"Ingenuousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is not Germany nor England, and the thirteenth century would have been astonished indeed at the prudery of the Bollandists. The incident is simply a new manifestation of Francis's character, with its ingenuousness, its exaggerations, its longing to establish a complete harmony, a literal correspondence, between ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... morning was to see his father alone, and give him a fair statement of the whole acting scheme, defending his own share in it as far only as he could then, in a soberer moment, feel his motives to deserve, and acknowledging, with perfect ingenuousness, that his concession had been attended with such partial good as to make his judgment in it very doubtful. He was anxious, while vindicating himself, to say nothing unkind of the others: but there was only one amongst them whose conduct he could mention without some necessity of defence or palliation. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... youthful nurse, with the most profound respect, but not sufficiently abstracted from some of those emotions which have followed my first childhood, and which my second education ought to correct. Is it possible to submit to your rod with more ingenuousness? At least I confess my faults. As I am bound to speak the truth, I dare not yet add, this can never happen to me again. But the strong resolution will come with weak age; and the more I can transform myself, the nearer I ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... favour of her asserted claims, the mystery that hung upon her parentage. But had Dick Fairthorn been the astutest of diplomatists, in this hope he would have been equally disappointed. Sophy had nothing to communicate. Her ingenuousness utterly baffled the poor flute-player. Out of an innocent, unconscious kind of spite, on ceasing to pry into Sophy's descent, he began to enlarge upon the dignity of Darrell's. He inflicted on her the long-winded genealogical memoir, the recital of which had, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her daily business to personate exceptional individuals, it seemed to be her pleasure that night to be like everybody else. She did it on opulent lines; there was a richness in her agreement that the going was as hard as iron on the Ellenborough course, and a soft ingenuousness in her inquiries about punkahs and the brain-fever bird that might have aroused suspicion, but after a brief struggle to respond to the unusualness she ought to have represented, Alicia's guests ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... child, let us remove from her everything that can destroy her primitive naivete; this is why we choose this dwelling for her—a moral sanctuary, where the priestesses of virtue, and doubtless always under pretext of their ingenuousness, take the most ingenuous but least ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... a self-consciousness about all forced things, and the hallmark of the Bohemian is an absolute ingenuousness." ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... there are sayings and repartees of his left still upon record, which seem to show that he not ignobly accommodated himself to his present circumstances; as may appear in part from the ingenuousness of the avowal he made on coming to Leucadia, which, as well as Syracuse, was a Corinthian colony, where he told the inhabitants, that he found himself not unlike boys who have been in fault, who can talk cheerfully with their brothers, but are ashamed to see their father; ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... dissimulation and envy exist not among them. When they deceive their enemies and their rivals, it is because they consider themselves in a state of warfare with them; but in other circumstances they are frank and ingenuous. It is this ingenuousness alone that has scandalised you respecting our women, who, hearing love constantly spoken of, and surrounded by its seductions and examples, conceal not their sentiments, and if it may be so expressed, give even, to gallantry a character ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... voice, and with the greatest ingenuousness, he recounted to the Prince the whole ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... position and parentage, nothing was known. She had met Adela's delicately-searching touches in that direction with a marked reserve. It was impossible to ask her point-blank, after probing her with a dozen suggestions, for the ingenuousness of an indifferent inquiry could not then be assumed, so that Adela was constantly baked and felt that she must some day be excessively 'fond with her,' which was annoying. The girl lit up at any sign of affection. A kind ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... soon be perceived that the part enacted by Burghley, Hatton, Croft, and other counsellors, and even by the Queen herself, was not a model of ingenuousness towards the absent Leicester and the States-General. The gentlemen sent at various times to and from the Earl and her Majesty's government; Davison, Shirley, Vavasor, Heneage, and the rest—had all expressed themselves in the strongest language concerning the good faith and the friendliness of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fairness and excellence. The best definition that has yet been given of genius itself is, that it is the carrying of the feelings of childhood onward into the thoughts and aspirations of manhood. He who is not attracted by the ingenuousness, and trustfulness, and simplicity, of the first period of human life, is certainly wanting in the finest and most delicate elements of nature, and character. Those who have been coarse and brutish, those who have been selfish and ambitious, those who have been the pests and scourges of the world, ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... calculation. Therefore we may gauge the "profound sense of the mathematician," of whom Lichtenberg has made fun, in that he says: "These so-called professors of mathematics have taken advantage of the ingenuousness of other people, have attained the credit of possessing profound sense, which strongly resembles the theologians' profound sense ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... with this apt summing-up, too pleased, in his masculine ingenuousness, to feel that for Mrs. Wake, with no ancestry at all to speak of, such a summing could not be very gratifying. He didn't see this at all until Mrs. Upton, folding her letter, came into the slightly awkward silence that followed ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... was little likely that she would allow the establishment to await the influx of Merrifields, though certainly Gillian had done nothing displeasing all that evening except that terrible blushing, for which piece of ingenuousness her aunt ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... disappointed her; she didn't quite know why. The old Marty would have been franker and more spontaneous. The old Marty might have made her laugh with his boyish ingenuousness, but he would have warmed her and made her feel delightfully vain. Could it be that she was responsible for this new Marty? Was Alice too terribly right when she had talked about armor turning into broadcloth because ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... of the stage, who picks up pocket-books and never looks into them, and who is too simple even to know that honesty has its opposite, represents the still lingering mistake, that an unintelligible dialect is a guarantee for ingenuousness, and that slouching shoulders indicate an upright disposition. It is quite true that a thresher is likely to be innocent of any adroit arithmetical cheating, but he is not the less likely to carry home his master's corn in his shoes and pocket; a reaper ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... the by, to show of what consequence it is for men, in their names of mixed modes, and consequently in all their moral discourses, to define their words when there is occasion: since thereby moral knowledge may be brought to so great clearness and certainty. And it must be great want of ingenuousness (to say no worse of it) to refuse to do it: since a definition is the only way whereby the precise meaning of moral words can be known; and yet a way whereby their meaning may be known certainly, and without leaving any room ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... the absurdity of the situation dawned upon him, and with absurdity came the humor of it. Even dying, Kent could not fail to see the funny side of a thing It struck him as suddenly as had the girl's beauty and her bewildering and unaffected ingenuousness. ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... merged in a sense of compassion. Her rival had lost Gustave. To Julie the loss of Gustave was the loss of all that makes life worth having. On her part, Isaura was moved not only by the beauty of Julie's countenance, but still more by the childlike ingenuousness of its expression. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... carried her back to the weeks they had passed in company, among the grand scenery of the Alps; but she would not betray the consciousness, for, whatever may be the ingenuousness of a female, she seldom loses her sensitiveness on the subject ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the aristocratic Mrs. Blunt, with an almost youthful ingenuousness, and in those black eyes which looked at me so calmly there was a flash of the Southern beauty, still naive and romantic, as if altogether untouched by experience. "I don't think there is a single grain of vulgarity in all her enchanting ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... we are blamed is modesty; to discover them to one's friends, in ingenuousness, is confidence; but to preach them to all the world, if one does not take ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... herring, but just the same altogether charming in its day, inspiring of dreams, and a vehicle for pleasant fancy. It belonged to what, from our grave old point of view, was the youth of the world, and the spirit of youth, its ingenuousness, and its ardour, were needed to appreciate it. Ik Marvel's "Reveries of a Bachelor" was of that genre—and how the hearth logs blazed and the fair faces flickered in the flames in those pages of Mr. ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... ever made, because prompt action seemed the only way, and time was lacking for debate about what seemed the next thing that had to be done. In fact, the Canadian people, regarded collectively, felt and acted in this case with as much ingenuousness as did those Tyrolese mountaineers, bred, according to Heine, to know nothing of politics save that they had an Emperor who wore a white coat ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... breath; and, if ever man found himself in the position of not knowing what to say, made the discovery beyond all question that he was so circumstanced. The child-like ingenuousness with which his visitor spoke, her modest fearlessness, her truthfulness which put all artifice aside, her entire forgetfulness of herself in her earnest quiet holding to the object with which she had ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... of his continued power of attraction is doubtless allied to the first; it is a naivete of a particular kind, which differs from the profound ingenuousness of which we have spoken by the fact that it is employed deliberately. Conscious simplicity is art, and if it is successful art of no mean order, Ronsard's method of admitting us, as it were, to his conversation with ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... infant's, her complexion fresh as the unplucked rose, her expression innocent and unsophisticated. A priest unhesitatingly would have given her absolution without confession. Her baby face, her childish prettiness and air of unaffected ingenuousness, her good taste in dress, her natural refinement, and cleverness in keeping men guessing had been, indeed, the chief keystones of her success. And, most remarkable of all, perhaps, was that she had been ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... olive blooms; the firefly was in the myrtle hedge; heaven and earth wore a mantle of surpassing beauty. Torella welcomed me kindly, though seriously; and even his shade of displeasure soon wore away. Some resemblance to my father—some look and tone of youthful ingenuousness, lurking still in spite of my misdeeds, softened the good old man's heart. He sent for his daughter, he presented me to her as her betrothed. The chamber became hallowed by a holy light as she entered. Hers was that cherub look, those large, soft eyes, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... His praises, and in the face of men, give honour to the everlasting Giver of all good. It was for this and these that I had been selected from mankind, and made the especial object of a Father's grace. I believed it in all the simplicity and ingenuousness of a mind awakened to a sense of religion and human responsibility. I could not do otherwise. From the moment that I was convinced of the obligation under which I had been brought, that I could feel the force of the silent compact which had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... is most devotedly attached,—the mother of a little girl as lovely as herself, and the delight of all who have the happiness of her acquaintance, to whom she is endeared not merely by her remarkable sweetness of temper and kindness of heart, but by the singular ingenuousness and openness of character which communicate an indescribable charm to her conversation. She is as transparent as water. You may see every colour, every shade of a mind as lofty and beautiful as her person. Talking with her is like being in the Palace of Truth ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... my duty to conceal my opinion, Her Majesty's Government having admitted that they had felt it their duty to refuse a proposition of that character. I should have felt that I was wanting in that ingenuousness and fair play in politics which I hope, whoever sits on that bench or this, we shall always pursue, if, when the true interests of the country are concerned, agreeing as I did with the Government, I did not express frankly that opinion. ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... meaning of his song?" "That was the effect of the blood of a wild dragon,..." and so forth. Wotan continues to ply the youth with questions, just as a kind old grandfather of humankind might lead on a child to talk, for the simple sake of hearing what he will say, for delight in his ingenuousness. The utmost tenderness for this joyous Walsung speaks in the tones of the greybeard. The final object of his questioning is to lead the youth to some acknowledgment of himself as a factor in his fortunes. Without ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... thoughts had often portrayed, and which his nature coveted as the only treasure wanting to complete the sum of his earthly bliss. It truly looked a being to be loved without the usual alloy of our passions; and there was a modest ingenuousness which shone in her air, that gently impelled the hearts of others to regard its possessor with a species of holy affection. Amongst the gay throng, however, that thoughtlessly glided along the Broadway, even this image of female perfection was suffered to move unnoticed ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... little heifers, because I have to give them up. I don't like to have things I love go away. You see you mustn't think of going to New York until the spring is all over and summer comes for good," she continued, with the most delightful ingenuousness, as she shaped the last of the ten flowers and glanced from her task at him with the most solicitous concern. "Of course, you feel as if the smash your lung got in that awful rock slide has healed all up, and I know it has, but you'll have to do as the doctor tells ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... too much surprised to be joyous, but he thanked his uncle with something of the cordial ingenuousness and grace which had ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... words." The term simplicity has two significations in English.—Firstly it is used to describe a person of little mind, narrow-minded, dull, not well informed, weak and credulous; it is also used to express candor, ingenuousness, and uprightness; to describe a person who is natural, without artfulness. It is in this sense that it is said that the greatest geniuses are the most simple; enemies of subtlety and trick, which are only appropriate to narrow minds. The simplicity of the just, in Scriptural language, ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... whose long strides are not easy to keep pace with. They walk more slowly when out of sight. Oh, the delightful dawdle back through the vague shadows of evening in sweetly scented lanes! How merrily she prattles with charming ingenuousness, while he watches her expressive features, a new strange thrill ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... gesture, the singular naivete—one can watch it all. But only for a moment. One must be childish indeed (and, by an odd irony, this exquisitively sophisticated author falls into the hands of most of his readers when they are children) to believe, for more than a moment, that the ingenuousness of the Fables was anything but assumed. In fact, to do so would be to miss the real taste of the work. There is a kind of art, as every one knows, that conceals itself; but there is another—and this is less often recognized—that displays ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... ran on, with an air of simple and charming ingenuousness; while I reflected that here possibly was a light and aimless creature whom I had mentally convicted of ungracious designs, that, although his presence in Wallencamp, as a representative of the great world I believed I had left behind me, was rather mal a propos, it ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... very rich and beautiful woman, by whom it is supposed he was courted for the nobleness of his descent. They say, that she was farther encouraged to persevere in her advances, by an incident which evinced the great ingenuousness of his disposition. Upon her pressing her suit, he took an opportunity, when they were alone, of stripping off his toga, and showing her the deformity of his person, that he might not be thought to impose ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the very framing and construction of my soul; namely, a blundering inaccuracy of her olfactory organs in hitting the scent of craft or design in my fellow-creatures. I do not mean any compliment to my ingenuousness, or to hint that the defect is in consequence of the unsuspicious simplicity of conscious truth or honour: I take it to be, in some, why or other, an imperfection in the mental sight; or, metaphor apart, some modification ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... well as strangers, invariably underestimated him. For one thing, his skin was so tender, his eyes so blue and innocent, his mouth so wide and sensitive, his forehead so white and high, that he gave the impression of almost childish simplicity and ingenuousness. For another thing, he dressed with such meticulous regard for the fashion, and he moved about with such indolent amiability, that his clothes and his manners distracted attention from ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... the writers for little ones chose to be unknown, for it would be ungenerous to disparage by name these ladies who considered their productions edifying, and in their ingenuousness never dreamed that their stories were devoid of every quality that makes a child's book of value to the child. They were literally unconscious that their tales lacked that simplicity and directness in style, and they themselves that knowledge of human nature, ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... according to her varying mood. Lela's face is pale as moonbeams; filial solicitude and divine sorrow have left their chastening impression upon her exquisite lineaments. Her countenance is Madonna-like in purity, ingenuousness, and self-abnegation. ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... and that the bargain to which he was consenting remained unknown. My friend Vaudreix also undertook to persuade M. de Gesvres to sell his chapel. The negotiations were conducted with entire good faith on the side of my friend Vaudreix and with charming ingenuousness on the side of Mr. Harlington, until the day when the Rubenses and the carvings from the chapel were in a safe place and Mr. Harlington in prison. There remains nothing, therefore, to be done but to release the unfortunate American, because he was content to play the modest part of a dupe; ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... narrative of his loss of temper, of his wild talk, of her clever strategy in counting ten—"just like a cold douche it was"—and the faint turn he so often had after spells of emotion. To convince Miss Walbrook of the queer little thing's ingenuousness he told how she had made him lie down on the library couch, covered him up, rubbed his brow with Florida water, and induced the best sleep he ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... strains of music a perplexing one. Now, to the observer who sees things relatively, it must seem strange that the modern man who happens to be gifted with exceptional talent should as a child and a youth so seldom be blessed with the quality of ingenuousness and of simple individuality, that he is so little able to have these qualities at all. As a matter of fact, men of rare talent, like Goethe and Wagner, much more often attain to ingenuousness in manhood than during the more tender years of childhood and youth. And this is especially ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... is the greatest beauty, the most marvellous and transcendent beauty, you ever saw. And that, M. Daniel Champcey, is her smallest attraction. When she opens her lips, the charms of her mind, beauty and her mind, and remember her admirable ingenuousness, her naive freshness, and all the treasures of her chaste and ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... with all the contrition, affection, and ingenuousness that even he wished to see there; and they put their ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... Her wide-eyed ingenuousness making me more suspicious, she answered, "Waiting to see if you'd appear." Then she stopped being truthful: "You forget we ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... a nuisance existing merely in by-corners, which any well-clad person could avoid; it was invading the very drawing-rooms, mingling itself with the comfortable fumes of port-wine and brandy, threatening to deaden with its murky breath all the splendour of the ostrich feathers, and to stifle Milby ingenuousness, not pretending to be better than its neighbours, with a cloud of cant and lugubrious hypocrisy. The alarm reached its climax when it was reported that Mr. Tryan was endeavouring to obtain authority from Mr. Prendergast, the non-resident rector, to establish ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... wife?" he asked abruptly. She caught her breath before laughing tolerantly, and then looked into his eyes with a tantalising ingenuousness. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... life, and her instincts were so strong and noble that she was eager to repair any errors into which she might be betrayed. Lavish in her generosity to others, she was personally frugal, even penurious. A certain brusque and original frankness, and the ingenuousness with which she betrayed every impression, often involved her in compromising positions, which would have been fatal to a woman in her position less pure and upright in her essential nature. Fond of dolls, toys, and trifles, she was also devoted to athletic sports and pastimes, riding, swimming, ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... we sat down to what Sam called "Pump-pie-King pie with raisins and mince." The expression on Sam's face was celestial. No other word could describe it. There was also an underlying expression of triumph which made me suspicious of his apparent ingenuousness, and as the lubras had done little else but make faces at themselves in the looking-glass for two days (I was beginning to hate that looking-glass), I appealed to ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... of a mountain, but it was of one that weighs me to the earth. Your inexplicable conduct and cruel indifference have heaped it on my feelings, Alida. You have said that there is no hope for Oloff Van Staats; and one syllable, spoken with your native ingenuousness and sincerity, has had the effect to blow all my apprehensions from that quarter to the winds. There remains only to account for your absence, to resume the whole of your power over one who is but too readily disposed to confide in ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... object that we have in view. Rev. Richard Watson takes a statesmanlike view of the whole case, and will, I am persuaded, as will all concerned here, meet you with the utmost ingenuousness and liberality, and, if they be met in a similar manner, all will end well. If you can agree to the following recommendation, I think everything else will easily be settled, viz., to constitute two or three districts, to meet annually, as District Conferences, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... the course of this voyage in company with Mark Twain, we at length discover, under his good-fellowship and apparent ingenuousness, faults which we should never have expected. He has in the highest degree that fault of appearing astonished at nothing—common, we may say, to all savages. He confesses himself that one of his great pleasures is to horrify the guides by his indifference and stupidity. He is, too, decidedly ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... sign of suffering. He simply sank back into himself, and became the man he had been before, plus his experience of feeling, and minus the ingenuousness of his self-knowledge. He took instead to self-mystification, trying to persuade himself that because he could not have Alison, Alison was not worth having. After that, it was but a step to palming off on his reason the monstrous ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... has the characteristic melancholy of youth when it is forced suddenly to bethink itself, and for a moment feels already old, feels the temperature of the world about it sensibly colder. Its very ingenuousness, its sincerity, will make the utterance of what comes [14] to mind just ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... contumely, through half-truths, for a course which any decent man must, in conscience, have followed. He composed a seething editorial, tore it up, substituted another wherein he made reply to the charges, in a spirit of ingenuity rather than ingenuousness, for The Patriot case, while sound, was one which could not well be thrown open to The Patriot's public; and planned vengeance ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the night mourning for her friend who was gone. Now, as she tried to give her attention to her aunt and to the vexed question of the propriety of crape on the body, she thought, with girlish ingenuousness, that she wanted Peter more than she had ever wanted him before, and that she could do nothing until she had seen him. And across her grief came one great flash of joy as she realized that in all her troubles and sorrows she would have ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... Bart's off-handed ingenuousness had completely disarmed the men. He pretended to be busy petting the horse, but saw Buck Tolliver slip back to his brother, and a few quick questions and answers passed between them. Then Buck ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... has a new thought, or striking thought, thinks himself justified in writing a volume. Of this I would not complain if he would have the ingenuousness to inform the reader, in a nota bene, on what page the new idea could be found, so that, if he paid for the book, he should be spared the trouble of hunting for the kernel in the bushel of compiled and often incongruous chaff, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... me say that—the other day, when I saw you—I had no idea of mentioning the Works to you, other than to explain my position—not an idea.... And then, when we talked—well, I did," he said with a kind of naked ingenuousness, as if no one could have been more surprised about it all than he.... "I can't explain it, so that it won't still seem peculiar to you.... It's only that I do feel somehow that—that knowing people makes a ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... to see that one is naked. She ignored nudity. It was the ingenuousness of Arcadia or Otaheite. Dea untaught made Gwynplaine wild. Sometimes it happened that Dea, when almost reaching youth, combed her long hair as she sat on her bed—her chemise unfastened and falling off revealed indications of a feminine outline, and a vague commencement of Eve—and would call ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... though you were dead and gone, you and your years of psalm-singings were not forgotten. You lived, an idealized memory of pure and pious harmony, in the hearts of your old church friends. Warmly did they fight for your "way of singing;" with most undeniable and open partiality, with most dubious ingenuousness and rectitude, did your old neighbor, Captain Pelatiah Allyn, conduct that hot July music-meeting, counting up boldly sixty-three votes in favor of your way, when there were only forty-three voters on your side of the alley, and crowding a final decision ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the matter of Madame Piriac's impending visit to Audrey Moze at Flank Hall, and through the texture of these difficult topics she could see, as it were, shining the sprightly simplicity, the utter ingenuousness, the entirely reliable fidelity of Mr. Gilman. She felt, rather than consciously realised, that he was a dull man. But she liked his dullness; it reassured her; it was tranquillising; it was even adorable. ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... and a simplicity that betokened perfect purity of thought Nor was this extraordinary confidence without its advantages to Eve; for, thrown so early among the artificial and calculating, it served to keep her own ingenuousness of character active, and prevented that cold, selfish, and unattractive sophistication, that mere women of fashion are apt to fall into, from their isolated and factitious mode of existence. When Eve, therefore, put the questions to her nurse, that have already been ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... to keep up the appearance of ingenuousness, was forced to further definition. "I don't think, darling, that in your sympathy, your solicitude, where young talent is concerned, you quite realize how much you give, how much you can be made use of. The man admires you, of course, ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... French singer. Voice, face, gestures, pantomime, all are different, all are purely her own. She is a creature of contrasts, and suggests at once all that is innocent and all that is perverse. She has the pure blue eyes of a child, eyes that are cloudless, that gleam with a wicked ingenuousness, that close in the utter abasement of weariness, that open wide in all the expressionlessness of surprise. Her naivete is perfect, and perfect, too, is that strange, subtle smile of comprehension that closes the period. A great impersonal ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... his wife, Louise. A Georgian by birth, her beauty and ingenuousness had won her great popularity at the court of St. Petersburg, to which she had been introduced by the Governor of Tiflis. She was neither tall nor short, possessed a wealth of raven black hair, perfect teeth, lustrous black eyes, a smile that would ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... of Eden at Scotland Yard—probably because the unwary might have thought him full of innocence. His smooth, bronzed boyish face showed ingenuousness and candour in every line. A glittering diamond pin adorned his necktie, a massive gold chain spanned his waistcoat, a gold ring with a single great ruby was on his finger. That was the only ostentation about him, and his quiet, well-cut ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... and—see how it has ended! The important thing now is that he shall make a good husband, and that, since he is unsuited for great things, he may be fit for smaller ones—for domestic life, and to make Pepita happy, whose only fault, after all, is to have fallen madly in love with him, with all the ingenuousness and violence ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... the insane asylum of God's Beloved we find also in the lives of Breton fisherfolk in the novel The Sea (1910); it is unadulterated primitive nature, which blends the roar of billows and the instinctive ingenuousness of the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... that was then arrived at, I never could detect any trace of conditions designed to check the dangerous policy which all who were behind the scenes realized the Emperor to be adopting. Who paid the piper never called one note of the tune. There was an ingenuousness about the proceedings on the part of our Government that was startling in ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... whom the book doubtless recalled the memory of their spring-time, shared Falstaff's ingenuousness, and remained faithful to Lyly; if men or letters, after some years of enthusiasm, ceased to imitate him, his book was for a long time continuously read, and it was reprinted again and again even in the reign of Charles I. It was translated into Dutch in the same century,[101] and was modernized ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... betray himself, the girl could not betray him. All that was required of him was just to maintain an ordinary air of ingenuousness. He had done enough acting in his life to be at home when dissimulating. He must do a ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... last the pure air of solitude; we drank in the golden cup of legend; we were intoxicated with poetry and with love. But, alas! it was only love of vague forms; of tints roseal and azure; of metaphysical phantoms. The real woman, seen close, revolted our ingenuousness: we would have had her a queen or a goddess, and to ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... face of the elder officer, added to the perfect ingenuousness of Faulkner's speech, satisfied Brant that he had not only elicited the truth, but that Miss Faulkner had been successful. But he was sincere in his suggestion that her relationship to the young officer would incline the division commander to look leniently ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... redeemed them; and, filled with life and spirit, set out on their return to Nain, where they testified with boldness of what they had heard, seen, and experienced at Hopedale. They related to the missionaries with an ingenuousness and sincerity, which the latter say they had never before known among Esquimaux, how the Almighty power of Jesus had awakened them, by giving them a proper sense of the wickedness of their ways, and caused ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... Belknap," she said at last, and with charming ingenuousness, "this is not a matter for my judgment; I rely upon you entirely; pray do not hesitate, but continue your investigations in whatever direction your judgment leads you. I wish Mr. Lamotte was here to confer ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... there was in it that followed the teaching of Christianity. He was among the believers, with his utmost energy alert to save and comfort the unbelievers. He believed in everything and everyone. The ingenuousness of his nature was childlike in its unchallenged faith and its tender instincts. His unworldliness was almost legendary in its belief of human nature. I remember he was asked once whether he believed in Santa Claus, and in his ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... then Mr. Burton entered, and, with a most exasperating affection of ingenuousness and ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... People. But there may be a war of sex with sex scarcely less tragic than the wars of men with men (or brutes). The author shows us an oldish husband—a civil servant—who surmounts, with not too much indelicacy, the primary difficulty of his young wife's ingenuousness in relation to the sacrament of marriage. But a further and worse difficulty is waiting for him when he comes to deal with the incompatibility of the sexes in the matter of moral standards. The thing, of course, has been done once for all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... scenes are graphically portrayed; and yet with that simplicity and ingenuousness which carries with it a conviction of ...
— The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave • William Wells Brown
... ejaculated the cleaner, eagerly—too eagerly for perfect ingenuousness. "That's why I said 'Poor dear!' and spoke of her pretty face. I am sorry for young folks when they get into trouble, aint you? You and me might lie here and no one be much the worse for it, but a ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... that in his eyes was no longer any of the ingenuousness of youth she remembered. Instead, his eyes were keen and speculative, searching into her for some assurance that she would not resurrect his particular ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... changeful. Yet there was plenty of 'character'—no dearth of good firm lines, with yet an entire absence of anything denoting hardness or obstinacy; the whole giving from the first candid glance an impression of extreme ingenuousness and single-mindedness. ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... extremely pretty woman; rather tall for her slight proportions, but elegant to a surprising degree. The extraordinary charm of her acting, her voice, her countenance, and her accent were delightful. It would have been impossible to display more grace, simplicity, and ingenuousness than she did: she gave several touches of pathos in a manner to make one cry, and to quite enchant all who bad taste enough and mind to appreciate her ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... she replied; and smiled—mainly at the ingenuousness of this, although partly at the contrast between her present view of him ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... the absolute ingenuousness of the boy, Thorpe used to take him from time to time on some of his daily trips to the pines. Necessarily he explained partially his position and the need of secrecy. Wallace was immensely excited and important at learning a secret of ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... man's ingenuousness. He contradicted his own story so unconsciously, that I began to think he was more of a ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... within her. Who could reproach her for exploiting such beauty before marriage? For at sight of Nathalie to-night, an Emperor himself could scarce have reproached his son for desiring the hand of so exquisite a creature. And, with her own great skill as a firm basis for the girl's charming ingenuousness, reflected her mother, what alliance would prove impossible to her now? For, even in her mother-love, this odd woman was filled with the selfishness of a very empty vanity. And it seemed now as if, with the death of ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... lands signed, and other questions of a similar nature, he thought "that he was given that way rather than otherwise." She explicitly denies that her governess ever advised her to marry the admiral without the consent of the council; but relates with great apparent ingenuousness, the hints which Mrs. Ashley had thrown out of his attachment to her, and the artful attempts which she had made to discover how her pupil stood affected ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... affection until he met LAURA. He fell for a moment under the spell of her fascination, and then, with cold logic, he analyzed her, and found out that, while outwardly she had every sign of girlhood,—ingenuousness, sweetness of character and possibility of affection,—spiritually and mentally she was nothing more than a moral wreck. He observed keenly her efforts to win him and her disappointment at her failure—not that she cared so much for him personally, ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... outlines of feminine tactics, which are emphasized by insincere gestures, by looks of feigned ingenuousness, by artful intonations of the voice and even by the snare of cunning silence, are characteristic to some degree of their ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... At the unassumed ingenuousness of this remark I suffered my impassiveness to relax, as I replied with well-established pride that although a country which neglected its ancestors might doubtless be able to produce more of the ordinary or graveyard spectres, we were unapproachable for the diverse forms and malignant enmity ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... waiting in King Street until she should leave off her work, or whether, as she suspected, it were only that he had been attracted to her as she passed by, she gave herself away with unconscious ingenuousness. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... his family, and giving lessons in painting to his daughter. Edmund Dunning had no intentions that any other lessons should be given, and it accordingly grieved him when he discovered the terms on which the young people stood to one another, and which their ingenuousness could not conceal. With this relation he had made himself acquainted as soon as he suspected it, by inquiring of Eveline, who frankly told him the whole truth. Arundel loved her, but dared not, on account of the distance that separated him from her father, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... effect of his shape, that though his advance was hesitating and respectful, it was impossible to contemplate his person without the ideas being suggested of velocity and swiftness. His presence and air had the appearance of frankness, ingenuousness, and manly confidence. The natural fire and haughtiness of his eye were carefully subdued, and he seemed, at least to a superficial view, the very model of good-nature and disinterested complaisance. His bright and flowing hair parted on his brow, and formed into a thousand ringlets, waved ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... triumphs is the way in which, almost to the last, "M. de Santillane," despite the rogueries practised often on and sometimes by him, retains a certain gullibility, or at least ingenuousness. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... with a great deal of candour and ingenuousness, that their condition was so miserable, and that they were so sensible of it, that, he believed, they would abhor the thought of using any man unkindly that should contribute to their deliverance; and that if I pleased, he would go to them with the old man, and discourse with them ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... that he would follow her. She only half intimated the reasons why she acted thus, but her partial reticence was the most charming portion of her revelations, and as he listened Cary was in a very ecstacy of delight. She knew that he would follow her! What adorable feminine ingenuousness in the confession! What ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... replied the visitor, gaining ease from the ingenuousness of the little girl and from the knowledge that she was older than ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... ceased speaking, and remained standing. He had said these things in a loud, rapid, hoarse voice, with a sort of irritated and savage ingenuousness. Once he paused to salute some one in the crowd. The sort of affirmations which he seemed to fling out before him at random came like hiccoughs, and to each he added the gesture of a wood-cutter who is splitting wood. When he had finished, the audience burst into a laugh. He stared at the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... a virtue of necessity, though it argues lack of ingenuousness, is perhaps preferable to the wholly honest demonstration of snarling over one's misfortunes. It may result in good even to the hypocrite, who occasionally surprises himself with the pleasure he finds in wearing a front of nobility, ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... took the hint, and made no further unnecessary advances. Yes, these Volga peasants certainly possess as strong a sense of democratic equality as any one could wish. But the soft ingenuousness of their manners and their tact disarm wrath at the rare little liberties which they take. Even their way of addressing their former masters by the familiar "thou" betokens respectful ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... with adroit use of the detective faculty of the modern reporter, he extracted from Webb the tale of his years—even the extent of his fortune. The young aspirant's ingenuousness made him gasp more than once; but he had too kindly a nature to state to Webb the hopelessness of his case. His new friend was manly and generous, and had won from him a sincere liking, tempered with pity. Better let him find out for himself how things stood; then, ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... monster of cynicism,' cried Dick. 'You use an imaginary helplessness with the brutality of a buccaneer, and your ingenuousness is a pistol you put to one's head, crying: your ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... grace and child-like ingenuousness, plainly allowed her preference for the young German painter to be seen. And Traugott warmly returned her affection. He grew so accustomed to the society of the pretty child (she was but fifteen), that ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... appealed to Rafael. Her ingenuousness gave him a sense of freshness and repose. She was a cosy secluded refuge where he might sleep after a tempest. His mother's satisfied smile was there to encourage him in this feeling. Never had he seen her so kind and so communicative. The pleasure of having him ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... manner to attract the notice of a common observer. The lessening of the bloom, the mournful character of a dove-like eye, and a look of thoughtfulness, on a brow that he had ever known devoid of care and open as day with youthful ingenuousness, were the symptoms that first gave the alarm to her father, whose previous losses, and whose solitariness, as respects the ties of the world, had rendered him keenly alive to impressions of such a nature. The reflections excited by this examination brought painful recollections to ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... and estrangement. The homely reunion, that he had somehow expected, now seemed foolish. Instead of feeling proud that he knew her better than all these people about him, he felt chagrined at his own ingenuousness. For he did not know her better. This woman he had never known; she had somehow devoured his little friend, as the wolf ate up Red Ridinghood. Beautiful, radiant, tender as she was, she chilled his old affection; that sort of feeling was not appropriate. ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... on vital statistics in America who is not familiar with the investigation of Dr. Billings. Let the reader compare the following quotation as to the relative birth rate of the races, and, noting date of data upon which the conclusion is based, decide for himself as to the ingenuousness of Mr. Hoffman's reluctant admission: "Dr. Billings, in his luminous report on the vital statistics of the United States (1886) shows that 1000 colored women (age from 15 to 49) give birth to 164 children, and 1000 white women to only 127, yearly; that is to say, three ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... himself in the same state of indifference with regard to Odette, he would then understand that it was his jealousy alone which had led him to find something atrocious, unpardonable, in this desire (after all, so natural a desire, springing from a childlike ingenuousness and also from a certain delicacy in her nature) to be able, in her turn, when an occasion offered, to repay the Verdurins for their hospitality, and to play the hostess in a ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... minute," Denis replied. "I can hardly believe it," he added with the usual ingenuousness of all vain people. "I can only think that a momentary infatuation for Lord Henry, who has ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... there any stamp of candour: it was simply a finely-formed, square, smooth young brow. And the slow absent glance he cast around at the upper windows of the houses had neither more dissimulation in it, nor more ingenuousness, than belongs to a youthful well-opened eyelid with its unwearied breadth of gaze; to perfectly pellucid lenses; to the undimmed dark of a rich brown iris; and to a pure cerulean-tinted angle of whiteness streaked with ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... suggest the propriety of a candid and open confession. The inexperience of youth, Mr. Waverley, lays it open to the plans of the more designing and artful; and one of your friends at least—I mean Mac-Ivor of Glennaquoich—ranks high in the latter class, as, from your apparent ingenuousness, youth, and unacquaintance with the manners of the Highlands, I should be disposed to place you among the former. In such a case, a false step or error like yours, which I shall be happy to consider as involuntary, may ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... frankness and affection of an old friend. Mr. Bentham's countenance has all that character of intense thought which you would expect to find; but it is impossible to conceive a physiognomy more strongly marked with ingenuousness and philanthropy. I have passed twelve days there, and shall return to-morrow, to stay most probably till he returns to town. His house in the city, which I now occupy solely and exclusively—[N. B. Three servants in the house at my command]—is most beautifully situated on St. James's ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... lest she should be blamed for not having yielded to it. She said that the schalischim appeared furious, that he had shouted a great deal, and that he had then fallen asleep. Salammbo told no more, through shame perhaps, or else because she was led by her extreme ingenuousness to attach but little importance to the soldier's kisses. Moreover, it all floated through her head in a melancholy and misty fashion, like the recollection of a depressing dream; and she would not have known in what way or in what ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... at which to roast their chestnuts. I will not return to the subject of the gun; you know all about it. It seems that there was some good in this explosive gun, and that he who invented it united a sort of genius with ingenuousness, inexperience, and ignorance enough to make one weep. Nothing can be said against the private character of the man. He had a few debts, and his tradespeople felt considerable anxiety when he left ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... to myself, much less to her, she is even as—'Mr. Simpson' who desireth the honour of the acquaintance of Mr. B. whose admirable works have long been his, Simpson's, especial solace in private—and who accordingly is led to that personage by a mutual friend—Simpson blushing as only adorable ingenuousness can, and twisting the brim of his hat like a sailor giving evidence. Whereupon Mr. B. beginneth by remarking that the rooms are growing hot—or that he supposes Mr. S. has not heard if there will be another adjournment of the House to-night—whereupon ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... understand her at first; I had a few unpleasant conjectures ready. I had to have many conversations with her before I understood her ingenuousness, her ignorance, her thorough goodness, in short, all her ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... studio in Rue Brea, they found Mrs. Brown, Molly and Judy trying not to look expectant, but, as Judy said, "ready to pop with curiosity." Elise ran to Mrs. Brown, and throwing her arms around her dear chaperone, hid her blushing face on her shoulder; while Mr. Kinsella, with boyish ingenuousness, said: "Well, what do you think? Elise and I have gone and ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... called 'cousin,' is not such, nor indeed any relation or connexion of mine! I know you have been cheated often, sadly, and by him; and, much as it has gone against my heart whenever I have heard him and his crew plot against your ingenuousness, I have long intended to be frank with you, as you have always treated me with frankness. Believe me I have ever opposed your 'ingannazione,' though without success; and, as I have no other shop in which to put my real antiques excepting this man's, I am glad to pay ten per cent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... himself with a sort of naive ingenuousness in a letter to the Lords of Council of the year 1607. In this letter he exhorts them not to present to him any 'sute wherof none of yourselves can guess what the vallew may prove,' but rather to help him to cut off superfluous expenses, ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... of that evening, it was because he had resolved not to consult any one and to lead his own inquiry. He was succeeding in the beginning; he had certainly perceived Madame Steno's white gown upon the terrace, while radiant Maud explained his unexpected return with her usual ingenuousness. ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... of familiarity and impressiveness, provoked more than one smile among the auditory. He noticed it, and a spark of defiance flashed up at the bottom of his heart. From time to time he loudly asked if "those people there" were not abusing his ingenuousness. ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... at this way of putting it. With the more sober-minded its ingenuousness had favourable effect, maintained throughout ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... that his darling child was being slighted wrought almost a miraculous change in Melbury's nature. No man so furtive for the time as the ingenuous countryman who finds that his ingenuousness has been abused. Melbury's heretofore confidential candor towards his gentlemanly son-in-law was displaced by a feline stealth that did injury to his every action, thought, and mood. He knew that a woman once given to a man for life ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... difficulty to keep him from abusing my friend Augusta. He had once danced with her, and their commerce had not been much to her advantage. I defended her upon the score of her amiable simplicity and unaffected ingenuousness, but I could not have the courage to contradict him when he said he had no notion she was very brilliant by the conversation he had had with her. Augusta, indeed, is nothing less than brilliant: but she is natural, artless, and very affectionate. just before she went ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... The ingenuousness of a girl, the graces of a child were discernible under the domino. Though they walked apart, these two beings suggested the figures of Flora and Zephyr as we see them grouped by the cleverest sculptors; but they were beyond sculpture, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... considered myself a full-grown man, dared all that man could do, and was a constant, but unwilling attendant upon the police office, where my youth, and the promises of my mother that I should be reformed, assisted by showers of tears on her part, and by apparent ingenuousness on mine, frequently pleaded in my favour with ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... more than Maggie could endure in silence. The frank ingenuousness of her nature prevailed, and turning towards him her dark, beautiful eyes, in which tears were shining, she said: "Forgive me, Mr. Carrollton. I sent Gritty home on purpose to see if you would be annoyed, for I felt vexed because you would not humor my whim and ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... life and destiny, he wore his culture as lightly as a flower. Even after he had left college, he retained the sunny outlook, the gladsomeness and the bloom of boyhood. Wherever he went he carried with him an atmosphere of joy. Fresh ingenuousness and glowing enthusiasm were part of his charm. There was a rich vein of the romantic in his character, but the cast of his mind was philosophical. He had no patience with superficiality masquerading as wisdom, and was quick to detect a fallacy in reasoning. A shining trait ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... and Arabic poets, which he has brought together in it, than to be commended for anything else that it contains, or for the style in which it is written. Certain marks of hurry in the composition, which his old schoolfellow, Doctor Parr, had intimated to him with the ingenuousness of a friend and a scholar, are still apparent. He takes up implicitly with that incomplete and partial, though very ingenious system, which Burke had lately put forth in his essay on the Sublime and Beautiful. ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... These two examples of ingenuousness are sufficiently characteristic of the morality of the system. In La Maison Tellier Guy de Maupassant has depicted with his masterly pen the psychology of the prostitute, the proxenet, and ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... after it, and the next second reappeared in the doorway holding the cape. He shook out its folds, breathing hard but acquiring confidence. In fact, he was able to look up in his father's face and say, with bright ingenuousness: ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... general more extensively than Sir Francis, but he is far less acquainted with the feelings and associations of the English mind. There is also a wariness about him, which I do not like so well as the imprudent ingenuousness of the baronet. He seems to me to have a cause in hand—Hobhouse versus Existing Circumstances—and that he considers the multitude as the jurors, on whose decision his advancement in life depends. But in this I may be uncharitable. I should, however, think more highly of his sincerity as ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... might have replied with ingenuousness, 'My life, I have nothing to say.' But, as the repartee did not occur to him, he contented himself with coming in from the balcony and standing at the side of ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... it more difficult than he had anticipated to gain his daughter's consent to see me. She had been very reluctant to assume the attitude required of her, and only her respect for his wishes and the good of the cause, and the assurance he had given her of the entire ingenuousness of my own motive, had induced her finally to yield. After some talk as to the significance of the interview before me, which I was too much agitated to comprehend, ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy |
