"Simplicity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has been a recognized function of the successive Mayors of San Francisco during this period; and the mystery surrounding it has been only lately divulged. It offers a touching and romantic instance of a survival of the old patriarchal duties of the former Alcaldes and the simplicity of pioneer days. It seems that, in the unsettled conditions of the Mexican land-titles that followed the American occupation, the consumptive widow of a scion of one of the oldest Californian families intrusted her property and the custody of her infant daughter virtually to the city of San Francisco, ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... presence is now rendered necessary. These elements are especially the ideas of politics, trade, commerce, and the liberal arts. Then for a moment under Servius an equilibrium seems to have been reached, and a religion to have been brought into being which was simple enough for the old lovers of simplicity and varied enough to satisfy the new demands of the community. But this was not for long, for the spiritual conquest of Rome by Greece began then, three centuries before the physical conquest of Greece by Rome. The hosts of Greek deities invaded and captured Rome under the leadership ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... What was more, he had, though he scarcely realized it, after all, only left behind in England a cramped life embittered by a steady shrinkage in the rent roll and as steady an increase in taxation and expenses. His present life was clean, and governed by a code of crude and austere simplicity. His mother's spirit was in him, and, being what he was, there were things he could not do. He did not attempt to reason about them. The knowledge was ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... never before seen anybody so handsome, or so finely dressed as the Count; and, in the simplicity of her coquetry, allowed her satisfaction to be quite visible. Nothing could be more clumsy than the gentleman's mode of complimenting her; but for this, perhaps, his speeches were more effective than others more delicate would have been; and though she said to each, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... approval, and looked enquiringly at his daughter; Bent-Anat's eyes met his with a glance of intelligence, and with all the simplicity of an impulsive child, she took from her head the wreath that had decorated her beautiful hair, went up to Pentaur, and crowned him with it, as it was customary for a bride to crown her lover ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... past, two or three of the clergy of the established church in the city of Berne, have preached the doctrines of the gospel, as exhibited in the standards of the church, with simplicity and faithfulness. Much interest was thus excited in a small number of persons, several of whom were among the class of patricians, and the result might be termed a little revival. Public attention was called to it, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... description. He looked at the plain rush carpet, the swords and foils which were almost his sole decoration upon the walls, the humble appointments of his dressing-table. Everything was scrupulously neat and clean, stern and soldier-like in simplicity. What a change was before him. From here to the royal palace of Theos, where a chamberlain would wait upon him with bended knee, and the small etiquette of a Court would hamper his every movement. The ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... idea of the simplicity of life here," l'Honorable philosophised. "We dwell as peacefully, in general, and almost as much in one spot as these great trees. After all, is there any condition in which mortal existence is happier than that of pure air and tranquility. ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... the stocks and bonds," said Maggie to herself, as she steeled her heart against his winning face and his manly simplicity of manner. She tried to say something about the sea and the view, but he looked at her earnestly, and said, in a ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... point and will select details that bear a helpful relation to it. If he wishes to present the picture of a valley, he will lay emphasis on its fundamental image and essential details with reference to its appearance; but if his desire is to present the impression of fertility or of rural simplicity and quiet, the elements that are important for the producing of the desired impression may not be at all the ones essential to ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... Terebra, from New Caledonia. They are extremely tapering cones, attaining almost nine inches in length. Their surface is smooth and quite plain, without any of the usual ornaments, such as furrows, knots or strings of pearls. The spiral edifice is superb, graced with its own simplicity alone. I count a score of whorls which gradually decrease until they vanish in the delicate point. They are edged with a ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... way along the crowded pavement unconcerned and practically unobserved, was white with ashes and was beating a piece of iron as a wayward child might be doing. He was followed by a boy, but no effort was made to collect alms. It is true philosophy to be prepared to live in such a state of simplicity. Most of the problems of life would dissolve and vanish if one could reduce one's needs to the frugality of a fakir. I have thought often of him since I returned, in London, to all the arrears of work ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... that the childish mind that had power to converse for trivial things had, as yet, no word for the not-trivial; that the blind womanly emotion on which he had trodden had as yet no counterpart in womanly thought, which might have formed excuses for his conduct, or at least have comprehended its simplicity. He only felt uneasily that her former cause of contention with him, her determination, sudden as her father's death, to leave the only home she possessed, was now enforced by her antagonism to the suggestion he had made of a future marriage, and ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... shells of the jacket are braced together by a large number of rivets, RR; and the top, or crown, is strengthened by heavy longitudinal girders riveted to it, or is braced to the top of the boiler by long bolts. A large number of fire-tubes (only three are shown in the diagram for the sake of simplicity) extend from the fire-box to the smoke-box. The most powerful "mammoth" American locomotives have 350 or more tubes, which, with the fire-box, give 4,000 square feet of surface for the furnace heat to act upon. These tubes are expanded at their ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... clothes is futile. Almost before this page comes from the printer, the trend may quite likely change. But the tendency of the moment is toward greater simplicity—in effect ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... in church had been scarcely less brilliant, and even without her sister's request she had gazed at it, but how entirely different it was! There she had rejoiced in her own modest garb, and told herself that her simplicity was more pleasing to God and the saints than the vain splendour of the others, which she might so easily have imitated or even surpassed. But here the anxious question of how she appeared among the rest of the company forced ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... reputation, and his words have peculiar significance. Grant had received him with a sort of filial kindness, making him at home in his quarters, and opening his mind and his purposes to him with his characteristic modesty and simplicity of manner. Hunter says: "I saw him almost every moment, except when sleeping, of the three weeks I spent in Chattanooga.... He is a hard worker, writes his own dispatches and orders, and does his own thinking. He is modest, quiet, never swears, and seldom drinks, as he took only two ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... "Ah, foolish and insensible people!" he exclaimed in his latest hours, "what will become of you? Who will relieve your miseries? Who will heal you?" When recommended to make his last will, he answered, with apostolic simplicity—"God knows, out of all my revenues, I have not a single coin to bequeath." And thus on the 11th day of November, 1180, in the 48th year of his age, under the shelter of a Norman roof, surrounded by Norman mourners, the Gaelic statesman-saint ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... was expected from her drew out her hitherto undeveloped powers of conversation, and enabled me day by day to appreciate more thoroughly the real intelligence and soundness of judgment concealed at first by her shyness, and still somewhat obscured by her childlike simplicity and absolute inexperience. In the latter respect, however, she was, of course, at the less disadvantage with a stranger to the manners and life of her world. A more perfectly charming companion it would ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... this letter the Superioress conferred not with flesh and blood, but sent for Mrs. Ginx. That worthy woman was not enchanted with her child's position. I have hinted that her faith was simple, but in proportion to its simplicity it was strongly-rooted in her nature. 'Tis not infrequent to find it so. Lengthy creeds and confessions of faith are apt to extend the strength and fervor of belief over too wide a surface. In the close frame of some single article will be concentrated the whole energy of the soul. The first formula, ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... in passing through that ordeal of gratulation which is sure to attend her steps in every part of our country; and I am persuaded that we cannot manifest our gratitude for her past services in any way more acceptable to herself than by earnest prayer on her behalf that she may be kept in the simplicity of Christ, enjoying in her daily experience the tender consolations of the Divine Spirit, and in the midst of the most flattering commendations saying and feeling, in the instincts of a renewed heart, 'Not unto me, O Lord, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... the whole affair stuck in Lloyd's imagination. There was a primitiveness, a certain hideous simplicity in the way Bennett had met the situation that filled her with wonder and with even a little terror and mistrust of him. The vast, brutal directness of the deed was out of place and incongruous at this end-of-the-century time. It ignored two thousand years of civilisation. It was a harsh, ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... thought proves true the whole basis of my life falls to the ground. We are beings of a different culture. Our souls are full of Gothic arches, pinnacles, twisted traceries we cannot shake off, and of which Greek minds knew nothing. Our minds shoot upward; theirs, full of repose and simplicity, rested nearer the earth. Those of us in whom the spirit of Hellas beats more powerfully consider the beautiful a necessity of life, and search after it eagerly, but instinctively demand that Aspasia should have the eyes ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... was taken up with delight, and the child spent an eager hour in penning the letter. It was pathetic in its simplicity. The little sufferer told the great exhibitor that he was sick in bed, was unable to see the Indians when they passed the hospital, and that he longed to see a photograph ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... remarked, that Palamon was so justly drawn as a lover, that he must have been in love indeed; that Arcite was a right martial knight, having a swart and manly countenance, yet with the aspect of a Venus clad in armour: that the lovely Emilia was a virgin of uncorrupted purity and unblemished simplicity; and that though she sung so sweetly, and gathered flowers alone in the garden, she preserved her chastity undeflowered. The part of Emilia, the only female part in the play, was acted by a boy of fourteen, whose performance ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... judicial system were once numerous and extremely complex. As reconstituted, however, by the great Judicature Act of 1873, which, together with an Amending Act, took effect near the close of 1875, they have acquired a considerable degree of orderliness and even of simplicity. The measure of 1873 abolished the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords, but the Amending Act three years later rescinded this modification, and, as has been explained elsewhere, the House of Lords is still a court of ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... her boudoir, writing down some notes previous to beginning her wedding toilet, which was designed to harmonize with the simplicity that characterized the other arrangements. She owned that it was depriving the neighbourhood of a pageant which it had a right to expect of her; but ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... us, it will be simply perfect!" they told each other when they settled down for the night in their hard little cots. They said that many times in the days that followed. The utter joy of work and freedom and simplicity ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... the time of my visit, about twenty vehicles of all sorts and descriptions, from the Colonel's magnificent barouche to the rude cart drawn by a single two-horned quadruped, filled the openings. There was a rustic simplicity about the whole scene that charmed me. The low, rude church, the grand old pines that towered in leafy magnificence around it, and the soft, low wind, that sung a morning hymn in the green, wavy woods, seemed to lift ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... thirty and forty, tall, very goodlooking, sympathetic, intelligent, tender and humorous, dressed with cunning simplicity not as a businesslike, tailor made, gaitered tourist, but as if she lived at the next cottage and had dropped in for tea in blouse and flowered straw hat. A woman of great vitality and humanity, who begins a casual acquaintance ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... and much good may it do him; and if, as when I was mad I had a share in giving him the government of an island, so, now that I am in my senses, I could give him that of a kingdom, it should be his, for the simplicity of his character and the fidelity of his conduct deserve it." And then, turning to Sancho, he said, "Forgive me, my friend, that I led thee to seem as mad as myself, making thee fall into the same error I myself ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of misfortune grew, Eve's courage redoubled; the greatness of her husband's nature, his inventor's simplicity, the tears that now and again she saw in the eyes of this dreamer of dreams with the tender heart,—all these things aroused in her an unsuspected energy of resistance. Once again she tried the plan that had succeeded so well already. She wrote to M. ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... his age as twenty-five, for the earth begins her work early in a man's frame, and has power over the green tree as well as the dry. But this stoop did not conceal his height and strength and breadth, and somehow his bigness, combined with his simplicity, his slow thought and slow tongue, appealed to Joanna, stirred something within her that was almost tender. She handed ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... sash of pale blue held up the rounded breast, that rose and fell with her breathing, beneath the white muslin. Pale blue stockings, and a pair of white shoes, with preposterous heels and pointed toes, completed the picture. The mingling, in the dress, of extreme simplicity with the cunningest artifice, and the greater daring and joie de vivre which it expressed, as compared with the dress of pre-war days, made it characteristic and symbolic:—a dress of the ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... or, Hena, the Virgin of the Isle of Sen—fittingly preludes the grand drama conceived by the author. There the Gallic people are introduced upon the stage of history in the simplicity of their customs, their industrious habits, their bravery, lofty yet childlike—such as they were at the time of the Roman invasion by Caesar, 58 B. C. The present story is the thrilling introduction to the class struggle, that starts with the conquest ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... not to see that the most intricate and remote recess of his hotel would be as open as his commonest closets to the eyes, to the probes, to the gimlets, and to the microscopes of the Prefect. I saw, in fine, that he would be driven, as a matter of course, to simplicity, if not deliberately induced to it as a matter of choice. You will remember, perhaps, how desperately the Prefect laughed when I suggested, upon our first interview, that it was just possible this mystery troubled him so much on account of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the retreat of the Hurons to Isle St. Joseph, the principal authorities are the Relations of 1649 and 1650, which are ample in detail, and written with an excellent simplicity and modesty; the Relation Abrge of Bressani; the reports of the Father Superior to the General of the Jesuits at Rome; the manuscript of 1652, entitled Mmoires touchant la Mort et les Vertus des Pres, etc.; the unpublished letters of Garnier; and a letter of Chaumonot, written ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... present on which his eye rested with pleasure was Grace Nugent. Beautiful—in elegant and dignified simplicity— thoughtless of herself—yet with a look of thought, and with an air of melancholy, which accorded exactly with his own feelings, and which he believed to arise from the same reflections that had passed in his ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... girls like you were all sweetness, and freshness, and simplicity," says Luttrell, with sudden vehemence. "What lies one hears in one's lifetime! Why, you might give lessons in coquetry and cruelty to many a ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... that was naturally said, it was so naive; or, such an innocent piece of simplicity ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... the principal Lamas and Kajees of the country, who, to a man, repudiated the proceedings, and refused to attend. Our captors were extremely anxious to induce us to write letters to Dorjiling, and sent spies of all kinds to offer us facilities for secret correspondence. The simplicity and clumsiness with which these artifices were attempted would have been ludicrous under other circumstances; while the threat of murdering Campbell only alarmed us, inasmuch as it came from people too stupid to be trusted. We made out that ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the victims of artificial civilization, his own feeling for them was natural and instinctive; yet never did natural and instinctive feeling receive expression more artistic, but with that admirable art in which elaboration attains the utmost perfection of simplicity. It excites our wonder to observe how in pathos Hood's genius divests itself of attributes which had seemed essential to its existence. All that is grotesque, whimsical, or odd disappears, and we ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... everything, is very touching and gratifying," she remarked upon them. "We were always in the habit of conversing with the Highlanders—with whom one comes so much in contact in the Highlands. The Prince highly appreciated the good breeding, simplicity, and intelligence, which make it so pleasant, and even instructive ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... of the pastoral reed, they sing the Contentions of the Shepherds, the Blessings of Love, or the innocent Delights of rural Life. Has it ever been ascribed to them as a defect, that their Eclogues do not treat of active scenes, of busy cities, and of wasting war? No: their simplicity is their perfection, and they are only blamed when they have too ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... bit in love with him albeit she realized he was rather lovable. The delight which she had experienced in his society lay in the fact that he was absolutely different from any other man she had met. His simplicity, his utter lack of "swank," his directness, his good nature, and dry sense of humour made him shine luminously in comparison with the worldly, rather artificial young men she had previously met—young men who said and did only those things which time, tradition, and hallowed memory ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... country curate in Fielding's "Joseph Andrews," with a head full of learning and a heart full of love to his fellows, but in absolute ignorance of the world, which in his simplicity he takes for what it ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of the gaolers who had him at their mercy, the narrator had not attempted to better his tale by the invention of perils. The history of the desperate project that had been planned and carried out five years before was related with grim simplicity which (because it at once bears the stamp of truth, and forces the imagination of the reader to supply the omitted details of horror), is more effective to inspire sympathy than elaborate description. The very barrenness of the narration ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... Ida de la Molle, and if any one doubted it, it was sufficient to compare her in her simplicity to the various human items by whom she was surrounded. They were a typical county society gathering, such as needs no description, and would not greatly interest if described; neither very good nor very bad, very handsome nor very plain, but moving religiously within the lines of custom ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... saw no new military principles developed, whether of strategy or grand tactics, the movements of the different armies and corps being dictated and governed by the same general laws that have so long obtained, simplicity of combination and manoeuvre, and the concentration of a numerically superior force ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... the Hebrides[9]. Martin's Account of those islands had impressed us with a notion that we might there contemplate a system of life almost totally different from what we had been accustomed to see; and, to find simplicity and wildness, and all the circumstances of remote time or place, so near to our native great island, was an object within the reach of reasonable curiosity. Dr. Johnson has said in his Journey[10] ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... institutions on the Continent, as well as in Great Britain.... I begin by stating that her correspondence was invaluable, as regarded the treatment and management of both prisoners and insane people. It was the fruit of her own rich practical experience communicated with touching simplicity, and it produced lasting benefits to these institutions in Russia. In 1827, I informed your dear mother that I had presented to the Emperor Nicholas a statement of the defects of the Government Lunatic Asylum, ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... can pray here very well," thought Kunin. "Just as in St. Peter's in Rome one is impressed by grandeur, here one is touched by the lowliness and simplicity." ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... satisfaction at finding her company preferred to that of her daughter. For it could not be supposed that the girl experienced just then any eager desire after religious knowledge; she had just reported Miss Starbrow's scoffing words with such a curious simplicity, as if she looked on religion merely as a branch of learning, like mineralogy or astronomy, which was scarcely necessary to her, and might therefore very well be dispensed with. No, it was purely a matter of personal preference; and Mrs. Churton, albeit loving and thinking well of herself, ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... Arnold's sculpturesque polish and restraint, of Lanier's instinct for sensuous beauty. What "songs greater than before known" might such a poet not sing as he wandered close to precious records of the Anglo-Saxon culture of the race amid the stately colonial peace and simplicity of St. Mark's church-yard, with the vividly colored life of all southeastern Europe surging about that slender iron fence—children of the blood of Chopin and Tschaikowsky; of Gutenberg, Kossuth, and Napoleon; of Isaiah and Plato, Leonardo and Dante—with the wild strains of the gypsy orchestra ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... never laughed in contempt, nor ever seemed to think herself better or wiser, than others. Her advice, when asked, was given with sweet simplicity and humility, as of one not qualified, in her own estimation, to teach, or desirous to usurp authority over others: yet she had a clear intellect and sound judgment, she opened her mouth with wisdom and in her tongue was the law of kindness. There seemed a sort of magnetism about her, ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... was a secluded spot, in the heart of a wild mountainous region, and though occasionally visited by travellers journeying northward, or by others coming from the opposite direction, retained a primitive simplicity of manners, and a great partiality for old ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... The simplicity of immediate flight she had, of course, long ago abandoned; it would only postpone the struggle with William King. That inflexible face of duty would hunt her down wherever she was, and take the child from her. No; there was but one thing to do: parry his threat of confessing to ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... urged against the Christian religion was met in the order in which it was advanced. Hume's sophistry on the subject of miracles, was, if possible, more perfectly answered than it had already been done by Campbell. And in the whole lecture there was so much simplicity and energy, pathos and sublimity, that not ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... residents of Japan. Another feature of Japanese life that cannot fail to impress the stranger is the small weight that is given to wealth. In their relations with foreigners the governing class and the wealthy people are sticklers for all the conventional forms; but among themselves the simplicity of their social life is very attractive. Elaborate functions are unknown and changes of costume, which make women's dress so large an item of family expense in any European country, are unnecessary. Some of ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... fine as anything of the kind in any parish church. But is the result attained the result aimed at? The richness, the glamour of gold and purple and rare woods and stones are there, as they must have been in Solomon's temple. But to me the simplicity and cool quiet of aisles and white pillars sometimes seem to forsake ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... days at Fayal, and that was two days more than I had intended to stay. It was the kindness of the islanders and their touching simplicity which detained me. A damsel, as innocent as an angel, came alongside one day, and said she would embark on the Spray if I would land her at Lisbon. She could cook flying-fish, she thought, but her forte was dressing bacalhao. Her brother Antonio, who served ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... lyrical. Then there showed hair that was too golden, lips that were too red—the Lot's wife of the Third Republic playing the lover. But such moments were the exception: they were a relaxation of the writer's self-imposed restraint: throughout the rest of the opera there reigned a delicate simplicity, a simplicity which was not so very simple, a deliberate simplicity, the subtle flower of an ancient society. That young Barbarian, Christophe, only half liked it. The whole scheme of the play, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... have known—if at all—only through its slanderers and persecutors. Marcus Aurelius, in a kindred spirit, and under the even heavier burdens of a tottering empire, domestic dissensions, and defeat and disaster abroad, maintained the severest simplicity and purity of life, appropriated portions of his busiest days to devout contemplation, meditated constantly on death, and disciplined himself to regard with contempt alike the praise of flatterers and the contingency of posthumous fame. We have, especially in Nero's reign, the record ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... at all at the time," she said, with the same simplicity. "It all happened so quickly, and it was so bewildering, and I didn't have time to think. The story about him just seemed to spring up of itself, and then it grew and grew all the time. I've worried a great deal ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... built to hold one person besides the man at the small oars. It was impossible to stand up in such a cranky craft, and your seat was about 6 in. from the bottom boards. No wonder all the fishing was done by hand-lines. The local method was simplicity itself. To fifty yards of line of the thickness of sash-cord was attached a large Colorado spoon, armed with one big triangle, and mounted on an eighth of an inch brass wire. The canoe was slowly rowed about, up and down ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... and I knew once for all that I could never hate him; that mere envy and a shame of it were the worst that I could feel. Everything about him won me, his simplicity, his fine pride, his clearness of eye and voice, his look of a swift, polished sword blade. I had never seen a man like him. The Duchess of Raincy-la-Tour would be a lucky woman; so much ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... with little modesty, and less courtesy, he styles the commentators on Shakspeare—naming in particular, KNIGHT, COLLIER, and DYCE, and including SINGER and all of the present day—criticasters who "stumble and bungle in sentences of that simplicity and grammatical clearness as not to tax the powers of a third-form schoolboy to explain." In order to bring me "within his danger," he actually transposes two lines of Shakspeare; and so, to the unwary, makes me appear to be a very shallow ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... fur-lined coat her father had sent her to fetch. There was a purse lying on a dressing-table, with sovereigns glittering through the silken network, and the girl snatched it up as she hurried away, thinking, in her innocent simplicity, that her father might have nothing but those few sovereigns to help him in his flight. She went back to him, carrying the bulky overcoat, and helped him to put it on in place of the dressing-grown he had been wearing. He had taken ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... as a biography of Sergeant York. It is but a story of the strength and the simplicity of a man—a young man—whom the nation has honored for what he has done, with something in it of those who went before and left him as a legacy the qualities of mind and heart that enabled him to fight ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... We must not take upon us to affirm that this was a mistake, although the Face may have looked no more kindly at Ernest than at all the world besides. But the secret was that the boy's tender and confiding simplicity discerned what other people could not see; and thus the love, which was meant for ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... impossible to regard him as he might have regarded another father-in-law. He had often heard the Duke spoken of as a man who could become awful if he pleased, almost without an effort. He had been told of the man's mingled simplicity, courtesy, and self-assertion against which no impudence or raillery could prevail. And now he seemed ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... agreed, Should be with them a cult and creed, Simplicity a passion. They'd quickly wreck this trade of ours, Since they would scorn the use of flowers, If they could set ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... heavily upon their country, have devoted all their strength and all their faculties to the great struggle for freedom, which you of Western Europe call the Nihilistic Movement. In your opinion, it is just because of its simplicity and its likeness to many others, that the story of my life may possess some value; and perhaps you are right. At any rate, since to interest if but a small number of people in the lot of those who serve "the cause," will be to serve the cause still further—and it is, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... day she mentioned a certain village priest to me, uninfluenced by anybody, and whose primitive simplicity caused him to be looked ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... who sat beside the Doge were holding grave discussion, for the few words of the young noble had touched upon weighty points; they had been presented with a simplicity which veiled their diplomatic force; he was a man of growing power who must be bound to the service of Venice, even were he not the last of a princely line which the Republic would fain see continued to her own latest generation. So unabashed in such a presence, ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... of such general knowledge it would be utterly impossible to call up, even faintly, the lives of Romans in successive ages. Read the earlier parts of Livy's histories and try to picture the pristine simplicity of those primeval times. Read Caesar's Gallic War, the marvellously concise reports of the greatest man that ever lived, during ten years of his conquests. Read Horace, and attempt to see a little of what he describes in his good-natured, easy way. Read the correspondence of the younger ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... of the pastoral kind To a Bride—town-made—with a heart and a mind With simplicity ever at battle? A bride of an ostentatious race, Who, thrown in the Golden Farmer's place, Would have trimm'd her shepherds with golden lace, And gilt ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... and adventures, with which our tragic pieces are crowded and obscured; so contrary to probability, which will not admit such a number of extraordinary and surprising events in the short space of four-and-twenty hours; so contrary to the simplicity of ancient tragedy; and so adapted to conceal, by the assemblage of so many different objects, the sterility of the genius of a poet, more intent upon the marvellous, than upon ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... Satan in Eden would have been furnished, and it would have been logically made out that all the fault of the first recorded son was with Eve, who had been the temptress, not the tempted, and who had taken advantage of the Devil's unsophisticated nature to impose upon his innocence and simplicity, and then had gone about among "the neighbors" to scandalize his character at tea-tables ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the principle of vicarious suffering is commonly understood and practised by races who stand on a low level of social and intellectual culture. In the following pages I shall illustrate the theory and the practice as they are found among savages in all their naked simplicity, undisguised by the refinements of metaphysics and ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... of the Photoplay puts into concrete form, with expert simplicity, the secrets of writing photoplays which appeal to the millions of Americans who attend the theatres and the producers can not buy enough of such plays to satisfy the exhibitors." (Signed) Robert Lee Macnabb, National Vice-President, Motion Picture ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... Carter, standing for a moment in the doorway, surveyed Frederic Hoff's quarters, taking in all the details of the furnishings. Both the sitting room and the bedroom adjoining were equipped in military simplicity, with hardly an extra article of furniture or adornment, chairs, tables, everything of the plainest sort. Moving first into the bedroom, Carter quickly investigated pillows and mattress, but in neither place did he find what he sought, evidence ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... Brockelsby had made this somewhat lengthy, perfectly voluntary explanation of the state of affairs in a calm, quiet voice, with much dignity and perfect simplicity, but the coroner did not seem impressed by it, ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... his tendencies, was in ecstasies over the naive simplicity of the color scheme. "Look at that red!" he shouted. "Look at that blue!! Look at that yaller!!!" He dove below and I heard rattling of tubes and brushes that told me he was about to commit landscape. This time I knew he couldn't possibly make ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... poetry is rich, would scarcely suit the translation of an old Epic whose predominating characteristic is its simple and easy flow of narrative. Indeed, the Maha-bharata would lose that unadorned simplicity which is its first and foremost feature if the translator ventured to decorate it with the art of the modern day, even if he had been ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... circumstances and varied requirements which may have induced corresponding adaptations, and which may have been transmitted in accordance with the principle of hereditary transmission. This hypothesis necessarily implies a prior simplicity of organisation, of which, indeed, there is sufficient proof; many cases of malformation can thus be considered as so many reversions to the ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... idly down the Appian Way, the ancient tower of Metella rose invitingly. The carriage stopped, and ascending, they walked up to the entrance. They marvelled at the enormous blocks of travertine of which the edifice was built, the noble simplicity of the style, the venerable garment of ivy which hid the ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... school and recreation centres, in summer camps and special organizations of youthful energy toward social serviceableness, that men and women can marry and rear families, if they really desire so to do, more easily than ever before, provided they are willing to pay the price of simplicity in the home and in individual mastery of the technic of new ways of living. What is needed for the best development of the family under modern conditions is not more celibates, men and women of high ability ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... partly on account of its refined and artificial grammatical structure. In this latter respect it differs materially from the Russian language; which, although equally rich, is remarkable for its simplicity and perspicuity. The Polish and Bohemian idioms, in the opinion of the best judges, are above all others capable of faithfully imitating the refinements of the classical languages; and the Polish prose is modelled after the ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... The simplicity of the Gospel was clouded by the prodigious number of rites and ceremonies which the bishops invented to ...
— Water Baptism • James H. Moon
... Equal or Greater simplicity marks all the writings of the Greek Poets.—The above [i. e. the Greek] Epitaph was written in Imitation of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... "Holy simplicity is all very well," Mark thought. "But holy imbecility is a great bore, especially when there ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... homespun and most of the romancers a little tawdry. His method is the mosaicist's, working self-consciously in fine materials. Movement with him never leaps nor flows; in fact, it seems to dawdle when, too often, he forgets to be vigilant in the interests of simplicity; it is languid with scrupulous hesitations and accumulations. As to his pictures, they come from a Kentucky glorified. When he says that in June there "the warm-eyed, bronzed, foot-stamping young bucks forsake their plowshares in the green rows, their reapers among ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... lead myself a life!" he cried as in compassion for my simplicity. "That's a question the young lady may put to me any moment it ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... parts external to each other, and connected into unity. Now, as we cannot reason from the non-consciousness of such a manifold to the impossibility of its existence in the intuition of an object, and as the proof of this impossibility is necessary for the establishment and proof of absolute simplicity; it follows that this simplicity cannot be inferred from any perception whatever. As, therefore, an absolutely simple object cannot be given in any experience, and the world of sense must be considered as ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... convenient. Often such opinions come to us from the highest circles, at times also from the lowest, and it is difficult to tell which of the two are the more instructive. The problems of humanity in all their simplicity are after all the same for us all, only they are viewed from different standpoints, and are treated with scientific or practical design. Members of the same profession readily understand each other; they employ their own technical language; but the unprofessional person ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... those which were straight or bent towards the nose foretold good fortune. If they were very crooked or approaching the form of a semicircle, they foreboded evil. Simple and straight lines were the signs of simplicity, honesty, and truth. Many lines signified changes in life, and the fewness of lines spoke of evenness and simplicity. When the lines increased or decreased, they gave warning of approaching changes in person and fortune. If the lines on the forehead near the hair of the head were broad, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... light is shed upon the problem of Lord Acton's mind and character. The perpetual attraction for me, as for many others, lay in the contrast between Lord Acton's Catholicism and the universalism of his learning; and, again, between what his death revealed of the fervor and simplicity of his Catholic faith, and the passion of his Liberal creed. Oppression—tyranny—persecution—those were the things that stirred his blood. He was a Catholic, yet he fought Ultramontanism and the Papal, Curia to the end; ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... evidently the fruit of bitter experience, which sounded strange coming from her lips. Yet, despite the utter unconventionality, there was no hint of fastness about her, and even when she touched by implication on her way of life, she did so with a kind of frank simplicity, hiding nothing ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... form the picture in my mind, and a crowd of detail rushes in which completely destroys its simplicity and harmony. How hard it is to judge, even at this distance, what are the salient features. I must try, but I know that from the point of view of psychological development I may easily miss out the very factors which were ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... God is to be at peace. The child simplicity is the greatest agency in bringing this full and complete realization, the child simplicity that recognizes its true relations with the Father's life. There are people I know who have come into such a conscious realization of their oneness with this Infinite Life, this Spirit of Infinite ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... did not expect the peace to endure. Decaen was "to dissimulate the views of the Government as much as possible"; "the English are the tyrants of India, they are uneasy and jealous, it is necessary to behave towards them with suavity, dissimulation and simplicity." He was to regard his mission primarily as one of observation upon the policy and military dispositions of the English. But Napoleon informed him in so many words that he intended some day to strike a blow for "that glory which perpetuates the memory of men throughout the centuries." ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... your pardon?" she queried. Then, obtaining no response, she continued, with perfect simplicity: "Margaret's quite like a daughter to me, you know. Of course, she and the Colonel will come with us—at least, until affairs are a bit more settled. Even afterward—well, we have a large house, Billy, and I don't see that they'd be any better ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell |
