"Shortsighted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... contrast between the political stagnancy and the great industrial activity. The great constitutional questions seemed to be settled; and the statesmen, occupied mainly in sharing power and place, took a very shortsighted view (not for the first time in history) of the great problems that were beginning to present themselves. The British empire in the East was not won by a towering ambition so much as forced upon a reluctant commercial company by the necessities of its position. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... to do something gratifying to him and his family, and soon should have done it if he would permit it; but no! The mask of friendship covered a deep selfishness that scrupled not to sacrifice a real friendship to a shortsighted and overreaching ambition. Let him go. I wished to befriend him and his, and would have done so from the heart, but as he cannot trust me I have ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... resentment of a narrow mind, because he did not find every thing in Northumberland.' PERCY. (feeling the stroke,) 'Sir, you may be as rude as you please.' JOHNSON. 'Hold, Sir! Don't talk of rudeness; remember, Sir, you told me (puffing hard with passion struggling for a vent,) I was shortsighted. We have done with civility. We are to be as rude as we please.' PERCY. 'Upon my honour, Sir, I did not mean to be uncivil.' JOHNSON. 'I cannot say so, Sir; for I DID mean to be uncivil, thinking YOU had been uncivil.' Dr. Percy rose, ran up to him, and taking ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... invented by an American, and bought of him. Our countryman, Bigelow, went to England to study carpet-weaving in the English looms, supposing that all arts were generously open for the instruction of learners. He was denied the opportunity of studying the machinery and watching the processes by a shortsighted jealousy. He immediately sat down with a yard of carpeting, and, patiently unraveling it thread by thread, combined and calculated till he invented the machinery on which the best carpets of the Old and the New World are woven. No pains which such ingenuity and energy can render ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... we exact a degree of morality from our fellowmen precisely in proportion to its apparent importance to ourselves. It is a purely practical and even a rather shortsighted matter with us. Our friend's private conduct, so far as it does not concern us, is an affair of small moment. He can be as much of a roue as he chooses, so long as he respects our wives and daughters. He can put through ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... thing was sickeningly clear to me. Jim Starr had nothing to do with it. I was the man for whom that bullet from the rim had been intended. I was the unthinking, shortsighted fool who had done Jim Starr to his death. It had never occurred to me that my midnight reconnoitring would leave tracks, that Old Man Hooper's suspicious vigilance would even look for tracks. But given that vigilance, the rest followed plainly enough. A skillful trailer would have found ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... the world better than Lucy. She remained in the background into which the Contessa was looking with eyes which she called shortsighted. "How do you do, Madame di Forno-Populo!" she said. "It is a long time since we met. We have both grown older since that period. I hope you ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... through the bushes in hot pursuit of a rabbit, the track of which he mistook for a fox. Poor fellow! He had been out since breakfast, and only shot a brace of ptarmigan, although they are as thick as bees and quite tame. 'But then, do you see,' said he, in excuse, 'I'm so very shortsighted! Would you believe it, I've blown fifteen lumps of snow to atoms, in the belief that they were ptarmigan!' and then ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... character in extensive combinations. Owners of short lines were inclined by tradition to resist even the imperative necessities of war and their stubborn conservatism was frequently encouraged by the shortsighted parochialism of the towns. The same pitiful narrowness that led the peasant farmer to threaten rebellion against the tax in kind led his counterpart in the towns to oppose the War Department in its efforts to establish ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... know,' said the Bishop mildly, putting on his spectacles and gazing down. 'I am a little shortsighted, you know. It is the size of ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... none too amiably with an arch glance from her shortsighted eyes. I know who is Tommy's sweetheart. Gerty ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... hold of the stick at the other end. Let Pseudo-Philosophy set the means above the end, and fix its shortsighted eyes on Labor and Capital, omitting Life. (What does it profit a file-cutter if he gains his master's whole capital and loses his own life?) But you and I, Mr. Little, are true philosophers and the work we are about to enter on ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... boy," sighed the old man, as he mused on what had just occurred. "Alas! that it should have been so long overshadowed. A milder course might have done better. Ah, me! we are weak and shortsighted mortals." ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... crime. In the progress of so tremendous a war, in which, notwithstanding its origin and cause, the insurrectionary States have strangely been enabled to command foreign capital, together with the sympathy and even the indirect assistance of foreign powers, it would have been shortsighted in the extreme to have anticipated that slavery would escape attack. Though made the pretext for violence, and prominently put forward as the justification of rebellion, it was evidently the weakest point in the rebel cause, and was, therefore, alike from the choice of the rebels ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... revolutionary times the worst so frequently remain the victors. The counter-revolution which is wont to follow on the heels of revolution, and with a corresponding violence, is a compensation only to the most shortsighted. It allows the disease, the familiarizing of the people with the infringement of law, to continue, until the hitherto sound parts are attacked. Hence, a people should, if they would have it go well with them, in the changes ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... a delicate hint from Kirilla Matveitch, had answered coldly that he had no intention of deceiving any one, and no idea of marrying, had risen, made his bow, and that was all.... Next day I set off to the Ozhogins'. The shortsighted footman leaped up from his bench on my appearance, with the rapidity of lightning. I bade him announce me; the footman hurried away and returned at once. 'Walk in,' he said; 'you are begged to go in.' I went into Kirilla ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... fault of your maternal selfishness. I feel that I am incapable of working, of making something of myself, and yet I was not intended for a secluded, simple life, lonely enough to kill one, to which I have been condemned by your shortsighted affection.'" ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... began when a shortsighted crowd, incapable of judgment, and with their minds clouded with a few cheap phrases, expected from a quick and victorious war the strengthening of all the elements of Force, and feared to be left stranded. ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... was a man of forty-five, tall and thin and inclined to stoop. He had shortsighted blue eyes and a shy, kind smile. He was not a sociable man, and resented being dragged from his books to attend a dinner-party. Like most people he was quite incapable of saying No to Mrs. Duff-Whalley when that lady desired an answer in the affirmative, but he had condemned himself roundly ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... bread and butter. You won't? then I will. I want it, after your father's lavish hospitality. (HEDVIG goes to fetch bread and butter.) My daughter—a poor shortsighted little ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest, who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away. Events which shortsighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes, had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the Evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... hand, is that men with dissimilar gifts may employ them with equal diligence; and that, if they do, their reward shall be the same, however great the endowments of one, and slender those of another. A reader who has missed that distinction must be very shortsighted, or sworn to make out a case ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the greatest interest in you, charming young lady, and in your country, but I have an orderly mind and would be really pleased to see those corners straightened out. Use your influence, which I am sure must be great, with that shortsighted body ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... the stairs just in time to be standing ready to receive Lord and Lady Coltshurst who were the first to be announced. He was a spare, unintelligent, henpecked, elderly man, and she, a stout, forbidding-looking lady. She had prominent, shortsighted eyes, and she used longhandled glasses; she had also three chins, and did not resemble the Guiscards in any way, except for her mouth and her ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... what I am talking about?" he repeated, with his eyes fixed attentively, not on my mother-in-law, but on me. "You shortsighted old woman! where are your spectacles? Look at her! Do you see no resemblance—the figure, not the face!—do you see no resemblance there to ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... food for man and beast as well as producing many other useful products, and much of the work of your Association seems to be along the same line. I am sure we can live easier and better on this earth when we learn to use the trees in their proper place. Man often acts in a shortsighted way by depending largely on annual crops for the main source of food for himself and his animals and neglects the long lived trees which may not have to be planted but once in a lifetime and which, if ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... manufactures so well at home, she diminishes her imports from France and England year by year. She has not only become their rival in manufactured goods in Asia and in Africa, but also in London and in Paris. Shortsighted people in France may cry out against the Frankfort Treaty; English manufacturers may explain German competition by little differences in railway tariffs; they may linger on the petty side of questions, and neglect great historical ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... drawing-room, where the real lady of the house sat at a dainty writing-table, scratching away at a letter that was no doubt as affectionate as the one which my mother had received. She was shortsighted, which seemed to be the case also with most of the other ladies in the room; this, perhaps, was why they stared so hard at us, and then went on with the elaborate pieces of needlework on which all of them were engaged. It seemed to ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... supply-and-demand. Blank's workers are perpetually getting into mutiny, into broils and coils: every six months, we suppose, Blank has a strike; every one month, every day and every hour, they are fretting and obstructing the shortsighted Blank; pilfering from him, wasting and idling for him, omitting and committing for him. "I would not," says Friend Prudence, "exchange my workers for his with seven thousand pounds ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... Nan was akin. And it was by no means sure that the last of the Princes was not the best of them; she was very proud of her brother's daughter, and was more at a loss to know how to make excuses for being shortsighted and neglectful. Miss Prince hated to think that Nan had any but the pleasantest associations with her nearest relative; she must surely keep the girl's affection now. She meant to insist at any rate upon Dunport's ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... written, for you ever trusted my faith, if you have blamed my faults. I am now comparatively happy—a word from you will, make me blest. And Fate has, perhaps, been more merciful to both, than in our shortsighted and querulous human vision, we might, perhaps, believe; for now that the frame is brought low—and in the solitude of my chamber I can duly and humbly commune with mine own heart, I see the aspect of those ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... years when he knew Mr. Lasher he was undoubtedly unfortunate. He was shortsighted, but no one had, as yet, discovered this, and he was, therefore, blamed for much clumsiness that he could not prevent and for a good deal of sensitiveness that came quite simply from his eagerness to do what he was told ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... sign outward, positive, and explicit, or a sign metaphysical, mystical, and esoteric. For, as to the last, it denoted that the task of the spectacles was over; that, when a philosopher has made up his mind to marry, it is better henceforth to be shortsighted—nay, even somewhat purblind—than to be always scrutinizing the domestic felicity, to which he is about to resign himself, through a pair of cold, unillusory barnacles. As for the things beyond the hearth, if he cannot see without spectacles, is he not about ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... religious impostor who has flourished among us. In 1831 Joseph Smith, the first of the Mormon prophets and the founder of Mormon-ism, came to Portage County, with one of his disciples, and began to preach. They made so many converts that some shortsighted people of Hiram thought to stop their work by tarring and feathering them. This only drove them from the place; but the next year, they settled in Kirtland, Lake County, where, in 1834, their followers ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... know, Dominie," she used to say, wagging her head like a profound and thoughtful bird; "this is all very foolish and shortsighted on my part. Five years from now that gutter-godling of yours will be doing work that will make people forget poor little me and ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... heaven,—what is rash or wise, shortsighted or far-seeing, too fast or too slow, upon the profound and terrible question, "What is to be done with slavery?" You have been saying something about it, and I rather think, if I could see it, that I should very much agree with you. Bryant and I had some correspondence about it a year ago, and I ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... to be a gigantic blackbeetle to perform strange and unholy evolutions in my sitting-room. Worst of all, I was victimised by the presence of a blackbeetle in a plate of clear soup served me at my club. I backed my bill, but it was too late, for I am very shortsighted. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... Cocked Hat said he did not think the previous speaker had mentioned the real cause of their fallen fortunes—their clothes were right enough; they had to thank their own shortsighted policy for their present position—yes, he was there to speak plainly, as Guy to Guy, and he told them that it was nothing short of social suicide for a Guy to carry about a placard, such as he saw too many of them wearing that evening, inscribed with the name of a recent murderer or some ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... beneath them, and a bird for every bush. Some of the neighbours thought that to drive two rails every so often, lay up the fences straight, and grub out the shrubs was the way, but father said they were vastly mistaken. He said that was such a shortsighted proceeding, he would be ashamed to indulge in it. You did get more land, but if you left no place for the birds, the worms and insects devoured your crops, and you didn't raise half so much as if you furnished the birds shelter and food. ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... wheel! Life was not an eternal revolution through identical situations! Only the shortsighted, seeing no farther beyond, as they contemplated this movement, could imagine that it was the only one. The earth itself was the image of life. It ever rotated through determined spaces of time; days and seasons were repeated, as, in the history ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... "but if you once begin this sort of thing, there's no end to it. It's so insidious. The more they have, the more they want; and all the time they're losing fighting power. I've thought pretty deeply about this. It's shortsighted; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Unhappy, shortsighted Anselmo, what art thou doing, what art thou plotting, what art thou devising? Bethink thee thou art working against thyself, plotting thine own dishonour, devising thine own ruin. Thy wife Camilla is virtuous, thou dost possess ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra |
