"Credulous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... generous, old-fashioned entertainer! One nearly always sees them clinging to the close whorls of flowers that are strung along the stem, and of course transferring pollen, in recompense, as they journey on. A more credulous generation imported the plant for its alleged healing virtues. What is the significance of its Greek name, meaning a lion's tail? Let no one suggest, by a far-stretched metaphor, that our grandmothers, in Revolutionary days, enjoyed pulling ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... could reckon on popular applause in holding up this class of men to ridicule. Bandello not only treats this sorcery of a Lombard monk as a miserable, and in its consequences terrible, piece of knavery, but he also describes with unaffected indignation the disasters which never cease to pursue the credulous fool. 'A man hopes with "Solomon's Key' and other magical books to find the treasures hidden in the bosom of the earth, to force his lady to do his will, to find out the secret of princes, and to transport ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... excellent," said Ling affably. "On this occasion, however, the public square will be so insufferably thronged with the number of timorous and credulous villagers who have pressed into the town that insufficient justice would be paid to your entrancing display. In consequence of this, we will select for the purpose some convenient spot in the neighbourhood. The proceedings will ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... in tradition; but it is surprising to find what singular superstitions still exist among credulous classes, even in the light of ...
— Myths and Legends of Christmastide • Bertha F. Herrick
... Dough-Boy! hard fares the white waiter who waits upon cannibals. Not a napkin should he carry on his arm, but a buckler. In good time, though, to his great delight, the three salt-sea warriors would rise and depart; to his credulous, fable-mongering ears, all their martial bones jingling in them at every step, like ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... terrify a credulous and ignorant people, but it has nothing surprising for me. Let Ennana and the wise men come. They will ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... of her soul, and by the mastery of a lover's kiss had taken full possession, Amadis de Jocelyn had pursued his "amour" with admirable tact, cleverness and secrecy. He found a new and stimulating charm in making love to a tender- hearted, credulous little creature who seemed truly "of such stuff as dreams are made of"—and to a man of his particular type and temperament there was an irresistible provocation to his vanity in the possibility of being able to lure her gradually and insidiously down from the high ground of intellectual ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... from returning her love, will not even condescend to look upon her, but confides entirely in a false friend, who is the most worthless wretch living. At the same time he has given his heart to a creature, who is the greatest coquette and the most perfidious of her sex, and he is so credulous as to be confident she is a Penelope, and his false friend a Cato. He embarks on board his ship in order to go and fight the Dutch, having left all his money, his jewels, and everything he had in the world to this virtuous creature, whom at the same time he recommends ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... believed the evil spirit had his dwelling, and in the form of a goat, with long beard and horns, guarded the entrance of the cave. The few who ventured there and beheld this apparition, brought back strange tales to their credulous companions, and even the neighbourhood of the enchanted cave ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... that might lead to a divorce. Drummond, like so many divorce detectives, was not averse to guiding events, to put it mildly. He had ingratiated himself, perhaps, with the clairvoyant and Davies. Constance had often heard before of clairvoyants and brokers who worked in conjunction to fleece the credulous. Now another and more serious element than the loss of money was involved. Added to them was a divorce detective—and honor itself was at stake. She remembered the doped cigarettes. She had heard of ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... and its results were of course noised abroad throughout so superstitious and credulous a community. The released Krooman told his companions of the "white-man-saucy-wood," administered by me in the barracoon; and, ever afterwards, the accused were brought to my sanctuary where the conflicting ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... could never have dared to breathe into them any but the most innocent of speeches. In the whole of Ver-vigbole no virgin inspired so much respect, and none had greater need to do so, for she was marvellously simple, credulous, and defenceless. ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... shorten mine, Sancho," returned the bachelor, "if you are not the second person in the history, and there are even some who would rather hear you talk than the cleverest in the whole book; though there are some, too, who say you showed yourself over-credulous in believing there was any possibility in the government of that island offered you by ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... imposthume is a woman's will! Can nothing break it? [Aside.] Fie, fie, my lord, Women are caught as you take tortoises, She must be turn'd on her back. Sister, by this hand I am on your side.—Come, come, you have wrong'd her; What a strange credulous man were you, my lord, To think the Duke of Florenc would love her! Will any mercer take another's ware When once 'tis tows'd and sullied? And yet, sister, How scurvily this forwardness becomes you! Young leverets stand not long, and women's anger Should, like their flight, procure ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... transport enough food and tools meant a costly expedition and the attracting of undesirable attention. I went alone, living with primitive Russian settlers and afterwards with the Indians. To gain a hold on them I studied the occult sciences and learned tricks that impose upon the credulous. To the white men I'm a crank, to the Indians something of a magician, but my search for the oil has gone on, and now while I already know where boring would be commercially profitable, I'm on the brink of ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... that this is a real Sentiment? that this luxury of generosity, this gallant rescue of Misery—out of an old cab, is genuine feeling? It is as genuine as the virtuous oratory of Joseph Surface when he begins, "The man who," &c. &c., and wishes to pass off for a saint with his credulous, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and Moliere and Foote were Aristophanic. PLUTARCH, LA MOTHE LE VAYER, and BAYLE, alike busied in amassing the materials of human thought and human action, with the same vigorous and vagrant curiosity, must have had the same habits of life. If Plutarch were credulous, La Mothe Le Vayer sceptical, and Bayle philosophical, all that can be said is, that though the heirs of the family may differ in their dispositions, no one will arraign the integrity of the lineal descent. ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... looked at him, and thought he shook his head. Of this, however, he could not be certain; for, as he shook his own during the moment of observation, he concluded that it might be a mere mistake of the eye, or, perhaps, the result of a mind predisposed to be credulous on the subject ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... Martyrdom," still extant, and written probably upwards of a hundred years after his demise, cannot stand the test of chronological investigation; and have evidently been compiled by some very superstitious and credulous author. According to these Acts, Ignatius was condemned by Trajan at Antioch in the ninth [392:2] year of his reign; but it has been contended that, not until long afterwards, was the Emperor in ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... me," by the schoolmaster of Naemanslaws, in the shire of Ayr; and if the incident never occurred, then must he have been one of the greatest liars that ever taught the young idea how to shoot. For our single selves, we are by nature credulous. Many extraordinary things happen in this life, and though "seeing is believing," so likewise "believing is seeing," as every one must allow ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... required to believe; and the old-fashioned, open, intelligible infidelity of the last century accepted them, and rejected Christianity accordingly. That was a self-consistent, simple, Ingenuous thing, compared with those monstrous forms of credulous reason, incredulous faith, metaphysical mysticism, even Christian Pantheism—so many varieties of which have sprung out of the incubation of German rationalism and German philosophy upon the New Testament. The advocates of these ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... of renewing the felicity of her earlier years, by being restored to the friendship of Mrs Harrel, in whom she had mistaken the kindness of childish intimacy for the sincerity of chosen affection; and though she saw her credulous error with mortification and displeasure, she regretted it with tenderness and sorrow. "What, at last," cried she, "is human felicity, who has tasted, and where is it to be found? If I, who, to others, seem marked out for even a partial possession of it,—distinguished ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... volatile oil of turpentine might be mixed with the waters from a pine-swamp, but this supposition did not quite satisfy me. I mentioned the fact to some philosophical friends on my return to England, but it was not much attended to. I suppose I was thought a little too credulous. ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... lips of the half-maddened bridegroom, as his glance flashed on Hazen. "Had you no mercy? Have you no mercy now, that you should torture her young, credulous soul with these fanciful obligations; obligations which no human being has any right to impose upon another, whatsoever the Cause, holy or unholy, ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... humor to befriend and defend him in private, but to his face assume, with the most delicate irony, that this marvel among men was always late, forgetful, rattle-brained, and credulous. And it was Levy's gift to play up to this assumption, to hang on his employer's words with breathless anxiety, to relax into a paternal smile when safe, and to support his omelets and his delays with oaths and circumlocutions stranger ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... now only too clear to me that my unfortunate brother in the Lord had fallen a victim to the hatred of his fiendish enemy, to the delusion of his judge and the witnesses, and to his own credulous imagination. ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... love. So long as the love lasts, the eye would follow its steps because—we are what we are, and a mere image in the mind doesn't satisfy the heart. Love is never satisfied, and asks not for less and less each day but for more—always for more. Then, too, love is credulous; it believes and imagines all things and, like all emotions, it pushes reason and experience aside and sticks to the belief that these beautiful qualities cannot die and leave nothing behind: they are not on the surface only; they have their sweet permanent ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... reverence, and the prayers of the devout were often rewarded by the gods, with an indication of the remedy their sufferings required; and magic, charms, and various supernatural agencies, were often resorted to by the credulous; who "sought to the idols, and to the charmers, and to them that had familiar ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... England, the gentlemen of the Press calculated that almost anything would be believed if it could be repeated often enough. And they were right: the spiteful and the silly disseminated lies about our governess from door to door with the kind of venom that belongs in equal proportions to the credulous, the cowards and the cranks. The greenhorns believed it and the funkers, who saw a plentiful crop of spies in every bush, found no difficulty in mobilising their terrors from my governess —already languishing in the Tower of London—to ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum." Our great poet thought this senseless declamation merited a serious refutation; perhaps he did not wish to appear despicable in the eyes of the ladies; and he would not be silent on the subject, he says, lest any one should consider him as the credulous Spaniards are made to believe by their priests, that a heretic is a kind of rhinoceros or a dog-headed monster. Milton says, that he does not think any one ever considered him as unbeautiful; that his size rather approaches mediocrity than, the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... general," violated the articles he had pledged his honor to maintain, disarmed and imprisoned the soldiers, sacked the churches, and gave the place up to all the ruthless cruelties and violences of a general pillage. Not only this, the too credulous Governor, Manivel, was himself imprisoned, plundered of money and clothes, and carried off on board the conqueror's frigate, with many of his unfortunate companions, to view the further spoliations of his countrymen. Many ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... from smiling with a kind of bitter triumph. "No," said he, "I will take nothing at your hands; if I were dying of thirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips, I should find the courage to refuse. It may be credulous, but I will do nothing ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... aunt locking up the secretary in the library, just as she did when there was a burglar scare in town. Her very glance and manner accused Frank, and he could scarcely restrain himself from arguing with her. Then he remembered his promise to his absent parents and that Miss Brown was a credulous, suspicious old maid. He tried to forget his troubles by going after his fishing-rod. This he had left at the spot near the river where he had met Ned Foreman. Frank swung along whistling recklessly, but he did not feel at all pleasant ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... Museum; and neat engravings of those Chatterton escutcheons are furnished by Mr Cottle, in his excellent essays on this tortuous genius. He was equally liberal in providing a pedigree for his friend Mr Burgham, a worthy and credulous pewterer in his native town, convincing him, by proofs that were not conclusive at the Herald's College, that he was descended from the De Burghams, who possessed the estate and manor of Brougham in the reign of Edward the Confessor, and so allying the delighted hearer ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... Minafer at first sight, and no matter how she disciplined herself, she had never been able to climb out. The thing had happened to her; that was all. George had looked just the way she had always wanted someone to look—the riskiest of all the moonshine ambushes wherein tricky romance snares credulous young love. But what was fatal to Lucy was that this thing having happened to her, she could not change it. No matter what she discovered in George's nature she was unable to take away what she had given him; and though ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... one of a numerous class of people who are termed, in the west, "money diggers," living a sort, of vagrant life, imposing upon the credulous farmers by pretending that they knew of treasure concealed, and occasionally stealing horses and cattle. Joseph Smith was the second son, and a great favourite of his father, who stated everywhere that Joe had that species of second sight, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... And what of him Tranio? Tra. If he be credulous, and trust my tale, Ile make him glad to seeme Vincentio, And giue assurance to Baptista Minola. As if he ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... mind, he contended, which would render a man as open to receive the teachings of Buddha, or Mahomet if he happened to hear them, as those of Jesus Christ. He might have added, or the teachings of a Payne, or an Ingersoll, or, as a remoter example, of the serpent in Eden who beguiled a credulous woman. ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... Turkey.' For, should the disruption of the Ottoman empire take place—the probability of which is at any rate no greater than in the time of our grandfathers—it will not be effected by internal revolution, but by foreign intervention; and credulous must he be who can believe in the disinterestedness of those who would lend themselves to such a measure. Thus, in the partition which would ensue, Servia might find ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... synonym for "a wise man of the East,"—astrologer, magician or soothsayer. They dispersed all over the world, carrying their delusive science with them, practising and teaching it, welcomed everywhere by the credulous and superstitious, often highly honored and always richly paid. Thus it is from the Chaldeans and their predecessors the Shumiro-Accads that the belief in astrology, witchcraft and every kind of fortune-telling ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... have more than matched the rival pastors That tute a credulous Fatherland; And we admit that you are proved our masters When there is dirty work in hand; But in your lore I notice one hiatus: Your Kaiser's scutcheon with its hideous blot— You've no corrosive in your apparatus Can out ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Misfortunes" Abelard gives his own account of the triumphant manner in which he confounded his master, William, but as Henry Adams says, "We should be more credulous than twelfth-century monks, if we believed, on Abelard's word in 1135, that in 1110 he had driven out of the schools the most accomplished dialectician of the age by an objection so familiar that no other dialectician was ever silenced by it—whatever may have been ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... extinct even now at the beginning of the twentieth. Writing in the latter part of the nineteenth century Mr. Ch. Cuissard tells us that he himself witnessed in Touraine and Poitou the superstitious practices which he describes as follows: "The most credulous examine the ways in which the flame burns and draw good or bad omens accordingly. Others, after leaping through the flames crosswise, pass their little children through them thrice, fully persuaded that the little ones will then be able to ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... of characters! I trust thou art no impostor, and that thy revelation of blissful scenes of existence beyond death and the grave, is not one of the many impositions which time after time have been palmed on credulous mankind. I trust that in thee "shall all the families of the earth be blessed," by being yet connected together in a better world, where every tie that bound heart to heart, in this state of existence, shall be, far beyond our ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... especially operative in the writings of this author, is the presence and regnancy of a false and fantastic philosophy, yet shot through with refracted light from the not risen but rising truth,—a scheme of physics and physiology compounded of Cartesian mechanics and empiricism (for it was the credulous childhood of experimentalism), and a corrupt, mystical, theurgical, pseudo-Platonism, which infected the rarest minds under the Stuart dynasty. The only not universal belief in witchcraft and apparitions, and ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... distinguished by the same ardor and religious zeal which led to the foundation of the colonies of New England. Traces of bad taste sometimes occur in his manner of writing; but he interests, because he is full of enthusiasm. He is often intolerant, still oftener credulous, but he never betrays an intention to deceive. Sometimes his book contains fine passages, and true and profound reflections, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... would be equally oppressive to the people. Tormented with these reflections, he opened his mind to his wife Judith, of whose fidelity he entertained no suspicion, but who, having secretly fixed her affections on another, took this opportunity of ruining her easy and credulous husband. She conveyed intelligence of the conspiracy to the king, and aggravated every circumstance, which, she believed, would tend to incense him against Waltheof, and render him absolutely implacable [x]. Meanwhile ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... The credulous, who are at first deceived by the illusion, very soon arrive at the point where they perceive their error, and, with the dissipation of the mirage, comes the contempt of the person who has thus made them take him seriously. They do not find it an easy ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... drowned by the din of selfish rogues or of blind enthusiasts. Poor stupid humanity goes round and round like a mill-horse in a dreary ring of political follies. The cast-off sophisms and rhetorical rubbish of a past generation are patched up, scoured, and offered to the credulous present as something novel and excellent. People do not know how often the rotten stuff has been used and thrown away, and accept it readily. After a while, they discover to their cost, as their ancestors did ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... eyetheia]. Lady Shiel tells us of the modern Persians, 'They have odd names for describing the moral qualities; "Sedakat" means sincerity, honesty, candour; but when a man is said to be possessed of "sedakat," the meaning is that he is a credulous, contemptible simpleton.' [Footnote: Life and Manners in Persia, p. 247.] It is to the honour of the Latin tongue, and very characteristic of the best aspects of Roman life, that 'simplex' and 'simplicitas' never ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... firmest of believers, without being credulous, so he was the most charitable of mortals, without being what we call an active friend. Admirable at giving counsel, no man saw his way so clearly; but he would not stir a finger for the assistance of those to whom he was willing enough ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... statement, "to a certain extent." It would have been infinitely more kind all round for the law to have shot, beheaded, strangled, or otherwise destroyed this absurd de Barral, who was a danger to a moral world inhabited by a credulous multitude not fit to take care of itself. But I observed to Fyne that, however insane was the view she held, one could not declare the girl mad on ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... suspicions glanced at me. He expatiated with great profoundness and fertility of ideas, on the uses to which a faculty like this might be employed. No more powerful engine, he said, could be conceived, by which the ignorant and credulous might be moulded to our purposes; managed by a man of ordinary talents, it would open for him the straightest and surest avenues to wealth ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... revolutions of empires and the downfall of mighty kings are awful events, that shake the physical as well as the moral world, and are often announced by forerunning marvels and prodigious omens. With such-like cautious preliminaries do the wary but credulous historiographers of yore usher in a marvellous event of prophecy and enchantment, linked in ancient story with the fortunes of Don Roderick, but which modern doubters would fain hold up as an apocryphal tradition of ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... next week's pursuit for a more satisfying labour. Some generall-erring relations he pickes up, as crummes or fragments, from a frequented ordinarie: of which shreads he shapes a cote to fit any credulous foole that will weare it. You shall never observe him make any reply in places of publike concourse; hee ingenuously acknowledges himselfe to bee more bounden to the happinesse of a retentive memory, than eyther ability of tongue, or pregnancy of conceite. He carryes his table-booke still about ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... a seat on a camp-stool, and, folding her hands in her lap, sat enjoying the peace and calm of the summer evening. Joe saw defeat in the very moment of victory; even while he sat, the garrulous Tommy might be revealing State secrets to the credulous Flower. ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... was his sister, no doubt. An unreasonable explanation, but she contented herself with it, because she needed to believe that Phoebus still loved her, and loved her alone. Had he not sworn it to her? What more was needed, simple and credulous as she was? And then, in this matter, were not appearances much more against her than against him? Accordingly, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... us to allow witches to live, many persons have made it a matter of conscience and of religion to be severe in respect to such a crime. This principle has without doubt made many persons credulous. How often have purely accidental associations been taken as convincing proofs? How many innocent people have perished in the flames on the asserted testimony of supernatural circumstances? I will not say that there are no witches; but ever since the difficulty ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts
... family in that underworld of exploited and miserable aliens which is one of the root social problems of America. Very poignantly Mr. JOHN COURNOS makes you understand the import of the phrase so constantly on the lips of such victims of their own credulous hopes of El Dorado—"Woe to COLUMBUS!" The portrait of Vanya's stepfather, brilliant, magnanimous, pursued by an AEschylean malignity of destiny, fills much of the foreground and is a quite masterly piece of work. One cannot be wrong in assuming ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... the above dreams are living to-day and their names and address may be obtained, none of them are credulous fanatics or predisposed to a belief ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... Rohan probably needed purging by fire, for the order to burn them indicates that they contained evidence derogatory to his position as a dignitary of the church. The prince cardinal was a vain and profligate man, full of vicious inclinations, and credulous to a degree that had made him the victim of the unscrupulous schemer, Madame de La Motte Valois, a woman as adroit and unscrupulous as she was daring. Of low birth, brought up by charity, married to a ruined nobleman, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... No vessel could carry such sail in the gale; but yet, there are madmen afloat who will sometimes attempt the most absurd things. If it was a vessel, she must have gone down, for when it cleared up she was not to be seen. I am not very credulous, and nothing but the occurrence of the consequences which you anticipate will make me believe that there was anything supernatural ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... days in Nevada were always "glummy" among Madigans, because the blonde twin had once been so affected by their gloom that she spelled it that way. An over-credulous person was a "sucher" since the day she had written it so. Jack Cody lived in the "vikinty" of their house, because Bep Partington had so decreed. "Don't greed" had become a classic since the day Aunt Anne issued her infamous ukase, compelling that twin who (wilfully speculating ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... the night! thou poor Forlorn! Remorse that man on his death-bed possess, Who in the credulous hour of tenderness Betrayed, then cast thee forth to Want and Scorn! The world is pitiless: the chaste one's pride 5 Mimic of Virtue scowls on thy distress: Thy Loves and they that envied thee deride: And Vice alone will shelter Wretchedness! O! I could weep to think ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... with kind indulgence. "A bird in the hand," etc., is a proverb peculiarly to the liking of Yankees. They do not take much interest in Peruvian mines or other forms of non-negotiable wealth unless they see a chance to work them off on a more credulous public. As for old Mrs. Clark, when she became tied to her chair, she was bitter on the topic. "That dratted old Field!" she would say with the brutal directness of the realist; "your father would have sold the whole of it for five thousand dollars and been thankful!"—a fact that ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... uncle, my father, your father... My flight, his displeasure, my loss of property—do you not see that all is a fiction, credulous knight? ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... Mrs. Inchbald seems to have fallen into the common mistake of the character in some sensible observations, otherwise, upon this Comedy. "It might be asked," she says, "whether this credulous steward was much deceived in imputing a degraded taste, in the sentiments of love, to his fair lady Olivia, as she actually did fall in love with a domestic; and one, who from his extreme youth, was perhaps a greater reproach to her discretion, than had she cast ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... dogmatic, conceited; opinative, opiniative[obs3]; opinioned, opinionate, opinionative, opinionated; self-opinioned, wedded to an opinion, opinitre; bigoted &c. (obstinate) 606; crotchety, fussy, impracticable; unreasonable, stupid &c. 499; credulous &c 486; warped. misjudged &c. v. Adv. ex parte[Lat]. Phr. nothing like leather; the wish the father to the thought; wishful thinking; unshakable conviction; "my mind is made up - don't ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... who would certainly bring her a blessing along with him. Derues affected the greatest modesty, and blushed at these praises, and often, when he saw the good father approaching, appeared not to see him, and found something to do elsewhere; whereby the field was left clear for his too credulous panegyrists. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... eastern places. In addition to these the Arabian priests are described by the Dutch as constituting a very numerous and pernicious tribe, who, although in the constant practice of imposing upon and plundering the credulous inhabitants, are held by them in ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... something he was trying to understand. In any other case Thor would have explained away this phenomenon on grounds purely physiological; but since it was Claude he found himself swept by an invading wonder. He knew what people more credulous than himself would say. They would say that on the instant of the great change toward which he had been so suddenly impelled even poor Claude, with his narrow earthly vision, had been dowered with an increase ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... shone out like Eblis's own. Nature had apparently observed this too, and had, by a paralysis of the nerve, ironically dropped the corner of the upper lid over it like a curtain, laughed at her handiwork, and turned him loose to prey upon a credulous world. ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... the belief that not only do crocodiles shed tears, but that sympathizing passengers, turning to commiserate the reptile's woes, are seized and destroyed by the treacherous creatures. That quaint and credulous old author—the earliest writer of English prose—Sir John Mandeville, in his "Voiage," or account of his "Travile," published about 1356—in which, by the way, there are to be found accounts of not ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... was playing bowls on the Hoe when the Spanish ships were sighted; it may not be true that he said, "There's time to play the game out and to thrash the Spaniards afterwards." We can cherish this doubtful tradition or not, as we happen to be credulous or sceptical; but in any case that was the genuine spirit of the West Country in those days of stress, and that was the spirit by which the British Empire was moulded. It was a spirit born of rough seas and unruly winds, the confidence that sprang from successful struggle with peril ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... and next to nothing about the country in which they found themselves. These men had built fabulous hopes, they dwelt in illusion, they put faith in the thinnest of shadows. Now the most practical miner is not a conservative person; he is erratic, credulous, and extravagant; reasonless optimism is at once his blessing and his curse. Nevertheless, the "old-timers" of the Yukon were moderate indeed as compared with the adventurous holiday-seekers who swarmed in ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... ice-tempered steel, an eye vulture-sharp, and a hand, miraculous, fast, and certain. To strike that swinging hand with a snap shot, when a miss meant a bullet fired at his own body at deadly short range—truly it would take a credulous man to believe that Donnegan had coldly planned to disable his man without ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... were amply fulfilled. On his arrival in the island, Simnel at once presented himself to the Earl of Kildare, then viceroy, and claimed his protection as the unfortunate Warwick. The credulous nobleman listened to his story, and repeated it to others of the nobility, who in time diffused it throughout all ranks of society. Everywhere the escape of the Plantagenet was received with satisfaction, and at last the people of Dublin unanimously tendered ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... Enid easily believed, Like simple noble natures, credulous Of what they long for, good in friend or foe, There most in those who most have done them ill. And when they reach'd the camp the King himself Advanced to greet them, and beholding her Tho' pale, yet happy, ask'd her not a word, But went apart ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... necessarily follows that such persons will cry up, and make use of, those that by these means captivate their understandings, especially their credits being ingaged also; but above all, if they proceed from meaner persons, of whom they are most credulous, having in suspition wiser men, believing the former are not able, and that the wiser are able; and therefore will deceive them. All which appears in some with us cryed up above any Physician that ever was in England, ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... pleasure in walking by her side. Every morning she found beside her plate a bouquet which he had culled. He never went to Avignon or to Nimes without bringing some little souvenir for her. What interpretation could she place upon these frequent marks of interest? Her own love made her credulous. After receiving many such attentions from him, she fancied she comprehended ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... is one danger of the poet in London, that he should come to think himself 'somebody'; though, doubtless, in proportion as he is a poet, the other danger will be the greater, that he should deem himself 'nobody.' Modest by nature, credulous of appearances, the noisy pretensions of the hundred and one small celebrities, and the din of their retainers this side and that, in comparison with his own unattended course, what wonder if his heart sinks and he gives up the game; how shall his little pipe, though it be of silver, hope to ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... not without effect on the morale of either army. McClellan was as exultant as he was credulous. "I have just learned," he reported to Halleck at 8 A.M. on the 15th, "from General Hooker, in advance, that the enemy is making for Shepherdstown in a perfect panic; and that General Lee last night stated publicly that he must admit ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... those who had died of the cholera piled up in carts and tumbrils, in coffins so hastily and slightly constructed, that, as they rattled over the stones, there was constant danger of their horrible contents being poured upon the pavement. But the strange reports that were afloat amongst this credulous and passionate populace, form the most striking feature in the picture. It was reported in Paris, as our readers will probably remember, that there was, in reality, no cholera, but that poison had been poured into the fountains of the metropolis, and had been mingled with the wine and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... deceitful spring; how often does he thrust his arms, catching at the neck he sees, into the middle of the water, and yet he does not catch himself in them. He knows not what he sees, but what he sees, by it is he inflamed; and the same mistake that deceives his eyes, provokes them. Why, credulous {youth}, dost thou vainly catch at the flying image? What thou art seeking is nowhere; what thou art in love with, turn but away {and} thou shalt lose it; what thou seest, the same is {but} the shadow of a reflected form; it has nothing ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... an army of twenty-five thousand men be wanted? A single reflection might have taught the most credulous that while the war raged between France and England, neither could spare a man to invade America. For what purpose, then, could it be wanted? The case carries its own explanation. It was wanted for the purpose ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... same. Irishmen are best at the specially HARD professions—the trades of iron, the lawyer, and the soldier. In all these cases, therefore, I came back to the same conclusion: the sceptic was quite right to go by the facts, only he had not looked at the facts. The sceptic is too credulous; he believes in newspapers or even in encyclopedias. Again the three questions left me with three very antagonistic questions. The average sceptic wanted to know how I explained the namby-pamby note in the Gospel, ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... James Williams sat a girl in a loose tan jacket and a straw hat adorned with grapes and roses. Only in dreams and milliners' shops do we, alas! gather grapes and roses at one swipe. This girl gazed with large blue eyes, credulous, when the megaphone man roared his doctrine that millionaires were things about which we should be concerned. Between blasts she resorted to Epictetian philosophy in the form of pepsin ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... the manufacture of demagogues without adopting measures which would render us false to our acknowledged principles of government and to our civilising mission. But we may govern in such a manner as to give the demagogue no fulcrum with which to move his credulous and ill-informed countrymen and co-religionists. The leading principle of a government of this nature should be that low taxation is the most potent instrument with which to conjure discontent. This is the policy which will tend more than any other to the stability of Imperial ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... you. Which, therefore, will you choose, to accompany us to Rome, and there be made empress, or to wait here until the emperor can come to you?" The princess thought deeply for a time, and then replied: "I would not be too credulous, or too hard of belief. If the emperor loves me and would wed me, let him find me in my father's house, and make me his bride ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... God, and—and he has too many prophets to mention! I was devout once for three months—since then I have never had as much faith of the Church sort as would lie on a ten-sous piece. But'—with a sudden whimsical change of voice—'I am as credulous as a Breton fisherman, and as superstitious as a gipsy! Wait and see. Will ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... amorous blockhead, a credulous cuckold, and, (though painted as a brave fellow, and a soldier,) a mere Tom. Essence, and a quarreler with his best friend, dies like a fool, (as we are led to suppose at the conclusion of the play,) ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... again. Her hand went out to the glass beside her, and raised it to her lips. Some of the more eagerly credulous afterwards asserted that they had seen a cloudy yellow liquid appear in the vessel, but it is not improbable that the wish was father to the vision. At any rate, the fifty-nine suppliants experienced at that instant a gush of sweet coolness down their throats, and ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... to entertain With soaring hope not over-credulous; Since if all human loves were impious, Unto what end did God the world ordain? For loving thee what license is more plain Than that I praise thereby the glorious Source of all joys divine, that comfort us In thee, and with ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... the first startling reference to Mrs. Tenbruggen, by name. She is in London, finding her way to lucrative celebrity by twisting, turning, and pinching the flesh of credulous persons, afflicted with nervous disorders; and she has already paid a few medical visits to old Mr. Dunboyne. He persists in poring over his books while Mrs. Tenbruggen operates, sometimes on his cramped right hand, sometimes (in the ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... die, before I give Maillard an hundred slashes with a sword, 75 Chalon an hundred breaches with a pistoll. They could not all have taken Clermont D'Ambois Without their treacherie; he had bought his bands out With their slave blouds: but he was credulous; Hee would beleeve, since he would be beleev'd; 80 Your noblest natures are most credulous. Who gives no trust, all trust is apt to breake; Hate like hell mouth who thinke ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... Auckland was of a different tone from the one which had preceded it. Burnes, who was nominally Macnaghten's chief lieutenant, with more self-restraint, had much the same temperament. Kaye writes of him: 'Sometimes sanguine, sometimes despondent, sometimes confident, sometimes credulous, Burnes gave to fleeting impressions all the importance and seeming permanency of settled convictions, and imbued surrounding objects with the colours of his own varying mind.' But if Burnes had been a discreet and steadfast man, he could have exercised no influence ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... without charge. His reputation as a physician was considerable, and although his enemies, who were many, made repeated efforts to secure a competitor, the wary declined their invitations, and the credulous were soon driven away by poverty, or the fear of it. Bard was a bachelor, lived economically, never presented a bill, and when he died, about the year 1850, his books were free of charges. Before the repeal of the Third Article in the Bill of Rights, ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... the apparent enfranchisement, and had a public rejoicing in the occasion. But the delusion could not escape the discrimination of Mr. P. He detected it at once, and exposed it, and incurred the displeasure of the credulous people of color by refusing to participate in their premature rejoicings. He soon succeeded however in convincing his brethren that the new provision was a mockery of their wrongs, and that the assembly had only added insult to past injuries. Mr. P. now urged the colored people to be patient, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... already observed, are generally out during the day, being engaged in their avocations abroad. There is a very small tent about the middle of the place; it belongs to a lone female, whom one frequently meets wandering about Wandsworth or Battersea, seeking an opportunity to dukker some credulous servant-girl. It is hard that she should have to do so, as she is more than seventy-five years of age, but if she did not she would probably starve. She is very short of statue, being little more than five feet and an inch high, but she is wonderfully strongly built. Her head is very large, and ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... borne from the beginning, and which alone confined it to its real objects and within its legitimate limits. The Government accepted the amendment without hesitation, but its position had become embarrassed. Mistrust, the most credulous of all passions, spread rapidly amongst the Liberals. Those who were not enemies to the Restoration had, like it, their foibles. The love of popularity had seized them, but they had not yet acquired foresight. They gladly embraced this opportunity of ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the plate, itself a copy of Nature, was very liberally supplied by the artist, to meet the wants of the catalogue of "organs." Professor Bumpus is seated in front of a row of women,—horn-combers and gold-beaders, or somewhere about that range of life,—looking so credulous, that, if any Second-Advent Miller or Joe Smith should come along, he could string the whole lot of them on his cheapest lie, as a boy strings a dozen "shiners" on a stripped twig ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... herself, "Why, if half this is true, he is a remarkable man," like many other credulous people, not reflecting that, when half a man says is false, the other half is apt to be also. She began to think it would be worth her while, a red feather in her cap, to refuse such a picturesque person; and then it occurred to her that he had not proposed to marry ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... phrenology and mesmerism as the great organs of education, even of the regeneration of mankind; apologising for the earlier ravings of the Poughkeepsie seer, and considering his later eclectico-pantheist farragos as great utterances: while, whenever he talked of Nature, he showed the most credulous craving after everything which we, the countrymen of Bacon, have been taught to consider unscientific-Homoeopathy, Electro-biology, Loves of the Plants a la Darwin, Vestiges of Creation, Vegetarianisms, Teetotalisms-never ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... Galen. The style of these books is elegant, and his description of diseases accurate. Alexander of Tralles was the first to open the jugular vein in disease, and employed iron and other useful remedies, but he lived in superstitious times, and was very credulous. For epilepsy, he recommended a piece of sail from a wrecked vessel, worn round the arm for seven weeks.[30] For colic, he recommended the heart of a lark attached to the right thigh, and for pain in the kidneys an amulet depicting Hercules overcoming a lion. To exorcise ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... he found very great, and, on the whole, he evidently thought the Northern miners much superior, in most essential points, to their fellows at the South. Certainly, according to him, they are neater in their persons, more cool and sensible, less credulous, less addicted to politics, and much more thrifty. 'The women, when they are well-behaved and good managers,' he said, 'have more influence with the men in the North. In the South and in Auvergne, I have sometimes thought the worst women ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... festival, and my condescension there, confirmed the obstinately-credulous inhabitants in their first opinion of my dignity. It appeared very soon, notwithstanding, in the newspapers, that the reported journey of the king was wholly without foundation. But I had been a king, and a king I was unfortunately compelled to remain; and certainly I was one of the ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... give of the supposed incidents attending Pascal’s conversion, there never was a more absurd fancy than that Pascal’s mind suffered any eclipse in the great change that came to him. He may have been credulous, he may have been superstitious. The miracle of the Holy Thorn may be an evidence of the one, and the unnatural asceticism of his later years a proof of the other. But to speak of the author of the ‘Provincial Letters,’ of the problems on the Cycloid, and finally of the ‘Pensées,’ as if his ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... with that reproachful face, Olivia! It is true. You would look upon it as sheerest folly, I tell you, and laugh at me for a credulous fool." ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming |
