Sagacity Quotes

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

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Dexterity, Obstacles, Accomplished

  Napoleon Bonaparte “Napoleon in his own words from the French of Jules Bertaut”, Рипол Классик

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• Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and the herald of all revolutions.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Courage, Fear

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1808). “Select Essays and Poems”, p.15

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• 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

  Art, War, Men

  Niccolo Machiavelli (2018). “History of Florence and the Affairs of Italy”, p.115, Ozymandias Press

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• 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

  Philosophical, Heart, Sight

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• Happy the man who gains sagacity in youth, but thrice happy he who retains the fervour of youth in age.

  Dagobert D. Runes

  Men, Age, Gains

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• 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

  War, Lying, Power

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• All business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Business, Analysis, Use

  Thorstein Veblen (2016). “THORSTEIN VEBLEN Ultimate Collection: 8 Books & 50+ Business Essays and Articles in Warfare and Economics: The Theory of the Leisure Class, The Theory of Business Enterprise, The Higher Learning In America, Panem et Circenses, The Vested Interests and the Common Man, The Use of Loan Credit in Business…”, p.1089, e-artnow

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• 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

  Morning, Mind, Fool

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• 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

  Eye, People, Mind

  Lord Chesterfield, David Roberts (2008). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.29, Oxford University Press

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• 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

  Dog, Successful, Animal

  James Thurber (1955). “Thurber's Dog's: A Collection of the Master's Dogs”

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• Most men do not feel in themselves the competence required for leading their group to victory, and therefore seek out a captain who appears to possess the courage and sagacity necessary for the achievement of supremacy. Even in religion this impulse appears. Nietzsche accused Christianity of inculcating a slave-morality, but ultimate triumph was always the goal. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

  Bertrand Russell

  Blessed, Men, Goal

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Power: A New Social Analysis”, p.29, Routledge

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• There is not any present moment that is unconnected with some future one. The life of every man is a continued chain of incidents, each link of which hangs upon the former. 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. Evil may at some future period bring forth good; and good may bring forth evil, both equally unexpected.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Evil, Secret

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• The successful businessman must be able to foresee possibilities, to estimate with sagacity the outcome in the future.

  Frank William Taussig

  Inspirational, Successful, Outcomes

  Frank William Taussig (2013). “Principles of Economics”, p.170, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Absence makes the heart grow fonder

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  I Miss You, Romantic, Missing You

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• [C]lass 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 moronrun through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will cease thereby to be a moron.

  H. L. Mencken

  Beautiful, Real, Eye

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

  George Santayana

  Character, Personality, Manhood

  George Santayana (2015). “Character and Opinion in the United States”, p.28, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• There is not any present moment that is unconnected with some future one. The life of every man is a continued chain of incidents, each link of which hangs upon the former.

  Joseph Addison

  Life, Future, Men

  Joseph Addison (1793). “A Collection of Interesting Anecdotes, Memoirs, Allegories, Essays, and Poetical Fragments”, p.336

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• "Ego," sayest thou, and art proud of that word. But the greater thing - in which thou art unwilling to believe - is thy body with its big sagacity; it saith not "ego," but doeth it.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Art, Believe, Ego

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2017). “THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA (Modern Classics Series): The Magnum Opus of the World’s Most Influential Philosopher, Revolutionary Thinker and the Author of The Antichrist, The Birth of Tragedy & Beyond Good and Evil”, p.37, e-artnow

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• Egotism is usually subversive of sagacity.

  Marianne Moore

  Ego, Egotism, Subversive

  Francis Fisher Browne, Scofield Thayer, Waldo Ralph Browne, Marianne Moore (1927). “The Dial”

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• Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment.

  Edmund Burke

  Saving, Judgment, Virtue

  Edmund Burke (1834). “The Beauties of Burke, Consisting of Selections from His Works”, p.59

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• The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Powerful, Exercise, Men

  Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge (2017). “The Complete Works of Theodore Roosevelt”, p.3154, Madison & Adams Press

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• 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

  Loss, Men, Imagination

  James Thurber (1990). “Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself”

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• 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

  Law, Medicine, Everyday

  H. L. Mencken (2015). “In Defense of Women: Human Sexuality”, p.9, 谷月社

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

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Philosophy, War, Health

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2016). “Thus spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None”, p.57, Friedrich Nietzsche

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• 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

  Secret, Divinity, Causes

  Joseph Addison (1794). “Interesting Anecdotes, Memoirs, Allegories, Essays, and Poetical Fragments: Tending to Amuse the Fancy, and Inculcate Morality”, p.182

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