"Guileless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Ops! He was going to reform the world, after your fashion, Austin,—you have something to answer for. Unfortunately he began with the feminine side of it. Cupid proud of Phoebus newly slain, or Pluto wishing to people his kingdom, if you like, put it into the soft head of one of the guileless grateful creatures to kiss him for his good work. Oh, horror! he never expected that. Conceive the System in the flesh, and you have our Richard. The consequence is, that this male Peri refuses to enter his Paradise, though the gates are open for him, the trumpets blow, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cruelty? If you could but have known that what time he laughed and talked with your guests and feasted at your board, with its tasty viands and its cake with lighted candles, and bent his furtive glance upon the beauty of your guileless Virginia—if you could but have known that in his black heart the canker jealousy was gnawing and that, behind the smile he wore as a mask, the brainy man was ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... Carmen a means of reaching a woman of the stamp of the Beaubien, and through her the leader of the most exclusive social set in the metropolis, is difficult to say. But thus does the human mind often seek to further its own dubious aims through guileless innocence and trust. Perhaps Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had likewise a slight trace of that clairvoyance of wisdom which so characterized the girl. But with this difference, that she knew not why she was led to adopt certain means; while Carmen, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... mingled in scenes of gayety from her earliest days, and from the pleasure which her presence was sure to diffuse, and perhaps, it may be added, from a nature singularly guileless, that could see no evil in what appeared to her but as innocent indulgences, she was led into expenses and frivolous gratifications which were by no means essential for a mind like hers. Dishonest tradesmen took advantage of her inexperience and extreme easiness, and swelled their bills to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... a delicious reverie. How infinitely superior Rose is to all these people whose lives I can picture around me. Two women sit cackling beside me on the bench: they are at once guileless and bad, with their mania for eternally wagging tongues that know no rest. A little farther on, a good housewife is shaking her troublesome child; a stout, overdressed woman of the shop-keeping class is flaunting her finery down one of the walks; a priest passes and, while his lips mumble ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... might have been deceived, for Jamie could withdraw every sign of intelligence from his face, as when shutters close upon a shop window. Our visitor fell at once into the trap, and made things plain to the meanest capacity, until Jamie elicited from the guileless Southron that he had never heard of the Act of Union; that Adam Smith was a new book he hoped to buy; that he did not know the difference between an Arminian and a Calvinist, and that he supposed ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... may come across a guileless sort of man who, after extolling the virtues of his platoon commander, proceeds to tell his friend Bob: "No, I haven't been made a corporal yet, but our section has none now and I am the oldest soldier left." One feels great curiosity as to the ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... autumn manoeuvres, and a touch of colour in his descriptions had induced the proprietors of the Gazette to give him a trial as a war-special. There was a pleasing diffidence about his bearing which recommended him to his experienced companions, and if they had a smile sometimes at his guileless ways, it was soothing to them to have a comrade from whom nothing was to be feared. From the day that they left the telegraph-wire behind them at Sarras, the man who was mounted upon a 15-guinea 13-4 Syrian was delivered over into the hands of the owners of the ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... said Bateman, in fear of Freeborn; "we'll have none of your Popery. It will be a simple, guileless chapel, in which the Church ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... "Oh, to think of guileless little Syd being so foxy!" he cried. "I wouldn't have believed it if any one else had told ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... if I understand you! I never pretended to be guileless. Come: is it because I raised a laugh against your ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... guiltless, it is recorded that the posterity of Avidius Cassius lived in security, and were admitted to honors and public distinctions by favor of him, whose life and empire that memorable traitor had sought to undermine under the favor of his guileless master's too confiding magnanimity. ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... a flag waved in their eyes, and had sold themselves for a shilling to the landlords of their country. In one of the Socialist papers that Jimmie read, there appeared every week a series of comic pictures in which the working man was figured as a guileless fool by the name of "Henry Dubb". Poor Henry always believed what he was told, and at the end of each adventure he got a thump on the top of his nut which caused stars to sprout over the page. And of the many ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... quite comprehend her. He was aware that across the sea many a mamma was laying her plans to make her daughter mistress of Halford, and the daughters had looked at him with languishing eyes, but here was a girl, guileless and pure, who was putting aside the great boon he would gladly bestow upon her. He must set before her the greatness of the gift. He described his estate—its parks, meadows, groves of oak, the herds of deer, flocks of pheasants; the ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... never doubted him. Never has the faintest suspicion of his truth dimmed the mirror of her guileless mind, nor will it ever now. She goes down to the grave smiling, holding his hand, and kissing it. Now and then she wanders a little, but there is nothing painful or uneasy in ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... said, aloud, as the detective approached him, "we are wrong; he is in the bow of the 'Brown Bess,' and he sails in the 'Prairie Flower;'" and as he uttered the first lie that he had ever told in his guileless young life Maurice looked full in the detective's face ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... his blissful insouciance. This time he talked for ten minutes at a stretch, and in the course of the speech he told Jurgis all of his family history. His big brother Charlie was in love with the guileless maiden who played the part of "Little Bright-Eyes" in "The Kaliph of Kamskatka." He had been on the verge of marrying her once, only "the guv'ner" had sworn to disinherit him, and had presented him with a sum that would stagger the imagination, and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... observing Maid Address'd her guide, "These Theodore, thou sayest Are men, who pampering their foul appetites, Injured themselves alone. But where are they, The worst of villains, viper-like, who coil Around the guileless female, so to sting The heart that loves them?" "Them," the spirit replied, A long and dreadful punishment awaits. For when the prey of want and infamy, Lower and lower still the victim sinks, Even to the depth of shame, not one lewd word, One impious ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... Was it to make confusion worse confounded? Alas! Alas! If we had only been as we were in the golden age, these friars would never have had a chance—not they! We too are not as the monks of old were; they lived the guileless life—austere, hard, self-denying, saintly! What are we in comparison ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... naive trusting person (HARRY laughs—CLAIRE gives him a surprised look, continues simply). Such a guileless soul that I thought flying would do something to a man. But it didn't take us out. We just ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... find a guard posted of Paoli's militia. Luckily, he knew all the fords, and in the hill-villages off the road the inhabitants showed no suspicion of us, but took it for granted that we were the good Paolists we passed for. Marc'antonio answered all their guileless questions by giving out that we were two roving commissioners travelling northward to delimit certain pievi in the Nebbio, at the foot of Cape Corso—an explanation which secured for us the best of victuals as ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... wandering in the summer meadows Where the children stoop and play In the green faint-scented flowers, spinning The guileless hours away? Who touches their bright hair? who puts A wind-shell to each cheek, Whispering betwixt ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... knew her life, how oft she stood, Pure in her guileless maidenhood, By dying bed, in hovel lone, Whose sorrow she had ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... sculptor Simeon, Ireland conceived a very low and not unjustifiable opinion of critical tact. Critics would find merit in anything which seemed old enough. Ireland's next achievement was the forgery of some legal documents concerning Shakespeare. Just as the bad man who deceived the guileless Mr. Shapira forged his 'Deuteronomy' on the blank spaces of old synagogue rolls, so young Ireland used the cut-off ends of old rent rolls. He next bought up quantities of old fly-leaves of books, and on this ancient paper he indicted a sham confession of ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... has faith in the ray. The heavens were blue, warm was the air. The fragile creature, without knowing anything, or recognising anything, or understanding anything, softly floating in musings which are not thought, felt itself in safety in the midst of nature, among those good trees and that guileless greenery, in the pure and peaceful landscape, amid the rustle of nests, of flowing springs, of insects, of leaves, while over all there glowed the great innocency ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... process of evolution toward their ideals: just as nations and men are. Doubtless, when Jack's mechanism is perfected, his guilt will disappear. A little way above the florets the club enlarges abruptly, forming a projecting ledge that effectually closes the avenue of escape for many a guileless victim. A fungus gnat, enticed perhaps by the striped house of refuge from cold spring winds, and with a prospect of food below, enters and slides down the inside walls or the slippery colored column: in either case descent is very easy; it is the return that is made so ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... mayst thou ever be what now thou art, Nor unbeseem the promise of thy spring, As fair in form, as warm yet pure in heart, Love's image upon earth without his wing, And guileless beyond Hope's imagining! And surely she who now so fondly rears Thy youth, in thee, thus hourly brightening, Beholds the rainbow of her future years, Before whose heavenly hues ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... any suspicions he convicted himself most clearly of conspiring against us. For no one that has not endured any injury is suspicious toward us nor does one become so as a result of an upright and guileless mind: no, it is those who have prepared to wrong others that are ready to be suspicious of them because of their own conscience. If, again, nothing of this sort was at the bottom of his action, but he merely looked down on us and insulted us with ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... guileless in the face of diplomacy. "I only told you about all this, Fred, because it seemed—well, it seemed so kind o' funny ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... child, Kate—who in her guileless innocence had become familiar with the invisible knocker, until she was more amused than alarmed at its presence—merrily exclaimed: "Here, Mr. Split-foot, do as I do." The effect was instantaneous: the invisible rapper responded by imitating the number of her movements. ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... of about my own age came to me and asked me to teach him algebra. He was preparing for his examination as a civil engineer; and he came to me because, ingenuous youth that he was, he took me for a well of learning. The guileless applicant was very far out in ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... recalled it, and thought with a strange comfort that then, at least, there was nothing to conceal; nothing but sincerity in the sweet, honest face—not pretty, but so perfectly candid and true—with the sun shining on the lint-white hair, and the bright blue eyes meeting his, guileless as a child's. Ay, and however they were dimmed with care and washed with tears—oceans of bitterness—that innocent, childlike look never, even when she was an old woman, quite faded out of ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... to envy Sprigg for his finery would no more have entered his thoughts than to envy a redbird for his tail feathers, or a red man for his head feathers. Ben could have put those Manitou moccasins on and worn them whithersoever he pleased, and his guileless feet been as easy and safe in them as had they been shod with unenchanted, merchantable, split-leather, Yankee shoes. Ben could have followed the chase in those moccasins day after day, till he had rubbed and kicked them bare of all their gaudy ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... Kshatriyas, and the Sudras adoring the Brahmanas and the Kshatriyas, waited upon the Vaisyas. And Santanu residing in Hastinapura, the delightful capital of the Kurus, ruled the whole earth bounded by seas. He was truthful and guileless, and like the king of the celestials himself conversant with the dictates of virtue. And from the combination in him of liberality, religion and asceticism, he acquired a great good fortune. He was free from ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... father, this would, doubtless, have been true enough. But though he had known him for so many years, and was privy to much of his history, he did not yet understand Philip Caresfoot. His own open and guileless nature did not easily suspect evil in another, more especially when that other was the father of her whom he looked upon as the earthly incarnation of all that was ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... Chinese darlings," inwardly delighted that the Maluka's simple trust seemed as guileless as ever, smugly professed themselves willing to fall in with any arrangement that was pleasing to the white folk, and as they mounted their horses Dan heaved a ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... held the well-founded idea that in time Jennie would yield to him physically, as she had already done spiritually. Just why he could not say. Something about her—a warm womanhood, a guileless expression of countenance—intimated a sympathy toward sex relationship which had nothing to do with hard, brutal immorality. She was the kind of a woman who was made for a man—one man. All her attitude toward ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... in this world than the guileless, hot-headed, intemperate, open admiration of a junior. Even a woman in her blindest devotion does not fall into the gait of the man she adores, tilt her bonnet to the angle at which he wears his hat, or interlard her speech ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... fictitious claimants coming forward, representing themselves as Harrisson—desperate bidders for a chance of the Klondyke gold. They might easily have supposed this man and his quenched memory another of the same sort. Evidently if investigation was not to suffer from overgrown suspicion, only young and guileless official instinct could be trusted—plain-clothes ingenus. Dr. Conrad laughed to himself over a particularly outrageous escapade of Sally's, who, when her mother said they always sent such very young chicks of constables ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... preserved, it would be for one or both of two reasons—because they dealt with and were bitter-sweet reminders of a time of sorrow; or because she was pleased, perhaps touched, by the writer's guileless efforts to seem spiritually-minded. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... (and incidentally inaudible to cigarette smokers in the foyer) gives notice of the resumption of the play, while at the end of the Acts the curtain flutters up and down at a feverish pace as if the idea was to get in as many "calls" as possible before the applause stops. Are we as guileless as all that, I wonder? And, anyway, no such manoeuvre was necessary. The applause was hearty, the laughter spontaneous, and anybody who cares for plays made and played with brains should go and see this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... more comfortably about him, watching him with troubled eyes. What a good sort she was! Esther liked her downright honesty and warm-heartedness; she thought she had never met anyone of that age so utterly guileless. How did she get on with her temperamental sister-in-law? What did she think ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... we were ardently attached. Our greatest favourite, if we loved one more than the other, was our sister Nina, for she was the youngest. She was the most fascinating and lovely, though we confessed that if she had a fault, her disposition was too yielding and confiding—guileless herself, she could not credit that guile existed in others. Hers was one of those characters which, from its very innocence, would be held more sacred in the eyes of an upright, honourable man, though it exposes its possessor to be made the dupe of the designing ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... at my Physical Culture Studio again, the day after Lawyer Judson has explained for us the fine points of that batty will of Pyramid's, I'm about as friendly and guileless as a dyspeptic customs inspector preparin' to go through the trunks of a Fifth avenue dressmaker. He comes in smilin' and chirky, though, slaps me chummy on the shoulder, ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... any rate. It was as formal as an invitation to a dinner, and as guileless. The thing he thought he wanted lay within his reach. He had merely to say yes. He did say yes; but first he looked about him instinctively, as for guidance. He looked at the stars twinkling high above the distant Libyan Plateau; at the long arms ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... Nature's heart so near That all her voices in his ear Of beast or bird had meanings clear, Like Apollonius of old, Who knew the tales the sparrows told, Or Hermes, who interpreted What the sage cranes of Nilus said; A simple, guileless, childlike man, Content to live where life began; Strong only on his native grounds, The little world of sights and sounds Whose girdle was the parish bounds, Whereof his fondly partial pride The common features magnified, As Surrey hills to mountains ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... though she wished to transfer the glory of this admiration to him, and to say that she cared more for his than for all the rest. She threw her innocence into her vanity; or rather she seemed to give herself up to the guileless admiration which is the beginning of love, with the good faith found only in youthful hearts. As she danced, the lookers-on might easily believe that she displayed her grace for Martial alone; and ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... itself?" Marion asked, coolly. "I tell you, girls, it is impossible to know whether the man who dresses well, and calls on you at stated intervals, looking and talking like a gentleman, is not a very Satan, who will lead away the pretty guileless, unsuspecting young girl who is worth his trouble; and the leading often and often commences with a dance; and the young girl may never have been allowed to dance with him at all had not stately and entirely unexceptionable ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... string of massive amethysts completed a discord as elaborate as a harmony of Richard Strauss. Her whole impression was almost as inviting as it was grotesque. One could not chat with her without liking her, and it is to be suspected that only a very guileless or austere male could like her without proceeding to ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... intrusion. Let us, then, seek for some better opportunity." And then he prepared to take leave, as if he had some other affairs on his hands. Tayu observed, with a knowing smile, "The Emperor, your father, always thinks of you as quite guileless, and actually says so. When I hear these remarks I often laugh in my sleeve. Were his Majesty to see you in these disguises, what would ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... Officer, "Gedge and I. Little stunts, you know.... It's part of my job, of course, huntin' Fritzes, but it's more than a job with him: it's a holy mission. That's why I'm a bit frightened of him really." The speaker searched the visitor's face with his guileless blue eyes. "I'm afraid of meeting him one day, unexpectedly, before I can establish our identity!" His quick smile flashed across his sunburnt face ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... statement could only have been intended to mislead the uninformed at a distance. "Qui s'excuse s'accuse" is applicable in this as well as in other ruses for hiding those sinister Bond aims and to pose as the guileless and victimized Boer nation. It was just the other way about—it was England who was unprepared and exposed to imminent risk of aggression on the part ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... dwell Spirits of Evil, the never-resting, vagrant, home-destroying guests, who enter unbidden into the human soul! Hark, the rustling of their raven-hued plumage! They take wing, they fly aloft; 't is the shriek of the vulture, swooping down upon the guileless dove. ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... words, but she totally misinterpreted the meaning of these very words in current literature, particularly the cook-book. Her bread was as heavy with undigested facts as is the stomach of a dyspeptic with food, but she was, in a way, a good servant, very faithful, attached to Mrs. Anderson, and a guileless purveyor of gossip, which rendered her exceedingly entertaining. She sniffed meaningly now in response to Mrs. Anderson's affirmative with regard to the identity of the ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... one of the sections when young Scoresby underwent his preliminary examination. I was touched to the quick with pity; for the rest of the class answered up brightly and handsomely, while he—why, dear me, he didn't know anything, so to speak. He was evidently good, and sweet, and lovable, and guileless; and so it was exceedingly painful to see him stand there, as serene as a graven image, and deliver himself of answers which were veritably miraculous for stupidity and ignorance. All the compassion in me was aroused in his behalf. I said to myself, when he comes to be examined again, he will ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... garden Madame Nilsson, in white cashmere slashed with pale blue satin, a reticule dangling from a blue girdle, and large yellow braids carefully disposed on each side of her muslin chemisette, listened with downcast eyes to M. Capoul's impassioned wooing, and affected a guileless incomprehension of his designs whenever, by word or glance, he persuasively indicated the ground floor window of the neat brick villa projecting obliquely ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... very evil influence. Such boys were above criticism. The moral tone was not low so much as strangely indifferent. A boy's private life was his own affair, and public opinion exercised no particular moral sway. Yet vague and guileless as I myself was, I gratefully record that I never came in the way of any evil influence whatever at Eton, in any respect whatever. Talk was rather loose, and one believed evil of other boys easily ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of the curious libraries in England, and has ransacked many of the cathedrals. With all his quaint and curious learning, he has nothing of arrogance or pedantry; but that unaffected earnestness and guileless simplicity which seem to belong ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... watchful Love, To hear the chorus of the trooping waves, When the young breezes laugh them into life! Or listen to the mimic ocean roar Within the womb of spiry sea-shell wove,— From sight and sound to catch intense delight, And infant gladness from each happy face,— These are the guileless duties of the day: And when at length reposeful Evening comes, Joy-worn he nestles in the welcome couch, With kisses warm upon his cheek, to dream Of heaven, till morning wakes him to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... delightful world, it may be, intellectual, idealistic, spiritual; but not the world of every day—the world in which the vast majority of men have to spend fifty-two weeks of every year. Very delightful, too, is the type of man thus produced—charmingly learned, sweetly innocent, guileless, impracticable; walking the path of life with head in air, with eyes unseeing and ears unhearing the things that fill the thoughts of common men. Holding fellowship with the immortals, eating the bread of philosophy, doctrinaire, drinking the wine of poetry—how good would it be to live with ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... she dishonored? He was bound to her by every tie of honor. He loved her. She had a charm for him no other woman ever possessed, and she loved him. A women's eye, he told himself, had never deceived him. Yes, she loved him. Yet if Enrica were as guileless as she seemed, how could she conceal from him she had another lover—less loved perhaps than he—but still a lover? And this lover had refused to marry her? That was the stab. That every one in Lucca should know his future bride had been scouted by another man who had turned a rhyme upon ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... Never have I known anyone who combined so many qualities, far asunder as the poles, in one single disposition. He was placid and turbulent, yet always majestic. He was inexplicable and entirely lovable—a stupid old dear, and as wise as Solomon! He seemed guileless, and yet had moments of suspicion and craftiness worthy of the wisdom of the serpent. One moment he would call me "dearest child"; the next, with indignant ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... purring in the sunshine, were her constant friends through the long summer days. And every morning Azalia came in and read the news. Pleasant the sound of her approaching step! Ever welcome her appearance! Winsome her smile! How beautiful upon her cheek the deepening bloom of a guileless heart! ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... Inglefield's house is the nearest. This may be one of its inhabitants. I did not recognise his features, but this was owing to the dusky atmosphere and to the singularity of his garb. Inglefield has two servants, one of whom was a native of this district, simple, guileless, and incapable of any act of violence. He was, moreover, devoutly attached to his sect. He could not be ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... Doctor, whose head was stored with nearly as much of human knowledge as mortal head could hold, took simple, guileless little Sam by the hand, and led him into the garden of knowledge. Unless I am mistaken, these two will pick more flowers than they will dig potatoes in the aforesaid garden, but I don't think that two such honest souls will gather much unwholesome fruit. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... me to be boys or girls; they are preternaturally acute and observant. You seldom see them playing together. They seem to be born with the gift of telling a lie with most portentous gravity. They wear an air of the most winning candour and guileless innocence, when they are all the while plotting some petty scheme against you. They are certainly far more precocious than English children; they realise the hard struggle for life far more quickly. The poorer classes can hardly ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... wise and guileless sway Win every recreant today, And sorrow's vast and holy wave Blend all our hearts around his grave! Let the faithful bondmen's tears, Let the traitor's craven fears, And the people's grief and pride, Plead against the parricide! ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... form and with weakish legs, as yet unversed in the wiles of waiterhood, and but too evidently of a romantic temperament, and deeply (it were not too much to add hopelessly) in love with some young female not aware of his merit. This guileless youth, descrying the position of affairs, which even his innocence could not mistake, limited his waiting to languishing admiringly against the sideboard when Bella didn't want anything, and swooping ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Sir Adrian would watch him with great eyes. What meant this change? the guileless philosopher would ask himself, and wonder if he had judged his brother too harshly all through life; or if it was his plain speaking in their last quarrel which had put things in their true light to him, and ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... heart sank down within me, and I prayed earnestly, earnestly to God. I talked to the dear dear lad of his danger, night and day we prayed and read. A dear guileless spirit indeed. I never saw in so young a person such a thorough conscientiousness as for two years I witnessed in his daily life, and I had long not ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bewildered awe and pleasure at the material splendours looming up in her horizon, her soul was filled with a tenderness as exquisite as the religion of a child. It was a combination of intense gratitude and the guileless passion of a hitherto wholly unawakened woman—a woman who had not hoped for love or allowed her thoughts to dwell upon it, and who therefore had no clear understanding of its full meaning. She could not have ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Fools sailed on, all aft fooling and befouling, from the guileless-eyed, gentle-souled Finnish mate, who, with the scent of treasure pungent in his nostrils, with a duplicate key stole the ship's daily position from Captain Doane's locked desk, to Ah Moy, the cook, who kept Kwaque at a distance and never ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... went and told her, and it brought her, hearin' you was dangerous, and she calculated she might be o' use to ye now, for some, they be sich friends!" said Grandma, making this observation with the most guileless enthusiasm. "And Becky, she wa'n't much brought up, and used to be as wild and harum-scarum as any of 'em; but I allus said that there was a good deal to Becky, after all. Wall, George Olver, he recognized where she was and he went down thar' ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... person also possessed a heart, although she was now stout and on the wrong side of middle age. She was aware, too, that the Colonel knew as much, and his scientific pin-pricks and searings of that guileless and unprotected organ struck her as little short of cruel. None the less so, indeed, because the victim at the stake imagined that they were inflicted in kindness by the hand of a still tender and ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... genius of a gentle, delicate man, guileless of passions and devoted to science and work, he never can so completely transfuse himself into the body of a dashing, sensual, and violent man, of exuberant vitality, torn by every desire or even by every ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... the most beguiling easy chairs, it had all Mr. Woodward's best pictures, it had fascinating little tables, and a tempting set of books. There was something in the sight of the familiar room which made Brian's wrath flame up once more. Erica's guileless life seemed to rise before him the years of patient study, the beautiful filial love, the pathetic endeavor to restrain her child-like impatience of conventionalities lest scandalmongers should have even a shadow of excuse for slandering ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... the Lord that Saul Sat in the dark displeasure of his God. (d) And out from this displeasure, like the dawn From dusky night, the youthful David sprang— The Lord's anointed, yea, the Lord's beloved: Sweet Bard of Bethlehem! whose harp divine, Tuned to the throbbings of a guileless heart, Soothed the dark spirit of the sinful King, And woke his life to light and hope again, (e) But ah! the sling and stone his envy roused, And envy hate begat. 'Tis ever so: The honest fealty of a noble soul To all that's brave, and true, and good in life, Will meet malicious ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... came a stranger to Walgett town, To Walgett town when the sun was low, And he carried a thirst that was worth a crown, Yet how to quench it he did not know; But he thought he might take those yokels down, The guileless yokels of Walgett town. ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... were the figures, how much more was the Truth itself, the good Shepherd, when He came, both guileless and heroic? If shepherds are men of simple lives and obscure fortunes, uncorrupted and unknown in kings' courts and marts of commerce, how much more He who was "the carpenter's Son," who was "meek and lowly of heart," who "did not strive nor cry," who "went about doing good," who ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... turned and looked suspiciously at her; but her face was guileless and calm, with no trace of raillery, her eyes still fixed on the ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... of artless maid, Sweet floweret of the rural shade! By love's simplicity betrayed, And guileless trust, Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... one felt called upon to celebrate it. The guileless tried to see the imaginary line of the meridian which the sophisticated pointed out to them on the water; the cream-peppermint lady went so far as to say she felt the jar as the steamer passed over it. ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... Lamour's Disease. About five she retired to her severely simple apartments in the big brownstone office building devoted to physicians, corner of Fifty-eighth Street and Madison Avenue. Here she took tea, read a little, dined all alone, and retired about nine. This was the guileless but determined existence of Rosalind Hollis, M.D., according to McConnell, the detective ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... neglect of the world, his confidence in Walter had been his preservative from misanthropy; and when vexed at the recollection of his own imprudent frankness and folly, in provoking the resentment of powerful foes, he soothed his galled spirit by considering, that the guileless simplicity of his nature, which had raised those foes, had also secured him a faithful friend. That bright creation of his fancy disappeared, a chaos of duplicity, dark contrivance, and injustice remained: ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... some small pieces. Their sense of smell is wonderful, and they'll get on the job right away. The shark will follow us for more, and just when he thinks he's found a regular meal, we'll heave over the big piece attached to the hook. He'll nab it in a hurry, and then his guileless and unsuspicious nature ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... whom the Worcester lawyers of this time like best to remember was Peter C. Bacon. He was the Dominie Sampson of the Worcester Bar. I suppose he was the most learned man we ever had in Worcester, and probably, in Massachusetts. He was simple and guileless as a child; of a most inflexible honesty, devoted to the interest of his clients, and an enthusiastic lover of the science of the law. When, in rare cases, he thoroughly believed in the righteousness of his case, he was irresistible. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... guileless heart whose truth, my boy, Is to me a source of the purest joy, In whose sinless depths I can plainly see, That as yet from all thought of ill 'tis free; When manhood's down shall have clothed thy cheek, When pleasure shall tempt and passion speak, When beset by snares that ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... 544, not deceive &c 545. Adj. truthful, true; veracious, veridical; scrupulous &c (honorable) 939; sincere, candid, frank, open, straightforward, unreserved; open hearted, true hearted, simple-hearted; honest, trustworthy; undissembling &c (dissemble) &c 544 [Obs.]; guileless, pure; truth- loving; unperjured^; true blue, as good as one's word; unaffected, unfeigned, bona fide; outspoken, ingenuous &c (artless) 703; undisguised &c (real) 494. uncontrived. Adv. truly &c (really) 494; in plain words ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... cried my unknown, "I love to hear thy innocent story and look on thy guileless face. There is, alas! so much of the contrary in this world, so much terror and crime and blood, that we who mingle with it are only too glad to forget it. Would that we could shake off our cares as men, and be ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... trouble is ahead for that little girl. Oh, if her father could only be with her all the time. Outsiders can do so little because their authority is so limited and those who HAVE the authority are either too guileless or debarred by their stations. Dr. Llewellyn, Harrison and Mammy are the only ones who have the least right ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... beheld the stranger's black eyes upon herself. He, too, wished to know why she stayed in Mexico, but in his sharp, shifting look there was a penetration quite different from that of the guileless Michel. He bestrode a magnificent horse that seemed made for armor, whereas he himself would surely have been crushed under so much as a Crusader's buckler. Being so very small, and perched so ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... participate." It would appear that the Patharis have not much to learn from the owners of buried treasure or the confidence or three-card trick performers of London, and their methods are in striking contrast to the guileless simplicity usually supposed to be a characteristic of the primitive tribes. Mr. White states that "All the property acquired is taken back to the village and there distributed by a panchayat or committee, whose head is known as Mokasi. The Mokasi is elected by the community ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... continued to glance at him beneath her dark lashes—dark lashes around blue eyes—with a guileless and wondering admiration. He certainly was a very good-looking man, well set up, with that quiet air ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... representation in Hamburg. The pleasant impression then made by its agreeable and lovely melodies has not faded the less that, after hearing many of our stormy and exciting modern operas, one often and ardently {11} longs for the restful charm and guileless pleasure of a piece ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... rotatory Clothes-horse for drying the Imperial linen on; and to have no intellect at all, because he was without guile, and had no vulpinism at all. In which they were very much mistaken indeed. History is proud to report that the guileless Prussian Majesty, steadily attending to his own affairs in a wise manner, though hoodwinked and led about by Black-Artists as he had been, turned out when Fact and Nature subsequently pronounced upon it, to have had more intellect than the whole of them together,—to have been, in a manner, the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... soul and sense Had thrill'd my guileless Genevieve; The music and the doleful tale, The rich and ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... guileless for a war correspondent," he said. And he turned on his heel and stalked away ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... admit, as mark regular and scientific perfection, and perhaps much of their power was owing to their not being altogether symmetrical. Her great charm consisted in a spirit of youthful innocence, so guileless that the very light of purity and truth seemed to break in radiance from her countenance. Her form was round, light, and flexible. When she smiled her face seemed to lose the character of its mortality—so seraphic and full of an indescribable spell ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... protested, and showed himself willing to accept the assurance that Cicely was as simple and guileless as his own little maid; and Mr. Talbot, not wishing to be sent adrift with Cicely at that time of night, and certainly not to put such an affront on the good, if over-anxious father, was pacified, but the cordial ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... see Victor?" exclaimed the guileless Selma. "Why didn't you say so? I'd have told you at once that he was in Indianapolis and wouldn't be back for two or ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... of merry quips. Lucy had made as little of the affair as possible to George. Her eyes rested on him, as he sat opposite to her, and she felt happy and proud. Now and then he looked at her, and an affectionate smile came to his lips. She was delighted with his slim handsomeness. There was a guileless look in his blue eyes which was infinitely attractive. His mouth was beautifully modelled. She took an immense pride in the candour of soul which shone with so clear a light on his face, and she was affected as a stranger might have been by the exquisite charm of manner which he had inherited ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... the riverside snugly smuggled inside the lining of a coat, or in a great circular pocket made for the purpose. It was such an one that, nigh on a hundred years ago, Mr. Scrope caught red-handed one day on his rented salmon water near Melrose. The man was a guileless creature from Selkirk, too innocent, it appeared, to be able to account for the salmon flies in the inside of his dilapidated hat, or for the 10 lb. salmon ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... I have seen her turn pale at a word, a gesture, on her part. I have seen her embrace Maud Gorka, and play tennis with that same friend so gayly, so innocently. I have seen that she could not bear the presence of Maitland in a room, and yet she asked the American to take her portrait.... Is she guileless?... Is she a hypocrite? Or is she tormented by doubt-divining, not divining-believing, not believing in-her mother? Is she underhand in any case, with her eyes the color of the sea? Has she the ambiguous ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... and spent a merry evening, all except poor Rose, who, ere she went back, had poured all her sorrows into Lady Grenville's ear. For the kind woman, knowing that she was motherless and guileless, carried her off into Mrs. St. Leger's chamber, and there entreated her to tell the truth, and heaped her with pity but with no comfort. For indeed, what comfort ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... of Rienzi, many of their happiest hours had been passed together, remote from the gaudy crowd, alone and unrestrained, in the summer nights, on the moonlit balconies, in that interchange of thought, sympathy, and consolation, which to two impassioned and guileless women makes the most interesting occupation and the most effectual solace. But of late, this intercourse had been much marred. From the morning in which the Barons had received their pardon, to that on which they had marched on Rome, had been one succession of fierce excitements. ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Southern armies. None were in uniform, but this proved nothing as to their being soldiers. One of them, a mere boy, was captured at his own door, with gun in hand. It was a fowling-piece, which he used only, as his mother plaintively assured me, "to shoot little birds with." As the guileless youth had for this purpose loaded the gun with eighteen buck-shot, we thought it justifiable to confiscate both the weapon and the owner, in mercy ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Dick; "I'll look as unconscious and guileless as a lamb;" and with that we passed down the companion ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the woods, and warbled in the liquid flowing of the brooks. In such a time and place, Adam and Eve might have begun the life of humanity on earth, and found in the loveliness and beauty of the world a fitting image of the tranquillity and tenderness that overflowed their guileless hearts. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... longer lit up with the red glow; they resound no longer with the shouts and splashing of the yeomen. You might almost as readily find a hart on Harthope, or a wild cat at Catslack, or a wolf at Wolf-Cleugh, as catch three stone-weight of trout in Meggat-water. {6} The days of guileless fish and fabulous draughts of trout are over. No sportsman need take three large baskets to the Gala now, as Lauder did, and actually filled them with thirty-six dozen of trout. The modern angler must not allow his expectations to be raised too highly by these ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... Liege into Holland, giving one thus the opportunity to see a great many troops and ruins along the way. I told him I had some money and would be glad to invest in such a trip, at the same time giving him my address at the Hotel Metropole. Guileless as he appeared, he turned out to be an agent of the German Government. He naturally wanted to make himself solid with his masters by delivering the goods, so he had twisted all my words into the most damning evidence, ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... that journeys o'er the wave, But not his heart, for that is now thy slave, And from thy side can never wrested be, Nor of its own accord return to me. Ah! could I with me o'er the treach'rous brine Take aught of that pure, guileless heart of thine, No doubt should I then feel of victory, Whereof the glory would belong to thee. But now, whatever fortune may befall, I've cast the die; and having told thee all, Abide thereby, and vow my constancy— Emblem of which, herein, a diamond see, By whose great firmness and ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... severity. Florent divined a reproach, a sort of condemnation in the bright oak, the polished lamp, and the new matting. He scarcely dared to eat for fear of letting crumbs fall on the floor or soiling his plate. There was a guileless simplicity about him which prevented him from seeing how the land really lay. He still praised Lisa's affectionate kindliness on all sides; and outwardly, indeed, she did continue to treat ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... And broken sighs and tears, Bhima's fair child, The ever-faithful wife, speaks thus again:— "By whomsoever's spell this harm hath fall'n On Nishadha's Lord, I pray that evil one May bear a bitterer plague than Nala doth! To him, whoever set my guileless Prince On these ill deeds, I pray some direr might May bring far darker days, and life to live More miserable still!" Thus, woe-begone, Mourned that great-hearted wife her vanished lord, Seeking him ever in the gloomy shades, By wild beasts haunted. Roaming everywhere, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... damp—by far! She little knew, Your guileless Aunt Lavinia, Those evenings when she slumbered through "The Prince of Abyssinia," That there were two beside her chair Who both had quite decided To see things in a rosier air Than ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... wards—putting them even only as vessels of her attempted earnestness—had violently broken away, but a remedy to this grief, for reasons too many to tell, dwelt in the possible duration, could it only not be arrested, of two other lives, one of these her own, the second the guileless Henry's. The single gentlewomen, to a remarkable number, whom she regarded and treated as nieces, though they were only daughters of cousins, were such objects of her tender solicitude that, she and Henry and ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... ye pervert the knowledge gained in the springtime of your guileless youth to the foul purpose of bringing desolation to the doors of those you once knew and respected! John! John! is the image of the maiden whom in her morning of beauty and simplicity I believe you did love, so faintly impressed, ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... they were passing the privet hedge which surrounded Miss Bassett's house and garden; and a sound caused both to glance around. The front door had just been opened; and a gentleman was descending the steps,—a young gentleman in neat clerical garb, his guileless ecclesiastical countenance suffused with mantling blushes of confusion and delight. He stopped on the gravel path to receive the last words of Miss Octavia Bassett, who stood on the threshold, smiling down upon him in the prettiest way ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to Bressant's undisguised manners that she forgot to be disturbed by this guileless compliment. Many hours afterward, when she was alone in her chamber, the words recurred to her, devoid of the version his manner had given them, and then they brought the blood gently ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... prosperity or health of the best. It is the "sel" in the German "Selig" and the "sil" in our "silly," which once represented in the best sense well-being of the innocent. So our old poets talk of "seely sheep;" but as the guileless are apt prey to the guileful, silliness came to mean what "blessed innocence" itself now stands for in the language of men who, poor fellows, are very much more foolish. So Selborne has a happy old pastoral name. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... the blade of battle Hoarded wealth may well enjoy, Guileless gotten this at least, Golden meed I fearless take; But if we for woman's quarrel, Warriors born to brandish sword, Glut the wolf with manly gore, Worse the lot of ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... she should see him again. Never concealing from any of us how dearly she loved him. She was truly as guileless as a child of ...
— Edna's Sacrifice and Other Stories - Edna's Sacrifice; Who Was the Thief?; The Ghost; The Two Brothers; and What He Left • Frances Henshaw Baden |
