"Shortsighted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... offered the section that town now stands on, for a team and a two weeks' grubstake for a man and his wife. They wanted to get out, and they couldn't. I gave 'em the grub, and told 'em it was worth the price of it to me not to own the land. Yes, sir—and I meant it. I was that shortsighted. So were others. We thought the country would never fill up, just as we thought the buffalo would never be killed out, and we kept on drifting. When I woke up, the cheap lands were about gone. And then, ten years late, I made my grab for a piece of what was left. I hiked ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... before us, on the other 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 ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the happy results of our unique system of free enterprise was the rewarding of men in exact proportion to their merits and abilities. The war, bringing disruption and bankruptcy to so many shiftless and shortsighted people, made of Consolidated Pemmican one of the country's great concerns. The organization welcoming General Thario was far different from the one which had hired his son. I now had fourteen factories, stretching like ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... comparison with which all seemed common. Her money flew apace, in spite of the cheap living. She was even richer than he expected; and he remembered with shame how he had once regretted his inability to accept the thousand lire that Philip Herriton offered him in exchange for her. It would have been a shortsighted bargain. ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... understood the complexion, and she was more concerned with the details of the work than with anything else. Besides, she was in a strong position. She had nothing to fear from Miss Rapson. She soon recognised that she had not much to learn from her, either. Miss Rapson was forty, angular, shortsighted. She was inclined to be fussy and self-important and lacking in self-reliance. If anything went wrong she lost first her head and then her temper. "Hysterics!" thought Sally, cruelly. And Miss Rapson was ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... mention the extraordinary facts that in some of the primary classes of German schools as many as 74 per cent, were shortsighted, and that in his class at Cassel, of the twenty-one pupils, eighteen wore spectacles, while two of them could not see the desk before ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... poverty, suffering and death—are, as we know, the consequences, just and equitable, of original sin, it is a shortsighted faith and a defective vision that find in these crosses only chastisement for sin. Truly, they should not have been, had we never sinned; but as God, in His mercy, draws good out of evil, so has He made these inevitable ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... Ah! 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 ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... his own poems witness his love of hunting and of country life, and he ran a horse often enough in the palii of Siena. He was more than common tall, with broad shoulders, and very active. In colour dark, though he was not handsome, his face had a sort of dignity that compelled respect, but he was shortsighted too, and his nose was rather broad and flat. If he lacked the comeliness of outward form, he loved all beauteous things, and was in many ways the most extraordinary man of his age; his verse, for instance, has just that touch of genius which seems to be wanting in the work of contemporary ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... 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 of gentlemen, ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... of R. Your feelings correspond entirely with my own. I was hoping 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 enough who can ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... Mme. D'Arblay describes a striking scene in which her father, utterly puzzled by 'sad and altered Streatham,' left it one day with tears in his eyes. Another day, Johnson accompanied her to London. 'His look was stern, though dejected, but when his eye, which, however shortsighted, was quick to mental perception, saw how ill at ease she appeared, all sternness subsided into an undisguised expression of the strongest emotion, while, with a shaking hand and pointing finger, he directed her looks to the mansion from which they were driving; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... 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 ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... fell upon Turgenev leaning against the doorpost at the far end of the room, and as I looked, I was struck, being shortsighted, by a certain resemblance to my father [Thackeray], which I tried to realise to myself. He was very tall, his hair was grey and abundant, his attitude was quiet and reposeful; I looked again and again while I ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... I'm shortsighted, though I never lets on. Rhoda, 'ow can you 'ave let on to the gentleman as I'm deficient? As to knowing Mr. Wrent, I'd do so well enough," said Mrs. Bensusan, tossing her head, "with his long white beard and white 'ead, let ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... demand for it, a large number of very worthy citizens assumed that one would be passed. The fact seems to have been lost sight of that the tenderloin element opposes such legislation, and that the management of the so-called liquor interests organized as the "Royal Arch," takes a shortsighted view of Local Option provisions. The machine was thus interested. Its representatives in Senate and Assembly did not propose that any Local Option bill should pass. So the Local Option bill was smothered. The smothering process most suggestively ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... trepidation, probably occasioned by her entering so late, in a vacant seat at the desk nearest the door. Being seated, she proceeded, still with an air of hurry and embarrassment, to open her cabas, to take out her books; and, while I was waiting for her to look up, in order to make out her identity—for, shortsighted as I was, I had not recognized her at her entrance—Mdlle. Reuter, leaving her chair, ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... became evident to all but the most shortsighted of politicians that a rebellion, of which none could foretell the result, was imminent. As one shrewd observer wrote: "I look upon it that Ireland must soon stand in respect to England in one of three situations—united with her, the Legislatures being joined; ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... and mammas, were driven to despair; but at last they hit upon a remedy. They would be distinguished by hook or by crook, and the only way left now was always to go on foot. So they walked the pavement—wet or dry, nothing could induce them to enter the door of a carriage. Item: they gave up being shortsighted; the few who for reasons distinct from fashion could not resign the habit concealed it, as if it was a defect ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... mentioned magnifying glasses as being useful to old people to make them see better. True spectacles are said to have been fashioned in 1317 by Salvino degli Armati, a Florentine nobleman. At first they were convex; indeed, no mention of concave glasses for shortsighted persons was made until towards the middle of the sixteenth century. From that time onward there were developments, and among the household curios are to be found silver, brass, and tortoiseshell rims, and glasses of ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... my own pocket, and of disestablishing in Neopalia what seems to be the only institution in no danger of such treatment here—the tax-gatherer. If they understood that intention of mine, they would hardly be so shortsighted as to set me adrift in my shirt like a second Baron d'Ezonville, or so unjust as to kill poor old Stefanopoulos as they had killed his ancestor. Besides, as I comforted myself by repeating, they were a good-hearted race; unsophisticated, of course, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... that is, of books, as Mr. James. One can be, you know—it is most common, indeed—in a book store and at the same time not be in a book store—any more than if one were in a hotel lobby. Mr. James "snooked" around the shop. He ran his nose over the tables, and inch by inch (he must be very shortsighted) along the walls, stood on tiptoe and pulled down volumes from high places, rummaged in dark corners, was apparently oblivious of the presence of anything but the books. He was not the slightest in a ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... employed against Pensacola. These events will receive no other mention. Their only bearing upon the general war was the diversion of this imposing force from joint operations with the French, Spain here, as at Gibraltar, pursuing her own aims instead of concentrating upon the common enemy,—a policy as shortsighted ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... 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 her in peace ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... never taking her eyes off him. "I wonder, I wonder" she ceased, her chin upon her hand, still looking at him. A bell chimed behind them, and Richard raised his head. Then he opened his eyes which wore for a second the queer look of a shortsighted person's whose spectacles are lost. It took him a moment to recover from the impropriety of having snored, and possibly grunted, before a young lady. To wake and find oneself left alone with ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... generous and obliging deportment to others; he had to reprove them perpetually for mean shortsightedness, and when he died he virtually left no successor, for his sons are both narrowminded, mean, shortsighted creatures, without dignity or honour. All they can say of their forefathers is that they came from Lualaba up Luamo, then to Luelo, and thence here. The name seems ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... repeatedly. We lay very still wondering what they would think, and hoping that they would make no search for us. They could have tracked us in the snow quite easily, but we knew very well they would never think of it, for they were both shortsighted and ignorant of what the Red Indians do when they go tracking. To our surprise their voices came nearer and nearer, till they were at the edge of the clump, but on the side opposite to that in which the rabbit-run opened. I whispered to Hugh to be quiet as they stopped to call ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... nature. If there are convulsive attacks, they are the result of used-up matter returning into the circulation, and reaching even the brain and central parts of the nervous system. The cure is gained when the defective organs are brought to act well. It is shortsighted action to deal with the kidneys alone in this trouble. They often fail because they are overloaded through the failure of lungs and skin to do their part. First, it is well to act on the lungs by gentle rubbing with hot olive oil between the shoulders and over all the back—done best in a ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... 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
... la Comtesse, the founder of this religious house," she explained. "She delights to see English visitors. She adores your nation. Come, let us go to her, but I ask you to approach quite near her, or she will not see you clearly. She is shortsighted." ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... pompous form, she presented her poniard-point sharply tipped and deadly. 'Why should people take themselves seriously?' she would say, with a shrug of her shoulders. 'Surely, we are a common enough species!' And then the green-grey eyes would narrow themselves in their shortsighted way, and Mrs. Ogilvie's voice, charmingly refined and well-bred, would with a few words lightly prick the falsely sentimental and self-inflated wind-bag of oratory that had presented its unprotected surface to ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... calculation or reflection. A new peace maddens England to the same paroxysm as a new war maddens France. She hath sent over hither her minister ... or rather her prime minister himself is come to transact all the business ... the most ignorant and most shortsighted man to be found in any station of any public office throughout the whole of Europe. He must be treated as her arbiter: we must talk to him of restoring her, of regenerating her, of preserving her, of guiding her, which (we must protest with our hands within our frills) he alone ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... selected portions of it—of course only those portions unfit for settlement—in a state of nature, not merely for the sake of preserving the forests and the water, but for the sake of preserving all its beauties and wonders unspoiled by greedy and shortsighted vandalism. These beauties and wonders include animate as well as inanimate objects. The wild creatures of the wilderness add to it by their presence a charm which it can acquire in no other way. On every ground it is well for our nation to preserve, not only for the sake of this ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... my plan could be brought forward, in the first place, by the Chamber of Deputies. As, in the event of the new Civil List being discussed, I was particularly anxious to avoid the question of the continuation of the court theatre being treated in the ignorant and shortsighted radical fashion, which was to be feared above all, I did not despair of making the acquaintance of some of the most influential among the new members of parliament. In this wise I found myself suddenly plunged into quite ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... all that sort of thing. Say 'yes' to everything he says. That's your cue at present. Talk as little as you can, and agree with everybody. The man you must talk with most is Monsieur Parker. He is president of the mining company. Happily he's rather shortsighted, so he won't notice anything. He's the man to whom you'll have to explain ze loss of ze diamonds. He'll be here to-night for dinner, so you'd better ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... child of injustice; for so shortsighted were these hungry parasites that they developed a system of land-laws so bad as to cause universal poverty, and bring a reaction which is steadily sweeping the "landed" class of Ireland to extinction and oblivion. The fundamental principle of ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... enterprise then directs its attention to profits, because, from mere economic necessity, profits are the criterion of the true success of the enterprise, that is, its serviceability to mankind. Here we distinguish between the shortsighted man, who aims at immediate returns, and the farsighted man, whose eye is fixed on the future, who verily desires the profits, but desires them in the long run. But this is only a manifestation of human nature as we find it in every field. We always note a deficiency in ...
— Creating Capital - Money-making as an aim in business • Frederick L. Lipman
... 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 Eustace's ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... families of established wealth and hereditary political importance conducts the government, it will display in seasons of danger an incomparable tenacity of purpose and power of heroic self-sacrifice, just as in seasons of tranquillity it will be shortsighted, selfish, and negligent—the germs of both results are essentially involved in its hereditary and collegiate character. The morbid matter had been long in existence, but it needed the sun of prosperity ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Lee, you're shortsighted. I'm an unbeliever, and a black rogue, but at least I have a mission. Our scientific advance has destroyed religion; we've penetrated to the heavens, and found no God. But science has not disproved Him, either, and people forget ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... patience with the slow hand! I could not draw a line without despair. The pliant fingers and the plastic mind must keep pace to make progress in art. My taste is fixed, and my imagination uncreative, because chained down by certainties; and the shortsighted ardor and daring experiments which are indispensable to sustain and advance the follower in Raphael's footsteps, are too far behind for my resuming. The tide ebbed from me at the accursed burning of ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... the situation of the empire at that period; it was this—"To enrich the soldiery at any price, and to regard the rest of their subjects as so many ciphers." But, as a critical historian remarks, this was a shortsighted and self-destroying policy; since in no way is the subsistence of the soldier made more insecure, than by diminishing the general security of rights and property to those who are not soldiers, from whom, after ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... strong national unity, like that of Prussia under Frederick the Great, out of weak, disordered, smaller units, may engender for a time a bellicose spirit which works itself out in strife, so the rapid rise and union of weak and oppressed bodies of poorer labourers make for a shortsighted policy of blind aggression. Such considerations as this must, at any rate, temper the hopes of speedy industrial pacification we may form from dwelling on the more reasonable effects and teaching of organization. Although the very growth and existence of the ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... evening. Raoul was surrounded by icy darkness, but he did not feel the cold. It was here, he remembered, that he used to come with little Christine to see the Korrigans dance at the rising of the moon. He had never seen any, though his eyes were good, whereas Christine, who was a little shortsighted, pretended that she had seen many. He smiled at the thought and then suddenly gave a start. A ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... her such as her father had uttered before his death, and that she would not be able to bear it and would burst into sobs in his presence. Yet sooner or later it had to be, and she went in. The sobs rose higher and higher in her throat as she more and more clearly distinguished his form and her shortsighted eyes tried to make out his features, and then she saw his face ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... instantly fascinated with her future teacher. There was something lovable not only in her intelligent face, pale with the protracted labors of her daily life, but in the infirmity of her eyes, for she was shortsighted, and could see objects distinctly only by nearly closing the lids. This peculiarity, not disagreeable in itself, won upon Pet's compassion, and made her feel more at home in the strange lady's presence than if she were conscious that a pair of full-sighted orbs were looking at her, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... he leaves others to judge, that his readers will perform theirs he by no means feels assured. The vulgar—among whom I would not be understood to mean merely the rabble—the vulgar I say (between ourselves) extend their influence far around, and unfortunately—set the fashion. Too shortsighted to reach my full meaning, too narrow-minded to comprehend the largeness of my views, too disingenuous to admit my moral aim—they will, I fear, almost frustrate my good intentions, and pretend to discover in my work an apology for the very vice which it has been my object to condemn, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller |
