"Naivete" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... watch her approach and her departure. There was something irresistibly feminine about Lulu's flight. She herself seemed to appreciate this. If anybody looked at her, she exhibited her accomplishments with an eagerness that had a charming touch of naivete. She dipped and dove endlessly. She dealt in little darts and rushes, bird-like in their speed and grace. She never flew high, but, on her level, her activity ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... language, the work, for the most part, not only reading like the production of a native, but of one familiar with the most intimate resources of idiomatic English. A very few exceptions to this remark in some portions of the dialogue, whose naivete atones for their inaccuracy, only present the general purity of the composition in a more striking light. We sincerely trust that the writer, who has been so happily distinguished in the field of literary research, will be induced, by ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... humbug? I said, before, that you should have a history of these people by Dickens or Theodore Hook, but there is little need of professed wags;—do not the men write their own tale with an admirable Sancho-like gravity and naivete, which one could not desire improved? How good is that touch of sly indignation about the LITTLE CATAFALQUES! how rich the contrast presented by the economy of the Catholics to the splendid disregard of expense exhibited by ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... news of her. She is the coming sensation. They say she is very rich, but quite one of the people, you know: in fact, she makes no scruples of telling you her father was a blacksmith, I think, and takes the dear old man with her everywhere. FitzHarry raves about her, and says her naivete is something too delicious. She is regularly in with some of the best people already. Lady Dungeness has taken her up, and Northforeland is only waiting for your cousin's engagement to be able to go over decently. ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... becoming white ones—to all of which he was witness. After that the card-playing by the camp fire, during which the chief came to his tent, and did what he could to draw him. In this part of his narration, the mulatto with modest naivete, hints of his own adroitness; how he threw his inquisitor off the scent, and became at length disembarrassed of him. He is even more reticent about an incident, soon after succeeding, but referred to it at an early part ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... to isle over a sunny sea, dallying with the time, secure of a cloudless sky and of the greetings of innocence and love wheresoever the breeze may waft us. There is in truth a holy purity, an innocent naivete, a childlike grace and simplicity, a freshness, a fearlessness, an utter freedom from affectation, a yearning after all things truthful, lovely and of good report, in the productions of this early time, which invest them with a charm peculiar in its kind, and which few even ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... ago, wasn't it?—a long time, as political incidents or accidents go. But Washington hasn't forgotten. When I was down there last winter the five-o'clock-tea people were still recalling Mrs. Blount's gowns and the wild-Western naivete ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... his favourite subject. Such a little ark, on such a hazy morning, and such a little pigeon—the rest of the picture being cheap sky, and still cheaper sea; nothing, I have often heard him say, was more popular than this with his clients. He held it to be his masterpiece, but would add with some naivete that he considered himself a public benefactor for carrying it out in such perishable fashion. "At any rate," he would say, "no one can bequeath one of my ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... as I have said; but I am a daughter and sister first, patriot later. In a fit of meaningless bravado, tempered perhaps by some compulsion from over the border, my old father and brothers had joined a rebel commando. You, with a naivete which I had hardly expected in you, and for which I liked you, told me the objective of your column—information which meant everything to me, and perhaps to you, for you looked as if you would have liked to have bitten ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... course by the side of the ladies, who, sensible of his extreme attention to their safety, began to converse with him in almost the tone of familiar friendship, and appeared to take great pleasure in the naivete, yet shrewdness, of his conversation. Yet Quentin did not suffer the fascination of this intercourse to interfere with the vigilant discharge of ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... up, and walked over to the door that opened on to the court. Suddenly she stopped as if rooted to the sill: she caught sight of Philippina, who was then sitting by the window mending a pair of socks. On her face there was an expression of naivete that may be harmless in itself, but it was ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... where Miss MARIE LOeHR (looking rather like a nice Dutch doll) delivered the blunt gaucheries of Remnant with a delightfully stolid naivete, the design of the play and its simple little devices might almost have been the work of amateurs. The sordid quarrels between Tony and his preposterous mistress (whom I took to be a model, till I found that he was ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... naivete, and Wolsey's lips wore a smile, as he plucked the king by the sleeve and took him over to the window, out ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... naivete of Leblanc seems to have been mitigated by duplicity. He went on with the general pacification of the world as if the Balkan submission was made in absolute good faith, and he announced the disbandment of the force ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... last four months came pelting. Anthony fairly opened his heart. At first, listening to the bare truth told with the confident naivete of disbelief, Valerie felt as though she were cheating the blind. After a little, this sense of shabbiness was suddenly supplanted by a perfect torment of apprehension lest Anthony should detect her hypocrisy. Presently, before her breathless interest ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... head and body. Hair of scalp fine. Brows and lashes scarce, trunk elongated and cylindrical. Limbs thick and plump, tapering from the root to the extremities. Good fat layers over the entire body. Reproductive organs those of a little boy. Infantile mental state: light-heartedness, naivete, timidity, easily evoked tears and laughter, promptly aroused but fugitive wrath: excessive tenderness, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... of a more sophisticated class, Jean had at first taken her naivete for the height of subtlety. He was always expecting her to betray herself. But after that evening with her he changed. Just such simplicity had been his wife's. Sometimes Sara Lee reminded him of her—the upraising of her eyes ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in the collections of Hakluyt and Purchas, this book of Raleigh's takes easily the foremost position. In comparison with the bluff and dull narratives of the other discoverers, whose chief charm is their naivete, the Discovery of Guiana has all the grace and fullness of deliberate composition, of fine literary art, and as it was the first excellent piece of sustained travellers' prose, so it remained long without a second in our literature. The brief examples which it has alone been possible to ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... this beautiful ode in his nineteenth idyl; but is very inferior, I think, to his original, in delicacy of point and naivete of expression. Spenser, in one of his smaller compositions, has sported more diffusely on the same subject. The poem to which I ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... technique of older literatures. But, perhaps because of this very limitation, it is much more alert to the variety and life of the human substance with which it deals. It does not take the whole of life for granted and it often reveals the fresh naivete of childhood in its discovery of life. When its sophistication is complete, it is the sophistication of English rather than of American literature, and is derivative rather than original, for the most part, in its criticism of life. I would specifically ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... water to carry out his relief work and was lavishly generous to German soldiers or civilians if thereby he might save time and set aside impediments. He took a strong liking to Bertie, though he showed it little outwardly. The latter probably in his naivete and directness unveiled his full purpose to this gum-chewing, grey-eyed American. When the news of Mrs. Warren's death had reached Bertie through a circuitous course—Praed-Honoria-Rossiter—he had modified his scheme and at the same time had become still more ardent about carrying it into ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... when we were all gathered together. Yank and I did the listening and Talbot the interpellating. Johnny swarmed all over himself like a pickpocket, and showed us everything he had in the way of history, manners, training, family, pride, naivete, expectations and hopes. He prided himself on being a calm, phlegmatic individual, unemotional and not easily excited, and he constantly took this attitude. It was a ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... lightened by the gay chat of one of the party, who, with the excellent practical sense of mature experience, and the kindest heart, united a naivete and innocence such as I never saw in any other who had walked so long life's tangled path. Like a child, she was everywhere at home, and like a child, received and bestowed entertainment from all places, all ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... efficiently and in content. Edwin filled the house with newspapers, and she never looked at them, never had the idea of looking at them, unless occasionally at the 'Signal' for an account of a wedding or a bazaar. In which case she would glance at the world for an instant with mild naivete, shocked by the horrible things that were apparently going on there, and in five minutes would forget all about it again. Here the whole of England, Ireland, and Scotland was at its front doors that night waiting for newsboys, and to her the night ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... year and a half of ideal happiness Ruyler, in what leisure he could command, found Helene's rapidly expanding mind as companionable as he had hoped; and the girlish dignity she never lost, for all her naivete and vivacity, gratified his pride and compelled, upon their second brief visit to New York, even the unqualified ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Mrs. Thomas's dressmaking shop. Those formal phrases, the very flower of small-town proprieties, and the flat commonplaces, nearly all hypocritical in their origin, became very funny, very engaging, when they were uttered in Lena's soft voice, with her caressing intonation and arch naivete. Nothing could be more diverting than to hear Lena, who was almost as candid as Nature, call a leg a "limb" or a house ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... moment that you are "only a woman." If you marry him he will expect to rule everywhere except in the kitchen, and as you value a quiet life you had better take care that the kitchen produces what pleases him. On occasion he will assert his authority with some violence and naivete. No one can be long amongst Germans, or even read many German novels, without coming across instances of what I mean. For example, there was once a quarrel between lovers that all turned upon a second glass of champagne. The girl did not want it, and the man insisted that she should drink it whether ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... the most engaging sentiment, and the most refin'd simplicity of manners; but he wants that rustic wildness and naivete in delineation characteristic of the Sicilian, and of the ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... These were the materials which Kalidasa, the Attic dramatists, and the bards of the Nibelungen found ready, awaiting their artistic treatment. But the mythology of the New World, with all its pretty and agreeable naivete, affords hardly enough, either of variety in situation or of complexity in motive, for a grand epic ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... of the children she wished to have. I don't know why they never had any children—not that I really believe that children would have made any difference. The dissimilarity of Edward and Leonora was too profound. It will give you some idea of the extraordinary naivete of Edward Ashburnham that, at the time of his marriage and for perhaps a couple of years after, he did not really know how children are produced. Neither did Leonora. I don't mean to say that this state of things continued, but there it was. I dare say it ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... you know,—I loved him dearly, but papa sent him away. Then there was Dick, the groom; but he laughed at me, and I suffered misery!" and she struck a tragic French attitude. "There is to be company here to-morrow," she added, rattling on with childish naivete, "and papa's sweetheart— Blanche Marabout—is to be here. You know they say she is ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... definite character which impresses its force upon everybody; beautiful in her old age, disdaining that servile conformity to prevailing fashion which makes many old people at once ugly and contemptible: speaking English with a slight, old- fashioned, refined Scotch accent, which gives naivete to everything she says, up to the latest novelty in theology and politics: devoted to her children and grandchildren, the life of the family, and though upwards of seventy, the first to rise, and the last to retire in the house. She ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... the "free agreement" of the bourgeois entrepreneur is, and we can only admire the "absolute" naivete of the man who sees in it the precursor of communism. It is exactly this Anarchic "arrangement" that must be got rid of in order that the producers may cease to be the slaves ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... above his equals and followed his former simple mode of life. The emperor of Austria sent him a golden chain and three thousand ducats, the first money received by the Tyrol from Austria; but Hofer's pride was not raised by this mark of favor, and the naivete of his reply on this occasion has often been a subject of ridicule: "Sirs, I thank you. I have no news for you to-day. I have, it is true, three couriers on the road, the Watscher-Hiesele, the Sixten-Seppele, and the Memmele-Franz, and the Schwanz ought long to have been here; I expect ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... naivete and superstition, in assuming a freer attitude towards theological authority, and in developing a new conception of the value of individual personality, men looked to the guidance of Greek and Roman ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... but it comes out with delicious naivete in the working classes. Now, educated people like to read of scenes that are familiar to them, though I grant you that the picture must be idealised if you're to appeal to more than one in a thousand. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... her companion closely,—evidently Mlle. Fouchette was in earnest. Such naivete in a ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... not been prepared for a powerful and sympathetic personality, that curious mixture of naivete and hard sophistication, and she had ascribed her interest in him to curiosity in exploring what to her was a completely foreign type. In her own naivete it had never occurred to her that men outside her class were gentlemen as she understood the term, and she ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Victor Hugo. When his name is mentioned it is equivalent to hoisting the flag of Norway. In his noble qualities and in his faults, in his genius and in his weak points, he as thoroughly bears the stamp of Norway as Voltaire bore that of France. His boldness and his naivete, his open-heartedness as a man and the terseness of his style as an artist, the highly wrought and sensitive Norwegian popular sentiment, and the lively consciousness of the one-sidedness and the intellectual needs of his fellow-countrymen that has driven him to Scandinavianism, Pan-Teutonism, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... "and what has happened to me? The woman on whose bosom my child rested is the most abandoned of creatures. I loved her just as if she belonged to another world—a world of innocence. And now I am satisfied that she was the go-between, and that her naivete was a mere mask concealing an unparalleled hypocrite. I imagined that truth and purity still dwelt in the simple rustic world—but everything is perverted and corrupt. The world of simplicity is base; aye, far worse ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... kept it uncommonly well," was the involuntary reply, which, in its extreme honesty and naivete, was perhaps the best thing that Hilary ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... North there are, I believe, no men who would make such a boast; but I think there are many women—beautiful, fascinating lazzaroni of the parlor and boudoir—who make their boast of elegant helplessness and utter incompetence for any of woman's duties with equal naivete. The Spartans made their slaves drunk, to teach their children the evils of intoxication; and it seems to be the policy of a large class in the South now to keep down and degrade the only working class they have, for the sake of teaching ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Lord St. George would not take him!" rejoined the good-hearted Sir Christopher, with forcible naivete. "No, no, Linden, we must not be so hard-hearted; we must forgive and forget;" and so saying, the baronet threw out his chest, with the conscious exultation of a man who has uttered a noble sentiment. The moral of this little history is that Lord St. George, having been pillaged "through ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for his hero, and was very proud of Sancho Panza. It would have been strange indeed if he had not been proud of the most humorous creation in all fiction. He was proud, too, of the popularity and success of the book, and beyond measure delightful is the naivete with which he shows his pride in a dozen passages in the Second Part. But it was not the success he coveted. In all probability he would have given all the success of "Don Quixote," nay, would have seen every copy of "Don Quixote" ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... de Galland. Abondant sans etre prolixe, naturel et familier sans etre lache ni trivial, il ne manque jamais de cette elegance qui resulte de la facilite, et qui presente je ne sais quel melange de la naivete de Perrault et de la bonhomie ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... of erotic novels was rather pink about the gills. He wondered how much of the girl's naivete was natural and how much pose. On the whole, judging from her antecedents and environment, he decided that it was largely pose, but thought none the less of her for that. The artificial always interested him more ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... crossing. He always called her his "little girl," though she was by no means little in the ordinary acceptation of the word, being at least sixteen, and rather tall for her years. But there was a sort of freshness and naivete and youthfulness about her which made him use that adjective. She usually carried a pile of books in a strap, so he conjectured that she must be coming from school, and, ever since he had first seen her, she had worn the same rough blue serge dress, ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... a woman is intriguing in its very naivete, and now as she stood before me, slim and graceful in her well-cut walking costume, a quick flicker of red flaming in her cheeks and her eyes alight with that sweet tantalizing look in which expectation ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... also prompts them to eliminate all good qualities from the god of their superiors; they make revenge on their masters by making a devil of the latter's god.—The good god, and the devil like him—both are abortions of decadence.—How can we be so tolerant of the naivete of Christian theologians as to join in their doctrine that the evolution of the concept of god from "the god of Israel," the god of a people, to the Christian god, the essence of all goodness, is to be described as progress?—But ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... in the spring, certainly, and why? Because we feel. And because that man is a duffer who thinks the creative artist is allowed to feel. Every genuine and sincere artist smiles at the naivete of this bungler's error—sadly perhaps, but he does smile. For what one says must of course never be the first consideration, but the ingredients, indifferent in themselves, from which the esthetic product ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... house came to clear away, and the band being there, I stopped them and bade them tune up, and at the same time seizing the maid Wheedle, away we flew. We danced, we whirled, we twirled. Ale upon this! My head was lost. "Why don't it last for ever?" says I. "I wish it did," says she. The naivete enraptured me. "Oooo!" I cried, hugging her, and then, you know, there was no course open to a man of honour but to offer marriage and make a lady of her. I proposed: she accepted me, and here I am, eternally tied to this ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the first of many outbursts of confidence. Afterward she related to Clelie, with the greatest naivete, the whole history of ...
— Esmeralda • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... how Jim Hooker had personated him stopped short upon Clarence's lips. He could not bring himself now to add that revelation to the contempt of his small companion, which, in spite of its naivete, somewhat ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... of silence in which Darrell studied the face before him; the same, yet not the same, as on that summer night. The childlike naivete, the charming piquancy, had given place to a sweet seriousness, but it was more tender, ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... eagerly and awestruck. His eyes burned with a beautiful radiance. Leaning forward on the table he moved nearer to his mother, and looking straight into her face, wet with tears, he delivered his first speech to her about the truth which he had now come to understand. With the naivete of youth, and the ardor of a young student proud of his knowledge, religiously confiding in its truth, he spoke about everything that was clear to him, and spoke not so much for his mother as to verify and strengthen his own opinions. At ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... in Germany, was obliged to give his attention to it during his stay. The prominent men of Gaul presented vigorous complaints to him against Licinius and his administration. Then there occurred an episode that, recounted three centuries later with a certain naivete by Dion Cassius, has been overlooked by the historians, but which seems to me to be of prime interest in the history of the Latin world. ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... was the fascinating naivete of the Eastern woman, and Miska had all the suave grace, too, which belongs to the women of the Orient, so that many admiring glances followed her charming figure as she crossed the room to ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... Andrews, James accompanied him, and acted as Prof. of Hebrew and Oriental Languages. He wrote many poems, but his chief work was his Diary, an original authority for the period, written with much naivete, and revealing a singularly attractive personality. M., who for his part in Church matters, had been banished to England, d. at Berwick on his way back ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... which can only do her harm. I stayed up till 20 minutes past 9." Madame de Sevigne's letters, which the Baroness read aloud, met with more approval. "How truly elegant and natural her style is! It is so full of naivete, cleverness, and grace." But her highest admiration was reserved for the Bishop of Chester's 'Exposition of the Gospel of St. Matthew.' "It is a very fine book indeed. Just the sort of one I like; which is just plain and comprehensible and full of truth and good feeling. It is not one of ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... not trouble about the police, but could calmly consider the question of going elsewhere, as he found no inducement to take part in an insurrection conducted in such a slovenly fashion. While he walked about, smoking his cigar, and making fun of the naivete of the Dresden revolution, I watched the Communal Guards assembling under arms in front of the Town Hall at the summons of their commandant. From the ranks of its most popular corps, the Schutzen-Compagnie, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... corsage, and a cluster of roses in her belt, she was as inconsistent and incongruous to the others as a fashion-plate would have been in the dry and dog-eared pages before them. Yet she carried it off with a demure mingling of the naivete of youth and the aplomb of a woman, and as she swept down the narrow aisle, burying a few small wondering heads in the overflow of her flounces, there was no doubt of her reception in the arch smile that ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... present in sufficient numbers to animate the front steps of the Main Building with constantly gathering and dissolving little groups. These called out greetings to each other, and exchanged dolorous mutual condolences on their hard fate; all showing, with a helpless masculine naivete, their consciousness of the lovely, observant figure in the carriage below them. Of a different sort were the professors' wives, who occasionally drifted past on the path. Aunt Victoria might have been a blue-uniformed messenger-boy for all that was betrayed by their skilfully casual glance at her ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... downstairs was not asleep, she could hear him coughing. He is a queer, naive man, thought Nadya, and in all his dreams, in all those marvellous gardens and wonderful fountains one felt there was something absurd. But for some reason in his naivete, in this very absurdity there was something so beautiful that as soon as she thought of the possibility of going to the university, it sent a cold thrill through her heart and her bosom and flooded them with ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Sheila, with refreshing naivete. 'How does it feel? does it even in the slightest degree ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... Franklin's loyalist grandson, and had been cut and tortured into the pompous, stilted periods that were supposed to befit the dignity of so important a personage. When John Bigelow published the original with all its naivete and homely turns of phrases and suppressed passages, he shed a flood of light upon ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... Naivete.—Naivete is the language of pure genius and of discerning simplicity. It is the most simple picture of a refined and ingenious idea; a masterpiece of art in him in ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... it generally refreshing. His family accepts the situation with perfect naivete. I am welcomed as Doro's chum with all ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... impressions, correlation of those impressions into a connected body of phenomena, and final interpretation of them as a whole are, have been, and always will be the marks of the enduring in all literature, whether poetry or prose." [Footnote: Lewis Worthington Smith, "The New Naivete," Atlantic, April, 1916.] To quote another critic: "A rock, a star, a lyre, a cataract, do not, except incidentally and indirectly, owe their command of our sympathies to the bare power of evoking reactions in a series of ocular ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... look for him there, and find him too, and save him," exclaimed Paganel. "Ah, precious document," he added, with perfect NAIVETE, "you must own you have fallen into the ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... Now he told Mrs. Snyder that he had never heard a lecture which seemed to amuse an audience more than hers had done, and that he quite envied her because of her power of holding attention. Mrs. Snyder, with the last petal of her chocolate lily sweet upon her tongue, listened with such a naivete of acquiescence that she was really charming, and Von Rosen had spoken the truth. He had wondered, when he saw the eagerly tilted faces of the women, and heard their bursts of shrill laughter and clapping of hands, why he could ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... twelve thousand crowns." Then she said with naivete "It was not a great sum to carry on ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... frankness of her friendship was undisturbed by overmuch knowledge of her own attractions, and the possibility of less contentment on his side did not occur to her. Feeling herself so much older, in reality, than he, she assumed with delicious naivete, the role of confidant and general adviser. What time she could spare from Benis and the great Book she bestowed most generously ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Sweet naivete of feature, Simple, wild, enchanting elf, Not to thee, but thanks to nature, Thou art ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... into his arms and devour with kisses this sweet specimen of womanly tenderness, frank inconsistency, naivete, and archness. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... This naivete confused Mrs. Armine. For a moment it seemed to be pushing away her anger, to be drawing the sting from her curiosity. But then the childishness of this strange rival stirred up in her a more acrid bitterness than she had known till now. And the ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... Scenes are divided by slender Gothic columns, and other architectural features are tessellated floors and a sketchy sort of brick-work that appears wherever a limit-line is needed. It is the charming naivete of its drawing that delights. Border there is none, but its lack is never felt, for the pictures are of such interest that the eye needs no barrier to keep it from wandering. Whatever border is found is a varying structure of architecture and of ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... two exchanging glances, but then he threw in a jesting word and the thread was broken. He was playing for his life, and he played well, for he misled them with his cheerfulness and naivete, so that they could not tell whether he knew anything or not. He played ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... O'Connell twitted them with the obvious fact, that they gave no protection under their bill by day, although it was notorious that almost all the assassinations were then perpetrated. Mr Sidney Herbert is reported, with great naivete, and innocently enough, to have offered the following reasons for the omission:—"He could show from proofs before him, that the murders which were committed in broad day were, generally speaking, murders ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... General Brant," she went on, turning explanatorily to Boompointer, "married my adopted mother in California—at Robles, a dear old place where I spent my earliest years. So, you see, we are sort of relations by marriage," she added, with delightful naivete. ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... remained to be taken—it was necessary to burn all the incriminating evidence. On the 21st December, the last circular telegram in connection with this extraordinary business was dispatched from Peking, a delightful naivete being displayed regarding the possibility of certain letters and telegrams having transgressed the bounds of the law. All such delinquencies are to be mercifully wiped out by the simple and admirable method of invoking the ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... know the Kaiser," says Mr. Fisher, "the most amazing and amusing figure on the great stage of politics. The outlines of his character are familiar to everybody, for his whole life is spent in the full glare of publicity. We know his impulsiveness, his naivete, his heady fits of wild passion, his spacious curiosity and quick grasp of detail, his portentous lack of humour and delicacy, his childish vanity and domineering will. A character so romantic, spontaneous, and robust must always be a favourite with ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... daubing educated flattered girls in an age of luxury and a society of leisure. He noted that the water-colours on the walls of the room she sat in had mainly the quality of being naives, and reflected that naivete in art is like a zero in a number: its importance depends on the figure it is united with. Meanwhile, however, he had fallen in love with her. Before he went away, at any rate, he said to her: "I thought St. George was coming ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... whose writings have been the means of making "Dear Do'set" known to all the world. The monument of Lord Holles is remarkable for a comic cherub who is engaged in wiping his tears away with a wisp of garment; the naivete of the idea is amusing in more ways than one. Another curious monument, badly placed for inspection, is that of Sir John Williams. The so-called "crusaders" effigies are thought to be of a later date ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... to be forearmed, he was in reality unconscious of the degree to which he had proved susceptible to the lady's blandishments, if indeed she had employed blandishments and had not merely given him the evidence of a good heart upon which his youth and naivete had made a ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... is—contradictions multiply in his case—much of the child about Mr. Baruch, simple, trustful—outside of Wall Street,—incapable of concealment,—outside of Wall Street—of that which art has taught the rest of us to conceal. His humility makes him wonder; his naivete makes him talk quite frankly, unrestrained by the conventions that balk others. After all, is not wondering at yourself a sign of humility? A vain man, become great by luck, by force of circumstances, by the possession of gifts ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... Rigou, without replying to this naivete, "go over to Gaubertin's to-morrow morning. Tell him that my fellow-mayor and I" (striking Soudry on the thigh) "will break bread with him at breakfast somewhere about midday. Tell him everything, so that we may all have thought ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... and writing a polite little note. It was very short, and I tried not to make it too nice, and I said nothing at all about writing, only just remarked that it would be interesting to receive letters from India," said Bridgie, with a naivete which made Mademoiselle throw up her hands in delight. "He has written to me four times since then, and,"—her eyes began to dance, and a dimple danced mischievously in her cheek—"I enjoy writing to him so much that I answer ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... State, we must also remember that America was in many respects born full-grown, like Athena from the brain of Zeus, and cooerdinates in the most extraordinary way the shrewdness of the sage with the naivete of the child. Those who criticise the United States because, with the experience of all the ages behind her, she is in some points vastly defective as compared with the nations of Europe are as much mistaken ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... lives of all the saints are not history in the strictest sense of the word. But what has that to do with the Communion of Saints? If simplicity and naivete have woven around some names an unlikely tale, a fable or a myth, it requires some effort to see how that could affect their standing with God, or their disposition to help us ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... He therefore struck out in a path in which he has had no great followers; for the big men in Russian literature are all Realists. Romanticism is as foreign to the spirit of Russian Realism as it is to French Classicism. What is peculiarly Slavonic about Pushkin is his simplicity, his naivete. Though affected by foreign models, he was close to the soil. This is shown particularly in his prose tales, and it is here that his title as Founder of Russian Literature is most clearly demonstrated. He took Russia away from the artificiality of the eighteenth century, and exhibited ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... to decay. He may get a wider, a more penetrating, a more tolerant view of life; his style gain lucidity, impressiveness, incisiveness, pungency; but in the case of the poetical and the reflective writer it seems to me that something evaporates—some quite peculiar freshness, naivete, indiscreetness, which, can never be recaptured. Take a few typical instances. Coleridge lost the poetical gift altogether when he left his youth behind; Wordsworth wrote all his best poetry in a few early ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... intention had been translation rather than imitation and he would have abhorred the feeble new product, but this did not concern his successors— they were interested only in his technical principles. Moreover, in their naivete, they imagined they were improving on Jackson because their prints were counterfeit paintings while his ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... actually a pupil of Rembrandt. His much prized and rare genre pictures treat very simple subjects, and consist seldom of more than two or three figures, generally of women. The naivete and homeliness of his feeling, with the addition sometimes of a trait of kindly humour; the admirable lighting, and a touch resembling Rembrandt in impasto and vigour, render his pictures very attractive. ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... Giovanni Bellini's splendid Baptism of Christ, finished in 1510 for the Church of S. Corona at Vicenza, but which the younger artist might well have seen a year or two previously, while it was in the course of execution in the workshop of the venerable master? Apart from its fresh naivete, and its rare pictorial charm, how trivial and merely anecdotic does the conception of Titian appear by the side of that of Bellini, so lofty, so consoling in its serene beauty, in the solemnity of its sunset colour![16] Alone in ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... cried Mr. Elton, "but I must confess that I regard it as a most happy thought, the placing of Miss Smith out of doors; and the tree is touched with such inimitable spirit! Any other situation would have been much less in character. The naivete of Miss Smith's manners—and altogether—Oh, it is most admirable! I cannot keep my eyes from it. I never saw ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... inspecting the deadly instrument we discovered it to be loaded to the very muzzle, a mixture of pebbles, slugs, and bits of iron being crammed into the barrel over a charge of a couple of ounces of powder. On our inquiring why it was so heavily charged, the man told us with much naivete, that it was to kill nine men, illustrating the method by which this wholesale destruction was to be accomplished, by planting the butt on his hip and whirling the muzzle from right to left in a horizontal direction across us all, and telling us very ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... example!" decided Danvers, with a stern eye that did not deceive anyone. He was amused at her naivete, and had no wish to ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... token, did not escape the attention of the interviewer. Her appealing charm of face and figure was accentuated by her daintiness and a fleeting suggestion of naivete in poise and expression when she was amused. His first glance revealed to Haines that her eyes were gray, the gray that people say indicates the possessor to have those priceless qualities—the qualities that make the sweetest women true, that make the maiden's eyes in truth the windows ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... friend a service, devoted to his wife and her relations, and anxious to deal justly and honourably with all men. We have called him vain, and vain he undoubtedly was to an extraordinary degree. But Pliny's vanity is never offensive. The very naivete with which he acknowledges his failing disarms all criticism and merely renders it amusing. Indeed, it is doubtful whether he would have admitted that it was a failing at all, inasmuch as it was his love of praise which spurred him on to literary endeavour. The ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... long. So, too, it seems to us, despite all the rhythmical innovations of our time. The personality that could beat out exuberantly music as rhythmically various and terse and free must indeed have possessed a primitive naivete and vitality and spontaneity of impulse. What manifestation of unbridled will in that freedom of expression! Berlioz must have been blood-brother to the savage, the elemental creature who out of the dark and hidden needs of life itself invents ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... during which journey, his manner to Emily was so particularly severe, that this alone would have confirmed her late conjecture, had any such confirmation been necessary. Her senses were now dead to the beautiful country, through which she travelled. Sometimes she was compelled to smile at the naivete of Annette, in her remarks on what she saw, and sometimes to sigh, as a scene of peculiar beauty recalled Valancourt to her thoughts, who was indeed seldom absent from them, and of whom she could never hope to hear in the solitude, to which she ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... are often characterised by an astonishing naivete. "God being All-in-all, He made medicine," she tells us; "but that medicine was Mind. . . . It is plain that God does not employ drugs or hygiene, nor provide them for human use; else Jesus would have recommended and employed them ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... herself knew nothing of this plot. She besought the King to pardon the Constable,—a request which proves how great was her naivete. By royal command Richemont received back ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... which enabled her to compel obedience and repress the little evil that existed in the girl's soul. Mother and daughter had never been parted; thus Cecile had, what is more rare in young girls than is generally supposed, a purity of thought, a freshness of heart, and a naivete of nature, real, complete, ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... under like circumstances at court, would have made you famous," I said, pleased alike with her naivete and ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... refinement and good-breeding which the exquisite polish of his compositions would lead us to expect. He was always cheerful and animated, often, indeed, boisterous in his mirth; entered with spirit into convivial society; contributed largely to its enjoyments by solidity of information, and the naivete and originality of his character; talked often without premeditation, and ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... found a natural expression in the coffee house. Johnson was fifty-four and Boswell only twenty-three when the two first met in Tom Davies' book-shop in Covent Garden. The story is told by Boswell with great particularity and characteristic naivete: ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers |
