"Naive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him 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. ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... attractive feature of the Middle Ages is that they were so intensely human. A naive spirit appears in their formal literature, as in Chaucer's account of the Canterbury pilgrims, in their decorated religious manuscripts, in their thought, and very characteristically, in their architecture, which combines a simple naturalness with ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... Madame Sand to fill in the blank, in a way all her own, and her task as we have seen was completed, revolutions notwithstanding. She owns to having then felt the attraction experienced in all time by those hard hit by public calamities, "to throw themselves back on pastoral dreams, all the more naive and childlike for the brutality and darkness triumphant in the world of activity." Tired of "turning round and round in a false circle of argument, of accusing the governing minority, but only to be forced to acknowledge after all that they were ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... dramatic conception, then, of the nineteenth century, is that of a perfectly naive hero upsetting religion, law and order in all directions, and establishing in their place the unfettered action of Humanity doing exactly what it likes, and producing order instead of confusion thereby because it likes to do what is ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... be hoped, for the sake of their veracity, that they knew their candidate chiefly as the very good company that he always was; and had paid as little attention, as good company usually does, to so solid a work as the Treatise. Hume expresses a naive surprise, not unmixed with indignation, that Hutcheson and Leechman, both clergymen and sincere, though liberal, professors of orthodoxy, should have expressed doubts as to his fitness for becoming a professedly presbyterian teacher of presbyterian youth. The town council, ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... priest, with an air of embarrassment, took up his hat from the table. His cigar had gone out, but he pulled at it as if he thought it was still alight, then took it out of his mouth and, glancing with a naive regret at the good things upon the table, his half-finished coffee, the biscuits, the ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... climbing the spire during the Whitsun fair, to which Francis Price, in a naive description, attributes much damage to the leadwork of the roofs, has only ceased in recent times, some sixty or seventy years ago. Arnold, a watchmaker, wound up his watch while leaning actually against the vane. When a lad, during a royal visit, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... appropriate enough in a daughter of the gods. When she loves, it is without any airs and graces. She has not an atom of self-consciousness; she cannot premeditate; she loves because she must, rather than because she will, because it is the condition of her life. Some of the naive remarks she has to utter, might in clumsy lips seem coarse. Miss Anderson delivered them with consummate grace and innocence, but her fine smile, her bright sparkling eye, proved sufficiently, that the innocence was not stupidity. The first long speech at the conclusion of which she ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... conquer the naive instincts of that crowd. In a moment they gave him their compassion, jocularly, contemptuously, or surlily; and at first it took the shape of a blanket thrown at him as he stood there with the white skin of his ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... generous, such was the shy woodland companion with whom Diane chose willfully to spend her idle hours, finding the girl's unconstrained intervals of silence, her flashes of Indian keenness, her inborn reticence and naive parade of the wealth of knowledge Mic-co had taught her, a most bewildering book in which there was daily ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... pearls and rubies, formed the staple of their commerce. Gama at the same time was assured that in pursuing the line of the coast, he would find numerous cities; "Whereat we were so joyful," says Velho in his naive and valuable narrative, "that we wept for pleasure, praying God to grant us health that we might see all that which we ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... 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
... Charlotte proved so jealous of the attentions paid to the beautiful Duchess by her husband, the King, that at one time she contemplated resigning her post. The letter of resignation was actually written and despatched; but Her Grace, who did not approve altogether of its language, added this naive postscript before sending it, "Though I wrote the letter, it was the ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... revelation. True music finds its way to the hearts, and how wonderfully refreshing are these simple nursery songs, recalling days of sweet childhood, how droll and truly realistic are these children in {117} their natural and naive sauciness! Here is no display of human passions; simply and clearly the old fairytale goes on, embellished by the masterly way in which the musician ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... processes are interestingly described by the writers of the old treatises on divers arts. In the earliest of these, by the monk Theophilus, in the eleventh century, we have most graphic accounts of processes very similar to those now in use. The naive monastic instructor, in his preface, exhorts his followers to honesty and zeal in their good works. "Skilful in the arts let no one glorify himself," say Theophilus, "as if received from himself, and not from elsewhere; but let him be thankful humbly ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... themselves in the same sense that the works from the Third Symphony on, up to, and including the Eighth, are in a class apart from the others. His compositions prior to the Third Symphony are in the style of Mozart and Haydn. They are the naive utterances of the young musician who does not yet realize that he has a mission to perform; whose ambition was to be ranked with his great predecessors. Of the works of the second period, it can be said that their most ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... 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 Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... elder sister. She was half curious herself, but Ursula was old enough to know better, and to be ashamed of the other's naive and undisguised curiosity. "Oh, what would Cousin Anne say! A girl running after a gentleman (even if he is a gentleman), to ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... day when she was as her daughter was now; that his love for the little one that was of her transcended all else in his being—all else save the one thing that he never mentioned, not even to himself. SHE had been like that; a dainty, pretty, loving, simple, naive, sturdy, rugged little thing, with wind-blown hair, and sun-tanned cheeks and legs—soft, gentle, infinitely appealing, generous, loving. In the little one that was of her, he saw her again, violet-eyed, ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... again for the cause of this progress in thought and stagnation in practice. In India, creed and practice go their own way; thinking is independent of acting. Listen to the naive standpoint assumed in the Confession or Covenant of a Theistic Association established in Madras in 1864. We read in article 3 that the person being initiated makes this declaration: "In the meantime, I shall observe the ceremonies now in use, but only where ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... "A narrative, told with naive simplicity, of how a man who was devoted to his fruits and flowers and birds came to fall in love with ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... tenderly playing the mother: Can there be anything fairer on earth? So proud of her charge she appears, so delighted; Of all her perfections (indeed, they're a host), This loving attention to others, united With naive ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... 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 ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... would never replace Camille, Madame Raquin abruptly pronounced the name 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 ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... history will be charmed by this great tale of a lost cause and will not find the simple-hearted exaggerations of the eulogist of the Gothic race misleading. He pictured what he believed or wanted to believe, and his employment of fable and legend, as well as the naive exhibition of his loyal prejudices, merely heightens the interest of his story. Those who want coldly scientific narrative should avoid reading Jordanes, but should likewise remember the truthful, words ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... Evans was shocked. "You are naive indeed, young man, to think anything of this magnitude can even be started in such a short time as that. And yes, there are dozens of matters—hundreds—that should be discussed before I can even start to ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... conception of heavenly ideals of precious earthly things followed from the first naive method of speculation we have mentioned, that of a pre-existence of persons from the last. If the world was created for the sake of the people of Israel, and the Apocalyptists expressly taught that, then it follows, that in the thought of God Israel was older ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... Rhal, who was something more than a mayor and something less than a king. Actually, Arrill seemed to get along with a minimum of government. All in all, the Earthmen had summed up the Arrillians as being a naive, mild, and courteous people. They probably still thought so, all of ...
— Grove of the Unborn • Lyn Venable
... him with a woman's for this naive assurance. "I don't doubt you for a moment," she said. "You ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... his failings as much as his talents that enabled him to work the miracle. His lack of self-respect and humour, his childish egotism, his love of gossip, his naive bathos, and his vulgarities contributed as much to the making of his immortal book as his industry, his wonderful verbal memory, and his doglike fidelity. I have said that his greatness is only reflected. But that is hardly just. It might even be more true to say that Johnson ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... Deity minimizes or leaves out divine transcendence; thus it starves one fundamental impulse in man—the need and desire to look up. Instead of this transcendence modern preaching emphasizes immanence, often to a naive and ludicrous degree. God is the being who is like us. Under the influence of that monistic idealism, which is a derived philosophy of the humanistic impulse, preaching lays all the emphasis upon divine immanence in sharpest contrast either to the deistic transcendence of the eighteenth century ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... girl with a puzzled frown as she brought her banjo in from another room and sat down with it. She relaxed the severity of her stare a little as Molly played one wild air after another, singing some of them with an evidence of training in her naive effectiveness. There were some Mexican songs which she had learned in a late visit to their country, and some Creole melodies caught up in a winter's sojourn to Louisiana. The elder sister accompanied her on the piano, not with the hard, resolute proficiency which one might have expected of Eunice ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... then he regarded her as any poor girl too happy if he deigned to make her his wife. He was a true provincial, and a Fleming; without malevolence, not devoid of devotion and kindheartedness, but led by a naive selfishness which rendered all his better qualities incomplete, while certain absurdities of manner spoiled ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... is of permanent value, culled from the folk-lore of the primitive races; the vocabulary, based upon that of the Hiawatha Primer, is increased gradually, and the new words and phrases will add to the child's power of expression. The naive explanations of the phenomena of nature given by the primitive races appeal to the child's wonder about the same phenomena, and he is pleased and interested. These myths will gratify the child's desire for complete stories, and their intrinsic ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook
... Every naive and laboured line of the stilted letter touched and amused and also flattered Neeland; for no young man is entirely insensible to a young girl's gratitude. An agreeable warmth suffused him; it pleased him to remember that he had ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 household ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... can do very well, Alvin, though of course not half so well as Mike, for nobody can do that," was the naive ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... however, I did not insist on rapid and naive judgments; but by a close observation of the subject as he was about to make a judgment I could tell quite plainly which judgments were spontaneous and which were deliberate. By keeping track of these with a system of marks, I was able to collect ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... 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 feeling of ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... plump, but you would be more beautiful still if you ate more pork and beans"—would she regard this as evidence of refined love, or would she turn her back and never speak to him again? Anthropologists are sometimes strangely naive. We have just seen what kind of "attachments" are formed by African youths and girls while tending cattle; Burton adds to the evidence (F.F., 120) by telling us that among the Somali "the bride, as usual in the East, is rarely consulted, but frequent tete-a-tetes at the well and in the bush ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... intervals. Just the graze of a butterfly to make it certain that the other was there: but all the while they both regarded the tiny fire which had set each content of the room a-dancing in the companionable darkness. For each, I take it, preferred to think of the other as being still the naive young person each remembered; and the firelight made ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... more convenient opportunity to end this part of the social study of the age of Shakespeare than with this naive picture of the sex which most adorned it. Some of the details appear trivial; but grave history which concerns itself only with the actions of conspicuous persons, with the manoeuvres of armies, the schemes of politics, the battles of theologies, fails ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... mixture of Byzantine basilica, mosque and desert hut. Entering there, it is as if we were introduced suddenly to the naive infancy of Christianity, as if we surprised it, as it were, in its cradle—which was indeed Oriental. The triple nave is full of little children (here also, that is what strikes us first), of little mites who cry or else laugh and play; and there are mothers suckling their new-born ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... once that Tighe had laid his spell upon her. She was again the sullen, resentful girl of yesterday. Suspicion filmed her eyes. The eager light of faith in him that had quickened them while she listened for his answers to her naive questions about the great ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... he has; because this rouses the suspicion in the reader that he has very little, since a man always affects something, be its nature what it may, that he does not really possess. And this is why it is praise to an author to call him naive, for it signifies that he may show himself as he is. In general, naivete attracts, while anything that is unnatural everywhere repels. We also find that every true thinker endeavours to express his thoughts as purely, clearly, definitely, and ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... came with me, and looked with growing interest at everything. After having examined some cabinets of exquisite amulets she said to me in quite a naive way: ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... of the repulsion he inspired. It is quite possible that both versions were true, that he rejoiced at his release, and at the same time wept for her who released him. As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple-hearted than we suppose. ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Saints", we look naturally for religious poetry, and we do not look in vain. This poetry, chiefly Catholic, has a quality of its own as distinctive as that of the writers of the group we have just left. Now it voices a naive, devoted simplicity of Christian faith; now it attains to a high and keen spirituality; now it is mystic and pagan. Among the religious poets, Lionel Johnson easily stands first—perhaps the Irish poet of firmest fibre and most resonant voice of his generation. A note ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... pointlessly clever young man, without, I suspect, ever trying to understand anything. My daughter knew him from childhood. I am a busy man, and I confess that their engagement was a complete surprise to me. I wish their reasons for that step had been more naive. But simplicity was out of fashion in their set. From a worldly point of view he seems to have been a mere baby. Of course, now, I am assured that he is the victim of his noble confidence in the rectitude of his kind. But that's ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... mean!" cried Eustace, on whose common sense the naive absurdity of the last speech struck keenly; and then, as if to escape the scolding which he ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... up at the two who were 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 to ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... on, slowly, his eyes upon her, "But she knows that you are not one of those others and has requested that you do her the grace to call upon her. I assured her that you would, for I know that you are kind, and also," with an air of naive pride which Arlee found admirable in him, "it is not all the world who is invited to the home of our—our haut-monde, you understand?... And then it will interest you to see how our ladies live in that seclusion which is so droll to you. ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... short and joyous hours she led him from store to store, graciously leaving to him the privilege of selection but in nine cases out of ten demonstrating that he was entirely wrong in his choice, always with the naive remark after the purchase was completed and the money paid in hand: "Of course, Kenny, if you would rather have the other, don't for the world let me ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... don't know that being naive does any harm—being not quite so clever. Where does your cleverness lead you? Only to being cheated. Because there isn't ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... of the rostrum he might come in closer contact with the American public, meet his readers personally, and secure some first-hand constructive criticism of his work. This last he was always encouraging. It was a naive conception of a lecture tour, but Bok believed it and he contracted for a tour beginning at Richmond, Virginia, and continuing through the South and Southwest as far as Saint Joseph, Missouri, and then back home by ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... listened impatiently to this naive and somewhat incoherent explanation, and she now said, "I wish you would go away. You see that I am alone here and in trouble. I can't imagine what motive you can have for annoying me in this way," her eyes filling ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... obvious in her methods. Her lines are at 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 of abandon into ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... had traveled back and forth many times between them since Forsythe wrote that first love-letter. He found a whimsical pleasure in her deep devotion and naive readiness to follow as far as he cared to lead her. He realized that, young as she was, she was no innocent, which made the acquaintance all the more interesting. He, meantime, idled away a few months on the Pacific coast, making ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... return from these mysterious absences, would let it be known that he had just accomplished some great deed, or brought a dangerous mission to a successful termination. In this way the Chevalier Acquet de Ferolles had become the idol of the little group of naive royalists among whom he had found refuge. He had bravely served the cause; he plumed himself on having merited the surname of "toutou of the Princes," and in Mme. de Combray's dazzled eyes this was equal to ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... only way to do it: you engage a few score of the theatrical tribe by promising them high salaries and give them small advances; you look for a lady treasurer who is wise enough to have a bond and naive enough to deposit it; with it you buy the necessary accessories, have them sent on account and you are ready either to begin, or to break up. And in two months you can repeat the same prescription until you get results," ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... to doubt the truth of these records, naive as are some of the descriptions. Unquestionably the Wokou were a terrible scourge to the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... naive, I must say that for you!" Mrs. Westgate exclaimed. "It must be a great advantage to you here in London. I suppose that if I myself had a little more naivete, I should enjoy it more. I should be content to sit on a chair in the park, and see the people pass, and be told that this ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... Udal was Richard Mulcaster, head-master of St. Paul's school, and afterward of Merchant Taylors', concerning whom we have, from delightful old Fuller, this quaint and naive description: ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... poet would rise, exhaling sweetness from every pore of his bulky entity, to interpret what he called a "Thought." Sometimes it was a demonstration of the priceless value of "nothings"; sometimes it was a naive suggestion that no house could afford to be without an "Art"-rocker with Arr Noovo insertions. Such indispensable luxuries were on sale up-stairs. Again, he performed a "necklace of precious sounds"—in other words, some verses upon various ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... echoing dissonances, its singular richness of mood, its shadowy beauty, its exquisite and elaborate art—this music which drifted before the senses like iridescent vapor, suffused with rich lights, pervasive, imponderable, evanescent. It was music at once naive and complex, innocent and impassioned, fragile and sonorous. It spoke with an accent unmistakably grave and sincere; yet it spoke without emphasis: indirectly, flexibly, with fluid and unpredictable expression. It was eloquent beyond denial, yet its reticence, its economy of ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... the younger ones, perhaps from over-consciousness of their inferior position or the preoccupation of their labor, never indulged in any gallantry toward her, and he himself, in his revulsion of feeling against the whole sex, had scarcely noticed that she was good-looking. But this naive exhibition of preference could not be overlooked, either by his companions, who smiled cynically across the table, or by himself, from whose morbid fancy it struck an ignoble suggestion. Ah, well! the girl was pretty—the daughter of his employer, who rumor said owned ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... at the naive confession and the gloom vanished from his face as he stood up, his long limbs ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... him circuitously to a table for two at the far side of the room. Reaching it she again considered. Would she sit on the right or on the left? Her beautiful eyes and lips were very grave as she made her choice, and Anthony thought again how naive was her every gesture; she took all the things of life for hers to choose from and apportion, as though she were continually picking out presents for herself ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... conception of the world was as a flat, wide-extending surface. In Egypt he was told how Pharaoh Necho had sent a crew of Phenicians to explore the coast of Africa by setting out from the Red Sea, and how they sailed south till they had the sun on their right hand. "Absurd!" says Herodotus, in his naive manner, "this story I can not believe." In Egypt, as in Greece or Europe generally, the sun rises on the left hand, and at noon casts a shadow pointing north; whereas in South Africa the sun at noon casts a shadow pointing south, and sunrise is therefore on the right hand. The honest ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... embarrassment. He was the life of her big and little feasts at Pre Catalin and D'Armenonville. He sat in her box at the Opera; he translated the conspicuously unspeakable passages in all of the lively but naive comedies; he ordered her champagnes and invented hors d'oeuvres so neoterical in character that even the Frenchmen applauded his genius. And, through all, he was managing very nicely to keep his twelve ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... the laws, all the details, pertaining to the student duel are quaint and naive. The grave, precise, and courtly ceremony with which the thing is conducted, invests it with a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... far away, a tiny dazzling white speck flying across the brooding purple masses of thunderclouds piled up on the horizon. Sometimes, on the rare mail tracks, where civilisation brushes against wild mystery, when the naive passengers crowding along the rail exclaimed, pointing at her with interest: "Oh, here's a yacht!" the Dutch captain, with a hostile glance, would grunt contemptuously: "Yacht! No! That's only ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... and very interesting; and once he brought down the house with laughter and applause by explaining the mental process which prevented him from appreciating a joke until after all others had done so. This naive confession made his ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... pleased at this naive compliment, for she knew Marjorie was straightforward and sincere. She smiled at her little granddaughter, saying, "I'm glad you're pleased with your family's personal appearance, and I think some day you will grow up to be a pretty young lady yourself; but you must try to remember that handsome ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... Eveleth with a home; for Dorothea's need of a strong hand over her was imperative. He had reached the point where that circumstance could no longer be ignored. The avowal that the child had passed beyond his control would have had more bitterness in it, were it not for the fact that her naive self-sufficiency touched his sense of humor, while her dainty beauty wakened his ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... sounded so terrified, so helpless, I was struck to the heart. She meant to offer me a compensation by giving me leave to kiss her! How charming, how charmingly naive. I could have fallen down and knelt ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... 