"Naively" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in arrogance and in humility, even in martyrdom. Certain modes of seeking recognition we define as "vanity," others as "ambition." The "will to power" belongs here. Perhaps there has been no spur to human activity so keen and no motive so naively avowed as the desire for "undying fame," and it would be difficult to estimate the role the desire for recognition has played in ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... really meant to comfort poor Davidson," continued Hollis. "Can you fancy anything more naively touching than this old mandarin spending several thousand pounds to console his white man? Well, there she is. The old mandarin's sons have inherited her, and Davidson with her; and he commands her; and what with his salary and ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... and so it was. While Miss Treherne was comforting the bereaved girl, I talked to Mrs. Callendar. I fear that Mrs. Callendar was but a shallow woman; for, after a moment of excitable interest in Justine, she rather naively turned the talk upon the charms of Europe. And, I fear, not without some slight cynicism, I followed her where she led; for, as I said to myself, it did not matter what direction our idle tongues took, so long as I kept my mind upon the two beside that grave: ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... mow that swale a few days after, Gramp first marvelled, then grumbled repeatedly; for the grass was in a mat. He spoke of it at the dinner table that day, making a covert accusation against Gram, whereupon Theodora and I owned up in the matter, Doad naively adding that we had done it "on the strength of Gram's original permit," but that we had agreed never to do so again. The Old Squire laughed a little grimly and said he wanted it understood, that the permit, ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... letter written to William Dunlap, from Philadelphia, on June 10, 1832, James Nelson Barker very naively and very fully outlined his career, inasmuch as he had been informed by Manager Wood that Mr. Dunlap wished such an account for his ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... that it could not have been earlier than A.D. 1545. Pinto landed on Tane-ga-shima, an island south of the extreme southern point of the island of Kyushu. They were received with great cordiality by the prince, who evinced the utmost curiosity concerning the Portuguese who were on this ship. Pinto naively confesses that "we rendered him answers as might rather fit his humor than agree with the truth, ... that so we might not derogate from the great opinion he had conceived ...
— Japan • David Murray
... of mine," she completed, "if our positions were reversed." Then, without waiting for a further demur on my part, she kissed me, and as if the sweet embrace had made us sisters at once, drew me to a chair and sat down at my feet. "You know," she naively murmured, "I am almost rich; I have five hundred dollars laid up in ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... assume a tone of injured innocence, and conclude to hastily that everybody excepting themselves has had a hand in their personal misfortunes. An eminent writer lately published a book, in which he described his numerous failures in business, naively admitting, at the same time, that he was ignorant of the multiplication-table; and he came to the conclusion that the real cause of his ill-success in life was the money-worshiping spirit of the age. ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... from the Convent of Santa Clara, Mr. Hathaway," explained Captain Stidger, naively oblivious of any discourtesy on their part, as he followed Hathaway's glance and took his arm as they moved away. "Not the least of our treasures, sir. Most of them daughters of pioneers—and all Californian bred and educated. Connoisseurs have awarded them the palm, and declare ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... admitted him, and, although they protested that they were not half through, he was naively astonished at the change they had brought to pass. For the first time in many days the place was thoroughly warm and dry; it likewise displayed an orderliness and comfort to which it had been a stranger. From some obscure ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... use, because it is inconsistent with our industrial age," says Ingersoll naively, expressing in this utterance, with perfect directness and simplicity, the exact notion of Christ's teaching held by persons of refinement and culture of our times. The teaching is no use for our industrial age, precisely as though the existence of this industrial age were a ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... of these stories that one never knows what is going to happen. Poetic justice is often satisfied, but by no means always (Kagssagssuk). One or two of them are naively weak and lacking in incident; we are constantly expecting something to happen, but nothing happens ... still nothing happens ... and the story ends (Puagssuaq). It is sometimes difficult to follow the exact ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... married Cynthia, as her mother put it—taking credit to herself as if she had had the principal part in the achievement—she now became a little envious of her daughter's good fortune in being the wife of a young, handsome, rich and moderately fashionable man, who lived in London. She naively expressed her feelings on this subject to her husband one day when she was really not feeling quite well, and when consequently her annoyances were much more present to her mind ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... becoming moth. It is all human, and yet all intensely practical with Thoreau. He envies the Indian not because he is "wild," or "free," or any such nonsense, but for his instinctive adaptations to his background,—because nature has become traditional, stimulative with him. And simply, almost naively, he sets down what he has discovered. The land I live in is like this or that; such and such life lives in it; and this is what it all means for me, the transplanted European, for us, Americans, who have souls ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... was deeply religious, with the unquestioning faith of a child. There is a letter in existence written by him to his father when the latter was on his death-bed that bears witness to this. He thanks him with filial affection for all his care, and says naively that he would rather have his prayers than fall heir to twenty thousand daler. His pictures show a stocky, broad-shouldered youth with frank blue eyes, full lips, and an eagle nose. His deep, sonorous voice ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... girl seeing him take up a book, had retreated to her chamber. Heyst sat down under his father's portrait; and the abominable calumny crept back into his recollection. The taste of it came on his lips, nauseating and corrosive like some kinds of poison. He was tempted to spit on the floor, naively, in sheer unsophisticated disgust of the physical sensation. He shook his head, surprised at himself. He was not used to receive his intellectual impressions in that way—reflected in movements of carnal emotion. He stirred impatiently in his chair, and raised the book to his eyes with both hands. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... not considered Billy as her partner; how could she, when he was trailing around over the country with the round-up, and nobody knew whether he would come or not? No, Mr. Walland did not come to the ranch so very often. She added naively that he was awfully busy. He had ridden in with them—and why not? ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... much amused in reading an effusion by one critic who, in discussing the question of the canal lines, remarked that he could not accept 'these one-man discoveries,' oblivious of the fact that they are the discoveries of many observers. He then very naively gives the illuminating information that his astronomical experience is confined to the 'observation' of the moon for about six months, by the aid of a 1-1/4-inch hand-telescope! Surely, when confronted with a critic of such ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... winking his bloodshot eyes was productive of pain. About a teaspoonful of Kandavu real estate had also been blown into Mr. Gibney's classic features when the shells from the Maxim-Vickers gun exploded in his immediate neighbourhood, and as he naively remarked to Bartholomew McGuffey, he was in luck ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... season had ever enjoyed herself more naively and she brought to every entertainment eager sparkling eyes and dancing feet that never tired. She became the "reigning toast." At parties she was surrounded by a bevy of admirers or forced to divide ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... they are lost; he was versed in the national poetry, "doctus in nostris carminibus," writes his pupil Cuthberht,[82] who pictures him on his deathbed, muttering Anglo-Saxon verses. He felt the charm of the poetic genius of his nation, and for that reason has preserved and naively related the episodes of Caedmon in his stable,[83] and of the Saxon chief comparing human life to the sparrow ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... she did not know how to interpret the words of the nobleman, who understood how to reprove with subtle mockery, and answered naively: "Don't think me frivolous, Junker. I know the seriousness of the times, but I have just finished a silent confession and discovered many bad traits in my character, but also the desire to replace them with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "It is the duty of the educated women of this Republic to protest against the extension of the suffrage to another man until they themselves are enfranchised!" Thus it would appear that Mrs. Stanton does not believe in universal suffrage. A Suffrage speaker in New York not long ago said naively: "We [the women, when enfranchised] will vote to withhold the suffrage from the ignorant." She did not explain what would happen if the ignorant voted not to have the suffrage withheld; nor did she appear ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... at dinnertime and was sitting awkwardly in the middle of the drawing room on the first chair he had come across, blocking the way for everyone. The countess tried to make him talk, but he went on naively looking around through his spectacles as if in search of somebody and answered all her questions in monosyllables. He was in the way and was the only one who did not notice the fact. Most of the guests, knowing of the affair with the bear, looked with curiosity ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... center of the rural library movement—a movement so splendid in conception; so successful in results, if statistics are credited; so direct as to method, the entire appropriation being expended on but two things, books and bookcases; so naively simple as to administration, there being neither librarians, libraries, or pay-rolls—that a study of it could not fail ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... in the Mayoruna domestic economy than in the Mayorunas themselves, were scanning the figures moving about in the reddish haze of smoke. Most of them were women, all nude and naively unconscious of any need of clothing. Like the men of the tribe, they bore the red and black rings and streaks on face and body; but, unlike the males, each wore a facial ornament in the shape of an oval piece of wood thrust through the lower lip. From time to time those near by glanced up from ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... be allowed to transpire before the appointed hour, under risk of causing everything to miscarry, took it into their heads to confide it at once to two hundred men, in order "to test the effect," as the ex-Colonel Beville said later on, rather naively. They read the mysterious document which had just been printed to the Gendarmes Mobiles, who were drawn up in the courtyard. These ex-municipal guards applauded. If they had hooted, it might be asked what the two experimentalists in the coup d'etat would ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... that Beethoven was music-mad, that they could not be called music, that they were too difficult, unintelligible, and so on. That was close onto a century ago, and they are still unintelligible to some, but we now know that this is not the fault of the quartets as was so naively assumed at that time. The condemnation of them by the performers has a show of reason in it as they taxed their capacity too severely. Wagner had the same thing to contend with ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... quite typical and naively illuminating confessions reveal, under French influences. Something of the same sort had been happening in France, and the English rebels found exemplars of revolt ready to their need. These French rebels were ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... an object of ridicule. His fellow-painters made no secret of their contempt for his work, but he earned a fair amount of money, and they did not hesitate to make free use of his purse. He was generous, and the needy, laughing at him because he believed so naively their stories of distress, borrowed from him with effrontery. He was very emotional, yet his feeling, so easily aroused, had in it something absurd, so that you accepted his kindness, but felt no gratitude. To take money from him was like robbing a child, and you despised him ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... younger son of Isaac and Rebecca, the favourite of his mother, and had twelve sons, the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel; his character and the story of his life are naively delineated in the book ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... presumed that his fitness in a partisan light had been thoroughly scrutinized by both President and Senate. Upon the vital point the investigation was deemed conclusive. "He was appointed," the "Washington Union" naively stated when the matter was first called in question, "under the strongest assurance that he was strictly and honestly a national man. We are able to state further, on very reliable authority, that whilst Governor ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... don't truly mean it? There are so many other girls whom you have known so much longer, and whom you must love better than you do me; although I don't believe they can love you any better than I do," said Toinette, naively. ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... unable to establish any communication with her; and he felt that the liveliness of the young men would reduce him to a condition of amiable ineffectiveness which would make him, as Marie Bashkirtseff naively said, hardly worth seeing. However, there was no way out, and on a delicious July morning, with soft sunlight everywhere, and great white clouds floating in a sky of turquoise blue, Howard and Miss Merry started from Windlow. The little ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... you for what you have done for me to-day," she naively told him. "I am certain you saved my life. My, that was a great ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... provisions of the Ordinance of 1787, which had drawn the line through the southern bend of Lake Michigan. This departure from the Magna Charta of the Northwest furnished the would-be secessionists with a pretext. But an editorial in the Northwestern Gazette and Galena Advertiser, January 20, 1842, naively disclosed their real motive. Illinois was overwhelmed with debt, while Wisconsin was "young, vigorous, and free from debt." "Look at the district as it is now," wrote the editor fervidly, "the fag end of the State of Illinois—its interest wholly disregarded in State legislation—in ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... see. He thought he understood why he had been kept waiting, why Mrs. Moze pretended to be ill, why the girl had frowned, why the naively calm Miss Ingate was in such a state of nerves. The explanation was that he was not wanted. The explanation was that Mr. Moze had changed his solicitor. His face hardened, for he and his uncle between them had "acted" for the Moze family ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... so much!" she said naively. "This old place is so dull and lonely, and I am so much alone with an old woman who waits upon us. Why don't ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... this writing, when one sits in the stillness of one's study and communes with one's own day-dreams while the spring night looks in at one's window. Between the lines I saw a beloved image, and it seemed to me that there were, sitting at the same table writing with me, spirits as naively happy, as foolish, and as blissfully smiling as I. I wrote continually, looking at my hand, which still ached deliciously where hers had lately pressed it, and if I turned my eyes away I had a vision of the green trellis of the little gate. Through that trellis Sasha ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... inadequate. But after you have toiled to the end of this remarkable discussion, in which Socrates demolishes all the then received theories of knowledge, he gives you no answer of his own. He abruptly closes the discussion by naively remarking that, at any rate, Theaetetus will learn that he does not understand the subject; and the ground is now cleared for an ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... do you mean quicker progress?" he asked, so naively that she concluded he was a trifle stupid. The best-looking ones were ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... he stood holding her hand and looking steadily at her. The girl gazed up at him with her trustful brown eyes alight, and a smile playing about her mouth. "My, but you are big!" she naively exclaimed. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... blurred facsimile of the Hebrew, the main difference in the latter parallel being that while the Jews are God's chosen people, the poor Gipsies seem to have been selected as favourites by that darker spirit, whose name they have naively substituted ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... dressed in rags of coloured printed calico or in sailor costumes, are for the greater part hoarse or snuffling, with noses half fallen through, with faces preserving traces of yesterday's blows and scratches and naively bepainted with the aid of a red ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... when she was dancing a quadrille as my vis-a-vis, with, as her partner, the loutish Prince Etienne! How charmingly she smiled when, en chaine, she accorded me her hand! How gracefully the curls, around her head nodded to the rhythm, and how naively she executed the jete assemble with her ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... women lie." Falsehood, kindly falsehood, venial falsehood, sublime falsehood, horrible falsehood,—but always the necessity to lie. This necessity admitted, ought they not to know how to lie well? French women do it admirably. Our manners and customs teach them deception! Besides, women are so naively saucy, so pretty, graceful, and withal so true in lying,—they recognize so fully the utility of doing so in order to avoid in social life the violent shocks which happiness might not resist,—that lying is seen to be as necessary to their lives ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... they find nothing corresponding to the productions of the country from which they had come. Fruits are in abundance, but there is no grain which requires culture, and which would give origin to a continued industry. The legend relates, somewhat naively, the hunger and distress of these elevated beings, until at length they discover the maize, and other nutritious fruits and grains in the county of Paxil ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... is no longer a secret among the people; one hears everywhere that few prisoners are taken; they are shot down in small groups. They say naively, 'We don't want any unnecessary mouths to feed. Where there is no one to enter complaint, there is no judge.' Is there, then, no power in the world which can put an end to these murders and rescue the victims? Where is Christianity? Where is ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... This, when he talked of Mexico, and having come from his own far land, "Irlandesa," with an enthusiastic desire to visit hers, telling her of his intention to do so. On this occasion he had ventured to speak of what he had heard about Mexican banditti; still more of the beauty of the Mexican ladies—naively adding that he would no doubt be in less danger of losing his ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... he asked us naively. Then, not waiting for an answer: "She is my wife, effendim. You would not have me be revengeful—not ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... for two nights," he said, looking at me naively and stroking his beard. "One night with a confinement, and the next I stayed at a peasant's with the bugs biting me all night. I am as sleepy ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... all record of the real causes of the perpetuation of this requirement. At Zui, too, a curious explanation is offered for the partial depression of the kiva floor below the general surrounding level. Here it is naively explained that the floor is excavated in order to attain a liberal height for the ceiling within the kiva, this being a room of great importance. Apparently it does not occur to the Zui architect that the result could be achieved in a more ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... in their out-of-the-world, remote way, upon fleecing the passing stranger quite as earnestly as other Italians, and they naively improve every occasion for plunder. As we passed up the shady side of their wide street, we came upon a plump little blond boy, lying asleep on the stones, with his head upon his arm; and as no one ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... written in French, announced that the new state would be governed by a military dictatorship, that the royal standard was a yellow triangle on a red ground, and that the arms of the principality were "d'Or chape de Gueules." It pointed out naively that those who first settled on the island would be naturally the oldest inhabitants, and hence would form the aristocracy. But only those who at home enjoyed social position and some private fortune would be ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... middle kingdom! She is the largest and richest in the world. The grandest men in the world have all come from the middle empire."[29] In all the literature of all the states equivalent statements occur, although they are not so naively expressed. In Russian books and newspapers the civilizing mission of Russia is talked about, just as, in the books and journals of France, Germany, and the United States, the civilizing mission of those countries is assumed and ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... elsewhere is born of avarice and unmitigated materialism. The love of pleasing, the influence of women, and a frivolous temper everywhere and on all occasions signalize them. "Why, people laugh at everything here!" naively exclaimed the young Duchess of Burgundy, on her arrival ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... there are sevewal!" admitted Rosalind naively, "but just now there is a Special Somebody! Title, estate, family, diamonds, all complete, just the vewy parti mother had hoped for ever since I was born. He has spoken to father alweady, and is going ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... But, as he naively says, "the relations that follow marriage are ... a clog to an active mind"; and his kinsman Bristol was ever urging him to show his worth "by some generous action." The result of this urging was Scanderoon. ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... taken as a compliment to the vicar and the Church—may really, in a sense, be called patriotic since an acknowledgment of the duty we owe, individually, to the local community of which we form part. And then," she added, naively giving herself away at the last, "of course, if you go over to the station in the brake Patch cannot make ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the new great house, built on a plot of ground that the Lancashire millionaire had caught up, while the squire and the other landowners of the neighbourhood were sleeping. 'And if you get Walter Heriot to come to you, Harry Richmond, it'll be better for him, I'm sure,' she added, and naively: ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of Cape Ann. I can never read it without thinking of Botticelli's picture of Spring, so naively does this picturesque rascal suffuse his landscape with ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... Plutina, "straighteners" even, if she would have them. The dreamer blushed at the intimacy of his thought. It did not occur to his frugal soul that now he need not continue on The Bonita, but might instead go easily to New York by train. He was naively happy in this influx of good fortune, and showed his emotion in the deepened color under the tan of his cheeks and in the dancing ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... of life. There is no rhetoric in it, no rhodomontade. It is the melody of a man's voice singing for the pleasure of singing, now vehemently, from the sheer delight in things physical and outward, now sadly, as some evanescent object induces melancholy, now in a naively reflective way, as past or future brings memories or expectations. He never reaches quite the exquisite melodies of Herrick, but when he writes of love he is as simple as Herrick, and he is more direct, more heart-whole, ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... contemplation of the great dramatis personae, seldom give thought as to what the effect on the minor characters must have been. It is worth observing that our author is thoroughly earnest in his exhortations—at times almost naively so. If he be often rather over-inclined to threaten grim damnation to an alarming majority, and describe with a relish the eternal horrors which hang around the second death, in good old-fashioned style, still we must remember that he sincerely means ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... doing as Napoleon did. Set your own time for the fight, pitch upon one man at a time, always pick out one not used to your mode of warfare, and then clean him out before he thinks the action has begun. "Formerly," says Bovee, naively, "when great fortunes were only made in war, war was business; but now, when great fortunes are only made by business, business ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... understand—but no, you don't understand. You'll have to take my word for it." Miss Howe's eyes sought a red hibiscus flower that looked in at the window half drowned in sunlight, and the smile in them deepened. The flower admitted so naively that it had no ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... such immensely jolly reading," remarked Wildney naively. "I shall take to reading him through when I ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... new lingerie for her rich neighbour's daughter. He sits down and helps her in the work, writing meanwhile, between the acts, an alphabetic ideology on Art and Life. But as they are beading the vests and skirts and other articles of richly laced linen underwear, Najma holds up one of these and naively asks, "Am I not to have some such, ya habibi (O my Love)?" And Khalid, affecting like bucolic innocence, replies, "What do we need them for, my heart?" With which ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... the Marquis firmly. "Would I listen? I spoke almost as soon as I came in. Laure, these Marteaux have lived long enough by the side of the d'Aumeniers to have become ennobled by the contact," he went on naively. "I now know the young man as I know myself. It is useless for you to plead longer. I come ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... through the court, in which she naively joined, while Hogarth's eyes and hers met one instant, blazed outrageously, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... place, he was very, very good-looking. A handsome, graceful figure, agreeable, rather unformed features, kindly bluish eyes, golden hair, a clear white and red skin, and, above all, that peculiar, naively-cheerful, confiding, open, at the first glance, somewhat foolish expression, by which in former days one could recognise directly the children of steady-going, noble families, 'sons of their fathers,' fine young landowners, ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... raiment either of Billy or Bridge indicated that here was any particularly rich field for loot, and, too, the athletic figure of Byrne would rather have discouraged any attempt to roll him without first handing him the "k.o.", as the two would have naively put it. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... pages of his earlier years, Fraught with hot sighs, sad laughters, kisses, tears; Fresh-fluted notes, yet from a minstrel who Blew them not naively, but as one who knew Full ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... if the gas companies would consent to simultaneously turn off the gas at intervals of five minutes over the whole of London, a signal which would be visible to the astronomers in Mars would result. He adds, naively: "If only tried for an hour each night some ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... "something about you did it. I want to say that I've loved you ever since. It's made me serious.... I haven't bothered with girls since. You are the only woman who interests me. I think about you most of the time when I'm not doing something else," he explained naively. "I know perfectly well I'm in love with you because I don't dare touch you—and I've never thought of—of kissing you good-night as we used to before that night last spring.... You remember that we didn't do it that night, ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... this woman's punishment? Here again, in this vitiated life, was only to be seen the remorseless working of law—cause and effect. Crooked! Had not the tree been crooked from the beginning—incapable of being straightened? She had herself naively confessed it. Was not the twist ingrained? And if so, where was the salvation he had preached? There was good in her still,—but what was "good"? . . . He took no account of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... deemed less respectable and sometimes was punished by torture and death. Augustine Nicholas relates that a poor peasant who had been accused of sorcery was put to the torture to compel a confession. After enduring a few gentle agonies the suffering simpleton admitted his guilt, but naively asked his tormentors if it were not possible to be ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Sunday evening; and the first thing he did was to despatch a note, by messenger, to Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes, announcing the important fact that he was there, and what his errand was, and asking whether he might come up and see Doctor Holmes any time the next day. Edward naively told him that he could come as early as Doctor Holmes liked—by breakfast-time, he was assured, as Edward was all alone! Doctor Holmes's amusement at this ingenuous note may ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... legality. Balzac's Jewish banker, who thrives on others' ruin is a type that exists to-day, as then, without any adequate effort made by law to suppress him. Less happy in indicating a remedy than in branding an evil, the novelist naively held that France had only to adopt his doctrine of absolute rule for the suppression to become a fact. An unprejudiced reading of history should have informed him that regimes have always so far existed for the benefit of their creators, and that, although constitutional monarchies and republics ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... abrupt runs, exquisitely unnecessary grace notes, and sudden twitterings prolonged till a strange and frivolous Eternity tripped in to banish Time, it grasped Domini's fancy and laid a spell upon her imagination. For it sounded as naively sincere as the song of a bird, and as if the heart from which it flowed were like the heart of a child, a place of revelation, not of concealment. The sun made men careless here. They opened their windows to it, and one could see into the warm and glowing rooms. Domini looked ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... calibre. And this man whom we realise does not impress us unfavourably; if he is without charm, he is surely immensely interesting and attractive; he is so strong in his intellectual convictions, he is so free from intellectual affectations, he is such an ingenuous egotist, so naively human; he is so mercilessly honest and independent, and, at times (one may be permitted to ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... few sentences further on, the Pope naively asks: "Is it just that the fruit of a man's sweat and labor should be enjoyed by another?" Had the Pope pondered over that question more profoundly, he might have come to far different conclusions from those which he seems ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... repulsion toward those twin monstrosities be altogether lust, seeing that so charming a maiden deems them worthy of veneration. And they even cease to seem ugly as I watch her standing there between them, dainty and slender as some splendid moth, and always naively gazing at the foreigner, utterly unconscious that they might have seemed to him both ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... often thought myself," said Phyllis naively. "She might have been much worse than I.... Oh, but I was frightened when I saw you first! I didn't know what you'd be like. And then, when I ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... of attitude between the modern leisure class and that of the quasi-peaceable stage. At the earlier stage, as was said above, the all-dominating institution of slavery and status acted resistlessly to discountenance exertion directed to other than naively predatory ends. It was still possible to find some habitual employment for the inclination to action in the way of forcible aggression or repression directed against hostile groups or against the subject classes within ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... no remark as to Gerald's lie to her. Indeed, Chirac had heard it. She knew Gerald for a glib liar to others, but she was naively surprised when he ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... murderer, to the last grand scene near Svalderoe. You trace it in his absorbing grief for the death of Geyra, the wife of his youth; the saga says, "he had no pleasure in Vinland after it," and then naively observes, "he therefore provided himself with war-ships, and went a-plundering," one of his first achievements being to go and pull down London Bridge. This peculiar kind of "distraction" (as the French call it) seems to have had ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... of settling his father's affairs so much, that at last one day she showed him the rough draft of a power of attorney to manage and administer his business, arrange all loans, sign and endorse all bills, pay all sums, etc. She had profited by Lheureux's lessons. Charles naively asked her where this ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... been such as Mark Twain and James Whitcomb Riley. I do not know what Mark Twain thought of Walt, but I know what Riley thought of him. He thought him a grand humbug. Certainly if he had had any sense of humor he would not have peppered his poems so naively with foreign words, calling out "Camerado!" ever and anon, and speaking of a perfectly good American sidewalk as a "trottoir" quasi Lutetia Parisii. And if he had not had a streak of humbug in him, he would hardly have written anonymous ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... so jolly," put in the youngest Miss Brown, who was a hearty girl. "That's the sort of religion for me, the kind that can rollick—of course I mean out of church," she added naively. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... may have had as a stroke of fate, as a call on courage. Mr. d'Alcacer, acutely observant and alert for the slightest hints, preferred to look upon himself as the victim not of a swindle but of a rough man naively engaged in a contest with heaven's injustice. D'Alcacer did not examine his heart, but some lines of a French poet came into his mind, to the effect that in all times those who fought with an unjust heaven had ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... studied and played upon the passions and weaknesses of his fellows, possibly for their good, but always as a magician might deal with the beings subject to his power. By what strange lapse did he thus naively lay ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... but something else as well," muttered Trudolyubov, naively taking my part. "You are not hard enough upon it. It was simply rudeness—unintentional, of course. And how could ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... in funeral display is naively exhibited in the portrayal of the girl when she "in her coffin sat, and did admire her winding sheet," before she related her experiences "among lonesome wild deserts and briary woods, which dismal were and dark." But immediately after her description ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... naively-told episode of Our Lady's method of repaying money lent on her security, is not without parallels, some of which ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... plucked and turned over to a subsidized police if they protest; where hundreds of pure girls are entrapped, drugged and ruined every day of the world. These social ulcers are so protrusive, have been written up so frequently by enterprising young reporters who naively supposed that to expose was to suppress, that even optimistic Dr. Talmage must at least be cognizant that such places exist,—even in Brooklyn, which enjoys the supernal blessing of his direct ministrations, and from which moral Mecca his sounding sentences ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... he would be in life, her little Ramuntcho, so coddled formerly in his white gown and for whom she had formed naively so many dreams: a smuggler! Smuggler and pelota player,—two things which go well together ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... denied, in favor of a pantheistic view which points forward to the modern period. Side by side with the assertion that there is no proportion whatever between the infinite and the finite, the following naively presents itself, in open contradiction to the former: God excels the reason just as much as the latter is superior to the understanding, and the understanding to sensibility, or he is related to thought ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... cousins at Los Osos Rancho to-night, but comes here to-morrow for a visit. She knows the place well; in fact, she once had a romantic love affair here. But she is very entertaining. It will be a little change for us," she added, naively. ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... interruption, and exclaim to himself, "What in hell am I talking about?" And a momentary awe would overcome him—the awe of listening to himself give utterance to fantastic ideas that he knew had no existence in him—a cynical magician watching a white rabbit he had never seen before crawl naively out of his own sleeve. Thus his phrases assembled themselves on his tongue and pirouetted of their own ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... to hide a touch of embarrassment. Jim was not trying to flatter; she saw he was naively following a ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... have to go to New York or Europe FIRST, you know," she answered, naively, "even if it were all settled. I should have to get things! ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... esteems it better to write a new book, covering some untouched portion of his scheme, than to give to an earlier volume the revision which in the light of his matured convictions it may need. His philosophical limitations he never transcended. He does not so naively offer a substitute for philosophy as does Comte. But he was no master in philosophy. There is a reflexion of the consciousness of this ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... a pleasant joke; and I am bound to say that his bearing was so admirable that if he had been my son I could have hugged him. 'Good!' he answered. 'No doubt your sword is as sharp as your wits, sir. I see,' he continued, glancing naively at my old scabbard—he was himself the very gem of a courtier, a slender youth with a pink-and-white complexion, a dark line for a moustache, and a pearl-drop in his ear—'it is longing to be out. Perhaps you will take a turn in ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... The manner in which some tried to get out of the affair was quite characteristic. This one played the part of an injured man, and growled out, that no body had a right to ask him as long as he kept his peace; that one naively declared, that he had believed the old, but now he must believe the new; a third, that he would teach nothing bad, that he could understand neither Greek nor Hebrew, and it were well if these languages had ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... set out for London once more. Here he started as a hosier in St. Paul's Churchyard, lodging meantime in the house of a milliner, where he fell in love with one of the apprentices, Miss Griffiths, 'a native of Wales.' His affections were won, we are naively informed in the Memoir, by the young woman's talent in the preparation of a vegetable pie. This is our first glimpse of Lady Phillips—'a quiet, respectable woman,' whom Borrow was to meet at dinner long years ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... met hers with an innocent sort of deprecating consciousness. "I—I never thought about myself in that way before," admitted Mollie, naively. ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sensitized matter at times appearing grotesque, dimly lit, although never flimsy. This pedantic, pictorial, even scholarly system by our revered writer adopted, is bent, applied to meet extreme passes of imaginative perfection and delicacy. The picture is naively introduced and obscurely, somewhat trenchantly elaborated, allows itself to be apologetically understood; whilst in succession the lower taste for animal sentiment is sorcerized by vivid flashes of captivating ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... our poor orphans were housed," said Father Bowles naively. "For the last three months some of our dear nuns have ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Yes," said Irma naively, "Bela promised me all that if I gave you to him: and I think that he is honest and will keep to ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... regarded as a retrogression toward a barbarous past, as a relapse to the level of primitive animism? If so, we should be deceived by appearances. Religions do not fall back into infancy as they grow old. The pagans of the fourth century no longer naively considered their gods as capricious genii, as the disordered powers of a confused natural philosophy; they conceived them as cosmic energies whose providential action was regulated in a harmonious system. Faith was no longer instinctive and impulsive, ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... the greater part of two hours, but absolutely in vain, and then got up, and suggested going home to luncheon. She added naively: "I thought they must have something wrong about them, and I am quite sure of it now, or I ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... conventional doctrines, not expressing my own beliefs.) This direction towards an object is commonly regarded as typical of every form of cognition, and sometimes of mental life altogether. We may distinguish two different tendencies in traditional psychology. There are those who take mental phenomena naively, just as they would physical phenomena. This school of psychologists tends not to emphasize the object. On the other hand, there are those whose primary interest is in the apparent fact that we have KNOWLEDGE, that there is a world surrounding us of which we are ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... of a young man from the Five Towns, who comes up London to seek his fortune. He is grossly ignorant of life and naively curious about love. This is the history of his adventures towards love and ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... know the strictness of your principles," he answered, naively, "I should think that you wished either to give me ideas which I deny myself, or else to tear a secret from me. But perhaps you are ...
— Study of a Woman • Honore de Balzac
... with delight, as she caught sight of the old man, hatless, and with his white hair flying, running down the path. Then turning, back to Ralph, she said, naively: ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... defendant as the increase of these heifers: now he demands between thirty and forty. When asked why he only claimed twenty, as nobody denies that the produce of the heifers has increased to double that number, he says naively, but without hesitation, that there is a fee to be paid of a shilling a head on such a claim if established, and that he only had twenty shillings in the world; so, as he remarked with a knowing twinkle ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... vain, commonplace—as commonplace as I am myself when I am sorting ancestors for my autobiography. She combs out some creditable Scots, and labels them and sets them aside for use, not overlooking the one to whom Sir William Wallace gave "a heavy sword encased in a brass scabbard," and naively explaining which Sir William Wallace it was, lest we get the wrong one by the hassock; this is the one "from whose patriotism and bravery comes that heart-stirring air, 'Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled.'" Hannah ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in doubt, for a more complacently incapable damsel never went a-voyaging. The Saracen maiden who followed her English lover from the Holy Land by crying "London" and "A Becket" was scarce so impotent as Placidia; for any information the Saracen maiden had she retained, while Placidia naively admitted that she had already forgotten by which line of steamers her passage through the Mediterranean ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... of those who looked upon Germans as barbarians. Experience had shown him that ordinary Germans had plenty of human kindness. He sniffed the pleasant odors that came from the kitchen automobiles near by, and remarked naively that he would be glad to share their rations until ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to talk of M. Lenoble, dear," she would say naively, when she had entertained Diana with the minute details of her last conversation with her lover, or a lively sketch of the delights of that ideal cottage which she loved to furnish and unfurnish in accordance with the ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... minute directions for the figures, costume, and attitude of the sacred characters, and for the preparation of many hundreds of historical subjects required for the decoration of churches. The artist, when solicited by M. Didron to sell "cette bible de son art," naively refused, on the simple ground that "s'il se depouillait de ce livre, il ne pourrait plus rien faire; en perdaut son Guide, il perdait son art, il perdait ses yeux et ses mains" (ib. p. xxiii.). It was not till the fifteenth century that ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent |
