearance of the landlady, who had that look of selfish shrewdness, which, of all others, is the most hateful to those whose feelings are untinctured with the world. A girl, who she told us was her niece, sat by her, playing on a guitar, while herself was at work, with the assistance of spectacles, and had a prayer-book with the ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... from him through both experience and teaching along lines of her own. She had found a formula for the resolution of problems, both physical and mental, which had hag-ridden her for years. She had a natural mental keenness, a speculative mind, a practical shrewdness (the gift of her New England ancestors) and an ample field. The theology, the medical science and indeed the philosophy or psychology of the New England of the sixties contributed strongly, through their limitations, to the growth of bizarre systems which had in them elements ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... of thing," she said sweepingly, and he could almost see the inclusive gesture with her free hand. He laughed but still marvelled at the shrewdness of ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... tell you vere zey take them," the old man interrupted. "You know Alsace—no? So! See! I tell you." He approached, poking Tom's chest with his bony finger and screwing up his blue eyes until he seemed a very demon of shrewdness. They wondered if he were ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... publication.[2]—Is it in a spirit of mischief that Baxter names THE VANISTS, or disciples of Sir Henry Vane the younger, as one of the recognised sects of this time? That great Republican leader, it was known, with all his deep practical astuteness and the perfect clearness and shrewdness of his speeches and business-letters, carried in his head a mystic Metaphysics of his own which he found it hard to express. It was a something unique, including ideas from the Antinomians, the Anabaptists, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... persons, dealers in shekels, and did say unto them, "Let us find us a man who can tell us whether those in high places will sell gold. And if he say unto us, nay, let us buy much gold and make many shekels." And the divers persons, dealers in shekels, were astonished at his shrewdness, and were all of one accord. Then PHYSKE found him a man who did say unto him nay, and PHYSKE and the divers other persons did buy much gold. Now it happened that those in high places did sell gold, and PHYSKE ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... comes to set us free,' would hardly make us 'meet him cheerily, as our true friend,' were this his real shape. But were I disposed to enumerate our scarecrows, the list would be incomplete; as there are doubtless many that I have not the shrewdness to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... The shrewdness of all hunted animals took hold of the old man's nature. He ran half a mile, then turned and doubled his track. At a stony spot, where a trail does not remain long at best, he stopped, swung his arms and jumped ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... God's blessing follows such an one at every step, and he will succeed in the end, whatever trials may beset his path at first. It is a great mistake to suppose that a man's success depends on his "sharpness." Shrewdness is a valuable quality, but it must be coupled with a plain, practical honesty, or it will amount to nothing in the end. A man must be faithful to his God if he would have his ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... ability, with the exception of du Ronceret; but the Norman vanity and the brutal ambition of the Heir were fully on a par with Claude Vignon's literary power, Nathan's poetic gift, La Palferine's finesse, Couture's financial eye, Bixiou's wit, Finot's shrewdness, Maxime's profound diplomacy, and Leon de ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... dressed; but Hal's chagrin was so great at the thought of being so cleverly detected by Jerry's shrewdness, that I attempted to comfort him by promising to relate my own misfortunes upon experiencing my first attack. After supper, and while we were smoking our pipes, the boys claimed the ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... kindness (ill-explained, as it seemed to him), of which he was so suddenly the object, had no other purpose than to entice him into a step which might be used to compromise him with the Thuilliers? What a blow to his reputation for shrewdness, and what a role to play!—that of the dog letting go the meat for ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... magistrates and over the whole army. Seoses was the first and only man who held this office in Persia; for it was conferred on no one before or after that time. And the kingdom was strengthened by Cabades and guarded securely; for in shrewdness and activity ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... possible for her to be wise either before or after the event; she had not sufficient coldness nor shrewdness of character to enable her to break with all these conflicting surroundings and begin life over again as she had eloquently described to the priest, for without money she could not leave St. Ignace, and she could ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... watch'd it, and departed weeping for him; Then, tho' she mourn'd his absence as his grave, Set her sad will no less to chime with his, But throve not in her trade, not being bred To barter, nor compensating the want By shrewdness, neither capable of lies, Nor asking overmuch and taking less, And still foreboding 'what would Enoch say?' For more than once, in days of difficulty And pressure, had she sold her wares for less Than what she ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... instantly followed up by entire consecration to God. The path of usefulness soon opened out before him; and in spite of 'fightings without and fears within,' he pursued it with undeviating integrity to the close of a protracted life. His shrewdness and originality of thought, quaint and pointed method of expression, combined with such an intimate acquaintance with the word of God, that some said he had the scriptures at his fingers' ends, and others nicknamed him 'old chapter and verse;' ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... Russia, Italy, and America, though holding hands now, will separate when the war is over, and may find it necessary to use the same hands for chastizing each other. Alliances have been political games and devices, useful or useless according to the shrewdness of their instigators, but of no value in promoting love between nations. Old-time enemies become friends, and old-time friends become enemies at the command of the political drill-sergeant. England was the hereditary enemy of France. Prussia was the ally ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... there in the world so much, and dealt with so many people, that the natural frankness of his mind was sharpened into caution. But any weak and helpless person still could get the best of him; and his shrewdness certainly did not spring from any form of bitterness. He was rough in his ways sometimes, and could not bear to be contradicted when he was sure that he was right, which generally happened to him. But above all ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... spent the rest of the night seeking for his wretched idol. The next day he continued his search, he crossed and recrossed the river many times. He watched and smelt everyone that came over, and with significant shrewdness he sought unceasingly in the neighboring taverns for his master. The next day he set to work systematically to smell everyone that might cross ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... displeased at this popular tribute to his shrewdness. Dignity forbade him, however, to acknowledge the compliment, and he contented himself with lifting the two handles of the stretcher which was next him. A covering was thrown over the face of the dead man, and the two policemen, with their burden, began to ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... States; and it is much to be desired that he would favour the public with the result of his observations during his residence in that country; as probably no person living is qualified to execute such a task with more shrewdness, judgment, or ability. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... at that time, she had never grown in any degree as she ought; she was short, stout, and of a pale and very plain countenance. It could not be now said that she was deficient in mind, but she was slow in its operations. She displayed, indeed, a more than ordinary depth of reflection, and a shrewdness of observation, but the evidences of-this came forth in a very quiet way, and were observable only to her mother and sister. To all besides she was extremely reserved: she was timid to excess, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... the second joined it, it was conducted as a partnership, under the title of Murray and Highley. But in 1803 John Murray cancelled the partnership, and started for himself at 32, Fleet Street. Relieved from a timorous partner, he at once displayed his shrewdness, energy, and literary enthusiasm. He rapidly became, as Byron called him, "the [Greek (transliterated): Anax] of Publishers," or, as he was nicknamed, "The Emperor of the West." In February, 1809, he had launched the 'Quarterly Review'; ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... it does come, always bursts up in an unexpected place; I derived much from observing in the faces of these cheerful friars, that intelligent shrewdness and arch penetration so visible in the countenances of our Welch farmers, and curates of country villages in Flintshire, Caernarvonshire, &c. which Howel (best judge in such a case) observes in his Letters, and learnedly accounts for; but which I had wholly forgotten till the monks of St. Victor ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... following a prudent tactical system, which hardly allows of a step in advance or retreat even in the course of ten years. The secret intrigues of men who desire above all things to avoid noise requires special shrewdness, a special aptitude for dealing with small matters, and a patient endurance such as one only finds in persons callous to all passions. It is thus that provincial dilatoriness, which is so freely ridiculed in Paris, is full of treachery, secret stabs, hidden victories and defeats. These worthy ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... obdurate in retaining superstitions that rendered them objects of fear, and therefore of respect." Smith in his book on the Araucanians of Chili, notes (238), that besides the usual medicine men there was an occasional woman "who had acquired the most unbounded influence by shrewdness, joined to a hideous personal appearance and a certain mystery ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... surprising, not so much through want of liberality in such patrons, although for the most part they are least liberal where they should be the very opposite, as through the timidity and excessive modesty, or rather, to be more exact in this case, the lack of shrewdness of Baldassarre. To tell the truth, in proportion as one should be discreet with magnanimous and liberal Princes, so should one always be pressing and importunate with such as are miserly, unthankful, and discourteous, for the reason that, even as in the case of ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... of Mercy is lovely throughout the pilgrimage; but in the important choice of a partner for life, she manifests great prudence and shrewdness; she asks the advice of those who knew Mr. Brisk, and whose names proved how capable they were to give it. And she acted upon their knowledge of his character. And when she discovered the utter selfishness of his disposition, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "Your native shrewdness, my dear Watson, that innate cunning which is the delight of your friends, would surely prevent you from inclosing cipher and message in the same envelope. Should it miscarry, you are undone. As it is, both have to go wrong before any harm comes ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... now asked that the chief of police come personally to escort them out and make an apology. In many ways, it seems like an opera bouffe, but there is no doubt that up to date they have shown more shrewdness and policy than the government, and are getting the latter where it is a laughing stock, which is fatal in China. But the government isn't inactive; they have appointed a new Minister of Education and a new Chancellor of the University, both ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... suggested Randolph, half smiling, yet wondering at her unlooked-for serious shrewdness as he glanced ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of Queen Elizabeth there was no merchant in England better known or held in higher repute than Sir John Spencer, the Rothschild or Rockefeller of his day, whose shrewdness and industry had raised him to the Chief Magistrateship of the City ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... soon came to be Canny Elshie, or the Wise Wight of Mucklestane-Moor. Some extended their queries beyond their bodily complaints, and requested advice upon other matters, which he delivered with an oracular shrewdness that greatly confirmed the opinion of his possessing preternatural skill. The querists usually left some offering upon a stone, at a distance from his dwelling; if it was money, or any article which did not suit him to accept, he either ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... natural causes are insufficient, that God "gave" them, as he now gives to some, riches or honors; that is to say, by virtue of the operation of natural laws. If all who keep cattle would exercise a tithe of the patriarch's shrewdness and sagacity in improving their stock, we should see fewer ill-favored ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... took all fire, all animation out of his voice; his great, pale cheeks hung like filled pouches, motionless, without a quiver; but in his blue eyes, narrowed as if peering, there was the same look of confident shrewdness, a little crazy in its fixity, they must have had while the indomitable optimist sat thinking at night in his cell. Before him, Karl Yundt remained standing, one wing of his faded greenish havelock thrown back cavalierly ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... of this remarkable avenue dawned upon me I could not but admire the native shrewdness of the ancient progenitor of the Mezops who hit upon this novel plan to throw his enemies from his track and delay or thwart them in their attempts to follow him to ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Some of the reasons assigned for entertaining this view are—1st, "The negro is naturally improvident." 2d, "He is constitutionally indolent." 3d, "Being of an inferior race, he is deficient in that shrewdness and management necessary to prevent his being imposed upon, and which are indispensable to enable him to conduct any business with success." 4th, "All these natural defects have been aggravated by slavery. The slave never ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... others and to underestimate himself in the comparison—indeed, a certain humility was strongly marked in him, even as regards his art, though he was self-confident also. When he was unconstrained his great powers of observation, his shrewdness of judgment, his bubbling humor, and a picturesque vivacity of phrase not uncommon among artists made him one of the ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... is rather curious to note, that whilst English booksellers are emulously vying with one another to publish editions of Uncle Toms, Queechys, Wide Wide Worlds, &c., they neglect to issue English works which the superior shrewdness of {405} Uncle Sam deems worthy of reprinting. Southey's Chronicle of the Cid, which was published by Longman in 1808, and not since printed in England, was brought out in a very handsome octavo form at Lowell, U. S., in 1846. And this, the "first American edition," as ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... three years? And as for De Montespan, was she not wasting away into an old woman? If they had found it possible to win the heart of this sensual Louis, why not she? This heart had once been all her own, and why should not she, who combined the beauty of one mistress with the shrewdness of the other, dispossess them both, and re-enter into possession ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... an idea of forming for her certain contact points with the active life from which she was otherwise cut off. But she gave us, I am sure, more than we brought her, and, as will be seen later, her shrewdness was an important ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... you mean," Asgill retorted, showing his greater shrewdness, "who has the spirit to say that he ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... part of spokeswoman, gave her tale, interrupted now and again by a long whistle with which the Major signified his shrewdness, or by an energetic nod which meant that the ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... that I should be found; and this especially when a man would stay for a while talking on the stairs within an arm's length of where I lay: now it was as I might say, more of the intellect; and I pondered on what I heard my Cousin Tom say, and marvelled at his shrewdness; for fear, if it does not drive away wits, sharpens them wonderfully. He had, of course, put me in greater peril, by saying that I was gone to Rome; but he had saved himself very adroitly, for no witness in the house could tell that I had ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... coal-black in the clear yellow glow of the rising moon, seemed to cast its shadow upon the ground prepared for that experiment. He was going to try ever so many experiments; I had admired his energy, his enterprise, and his shrewdness. Nothing on earth seemed less real now than his plans, his energy, and his enthusiasm; and raising my eyes, I saw part of the moon glittering through the bushes at the bottom of the chasm. For a moment it looked as though the smooth ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... a very capable business man. He possessed the combination of shrewdness, ability to grasp and marshal details, and that utter selfishness which the world from time immemorial has rewarded with huge accumulations of money. He had one of those minds which find their recreation in intrigue. Unembarrassed by a conscience and unhampered by scruples he drove directly ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... a shrewdness that if more fully expanded might make them millionaires, but in the present small way they hoped to put to account in getting a few extra dimes. They put a big chunk of iron in the mould and poured in the melted solder which enclosed it completely, so that when they ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... who came on board us was named Terence O' something. His countenance was the droll medley of fun, shrewdness, and blundering, that is so often found in the Irish peasant, and which appears to be characteristic of entire races in ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... knew that all Beatrice's bills were sent to Mary to discount, and Mary, not without a certain shrewdness, had her own ideas on the matter. But it amused more than it annoyed her. Gay might as well have a few hundred to spend in getting a wife and caretaker as tradesmen whose weakness it was to swell ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... Curtis, Franklin, Dexter, and others of eminence, and he never failed to sustain himself upon terms of equality. This was remarkable in presence of the fact that he was likely to be retained on the hard side of most cases. This was due, perhaps, to his reputation for shrewdness, and for a quality in practice which has been called the inventive faculty. When parties were not allowed to testify, there was a wide field for the imagination, and for the exercise of the inventive faculties on the part of an advocate. He had defended, successfully, the Ursuline Convent ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... taken his opening with his customary incisive shrewdness. The mention of Bacon had settled it, to his mind. Only one imaginable character of manuscript from the philosopher scholar-politician could have value enough to tempt a thief of Enderby's calibre. Enderby's expression told that the shot was a true one. As for Bertram, he ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... time moodily thinking. She did not like the way in which her cousin assumed superiority over her. The difference in their ages did not account for the greater worldly wisdom Louise had acquired, and in much that she said and did Beth recognized a shrewdness and experience that made her feel humbled and, in a way, inferior to her cousin. Nor did she trust the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... cousin, Ralph Mainwaring, while never quite forgiving him for having disposed of the estate, had, nevertheless, with the shrewdness and foresight for which his family were noted, given to his only son the name of Hugh Mainwaring, confident that his American-English cousin would never marry, and hoping thereby to win back the old Mainwaring estate ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... them, he has had no rival in this country unless one be found in Jefferson. The complete discomfiture of his most formidable assailants in 1863, especially of those who sought to prejudice him before the people on account of the arrest of Vallandigham, cannot easily be paralleled for shrewdness of treatment and for keen appreciation of the reactionary influences which are certain to control public opinion. Mr. Van Buren stands without rival in the use of partisan tactics. He operated altogether ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Maximin by name, was a true barbarian, though born in the empire. His father was a Goth, his mother of the nation of the Alani. But he had judgment and shrewdness, and a valor equal to his strength, and soon advanced in the favor of the emperor, who was a good judge of merit. Fierce and impetuous by nature, experience of the world taught him to restrain these qualities, and he advanced in position until he ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... ripe scholars, but who had borne and were bearing a leading part in the great actions of that memorable epoch. Among such men he would be most at home, for there his wit, his shrewdness, his genial spirits, and high breeding would be best appreciated. But his own keen relish of life, and his delight in watching the lights and shades of human character, took him into that wider circle where witty and notable men are always eagerly sought after to grace the feasts ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... connivance of Sophie Gamard allowed him to take advantage of Abbe Francois Birotteau's unsuspecting good nature, and to rob him of all the inheritance of Abbe Chapeloud, whom he had hated in his lifetime, and over whom he triumphed thus again, despite the shrewdness of the deceased priest. Abbe Troubert even won over to his side the Listomeres, defenders of Francois Birotteau. [The Vicar of Tours.] About 1839, at Troyes, Monsiegneur Troubert was on terms of intimacy with the Cinq-Cygnes, the Hauteserres, the Cadignans, the Maufrigneuses, and Daniel ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... advanced a few yards, and then an enormous expanse of blue burst into sight. There, in the lap of its steel-coloured mountains, basking in the gorgeous tropical sunshine, lay the great lake Tanganyika. The goal had been reached; by his daring, shrewdness and resolution he had overcome all difficulties. Like the soldiers in Tacitus, in victory he ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... mind your presence, but rest assured that though he may lie on his side with his back turned, the cunning jucko is carefully noting all you do. The abject and humble behaviour of a poor negro's dog in America was once proverbial: the quaint shrewdness, the droll roguery, the demure devilry of a real Gipsy dog are ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... upon which Sherman's fame as a soldier so largely rests, was by no means the greatest or most significant of his many achievements. His record as a soldier is filled with examples of his courage, his shrewdness, and his tenacity, while his mingling of gentle ways and grim determination, of restlessness and calm, of forethought, fearlessness, and frankness, make him at once a unique and central figure in the decade of war and reconstruction that forms so important a chapter in the story of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... to make everything clear I have not told you what the woman I married is like. I have emphasized, you see, the other woman. I make the blind statement that I love my wife, and to a man of your shrewdness that means nothing at all. To tell the truth, had I not started to speak of this matter I would feel more comfortable. It is inevitable that I give you the impression that I am in love with the tobacconist's wife. That's not true. To ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... great impression upon the king, both on account of her shrewdness and beauty; so, being a jolly monarch, he conceived the notion of marrying her to the heir apparent. The heir apparent had no objection, and so the ceremony was consummated with ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... maintain a languishing existence; here and there it might have a casual run of success; and, as these local ebbs and flows were continually shifting, perhaps, after all, the trade might lie amongst a small number of hands. Universally, however, the landlords showed some shrewdness, or even sagacity, in qualifying, according to the circumstances of the inquirer, the sort of credit which they allowed to the exaggerated ill fame of the roads. Returning on this very road, some months after, with a timid female relative, who put her questions with ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... habitual civility, made familiar acquaintance with the shopwoman. She was a little sickly old lady, her head shaking, as with palsy, somewhat deaf, but still shrewd and sharp, rendered mechanically so by long habits of shrewdness and sharpness. She became very communicative, spoke freely of her desire to give up the shop, and pass the rest of her days with a sister, widowed like herself, in a neighbouring town. Since she had lost her husband, the field and orchard attached ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The two men looked at one another, while the knot of beggars, gathered round the gate and just out of earshot, watched them—in the dark as to all else, but aware with Irish shrewdness that they were at grips. Asgill was not only taken by surprise, but he lay under the disadvantage of ignorance. He did not know precisely how things stood, much less could he explain this sudden attack. ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... those circumstances which must almost be considered as part of the common stock of Comedy, and everything depends on the delicacy and humour with which it is used. That Falstaff should fall so repeatedly into the snare gives us a less favourable opinion of his shrewdness than the foregoing pieces had led us to form; still it will not be thought improbable, if once we admit the probability of the first infatuation on which the whole piece is founded, namely, that he can believe himself qualified to inspire a passion. This leads him, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... vigorous and dexterous of any of the family. He finally became more than six feet high, and every way well proportioned, and remarkable for his agility and strength. He was so uncommonly shrewd, bright, strong, and active, that he became notorious for his shrewdness, and for his feats of strength and agility. Indeed, he was so full of his playful mischief as ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... though he was pleased to make rather cynical fun of his son's political enthusiasm, esteeming it in a sense a diverting and therefore reprehensible pursuit for a business man, the elder Lossing had a sneaking pride in it, all the same. He liked to bring out Harry's political shrewdness. ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... succeeding move; when it was found that the kingdom was not large enough to pay it. The net-work of the nobility, hemmed in by the net-work of the bourgeoisie,—the antagonism of two protected races, one protected by fixed institutions, the other by the active patience of labor and the shrewdness of commerce,—produced the revolution of 1789. The two races almost reunited are to-day face to face with collaterals without a heritage. What are they to do? Our political future is big ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... wholly due to my Yankee shrewdness; and now, having gained my point," she added, with a graceful inclination, "I will not keep you ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... men showed his native shrewdness and kindliness, as well as the value of all his early training in the arts of the politician. Always ready to listen, and to give men free chance to relieve their minds in talk, he never directly antagonized ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... the "Southern Literary Messenger," a monthly magazine, published by Mr. Thomas W. White, in the city of Richmond. He strongly advised me, among others, to prepare at once a full account of what I had seen and undergone, and trust to the shrewdness and common-sense of the public-insisting, with great plausibility, that however roughly, as regards mere authorship, my book should be got up, its very uncouthness, if there were any, would give it all the better chance of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... stars, of twin mountain lakes, the blue-purple of ocean. A girl in love is blessed with just such eyes—sometimes. Whereupon, remembering her own two girls, May and Doris—good as gold, bless them, yet, her shrewdness pronounced, when compared with Damaris, but ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... underneath the building. The church has been enlarged since, and I heard that the paper with our names, and those of the members of the committee, was found in a good state of preservation. This Sergeant Murray was a man of great dry humour and shrewdness. ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... about our "brilliant" Wall Street financiers. Their "brilliancy" is merely a repulsive egotism in one of its worst forms,—that of cupidity. They are like misers with longer, quicker, and more sinewy fingers than other misers, in the gathering together of dollars. Their shrewdness may be exceptional, but a quality which consists half in accurate guessing and half in bullying defiance is hardly worthy of the name. As for their "nerve" and "coolness," these are not endowments that in such connection can be admired or praised. For surely the gambler who ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... name and his acres—of various important commissions, as military attache even, for a short space, to an important embassy, he had acquired, by mere living, that for which his intellectual betters had often envied him—a certain shrewdness, a certain instinct, as to both men and affairs, which were often of more service to him than finer brains to other persons. But, like most accomplishments, these also brought their own conceit with them. Lord Grosville having, in his ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Mr. Bolton's shrewdness continued to rise as I noticed his close attention to my tale and how much to the point his questions were. Every now and then he stopped me while he made a jotting in a fat little brown leather pocket book, and ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... nicknamed Scattercopper. Still, nevertheless, with an earnest shout, and evidently with as much good faith as ever, the people bellowed 'He is the very image of the Great Stone Face!' But Ernest turned sadly from the wrinkled shrewdness of that sordid visage, and gazed up the valley, where, amid a gathering mist, gilded by the last sunbeams, he could still distinguish those glorious features which had impressed themselves into his soul. Their aspect cheered him. What did the benign ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and England as one of the cattle kings. He is a Westerner of the Westerners, and an individuality even among them. Tall and loose-built, with an authentic Bret Harte quality in action and speech, he can flash a glance of shrewdness or humour from the deep eyes under their shaggy, pent-house brows. He is one of the biggest ranch owners in the West (perhaps the biggest); his judgment on cattle or horses is law, and he has ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... trees, and hair of the buffalo. "From this combination proceeds a Wakan influence so powerful that no human being, unassisted, can resist it." Wonderful indeed must be the magic power of these Dakota Druids to lead such a man as the Rev. S.R. Riggs to say of them: "By great shrewdness, untiring industry, and more or less of actual demoniacal possession, they convince great numbers of their fellows, and in the process are convinced themselves of their sacred character and office." Tahkoo ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... employments for which he was unfit and from which he was compelled to retire in disgrace, getting a 'competent private fortune' by dishonest practices, which he lavished in overcoming the virtue of timid and venal men, his name is the shame of England. Nugent says of him: 'His shrewdness in judging of men was employed only to enable him to found his influence upon their weaknesses and vices; so that, when opposed to men of capacity, or thwarted by what remained of public virtue in the country, he found himself in conflict with weapons of which he ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... with good-natured shrewdness. 'Well, if they'd leave it to us once or twice per'aps we'd understand a little more about the Woman Question. I know w'y my wife isn't here. It's because she knows I can't cook, and she's 'opin' I can ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... His art never looked like nature. It stared you in the face, and could not deceive the dullest observer. His very flattery had a tone of falseness that affronted the person flattered; and Mrs. Deborah, in particular, who did not want for shrewdness, found it so distasteful, that she would certainly have discarded him upon that one ground of offence, had not her love of power been unconsciously propitiated by the perception of the efforts which he made, and the degradation to which he ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... infliction of this household moralizing, which might tend to damage the airy-fairy nature that Dick, as maiden shrewdness told her, had accredited her with. Her dead silence impressed Geoffrey with the notion that something in his words did not agree with her educated ideas, ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... that the wisdom of the serpent is frequently outwitted by a crafty woman, or a cunning priest. A well-known Lancashire tradition gives a humorous account of how the devil was on one occasion deluded by the shrewdness of a clever woman. Barely three miles from Clitheroe, on the high road to Gisburne, stood a public house with this title, "The Dule upo' Dun," which means "The Devil upon Dun" (horse). The story runs that a poor tailor sold himself to Satan for ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... where he has a season ticket,—about an amateur who lately appeared there, and about actresses, with other theatrical scandal.—In the smoking-room, two checker and backgammon boards; the landlord a great player, seemingly a stupid man, but with considerable shrewdness and knowledge of the world.—F———, the comedian, a stout, heavy-looking Englishman, of grave deportment, with no signs of wit or humor, yet aiming at both in conversation, in order to support his character. Very steady and regular in his life, and parsimonious in his disposition,—worth ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Not so some of the others who went out to see, and among them was "King" Plummer, who began at once to calculate the number of cattle, their value, and how far they had come, all of which he did with great shrewdness. ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... some forty years of age, stoutish, a trifle asthmatic, with a long visage expressive of much shrewdness, and bushy eyebrows, which lent themselves at will to a look of genial condescension, of pious austerity, or of stern command. His dark hair and reddish beard were carefully trimmed; so were the nails of his ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... later, Jane watched him drive away, thinking to herself: "Deryck was right. But what a queer mixture of shrewdness and obtuseness, and how marvellously it worked out to the ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... will not far outweigh the fact of your rustic birth. Money is the lever which moves the world now-a-days. That has been my experience, and, if you act up to the position which I offer you, your old home will not stand in your way much. Of course I need not tell a young man of your sense and shrewdness that it will not be necessary for you to allude to it. Let the ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... better their condition, to keep off of the auction-block at least. Jeremiah could claim to have no mixture in his blood, as his color was of such a pure black; but with the way of the world, in respect to shrewdness and intelligence, he had evidently been actively conversant. He was about twenty-six years of age, and in stature only medium, with ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... had some talk about "Carlyleism," and I was not quite satisfied with the ground she took, but there was no opportunity for full discussion. I wished to give myself wholly up to receive an impression of her. What shrewdness in detecting various shades of character! Yet, what she said of Hannah More and Miss Edgeworth, grated upon ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... guess, during the interview, only to find she had hit the mark. She knew that Ned Cragg had been condemned by the British government and was supposed to have escaped to America, but not until now was she sure of his identity with Ned Joselyn. Her father had told her much, but not this. Her native shrewdness was alone ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... unique. An express car had never been looted in this manner before. "Therefore," said Mr. Pinkerton, "it was done by a new man, and although this new man had the nerve, brains and shrewdness necessary to successfully terminate his plans, yet he will lack the cunning and experience of an old hand in keeping clear of the detectives and the law, and will do some one thing which will put ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... reader turns from it to actual life, and perceives that the majority are not punished in any such way. Bunyan conceals nothing, assumes nothing, and exaggerates nothing. He makes his bad man sharp and shrewd. He allows sharpness and shrewdness to bring him the rewards which such qualities in fact command. Badman is successful, he is powerful; he enjoys all the pleasures which money can buy; his bad wife helps him to ruin, but otherwise he is not unhappy, and he dies in peace. Bunyan ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... outer world must march up the hill, and, when they are tired of it, must needs, like the Duke of York in his famous military expedition, march down again. None but a Swiss would build an hotel here, and few but English would frequent it. Yet the shrewdness of the proprietor has been amply justified, and Les Avants is becoming in increasing degree ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... that Mr. Hahn picked up a good deal of valuable information in the course of his career as a waiter; and to him information meant money, and money meant power and a recognized place in society. The diplomatic shrewdness which enabled him to estimate the moral calibre of a patron served him equally well in estimating the value of an investment. He had a hundred subterranean channels of information, and his judgment as to ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... of culture, if not of character. I look on with a profound and regretful pity. You successful,—YOU! with half your powers lying dormant,—you, with your imagination stifled, your conscience unfaithful, your chivalry deadened into shrewdness, your religion a thing of tithes and forms;—you successful, in whom romance has died out; to whom fidelity and constancy and aspiration are nothing but a voice; who remember love and heroism and self-sacrifice only as the vaporings of youth; who measure principles by your purse, utility ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... been there, George would have been glad to discuss with his uncle, who had, after all, a sort of worldly shrewdness, how far a man is justified in controlling his wife's opinions. But before an audience now a trifle unsympathetic, he could not resist the temptation of making the gesture of a man magnificently master ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... and woolen hose, with iron-soled shoes. The old man's face was cunning, but his eyes were bright and keen and deep gray; his gray hair hung low to conceal his lopped ears, and there hung about him an indescribable air of shrewdness faced with ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... as a criminal lawyer in a metropolis. The fact that he was content with the limitations of a practice in a city of 3,500 inhabitants, Fairberry, his home town, was of itself indicative of his indolence. And yet, when he took a case, he manifested gifts of shrewdness that would have made many another lawyer of much ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... cost of transmuting human energy into articles of trade and commerce. But that simple formula is not considered business-like. It is not complex enough. We have "business" which takes the most honest of all human activities and makes them subject to the speculative shrewdness of men who can produce false shortages of food and other commodities, and thus excite in society anxiety of demand. We have false ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... grouped around the office awaiting their turn. In the faces of some were shrewdness, cunning, hypocrisy. Some looked out through dull eyes, humbled and brow-beaten and unfeeling. But all of them when they spoke to Jud Carpenter—Jud Carpenter who stood in with the managers of the mill—became at once the grinning, fawning framework ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... walking unscathed through the fiercest storms.[1151] They were soon regarded as more expert magicians than the Druids themselves. They may have laid claim to magical powers, or perhaps they used a natural shrewdness in such a way as to suggest magic. But all their power they ascribed to Christ. "Christ is my Druid"—the true miracle-worker, said S. Columba. Yet they were imbued with the superstitions of their own age. Thus S. Columba sent a white ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... on!" The next moment the stranger had leaped down beside Elijah. He seemed to be an odd mingling of the sailor and ranchero with the shrewdness ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... able to discover whether there was not a slight tinge of underlying jocularity in this remark of Mrs Brand, for she was a strange and incomprehensible mixture of shrewdness and innocence; but no one took much trouble to find out, for she was so lovable that people accepted her just as she was, contented to let any small amount of mystery that seemed to be in her ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... letters at a downsitting. And what letters they are, all sealed with the name of JESUS—she will seal now with no other seal. What letters of a strong and sound mind go out under that seal! What a business head! What shrewdness, sagacity, insight, frankness, boldness, archness, raillery, downright fun! And all as full of splendid sense as an egg is full of meat. If Andrew Bonar had only read Spanish, and had edited Teresa's Letters as he has edited Rutherford's, we would have had that treasure in all our ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... Treasury, and the other at Ham House, which belonged to the Duke of Lauderdale, who was the L of the Cabal. Lord Clifford is wearing a crimson robe, under a magnificent flowing mantle of ermine, and in his right hand is the white wand of office. His face shows shrewdness and determination, and a certain geniality, which suggests that, though on occasion he might not have scrupled to act as an oppressor, yet he would always have liked to do ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... Maintenon began as early as 1672; and during the twelve years she was the governess of Montespan's children she remained discreet and dignified. "I dismiss him," said she, "always despairing, never repulsed." What a transcendent actress! What astonishing tact! What shrewdness blended with self-control! She conformed herself to his tastes and notions. At the supper-tables of her palsied husband she had been gay, unstilted, and simple; but with the King she became formal, prudish, ceremonious, fond of etiquette, and pharisaical ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... to one or two of my friends, but the majority, except my bosom chum K——, who is a far-seeing business man, with their innate shrewdness, wanted to know where I was going to get any custom in such a place as Ruhleben Camp. I explained that my idea was to engrave watches, coins, studs links, indeed any article which the prisoners possessed, thus converting them into interesting souvenirs of their sojourn ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... replied, at first with faint amusement at the mingled shrewdness and ignorance of these men, then with a fierce pride in his city which made his words, as the letter-writer expressed it, shine like rubies and sing like a fountain. The merchants listened, and munched their sticky baclawi, ripe olives and dates and figs, and drank many tiny cups of coffee, ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... young lady, whose history had surrounded her in his mind, almost from his cradle, with circumstances of unusual interest; or from his attachment towards the young gentleman, into whose confidence he had, through his shrewdness and alacrity, and the rendering of sundry important services as a spy and messenger, almost imperceptibly glided; whether they had their origin in either of these sources, or in the habit natural to youth, or in the constant badgering and worrying of his venerable ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... and education, and of great piety and prudence." Of her prudence there could hardly be a doubt, for as daughter and sister of Emanuel and George Downing, she had had before her through all her early years, examples of shrewdness and farsightedness for all personal ends, that made the names of both, an offence then and in later days. But no suspicion of the tendencies strong in both father and son, ever rested on Mistress Gardner, who was both proud and fond of her elderly husband, and who found him ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... and promised to give us all assistance. He sent at once for the doctor, and held my shoulder tenderly while the ball was taken from it. This he kept, together with Miste's revolver, and indeed acted throughout with the greatest shrewdness and good sense. As an old campaigner he strongly urged me to remain quietly at St. Martin for a few days until the fever which inevitably follows a bullet wound should have abated; but, on learning that it was my intention to proceed at once ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... features in the expression of the men were incredulity, unbelief, cunning, observation, heartlessness. I did not see a good face in the whole room: powerful faces there were, I grant you; high noses, resolute mouths, fine brows; all the marks of shrewdness and energy; a forcible and capable race; but that was all. I did not see one, my dear brother of whom I could say, "That man would sacrifice himself for another; that man loves ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... under the shrewdness of the attack; the next, he had perfectly recovered. "Do I?" he said. "It is very possible. I have observed a similar tendency ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... animal or a child. It was this childish element in his nature which sometimes for a moment unsettled his wife's estimate of him. Was it possible that he was simply undeveloped, that he had delayed, somewhat longer than is usual, the laborious process of growing up? He had the kind of sporadic shrewdness which causes it to be said of a dull man that he is "no fool"; and it was this quality that his wife found most trying. Even to the naturalist it is annoying to have his deductions disturbed by some unforeseen ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... the first faithful portrait of its inhabitants. All the features in the foregoing sketch were taken from the life, and they are characteristic of that mixture of quickness, simplicity, cunning, carelessness, dissipation, disinterestedness, shrewdness, and blunder, which, in different forms and with various success, has been brought upon the stage or delineated ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... there was a connection between the tides and the moon. Ancient writers, such as Pliny and Aristotle, have referred to the alliance between the times of high water and the age of the moon. I think we sometimes do not give the ancient astronomers as much credit as their shrewdness really entitles them to. We have all read—we have all been taught—that the moon and the tides are connected together; but how many of us are in a position to say that we have actually noticed that connection by direct personal observation? The first man who studied this matter ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... fathers of the Society that they were the cats of the Church, and a damnable and corruptible milk, who were trying by their deceits to influence other religious not to go to Japon. He added that such as they were members that had been lopped off from the Church; and that by their shrewdness and political methods they were insinuating themselves into everything. Of the judge-conservator he said that one would believe him a canon of London rather than of the cathedral of Manila; that the Jesuits had made him a pope or popelet, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... History knows him not, except that he had been a marquis, then took up with the Girondins, finally shot up among the Jacobins and made much noise by his intrigues and despatches. With all his showiness and vanity he had enough shrewdness to suit his language at the French embassy in Portman Square to the Jacobin jargon of the times. After the September massacres the only hope for an aristocratic envoy was to figure as an irreproachable patriot. Chauvelin's dealings with ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... time she entered upon the second act of the play a mysterious and solacing pleasure came to her. She enjoyed the words with which Enid questions the life of her richest and most powerful suitor. The mingled shrewdness, simplicity, and sweetness of this scene always filled her with a new sense of Douglass's power of divination. Indeed, she closed the play each night with a sense of being more deeply indebted to him as well as a feeling of having been near ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... could not walk straight, his tongue was too large for his mouth, and he had goggle eyes. Through fear of assassination he habitually wore thickly padded and quilted clothes, usually green in color. He was a man of considerable shrewdness, but of a small mind, and of unbounded conceit. His Scotch tutor had crammed him with much ill-digested learning, so that he gave the impression of a man educated beyond his intellect. His favorites used ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... received greater honors than were bestowed upon him by the emperor. Having a natural aptitude for acquiring languages, he soon could read and write four different dialects, and being possessed of great intelligence and shrewdness withal, he was sent by the khan on important missions to various parts of his kingdom. He acquitted himself so well on these embassies, some of which required his absence from the capital for many months, and he brought back such interesting accounts of the people he ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... Gawtrey found it difficult to get into society. The nobles, proud and rich, played high, but were circumspect in their company; the bourgeoisie, industrious and energetic, preserved much of the old Lombard shrewdness; there were no tables d'hote and public reunions. Gawtrey saw his little capital daily diminishing, with the Alps at the rear and Poverty in the van. At length, always on the qui vive, he contrived to make acquaintance ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... eye of the detective never sleeps, and Maroney and his wife were always outwitted. While they greatly exulted over their shrewdness, the detective, whom they thought they had bewildered, was quietly gazing at them from the rear window ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... dinner Sommers found Colonel Hitchcock's eyes resting upon him, as if he were trying to understand him. Sommers was conscious of the fact that Lindsay had probably done his best to paint his character in an unflattering light; and though he knew that the old colonel's shrewdness and kindliness would not permit him to accept bitter gossip at its face value, yet there must have been enough in his career to lead to speculation. While they were smoking, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... officers were convinced that Ruiz was mad. How do you say that?—tile loose—eh? But the doctor, an observant Scotsman with much shrewdness and philosophy in his character, told me that it was a very curious case of possession. I met him many years afterwards, but he remembered the experience very well. He told me, too, that in his opinion ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... to be defiant, settled herself in her chair. She had battled in North Queensland so long that she neither feared nor respected anybody; but her native shrewdness told her she had all to gain and nothing to lose by ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... in the habit of paying the most minute attention to every branch of domestic economy, and his suggestions are invariably marked by shrewdness and good sense. Thus when Mrs. Thrale was giving evening parties, he told her that though few people might be hungry after a late dinner, she should always have a good supply of cakes and sweetmeats on a side table, and that some cold meat and a bottle of wine would often be found ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... must confess—and his portrait agrees with my memory—that his face by no means suggested the idealist and man of feeling; it seemed rather expressive of shrewdness, and to have been lined and worn by severe conflicts concerning the most diverse interests. But his voice and his glance were unusually winning, and his power over the heart of the child was limitless. A few words were sufficient to win completely ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... charlatan in every page. To them, however, whose first care is for rare work, the series of novels that began with Vivian Grey and ended with Endymion is one of the pleasant facts in modern letters. These books abound in wit and daring, in originality and shrewdness, in knowledge of the world and in knowledge of men; they contain many vivid and striking studies of character, both portrait and caricature; they sparkle with speaking phrases and happy epithets; they are aglow with the passion of youth, the love of love, the worship of ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley |
