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Naughtiness   Listen
Naughtiness

noun
1.
An attribute of mischievous children.  Synonyms: badness, mischievousness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Naughtiness" Quotes from Famous Books



... since in a popular down-town restaurant. The action and the manner of speech did not harmonize. If I felt it borne in upon me that I must be a profane fellow to prove my manliness, I would choose another diet than spoon victuals to nourish my formidable zest for naughtiness. Rare beef or wild game would be less incongruous. There are times when a man may be excused for using objectionable language. Stress of righteous indignation, seasons of personal conflict with hansom cabmen, large-headed street ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... Richards," answered Mrs. Curtis coldly. But Madge could see that she was dreadfully vexed at Tania's latest naughtiness. ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers

... frightened, and very pale, was quite self-possessed, and went about the house assisting her mother ably, despite the tendency to sob, which she found it very difficult to overcome. But the baby behaved in the most shameful and outrageous manner. His naughtiness is almost indescribable. The instant the door opened, and his father's bloody face was presented to view, baby set up a roar so tremendous that a number of dogs in the neighbourhood struck in with a loud chorus, and the black ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... these words made answer: 'What, O lady, is the name you bear?' To which she: 'Know that my friends call be Happiness, but they that hate me have their own nicknames (34) for me, Vice and Naughtiness.' ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... in bliss. She could feel herself dissolving. Her pleasure was terrible. It was true that she had left Paris without saying good-bye to Musa. She had done it on purpose. Why? She did not know. Perhaps out of naughtiness, perhaps.... She was aware that she could be hard, like her father. But she was glad, intensely glad, that she had left Paris so, because the result had been this avowal. She, Audrey, little Audrey, scarcely yet convinced that she was grown up, was necessary to the genius whom ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... white ball lay curled again in the crook of my knees? Had he rested there for the last time? With a groan I thrust the thought from me, but always it returned, leering hideously. Miserably I recited his qualities—his love for me, his mettle, his beauty, his unfailing good humour.... What naughtiness there was in him seemed very precious. Painfully I remembered his thousand pretty ways. He had a trick of waving his little paws, when he was tired ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... did her best, and that's a satisfaction," said Father. "Johnnie's a clever little lad in spite of his naughtiness, and may turn out better than we expect Some day he may even thank you for having saved his life. Gwen must keep her eye on him. He owes her so much it ought to make ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... Granny had had to chide him for childish naughtiness had he been greatly troubled over the vexed question of right and wrong. Looking back now, he could see that he had been hedged about by what he chose to call circumstances. First there had been the influences of that home beneath the Silver Maple, ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... attack on Mr. Gladstone is in "Fors", September, 1875, the apology and withdrawal in "Fors", February, 1878. The second "naughtiness" will be found in "Arrows of the Chace", Vol. II., and a final attack is made in an interview in the Pall Mall Gazette, 21st April, 1884. The subject is summarized in an article in the Daily News ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin

... Octavias and Julia Domnas, and other respectable wives! All that I quite enjoyed because I understood. Eight years' campaigning in New York, and London and Paris would teach even an idiot that nineteenth century 'best society' can lift you so close to the naughtiness of the golden Roman era, that one only has to strain a very little on tip-toe, to feel at one's ease with the jeunesse doree of dead ages. Here—what do you find in a huge stone well sunk into the bowels of the earth? About as enticing as a plunge into a dry cistern, suddenly unroofed? If ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... speaking what the New Testament calls sins. Wickedness—iniquity—seem to be harder words, and to mean worse offences. They mean the evil things which a man does, not out of the weakness of his mortal nature, but out of his own wicked will, and what the Bible calls the naughtiness of his heart. So wickedness means, not merely open crimes which are punishable by the law, but all which comes out of a man's own wilfulness and perverseness— injustice (which is the first meaning of iniquity), cunning, falsehood, covetousness, pride, ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley

... astonishing, the age of you children! You might be fifty, each of you, and I your little boy whom you had discovered in an act of naughtiness and were bringing home! Really are you as displeased with me a ce point-la? C'est epatant! But laugh, my little Blanquette, are you not ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... unheard-of thing for her seat to be empty. But to-day it was so, and the row of little boys whom her gentle presence generally awed into tolerable behaviour, indulged unchecked in all the ingenious naughtiness that infant mind and body ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker

... accuse himself of not having done his duty by the girl or of any desire to shirk it in the future; and that being the case, he grew every minute more inclined to believe that the fact that his duty was now being made so disagreeable to him was owing, not to any fault of his, but to the naughtiness of her disposition. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... how beautiful!—and the earth a green garden, blossoming with many-colored delights. Thus Nature, whose laws I had broken in various artificial ways, comported herself towards me as a strict but loving mother, who uses the rod upon her little boy for his naughtiness, and then gives him a smile, a kiss, and some pretty playthings to console the urchin ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... that she was, had been informed of the success of Tom's naughtiness—not indeed till after it was over, when there was nothing to be done but to shake her head and laugh; and now she explained so that her son came to a better understanding of ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and opinions, and she was aware that in the eyes of the nuns there were few offences so heinous as that which she was going to commit. "But I am not a nun yet," thinks the poor child, clasping and unclasping her hands in her perplexity, and struggling with the conscience-stricken sense of naughtiness, which threatened at this last moment to overpower all her foregone conclusions, and disconcert her in spite of herself— "I am not a nun yet, so it cannot be so very wrong in me; and then there is Monsieur Horace——" and with the thought of him all Madelon's courage returned. The rush ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... until I mind; but after that he forgets it all,—takes all my naughtiness and throws it behind his back, and ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... after saying good-morning, began a long and detailed account of Seryozha's naughtiness, but Anna did not hear her; she was considering whether she would take her with her or not. "No, I won't take her," she decided. "I'll go alone ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... do well by others' ills, You'll do right well," she said, When we would come and tell about The naughtiness of Ned. "Now children, if you shun the bad You may in others find, And never let yourself be rude, Or naughty, or unkind, You'll learn to do by others' ills Right well," dear grandma said, "And in the way that's good and true, Your ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller

... to. I enjoyed that visit too. But the latest and the reigning idea is that they are not to be thwarted or crossed in any way, and as for being punished such barbarity is not to be thought of. If detected in naughtiness they are to be reasoned with only, and if the naughtiness is persisted in it is to be taken for granted that the small sinners are ill, and must be gently nursed into good ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... had to send a certain number of pheasants and other game to the absent family and their friends every now and then, and this duty was his pretext. There was plenty of shooting to be got elsewhere, but the spice of naughtiness about this was alluring. To reach that part of the wood where it was proposed to shoot the shortest way ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... For the bewitching of naughtiness doth obscure things that are honest; and the wandering of concupiscence doth ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous

... this Galileo when his uncle had finished. Mr. Knight wished Tom to go into the drapery, but Tom would not. Tom wanted to be an artist; he was always drawing. Mr. Knight had only heard of artists; he had never seen one. He thought Tom's desire for art was mere wayward naughtiness. However, after Tom had threatened to burn the house down if he was not allowed to go to an art-school, and had carried out his threat so far as to set fire to a bale of cotton-goods in the cellar, Mr. Knight yielded to the whim for the sake of peace ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett

... Captain Carbonel was driving the phaeton, with his wife in it, home from Elchester; when, just as they were passing Todd's house, a terrible scream was heard. Shrieks that did not mean naughtiness but agony; and a flame was visible within the door. In one moment the captain was over the wicket, past the lurcher, dragging with him his great old military cloak, which had been over Mary's knees. Another second, and he had wrapped little Hoglah in it from top to toe, stifling the flames by throwing ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the VIOLETS clean," carolled Mary blithely. Mrs. Jimmy Milgrave, whose pew was just in front of the manse pew, turned suddenly and looked the child over from top to toe. Mary, in a mere superfluity of naughtiness, stuck out her tongue at Mrs. ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... of temptation comes. But when it comes, it doth as the painter doth, draweth out our heart to the life: yet the sight of what we are should not keep us from coming to Jesus Christ. There are two ways by which God lets a man into a sight of the naughtiness of his heart; one is, by the light of the Word and Spirit of God; and the other is, by the temptations of the devil. But, by the first, we see our naughtiness one way; and, by the second, another. By the light of the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... took her place at the tea-table, she wondered within herself what was the matter with her eyes to cause such remarks, and still more why she could not help liking Lionel so much the best of her cousins, in spite of all the naughtiness of word and deed, which ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... you. The misery of my life has been want of affection. Any one who loved me could have guided me at will. You doubt! You don't know what is in me! How I felt as if I would work night and day at my lessons, if they were ever to be heard by mamma! I remember once, after a day's naughtiness, lying awake, sobbing, and saying, again and again, half aloud, "I would be good if they would ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and amusement. No band of enthusiastic pilgrims ever started in such high feather to see a dramatic and terpsichorean feast as did we. There was an expression of mystery and expectancy on every face. Mary Garden and all she does would be a mere flea bite to what we should see of pure and simple naughtiness. But alack and alas for our blasted hopes and the human weakness that had been worked on by the adroit press agent! The show was a "fake:" there was nothing naughty about it—and very little that was nice. ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne

... its day. Fielding's Journal had perhaps the least immediate success of the four. Sterne's Journey unquestionably had the most. The tenant of "Shandy Hall," as was customary in the first heyday of "Anglomania," went to Paris to ratify his successes, and the resounding triumph of his naughtiness there, by a reflex action, secured the vote of London. Posterity has fully sanctioned this particular "judicium Paridis." The Sentimental Journey is a book sui generis, and in the reliable kind of popularity, which takes ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... put everything else out of our heads. I don't know how late we didn't sit up talking. Maudie grew quite bright again, and I think the excitement kept her from catching cold. Serry, for a wonder, was the quietest of all. She told me afterwards that she was more thankful than she could say that her naughtiness hadn't done Maud any harm, and she told it all to mother—all of her own self. I think that was good of her. The only thing she kept up her mischief about was that she never has told ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... must be at the pains of being continually on his guard. He wished him a hundred miles away. However, there was no refusing Valencia anything; so he got his hat, but with so bad a grace, that Valencia saw his chagrin, and from mere naughtiness of heart amused herself with it by talking all the way of nothing ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... The Princess and the Butterfly contains no sufficient indication of Fay Zuliani's jealousy of the friendship between Sir George Lamorant and the Princess Pannonia. We are rather at a loss to account for the coldness of her attitude to the Princess, and her perverse naughtiness in going off to the Opera Ball. This renders the end of the act practically ineffective. We so little foresee what is to come of Fay's midnight escapade, that we take no particular interest in it, and are rather disconcerted by the care with which ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... on the other hand, the 'superfluity of naughtiness' displayed by some abnormal felon seems to warrant the supposition of a visit from the Pit, the greater portion of mankind, we submit, are much too green for any plausible assumption of a foregone training in good or evil. This ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... a greater degree, as she had often felt in childhood, when, in taking her to task for some naughtiness, he had worn this same sad and distant look. He had never punished her nominally; the pain he himself showed had always affected her as the severest ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... no son and the princess was his only child, and the hopes of the family all rested on her. The king wondered how she would govern his people, after he should die, and she became the queen. Yet he was glad for one thing: that, with all her naughtiness, she was, like her father, always kind to animals. Her pet was a little aurochs calf. Some hunters had killed the mother of the poor little thing in winter time. So the princess kept the creature warm and it fed out of her ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis

... to be corresponding feminine types were to be seen in profusion. Women with incomes of one hundred, two hundred, three hundred a year, women who had passed the age either of matrimony or naughtiness. What thousands of friendless and lonely people there must be in this great Dingy City! The class that lies on the grass is more sociable; they are free from a thousand tyrannies ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... appear in this preface, and the author imagines they may reveal to the reader something of the mentality which wrote this book. A mentality somewhat alien to the English, since it was profoundly interested in women without incurring any suspicion of French naughtiness, or endeavouring in any way to make itself pleasing to them. A mentality hampered by an almost hysterical shyness which, however, was capable of swift and complete evaporation ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... rather creep-mouse, but has no other fault that I know of. She is like her father's family, something like Mamma. But as for Harriet, the eldest, and her mother's darling, you will soon be sensible of some of her charms. I only hope she will not teaze the children into naughtiness, as she did last year. I do not know what would be done if Horace was at home. One day he had a regular battle with her. It began of course in fun on both sides, but he soon grew angry, and at last tore her frock and trod pretty hard on her foot. I could not be sorry for her, she deserved ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... they must at length return for food; and while thus waiting, watching, She heard all prayers that reached her; She answered them with love and forgiveness ever ready; and to the few who realized their folly—naughtiness, perhaps, at worst it was—this side of "death," She brought full measure of peace and ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... them, longing for sympathy, suspicious of pity—pity which is of all things most hateful to the cripple and the hunchback. As she stood in the doorway, there was a look of almost stern disapproval on her face, though the eyes softened with the tenderness of a woman watching the gracious naughtiness of a child. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... who have some useful or beautiful object in view make the sacrifice, as they feel it, to leave their villages every day and go to the nearest capital to carry on their studies or experiments. What we consider modern conveniences they would consider a superfluity of naughtiness for the most part. As work is the ideal, they do not believe in what we call ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... Bourse 'ud get along without a bit o' the pitch-and-toss barney, as every man as is a man finds the werry salt of life. Yah! This here Moral game is a gettin' played down too darned low for anythink. And wot's it mean, arter all? Why, 'No Naughtiness, except for the Nobs!' That's about the exact size of it, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various

... as flatter the senses." Let me have the phenomena which are inconvenient as well as the things which flatter the senses, and the chances are that my life will be a healthier and happier one than that of the person who spends his time on a cloud blushing at Nature's naughtiness. ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... mind that nothing so discourages or unfits a man for an effort as idleness. "Idleness," says Burton, in that delightful old book "The Anatomy of Melancholy," "is the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, the chief mother of all mischief, one of the seven deadly sins, the devil's cushion, his pillow and chief reposal . . . An idle dog will be mangy; and how shall an idle person escape? Idleness of the mind is much worse than that of ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... can do with him," said Richard. "Papa had better not hear it now, at any rate. He is very tired and sad this evening! and his arm is painful again, so we must not worry him with histories of naughtiness among ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... praise indeed, when placed side by side with his dismissal of the women of Hamburg. They are plump, we are told, "but the little god Cupid is to blame, who often sets the sharpest of love's darts to his bow, but from naughtiness or clumsiness shoots too low, and hits the women of Hamburg not in the ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... we only knew how sick she and Rachel had been, we'd see why they never wanted to think of those hours again! And when I chanced to mention that to-night would be full moon—the night of nights when the Sphinx and the Ghizeh Pyramids held their court—Monny begged to have the bad taste of her naughtiness taken out of her mouth by a dinner at Mena House. We might dine early, and plunge into the desert later, when the moon was high. Of course, I proposed that all should be my guests—all except "Antoun" who, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... the head, so that there would be no unpleasantness between master and servant, and if he was an intelligent animal he would know that the crook had been thrown not to hurt but merely to express disapproval of his naughtiness. ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... airy and frivolous as possible. Perhaps I overdid the airy business, for Von Gerhard looked at me for a long, silent minute, until the nonsense I had been chattering died on my lips, and I found myself staring up at him like a child that is apprehensive of being scolded for some naughtiness. ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... Mary-Nanna singing her song about the Bumpetty-Bumpetty Major. She could still hear Old Nanna talking to Michael and telling him to be a good boy. That could only end in Michael being naughty. To avert naughtiness or any other disaster from her children was the end of ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... another, "His Naughtiness bain't ekal to Gantick." And this observation was the original of a proverb, still repeated— "As naughty as Gantick, where the ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... see the tall, grave, stately Mrs. Robert Brownlow standing there describing the intolerable naughtiness of that imp, who, not a bit abashed, sat astride on the balustrade in the comfortable conviction that ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... was never guilty of childish faults of conduct, of little whims of stubbornness and petulance; but his character rested on a foundation of honesty, sincerity, and filial love that was never shaken by the summer storms of naughtiness which at times made their ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... doubts as to whether such persons ever existed, after that Straussian method of pseudo-criticism which cometh not from above, from the Spirit of God, nor yet indeed from below, from the sound region of fact, but from within, out of the naughtiness of the heart, defiling a man. I might weaken, too, the effect of the hymn by going on with the rest of it, and making you smile at its childish miracles and portents; but I should only do a foolish thing, by turning ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... all sorts of children's gear, masculine and feminine, together with spelling books, copy books, ivory alphabets, dissected maps, dolls, toys, and gingerbread, for the same small people. There she sat a careful mother, fretting over their naughtiness and their ailments; always in fear of the sun, or the wind, or the rain, of their running to heat themselves, or their standing still to catch cold: not a book in the house fit for a person turned of eight years old! not a grown ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 399, Supplementary Number • Various

... very men or women who would scorn to play a child's game in a childlike spirit, will show the best known form of childish fretfulness and sheer naughtiness in their way of taking a game which is considered to be more on a level with the adult mind, and so rasp their nerves and the nerves of their opponents that recreation is simply out ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call

... it was like a bad dream. I believe him. I'm sure of it. He didn't lie to me. And I can't hate him. I can't punish him without punishing myself. I don't want to punish him, any more than I would want to punish a baby, if I had one, for a naughtiness it couldn't help." ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... was greatly shocked, and unable to understand such naughtiness, rang the bell and ordered Sophie to take the child away, and Bunny was carried off weeping bitterly. But this fit of anger only made her mama more anxious to have some one to look after her daughter, and in a few days the governess arrived, and ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland

... came to the door with her arms covered with soap-suds, and after hastily answering that 'Bob was nowhere's about, plunged them in the wash-tub again, and took no more heed of Duncan. He hesitated whether to tell her about the thermometer or not, but had been so impressed with the naughtiness of 'telling tales,' that he could not make up his mind it could be right, even in this case, and so turned away and ran back to the desert, where he found his father ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford

... Arabs—or even under the form of an animal. Consequently the creole negro fears everything living which he meets after dark upon a lonely road,— a stray horse, a cow, even a dog; and mothers quell the naughtiness of their children by the threat of summoning a zombi- cat or a zombi-creature of some kind. "Zombi k nana ou" (the zombi will gobble thee up) is generally an effectual menace in the country parts, where it is believed zombis may be met with any time after sunset. In the city it is thought ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... down on the foot of the bed and drew the girl towards her, putting her motherly arm round the little figure, and smoothing the ruffled hair. Mrs. Rowles went on to explain to Juliet the great danger which she had run, and the extreme naughtiness of flat disobedience; and all the while Juliet stood with a calm face and silent manner, so that her aunt thought she was penitent. But this quietness was caused by her having so fully made up her mind as to what she would ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison

... naughtiness that has given character to the current German Imperial policy in Belgium, e.g., or that similarly has characterised the dealings of Imperial Japan in Korea during the late "benevolent assimilation" of that people into Japanese-Imperial usufruct, is not fairly to be taken to indicate what ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... Brunhilde was put to sleep for interfering somehow or other in the love affairs of Siegfried's mother and father, who are really sister and brother. If you think of it, the story is extremely indecent, but operatic things never seem to be shocking; music, apparently, covers a multitude of naughtiness, like charity is reported to do. Very likely that's why Mrs. —— is always doing so much for institutions and what not—for her sins, I suppose. I always thought she was a naughty old hypocrite! By the way, there is a comic character in "Siegfried," and in one of the ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch

... stand it," she thought. "There's only one way out. I must have a real desperate burst of naughtiness. What shall I do that will most aggravate them? For do that thing I will, and as ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... only a year, looked like her mother—sweet, very practical, always in a wide-eyed condition of surprise at Suzanna's wonderful imagination; a dependable little body who rarely fell from grace by reason of naughtiness. ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake

... Hamlet, that gentlemen purposely wrote badly lest they should be mistaken for scriveners; but most of them, then as now, wrote badly because they could not write any better. In short, the whole range of Shakespear's foibles: the snobbishness, the naughtiness, the contempt for tradesmen and mechanics, the assumption that witty conversation can only mean smutty conversation, the flunkeyism towards social superiors and insolence towards social inferiors, the easy ways with servants which is seen not only ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw

... of things touched upon. I think this is partly due to the amount of exercise we took. When picturing my childhood I always see myself racing about, jumping walls, climbing trees. In France and Italy I have been struck by the greater sedateness of Continental children. Our idea of naughtiness consisted chiefly in having suppers in our bedrooms and sliding down the banisters after being sent to bed. The first gratified our natural appetite, while the second supplied the necessary thrill in the fear ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... The Rhine-daughters have quickly forgotten their victim. They begin their blissful circumswimming of their idol, with a song in ecstatic celebration of it, so penetratingly, joyously sweet, that you readily forgive them their naughtiness: "Rhine-gold! Rhine-gold! Luminous joy! How laugh'st thou so ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... aprons, and the dying torches had split and guttered and fallen from the sconces and been trodden out under the top-boots of bearded men, she had gone home with Ellen like a reveller conducted by a sober friend, exclaiming every now and then with a fearful joy in her own naughtiness, "It's nearly nine, but it's been ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... prowl often about the courts and alleys of the mansion, in the hope of scenting raw meat, and one evening she heard the little boy Day crying in a basement cellar. The child was weeping because his mother had threatened to whip him for some naughtiness, and she heard at the same time the voice of Dawn ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault

... part of his father he could always, in his childhood's days, run for protection behind the short skirts of his sister Winnie. On the other hand, he might have been suspected of hiding a fund of reckless naughtiness. When he had reached the age of fourteen a friend of his late father, an agent for a foreign preserved milk firm, having given him an opening as office-boy, he was discovered one foggy afternoon, in his chief's absence, busy letting off ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... impatient of them as the Swedenborgians commonly are, and he probably acknowledged a measure of verity in the spiritistic phenomena; but he seemed rather incurious concerning them, and he must have regarded them as superfluities of naughtiness, mostly; as emanations from the hells. His powerful and penetrating intellect interested itself with all social and civil facts through his religion. He was essentially religious, but he was very consciously a citizen, with most decided opinions upon political questions. My own darkness as ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... is granted. But this is a concession under difficulties. His general position is that by punishing him his mother only 'procures him to be much more naughty,' and he declines as resolutely as Jeremy Bentham to admit that naughtiness in itself involves unhappiness, or that the happiness of naughtiness should not be taken into account. He frequently urges that it is pleasanter while it lasts to give way to temper, and that the discomfort only comes afterwards. It follows logically, as he argues in 1835, that ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... do what we bid you, your brother is safe," she said, in a voice of quiet decision. "He is quite at our mercy, and will be well cared for, if you are good. Any naughtiness on your part will only injure him. The moment you misbehave he will be turned into the streets, to find his way home as best he can. He will be brought to you in a week if you have not been the cause of his being lost in ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... naughtiness fallen from her like a cloak, Zoe sat regarding her parent, her lower lip less and less steady. She might have been stunned, trying to keep her equilibrium by a series of rapid little blinks, Lilly meanwhile sunk into a heap and crying down into ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... she, smiling upon me, said: the desire of naughtiness has risen up in thy heart. Does it not seem to thee to be an ill thing for a righteous man to have an evil desire rise up ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... or two others later. At 5 years old, Miss Lehzen was placed about me, and though she was most kind, she was very firm and I had a proper respect for her. I was naturally very passionate, but always most contrite afterwards. I was taught from the first to beg my maid's pardon for any naughtiness or rudeness towards her; a feeling I have ever retained, and think every one should own their fault in a kind way to any one, be he or she the lowest—if one has been rude to or injured them by word or deed, especially those ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... marauding Bedouin. And this population could easily increase to the three millions of the Exodus, at the same ratio in which the population of the United States is now increasing; so that it is a mere superfluity of naughtiness for the bishop to deny what the sacred historian so emphatically asserts: "That the people were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and the land was filled with them." But the bishop utterly ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... bishop holds a court, and his officer summons to it a large number of people, all having English names, and tells the audience to "ring well in their purse"; which shows that money was collected for the performance. Mary is brought before the court, to be tried for naughtiness, and Joseph also for tamely bearing it. His innocence is proved by his drinking without harm, a liquid which, were he guilty, would cause spots on his face. Mary also drinking of the same, unhurt, one of the accusers affirms that ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... spitfire looked very funny capering around and around, her long curls rumpled about her determined, flushed face, and her feet not still an instant in her flapping night-drawers. Many and many a time you escaped punishment, Beth, because you were so very comical even in your naughtiness." ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine

... that this was done, she stood off from me; and she lookt at me, half shy and half of sweetness and naughtiness. And she came then in a moment, and put her hands upward to my shoulders, and so stood her eyelids something down over her eyes; and did steal a little look up, this time and that. And lo! in a sudden moment, before I did wot, she was to her knees before ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... high, in that little lad on the left side of the picture with a battledore for a fiddle. They had a great deal of what he called excellent fun, though I am afraid it sometimes bordered upon mischief or naughtiness. I used to consider that he and his schoolfellows were regular heroes as I listened to his stories when he came home for the holidays; and even now I must confess I cannot help laughing when I think of some ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... had amounted to much, we would not be in such ignorance of her doings. The probability is that she was a society or fashion editor on one of the daily papers of her time,—a sort of Clara-Belle woman, whose naughtiness was mistaken for a species of intellectual brilliancy. Sappho was a gamey old girl, you know. Her life must have been a poem of passion, if there is any truth in the testimony of the authorities ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field

... waited; and though he was much worried at his new pet's naughtiness, he enjoyed his ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott

... were resting, you could feel naughtiness coming on. Then Pidgeon carried you on his back to the calf-shed; or Mrs. Fisher took you up into her bedroom ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... queer ones, I fell upon in my aunt's house, but, save once, against the naughtiness of Mrs. Aphra Behn, she never interfered. We liked greatly a book called "Peter Wilkins," by one Paltock, full of a queer folk, who had winged "graundees," a sort of crimson robe made of folds of their own skin. None ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... asked the Wizard. "I intend to sew them upon my coat and watch them carefully. The spirits of the Imps are still in the buttons, and after a time they will repent and be sorry for their naughtiness. Then they will decide to be very good in the future. When they feel that way, the tin button will turn to silver and the brass to gold, while the lead button will become aluminum. I shall then restore them to their proper ...
— Little Wizard Stories of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... the governess, the preparatory school, the secondary school, and the university, until it is an adult, you will produce, not a self-reliant, free, fully matured human being, but a grown-up schoolboy or schoolgirl, capable of nothing in the way of original or independent action except outbursts of naughtiness in the women and blackguardism in the men. That is exactly what we get at present in our rich and consequently governing classes: they pass from juvenility to senility without ever touching maturity except in body. The classes which cannot afford this sustained tutelage are notably ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... Puck was leaning against the little gate which had been placed across the door to keep him from running away, though it was of no use now, for he was big enough to climb over it. Augustine, to punish him for his naughtiness, as well as to guard against such a thing happening again that morning, had undressed him, knowing that he would not be likely to run away with nothing on but his ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... made. We begin to see when and also why spoons and forks and pots and pans are good or bad. We are less at the mercy of chance or blind fashion in such things than our fathers were. We know our vulgarity and the naughtiness of our own hearts. The advance, the self-knowledge, is not general yet, but it grows more general every year and the conviction of sin spreads. No doubt, like all conviction of sin, it often produces unpleasant results. The consciously artistic person ...
— Progress and History • Various

... or less subconscious—such things always are—but I think Ann will some day prove what I say. In a way, it's like the feeling I have for—for my own baby, Lyn. I see him in Bobbie; I feel him in Bobbie's dearness and naughtiness. Ann holds what went before in what is around her now. Sometimes it puzzles ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock

... Babbitt was stirred to like naughtiness. "Say, folks, I wished I dared show you a book I borrowed from ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... verse. And when he felt madness coming upon him he often found relief in his interest in these pets. One of his poems tells how Cowper scolded his spaniel Beau for killing a little baby bird "not because you were hungry," says the poet, "but out of naughtiness." Here is Beau's reply— ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... was indeed amusing to see Lady Valleys with her first-born. Her fine figure, the blown roses of her face, her grey-blue eyes which had a slight tendency to roll, as though amusement just touched with naughtiness bubbled behind them; were reduced to a queer, satirical decorum in Miltoun's presence. Thoughts and sayings verging on the risky were characteristic of her robust physique, of her soul which could afford to express almost ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... led to these reflections by the memory of Aubrey Beardsley, and the reception which his work received, not from the British public, but from the inner circle of advanced intellectuals. Too much occupied with the obstetrics of art, his superfluity of naughtiness has tarnished his niche in the temple of fame. 'A wish to epater le bourgeois,' says Mr. Arthur Symons, 'is a natural one.' I do not think so; at least, in an artist. Now much of Beardsley's work shows the eblouissement ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... without such resistance. As, for instance, when we have to train a child with a perverse will, if we quietly assert what is right to the child, and insist upon obedience without the slightest antagonistic feeling to the child's naughtiness, we accomplish much more toward strengthening the character of the child than if we try to enforce our idea by the use of our personal will, which is filled with resistance toward the child's obstinacy. In the latter case, it is just pitting our will against the will of the child, which ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call

... shoulders,—how expressive,—how surprising! But Fred need not have been surprised; they never set up for Faith, Hope, and Charity. What he most wondered at was that they still looked so lovely, when they were clearly full of all pagan naughtiness. They might ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... the flowers up to her face. It was awful, for you could see her mouth thicken and redden over its edges and shake. She hid it behind the flowers. And somehow you knew it wasn't your naughtiness that made her cry. There was ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair

... greatest honour and glory. I say, to consider the precious promises; to believe the excellency and virtue of Jesus Christ, and love him in your souls, and delight in him, is the weightiest matter of the gospel. To go out of yourselves daily into his fulness, to endeavour new discoveries of your own naughtiness and his grace, this is the new and great commandment of the gospel. The obedience of it is the most essential part of a Christian walk. Now, again, to know that ye do believe, and to discern your interest in Christ, this is but a matter of comfort ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... Lindesay, accustomed all her life to the homage of many men, and having been brought up in a great castle in an age when chivalrous respect to women had not yet given place to the licence of the Revival of Letters, practised irritation like a fine art. She was brimful of the superfluity of naughtiness, yet withal as innocent and playful as ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... to be 'Mary Jane,'" retorted Billy, with calm naughtiness, refusing to meet Aunt Hannah's beseechingly reproving eyes. Then suddenly she chuckled. "It would be a combination, wouldn't it? 'Words by Mary Jane Arkwright. Music by Billy Neilson'! We'd have sighing swains writing to 'Dear Miss Arkwright,' ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter

... her ignorance. The youth—to Artois the Marchesino seemed almost a boy, indeed, often quite a boy—was admirable in his precocity. He embodied Naples, its gay furberia, and yet that was hardly the word—perhaps rather one should say its sunny naughtiness, its reckless devotion to life purged of thought. And Vere—what did she embody? Not Sicily, though she was in some ways so Sicilian. Not ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... feelings of duty, believing that, as we are called with a high and holy calling, and forbidden to adorn these bodies, but to wear the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, as we have ourselves laid aside these superfluities of naughtiness, so we should not in any measure contribute to the destroying of others, knowing that we shall be called to give an account of the deeds done ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... and ermine boa, was fitted to a bride's head with its orange flowers and veil, and these works of art were sent over to Jack, labelled "Miss Laura and Lotty Burton going to the Minots' Christmas ball,"—a piece of naughtiness on Jill's part, for she knew Jack liked the pretty sisters, whose gentle manners made her own wild ways ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... doth commend thy prudence in getting out of the way ere she reproaches thee for seducing the good Knight into that Milwaukee journey, of the responsibility of which naughtiness I have in very sooth washed my hands as clean ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... Nor did it seem applicable to a young man who had spent a quiet winter in Rome with his mother. But Cecil, since his engagement, had taken to affect a cosmopolitan naughtiness which he was far ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster

... find it difficult to believe that a great man whom we admire was ever an ordinary human being, with faults and errors like our own. But when we do find natural, childish letters, or read anecdotes of youthful naughtiness, we immediately feel like shaking hands with the scapegrace, and a real liking for ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody

... Who is, I wonder? What a madness it was to think that she and I could pull together. Imagine that little teasing, irresponsible child in such a box as this, bored to death by these interminable women! For all her naughtiness and her folly she was wiser than I. But ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... Jews have their vices: no wonder if it were proved (which it has not hitherto appeared to be) that some of them have a bad pre-eminence in evil, an unrivalled superfluity of naughtiness. It would be more plausible to make a wonder of the virtues which have prospered among them under the shadow of oppression. But instead of dwelling on these, or treating as admitted what any hardy or ignorant person may deny, let us found simply on the loud assertions of ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... be that the miasmas of naughtiness develop best in the sunny brilliancy, of our atmosphere. It may be that the land and the people are young-hearted together, and the children's spirits not crushed and saddened by the shadow of ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner

... at her from the mirror into which he was looking—mirrors always fascinated George and he could never keep away from them—and there was in his face the whimsical and appealing naughtiness of a child. Suddenly Gabriella felt that as far as character and experience counted, she was immeasurably older than George. Her superior common sense made her feel almost middle-aged when he was in one of his boyish moods. At the age of nine she had not been ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... "This morning I prayed with great desire, 'Lord, keep me to-day from being naughty at all,' and I was naughty an hour afterwards; I looked at the clock and saw. How was it I was naughty when I wanted to be good? The naughtiness jumped up inside me, so"—(illustrating its supposed action within), "and it came running out. So what is the ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... school-room and in the nursery; and children—left to their own devices—accept it with wonderful courage and sagacity. If we allow to their souls some noble and free expansion, they may be trusted to divert themselves from that fretful self-consciousness which the nurse calls naughtiness, and the doctor, nerves. A little wholesome neglect, a little discipline, plenty of play, and a fair chance to be glad and sorry as the hours swing by,—these things are not too much to grant to childhood. That careful coddling which deprives ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... come in time," she whispered, as if talking to herself. "Oh, papa, I want to hear you say you forgive all my naughtiness. I want one kiss before I go. Oh, take me in your arms, papa, and press me to your heart, and say you love ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley



Words linked to "Naughtiness" :   roguishness, rascality, disobedience, naughty, prankishness



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