"Guileless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by Baldy Thompson's was reckoned as a good tucker track, especially when a dissolution of parliament was threatened. Then the guileless traveller would casually let Baldy know that he'd got his name on the electoral list, and show some interest in Baldy's political opinions, and oppose them at first, and finally agree with them and see a lot in them—be led ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... one felt called upon to celebrate it. The guileless tried to see the imaginary line of the meridian which the sophisticated pointed out to them on the water; the cream-peppermint lady went so far as to say she felt the jar as the steamer passed over it. Conjectures, witty, mathematical, or inane, were made as to the ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... you insist on putting your hostess in such an unfortunate position, I decide that it is up to the ladies themselves. Which one wishes to take the office, to force herself forward against the wishes of the other?" She cast a seemingly guileless glance of inquiry first on Mrs. Carrington, then on Mrs. Flynn, who simultaneously uttered exclamations of indignation at the ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... and sincerity was too much for the guileless and inexperienced Zoe. She was grieved at the pain she had given, and rose to retire, for she felt they were both on dangerous ground; but, as she turned away, she made a little, deprecating gesture, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... and most esteemed native helper in the mission, died in 1864, after more than thirty years of efficient labor. "A guileless, spiritual man, whose lovely spirit disarmed the enmity even of those who hated his religion. The church of Christ in Syria owes much to the holy life and faithful teaching of this man of God. The missionaries owe much. He long upheld their hands by the strength ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... guileless babe!" said Patty. "What is there to explain, may I ask? I can't very well tell her that I prefer not to learn the lessons as she gives them out, but think it easier to wait and cram them up at one fell swoop, just before examinations. ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... and ended with the nightmare screams of a child. I have never been so frightened in my life. And there was a snake song, a soft, wavy, piano, pianissimo effect, all malignant stealth and horror, and running through it were the guileless and insistently hungry twitterings of baby birds in the nest. But there were comical pieces, too, in which ludicrous adventures befell unsophisticated monkeys; and there was a whole series of spring-fever songs—some of them just rotten ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... of Paoli's militia. Luckily, he knew all the fords, and in the hill-villages off the road the inhabitants showed no suspicion of us, but took it for granted that we were the good Paolists we passed for. Marc'antonio answered all their guileless questions by giving out that we were two roving commissioners travelling northward to delimit certain pievi in the Nebbio, at the foot of Cape Corso—an explanation which secured for us the best of victuals as well as the ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... so solemnly sworn, Caterina knoweth naught. It is for me and thee alone—and least of all for the ear of Venice. But thou knowest—if it were no more than that the way of a crown be not easy for a young and guileless maid—some one of her own should be with her in that strange land; and he ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... of our acquaintance, that she was a dear little creature; and a great mercy it is, both in life and in novels, which (and the latter especially) abound in villains of the most sombre sort, that we are to have for a constant companion so guileless and good-natured a person. As she is not a heroine, there is no need to describe her person; indeed I am afraid that her nose was rather short than otherwise, and her cheeks a great deal too round and red for a heroine; but her face blushed with rosy health, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Lee had this devoted statesman at her feet. She had not studied the Senate without a purpose. She had read with unerring instinct one general characteristic of all Senators, a boundless and guileless thirst for flattery, engendered by daily draughts from political friends or dependents, then becoming a necessity like a dram, and swallowed with a heavy smile of ineffable content. A single glance at Mr. Ratcliffe's face showed Madeleine that she need not ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... with the town for being changed to me, when I myself had come back, so changed, to it? All my early readings and early imaginations dated from this place, and I took them away so full of innocent construction and guileless belief, and I brought them back so worn and torn, so much the wiser and so much ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... nursed thee, songstress of the plaintive note, And, in fond and childish fancy, fed thee from his pointed dart. So, sweet Philomel, the poison sunk into thy guileless throat, Till, with all love's weight of passion, strike its notes to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... land of hopelessness, the last boundary of utter defeat as he labored over the uneven road at the end of a blistering summer day, trundling his bicycle at his side. There was a suit-case strapped to the handlebar of the bicycle, and in that receptacle were the wares which this guileless peddler had come into that land to sell. He had set out from Omaha full of enthusiasm and youthful vigor, incited to the utmost degree of vending fervor by the representations of the general agent for the little instrument which had been the stepping-stone ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... most Tahitians had no detailed knowledge of them, being crammed with the lore of theology, of saints, of automobiles, and moving pictures, and prize-fights for money. Matatini Afaraauia, son of Faaruia, of chiefly descent, a boy of seven, and of a guileless, bewitching disposition, made me his intimate friend, and through his sharp eyes I discovered phenomena that might have escaped my untutored mind. He lifted a stone, and beneath it was a spider larger than a tarantula. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... society on my own. I did not make my infatuation conspicuous by walking with him in the streets, but otherwise I did not attempt to disguise the partiality I felt for him. Had I mixed more with other girls before entering society I might have been less guileless. But as it was, I never thought of tempering by coquetry the satisfaction visible in my face whenever Mr. ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... followers are constantly confident that he can, and are therefore his constant and ready tools for this or that party or interest. They sell themselves to monarchy or democracy, to capital or labour, with the same guileless innocence of what is happening to them, with the same simple-minded incapacity to learn anything from the lessons of the past. There are no short cuts to spiritual ends, and those ends can never be accomplished ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... were rolled up. The sun glinted on her uncovered hair, blazed in the bright tin basin into which she was dropping scarlet peppers. She appeared younger than he had remembered her; her arms were youthful and softly dimpled; her brow seemed again the calm, guileless brow of a girl; her eyes, as she raised them in ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... neglect it. He was well aware that Jefferson had complained to Virginia that he had been made to hold a candle to the wily Secretary of the Treasury in the matter of assumption, in other words, that his guileless understanding, absorbed in matters of State, had been duped into a bargain of which Virginia did not approve, despite the concession ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... picturesque gentleman of the period, and one who had the reputation of being polite even in the most trying circumstances, and no matter how well he had dined, came in and stood for a time as a spectator beside a table at which Murphy was playing poker with some guileless planters. Mr. Knowles was not himself guileless, and very shortly he perceived that the one-eyed gambler was dealing himself cards from the bottom of the pack. Thereupon he drew his revolver from his pocket and rapping with it on the table ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... typing-girl and at the Brixton milliner. All too fearfully I divined their preposterous significance. Beyond question a black infamy had been laid bare, but I made no effort to convey its magnitude to my guileless informant. As I left him he was mildly bemoaning his own lack ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... self-forgetfulness, and an earnest desire to please, and which will always prevent its owner from breaking any of those rules of etiquette which make the wheels of society run so smoothly; and there was an easy winning grace, and guileless sweetness of manner, about the simple true-hearted lighthouse maiden, that won its way to all hearts. There is no such beautifier as thoughtful goodness; and the amiable character, and clear understanding of Grace Darling, shone through ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... love." Nothing else had genuine reality. The child, its vision being as yet unclouded by false teachings, saw the universe thus truly; and Blake, therefore, in Songs of Innocence, gave glimpses of the world as the child sees it,—a guileless existence amid the peace that passes all understanding. He hymned the sanctity of animal life: even the tiger, conventionally an incarnation of cruelty, was a glorious creature of divine mould; ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... willing to wait for her, go about your business for three years, and then come and try your chance with her. If she likes you she shall have you. I am quite aware you are poor,—that you are a curate on a hundred and fifty a year; but you are well connected and a gentleman, and as guileless as a young Nathaniel. I could not desire a better husband ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... author and director, of a scene of vulgar distress. But even he was somewhat startled upon the present occasion. The character and conduct of Emily in Mr. Tyrrel's family had been without a blot. She had not a single enemy; and it was impossible to contemplate her youth, her vivacity, and her guileless innocence, without emotions of ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... sudden pain, and he gave his head an impatient toss. Then his thoughts rested on Liza. "There," he thought, "is a new life just beginning. A good creature! I wonder what will become of her. And she's pretty, too, with her pale, fresh face, her eyes and lips so serious, and that frank and guileless way she has of looking at you. It's a pity she seems a little enthusiastic. And her figure is good, and she moves about lightly, and she has a quiet voice. I like her best when she suddenly stands still, and listens attentively and gravely, then becomes contemplative and shakes ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... death untrue; Yet, supple sophist to a plastic mind,[13] Saw gods in woods, and spirits in the wind, Heard in the tones that stirred the waves within, The mingled voice of Hadna and Odin, Doomed the fleeced tenant of the wild to bleed A guileless votive to his harmless creed, Then gladly grateful at each rite fulfilled, Sought the cool shadow where the spring distilled, And lightly lab'rous thro' the torpid day, Whiled in sweet peace ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... sculptor, the most guileless and amiable of men, was now a dear friend. His style was the purest Grecian, and had some of his works been found among the ruins, multitudes would have come to Rome to admire them. He was now in the height of his fame; yet he was so kind and encouraging to young people that he allowed my ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... have done, and say no more; The little I have said may serve to show The guileless heart in silence may grieve o'er The wrongs to whose exposure it is slow: I leave you to your conscience as before, 'T will one day ask you why you used me so? God grant you feel not then the bitterest grief!- ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... regard for you, so as not to terminate this inchoate comedy. At the same time I am here to help out Alcmena, poor innocent, denounced as disloyal by her lord, Amphitryon. For it would be sinful of me, if the storm I have brewed should descend on the head of guileless Alcmena. ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... his delicate and wasted frame. Death had been coming slowly on for a long time; but now he hastened his footsteps, and Charley knew that he should never see another summer in this world. He was not afraid to die—oh, no! the guileless, holy life of the gentle boy had robbed death of its sting. He well knew that this life was but a small part of our career, and the separation from those he loved so well, would be short. His faith in his Saviour was perfect and entire. He ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... glass—from this a little bird soars upward, twittering in guileless cheerfulness, so that a man may listen to his song, and perhaps join in 'Fair is life! no downcast looks! ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... tears aghast That from his lips the words had passed, Though guileless he his soul possessed And faith still reigned ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... Grammont's memoirs, which generally aimed at making an ugly woman ridiculous, or an injured husband the sport and victim of wicked lover and heartless wife. No sense of the fitness of things constrained her ladyship from communicating these Court scandals to her guileless sister. Did they not comprise the only news worth anybody's attention, and relate to the only class of people who had any tangible existence for Lady Fareham? There were millions of human beings, no doubt, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... of great size and fierce aspect. He had seen the bears and was mightily afraid of them, and he wanted somebody to go up there and exterminate them so that he might work his mining claim unmolested and unafraid. The Professor, being guileless and confiding, believed the tale, and he tried to oblige the bear-haunted miner by promoting an expedition of extermination. Seventeen men replied to his overtures with the original remark that they "Hadn't lost any bears." Since 1620 that has been the standard bear joke of the North ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... at the village in an hour and a half. The sun was already up. The leopards came and sat near the houses as guileless as children; the boars snorted and ran into the rice fields to hide. The tiger came and sat in the open and watched the forest. The antelopes and the deer stood in the ponds and on the banks of the river. By instinct they knew that the water was the only place where the fire could not reach ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... beauteous nest of snow-white doves, What wealth could price for me your guileless loves? My earthly cherubim, my precious pearls, My pretty flock of loving little girls, My stores of happiness with least alloy, My treasuries of hope and trembling joy! Yon toothless darling, nestled soft and warm On a young yearning mother's cradling arm; The soft angelic ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... He stole a thievish look over his shoulder at the glass, and cautiously drew finger and thumb down that beaked nose. Then he really quietly smiled, a smile he felt this abominable facial caricature was quite unused to, the superior Lawford smile of guileless contempt for the fanatical, the fantastic, and the bizarre: He wouldn't have sat with his feet on the fender ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... little knew, Your guileless Aunt Lavinia, Those evenings when she slumbered through "The Prince of Abyssinia," That there were two beside her chair Who both had quite decided To see things in a rosier air Than ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... the South; but their hearts were always open, and the slightest demand upon their sympathies brought forth their tears. They never shunned a man or woman who sought food or shelter on their way to freedom. The goodness of heart and the guileless spirit of the blacks was not better understood by any one than Clotelle; and she felt a secret joy at seeing all the servants in the Greenville hotel negroes. She saw from their very looks that she had their undivided sympathies. One ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... said Bateman, in fear of Freeborn; "we'll have none of your Popery. It will be a simple, guileless chapel, in which the Church Service ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... may'st thou ever be what now thou art, Nor unbeseem the promise of thy spring; As fair in form, as warm yet pure of heart, Love's image upon earth without his wing, And guileless ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... a council of three was sitting in debate. The subject under discussion was that other note which George had written and so ill-advisedly entrusted to one whom he had taken for a guileless gardener. The council consisted of Lord Marshmoreton, looking rather shamefaced, his son Percy looking swollen and serious, and Lady Caroline Byng, looking like a ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... grown darker, as if all the sad light of the cloudy evening had taken refuge on her forehead. This fair hair, this pale visage, this pure brow, seemed surrounded by an ashy halo from which the dark eyes looked out at me. Their glance was guileless, profound, confident, and trustful. She carried her sorrowful head as though she were proud of that sorrow, as though she would say, 'I—I alone know how to mourn for him as he deserves. But while we were still shaking ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... a stranger to Walgett town, To Walgett town when the sun was low, And he carried a thirst that was worth a crown, Yet how to quench it he did not know; But he thought he might take those yokels down, The guileless yokels ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... "and we thank God that we do know, how good he was, how simple-minded, how guileless; a man of prayer, full of faith and good works that he did—meekly following his Saviour in pureness of heart (for to him such grace was given), walking humbly with his God. We who can ill afford to spare him from among us, ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... the abstract, from regions of vague purpose and desire, to the concrete, to the thought of a maiden with name and local habitation, a maiden actual and accessible, whose image he could recall, whose pretty looks and guileless speech he knew. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... to resist the opportunity, and, affecting considerable surprise, interrupted him with the apparently guileless query: ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... learned scholar And indefatigable student of philosophy and letters, An able and successful instructor of youth, Of genuine uprightness and guileless simplicity A devout, benevolent ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... whom the Worcester lawyers of this time like best to remember was Peter C. Bacon. He was the Dominie Sampson of the Worcester Bar. I suppose he was the most learned man we ever had in Worcester, and probably, in Massachusetts. He was simple and guileless as a child; of a most inflexible honesty, devoted to the interest of his clients, and an enthusiastic lover of the science of the law. When, in rare cases, he thoroughly believed in the righteousness of his case, he was irresistible. But in general he was full of doubts and ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... mot,[381] and her influence may have been in other ways good by governing the force and fire, so often wasted or ill-directed, of Diderot's genius. Soeur Sainte-Suzanne is the youngest daughter of a respectable middle-class family. She perceives, or half-perceives (for, though no fool, she is a guileless and unsuspicious creature), that she is unwelcome there; the most certain sign of which is that, while her sisters are married and dowered handsomely, she is condemned to be a nun. She has, though quite real piety, no "vocation," ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... pink details flashed out. An old man behind the picket fence looked up, and straightened himself, and gazed—under a shading hand. Then he came along the driveway and stood in the white gate, waiting their approach. He had a red, guileless face and white hair. The face held a look of childish interest as they drew up. "You got ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... an element of subjectivity mingled with it. So much of it seems to depend upon the temper and beliefs of the time, so much of the shadow of conscience to be the fear of social and even legal penalty. Not to travel far for instances, one finds Plato speaking in a guileless and romantic fashion of a whole range of passions and emotions that we have grown to consider as inherently degrading and repulsive. Yet no shadow of the sense of sin seems to have brooded over that bright and clear Greek life, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the toper, guileless though thou keep thy soul: Certain 'tis that sins of others none shall write ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... young lady who intoxicated his fancy. She was beautiful: a quick, attractive girl of twenty-one, who could talk brightly of things that excited his attention. Soon she told him a piteous tale of domestic trouble. She was an artist in words and facial expression. Her whole being was indicative of a guileless life. One morning by appointment they met to say goodbye, for he was to sail from London that afternoon in command of a large vessel on a long voyage. She was brimming over with sparkling wit that overjoyed him. She skilfully hinted of marriage on his return, ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... a woman to perceive its strength, unless you, as her lawyer and kinsman, make it plain to her," was the guileless answer. "Mrs. Curran knows nothing of court procedure, but she is clever enough to foresee consequences, and her history before her New York fiasco includes bits of romance from the lives ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... care-free they are, those merry little beggars, Mr. Narkom. What you said in your letter set my thoughts harking backward, and ... I was wondering what things the coming years might hold for them and for their parents. At one time, you know, that fellow Philip Bawdrey was as innocent and as guileless as any of those little shavers; and yet in the after years he proved a monster of iniquity, a beast of ingratitude, and—— Oh, well, let it pass. He paid, as thankless children always do pay under God's good rule. I wonder what his thoughts were ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... life, my awl to me!" He cried, his flame addressing— "If I 'adze such a love as yours, I'd ask no other blessing!" "I am rejoist to hear you speak," The maiden said with laughter— "For tho' I hammer guileless girl, It's plane what you are rafter. Now if file love you just a bit, What further can you ax me? Can—will you be content with that, Or will you further tacks me?" He looked handsaw her words were square— "No rival can ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... to the girl. Of course, it really signified nothing in this careless part of the world that she was travelling alone. What gave the puzzling twist to an ordinary situation was her manner: she was guileless. She reminded him of his linnet, when he gave the bird the freedom of the house: it became filled with a wild gaiety which bordered on madness. All that was needed to complete the simile was that the girl should ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... Street and found Beck in his office. He gazed with melancholy misgivings at this lean man with hair and whiskers of a lifeless black. Beck suggested a starved black spider, especially when you were looking into his cold, amused, malignant black eyes. He made short work of the guileless brewer, who was dazed and frightened by the meshes in which he was enveloped. Staring at the horrid specter of publicity which these men of craft kept before him, he could not vigorously protest against extortion. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... read, when a guileless little chap in roundabouts, "The Children of the Abbey," and other tales of like kidney. They were romantic and sentimental, weren't they? Well, old fellow, not one of them was half so romantic or sentimental as this marriage of mine. There were villains in them, too—Colonel ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... were several braw, braw lads of Barbie Water. There were Tarmillan the doctor (a son of Irrendavie), Logan the cashier, Tozer the Englishman, old Partan—a guileless and inquiring mind—and half a dozen students raw from the west. The students were of the kind that goes up to College with the hayseed sticking in its hair. Two are in a Colonial Cabinet now, two are in the poorhouse. So ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... measured tones, but deep in his heart he not only hoped, but he was determined on something very different—namely, that the girl now turning her bright, guileless, eager face to his would then be installed at Wyndfell Hall as his wife, and therefore as mistress of the wonderful old house. And this hope, this imperious determination, turned his mind suddenly to a less agreeable subject of thought—that is, to ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... of gayety from her earliest days, and from the pleasure which her presence was sure to diffuse, and perhaps, it may be added, from a nature singularly guileless, that could see no evil in what appeared to her but as innocent indulgences, she was led into expenses and frivolous gratifications which were by no means essential for a mind like hers. Dishonest tradesmen took advantage of her inexperience and extreme easiness, and swelled their bills to an ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... or of the ubiquitous moving-picture reel. So much must at least be said for these great educators: they have broken the villain of his open-face attire; to-day he knows better, and when prowling to devour, disguises himself in the guileless if nobby "sack suit" of the widely advertised ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... has completely cleansed souls, how guileless and how pure they may be! Nor am I speaking of the Elect, such as I saw at La Trappe—merely of young novices, little priestlings whom I have known. They had eyes like clear glass, undimmed by the haze of a single sin; and, looking into them, behind those eyes you would have seen their open ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... influential women, to those imposing dowagers full of excellent good-sense, like my aunt, who will help your career, defend you from attacks, and say for you the things that you cannot say for yourself? Am I not, on the contrary, generous in bidding you reserve your love for the coming angel with the guileless heart? If the motto Noblesse oblige sums up the advice I gave you just now, my further advice on your relations to women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, "Serve all, ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... it grieves me to behold them sent From their old home; 'tis pain, 'tis punishment, To leave each scene familiar, every face, For a new people and a stranger race; For those who, sunk in sloth and dead to shame, From scenes of guilt with daring spirits came; Men, just and guileless, at such manners start, And bless their God that time has fenced their heart, Confirm'd their virtue, and expell'd the fear Of vice in minds so simple and sincere. Here the good pauper, losing all ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... rock, and the wide roar Rises foam-lipped along the shore. Ah! then how good my life I know, How good it is each day to go Where the great voices call, and where The eternal rhythms flow and flow. In that august companionship, The subtle poisoned words that drip, With guileless guile, from friendly lip, The lie that flits from ear to ear, Ye shall not speak, ye shall not hear; Nor shall you fear your heart to say, Lest he who listens ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... more, he had, by his detestable arts, broken up one of the happiest homes in America, and ruined his guileless victim. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... clearly demonstrates that the guileless Simpkin and the equally guileless Marshall had paid Borrow for the right to publish Faustus, and even though part of the payment was met by a bill, I think we may safely find in the transaction whatever verity there may be in the Joseph Sell episode. 'Let me know how you sold your ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... the affair as possible to George. Her eyes rested on him, as he sat opposite to her, and she felt happy and proud. Now and then he looked at her, and an affectionate smile came to his lips. She was delighted with his slim handsomeness. There was a guileless look in his blue eyes which was infinitely attractive. His mouth was beautifully modelled. She took an immense pride in the candour of soul which shone with so clear a light on his face, and she was affected as a stranger might ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... the Pagan to his deities. 'Save my soul!' cries the Christian at his altars. We, who are without a god, murmur to the great unknown forces of Nature: 'Let me save others some little portion of this pain entailed on all simple and guileless things, that are forced to live, without any fault of their own at their birth, or any will of ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... A berry red, a guileless look, A still word,—strings of sand! And yet they made my wild, wild heart Fly down ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... getting information seemed guileless, and Holgate opened his basket as wide as he knew. "Toorn, didst tha sway" (Holgate talked broadly to Dicky always, for Dicky had told him of his aunt, Lady Carmichael, who lived near Halifax in Yorkshire), "toorn, aw warrant! It be reg'lar as kitchen-fire, this ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... upon the Kshatriyas, and the Sudras adoring the Brahmanas and the Kshatriyas, waited upon the Vaisyas. And Santanu residing in Hastinapura, the delightful capital of the Kurus, ruled the whole earth bounded by seas. He was truthful and guileless, and like the king of the celestials himself conversant with the dictates of virtue. And from the combination in him of liberality, religion and asceticism, he acquired a great good fortune. He was free from anger and malice, and was handsome in person ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... usual plan of following periods of great harshness by spells of mildness, sent Count Inouye as Envoy Extraordinary, to smooth over matters. He issued a decree restoring the late Queen to full rank. She was given the posthumous title of "Guileless, revered" and a temple called "Virtuous accomplishment" was dedicated to her memory. Twenty-two officials of high rank were commissioned to write her biography. But the King was still kept a prisoner in ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... Ministers" in the speech of a former Prime Minister on the fiscal question (1903) became in course of telegraphing "guileless monsters," and so reached the Bristol press. Fortunately, the newspaper proof readers were wide awake, and the error was corrected ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... monster arose who delighted in the blood of the guiltless, it is recorded that the posterity of Avidius Cassius lived in security, and were admitted to honors and public distinctions by favor of him, whose life and empire that memorable traitor had sought to undermine under the favor of his guileless ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Ernest Wilton. "What you have already told me, besides his own innocent, guileless look, has interested me strangely in him; and, in addition to that, I'm sure I know something about him or somebody extremely like him, which I cannot at present recall to ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... letter which she had been perusing before the luncheon hour, and re-read it once or twice; then dropping it listlessly upon her lap, she turned upon her fellow-passengers a look of such guileless interest that they might have been excused had they been moved by that compassion, so frequently unwarranted, for innocence on the threshold of ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... foyer) gives notice of the resumption of the play, while at the end of the Acts the curtain flutters up and down at a feverish pace as if the idea was to get in as many "calls" as possible before the applause stops. Are we as guileless as all that, I wonder? And, anyway, no such manoeuvre was necessary. The applause was hearty, the laughter spontaneous, and anybody who cares for plays made and played with brains should go ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... thought too far, for I had been, at the time of which he spoke, seated on this very piazza beside the innocent young lady opposite, who now showed no tokens of the sweet confusion, with which she listened to my broken confidence last night, and only glanced from one to the other with guileless ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... have supposed she had come from the sitting-room with me, but for a certain elaborate and enforced nonchalance in her demeanor, a jaunty air of insouciance, as far removed, on the one hand, from the calm equilibrium of dignity which almost imperceptibly soothes and reassures you, as from the guileless gayety of infantile ignorance, which perforce "medicines your weariness," on the other,—a demeanor which at once disgusts and alarms you. I felt confident that some underhand work was going on. I went upstairs. There was Cheri again, this time with his ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... the window alight. O how my heart throbbed!—"Lie still," said I, "busy thing! why all this emotion?—Those shining ornaments cover not such a guileless flatterer as thou. ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... she asked, as she opened the gate for him; and her guileless eyes were raised to his with a sudden anxiety. "Are you ill—or—or overtired? Ah, yes! that must be ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... out from his impurity and wickedness into a new and Divine life of holiness, awakened to a conscious experience of purity, truth, and love, the great prime elements in the reign of God. He must be guileless and lowly. "Whosoever will not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... gravity unimpaired, and from time to time he blew his nose with portentous fervour. Indeed, the manner in which he accomplished this latter feat was marvellous in the extreme, for, though that member emitted sounds equal to those of a trumpet in intensity, he could yet, with his accompanying air of guileless dignity, evoke the waiter's undivided respect—so much so that, whenever the sounds of the nose reached that menial's ears, he would shake back his locks, straighten himself into a posture of marked solicitude, and inquire afresh, with head slightly inclined, whether ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... very beautiful and radiant. After a few moments' conversation she approached the subject which {162} evidently lay close to her heart. Indicating a cluster of paradise aigrettes kept in the office for exhibition purposes, she looked me straight in the face and in the most frank and guileless manner asked me to sell them to her for her new hat! The rest of the day I was of little service ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... good men a guileless and holy second childhood, in which the soul becomes childlike, not childish, and the faculties in full fruit and ripeness are mellow without sign of decay. This is that songful land of Beulah, where they who have travelled manfully the Christian way abide awhile to show the world a perfected ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... unjustifiable opinion of critical tact. Critics would find merit in anything which seemed old enough. Ireland's next achievement was the forgery of some legal documents concerning Shakespeare. Just as the bad man who deceived the guileless Mr. Shapira forged his 'Deuteronomy' on the blank spaces of old synagogue rolls, so young Ireland used the cut-off ends of old rent rolls. He next bought up quantities of old fly-leaves of books, and on ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... quick eyes glanced for a moment at the colonel's face, but no reply was made to the supposition. Then the colonel fell to his guileless Offenbach again. There is nothing so innocent as the meditative rendering of a well-known tune. A popular air is that which echoes in ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... thing which was not." This is certainly a glorious antithesis to Hume's position. Whether we take it to illustrate the Saint's extreme lack of humour, or a subtler depth of humour veiled under stolidity, or his rigorous veracity, or his guileless confidence in the veracity of others, we certainly cannot approve it as an example of the attitude we ought to observe with regard to every newly recounted marvel. Truly there might be more liberality, more enlightenment, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... Oakhurst recognized Tom Simson, otherwise known as "The Innocent," of Sandy Bar. He had met him some months before over a "little game," and had, with perfect equanimity, won the entire fortune—amounting to some forty dollars—of that guileless youth. After the game was finished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful speculator behind the door and thus addressed him: "Tommy, you're a good little man, but you can't gamble worth a cent. Don't try it over again." He then handed him his money back, pushed him gently ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... daughter, under the tend guileless purity of thought, speech, and action, as by her uncommon loveliness of person. The news that this girl was in prison on suspicion of the murder of her child was what kept Reuben Butler lingering on the hills outside Edinburgh, until a fitting time should arrive to wait upon Jeannie and her ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... cook. I replied that the light of my countenance would shine upon my faithful servant to the extent of several coins, both rupees and pais, but that the peculiar customs of my caste forbid me to touch food cooked by any one but myself. I would, however, in consideration of his exertions and his guileless heart, invite the true follower of the prophet, whose name is blessed, to partake with me of the food which I should presently prepare. Whereat he was greatly delighted, and fetched the meat, which he had stowed away in a ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... in question was "worked out" and worthless, and that the partners, whom it had already enriched, had talked of abandoning it but a day or two before the quarrel, this proceeding could only be accounted for as gratuitous spite. Later, two San Francisco lawyers made their appearance in this guileless Arcadia, and were eventually taken into the saloons, and—what was pretty much the same thing—the confidences of the inhabitants. The results of this unhallowed intimacy were many subpoenas; and, indeed, when the "Amity Claim" came to trial, all of Sandy Bar that was ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... everyone extolling Andrea mightily and saying that he was by way of making marvellous proficience in painting. Whereupon he planned to fulfil a desire of his own without much expense; and so, approaching Andrea, who was a mild and guileless fellow, on the side of his honour, he began to persuade him under the cloak of friendship that he wished to help him in a matter which would bring him honour and profit and would make him known in such a manner, that he would never be poor any more. Now many years before, as has been related ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... dear, Serious infant worth a fear: In thy unfaultering visage well Picturing forth the son of TELL, When on his forehead, firm and good, Motionless mark, the apple stood; Guileless traitor, rebel mild, Convict unconscious, culprit-child! Gates that close with iron roar Have been to thee thy nursery door; Chains that chink in cheerless cells Have been thy rattles and thy bells; Walls contrived for giant sin Have hemmed thy faultless weakness in; Near thy sinless bed ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... another boat. On board Kit disports himself as a fatuous ass, of the kind that hyphenated Americans (in plays) would naturally assume to be the staple of a British Cabinet. Not that Goring really was such an ass; but it was Kit's plan to be so guileless as to induce the enemy agents to think they had a sitter. And I must say they were pretty easily induced. Their general schema was to get those inevitable papers, copy and return them, and delay Goring's visit to Washington, while the late lamented BERNSTORFF put in a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... let him eat! Whoso would slumber, let him to bed. But he who would bicker, it must needs be with me. Here is a man of the Dale, who hath sought the wood in peace, and hath found us. His hand is ready and his heart is guileless: if ye fear him, run away to the wood, and come back when he is gone; but none shall mock him while I sit by: now, lads, be merry and blithe with ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... merciless treachery were left out, for very shame; but upon the crown officials then in authority over the Province, history and poetry have indelibly branded the stigma of an unnecessary edict of expulsion, which devastated one of the fairest regions of America, and tore seven thousand guileless and peaceful people from a scene of rural felicity rarely equaled on earth, to scatter them in the misery of abject poverty, among strangers speaking a strange tongue and hating their religion. The agents who faithfully executed the cruel decree were Massachusetts men, ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... brought her, Gregory looked at her. Marriage had worked none of its even superficial disenchantments in him. After three months of intimacy, Karen still constantly arrested him with a sense of the undiscovered, the unforeseen. What it consisted in he could not have defined; she was simple, even guileless, still; she had no reticences; yet she seemed to express so much of which she was unaware that he felt himself to be continually making her acquaintance. That quiet slipping now of her hand into his, while her gaze maintained its calm detachment, the charm of her mingled ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... are of countless kinds. Some cure at short hand, some miles distant from the patient. They are equaled in numbers by the hypnotists, or hypnotic doctors, who profess to throw their patients into a trance and cure them by suggestion. I heard of one cure in which the guileless American is made to lie in an open grave; this is called "the return to nature." Again, patients are cured by being buried in hot mud or in hot sand. I have seen a salt-water cure, where patients ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... was not unlike a retired grocer who had shaken the butter and eggs from his soul and settled back to enjoy a life of placid idleness. He was a little beyond middle age, pleasant of face, white of hair, and blessed with guileless blue eyes. His genius had no sparkle to it; it consisted solely of detail and system and indefatigability, coupled with a memory that was well nigh infallible. His brain was as serene and orderly as a cash register; one almost expected ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... up quickly; her expression was almost of alarm, and her eyes dilated as they met mine—for, as I have said, she was all unversed in the ways of her sex, and by nature too guileless to attempt to disguise her feelings ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... trusted her faithful love, how much wretchedness would have been averted! But she appeared to me such an impulsive child that I shrank from unburdening my heart to her, while she acquainted me with every thought and aim of her pure, guileless life. She was singularly, almost idolatrously fond of me, and I loved her very sincerely, for her character was certainly the most admirable ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... by the first woman that came along seeming inclined to let the veil of modesty drop before me. And while, with - the exception of Emmy, the most beautiful, sweetest and noblest women did not exercise the slightest alluring power over me and Emmy's guileless trust in me and her absolute want of jealousy in that respect were entirely justified, a coarse, low-born, sensual and good-natured woman could seduce me to things that neither Emmy nor any of the persons ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... snatches of conversation and smiled understandingly, for she too knew now the little daily trials, the family sorrows and dissensions, the occasional soul tempests, the laughable ways and tenderly pathetic ambitions of these simple, guileless human folks. ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... rug more comfortably about him, watching him with troubled eyes. What a good sort she was! Esther liked her downright honesty and warm-heartedness; she thought she had never met anyone of that age so utterly guileless. How did she get on with her temperamental sister-in-law? What did she think ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell |
