"Artlessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are lost. And nothing that I can say can give any notion of his eloquence and manner,—of the hold which he soon got on his audience—of the variety of his stores of information—or, finally, of the artlessness of his habits, or the modesty and temper with which he listened to, and answered arguments, contradictory to his own."—J. ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... aesthetic, to which she belongs, now virtue is driven, And into politics forced, where she's a troublesome guest. Where are we hastening now? If natural, dull we are voted, And if we put on constraint, then the world calls us absurd. Oh, thou joyous artlessness 'mongst the poor maidens of Leipzig, Witty simplicity come,—come, then, to glad us again! Comedy, oh repeat thy weekly visits so precious, Sigismund, lover so sweet,—Mascarill, valet jocose! Tragedy, full of salt and pungency epigrammatic,— And thou, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... "The naive artlessness of the Middle Ages," says Brandl, "became in the hands of the Romantic school, an intentional form of art." The impression of antiquity is heightened by the marginal gloss which the poet added in later editions, composed in a prose that has a quaint ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... explosions, "the gravest actors of farcical nonsense that the world possesses. May I never be where there are no boys! A couple of boys left to themselves will furnish richer fun than any troop of trained comedians. No: no Art arrives at the artlessness of nature in matters of comedy. You can't simulate the ape. Your antics are dull. They haven't the charming inconsequence of the natural animal. Lack at these two! Think of the shifts they are put to all day long! They know I know all about it, and yet their serenity of innocence is all ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Publick as Private, which happened in London during the Last Great Visitation in 1665. Written by a Citizen who continued all the while in London. Never made public before." The story is told with such an air of veracity, the little circumstantial details are introduced with such apparent artlessness, the grotesque incidents are described with such animation, (and relish!) the horror borne in upon the mind of the narrator is so apparently genuine, that we can easily understand how almost everybody ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... open to those happy influences, exercised over some spirits, by the graces and wonders of nature. He gives utterance to these feelings with characteristic enthusiasm, and at the same time with the artlessness and simplicity of diction of a child. When speaking of some lovely scene among the groves, or along the flowery shores of these favored islands, he says, "One could live there forever." Cuba broke upon him like an elysium. "It ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... Frederick William Faber's sweet and simple lyrics. It voices that temper and spirit in the human heart which the Saviour first looks for and loves best. None better than Faber could feel and utter the real artlessness ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... there came a time of dearth; a period in which the new name was no longer a thing to conjure with, and artlessness was a drug on the market. Cleverness was the name of the new requirement, and Jimaboy's gift was glaringly sentimental. When you open your magazine at "The Contusions of Peggy, by James Augustus Jimaboy," you are justly indignant when you find ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... looked round. Landau was sitting at the window, leaning on his elbow and the back of his chair, his head drooping. Noticing that all eyes were turned on him he raised his head and smiled a smile of childlike artlessness. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... there he could do so, and opposition made him only more obstinate, more determined to press his advantage. Had she been more politic—Juliana off the stage as well as on—she, whose artifice was glossed by artlessness— ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... should be called belligerents; it were idle to try to deny they were the most dangerous of spies. And yet these two now sailed across the bay and landed inside the Tamasese lines at Salelesi. On the very beach they had another glimpse of the artlessness of Samoan war. Hitherto the Tamasese fleet, being hardy and unencumbered, had made a fool of the huge floating forts upon the other side; and here they were toiling, not to produce another boat on their own pattern in which they had always enjoyed the advantage, but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... about the room, I saw on her book-shelves, arranged with order and precision, nine little butter plates in the form of pansies. I uttered an exclamation of delight, and she from her corner, with the artlessness of a child, said, "I put them there for you to see." Another time she sprang up with her quick, light step, and ran to the yard to fetch a flower for me to copy, apparently thoughtless of two flights of stairs to tax her ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... the Miss Steeles was enough. The vulgar freedom and folly of the eldest left her no recommendation, and as Elinor was not blinded by the beauty, or the shrewd look of the youngest, to her want of real elegance and artlessness, she left the house without any wish ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Paris—letters breathing the most devoted and disinterested love; but to him every word seemed studied, every expression false. Those very letters would, a few short weeks ago, have seemed to Douglas the perfection of truth and artlessness. ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the examination of the sketches. He put his hand on the weak points as well as on the strong ones; he enjoyed with Wetmore the places where her artlessness had frankly offered itself instead of her art. There was something ingenuous and honest in it all that made it ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... thing that was herself and yet not herself, this face that looked up at her and laughed and yet made no voice. She leaned back in the boat and asked Israel if it was still in the water. But when at length she had grasped the mystery, the artlessness of her joy was charming. She was like a child in her delight, and like a woman that was still a child in her unconscious love of her own loveliness. Whenever the boat was at rest she leaned over its bulwark and gazed down into the ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... for Sergeant York when among the returning soldiers his troop-ship touched port—the harbor of New York in May, 1919. The story of the man had run ahead—his fight in the forest, that had added to the cubic stature of the American soldier; the artlessness of his life and the genuineness of his character, which as yet showed no alloy; the modest, becoming acceptance of illustrious honors paid to him in France. The people saw in this simple, earnest mountaineer the type of American that had made America. They ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... The grave artlessness of the manner acted as a kind of check, and Lady Belamour said in a different tone, "Seriously, child, the family are truly obliged for your share in rousing the poor creature from his melancholy. My good man made the attempt, but all in vain. What ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reclines on a stubby little sofa, drawn well up to the fire. The poet would not select Maria as his ideal of female loveliness; and yet there is a touching modesty in her demeanor, a sweet smile ever playing over her countenance, an artlessness in her conversation that more than makes up for the want of those charms novel writers are pleased to call transcendent. "Father!" she says, pausing, "some one knocks at the outer door." The old man starts ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... Poverty, his bride, and swore to her faith and love, down to that evening when, naked upon the naked earth of Portiuncula, he breathed out his life, it may be said that all his thoughts went out to this lady of his chaste loves. For twenty years he served her without faltering, sometimes with an artlessness which would appear infantine, if something infinitely sincere and sublime did not arrest the smile upon the ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... said Grodman. "And as such comes under the heading of Suspicious Characters. He has written an Epic Poem and read it to me. It is morbid from start to finish. There is 'death' in the third line. I dare say you know he polished up my book?" Grodman's artlessness ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... brusque reply with a hurt look, her mouth drooped grievedly, and her eyes took on a wide, child-like look of distress that gave an impression of innocence. He went away wondering if, after all, he had not misjudged her. Perhaps she was only an adorable child who had no idea of the effect her artlessness had upon men. She certainly was lovely—wonderful! And yet the last glimpse he had of her had left that impression of jeweled horns and scarlet, pointed toes. He had to get away and think it out calmly before he went again. Oh yes, he was ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... increased with the years, and he came to look upon his first book as only the crude attempt of a child as compared with his later works. "The Day," he writes in 1620, "has now overtaken the Aurora [the morning glow]; it has grown full daylight and the morning is extinguished."[41] He says, with artlessness, that when he wrote the Aurora, he was not yet accustomed to the Spirit. The heavenly joy, indeed, met him and he followed the Spirit's guidance, but much of his own wild and untamed nature still remained to ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... them, and the esteem which is due to merit appears to be lavished on every one alike. And as true humility, blended with a right appreciation of self-respect, gives a pleasing cast to the countenance, so from a sincere and open disposition springs that artlessness of manner which disarms all prejudice. Feeling, on the contrary, is ridiculous when affected, and, even when real, should not be too openly manifested. Let the manners arise from the mind, and let there be no disguise for the genuine emotions of ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... had many opportunities for observing her and her mother closely. The more intimately I knew them the higher did they rise in my estimation. A purer, sweeter, truer-hearted girl than Blanche I had never seen. There was an artlessness and innocence about her but rarely met with in young ladies of her age. Especially was she free from that worldliness and levity which so often mars young maidenhood. Her mind was well stored and cultivated, and she was beginning to use her mental treasures in a ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... against which the tree-dotted turf assumed a more delicate hue. The air was filled with the perfume of irises growing in vases which they could scarce distinguish. All three paced on slowly through the warm spring night, which was steeping them in its odors, and Jeanne, with childish artlessness, raised her face ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... at the face above her with such a winning smile that Mrs. Sherman drew her toward her with a quick hug and kiss. Lloyd gave a little wriggle of satisfaction. "I'm so glad you've come!" she cried, so completely won by Betty's artlessness that ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... native beauties on the altar of fashion. Her hair, which was of a golden richness of color, was left, untortured, to fall in the natural ringlets of infancy, and it shaded a face which was glowing with the united charms of health, youth, and artlessness; her eyes spoke volumes, but her tongue was silent; her hands were interlocked before her, and, aided by her taper form, bending forward in an attitude of expectation, gave a loveliness and an interest ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... was beautiful, and she was vain. Much of her apparent artlessness was assumed. She was pleased to be admired, and felt gratified to see the effect of her glance, as she favoured one with a languishing look, and another with a haughty stare, or a wicked, sparkling, mischief loving gleam,—transient on her part but fatally ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley
... and more feasible. There is a gay audacity about the laugh which lingers in Bertie's eyes and on his lips, as if Dan Cupid himself had just been there, whispering some choice scheme of roguish knavery, some artful artlessness, into the young man's ear. Bertie does not acknowledge that his inspiration has come in such a questionable fashion. He says to himself, "It will do: I feel it will do. Isn't it providential? Just when I was in despair!" This is a more suitable sentiment ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... was smiling, but all in benevolence, at the artlessness of this eager youth, who in all the unconscious glory of his looks and strength, ascribed the credit of his entrance into a maiden's heart to the virtue of a few ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... all its artlessness, with its interminable conversations, unfinished speeches, long silences, oriental reposes, and oriental ardor. Luigi and Ginevra comprehended love. Love is like the ocean: seen superficially, or in haste, it is called monotonous by common souls, whereas ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... Yolanda was a real triumph of skill and adroitness over inherited convictions and false education. She had brought him from condescension to deference solely by the magic of her art. Or am I wrong? Was it her artlessness? Perhaps it was her artful artlessness, since every girl-baby is born with a modicum ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... brothers were frightened at their sister's artlessness. In her regard for her oath she gave herself up without reserve to be vilified, alas! for ever; to have ballads sung about her; to be mocked by the very foes of Jesuits and ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... however. I admit that artlessness is a charming idea. I admit that it is sometimes charming as a reality. I applaud it (all the more heartily because it is rare) in children. But then, children, like the young of all animals whatsoever, have a natural grace. As a rule, they begin to ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... the medium of conscious reflection, as they seem to have done, and still retain all the dewy freshness of pure creative nature; insomuch that his art carries such an air of unstudied ease as gives it the appearance of perfect artlessness.[18] ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... and when she made mischief, used cutting speeches, or caused her friends pain, she excused herself for her fault, not by admitting and deploring it, but by pleading not guilty, and asserting innocence so constantly, and with such seeming artlessness, that it was impossible to question her plea. In her childhood, they were but mischiefs then which she did; but her power became more fatal as she grew older—as a kitten first plays with a ball, and then pounces on a bird and kills it. 'Tis not to be imagined ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mouth, and perfect teeth completed an ensemble little short of bewitching. Her elegant figure and the delicacy of her features were matched by hands and feet of such exquisite proportions that sculptors besought the privilege of modeling them, and poets raved about them in their verses. Artlessness and naivete were joined with such fine breeding of manner that it seemed as if the blue blood of centuries must have coursed in her veins instead of the blood of obscure actors, whose only honor was to have given to the ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... cooking the meats, so as to preserve their savory properties. This he did sparingly at first, and as a part of a system of profound deception; but day by day, and hour after hour, most especially with Margery, did his manner become sensibly less distant, and more natural. The artlessness, the gentle qualities, blended with feminine spirit as they were, and the innocent gayety of the girl, appeared to win on this nearly remorseless savage, in spite of his efforts to resist her influence. Perhaps the beauty of Margery contributed its share ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... etc. The content is the important thing, and the form is too frequently awkward or bald. Sometimes, indeed, in the clear-obscure of Emerson's poetry the deep wisdom of the thought finds its most natural expression in the imaginative simplicity of the language. But though this artlessness in him became too frequently in his imitators, like Thoreau and Ellery Channing, an obtruded simplicity, among his own poems are many that leave nothing to be desired in point of wording and of verse. His Hymn Sung at the Completion ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... an ideal peasant maiden, blooming and blithe and fair, of an indefinable simplicity and purity; the genuine peasant of the poetic world, not a fine lady of Marie Antoinette's Petit Trianon playing at rustic artlessness. The voice and the singing were but the natural expression of that charming maidenhood. The full volume, the touching sweetness of tone, the exquisite warble, the amazing skill and the marvellous execution, with the perfect ease and repose of consummate art, and the essential ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... clergyman to select a companion so absolutely antagonistic in every element of character. But a glance at Pauline's perfectly beautiful face explained the mystery. How could anyone help loving her, she was so radiant and so winning in her unaffected artlessness? ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... form, and designed to meet the popular demand for entertaining and edifying literature—a demand which increased rapidly with the cheapening of paper and the invention of printing. They vary greatly in content and have no common character except a certain artlessness, which is sometimes pleasing but often runs into extreme vulgarity. Special favor was enjoyed by certain collections of anecdotes, specimens of which are given in the first three numbers. The text of Nos. 1, 4, and 5 follows Braune's Neudrucke ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... corridors with the joy of thoughtless animal life, provoking indulgent smiles at a great distance. His usual discourses treated of trotting horses, wine-parties in expensive restaurants, and the merits of persons of easy virtue, with a disarming artlessness of outlook. He pounced upon Razumov about midday, somewhat less uproariously than his habit ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... encyclopaedia of the sciences as then known. In the anxious care with which he sought out and selected reliable information, and referred to authorities he shows the best qualities of the modern historian, and his style is remarkable for "a pleasing artlessness." ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... dared to say a word to her of what her entertainer was, or what her part should be. Premeditation might throw her out of balance, conscious art might exhibit her a scheming courtesan; just in her artlessness lay all her magic. No, no; he trusted her. She was still adorably English—witness her on the ship! He could see how she would do, how the sight would ravish him, lover as he was; for the rest, he must trust to his early calculations. Yes! he was ready to stake everything ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... been practising on insects tricks which to all appearances are as puerile as those which we practised on the Turkeys in the days when the farmer's wife used to run after us cracking her whip. Do not laugh: a serious problem looms behind this artlessness. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... people, and always kept a store of them by him, from which he frequently replenished his protege's stock, allowing him the profits. That she did not make this further disclosure was probably due to ignorance of the circumstances; in other words, her artlessness was extreme enough to render her a dangerous confidant, and both her ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... scenes are characterized by an artlessness and grace that recall Florian's les Deux Billets or Musset's A quoi revent les jeunes Filles. It is the poetry of an epoch of prose. "All the poetry of the first half of the eighteenth century is in Marivaux, as all the poetry of ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... Sagacious Pioneer of Special Privilege who manufactured the first carload of Public Opinion is lost to posterity; all that is known about him is that he was a close student of the Art of concealing Artifice by Artlessness and therefore wore gum rubbers on his feet and carried around a lot of ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... galleries, and banquettes, and spoke of a faubou',—without being able to name any street. He asked her what her father used to do, and was assured that he did everything—that there was nothing he could not do. Divine absurdity of childish faith!—infinite artlessness of childish love! ... Probably the little girl's parents had been residents of New Orleans—dwellers of the old colonial ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... never heard of such a thing as death, and laughed on the lightest incitement, and directly afterward would sing a few bars of some grave melody with such tenderness of expression that I had to turn away my eyes lest she should see the evidence of her success in art, if art it was, not artlessness, as then I was compelled to think it. And she said the oddest things in the most unconventional way, skirting sometimes unfathomable abysms of thought, where I had hardly the courage to set foot. In short, she was fascinating in a thousand and fifty different ways, and at every step I executed ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... aquiline nose, or, in other words, a hooked one like a bird of prey, always large; the jaws are large, ears long, hair woolly, abundant and rich (dark); beard rare, canine teeth, very large; the lips are thin. A large number of swindlers and forgers have an artlessness, and something clerical in their manner, which gives confidence to their victims. Some have a haggard look, very small eyes, crooked nose, and the face of an old woman." ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... liking such a man at first sight; and I believe that no man in London society was more generally liked than Anthony Trollope. There was something pathetic in his attitude as above indicated; and a fresh and boyish quality always invested him. His artlessness was boyish, and so were his acuteness and his transparent but somewhat belated good-sense. He was one of those rare persons who not only have no reserves, but who can afford to dispense with them. After he had shown you all he had in him, you ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... Arthritic artritulo. Artichoke artisxoko. Article artikolo. Article (commerce) komercajxo. Articulate elparoli. Articulation (anat.) artiko. Artifice artifiko. Artificial artefarita. Artillery artilerio. Artisan metiisto. Artist artisto. Artless simplanima, naiva. Artlessness naiveco. As kiel. As—as tiel—kiel. Ascend supreniri. Ascension (feast of) Cxieliro. Ascension suprenirado. Ascent supreniro. Ascertain certigxi. Ascribe aligi al. Ashamed, to be honti. Ashes cindro. Ashpan cindrujo. Asia Azio. Asiatic Aziano. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... sketches in Vanity Fair and in Punch, especially the minor thumb-nail drolleries, are delightful—true caricatures—real portraits of character. It is true they are ill drawn, often impossible, crude, and almost childish in their incorrectness and artlessness. But they have in them the soul of a great caricaturist. They have the Hogarthian touch of ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... pardon my interruption," said the girl, turning her eyes full upon him with artful artlessness. "You are very good, but it's quite unnecessary. Dr. Heath promised to call again during ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... 'Vicar of Wakefield' (1766), of which we have already spoken (above, page 244). With its kindly humor, its single-hearted wholesomeness, and its delightful figure of Dr. Primrose it remains, in spite of its artlessness, one of the ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... of the past week; if Katherine had been disdainful, the girl Huguette had been kind, and the Golden Scull had found the dainty soldier a frequent visitor. It was Huguette who, after listening to Noel's complaints of the Grand Constable, had suggested to him, in apparent artlessness of heart, that he could play upon the king's superstitions through a new astrologer and had promised to find him a star-gazer who would say anything and everything that Messire Noel wished to have said. The ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... myself," said Platonov with artlessness. "You see, I am a vagabond, and am passionately in love with life. I have been a turner, a compositor; I have sown and sold tobacco—the cheap Silver Makhorka kind—have sailed as a stoker on the Azov Sea, have been a fisherman on the Black—on the Dubinin ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... and youth, of silence and dawn, shone in their faces, making a divine picture, with the fleeting spell over it all that belongs only to the earliest days of passion, just as simplicity and artlessness are the peculiar possession of childhood. Alas! love's springtide joys, like our own youthful laughter, must even take flight, and live for us no longer save in memory; either for our despair, or to shed some soothing fragrance over us, according ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... with the ritual gestures of the infatuated picture-lover, he praised the artlessness of the clear, wide eyes, the delightful freshness of the complexion, and the charming candour ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... unshakable realm of patriarchal virtue and venerable tradition. The political skies were overcast with the thunder clouds of approaching revolutions; France had just passed through another violent upheaval. Village conditions seemed to offer a veritable haven of refuge. The pristine artlessness of the peasant's intellectual, moral, and emotional life furnished a wholesome antidote to the morbid hyperculture of dying romanticism, the controversies and polemics of Young Germany, and the self-adulation ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... tailor's dummies. The statue of Diana on the tower of the Garden—its constancy shown by its weathercock ways, its innocence by the coating of gold that it has acquired, its devotion to style by its single, graceful flying scarf, its candour and artlessness by its habit of ever drawing the long bow, its metropolitanism by its posture of swift flight to catch a Harlem train—remained poised with its arrow pointed across the upper bay. Had that arrow sped truly and horizontally it would have passed fifty feet above the head of the heroic matron whose ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... and roar—Of an Assistant-Sub-Inspectorship. Ah, Jim! tentatively beloved (so to speak) by this solitary, but by no means desolate, heart!—setting aside the rises I would take out of thy artlessness, and the way I would whip thy simplicity with my fine wit till thou wert as crestfallen as a dried pear—I confess a spontaneous thought associated with the mental carte-de-visite of thy wholesome avoirdupois. No less, indeed, than the psychological ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... by the next apartment, where we discovered for the first time the small button in the wall that, when pressed, opens the street door below. This was quite jolly, and we played with it some minutes, while the colored janitor grinned at our artlessness, and said good things about the place. Our hearts went out to this person, and we would gladly have ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... mean by that emphatic tone? What is all this bombastic sermon about? What manners are these? My friend, you are grotesque. Those lines should be repeated simply, naturally and with the utmost artlessness. Remember that it is the good La Fontaine who speaks! [accenting each syllable] the-good-La-Fon-taine—do you hear? There is but one way possible to render the ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... you about an artlessness and roughness in Scott's work. I thought what I had dwelt on was the magnificent tone of the H. of Midlothian. Also he has two of the first (first in rank and order if not first in degree) qualifications for a writer of fiction—Dramatism and individuality ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... one most as one reads the accounts of Mrs. Opie is the artlessness and perfect simplicity of her nature. The deepest feeling of her life was her tender love for her father, and if she remained younger than most women do, it may have been partly from the great blessing which was hers so long, that of a father's ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... of Elizabethan lyrics apparently as spontaneous and unfettered as the song of the lark. The seeming artlessness of much of this verse should not blind us to the fact that an unusual number of poets had really studied the art ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... and entertaining in this tranquil occupation. His masterly intellect could grasp the world and all its visible contents, and yet descend to entertain his children with extemporised tales. He possessed information of the most varied kind, which he communicated with perfect simplicity and artlessness! His profound astronomical knowledge was combined with a rich store of mechanical and manipulative faculty, which enabled him to take a keen interest in all the technical arts which so materially aid in the progress of science. I shall never forget the happy days that ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... recollect that we know nothing of Christianity except from its records; and as these, once fairly ascertained to be authentic and genuine, are all, as regards their contents, supported precisely by the same miraculous and other evidence; as they bear upon them precisely the same internal marks of artlessness, truth, and sincerity; and, historically and in other respects, are inextricably interwoven with one another; we see not on what principles we can safely reject portions as improbable, distasteful, not quadrating ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... artlessness, frankness, ingenuousness, openness, sincerity, candor, guilelessness, innocence, simplicity, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... game of the public! But he knows not, the liar, how far he is misleading himself. The capital on which he lives is confidence, and nothing equals the confidence of the people, unless it be their distrust when once they find themselves betrayed. They may follow for a time the exploiters of their artlessness, but then their friendly humor turns to hate. Doors which stood wide open offer an impassable front of wood, and ears once attentive are deaf. And the pity is that they have closed not to the evil alone, but to the good. This is the crime of those who distort and degrade ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... too, had extremely interested her; her youth, and the uncommon artlessness of her conversation, added to her melancholy situation, and the loveliness of her person, excited in her a desire to serve, and an inclination to love her; and she determined, if she found her as deserving as she ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... no suspicion of you then, but now that I know you better, I see that it was not all childish simplicity which made you smile so graciously upon those who sought your favor. You are a coquette, Katy, and the greater one because of that semblance of artlessness which is the perfection of art. This, however, I might forgive, were it not for one flagrant act, which, if it is not a proof of faithlessness, certainly borders upon it. You know to what I refer, or if you ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... factors in the evolution of two or three general types which appear in infinite variations. The material most used is wood, but this has had less influence in the determination of form than might have been expected. The artlessness of the planning, which is arranged to afford the maximum of convenience rather than to conform to any traditional type, has been the element of greatest artistic success. It has resulted in exteriors which are the natural outgrowth of the interior arrangements, frankly expressed, without ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... trained confreres will smile at the irrationalism of this view, and at the artlessness of my essays in point of technical form. But they should be taken as illustrations of the radically empiricist attitude rather than as argumentations for its validity. That admits meanwhile of {x} being argued in as technical a shape as any one can desire, and possibly I may be spared to do later ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... the throwing-off young gentleman, 'I never saw any approach to them. I used to think my cousin's blue eyes lovely, but they grow dim and colourless beside yours.' 'Oh! a beautiful cousin, Mr. Caveton!' replies the young lady, with that perfect artlessness which is the distinguishing characteristic of all young ladies; 'an affair, of course.' 'No; indeed, indeed you wrong me,' rejoins the throwing-off young gentleman with great energy. 'I fervently hope that her attachment towards me ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... belief, "I suffer with you; I understand you; come with me; let us weep together beside the brook, beneath the willows." And they follow him! They listen to his empty and sonorous poetry like infants to a nurse's lullaby. Canalis, like Nodier, enchants the reader by an artlessness which is genuine in the prose writer and artificial in the poet, by his tact, his smile, the shedding of his rose-leaves, in short by his infantile philosophy. He imitates so well the language of our early youth that he leads ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... and Antony and Cleopatra, the moderation with which Shakspeare excludes foreign appendages and arbitrary suppositions, and yet fully satisfies the wants of the stage, is particularly deserving of admiration. These plays are the very thing itself; and under the apparent artlessness of adhering closely to history as he found it, an uncommon degree of art is concealed. Of every historical transaction Shakspeare knows how to seize the true poetical point of view, and to give unity and rounding to a series of events detached from the immeasurable ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... winter the same symphony was performed in Leipzig. "There is a resistless and audacious energy in the thoughts, a stormy bold progression, and yet withal a maidenly artlessness in the expression of the main motives that lead me to hope for much from the composer;" so wrote Laube, with whom Wagner had shortly before become acquainted. Here again we recognize the stormy, restless activity of the time, which ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... "Alfred Royal's child, and yet she bears her mother's name. And why does she conceal from me where she lives? Surely, she cannot be consciously doing anything wrong, for I never saw such perfect artlessness of look and manner." The problem occupied her thoughts for days after, without her arriving ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... more irresistible fascinations employed for the accomplishment of a wicked object. Beneath an air of innocent frankness, this precocious scoundrel concealed wonderful astuteness and penetration. He could at will adorn himself with the confiding artlessness of youth, so that angels might have yielded to the soft look of his large dark eyes. There were few women living who could have resisted the thrilling tones ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... Nature, after all, is kinder than unkind to him, and always has a compensation and a soothing balm for every blow that age may deal him. And in the fading embers of the old man's eyes there are, at times, swift flashes and rekindlings of the smiles of youth, and the old artlessness about the wrinkled face that dwelt there when his cheeks were like ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... beyond the first mouthful; but Lucien, who shared to some extent l'Encuerado's weakness for the culantro, was having quite a feast. Our bill of fare was thus reduced to a single dish, and I left the broiled duck to my two companions and confined myself to the roast. With an artlessness that approached the sublime, the Indian, thinking that we should prefer the fresh plant to the cooked, the odor of which had been somewhat softened down by the operation, presented us with several stalks. On the whole, however, he was not altogether to blame, for we often ate with pleasure ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... beautiful and celebrated Duchess of Hamilton. Shortly before the death of George II., and whilst he was greatly indisposed, Miss Gunning, upon becoming Duchess of Hamilton, was presented to his majesty. The king, who was particularly pleased with the natural elegance and artlessness of her manner, indulged in a long conversation with her grace. In the course of this tete-a-tete the duchess said, with great animation, "I have seen everything! There is only one thing in this world I wish to see, and I do long so much ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... quips and merry jests of Oscar Wilde, his artful artlessness, his insolence, his self-pity, his loyalty and fickleness, his sensuality and tenderness, only fill after all a small space in the heart's chamber of those who read him and stare at his plays and ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... The very artlessness of her emotions bore evidence to their purity, their holiness. She was rejoiced to see her permitted lover, she felt no shame in that emotion of chaste joy, and would no more have dreamed of concealing it from him whom she loved so devotedly, than of masking her devotion to the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... little soul under her casing of Parisian veneer, and was often innocently surprised at the potency of her own charm. That men, big men and wise men, were inclined to take her artful artlessness at its surface value was a continual revelation to her. Like Rachael, she had gone to bed the night before in a profoundly thoughtful frame of mind, a little apprehensive as to Warren's view of her call, and uneasy as to the state in which she had left his wife. But, unlike Rachael, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... full of knowledge and meditation and earnest feeling! How much that he had spoken still echoed in the heart, and rung in the brooding ear of Egremont. And his friend, too, that pale man with those glittering eyes, who without affectation, without pedantry, with artlessness on the contrary and a degree of earnest singleness, had glanced like a master of philosophy at the loftiest principles of political science,—was he too a workman? And are these then THE PEOPLE? If so, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... Bible," said Lincoln, with the artlessness of a mischievous child. "I looked in to ask how the ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... in phrases such as these, that it had the effect of restoring to her much of her self-possession, of which the nature of the previous dialogue had a little deprived her; and, in the most natural manner in the world, she replied—perhaps too, we may add, with much of the artlessness of art— ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... king about this time began to regard the conduct of his once idolized Anne Boleyn with an altered eye. That easy gaiety of manner which he had once remarked with delight, as an indication of the innocence of her heart and the artlessness of her disposition, was now beheld by him as a culpable levity which offended his pride and alarmed his jealousy. His impetuous temper, with which "once to suspect was once to be resolved," disdained to investigate proofs or to fathom motives; a pretext alone was wanting to his rising fury, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... shared by all these earlier pictures is their artlessness and often their absolute ugliness. Quaint is the highest adjective that fits them. In books of the later period not a few blocks of earlier date and of really fine design reappear; but in the chap-books quite 'prentice hands would ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... the diffidence of Major Gahagan, has also the engaging artlessness which lends so great a charm to the personal narrative of Mr. Barry Lyndon. He does not reserve from the reader's knowledge such of his exploits as stealing the chaplain's whiskey, and drinking the peach-brandy of the simple old ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... the whole narrative as being an allegory. Adam is the rational part of man; Eve, the sensual; the serpent, external excitements to evil. But the simplicity and artlessness of the narrative ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... reward of the artist in words, who wrestles for the exact nuance, and will not let a sentence go till he has obtained its blessing. Consequently he is never finicking in his phraseology, and seldom final. The subtle artfulness of Stevenson is beyond him; but he has a rarer quality—that subtler artlessness which has belonged in some measure to all the greater writers of sentiment. It is a quality independent of the mechanics of writing; whether the author echoes the syntax of Addison or the diction of ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... been born without the faintest sense of responsibility. And yet, while Gabriella listened to him, she realized that, in some ways, he might be a less trying companion than poor Jane. His candour was as simple, as unaffected, as the serene artlessness of a child. It was impossible not to believe in his sincerity. Though she "despised him," as she told herself, still she was obliged to admit that there was something to be said on his side. The harsh judgment of youth—of youth ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... vulgar details in his most exquisite passages. There is something childish about almost all the thought and art of the Middle Ages—at least outside of Italy, where classical models and traditions never quite lost their hold. But Chaucer's artlessness is half the secret of his wonderful ease in story-telling, and is so engaging that, like a child's sweet unconsciousness, one would ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... her cherisher and protector through life. Then came the devastating thought that Elfride's childlike, unreasoning, and indiscreet act in flying to him only proved that the proprieties must be a dead letter with her; that the unreserve, which was really artlessness without ballast, meant indifference to decorum; and what so likely as that such a woman had been deceived in the past? He said to himself, in a mood of the bitterest cynicism: 'The suspicious discreet woman who imagines dark and evil things of all her fellow-creatures is far too shrewd ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... Is she not pretty? I admit it, Violette; I have not, like you, the artlessness of the flower whose name you bear. You will have to resign yourself to it; you have a very bad fellow for a friend. As to the rest, be content. I have resolved to scandalize the family roof no longer. I have finished with ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... mask with innocence their smile), The (artful) artlessness of all your ways, Your kiss-provoking mouth, its lure, its guile - All these have had my fond and frequent praise. And something more than praise to you I gave - Something which made you know ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... with you, sir." Maltravers started, and half smiled, and coloured. But looking on her eyes, which were fixed earnestly on his, there was so much artlessness in their soft, unconscious gaze, that he saw she was wholly ignorant of the interpretation that might be put upon ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... makes up in good cheer. Not at all retiring, though never bold, it chooses some conspicuous perch on a bush or tree to deliver its outburst of song, and sings away with serene unconsciousness. Its artlessness is charming. Thoreau writes in his "Summer" that the country girls in Massachusetts hear the bird say: "Maids, maids, maids, hang on your teakettle, teakettle-ettle-ettle." The call-note, a metallic chip, is equally characteristic ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... turned round, and before I had time to look at him, imagine my astonishment when Nais ran forward and, with the artlessness of a child, flung her arms ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... him and seemed to burn herself. Nevertheless she was favored with her usual childlike artlessness of speech, and answered, "I am ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... overtake her treasure. Pitiful indeed, therefore, is the pitiless inflexibility of purpose with which she wings from her child's heart all the dangerous endearments of childhood,—its merry laughter, its sparkling tears, its trustfulness, its artlessness, its engaging waywardness; and in their place instils silence, submission, self-constraint, suspicion, cunning, carefulness, and an ever-vigilant fear. And the result is a spectacle of unnatural discipline simply appalling. The life of such a child is an egg-shell on ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... with unexampled misery as it was. Though well aware, from former experience, of her father's hypocritical disguises, she was too full of generosity and candor to allow her heart to entertain suspicion. Her nature was one of great simplicity, artlessness, and truth. Truth, above all things, was her predominant virtue; and we need not say, that wherever it resides it is certain to become a guarantee for the possession of all the rest. Her cruel-hearted father, himself false ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... move away, I felt some rain-drops, and down in some seconds rushed a shower. I looked, saw that the sky was rapidly darkening, and ran into the nearest of the little cubical houses, leaving her glancing sideways upward, with the quaintest artlessness of interest in the downpour: for she is not yet quite familiarised with the operations of nature, and seems to regard them with a certain amiable inquisitive seriousness, as though they were living beings, comrades as good as herself. She presently joined me, but even then ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... in consideration of the growing importance of her millinery department; and straightway Miss Wimple went and took the hoop, and offered it up for a pride-offering in the stead of her delicacy, that was so dear to her. It was a thing of touching artlessness to do; only so cunning-simple a soul as Sally Wimple could ever have thought of it. She sat up late that night, engaged in compromising with her prejudices, by drawing out the whalebones, one by one, from the "Alboni," shaving ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... is indeed excellent; but she is too young for suspicion, and has an artlessness of disposition I ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... Bohemian of the Boulevard de Gand; so much so, that Madame de la Baudraye, basing her information on points furnished her by Nathan, one day drew a picture of him, writing a description in which artificiality and artlessness were combined. In this were many interesting touches: La Palferine's contempt shown at all times for the bourgeois class and forms of government; the request for the return of his toothbrush, then ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... will observe also that absolute artlessness, to men in any kind of moral health, is impossible; they have always, at least, the art by which they live—agriculture or seamanship; and in these industries, skilfully practised, you will find the law ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... girl!" cried the Baroness when Hortense had poured out her poem, of which the morning's adventure was the last canto, "dear little girl, Artlessness will always be the artfulest puss ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... to-morrow as to-night, if my lord and husband is still as gracious to me to-morrow as to-day," said Catharine, with perfect artlessness and without embarrassment, as she gave her hand to the king. Henry cast on her a suspicious, searching look, and a peculiar, malicious expression was manifested ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... the cool translucence of morning light the lovers met in this quiet glade, the great heather moors above them once more royally purple, the burnie beneath singing a gentle song, the birds vying with each other in complicated trills of pretended artlessness. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... Myshkin; both of these being young men, and both of them so Christ-like, that in reading about them one is compelled to acknowledge that something in the temper of that Figure, hitherto concealed from His followers, has been communicated to this Russian. The naive, and yet ironical, artlessness of their retorts to the aggressive Philistines who surround them remind one over and over again of those Divine "bon-mots" with which, to use Oscar Wilde's allusion, the Redeemer bewildered His assailants. Stephan Trophinovitch reading the Miracle of the Swine with his ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... exposition, demonstration; exhibition, production; display, show; showing off; premonstration|. exhibit[Thing shown]. indication &c. (calling attention to) 457. publicity &c. 531; disclosure &c. 529; openness &c. (honesty) 543, (artlessness) 703; panchement. evidence &c. 467. V. make manifest, render manifest &c. adj.; bring forth, bring forward, bring to the front, bring into view; give notice; express; represent, set forth, exhibit; show, show up ; expose; produce; hold ...
— Roget's Thesaurus |
