Sharp (person)

“ Sharp has his eye upon W—. “Ah!” says he “there is a man who has a soul above buttons—a genius for business. Every thing he touches turns to gold.”
But W—, with his multitude of irons in the fire, incautiously takes hold of the hot end of one of them, and is maimed. ”

“ The foregoing being sufficient to give the reader a general idea of the common sharp and his methods, no more need be said with regard to this elementary branch of our subject. It will be sufficient to point out that the sharp usually devotes his entire energies to perfecting himself in some particular game. Having found his victim, he feigns indifferent play, and encourages the dupe to 'take him on.' No matter how skilful he may be, he never allows any evidence of the fact to escape him. ”

“ For that mystery concerns the evolution of a human soul; and the part of it for which ‘the man’ is consciously and personally responsible, is the method he used, the fiction he created and deliberately fostered,—rightly or wrongly—for the protection of his inner, compelling self.
This deliberate ‘blind’—which according to some critics “is William Sharp’s most notable achievement in fiction rather than the creation of any of ‘her’ works”—is largely the cause of the sense of confusion that exists in the minds of certain of his friends, to whom he told the half but not the whole of the facts. ”

“ As a whole, he characterizes Sharp's book as "the production of a mind unjustly exasperated against a people, whose individuals either knew him not, or, if they knew him, treated him with benevolence and civility, as they do all the English, and all other strangers who visit their country." ”

“ To some extent I have an advantage over you in having a very fierce nation to write for. I have to make everything very hard and clear, as it were. It is like riding a wild horse. If one’s hands fumble or one’s knees [336] loosen one is thrown. You have in the proper sense far more imagination than I have and that makes your work correspondingly more difficult. ”

“ If I may speak quite openly and as a friend who would wish you to do yourself full justice and produce the best work that is in you, I wish you had given yourself more time to work out some of the situations which seem, to me at least, to lack a certain degree of precision and consistency. ”

“ And this high-minded truthfulness of the statesman was no doubt the secret of no small part of his influence and power.
There is a truthfulness in action as well as in words, which is essential to uprightness of character. A man must really be what he seems or purposes to be. When an American gentleman wrote to Granville Sharp, that from respect for his great virtues he had named one of his sons after him, Sharp replied: “I must request you to teach him a favourite maxim of the family whose name you have given him—Always endeavour to be really what you would wish to appear. ”

“ Having a reputation for writing great stories (for example) you will write equally great essays, satires and what not, all in vain. It is only to mediocrity that ‘great general ability’ is conceded.290 That is why the late William Sharp, turning to another kind of work than that in which he had distinguished himself, took a feminine name, and, secure from disparaging comparison with himself, was accessible to commendation. ”

“ Since no human being has ever yet seen his or her own soul, absolutely impartially and in all its rounded completeness of good and evil, of strength and weakness, of what is temporal and perishable and what is germinal and essential, how can we expect even the subtlest analyst to depict other souls than his own. ”

“ I shall once more cut a figure, and cock my hat in the face of the best of them! for since our modern men of fortune are grown wise enough to be sharpers: I think sharpers are fools that don't take up the airs of men of quality. ”

“ The reader must distinctly understand that such open and palpable deceptions as these two last would only be practised by the very lowest class of sharps. A good man would scorn the action.6 With regard to the methods resorted to at any time very much depends upon the class of sharp and the intelligence of the company in which he happens to find himself. The employment of simple trickeries like these in a card party of 'smart' players could only be attended with modified success, very modified indeed. If the players were smart, the sharp would smart. ”

“ It only remains for the reader to make the best use of the information given. I have no fear that, in writing what I have, I shall be accused by sensible people of assisting those sharps who may not know all that is here published. The resources of these men are always equal to their necessities; they can only cheat, at the worst, and the sharp will always find means of cheating so long as he can find dupes. ”

“ It is unmanly, and is felt to be dishonest. "It may seem difficult," says Richard Sharp, "to steer always between bluntness and plain-dealing, between giving merited praise and lavishing indiscriminate flattery; but it is very easy—good-humour, kindheartedness, and perfect simplicity, being all that are requisite to do what is right in the right way." ”

“ Rightly or wrongly, I am conscious of something to be done—to be done by one side of me, by one half of me, by the true inward self as I believe— (apart from the overwhelmingly felt mystery of a dual self, and a reminiscent life, and a woman’s life and nature within, concurring with and oftenest dominating the other) —and rightly or wrongly I believe that this, and the style so strangely born of this inward life, depend upon my aloofness and spiritual isolation as F. M. To betray publicly the private life and constrained ideal of that inward self, for a reward’s sake, would be a poor collapse. ”

“ I write merely to say that I am heartily satisfied with your criticism, and grateful for it; and that I often read your other reviews with advantage—and shall watch your career, already so fruitful, with great interest. A man who comes down to first principles and looks at things broadly, as you are doing, is sure in the end to be a man of mark. ”

“ Although most of these contrivances are simple in operation, the reader must not run away with the idea that their use entails no skill upon the part of the sharp who uses them. That would be far too blissful a state of affairs ever to be achieved in this weary world, where all is vanity and vexation of spirit. ”

“ Every word you say is true and urgent, and even if I did not know it to be so I would pay the most searching heed to any advice from you, in whose insight and judgment mentally as well as spiritually I have such deep confidence. ”

“ My advice is, be as sharp as yo like, if yo're sharp in a reight way, but thers some things it's as weel to be slow abaat. Be slow to do a shabby trick, an' be sharp to help a poor body 'at needs it. Be slow to see other fowk's faults, an' be sharp to improve yor own. Be slow to scandalise yor neighbors, an' keep a sharp luk aat to steer clear ov iverybody else's business ”

“ The mood in which I wrote the tales you like, has gone from me, and I am afraid I shall be unable to write others of the same kind. In youth the mind is an empty chamber; and the spirits fill it, and move and dance there, [405] and colour it with their wings and raiment. In manhood one has familiars. But between those times (forgive me for echoing Keats) one has little save a tag or two of cynicism, a little crude experience, much weariness, much regret, and a vision blurred by all four faults. ”

“ Schoolgirls have suffered rather more than schoolboys at the hands of writers of fiction. Miss Sharp possesses an endowment of humour, rich, sensitive, radiant, that pervades her book like a joyous elemental spirit. ”

“ If there is spiritual truth in the vision of the Blind Harper who saw the Washer of the Ford, or in that of Molios who hailed the seals as brethren, or in that of Colum who blessed the birds and the fish of the sea and even the vagrant flies of the air, and saw the Moon-Child, and in that seeing learned the last mystery of the life of the soul, if in these, as in the “Fisher of Men” and “The Last Supper,” I have given faint utterance to the heart-knowledge we all have, I would not have you or any think that the pagan way is therefore to me as the way of darkness. ”

“ There came a strange glitter in our hero's eyes, and a suspicion that almost caused his heart to stand still. He had reckoned himself a very shrewd, sharp man, but suddenly, and on evidence that would not have aroused a passing comment on the part of most men, he became convinced that he had been magnificently played. ”

“ During the early days of hard work for the bare necessities of life, he had little time to devote to the writing of poetry or of purely imaginative work. His literary efforts were directed toward the shaping of his prose critical writings, toward the controlled exercise of the mental faculties which belonged to the William Sharp’s side of himself. From time to time the emotional, the more intimate self would sweep aside all conscious control ”

“ What a splendid man he was: a true genius, yet full of the joy of life, sociable, fun-loving, genial, and in every way a gentleman. I was reading one of his books lately, and was struck with the sympathetic spirit he showed toward what to him meant nothing—Christianity. I wish we had more men like him. There is another man for whom I think I have an equal admiration, though of a different order in one sense—Dr. ”

“ I don't mind a man's being sharp, and looking out for himself. I do that. But I carn't humbug people as you are doing,—and I won't, neither. You're sticking it into the people nicely,—don't you think you are? ”

“ Skill, however, is not the only qualification necessary to the successful sharp. He must have unbounded self-confidence if his wiles are to be of any avail. In addition, he must also possess tact and address, for upon these two qualities will depend the grade of society into which he will be enabled to carry his operations. ”

“ Rainbow-hued as is his genius, he himself was a creature of earth. It was enough to live.... He would cling to life, even though it were by a rotten beam, he declared once in his extremity. And the poet of life he unquestionably is. There is a pulse in everything he writes: his is no galvanised existence. No parlour passions lead him into the quicksands of oblivion.... ”

“ But she had yet to learn that her ardent desire to sacrifice herself for somebody did not bring with it the necessary opportunity, and it was not encouraging to discover that no one was particularly anxious 314 to be the recipient of her good works, and that her effort at well-doing was more resented by those in authority than her previous and undisguised course of self-indulgence. ”

“ Lay one consolation to heart: you won’t have to do this again; when you return, ‘twill be to a city of which you have deduced a general idea, from the turbid phantasmagoria of your days and nights here. The conclusions on our side were that we had formed a liking for you such as we have retained after the visits of very few guests from the Old World or the New. Well as I knew your books and record I had the vaguest notion of your self. ‘Tis rare indeed that a clever writer or artist strengthens his hold upon those who admire his work, by personal intimacy. ”

“ We play to them, and to them only, from the moment we begin to think for ourselves, until Providence is good enough to ring down the curtain. We make a wretched compromise with our real selves, in order to get through life without being laughed at for taking it seriously. ”

“ I, with my two eyes bandaged, see as much as another fellow with his eyes unbandaged, and when I unbandage myself, I look everything through and through; and when I look hard at anything, it catches fire, and what cannot burn splits in pieces. Therefore I am called Sharp-Eyes. ”

“ Possibly, of the work-a-day inhabitants of this planet, nine persons out of ten of the majority who are 'indifferent honest,' will be inclined to a belief that sharping, at the worst, can form but a very insignificant factor in the social problems of modern times. ”

“ But whenever I have expressed such a conviction I have been told that the works of man are after all nobler, in the truer sense lovelier, and more spiritually refreshing and helpful—and though I do not find them so, I must believe that to most people such is the case, perhaps to the infinite majority. ”

“ It will be difficult to follow—for absolute simplicity is the most difficult of all styles, being, as it must be, the expression of a mind at once so imaginative [269] in itself, so lucid in its outlook, and so controlled in its expression, that only a very few rarely gifted individuals can hope to achieve the isolating ideal you indicate. ”

“ The F. M. writing was the result of an inner impulsion, he wrote because he had to give expression to himself whether the impulse grew out of pain or out of pleasure. But W. S., divorced as much as could be from his twin self, wrote because he cared to, because the necessities of life demanded it. He was always deeply interested in his critical work, for he was a constant student of Literature in all its forms, and of the Literature of different countries—in particular of France, America and Italy. ”

“ Obviously, a great many poor women had lost a great many babies, since the day she had sat on the chair at the end of his bed and talked about her favourite poets, for the book on her lap was only a pretence to which neither of them paid the least attention, and their conversation was of a purely personal nature, the kind of conversation that has no subject and no epigrams, and is carried on in half-finished sentences. ”

“ Where a sharp tongue will not serve the purpose, they trust to the sharpness of their finger-nails, or incarnate a whole vocabulary of vituperative words in a resounding slap, or the downright blow of a doubled fist. ”