"Ingenuousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little more than her single- hearted love, a fidelity that ennobled her nature, and a simplicity that betokened perfect purity of thought Nor was this extraordinary confidence without its advantages to Eve; for, thrown so early among the artificial and calculating, it served to keep her own ingenuousness of character active, and prevented that cold, selfish, and unattractive sophistication, that mere women of fashion are apt to fall into, from their isolated and factitious mode of existence. When Eve, therefore, put the questions to her ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... make up one's mind to the plunge, one might marry one's sons profitably. At the outset it presented a field so promising as to lead to rashness and indiscretion on the part of persons not given to analysis of character and in consequence relying too serenely upon an ingenuousness which rather speedily revealed that it had its limits. Ingenuousness combining itself with remarkable alertness of perception on occasion, is rather American than English, and is, therefore, to the ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... again. "The man is surely guilty," said I to myself, "who is pronounced so, when that judge has summed up the evidence against him." I had never in my life beheld so much benignity and gentleness—so much of truth, ingenuousness, and pure humanity, stamped on a face before. There was the fascination of the serpent there; and the longer I looked, the more pleasing became the countenance, and the longer I wished to protract my observation and delight. He was a middle-aged man—for a judge, he might be called young. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... is the way in which, almost to the last, "M. de Santillane," despite the rogueries practised often on and sometimes by him, retains a certain gullibility, or at least ingenuousness. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Ballard in the same dilemma as honest Andrew Kippis. "This lady," he says, "was not more distinguished for the dignity of her birth than celebrated for her fine parts and learning; and yet," he adds, in all the simplicity of his ingenuousness, "I know so little in relation to the two last accomplishments, that I should not have given her a place in these memoirs had not Mr. Evelyn put her in his list of learned women, and Mr. Philips (Milton's nephew) introduced her among his ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... sense of all its inmost fibres. Our cheerfulness ran over, and the mild, pensive clerk was so magnetized by it that he came and sat down with us. He presently confided to me, with infinite naivete and ingenuousness, that, judging from my personal appearance, he should not have thought me the writer that he in his generosity reckoned me to be. His conception, so far as I could reach it, involved a huge, uplifted forehead, embossed with protuberant organs of the intellectual faculties, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... with the investigation of Dr. Billings. Let the reader compare the following quotation as to the relative birth rate of the races, and, noting date of data upon which the conclusion is based, decide for himself as to the ingenuousness of Mr. Hoffman's reluctant admission: "Dr. Billings, in his luminous report on the vital statistics of the United States (1886) shows that 1000 colored women (age from 15 to 49) give birth to 164 children, and 1000 white women to only 127, ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... comprehensive and penetrating glance took in every point with a flash. There stood before him one of the handsomest youths he had ever seen, with a mien as graceful as his countenance was captivating; and his whole air breathing that freshness and ingenuousness which none so much appreciates as the used man of the world. And this was his child; the only one of his blood to whom he had been kind. It would be an exaggeration to say that Lord Monmouth's heart was touched; but his good-nature effervesced, and his fine taste was deeply ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... responsibilities of life, and her instincts were so strong and noble that she was eager to repair any errors into which she might be betrayed. Lavish in her generosity to others, she was personally frugal, even penurious. A certain brusque and original frankness, and the ingenuousness with which she betrayed every impression, often involved her in compromising positions, which would have been fatal to a woman in her position less pure and upright in her essential nature. Fond of dolls, toys, and trifles, she was also devoted ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... she said then with a laugh, that looked as if it were meant to be one of childlike, ingenuousness. "Don't think me very bad. Everybody can't be good and discreet like ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... outlines of feminine tactics, which are emphasized by insincere gestures, by looks of feigned ingenuousness, by artful intonations of the voice and even by the snare of cunning silence, are characteristic to some ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... kind of writing, not fish or flesh or good red herring, but just the same altogether charming in its day, inspiring of dreams, and a vehicle for pleasant fancy. It belonged to what, from our grave old point of view, was the youth of the world, and the spirit of youth, its ingenuousness, and its ardour, were needed to appreciate it. Ik Marvel's "Reveries of a Bachelor" was of that genre—and how the hearth logs blazed and the fair faces flickered in the flames in those pages of Mr. Donald G. Mitchell!—and ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... her at first; I had a few unpleasant conjectures ready. I had to have many conversations with her before I understood her ingenuousness, her ignorance, her thorough goodness, in short, all her simple ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... substantial accuracy of the reported observation." The story of this investigation is told in Monthly Notices, 20-98. It seems too bad to threaten the naive little thing with our rude sophistications, but it is amusingly of the ingenuousness of the age from which present dogmas have survived. Lescarbault wrote to Leverrier. Leverrier hastened to Orgeres. But he was careful not to tell Lescarbault who he was. Went right in and "subjected Dr. Lescarbault to a very severe ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... Cecil, whose industry is equalled only by his ingenuousness, posed the Premier with awkward question. Wants to know "whether the Government propose to continue Sir Nevil Macready's appointment as resident magistrate; if so, whether he will be able in that capacity, in case of civil disturbance, to call upon himself as a military officer to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... the value of spiritual life is intrinsic and centred at every point. It is never wholly recoverable. To recover it at all, an historian must have a certain detachment and ingenuousness; knowing the dignity and simplicity of his own mind, he must courteously attribute the same dignity and simplicity to others, unless their avowed attitude prevents; this is to be an intelligent critic and to write history like ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... a world whereof we know none of the purposes. It is simply a matter of having a little less pride and of looking a little more fraternally upon existences that are much more fraternal than we believed. There is no secret about the almost puerile ingenuousness of Von Osten's methods and Krall's. They start with the principle that the horse is an ignorant but intelligent child; and they treat him as such. They speak, explain, demonstrate, argue and mete out rewards or punishments like a schoolmaster addressing little ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... be confessed that the Queen of Navarre herself gave no little aid and comfort to the advocates of timid and irresolute counsels, by a course singularly wanting in ingenuousness. This amiable princess knew how to express herself with such ambiguity as to perplex both religious parties and heartily satisfy neither the one side nor the other. She was the avowed friend and correspondent of Melanchthon and Calvin. She was believed to ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... refined ingenuousness about her that was particularly attractive. She walked well, holding her skirt tightly about her as only a true Parisienne can, and displaying a pair of extremely neat ankles. She inquired about me—how long had I been in the Count's service, how I liked him, and such-like; while I, by careful ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... The perfect ingenuousness with which Ela put these questions, and the plaintive appeal against the hard requirements of social laws in the mountains, which was expressed in his voice and accent, were so indescribably ludicrous that both my husband and myself laughed convulsively. "I never tell my ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... of Francis; but Italy is not Germany nor England, and the thirteenth century would have been astonished indeed at the prudery of the Bollandists. The incident is simply a new manifestation of Francis's character, with its ingenuousness, its exaggerations, its longing to establish a complete harmony, a literal correspondence, between ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... was little likely that she would allow the establishment to await the influx of Merrifields, though certainly Gillian had done nothing displeasing all that evening except that terrible blushing, for which piece of ingenuousness her aunt loved her all ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ran on, with an air of simple and charming ingenuousness; while I reflected that here possibly was a light and aimless creature whom I had mentally convicted of ungracious designs, that, although his presence in Wallencamp, as a representative of the great world I believed ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... women of the provinces have since developed into a Eugenie Grandet, a Madame de Mortsauf, a Madame Claes! . . . What was wanting to Balzac in the hell of life, whose every spiral he descended, was virginity in love and ingenuousness in poetry. He always lost himself in the difficult places of style; and himself wept over the lack. When he wrote the Search for the Absolute, he was in quest of the ideal; but the ideal is that which one had inside ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... of hours only but of days, and on one occasion, at least, of days in succession; and was characterized by a freedom of conversation on a great variety of topics that could scarce fail, under the ingenuousness and frankness of his manner, to put me in possession of his views, principles, and feelings upon most points that give insight ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... so pretty. He had possessed so few women of such ingenuousness. This love without debauchery was a new experience for him, and, drawing him out of his lazy habits, caressed at once his pride and his sensuality. Emma's enthusiasm, which his bourgeois good sense disdained, seemed ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... their flashing eyes, the silken touch of their delicate fingers, sent the blood rushing through my veins like a stream of lava; but in their gentle accents, the simple ingenuousness of their expressions, the childlike innocence of their faces, I regarded them only as two beautiful children kneeling in ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... prince whose turbulent and evil disposition caused so much misfortune to France, was born here. Happy too had it been for him, had he here closed his eyes before he entered upon the wider theatre of the world! During his early days passed at Navarre, he is said to have shewn an ingenuousness of disposition and some traits of generosity, which gave rise to hopes that were miserably falsified by his future life.—The present edifice, however, a modern French Chateau, retains nothing more than the name of the structure which was built ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... habits is not a romance, but the most arduous of real concerns. If we are led up to none of the enkindled summits of the soul, and plunged into none of its abysses, that is no reason why we should fail to be struck by the pale flame of strenuous self-possession, or touched by the ingenuousness and simplicity of the speaker's accents. A generation continually excited by narratives, as sterile as vehement, of storm and stress and spiritual shipwreck, might do well, if it knew the things that pertained to its peace, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... though his advance was hesitating and respectful, it was impossible to contemplate his person without the ideas being suggested of velocity and swiftness. His presence and air had the appearance of frankness, ingenuousness, and manly confidence. The natural fire and haughtiness of his eye were carefully subdued, and he seemed, at least to a superficial view, the very model of good-nature and disinterested complaisance. His bright and flowing hair parted on his brow, and formed into a thousand ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... he kept the mysterious secret of his origin and identity—that is, if he himself knew them, he was never known to maintain the same moral temperament for a week together. Never did there exist a being so capricious and unstable. At one time, you found him all ingenuousness and candor; at another, no earthly power could extort a syllable of truth from his lips. For whole days, if not for weeks together, he dealt in nothing but the wildest fiction, and the most extraordinary ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... loses the freshness and simplicity that won me,—the sweetness and ingenuousness that enchained me!" he cried impetuously. "Wait till she has been flattered and spoiled by a vain and deceiving world; till she learns to prize the admiration of many better than the true love of one; till she becomes that tinsel thing my soul abhors, a false and worldly woman. No! give her to me ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... spoke hoarsely, but he was too long accustomed to disguise to permit the weakness to escape, when he knew how much it would pain the sensitive and faithful being who had yielded her affections to him with a singleness and devotion which arose nearly as much from her manner of life as from natural ingenuousness. ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... any common miner, that his reserve was unbroken, and his life one continual self-denial. There were thirty men in all who worked for him, and by them all he was respected and feared rather than liked. There was a chilling reserve wrapped about him, an utter absence of ingenuousness and frankness of character, that prevented any affection growing up amongst the men for their master, and his attitude towards them was summed up in the answer he gave to an acquaintance who once asked him how he got on with his men, if he had any friends amongst them. Talbot ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... and there never had entered into his heart a feeling or idea of real affection until he met LAURA. He fell for a moment under the spell of her fascination, and then, with cold logic, he analyzed her, and found out that, while outwardly she had every sign of girlhood,—ingenuousness, sweetness of character and possibility of affection,—spiritually and mentally she was nothing more than a moral wreck. He observed keenly her efforts to win him and her disappointment at her failure—not that she cared so much for him personally, but that it hurt her vanity not to be ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... aloud His praises, and in the face of men, give honour to the everlasting Giver of all good. It was for this and these that I had been selected from mankind, and made the especial object of a Father's grace. I believed it in all the simplicity and ingenuousness of a mind awakened to a sense of religion and human responsibility. I could not do otherwise. From the moment that I was convinced of the obligation under which I had been brought, that I could feel the force of the silent compact which had been effected between the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... more difficult than he had anticipated to gain his daughter's consent to see me. She had been very reluctant to assume the attitude required of her, and only her respect for his wishes and the good of the cause, and the assurance he had given her of the entire ingenuousness of my own motive, had induced her finally to yield. After some talk as to the significance of the interview before me, which I was too much agitated to comprehend, he bade ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... fall he thought more contemptuously of Mary Ann. Idealise her as he might, see all that was best in her as he tried to do, she remained common and commonplace enough. Her ingenuousness, while from one point of view it was charming, from another was but a pleasant synonym for silliness. And it might not be ingenuousness—or silliness—after all! For was Mary Ann as innocent as she looked? The guilelessness of the dove might very well ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... is the greatest beauty, the most marvellous and transcendent beauty, you ever saw. And that, M. Daniel Champcey, is her smallest attraction. When she opens her lips, the charms of her mind, beauty and her mind, and remember her admirable ingenuousness, her naive freshness, and all the treasures of her chaste ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... express his own views. "Then," says Marmontel, "he threw himself into the subject with warmth—as simple, as natural, as sincere as he is systematic and sophistic in his works. Nothing is less like the ingenuousness of his character and ordinary life, than the artificial and premeditated simplicity of his works. Helvetius was the very opposite in his character of what he professes to believe; he was liberal, generous, unostentatious, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... darling child was being slighted wrought almost a miraculous change in Melbury's nature. No man so furtive for the time as the ingenuous countryman who finds that his ingenuousness has been abused. Melbury's heretofore confidential candor towards his gentlemanly son-in-law was displaced by a feline stealth that did injury to his every action, thought, and mood. He knew that a woman once given to a man for life took, as a rule, her lot as it came and made the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... considered a very original and delightful young man. He was fresh in from the range, but he had the polish of a university education over his roughness, and what I know now to be inborn coarseness was then accepted for ingenuousness. He passed current in the best society of the capital, where he was coddled as a butterfly of new species. We met; he made love to me, and I—I am afraid that I encouraged him ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... "you are the honestest knave I ever met, and one would trust you with one's purse for the ingenuousness with which you own you would steal it. Pray, think you it is probable that I have ever had the happiness to meet you before? I cannot help fancying so—yet as I have never been in the watch-house, or the Old Bailey, my reason tells me ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... unbosom myself, puts my heart perpetually upon my lips. After having disclosed myself without reserve to the musician Lutold, there was no occasion to attempt acting the mysterious with the Marquis de Bonac, who was so well pleased with my little history, and the ingenuousness with which I had related it, that he led me to the ambassadress, and presented me, with an abridgment of my recital. Madam de Bonac received me kindly, saying, I must not be suffered to follow that Greek monk. It was accordingly resolved that I should remain at their ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... atmosphere of their milieu. What we find in the insane asylum of God's Beloved we find also in the lives of Breton fisherfolk in the novel The Sea (1910); it is unadulterated primitive nature, which blends the roar of billows and the instinctive ingenuousness of the islanders into a ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Wesson entered. He was thin, rather frail-looking, with a boyish ingenuousness and a slightly foolish smile, despite his seven children. But his wife was a ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... refill it, Elfride became better at ease; and when furthermore he accidentally kicked the leg of the table, and then nearly upset his tea-cup, just as schoolboys did, she felt herself mistress of the situation, and could talk very well. In a few minutes ingenuousness and a common term of years obliterated all recollection that they were strangers just met. Stephen began to wax eloquent on extremely slight experiences connected with his professional pursuits; and she, having ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... we are blamed is modesty; to discover them to one's friends in ingenuousness, is confidence; but to preach them to all the world, if one does not ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... Maggie could endure in silence. The frank ingenuousness of her nature prevailed, and turning towards him her dark, beautiful eyes, in which tears were shining, she said: "Forgive me, Mr. Carrollton. I sent Gritty home on purpose to see if you would be annoyed, for I felt vexed because you would not humor my whim and meet me at ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... have observed mankind in general more extensively than Sir Francis, but he is far less acquainted with the feelings and associations of the English mind. There is also a wariness about him, which I do not like so well as the imprudent ingenuousness of the baronet. He seems to me to have a cause in hand—Hobhouse versus Existing Circumstances—and that he considers the multitude as the jurors, on whose decision his advancement in life depends. But in this I may be uncharitable. I should, however, ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... Yet there was plenty of 'character'—no dearth of good firm lines, with yet an entire absence of anything denoting hardness or obstinacy; the whole giving from the first candid glance an impression of extreme ingenuousness and single-mindedness. ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... deal of candour and ingenuousness, that their condition was so miserable, and that they were so sensible of it, that, he believed, they would abhor the thought of using any man unkindly that should contribute to their deliverance; and that if I pleased, he would go to them with the old man, and discourse with ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... III., Tassoni penned two philippics against Spaniards, which are the firmest, most embittered expression of patriotism as it then existed. He had the acuteness to perceive that the Spanish state was no longer in its prime of vigor, and the noble ingenuousness to dream that Italian princes might be roused to sink their rancors in a common effort after independence. As a matter of fact, Estensi, Medici, Farnesi, Gonzaghi, all the reigning houses as yet unabsorbed by Church or Spain, preferred the predominance of a power which sanctioned ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... 'busting' himself with Titanic intellectualities, but who is a readable dramatic critic.... Mr. Hale is a modest and sensible, as well as an acute and sound critic.... Most people will be surprised and delighted with Mr. Hale's simplicity, perspicuity and ingenuousness." ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... thought "that he was given that way rather than otherwise." She explicitly denies that her governess ever advised her to marry the admiral without the consent of the council; but relates with great apparent ingenuousness, the hints which Mrs. Ashley had thrown out of his attachment to her, and the artful attempts which she had made to discover how her pupil stood ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... themselves but among themselves, and are such that, if they were compulsorily brought together, would perforce bring forth a culture-monster. For a 'classical education' is something so unheard of, difficult and rare, and exacts such complicated talent, that only ingenuousness or impudence could put it forward as an attainable goal in our public schools. The words: 'formal education' belong to that crude kind of unphilosophical phraseology which one should do one's utmost to get rid of; for there is ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Video meliora, proboque, &c. Writers were now beginning to pride themselves on their classical reading. The present occasion, it must be owned, was a very good one for introducing the passage from Horace. The previous words have an affecting ingenuousness; and, indeed, the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... the old one, I fear," rejoined the earl. "Jane Seymour's charms have usurped entire sovereignty over him. With all her air of ingenuousness and simplicity, the minion is artful and dangerous She has a high mark, I am persuaded—no ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Mindanao. The decree ordering this deportation and the destruction of all copies of his books to be found in the Philippines is a marvel of sophistry, since, in the words of a Spanish writer of the time, "in this document we do not know which to wonder at most: the ingenuousness of the Governor-General, for in this decree he implicitly acknowledges his weakness and proneness to error, or the candor of Rizal, who believed that all the way was strewn with roses." [11] But it is quite evident that Despujols was playing a double game, of which he seems ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the man's ingenuousness. He contradicted his own story so unconsciously, that I began to think he was more of a simpleton ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... pensive and thoughtful; my heart was oppressed. I suffered a slight feeling of uneasiness, as if I had been the cause of the pain she felt. Undoubtedly the grand duke had been asking her, jestingly, if she found any resemblance to the portrait of her cousin of the olden times; and, in her ingenuousness, she perhaps reproached hers. If for not having told her father that she had before recognized me. When the concert was over, I followed the aid-de-camp. He led me toward the grand duke, who advanced a few steps to meet me, took me cordially by ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... the greater part of the night mourning for her friend who was gone. Now, as she tried to give her attention to her aunt and to the vexed question of the propriety of crape on the body, she thought, with girlish ingenuousness, that she wanted Peter more than she had ever wanted him before, and that she could do nothing until she had seen him. And across her grief came one great flash of joy as she realized that in all her troubles and sorrows she would have him ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... mother of a little girl as lovely as herself, and the delight of all who have the happiness of her acquaintance, to whom she is endeared not merely by her remarkable sweetness of temper and kindness of heart, but by the singular ingenuousness and openness of character which communicate an indescribable charm to her conversation. She is as transparent as water. You may see every colour, every shade of a mind as lofty and beautiful as ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... which he had such an endless supply, the virtues and the accomplishments which his observant eye has discovered in himself, the new Praetorian Prefect. Such a course would certainly not be often pursued by a modern statesman, but there is a pleasing ingenuousness about it which to some minds will be more attractive than our present methods, the "inspired" article in a hired newspaper, or the feigned reluctance to receive a testimonial which, till the receiver suggested it, no one had ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... the times concurred with the spirit of manners to sanction a tone of frank expression to the stronger passions, which the reserve of modern habits would not entirely license. And hence, not less than from the noble ingenuousness of their natures, the martial young cavalier, and the superb young beauty of the imperial house, on recovering themselves from their first transports, found no motives to any feeling of false shame, either in their own consciousness, or in ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... lifetime. I 'm going to find out my cousin, and make his acquaintance, and see what he 's like. And then—well, if he 's nice, who knows what may happen? I planned it ever so long ago," she proclaimed, with an ingenuousness that was almost brazen, "and made all my preparations. Then I sat down and waited for the day when I should ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... she added, with charming vivacity and ingenuousness: "Ah, how willingly I shall kiss you ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... are you givin' me! O' course they don't . . .!" She laughed outright; but the next instant checking herself, went on with absolute ingenuousness: "Before I went on that trip to Monterey I tho't Rance here was the genuine thing in a gent, but the minute I kind o' glanced over you on the road I—I seen he wasn't." She stopped, a realisation having suddenly been borne in upon ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... not betray himself, the girl could not betray him. All that was required of him was just to maintain an ordinary air of ingenuousness. He had done enough acting in his life to be at home when dissimulating. He must do a little more successful ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... little, with adroit use of the detective faculty of the modern reporter, he extracted from Webb the tale of his years—even the extent of his fortune. The young aspirant's ingenuousness made him gasp more than once; but he had too kindly a nature to state to Webb the hopelessness of his case. His new friend was manly and generous, and had won from him a sincere liking, tempered with pity. Better let him find out for himself how things stood; then, when his eyes were open, ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... necessity, though it argues lack of ingenuousness, is perhaps preferable to the wholly honest demonstration of snarling over one's misfortunes. It may result in good even to the hypocrite, who occasionally surprises himself with the pleasure he finds in wearing a front of nobility, ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... all that man could do, and was a constant, but unwilling attendant upon the police office, where my youth, and the promises of my mother that I should be reformed, assisted by showers of tears on her part, and by apparent ingenuousness on mine, frequently pleaded in my favour with ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... far as her own interests were concerned, and to accept as the entire recompense for all her expenditures of money and blood a benefit accruing to the American States. This was a humorous assumption of the ingenuousness of her most disinterested protestations. The French minister, we are told, "seemed to smile" at this compliment to the unselfishness of his chivalrous nation,[82] and replied that the American States were making no request to England for independence. As Franklin happily expressed ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... if you only knew how refreshing this ingenuousness of yours is to an old woman of the world ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... keep up the appearance of ingenuousness, was forced to further definition. "I don't think, darling, that in your sympathy, your solicitude, where young talent is concerned, you quite realize how much you give, how much you can be made use of. The man admires you, of course, and has, of course, talent of a sort. ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... refusing him the reversion of the office of governor of Poitou, which was then held by Sully, his father-in-law. In order to revenge himself for the neglect he met with at court, as he states in his Memoires with military ingenuousness, he espoused the cause of Conde with all his heart, being also drawn in this direction by his liking for Conde's brother and his consequent desire to help those ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... ingenuousness are sufficiently characteristic of the morality of the system. In La Maison Tellier Guy de Maupassant has depicted with his masterly pen the psychology of the prostitute, the proxenet, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... 'il Moro,' the Moor, is the most perfect type of the despot of that age, and, as a kind of natural product, almost disarms our moral judgement. Notwithstanding the profound immorality of the means he employed, he used them with perfect ingenuousness; no o ne would probably have been more astonished than himself to learn that for the choice of means as well as of ends a human being is morally.responsible; he would rather have reckoned it as a singular virtue that, so far as possible, he had abstained ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... said in his praise, that he is extremely ready to own his errors: but I have sometimes made a great drawback upon this article, in his disfavour; having been ready to apprehend, that this ingenuousness may possibly be attributable to two causes, neither of them, by any means, creditable to him. The one, that his vices are so much his masters, that he attempts not to conquer them; the other, that he may think it policy, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... a hurried voice, and with the greatest ingenuousness, he recounted to the Prince the whole history ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their sons. And now, when all are gone, and time is crowding me to the grave, the nobleness of their characters, the simplicity of their bearing in the discharge of their household duties, and the ingenuousness of their manners in social intercourse, is a cherished, venerated memory. None of these women were ever in a boarding-school, never received a lesson in the art of entering a drawing-room or captivating a beau. They were sensible, modest, and moral women, and their virtues live after them in the ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... ingenuousness, or did the girl have a deeper motive? For an instant Corinna wondered; then she returned merrily: "Certainly he wouldn't look at me when ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... engaged, Mr. Falkland came up. Mr. Tyrrel always regarded him with aversion and loathing. Mr. Falkland, however, slided in a graceful and unaffected manner into the conversation already begun; and the animated ingenuousness of his manner was such, as might for the time have disarmed the devil of his malice. Mr. Tyrrel probably conceived that his accosting Miss Hardingham was an accidental piece of general ceremony, and expected every moment when he would withdraw ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... appealed to Rafael. Her ingenuousness gave him a sense of freshness and repose. She was a cosy secluded refuge where he might sleep after a tempest. His mother's satisfied smile was there to encourage him in this feeling. Never had he seen ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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 deprived Germinie of all hope of repose. Mere girl as she was, she wounded her every minute in the day by her presence, her touch, her caresses, everything in her amorous body ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... with such childish ingenuousness, and in so cheerful and jesting a tone, that the cardinal listened to her as if intoxicated, and with unconcealed admiration he looked into that delicate, childishly pure face, over which no trace of sorrow nor any sign of care had ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... find it very uninteresting, for I am going to visit some poor cottages," persisted Miss Amelyn, with a certain timid ingenuousness of manner which, however, was as distinct as Miss Desborough's bolder frankness. "I promised the rector's daughter to ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... buildings in plaster, with a decoration meagre and accentuated by the needs of construction. In fact, the large entrance doors, all of wood, were made afterwards and applied to the plaster, and the same may be said of all the visible woodwork; but this lack of ingenuousness in the construction is not to be too severely blamed, since it is a question of pavilions which are to disappear after an existence of six months. Economical reasons are always worthy of respect, and the modesty of the Municipal Council on ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... with all the contrition, affection, and ingenuousness that even he wished to see there; and they put their horses ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the bold request. Anne felt at once that she would go. There was nobody in the world whose care she would more readily be under than the trumpet-major's in a case like the present. He was their nearest neighbour's son, and she had liked his single-minded ingenuousness from the first moment ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... Belknap," she said at last, and with charming ingenuousness, "this is not a matter for my judgment; I rely upon you entirely; pray do not hesitate, but continue your investigations in whatever direction your judgment leads you. I wish Mr. Lamotte was here to confer with you; but, if ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... say anything against one of your friends,' she said with a great show of ingenuousness. ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... his family, and giving lessons in painting to his daughter. Edmund Dunning had no intentions that any other lessons should be given, and it accordingly grieved him when he discovered the terms on which the young people stood to one another, and which their ingenuousness could not conceal. With this relation he had made himself acquainted as soon as he suspected it, by inquiring of Eveline, who frankly told him the whole truth. Arundel loved her, but dared not, on account of the distance that separated him from her father, make ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... became, perhaps almost unconsciously, the supporter of a cause of which he disapproved. That he should have been under any temptation to suppress or soften any important opinion, or to deviate in any respect from that ingenuousness and good faith which naturally belonged to his character, is a circumstance which cannot be sufficiently lamented. But if there are any who feel disposed to pass a very severe censure upon Park's conduct, let his situation at the time when he was preparing his Travels for the press, ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... chuckling to himself; so he, too, was in the secret of the situation. I half expected him to pretend ingenuousness, and spring the tale of Dierdre's adventure with Herter on the company. But he preserved a discreet reticence, more for his own sake than mine or his sister's, of course. He's as lazy as he is impish, except when there's some special object to gain, and probably he wished to avoid the bother of explanations. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... facetious digger—was particularly attentive to Done. Jim was flattered by her open preference, dazzled by her bright eyes and glowing cheeks, and piqued by her bantering manner, for she still implied that he might be allowed indulgences because of his beardless, boyish face and his seeming ingenuousness. As a protest against this attitude, Done was impelled to drink rather more rum than was good for him, and under the influence of the fiery spirit he lost some thing of his habitual reserve, and a fight with Quigley was only averted by ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... there was not a grain of indelicacy or boldness in it; it was simply a truthful expression of a pure and noble nature, the spontaneous outburst of a holy affection responding to the sacred love of his own heart, and the avowal aroused a profound reverence for an ingenuousness that was as rare as ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... ceased speaking, and remained standing. He had said these things in a loud, rapid, hoarse voice, with a sort of irritated and savage ingenuousness. Once he paused to salute some one in the crowd. The sort of affirmations which he seemed to fling out before him at random came like hiccoughs, and to each he added the gesture of a wood-cutter who is splitting wood. When he had finished, the audience burst into a laugh. He stared ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... youth, Mr. Waverley, lays it open to the plans of the more designing and artful; and one of your friends at least—I mean Mac-Ivor of Glennaquoich—ranks high in the latter class, as, from your apparent ingenuousness, youth, and unacquaintance with the manners of the Highlands, I should be disposed to place you among the former. In such a case, a false step, or error like yours, which I shall be happy to consider as involuntary, may be atoned for, and I would ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... a commercial office, or at some open-air pursuit. Naturally he turned again to the thought of gambling, this time the great legalised game of hazard, wherein he was as little likely to prosper as among the blacklegs of Brussels. Rolfe liked him for his ingenuousness, and for the vein of poetry in his nature. The love affair still went on, but Morphew seldom alluded to it, and his seasoned friend thought of it as a youthful ailment which ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... who criticise the United States because, with the experience of all the ages behind her, she is in some points vastly defective as compared with the nations of Europe are as much mistaken as those who look to her for the fresh ingenuousness of youth unmarred by any trace of age's weakness. It is simply inevitable that she should share the vices as well as the virtues of both. Mr. Freeman has well pointed out how natural it is that a colony should rush ahead of the mother country in some things ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... one could hardly help smiling. And yet there was a pathos in the caricature that dissipated the smile half-way. It never found voice in a laugh. The pathetic quality was no doubt a certain serious ingenuousness—a confiding look that always met your eye from the eager face of the diminutive wearer of second-hand coats ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... in the family, you know, Mrs. Smith," I replied, blushing for the ingenuousness which had ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... and privations, to suffer the want of all things, to peril health and even life itself, to endure the most intense fatigue and loss of rest, if by so doing they may relieve another's pain or soothe the burdened and aching heart; and with the utmost ingenuousness, they will avow that they have done nothing worthy of mention; that it is the poor soldier who has been the sufferer, and has made the only sacrifices ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... so they do!" ejaculated the cleaner, eagerly—too eagerly for perfect ingenuousness. "That's why I said 'Poor dear!' and spoke of her pretty face. I am sorry for young folks when they get into trouble, aint you? You and me might lie here and no one be much the worse for it, but a sweet lady ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... book doubtless recalled the memory of their spring-time, shared Falstaff's ingenuousness, and remained faithful to Lyly; if men or letters, after some years of enthusiasm, ceased to imitate him, his book was for a long time continuously read, and it was reprinted again and again even in the reign of Charles I. It was translated into Dutch in the same century,[101] and ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... paid so mighty well, might take the matter. She most certainly had not promised so large a sum of money, nor paid the good round sum of ten thousand francs down in advance, merely in order that Gurn might have a little walk upon the tiles. What was to be done with regard to that personage? With much ingenuousness Nibet confided his anxiety ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... you. You put a very shrewd question when you ask me how I know that their autumnal migration is southward? Was not candour and openness the very life of natural history, I should pass over this query just as a sly commentator does over a crabbed passage in a classic; but common ingenuousness obliges me to confess, not without some degree of shame, that I only reasoned in that case from analogy. For as all other autumnal birds migrate from the northward to us, to partake of our milder winters, and return to the northward ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White |
