Sagacity Quotes - Page 3

• 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

  Discovery, Vision, Chance

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• 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. The wits of these happy days have discovered a way to fame, which the dull caution of our laborious ancestors durst never attempt; they cut the knots of sophistry, which it was formerly the business of years to untie, solve difficulties by sudden irradiations of intelligence, and comprehend long processes of argument by immediate intuition.

  Samuel Johnson

  Cutting, Years, Long

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1837). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius /c by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.237

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• Spies cannot be usefully employed without a certain intuitive sagacity.

  Sun Tzu

  Art, War, Spy

  Sun Tzu, Julius Caesar, Einhard, Niccolò Machiavelli, Carl von Clausewitz (2016). “Strategy Six Pack”, p.30, Lulu.com

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• Criticism is above all a gift, an intuition, a matter of tact and flair; it cannot be taught or demonstrated--it is an art. Critical genius means an aptitude for discerning truth under appearances or in disguises which conceal it; for discovering it in spite of the errors of testimony, the frauds of tradition, the dust of time, the loss or alteration of texts. It is the sagacity of the hunter whom nothing deceives for long, and whom no ruse can throw off the trail.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Art, Mean, Loss

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• 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

  Men, Views, Should Have

  "The Ten Books On Architecture". Book by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, Book III, Preface, Sec. 1, c. 15 BC.

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• 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

  Patience, Generations, Genius

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1837). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius /c by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.237

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• 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

  Eye, Men, Judging

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