"Naivete" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But, perhaps because of this very limitation, it is much more alert to the variety and life of the human substance with which it deals. It does not take the whole of life for granted and it often reveals the fresh naivete of childhood in its discovery of life. When its sophistication is complete, it is the sophistication of English rather than of American literature, and is derivative rather than original, for the most part, in its criticism ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to know what Religion really is, go into a Catholic church in a Catholic country under invasion. You only feel the tenderness, the naivete of Catholicism in peace-time. In war-time you realize ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... admit, however, that after these untoward incidents of the first minute, Miss Montague and her friends behaved throughout with distinguished propriety. Her manners were perfect—I may even say demure. She asked about "Cecil" with charming naivete. She was frank and girlish. Lots of innocent fun in her, no doubt—she sang us a comic song in excellent taste, which is a severe test—but not a suspicion of double-dealing. If I had not overheard those few words as I came up the ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... that Marivaux could prevail upon himself to draw a description or a reflection to an end, feeling, as he did, that there was always something left unsaid. His struggle with himself and his apology to the reader are sometimes quite amusing in their naivete. "Me voila au bout de ma reflexion," he says: "j'aurais pourtant grande envie d'y ajouter quelques mots pour la rendre complete: le voulez-vous bien? Oui, je vous en prie. Heureusement que mon defaut la-dessus n'a rien de nouveau ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... all that is perverse. She has the pure blue eyes of a child, eyes that are cloudless, that gleam with a wicked ingenuousness, that close in the utter abasement of weariness, that open wide in all the expressionlessness of surprise. Her naivete is perfect, and perfect, too, is that strange, subtle smile of comprehension that closes the period. A great impersonal artist, depending as she does entirely on her expressive power, her dramatic capabilities, her gift for being moved, for rendering the emotions of those in whom we do not ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... publish by subscription his first book, 'A Journey on Foot from Holm Canal to the East Point of Amager' a fantastic arabesque, partly plagiarized and partly parodied from the German romanticists, but with a naivete that ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... as its master—yes, monseigneur, you are full of prudence and wisdom. Let us conceal the corruptions of the world from this innocent child, let us remove from her everything that can destroy her primitive naivete; this is why we choose this dwelling for her—a moral sanctuary, where the priestesses of virtue, and doubtless always under pretext of their ingenuousness, take the most ingenuous ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... could not fail to interest. The more he pondered upon his acquaintance with Jonathan Tinker, the more fascinating the erring mariner became, in his complex truth and falsehood, his delicately blended shades of artifice and naivete. He must, it was felt, have believed to a certain point in his own inventions: nay, starting with that groundwork of truth,—the fact that his wife was really dead, and that he had not seen his family for two years,—why should he not place implicit faith in all the fictions ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... "and what has happened to me? The woman on whose bosom my child rested is the most abandoned of creatures. I loved her just as if she belonged to another world—a world of innocence. And now I am satisfied that she was the go-between, and that her naivete was a mere mask concealing an unparalleled hypocrite. I imagined that truth and purity still dwelt in the simple rustic world—but everything is perverted and corrupt. The world of simplicity is base; aye, far worse than that ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... course the lives of all the saints are not history in the strictest sense of the word. But what has that to do with the Communion of Saints? If simplicity and naivete have woven around some names an unlikely tale, a fable or a myth, it requires some effort to see how that could affect their standing with God, or their disposition to help us ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... measured, reserved, gentle, even respectful; and from his low and honeyed tongue, came piercing remarks, overwhelming by their justice, their force, or their satire, composed of two or three words, perhaps, and sometimes uttered with an air of naivete or of distraction, as though he was not thinking of what he said. Thus he was feared, without exception, by everybody, and with many acquaintances he had few or no friends, although he merited them ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Karr, Wolff, Pixis, and Clara Wieck—and all Germans, generally speaking. Schmucke was a great musical composer doomed to remain a music master, so utterly did his character lack the audacity which a musical genius needs if he is to push his way to the front. A German's naivete does not invariably last him through his life; in some cases it fails after a certain age; and even as a cultivator of the soil brings water from afar by means of irrigation channels, so, from the springs of his youth, does the Teuton draw the simplicity which disarms suspicion—the ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... manner it was not Mallare who became insane. It was his point of view that went mad. Although there are passages in the Journal that escape coherence, the greater part of the entries are simple almost to naivete. They reveal an intellect able to adjust itself without complex uprootings to the phenomena engaging its energies. The first concrete evidence of the loathing for life that was to result in its own annihilation appears in a passage ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... vivid, bold, and true, So fervent Boswell gives him to our view: In every trait we see his mind expand; The master rises by the pupil's hand; We love the writer, praise his happy vein, Grac'd with the naivete of the sage Montaigne. Hence not alone are brighter parts display'd, But e'en the specks of character pourtray'd: We see the Rambler with fastidious smile Mark the lone tree, and note the heath-clad isle; But when th' heroick tale of Flora's[786] charms, Deck'd in a kilt, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... pleasure of the people is, I believe, in such plays, where very complete observation of certain phases of American life and very real pictures of manners are combined with comedy almost childlike in its naivete. The sovereignty of the young girl which is such a marked feature in social life ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... see him come out of his queer scrape so triumphantly. The Colonel bowed and smiled with very pleasant good-nature at our plaudits. It was like Dr. Primrose preaching his sermon in the prison. There was something touching in the naivete and kindness of the placid and ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fine works may crop up, but they will be accidents, and will not affect the general tendency of the exhibitions nor the direction in which the Academy is striving to lead English art. Under the guidanceship of the Academy English art has lost all that charming naivete and simplicity which was so long its distinguishing mark. At an Academy banquet, anything but the most genial optimism would be out of place, and yet Sir Frederick Leighton could not but allude ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... conscientious defenders, chosen from Republican jurists, two of whom were then in San Luis to do what they might before Juarez. The other two spent eloquence and acumen on the court's seven tawny brows. Their first point came from Maximilian himself. It was complacent, this point. The naivete of it was superb. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... generally refreshing. His family accepts the situation with perfect naivete. I am welcomed as Doro's chum with all the good-will in ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... lady had the grace of one born to the instrument. As she took the sticks in her hands and struck a chord upon the outstretched strings, her face assumed a new expression; so far, we must confess, there had been much "naivete" in it, now she felt at home; this ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... glanced at me eagerly. His naivete was not of ignorance of men and their motives. He had confessed royalty, cannibals, pirates, and nuns. The souls of men were naked under his scrutiny. But his faith burned like a lambent flame, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... at her naivete, and Wolsey's lips wore a smile, as he plucked the king by the sleeve and took him over to the window, ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... evening, when the reverend gentleman occupied a seat near mine, I asked, with as much naivete as I could command, if he had "worked" the plumbers, the architects, the masons, the carpenters, and the bell-founders? To each of these questions he returned a ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... her tall brother, and her manner and air had something very distinguished. The first time Guy saw her, he was strongly reminded both of Philip and of Mrs. Edmonstone, but not pleasingly. She seemed to be her aunt, without the softness and motherly affection, coupled with the touch of naivete that gave Mrs. Edmonstone her freshness, and loveableness; and her likeness to her brother included that decided, self-reliant air, which became him well enough, but which did not sit as ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... storm sleeps and the winds are still, the currents set in one direction, and we may sail from isle to isle over a sunny sea, dallying with the time, secure of a cloudless sky and of the greetings of innocence and love wheresoever the breeze may waft us. There is in truth a holy purity, an innocent naivete, a childlike grace and simplicity, a freshness, a fearlessness, an utter freedom from affectation, a yearning after all things truthful, lovely and of good report, in the productions of this early time, which invest ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... but I am a daughter and sister first, patriot later. In a fit of meaningless bravado, tempered perhaps by some compulsion from over the border, my old father and brothers had joined a rebel commando. You, with a naivete which I had hardly expected in you, and for which I liked you, told me the objective of your column—information which meant everything to me, and perhaps to you, for you looked as if you would have liked to have bitten your tongue out after you ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... of all speculation—simply as speculation—reaches its acme in the Essay on Bacon. The curious naivete with which Macaulay denounces all philosophy in that vigorous production excites a kind of perverse admiration. How can one refuse to admire the audacity which enables a man explicitly to identify philosophy ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... enterprise. She saw nothing beyond the even gravel road-bed, the uninteresting trestles and bridges and cuts and fills, the like of which she had seen many times before, and her comment was childlike. O'Neil, however, appeared to find her naivete charming, and ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... the reign of Elizabeth, most of them now only remembered because they were reprinted in the collections of Hakluyt and Purchas, this book of Raleigh's takes easily the foremost position. In comparison with the bluff and dull narratives of the other discoverers, whose chief charm is their naivete, the Discovery of Guiana has all the grace and fullness of deliberate composition, of fine literary art, and as it was the first excellent piece of sustained travellers' prose, so it remained long without a second in ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... house with newspapers, and she never looked at them, never had the idea of looking at them, unless occasionally at the 'Signal' for an account of a wedding or a bazaar. In which case she would glance at the world for an instant with mild naivete, shocked by the horrible things that were apparently going on there, and in five minutes would forget all about it again. Here the whole of England, Ireland, and Scotland was at its front doors that night waiting for newsboys, and to her the night was like ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... proprieties, and the flat commonplaces, nearly all hypocritical in their origin, became very funny, very engaging, when they were uttered in Lena's soft voice, with her caressing intonation and arch naivete. Nothing could be more diverting than to hear Lena, who was almost as candid as Nature, call a leg a 'limb' or a house ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... seemed beyond Lily's perfect comprehension. She paused before she answered, with the naivete of a ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... result that the next moment two well- aimed bullets sang past his ears. Taking the hint, Borrow put spurs to his mule, and, followed by the terrified guide, soon outdistanced these official banditti. With great naivete he remarks, "Oh, may I live to see the day when soldiery will no longer be tolerated in any civilised, or at ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... I said, before, that you should have a history of these people by Dickens or Theodore Hook, but there is little need of professed wags;—do not the men write their own tale with an admirable Sancho-like gravity and naivete, which one could not desire improved? How good is that touch of sly indignation about the LITTLE CATAFALQUES! how rich the contrast presented by the economy of the Catholics to the splendid disregard of expense exhibited ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... who describes them—a petulant, humorous, easily angered, happy, observant, ignorant, poor gentleman—that Browning entirely disappears. The poem retains for us in its verse, and indeed in its light rhythm, the childlikeness, the naivete, the simple pleasures, the ignorance and the honest boredom with the solitudes of Nature—of a whole class of Italians, not only of the time when it was written, but of the present day. It is a delightful, inventive piece of ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... day be ascertained without discovering his engine-turned repeater, and hearing its fascinating music: then the fanciful chain, the precious stones in golden robes, and last of all, the family pride described in true heraldic taste and naivete. Of Peter ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... in fierce stammering; while Louis deliberately continued a viva voce self-examination, with his own quaint naivete, betraying emotion only by the burning colour of cheek ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... while it seemed as if a brave prospect of happiness was in store for the young queen. Her love for her husband, her delight in his affection, her pride in his accomplishments, together with her simplicity, innocence, and naivete, completely won his heart. These claims to his affection were, moreover, strengthened by the charms of her person. Lord Chesterfield, a man whom experience of the sex had made critical, writes that she "was exactly shaped, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... would have been strange indeed if he had not been proud of the most humorous creation in all fiction. He was proud, too, of the popularity and success of the book, and beyond measure delightful is the naivete with which he shows his pride in a dozen passages in the Second Part. But it was not the success he coveted. In all probability he would have given all the success of "Don Quixote," nay, would have seen every copy of "Don Quixote" burned in the Plaza ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... by spiritual encouragement, were done with a beautiful naivete. Such a life was all the more meritorious because the abbe was possessed of an erudition that was vast and varied, and of great and precious faculties. Delicacy and grace, the inseparable accompaniments of simplicity, lent charm to an elocution that was ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... a definite character which impresses its force upon everybody; beautiful in her old age, disdaining that servile conformity to prevailing fashion which makes many old people at once ugly and contemptible: speaking English with a slight, old- fashioned, refined Scotch accent, which gives naivete to everything she says, up to the latest novelty in theology and politics: devoted to her children and grandchildren, the life of the family, and though upwards of seventy, the first to rise, and the last ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... that you might be prepared," Pyotr Stepanovitch said hurriedly, with surprising naivete, running up to the table, and instantly staring at the corner of the letter, which peeped ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... by the delicate naivete and sparkling espieglerie, interchanged with true love pathos, of her duet with Belletti, from Rossini's I Turchi in Italia, the music being in the same voice with that of his 'Barber of Seville.' The distinct rapidity, without hurry, of many passages, was remarkable in both performers. ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... Moving Fortress. It didn't bore her to listen, because she didn't have to answer; she had only to look at him and smile, and nod her head at him now and then as a sign of enthusiasm. She liked looking at him; she liked his young naivete and monomania; she liked his face and all his gestures, and the poise and movement of his ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... prepared to do a friend a service, devoted to his wife and her relations, and anxious to deal justly and honourably with all men. We have called him vain, and vain he undoubtedly was to an extraordinary degree. But Pliny's vanity is never offensive. The very naivete with which he acknowledges his failing disarms all criticism and merely renders it amusing. Indeed, it is doubtful whether he would have admitted that it was a failing at all, inasmuch as it was his love of ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... medieval naivete and superstition, in assuming a freer attitude towards theological authority, and in developing a new conception of the value of individual personality, men looked to the guidance of Greek and Roman thinkers, and called ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... this vast and unruly body. Since the opening of this session, all that he has said and done has proved his utter unfitness for the place he occupies. First, his imprudent answers to O'Connell, and the turn he gave to that affair. Then, in bringing forward his financial statement, the naivete with which he admitted that he had submitted to the clamour against the House Tax, and withdrawn it contrary to his own judgment; then the facility with which he gave in to O'Connell's motion about the Irish Judge, and threw over his colleagues and his party without an ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... you are mistaken," said Jane, with perfect naivete. "I was at two or three small parties, you know, in New York, while I was staying with Mrs. Stanley, this spring; well, I missed more than half the quadrilles, while those fat Miss Grants, and ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... found in germ there. The Roman calendar of festivals has its origin in the regularly recurring rites of the earliest Latin husbandman. As the city grew, these old agricultural festivities lost of course much of their native simplicity and naivete; some of them survived merely as religious or priestly performances, some became degraded into licentious enjoyment; but the music and dancing, the gay dresses, the racing, the mumming or acting, are all to be found ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... Montaigne, with honest naivete, compares his writings to a thread that binds the flowers of others; and that, by incessantly pouring the waters of a few good old authors into his sieve, some drops fall upon his paper. The good old man elsewhere acquaints us with a certain ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... were present in sufficient numbers to animate the front steps of the Main Building with constantly gathering and dissolving little groups. These called out greetings to each other, and exchanged dolorous mutual condolences on their hard fate; all showing, with a helpless masculine naivete, their consciousness of the lovely, observant figure in the carriage below them. Of a different sort were the professors' wives, who occasionally drifted past on the path. Aunt Victoria might have been a blue-uniformed messenger-boy for all that was betrayed ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... with the greatest naivete, so that her absolute faith in herself, her genius, and her mission, did not astonish him. The words seemed to ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... up in Mendocino," returned the stranger, with sublime naivete. "Got a mill there. You see, sightin' standin' timber and selectin' from the gen'ral show of the trees in the ground and the lay of roots hez sorter made me take notice." He paused. "Then," he added, somewhat despondingly, "you don't ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... his young brother Carl preferred to himself. Not only was Carl the darling of his parents, but he was the pet and plaything of the whole palace. True, the poor little archduke was not gifted with the grace and charming naivete of his brother. He was awkward, serious, and his countenance wore an expression of discontent, which was thought to betray an evil disposition, but which, in reality, was but the reflection of the heavy sorrow which clouded his young heart. No one seemed to understand—no ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... to gather into his arms and devour with kisses this sweet specimen of womanly tenderness, frank inconsistency, naivete, ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... following extract from a letter to the London and China Express, of 5th July 1875, part of which we have ventured to reproduce in italics, surpasses, both in fiction and naivete, anything it has ever been our lot to read on either side of this much-vexed question:—"The fact is, that this tremendous evil is utterly beyond the control of politicians, or even philanthropists. Nothing ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... can by means of light and shade, but is peremptorily forbidden to use actual solidities on a plane surface. He must represent gold by colour, not by sticking gold on his fIgures. [This was done with naivete by the early painters, and is really very effective in the pictures of Gentile da Fabriano—that Paul Veronese of the fifteenth century—as the reader will confess if he has seen the "Adoration of the Magi," in the Florence ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... Viola, and though he is careful to refer to her as his wife, the book reminded people that they were said to have travelled together before they were married. Her figure moves through the grey Flemish cities and the grey Flemish landscape with an adorable innocence and naivete, a trifle slenderer and tenderer than the Viola I remember, who always had for me an air of energy and obstinacy and defiance, but for Jevons, perhaps, not more slender or more tender than the Viola he knew. You ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... given up; but the Carnival, though waning, still recalled ancient Venice, and rejoiced his heart. Familiar with the Italian language, he took pleasure in studying, also, the Venetian dialect, the naivete and softness of which charmed him, especially on woman's lips. Stretched in his gondola, he loved to court the breezes of the Adriatic, especially at twilight and moonlit hours, unrivalled for their splendor in Venice. In summer and autumn he delighted to give the rein ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... ready to talk, he questioned her about her tastes. She admitted, with pretty naivete, that she had hopes of social success and glory, and that she desired to have fine horses, which she knew almost as well as a horse-dealer, for a part of the farm at Roncieres was devoted to breeding; but she appeared to trouble her head no more about a fiance than ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... most reckless dreamers are fulfilled, that England is crowded out of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, and is involved in a long-lasting war with the native Indians. An impossibly large dose of political naivete is needed in order to make us believe that England would take this loss quietly ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Church or the reputation of a saint—in general, by its relationship to matters of faith. Thus it happens that the chronicles of the monks and the lives of the saints, charming and interesting as they are in their naivete, their simplicity, their trustful credulity, and their pictures of a life and an attitude of mind so remote from ours, are filled with incidents given as facts that test the greatest faith, strain the most vivid imagination, and shock that innate respect for ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... His naivete and confidence set her once more in a state between indulgent amusement and anger. Another man she would have laughed at straight in the face, but this simple belief in her goodness threw her out of her usual stride, and in the end ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... had been but a week before. Preciosa McNulty had communicated her novel impressions to his daughters, who, in turn, had commented on Preciosa's naivete in their father's hearing; then Roscoe Orlando, who had never hurt himself by overwork and who was developing a growing willingness to leave his maps and his plats and his subdivisions a little earlier in the afternoon, ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... moment astonished at the audacious naivete of that language. He thought best, however, to ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... educated and sceptical Athenian, as to the critical scholar of modern times, the physical resurrection of Jesus from the grave, and his ascent through the vaulted floor of heaven, might seem foolishness or naivete. But to the average Greek or Roman the conception presented no serious difficulty. The cosmical theories upon which the conception was founded were essentially the same among Jews and Gentiles, and indeed were but little modified until the establishment ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... replying to this naivete, "go over to Gaubertin's to-morrow morning. Tell him that my fellow-mayor and I" (striking Soudry on the thigh) "will break bread with him at breakfast somewhere about midday. Tell him everything, so that we may all have thought it over before we meet, for now's the time to make an ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... at it," she confessed, with a naivete he could not but question, for he thought he saw a ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... murmured, and her naivete brought the ready tears to his eyes. They made a rendezvous for the next morning on the Promenade Platz. The only thing he did not like was the scowling face of the dancer when he said good night to the others under the electric lights ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Every man was bound to marry, after the exile, and could be compelled to do so, and to beget at least one son and one daughter. By direct inference sterility made marriage void. It had failed of its purpose. It was the naivete of this notion of marriage which led to the provision of witnesses for the consummation of the marriage. Marriage meant carnal union under prescribed conditions, and nothing else. In Deut. xxii. 28 f. the rule is laid down that a man who violated a maid must remain her husband. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... I should warn the young artist against the imitation of "naivete" and so-called "quaintness;" especially in our designs for Church embroidery as it is hardly a noble quality in art, though we look on it with a tender pity, half-way between admiration and contempt, when we find it inevitably in mediaeval work; struggling to overcome the ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... of the church. Put his religion is altogether conventional. He thanks God for material blessings, prays for their continuance, and as the conclusion of everything, in compensation for a formally orthodox life, or rather creed, expects when he dies to be admitted to Heaven. The simple naivete with which he expresses this skin-deep and primitive faith is, indeed, one of the chief sources of ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... The naivete of this last question brings up insistently a perplexing problem. If the poet despises his readers, why does he write? He may perhaps evade this ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... he praised with enthusiasm the waters, the bananas, and the dairy-produce of the district. The sight of our instruments, our books, and our dried plants, drew from him a sarcastic smile; and he acknowledged, with the naivete peculiar to the inhabitants of those countries, that of all the enjoyments of life, without excepting sleep, none was comparable to the pleasure of eating good beef (carne de vaca): thus does sensuality obtain an ascendancy, where there is no ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... expressed contempt, one by one fell away. Vivian and the Baroness were left alone, and conversed much together. The lady displayed, on every subject, engaging ignorance, and requested information on obvious topics with artless naivete Vivian was convinced that her ignorance was not affected, and equally sure that it could not arise from imbecility of intellect; for while she surprised him by her crude questions, and her want of acquaintance with all those topics which generally ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... traffic obstructs the outer currents. Boys especially are often dumb-bound, monophrastic, inarticulate, and semi-aphasic save in their own vigorous and inelegant way. Nature prompts to a modest reticence for which the deflowerers of all ephebic naivete should have some respect. Deep interests arise which are almost as sacred as is the hour of visitation of the Holy Ghost to the religious teacher. The mind at times grows in leaps and bounds in a way that seems to defy the great enemy, fatigue; and yet when the teacher grows a little tiresome ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... twitted them with the obvious fact, that they gave no protection under their bill by day, although it was notorious that almost all the assassinations were then perpetrated. Mr Sidney Herbert is reported, with great naivete, and innocently enough, to have offered the following reasons for the omission:—"He could show from proofs before him, that the murders which were committed in broad day were, generally speaking, murders perpetrated against persons ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... impossible to judge where the naivete of the British Secretary of State ends and cynicism begins, for Sazonof could not have told to him more plainly than in these lines that all Russia's ostensible readiness for peace served no other purpose than to win time ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... was a member and whither he asked Aladdin to supper. Fishes and lobsters and clams were the staple articles of Boat Club suppers, and over savory messes of these, helped down with much whisky and water, Aladdin and Beau Larch made the evening spin. Aladdin, talking eagerly and with the naivete of a child, wondered why he had never liked this man so much before. And Larch told the somewhat abject story of his life three times with an ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... into exertion. After swallowing a glass of warm wine, well sugared, and spiced with tincture of cinnamon, he licked his lips, sucked the edges of his glass, and said: 'Thank ye, doctor; but for you I should have been dead,' with a naivete which I can never forget, and which even now mingles pleasing associations with the thoughts of those days ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... scene—the red robbers becoming white ones—to all of which he was witness. After that the card-playing by the camp fire, during which the chief came to his tent, and did what he could to draw him. In this part of his narration, the mulatto with modest naivete, hints of his own adroitness; how he threw his inquisitor off the scent, and became at length disembarrassed of him. He is even more reticent about an incident, soon after succeeding, but referred to it at an early ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... what can you expect?" Meredith cried, when she had expressed her views with naivete. Which was all very flattering and calculated to spoil her thoroughly, but Meredith was in a mood to spoil her ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... worldliness of her mentality amused while it sometimes astonished him. This comparatively ignorant girl of eighteen had no hesitation in guiding the man of more mature years, and succeeded through her naivete rather than by force of character. The weakest of women can dominate the ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... with which Moore gives himself up to be manipulated by Lord Byron, the naivete with which he shows all the process, let us a little into the secret of the marvellous powers of charming and blinding which this great ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... charming in their naivete, they are unspoiled and unreflecting. They are children, and lacking in well-defined personality. They have no knowledge of anything beyond the customs and superstitions of the simple folk about them. Their religion, which is so continually ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... pictures before. Here they are presented differently than in America. Some of the plays I've seen have the naivete and simplicity of a confession. Others interpret abnormal, psychopathic characters whose feelings and thoughts are expressed by the actors with a fine and vivid realism. There is the exultation of life, and the despair, ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... Jack regarded the models, the draperies, and the studies on the walls. Certain it was that he was much more at his ease in the parlor, and when he and Sophy were once more alone at their meal, although he ate nothing, he had regained all his old naivete. Presently he leaned forward and placed his hand fraternally on her arm. Sophy looked up with ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... heard of the good woman who was showing some friends about her new home. The bathtub was an object of special pride. "Why," she exclaimed, in a glow of enthusiasm, "it's so nice that we can scarcely wait till Saturday night." We may laugh at her naivete, but there is a good deal more of the "waiting for Saturday night" proposition than is good for—some of our neighbors. And, on the other hand, there is more of the heroic sort of bathing by faithful devotees of cleanliness ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... it was likely to be, and held him upright, with the seeming merriment in my eyes which I did not allow to stray from his. He thought I was mad, then he thought he was—then I recalled him to the dangers and exigencies of the moment by saying, with forced naivete: ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... prejudices of his times as well as to fall in with their ways of thought and sentiment; and though it is the "Prioress" who tells a story against the Jews which passes the legend of Hugh of Lincoln, yet it would be very hazardous to seek any irony in this legend of bigotry. In general, much of that naivete which to modern readers seems Chaucer's most obvious literary quality must be ascribed to the times in which he lived and wrote. This quality is in truth by no means that which most deeply impresses itself upon the observation of any one able to compare Chaucer's writings with ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... writer to enter the rehearsal once during one of the movements. He was expecting something by Tschaikowsky or Richard Strauss. As he listened, the simplicity and naivete of the ideas suggested Mozart; but presently there was an earnestness foreign to Mozart, and Beethoven was recalled. Just then the counterpoint took a turn which was plainly not Beethoven, but surely the work of some late master, and the question was, Who could have done ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... With perfect naivete, or with perfect simulation of it, she looked him in the face, and it was Mumford who had to avert his eyes. The ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... attained a distinguished success almost everywhere; but the themes of the first and last movement are not sufficient for the treatment they receive. This work has been more successful in Europe than in this country. Perhaps the most notable quality of Dr. Dvorak's personality is his naivete, which shows well in his music. He is quite like a modern Haydn, who has learned and remembered everything of musical coloration which has been discovered, but who applies his knowledge in a simple and direct manner ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... where Miss MARIE LOeHR (looking rather like a nice Dutch doll) delivered the blunt gaucheries of Remnant with a delightfully stolid naivete, the design of the play and its simple little devices might almost have been the work of amateurs. The sordid quarrels between Tony and his preposterous mistress (whom I took to be a model, till I found that he was only an artist in steam locomotives) were extraordinarily lacking in subtlety. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... her mind was of a new motive for coming to a better, closer understanding with Paul about the fundamentals of their life. It had not occurred to her before, in spite of all her struggles "to be good," as she put it to herself with her childlike naivete, that Paul might be needing her as much as she needed him! Spurred on by this new reason for breaking through the impalpable wall that separated their inner lives, she resolved that she would no longer let herself be dominated by the inconsequent multiplicity of the trifling incidents ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... death, &c. He was a thoughtful man and unquestionably sensitive; but all that he said had the stamp of oriental thought, systematically arranged in advance and quite perfectly expressed at the moment, free from the immediate naivete of elementary knowledge. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... reader reflect on the astounding ignorance of the world, and especially of the world of industry, which is betrayed with so much naivete by this socialist of the Christian pulpit. He knows so little of the commonest facts of history that he looks upon steel as a ready-made product of nature, and all the mills of the steel trust as merely a means of monopolising knives, bridges, rails, ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... but it comes out with delicious naivete in the working classes. Now, educated people like to read of scenes that are familiar to them, though I grant you that the picture must be idealised if you're to appeal to more than one in a thousand. The working classes detest anything that tries to represent their daily life. It isn't because ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... to be one of his mental and eternal friends, or rather friendships—since she existed in abstractu as far as he was concerned. For she did not find him at all physically moving. Physically he was not there: he was oddly an absentee. But his naivete roused the serpent's ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... the few grains of characteristic fact which I could find among Dietrich's lengthy professional reflections; but the chapter on which this scene is founded is remarkable enough to be given whole, and as I have a long-standing friendship for the good old monk, who is full of honest naivete and deep-hearted sympathy, and have no wish to disgust all my readers with him, I shall give it for the most part untranslated. In the meantime those who may be shocked at certain expressions in this poem, borrowed from the Romish devotional school, may ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... then to talking of many things, as they rode toward Poetical, but inevitably they spoke chiefly of the great State of Missouri. On the subject of Missouri the boy talked, as old Bernique had talked, with expansive naivete. In his roamings he had ridden the State up and down, and had found much to love in it. "You'll like her, too, all righty," he told Bruce confidently, "whend you git broke to her." On one of youth's candid impulses to speak ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... feel, if not look, something older. At the porch we were met by Maude, her slight girlish figure rounded into the perfection of womanhood, the rich bloom of her cheek not quite as deep perhaps; but the sweet blue eyes met mine with all the old frankness, the charming naivete that had rendered her so much a favorite ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... act," she said, as the curtain fell on Peter Pan's flight through the window with the Darling Children—"that delicious first act! Of course Barrie can't keep it up—no one could. But the humor of it and the tenderness and the naivete! Only a grown-up with the heart of a ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... the Book, craftsmen as obscure as many a great artist of those times appropriated paper to the uses of typography. In the fifteenth century, that naive and vigorous age, names were given to the various formats as well as to the different sizes of type, names that bear the impress of the naivete of the times; and the various sheets came to be known by the different watermarks on their centres; the grapes, the figure of our Saviour, the crown, the shield, or the flower-pot, just as at a later day, the eagle of Napoleon's time gave the name to the "double-eagle" ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... woman's birthright of love and devotion, but is not quite sure how far it might be affected by her ability to detect a solecism. Hence, she offers a great deal of subtle flattery to masculine self-love. With curious naivete she says: ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... is intriguing in its very naivete, and now as she stood before me, slim and graceful in her well-cut walking costume, a quick flicker of red flaming in her cheeks and her eyes alight with that sweet tantalizing look in which expectation and ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... other. And then she adverted, with a blush, to the extreme recency of this date. To wed immediately would be improper—would be indecorous—would be outre. All this she said with a charming air of naivete which enraptured while it grieved and convinced me. She went even so far as to accuse me, laughingly, of rashness—of imprudence. She bade me remember that I really even know not who she was—what were her prospects, her connections, her standing in society. She begged ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... you told him that," Morton replied primly, albeit he was hard put to it to prevent himself from chuckling aloud over the naivete of this indiscreet ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... of virtue, told him that now especially it would be essential not to break off his relations with England, and that this gave him a splendid chance of strengthening them. Afterwards he explained this with a naivete which often causes his writings, especially where he tries to suppress or cloak matters, ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... purport and music are taken from the sacred rituals of the Omaha, the Osage and the Pawnee tribes. The richness and beauty of symbolism in the original language suffer a loss of native naivete in ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... had been written by Burns or by a Greek lyrist. I do not think that it would be possible to find anywhere in the English language more pure and fresh delight in the sights and sounds of rural nature expressed with such apparent naivete. And all the time the mind's eye is kept so closely, so distinctly, on the object that the result is often the sublimity of art as defined by Longinus, the selection and combination of exactly those ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... loved him dearly, but papa sent him away. Then there was Dick, the groom; but he laughed at me, and I suffered misery!" and she struck a tragic French attitude. "There is to be company here to-morrow," she added, rattling on with childish naivete, "and papa's sweetheart— Blanche Marabout—is to be here. You know they say she is to be ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... an air of naivete that seemed perfectly natural to her, "you women do not love as passionately ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... long time, as political incidents or accidents go. But Washington hasn't forgotten. When I was down there last winter the five-o'clock-tea people were still recalling Mrs. Blount's gowns and the wild-Western naivete ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... one last step remained to be taken—it was necessary to burn all the incriminating evidence. On the 21st December, the last circular telegram in connection with this extraordinary business was dispatched from Peking, a delightful naivete being displayed regarding the possibility of certain letters and telegrams having transgressed the bounds of the law. All such delinquencies are to be mercifully wiped out by the simple and admirable method of invoking the help of the kitchen-fires. And in this appropriate way does ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... or inability to see her mother in robes of sin irritated Kirkwood. For Phil to call her an amusing person was sheer childish naivete. Phil was the victim of an infatuation which he could understand now that his wife began to live again in his imagination. He had read in books that the maternal instinct will assert itself after long separations, ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... public spirit. A characteristic incident is that in which he records his genuine shame that the Navy Board had not lent any money towards the expenses caused by the Fire and the Dutch War. But when the loan is resolved upon, he tells us, with delicious naivete, how he rushes in to begin the list, lest some of his fellows should head it with a larger sum, which he would have to equal if he came after them. He hates gambling,—it was perhaps the one vice which never tempted him,—and he records, ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... Fred inquired, but as he glanced in seeming naivete at his companion, something he saw in the latter's eye warned him, and suddenly Fred thought it would be ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... due to her face, which had an expression of naive sophistication, or of sophisticated naivete, not at all likely to mislead the mature; nor to her carriage, which, though slightly self-conscious, was modest enough, and not a bit too demure. It was due to her dress, which, after all, was not quite ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... fleur-de-lis of so large a pattern as not to interfere with the details thrown against it. Scenes are divided by slender Gothic columns, and other architectural features are tessellated floors and a sketchy sort of brick-work that appears wherever a limit-line is needed. It is the charming naivete of its drawing that delights. Border there is none, but its lack is never felt, for the pictures are of such interest that the eye needs no barrier to keep it from wandering. Whatever border is found is a varying structure of architecture and of lettering and of the happy flowers of Gothic times ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... evangelical, lurid view of what the girl he loved would find herself in for. She could see this now—she could see it from his present bewilderment and mystification, and she liked him and pitied him, with the kindest smile, for the original naivete as well as for the actual meekness. No wonder he hadn't known what she was in for, since he now didn't even know what he was in for himself. Were there not moments when he thought his companions almost unnaturally good, ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... had bound it so long. So, too, it seems to us, despite all the rhythmical innovations of our time. The personality that could beat out exuberantly music as rhythmically various and terse and free must indeed have possessed a primitive naivete and vitality and spontaneity of impulse. What manifestation of unbridled will in that freedom of expression! Berlioz must have been blood-brother to the savage, the elemental creature who out of the ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... existed in the girl's soul. Mother and daughter had never been parted; thus Cecile had, what is more rare in young girls than is generally supposed, a purity of thought, a freshness of heart, and a naivete of nature, real, complete, ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... his Intellect-Depth and Naivete of his Faith-His Goodness, Extreme Modesty, and Love of Truth-Attitude in Regard to his Masters-His Correspondents and ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... development are generally spontaneous, profuse, and unrestrained. There is an absence of shyness, of any sense of shame, of the feeling of self-consciousness. The children have as yet no notion of the meaning of sex. Their naivete in this regard has not been destroyed by the social suggestion that such actions are wrong and vulgar. They are natively happy and free in their ignorance. The individual differences among children are as great in their experiencing and manifesting this emotion as they are in any other ...
— A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes • Sanford Bell
... for him without any reason, she seemed to delight in making him suffer, she needed him for a plaything. She spoke of Monteverde and their love with quiet cynicism, as if the doctor were her husband. She had to confide the secrets of her life to some one, with that imperious naivete that forces the guilty to confess. Little by little she let the master into the secret of her passion, telling him unblushingly of the most intimate details of their meetings, which were often in her own ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of humor shone in the Northman's face. He spoke to his companion, who made answer; then he replied with the naivete ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... token, did not escape the attention of the interviewer. Her appealing charm of face and figure was accentuated by her daintiness and a fleeting suggestion of naivete in poise and expression when she was amused. His first glance revealed to Haines that her eyes were gray, the gray that people say indicates the possessor to have those priceless qualities—the qualities that make the sweetest women true, that make the maiden's ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... greeted her with cordiality, responded to her advances, talked to her with the tolerant and humorous shrewdness that lurked in their dim eyes, but it was always one at a time. If, with disarming naivete, she appealed to Stephen, Reuben turned into a graven image; and if she chaffed with Reuben, Stephen became as one who having eyes seeth not, and having ears heareth not. But she persisted with a zeal which, if not according to knowledge, was the result of a firm belief in the possibility ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... in municipal documents is their naivete—that unavoidable and unconscious self-revelation which is much of the great charm and value of all autobiographies. By the way, do statisticians really understand municipal documents, or do they think them valuable simply because they are ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... laugh. Particularly when he realized that this girl could break the arm of any spaceport thug in the galaxy. She was a strange mixture of naivete and strength, unlike anyone he had ever met before. Once again he realized that he had to visit the planet that produced ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... it made you think of me, whom you never saw, to see another woman's profile," she retorted, with the faintest touch of asperity in her childlike voice. "But," she added, more gently and with a relapse into her adorable naivete, "most people's profiles ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... woman's warm and delicate sympathy and with the clear vision of childhood. "Selma Lagerloef," declared the Swedish critic, Oscar Levertin, "has the eyes of a child and the heart of a child." This naivete is responsible for the simplicity of her character types. Deep and sure they may be, but never too complex for the reader to comprehend. The more varied characters—as the critic Johan Mortensen has ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... purpose, her lips calm and scarlet, her eyes bright and hopeful. In fact, Joan had made her plans. She would wait till spring, partly to get back her full strength, partly to make further progress in her studies, but mostly in order not to hurt this hospitable Prosper Gael. The naivete of her gratitude, of her delicate consideration for his feelings, which continually triumphed over an instinctive fear, would have filled him with amusement, perhaps with compunction, had he been capable of understanding them. She was truly sorry that she had hurt him by running away. She told ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... you know them! But it is that, Mr. Howard, which has interested me in your favor—you have so much naivete, and ignorance of the moral turpitude of the old world, that I feel convinced you never could be guilty ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... to study Roman Law under Niebuhr and Schlegel at Bonn. 'Our dear child,' writes Mrs. Austin to Mrs. Grote, 'is a great joy to us. She grows wonderfully, and is the happiest thing in the world. Her German is very pretty; she interprets for her father with great joy and naivete. God forbid that I should bring up a daughter here! But at her present age I am most glad to have her here, and to send her to a school where she learns—well, writing, arithmetic, geography, and, as a matter ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... comic papers; if they were left with no other assistance than this, absolutely free to please themselves, and could be persuaded not to try and please any one else, I believe that in fifty years we should have all that was ever done repeated with fresh naivete, and as much more delightfully than even by the best old masters, as these are more delightful than anything we know of in classic painting. The young plants keep growing up abundantly every day—look at Bastianini, dead not ten years since—but they are browsed ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... downstairs was not asleep, she could hear him coughing. He is a queer, naive man, thought Nadya, and in all his dreams, in all those marvellous gardens and wonderful fountains one felt there was something absurd. But for some reason in his naivete, in this very absurdity there was something so beautiful that as soon as she thought of the possibility of going to the university, it sent a cold thrill through her heart and her bosom and flooded them with joy ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... I pondered several minutes on the novelty and boyish naivete of the whole proceeding, and found myself a good deal refreshed by the sincerity of the two young fellows and their fine confidence in the perfectibility of the future. It seemed to me, the more I thought of it, that I could hold on to this scheme of theirs as a help to myself in retaining ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... the youthful Balzac in which she describes minutely his appearance, noting his beautiful hands, his intelligent forehead and his expressive golden brown eyes. There was something in his manner of speaking, in his gestures, in his general appearance, so much goodness, confidence, naivete and frankness that it was impossible to know him without loving him, and his exuberant good nature was infectious. In spite of his misfortunes, he had not been in their company a quarter of an hour, and they had not even shown ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... self-defense industries began to coalesce in enormous "trusts" and "combines" and monopolies. Capitalization of millions now ran into billions, finance became international in its scope and gargantuan in its proportions and ominousness, advertising grew from its original simplicity and naivete into a vast industry based on all that the most ingenious professors could tell of applied psychology, subsidizing artists, poets, men of letters, employing armies of men along a hundred different lines, expending ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... Gilbertine! This is not the bridal-day she expected." Then, with irresistible naivete, entirely in keeping with her fairy-like figure and girlish face, she added: "I think it was just horrid in the old woman to die the night before the ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... also at Evreux that an official of high rank amused Madame Bonaparte and her suite, by a naivete which the First Consul alone did not find diverting, because he did not like such simplicity displayed by an official. Monsieur de Ch—— did the honors of the country town to the wife of the First Consul, and this, in spite of his age, with much zeal ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... unnatural that Schiller, in distaste for the weak riot of feeling and the passion for describing Nature which obtained in his day, was led to overpraise the Homeric naivete and overblame the sentimentality which he ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... subject in obscurity." We smile at Boswell's evident impression that Johnson could, if he had chosen, have dispelled the darkness. When we find a number of educated gentlemen seriously enquiring as to the conditions of existence in the next world, we feel that they are sharing Boswell's naivete without his excuse. What can any human being outside a pulpit say upon such a subject which does not amount to a confession of his own ignorance, coupled, it may be, with more or less suggestion of shadowy hopes ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... throne in the kingdom of Kipling's esteem. Nothing interests him but the mechanics and the bureaucratic organization and the esprit de corps. Nor does he conceive that the current psychology of ruling and managing the earth will ever be modified. His simplicity, his naivete, his enthusiasms, his prejudices, his blindness, and his vanities are those of Stalky. And, after all, even the effect he aims at is not got. It is nearly got, but never quite. There is a tireless effort, but the effort is too plain ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... theatrical air; and, flinging down the breeches of which he was the bearer, held out his arms and stared, having very little doubt but that his Lordship would forthwith spring out of bed and hug him to his heart. A similar piece of naivete many fathers of families have, I have no doubt, remarked in their children; who, not caring for their parents a single doit, conceive, nevertheless, that the latter are bound to show all sorts of affection ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and a longer one than would have been accorded the average "promoter" with nothing more tangible upon which to raise money than his unsupported word. His Western phraseology and sometimes humorous similes, his unexpected whimsicalities and a certain naivete secretly amused many of those whom he approached, though they took the best of care not to show it lest he mistake their interest in himself ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... through the ten-volume romances of Mlle. de Scudery, which have mostly long since fallen into oblivion. Doubtless the portraits are a trifle rose-colored, but they accord, in the main, with more veracious history. The Grande Mademoiselle describes herself and her friends, with the curious naivete of a spoiled child who thinks its smallest experiences of interest to all the world. Mme. de Maintenon gives us another picture, more serious, more thoughtful, but illuminated ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... forearmed, he was in reality unconscious of the degree to which he had proved susceptible to the lady's blandishments, if indeed she had employed blandishments and had not merely given him the evidence of a good heart upon which his youth and naivete ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... responded the man, earnestly, though he was unable to keep from slightly smiling at the unconscious naivete of the question. "I would she could see it in a more befitting frame, to set it off. If thou 't but let me, I'd put it in the other setting. Then 't ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... For naivete that would be unusual in an unpaid attache of Legation, this sudden leap from his own to his opponent's ground, after two years and a half of dogged resistance, might have roused Palmerston to inhuman scorn, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams |
