"Naturalness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Queen Jane set out from Stirling "with a small train" to avert suspicion, and appeared at the gates of Edinburgh Castle suddenly, without warning as would seem, asking to be admitted to see her son. The Chancellor, wise and wily as he was, would appear to have acknowledged the naturalness of this request, and "received her," the chronicler says, "with gladness, and gave her entrance to visit her young son, and gave command that whensoever the Queen came to the castle it should be patent to Her Grace." Jane entered the castle accordingly, with ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... was stationed. Once Sir John had even tried the experiment of addressing an acquaintance who stood near his Grace, meaning to lead up to a meeting, but though the Duke did not move from the place where he stood, in a few moments he had, with ease and naturalness, gathered about him a circle which 'twould have been difficult indeed to enter. Sir John went away livid, and hated and sneered at him from that hour, all the more bitterly, because no hatred was a weapon against him, no sneer could do more than glance from him, leaving no scratch. ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... we do not differ, sir," said Ozzie. And Mr. Prohack found satisfaction in the naturalness, the freedom from pose, of Ozzie's diffident and disconcerted demeanour. His sympathy for the young man was increased by the ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... that the triumph of the Logos-Christology at Nicaea and Chalcedon was inevitable. A certain historic naturalness of the movement he would concede, the world on which Christianity entered being what it was. He is aware, however, that many elements other than Christian have entered into the development. He has phrased his apprehension thus. That Hellenisation of Christianity ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... straightforward portraiture, and in the rendering of character. His portraits of men, unlike those of women, are dignified, simple, and restrained. His art was one long development till blindness prevented him from working. Every year he attained more freedom and naturalness in his pose and developed more power in ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... yet they were pouring down her face, making havoc of the paint and powder, of which she was quite aware and for which she cared not at all. Ishmael thought she had never shown her triumphant naturalness, her stark candour, more finely. As on that evening when he had met her in Paradise Lane, he was conscious that they understood each other almost as well as anyone ever can understand any other human being, because they were in some respects so alike. Something quiet and incurably ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... after many experiences, does a man learn, at the sight of a fellow-creature's real failing or weakness, to sympathise with him, and help him without a secret self-congratulation at his own virtue and strength, but on the contrary, with every humility and comprehension of the naturalness, almost the inevitableness, ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... of the Court revels, 'A Historie of Ariodante and Ginevra was showed before her Majestie on Shrovetuesdaie at night' in 1583. {208} Throughout Shakespeare's play the ludicrous and serious aspects of humanity are blended with a convincing naturalness. The popular comic actor William Kemp filled the role of Dogberry, and Cowley appeared as Verges. In both the Quarto of 1600 and the Folio of 1623 these actors' names are prefixed by a copyist's error to some of the speeches allotted ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... into a cautious and level-headed man, dependable in hardship and cool in the face of danger. He was, as one of them put it, "courageous without recklessness, firm without being stubborn, resolute without being obstinate. There was no element of the spectacular in his make-up, but an honest naturalness that won him ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... Allen is already known to the readers of the Sunday-school Times as one of our best writers of stories for children. His style is marked by a simplicity, naturalness and lack of sensationalism; and his stories move with the freedom of boyish nature and of the open ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... with a purpose, and, as she forgot it, she carried it out. Never before had Claude understood completely why she had gained her position in London and Paris, realized fully her fascination. Her delightful naturalness, her pleasure, her almost boyish gaiety, her simplicity, her humor took him captive for the moment. She explained that she had left her companions and stolen away to enjoy ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... perfect harmony were her ivory-clear complexion and deep sea-blue eyes that looked upon the world with the ingenuous calmness of a mermaid or the pixie of an undiscovered mountain stream. Her frame was strong and yet possessed the grace of absolute naturalness. And yet with all her Northern clearness and frankness of line and colouring, there seemed to be something of the tropics in her—something of languor in the droop of her pose, of love of ease in her ingenious complacency of satisfaction and comfort in ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... which persons of elevated rank and of superior refinement oftentimes derive from a happy imitation of the rude unpolished manners and discourse of their inferiors. For the pleasure so derived may be traced to three exciting causes. The first is the naturalness, in fact, of the things represented. The second is the apparent naturalness of the representation, as raised and qualified by an imperceptible infusion of the author's own knowledge and talent, which infusion ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... is filled with any strong emotion by a surprising event or intelligence, it runs to discharge it on others, impatient of their sympathy; and it marks, I fancy, the simplicity and greater naturalness of this period (Jacob's), that the grown-up men and women ran to meet each other, giving way to their ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... been seducing my susceptible friend here. Like many of us, he has been captivated by her naturalness, her naivete, her clear good eyes,—that look of nature that is always art! May I relate the idyl of your tragic passion, dear ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... to him the natural completion of the study of old Greek; and it was his acquaintance with the popular songs of modern as well as of ancient Hellas that gave the color which imparted such a vivid expression of truth and naturalness to his own Greek songs. It was thus that the "Griechen Lieder" arose, which appeared in separate but rapid numbers, and found great favor with the people. But even these "Griechen Lieder" caused anxiety to the paternal governments of ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... herself to stand there, apparently unconcerned before this battery of bold and curious eyes. That, once done, made the rest easier. She was grateful for the mask. And with her first low, almost incoherent, words in reply Joan entered upon the second phase of her experience with these bandits. Naturalness did not come soon, but it did come, and with it her ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... those two than on the winged multitude, and thought on, of the myriad true tales of love-weakness and love-wrath for which they and their two pretty mates were just now so unlucky as to stand; of the awful naturalness of such things; of the butterfly beauty and wonder—nay, rather the divine possibilities of the lives such things so naturally speed to wreck; and then of Tom Moore almost ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... romanceros. His descriptions glow with the fresh and ever-varying delight of the observant traveler, who seems to see before him for the first time the cities which, with a few vigorous and simple strokes, he transfers to big pages. His pictures have the charm of naturalness and a simplicity that is more effective than the most ornate diffuseness. Thus he says of the picturesque little city of Namur: 'Seated at the confluence of the Sambre with the Meuse, and throwing over each river a bridge of ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... the third and right way of dealing with the sex relations of men and women. That is the way of simple candor and naturalness. Treat the sex question as you would any other question. Don't treat it reverently; don't treat it rakishly. Treat it naturally. Don't insult your intelligence and lower your moral tone by thinking about either the decency or the indecency of matters that are familiar, undeniable, and unchangeable ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... aimed at in these decorations, and set floral pieces are in bad taste at a private dinner. Though hundreds of dollars may have been spent in the fleeting loveliness of flowers, the effect to be aimed at is naturalness rather than display. A border of holly, or ivy leaves freshly gathered, may be sewed around the plush scarf through the center of the table, and is a beautiful decoration, far outshining gold ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... delineation of character, in the perfect naturalness with which all his personages act out their respective parts, no novelist is more realistic than Thackeray. But realism has a broader application. A novelist who takes every-day life for his subject has not ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... then, bursting into naturalness, and glancing from the corner of her eye, "'Tis the funniest thing under the sun! And ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... did write represented hours of labor, however; for she felt that the weight of nations lay on every word, and she wrote and rewrote the poor little sentences until every vestige of naturalness and of spontaneity were taken out of them. Such information as she could gather seemed always, in her eyes, either too frivolous to be worth notice, or too serious to be of interest. And ever before her frightened eyes loomed the bugbear ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... question I must say that I have read but very little. Even Dr. Farrar's standard work on "Eternal Hope" I have not read. But I considered this to be no serious disadvantage, on the whole. I conceived—and I think it was no undue egotism—that my own originality and naturalness would balance in a large degree the completeness which otherwise I might have attained. I think it is no small advantage to see the natural working of an open mind, not warped by other people's opinions ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... more than thirty fables are given in the list. Comparative study of these fables, considering the animals most frequently mentioned, the correctness and naturalness of the traits ascribed to the different animals, the moral precepts inculcated by the fables, etc., will be found ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... man did not seem to be aware of it, for he greeted Maria Clara and her friends with naturalness and sat down at their side. The only one ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... Commons, and the discontents and intrigues that are the concomitants of an overwhelming party advantage broke against him as waves break against a cliff. He foresaw so far in these matters that it seemed he scarcely troubled to foresee. He brought political art to the last triumph of naturalness. Always for me he has been the typical aristocrat, so typical and above the mere forms of aristocracy, that he remained a commoner to the end of ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... play consist in its perfect naturalness, its progressive interest, the consistency, variety, and vitality of its personalities, the deep emotional interest, of situations arising out of contrasted character, and the easy action of its hidden machinery. ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... probably derived his information. It contains also lists of the coincidences between the Acts and St. Paul's and St. Peter's Epistles, of their points of contact with the contemporary history of the outer world, and of the incidents which show the naturalness and veracity of the narrative. The introduction closes with an excellent chronological table from ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... first book, When It Was Lurid, created little less than a furore. The work on which he is now engaged, which will bear the title of The Browns of Brixton, is a tender sketch of English domesticity. This new vein of Mr. Hatton's will, doubtless, be distinguished by the naturalness of dialogue and sanity of characterisation of his first novel. Messrs. Prodder and Way are to publish it ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... Danvers Carmichael, and the Duke of Borthewicke are admirably relieved against each other, and Nancy herself as irresistible as she is natural. To be sure, she is a wonderful child, but then she manages to make you believe she was a real one. Indeed, reality and naturalness are two of the charms of a story that both reaches the heart and engages the mind, and which can scarcely fail to make for itself a large audience. A great deal of delightful talk and interesting incidents ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... of his wit and his verse in such early comedies as LOVE'S LABOUR LOST and THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA, the critical reader is apt to be left pretty evenly balanced between the two reflections that the wit and the versification have indeed at times a certain happy naturalness of their own, and that nevertheless, if they really be Shakspere's throughout, the most remarkable thing in the matter is his later progress. But even apart from such disputable issues, we may safely say with Mr. Fleay that "there is not a play of his that can be referred even on the rashest ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... a running sketch of the chance guests, Graham heard scarce half she said, so occupied was he in trying to sense his way to an understanding of her. Naturalness was her keynote, was his first judgment. In not many moments he had decided that her key-note was joy. But he was dissatisfied with both conclusions, and knew he had not put his finger on her. And then it came to him—pride. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... himself an oak-wreath. In the day time, to be sure, an occupation of that sort would not look very well, but night is the realm of phantasy and the wreath is the emblem of glory. Then, too, I find that this first scene—the naturalness of which I hope I have proved—is of deep significance for the play. In order to explain psychologically the Prince's headstrong disobedience of the Elector's express order, a great excitement of mind was needed. Now I really do not know where Kleist could better have derived this than precisely ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... of the grave over his head, there to remain until his successor was installed In that subsequent ceremony "the horns" were said to be taken from the grave of the deceased ruler and placed upon the head of his successor The social and religious functions of the phratry, and its naturalness in the organic system of ancient society, are rendered apparent by ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... studied her, he decided that her chief charm, in his eyes, was her absolute naturalness and unconventionality. "But to some men," he mused "what a danger zone she would prove. Allied to her great beauty, her wealth, and her gifts, there is a way with her that would make her almost absolutely irresistible if she had ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... We stand in danger of exaggerating these vociferous thoughts. This question of naturalness as opposed to artificiality is not immediately pertinent to our problem, nor is the matter of optimism and pessimism, nor the biologic idea of survival. We should have looked more to the way of love in the lives of men and ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... but the naturalness of the exclamation disarmed him, and the words called up thrilling memories of his own college days, when he had ridden his grandfather's horses in the famous hunting valley not a hundred ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... charm, sustained interest, and a wealth of thrilling and romantic situations. "So naively fresh in its handling, so plausible through its naturalness, that it comes like a mountain breeze across the far-spreading desert of similar romances."—Gazette-Times, Pittsburg. "A slap-dashing day romance."—New ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... spiritual nationality, may often retain a neutral and confused residuum of belief, which they may egregiously regard as the essence of all religion, so little may they remember the graciousness and naturalness of that ancestral accent which a perfect religion should have. Yet a moment's probing of the conceptions surviving in such minds will show them to be nothing but vestiges of old beliefs, creases which thought, even if emptied of all dogmatic tenets, has not been able to smooth away at its ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... him, Watson, as a spirit? Solid flesh was not exactly in line with his idea of the unearthly. How to explain it? He had to go back to Holcomb again. The doctor had accepted without question Avec's naturalness, his body, his appetite. Reasonably enough, Geos, with some smattering of his superior's wisdom, should accept Watson in ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... tiring?" he asked in a voice that surprised him by its naturalness; and she answered that, on the contrary, she had seldom ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... painting might represent an action, but only by means of bodies which make allusion to it; that poetry can represent bodies, but only by means of actions. Returning to this theme, he explained the action or movement in painting as added by our imagination. Lessing was greatly preoccupied with the naturalness and the unnaturalness of signs, which is tantamount to saying that he believed each art to be strictly limited to certain modes of expression, which are only overstepped at the cost of coherency. In the ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... it with Shakespeare. He sees his characters and realizes their sensations so vividly that his brain and feelings become the brain and feelings of his creations; and thus only does his Lear say with such perfect naturalness, "Pray you, undo this button." Hence, too, all the distinctness of character in his lifelike men and women, be it Hamlet or Falstaff, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... the talk grew too boisterous, the women would hurry the courses and then withdraw to a side of the veranda, to sit sadly by themselves. If a quieter man, or some young fellow from Camberton, slipped away from the dining-room and joined them, they would talk gayly, simulating ease and naturalness. ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... aggregate value. The entire roof of the church, which is divided into zones, is admirably painted by figures of such proportions as to look of life size from the floor, representing prominent Scriptural scenes. The excellence, finish, and naturalness of the figures challenged special attention; it was difficult not to believe them to be in bas-relief. On inquiring as to their authorship, we were told that they were the work of Mattia Preli, an enthusiastic artist, who spent his life ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... moment's pause, only to find, too late, that all warmth and naturalness had left her with the effort. Fluent dream-practice is only too apt to make one uncomfortably crude ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... and oppression, the Pilgrims of Mayflower fame established in the New World a reign of Puritanic tyranny and crime. The history of New England, and especially of Massachusetts, is full of the horrors that have turned life into gloom, joy into despair, naturalness into disease, honesty and truth into hideous lies and hypocrisies. The ducking-stool and whipping post, as well as numerous other devices of torture, were the favorite English methods ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... simple story told that contains its truth in its very naturalness and simplicity. It reveals a bit of the real life ever going on all around us unnoticed. A minister in a certain small town in an eastern state received from the home mission board of his church a letter asking for a special offering ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... that he might study her. And the more he saw of her, the more he was struck by her unaffected naturalness and apparent sincerity. Not a word, not even a suggestion while they were dancing, of the matter of the cab; it was as though she were just an old friend. And her dancing was a delight—such a delight, indeed, that he was reluctant to have it end. ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... hand; it is often imitative, like all Latin poetry, of the Greek songs that sounded at the awakening of the world. This is more tolerable when Theocritus is the model, as in the "Eclogues," and less obvious in the "Georgics," when the poet is carried away into naturalness by the passion for his native land, by the longing for peace after cruel wars, by the joy of a country life. Virgil had that love of rivers which, I think, a poet is rarely without; and it did not need Greece to teach him to sing of ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... me to speak ill of Pope or his great disciples, above all, when they possess pathos and naturalness like Goldsmith: after the greatest they are perhaps the most agreeable writers and the poets best fitted to add charm to life. Once when Lord Bolingbroke was writing to Swift, Pope added a postscript, in which he said—"I think some advantage would result to our age, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... enigmatical conceit. I would swear that the very milestones had ears, and that Harmer-hill stooped with all its pines, to listen to a poet, as he passed! I remember but one other topic of discourse in this walk. He mentioned Paley, praised the naturalness and clearness of his style, but condemned his sentiments, thought him a mere time-serving casuist, and said that "the fact of his work on Moral and Political Philosophy being made a text-book in our Universities was a disgrace to the national character." We parted at the six-mile stone; and I returned ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... rambles in the beautiful country around, only returning when the plague has to a great extent abated. The superiority of the 'Decameron' is not only in the polish and grace of its style, the first complete departure from the stilted classicism of contemporary narrative, the happy naturalness of good story-telling,—but in the conception of the work as a whole, and the marvelous imagination of the filling-in between the framework of the story of the plague by the hundred tales from all lands and times, with the fine ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... it were, makes Plutarch a modern, and uses his books to illustrate the passing times. He introduces him to new characters, and reads his judgment upon them. He finds in him a hundred things that others had not seen. It is a wide step from Montaigne to Rousseau, and yet, spite of the naturalness of the one and the artificiality of the other, there were some points of resemblance between them, and they harmonize in their love for a common master, Rousseau has written of Plutarch as Montaigne felt,—"Dans le petit nombre de livres que je lis quelquefois encore, Plutarque ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... in writing of Debussy, warmly praises the delightful naturalness of his early compositions. "One would feel justified in building the highest hopes on the young genius who can manipulate so easily the beautiful shapes his imagination ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... parsonage at Sesenheim, a village near Strassburg. Now Herder's teaching bore fruit in an outburst of real song (1, 2 and 4). The influence of the Volkslied is clearly discernible in the unaffected naturalness, spontaneity, and simplicity of these lyrics. Thus das Heidenroeslein, which symbolizes the tragic close of the sweet idyll of Sesenheim, is to all intents and ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... startled to find the golden thread of their companionship cut with such cruel abruptness. But it was cut; the door had closed on her. The moment it had closed she passed into his imagination. By what charm had she allayed the fever of his anxiety? Her naturalness had perforce given him assurance that peace must surround one in whom it shone so steadily, and smiling at the thought of Zotti's repast and her twinkle of subdued humour, he walked away comforted; which, for a lover in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... naturalized in America during the Colonial Period, because the economic and social conditions of the time did not justify such naturalization. The appropriate occasion for the transfer was postponed until after American political independence had been secured; and when occasion did not arise, the naturalness of the transfer was perverted and ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... conceited, and declared that he ought to wait till he had something to show for his powers, before he assumed the airs of a spoiled celebrity. But to Rowland and to most friendly observers this judgment was quite beside the mark, and the young man's undiluted naturalness was its own justification. He was impulsive, spontaneous, sincere; there were so many people at dinner-tables and in studios who were not, that it seemed worth while to allow this rare specimen all possible freedom of action. If Roderick took the words out ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... irresistible." He managed his strength to such advantage, that few men dared to grapple with him "in a pitched field of long and serious debate." His general tone and style in debate were marked by an intense earnestness, whilst his narrative, possessing, from its striking naturalness and simplicity, a high degree of dramatic interest, was occasionally relieved with splendid passages of impassioned and stirring eloquence. Intrepid self-reliance, unwearied activity, far-reaching sagacity, clearness, and fulness, were the prominent characteristics ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... declared me heathen, merely fit for the stake. Their blind zeal did not let them see that my comparison between the old and the new was merely to prove that a goodly number of our grandmothers had more blood in their veins, far more humor and wit, and certainly a greater amount of naturalness, kind-heartedness and simplicity than the majority of our emancipated professional women who fill our colleges, halls of learning, and various offices. This does not mean a wish to return to the past, nor does ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... museum building, whose wide and lofty corridors sent a thrill of awe through the impressionable girl. Feeling very small and young, she followed the professor over the tiled floors, then through two or three large apartments filled with strange looking beasts and birds of a startling naturalness, past long glass cases, where she caught hasty glimpses of everything possible in shell, bone, stone, or mineral, then across a narrow corridor, where the professor stopped ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... greater affairs to which that parish—if their protest prevailed—would now be dedicated. Not that the church was at once mentioned, but subtly implied as now enlisted,—and emancipated henceforth from all ecclesiastical narrowness . . . . The amazing thing by which Hodder was suddenly struck was the naturalness with which Alison seemed to fit into the new scheme. It was as though she intended to remain there, and had abandoned all intention of returning to the life which apparently she had once ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... alluring glances, soft laughter, intent upon making a favorable impression. But he saw only one, Felicia, who stood in the centre of a group of men, holding forth as if in her own studio, and tranquilly sipping a sherbet as she watched the duke's approach. She welcomed him with perfect naturalness. Those who stood by discreetly withdrew. But, in spite of what de Gery had overheard concerning their alleged relations, there seemed to be only a good-fellowship entirely of the mind between them, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... is also very effective. The poem on the whole, however, is chiefly to be admired for the graceful insouciance of its metre, so well in accordance with the character of the sentiments, and especially for the ease of the general manner. This "ease" or naturalness, in a literary style, it has long been the fashion to regard as ease in appearance alone—as a point of really difficult attainment. But not so:—a natural manner is difficult only to him who should never ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... assurance, in the naturalness of things about him. Everything else was just the same; it did not seem that it could be part of natural law then for his own life to be ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... limned. In Colonel Delancy Hyde, "Virginia-born," we have a most amusing representative of the lower orders of the "Chivalry." Estelle is a charming creation, and we know of few such touching love-stories as that through which she moves with such naturalness and grace. In the cousins Vance and Kenrick we have strongly marked and delicately discriminated portraits. The negro "Peculiar" is made to attract much of our sympathy and respect. He is not the buffoon that the stage and the novel generally make ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... didn't write it, or it wouldn't have been so stupid. I could stand anything except the charge that I've lost my naturalness and become conventional." ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... but amusement, emotion and beauty. But George Sand herself felt the delight of existence. She says of Joy "It is the great uplifter of men, the great upholder. For life to be fruitful, life must be felt as a blessing." In all she wrote we feel the rare charm of perfect ease and naturalness, combined with the cadences of beauty. We never feel that she is "posing." And yet the author of the bitter attack "Lui et elle," accused her of continual "posing." Edonard de Musset wrote with an envenomed pen, ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... delight with which he had made the acquaintance of the English "prose-idyll," and took it for granted that it was a real picture of English life. Despite all the machinery of Mr. Jenkinson's schemes, who could doubt it? Again and again there are recurrent strokes of such vividness and naturalness that we yield altogether to the necromancer. Look at this perfect picture—of human emotion and outside nature—put in in a few sentences. The old clergyman, after being in search of his daughter, has found her, and is now—having left her ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... laid in the smoking-parlour. Thus those guests for whom audiences were not provided, could have the felicity of seeing the great ones pass across the lawn on their excursions for food, and possibly trip over the croquet hoops, which had been left up to give an air of naturalness to the lawn. In the smoking-parlour an Elzevir or two were left negligently open, as if Mr and Mrs Lucas had been reading the works of Persius and Juvenal when the first guests arrived. In the music-room, finally, which was not usually open on these occasions, there ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... the naturalness of innocence, knelt, as he was always used to do, and said his prayers, adding a special petition for his dear absent parents, and another for the poor boy ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... Book) and Juliet Irwin; or, the Carriage People (June, 1847, Godey's Lady's Book). One of her chief collections of stories is Pencil Sketches (1833-1837). "Miss Leslie," wrote Edgar Allan Poe, "is celebrated for the homely naturalness of her stories and for the broad satire of her comic style." She was the editor of The Gift one of the best annuals of the time, and in that position perhaps exerted her chief influence on American literature When one has read three ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... the Middle Ages is that they were so intensely human. A naive spirit appears in their formal literature, as in Chaucer's account of the Canterbury pilgrims, in their decorated religious manuscripts, in their thought, and very characteristically, in their architecture, which combines a simple naturalness with a bold and daring ingenuity. From columns, the constructional motive of which is so simple and natural, and walls pierced with windows, they erected systems of lofty arches and high stone-vaulted roofs, the stability ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... know not how many of the noble works which have delighted the world with their beauty and charming humor. Here the poet called up into pictorial presence, and informed with life, grace, beauty, infinite friendly mirth and wondrous naturalness of expression, the people of whom his dear books told him the stories,—his Shakspeare, his Cervantes, his Moliere, his Le Sage. There was his last work on the easel—a beautiful fresh smiling shape of Titania, such as his sweet guileless fancy ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mean and ugly; the forging of the sword the coming power and determination of manhood. The killing of the dragon is unavoidably rather ridiculous; but the scene with the bird is fascinating by its naturalness and simplicity as well as its tenderness and sheer sweetness. Finally, after the scene with the Wanderer, the scene of the awakening of Bruennhilde affords an opportunity for love-making, and it is love-making of so unusual a sort that one does not feel it to be an ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... in Kirsty that unassumed, unconscious dignity, that simple propriety, that naturalness of a carriage neither trammeled nor warped by thought of self, which at once awakes confidence and regard; while her sweet, unaffected 'book English,' in which appeared no attempt at speaking like a fine lady, no disastrous endeavour to avoid her country's utterance, revealed at once her genuine ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... of the enemy" is God's purpose for all His children. Power to do the will of God patiently and effectively, with naturalness and ease, or to suffer the will of God with patience and good cheer, comes with this blessed baptism. It is power for service or sacrifice, according to God's will. Have you this power? If not, it is for you. Yield yourself fully ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... which Wordsworth feels his subject, and also from the profoundly sincere and natural character of his subject itself. He can and will treat such a subject with nothing but the most plain, first hand, almost austere naturalness. His expression may often be called bald, as, for instance, in the poem of Resolution and Independence; but it is bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness which is full of grandeur. . . Wherever we meet with ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... which are interesting, even if not strictly true. A negro has quite an imagination. I will relate some of these stories, without expressing an opinion, leaving others to decide as to their accuracy and naturalness. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... is it as a reminder of the essential constructive task of which the two primary generalizations of Socialism we have so far been developing are but the outward and visible forms. There is no untutored naturalness in Socialism, no uneducated blind force on our side. Socialism is made of struggling Good Will, made out of a conflict of wills. I have tried to let it become apparent that while I do firmly believe not only in the splendour and nobility of the Socialist dream but in ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... to my Western ignorance and inexperience—a charm of manner, intonation, apparently native and unstudied elocution, and all that—the groundwork of it native, the ease of it, the polish of it, the winning naturalness of it, acquired in Europe where he had been Charge d'Affaires some time at the Court of Vienna. He was joyous and cordial, a most pleasant comrade. One of the two incidents above referred to as ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... bewilderment, all still rocking from the sudden gust that had proceeded out of dear Lady Mildmay's gentle lips. But the undercurrent of wonder and of reproach that there had been in the warning May Quisante now almost missed. By an effort at last she realised its presence, the naturalness of it, and its rightness. But still it seemed to her a little conventional, something that might be supposed to be appropriate, but was not, if the truth were faced. "Alexander and I have never been like that to one another—at ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... naturalness, the humanness, as well as the God-likeness of the work of atonement that is going on all over the world, as it climbs and swings slowly up out of the darkness and into the light of life. Jesus the great atoning sacrifice? ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... the sad sights of want and woe in all our large cities, will be able to appreciate the naturalness of the foregoing description of missionary work ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... of to-day," as Henriette Fuerth truly says ("Erotik und Elternpflicht," Am Lebensquell, p. 11), "have not yet attained that beautiful naturalness out of which in these matters simplicity and freedom grow. And however willing we may be to learn afresh, most of us have so far lost our inward freedom from prejudice—the standpoint of the pure to ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... a cornet spinning his rings on the table after dinner. "College does civilise a boy," he ejaculates, which is true—always providing that it is a good college. Yet, with that almost unconscious naturalness which is particularly noticeable in him, he is much dissatisfied with Oxford—thinks it (as we all do) terribly fallen off since his days. Perhaps the infusion of Dissenters' sons (it is just at the time of the first Commission in 1854) ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... supernatural influence of e rem chaugala, or to jurn-win, two spirits of the jungle and the sea. The death is avenged by the nearest relation of the deceased, who shoots arrows at the invisible enemy. The negroes of Central Africa entertain precisely similar ideas about the non-naturalness of death. Mr. Duff Macdonald, in Africana, writes: 'Every man who dies what we call a natural death is really killed by witches.' It is a far cry from the Blantyre Mission in Africa to the Eskimo of the frozen North; but so uniform is human nature in the ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... it is in itself—in its very nature against the growth of the body and soul of man after a certain time—is nevertheless the chief of those urging forces which shall bring us to simplicity and naturalness at the last. Manhood is built quite as much by learning to avoid evil as by cultivating the aspiration ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... Monty, with the utmost naturalness, as though so deep a question flowed necessarily from what had gone ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... correctly in all regards, and with a naturalness that showed he had not been coached. The commissioner was satisfied that here was his first-born, and the pang that went through his heart was like a red-hot arrow. But he turned his mind to the necessities of the occasion, not yielding ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... most conspicuous note, and to clearness he added singular grace, great skill in phrase-making, great aptitude for beautiful description, perfect naturalness, absolute ease. The very faults which the lovers of a more pompous rhetoric profess to detect in his writing are the easy-going fashions of a man who wrote as he talked. The members of a college which produced ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... the story, the motive of which is the growth of love between the young chief and heroine, is delineated with a sweetness and a freshness, a naturalness and a certainty, which places 'The Lilac Sunbonnet' among the best stories of the time."—New York Mail ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... He was a man of five-and-thirty, and she could not get over the feeling that her impulsive exclamation had been presumptuous. He saw her uncertainty, and perhaps liked her the better for it, though the delicious naturalness, the child-like recognition of a real though scarcely known ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... again almost immediately. The Professor gave a gasp of astonishment at his altered appearance. His tweed suit seemed to have been turned inside out. There were no lapels now and it was buttoned up to his neck. He wore a long white apron; a peaked cap and a chin-piece of astonishing naturalness had transformed him into the semblance of ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... found himself alone with Chiquita and the old Spanish lady, and, knowing that the latter could not understand a word of his tongue, he addressed himself to the girl with some degree of naturalness. ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... With a perfect naturalness she raised a warning palm against him, and at that instant the quartette party began their performance. She had not even turned an eye in his direction, and he was a little piqued. The hand which had motioned him to silence was laid now on the gnarled old apple-tree, ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... and freshness of style, Mrs. Haven adds a genial, cheerful philosophy of Life, and Naturalness of Character and Incident, in the History ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... and even from Albert, her admiration of him, and her incapacity to love him till her own character be more advanced, are told with great naturalness. Her travels with Joseph Haydn, are again as charmingly told as the Venetian life. Here the author speaks from her habitual existence, and far more masterly than of those deep places of thought where she is less at home. She has lived much, discerned much, felt great ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... had the sense to see that his characteristics were such that many of his critics were unfair to him. Chesterton will never allow for an instant that Browning suffered from anything but an evident 'naturalness,' which expressed itself in a rugged style, concealing charity in an original ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... distant horizon, with full knowledge of the situation, to be content with "what is here and now"; and herein is the essence of classical feeling. But by us of the present moment, certainly—by us for whom the Greek spirit, with its engaging naturalness, simple, chastened, debonair, tryphes, habrotetos, khlides, khariton, himerou, pothou pater, is itself the Sangrail of an endless pilgrimage, Coleridge, with his passion for the absolute, for something fixed where all is moving, his faintness, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... said that the dialogue of the Bible lacks the charm of poetry?—that its action and sentiment, its love and its sorrow, are not heightened by those efforts of the fancy which delight us in dramatic authors?—that its simplicity is bald, and its naturalness rough?—that its excessive familiarity repels taste and disturbs culture? If we may trust Wordsworth, simplicity is not inconsistent with the pleasures of the imagination. The style of the Bible is not redundant,—there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Godunoff was printed. Among all the works of Pushkin there is not one which exhibits so high a degree of artistic skill, or so vigorous and powerful a genius, as this drama, in which every word, every dialogue, seems to unite the certainty of study and meditation with the fire and naturalness of a happy improvisation, and in which there is not a character nor an allusion which destroys the truth and vigour of the composition, viewed as a faithful mirror of Russian nationality, Russian history, and Russian character. The remainder of Pushkin's short, alas! but laborious life, however ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... little or nothing of the science of voice as we know it to-day. They did know, however, the great fundamental principles of singing, which are freedom of form and action, spontaneity and naturalness. They studied Nature, and learned of her. Their style of singing, it is true, would be considered superficial at the present day, but it is generally conceded that they did make a few great singers. If the principles ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... the Matterhorn itself. And while it stands, it wants not only aspiration, it wants tenderness; it wants humility; it wants the unrest which tenderness and humility must breed, and which Mr. Ruskin so clearly recognises in the best Gothic art. And, meanwhile, it wants naturalness. The mere smooth spire or broach—I had almost said, even the spire of Salisbury—is like no tall or commanding object in Nature. It is merely the caricature of one; it may be of the mountain-peak. The outline must ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... will find occasional lapses in taste or expression, and the quibbling peddler of rhetoric will gloat over some doubtful construction; but neither purist nor peddler of rhetoric has ever been able in his writing to display the ease, the rush, the naturalness, the sparkle which were as genuine in Roosevelt as were the features of his face. On reading these pages, which have escaped the attention of the professional critics, I wonder whether they may not have a fate similar to Defoe's; for Defoe also was read voraciously ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... past Moon Eng Muoi hath made offers of lendings, bestowing upon other Chinese girls gifts of hairpins and bracelets and hath been of so great meekness, unlike her disposition of naturalness, that all Chinese girls say, "Unto Eng Muoi hath come the Goddess of Mercy." Now all know it is the God of the foreigner that ...
— Seven Maids of Far Cathay • Bing Ding, Ed.
... Katharine interposed. "Nothing at all." She moved a few paces across the room, as if she intended to leave them. Her preoccupied naturalness was in strange contrast to her father's pomposity and to William's military rigidity. He had not once raised his eyes. Katharine's glance, on the other hand, ranged past the two gentlemen, along the books, over the tables, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... has, we like to think, much in its favor, if only for its freshness, its spontaneity, and a very gratifying naturalness. Rousseau was all of this, and lived in a world untouched, he wove about himself, like other visionaries, a soft veil hiding all that was grossly unreal to him from all that was real, and for Rousseau, those things and places he expressed existed vividly for him, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... like that of Ventidius, are introduced with two objects—one to gain time, the other for the sake of naturalness: of the latter of which there are two instances in Macbeth; one where the King talks of the swallows' nests: the other, relating to the English king touching for the evil, seems remarkably suited to the mind ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... their own path. He also committed the mistake of generally imitating Sophocles, the untransplantable child of Athens, instead of Euripides, to whom he could do better justice, as the success of his Euripidean plays prove. [15] His style, though emphatic, was wanting in naturalness. The author of the treatise to Herennius contrasts the sententiae of Ennius with the periodi of Pacuvius; and Lucilius speaks of a word "contorto ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... so great was the poverty of genius that when Cimabue in the thirteenth century painted that famous Madonna which to our eyes appears to be of the crudest workmanship, the little advance made by it in the direction of naturalness was received by the city with acclamations, the very street down which it was carried being called the "Happy Street" in honour of the event. Giotto carried on his master's teachings, and a few years later the Florentines had advanced to the standard of Fra Angelico, ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... have been to the honor and advantage of other Christians to imitate; and I could see good things in other Churches which Quakers would have done well to copy. I could see even among Unitarians of the older and better class, an attention to matters practical, a naturalness of style, and a freedom from certain anti-christian expressions and notions, which it would have been well for orthodox Churches to have made their own; and I could see where Unitarians had both gone too far through ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... presidency, which he liked because there, at the broad white marble counter laden with food and drink, the deputies laid aside their imposing, high and mighty airs, the legislative haughtiness became more affable, recalled to naturalness by nature, he knew that a sneering, insulting item would appear in the Messager the next morning, holding him up to his constituents as "a ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), the author of much religious verse, shows the unaffected naturalness of the new movement. This stanza from her Amor Mundi (Love of the World) ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... of convention, that when last I saw her, playing in some burlesque at the Gaiety, her fringe was curled and her pretty face rouged with the best of them. And, if further need be to show the absurdity of having called her performance 'a triumph of naturalness over the jaded spirit of modernity,' let us reflect that the little mimic was not a real old-fashioned girl after all. She had none of that restless naturalness that would seem to have characterised the girl of the early ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... whose manners are assumed for the occasion and those who wear them habitually. The former are apt to forget themselves occasionally, or they overact their part, or if they succeed in sustaining a perfect elegance of deportment that is really pleasing as an effort of art, they always want the grace of naturalness and simplicity which belongs to the Manners of those who have made courtesy and refinement their own by loving them. It is only when we act as we love to act, that our Manners are truly our own. If we cultivate the external forms ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... Another hymn, and then some Bible scene or striking incident is read and commented upon, and when interest is fairly roused the gospel is preached in its simplicity and a direct appeal made to the people. There is a wonderful fascination in this service—a naturalness in all the surroundings, so like the circumstances of our Lord's discourses, that makes God's nearness felt, and inspires great faith for results. Great have been these results—how great we shall know by-and-by. Many a soul has thus been born by the sea, in the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... and action are of his nature. [Footnote: Svabhavikijnana bala kriya cha.] It is because this naturalness has not yet been born in us that we tend to divide joy from work. Our day of work is not our day of joy— for that we require a holiday; for, miserable that we are, we cannot find our holiday in our work. The river finds its holiday in its onward flow, the fire in its outburst of flame, the scent ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... all the joy of life was alight in her face, and the one mysterious and wonderful secret of her sex was shining softly out of her eager eyes. So that, after all, when they met, Wingrave asked her no questions. She came into his arms with all the graceful and perfect naturalness of a child who has wandered a ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hear from Mr. Kingsley? and, if so, how is his wife? I am reading now Mrs. Stowe's 'Sunny Memories,' and like the naturalness and simplicity of the book much, in spite of the provincialism of the tone of mind and education, and the really wretched writing. It's quite wonderful that a woman who has written a book to make the world ring ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... inveterate illusion of his countrymen that excellence in poetry depended on the imitation of good models. He took a deep interest in the poetry of primitive and unlettered men, and deduced from that his criteria of excellence; namely, sincerity, naturalness, strength and fulness of expression. The virtue of the greatest poets, such as Homer, Shakspere and Ossian, lay—so he said—in the fulness and fidelity with which they had felt and expressed the life of their nation and their epoch. Thus he became ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... vivid naturalness Pythagoras was himself far surpassed by Myron. Pythagoras had seen the importance of showing the effect of action in every portion of the body. Myron carried the minuteness of representation so far that his Statue of Ladas, the runner, was spoken ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... outlined against the darkness behind them. She heard him take one deep, slow inspiration, like a swimmer who fills his lungs before plunging into the water; she heard the quick release of the breath, followed by his voice, saying, with an effort at naturalness: ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... passion and pure love, of flesh and spirit, of the animal and the angel in man. The music is always expressive, the choruses very beautiful, the orchestration skillful, but the whole is fatiguing and excessive, too full, too laborious. When all is said, it lacks gayety, ease, naturalness and vivacity—it has no smile, no wings. Poetically one is fascinated, but one's musical enjoyment is hesitating, often doubtful, and one recalls nothing but the general impression—Wagner's music represents the abdication of the self, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... strike a European as childish and monstrous, but one must admire many praiseworthy traits in the play itself, for instance the naturalness with which the players often declaim monologues lasting for a quarter or half an hour. The extravagances which here shock us are perhaps on the whole not more absurd than the scenes of the opera of to-day, or the buskins, masks, and peculiar ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... that the young man's naturalness and confidence staggered me, the more so as I saw by the sarcastic smile on Hale's lips that he did not believe a single word spoken. A portable telephone stood on the table, and as Macpherson finished his ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... and her eyes—she looked—" She hesitated for a word, and dropped to the homely, "She looked as if she would bite with annoyance that he should be here. The expression was gone in a moment; she spoke with an ease and naturalness that was astonishing, even disgusting; but it had been there. I do not ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... appetite for good food, and not a little discernment of what was good; a great and boylike enjoyment of primitive pleasures; a love of practical jokes and a hearty roar of laughter for hearty fun; a self-respecting naturalness, which made them gentlemen in substance if not in all technical details; a pungent contempt for humbug and artifice, though they might not mind a good, swaggering lie upon occasion; a robust sense of honor in all matters which were trusted to their honorable feeling; and, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... but even unusual paleness, if there had been in those hands, one of which bore the great Papal ring, not merely trembling, but even a sign of constriction or tenseness, it might well have been, thought the priest afterwards, that the scene would have ended very differently. But the naturalness and ease of the pose were absolute. He stood there, the hands lightly laid one upon the other, his face palish certainly, but not colourless. There was even a slight flush in his cheeks from his quick walk up the long hall. It was a situation ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... revision. In going over his work, word by word and sentence by sentence, the writer will generally find many opportunities to increase the effectiveness of the structure and the style. Such revision, moreover, need not destroy the ease and naturalness of expression. ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... arrogance dropped from her before their simple, joyous naturalness. Julia had no feeling of wishing to impress them, to assert her own equality. Instead she genuinely wanted them to like her; she carried herself like the little girl she looked in her sailor blouse, like the ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... bow-windows at a watering place. Ethelberta's plan was to tell her pretended history and adventures while sitting in a chair—as if she were at her own fireside, surrounded by a circle of friends. By this touch of domesticity a great appearance of truth and naturalness was given, though really the attitude was at first more difficult to maintain satisfactorily than any one wherein stricter formality should be observed. She gently began her subject, as if scarcely knowing whether a throng were near her or not, and, in her fear of seeming artificial, ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... only one among them, Felicia, on her feet in the centre of a group of men, discussing some question as though she were in her studio, and watching the duke come towards her, while tranquilly taking her sherbet. She greeted him with perfect naturalness. Those near had discreetly retired to a little distance. There seemed to exist between them, however, notwithstanding what de Gery had overheard with regard to their presumed relations, nothing more than a quite intellectual intimacy, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... and Psychology. I do not deny that the study of religious history, by exhibiting the naturalness and universality of religious ideas and religious emotions, may rationally create a pre-disposition to find some measure of truth in every form of religious belief. But I would venture to add a word of caution against the tendency fashionable in many ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... approached, my guru might fall into a doze with the naturalness of a child. There was no fuss about bedding. He often lay down, without even a pillow, on a narrow davenport which was the background ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... self, which had been a conscious religious end for thousands of years, which men had sought in mortifications, in the wilderness, in meditation, and by innumerable strange paths, was coming at last with the effect of naturalness into the talk of men, into the books they read, into their unconscious gestures, into their newspapers and daily purposes and everyday acts. The broad horizons, the magic possibilities that the spirit of the seeker ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... and of the writers. The poet's own letters, as may be supposed from the thought he bestowed on them, are full of artifice, and composed with the most elaborate care. Every sentence is elaborately turned, and the ease and naturalness which give a charm to the letters of Cowper and of Southey are not to be found in Pope. His epistles are weighted with compliments and with professions of the most exalted morality. 'He laboured them,' says Horace Walpole, 'as much as the Essay on Man, and ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... was forty-four), this was in no way owing to any artificial aid, but to a kind of brilliant vitality, not a bouncing mature liveliness, but a vivid, intense, humorous interest in life that was and would always remain absolutely fresh. She was naturalness itself, and seemed unconscious or careless of her appearance. Nor did she have that well-preserved air of so many modern women who seem younger than their years, but seemed merely clever, amiable, ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... has given the world a delightful glimpse of what the life at Windsor and Buckingham Palace was from 1842 to 1845; how much real friendliness existed in it; what simplicity and naturalness lay behind its pomp and magnificence. Dissipation and extravagance found no place there. That palace home—whether in town or country, where all sacred obligations and sweet domestic affections reigned supreme, where ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... pupils in grades above the third. It is believed that these readers will aid in overcoming these serious faults in reading, which all teachers and parents deplore. The dramatic appeal of the stories will cause the child to lose himself in the character he is impersonating and read with a naturalness and expressiveness unknown to him before, and this improvement will be evident in all his oral reading, and even ...
— Children's Classics in Dramatic Form - Book Two • Augusta Stevenson
... character of the theme forbids much indulgence in conceits such as Tennyson sometimes falls into, and the execution is more finished than his volumes always are: there are very few prosaic lines, and few instances of that excess of naturalness which degenerates into the mawkish. The nature of the plan—which, after all, is substantially though not in form a set of sonnets on a single theme—is favorable to those pictures of common landscape and of daily life, redeemed ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... speak lines from a play inject as much naturalness and sincerity into your delivery as you can command. Speak the words as though they really express your own ideas and feelings. If you feel that you must exaggerate slightly because of the impression the ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... inornate, though by no means correspondingly simple, as to render any comparison between it and the dramatic work of Shakspere out of the question. But when acted, the artistry of the play is revealed. Its intense naturalness is due in great part to the stern concision of the lines, where no word is wasted, where every sentence is fraught with the utmost it can convey. The outlines which disturbed us by their vagueness become more clear: in a word, we all ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... skill of elaboration. The series of cuttings, for instance, which he makes from Burton, on the occasion of Bobby Shandy's death, are woven into the main tissue of the dialogue with remarkable ingenuity and naturalness; and the bright strands of his own unborrowed humour fly flashing across the fabric at every transit of the shuttle. Or, to change the metaphor, we may say that in almost every instance the jewels that so glitter in their stolen setting were cut and set by Sterne himself. ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill |
