"Sapient" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more difficult to analyse than specialisation of work—a specialisation of sentiment, habits and morals, which makes people supremely sapient within a narrow sphere which they have appropriated, and so limited as to be blind in the broad field of ethics which lies outside their special ken. And yet it is through these groups, keen-eyed ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... and Sir Andrew Aguecheek were evidently not well taught in astrology. 'Shall we set about some revels?' says the latter. 'What shall we do else?' says Toby; 'were we not born under Taurus?' 'Taurus, that's sides and heart,' says sapient Andrew. 'No, sir,' responds Toby, 'it's legs and thighs. Let me ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... inquire into the causes of the calamity. In his "Monarchy or no Monarchy," published in 1651, he had inserted an hieroglyphical plate, representing on one side persons in winding sheets digging graves; and on the other a large city in flames. After the great fire some sapient member of the legislature bethought him of Lilly's book, and having mentioned it in the house, it was agreed that the astrologer should be summoned. Lilly attended accordingly, when Sir Robert Brooke told him the reason of his summons, and called upon him to declare what he ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... live, alas! of heaven-directed mien, Of cultured soul, and sapient eye serene, Who hail thee Man!—the pilgrim of a day, Spouse of the worm, and brother of the clay, Frail as the leaf in autumn's yellow bower, Dust in the wind, or dew upon the flower, A friendless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... genius, who would astonish the world by actions, not by speech. Before he was even fifteen she said of him, in her adoring way: "Oh! he has a great mind." And, naturally enough, she only acknowledged Blaise to be a necessary lieutenant, a humble assistant, one whose hand would execute the sapient young master's orders. The latter, to her thinking, was now so strong and so handsome, and he was so quickly reviving the business compromised by the father's slow collapse, that surely he must be on the high-road to prodigious wealth, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... revered writer and statesman may not have selected the supposed best authorities for his dates, but the sapient critic indulges in a strange admixture of misconception. However, Egyptian chronology is not fully agreed upon, even Manetho and Herodotus differ some 120 years as to the time of Sesostris, and Bishop ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... a fool, Sally," cried the sapient waiter. "Don't you see that his dress is military? Look at his black cap, with its long bag and great feather, and the monstrous sword at his side; look at them, and then if you can, say I am mistaken ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... with this, Walchendorf got a Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the value of his astronomical labours. This sapient body reported that his work was not only useless, but noxious; and soon after he was attacked by the populace ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... is the precise reason why they are here, most sapient of second officers? if we hadn't been short-handed the cap'en wouldn't ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... the MAN whose school was the University, whose Alma Mater was Oxonia herself. We do not cut our wise teeth in a day; some people, indeed, are so unfortunate as never to cut them at all; at the best, two months is but a brief space in which to get through this sapient teething operation, a short time in which to graft our cutting on the tree of Wisdom, more especially when the tender plant happens to be a Verdant Green. The golden age is past when the full-formed goddess of Wisdom sprang from the brain of Jove complete ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... subjected in almost every instance. "Nothing by which we can be known." "Then I am afraid to undertake the publication." We presumed timidly to suggest that every writer must have a beginning, and that to refuse to publish for him until he had acquired a name, was to imitate the sapient mother who cautioned her son against going into the water until he could swim. "An old joke—a regular Joe!" exclaimed our companion, tossing off another bumper. "Still older than Joe Miller," ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... very time, when the presumption against the revivication of poetry shall have attained the appearance of absolute certainty, to witness a Tenth Avatar of Genius—and to witness its effect, too, upon the sapient personages who had been predicting that ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... not old, only dating back to the reign of the sapient James the First. Remembrance of the sept of Maguires who ruled here before that time, still lingers ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... difficulties are quite different from those which enabled the learned curiosity of the German mind to achieve one of its most unforgettable triumphs. It is a long while since I, like all other young scholars, enjoyed with all the sapient laboriousness of a fastidious philologist the work of the incomparable Strauss.[5] At that time I was twenty years old: now I am too serious for that sort of thing. What do I care for the contradictions of "tradition"? How can any one ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... insect-eating birds have flown to where the insect is commoner, fatter, and fuller-flavoured? It is we stay-at-home British birds that really keep the insects down. I know that insect eggs do not appear in our poor dissected gizzards. How should they? How would you recognize their remains, O sapient sparrow-shooters? But they are there, for all that. Those blessed with eyes can see us hunting for them in the fallen leaves, among the garbage, in the crannies ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... Monday. Betimes Tuesday morning, inspired outwardly by the zeal of one just won over from skepticism to the immediate advisability of following a sapient course, he sought opportunity to become a member in good standing of the Shining Star Colored Uplift and Progress League, a simple ceremony and a brief, since it involved merely the signing of one's name on Dotted Line A of a printed form card and ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... gaze at him with their bright, languishing eyes; invisible lips mockingly press tender kisses on his cheeks; gigantic mushrooms, which look like golden bells, grow at the foot of the trees; large silent birds sway to and fro on the branches overhead, put on a sapient look and solemnly nod their heads. Everything seems to hold its breath; all is hushed in awed expectation; suddenly the soft tones of a hunter's horn are heard, and a lovely female form, with waving plumes on head and falcon ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... upon a little steed, unmeet for such a course, Appeared the honoured veteran; but weak seemed man and horse. Then shook their ears the sapient peers,—'That joust will soon be done: My Lord of Brougham, I'll back Fitzball, and give you ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... danger of apoplexy, or other cerebral disease, through indulgence too freely in various liquids, vinous and spirituous, should cherish Bacon's sapient deliverance: "It is like that the brain of man waxeth moister and fuller upon the full of the moon; and therefore it were good for those that have moist brains, and are great drinkers, to take sume of lignum aloes, rosemary, frankincense, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... sapient Thomas Heywood gravely goes on to inform us, that all these things actually came to pass. Upon Richard III he is ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... will be about the expiration of the fifth week, although there will be no absolute security in less than the double number of months," After making these remarks, our author reasons himself into the sapient conclusion, that the poison in all rabid animals resides in the saliva, and does not affect any other secretion. "The knowledge that the virus is confined to the saliva," he opines, "will settle a matter that has been the cause ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... "Who, O thou sapient, saintly bird! Thy shouted warnings ever heard Unbleached by fear? The blue-faced blubbering imp, who steals Yon turnips, thinks thee at his heels, ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... its ordered grooves And circles into full utility? The motion of the honourable gentleman Reminds me aptly of a publican Who should, when malting, mixing, mashing's past, Fermenting, barrelling, and spigoting, Quick taste the brew, and shake his sapient head, And cry in acid voice: The ale is new! Brew old, you varlets; cast ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... mention may be made,[Sec.c][Sec.6] Who for the Junta modelled sapient laws, Taught them to govern ere they were obeyed: Certes fit teacher to command, because His soul Socratic no Xantippe awes; Blest with a Dame in Virtue's bosom nurst,— With her let silent Admiration pause!— True to her second husband ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... own, the sapient jurymen exchanged glances several times during the evidence of the last two witnesses, and shook their heads, while one man began to make notes on the sheet of paper before him with a very scratchy pen, whereupon two more immediately caught ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... her. "I've learned to look for a particular application when you wear that particularly sapient ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... blackberry wine as the short cut from poverty to prosperity in Ireland, the scheme being parallel to Mr. Gladstone's famous remedy of jam, this sapient "B.O.N." says:— ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... could, in reality, be no great pleasure in seeing an assembly of old grey-bearded Turks getting drunk on porter and Champagne, and making fools of themselves, however much gratification it might afford the sapient heir to the throne of Bavaria, and his attendant crowd of Germans ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... at this sapient declaration. "However, I assure you, brother mine and most considerate of cooks, I'll not be sorry to have a change of diet from the cold salt pork and biscuit on which we have fared all the ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... a mistake to confound the irresistible man with the fool. Neither is he stupid. Very often he is a man of no small amount of brain. He is, of course, always conceited, and generally, though not always, handsome. I am not describing the soft, sapient, pretty man who lisps, nor the weak-kneed young gentleman with pink cheeks who sings tenor. Far worse. The irresistible man, as we know him, is often a man who is doing a man's work in the world, and doing it well. He is frequently a man of character, ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... "True, most sapient counsellor, and I will be on my guard. To show how I profit by your sageness, let us drop all thought of this royal maiden who is probably out of my reach, and attend to the other business. It is good to have a ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... minstrels far roaming; Lean are the kine; the bees never humming; Milking-folds void; to the kiln no meat coming; Gaunt every steed; no pert sparrows strumming; Long the night till the dawn; but a glimpse is the gloaming. Sapient Cynfelyn, this was thy summing; "Prudence is Man's surest guide, by ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... quantities sufficiently large to warrant working. At the place, however, which they subsequently named Chihuahua (pronounced in the vernacular Chee-waw-waw) the perspicacious Jones had given it as his opinion, formed after mature deliberation and a sapient examination of some two or three shovelsful of dirt, that there was a satisfactory "color in that ar bank." Some hard work of about a week demonstrated that there were excellent diggings there, and then work was commenced upon it in good ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... together from the North Shore landing-place, Mr. Smith delivered himself of these sapient words, designed, I am sure, to be of real help ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... him. The first did not dazzle him; but as to the second, he did not conceal from himself the imperfections of a provincial education which he should have to unmake, but this was no serious objection to his sapient conjugal pedagogy. ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... American war; a sapient French statesman, writing from Louisiana to his royal master in Paris, advised the French government to cultivate a close and intimate alliance with the Cherokee Indians, who, occupying as they ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... Morals and minuets, virtue and her stays, And tell-tale powder—all have had their days. The ball begins—the honours of the house First duly done by daughter or by spouse, Some potentate—or royal or serene— With Kent's gay grace, or sapient Glo'ster's mien, Leads forth the ready dame, whose rising flush Might once have been mistaken for a blush, From where the garb just leaves the bosom free, That spot where hearts were once supposed to be; Round all the confines of the yielded ...
— English Satires • Various
... in, perceived him cutting a hen's throat with the most heartfelt satisfaction, as he grinned and exclaimed, by way of answer to its screams, "Poor feller! I guess I wouldn't hurt you for de world;" I could not help thinking with Leibnitz, that most sapient of philosophers, that this is the best of ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... extract from an equally sapient proposition, published in the Chinese state-papers on the 14th January, 1840; it is headed, Memorial of Toang Wangyen to the emperor, recommending plans for the extermination of barbarians: "Your minister's opinion is ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... boat across. You say that a rope is forbidden; and he then falls back on the use of a current in the stream. I once thought I had carefully excluded all such tricks in a particular puzzle of this class. But a sapient reader made all the people swim across without using the boat at all! Of course, some few puzzles are intended to be solved by some trick of this kind; and if there happens to be no solution without the trick it is perfectly legitimate. We have to use our best judgment as to whether ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... Chaos, and the natures which it contained within itself in a state of perpetual vicissitude; how the heaven had its boundary determined, the generation of the earth, the depth of the ocean, and also the sapient Love, the most ancient, the self-sufficient, with all the beings which he produced when he separated one thing from another.' Which noble passage is more directly to Aristotle's purpose in the first book of his metaphysics than any of those which he has ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... "have lugged the commander in chief of the cutpurses by the throat, that sapient soothsayer that was playing off his pranks with his match the ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... "the determined campaigners" if he had only knit the issue with them in a fair and square fight. This, however, was the thing of all others he wished to avoid. Perhaps if he could have foreseen how barren in any alternative policy his sapient critics were to be he might have acted otherwise, but the credit is due to him of making dissension impossible by leaving no second party to ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... until Jack Holloway turned up with a family of Fuzzies and the claim that they were not just nice little animals, but human. If he was right and the Fuzzies were declared the 9th extrasolar sapient race, there went the Company, ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... thick-wov'n Arborets and Flours Imborderd on each Bank, the hand of Eve: Spot more delicious then those Gardens feign'd Or of reviv'd Adonis, or renownd 440 Alcinous, host of old Laertes Son, Or that, not Mystic, where the Sapient King Held dalliance with his faire Egyptian Spouse. Much hee the Place admir'd, the Person more. As one who long in populous City pent, Where Houses thick and Sewers annoy the Aire, Forth issuing on ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Peter, to whose sapient heart High Heaven his secrets opens, tells and shews, Your messengers direct can to that part, Where of the prince they shall hear certain news, And learn the way, the manner, and the art To bring him ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... and my mother's compatriots for their share in that horror going on abroad, I can also pity the hot-headed, imperfect mere man going to war under a carefully incited and fostered misapprehension, and need no longer glorify the cool-headed, sapient policy which so ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... hold the herring he holds the scales, my sapient brother," cried the fat man. "But I pray you, good youth, to tell us whether you are a learned clerk, and, if so, whether you have studied ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... When these sapient guardians of the peace perceive that as many have been admitted as can possibly be squeezed into the building, they shut the doors; and the process of distribution goes on until the mass is equalized throughout the edifice; a task of no small difficulty, as the portions of the building contiguous ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... Rouen, (sapient clime) Two villagers, whose wives were in their prime, And rather pleasing in their shape and mien, For those in whom refinement 's scarcely seen. Each looker-on conceives, LOVE needs not greet Such humble wights, as ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... thing was that when the settler, who had given the escaping prisoner the file and stood by to see him use it to make his escape more certain, was brought up before two magistrates for helping a prisoner to elude his sentence, these sapient administrators of law dismissed the charge. This miscarriage of justice so disgusted both the constable and his superintendent that in, contemplation of it they seemed to forget the astonishing feat with the hand-car. But we dig it up proudly from the ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... about his trouble. Trouble it was, though this seems an odd name for the consciousness of a bright enchantment; and the first thing that reason, definitely consulted, told him about the matter was that he had been in love with Angela Vivian any time these three years. This sapient faculty supplied him with further information; only two or three of the items of which, however, it is necessary to reproduce. He had been a great fool—an incredible fool—not to have discovered before this what was the matter with him! Bernard's sense of his own shrewdness—always ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... might conceivably compromise on a boy. But how is he going to make sure that it will not be a girl? The thing, as yet, is a medical impossibility—but medicine is making rapid strides. Why not wait until the secret is discovered? This sapient compromise pleases the bridegroom, and he proceeds to a consideration of various problems of finance. And then, of a sudden, the organist swings unmistakably into "Lohengrin" and the best man ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... project before the "Great Eltchee," how it was received with the roughest language and how my first plan was thoroughly "frustrated." I have told a true tale, and no more. "A strange perversion of facts," cries the sapient criticaster, with that normal amenity which has won for him such honour and troops of unfriends: when his name was proposed as secretary to the R. A. S., all prophesied the speediest dissolution ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the Regent, ... (didn't he?) but I persisted in not reading my letter in the presence of my friend. A notice on my punctiliousness may be put down to-night in her 'private diary.' I kept the letter in my hand and only read it with those sapient ends of the fingers which the mesmerists make so much ado about, and which really did seem to touch a little of what was inside. Not all, however, happily for me! Or my friend would have seen in my eyes what they did ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... always at the race track, and if you don't belong in Baltimore he is aware of it the instant he sets eyes upon you, because he knows every man, woman, child, and dog in Baltimore, and they all know him. If you are a Baltimorean you are already aware that I refer to the sapient McNeal, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... known," and the like, are to be received with absolute incredulity, and the claims of ignorant owners of books who fancy that their little pet goose is a fine swan, because they never saw another, are as ridiculous as the laudation bestowed by a sapient collector upon two of his most valued nuggets. "This, sir, is unique, but not ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... to offer thereby an occasion for a grave and twilit elegy by Matthew Arnold. Clough's life-work was a continual asking of the question, "Life being unbearable, why should I not die?"—while echo, that commonplace and sapient commentator, mildly answered, "Why?": and this was precisely the impression that I gathered from my initial vista of the ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... the very legitimate desire of the general-secretary to get elected to the place, and the secret opposition of the minister to this wish of a man who was one of his firmest supporters and most zealous workers. This, of course, brought down an avalanche of suppositions, flooded with the sapient arguments of the two officials, who sent back and forth to each other a wearisome flood of nonsense. Elisabeth quietly asked ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... his love of novelty for wisdom. He would break his head against a wall, this obstinate King of Rome, while I crept safely through a mouse-hole. Walls are not so easily battered down as he supposes; but mouse-holes abound everywhere, as this sapient king will find out some of these days. It was much easier for us to creep into Bavaria with the help of the lovely Josepha, than to flourish our sword in her brother's face. He has not long to live, and we shall come peacefully in possession of his ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... command, she at once returned to her lord, as the holy spirit-messenger of God 2295 bade her, in sapient speech. Thus was Ismael born to Abraham, even when he had [lived] 86 winters in the world. The son grew and flourished, as the angel, the 2300 true minister of peace, had promised to the woman ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... different. The Terran Federation is a government of and for—if occasionally not by—all sapient peoples of all races. The Federation Constitution guarantees equal rights to all. Making slaves of people, human or otherwise, is a direct blow at everything the Federation stands for. No wonder they kept hunting fifteen years for the ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... smoke, so the tumour will also dry up and disappear. If the patient should afterwards prove ungrateful to the good physician, the man of skill can avenge himself very easily by throwing the vervain into water; for as the root absorbs the moisture once more, the tumour will return. The same sapient writer recommends you, if you are troubled with pimples, to watch for a falling star, and then instantly, while the star is still shooting from the sky, to wipe the pimples with a cloth or anything that comes to hand. Just as the star falls from the sky, so the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... born in Greece! and so it goes on transfusing itself from clime to clime, in ever new and higher forms, until man is developed. Well, was there ever such stuff concocted before? I almost hear the bray of that donkey, who originated in a flower. And pray, most sapient self! what is nature? It seems now, to me, a form, a mere dead incubus of matter. And could this inert tangible matter, sublimate in its hard, dead bosom, an essence so subtle, as to be freer of the bonds of time and space? At such a preposterous suggestion even ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... this sapient patrician much has been said, and more has been written, respecting our antipodean empire; though I believe the mass of the English people are still as unacquainted with the characteristics of the colony, and the manners of colonial life, as if the vast continent ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... surprise. The word operated like a charm; all were ready to admit that it was a surprising thing when heard for the first time. Miss Jacky remarked that we are all liable to be surprised; and the still more sapient Grizzy said that, indeed, it was most surprising the effect that surprise had upon some people. For her own part, she could not deny but that she was very often frightened when she ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... and that Brutus I beheld, Who Tarquin chas'd, Lucretia, Cato's wife Marcia, with Julia and Cornelia there; And sole apart retir'd, the Soldan fierce. Then when a little more I rais'd my brow, I spied the master of the sapient throng, Seated amid the philosophic train. Him all admire, all pay him rev'rence due. There Socrates and Plato both I mark'd, Nearest to him in rank; Democritus, Who sets the world at chance, Diogenes, With Heraclitus, and Empedocles, And Anaxagoras, and Thales sage, Zeno, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... restricted, as yet," replied the Cardinal-Bishop with a sapient smile. "Nor is there any restriction upon the inspiration, political as well as spiritual, which the American Government draws from Rome—an inspiration much more potent, I think, than our Protestant brethren ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... practicable, the inhabitants of the earth, who were so much more numerous than those of the moon, might invade the latter with a large army, for the purpose of rapine and contest; but notwithstanding the influence of this sapient politician, they finally obtained leave to quit the moon whenever they ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... engagement. She told me last night she had it back. I watched her listening very suspiciously to Professor Crooklyn. My dear, it is her passion to foretell disasters—her passion! And when they are confirmed, she triumphs, of course. We shall have her domineering over us with sapient nods at every trifle occurring. The county will be unendurable. Unsay it, my Middleton! And don't answer like an oracle because I do all the talking. Pour out to me. You'll soon come to a stop and find the want of reason in the want of words. I assure you that's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the roving appetite, and lead Blind nature to a God not yet revealed. 'Tis Revelation satisfies all doubts, Explains all mysteries, except her own, And so illuminates the path of life, That fools discover it, and stray no more. Now tell me, dignified and sapient sir, My man of morals, nurtured in the shades Of Academus, is this false or true? Is Christ the abler teacher, or the schools? If Christ, then why resort at every turn To Athens or to Rome for wisdom short Of man's occasions, when in Him reside Grace, knowledge, comfort, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... walk the streets of Charleston, rows of greedy vultures, with sapient look, sit on the parapets of the houses, watching for offal. These birds are great blessings in warm climates, and in Carolina a fine of ten dollars is inflicted for wantonly destroying them. They appeared to be quite conscious of their privileges, and sailed ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... disappeared, another drollery was exhibited, called the "Fool and his Five Sons," the names of the hopeful offspring of the sapient sire being Pickle Herring, Blue Hose, Pepper Hose, Ginger Hose, and Jack Allspice. The humour of this piece, though not particularly refined, seemed to be appreciated by the audience generally, as well as by the monarch, who laughed ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... smile and sapient shake of the head, I will go on picking such interest as I can out of my trivial adventures, even though that interest should be the creation of my own fancy; nor will I cease to indict on ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... flageolet, and first violin, had prudently abstained from drinking—at their own expense, and had reserved their thirstiness for the benefit of the bibicals of the "founder of the feast," and, consequently, had only attained that peculiar state of sapient freshness which invariably characterises quadrille bands after supper, and had, therefore, overlooked the rapid obfuscation of their more imprudent companion in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... he thus far sacrificed his time to the Muses, he would, if the truth must be spoken, have been much better pleased had the pious or sapient apothegms, as well as the historical narratives, which these various works contained, been presented to him in the form of simple prose. And he sometimes could not refrain from expressing contempt ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... there's nothing TO her," said the sapient Miss Thornton. "No. You'll be doing that work in a few months, and getting forty. So come along to ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... ordination. He had permitted himself to be held to the Church by his mother's fond desires, despite the fact that his nominal observance of these had wrecked his own life and all but brought her in sorrow to the grave. The abundance of his misery might be traced to forgetfulness of the sapient words of Jesus: "For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Sapient I was not, although I Sapia Was called, and I was at another's harm More happy far than at ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... That lead'st th' oblivious soul astray— Though thou sphere-descended be— Hence away!— Thou mightier Goddess, thou demand'st my lay, 5 Born when earth was seiz'd with cholic; Or as more sapient sages say, What time the Legion diabolic Compell'd their beings to enshrine In bodies vile of herded swine, 10 Precipitate adown the steep With hideous rout were plunging in the deep, And hog and devil mingling grunt and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the grave, and to leave the record of their inanity behind them in black and white; some stipulating that their clothes or other treasures should be burnt with them, others that their graves should be watched by particular servants, or their monuments crowned with flowers;—sapient end to a life of sapience! 'Of their doings in this world,' said he, 'you may form some idea from their injunctions with reference to the next. These are they who will pay a long price for an entree; whose floors are sprinkled with wine and saffron ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... these thin cobwebs Death and Eternity sate glaring." "How will this look in the Universe," he asks, "and before the Creator of Man?" When someone in his old age challenged him with the question, "Who will be judge?"—(it is curious how every sapient inanity strikes, as on an original idea, on the notion that opinions differ, and therefore—apparently, if their thought has any consequence—are as good one as another)—Who will be judge? "Hell fire will be judge," said Carlyle, "God Almighty will be ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... letter to Evanston's most distinguished citizen, the Hon. Andrew Shuman, and that sapient poet-critic tells us that as nearly as he can recollect the poem was written, not by Dr. Watts, but by an American girl. But whether that girl was Lucretia Davidson or Miss Ada C. Sweet he ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... what I claim: for, if the verdict be given in your favour, you are bound by our bargain; and if it be given against you, you are bound by the decision of the jurors.' The pupil, however, was equal to the occasion, and rebutted the dilemma as follows. 'Most sapient master, whatever be the issue of this suit, I shall not pay you what you claim: for, if the verdict be given in my favour, I am absolved by the decision of the jurors; and, if it be given against me, I am absolved by our bargain.' The jurors are said to have been ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... its sapient head, shrugged its authoritative shoulders, and sundry criticisms crept into the journals; but the prophet was judged in "his own country"; and home work, according to universal canons, rarely finds favor among ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the riot, And wishing for a little quiet, The sickman raised his head, And said— Gentlemen, I do beseech ye, cease your pother, Nor any more with me your wise heads bother, Scratching your wigs, Like sapient pigs; Whate'er you may decide is my disease, I humbly do conceive a little ease From your infernal noise and chatter. With which I'm dunn'd And nearly stunn'd, Would greatly tend to mend the matter; And if, perforce, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... clear the place out," he would say. "My pictures are getting to look like advertisements of an old clo' shop, and if a man doesn't change all his properties every year, the sapient critics say he has become mannered. But I can't let them go; or rather they won't let me go; they hang on like barnacles ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... the wine and the good cheer which we have had in yonder old man's house, my lord," said this sapient follower, "and that I ken him by report to be a just living man in many respects, and a real Edinburgh gutterblood, I should have been well pleased to have seen how his feet were shaped, and whether he had not a cloven cloot under the braw roses ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... small beginning, like the plant itself it has developed into a great and increasing industry and its culture become a source of wealth unprecedented in agricultural history. Could the sapient James I. and his successors the Stuarts, now look upon this cherished production of the world, they would discover a commercial prosperity connected with those nations which have fostered and encouraged its growth far in advance of those who have frowned upon the plant ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... those gardens feigned Or of revived Adonis or renowned Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son Or that, not mystic, where the sapient King Held dalliance with his fair ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... example set by offering such extensive service; none of the other corps having volunteered to go farther than their military district, Wilts, Hants, and Dorset. One of these wiseacres exclaimed, in very boisterous language, against accepting the offer, and for this sapient reason—"because," as he said, "two hundred men out of one parish had volunteered to march to any part of the kingdom to hazard their lives in the defence of their country, provided they were commanded by an officer of their own choice; ergo, it was highly ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... just this letter, mamma, from Mr. Sapient, telling me that the Council won't let me go to University College to share the education that can only be had there at a reasonable cost, because the young men would be demoralized ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... hardly worth while searching the floor for a chamber-maid: he decided to inform the civil-spoken clerk, and have the key brought to the office, at which sapient resolve Puck, who was surely abroad in New York that night, must have chuckled delightedly. Unhappily, there were other spirits brooding in the city, spirits before whose deathly scowls the prime mischief-maker would have fled in terror, and Curtis, all unwitting, brushed against one ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... exactly comprehend, myself, I have introduced a wheel within a wheel, a letter within a letter, a play within a play, after the manner of the old dramatists; and I beg you to make a note that the foregoing admonitions and most sapient counsels are not addressed to you. You are something of a philosopher; but you are not, like Mr. Stephen Duck, "something of a philosopher and something of a poet"; for I do not believe, O fortunate youth, that you ever invoked the ten ladies minus one in your life; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... of this sapient opinion, the reverend gentleman made ready for a round of parochial visits. Foremost on his list appeared the name of Miss Philura Rice. As he stood upon the door-step, shaded on either side by fragrant lilac plumes, he resolved to be particularly brief, though impressive, in his pastoral ministrations. ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley
... month to get the first principles of justice and of constitutional law through his head, the belated editor of that law journal has come to the conclusion—self-evident as it ought to be to a child—that a judge has no legal right to take from an accused person the right of trial by jury. Sapient editor, wise man! No second Solomon, you. You, with all your legal lore, have at last managed to see, in a year and a month, what the veriest simple woman in the land, all uneducated as women are in the technicalities of the law, had no difficulty of seeing in an hour. Right of trial ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... face, while displaying in his every feature, including his closely-compressed lips, such an expression of profundity as never before was seen on any human countenance—unless on that of some particularly sapient Minister of State who is debating ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... under the influence of a cold, and receiving, as he enters, the usual deprecation on such occasions. I rather suspect that the adventures of Punch, and his fickle lady, who are always attended by a dancing demon, have afforded the materials for this sapient observation. ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... practice and the knowledge of Western humankind was one of the great menaces to effective personnel. Fortunately this particular report came into the hands of the Chief, who happened to be touring in the West. A fuller investigation exposed to the sapient experience of that able man the gullibility of the inspector. From the district a brief statement was ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... and flowers Imbordered on each bank, the hand of Eve: Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned Or of revived Adonis, or renowned Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son; Or that, not mystick, where the sapient king Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse. Much he the place admired, the person more. As one who long in populous city pent, Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air, Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breathe ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... In the Chinese Encyclopaedia we are told that the 'lightning stones' have sometimes the shape of a hatchet, sometimes that of a knife, and sometimes that of a mallet. And then, by a curious misapprehension, the sapient author of that work goes on to observe that these lightning stones are used by the wandering Mongols instead of copper and steel. It never seems to have struck his celestial intelligence that the ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... however, was not a Drouet, interested to praise. There she heard a different voice, with which she argued, pleaded, excused. It was no just and sapient counsellor, in its last analysis. It was only an average little conscience, a thing which represented the world, her past environment, habit, convention, in a confused way. With it, the voice of the people was truly ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... past. For Ernest Bloch, the primeval forest with its thick spawning life, its ferocious beasts, its brutish phallic-worshiping humanity, is still here. Before him there still lie the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years of development necessary to make a sapient creature of man. And he writes like one who has been plunged into a darkness and sadness and bitterness all the greater for the vision of the rainbow that has been given him, for the glimpse he has ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... "Since my sapient sister is so curious, I will confess that once—and only once in my life—I was in dire danger of falling most desperately in love. The frigate was coaling at Palermo, and I went ashore. One afternoon, in sauntering through the orange and lemon groves which render ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... and above-board. The prospectors would point out the most likely spots to try for diamonds, the Ovampo boys would be set to work, and almost invariably they found diamonds. Occasionally one or other of the "experts" would suggest a different spot, and usually these sapient individuals would justify their reputation by finding ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... to arise from such conditions needs not to be enlarged upon; it is at once obvious, and probably gave rise to the following sapient remark by a globe-trotting author, which I took ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... admiration without possessing in a high degree some species of sterling excellence." Does it thence follow that it possesses in the highest degree every species of sterling excellence? "Yet thus," says the sapient reviewer, "he admits the fact against which he mainly argues,—namely, the superiority of these time-honored productions." As if the possession of an abstract excellence of some kind necessarily implied the possession ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... affliction To wrong the innocent, Let the fools be silent, As erst in Badon's fight, - With Arthur of liberal ones The head, with long red blades; Through feats of testy men, And a chief with his foes. Woe be to them, the fools, When revenge comes on them. I Taliesin, chief of bards, With a sapient Druid's words, Will set kind Elphin free From haughty tyrant's bonds. To their fell and chilling cry, By the act of a surprising steed, From the far distant North, There soon shall be an end. Let neither grace nor health Be to Maelgwn Gwynedd, ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... Nancy again," and the big black sun-bonnet nodded with sapient significance. "Send her ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... a tuning-fork." The noises have occurred simultaneously with earthquakes in other parts of the country, and afterward rocks have been found moved from their bases and cracks have been discovered in the earth. One sapient editor said that the pearls in the mussels in Salmon and ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... this sapient pair that received Cowperwood in the old General's absence, first in Mr. Du Bois's room and then in that of Mr. MacDonald. The latter had already heard much of Cowperwood's doings. Men who had been connected with the old gas war—Jordan Jules, for instance, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... calls 'mountain lions,'" observed the Old Cattleman, wearing meanwhile the sapient air of him who feels equipped of his subject, "is plenty furtive, not to say mighty sedyoolous to skulk. That's why a gent don't meet up with more of 'em while pirootin' about in the hills. Them cats hears him, or they sees him, an' him still ignorant ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... mentioned Carlotta's needlework. This was undertaken at the sapient instigation of Antoinette, who in her turn, I am sure, neglected the ladle for the scissors, and cast many of her duties upon the silent but sympathetic Stenson. Carlotta herself delighted in these preparations. She was never happier than when curled up on the sofa, a box of chocolates ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Such was the sapient discourse of Mrs. Galton, who, half an hour ago, had been supernaturally wise and prudent. Go to, wise mother and silly woman; men will love thee none the less for the inequalities of thine intellect; and honest Joe will save thy life, and heed ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... to cheapen and bargain with me," said Gotzkowsky with a hoarse laugh. "You take me for a chapman, who measures out his life and services by the yard; and you wish to pay me for mine by the same measure. Go, most sapient gentlemen; I carry on a wholesale trade, and do not cut off yards. That I leave to shopkeepers, to ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... stuck, apparently with no ulterior purpose than that of ornament; but beside the bunch of ribbands there is also fixed a piece of wolf's skin, to give strength to the jaded animal, for, remarks the sapient Pliny, "a wolf's skin attached to a horse's neck will render him proof against all weariness." Personally, we should think a little more consideration and some elementary knowledge of farriery would have been of more service ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... a Joe Miller joke, but one of actual and recent occurrence; although there is a similar story fathered on a sapient civic authority. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... breathed this free, exhilarating, vitalizing atmosphere, and the convention-laden air of Paris would stifle me. I have written to my father and announced that I propose remaining in Charleston. That is not all: he forbade my studying law in Paris, because his sapient Breton neighbors would have been scandalized by a viscount's taking so sensible a step; but possibly I may prepare myself for the bar at this distance, without subjecting my father to the annoyance of ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... the possession of Nanking still invested the Taepings. Without that city they would have been nothing but a band of brigands, who could easily have been dispersed. With it they could claim the status of a separate dynasty. Yet the capture of Nanking was put off until the last act of all. These sapient leaders, whose military knowledge was antiquated, acted with an indifference to the most obvious considerations, that would have been ludicrous if it had not been a further injury to a suffering people. In 1858 their apathy was such that it not merely saved Nanking but played the ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... go to the end, that this ordeal also must be faced, and that, in particular, there was a detestable wisdom in her hostess's advice. She was conscious, however, of no obligation to recognise it then and there; she wanted to get off, and even to carry Mrs. Burrage's sapient words along with her—to hurry to some place where she might be alone and think. "I don't know why you have thought it right to send for me only to say this. I take no interest whatever in your son—in his settling in life." And she gathered ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... wrote many of those beautiful earlier pieces, now collected in his works. These early poems were all composed in 1824 and 1825, during his last years in college, and were printed first in a periodical called 'The United States Literary Gazette,' the sapient editor of which magazine once kindly advised the ardent young scholar to give up poetry and buckle down to the study of law! 'No good can come of it,' he said; 'don't let him do such things; make him stick ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... fools; Give, as thy last memorial to the age, One classic drama, and reform the stage. Gods! o'er those boards shall Folly rear her head, Where Garrick trod, and Kemble lives to tread? On those shall Farce display Buffoonery's mask, And Hook conceal his heroes in a cask? Shall sapient managers new scenes produce From Cherry, Skeffington, and Mother Goose? While Shakspeare, Otway, Massinger, forgot, On stalls must moulder, or in closets rot? Lo! with what pomp the daily prints proclaim, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... of Sir Jonas upon Berlin—for he exercises everywhere a sapient observation on men and things—are of dim tumidly insignificant character, reminding us of an extinct Minerva's Owl; and reduce themselves mainly to this bit of ocular testimony, That his Prussian Majesty rides ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... Swing, sapient young person, walked casually to the window and watched Luke Tweezy cross the street to Calloway's store. Then he returned to Racey's table. Racey turned his tousled head sidewise and whispered from a corner of his mouth, ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... Youth is perverse and foolish," said the goldsmith, as he poured out the tea. "When the voice of Experience and the voice of Wisdom say, 'Eschew cards, abjure dice, avoid men with lumps on their necks and revolvers in their pockets,' sapient Youth says, 'The old man's goin' dotty.' But we shall see. Youth's innings will come, and I bet a fiver—no, no, what am I thinking of?—I stake my honour that Youth's middle stump gets ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace |
