"Perspicuity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... found that those grandees were not expected quite immediately. "I might go back to Greshamsbury for three or four days as she is not to be here," he said naively to his aunt, expressing, with tolerable perspicuity, his feeling, that he regarded his visit to Courcy Castle quite as a matter of business. But the countess would hear of no such arrangement. Now that she had got him, she was not going to let him fall back into the perils of ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... beast it certainly was; that taurus with head lowered, tail lashing the air, one hoof pawing savagely, worthy representative of all the horrors it typified, and which she explained with maddening perspicuity. That night, when papa tore himself away from the club room at one o'clock, and met mamma on the doorstep—just coming home from a supper at Delmonico's after an opera party—they were ascending the stairs, when frantic ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... always take a comprehensive view of his subject, but he seldom fails to take a clear view of it. The same turn of mind may be observed in the conversation of Frenchmen; even when their information is defective, they will very generally arrest attention by the apparent order and perspicuity of their thoughts; and they never seem to know what it is to be at ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... De Fonte, the later voyages of La Perouse and Anson, and the charts of 1640. In the charts of that day Spanish navigators reckoned longitude E. 360 degrees from the meridian of the Isle of Ferro. For the sake of perspicuity before a modern audience, the more recent meridian of Madrid was substituted. The custom of dropping a day at some arbitrary point in crossing the Pacific westerly, I need not say, remains unaffected by any change of meridian. I ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... familiar letter writing. Because your object in writing to a friend is to make yourself perfectly clear to him, therefore you make use of the simplest, plainest, readiest words—and such are ever the best for an essay, sermon, lecture, or even oration. This practice imparts ease and perspicuity, and it teaches that writing ought to be and may be as little difficult as conversation. It teaches every one not to say anything till he shall have something to say. A want of something to say is generally not felt in writing letters, especially ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... questions under discussion.... Long habit has given me great facility in collating, digesting, and extracting complex documents, but I am not hasty in drawing inferences; the arrangement of the facts and arguments is always to me a considerable labor, and though aiming at nothing more than perspicuity and brevity, I am a ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... harmonize the genealogy of this romance. A birth-mark of a Stettin apple, which is visible only in autumn when that fruit is ripening, plays the part of Box's strawberry in the farce, and with as much perspicuity. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... the time he had started his cigars, De Marsay began to see the events of the night in a singular light. Like many men of great intelligence, his perspicuity was not spontaneous, as it did not at once penetrate to the heart of things. As with all natures endowed with the faculty of living greatly in the present, of extracting, so to speak, the essence of it and assimilating it, ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... thinkers on social questions are beginning to see the conquest of the industrial and commercial worlds by the power of associated capital. To-day the new feudalism has more than half entangled society in its meshes, and its complete establishment stares us in the face. What perspicuity to have foreseen so clearly what is now being realized! If prescience is a test of science—if the foretelling of future events is a test of the laws that govern them and from which they are deducible, then Fourier must have discovered at least ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... solicited the Consul to print a catalogue of his books; which proposition his modesty at first induced him to reject; but, afterwards, his liberality, to comply with. He then observes that, "in the compilation of the catalogue, he has studied brevity as much as it was consistent with perspicuity; and that he was once desirous of stating the value and price of the books, but was dissuaded from it by the advice of the more experienced, and by the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... be a good man in order to divine what in certain circumstances a good and pure spirit will do. The Bishop of Beauvais had entertained no doubt as to what would happen. He knew exactly, with a perspicuity creditable to his perceptions at least, that, notwithstanding the effect which his theatrical mise en scene had produced upon the imagination of Jeanne, no power in heaven or earth would induce that young soul to content itself ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... thought that because I received you with hospitality and kindness, you should imagine me capable of writing with propriety and perspicuity? Your gratitude misleads your judgment. The knowledge which I acquired from your conversation has amply repaid me for your five weeks' entertainment. I gave you nothing more than what common hospitality dictated; but could any other guest have instructed me as you ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... William Dobbin's task to muse upon these movements of Amelia's, and to watch her heart; and if his love made him divine almost all the feelings which agitated it, alas! he could see with a fatal perspicuity that there was no place there for him. And so, gently, he bore his fate, knowing it, and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... talk to me about the manner of my writing; observed that, though I had the advantage of my antagonist in correct spelling and pointing (which I ow'd to the printing-house), I fell far short in elegance of expression, in method and in perspicuity, of which he convinced me by several instances. I saw the justice of his remark, and thence grew more attentive to the manner in writing, and determined to endeavor ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... sometimes unavoidable, I have not wantonly nor licentiously indulged. It has been my settled principle, that the reading of the ancient books is probably true, and therefore is not to be disturbed for the sake of elegance, perspicuity, or mere improvement of the sense. For though much credit is not due to the fidelity, nor any to the judgment of the first publishers, yet they who had the copy before their eyes were more likely to read ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... important that the statute laws should be made as plain and intelligible as possible, and be reduced to as small a compass as may consist with the fullness and precision of the will of the Legislature and the perspicuity of its language. This well done would, I think, greatly facilitate the labors of those whose duty it is to assist in the administration of the laws, and would be a lasting benefit to the people, by placing before them in a more accessible and intelligible form the laws which so ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Necker displays much irregular force of imagination, united with considerable perspicuity and compass of thought; though his speculations are deformed by an undue attachment to certain leading ideas, which, harmonizing with his habits of mind, had acquired an excessive preponderance in the course of his long and uncontroverted meditations. He possessed extensive ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... in the press MONSIEUR DELILLE has given the world another proof of the powers of his mind, and displayed the French language to vast advantage, in a more arduous strain of poetry that it had yet attempted. The perspicuity for which it has always been remarked, and to which it owes its charms in conversation as perhaps also the dificulty with which it is adapted to works of poetical imagination, is strongly exemplified in his translation of Paradise ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... Zebehr, and to record opinions that were inconsistent with those he had expressed on the same subject only a few weeks and even days before. But even in what follows I believe it is safe to discern his extraordinary perspicuity; for when he saw that the Government would not send Zebehr to Cyprus, he promptly concluded that it would be far safer to take or have him with him in the Soudan, where he could personally watch and control ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... disturbance and inflammation of his mind, would be disposed to a similar communication. I shall interweave with Mr. Collins's story various information which I afterwards received from other quarters, that I may give all possible perspicuity to the series of events. To avoid confusion in my narrative, I shall drop the person of Collins, and assume to be myself the historian of our patron. To the reader it may appear at first sight as if this detail of the preceding life of Mr. Falkland were foreign to my ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... Nature. But your Lordship will observe, that the transitions of the Poet who breaks from his subject to exhibit an historical detail whose connection with it is remote, or who is solicitous to display the fertility of a rich imagination at the expence of perspicuity, when it is not supposed that his passions are inflamed: you will observe, my Lord, that his digressions are by no means so excusable as those of the other, because obscurity in the latter may be an excellence, whereas in the former it is ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... conveniences and luxuries than are usually to be met with in the habitations of the clergy. About a mile farther on the right is the elegant residence of N. G. Clarke, Esq. one of the king's counsel; a gentleman highly distinguished for acuteness and perspicuity in his profession, and thorough hospitality in his house. Still farther on the left, as you descend a steep hill, there is a fine view, at a considerable distance, of the domains of Hamstead hall. It is a very elegant and ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... I last had the honor of addressing your Lordships, I endeavored to state with as much perspicuity as the nature of an intricate affair would admit, and as largely as in so intricate an affair was consistent with the brevity which I endeavored to preserve, the proofs which had been adduced against Warren Hastings upon an inquiry instituted by an order of the Court ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... by the mass of memoirs written by parties, who, however acute their mental perceptions may be, yet, from want of early education, do not assign to words that accuracy of signification, and do not possess that perspicuity of style, which is absolutely necessary for the communication of ideas! Those, therefore, who, with different notions of language, read the writings of such as we are alluding to, either fail to attach to them any definite meaning, or attach ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... different signification, might be distinctly and easily referred. It is in regard to the finer shades of meaning, the subtler touches of expression, the application of words and phrases where the strictest exactness and perspicuity are required, that an ordinary English style is apt to become loose and shadowy; and it is precisely here that we are entitled to expect the severest, chastest form of utterance. Coleridge used to complain of a general confounding of the word 'notion' with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... letters which she wrote upon it, the first to Mr. Bennet, a Romish priest, and the second to Mr. H——, who had procured an answer to that letter from a stranger, Mr. Beimel's indisposition preventing him from returning one, were thought so valuable on account of the strength and perspicuity of reasoning, as well as their conciseness, that she consented to the importunity of her friends, for their publication in June 1707, under the following title, A Discourse concerning a Guide in Controversies; in two Letters: Written to one of the Church Church of Rome, by a ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... for the year 1659, mentions Nayler, whom he met in company with Edward Burrough at the house of Milton's friend, Pennington. Ellwood's father held a discourse with the two Quakers on their doctrine of free and universal grace. "James Nailer," says Ellwood, "handled the subject with so much perspicuity and clear demonstration, that his reasoning seemed to be irresistible. As for Edward Burrough, he was a brisk young Man, of a ready Tongue, and might have been for aught I then knew, a Scholar, which ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... in a confidential whisper, "of course this is only a matter of coffee and glorias? They will be ready for you all on your return. I know—I understand!" And he smiled and nodded a great many times, and laid his finger knowingly on the side of his nose. We laughed heartily, assuring him that his perspicuity was wonderful, and he stood on the broad steps in high good humor, watching us as our ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... for the flag and three for the Union. Kilpatrick was then called upon for a speech, and responded in his usually felicitous style. He is certainly an orator as well as a warrior. He speaks, too, as he fights, with dash and daring. What he has to say he says with such perspicuity that no one doubts his meaning. Frequently there are flashes of eloquence worthy of a Demosthenes. His voice and diction seem to be well-nigh faultless. His speech to-day elicited frequent outbursts of applause, ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... moderation in this respect has never been better stated than in his words: "It has been my settled principle that the reading of {216} the ancient books is probably true, and therefore is not to be disturbed for the sake of elegance, perspicuity or mere improvement of the sense. For though much credit is not due to the fidelity, nor any to the judgment of the first publishers, yet they who had the copy before their eyes were more likely to read it right than we who read it only by imagination." And in several other matters he in passing ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... creative process and as completed work; and finally, the everyday aesthetic appreciations of nature and human life, both by ourselves and by the people whom we seek out for study. Each kind of material has its special value. The first has the advantage of the perspicuity which comes from simplicity, similar for our purposes to the value of the rudimentary forms of life for the biologist. But this advantage of early art may be overestimated; for the nature of beauty is better revealed in its maturer ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... guard himself against the fastidiousness or stiffness which results from pedantry, and take great pains not only with the content of his thoughts, but with the language in which these thoughts are couched." Simplicity, perspicuity, and conciseness, these he taught by precept and example, and though he was accused of "Germanizing" the Hebrew language, he persisted in his labor until he attained the foremost ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... his resentment. Dennis speaks of him as his "departed friend, whom I infinitely esteemed when living for the solidity of his thought, for the spring and the warmth and the beautiful turn of it; for the power and variety and fulness of his harmony; for the purity, the perspicuity, the energy of his expression; and, whenever these great qualities are required, for the pomp and solemnity and majesty of ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... were held in the spring and summer of the year 1604, and it was towards the close of that year that they began their operations; the manner of which, and the discovery, we shall relate with as much brevity as is consistent with perspicuity. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... every kind of writing she easily detected any ill-adapted or far-fetched expression. She could not bear those feeble imitators of Erasmus who bind the Latin language in the fetters of miserable proverbs; on the other hand, she approved a style chaste in its propriety, and beautiful by perspicuity, and she greatly admired metaphors, when not too violent, and antitheses when just, and happily opposed. By a diligent attention to these particulars, her ears became so practised and so nice, that there was nothing in ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... be necessary for the sake of perspicuity to suppose the country divided into districts, agreeing as nearly as could be ascertained with the boundaries of the respectives tribes. In these districts a section or two of land, well supplied with wood and water, should be chosen for the Aborigines; such lands, if ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... are manifest namely, that not by love, but by faith, we overcome the terrors of sin and death, that we cannot oppose our love and fulfilling of the Law to the wrath of God, because Paul says, Rom. 5, 2: By Christ we have access to God by faith. We urge this sentence so frequently for the sake of perspicuity. For it shows most clearly the state of our whole case, and, when carefully considered, can teach abundantly concerning the whole matter, and can console well-disposed minds. Accordingly, it is of advantage to have it at hand and in sight, ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... say smuggler," replied Pepe, chuckling at his own perspicuity, "it is only meant as a compliment, for you haven't an ounce of merchandise in your boat, unless indeed," continued he, pointing with his foot to a rope ladder, rolled up, and lying in the bottom, "unless that may be a sample! Santa ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... current hand—draw a score through the tops of your t's, and open the loops of your l's—insuperable objections to the arrangements which I have proposed to you. There is much more to the same effect, occupying four good pages of paper, which a little attention to perspicuity and distinctness of expression might have comprised within as many lines. For, after all, Frank, it amounts but to this, that you will not do ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... rank and file of boys would not be aroused by it to overcome the difficulty and go up higher. But Benjamin was aroused, and he resolved that his composition should yet be characterized by elegance and perspicuity. He set about that improvement at once. We shall see, in another chapter, how he purchased an old copy of the Spectator for a model, and set about ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... cried: "Lord, open the King of England's eyes!" Upon Tyndale's version of the Bible the King James translation is solidly based. "It is astonishing," says Dr. Geddes, a profound scholar, "how little obsolete the language of it is, even at this day; and, in point of perspicuity and noble simplicity, propriety of idiom, and purity of style, no English version has yet surpassed it." Of course our language has changed greatly ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... you love me," he went on, with an inversion of the due order of the proposition, and an assumption that would have been intolerable in anyone else, "and you know that I love you dearly." It was a proper compliment to her perspicuity that she should know already that he loved her, but his mind smiled as he thought how insufficient sometimes are the bases of knowledge. "I love you dearly, and am come to ask you to ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... notwithstanding is not so much different from it in kind as in degree: for in that which I mention'd there are no Discoveries made which contradict those which this Author means; but the difference consists in this, viz. that in our way there is a greater degree of Clearness and Perspicuity than there is in the other; for in this we apprehend things by the help of something, which we cannot properly call a Power; nor indeed will any of those words, which are either us'd in common discourse, or occur in the Writings of ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... give her daughter to another suitor. The father, though much under the sway of his spouse, is in his heart desirous to keep his engagement, and has called in the notary to draw the contract. At this moment the scene begins, the actors of which, for greater perspicuity and brevity, may be provided with stage names ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... cleverest book on our list is "Twice Lost".... This is bold and skilful drawing, and it is a fair sample of the earlier half of the volume. The combined vigor, ease, and perspicuity of the ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... indeed is not known by sense, but at once, together with sense, by some other cognitive power. But that the divine presence is known by the intellect immediately on the sight of, and through, corporeal things, happens from two causes—viz. from the perspicuity of the intellect, and from the refulgence of the divine glory infused into the body after ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Mrs. Saggers's pail: which household article has split Titbull's into almost as many parties as there are dwellings in that precinct. The extremely complicated nature of the conflicting articles of belief on the subject prevents my stating them here with my usual perspicuity, but I think they have all branched off from the root-and-trunk question, Has Mrs. Saggers any right to stand her pail outside her dwelling? The question has been much refined upon, but roughly stated may be stated ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... in a more finished style than you do," answered Mr. Franklin. "His expressions are more elegant, and there is more method and perspicuity in his composition." ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... melancholy, the singular mixture of skepticism and credulity, and the brilliancy of imaginative illustration, give his essays a peculiarity of character that renders them exceedingly fascinating. The poet Cowley, in his prose writings, is distinguished for his undeviating simplicity and perspicuity, and for smoothness and ease, of which hardly another instance could be produced from any other ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... together all the ancient writers on this art, from the first writer on the subject and inventor of it, Tisias, and has compiled with great perspicuity the precepts of each of them, mentioning them by name, after having sought them out with exceeding care; and he has disentangled them with great diligence and explained their difficulties; and he has so greatly excelled the original writers themselves ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... author, whoever he might be, was more anxious to satisfy a grudge against Dennis than to defend Dennis's victim. It is not much of a compliment to Addison to say that he had enough good feeling to scorn such a mode of retaliation, and perspicuity enough to see that it would be little to his credit. Accordingly, in his majestic way, he caused Steele to write a note to Lintot (August 4, 1713), disavowing all complicity, and saying that if even he noticed Mr. Dennis's criticisms, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... had belonged to him before the theft, he might be suspected of theft himself, and in this case a double conviction of the parties would ensue; that is, of him who did not take what he ought, and of him who had more than he was entitled to. This opinion, which is remarkable for its perspicuity and soundness, is to be found in the one hundred and second folio of Logerhedius, tome six hundred, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... in the process is traced with admirable perspicuity and fullness by Mr. Geikie."—London ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... according to Nature' (although this phrase belongs also to the Epicureans), the ideal 'Wise Man,' 'Apathy,' or equanimity of mind (also an Epicurean ideal), the power of the 'Will,' the worship of 'Duty,' the constant 'Advance' in virtue, &c. But perspicuity will be best gained by considering the Moral system under four heads—the Theology; the Psychology or theory of mind; the theory of the Good or human happiness; and the scheme of Virtue ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... involve his phraseology here in a most studious haze of scholasticism. Perspicuity is by no means the quality of style most in request, when we come to these higher stages of sciences. Impenetrable mists, clouds, and darkness, impenetrable to any but the eye that seeks also the whole, involve the heaven-piercing ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon |
