"Credulous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... room, Mr. Maltboy," said his host, ushering him into a little apartment at the end of the entry, which contained a few books, and was passed off upon a credulous world as Mr. Whedell's library. The gas was lighted, writing materials were produced, and, in less than three minutes, Matthew Maltboy had put his name at the bottom of a check on the —— Bank, for two hundred dollars. He did so smiling, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... and my deportment on the occasion, had but strengthened the credulous townspeople in ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... monks to commemorate an event at once so solemn and important. But what shall be said in defence of the manifest fraud which is annually practised in Jerusalem on Easter-eve by the Greek church, when the credulous multitude are taught to believe that fire descends from heaven into the Holy Sepulchre to kindle ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... yields; the second makes deliberate choice. Is not that choice in itself an immense flattery? A woman armed with experience, forewarned by knowledge, almost always dearly bought, seems to give more than herself; while the inexperienced and credulous girl, unable to draw comparisons for lack of knowledge, can appreciate nothing at its just worth. She accepts love and ponders it. A woman is a counselor and a guide at an age when we love to be guided and obedience is delight; ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... with her, and endeavored to recommend himself by all those little unmeaning, but flattering attentions, by which our credulous sex are so often misled; his manner was tender, yet timid, modest, respectful; his eyes were continually fixed on her, but when he met hers, artfully cast down, as ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... When she was with him she enjoyed the moment with all her heart and soul—gave to it and to him everything that was best in her—all the richness of her mental and bodily vigour, all the unspoiled enthusiasm of her years, all the sturdy freshness of youth, eager, receptive, credulous, unsatiated. ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... it throbs in my bosom, as if it would reproach me for so lately upbraiding it for giving way to the love of so dear a gentleman!—But take care thou art not too credulous neither, O fond believer! Things that we wish, are apt to gain a too ready credence with us. This sham-marriage is not yet cleared up: Mrs. Jewkes, the vile Mrs. Jewkes! may yet instigate the mind of this master: His pride ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... obligations of virtue! What a misfortune is it to have made such a use of such talents! It would have been better for you and for mankind if you had been one of the dullest of Dutch theologians, or the most credulous monk in a Portuguese convent. The riches of the mind, like those of Fortune, may be employed so perversely as to become a nuisance and pest instead of an ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... Helvetius, who combated the dogma of the spagyrics, received from another unknown a powder of projection with which he converted an ingot of lead into gold. Helvetius was not precisely a charlatan, neither was Spinoza, who verified the experiment, a credulous simpleton. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... supposed direful consequences that would follow the triumph of Atheism I have not dealt with at length. These are the bugbears which the designing normally employ in order to frighten the timid and credulous. Mental uprightness and moral integrity are certainly not the property of one religion, nor can it be said with truth that they belong to any. And examining the histories of religion it is a fair assumption that in whatever direction the world may suffer from the disappearance ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... aiding and being accessory thereto, by anywise furthering, cherishing, abetting it. He that by crafty significations of ill-will doth prompt the slanderer to vent his poison; he that by a willing audience and attention doth readily suck it up, or who greedily swalloweth it down by credulous approbation and assent; he that pleasingly relisheth and smacketh at it, or expresseth a delightful complacence therein: as he is a partner in the fact, so he is a sharer in the guilt. There are not only slanderous throats, ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... lengthening jaw. In truth there seemed something uncanny in so accurate a reproduction of Mrs Fanshawe's description. Was there, indeed, no such person? Did she exist purely as a dummy figure, to be dangled before the eyes of credulous beginners? Claire sighed, and buried her last lingering hope; and at that very moment the postman's rap sounded at the door, and a square white envelope was handed in, addressed in feminine handwriting to ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... wonderful adventures of my shipmate, Mr Johnson, it may be considered that I think lightly of the importance of speaking the truth. To do Jonathan justice he took ample care that his yarns should never for a moment deceive the most simple-minded or credulous of his hearers. At that time, however, I did not see things as clearly as I did when I grew older, and I was vexed at having tried to deceive Macquoid, more from the fear of being found out than from any refined sense of shame. He, however, when he ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... in love with her, was actually taking up the part of a lover, she dreaded to think what might occur in consequence. Joseph was a very clever young workman, of excellent character, and Laura was intolerably foolish and to the last degree credulous. ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... no respect, only flattery. If her admirers only told her that she was an angel, she would let them treat her like an idiot. So very credulous and frivolous was she, so very silly did she become when besieged with attention, flattered and admired to the proper degree, that there were moments when Helstone actually felt tempted to commit matrimony a second time, and to ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... victims of seduction dying in a workhouse or on a dunghill, penitent, broken-hearted, and uncommonly ragged and sentimental. It may be a frequent case, but it is not the worst. It is worse, I think, when the fair, penitent, innocent, credulous dupe becomes in her turn the deceiver—when she catches vice from the breath upon which she has hung—when she ripens, and mellows, and rots away into painted, blazing, staring, wholesale harlotry—when, in her turn, she ruins ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... who awakes with a start—not very clearly at first, then with feverish coherence, at times with recklessness almost eloquent. Still only half awakened himself, still scarcely convinced, scarcely credulous that this miracle of an hour had been wrought in him, here under the sky and setting sun and new-born leaves, he spoke not only to her but of her to himself, formulating in words the rhythm his pulses were beating, interpreting this surging tide which thundered in his heart, clamoring out the ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... for Grineff," said the lady, in an icy tone. "The Tzarina cannot grant him grace. He passed over to the usurper, not as an ignorant and credulous man, but as a ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... gentleman; and that is enough for me. As to your Life Force, which you think irresistible, it is the most resistible thing in the world for a person of any character. But if you are naturally vulgar and credulous, as all reformers are, it will thrust you first into religion, where you will sprinkle water on babies to save their souls from me; then it will drive you from religion into science, where you will snatch the babies from the water sprinkling and inoculate them with disease to save ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... behind him, she stood quite still in the middle of the floor where he had left her. That letter, that portentous letter which Angie had spitefully put into her willing, credulous hands had referred to Tia Juana, not to herself. How plain it all was, now, and how ruthlessly, unjustly she had driven him from her! And he? He had repaid her flouting of him by tireless devotion and a measureless service! Ah, but ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... civilized generations, thinking how her eyes would dilate, if she waked up some morning and saw the saint by her bedside; and how sure she would be to think, at first, it was a miracle,—his dear, devout Majella, who, with all her superior knowledge, was yet more credulous than he. All her education had not taught her to think, as he, untaught, had learned, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... modern Indians from exploring its shining recesses, for here it was firmly believed the evil spirit had his dwelling, and in the form of a goat, with long beard and horns, guarded the entrance of the cave. The few who ventured there and beheld this apparition, brought back strange tales to their credulous companions, and even the neighbourhood of the enchanted cave was avoided, especially ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the mariner was entirely dependent on the winds and the tides to make his voyage, he was, as everybody knows, a peculiarly impulsive, generous, faithful and credulous mortal in his love affairs. Once ashore, he spliced the main-brace, sneered oathfully at land-lubbers, hitched up his trousers and ran alongside the first trim-looking craft who angled for his attentions—and his money. These fine salt-water ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... he does not know the use of them. He was a smatterer of that most dangerous kind, who feel certain they have arrived at truth. Like so many other children of the eighteenth century, he rejected the past with disdain, but was blindly credulous of the future; and was ready to embrace an absurdity if it came in a new and scientific shape. The marquises and abbes he met in France had dreamed over elementary principles of society and government, until they had lost themselves in wandering ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... careful how I say it. I don't just exactly relish having my letters turned over to Peter Morrison, but possibly I can think of some way—I must think of some way—to make them feel that I have not been any more credulous than they." ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... instances that have been collected to prove the depressing and injurious effects that even nature, on a grand and overwhelming scale, seems to exercise on the mind and spirit of man—how it makes him timid, credulous, and superstitious, and produces effects which retard his progress. But to advance further on this point, however interesting it may be, would only tend to distract the attention of the reader from the subject with which ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... retired upon an annuity or small independent income to some village or country town of which he was not a native, or in which he had not been accustomed to live. Such men having little to do become credulous and talkative from indolence; and from the same cause, and other predisposing causes by which it is probable that such men may have been affected, they are prone to superstition. On which account it appeared to me proper ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... by Wesley that his preaching rarely affected the rich and the educated. It was over the ignorant and the credulous that it exercised its most appalling power, and it is difficult to overrate the mental anguish it must sometimes have produced. Timid and desponding natures unable to convince themselves that they had undergone ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... with his army, form a junction with the Leaguers amongst the population, and prevail upon the king to carry his arms elsewhither." The people of Paris," says De Thou, "were extravagant enough to suppose that this prince could not escape Mayenne. Already a host of idle and credulous women had been at the pains of engaging windows, which they let very dear, and which they had fitted up magnificently, to see the passage of that fanciful triumph for which their mad hopes had caused them to make every ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... that we are too credulous a family to travel in safety with a courier. When you arrive at the hotel to-morrow, therefore, you will discover that we have fled by an earlier train. We take it from no personal objection to your society, but ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... are neither weak nor credulous: vulgar prejudices, superstitious terrors, enthusiastic dreams have never subjugated a mind whose innate purity can have left you nothing to fear, and whose genuine piety must have made you feel, that every thing is yours to hope. Why then do I find you in this seclusion? what good is ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... his schemes and stratagems, which, in their day, had bewildered Wall Street, as simple as the trading across the counter of a cross-roads store. For years he had been out of it. He had lost count. Disuse and ill health had rendered his mind feeble, made him at times suspicious, at times childishly credulous. Without friends, along with his physician and the butler, who was also his nurse, he lived in the house that in 76, in a burst of vanity, he had built on Fifth Avenue. Then the house was a "mansion," and its ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... In my credulous years—he thought—they told me that evil was a sort of dirty hue, just as definite as a soiled collar, but it seems to me that evil is only a manner of hard luck, or heredity-and-environment, or "being found out." It ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... imagined that a Schmucke was possible. Here already you have a sufficient description of the good couple; but it is not every mind that takes kindly to the concise synthetic method, and a certain amount of demonstration is necessary if the credulous are ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... during the washing process, but is not applied with unpleasant force. To finish the bath you are drenched with several buckets of water descending from hot to cold, but not, as some declare, terminating with ice water. This little fiction is to amuse the credulous, and would be 'important if true.' Men have sometimes rushed from the bath into a snow bank, but the occurrence is unusual. Sometimes the peasants leave the bath for a swim in the river, but they only do so in mild weather. In all the cities there are public bath rooms, where men are steamed, ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... wounded his victim. Fearful lest the young king, who was faithful to Coligny, should discover her part in the attempted murder, the queen mother invented a story of a great Huguenot conspiracy. The credulous king was deceived, and the Catholic leaders at Paris arranged that at a given signal not only Coligny, but all the Huguenots, who had gathered in great numbers in the city to witness the marriage of the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... fear most horrible which has not halted yet. These are the monarch and the priest. The one is symbolical of despotic or oligarchic power, the other typifies the sordid ignorance and fearful superstition of the credulous masses which maintains the power of the first. High in the streets of Moscow, where one may see the pallid, long-haired, degenerate-looking venders of holy lies and pious impositions shuffle along like spectres from a remoter age, there hangs a woven streamer of scarlet hue with huge ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... thus indicates the belief that not only do crocodiles shed tears, but that sympathizing passengers, turning to commiserate the reptile's woes, are seized and destroyed by the treacherous creatures. That quaint and credulous old author—the earliest writer of English prose—Sir John Mandeville, in his "Voiage," or account of his "Travile," published about 1356—in which, by the way, there are to be found accounts of not a few wonderful things in the way of zooelogical curiosities—tells ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... upon a bench to rest near the "wishing tree," a dwarf chestnut so well known to residents of the District, and I have been impressed by the many superstitious persons, both men and women, who have stopped for a moment and silently stood under its branches. Many are the credulous believers in its power to satisfy human desires, and the season when its branches are full of nuts is regarded by these as a specially propitious time for their realization. With many persons this tree is the basis of ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... to be feared that the hero of this chronicle began life as an impostor. He was offered to the credulous and sympathetic family of a San Francisco citizen as a lamb, who, unless bought as a playmate for the children, would inevitably pass into the butcher's hands. A combination of refined sensibility ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Byng's honourable wife, who had been insulted by the lover of Al'mah and the would-be betrayer of an honest girl—of Jigger's sister.... Yes, you may well start. I know of what stuff you are, how you had the soul and body of one of the most credulous and wonderful women in the world in your hands, and you went scavenging. From Al'mah to the flower-girl! . . . I think I should like to kill you myself for what you tried to do to Jigger's sister; and if it wasn't here"—he handled the little steel weapon with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... range of ingenious guessing. But "thought transference," tapping the mental wires of another person, would have accounted for every case, with, perhaps, the exception of that in which an unknown detail was added. This confession will, undoubtedly, seem weakly credulous, but not to make it would be unfair and unsportsmanlike. My statement, of course, especially without the details, is not evidence ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... hollowness, and bitter disappointment; in the surfeit of pleasure; in utter weariness of the world,—he exclaims, "O! give me back that sweet morning of my days, when all my feelings were fresh, and the heart was wet with a perpetual dew. Give me the untried strength; the undeceived trust; the credulous imagination, that bathed all things in molten glory, and filled the unknown world with infinite possibilities." Sad with skepticism, and tired with speculation, he cries out for that faith that needed no other confirmation than the tones of a mother's voice, and found ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... gigantic crucifix upheld in mid-air above the Mountain, and he crosses himself devoutly ere he bends down to earth once more to his work in the rich dark soil. "Such stuff as dreams are made of" appear in truth the weird phantoms that the sly Demon of Vesuvius flings up into the pure aether, and if credulous mankind likes to draw inferences for good or bad from these unsubstantial creations of his fancy, he laughs to himself with a hollow reverberating sound. It must, however, have been in the true ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... eastern places. In addition to these the Arabian priests are described by the Dutch as constituting a very numerous and pernicious tribe, who, although in the constant practice of imposing upon and plundering the credulous inhabitants, are held by them in ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... to the credulous monarch, it suddenly struck me what an invaluable tool such a man might prove in the hands of a political faction, or even of a foreign Power astute enough to corrupt him and inspire the oracles delivered ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... credulous, and somewhat desperate, to deliver this Sir, to her you know not, but you shall confess me, and find I will not start; in us all meetings lie open to these lewd reports, and our thoughts at Church, our very meditations ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont
... It subjected credulous mankind to the last of indignities, in forcing it to listen to that doctrine of infinitesimals and potencies which is at once the most epigrammatic of paradoxes, and the crowning ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... whole, the Indians of Southern America represented some of the most simple children who ever lived in the lap of Nature. Unsophisticated, credulous, and strangely wanting in reasoning powers and organized self-defence, they fell ready victims to the onslaughts of the Spaniards, who burst with such dramatic unexpectedness on their ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... the prayers of the devout were often rewarded by the gods, with an indication of the remedy their sufferings required; and magic, charms, and various supernatural agencies, were often resorted to by the credulous; who "sought to the idols, and to the charmers, and to them that had familiar spirits, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... usual thing. Everybody is back—everybody is hard up or says he is—everybody is full of lies, as usual, and is turning them loose on anyone who will listen, credulous or sophisticated, it makes no difference. It's the telling, not the believing that's the thing. Oh! the little cad Mattison is engaged—Charlotte Brundage has landed him, and the wedding is ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... was the firmest of believers, without being credulous, so he was the most charitable of mortals, without being what we call an active friend. Admirable at giving counsel, no man saw his way so clearly; but he would not stir a finger for the assistance of ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... burst. His secretary has asserted that the letters which reached him at Astorga contained all this disquieting news, and there is absolutely no proof that they did not. The probability is all on the side of the account which was universally accepted until attacked by the group of over-credulous French historians whose zeal for the Revolution is such that they feel bound to deny every statement of the equally biased ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... $400 for each teacher or minister. The Indians want their children to come into the mission schools where they may learn "the Jesus way," but it costs $150 for each pupil. The mountain people of the South, unlettered, simple-hearted, credulous, are the prey of Mormon missionaries, who are working zealously for converts, and, as one reports, with "good success." The antidote is Christian teachers and preachers, but here again is an average cost of $400. The Chinese field, besides the work for men in mission schools, ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 1, January, 1896 • Various
... much his shoulders ached from the pack, however sorely he panted, Babbitt could hear his guide panting equally. But the trail was satisfying: a path brown with pine-needles and rough with roots, among the balsams, the ferns, the sudden groves of white birch. He became credulous again, and rejoiced in sweating. When he stopped to rest he chuckled, "Guess we're hitting it up pretty good for a couple o' old ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... eastern end of Loch Earn, where the pretty modern village of St. Fillans now stands, under the shadow of Dun Fillan, or St. Fillan's Hills, six hundred feet high, on the top of which the saint used to say his prayers, as the marks of his knees in the rock still testify to the credulous. The other spring is at another village called St. Fillans, nearly thirty miles to the westward, just outside the limits of our map, on the road to Tyndrum. In this Holy Pool, as it is called, insane folk were dipped with ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... chapter and tell you who wrote it, when he wrote it, how he wrote it, and why; and the who, when, how, and why, should be each different from those mentioned by the author of the book himself. As years removed the credulous simplicity of childhood, we found out that this was only a trick of the trade. We discovered that no two of these doctors agreed among themselves, that the line of argument they followed would disprove ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... primitive, hot hate. Of his own land and life he heard nothing, not even when his face was again turned toward the east. Nor did he think of it. As now he saw them, the rules and principles and standards of his former existence were petty and credulous. But he assured himself he had not abandoned those standards. He had only temporarily laid them aside, as he had left behind him in London his frock-coat and silk hat. Not because he would not use them again, but because in the Congo ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... For these three days become a mineral. He was all gold when he lay down, but rose All tincture; and doth not alone dispose Leaden and iron wills to good, but is Of power to make even sinful flesh like his. Had one of those, whose credulous piety Thought that a soul one might discern and see Go from a body, at this sepulchre been, And issuing from the sheet this body seen, He would have justly thought this body a soul, If not of any man, yet of ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... willingness to yield to such propositions for action and of inability to resist them, is indeed different from man to man. We all know the stubborn persons who are always inclined to resist whatever is proposed to them and who do not believe what is told them, and we know the credulous ones who believe everything that they see printed. But the degree of suggestibility changes no less from hour to hour with the individual. In a state of fatigue or under the influence of alcohol or under the influence of strong emotions, in hope and fear, the suggestibility is reenforced. ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... saw many other prodigies in the skies; their descendants, less credulous, can study the facsimile reproduced in Fig. 51, of the drawings published in the year 1557 by Conrad Lycosthenes in his curious ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... should print his observations of the inhabitants of the different planets, he would have to say of those of the Earth something like this: "One of Man's leading traits is what is known as belief. He is a credulous creature, and is especially susceptible to appeals to his credulity in regard to matters affecting his existence after death." Whatever explanation we may accept of the origin of the conception by this animal of his soul-existence, and of the evolution of shadowy beliefs into religious ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... With all due deference, your grace, 'tis the idle portion of the community, your drunkards and vagabonds, who quarrel for want of something to do, and clamour about privilege because they are hungry; they impose upon the curious and the credulous, and, in order to obtain a pot of beer, excite disturbances that will bring misery upon thousands. That is just what they want. We keep our houses and chests too well guarded; they would fain drive us away from ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... the waters from a pine-swamp, but this supposition did not quite satisfy me. I mentioned the fact to some philosophical friends on my return to England, but it was not much attended to. I suppose I was thought a little too credulous. ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... immediate steps to have his incomprehensible and dangerous allegation suppressed. Such a man is a menace to the community! In the meantime, I must beg of you to dismiss him at once. Do not listen to him, do not allow him to influence you! You are only an impulsive, credulous girl, and he is using you as a mere tool for his own ends. I cannot imagine how you happened ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... How all which makes him worthy of more love Must train his ear to catch the siren croon That never else had reached his upland home! And he who failed in proof, how should he arm Another against perils? Ah, false hope And credulous enjoyment! How should I, Life's fool, while wakening ready wit in him, Teach how to shun applause and those bright eyes Of women who pour in the lap of spring Their whole year's substance? They can offer To fill the day much fuller than I could, And yet teach ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... existence of Vampyres first took its rise in Norway and Sweden, from whence it rapidly spread to more southern regions, taking a firm hold of the imaginations of the more credulous portion of mankind. ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... there, both rough and smooth?" asked the little tailor, and went to cut the wood. "What! the whole forest, young and old, with all that is there, both rough and smooth, and the well and its spring too," growled the credulous giant in his beard, and was still more terrified. "The knave can do much more than bake apples, and has a wizard in his body. Be on thy guard, old Hans, this is no serving-man for thee!" When the tailor had brought the wood, the giant commanded him to shoot two or three ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... who had ever prided himself on his truth-fronting intellect, and had freely uttered his scorn of the credulous mob! He who was his own criterion of moral right and wrong! No wonder he felt like a whipped cur. It was the ancestral vice in his blood, brought out by over-tempting circumstance. The long line of base-born predecessors, the grovelling hinds and ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... all darkness, and the light is but a phantom of the credulous. How do we know that we know, that the inference we draw from our experience is correct, that we are in touch with a living God who is to any extent what we fancy Him to be? Our experience consists of emotions, impulses, aspirations, compunctions, resolves; we infer that we are in ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... Hugh pyres of pine logs were rolled together and lit into flame as the darkness of night came on. These great fires were to light the way for the Saviour when He should come. Men rolled their bodies through the forests in a kind of pagan ecstasy of self-sacrifice to meet Him. So credulous are the negroes of the Black Belt, says a resident white lawyer, that if a fellow with a wig of long hair and a glib tongue should appear among them and say he is the Christ, inside of a week the turmoil of the ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various
... John Cotton, remarks that "the hen, which brings not forth without uncessant sitting night and day, is an apt emblem of students." Certainly the hen is an apt emblem of the "uncessant" sitter, the credulous scratcher, the fussy cackler ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... appearance was not like a reality. No vessel could carry such sail in the gale; but yet, there are madmen afloat who will sometimes attempt the most absurd things. If it was a vessel, she must have gone down, for when it cleared up she was not to be seen. I am not very credulous, and nothing but the occurrence of the consequences which you anticipate will make me believe that there was anything supernatural in ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... to enable him to effect his mysterious purpose without discovery. Whilst Content endeavored to calm the apprehensions of his wife, who still persisted in sharing his danger, by such reasons as he could on the instant command, the credulous Dudley placed the thin piece of silver between his teeth, and, with a pressure that denoted the prodigious force of his jaws, caused it to assume a beaten and rounded shape. He then slily dropped the battered coin into the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... astronomer Herschel was observing the southern sky from the Cape of Good Hope, the most clever hoax was perpetrated that ever was palmed upon a credulous public. Some new and wonderful instruments were carefully described as having been used by that astronomer, whereby he was enabled to bring the moon so close that he could see thereon trees, houses, animals, ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... many cases the paid agents of the Republican party, have for months been circulating among the unsophisticated and more credulous classes, preaching their heresies and teaching the people that if Weaver is elected president, money may be had for the asking, transportation on the railroad trains will be practically free, the laboring man will be transferred from his present position and placed upon a throne of power, ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... he explained satisfactorily, to my credulous mind, the cause of his sudden retreat from Bristed Hall, and gave me reason to believe that the statements his brother had made concerning him were untrue and ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... boat because I am in doubt whether my efforts will keep her afloat, I am really helping to sink her. If in the mountain precipice I doubt my right to risk a leap, I actively connive at my destruction. He who commands himself not to be credulous of God, of duty, of freedom, of immortality, may again and again be indistinguishable from him who dogmatically denies them. Scepticism in moral matters is an active ally of immorality. Who is not for is against. The universe will have ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... Too credulous of Tacitus, many writers have severely characterized the facility and the severity with which the senate condemned those accused under the Lex de majestate: they consider it an indication of ignoble servility toward the emperor. Yet we know very well that the Roman senate ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... over such unauthorised additions even by an Attorney-General. "I mistook many things," said Yelverton afterwards, in words which come back into our minds at a later period, "I was improvident in some things, and too credulous in all things." It might have seemed that dismissal, if not a severe reprimand, was punishment enough. But the submission was not enough, in Bacon's opinion, "for the King's honour." He dwelt on the greatness of the offence, and the necessity ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... point so "very grave"? Not because it was mere dialectics! The only part of the story that seems grave today is the part that Abelard left out; the part which Saint Bernard, thirty years later put in, on behalf of William. We should be more credulous than twelfth-century monks, if we believed, on Abelard's word in 1135, that in 1110 he had driven out of the schools the most accomplished dialectician of the age by an objection so familiar that no other dialectician was ever silenced by it—whatever may have been the ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... It is a call for implicit confidence. And that confidence has been given by a too credulous public. Three hundred years ago, when the victims were marched in long procession from dungeon to burning-place, they were accompanied by an approving mob, eager to inflict every indignity and to applaud every pang. The men about the burning-place were not ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... resemble the metal weapons and the artillery of advanced peoples, so the mental products, the fairy tales, and myths of rude races have everywhere a strong family resemblance. They are produced by men in similar mental conditions of ignorance, curiosity, and credulous fancy, and they are intended to supply the same needs, partly of amusing narrative, partly of crude explanation ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... day of the penance, at the young girl with whom he had been. She was his sister, no doubt. An unreasonable explanation, but she contented herself with it, because she needed to believe that Phoebus still loved her, and loved her alone. Had he not sworn it to her? What more was needed, simple and credulous as she was? And then, in this matter, were not appearances much more against her than against him? Accordingly, she waited. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... man,—he, the insolent, self-opinionated tyrant, yet bound slave of the Earth on which he dwells ... why should he live again and carry his ignoble presence into the splendors of an Eternity too vast for him to comprehend? ..Nay, nay! ... I perceive thou art one of the credulous, for whom a reasonless worship to an unproved Deity is, for the sake of state-policy, maintained, . . I had thought thee wiser! ... but no matter! thou shalt pay thy vows to the shrine of Nagaya to-morrow, and see with what ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... great city afforded a thousandfold facility for doing him a mischief. And first she must draw closer a certain loose tie she had already looped betwixt herself and the household of Lady Bellair. This tie was the conjunction of her lying influence with the credulous confidence of a certain very ignorant and rather wickedly romantic scullery maid with whom, having in espial seen her come from the house she had scraped acquaintance, and to whom, for the securing of power over her through her imagination, she had made the strangest ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... during the past winter she knew that the boys were beginning to 'see life' in the way she especially disapproved. Both were far from home, had money enough to waste, and were as inexperienced, curious, and credulous as most lads of their age. Not fond of books, therefore without the safeguard which keeps many studious fellows out of harm; one self-indulgent, indolent, and so used to luxury that pampering of the senses was an ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... against France. They received the reply that the affair had been virtually settled at the time of the Berlin Congress[256]. The resentment produced by these events in Italy led to the fall of the Cairoli Ministry, which had been too credulous of French assurances; and Depretis took the helm of State. Seeing that Bismarck had confessed his share in encouraging France to take Tunis, Italy's rapprochement to Germany might seem to be unnatural. It was so. In truth, her alliance with the Central Powers was based, not on good-will to them, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Buddha, or Mahomet if he happened to hear them, as those of Jesus Christ. He might have added, or the teachings of a Payne, or an Ingersoll, or, as a remoter example, of the serpent in Eden who beguiled a credulous woman. ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... to be equally the beauty-spots of the mountains. How perplexing it is that advisers are always so kindly and willing to help, and always so undiscriminating. It is equally disastrous to be a sceptic and to be credulous. Banff is an ordinary little tourist-resort in mountainous country, with hills and a stream and snow-peaks beyond. Beautiful enough, and invigorating. But Lake Louise—Lake Louise is of another world. Imagine a ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... on the morrow, his thoughts would return to dwell on the haunting vision of the girl's face, while his own rude, credulous chivalry, kindled by the recollection of her beauty, stifled ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... the Resurrection in the Gospels belong to the less credible form of statement. They emanated from a credulous and superstitious people in an ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... as a belief is furnished by two considerations. First, there were old authoritative sages and poets who loved to speculate and dream, and who published their speculations and dreams to reign over the subject fancies of credulous mankind. Secondly, the conception was intrinsically harmonious, and bore a charm to fascinate the imagination and the heart. The fragmentary visions, broken snatches, mystic strains, incongruous thoughts, fading gleams, with which imperfectrecollection comes laden from our childish ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the Croats, Serbs, and Valachs, was spreading daily, and that, too, in the name of the Sovereign. Generals, colonels, and other field officers of the Imperial army were at the head of it, without any one of them being summoned by the King to answer for his conduct. The eyes of the too credulous natives were now opened, and still more when the King refused to sanction the acts for the levying of troops and raising of funds for the suppression of the rebellion, although the Diet had been convened chiefly for ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... to candidates, and a banquet following initiations was a custom. He states that there were several signs and passwords by which the members were able "to be known to one another all over the nation," his faith in their effectiveness surpassing that of the most credulous in our day. ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... been customary to regard John Aubrey as a credulous and gossiping narrator of anecdotes of doubtful authority, and as an ignorant believer of the most absurd stories. This notion was grounded chiefly upon the prejudiced testimony of Anthony a Wood, and on the contents of the only work which Aubrey ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... amply fulfilled. On his arrival in the island, Simnel at once presented himself to the Earl of Kildare, then viceroy, and claimed his protection as the unfortunate Warwick. The credulous nobleman listened to his story, and repeated it to others of the nobility, who in time diffused it throughout all ranks of society. Everywhere the escape of the Plantagenet was received with satisfaction, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... the least superstitious of mortals, still here he was face to face with one of these conjunctions of affairs which the credulous accept as manifestations of some hidden power, and sceptics as coincidences and nothing more. All the afternoon he had been thinking of Narcisse, and yearning beyond measure for something suggestive of his art; and here, on his plate before him, was food which might have been touched by the ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... Charlot, who in such matters was profoundly ignorant and correspondingly credulous. "Is it ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... private rooms. A growing distrust of her countrymen, arising largely from observation of the ways of Tanaka, was making little Asako less confiding than of yore. She was still ready to be amused by them, but she was becoming less credulous of the Japanese pose of simplicity and the conventional smile. However, she was soon melted by Mr. Ito's kindliness of manner. He patted her hand, and called her ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... he walked on the Avon, or changed its waters into wine. M. Renan ought to have made no account of these stories of miracles. He should have dropped them entirely, as did Rammohun Roy in his Hindoo translation of the New Testament. Let the credulous feed on these creations of superstition, but let men of ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... thousand of the wealthiest citizens of their town were willing to buy the rock again at a profit from whoever should be its possessor during the next few weeks in the fond hope of selling it once again to provincials, clerics, widows, orphans, and in general the uninstructed and the credulous—among whom had been industriously spread the report that the rock in question consisted of one ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... diversion, or whether they be put on to intimidate their enemies when they go to battle, by their monstrous appearance, or as decoys when they go to hunt animals, is uncertain. But it may be concluded, that, if travellers or voyagers, in an ignorant and credulous age, when many unnatural or marvellous things were supposed to exist, had seen a number of people decorated in this manner, without being able to approach so near as to be undeceived, they would readily have believed, and, in their relations, would have attempted to make others believe, that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... which my feeble soul is plunged. The secret of Thy judgments turns my timid heart to ice. Veiled in the recesses of Thy being, Thou dost forge fate and time, and life and death, and fear and joy, and deceitful and credulous hope. Thou dost reign over the elements and over hell in revolt. The smitten air shudders at Thy voice. Redoubtable judge of the dead, take ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... Christian missionary, it may be backed by the explorer Lander, who, in speaking of this same class of men, says: "These Mollahs procure an easy subsistence by making fetishes or writing charms on bits of wood which are washed off carefully into a basin of water, and drank with avidity by the credulous multitude." And he adds: "Those who profess the Mohammedan faith among the negroes are as ignorant and superstitious as their idolatrous brethren; nor does it appear that their having adopted a new creed has either improved their manners or bettered their ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... not mean that she was more respected. Do you understand by respect and consideration those empty forms of etiquette which make a man bow down to the ground to a woman and regale her with a few hollow compliments, designed to tickle the vanity or turn the head of a credulous and frivolous being? Do you call respect the singular habit of certain men to always find the eyes of the woman to whom they are speaking divine, to compare her mouth to a rosebud, her teeth to a string of beautiful pearls, ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... the frigate. "As likely the Frenchman come to finish us off, or maybe only the Flying Dutchman again," said Stubbs. I thought that I detected a gleam of humour in his eye, as if he was not quite so credulous as he pretended to be. As the stranger approached, the belief that she was the Phoebe gained ground. At length those who knew her best said that there was no doubt about the matter. They were right. Before dark she hove-to close to us, and a boat with a midshipman in her boarded us. The ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... "milieu enivrant" of joy and hope. The master was surrounded by a "bande de joyeux enfants," a "troupe gaie et vagabonde," whose existence in the open air was a "perpetual enchantment." The disciples were "ces petits comites de bonnes gens," very simple, very credulous, and like their country full of a "sentiment gai et tendre de la vie," and of an "imagination riante." Everything is spoken of as "delicious"—"delicieuse pastorale," "delicieuse beaute," "delicieuses sentences," "delicieuse theologie d'amour." Among the "tender and delicate souls ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... victories of the French. Thus there is lying in the air, lying on earth, lying in words and in writing, lying to Heaven and earth, lying in every thing. Our great men treat Russia like a child, but there is no small degree of credulity in believing us to be so credulous." ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... a credulous and ignorant people, but it has nothing surprising for me. Let Ennana and the wise men come. They ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... done, Stephanus!'" He adds, "This really took place, though a man should ever so much disbelieve it."[336] But it must be recollected that Dion was writing his history when Philostratus wrote; and one of them may have taken the account from the other; moreover, he is well known to be of a credulous turn of mind, and far from averse from recording ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... peace-makers. It was deemed to be their right and duty, when in their opinion the strife had lasted long enough, to interfere and bring about a reconciliation. The knowledge of this fact led the Lenapes, in aftertimes, to put forward a whimsical claim to dignity, which was accepted by their worthy but credulous historian, Heckewelder. They asserted that while their nation was at the height of power, their ancestors were persuaded by the insidious wiles of the Iroquois to lay aside their arms, for the purpose of assuming the lofty position of universal mediators and arbiters among the Indian ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... sheriff. As he walked upon the battlements of the house, he descried where Saladyne and he drew near, with a troop of lusty gallants. At this he smiled, and called Adam Spencer, and showed him the envious treachery of his brother, and the folly of the sheriff to be so credulous. ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... with him, fits his Lunacie, What ere I forge to feede his braine-sicke fits, Do you vphold, and maintaine in your speeches, For now he firmely takes me for Reuenge, And being Credulous in this mad thought, Ile make him send for Lucius his Sonne, And whil'st I at a Banquet hold him sure, Ile find some cunning practise out of hand To scatter and disperse the giddie Gothes, Or at the least make them his Enemies: See heere he comes, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... unsuspicious mind, Easy and soft and credulous and kind; Who, when offended for the twentieth time, Will hear the offender and forgive the crime: And there are others whom, like these to cheat, Asks but the humblest efforts of deceit; But they, once injured, feel a strong disdain, ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... where they view themselves; Which are as easy broke as they make forms. Women! help heaven! men their creation mar In profiting by them. Nay, call us ten times frail, For we are soft as our complexions are, And credulous to false prints. ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... night was resonant with the patter of rain. The earthen lamp by my bedside was burning low. My grandmother's voice droned on as she told the story. And all these things served to create in a corner of my credulous heart the belief that I had been gathering sticks in the dawn of some indefinite time in the kingdom of some unknown king, and in a moment garlands had been exchanged between me and the princess, beautiful as the Goddess of Grace. She had a gold band on ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... with its immense stores of munitions of war, twenty-five hundred pieces of heavy ordnance, and all its ships, save one, had been doomed to destruction by the perfidious officers who surrounded and advised its loyal but too credulous commander. It was something ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... forth phrenology and mesmerism as the great organs of education, even of the regeneration of mankind; apologising for the earlier ravings of the Poughkeepsie seer, and considering his later eclectico-pantheist farragos as great utterances: while, whenever he talked of Nature, he showed the most credulous craving after everything which we, the countrymen of Bacon, have been taught to consider unscientific-Homoeopathy, Electro-biology, Loves of the Plants a la Darwin, Vestiges of Creation, Vegetarianisms, Teetotalisms-never mind what, provided it was unaccredited ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... king to allow her to see her daughter for the last time, and that the request was refused. Pole was not in England at the time. He drew his information from Catholic rumour, as vindictive as it was credulous; and in the many letters from members of the privy council to him which we possess, his narrative is treated as throughout a mere wild collection of fables. I require some better evidence to persuade me that this story is ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... independent account of its own Ragnar. But by possessing the resource of writing, men became able to consolidate the separate trains of events, and as it were, fuse two truths into one error. And this was what actually happened. The credulous Saxo put together the different exploits of both Ragnars, and ascribing the whole of them to his favorite hero, has involved in obscurity one of the most interesting parts of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... of Mrs. James Williams sat a girl in a loose tan jacket and a straw hat adorned with grapes and roses. Only in dreams and milliners' shops do we, alas! gather grapes and roses at one swipe. This girl gazed with large blue eyes, credulous, when the megaphone man roared his doctrine that millionaires were things about which we should be concerned. Between blasts she resorted to Epictetian philosophy in the form ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... would have been the death of me if I had not overruled her and exterminated her within my breast. How I loved her! how I have suffered through her—enough to be our united portions of future pain—suffer you no more, therefore. You are too young, tender and credulous to try a fall with that creature. She must have divined long ago that you were enamored of her. She is not too clear-sighted in all things, but she sees such effects by intuition. It is very probable that she has returned to this house on your account, so suddenly. ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... Providence shown to our people, desirous of the right, but lukewarm in faith and too credulous in the illusions of the old world, the powerlessness of monarchy to insure the safety of Italy, and the irreconcilability of papacy with the free progress of humanity. The dualism of the middle ages is henceforward a mere form without life or soul; the Guelph and ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... they said, at length; and finding that we were not to be frightened, they turned their attention to passengers more credulous, and actually made some of them believe what ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... his sick mother. He heard the order of Captain Fairfield to man the windlass and stand by the head sails; then he pulled for the Caribbee, to which his boat belonged. Everything had worked to his entire satisfaction. Levi had been as credulous as he desired him to be, and The Starry Flag was standing out of the bay on her way ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... their return to earth, and their visits to the living; and it would have been astonishing to me, had I been a less diligent observer of human inconsistencies, to mark a mind otherwise so reasoning and strong, in this respect so credulous and weak; and to witness its reception of a belief, not only so adverse to ordinary reflection, but so absolutely contradictory to the philosophy it passionately cultivated, and ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are a certain number of people who always think dead men great and live men small.' The tendency is natural and is entirely worthy of blame. If a man is great when he is dead, then he was great when he was alive. It is but a re-echo of much of the folly talked during the war, when we were so credulous as to believe that every dead soldier was a saint and every live one a hero. Then, when the war was over, these hero worshippers quietly forgot that the soldiers had been heroes, put up stone crosses to the dead, and did little ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... doubt of it. Mind you, I trust them implicitly. But, outside their own line, they're credulous as children—you know." ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... mortal sin. The bishop issued a mandate, and had it read from the pulpits, in which he speaks of certain impious, impure, and noxious comedies, insinuating that those which had been acted were such. The credulous and infatuated people, seduced by the sermons and the mandate, began already to regard the count as a corrupter of morals and a destroyer of religion. The numerous party of the pretended devotees mustered in the streets and public places, and presently ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... Sganarelle, and Thomas Corneille's Don Cesar d' Avalos. The prologue is too bad to be quoted, and I doubt if it can ever have been spoken on any stage. This play is written partly in blank verse, partly in prose; though very coarse, it is, on the whole, clever and witty. Old Moneylove, a credulous fool, who has a young wife (Act ii., Scene I), reminds one at times of the senator Antonio in Otway's Venice Preserved, and is, of course, deceived by the gallant Stanley; the sayings and doings of Mrs. Moneylove, who is "what she ought not to be," and the way she ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... monstrous falsifier, Gomora; but adopts them both, according to the custom of novelists; and not the slightest objection is raised. Then descending lower and still lower; disregarding alike the warning of Lord Bacon 'a credulous man is a deceiver,' and of Tacitus fingunt simul creduntque—he rakes up even a devotee, Boturini, and makes him also an historic authority, without overtaxing public credulity; though this wretch, as we have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... this side, now on the other side, Roved round his castle but to ascertain If credulous Morando, who to ride Thither was wonted, would return again. All day he in the forest used to hide, And, when he saw the sun beneath the main, Came to the tower, and, through a secret gate, Was there admitted by his ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... curiosity and fired my imagination—not that I believed it all, for Zamorra was evidently a visionary with a fixed idea, and as touching his craze, credulous as a child; but in those days South America had been very little written about and not half explored; for me it had all the charm and fascination of the unknown—a land of romance and adventure, abounding in grand scenery, peopled by strange races, and containing the ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... guest. Even in some of the facts which were related by Carwin, he maintained the probability of celestial interference, when the latter was disposed to deny it, and had found, as he imagined, footsteps of an human agent. Pleyel was by no means equally credulous. He scrupled not to deny faith to any testimony but that of his senses, and allowed the facts which had lately been supported by this testimony, not to mould his belief, but merely to give ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... of wisdom, he may be confidently followed. His religion has nothing in it enthusiastick or superstitious: he appears neither weakly credulous, nor wantonly skeptical; his morality is neither dangerously lax, nor impracticably rigid. All the enchantment of fancy, and all the cogency of argument, are employed to recommend to the reader his real interest, the care of pleasing the author of his being. Truth ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... the gate to the infernal regions, and was dropped by Lucifer after a terrible conflict with the Archangel St. Michael, in which the fiend was worsted by the saint. This stone was still supposed to be seen by credulous visitors at the "Angel Inn," but as we were not particularly interested in that angel, who, we inferred, might have been an angel of darkness, or in a stone of such a doubtful character, we did not go to ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... credulous. In a RESURRECTION of Jeanne, after death, the age did not believe. The brothers had never seen anything of the kind, nor had the town council of Orleans. THEY had nothing to gain by their belief, the brothers had everything to gain. One might say that they feigned belief, in the hope ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... thus be taken in vain; but the poets say that the gods laugh at the oaths and lies of lovers, and so women who regard their honour should not show themselves credulous or compassionate." ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... child," Gray put his hand on the other's shoulder with mock tenderness, "because these seemingly sagacious whites among whom we live are really a very credulous people, and the first one who goes to them with a good front and says 'Look here, I am the leader of the colored people; I am their oracle and prophet,' they immediately exalt and say 'That's so.' Now do you see why Miss ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Duchesse du Maine, at the age of sixty years, has yet learned nothing from experience; she is a child of much talent; she has its defects and its charms. Curious and credulous, she wishes to be instructed in all the different branches of knowledge; but she is contented with their surface. The decisions of those who educated her have become for her principles and rules upon which her mind has never formed ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... there have, in all Ages and Places, been, who were too Sagacious to admit of that as Revelation from God, which manifestly oppos'd Natural Light; and who needed a proof of the Divine Mission of such pretenders as these. But the unthinking Multitude were ever Credulous; and thence have been always practic'd upon in various kinds, and measures, as has best suited the occasion: Those who have had vicious Inclinations, or little Aims, and short views, having impos'd upon them suitably to their Ends: And such as have had larger ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... European Press, well primed for the purpose (the Guelph funds not having been restored, so far as we know, to their proper owner), continues unceasingly to implore William II to consent to a relaxation of the regulations in regard to these passports. The idea is, that when our credulous fools come to learn that this relaxation has been granted, there will be absolutely no limit to their enthusiasm for him. Already they speak of him good-naturedly as ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... particularly interested in her location. Since the day, two years past, when, having decided that he had used her and her rapidly depleting supply of cash as long as was safe or convenient, he had unceremoniously left her and gone to New York to live upon money supplied by a credulous city gentleman, whom his smooth tongue had interested in his "inventions," he had not taken the trouble even to write to Emeline. But within the present month the New Yorker's credulity and his "loans" had ceased to be material assets. Then Bennie D., face to face with ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to the religion of their ancestors, and the troops of Sultan Segued, six hundred religious, placing themselves at the head of their men, marched towards the Catholic army with the stones of the altars upon their heads, assuring their credulous followers that the Emperor's troops would immediately at the sight of those stones fall into disorder and turn their backs; but, as they were some of the first that fell, their death had a great influence upon the people to undeceive them, and make ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... you have been saying,' she said, almost harshly. 'I know so little of books, I cannot give them the place you do. You say you have convinced yourself the Gospels are like other books, full of mistakes, and credulous, like the people of the time; and therefore you can't take what they say as you used to take it. But what does it all quite mean? Oh, I am not clever—I cannot see my way clear from thing to thing as you do. If there are mistakes, does it matter so—so—terribly to ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of what, at best, is a doubtful tradition. Our concern is with another "science" than that of the arena. We must follow the purple-robed victor to Italy—if, indeed, we be not over-credulous in accepting the tradition—and learn of triumphs of a different kind that have placed the name of Pythagoras high on the list of the fathers of Grecian thought. To Italy? Yes, to the western limits of the Greek ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... surrounds with grace those the heart loves first. I believe he never for an instant reflected on the effect his devoted attentions might produce, and, absorbed in the magic of his own rapturous thoughts, he had no time for calmer reasoning. Love is proverbially credulous; and although neither promise nor protestation had been spoken, Theresa never doubled what she hoped, and, perhaps, in her girlish faith, believed his feelings the deeper from ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... adore, but as your apprentice I have no alternative. It is my duty to tell you that General Stanley is no orphan! KING/RUTH: What! FREDERIC: More than that, he never was one! KING: Am I to understand that, to save his contemptible life, he dared to practice on our credulous simplicity? (FREDERIC nods as he weeps) Our revenge shall be swift and terrible. We will go and collect our band and attack Tremorden Castle this very night. FREDERIC: But stay— KING: Not a word! He ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... entirely unacquainted with the Book they point at, it is not impossible that he might inveigh against it without having any Mischief in his Heart, tho' it was the most useful Performance in the World. A Man may be credulous and yet well disposed; but if a Man of Sense and Penetration, who had actually read The Fable of the Bees, and with Attention perused every Part of it, should write against it in the same strain, as Dion has done in his second Dialogue, then I must confess, I should be at a Loss, what Excuse ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... who were permitted to know and love the object of this sketch spent the rest of their days not only in an attitude of apology for having at first failed to recognize her higher nature, but of remorse that they should have ever lent a credulous ear to a priori tradition concerning her family characteristics. She had not escaped that calumny which she shared with the rest of her sex for those youthful follies, levities, and indiscretions ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... later the Red Beadle, his patched garments pathetically spruced up, came to see his friends, goaded by the news of Hulda's illness. There was no ruddiness in his face, the lips of which were pressed together in defiance of a cruel and credulous world. That Nature in making herself should have produced creatures who attributed their creation elsewhere, and who refused to allow her one acknowledger to make boots, was indeed a proof, albeit vexatious, of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... not own. Brilliard besides knew a great man, who having a pique to Octavio, might the sooner be brought to receive any ill character of him: to this sullen magistrate he applies himself, and deluding the credulous busy old man with a thousand circumstantial lies, he discovers to him, that Octavio held a correspondence with the French King to betray the State; and that he caballed to that end with some who were looked upon as French rebels, but indeed ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... several visits to this region when the first settlers were struggling with the wilderness. It was a much wilder country than that about Palmyra, and the inhabitants were much more credulous. Upon these people Smith practised with his peek-stone. A number of aged persons now living in that vicinity give this description of the prophet: He was six feet or a trifle over in height; of stout build, but wiry; his hair and complexion were light; his eyes were blue and mild; and "he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Biographical History of Literature, which gave its author, John Berkenhout, a free-thinking physician, his chief claim to remembrance. Steevens was a friend of Berkenhout, and helped him in the preparation of the book. Into his account of Shakespeare, the credulous physician introduced quite honestly the fourteen-year-old forgery. The reputed date of 1600, which the supposititious justice of the peace had given it in the Theatrical Review, was now suppressed. Berkenhout confined his comment to the halting reminiscence: ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... upon which Dame Van Winkle is supposed to have sat, while she was berating her idle and incorrigible lord and master, is also shown to the visitor, and the more credulous ones gaze with interest upon a flagon which they are assured is the very one out of which Rip Van Winkle drank. The only thing needed to complete the illusion is the appearance of the old dog, which the man who had so grievously overslept ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... cheek was close against his breast. "What could I do?" she murmured. "A man in sorrow and trouble may go to a woman for sympathy and support and the world will not gainsay or misunderstand him. But a woman—weaker, more helpless, credulous, ignorant, and craving for light—must not in her agony go to a ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... they are fain to call themselves) Philosophers, having their eyes darken'd, and their Brains troubl'd with the smoke of their own Furnaces, began to rail at the Peripatetick Doctrine, which they were too illiterate to understand, and to tell the credulous World, that they could see but three Ingredients in mixt Bodies; which to gain themselves the repute of Inventors, they endeavoured to disguise by calling them, instead of Earth, and Fire, and Vapour, Salt, Sulphur, ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... opinion of the world, has recently attempted to put her conduct in a better light by trying to throw the responsibility for the war upon the Allies. But through all the gross falsehoods, which fail to deceive even the most credulous, the truth ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... political and temporary character which it ought to have borne from the beginning, and which alone confined it to its real objects and within its legitimate limits. The Government accepted the amendment without hesitation, but its position had become embarrassed. Mistrust, the most credulous of all passions, spread rapidly amongst the Liberals. Those who were not enemies to the Restoration had, like it, their foibles. The love of popularity had seized them, but they had not yet acquired foresight. They ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... until she more than half believed that flattering fiction. She began to reckon herself an essential element in the establishment at The Hard, the pivot indeed upon which it turned. Whereupon a rather morbid craving for the Miss Minetts' society developed in her. For, with those two credulous ladies as audience, she could fortify herself in delusion by recounting all manner of episodes and incidents not as they actually had, but as she so ardently desired they might have, taken place.—A pathetic form of lying this, though far from uncommon ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... discreet than his riotous dependents. His wife is reported to have remarked of a censure upon their elder son's addiction to equivocal society, that she had heard Ralegh in his youth showed similar tastes. Aubrey, whom nobody believes and everybody quotes, the 'credulous, maggotty-headed, and sometimes little better than crazed' antiquarian, as Wood, his debtor for much curious unsifted gossip, courteously characterizes him, relates how, at a tavern revel, Ralegh quieted a noisy fellow, named Charles Chester. He sealed up his mouth ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing |
