"Naive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reminiscences, and chronological errors, and they are written sometimes with a credulity and exaggeration of language which raise a smile; but they reveal the state of men's minds and fancies within the circle of Charlemagne's influence and at the sight of him. This monk gives a naive account of Charlemagne's arrival before Pavia and of the king of the Lombards' disquietude at his approach. Didier had with him at that time one of Charlemagne's most famous comrades, Ogier the Dane, who fills a prominent place in the romances and epopoeas, relating ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... naive words a smile lighted up the stern faces of the judges, and sped like a ray of sunlight over all the countenances of the spectators. Even the rigid features of the attorney-general were touched for an instant with the glow; only those ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... apart in rank. Had Lempriere been born as low and as poor as Buonespoir, he would have been a pirate too, no doubt; and had Buonespoir been born as high as the Seigneur, he would have carried himself with the same rough sense of honour, with as ripe a vanity; have been as naive, as sincere, as true to the real heart of man untaught in the dissimulation of modesty or reserve. When they shook hands across the trencher of spiced veal, it was as man shakes hand with man, not ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... look at him. I was startled by the expression in those fine sombre eyes of his, an expression of intolerable anguish; they betrayed a tragic depth of emotion of which I should never have thought him capable. But the expression passed away and he smiled. His smile was simple and a little naive. It changed his face so that I wavered in my first ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... to Steinmann, "the prospect of an altered conception of the process of formation of the organic world." According to the new conception, the many extinct forms of antiquity are not, as Darwin supposed, "unsuccessful attempts and continued aberrations of nature"—how this reminds one of that old, naive, much-ridiculed idea that fossils were models that God had discarded as unserviceable—but would gain new life and assume hitherto unsuspected relationship to the present ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... commended to Longfellow's attention a ballad sung in the Faroes, begging him to translate it some day, "as none but he can translate it." "It is so sad, that no tenderness less exquisite than his can prevent its being painful; and at least in its denouement, so naive, that no purity less exquisite than his can prevent its being dreadful."[24] Later in the lecture he commends to his hearers the Heimskringla of Snorri Sturluson, the ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... The straightforward naive way in which this was said seemed so absurd on the face of it that the cousins could not refrain from smiling: but the sight of a great mass of rock ahead dividing the swift stream into two, and toward which the raft seemed to be rushing fast, made all turn to seize their ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... watching her, the sight was so comical that Red Feather did that which I do not believe he had done a dozen times in all his life—he threw back his head and laughed loud. Melville caught the contagion and gave way to his mirth, which was increased by the naive remark of Dot that she couldn't see anything ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... triumphs. Wit, pathos, humour, realism, exaggeration, and romance are in this marvellous story all blended together, and out of the very clash and chaos of these things comes life itself. And what a curious life it is, half civilised and half barbarous, naive and corrupt, chivalrous and commonplace, real and improbable! Cressy herself is the most tantalising of heroines. She is always eluding one's grasp. It is difficult to say whether she sacrifices herself on the altar of romance, or is merely a ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... interesting to the young artist, and his critical observations on people and places, on manners and customs, are naive and often very keen. The following are ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... times involved and turgid and almost cryptic, but she shows an originality which does not depend upon eccentricities. In her "Before the Feast of Shushan" she displays an opulence, the love of which has long been charged against the Negro as one of his naive and childish traits, but which in art may infuse a much needed color, warmth and spirit ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... arrival Thorwald gave us a long ride in an electric carriage to show Mona the country. Returning, we took her about the large house and were all delighted to hear her naive remarks. At length Zenith asked Thorwald if he could not think of something ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... a problem to dollars and cents, I have come to see, is just his means of arriving at definiteness. My uncle wants to do a good business, whether in the gross joys of the flesh or in the benefits of salvation. The Lord's cause, he thinks, ought to be as solvent as the world's. A naive view? To be sure, but not one ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... Pont Neuf to Parnassus; he was patriotic as well as romantic, and humorous as well as humane. Translations of poetry as a rule are merely misrepresentations, but the muse of Beranger is so simple and naive that she can wear our English dress with ease and grace, and Mr. Toynbee has kept much of the mirth and music of the original. Here and there, undoubtedly, the translation could be improved upon; 'rapiers' for instance is an abominable rhyme to 'forefathers'; 'the hated arms of Albion' in the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... azure, starry, like a beautiful, calm sky; ultramarine dominates; thirty compartments of large dimensions, indicated by simple lines, contain the life of the Virgin and of her Divine Son in all their details; they might be called illustrations in miniature of a gigantic missal. The personages, by naive anachronisms very precious for history, are clothed in the mode of the times ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... naive view?" Mr. Bennet asked, smiling. "As it happens, my associates and I are not undertakers. We took on the disguise in order to present an understandable motive if our plan to capture you had misfired. In that event, others would have believed exactly—and only—what you ...
— Forever • Robert Sheckley
... wrote to Murray (October 20, 1805): "We cannot sufficiently thank you for your kind attention to our concerns, and only hope that the success of the embryo edition may be equal to your care." How great was the importance of the venture in his eyes may be judged from the naive allusion with which he proceeds: "It will be a week or two before we commit it to the press, for amidst our other occupations the business of the school must not be neglected, and that by itself ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... the 'History of Civilisation' makes a naive remark in connexion with this subject. Speaking of the other country, which he censures equally with Scotland for its slavery to superstition, he says of the Spaniards that they are a well-natured, truthful, industrious, temperate, pious people, innocent in their habits, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... one with the All-good. On such a supposition, why pray—for even were there One other than ourselves to pray to, what is there to pray for? Or, to quote the actual question of a believer in this kind of immanence, Why ask outside for a strength which we already possess? What a naive question of this calibre reveals only too plainly is that self-complacency which is the most deadly foe of the spiritual life. One is reminded of the American story in which a bright and intelligent wife asks her cultured but indifferent husband, "Is it true that God is immanent in us all?" ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... so Japanese officers passed through Kiev, too. They were bound for the front, escorting their guns and ammunition. How curious they looked beside the big, naive Russians. They were like porcelain figurines with impenetrable, yellow faces, mask-like, and tiny hands and feet. What a finished product they appear, and yet they go to the front and observe the latest methods of warfare and multiply their ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... good-looking and she herself is not averse to flattery, she will reward him with a quick smile. In any case, the whole matter is treated as an ordinary occurrence, as it is, and no insult is felt where none is intended. Such remarks are but an expression, which is oftentimes naive, of the admiration which is felt at the sight of unusual feminine charms. The incident simply goes to show that everywhere in Spain there is tacit recognition of the general inferiority of women. ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... 66). It is exceedingly interesting to compare this landscape roll with the MS of Marco Polo, illuminated about a century later, from which the scene of the embarkation at Venice has been taken; the one is so obviously the work of a highly developed and the other of an almost naive ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... offended him in some way, and in return he had found them all out. He muttered darkly; he laughed sardonically; he crushed them one after another; but of his chief, Massy, he babbled with an envious and naive admiration. Clever scoundrel! Don't meet the likes of him every day. Just look at him. Ha! Great! Ship of his own. Wouldn't catch him going wrong. No fear—the beast! And Massy, after listening with a gratified smile ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... him after his shameful treatment of her. She seemed to me, and to her family also, to have thrown herself away on a man who had proved himself utterly unworthy any woman's devotion. All my chivalry, too, seemed wasted, and the only result of the experiment was the dissipation of an ideal, the naive expectation of the vicarious penalty to which I had in my sincerity offered myself having passed away. Convinced, that I had cured her, I was indignant at having cured her for him, but I suffered no visitation of contempt for women, and my indignation ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... all traced their descent from Abraham, the son of Terakh, but the children of Israel claimed the privilege of being the only legitimate issue of his marriage with Sarah, giving naive or derogatory accounts of the relations which connected the others with their common ancestor; Ammon and Moab were, for instance, the issue of the incestuous union of Lot and his daughters. Midian and his sons were descended from Keturah, who ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... give you an example. If you wish to guide a young man on the path of true culture, beware of interrupting his naive, confident, and, as it were, immediate and personal relationship with nature. The woods, the rocks, the winds, the vulture, the flowers, the butterfly, the meads, the mountain slopes, must all speak to him in their own language; in them ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... with the very best of its kind, this has been owned with a recognition too wide and spontaneous to leave room for doubt. The brilliant, venturesome imagination, defying forecast with ever-fresh surprise; the sense of humour in its finest and most naive form; the power to touch with lightest hand the undercurrent of pathos in the midst of fun; the audacity of creative fancy, and the delicacy of insight—these are rare gifts; and surely they were his. Yes, but it was his ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... roses," were the words Condillac put in the mouth of his statue; and these words translate the immediate truth exactly, as soon as observation becomes naive and simple enough to attain pure fact. In a passing breath I breathe my childhood; in the rustle of leaves, in a ray of moonlight, I find an infinite series of reflections and dreams. A thought, a feeling, an act, may reveal a complete soul. My ideas, my sensations, are like me. How would such facts ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... with the naive wonder of an inexperienced man. Having paid this tribute to his superior knowledge, he regained his previous air of grave perception. "I reckon she ain't none of them. But I'm keepin' you from your work. Good-by. My name's ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... flashes on everything, and out of the darkness and the dust and death of centuries life leaps at you. And I know nothing in English prose which for a noble and simple eloquence surpasses the opening and the closing paragraphs of this great work, nor—with some naive and almost childish passages of humour omitted—a richer, terser, purer, or more perfect style than that of the whole narrative. Nowadays, the fashion in criticism has changed, and the feeblest duffer amongst us receives welcome ten times more enthusiastic and praise less measured ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... Breakfast was a hurried affair, while both she and Susie were absent from the midday dinner. The shy, fluttering glances which he occasionally surprised from her, the look of mutual appreciation which sometimes passed between them at a quaint bit of philosophy or naive remark, started his pulses dancing and set the whole world singing a ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... naive history we learn to look at life from the Esquimaux point of view. Mr. Hall's sympathetic nature fitted him for this difficult task; and having accomplished it well, he is enabled, by his vivid descriptions, to invite the reader to see what he saw, and to sit by the "Innuit" fireside. We must confess, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... her with a smile so broad and sudden that Elizabeth felt a heat rising in her cheeks. Her question had no doubt been a little naive. ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... myself at the naive question. Surely it could not be possible she remained ignorant of the feud existing between us. She had twice witnessed our hostile meetings, and certainly could not forget how we had ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... glance of naive coquetry. "You ask how? If I were my great grandmother, you might try to kiss me, and chance a ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... originality in versification. The pantoum is particularly theirs—a form arising from their habits of improvisation and competitive versifying. They have also the epic or sjair, generally a pure romance, with much naive simplicity and natural feeling. And finally, they have the ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... much life and experience challenges them, they are the best force in us. I respect and value them so much that I deplore the waste of the least of them. An ideal is a moral ambition, a great wish of a true, even if a bit naive, soul. And it should have the ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... material bodies. And thus our philosopher is punished in the sinning part; his contempt of the earthly has led him into an abuse of abstract reasoning, and this abuse has made him the dupe of a very naive physical metaphor. ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... man seeks the day for the sake of the day, and the light for the light's sake; and he labours to acquire what is good for the sake of the good itself, and not of anything else." So far for the egotism, naive and unconscious, of Christianity, whose burden is, "Do good to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the happy years of peaceful married life. The prince liked early hours and country pleasures, and the Queen, like a loyal wife, not merely consented to his tastes, but made them absolutely her own. Before she had been married a year, she made the naive pretty confession that 'formerly I was too happy to go to London and wretched to leave it, and now, since the blessed hour of my marriage, and still more since the summer, I dislike and am unhappy to leave the country, and would ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... his young companion, who, following the injunctions of the Lady of Azay, regaled him well with glance and gesture, believing there could be no danger near so old a fellow, in such wise that Blanche—naive and nice as she was in contradistinction to the girls of Touraine, who are as wide-awake as a spring morning—permitted the good man first to kiss her hand, and afterwards her neck, rather low-down; at least so ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... look that nice," she said with a candor at once pathetic and naive. "I've been wishing he wouldn't come, but now I kinda hope ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... and a French. French eyes see beauty in everything. To the German eye the sense of beauty has been denied. You cannot compare a beast and a man. In the old days, when there were wolves, it was the custom of the naive people of those days to torture a wolf if they caught one. They put him to death with the same refinements which were requisitioned for human criminals. This meant nothing to the wolf. The mere fact that he had been caught was what tortured him. And so I think it will be with the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... most naive and vivid illustrations of this conception of headache is the remedy adopted for generations past, in this all too familiar and distressing condition, by the Irish peasantry. It consists of a band or strip of tough cloth, or better, of twisted or ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... to work to make Mrs. Morrell a widow, until at last—her husband being away at sea—she had to be guarded from his persistent advances by some of the English and American families resident in Manila. She tells the story in the most naive and delightful manner, and the reader's heart warms to the little woman. But I must not diverge from ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... folkways are subjected to rational or ethical examination they are no longer naive and unconscious. It may then be found that they are gross, absurd, or inexpedient. They may still be preserved by conventionalization. Conventionalization creates a set of conditions under which a thing may be tolerated which would otherwise be ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... her again at intervals, finding her naive love and humble adoration and obedience very pleasant; and, meeting her once at a peasant's fair, he jestingly yielded to the burlesque solicitations of a mountebank in a white mitre, paid a small fee, and went through an absurd ceremony ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... simple essentials. It embodies everything essential to an understanding of the old mentality of China which has not yet been completely destroyed. From a literary standpoint it has also much that is valuable because it is so naive; and although it is concerned with such a distant region of the world as China its treatment of modern political ideas is so bizarre and yet so acute that it will ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... beings, birds, fishes, trees, plants, stones, metals, and even actions, events, and feelings, diminutives are obtained, which by their form, present the names so made in different colors; they become more naive, more childlike, eventually more roguish, or humorous, or pungent. These traits can scarcely be rendered in English; for, as Robert Ferguson remarks: "The English language is not strong in diminutives, and therefore it lacks some of the most effective means for the expression ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... much to love in you!" and she made her heart's confession with a perfectly naive candour. "I daresay you don't see it yourself, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... insensible to Rhythm. It fires his spirit in the war dance and battle chant, soothes him in the monotonous hum of the pow-wow, and softens him in naive love songs. It is the heart of music, and it can be proved that low and vulgar rhythms have a debasing effect upon the character of a people. 'Let me write the songs of a people,' said a great thinker, 'and I ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... sourly, "Don't be naive, Lieutenant. Whoever does it, is going to need little integrity. You don't win in a sharper's card game by playing your cards honestly. The biggest sharper wins. We've just found a joker somebody dropped on the floor; if we ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... passed from her face; so also had the world-wise expression. There was something in her present naive frankness that prevented it from ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... to the eye in the study of such a dry-as-dust subject as psychology, because three of its fixed principles are: "Experience is the process of becoming expert by experiment," "One finds a measure of truth in the naive realism of Common Sense;" and "Action and Reaction are ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... also knew instinctively that he was going to have to keep the number of his immediate associates small. They were going to have to know his secret, and no man is so naive as not to realize that while one person can keep a secret, it becomes twice as hard for two and from that point on the likelihood fades in ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... "embarras". That the persians the heathens worshipped as gods existed, and that they were men and women false and powerful, Saxo plainly believes. He has not Snorre's appreciation of the humorous side of the mythology. He is ironic and scornful, but without the kindly, naive fun of the Icelander. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... devotion, an exquisite loyalty. The tyrannical man, the monster, the Black Man, find a place here like the Lestrigons and the Cyclops of Homer only to inspire horror by contrast with softer manners; they are almost what the wicked man is in the naive imagination of a child brought up by a mother in the ideas of a gentle and pious morality. The primitive man of Teutonism is revolting by his purposeless brutality, by a love of evil that only gives him skill and strength in the service ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... had frankly connived with the others,—I confess that I felt shame for us and pity for the friendless man we were sending out into the world. Something childlike in his acceptance of the proposal, a few phrases of naive enthusiasm for his new prospects, repeated to me by Solon, touched me strangely. It was, therefore, with real embarrassment that I read the Argus notice. "With profound regret," it began, "we are obliged to announce to our readers ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... some Ritualistic epigrams to say to Mr. Smith to-night. How delightfully rustic we all are! So naive! I am going to order dinner, and add up the ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... coloring and darker contrast is very handsome. It is to be regretted that the lunettes over the other doors are again that watery blue from heaven. Though brilliant in themselves and clear in coloring, none of the three decorations in this court are sufficiently naive in design for the space - much too smart and knowing, they might be easel picture motifs used for the occasion. The American public is so quick and clever that it is difficult to find in the painters the simplicity of mind necessary for such ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... my chin—she told me—look, isn't this the way?" Her slender hands lifted the hat to her hair, so sweetly rumpled from her pillows, "Look, Grandy, look at me! I am wearing Maman's hat —she told me I could wear it when I came to the House in the Woods! Do you think it looks well on me?" Her naive vanity almost broke their hearts. "Do you, Grandy? Look ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... herself rather aloof from strangers, would be pleased on these occasions to put on a little winning graciousness, giving her hand with the air of a small princess to any one soliciting the honour of a dance; and she was seldom without some tall partner, attracted by her gentillesse and naive prattle—a moustached Austrian or Prussian officer, perhaps, in white or blue uniform, or one of her counts or barons, with a bit of ribbon dangling from his button-hole; or, if all else failed, there was always her father, who was ever ready to indulge ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... latter country as the bear's skin of which it would be a good stroke of business for Greece to secure a share. The German Minister at Athens, better acquainted with Greek views and feelings, took a less naive line. He did not want Greece to attack her ally, but was content to advise that she should free herself from the ties that bound her to Servia, and in the event of Bulgarian aggression just leave her ally in the lurch. But, if he went less far than his chief in one ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... the spoiled child in her make-up. Her bringing up had been bad. In different environments she might have been entirely different. There was much in her that attracted him. He liked her merry disposition, her girlish ingenuousness. Such a naive nature, he argued, could not be wholly depraved. He frankly enjoyed her society, and it was not long before he let down the barriers of his reserve. Laura was quick to notice the change, and she would have belied her sex if it had not given her pleasure. Madison interested her; ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... something of his old tenderness return to this wholesome, pretty girl at his side; perhaps he betrayed it in his voice, or in an unconscious lingering by her bridle-rein, but she accepted it with a naive reserve which he naturally attributed to the effect of his own previous preoccupation. He bore it so gently, however, that it awakened her interest, and, possibly, her pique. Her reserve relaxed, and by the time they ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... distracted between the two, and excited both by the lacrima and his triumph, turned to the younger child with so naive and grotesque a pride, "I don't know which to thank the most. You give me so much joy, child,—I am so proud of thee and myself. But he and I, poor fellow, have ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... vanes—many crippled and others almost defunct—sketches of a few of which I give my readers. Note the one, carved out of a piece of wood and rudely shaped like a bottle, which is stuck on an untrimmed bough of a tree and spliced to a clothes-prop: could anything be more naive? (in justice I would add that this is not at the inn); or the one that is noted just below it—an axe poised on the roof of the local wheelwright's workshop, which aforesaid roof still bears unmistakable evidence ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... ignorance of the world, possibly—as only a graceful concealment of a self of which he knew nothing; and he was not surprised to find that her pretty gray eyes, now no longer hidden by her veil, really told him no more than her lips. He was a little afraid of her, and now that she had lost her naive enthusiasm he was conscious of a vague remorsefulness for his interrupted work in the forest. What was he doing here? He who had avoided the cruel, selfish world of wealth and pleasure,—a world that this woman represented,—the ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... to Panama? Why does he build bridges and things? Other people like you and me can do that sort of thing; but he—," and Caroline Darrah raised her eyes full of naive questioning. ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... illustration of the doctrine of heredity in the case of this master of romance. George Eliot's dictum that we are, each one of us, but an omnibus carrying down the traits of our ancestors, does not appear at all to hold here. This fanciful realist, this naive-wistful humorist, this dreamy mystical casuist, crossed by the innocent bohemian, this serious and genial essayist, in whom the deep thought was hidden by the gracious play of wit and phantasy, came, on the father's side, of a stock of what the world regarded as a quiet, ingenious, demure, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... institutions. For the purposes of the historian they are merely tendencies which combine to define the general trend of historical change. The logical motive, which has everywhere guided science in formulating its conceptions, is here revealed in its most naive and elementary form. Natural science invariably seeks to describe change in terms of process, that is to say, in terms of interaction of tendencies. These tendencies are ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... asked a multitude of questions, most of them pointless, some naive, and Melinda dug into her infinitesimal fund of knowledge and gave. The little man scribbled furiously, ...
— Teething Ring • James Causey
... permanently settled at Concord, Massachusetts, the most famous literary town of its size in the United States. The appreciation of the Concord people for their home is shown by the naive story, told by a member of Emerson's family, of a fellow townsman who read of the rapidly rising price of building lots in Chicago, and remarked, "Can't hardly believe that any lands can be worth so much money, ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... full advantage of the offer. He "lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, even as the garden of the Lord." So they parted, and Lot "pitched his tent towards Sodom," whose inhabitants, says our naive story, "were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly." Commentators explain that Lot's approach to such a detestable sink of iniquity indicated the native corruption of his heart, or at least a sad lack of horror at the ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... conduct. He did more than his duty: where anything was to be done, he saw no difficulties." Great as his merits were, he was never insensible to them; and, in the sketch of his career, furnished by him to his chief biographers, he records his exploits with naive self-satisfaction, resembling the sententious tablets of Eastern conquerors: "I boarded, if I may be allowed the expression, an outpost of the enemy, situated on an island in the river; I made batteries, and afterwards fought them, and was a principal cause of our success." ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... Almayer shows the atavistic "pull" of the soil and opposes finesse to force, while Alice Jacobus in 'Twixt Land and Sea (A Smile of Fortune) is half-way on the road back to barbarism. But Nina will be happy with her chief. In depicting the slow decadence of character in mixed races and the naive stammerings at the birth of their souls, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... smiling at O'Neil's naive manner and the happy and roguish expression on his face, our guest's appearance having been much improved, by the food of which he had partaken as well as the stimulant, which had put some little colour into his pale cheeks. "I'm sure I can't guess. But ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... few hours later he took the train for the next station, Tambak. No European had ever done such a thing before apparently, and there was quite a fuss at the station to find a first or even a second-class ticket. And during the search the railway officials displayed the most naive curiosity, and questioned the traveller without restraint. Arrived at Tambak X. descended, and immediately the station-master hurried forward and politely assured him that he had made a mistake, since ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... at breakfast. He had recovered his bird-like manner, and was full of a mysterious assassination that had just taken place in New York, all the thrilling details of which were at his fingers' ends. It was at once comical and sad to see this harmless old gentleman, with his naive, benevolent countenance, and his thin hair flaming up in a semicircle, like the footlights at a theatre, reveling in the intricacies ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... he was naive enough to renew his banter. She took her seat on the corner sofa, and looked straight into his face: "Do we really intend to remain ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... of this naive discrimination between the inert and the animate, the activities of the primitive social group tend to fall into two classes, which would in modern phrase be called exploit and industry. Industry is effort that goes to create a new thing, with a new purpose given it by the fashioning hand of its ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... practical individualistic doctrine. You would not thank me for expounding it to you at large. Indeed I think that she herself did not enlighten me fully. There must have been things not fit for a man to hear. But shortly, and as far as my bewilderment allowed me to grasp its naive atrociousness, it was something like this: that no consideration, no delicacy, no tenderness, no scruples should stand in the way of a woman (who by the mere fact of her sex was the predestined victim of conditions created by men's selfish passions, their vices and their abominable ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... studied, as bits of it were judiciously appropriated by Pope. Another authority was the great Bossu, who wrote in 1675 a treatise on epic poetry; and the modern reader may best judge of the doctrines characteristic of the school, by the naive pedantry with which Addison, the typical man of taste of his time, invokes the authority of Bossu and Aristotle, in his exposition of Paradise Lost.[3] English writers were treading in the steps of Boileau and Horace. Roscommon selected for a poem the lively topic ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... came back, she sat opposite to him to see him. His naive look of joy was very sweet to her. His eyes were dark blue, showing the fibrils, like a purple-veined flower at twilight, and somehow, mysteriously, joy seemed to quiver in the iris. Helena appreciated him, feature by feature. She liked his clear forehead, with its thick black hair, and his full ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... does the word suggest, what intellectual concept is the word a name for? Is it these forecasts and guesses, and the exact mode of realizing the Socialist ideal which Marx laid down, or is it the great principle of social evolution determined by economic development? Is it his naive and simple description of the process of capitalist concentration, in which no hint appears of the circuitous windings that carried the actual process into unforeseen channels, or the broad fact that the concentration has taken place and that monopoly has come out of competition? Is it his ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... Donatello claimed to be a deep thinker. He did not spend his time, like Michael Angelo, in devising theories to explain the realms of art. He was without analytical pedantry, and, like his character, his work was naive and direct. Nor was he absorbed by appreciation of "beauty," abstract or concrete. If he saw a man with a humped back or a short leg he would have been prepared to make his portrait, assuming that the entity was not in conflict with the subject in hand. Hence ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... has for its object not only to impart information, but to excite the very definite pleasure of recognition of a known object. All explorers agree in their accounts of the savage's delight in his own naive efforts at picture making. All such drawings show in varying degrees the same characteristics; first of all, an entire lack of symmetry. In a really great number of examples, including drawings and picture-writing from all over the world, ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... government so naive or badly informed as to imagine that the presence of American war-vessels at Havana will be a cause of satisfaction to Spain or an indication ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... world. His severity, in the matter of carrying himself, was so great that he would not scratch his head were anybody present. Puff had travelled on the continent. To sum up, he was so remarkably handsome that he had been, it was said, caressed by the Queen of England. Simple and naive as I was I leaped at his neck to engage him in play, but he refused under the pretext that we were being watched. I then perceived that this English Cat Peer owed this forced and fictitious gravity that in England is called respectability to age ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... at the naive simplicity of the suggestion. He did not detect the guile at first. But it dawned on him presently and he smiled more. She had said she was not going to visit the ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... naive expressions of tenderness with an interest that was mingled with astonishment. The farmer's wife called a servant to help set the table; and at Moser's invitation, the young man approached the brushwood fire which had ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... looking simply at the bias which directed their thinking, is there in all the world a more plain-spoken attempt to contrive an automatic governor—a machine which would preserve its balance without the need of taking human nature into account? What other explanation is there for the naive faith of the Fathers in the "symmetry" of executive, legislature, and judiciary; in the fantastic attempts to circumvent human folly by balancing it with vetoes and checks? No insight into the evident fact that power upsets all mechanical foresight and gravitates toward the natural leaders ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... as old as human speech,—and perhaps even antedates it. A naive acceptance of the supernatural was unquestionably one of the primal attributes of human intelligence. The ghost story may thus quite conceivably be the first form of tale ever invented. It makes its appearance comparatively early in ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... Victoria's naive admiration of the house and gardens delighted her host and hostess. She could not be too much astonished at its wonders to please them, and, both being thoroughbred, they liked her the better for saying frankly that she was unused to beautiful houses. "You can't think what this is like after school ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... 