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 ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... Mr. Compton nailed him, but the commission took time; and while it was pending, Mr. Heathfield went to another judge with another disabled witness: Peggy Black. That naive personage was nursing her deceased sister's children—in an affidavit: and they had scarlatina—surgeon's certificate to that effect. Compton opposed, and pointed out the blot. "You don't want the children in the witness-box," said he: "and we are not to ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... continued to retain his characteristic sincerity and good faith; but, once duped and tricked by the southern schemers, as if with a fierce scorn, he rejected troth with the truthless; he exulted in mastering them in their own wily statesmanship; and if reproached for insincerity, retorted with naive wonder, "Ye Italians, and complain of insincerity! How otherwise can one deal with ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 street, and sometimes he looked past her and ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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
... Without vailing the character of the voluptuous queen, or concealing the poetical aspects of her romantic history, he delineates the events in her life, for which she is now chiefly remembered, with a naive simplicity that becomes piquant from its apparent artlessness. Nor does he indulge, to any disagreeable excess, in the superfluous moralizing which a less shrewd writer would have deemed essential to the effect. He leaves the story to assert its own moral. The reader, who ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... boy," he announced with the naive simplicity that made him so lovable. "I suppose it's very childish of me, but I have a tremendous desire to see this ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... singular result of negotiations begun under such unfavourable auspices, though the value of concessions, to the observance of which nothing constrained the Sultan, seems problematical, and was certainly less than the ambassador, in his naive vanity, hastened ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... things on the spot, she thereupon retired behind a corner of rock, and presently threw one of her high-lace boots out to Jack. It crumpled his toes, but Jack thought he could wear it if he had to. So that point was settled satisfactorily, and they went on planning impossibilities with a naive enthusiasm that ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... hesitation that was almost naive. She smiled, and there was apology in her smile, though none in her voice, as she remarked ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... science. Xenophanes attacks the religion of his times on the ground of its crude anthropomorphism. "Mortals," he says, "think that the gods are born as they are, and have perception like theirs, and voice and form." But this naive opinion Xenophanes corrects because it is not consistent with the new enlightenment concerning the arche, or first principle of nature. "And he [God] abideth ever in the same place, moving not at all; nor doth it befit him to go about, now hither, ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... she takes no care upon her mind; but when impassioned, she thinks of all things. She has something of the perfidy of the Negroes by whom she has been surrounded from her cradle, but she is also as naive and even, at times, as artless as they. Like them and like the children, she wishes doggedly for one thing with a growing intensity of desire, and will brood upon that idea until she hatches it. A strange assemblage of virtues and defects! which her Spanish nature had strengthened ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... other forms thus reduced to angularity argues, of course, no affectation of quaintness on the part of the worker, but was the unavoidable outcome of her way of work. There is a pronounced and early limit to art of this rather naive kind, but that there is art in some of the very simplest and most modest peasant work built up on those lines no artist will deny. The art in it is usually in proportion to its modesty. Nothing is more ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... Carnival survives in its naive purity only in Spain. It has faded in Rome into a romping day of clown's play. In Paris it is little more than a busier season for dreary and professional vice. Elsewhere all over the world the Carnival gayeties are confined to the salon. But in Madrid ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... where as secretary I served His Senoria Ilustrisimo, the Bishop of the state." But, as he meekly explained, he had sought the Lord's service among the Huastecans. Pastors were said to be needed, yet never had he imagined——He stopped short, in naive embarrassment. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... look of half-smiling, half-tender reproach at him. "You know who I mean, Bob. And I'm not going to have him put in danger on our account," she added with naive dogmatism. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Empire. Whatever was good for the Empire was good, it was assumed, for the people. The humanitarians in the United States who tried to introduce labor legislation in their own country accepted this naive philosophy of the German people, which had been so skilfully developed by Prussian statesmen, without appreciating that its result was enervating. Our prevailing political philosophy, however, that workers and capitalists understand ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... sinister scene, we could see—last word of this antithesis—the white figures of the young girls of the sisterhood, kneeling on the chairs nearest the coffin of their companion, and who undoubtedly were beseeching God, in their naive and original prayers, to grant her the paradise of their dreams: a pretty paradise in the Jesuitical style, all in carved and gilded wood, and many-colored marble, where one could see at the end a tableau in a transparent light; the Virgin crowned ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... Also, that she relished the euphony and felicity of her phrasing, which was certainly her own. Whether she spoke from conviction or not, one thing seemed indisputable: the atmosphere surrounding the books and authors she named had a genuine fascination for her. There was a naive sincerity in her rhetoric, and her delivery and gestures had a rhythm that seemed to be akin to the rhythm of her ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... 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
... or rather some special motive, which led to the establishment of a city there. Even the legend betrays its sense of the strangeness of the fact: the story of the foundation of Rome by refugees from Alba under the leadership of the sons of an Alban prince, Romulus and Remus, is nothing but a naive attempt of primitive quasi-history to explain the singular circumstance of the place having arisen on a site so unfavourable, and to connect at the same time the origin of Rome with the general metropolis of Latium. Such tales, which profess to be historical but are merely improvised ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... and sharp dealings were reserved for outsiders and he was generous with his family. And my sweet, simple, old grandmother belonged to all the societies, charitable and otherwise, in town ... but she was not, never could be "smart." She was always saying and doing naive things from the heart. And soon she began to disapprove of my ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... relations so rich, and Phil never knew where the money was coming from for to-morrow's tobacco. Why couldn't they do something for him? But they were so selfish. Why couldn't they build country-houses? She had all that naive dogmatism which is so pathetic, and sometimes achieves such great results. Bosinney, to whom she turned in her discomfiture, was talking to Irene, and a chill fell on June's spirit. Her eyes grew steady with anger, like old Jolyon's when his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and the second, Virgil. Hence, too, the first group approved of Philips' efforts to create a fresh and simple pastoral manner. As a poet, Purney moved sharply away from the classical pastoral by curiously blending an entirely original subject matter with a sentimentalized realism and a naive, diffuse expression; and as a critic he pointed in the direction of Shenstone and Allan Ramsay by emphasizing the tender, admitting the use of earthy realism in the manner of Gay, and recommending for pastoral such "inimitably ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... tradition. The Latin classics, apart from their use as a source of tropes and commonplaces, only served to inspire a superstitious and uncomprehending reverence for ancient Rome. Of this new learning Otto II and his son were naive disciples. They could not sufficiently admire the encyclopaedic Gerbert, the most fashionable and incomparably the ablest teacher of their day. Otto II and his court listened patiently for hours while Gerbert disputed with a Saxon ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... he growled dryly. "Now keep still, and be real thoughtful, Frankie Boy. That also goes for you other two naive boneheads..." ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... his window and caught sight of his father's apprentice on his way back to the workshop. The lad stood there on the pavement talking with naive effrontery to a little book-stitcher of his acquaintance. He was kissing the girl, without a thought of the passers-by, and whistling a tune between his teeth. The pretty, sickly-looking slattern carried her rags with an air, and wore a pair of smart, well-made boots; she was pretending to push her ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... gaiety that seemed a little forced, and at mention of her departure a subtle change had come over her face. O'Neil realized that she had matured markedly since his last meeting with her; there was no longer quite the same effect of naive girlishness. ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... that Browne attained to any great generalizations regarding embryogeny on the basis of his rather naive experiments, but they are indicative of the effects of the "new learning" in one area of biology. Actually, Browne appears more comfortable in the search for patterns conforming to the quincunx, as in The Garden of Cyrus, and although he may well have been in search of something ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... the priests had resolved to take against Jesus was quite in conformity with the established law. The procedure against the "corrupter" (mesith), who sought to injure the purity of religion, is explained in the Talmud, with details, the naive impudence of which provokes a smile. A judicial ambush is there made an essential part of the examination of criminals. When a man was accused of being a "corrupter," two witnesses were suborned who were concealed behind ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... business here." "Noa, lad; aw niver come to theeas shops when aw've ony business, aw allus do that furst." This rayther puzzled th' young swell an' his face went as red as a hep, cos aw laff'd at him; an' he struck his naive o'th' table; "Sir," said he, "will you take your departure?" "Noa," he said, "aw'll tak nowt 'at doesn't belang to me if aw know on it." "You're an insolent scoundrel, and I leave you with contempt." "Yo can leeav ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley
... 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 presentiment—restrained, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... on strategic arms limitations and in other areas will have far greater chance for success if both sides enter them motivated by mutual self-interest rather than naive sentimentality. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... not only the claim of the specialist that I would repudiate. People are too apt to suppose that in order to discuss morals a man must have exceptional moral gifts. I would dispute that naive supposition. I am an ingenuous enquirer with, I think, some capacity for religious feeling, but neither a prophet nor a saint. On the whole I should be inclined to classify myself as a bad man rather than a good; not indeed as any sort of picturesque scoundrel or non-moral expert, ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... in the expansive moods when his naive wonder at his own performances carries him into self-panegyric, which, not infrequently, we can endorse, though with some discount. Thus, for instance, the Bourgeois of Paris he declared to be one of those masterpieces that leave everything else behind. "It is grand, it is ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... "Food! Coffee! Do you think I am starving?" she asked, with a savage little laugh. "I have as much money as I want—more than you are ever likely to have, mademoiselle. You are very naive, mon enfant. You invite me into your room—Lettice Campion invites Cora Walcott into her room!—where nobody knows us, nobody could trace us—and you quietly ask me to eat and drink! Eat and drink in this house? It is so likely! How am I to tell, for example, if ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... They are more naive than the children who are in process of being well-educated; more independent and also more dependent. They feel more keenly any separation from those they love; they cry lustily if their mother disappears only for an hour or two; and nevertheless they can fend for themselves ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... though he did not complete his work before 1195, it is evidently founded upon notes which he had taken in the course of his pilgrimage. He shows no greater political insight than we should expect from his position; but relates what he had seen and heard with a naive vivacity which compels attention. He is prejudiced against the Saracens, against the French, and against all the rivals or enemies of his master; but he is never guilty of deliberate misrepresentation. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... around, and Mr. B. is breakfasting under another tree, hard by; and messages, nods, and smiles pass backward and forward. Families see each other daily in these public resorts, and exchange mutual offices of good will. Perhaps from these customs of society come that naive simplicity and abandon which one remarks in the Continental, in opposition to the Anglo-Saxon, habits of conversation. A Frenchman or an Italian will talk to you of his feeling and plans and prospects ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the whole rose, in beautiful symmetrical lines, a wooden belfry, tapering from a square tower into a delicately modelled spire. To complete and accentuate the note of the picturesque, the superstructure was held in its place by rude modern beams, propping the tower with a naive disregard of decorative embellishment. We knew it at once as the quaint and ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... him!" said she in so naive half-wild a fashion, that Mary, comprehending all, looked imploringly at her father, and putting her arm round Grace, forced ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... She was very elegant, and quite unexceptionable until she opened her mouth. She related to him how her mother, who had once been a premier sujet in the Covent Garden ballet, was helpless from sciatica. But she related this picturesque and pride-causing detail in a manner very insipid, naive, and even vulgar, (After all there was a difference between First Division and Second Division in the Civil Service!) She was boring him terribly before they reached Brook Green. She took leave ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... high voice from behind the vine at no great distance, followed by her shrill laugh. 'Come and help me, Dmitri Andreich. I am all alone,' she cried, thrusting her round, naive little face ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... 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, ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy |
