"Naturalness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at in these decorations, and set floral pieces are in bad taste at a private dinner. Though hundreds of dollars may have been spent in the fleeting loveliness of flowers, the effect to be aimed at is naturalness rather than display. A border of holly, or ivy leaves freshly gathered, may be sewed around the plush scarf through the center of the table, and is a beautiful decoration, far outshining gold embroidery ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... me to do after I finished my breakfast was to pay my bill and ride away, but I felt no inclination for anything of the sort. In fact, the naturalness of departure did not strike me. I went out on the little porch and gazed upon the bright, fresh morning landscape, and as I did so I asked myself why I should mount my bicycle and wheel away over hot and dusty roads, leaving all this ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... fear, but even unusual paleness, if there had been in those hands, one of which bore the great Papal ring, not merely trembling, but even a sign of constriction or tenseness, it might well have been, thought the priest afterwards, that the scene would have ended very differently. But the naturalness and ease of the pose were absolute. He stood there, the hands lightly laid one upon the other, his face palish certainly, but not colourless. There was even a slight flush in his cheeks from his quick walk up the long hall. It was a situation in which the weight of a hair would turn ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... nacimiento birth. nacion f. nation. nacional national. nada nothing. nadie nobody, anybody. naranja orange. nariz f. nose, nostril. narrar to narrate. naturaleza nature. naturalidad f. naturalness. naufragio shipwreck, wreck. naufrago wrecked. nave f. ship, nave. nayade naiad, water nymph. nazareno Nazarene. necesario necessary. necesidad f. necessity. necesitar to need, want. necio foolish. negar to deny, refuse. negativo ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... Epaphroditus' "falling ill, nigh unto death," "drawing near, up to death." It is for him only an occasion for fresh gratitude and affection towards the sufferer, and for deep thanksgivings to Him who in His mercy has granted the recovery. All this is not only an experience, recorded with beautiful naturalness; it is a revelation, an oracle. We learn by it, as by the voice of Christ, that although "He took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses," His servants do not therefore of necessity fail in either faith or love when they suffer "in this tabernacle," and "groan, being burthened." Let them look ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... she is not," answered Rose, with spirit; "her sweet childish simplicity and perfect naturalness are very charming in these days, when they are so rarely found in a girl ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... new name, she stared at him with great wondering eyes; then her form relaxed. I carried her to a chair. Joe came with a glass of champagne; she drank some of it, and it brought life back to her face, and some color. With a naturalness that deceived even me for the moment, she smiled up at Joe as she handed him the glass. "Is it bad luck," she asked, "for me to be the first to drink my own health?" And she stood, looking tranquilly at every ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... beds of syringa in full flower, red and black currants nearly ripe, pretty wild roses and lilac almost looked homely, while white and yellow marguerites shadowed dear little wild strawberries, and a general air of naturalness prevailed. We had reached the very centre of our enchanted castle! How often had this courtyard been the scene of revelry, of tournaments and joustings, at which lovely woman had smiled and distributed her ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... said it. Fernanda watched him attentively, regaining the calmness and self-possession that he was rapidly losing. She seemed absorbed in the conversation, describing her travelling impressions with naturalness, and expressing her opinions with unconcern, as if there had been nothing between them but an old and tranquil friendship. Finally, availing himself of an instant's silence, he summoned ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... have visited Italy will be reminded of more than one picture by this gorgeous Vision of Beauty, equally sublime and pure in its Paradisaical naturalness. Lodge wrote it on a voyage to "the Islands of Terceras and the Canaries"; and he seems to have caught, in those southern seas, no small portion of the qualities which marked the almost contemporary Art of Venice,—the glory and the glow of Veronese, or Titian, or Tintoret, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... body, she was different; her limbs looked freer, rounder; her breath seemed stirring her more deeply; like a flower of early June she was opening before his very eyes. This, though it gave him pleasure, also added to his fear. The strange silence, in its utter naturalness—for what could he talk about with her?—brought home to him more vividly than anything before, the barriers of class. All he thought of was how not to be ridiculous! She was inviting him in some strange, unconscious, subtle way ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... other order and discipline seems to be contemplated by educators than the forcing them to stand and be stuffed full of indigestible and incongruous knowledge, than which proceeding nothing more disorderly could be devised. It looks as if we felt the innocence and naturalness of our children to be a rebuke to us, and wished to do away with it in short order. There is something in the New Testament about offending the little ones, and the preferred alternative thereto; and ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... continual triumph over the hearts of girls of all ages, for dear little fun-loving sister Prue is almost as much a central figure as Randy, growing toward womanhood with each book. The sterling good sense and simple naturalness of Randy, and the total absence of slang and viciousness, make these books in the highest degree commendable, while abundant life is supplied by the doings of merry friends, and there is rich humor in the ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... habitually. The former are apt to forget themselves occasionally, or they overact their part, or if they succeed in sustaining a perfect elegance of deportment that is really pleasing as an effort of art, they always want the grace of naturalness and simplicity which belongs to the Manners of those who have made courtesy and refinement their own by loving them. It is only when we act as we love to act, that our Manners are truly our own. If we cultivate the external forms of politeness from an indirect motive, ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... all the former naturalness was gone between them. No longer could they kiss and toy with one another as children in a fairy-world. They had suddenly become man and woman—fighting the age-long duel of sex. They would talk about ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... in the rendering of character. His portraits of men, unlike those of women, are dignified, simple, and restrained. His art was one long development till blindness prevented him from working. Every year he attained more freedom and naturalness in his pose and developed more power in his use ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... all still rocking from the sudden gust that had proceeded out of dear Lady Mildmay's gentle lips. But the undercurrent of wonder and of reproach that there had been in the warning May Quisante now almost missed. By an effort at last she realised its presence, the naturalness of it, and its rightness. But still it seemed to her a little conventional, something that might be supposed to be appropriate, but was not, if the truth were faced. "Alexander and I have never been like that to one another—at least never for ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... in a sweet, wholesome, girlish way, and not the least of her charms was her naturalness of manner and her entire lack ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... and portages innumerable; Chipeways, Gens de Terres, Les Pilleurs, The Weepers; with reminiscences of Hearne's journey, and the like; an immense and shaggy but sincere country, summer and winter, adorned with chains of lakes and rivers, covered with snows, with hemlocks, and fir-trees. There is a naturalness, an unpretending and cold life in this traveller, as in a Canadian winter, what life was preserved through low temperatures and frontier dangers by furs within a stout heart. He has truth and moderation worthy of the father of history, which ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... Prudy.' Compared with her, all other book-children are cold creations of literature; she alone is the real thing. All the quaintness of children, its originality, its tenderness and its teasing, its infinite uncommon drollery, the serious earnestness of its fun, the fun of its seriousness, the naturalness of its plays, and the delicious oddity of its progress, all these united for dear Little Prudy to embody ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... chronicles and woodcuts, as, for instance, those of Grave relating to the siege of Frankfort. At the same time a different taste was developed in him for observing the conditions of mankind in their manifold variety and naturalness, without regard to their importance or beauty. It was, therefore, one of our favorite walks, which we endeavored to take now and then in the course of a year, to follow the circuit of the path inside the city-walls. Gardens, courts, and back buildings extend to the /Zwinger/; ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... in her carriage, after the feverish interview with the cabinet officer, is a marvel of psychological subtlety. Both scenes illustrate Signor Fogazzaro's power to achieve the highest artistic results without exaggeration. This naturalness is the more remarkable because the character of a saint is unnatural according to our modern point of view. We have a healthy distrust of ascetics, whose anxiety over their soul's condition we properly regard as a form of egotism; and ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... now, in a moment's pause, only to find, too late, that all warmth and naturalness had left her with the effort. Fluent dream-practice is only too apt to make one uncomfortably crude and conscious in ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... find the journey tiring?" he asked in a voice that surprised him by its naturalness; and she answered that, on the contrary, she had seldom travelled with ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... word by word and sentence by sentence, the writer will generally find many opportunities to increase the effectiveness of the structure and the style. Such revision, moreover, need not destroy the ease and naturalness of expression. ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... not progressed as easily and pleasantly as her intercourse with Count Anteoni. She recognised that he was what is called a "difficult man." Now and then, as if under the prompting influence of some secret and violent emotion, he spoke with apparent naturalness, spoke perhaps out of his heart. Each time he did so she noticed that there was something of either doubt or amazement in what he said. She gathered that he was slow to rely, quick to mistrust. She gathered, too, that very many things ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... hiding the fact, it was difficult to approach and greet James Bansemer with the naturalness of the unsuspecting. His manner was beyond reproach, and yet, for the first time, she saw the real light in his black eyes. She talked to him as if nothing had happened to make her distrustful, but no self-control in the world could have checked ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Essays" were published in 1581 and the third in 1588. In 1582 he visited Italy and was made a Roman citizen, and the next year he was chosen Mayor of Bordeaux. Always a lover of books and a student of men, his writings are a rich mine of scholarly wit and worldly wisdom, consummate in the naturalness that conceals literary art. Like most works of the time, they contain passages which modern taste does not approve, but, taken as a whole, they are among the most interesting of books ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... Should he tell his landlady the truth? But the desire to realise his idea was intolerable, and, yielding as if before an irresistible force, he tied the parcel and prepared to go. At that moment he remembered that he must leave a note for his landlady, and he was more than ever surprised at the naturalness with which lying phrases came into his head. But when it came to committing them to paper, he found he could not tell an absolute lie, and he wrote a simple little note to the effect that he had been called away on urgent business, and hoped to ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... from the castle, and even from Albert, her admiration of him, and her incapacity to love him till her own character be more advanced, are told with great naturalness. Her travels with Joseph Haydn, are again as charmingly told as the Venetian life. Here the author speaks from her habitual existence, and far more masterly than of those deep places of thought where she is less ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... stanzas refer to Grundtvig, for whom see Note 57. The fourteenth stanza refers to the Finnish Swedish poet, Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804-1877), whose lyric, ballad, and epic genius was of national importance for Sweden. He was a champion of true freedom and naturalness in literature and life. Wergeland, see ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... in the naturalness of her manner toward him, and by her matter-of-fact, impersonal consideration of his perplexing situation, had brought to his unsettled and chaotic mind a sense of stability and order; and by subtly insinuating her ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... Lady's Book) and Juliet Irwin; or, the Carriage People (June, 1847, Godey's Lady's Book). One of her chief collections of stories is Pencil Sketches (1833-1837). "Miss Leslie," wrote Edgar Allan Poe, "is celebrated for the homely naturalness of her stories and for the broad satire of her comic style." She was the editor of The Gift one of the best annuals of the time, and in that position perhaps exerted her chief influence on American literature When one has read three or four representative ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... a tower, a cross, which he would reproduce with a peculiar and striking perfection of tone and color. In his paintings of Keats's and Shelley's tombs, not only are the slabs and marble there, but there, also, in all their naturalness, are the stately pines and cypresses above, with the sunshine and shadows alternating between them, and in the background the turreted top of St. Paul's Gateway, the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, all lending effect and picturesqueness ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... work upon; and those powers do generally work upon them with conspicuous skill of elaboration. The series of cuttings, for instance, which he makes from Burton, on the occasion of Bobby Shandy's death, are woven into the main tissue of the dialogue with remarkable ingenuity and naturalness; and the bright strands of his own unborrowed humour fly flashing across the fabric at every transit of the shuttle. Or, to change the metaphor, we may say that in almost every instance the jewels that so glitter ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... from oratorio, opera, and symphony, down to pianoforte variations, rondos, and dances, and in none of them did he fail to be pleasing and intelligible, not even where, as especially in his sacred music, he made use—a sparing use—of contrapuntal devices, imitations, and fugal treatment. The naturalness, fluency, effectiveness, and practicableness which distinguish his writing for voices and instruments show that he possessed a thorough knowledge of their nature and capability. It was, therefore, not an empty rhetorical ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... in my ears, and I began at length to grasp its significance, which seems to have escaped me till then. "Yes," I said to myself, "it is quite natural." And with this odd impression of naturalness was mixed a feverish, impatient pleasure. It was as if I had come to Mistra on purpose, and that I was about to meet the object of my ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... out from Stirling "with a small train" to avert suspicion, and appeared at the gates of Edinburgh Castle suddenly, without warning as would seem, asking to be admitted to see her son. The Chancellor, wise and wily as he was, would appear to have acknowledged the naturalness of this request, and "received her," the chronicler says, "with gladness, and gave her entrance to visit her young son, and gave command that whensoever the Queen came to the castle it should be patent to Her Grace." Jane entered the castle accordingly, with many protestations of her ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... the plague has to a great extent abated. The superiority of the 'Decameron' is not only in the polish and grace of its style, the first complete departure from the stilted classicism of contemporary narrative, the happy naturalness of good story-telling,—but in the conception of the work as a whole, and the marvelous imagination of the filling-in between the framework of the story of the plague by the hundred tales from all lands and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... oblique perspective ranged as regularly as bow-windows at a watering place. Ethelberta's plan was to tell her pretended history and adventures while sitting in a chair—as if she were at her own fireside, surrounded by a circle of friends. By this touch of domesticity a great appearance of truth and naturalness was given, though really the attitude was at first more difficult to maintain satisfactorily than any one wherein stricter formality should be observed. She gently began her subject, as if scarcely knowing whether a throng were near her ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... look out for, therefore, in a receiving set is that it does not cut out some of the high notes which are necessary to give the sound its naturalness. You will also have to make sure that your apparatus does not distort, that is, does not receive and reproduce some notes or "voice frequencies" more efficiently than it does some others which are equally necessary. For that reason when ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills
... in racial tendencies to find arithmetically the common denominator of such American figures as Franklin, Washington, Jackson, Webster, Lee, Lincoln, Emerson, and "Mark Twain"; yet the countrymen of those typical Americans instinctively recognize in them a sort of largeness, genuineness, naturalness, kindliness, humor, effectiveness, idealism, which are indubitably ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... healthful one, though it is not always graceful, since their long strides commonly give the prominent buttocks a jerky movement. They prove the naturalness of that style of walking which, in profile, shows the chest thrust forward and the buttocks backward; the abdomen is in, and the shoulders do not swing as the ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... action of the Greek mind, but to the influence of that so-called Orphic literature, which, in the generation succeeding Hesiod, brought, from Thessaly and Phrygia, a tide of mystical ideas into the Greek [128] religion, sometimes, doubtless, confusing the clearness and naturalness of its original outlines, but also sometimes imparting to them a new and peculiar grace. Under the influence of this Orphic poetry, Demeter was blended, or identified, with Rhea Cybele, the mother of the gods, the wilder earth-goddess of Phrygia; and the romantic ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... that hook-and-eye work which seems so trivial and passes so unnoticed as a matter of course, and which yet is often hard to reach, and which makes all the difference between tameness and liveliness, between clearness and obscurity—all the difference, not merely to the ease and naturalness, but often to the logical force of speech. These collections it was his way to sift and transcribe again and again, adding as well as omitting. From one of these, belonging to 1594 and the following years, the Promus of Formularies and Elegancies, Mr. Spedding has given curious ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... force? We stand in danger of exaggerating these vociferous thoughts. This question of naturalness as opposed to artificiality is not immediately pertinent to our problem, nor is the matter of optimism and pessimism, nor the biologic idea of survival. We should have looked more to the way of love in the lives of men and women and become historians of the method and conduct of the ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... the present day has become a greater favorite with boys than "Harry Castlemon," every book by him is sure to meet with hearty reception by young readers generally. His naturalness and vivacity leads his readers from page to page with breathless interest, and when one volume is finished the fascinated reader, like ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... If the talk grew too boisterous, the women would hurry the courses and then withdraw to a side of the veranda, to sit sadly by themselves. If a quieter man, or some young fellow from Camberton, slipped away from the dining-room and joined them, they would talk gayly, simulating ease and naturalness. ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... Simplicity and naturalness are great aids in breaking away from food slavery. They are discussed more fully elsewhere. In the next chapter will be found hints on the solution of the normal amount of food to ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... with the sanguineness of his years. Aram looked upon him wistfully; the bright eye, the healthy cheek, and vigorous frame of the youth, suited with his desire to seek the conflict of his kind, and gave a naturalness to his ambition, which was not without interest, even to ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The greatest miracles were in himself—Pelle, who resembled hundreds of millions of other workmen, and had never yet had more than just enough for his food. Man was really the most wonderful of all. Was he not himself, in all his commonplace naturalness, like a luminous spark, sprung from the huge anvil of divine thought? He could send out his inquiring thought to the uttermost borders of space, and back to the dawn of time. And this all-embracing power seemed to have proceeded from nothing, like God Himself! The mere fact ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... about Thomas was his unaffected modesty, his naturalness, his eagerness to learn, his willingness to accept suggestions, no matter from what source. Haberdashers' clerks—at least, those I have known—are superior persons; they know it all, you can not tell them a single thing. I can call to witness dozens of neckties and shirts I shall never ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... established in the New World a reign of Puritanic tyranny and crime. The history of New England, and especially of Massachusetts, is full of the horrors that have turned life into gloom, joy into despair, naturalness into disease, honesty and truth into hideous lies and hypocrisies. The ducking-stool and whipping post, as well as numerous other devices of torture, were the favorite English methods ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... may come to forget the distant horizon, with full knowledge of the situation, to be content with "what is here and now"; and herein is the essence of classical feeling. But by us of the present moment, certainly—by us for whom the Greek spirit, with its engaging naturalness, simple, chastened, debonair, tryphes, habrotetos, khlides, khariton, himerou, pothou pater, is itself the Sangrail of an endless pilgrimage, Coleridge, with his passion for the absolute, for something ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... if indeed he were a man, accept him, Watson, as a spirit? Solid flesh was not exactly in line with his idea of the unearthly. How to explain it? He had to go back to Holcomb again. The doctor had accepted without question Avec's naturalness, his body, his appetite. Reasonably enough, Geos, with some smattering of his superior's wisdom, should accept Watson in the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... breaks fresh ground in fiction.... All the leading characters in the book—Almayer, his wife, his daughter, and Dain, the daughter's native lover—are well drawn, and the parting between father and daughter has a pathetic naturalness about it, unspoiled by straining after effect. There are, too, some admirably graphic passages in the book. The approach of a monsoon is most effectively described.... The name of Mr. Joseph Conrad is new to us, ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... with affected naturalness, "you might inquire about your parents once in a while. The few steps over to our house wouldn't make you break your legs. Honour thy father and thy mother, you know. Your mother deserves any kindness you can show her. As for me, well, I have dressed you down at times, but only when ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... speech of Tours, her German Hanoverian. Incomparable! And she was not married? Helas! How many luckless fellows walked the world desolate? And this was M. Fitzgerald the journalist? And M. Breitmann had also been one? How delighted he was to be here! All this flowed on with perfect naturalness; there wasn't a false note anywhere. At dinner he diffused a warmth and geniality which were infectious. Laura was pleased and amused; and she adored her father for these impulses which brought to the board, unexpectedly, such ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... managed his strength to such advantage, that few men dared to grapple with him "in a pitched field of long and serious debate." His general tone and style in debate were marked by an intense earnestness, whilst his narrative, possessing, from its striking naturalness and simplicity, a high degree of dramatic interest, was occasionally relieved with splendid passages of impassioned and stirring eloquence. Intrepid self-reliance, unwearied activity, far-reaching sagacity, clearness, and fulness, were the prominent ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... talk without a sign of disapproval. I have seen a big Newfoundland watch the graceful antics of a kitten with the same air of indifference with which Tolstoy regarded his wife's humanity and naturalness. Tolstoy takes himself with profound seriousness, but, in spite of his influence on Russia and the outside world, the great teacher has been unable to cure ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... match, for he was one of the mediatized princes and ranked with royalty. But his properties took such an immense amount of money to keep up that an added fortune would be a great relief to the whole family. Her consummate naturalness did away with much of the bluntness of her speech; but even so, this was too much ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... than his predecessors, is more athletic in his struggles with the unlucky wights he visits, and can coerce mortals to do his will by the laying on of hands as well as by the look or word. He speaks with more emphasis and authority, as well as with more human naturalness, than the earlier ghosts. He has not only all the force he possessed in life, but in many instances has an access of power, which makes man a poor protagonist for him. Algernon Blackwood's spirits of evil, for example, have ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... sleep! It not only renews one's body: in a way it renews one's soul, restoring it to primaeval simplicity and naturalness. In the course of the day you succeed in tuning yourself, in soaking yourself in falsity, in false ideas ... sleep with its cool wave washes away all such pitiful trashiness; and on waking up, at least for the first few instants, you are capable of understanding and loving truth. I waked ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... pronunciation should set in, then at the cost of a little temporary self-consciousness we might, in one generation, or at least in two, have things again very much as they were in Shakespeare's day. It is true that men are slaves to the naturalness of what is usual with them, and unable to imagine that the actual living condition of things in their own time is evanescent: nor do even students and scholars see that in the Elizabethan literature we have a perdurable gigantic picture which, among all stages of change, will ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... from the bench and the prisoner turned from his steadfast contemplation of the throng, a psychic wave overflowed and lifted all the great assembly. This was spectacle, this was drama! The oldest of all the first principles stirred under the stimulus, and with savage naturalness sucked in the sense ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... over-opinion of both, spoils all. Pity it was his mischance of being a scholar; for it does only distract and irregulate him, and the world by him. He hammers much in general upon our opinion's uncertainty, and the possibility of erring makes him not venture on what is true. He is troubled at this naturalness of religion to countries, that protestantism should be born so in England and popery abroad, and that fortune and the stars should so much share in it. He likes not this connection with the commonweal and divinity, and fears it may be an arch-practice of ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... lapses in taste or expression, and the quibbling peddler of rhetoric will gloat over some doubtful construction; but neither purist nor peddler of rhetoric has ever been able in his writing to display the ease, the rush, the naturalness, the sparkle which were as genuine in Roosevelt as were the features of his face. On reading these pages, which have escaped the attention of the professional critics, I wonder whether they may not have a ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... even to this day the Homeric hymns have the power of freeing us, at any rate, for moments, from the terrible burden which the tradition of many hundreds of years has rolled upon us.' In these words Goethe has touched on the simplicity and the naturalness of Greek beauty, in contrast to the more exotic and elaborate beauty of which mediaeval and modern art and literature are full. Keats writing about the Grecian urn also had in his mind the liberating ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... as rock beneath or tree above assails the gentle stillness of its onward flow. Only that which comes from the heart goes again to the heart. We find a new and delicious personality, a simple Greek naturalness, in this exquisite dirge that scarcely owns the 'blasphemy of grief,' that are wanted in his sententious instructions and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... their child required careful pruning, with repression here and development there. While the young girl was far from being faultless, fine traits and tendencies dominated, and, though as yet undeveloped, they were unfolding with the naturalness and beauty ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... to-day," as Henriette Fuerth truly says ("Erotik und Elternpflicht," Am Lebensquell, p. 11), "have not yet attained that beautiful naturalness out of which in these matters simplicity and freedom grow. And however willing we may be to learn afresh, most of us have so far lost our inward freedom from prejudice—the standpoint of the pure to whom all things are pure—that we cannot acquire ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... farther we go into details in this direction, the more brilliantly, as may easily be imagined, does the naturalness of such an arrangement as this force ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... It had been his pride never to put himself in a position which had to be quitted, as it were, by the back door; but here, as he perceived, the main portals would have opened for him of their own accord. All this, and much more, he read in the finished naturalness with which Mrs. Vervain had met Miss Gaynor. He had never seen a better piece of work: there was no over-eagerness, no suspicious warmth, above all (and this gave her art the grace of a natural quality) there were none of those damnable implications ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... birch will have the same effect if planted among groups of evergreens. Additional undergrowth of native woodland shrubs, such as New Jersey tea, red-berried elder and blueberry for the Eastern States, will augment the naturalness of the scene and help to conserve ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... irrepressible floods of what seems like audible sunshine, so well does it match with summer's light, you think it is wonderful. It is mostly when you forget the long training of the prima donna, in her ease and apparent naturalness, that her song is sweetest. But there is a charm, which was well known of old, though we know it not to-day, which was practiced by the bards and believed in by their historians. It was the feeling that the song was born of the moment; that it came with the air, gushing ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... speak for themselves. Their naturalness, their clearness, their force and their general soundness of doctrine, and wholesomeness of sentiment, commend them to sensible and pious people. I have found them as useful ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... pieces indeed strike a European as childish and monstrous, but one must admire many praiseworthy traits in the play itself, for instance the naturalness with which the players often declaim monologues lasting for a quarter or half an hour. The extravagances which here shock us are perhaps on the whole not more absurd than the scenes of the opera of to-day, or the buskins, masks, and peculiar dresses, which the Greeks considered ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... startled at first by the unaffected naturalness of his words, was unfeignedly relieved at finding him restored to the normal. Usually his supply of light-hearted badinage was unceasing. He knew exactly when and how to season it with more serious statements. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... the worship of strange gods; it is the perverted worship of Jehovah. A more special standard, and therefore a stricter one, is now employed, and we know the reason of this: the temple having once been built in the place which Jehovah has chosen for Himself, the kindly naturalness hitherto belonging to His worship comes to an end (Deuteronomy xii. 8): and in particular the prohibition of the bamoth comes into force (1Kings iii. 2). That these continued to exist is the special sin of the period, a sin widespread ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... of the glories of Paris, for she became the fashion outside the theater. For the first time the great classic plays were given, not in the monotonous singsong which had become a sort of theatrical convention, but with all the fire and naturalness of life. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... of W. G. von Horn, lately published at Frankfort, are worth the attention of those whose novel reading is not confined to our own language. The style is clear and pleasing, and the characters full of truth and naturalness. The Erzaehlungen aus dem Volksleben der Schwerz (Tales of Popular Life in Switzerland) by Ieremias Gotthelf, also deserves a respectful mention. Gotthelf is a religious moralist, who sets forth the doctrines of virtue, religious trust in God, and the blessed ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... pure emotional melody which compare to advantage with the most perfect specimens of Greek and Elizabethan song. Tennyson did not very often essay this class of writing, but when he did, he rarely failed; his songs combine, with extreme naturalness and something of a familiar sweetness, a felicity of workmanship hardly to be excelled. In her best songs, Miss Rossetti is scarcely, if at all, his inferior; but her judgment was far less sure, and she was more ready to ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... information. It contains also lists of the coincidences between the Acts and St. Paul's and St. Peter's Epistles, of their points of contact with the contemporary history of the outer world, and of the incidents which show the naturalness and veracity of the narrative. The introduction closes with an excellent chronological table from A.D. ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... naturalness of the speaker acted upon Will Phelps with the effect of an electric shock. Never had he been so thoroughly aroused, and every nerve in his body was tingling when he left the chapel and started toward his ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... to the house. The perfect naturalness and simplicity of the boy appealed to her. She was pleased, too, that he had not told all this to Vere. It showed a true feeling of delicacy. And she was sure he was a good son. She went up to her room, got two ten lira notes, ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... the skill with which the leading idea is developed, we think that the graceful little production which we are now about to present to the reader, will possess very considerable interest. It is, it is true, no more important a thing than a mere song; but the naturalness and unity of the fundamental thought, and the happy employment of what is undoubtedly one of the most effective artifices at the command of the lyric writer—we mean repetition—render the following lines worthy of the universal admiration which they have obtained in the original, and may ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... giving mild support to Burke and the Tory party. After a few uncertain years, during which he debated his calling in life, he resolved on two things: to be a poet, and to bring back to English poetry the romantic spirit and the naturalness of expression which had been displaced by the formal elegance of the age ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... history of Christian opinion in regard to the canon of the New Testament, of which a very brief outline has been given, has all the marks of naturalness and truthfulness. The Biblical student should carefully remember the two following ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... attention to his costume at an early stage. It was the embodiment of his ideal of Nature-clothing, and it had been made especially for him at very great cost. "Simply because naturalness has fled the earth, and has to be sought now, and washed out from your crushed complexities ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... I know you didn't write it, or it wouldn't have been so stupid. I could stand anything except the charge that I've lost my naturalness ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... have the impression of a vast mental capacity turned to the lifelong study of a fascinating subject and acquiring in it the dignity of attitude and the naturalness which mastery inevitably produces. War has been the constant meditation of this powerful brain. In "La Conduite de la Guerre" this meditation is the minute historical examination of the battles of the First Empire and 1870. "Nothing can replace the experience ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... which the year has brought to our table this one stands out facile princeps—a gem of the first water, bearing upon every one of its pages the signet mark of genius.... All is told with such simplicity and perfect naturalness that the dream appears to be a solid reality. It is indeed a Little ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... Bushnell says: "The child is taken when his training begins in a state of naturalness as respects all the bodily tastes and tempers, and the endeavour should be to keep him in that key, to let no stimulation of excess or delicacy disturb the simplicity of nature, and no sensual pleasure in the name of food become a want or expectation of his appetite. Any artificial ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... Raleigh, Sir Thomas More, Charles II, Archbishop Laud all died with a real greatness of undismayed bravery, but with just a sense of enacting a part rehearsed. The death scene of Socrates, which is, I suppose, a romantically constructed tale, does indeed give a picture of perfect naturalness: and I thought that Father Payne's demeanour, like that of Socrates, showed clearly enough that the idea of death was not an overshadowing dread dispelled by an effort of the will, but that it was not present as a fear in his mind at all, and rather ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... friend should try to show me how mistaken I had been in the past, attempting to manage consciously what should have been left to nature, if he should eulogize my natural action now and contrast it with my former awkwardness, he would plainly be in error. My present naturalness is the result of long spiritual endeavor, and cannot be had on cheaper terms; and the unconsciousness which is now noticeable in me is not the same thing as that which was with me when I began to play. It is true the incidental hardships connected with my ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... to note his capacity for pleasing and profitable intercourse with people of a class and tradition far removed from his own. Sensitive to an extreme and quick to resent a slight, he was at the same time finely responsive to kindness, and his conduct was governed by a tact and frank naturalness that are among the not least surprising of his powers. In spite of the fervor and floridness of some of his expressions of gratitude for favors from his noble friends, Burns was no snob; and it was characteristic of him to give up a visit to the Duchess of Gordon rather than ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... It seems an impossible feat. So you explain the contraction of the muscles, the size of a newborn baby—"about as big as your Molly Lou doll"—the position of the baby—"all folded up like a little Jack-in-the-box." Most conscientiously you leave an impression of the naturalness of the birth process. Not for worlds would you create any feeling of distress or anxiety. Neither do you, as the mother, seek to appropriate all the laurels. The children do not owe you love and obedience because of "what ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... Psychology. I do not deny that the study of religious history, by exhibiting the naturalness and universality of religious ideas and religious emotions, may rationally create a pre-disposition to find some measure of truth in every form of religious belief. But I would venture to add a word of caution against the tendency fashionable in ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... induced sleep are successively simulated with much naturalness by Mr. Jules David, who plays the part of Marius in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... a deep current of melancholy was under your Mother's Humour. Not 'under,' neither: for it came up as naturally to the surface as her Humour. My mother always said that one great charm in her was, her Naturalness. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... Lanier holds that a moral intention on the part of an artist does not interfere with the naturalness or intrinsic beauty of his work; that in art the controlling consideration is rather moral than artistic beauty; but that moral beauty and artistic beauty, so far from being distinct or opposed, are convergent and mutually helpful. This thesis he upholds in the following eloquent and cogent ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... Hawthorne put into them consciously, but what passed into them without his being able to measure it—the element of simple genius, the quality of imagination. This is the real charm of Hawthorne's writing—this purity and spontaneity and naturalness of fancy. For the rest, it is interesting to see how it borrowed a particular colour from the other faculties that lay near it—how the imagination, in this capital son of the old Puritans, reflected the hue of the more purely moral part, of the dusky, overshadowed conscience. ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... situation like that, a man becomes reconciled, justifies easily the part he is playing, and comes to understand, in a universe where logic counts for so little and sentiment and the impulse of the heart for so much, the inevitableness and naturalness of war. Suddenly the world is up in arms. All mankind takes sides. The same faith that made him surrender himself to the impulses of normal living and of love, forces him now to make himself the instrument through which a greater force works out its inscrutable ends through the impulses ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... next chapter I propose to show the end which the early Pantheists were striving after, and the reason and naturalness ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... like Webster, for instance, who as the Apothecary, speaks with a hungry voice, walks with a tottering step, moves with a helpless gait, which plainly shows that he never studied the part—he must have starved for it. Where will this confounded naturalness end? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... young womanhood intensely alive. Yet—there was too a significant wild shyness about her. My presence seemed at once to put her on her guard. The music of her voice was suddenly hushed, as though she had hurriedly, almost in terror, thrown a robe of reticence about an impulsive naturalness not to be displayed before strangers. As for the storekeeper, he was evidently a familiar acquaintance. He had known her—he said, after she was gone—since she was ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... stopped, listening, but without acute fear, knowing it improbable that they could dream of seeking in the grounds, and as a matter of fact their minds were a mere paralysis of holy wonder; so presently he had the little body in a two-foot grave, arranged surface and dead leaves to naturalness, leapt ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... should think under the circumstances in which he places them,—that it is the truth of his thoughts which first impresses us. It is in this respect that he is so universal; and it is by his universality that his naturalness is confirmed. Not all his finer strokes of genius, but the general scope and progress of his mind, are within the path all other minds travel; his mind answers to all other men's minds, and hence is like the voice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... the botanic searchings for wild rarities with some naturalist pundit whose name I have forgotten; and so forth. In matters theological, I was strongly opposed to the Tractarians, especially denouncing Newman and Pusey for their dishonest "non-naturalness" and Number Ninety: and I favoured with my approval (valeat quantum) Dr. Hampden. I attended Dr. Kidd's anatomical lectures, and dabbled with some chemical experiments—which when Knighton and I repeated ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... stood together on the windy and bleak down-platform of Knype Station, awaiting the express, which had been signalled. Edwin was undoubtedly very nervous and constrained, and it seemed to him that Janet's demeanour lacked naturalness. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... here, there are men of genius, of great brain power, there are men and women here of every variety of temperament, and attainment, held together for fourteen days by one common bond,' and the perseverance, the solemnity, the hilarity, the freedom, the naturalness, the earnestness of this meeting will so impress them that they will know that there is a miracle ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... and of superior refinement oftentimes derive from a happy imitation of the rude unpolished manners and discourse of their inferiors. For the pleasure so derived may be traced to three exciting causes. The first is the naturalness, in fact, of the things represented. The second is the apparent naturalness of the representation, as raised and qualified by an imperceptible infusion of the author's own knowledge and talent, which infusion does, indeed, constitute it an imitation as distinguished from a ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... oak-wreath. In the day time, to be sure, an occupation of that sort would not look very well, but night is the realm of phantasy and the wreath is the emblem of glory. Then, too, I find that this first scene—the naturalness of which I hope I have proved—is of deep significance for the play. In order to explain psychologically the Prince's headstrong disobedience of the Elector's express order, a great excitement of mind was needed. Now I really do not know where Kleist could better have derived this than precisely ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... parsonage at Sesenheim, a village near Strassburg. Now Herder's teaching bore fruit in an outburst of real song (1, 2 and 4). The influence of the Volkslied is clearly discernible in the unaffected naturalness, spontaneity, and simplicity of these lyrics. Thus das Heidenrslein, which symbolizes the tragic close of the sweet idyll of Sesenheim, is to all intents and purposes ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... without end; for I have often said that there was more of her, and to her, and in her, than belonged to any five women I ever knew. How exceedingly lovely she was in her own home! I remember you once said to me, "The greatest charm of my wife is, after all, her perfect naturalness." All who knew her, must have recognised the same winning characteristic. She was always fresh and always new—for she had "the well-spring of wisdom as a flowing brook." ... Were you not struck, in reading Thomas Erskine's letters on the death of Madame ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... life. It was a much subtler comparison than that of the ordinary guide, who rates his traveler by his ability to endure on a march, to carry a pack, use an oar, hit a mark, or sing a song. Phelps brought his people to a test of their naturalness and sincerity, tried by contact with the verities of the woods. If a person failed to appreciate the woods, Phelps had no opinion of him or his culture; and yet, although he was perfectly satisfied with his own philosophy ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... drama the conduct of the plot is of secondary importance, and character, ideas and dialog become the primary elements. In the first two Galds needed no lessons. In naturalness and intensity of dialog he never reached the skill which distinguishes the pure dramatic talents of contemporary Spain: Benavente, the Quintero brothers, Linares Rivas. Galds' dialog varies considerably in vitality, and it may happen that it is spirited and nervous ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... I could see double rows of hyacinths, tulips, and butter-and-eggs, edging the walks, and bushes of lilacs and snowballs almost in bloom, just as they had looked before I went up to the lumber-room. The serene naturalness of it all restored my wits to me; I unrolled the apron which I had wrapped about the bonnet, and reawakened, as from a nightmare, to the business ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... had a charm about him of a sort quite unusual to my Western ignorance and inexperience—a charm of manner, intonation, apparently native and unstudied elocution, and all that—the groundwork of it native, the ease of it, the polish of it, the winning naturalness of it, acquired in Europe where he had been Charge d'Affaires some time at the Court of Vienna. He was joyous and cordial, a most pleasant comrade. One of the two incidents above referred to as marking that ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Homer's they are very bold, and shew an astonishing play of imagination; in place of the naive simplicity and naturalness of antiquity, this modern genius gives us a dazzling display of wit and thought. To quote only ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... and right way of dealing with the sex relations of men and women. That is the way of simple candor and naturalness. Treat the sex question as you would any other question. Don't treat it reverently; don't treat it rakishly. Treat it naturally. Don't insult your intelligence and lower your moral tone by thinking about either the decency or the indecency of matters that are familiar, undeniable, ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... to be natural. We wear our natural clothes, and talk English, and sport a Teddy Roosevelt smile, and there isn't any call for theatrical talent. Where I've found the job tight was when I had got to be natural, and my naturalness was the same brand as that of everybody round about, and all the time I had to do unnatural things. It isn't easy to be going down town to business and taking cocktails with Mr Carl Rosenheim, and next ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... naturalness of innocence, knelt, as he was always used to do, and said his prayers, adding a special petition for his dear absent parents, and another for the poor boy who hadn't got ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... suggests a double operation, and the very felicity of it as an emblem is that it has these two sides, and with equal naturalness may stand for a power which quickens, and for one which destroys. The difference in the effects springs not from differences in the cause, but in the objects with which the fire plays. The same God is the fire of life, the fire of love, of purifying ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... your senate anticipates a division of the hegemony, crediting you with the chief maritime power, Lacedaemon with the chief power on land; and to me, personally, I confess, that seems a division not more established by human invention than preordained by some divine naturalness or happy fortune. For, in the first place, you have a geographical position pre-eminently adapted for naval supremacy; most of the states to whom the sea is important are massed round your own, and all of these are inferior ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... is asserted. Then he has a way of forcing Nature, much against her wish, to be epigrammatic,—of producing startling effects by artifices almost theatrical; and though his devices are obvious, they are more than forgiven for the genuine power and real naturalness behind the rhetorical masquerade. Other men's freaks and eccentricities lead to the distortion of truth and the confusion of relations, but Mr. Reade has freaks of wisdom and eccentricities of practical sagacity. Occasionally he has a stroke of observation that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... and naturalness," Frida answered with confidence. "He looked at the dress, and admired it, and being transparently naif, he didn't see why he shouldn't say so. It wasn't at all rude, I thought—and it ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... THE EARLY AND SACRED THEORIES OF DISEASE. Naturalness of the idea of supernatural intervention in causing and curing disease Prevalence of this idea in ancient civilizations Beginnings of a scientific theory of medicine The twofold influence of Christianity on the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... wearing the clothes of a labouring man—a brown smock-frock. So had this man, who seemed other than a labourer, on second thoughts: and he had concealed his face by his bundle of straw with the greatest ease and naturalness. ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... she appeared mentally fresh and charming, and the rich cadences of her cultivated voice gave Ringfield pleasure, slightly recalling Miss Clairville's accents, and he was happy in experiencing for the first time in his life that amiable naturalness, inimitable airiness, ease and adaptability, which characterize the Anglican clergy and their method of doing things. Attenuated tennis, Lilliputian Badminton, swings, a greased pole, potato and sack races, fiddling, and dancing on a platform, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... no misunderstanding," Katharine interposed. "Nothing at all." She moved a few paces across the room, as if she intended to leave them. Her preoccupied naturalness was in strange contrast to her father's pomposity and to William's military rigidity. He had not once raised his eyes. Katharine's glance, on the other hand, ranged past the two gentlemen, along ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... scenes, like that of Ventidius, are introduced with two objects—one to gain time, the other for the sake of naturalness: of the latter of which there are two instances in Macbeth; one where the King talks of the swallows' nests: the other, relating to the English king touching for the evil, seems remarkably suited to the mind ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... needn't be, for it is as independent of the morals as of the reasons. It isn't obliged, by the terms of its existence, to teach, any more than it is obliged to convince. It's the most absolute thing in the world; and from its unnatural height it can stoop at will in moments of enrapturing naturalness without ever losing poise. Wasn't that delightful where Caruso hesitated about his encore, and then, with a shrug and a waft of his left hand to the house, went off in order to come back and give his aria with more effect? That ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... the small tasks were being taken from him with easy naturalness, saving him much time. His assistant was being what he had claimed he would be, a genuinely useful left hand. Bryce found himself proud of the kid's manifest efficiency, for he was a product of the same school that Bryce himself ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... this was the only book in the collection he could remember reading, the odd title had stuck in his head. "Now let me see it and I shall prove to you what I mean." There was no way to tell from the unchanged naturalness of his words that this was the moment he had been working carefully towards. He sipped the tea. None of ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... intolerable as it is in itself—in its very nature against the growth of the body and soul of man after a certain time—is nevertheless the chief of those urging forces which shall bring us to simplicity and naturalness at the last. Manhood is built quite as much by learning to avoid evil as by cultivating ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... "Divine Emblems," originally published three years after his death under the title of "Country Rhymes for Children," there is no question. The internal evidence confirms the external. The book is thoroughly in Bunyan's vein, and in its homely naturalness of imagery recalls the similitudes of the "Interpreter's House," especially those expounded to Christiana and her boys. As in that "house of imagery" things of the most common sort, the sweeping of a room, the burning of a fire, the drinking of a chicken, a robin with a spider ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... seemingly endless procession of men, women, and children who wave palm-leaves and shout hosannas. One little flaxen-haired girl, dressed in blue, and carrying a long, slender palm-leaf, is especially striking in her beauty and naturalness. ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... this honesty of speech? Surely not, if he be earnest in his loves and faith; but, the rather, by such token of unbounded naturalness, he recognizes under the waistcoat of this dear, old, charming cockney the traces of close cousinship to the Waltons, and binds him, and all the simplicity of his talk, to his heart, for aye. There ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... of the highest order, whose fun is never forced and never fails; they found themselves on fact, and only burlesque what they have seen in actual life—they never evolve their fun from the depths of their inner consciousness; and in this naturalness, for me, lies the greatness of Leech. There is nearly always a tenderness in the laughter he excites, born of the touch of nature that makes the ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... the Stuarts in 1660 came naturally the restoration of the Prayer Book, and with equal naturalness a revision of it. But of what sort should the revision be, and under whose auspices conducted? This was an anxious question for the advisers, civil and ecclesiastical, of the restored king. Should the second Charles take up the book just as it had fallen from the hands ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... simple naturalness that makes her say that, John," said Mrs. Hardy. "She sees in me what she thinks a perfect woman, although I am an ordinary Englishwoman; while she does not understand the rougher nature men possess. Her thorough truth in thought and ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... masters. Indeed, it may be well in passing to point out to pupils how fatal to success in writing is the attempt to imitate the style of any man, De Quincey included; it is always in order to emphasize the naturalness and spontaneity of the "grand style" wherever it is found. The teacher should not inculcate a blind admiration of all that De Quincey has said or done; there is opportunity, even in this brief essay, to exercise the pupil in applying the commonplace tests ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... John came back in a few minutes and handed the two sovereigns over to Ernest, he did it with such an unblushing face as might have won him applause on any stage for its perfect naturalness. 'Lor' bless your 'eart, sir,' he said in answer to Ernest's shamefaced thanks, touching the place where his hat ought to be mechanically, 'it ain't nothing, sir, that ain't. If it weren't for the dookal families of England, sir, it's my belief the pawnbrokin' ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... less valuable is it as a reminder of the essential constructive task of which the two primary generalizations of Socialism we have so far been developing are but the outward and visible forms. There is no untutored naturalness in Socialism, no uneducated blind force on our side. Socialism is made of struggling Good Will, made out of a conflict of wills. I have tried to let it become apparent that while I do firmly believe not only in the splendour and nobility of the Socialist dream but in its ultimate ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... needed nothing but amusement, emotion and beauty. But George Sand herself felt the delight of existence. She says of Joy "It is the great uplifter of men, the great upholder. For life to be fruitful, life must be felt as a blessing." In all she wrote we feel the rare charm of perfect ease and naturalness, combined with the cadences of beauty. We never feel that she is "posing." And yet the author of the bitter attack "Lui et elle," accused her of continual "posing." Edonard de Musset wrote with an envenomed pen, (but we must remember he was defending a brother), in that strange literary ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... English language and literature was strongly influenced by the French, and in both Pope and Addison there is a marked leaning toward French poetry. Pope's translation of Homer while it lacks the simple majesty and naturalness of the original (a trait which Bryant in the nineteenth century happily caught), nevertheless gave to the English world the opportunity to become somewhat acquainted with the incomparable ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... Honest naturalness, grand simplicity, and an unpretentious majesty of character breathed all about him. An indwelling vehemency, a powerful will, and a firm confidence could readily be seen, but calm and mellowed with generous kindness, without a trace of selfishness or vanity. He was jovial, free-spoken, ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss |
