"Artless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... life to come—if I am even guilty of crimes—she will bring the retribution, without (as I firmly believe) any conscious exercise of her own will. In one indescribable moment I felt all this—and I suppose my face showed it. The good artless creature was inspired by a sort of gentle alarm for me. "I am afraid the heat of the room is too much for you; will you try my smelling bottle?" I heard her say those kind words; and I remember nothing else—I ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... observed the use of brogues, a kind of artless shoes, stitched with thongs so loosely, that, though they defend the foot from stones, they do not exclude water.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... hither cannot come, Here Pomp is out of place, And fawning Flattery finds no home With Simper and Grimace, But Nature, in her artless dress, (A greenwood nymph is she,) With eyes so wild and flowing tress, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... supposed that by this comparison I am suggesting that the talk of Mme. de Peyronnet and her daughters was naturalistic and so artless. It was nothing of the kind. Though original and spontaneous, it was the result, consciously or unconsciously, of a distinct artistic intention. When they talked, they talked their best, as does the writer of good familiar letters. ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... freckled face that speaks so eloquently of sunny days. The wet, trailing fingers of the briar-rose climbing over the porch tap at the casement, the loose branch of the plane-tree creaks in the wind, the distant sea moans and murmurs; but I prefer to listen to my little friend's artless and occasionally "h-less" English, as she tells me how the Andersons have always been tenants of Down End since her great-grandfather came to the county and added on the living-house to the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... chiffon-draped cushions were meant for use, not ornament. Flowers were tastefully arrayed in every available position; the tea-table lacked only the presence of pot and kettle; Jill had arranged the little curl on her forehead at its most artless and captivating angle—in a ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... always easy to get a hearing, to procure an audience, but means could be found. Soon your name would be on every one's lips. Your art is fresh. The jaded world likes freshness. The cynical town runs to artless art as an antidote to its own poison. Most of the players are wrinkled and worn. A young face will seem ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... isn't at all what I mean. Now cut out the artless prattle and let me find some sense in this history ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... either face. Raoul was no favourite in the royal circle, and his visible cowardice in the recent campaign had brought him into open disfavour with the lion-hearted Edward. He loved Arthyn dearly, and this proof of her independence of spirit, together with her artless confidence in his kindliness of heart, pleased him not a little. He had been forced during these past days to act a stern part towards many of the Welsh nobles who had been brought before him. He was glad enough, this thankless task accomplished, to allow the softer ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... without a mental image. As like as not he pictures all his relatives at a distance with their eyes shut. No boy wants to write familiar things to a forgotten aunt with her eyes shut. His thoughtless elders require him not only to write to her under these discouragements, but to write to her in an artless ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... poring, ye pale sons of toil, Who waste in studious trance the midnight oil, Say, can ye emulate with all your rules, Drawn or from Grecian or from Gothic schools, This artless frame? Instinct her simple guide, A heaven-taught Insect baffles all your pride. Not all yon marshall'd orbs, that ride so high, Proclaim more loud a present Deity, Than the nice symmetry of these small cells, Where on each angle genuine ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... artless narrative. The little man was at school again, God bless him, while his brother lay scalped upon ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... went, what she did, even what she thought—in simple, artless language that made me know her better, in the thorough workings of her nature, than during those long months of our intimacy ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... has a rare gift for composing stories for children. With a light, yet forcible touch, she paints sweet and artless, yet ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... willing to let the whole framework, as it were, of the book go by the board; it is not the thread of the narrative, but the sketches and incidents strung on it, that appeals to them. They revel in the fascinating novelty and ingenuousness of the Du Maurier vein, the art that is superficially so artless, the exquisitely simple delicacy of touch, the inimitable fineness of characterisation, the constant suggestion of the tender and true, the keen sense of the pathetic in life and the humour that makes it tolerable, the lovable drollery that corrects the tendency to the sentimental, ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... all that he longed for at this precise moment, even though he hurried to meet her. It was more the WOMAN IN HER—the something that satisfied his inner nature when he was with her—her coy touches of confidence, her artless outbursts of admiration, looking up in his face as she spoke, the dimples playing about the corners of her mouth. He revelled in all those subtle flatteries and cajoleries, and in all the arts to please of which she was past mistress. ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... he introduced to them the indisputably learned, the very argumentative, crashing, arrogant, pedantic, dogmatic, philological German gentleman, Dr. Gannius, reeking of the Teutonic Professor, as a library volume of its leather. With him is his fairhaired artless daughter Delphica. An interesting couple for the beguilement of a voyage: she so beautifully moderates his irascible incisiveness! Yet there is a strange tone that they have. What, then, of the polite, the anecdotic Gallic M. Falarique, who studiously ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and invariably by the same process; all, without exception, have violet eyes and velvet lips, (and sometimes the heroes also have the latter!) and all of them should wear key-holes at their ear-rings. Indeed, here is our quarrel with Mr. Reade. The conception of an artless woman is impossible with him. Plenty of beautiful ideals he creates, but with the actual woman he is almost unacquainted: Lucy Fountain, of all his feminine characters, is the only one whose counterpart ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... have taken for my text are very characteristic of this Apostle's manner. He has a great, wide-reaching truth to proclaim, and he puts it in the simplest, most inartificial manner, laying side by side two artless sentences, and stimulates us by the juxtaposition, leading us to feel after, and so to make our own, the large lessons that are in them. Let me, then, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... I shall not dress you for crying and roaring, but for being good and speaking with civility.' Just as she said these words, the door opened, and in came the lady whom I before saw, and whose name I afterwards found was Artless. As soon as she entered, the nurse addressed her, saying, 'Pray, madam, is it by your desire that Miss Nancy behaves so rudely, and bids me dress her directly, and change the buckles in her shoes, or else she will slap my face? Indeed she did give me a slap upon my hand; so ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... framing the enquiries that might best extort the desired evidence, and calculating with a judgment by no means to be despised, from the bearing, the turn of features, and the complexion of the victim, the probability whether he was making a frank and artless confession, or had still the secret desire to impose on the royal examiner, or from a different motive was disposed to make use of the treacherous authority which the situation afforded, to gratify his revenge upon some ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... strange compound; under an appearance of the most artless simplicity she concealed an iron will, and had hidden from every one of her family, and even from her most intimate friends, her firm resolve to become the Duchess of Champdoce. All her rambles in the neighborhood had turned ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... old Blake portraits still presided, and he found, for the first time, an artless humour in the formality of the ancestral attitude—in the splendid pose which they had handed down like an heirloom through the centuries. Among them he saw the comely, high-coloured features of that gallant ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... quote any parallel allusion in Byron?' You can ask all that: but you are not getting within measurable distance of it. Your mind is not even moving on the right plane. Or let me turn back to some light and artless Elizabethan thing—say to the Oenone duet in ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... as he was rather out of breath and very much moved, and I looked at him, for I felt pity for this poor, artless devil, and I was just going to give him some sort of answer, when the boat stopped. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... northern beauty to the fair of England; how would the simple graces of her seraphic form, which looked more like a being of air than of earth, put to shame the labored beauties of the court? And then it was not only the artless charms of a wood-nymph he would present to the wondering throng, but a being whose majesty of soul proclaimed her high descent and peerless virtues. How did he congratulate himself, in contemplating this unsullied temple of virgin ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... her, conversed with her in French, bowed and scraped before her, and called her "chere Maman"—a term to which she always responded in a tone of similar lightness and with her beautiful, unchanging smile. Only the lachrymose Lubotshka, with her goose feet and artless prattle, really liked our stepmother, or tried, in her naive and frequently awkward way, to bring her and ourselves together: wherefore the only person in the world for whom, besides Papa, Avdotia had a spark of affection was Lubotshka. Indeed, Avdotia always treated her with ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... the port of a tall young mountain- griffone, or negress, who is comely and knows that she is comely: it is a black poem of artless dignity, primitive grace, savage exultation of movement.... "Ou march tte enlai conm couresse qui ka passlarivi" (You walk with your head in the air, like the couresse-serpent swimming a river) is a creole comparison which pictures perfectly the poise of ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... he could have heard, no human voice, not even hers, could so have moved and softened him. The artless words in which she had told him of her love for this same Cricket were once more freshly spoken; her trembling, earnest manner at the moment was again before him; her pleasant voice—oh, what a voice it was for making household music at the fireside of ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... adorn our purses, Hitherto an artless place; More than pictures, songs, or verses, This ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 25, 1893 • Various
... finding fault with this and turning up his nose at that; and going in and coming out he was simply full of ennui. And as all the girls in the garden were just in the prime of youth, and at a time of life when, artless and unaffected, they sat and reclined without regard to retirement, and disported themselves and joked without heed, how could they ever have come to read the secrets which at this time occupied a place in the heart of Pao-yue? But so unhappy was Pao-yue within himself that he soon felt loth to stay ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... And the artless simplicity of Shelley's technique—much more really simple than the conscious "childishness" exquisite though that is, of a Blake or Verlaine—lends itself so wonderfully to the expression of youth's eternal sorrow. His best lyrics ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... one day with her attendant outside the city. The bandits carried their two captives to Anatolia, and there sold them. The little girl, who gave promise of great beauty, fell to the lot of a rich merchant of Broussa, the harshest, most severe, and intractable man of the town; but the artless grace of this child touched even his ferocious heart. He conceived a great affection for her, and distinguished her from his other slaves by giving her only light employment, such as the care of flowers, etc. A European gentleman who lived with this merchant ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... which justly you ascribe to Swift, is vernacularity; he never forgets his mother-tongue in exotic forms, unless we may call Irish exotic; for Hibernicisms he certainly has. This merit, however, is exhibited—not, as you fancy, in a graceful artlessness, but in a coarse inartificiality. To be artless, and to be inartificial, are very different things; as different as being natural and being gross; as different as being simple and ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... help fancying, dear, in spite of her innocent face and her artless ways, that your ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... that more pathetic situations and sentiments, that is, those which have a greater proportion of pain connected with them, may be endured in metrical composition, especially in rhyme, than in prose. The metre of the old ballads is very artless; yet they contain many passages which would illustrate this opinion; and, I hope, if the following Poems be attentively perused, similar instances will be found in them. This opinion may be further illustrated by appealing to the Reader's own experience of the reluctance ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... West Indies, or knows human nature, will not be surprised that I should have continued this connection as long as I remained on the island. From the artless manner in which Carlotta had conducted her plot; from her gestures and her agitation, I was quite sure that she was a novice in this sort of crime, and that should she ever relapse into her paroxysm of jealousy, I should be able to detect any farther attempt ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... despair of the poor man thus torn up as it were by the roots was so artless, it showed so plainly the purity of his ways and his ignorance of the things of life, that Madame de Listomere and Mademoiselle de Salomon talked to him and consoled him in the tone which mothers take when they promise a plaything to ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... checking her horse and looking in his face. A quick conviction that she was on the point of some confession sprang into his mind, but unfortunately showed in his face. She beat back his eager look with a short laugh. "There, don't speak, and don't look like that. That remark was worthy the usual artless maiden's invitation to a compliment, wasn't it? Let us keep to the subject of yourself. Why, with your political influence, don't you get yourself appointed to ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... my Father's cottage stood, (The Woman thus her artless story told) One field, a flock, and what the neighbouring flood Supplied, to him were more than mines of gold. Light was my sleep; my days in transport roll'd: With thoughtless joy I stretch'd along the shore My father's nets, or watched, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... succeed," says I, in a low, gentle tone of voice. "Where anything but pure nature is expected, I must always keep in the shade. You know, Cousin E. E., what an artless young thing I ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... said Jeanne; and it struck him that her words were strangely like those which Eileen might have spoken had she been there, only an artless comradeship replaced what would have been Miss Brokaw's tone of intimacy. She added, with genuine sympathy in her face and voice: "You must be exhausted, M'sieur Philip. If you were Pierre I should insist upon going ashore for a number of hours. Pierre obeys me when we are together. ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... the soldiers of the Union in the late war, and endured all the dangers and privations of hospital life, is Miss Melcenia Elliott, of Iowa. Born in Indiana, and reared in the Northern part of Iowa, she grew to womanhood amid the scenes and associations of country life, with an artless, impulsive and generous nature, superior physical health, and a heart warm with the love of country and humanity. Her father is a prosperous farmer, and gave three of his sons to the struggle for the Union, who served honorably to ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... Clarence Hervey's speedy marriage with an heiress, Miss Hartley, and found them confirmed by a letter Lady Delacour received from him. Some years ago he had formed the romantic idea of educating a wife for himself, and having found a beautiful, artless girl in the New Forest, he had taken her under his care on ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... that was much. Well I will see your rustic here. This infant passion must be crushed. Poor wench! some artless boy has caught thy youthful ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton
... baby on shore by somebody else, 'he' would know it, meeting it in the street: which, seeing that he had never set eyes upon it in his life, was not very likely in the abstract, but was probable enough to the young mother. She was such an artless little creature; and was in such a sunny, beaming, hopeful state; and let out all this matter, clinging close about her heart, so freely; that all the other lady passengers entered into the spirit of it as much as she: and the captain ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... prompted: he charged himself with the business of burning the bodies. This required some organisation. There were official formalities to fulfil, and the materials had to be assembled—the fuel, the improvised furnace, the iron bars, salt and wine and oil to pour upon the pyre. In his artless 'Records' he describes the last scene on the seashore. Shelley's body was given to the flames on a day of intense heat, when the islands lay hazy along the horizon, and in the background the marble-flecked Apennines gleamed. Byron looked on until ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... given me this cruel pain I feel!—You do not know the world; it is malignantly spiteful. People will perhaps say that your husband sent you back to your parents. Children brought up as you were, on your mother's lap, remain artless; maidenly passion like yours for Wenceslas, unfortunately, makes no allowances; it acts on every impulse. The little heart is moved, the head follows suit. You would burn down Paris to be revenged, with no thought of the ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... straight under her Cambrai cap, the head-dress with its yellowing flaps, which she never left off even for great occasions. Good fortune had not changed her. She was a true peasant of the Rhone valley, independent and proud, without any of the sly humilities of Balzac's country folk, too artless to be purse-proud. One pride alone she had—that of showing her son with what scrupulous care she had discharged her duties as guardian. Not an atom of dust, not a trace of damp on the walls. All the splendid ground-floor, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... This book, unlike the others, was not rejected; for the simple truth, told by an earnest pen, touched and interested. It was accepted, and has been kindly welcomed, thanks to you, Jamie; for many buy it to learn more of you, to weep and smile over artless words of yours, and forget their pity in their reverence and love for the child who taught the man to be, not what he is, but what, with God's help, ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... companion and sister. She appealed to Dr. Harlowe, in her sweet, bewitching way, which always seemed irresistible; but he only gave her a genial smile, called me "a brave little girl," and bade me "God speed." "I wish Richard Clyde were here," said she, in her own artless, half-childish manner, "I am sure he would be on my side. I wish brother Ernest would come home, he would decide the question. Oh, Gabriella, if you only ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... conversation was artless and confiding to a degree, and the servant could not help feeling that as from visitor to common serving-man this state of things was highly improper. His conclusion was that one of two things must be the explanation—either that this was a begging impostor, or that the prince, if ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... comprehend the trick that had been played upon him, although as yet he could not fully credit it. What mainly bewildered him was that Clara, whom he had always supposed to be as artless as a child—Clara, whom he had cared for as an elder and a father—should have been able to keep a secret and devise a plot and carry out ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... him patiently, helping him out with questions and artless, admiring exclamations and comments, until he was quite sure that she was properly impressed. Then she said, in a tone of honest sympathy: "But you mustn't let all this worry you, ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... introduced this conversation between Wilhelmina and Ramsay, to show not only what influence he had already gained over the artless, yet intelligent girl, but also the way by which he considerately prepared her for the acknowledgment which he resolved to make to her on some future opportunity; for, although Ramsay cared little for deceiving the father, he would not have married ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 18): "A becoming gait is one that reflects the carriage of authority, has the tread of gravity, and the foot-print of tranquillity: yet so that there be neither study nor affectation, but natural and artless movement." Therefore seemingly there is no virtue about the style ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... all, the question that puzzled him the most,—not without reason: it might have puzzled the shrewdest bystander. The artless candour with which she manifested her liking to him was at variance with the ordinary character of maiden love; it seemed more the fondness of a child for a favourite brother. And it was this uncertainty that, in his own ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 'tis enough to note That here in dwarf proportions were expressed The limbs of the great world; its eager strifes Collaterally pourtrayed, as in mock fight, 585 A tournament of blows, some hardly dealt Though short of mortal combat; and whate'er Might in this pageant be supposed to hit An artless rustic's notice, this way less, More that way, was not wasted upon me—590 And yet the spectacle may well demand A more substantial name, no mimic show, Itself a living part of a live whole, A creek in the vast sea; for, all degrees And shapes ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... cold, Whose virtues, rightly understood, Are, as Bethesda's waters, good. Strange words—The World, The Flesh, The Devil— Poor Babe, what can it know of Evil? But we must silently adore Mysterious truths, and not explore. Enough for him, in after-times, When he shall read these artless rhymes, If, looking back upon this day, With quiet conscience, he can say "I have in part redeem'd the pledge Of my Baptismal privilege; And more and more will strive to flee All which my Sponsors kind did ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and deepens the humour is, of course, produced in the two cases in two exactly opposite ways. In both cases it is a picture of human simplicity—of a noble and artless nature out of harmony with its surroundings—which moves us; but whereas in the Spanish romance the simplicity is that of the incompris, in the English novel it is that of the man with whom the incompris consorts. If there is pathos as well ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... rider—though a slave in his youth; His artless earnest sermons were the simple tale of truth, How the Son of God who loved us, left a scepter, crown and throne, All the joys of highest heaven, to go, ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... the palace as happy as he at that moment, and that was the Nabob. Escorted by his friends, he occupied, filled the main aisle all by himself, talking in a loud tone, gesticulating, so proud that he seemed almost handsome, as if, by dint of gazing long at his bust in artless admiration, he had caught a little of the splendid idealization with which the artist had softened the vulgarity of the type. The head at an elevation of three-fourths, free from the high rolling collar, gave rise to contradictory opinions from the spectators concerning the resemblance; ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... hand over the smooth sheen of her dress; her gown was chaste, even stern, in its simplicity—the expensive simplicity that is artful rather than artless. ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... skein; of course the thread Got tangled, snarled and twisted; "Have Patience!" cried the artless maid, To him ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... This artless epistle was quickly enclosed in an envelope, addressed and deposited in the post-box. Afterward pretty little Rosalind spent a night of dreamless slumber and awoke in the morning as fresh and innocent-looking as the fairest of the ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... Brahmana, I am Syumarasmi by name. I have come here for acquiring knowledge. Desirous of doing good to myself I have started this conversation in artless candour and not from desire of disputation. The dark doubt has taken possession of my mind. O illustrious one, solve it to me. Thou hast said that they who take the path of the good (viz., Yoga), by which Brahma is attained, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... doorstep of a brick tenement a curly-haired child sat, puzzling over the convolutions of a tangled string. Liz flopped down beside her, with a crooked, shifting smile on her flushed face. But her eyes had grown clear and artless of a sudden. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... greatness, who noticed at the same moment that her eyes were full of tears. This little scene is not only charming and touching, it is very significant, suggesting a combination of such qualities as are not always found united: sovereign good sense and readiness, blending with quick, artless feeling that sought no disguise—such feeling as again betrayed itself when on her ensuing proclamation the new Sovereign had to meet her people face to face, and stood before them at her palace window, composed but sad, the tears running ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... dignity, the King's ease with him, their conversation, in which the King courteously draws from Johnson knowledge of that in which Johnson is expert, Johnson's manly bearing and voice throughout—all is set forth with the unadorned vividness and permanent effect which seem artless enough, but which are characteristic of only ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... hastily fill in a few blanks in my previous sketch of our island career and to pass on to features of novelty and interest—vignettes of certain natural and unobtrusive features of the locality, first-hand and artless. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... and silver oaks. They had been old and gnarled of trunk, when the man whose life had just guttered out inside had come, young and militant, to preach the letter of that law, whose spirit was to his understanding a fourth dimension. Through the long windows of colored but artless glass, now partly raised, poured slanting panels of summer sun, mottling the interior and its occupants with dashes ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... Felice was seated in one of them, with her coat still huddled about her, she looked around with artless curiosity, and watched as in a dream, while the Major put his hand on ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... and cares, discloses, in a touching manner, the domestic relations of Southern families and their servants wherever Christianity prevails. It is one strain of the ordinary music of life in ten thousands of those households, falling accidentally upon our ears, and giving us truthful, artless impressions, such as labored statements and solemn depositions would not so well convey, and which theories, counter-statements, arguments, and invectives never can refute. Our senior pastor would say that the letter is like the Epistles of John,—not a doctrinal exposition, ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... ingenuous as she was, the girl had, at first, drawn near to her cousin, simply and naturally, obeying the law of attraction that draws the young toward the young. She had met his friendly advances with the immodesty of innocence, artless effrontery, the liberties taught by life in the country, the happy folly of a nature abounding in high spirits, and with all sorts of ignorant hardihood, unblushing ingenuousness and rustic coquetry, against which her cousin's vanity was without means of defence. The child's presence ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... irrelevant to their language. Wherefore the matter was received with approbation, and by frequent use was much improved. To the native performers the name of histriones was given, because hister, in the Tuscan vocabulary, was the name of an actor, who did not, as formerly, throw out alternately artless and unpolished verses like the Fescennine at random, but represented medleys complete with metre, the music being regularly adjusted for the musician, and with appropriate gesticulation. Livius, who several years after, giving ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... whose sweethearting went no farther than her artless lips. There was not a spice of mischief in the girl. What she had told La Testolina had been no more than the truth: Master Baldassare was good to her—better than you would have believed possible in such a crabbed old stub of a man. He was more of a father to her than ever Don Urbano had been ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... hovered about him with open admiration, held just that quality of good-natured tolerance which did not offend the waitress but that showed discerning persons that he considered her only in the light of an artless child. ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... Their artless natures and simple affections remained unpolluted by the seductions of civilization. Nothing was wanting to content them: they were caressed by the English, received heaps of gifts and lived without the slightest fatigue, ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... the infant phenomenon of the royal harem, so juvenile and artless were her looks and ways, despising a performance so rudimentary as the a, b, c, demanded to be steered at once into the mid-ocean of the book; but when I left her without pilot in an archipelago of hard words, she soon showed ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... the vast proportions of its owner; the pillars which supported it being the bodies of huge oaks or pines, in the natural state of the tree, and all about showed more marks of strength than skill in whoever built it. Ulysses, entering it, admired the savage contrivances and artless structure of the place, and longed to see the tenant of so outlandish a mansion; but well conjecturing that gifts would have more avail in extracting courtesy than strength would succeed in forcing it, from such a one as he expected to find the inhabitant, he resolved to flatter his ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... villain, divested of feeling, Wha 'd blight, in its bloom, the sweet flower o' Dumblane. Sing on, thou sweet mavis, thy hymn to the e'ening, Thou 'rt dear to the echoes of Calderwood glen; Sae dear to this bosom, sae artless and winning, Is charming young Jessie, the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... this atmosphere of pleasure and ease and riches; she was not entirely unfitted to judge a man. There was not much to awaken respect in the men she met at Crownlands, still less in the women. She liked Ward for his artless boyishness; forgave Anthony Pope much because he was straight and clean and self-respecting; but there were plenty of other men, spoiled and selfish, weak and stupid; men who amused and flattered Isabelle Carter perhaps, but among whom her husband loomed a very ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... to the door, avoiding his outstretched arm with an artless art which made me writhe; for once I had been the willing victim of all ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... which I had so often endeavoured to discover by intuition. A sort of stupor nailed me to the bank, and yet it was a very natural thing that I should come across the Nile in Egypt in the very centre of the Delta. But man is subject to such artless astonishment. ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... kindly welcome, Jenny brings him ben; A strappin youth, he takes the mother's eye; Blythe Jenny sees the visit's no ill ta'en; The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye. The youngster's artless heart o'erflows wi' joy, But blate an' laithfu', scarce can weel behave; The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can spy What makes the youth sae bashfu' and sae grave, Weel-pleas'd to think her bairn's ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... young ladies were desired to amuse the company with music and singing; among the rest Miss Simmons sang a little Scotch song, called Lochaber, in so artless, but sweet and pathetic a manner, that little Harry listened almost with tears in his eyes, though several of the young ladies, by their significant looks and gestures, treated ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... either to melody or key, but wandering at will, and yet somehow with an effect that was natural and pleasing, like that of the of birds. As the dusk increased, I fell more and more under the spell of this artless warbling, listening and waiting for some articulate air, and still disappointed; and when at last I asked him what it was he sang—'O,' cried he, 'I am just singing!' Above all, I was taken with a trick he had ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the negroes in civilization, without any clothing, filthy in person, disgusting in manners, and destitute of natural affection; the parent selling his child with no more remorse or repugnance than he would his chicken, yet at the same time, by way of contrast, artless and good humoured. Their appearance is extremely barbarous and repulsive. They rub red clay softened with oil over their heads and bodies, and invariably wear a large semicircular piece of blue glass in the upper and lower lip, with ear-pendants ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... who, mindful of th' unhonored dead, Dost in these lines their artless tale relate; If chance, by lonely Contemplation led, Some kindred spirit shall ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... named the night and the hour of Rhoda's spectral encounter, and Brook felt like a guilty thing. The artless disclosure startled her; she did not reason on the freaks of coincidence; and all the scenery of that ghastly night returned with ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... wrote in the "Village Minstrel" in the following candid and artless strain, "a sort of defiant parody on the Highland poets", of the natural features of ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... He has drawn me to the Life, but I'll return it— Such humble things make admirable Wives, and Women when they marry hectoring Blades, must buy their Peace with wond'rous Condescension, but when a Lady's unexception'd Graces, artless, immaculate, and universal, impow'r her to select thro' ev'ry Clime; nay, when she grasps the fickle Pow'r of Fortune, and is to raise the Man she stoops to wed, Lovers must sue on more submissive Terms; no Task's too hard when Heav'n's the Reward. I have a Lover too, no blust'ring ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... ere you squeeze my hand so devoutly, that I am not your artless country maid," exclaimed Helen, laughing; then, after a moment's pause, she cries, gayly, "ah! I have it, Frank; you must masquerade a little, that's all—win your bride under false colors, ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... victory." Just as if God were not the God of the whole earth, a disinterested God, a God who makes His sun to shine and His rain to fall upon all His children, without regard to race or clime or color. Why, it is as artless as the way the old Hebrew peasant called on God to blast his enemy's field, and drown his children with floods, and smite his herds with the plague. The tribal idea of God belongs with the ox cart, the medicine man, the cave dweller. This is an era of science. Whatever is true is universal, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... apart for damsels whose modesty and circumspection would not permit of their occupying seats in the dress circle. I, however, noticed in them an audacity of manner that did not appertain to such artless beings as my companion would have me believe them. It struck me, too, that the toilet of these artless damsels was not what it should be. Indeed, there was an extravagance of color, and scantiness at both ends of their drapery, that both my mother and grandmother ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... and the other at the spinet. "I know he's a bad man, and will end by killing one of us and stealing the silver and a horse, just as Mr. Vreeland's bond-servant did. He makes me think of the villain in 'The Tragic History of Sir Watkins Stokes and Lady Betty Artless.'" ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. It was no miraculous work, either as respects the difficulties overcome or as respects the consummation attained; nor was it made so by all the high-sounding words, which the Roman world of quality lavished in favour of Lucullus and the artless multitude in praise of Pompeius. Pompeius in particular consented to be praised, and praised himself, in such a fashion that people might almost have reckoned him still more weak-minded than he really was. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... said Dacres, "this little thing is just like a child, and in her very simplicity does not know what love is. Engagement! By Jove, I don't believe she knows the meaning of the word! She's perfectly fresh, artless, simple, and guileless. I don't believe she ever heard a word of sentiment or tenderness from any ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... seen her Poems? A fine, artless, sensible girl. Now, Cottle, that word sensible must not be construed here in its dictionary acceptation. Ask a Frenchman what it means, and he will understand it, though, perhaps, he can by no circumlocution explain its French meaning. Her heart is alive. She loves poetry. She loves ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... relic. The next day Eugene repaired to the head-quarters of General Bonaparte to implore that the sword of his father might be restored to him. The young general was so much impressed with the grace and beauty of the boy, and with his artless and touching eloquence, that he made many inquiries respecting his parentage, treated him with marked tenderness, and promptly restored the sword. Josephine was so grateful for the kindness of General Bonaparte to Eugene, that the next day she drove to his quarters ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... my simple lay, Whose accents flow with artless ease, Like orient pearls at random strung. A Persian Song of Hafiz. SIR ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... inward grace; In her dark eyes I have seen Sorrows of the Nazarene; In the proud and perfect mould Of her body I behold, Rounded in a single view, The good, the beautiful, the true; And when her spirit goes up-winging On sweet air of artless singing, Surely the heavenly spheres rejoice In union ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... a lover, I grant she should be so, and her sensibility will naturally lead her to endeavour to excite emotion, not to gratify her vanity but her heart. This I do not allow to be coquetry, it is the artless impulse of nature, I only exclaim against the sexual desire of conquest, when the heart ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... dismally at her shape and scornfully at her features, good, honest, irregular American features, that might not satisfy a Greek critic, but suited each other and pleased her countrymen. And then she would sigh heavily over her figure. Her friend had not the heart to impute the marquis's beautiful, artless compliments to mercenary motives. After all, the Italian was a good fellow, according to the point of view of his own race, if he did intend to live on his wife's money, and had a very varied ...
— Different Girls • Various
... a shepherd, so artless and gay, Whose flock ranges over yon mountain, And sweet is his song at the close of the day, By the echoing rock ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... bargains in politics, marm," he stated, dryly, "that takes more'n two to put 'em through when the pinch comes." He enjoyed the discomfiture that her artless confession brought to the Duke. The old man looked him up and down. That this Niles whom he himself had helped into office, who had been taking private toll from the liquor interests of the county as his predecessors had before him, a procedure ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... had a conviction that heredity plays its part in the evolution of genius, and her belief that the world will be inspired by the possession of her Thoughts is too artless to be offensive. She evidently has respect for rich material confided to her teacher, and one can imagine Miss Dearborn's woe had she been confronted by Rebecca's chosen literary executor and bidden to deliver certain "Valuable Poetry and ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... inquiry. Now what inquiry can be so useful as that which hath for its object the saving the lives of men? And when shall we find one more successful than that before us? Here are no vain boastings of the empiric, nor ingenious and delusive theories of the dogmatist; but a concise, an artless, and an incontested relation of the means, by which, under the Divine favour, Captain Cook, with a company of an hundred and eighteen men*, performed a voyage of three years and eighteen days, throughout all the climates, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... ever seen, she certainly is the most marvelous phenomenon of innocence that can be imagined. She lives in that atmosphere of infamy with a calm and triumphing ease which is either wonderfully profligate or entirely artless. Strange scion of an adventuress, cast upon the muck-heap of that set, like a magnificent plant nurtured upon corruption, or rather like the daughter of some noble race, of some great artist, or of some grand lord, of some prince or dethroned ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... flirts with it, and goes home to dream about it. At length he falls in love with it, courts it, marries it, and then he takes the pretty face home, and begins to know something more about it. All has as yet been "very jolly." The face has hitherto been charming, graceful, artless, and beautiful. It has now to enter upon another sphere of life. It has to be seen much closer; it has to be seen daily; and it has to ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... astonishment, she saw the domestic group already described, and to her eyes dominated by the "most beautiful and perfectly elegant" young man she had ever seen. But let not the incautious reader suppose that she succumbed as weakly as her artless charges to these fascinations. The character and antecedents of that young man had been already delivered to her in the kitchen by the other help. With that single glance she halted; her eyes sought the ceiling in chaste exaltation. Falling back ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... piece of sewing put into my incapable fingers, which could not be trained to hold a needle. I imagined I was stolen by brigands, and became—by virtue and intelligence—spouse of a patriotic outlaw in a frontierless land. I asked artless questions which brought me into discredit with my teachers, as, for example, who 'massacred' St. Bartholomew. But vital facts, the great laws of propagation, were matters of but casual concern crowded out of my life and out of my companions' lives (in a convent ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... very ready to impose on him; in short, to conceive that a friend should, of his own accord, without any view to his own interest, endeavour to do him a service, must argue such weakness of mind, such ignorance of the world, and such an artless, simple, undesigning heart, as must render the person possessed of it the lowest creature and the properest object of contempt imaginable, in the eyes of every ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... of an art we had lost, but have found again in the sepulchers of the East—the art of preserving the remains of the dead from the outrages of corruption—the greatest power in the universe. O Lelia, deny the youth of the world if you can, when you see it stop in artless ignorance before the lessons of the past, and begin to live on the forgotten ruins of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... good-humouredly, partly in courtesy to her hoyden mistress, but partly at the burning, blushing indignation she beheld in the artless face of ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... chatted with animation, it had been such an immense piece of luck for him at his age to get appointed on the staff "of a big thing like that—don't you know." It would give him the pull over a lot of chaps all through life, he asserted. "Therefore—down with Montero! Mrs. Gould." His artless grin disappeared slowly before the unanimous gravity of the faces turned upon him from the carriage; only that "old chap," Don Jose, presenting a motionless, waxy profile, stared straight on as if deaf. Scarfe did not know the Avellanos very well. They did not give balls, and Antonia never ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... in the Edinburgh Review (Mr. Macauley) would account for the use of dialogue in Herodotus by the childish simplicity common to an early and artless age—as the boor always unconsciously resorts to the dramatic form of narration, and relates his story by a series of "says he's" and "says I's." But does not Mr. Macauley, in common with many others, insist far too much on the artlessness of the age and ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... interview between Gregory Newton and Clarissa, in which poor Clary had declared with so much emphasis her certainty that his brother's suit to Mary must be fruitless. This she had said, with artless energy, in no degree on her own behalf. She was hopeless now in that direction, and had at last taught herself to feel that the man was unworthy. The lesson had reached her, though she herself was ignorant ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... Sperver, deep in thought, who had now resumed his walk down the corridor. The portrait of Hedwige, in all its artless simplicity, mingled in my mind with the ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... of artless innocence! Your dwellings are no more, And ye are turning from the path our fathers trod before; The homely hearth of honest mirth, all traces of the plough, The places of their ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... indicated, were afterwards taken up one by one, and minutely finished. We may almost count the locks of the hair, the plaits of the linen, the inlayings of the girdles and bracelets. This mixture of artless science and intentional awkwardness, of rapid execution and patient finish, excludes neither elegance of form, nor grace of attitude, nor truth of movement. These personages are of strange aspect, but they live; and to those who will take the trouble to look at them without prejudice, their ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... idealised in the Buddhist art of them: eternal are Kwannon and Benten; they need no help of man; they will compel reverence when the great temples shall all have become voiceless and priestless as this shrine of Koshin is. But these kind, queer, artless, mouldering gods, who have given ease to so many troubled minds, who have gladdened so many simple hearts, who have heard so many innocent prayers—how gladly would I prolong their beneficent lives in spite of the ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... psychological realism. All that had been hitherto wanting to this particular development of his art had been the woman. In Audrey Craven he had found the indispensable thing—intimacy without love, or even, as he understood the word, friendship. She was the type he had long desired, the feminine creature artless in perpetual artifice, for ever revealing herself in a ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... himself he has obtained a mastery. Rhetoric, and rhetoric in a court dress, prevails but too much in many French tragedies, especially in those of Corneille, instead of the suggestions of a noble, but simple and artless nature; Racine and Voltaire, however, have come much nearer to the true conception of a mind carried away by its sufferings. Whenever the tragic hero is able to express his pain in antitheses and ingenious allusions, we may safely reserve our pity. This ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... the maiden's cheek, telling of discovery and shame. Nothing she said in answer, but diligently pursued her occupation. I could perceive that the fair hand trembled, and that the gentle bosom was disquieted. I could tell why downwards bent the head, and with what new emotions the artless spirit had become acquainted. Instantly I saw the mischief which my rashness had occasioned, and felt how deeply had fallen the first accents of love into the poor heart of the secluded one. What had I done by the short, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... years of age. Her oval face recalled that of the artless Madonnas whom veneration still displays at the street corners of the antique towns of Brittany. Her eyes betrayed an infinite simplicity. One would love her as the sweetest realization of a poet's dream. Her apparel was of modest ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... into the world, over whose destiny I have no control, and whose existence would most certainly be richer in pain, and misery than in happiness; and I know unquestionably that I have no right to teach a light-hearted girl to think, and force her to exchange the artless gayety of a playful little animal for my own fruitless speculations and ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... it Homer." Bentley was right. With all its pomp of language and melody of versification, its richness of imagery and magnificence of diction, Pope's Homer is widely different from the original. He could not avoid it. The "awful simplicity of the Grecian bard, his artless grandeur and unaffected majesty," will be sought for in vain in the translation; but if they had appeared there, it would have been unreadable in that age. Michael Angelo, in his bold conceptions, energetic will, and rapid execution, bears a close resemblance to the father ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... her son, and with the terms on which she thought proper to stand with those whom old acquaintance or kindred gave some title to her good offices. In addition to all those motives to a candid treatment of me, there were others which owed their efficacy to her maternal regard for me, and to the artless and ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... from childhood that a playmate could always be summoned even from the other end of the town by a clarion call, and they had never seen any reason for changing their convenient method when long skirts and piled-up hair might have been supposed to demand a less artless manner. But then every one shouted across blocks, and besides, every one knew that Afternoon Tea Willie just dearly loved to be yelled at. He whirled about now, waved his hat, and came hurrying back, with the peculiar jerky ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... admired the courage of Mollie Ainslie before she saw her; she had been charmed with her beauty and artless grace on the first night of her stay at Mulberry Hill, and had felt obliged to her for her care of the little Hildreth; but she had not once thought of considering her the peer of the Richardses and the Le Moynes, or as standing upon the same social plane ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... dances!" was an artless exclamation of Catherine's towards the close of their conversation, which at once surprised ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... as the lady crossed the room and took up his pen, 'I merely mention this to illustrate my point. I'm not saying that cab-men ought to be intellectuals. I don't think so; I agree with Keats—happy is England, sweet her artless cabmen, enough their simple loveliness for me. But when you come to the people who make up the collective industrial brain-power of the country.... Why, do ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... nothing could be more artless and natural than the following legend of the Penobscot Indians of Maine, recorded by Mr. Leland, which tells of the origin of the "crowing of ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... fate of artless Maid, Sweety flow'ret of the rural shade! By love's simplicity betray'd. And guileless trust, Till she, like thee, all soil'd, is laid Low ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... his fancy. If matters had turned out otherwise than they had done, he told himself vaguely, he and "little May" would have been a pair of friends. He had no sister, and she had no brother, and he would have liked to play the brother to this most artless of learned ladies. "Look here, Miss May," he said, after the usual formulas, while he turned and walked a few paces by her side, "do you remember the fox-terrier puppy I was to have got for you and your sister Rose, in the spring? Well, he died of distemper, ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... it's mebbes luppen in whan I was wadin' the watter," he said with artless smile. "They're ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... domestic slave, ready in his attendance at his master's nod; initiated in the Greek language, of a capacity for any art; you may shape out any thing with [such] moist clay; besides, he will sing in an artless manner, but yet entertaining to one drinking. Lavish promises lessen credit, when any one cries up extravagantly the wares he has for sale, which he wants to put off. No emergency obliges me [to dispose ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... engaged himself," said one mother. "Dear, innocent boy! His greatest hope is that he may creep one day into a clergyman's ear. It's very artless and loveable, that; and being engaged will keep him steady. What joy for ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... would melt; Tears have wet my burning cheek, Caused by thoughts I could not speak. Mysteries then confused my brain, Which have since become more plain; Much that then seemed plain and clear Has grown darker year by year; When my artless prayers I said, Skies were near—just over head; And the angels seemed so near, I could whisper in their ear. All that I have learned since then, I would give, if once again, Those bright visions would return. For I find, the more I learn, ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... inevitable spontaneity. He costumes his tale arbitrarily, like a stage-haberdasher, and invents a voice to deliver it withal. 'The Last Days of Pompeii' shall be mouthed out grandiloquently; the incredibilities of 'The Coming Race' shall wear the guise of naive and artless narrative; the humors of 'The Caxtons' and 'What Will He Do with It?' shall reflect the mood of the sagacious, affable man of the world, gossiping over the nuts and wine; the marvels of 'Zanoni' and 'A Strange Story' ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... provided in large quantities. On the fair field itself the food offered by the stall-keepers seemed to be chiefly enormous slabs of shiny gingerbread made in fanciful shapes, such as hearts, lyres, and garlands, cheap sweetmeats, and the small boiled sausages the artless German eats in public ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... Wrongfulness of Art Collecting is conceded, and as well Certain Stories: Campbell Corot, which recounts the career of an able and candid Picture Forger. The del Puente Giorgione, which tells of an artful Great Lady and an Artless Expert. The Lombard Runes, a mere interlude, but revealing a certain duplicity in Professional Seekers for Truth. Their Cross, so called from an inanimate Object of Price which wrought Woe to a well meaning New York Couple. The Missing St Michael, a tale of Italianate Americans ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... communicative. He seemed to take more interest than he used to do in the Mission, I noticed. He had always been a hero among the Mashona boys: that was no new thing. And I was thankful indeed to see that he had not lost his old artless art of making friends with them. So many things might have conspired to rob him of it. He stayed but a month in all at the Mission, and he said little all that time, but his eyes were full of thought ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... first shock, the poor girl recovered herself with admirable courage. She raised her head, and eyed the lawyer without uttering a word. In its artless consciousness of innocence the look was nothing less than sublime. Addressing herself to Mr. Troy, Lady Lydiard pointed to Isabel. "Do you see guilt ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... Narcisse. Excuse me; I always forget your last name—and your first is so appropriate." It was worth all it cost, though Richling could ill afford the purchase. The young Latin's sweet, abysmal ignorance, his infantile amiability, his artless ambition, and heathenish innocence started the natural gladness of Richling's blood to effervescing anew every time they met, and, through the sheer impossibility of confiding any of his troubles to the Creole, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... back to the bank, and up the stream, and over the bridge, and down the stream again; and then, for the first time, the sweet girl turned appealingly to me, and confessed that she had exhausted her artless knowledge of the locality. It was exactly a week from the day when I had first followed her into the fields with my fishing-rod over my shoulder; and I had never yet caught anything but Alicia's hand, and that ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... and also those of the native dog. Here still was our own race amongst other animals all new and strange to Europeans. The prints of the foot of man alone were familiar to us. But here he was living in common with other animals, simply on the bounty of nature; artless, and apparently as much afraid of us, and as shy, as other animals of the forest. It seemed strange, that in a climate the most resembling that of Milton's paradise, the circumstances of man's existence ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... received more instruction from them than from her teaching. When we truly feel that the heart speaks, our own opens to receive its instructions, nor can all the pompous morality of a pedagogue have half the effect that is produced by the tender, affectionate, and artless conversation of a sensible woman on him who ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... through her tears at the stranger, and in a few artless words related her simple story. She was an orphan, and with her little brother, lived with her grandfather. They were very poor, and were wholly dependent upon a small pittance which the grandfather (who was blind) daily earned by ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... improvement in the mechanical part of his art, and also was the first who covered his picture with a thin varnish, both to preserve it and bring out the colors. He invented ivory black. His distinguishing excellence was grace, "that artless balance of motion and repose, springing from character, founded on propriety, which neither falls short of the demands nor overleaps the modesty of Nature." [Footnote: Fuseli, Lect. I.] His great contemporaries may have equaled him in perspective, accuracy, and finish; ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... of Germain's marriage as he told it to me himself, good husbandman that he is. I ask your forgiveness, kind reader, that I know not how to translate it better; for it is a real translation that is needed by this old-fashioned and artless language of the peasants of the country "that I sing," as they used to say. These people speak French that is too true for us, and since Rabelais and Montaigne, the advance of the language has lost for ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... anything to do with any of us. Pretended he didn't understand our kind of Latin. I offered him a place, myself, at a wage of more denarii than I could well afford. I wanted a chance to study him. Then came the colonel and fairy grabbed him. So I sent for you—in my artless professional way." ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... fans and tore their caps, was one of the first to enlist himself among her adorers. Squire Savage, the fox-hunter, who, like Hippolitus of old, chased the wily fox and timid hare, and had never yet acknowledged the empire of beauty, was subdued by the artless sweetness of Delia. Nay, it has been reported, that the incomparable lord Martin, a peer of ten thousand pounds a year, had made advances to her father. It is true, his lordship was scarcely four feet three inches in stature, his belly was prominent, ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... survivors, not of others alone, but, if I may be allowed the expression, of ourselves, find a void of so many years in our lives, which has silently brought us from youth to maturity, from mature age to the very verge of life! Still, however, I shall not regret having composed, though in rude and artless language, a memorial of past servitude, and a ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... composed by Al Wakidi, cadi of Bagdad, who was born A.D. 748, and died A.D. 822; he likewise wrote the conquest of Egypt, of Diarbekir, &c. Above the meagre and recent chronicles of the Arabians, Al Wakidi has the double merit of antiquity and copiousness. His tales and traditions afford an artless picture of the men and the times. Yet his narrative is too often defective, trifling, and improbable. Till something better shall be found, his learned and spiritual interpreter (Ockley, in his History of the Saracens, vol. i. p. 21-342) will not deserve the petulant ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... commenced, did not end soon. Patty was angry with John; and John, in consequence, renewed his attentions to Betty Sell. Not long, and his first liking increased to a feeling akin to real love. Betty was so sweet and artless in her doings and sayings, and, above all, hung with such evident fondness on every word of her admirer about his life and his struggles, his intense admiration of nature, his poetry, and his hopes of rising in the world through ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... found anybody out in some act of atrocious meanness, she never indulged in any idle threats of revenge: it was sufficient that she knew, and would take suitable steps on the earliest occasion. Consequently when it appeared, from the artless conversation of the Guru at lunch that the perfidious Mrs Quantock had not even asked him whether he would like to go to Lucia's garden party or not (pending her own decision as to what she was meaning to do ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... by, slowly at first, then quicker, for the young native woman whom he had married a year before had aroused in him a sort of unspoken affection for her artless and childlike innocence, and this deepened when her first child was born; and sometimes, as he worked at his old trade of boat-building—learned before he joined the King's ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... the side of the thoughtless and betrayed victim. All were held as trophies of victory,—all esteemed alike valuable. How shocking to the man of sensibility! How mortifying and heart-sickening to the intellectual, the artless, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... appears to have continued to assist with more amiability than wisdom. He hunted, belonged to the Yeomanry, owned famous horses, Maggie and Lucy, the latter coveted by royalty itself. 'Lord Rokeby, his neighbour, called him kinsman,' writes my artless chronicler, 'and altogether life was very cheery.' At Stowting his three sons, John, Charles, and Thomas Frewen, and his younger daughter, Anna, were all born to him; and the reader should here be told that it is through the report of this second Charles (born 1801) that he ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... simple and artless fashion Cynthia's son went about the creation of his own special Sunday-school class and when he got through the result was startling. It was the largest and somebody said the weirdest Sunday-school class ever seen in Green Valley. Indeed, when Mr. James ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... and an excessive eulogy of Granville, to whom the poem is inscribed. The whole is skilfully adapted to the time by a brilliant eulogy upon the peace which was concluded just as the poem was published. The Whig poet Tickell, soon to be Pope's rival, was celebrating the same "lofty theme" on his "artless reed," and introducing a pretty little compliment to Pope. To readers who have lost the taste for poetry of this class one poem may seem about as good as the other; but Pope's superiority is plain enough to a reader who will condescend to distinguish. ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... dazzles oft, and oft deceives; nor yet The dull unmeaning lustre that can gaze Alike on all the world. But paint an eye In whose half-hidden, steady light I read A truth-inquiring mind; a fancy, too, That could array in sweet poetic garb The truth he found; while on his artless harp He touched the gentlest feelings, which the blaze Of winter's hearth warms in the homely heart. And oh! recall the look of faith sincere, With which that eye would scrutinize the page That tells us ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... Stranger bursting into tears, look'd pale, And this the purport of her artless tale. 'I have no Parents; and no friends beside: 'I well remember when my Mother died: 'My Brother cried; and so did I that day: 'We had no Father;—he was gone away; 'That night we left our home new cloaths to wear: ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield |