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 and ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... strong admiration expressed by his friends, by all the society in which he was then moving, and by a mother who idolized him! These verses, though not yet the highest expression of his genius, were certainly full of charming tenderness, grace, and naive sensibility; moreover, they had been given to the public in such a modest way by a man so young that he might almost be called a child! If he were not conscious of his great superiority, of which he must nevertheless have felt some prophetic ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... sister that I was in love with her, and that I should certainly feel better if she would allow me to kiss her. The only answer of the innocent girl was to offer me her laughing lips, which seemed to call for kisses. I was burning; but my respect for that innocent and naive young creature was such that I only kissed her cheek, and even that in a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of Laurent. Then she enlarged with a flood of words on the propriety and advantages of such an union. She poured out her mind, repeating aloud all she had been thinking during the evening, depicting with naive egotism, the picture of her final days of happiness, between her two dear children. Therese, resigned and docile, listened to her with bowed head, ready to give satisfaction to her ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... climb? The motives are many—the result joy. Yes, joy, even in the providential escapes and the "bad five minutes," beloved by our naive scribes of the ice-axe, in the perils and death which they court for the sake of adventure and exploration. Sir Martin Conway speaks of the systematic climber as the man for whom climbing takes the place of fishing and shooting. How depressingly banal! Yet Sir Martin Conway has ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... Her confession, naive and shameless, and yet somehow not without a certain dignity, flowed on. She was mad about Doctor Dick Livingstone. Goodness knew why, for he never looked at her. She might be the dirt under his feet for all he knew. She trembled when she met him in the ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... much troubled between his gratitude and his inability to reciprocate the naive passion she had conceived for him. It is pleasant to be loved and flattered and exalted, ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... the few of her words handed down to us, in the early days of her mission the young prophetess spoke alternately two different languages. Her speech seemed to flow from two distinct sources. The one ingenuous, candid, naive, concise, rustically simple, unconsciously arch, sometimes rough, alike chivalrous and holy, generally bearing on the inheritance and the anointing of the Dauphin and the confounding of the English. This was the language of her Voices, her own, her soul's language. The other, more subtle, flavoured ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... out at the former place, he had determined to take a trip (his first) to Europe in this ship; having, as he said, already visited every state in the Union, and seen all that was to be seen there. He described to me, in a very naive and original manner, his sensations on passing by Tarifa, which was the first walled town he had ever seen. I related to him the history of that place, to which he listened with great attention. He made divers attempts to learn from me who I was; all of which I evaded, though he seemed fully ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... not only allowed a cowboy to keep her picture in his room, but actually spoke of her and used her name in a temperance lecture. Madeline just escaped feeling disgust. She was saved from this, however, by nothing less than her brother's naive gladness that through subtle suggestion Stewart had been persuaded to be good for a month. Something made up of Stewart's effrontery to her; of Florence Kingsley meeting her, frankly as it were, as an equal; of the elder sister's slow, quiet, easy acceptance of this visitor who had been honored ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... provocative of much merriment and teasing from the Toomeys. While Hugh did not resent it or defend Kate, he did not join in their ridicule of her. She was "green," he could not deny that, yet not in the sense the Toomeys meant. Naive, ingenuous, he felt were better words. She knew nothing of social usages, and she was without a suspicion of the coquetry that he looked for in girls before they had begun to do up their hair. She spoke with startling frankness upon ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... from the things of the world, and that there is a sort of truce and respite in the miserable routine of my existence, at once so agitated and so commonplace. I relish my complete independence with the naive joy of a twelve-year-old Robinson Crusoe. I sketch when I feel like it; the rest of the time, I walk here and there at random, being careful only never to go beyond the bounds of the sacred valley. I sit down upon the parapet ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet |
