Sometime in late 1850, Melville had probably come upon Coleridge's shrewd remark about "Hamlet," that "one of Shakespeare's modes of creating character is to conceive any one intellectual or moral faculty in morbid excess, and then to place himself... thus mutilated or diseased, under given circumstances".
As Austen remarks with shrewd sarcasm in Mansfield Park, "the enthusiasm of a woman's love is beyond even a biographer's".
In many ways, the remark was as politically shrewd as anything else.
But the subdued remarks also illustrated the shrewder side of a man known as a consummate behind-the-scenes operator, a veteran navigator of bureaucracies who prefers to speak softly at first — and keep the stick for later.
As he said to various recruiters, he was tired of fighting "for lost causes," a telling remark from an inveterately shrewd and lucky gambler who won, for the most part, betting long odds.
The oft remarked upon public school setting is a shrewd fabrication not just because it re-animates the high jinks free of parental interference that everyone associates with Enid Blyton.
Last week, those inclined to impute an eleven-dimensional chess gambit behind the president's every action were inclined to remark that inviting the conflict was a shrewd move.
I have no doubt his remarks were heartfelt, but they were also politically shrewd.
This book is littered with Uncle Toni's diktats, prohibitions and belittling remarks, all of which Mr Nadal explains earnestly—have a shrewd psychological purpose.
"You smoked me in thyme," one victim remarks, as he's served a dish of himself, with typically shrewd double meaning.
