Quotes & Sayings About Sagacity

The most holy cannibalism you can perform is to eat the flesh and blood of sagacity, and by sharing it with other wisdom thirsty cannibals. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Much I marvelled at the sagacity evinced by waiters and chamber-maids in proportioning the accommodation to the guest. How could inn-servants and ship-stewardesses everywhere tell at a glance that I, for instance, was an individual of no social significance, and little burdened by cash? They did know it evidently: I saw quite well that they all, in a moment's calculation, estimated me at about the same fractional value. The fact seemed to me curious and pregnant: I would not disguise from myself what it indicated, yet managed to keep up my spirits pretty well under its pressure.
Having at last landed in a great hall, full of skylight glare, I made my way somehow to what proved to be the coffee room.It cannot be denied that on entering this room I trembled somewhat; felt uncertain, solitary, wretched; wished to Heaven I knew whether I was doing right or wrong; felt convinced that it was the last, but could not help myself. — Charlotte Bronte

Honest and outspoken, honorable and uncompromising, Jubal A. Early epitomized much that was the Southern Confederacy. His self-reliance, courage, sagacity, and devotion to the cause brought confidence then just as it inspires reverence now. — James I. Robertson Jr.

Nowhere is the dog more venerated and cared for than in Zoroastianism. The Avesta and other sacred books say the dog symbolizes sagacity, vigilance and fidelity and is the pillar of the pastoral culture. It must be treated with the utmost kindness and reverence. Every household should not only give food to every hungry dog but the dog should be fed with 'clean food,' specially prepared, before the family itself is fed. At religious ceremonies a complete 'meal of the dog' is prepared with consecrated food and the dog is served before the worshippers join in the communal meal. A prayer is said as the dog eats. — J.C. Cooper

Great dream or idea comes up when you are thinking of something other than yourself. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

Serendipity ... You will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called 'The Three Princes of Serendip': as their Highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of. — Horace Walpole

Great statesmen seem to direct and rule by a sort of power to put themselves in the place of the nation over which they are set, and may thus be said to possess the souls of poets at the same time they display the coarser sense and the more vulgar sagacity of practical men of business. — Woodrow Wilson

A man doesn't like to have his ego popped, especially when he prides himself on his sagacity, and then to be proved wrong by a man who claims he doesn't know anything. — E.A. Bucchianeri

Common sense is a phrase employed to denote that degree of intelligence, sagacity, and prudence which is common to all men. — William Fleming

Mind not only what people say, but how they say it; and if you have any sagacity, you may discover more truth by your eyes than by your ears. People can say what they will, but they cannot look just as they will; and their looks frequently (reveal) what their words are calculated to conceal. — Lord Chesterfield

Baseball is the exponent of American Courage, Confidence, Combativeness, American Dash, Discipline, Determination, American Energy, Eagerness, Enthusiasm, American Pluck, Persistency, Performance, American Spirit, Sagacity, Success, American Vim, Vigor, Virility. — Albert Goodwill Spalding

Sagacity, for all his caution and astuteness, the old judge — Agatha Christie

The mental disease of the present generation is impatience of study, contempt of the great masters of ancient wisdom, and a disposition to rely wholly upon unassisted genius and natural sagacity. — Samuel Johnson

If you only notice human proceedings, you may observe that all who attain great power and riches, make use of either force or fraud; and what they have acquired either by deceit or violence, in order to conceal the disgraceful methods of attainment, they endeavor to sanctify with the false title of honest gains. Those who either from imprudence or want of sagacity avoid doing so, are always overwhelmed with servitude and poverty; for faithful servants are always servants, and honest men are always poor; nor do any ever escape from servitude but the bold and faithless, or from poverty, but the rapacious and fraudulent. God and nature have thrown all human fortunes into the midst of mankind; and they are thus attainable rather by rapine than by industry, by wicked actions rather than by good. Hence it is that men feed upon each other, and those who cannot defend themselves must be worried. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Success"

If you want a thing bad enough
To go out and fight for it,
Work day and night for it,
Give up your time and your peace and your sleep for it

If only desire of it
Makes you quite mad enough
Never to tire of it,
Makes you hold all other things tawdry and cheap for it

If life seems all empty and useless without it
And all that you scheme and you dream is about it,

If gladly you'll sweat for it,
Fret for it,
Plan for it,
Lose all your terror of God or man for it,

If you'll simply go after that thing that you want.
With all your capacity,
Strength and sagacity,
Faith, hope and confidence, stern pertinacity,

If neither cold poverty, famished and gaunt,
Nor sickness nor pain
Of body or brain
Can turn you away from the thing that you want,

If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it,
You'll get it! — Berton Braley

The framers of our constitution had the sagacity to vest in Congress all implied powers: that is, powers necessary and proper to carry into effect all the delegated powers wherever vested. — John C. Calhoun

So powerfully does fortune appear to sway the destinies of men, putting a silver spoon into one man's mouth, and a wooden one into another's, that some of the most sagacious of men, as Cardinal Mazarin and Rothschild, seem to have been inclined to regard luck as the first element of worldly success; experience, sagacity, energy, and enterprise as nothing, if linked to an unlucky star. — William Mathews

One has but to observe a community of beavers at work in a stream to understand the loss in his sagacity, balance, co-operation, competence, and purpose which Man has suffered since he rose up on his hind legs. He began to chatter and he developed Reason, Thought, and Imagination, qualities which would get the smartest group of rabbits or orioles in the world into inextricable trouble overnight. — James Thurber

Criticism, though dignified from the earliest ages by the labours of men eminent for knowledge and sagacity, has not yet attained the certainty and stability of science. — Samuel Johnson

George Stephenson, with a sagacity of mind in advance of the science of his day, answered, when asked what was the ultimate cause of motion of his locomotive engine, 'that it went by the bottled-up rays of the sun. — Carl Wilhelm Siemens

The most Indian thing about the Indian is surely not his moccasins or his calumet, his wampum or his stone hatched, but traits of character and sagacity, skill, or passion. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Were we in the habit of looking beyond the specific content of ideologies and doctrines, we should see that to claim kinship with one of them rather than some other does not at all imply much expenditure of sagacity. Those following one party imagine they differ from those following another, whereas all, once they choose, join each other underneath, participate in one and the same nature, and vary only in appearance, by the mask they assume. — Emil M. Cioran

If you want to make progress, put up with being perceived as ignorant or naive in worldly matters, don't aspire to a reputation for sagacity. If you do impress others as somebody, don't altogether believe it. You have to realize, it isn't easy to keep your will in agreement with nature, as well as externals. Caring about the one inevitably means you are going to shortchange the other. — Epictetus

The idea of governing at all times by the simple force of law (which we have been told is the only admissible principle of republican government) has no place but in the reveries of those political doctors whose sagacity disdains the admonitions of experimental instruction. — Alexander Hamilton

The dangerously high level of stupidity surplus was once again the lead story in The Owl that morning. The reason for the crisis was clear: Prime Minister Redmond van de Poste and his ruling Commonsense Party had been discharging their duties with a reckless degree of responsibility that bordered on inspired sagacity. Instead of drifting from one crisis to the next and appeasing the nation with a steady stream of knee-jerk legislation and headline-grabbing but arguably pointless initiatives, they had been resolutely building a raft of considered long-term plans that concentrated on unity, fairness and tolerance. It was a state of affairs deplored by Mr. Alfredo Traficcone, leader of the opposition Prevailing Wind Party, who wanted to lead the nation back to the safer ground of uniformed stupidity. — Jasper Fforde

The audacity of my sagacity is instrumentality to my successity. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

I love Winston Churchill. I love the wisdom he had, the sagacity. I like people who are independent-minded. People who aren't part of clans or systems, who are talented and free, and able to do things without being corrupted by the system. — Lapo Elkann

Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and the herald of all revolutions. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

He was not ill-fitted to be the head and representative of a community which owed its origin and progress, and its present state of development, not to the impulses of youth, but to the stern and tempered energies of manhood and the sombre sagacity of age; accomplishing so much, precisely because it imagined and hoped so little. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Your selling point is that unique quality like integrity,teachability, honesty, humility, skill, sagacity, love, self-confidence, vision, compassion and kindness which distinguishes you among your contemporaries. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

Happy the man who gains sagacity in youth, but thrice happy he who retains the fervour of youth in age. — Dagobert D. Runes

A Persian fairy tale tells of the Three Princes of Serendip, who "were always making discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of."7 Creativity in the wild operates much like that. — Daniel Goleman

If reason be judge, no writer has produced such inconsistent characters as nature herself has. It must call for no small sagacity in a reader unerringly to discriminate in a novel between the inconsistencies of conception and those of life. As elsewhere, experience is the only guide here; but as no one man's experience can be coextensive with what is, it may be unwise in every case to rest upon it. — Herman Melville

When I was foolish, I detested sagacity. I ate the fruits of my foolishness and ignorance. I thank God because I was once foolish. It was from my foolishness that I learnt and understood the true savour of sagacity. — Ogwo David Emenike

Another form on sagacity and self-defence consists in reacting as seldom as possible and withdrawing from situations and relationships in which one would be condemned as it were to suspend ones 'freedom', ones initiative, and become a mere reagent. — Friedrich Nietzsche

For, besides, that many persons find too sensible an interest in perpetually recalling such topics; besides this, I say, the motive of blind despair can never reasonably have place in the sciences; since, however unsuccessful former attempts may have proved, there is still room to hope, that the industry, good fortune, or improved sagacity of succeeding generations may reach discoveries unknown to former ages. — David Hume

The conduct of the criminal investigation has been left in the experienced hands of Inspector Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, who is following up the clues with his accustomed energy and sagacity. — Arthur Conan Doyle

You can become the greatest personality in your community by developing the sagacity of humility, teachability, prosperity-mentality and accountability. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

All business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage. — Thorstein Veblen

Serendipity is the way to make discoveries, by accident but also by sagacity, of things one is not in quest of. Based on experience, knowledge, it is the creative exploitation of the unforeseen. — Adrian Bejan

Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind. — Leo Rosten

All lives are difficult; what makes some of them fulfilled as well is the manner in which pains have been met. Every pain is an indistinct signal that something is wrong, which may engender either a good or bad result depending on the sagacity and strength of mind of the sufferer. Anxiety may precipitate panic, or an accurate analysis of what is amiss. A sense of injustice may lead to murder, or to a ground-breaking work of economic theory. Envy may lead to bitterness, or to a decision to compete with a rival and the production of a masterpiece. As — Alain De Botton

So swift, silent and furtive were his movements like those of a trained bloodhound picking out a scent, that I could not but think what a terrible criminal he would have made had he turned his energy and sagacity against the law instead of exerting them in its defense. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Well was it said by a man of sagacity that dancing was a sort of privileged and reputable folly, and that the best way to be convinced of this was to close the ears and judge of it by the eyes alone. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Those who either from imprudence or want of sagacity avoid doing so, are always overwhelmed with servitude and poverty; for faithful servants are always servants, and honest men are always poor; nor do any ever escape from servitude but the bold and faithless, or from poverty, but the rapacious and fraudulent. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Egotism is usually subversive of sagacity. — Marianne Moore

Wisdom is not taught, it is caught. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

Old men want to feel that the experience which has come with their years is valuable, that their advice is valuable, that they possess a sagacity that could be obtained only through experience - a sagacity that could be of use to young men if only young men would ask. — Robert A. Caro

Without this tremendous passion for power, influence, and advantage which money gives, how could nature develop the highest type of man? Without this infinite longing, whence would come the discipline which industry, perseverance, tact, sagacity, and frugality give? — Orison Swett Marden

The body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It does not take age to be a sage, neither does it require rage to have the courage to be a sage in this day and age. — Ogwo David Emenike

The enemy of art is the enemy of nature; art is nothing but the highest sagacity and exertions of human nature; and what nature will he honor who honors not the human? — Johann Kaspar Lavater

Your divine sagacity is your life's status symbol. — Ogwo David Emenike

Class consciousness is not one of our national diseases; we suffer, indeed, from its opposite
the delusion that class barriers are not real. That delusion reveals itself in many forms, some of them as beautiful as a glass eye. One is the Liberal doctrine that a prairie demagogue promoted to the United States Senate will instantly show all the sagacity of a Metternich ... another is the doctrine that a moron
run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will cease thereby to be a moron ... — H.L. Mencken

Above all, the Gy-ei have a readier and more concentred power over that mysterious fluid or agency which contains the element of destruction, with a larger portion of that sagacity which comprehends dissimulation. Thus they cannot only defend themselves against all aggressions from the males, but could, at any moment when he least expected his danger, terminate the existence of an offending spouse. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

The dog has seldom been successful in pulling man up to its level of sagacity, but man has frequently dragged the dog down to his. — James Thurber

Manhood and sagacity ripen of themselves; it suffices not to repress or distort them. — George Santayana

In practice it is possible to determine directly the skin colour and hence the ethnic affiliations of the ancient Egyptians by microscopic analysis in the laboratory; I doubt if the sagacity of the researchers who have studied the question has overlooked the possibility. — Cheikh Anta Diop

The Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights - the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others. — Walter Bagehot

There are moments in life when you blunder in front of a window, or a glass. And you stop to see the most risible creature peering back at you, in some hideous weskit that he has mistaken for the very pineapple of fashion, a kingsman slung round his neck like the banner of his pretentions, with an expression of adolescent constipation that is clearly intended as Deep Sagacity. You blink - you may even for an instant begin to laugh - until the realization dawns: this is a reflection, and it is mine. You've draped yourself in Rainbow togs and swaddled yourself in fervent convictions, but in that reflection there you stand: exposed in the knobbly white nakedness of your own absurdity. — Ian Weir

With a perversity of judgement, which must be attributed to his not having by Nature a very strong head, the Graces, the Spirit, the Sagacity, and the Perseverance, of the Villain of the Story outweighed all his absurdities and all his Atrocities with Sir Edward. With him, such Conduct was Genius, Fire and Feeling. It interested and inflamed him; and he was always more anxious for its Success and mourned over its Discomfitures with more Tenderness than could ever have been contemplated by the Authors. — Jane Austen

What drives him is the thirst for glory; the public good, as he understands it, is a means to that end. So when a great statesman accomplishes a laudable goal by sagacity and bravery, we're right to give him the praise he craves. But when we're surprised and disgusted because the man we lauded has humiliated himself and disgraced his office, we haven't just misjudged a man - we've misjudged the nature of modern politics. — Barton Swaim

A man's genius seems to befriend the more when he reads with open heart, the masterpiece of masterminds, the sagacity of sages, and the ingenious words of geniuses of ages. — Ogwo David Emenike

I picture the vast realm of the sciences as an immense landscape scattered with patches of dark and light. The goal towards which we must work is either to extend the boundaries of the patches of light, or to increase their number. One of these tasks falls to the creative genius; the other requires a sort of sagacity combined with perfectionism. — Denis Diderot

When in doubt, tell the truth. That maxim I did invent, but never expected it to be applied to me. I did say, "When you are in doubt," but when I am in doubt myself I use more sagacity. — Mark Twain

And through a Riddle, at the last--
Sagacity, must go-- — Emily Dickinson

Fortune has been considered the guardian divinity of fools; and, on this score, she has been accused of blindness; but it should rather be adduced as a proof of her sagacity, when she helps those who cannot help themselves. — Charles Caleb Colton

The darling schemes and fondest hopes of man are frequently frustrated by time. While sagacity contrives, patience matures, and labor industriously executes, disappointment laughs at the curious fabric, formed by so many efforts, and gay with so many brilliant colors, and, while the artists imagine the work arrived at the moment of completion, brushes away the beautiful web, and leaves nothing behind. — Timothy Dwight V

It takes no more actual sagacity to carry on the everyday hawking and haggling of the world, or to ladle out its normal doses of bad medicine and worse law, than it takes to operate a taxicab or fry a pan of fish. — H.L. Mencken

As to sagacity, I should say that his judgement respecting the warmest place and the softest cushion in a room is infallible, his punctuality at meal times is admirable, and his pertinacity in jumping on people's shoulders till they give him some of the best of what is going, indicates great firmness. — Thomas Huxley

The mind is found most acute and most uneasy in the morning. Uneasiness is, indeed, a species of sagacity - a passive sagacity. Fools are never uneasy. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Speransky, either because he appreciated Prince Andrey's abilities or because he thought it as well to secure his adherence, showed off his calm, impartial sagacity before Prince Andrey, and flattered him with that delicate flattery that goes hand in hand with conceit, and consists in a tacit assumption that one's companion and oneself are the only people capable of understanding all the folly of the rest of the world and the sagacity and profundity of their own ideas. — Leo Tolstoy

Sydney Smith playfully says that common sense was invented by Socrates, that philosopher having been one of its most conspicuous exemplars in conducting the contest of practical sagacity against stupid prejudice and illusory beliefs. — Edwin Percy Whipple

War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It isn't all just kismet. Some of it is serendipity. Some of it is sagacity. A lot of it is doing the right thing simply because we can. The difference between those who don't and those who do, is that those who do, do. It doesn't get any more complicated than that. — Briar Kit Esme

I don't ask for a miracle," Helmar resumed, "but I do need speed, boldness, and sagacity." He was in the red leather chair beyond the end of Wolfe's desk, with his briefcase on the little table at his elbow. His voice was a raspy oratorical baritone, hard and bony like him. He was going on. "And discretion - that is essential. You have it, I know. As for me, I am a senior partner in a law firm of the highest repute, with offices at Forty Wall Street. A young woman for whom I am responsible has disappeared, and there is reason to fear that she is doing something foolish and may even be in jeopardy. She must be found as quickly as possible. — Rex Stout

Men of his strength of purpose, and customary sagacity, if they chance to adopt a mistaken opinion in practical matters, so wedge it and fasten it among things known to be true, that to wrench it out of their minds is hardly less difficult than pulling up an oak. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The question as to which of these two theories applies to the actual world is, like all questions concerning the actual world, in itself irrelevant to pure mathematics.* But the argument against absolute position usually takes the form of maintaining that a space composed of points is logically inadmissible, and hence issues are raised which a philosophy of mathematics must discuss. In what follows, I am concerned only with the question: Is a space composed of points self-contradictory? It is true that, if this question be answered in the negative, the sole ground for denying that such a space exists in the actual world is removed; but this is a further point, which, being irrelevant to our subject, will be left entirely to the sagacity of the reader. — Bertrand Russell

Accept and express your underlying certitude, and it shall be worldwide sagacity. — Ogwo David Emenike

Spies cannot be usefully employed without a certain intuitive sagacity; (2) They cannot be properly managed without benevolence and straight forwardness; (3) Without subtle ingenuity of mind, one cannot make certain of the truth of their reports; (4) Be subtle! be subtle! and use your spies for every kind of warfare; (5) If a secret piece of news is divulged by a spy before the time is ripe, he must be put to death together with the man to whom the secret was told. — Sun Tzu

Chapter 3. That the Romans Did Not Show Their Usual Sagacity When They Trusted that They Would Be Benefited by the Gods Who Had Been Unable to Defend Troy. And these — Augustine Of Hippo

Winning squads emphasize fundamentals-pick and rolls,teamwork,and defense. They play with passion and they play hard. They move the ball, and when their players don't have it, they move well without the ball. They play with sagacity by exploiting mismatches. They gauge their opponents weaknesses and then attack them relentlessly. — Walt Frazier

His [the President's] office is anything he has the sagacity and force to make it. — Woodrow Wilson

It is only with prudence, sagacity, and much dexterity that great aims are accomplished, and all obstacles surmounted. Otherwise nothing is accomplished. — Napoleon Bonaparte

Serendipitous discoveries are made by chance, found without looking for them but possible only through a sharp vision and sagacity, ready to see the unexpected and never indulgent with the apparently unexplainable. — Horace Walpole

Apollo at Delphi, through the oracular utterance of his priestess, pronounced Socrates the wisest of men. Of him it is related that he said with sagacity and great learning that the human breast should have been furnished with open windows, so that men might not keep their feelings concealed, but have them open to the view. Oh that nature, following his idea, had constructed them thus unfolded and obvious to the view. — Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

The successful businessman must be able to foresee possibilities, to estimate with sagacity the outcome in the future. — Frank William Taussig

King: Should I specify for the realm what religion will be acceptable in this Kingdom, as the Emperor in the East did?
Titus: If you are of such sagacity, my Lord, that you know all the secrets of the Universe, you would be remiss if you did not specify the acceptable religion. But if you, too, are mortal, and your understanding is partial, I would think it arrogant to dictate to the people how they should approach Existence. Each has his own understanding, and each his own ability to understand. — Vann Turner

Human nature with all its infirmities and deprivation is still capable of great things. It is capable of attaining to degrees of wisdom and goodness, which we have reason to believe, appear as respectable in the estimation of superior intelligences. Education makes a greater difference between man and man, than nature has made between man and brute. The virtues and powers to which men may be trained, by early education and constant discipline, are truly sublime and astonishing. Isaac Newton and John Locke are examples of the deep sagacity which may be acquired by long habits of thinking and study. — John Adams

The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace. — Joseph Addison

The very large, very respectable, and very knowing class of misanthropes who rejoice in the name of grumblers,
persons who are so sure that the world is going to ruin, that they resent every attempt to comfort them as an insult to their sagacity, and accordingly seek their chief consolation in being inconsolable, their chief pleasure in being displeased. — Edwin Percy Whipple