Going Sane by Adam Phillips 256pp, Hamish Hamilton, £14.99 Not so very long ago that most sagacious of literary critics, Frank Kermode, said that we were ready for the adjective "Phillipsian" - derived, of course, from Adam Phillips's growing body of work, mostly collections of essays so agile and exuberant in their performance of thought that jumping in is irresistible.
It is said that Tiruvalluvar, or Holy Valluvar, was a humble weaver who, despite his humble origins and implied lack of formal education, was so sagacious, pious, and holy that he perfectly captured the very essence of ethics, virtue, and morality, in fact the very essence of dharma, in short pithy poetic couplets that remain unsurpassed to this day.
Possessed of a distinguished and sagacious mind, al-Maʾmūn set forth in the political domain very personal ideas that, in effect, ended in failure.
Although Brock's correspondence indicates a certain amount of paternal condescension for the First Nations, he seems to have regarded Tecumseh himself very highly, calling him "the Wellington of the Indians", and saying "a more sagacious or a more gallant warrior does not I believe exist".
Theses are sagacious men.
Neither can I. Sagacious?
Here Sheehan is most sagacious.
The N.H.L. has made some sagacious changes.
It is sound descriptively, less sagacious prescriptively.
"He was a sagacious, astute man".
Lines like this jar because Evans is otherwise so sagacious.
