a. 1898, Francis James Child (collator), Child's Ballads, 198: "Bonny John Seton",
The Highland men, they're clever men
At handling sword and shield,

With a clever lawyer, she could easily be acquitted.

1890, Joseph Jacobs (collator), Molly Whuppie, English Fairy Tales,
The youngest of the three strange lassies was called Molly Whuppie, and she was very clever. She noticed that before they went to bed the giant put straw ropes round her neck and her sisters', and round his own lassies' necks, he put gold chains. So Molly took care and did not fall asleep, but waited till she was sure every one was sleeping sound. Then she slipped out of the bed, and took the straw ropes off her own and her sisters' necks, and took the gold chains off the giant's lassies. She then put the straw ropes on the giant's lassies and the gold on herself and her sisters, and lay down.

And so make life, death, and that vast forever / One grand, sweet song.

Lord Macaulay has said of Bunyan: “though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were only two great creative minds. One of these minds produced ‘The Paradise Lost;’ the other, ‘The Pilgrim's Progress.’”

1912, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Constance Garnett (translator), The Brothers Karamazov, Book V, Chapter 7: "It's Always Worth While Speaking to a Clever Man",
I would have sent Alyosha, but what use is Alyosha in a thing like that? I send you just because you are a clever fellow. Do you suppose I don't see that? You know nothing about timber, but you've got an eye.

He was not clever, poor fellow, he did not know what questions to ask; he asked the same questions again and again. He continued to show his own troubled thoughts, and the vague dread in his mind, […]

This is a simple but clever trick to solve the problem.

Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers.[…]Much of their pleading is public-relations bluster. Clever financial ploys are what have made billionaires of the industry’s veterans. “Operational improvement” in a portfolio company has often meant little more than promising colossal bonuses to sitting chief executives if they meet ambitious growth targets. That model is still prevalent today.

Mr. Woodhouse was almost as much interested in the business as the girls, and tried very often to recollect something worth their putting in. "So many clever riddles as there used to be when he was young--he wondered he could not remember them! but he hoped he should in time." And it always ended in "Kitty, a fair but frozen maid."

I felt they expected me to say clever things, and I never could think of any till after the party was over.

Just before the break Villa were denied a second goal when Bent had the ball in the net, although he was ruled offside after Jean Makoun's clever pass.

The Rosenbloom Loop is a clever little device, but it’s an even more clever symbol of the role that discipline plays in the creation of illusion: the persistence of vision that makes sequential still images appear to move.

But at that moment I knew it was all over for me, I had never thought that this day would come, but it had and I was not feeling too clever. In fact I had to escape to a nearby toilet to be sick.

Right, and no, because the solicitor has told her that Walter's legs didn't look too clever, which, apparently, everyone's putting down to a fall, thankfully.

When a clever man is out hunting and comes across the tracks of, say, a kangaroo, he follows them along and talks to the footprints all the time for the purpose of injecting magic into the animal which made them.

Prior to this, the two women, who were “clever,” and possessed a certain amount of magical “power,”[…].

Fred is the clever fellow or tribal doctor who practises with the Kuku-Yalanji people. The tribal doctor’s work includes curing sickness, finding out the causes of death, predicting the future and making and stopping rain.

18th c, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope (later lines), Imitation of Horace, 1852, Charles Knight (collator), Half-hours with the Best Authors, Volume 4, page 188,
I can't but think 'twould sound more clever,
To me and to my heirs forever.

Clever

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