"Artless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... myself the temper of my people. And this is not to be learned by Edward, Prince of Wales, seated in the midst of proud nobles at his father's court; but it may be learned by a humble wayfarer, who travels from place to place seeking information from whence it may truly be culled—namely, from the artless sons of the soil, who speak not to please their listener but as ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to this effect, in the central motive of the poem, is that Venus herself is no artless virgin, no innocent Chloe, corresponding to a rustic Daphnis. She is already wife, mother, adulteress, femme entretenue, before she meets the lad. Her method of treating him is that of a licentious queen, who, after seducing page or groom, keeps the instrument of her pleasures in seclusion ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... repeated her plaintive song. It was not long before a small bird of beautiful plumage flew upon the tree, beneath which she usually sat, and, with its sweet and artless notes, seemed to respond to her voice. It was a bird of strange character, such as she had never seen before. It came every day and sang to her, remaining until it became dark. Her fond imagination soon led her to suppose that it was the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... tenderness, Ah, Monsieur, he said, had you but beheld her as I did with these eyes at that affecting instant with her dainty tucker and her new coquette cap (a gift for her feastday as she told me prettily) in such an artless disorder, of so melting a tenderness, 'pon my conscience, even you, Monsieur, had been impelled by generous nature to deliver yourself wholly into the hands of such an enemy or to quit the field for ever. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Impulsive and ingenuous as she was, the girl had, at first, drawn near to her cousin, simply and naturally, obeying the law of attraction that draws the young toward the young. She had met his friendly advances with the immodesty of innocence, artless effrontery, the liberties taught by life in the country, the happy folly of a nature abounding in high spirits, and with all sorts of ignorant hardihood, unblushing ingenuousness and rustic coquetry, against which her cousin's vanity was without means of defence. The child's presence ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... not unnatural that Hamlet's grief should assume a comprehensive form. The Queen had drawn the world in her train. Nobles and people, councillors and courtiers, the honoured statesman, the artless maiden, had joined her, had connived, were her accomplices. They had, parted among them, all the vices appropriate to her Court, her people. The world was betrayed to Hamlet in all its meanness and littleness: and he looked ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... up to an effective brevity, and with the fragrance of that admirable age of literature all about it. Here, then, there is something of the original Italian colour: in this narrative Shakespeare may well have caught the first glimpse of a composition with nobler proportions; and some artless sketch from his own hand, perhaps, putting together his first impressions, insinuated itself between Whetstone's work and the play as we actually read it. Out [173] of these insignificant sources Shakespeare's play rises, full of solemn ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... rapidly and with such earnestness that I was balked of understanding what he said sentence by sentence. The next day my companion wrote out a summary of what the Governor had said and I had tried to say in reply. As a brief report of a talk of three hours' duration it is plainly imperfect. The artless account is of some interest, however, because it furnishes an impression at once of an engaging simplicity and sincerity in the Japanese character and of the pressure ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... platform-commonplace. As a lamented London Maggid told me, "There still live some real soldiers of God." Such are those who use persuasion from the pulpit, such as shine through the example of their own humane Jewishness and such as capture our hearts by artless beautiful tales of ...
— Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago • Hannah Trager
... pediments and attics, consoles and urns, labored to express the childlike sentiment of the spire. But even the great Sir Christopher Wren, with his sixty steeple-towers, and all his followers to this day, have not succeeded in a translation so unnatural. Spirituality and the artless grace of inspiration are wanting to the spires of the Renaissance, and so they struggle up painfully into the sky. And it is very rare to find those who have gone back even to Gothic models building a spire which touches our affections, or claims affinity with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... of expression I was evidently ignorant, and I then mentioned my loss of hearing as a bar to this branch of usefulness, His rejoinder was the overflowing of a truly Christian heart, very much touched by an artless account of the Lord's dealings with me; and greatly did my spirit rejoice at having found a brother in the faith thus to ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... She was so artless—so unaffected by the conventions of the world—in a word, so natural in expressing her thoughts, that the man who had given the best years of his life to feed the vicious, grossly sensual and bestial imaginations of his readers was deeply moved. He was puzzled ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... be supposed that by this comparison I am suggesting that the talk of Mme. de Peyronnet and her daughters was naturalistic and so artless. It was nothing of the kind. Though original and spontaneous, it was the result, consciously or unconsciously, of a distinct artistic intention. When they talked, they talked their best, as does the writer of good familiar letters. ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... softness of the beard, which fell in waves over his throat to his breast, never a soldier but would have laughed at him in encounter, never a woman who would not have confided in him at sight, never a child that would not, with quick instinct, have given him its hand and whole artless trust; nor might any one have said he ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... frame, and wears it out. I have not spoken to him above thrice in my life, for he is a Dissenter, and has rarely come in my way. The document is a sort of record of his feelings, after the perusal of "Jane Eyre;" it is artless and earnest; genuine and generous. You must return it to me, for I value it more than testimonies from higher sources. He said, 'Miss Bronte, if she knew he had written it, would scorn him;' but, indeed, Miss Bronte does not scorn him; ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... coco-brandy, he has been driven from his house into the woods. "A mouse that dwelt in a cat's ear" had a more easy resting-place; and yet I have never seen a man that bore less mark of years. He must show us the church, still decorated with the bishop's artless ornaments of paper—the last work of industrious old hands, and the last earthly amusement of a man that was much of a hero. In the sacristy we must see his sacred vessels, and, in particular, a vestment which was a "vraie curiosite," ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... proper to stand with those whom old acquaintance or kindred gave some title to her good offices. In addition to all those motives to a candid treatment of me, there were others which owed their efficacy to her maternal regard for me, and to the artless and unsuspecting generosity of ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... the charm of this artless reply, and repeated it in l'Epreuve (see Introduction, p. lxiii), with the added epigram of Lisette: "Et quel est donc cet homme qui s'appelle lui ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... quickly toward his companion, studied his artless, hopeful countenance for a moment, and then looked away with ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... nature, which I can look through, as the balloon-voyagers tell us they see from their hanging-baskets through the translucent waters which the keenest eye of such as sail over them in ships might strive to pierce in vain? Why has the child trusted me with such artless confessions,—self-revelations, which might be whispered by trembling lips, under the veil of twilight, in sacred confessionals, but which I cannot look at in the light of day without a feeling of wronging ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the true spirit of noblesse oblige, even while she sees that that loyalty is costing her own happiness. But most of all the soul of this little play is in that triumph of simple girlish naivete, Leonie, so true, so artless, disarming all rivalry, and winning every spectator's heart, as she all but loses and then gains her lover's. These traits are Legouve's. They are not qualities that will stand on the stage alone. They need the setting of Scribe's ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... Merlin turned, and the two men strolled together down town. While they yet talked, Lawrence Newt observed that the eyes of his companion studied every carriage that passed. He did it in a very natural, artless way; but Lawrence Newt smiled with his eyes, and at length said, as if Arthur had asked him the question, "There ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... upon the open door and glanced in. There, to her astonishment, she saw the domestic group already described, and to her eyes dominated by the "most beautiful and perfectly elegant" young man she had ever seen. But let not the incautious reader suppose that she succumbed as weakly as her artless charges to these fascinations. The character and antecedents of that young man had been already delivered to her in the kitchen by the other help. With that single glance she halted; her eyes sought the ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... excerpts. Whatever else may transpire it is certain that labour such as his bears the assurance of unsullied happiness and overflowing joy. It is quaint, simple, unassuming; without affectation, full of pathos, and gently sensitive. He was a man who knew no guile, and his sweet and artless nature is faithfully portrayed in the outpourings of an impressionable, poetic soul. To dance with rustic maidens on the lea; to sing by moonlight to the piper's strain; to be happy, always happy, such is the theme, delicate and refined, ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... world—something must have gone wrong, terribly wrong, it was clear! They were coming towards him; he had meant to avoid them at first, but now his curiosity would not allow this, and he threw himself in their way, affecting an artless surprise and pleasure at being the first to welcome them back. Mark did not appear at all disconcerted to see him, and Mabel could not be frigid to anybody just then in the flush of happy expectation, which she did not try to conceal; ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... confidences, I plied him with much of interest and suggestion from my real and fictitious past. And it was after the third whisky of the third visit of that sort, if I remember rightly, that a propos of some artless expansion of a little affair that had touched and left me in my teens, that he did at last, of his own free will and motion, break the ice. "It was like that with me," he said, "over there at Aldington. ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... utmost awe by the villagers. The paper speaks of him as "our esteemed and talented townsman, Col. W.," and alludes to his "beautiful and accomplished wife," who, by the way, was formerly waiter in an oyster saloon, and won the Colonel's affection by the artless manner in which she would shout: ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various
... When my father took me to Italy, I continued averse to public company. In such seclusion, the presence of Sackville, being almost my only pleasure, chased from my mind its usual reserve, and gradually and surely won upon the awakened affections of my heart. Artless and unwarned, I knew not the nature of the passion which I cherished until it had gained an ascendancy ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... He made great improvement in the mechanical part of his art, and also was the first who covered his picture with a thin varnish, both to preserve it and bring out the colors. He invented ivory black. His distinguishing excellence was grace, "that artless balance of motion and repose, springing from character, founded on propriety, which neither falls short of the demands nor overleaps the modesty of Nature." [Footnote: Fuseli, Lect. I.] His great contemporaries may have equaled him in perspective, accuracy, and finish; but he added ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... read again to us in these days, even as we listen to the simple, grave, artless airs into which those rural peoples threw all their young heart, we cannot help marking a great inspiration; and we are moved to pity as we reflect ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... little stool at her aunt's feet, turned an artless, inquiring face up to her. "What are the 'sights' of La ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... conversation between Wilhelmina and Ramsay, to show not only what influence he had already gained over the artless yet intelligent girl, but also the way by which he considerately prepared her for the acknowledgment which he resolved to make to her on some future opportunity; for, although Ramsay cared little for deceiving the father, he would not have ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... third part of Rhetoric," as the dressing up of thought. Rhetoric to him had not in theory become style, but style is the only part which he finds interesting enough to treat. His schemes and tropes are of course the rhetorical figures; but let him explain them in his own artless way. "A scheme is the fashion of a word, sayyng or sentence, otherwyse wrytten or spoken then after the vulgar and comon usage. A trope is a movynge and changynge of a worde or sentence, from thyr owne significacion into another ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... baronetcy—by telling her partner in a quadrille, quite innocently, that "she should know his figure anywhere." The man had a hump, and one leg shorter than the other; but he thought Emily was dying for him, and proposed within a fortnight. Emily is an artless creature—"good, common-sense," Aunt Deborah calls it—and so she threw over Harry Bloomfield and married the hump and the legs that didn't match and the chance of the baronetcy forthwith; and now they say he beats her, and I ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... and sister. She appealed to Dr. Harlowe, in her sweet, bewitching way, which always seemed irresistible; but he only gave her a genial smile, called me "a brave little girl," and bade me "God speed." "I wish Richard Clyde were here," said she, in her own artless, half-childish manner, "I am sure he would be on my side. I wish brother Ernest would come home, he would decide the question. Oh, Gabriella, if you ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... enamored with her artless grace that they were soon united in marriage, and he took her to his mansion to grace its stately halls as she had the cabin of the Indian chief, her father, who was considered by the Indians equal in ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... rupee. However, you soon come to know the coolies by sight, and after some experience are rarely 'taken in,' but many young beginners get 'done' most thoroughly till they become accustomed to the tricks of the artless ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... has a rare gift for composing stories for children. With a light, yet forcible touch, she paints sweet and artless, yet natural ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... acts, which was to be put on the stage by Poquelin de Moliere, as D'Artagnan called him, or Coquelin de Voliere, as Porthos styled him. Loret, with all the charming innocence of a gazetteer,—the gazetteers of all ages have always been so artless!—Loret was composing an account of the fetes at Vaux, before those fetes had taken place. La Fontaine sauntered about from one to the other, a peripatetic, absent-minded, boring, unbearable dreamer, who kept buzzing and humming at everybody's elbow a thousand ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... impulsively and threw both arms about his neck. "I want to see you work out your problem. I will help you. You can go with me—and I can always live with you—and some day—some day—" She buried her face in his shoulder. The artless girl had never seemed to think it unmaidenly to declare her love for him, to show him unmistakably that she hoped ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... hands, striving to gain control of himself. In the early days of his misfortunes the necessity for straining every effort had kept him from brooding upon his losses, and finally a numbness of despair had seized him. But to-night the child's artless talk had brought back vividly the old home scene. He could see it now, as he had seen it so often in the light of a summer evening. The sparkling sea, with the tang of salt water wafted up over his fields; the rippling ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... "Religious as Cromwell, and artless as Macchiavelli! Begins his orders with an honourable mention of God, closes them with 'Put all deserters in irons,' and in between gives points to ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Denmark of the middle ages, whether judged historically or poetically. We know nothing of the authors of these poems, which treat of the heroic adventures of the great warriors and lovely ladies of the chivalric age in strains of artless but often exquisite beauty. Some of the subjects are borrowed in altered form from the old mythology, while a few derive from Christian legend, and many deal with national history. The language in which we receive these ballads, however, is as late as the 16th or even the 17th ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... heresy means," answered Dona Leonor, in an artless tone. "My dear father taught me what I know about the loving Jesus— that He is the only friend in whom human beings can really trust. It was the sure knowledge of this which comforted him through his illness, and made his deathbed so happy and glorious. ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... never to take your little brother's "chewing-gum" away from him by main force; it is better to rope him in with the promise of the first two dollars and a half you find floating down the river on a grindstone. In the artless simplicity natural to this time of life, he will regard it as a perfectly fair transaction. In all ages of the world this eminently plausible fiction has lured the obtuse infant to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sentimental brother, ere you squeeze my hand so devoutly, that I am not your artless country maid," exclaimed Helen, laughing; then, after a moment's pause, she cries, gayly, "ah! I have it, Frank; you must masquerade a little, that's all—win your bride under false colors, as ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... There is nothing about Locker which is not natural. As he is, so (apparently) does he speak: far more candidly and with more of self-revelation than Praed, more candidly than Mr Austin Dobson, who is apt to veil his personality behind a mask of elegant antiquarianism. But Locker is more artless and naive (which qualities are in him not the least inconsistent with irony) than any modern writer, except, perhaps, R. L. Stevenson now and then; and with the latter naivete itself is sometimes an artifice. Mr Brander Matthews rightly lays stress on ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... the people, and wisdom shall die with you," he struck twelve. When the sons of Jacob went down into Egypt and Joseph put up the price of corn, took their money, and then secretly replaced the coin in the sacks, he showed his artless love of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... grown-up playfellow, from her childhood to that day. She had romped with him in her frocks, she had gone on romping with him in her gowns. He had never been long enough separated from her to have the external changes in his daughter forced on his attention. His artless, fatherly experience of her had taught him that she was a taller child in later years—and had taught him little more. And now, in one breathless instant, the conviction that she was a woman rushed over his mind. He felt it in the trouble of her bosom pre ssed against his; ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Then she called together the other children, and again heard the story. It came disjointedly from each in turn, but most fluently, most picturesquely, most convincingly, from the lips of Augustus Adolphus Schmidtt and the fair Josephine. When they had finished their artless recital, Miss Clarkson sought Fraulein von Hoffman. That afternoon, beside the big open fire in the children's winter play-room, Fraulein von Hoffman addressed her young charges in words brief but pointed, and as she talked the mission of Ivan at Locust Hall took on a new ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... see the result. Religion becomes gloomy, anxious, and austere; it ceases to breathe cheerfulness and joy around; the gentler graces die before it; fear treads fast in the footsteps of hope; a stiff formality introduces cant in the place of what is natural and artless; the heart is stretched on a rack of self-torturing doubts and anxieties. The biographies and private journals of many eminent saints show us how little happiness they had in their religion,—how they were tortured ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... and as usually befalls Virginia maidens, never has been able to get rid of it. Redbud is a lovely little creature, whom it is a delight to look upon. She has a profusion of light, curling hair, a fine fresh, tender complexion, deep, mild eyes, and a mouth of that innocent and artless expression which characterizes childhood. She is about sixteen, and has just emerged from short dresses, by particular request and gracious permission from Miss Lavinia, who is major-domo and manager in general. Redbud is, therefore, clad in the morning-dress of young ladies ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... as much as you please,' said the nurse; 'I do not care for that: I shall not dress you for crying and roaring, but for being good and speaking with civility.' Just as she said these words, the door opened, and in came the lady whom I before saw, and whose name I afterwards found was Artless. As soon as she entered, the nurse addressed her, saying, 'Pray, madam, is it by your desire that Miss Nancy behaves so rudely, and bids me dress her directly, and change the buckles in her shoes, ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... wisely left alone, and an abundance of pink mallow, growing very thickly, gave a touch of bright colour to the grass. He stopped for a while considering the grave of a child, who had died at the age of five years, with an artless epitaph painted on a wooden cross. The grave was piously tended, though it bore a date of some ten years back; there were little rose-trees growing there, and a border of pansies, all the work, Hugh fancied, of children, doing gentle honour to ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was the smile of Mr. Juniper Gallivant. Merry and artless was the flash of his bright blue eyes. Brisk and chipper was the step at which his dainty feet bore him along Broadway. Warm and impulsive was the grasp ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... in the whole theatre, that secretly, in their hearts, the audience had flung themselves into the riot with her, the oldest and staidest of them, as perhaps they had often wanted to do when they heard a jolly tune like that. It was artless, graceless. One only needed ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... self-sufficing intellect; in Glyndon, the young Englishman, the mingled strength and weakness of human nature; in the heartless, selfish artist, Nicot, icy, soulless atheism, believing nothing, hoping nothing, trusting and loving nothing; and in the beautiful, artless Viola, an exquisite creation, pure womanhood, loving, trusting and truthful. As a work of art the romance is one of great power. It is original in its conception, and pervaded by one central idea; but it would have been improved, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... artless description of this sad discovery, given by one of the natives who accompanied the party, may be not unworthy of the reader's notice. "Away we go, away, away, along the shore away, away, away, a long distance we ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... might indeed have been said at that time to be positively ordered. Wasn't the fact that the dancing passion was so out of proportion to any social resource just one of the signs of the natural?—and for that matter in both sexes alike of the artless kindred. It was shining to us that Jim Pendleton had a yacht—though I was not smuggled aboard it; there the line was drawn—but the deck must have been more used for the "German" than for other manoeuvres, often doubtless under the lead of our cousin Robert, the eldest of the many light irresponsibles ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... can gaze Alike on all the world. But paint an eye In whose half-hidden, steady light I read A truth-inquiring mind; a fancy, too, That could array in sweet poetic garb The truth he found; while on his artless harp He touched the gentlest feelings, which the blaze Of winter's hearth warms in the homely heart. And oh! recall the look of faith sincere, With which that eye would scrutinize the page That tells us of offended God appeased By ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... Claude a glass of champagne, which the guest of honor politely refused by spilling it down the neck of Harry Pifflemind in such an artless monkey way that the other ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... hymns, and some Latin should be taught. In the second, the Latin grammar, Latin authors, and religion. In the third, completion of the grammar, difficult Latin authors, rhetoric, and logic. Williams calls this "Melanchthon's somewhat artless ideas of a proper school system," which he excuses as being "marked possibly by the crudity of a first effort at organization, but more probably controlled in form by the fewness of teachers in the schools ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... drew herself up rigidly. She had heard enough of Horace's artless chatter the summer before, to understand his mother's jealousy. Mrs. Oliver lived in a panic of fear lest the money that should be ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... delightful dreams and pictures from a mind filled to the brim with poetic loveliness. Since that time Miss Jackson has written vast quantities of verse; always rich and musical, and if one may speak in paradox, always artless with supreme art. None of these poems is in any sense premeditated or consciously composed; they are more like visions of the fancy, instantaneously photographed for the perception of others, and unerringly framed in the most appropriate ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Stephen and Thomas) he appears to have continued to assist with more amiability than wisdom. He hunted, belonged to the Yeomanry, owned famous horses, Maggie and Lucy, the latter coveted by royalty itself. 'Lord Rokeby, his neighbour, called him kinsman,' writes my artless chronicler, 'and altogether life was very cheery.' At Stowting his three sons, John, Charles, and Thomas Frewen, and his younger daughter, Anna, were all born to him; and the reader should here be told that it is through the report of this second Charles ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... too," he continued, "that you might have had that adorable young lady, Miss Waboose, who—in spite of her heathenish name—is the most charming, artless, modest young creature I ever saw. Oh! Punch, Punch, what a consummate ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... slightly, and looked at John with some suspicion. But John put on so innocent and artless a look that Mr. Mudge at once dismissed the idea that there was any covert meaning in what he said. Meanwhile Paul, from his hiding-place in the bushes, had listened with anxiety to the foregoing colloquy. When John described ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... in politics, marm," he stated, dryly, "that takes more'n two to put 'em through when the pinch comes." He enjoyed the discomfiture that her artless confession brought to the Duke. The old man looked him up and down. That this Niles whom he himself had helped into office, who had been taking private toll from the liquor interests of the county as his predecessors ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... husband and I think he makes enemies by his impulsive temper. You know what musicians are. They talk right out. We think his enemies put difficulties in his way. And so nothing is settled. We keep waiting and here we are. Elsa wants to marry. She wants children!" exploded the artless Frau. ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... outstretched hand, stooping and bowing his huge bulk as he came in a manner that to a less artless mind than Mr. Graham's might have suggested a touch of the obsequious. His furtive but watchful eye had already marked the fact that it was at Mr. Poe's desk—not his own—that Mr. Graham sat—which was ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... vile, place; that she hoped I would be tractable, and keep out of bad company; in short, she said all to me that an old experienced practitioner in town could think of, and which was much more than was necessary to take in an artless inexperienced country maid, who was even afraid of becoming a wanderer about the streets, and therefore gladly jumped at the first offer of a shelter, especially from so grave and matron-like a lady, for such my flattering ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... instruction from them than from her teaching. When we truly feel that the heart speaks, our own opens to receive its instructions, nor can all the pompous morality of a pedagogue have half the effect that is produced by the tender, affectionate, and artless conversation of a sensible woman on him who ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... room remind you of childish days?" cried the artless damsel. "It used always to be summer or Christmas then; and we had tea here in such beautiful china, so different from the ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... our gardening, and out of which he would from day to day select for his table just the plants we had marked for ours. He also nibbled our young beans; and so at last we were reluctantly obliged to let John Gardiner set a trap for him. Poor old simple-minded hermit, he was too artless for this world! He was caught at the very first snap, and found dead in the trap,—the agitation and distress having broken his poor woodland heart, and killed him. We were grieved to the very soul when the poor fat old fellow was ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... perversity that I have ever seen, she certainly is the most marvelous phenomenon of innocence that can be imagined. She lives in that atmosphere of infamy with a calm and triumphing ease which is either wonderfully profligate or entirely artless. Strange scion of an adventuress, cast upon the muck-heap of that set, like a magnificent plant nurtured upon corruption, or rather like the daughter of some noble race, of some great artist, or of some grand lord, of some prince or dethroned king, ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... sudden pangs shot thro' each aching heart, When, Death, thy messenger dispatch'd his dart? Thy dread attendants, all-destroying Pow'r, Hurried the infant to his mortal hour. Could'st thou unpitying close those radiant eyes? Or fail'd his artless beauties to surprise? Could not his innocence thy stroke controul, Thy purpose shake, and soften all thy soul? The blooming babe, with shades of Death o'er-spread, No more shall smile, no more shall raise its head, But, like a branch that from the tree ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... head full of Roman castrametation and geometrical problems, a prince, scarce emerged from boyhood, presents himself on that stage where grizzled Mansfelds, drunken Hohenlos, and truculent Verdugos have been so long enacting, that artless military drama which consists of hard knocks and wholesale massacres. The novice is received with universal hilarity. But although the machinery of war varies so steadily from age to age that a commonplace commander of to-day, rich in the spoils of preceding time, might vanquish the Alexanders, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the trick that had been played upon him, although as yet he could not fully credit it. What mainly bewildered him was that Clara, whom he had always supposed to be as artless as a child—Clara, whom he had cared for as an elder and a father—should have been able to keep a secret and devise a plot ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... advantageously known. Mr. GREEN of IPSWICH has spoken of it as a charming composition: reflecting, in a very natural and vivid manner, the series of interesting images which touch'd the sensibility of a young, an artless, but a most intelligent observer of Nature; plac'd in a situation highly favourable to observation, though in fact not often productive of it. That Originality in such a subject is invaluable: and that this Poem appears to him (I know few men so qualified to ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... an excitable nature," she observed, and seated herself upon the divan; "and you, dear Mr. Erwyn, who know women so thoroughly, will overlook the agitation of an artless girl placed in quite unaccustomed circumstances. Nay, I myself was affected ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... through the Park, Zoe facing the three of them in the soft gray interior of the Daab limousine. She was absolutely artless. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... which Joinville tells what he has to tell. From one point of view it may be truly said that no higher praise could be bestowed on any style than to say that it is simple, natural, straightforward, and charming. But if his indiscriminate admirers had appreciated this artless art, they would not have applied to the pleasant gossip of an old general epithets that are appropriate only to the masterpieces ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... pin, the gift of his particular aunt, was all this time within a few inches of Culver's nose, the inquiry was decidedly artless. ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... graveyard, into which his windows looked; but that was neither his purpose nor his fault. None of the sleepers, at all events, interrupted their slumbers to upbraid him. He had done according to his own artless conscience and the recipes of licensed physicians, and he looked no further, but pounded, triturated, infused, made electuaries, boluses, juleps, or whatever he termed his productions, with skill and diligence, thanking Heaven that he was spared to do so, when his contemporaries generally were ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the help of an art we had lost, but have found again in the sepulchers of the East—the art of preserving the remains of the dead from the outrages of corruption—the greatest power in the universe. O Lelia, deny the youth of the world if you can, when you see it stop in artless ignorance before the lessons of the past, and begin to live on the forgotten ruins ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... utterance to such subtle reflections, we both fell into artless meditation; we set to work to detect in ourselves the inscrutable phenomena of the origin of thoughts, which Lambert hoped to discover in their earliest germ, so as to describe some day the unknown process. Then, after much discussion, often mixed up with childish notions, ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... hurried survey of the camp, lessening the distance between herself and one of the light wagons with a gait in which grace was entirely subservient to speed; then, with one capacious wrench of the arms, she loosened the spring seat from the wagon and bore it to the governess with an artless air of triumph. It was difficult, under these circumstances, to explain to Mrs. Yellett that without that symbol of scholastic authority, a desk, the wagon seat was useless. Nevertheless, Mary set forth, with all her eloquence, ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... ashamed of myself when I came to the end of this artless prayer. I had got their secret. I could see them kneeling round the Mission forms, two or three with crumpled papers in their hands. They were unutterably shy of religious expression, and to read was their only chance. The boys on ...
— The Comrade In White • W. H. Leathem
... readers will be as glad as I feel myself, to conclude the dull detail of the last chapter. If they please, they may turn from the subtle intricacies of the law, to contemplate the simple, undisguised workings of nature, in her most artless colouring. ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... ever guess why her cheeks burned scarlet, and why she was so sorry when haying-time was over? She was sweet, innocent, artless, and their love was very natural, tender, innocent. It's a pity that all loves can not remain in just that idyllic, milkmaid stage, where the girls and boys awaken in the early morning with the birds, and hasten forth ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... At this artless question all the members of the tribunal looked at each other with a smile of pity; but over there at the window a ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... weakness—so ashamed, that I was resolved to subdue it at the instant, and to guard against the like for the future. Yet, at that moment, I more than half regretted that I could not permit her to enjoy a triumph which she so well deserved to glory in—her youth, her beauty, her artless innocence, and her manner, equally beyond comparison or description. But her indifference, Belford! —That she could resolve to sacrifice me to the malice of my enemies; and carry on the design in so clandestine a manner—and yet love her, as I ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... a vast undertaking; but where there is a will there is always a way, and soon it was evident that each had found "a little chore" to do for sweet charity's sake. Not a word was said at the weekly meetings, but the artless faces betrayed all shades of hope, discouragement, pride, and doubt, as their various attempts seemed likely to succeed or fail. Much curiosity was felt, and a few accidental words, hints, or meetings in queer places, were very exciting, ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... far be the villain, divested of feeling, Wha 'd blight, in its bloom, the sweet flower o' Dumblane. Sing on, thou sweet mavis, thy hymn to the e'ening, Thou 'rt dear to the echoes of Calderwood glen; Sae dear to this bosom, sae artless and winning, Is charming young Jessie, the flower ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... love—I would believe Thy words were truth; Nor deem that thou wouldst e'er deceive My artless youth: But when we part, Within my heart A small voice whispers low— Beware! Beware! Fond girl, the snare! it's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various
... Miss Theo—except, to be sure, on that one day when she had just happened to drop her scissors, and he had naturally stooped down to pick them up? Why was she blushing? Were not youthful cheeks made to blush, and roses to bloom in the spring? Not that mamma ever noted the blushes, but began quite an artless conversation about this or that, as she sate down brimful of ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... an artless accent which revealed either a pure heart or inscrutable depths. How could a woman, who had been the friend of Duclos and the Marechal de Richelieu, refrain from trying to read the riddle of this marriage? Aunt and niece were standing on the ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... Continue, I pray you, your thrilling disclosures as long as my cousin's ears can contain them!" And with a mocking courtesy she swept away, leaving the other two girls with an indefinable sense of guilt and disgrace. Poor Peggy! She had been so happy, all her troubles forgotten, pouring out her artless recital of home affairs; but now her face darkened, and she ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... fragile and sweet as ever in a dress of azure thibet cloth, her light hair hanging in clusters of wavy curls over her small shoulders. She leaned gracefully on the arm of Lindenwood, and looked in his face with a gentle, artless ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... the incensed father conducted his accusation with so much intemperance, producing likelihoods and allegations for proofs, that, when Othello was called upon for his defense, he had only to relate a plain tale of the course of his love; which he did with such an artless eloquence, recounting the whole story of his wooing as we have related it above, and delivered his speech with so noble a plainness (the evidence of truth) that the duke, who sat as chief judge, could not help confessing that a tale so told would have won his ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... a little significant sigh. "That's the key to the mystery, I believe. I couldn't endure to be kept off. Now I've as good a right as any one!" she added with artless elation. Isabel was duly diverted, but there was a certain melancholy in her view. Henrietta, after all, had confessed herself human and feminine, Henrietta whom she had hitherto regarded as a light keen flame, a disembodied voice. It was a disappointment ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... in haste. But he is incorrigible. He returns, and this time brings a still longer and more pretentious poem. Some applaud; others disapprove. Encolpius, seized with a fit of melancholy, thinks of hanging himself, but is persuaded to live by the artless caresses of a fair boy whom he has loved. Several adventures of a similar kind follow, and the book, which towards the end becomes very fragmentary, ends without any regular conclusion. Enough has been ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... dear madam, let me explain at once the object of my visit. I am an old man—a father, and a widower—but I am also" (oh, crafty Allcraft!) "a simple and an artless man. My words are few, but they express my meaning faithfully. There was a time when, placed in similar circumstances to your own, I would have given the world had a friend stepped forward to remove me for a season from the scene of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... up now! Of what use was it to pretend anything after that? Martin heaved a sigh of delight. For days the secret had trembled on his tongue, making life uncomfortable and unnatural. Constitutionally it was his habit to let slip from that artless member anything that lurked at its tip and as a result he held secrets in abhorrence. Now the truth was out and he for one was glad it was. He would no longer be dreading an encounter with the O'Dowds or be under the trying necessity ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... whole personality had a curious attraction for him in their tranquil meetings. Her hair was arranged with scrupulous exactitude each day, in the very latest fashionable style—a token of the convent-bred child's artless delight at being allowed to share in the vanities of this carnal world. The little dimpled hands, that sat so daintily on the trim wrists, were always busy with some fancy work, which the bent head and ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... discontent, finding fault with this and turning up his nose at that; and going in and coming out he was simply full of ennui. And as all the girls in the garden were just in the prime of youth, and at a time of life when, artless and unaffected, they sat and reclined without regard to retirement, and disported themselves and joked without heed, how could they ever have come to read the secrets which at this time occupied a place in the heart of Pao-y? ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... which then at least prevailed universally in Grecian music, the solemn choral song, of which we may form to ourselves some idea from our artless national airs, and more especially from our church-tunes, had no other instrumental accompaniment than a single flute, which was such as not in the slightest degree to impair the distinctness of the words. Otherwise it must hare increased ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... him and torment him so! Why, by the very fact that he put the purse prominently before you, first under the chair and then in your lining, he shows that he does not wish to deceive you, but is anxious to beg your forgiveness in this artless way. Do you hear? He is asking your pardon. He confides in the delicacy of your feelings, and in your friendship for him. And you can allow yourself to humiliate ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... And so ends this artless narrative. The little man was at school again, God bless him, while his brother lay scalped upon ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... greet the courtly throng? Did no fair flower of English loveliness On timid lute sustain some artless song, Her meek brow bound with smooth unbraided tress? For Music knew not yet the stately guise, Content with simplest notes to touch the soul, Not from her choirs as when loud anthems rise, Or when she bids orchestral ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... there that the artless virgin utters her first confessions; there, that the plighted maid reveals the beatings of her heart; there, that the blushing bride unveils the secrets ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... their faces still remained. And they have preserved too, in an extraordinary degree, the brightness of their antique paintings, the fresh tints of their costumes, of their robes of turquoise blue, or lapis, or emerald-green, or golden-yellow. It is an artless kind of fresco-work, which nevertheless amazes us by remaining perfect after thirty-five centuries. All that these people did seems as if made for immortality. It is true, however, that such brilliant colours are not found in any of the other Pharaonic monuments, and that here ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... apply study to the ordering of one's outward movements: for Ambrose says (De Offic. i, 18): "A becoming gait is one that reflects the carriage of authority, has the tread of gravity, and the foot-print of tranquillity: yet so that there be neither study nor affectation, but natural and artless movement." Therefore seemingly there is no virtue about the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... well as a beautiful, view. God's world did look bigger and greater from The Overlook. Sitting by her side, the minister held the girl's hand, and listened to her artless expressions. She told him quite frankly what all this view meant to her,—how it helped and soothed her worried spirit, brought comfort to her grieving heart. Here were many square miles of God's Footstool under ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... he turned away from the record, but the book fell open of itself at a full-page insert of the Decalogue, illuminated by some artless printer with gaudy splotches of gold, red and blue and green initials, and silly curlicues of arabesque, as if the man had been ignorant of what they meant, those ten ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... transparent that all men see him through. He is a man to make friends wherever on earth courage and integrity are esteemed,—the rarest of heroes, a pure idealist, with no by-ends of his own. Many of us have seen him, and everyone who has heard him speak has been impressed alike by his simple, artless goodness and his sublime courage. He joins that perfect Puritan faith which brought his ancestor to Plymouth Rock, with his grandfather's ardor in the Revolution. He believes in two articles—two instruments, shall I say?—the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence; ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... as time ran on, Zosephine, like all the rest of Carancro, began to look up with a certain deference, half-conscious, half-unconscious, to the needy young man who was nobody's love or lover, and yet, in a gentle, unimpassioned way, everybody's; landless, penniless, artless Bonaventure, who honestly thought there was no girl in Carancro who was not much too good for him, and of whom there was not one who did not think him much too good for her. He was quite outside of all their gossip. How could they know that ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable |
