It is always right to detect a fraud, and to perceive a folly; but it is very often wrong to expose either. A man of business shou...ld always have his eyes open, but must often seem to have them shut.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is of course, entirely possible that men (or anyone who is relatively privileged) are most defensive, most obstinate and unseei...ng when they are worried about losing privileges.... In the reactions of husbands, I detect a haunting worry about what they will lose when true gender equality arrives.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Inspector Clouseau: Do I detect something in your voice that says I am in disfavor with you? Chief Inspector Dreyfus: Yes. I ...wish you were dead. Inspector Clouseau: Well, of course, you are entitled to your opinion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to be a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a distance. Fashion is shrewd to det...ect those who do not belong to her train, and seldom wastes her attentions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are many eyes that can detect and honor the prudent and household virtues; there are many that can discern Genius on his sta...rry track, though the mob is incapable; but when that love which is all-suffering, all-abstaining, all-aspiring, which has vowed to itself, that it will be a wretch and also a fool in this world, sooner than soil its white hands by any compliances, comes into our streets and houses,--only the pure and aspiring can know its face, and the only compliment they can pay it, is to own it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He planted where the deluge ploughed, His hired hands were wind and cloud;... His eyes detect the Gods concealed In the hummock of the field.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If the individuals who compose the purest circles of aristocracy in Europe, the guarded blood of centuries, should pass in review,... in such manner as that we could, at leisure, and critically inspect their behavior, we might find no gentleman, and no lady; for, although excellent specimens of courtesy and high-breeding would gratify us in the assemblage, in the particulars, we should detect offence. Because, elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... in the nineteen-thirties ... the most casual reader of murder mysteries could infallibly detect the villain, as soon as there ...entered a character who had recently washed his neck and did not commit mayhem on the English language.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I shall never love England till she sues to us for help; and, in the meantime, the fewer triumphs she obtains, the better for all ...the parties. An Englishman in adversity is a very respectable character; he does not lose his dignity, but merely comes to a proper conceit of himself.... I seem to myself like a spy or a traitor, when I meet their eyes, and am conscious that I neither hope nor fear in sympathy with them, although (unless they detect me for an American by my aspect) they look at me in full confidence of sympathy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »