"Naivete" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to gather into his arms and devour with kisses this sweet specimen of womanly tenderness, frank inconsistency, naivete, and archness. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... from the outset with an innocent familiarity, and asked him the most direct questions. He was not a particularly intellectual youth, though he had some vague literary interests; but he was entirely healthy, good, and quite irresistibly charming in his naivete and simplicity. Howard had a dislike of all sentimentality, but the suppressed paternal instinct which was strong in him had been awakened; and though he made no emotional advances, he found himself strangely drawn to the boy, with a feeling for which he could not wholly account. ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... replied the duc, with careless naivete, and a complaisant forgetfulness, of which no words could translate the tone and the vocal expression. "Now, here is poor Raoul, who is your son, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... talked to her more as the child that she was, laughing, joking, and telling her queer hobgoblin and fairy stories, some of which she knew before indeed, but which he related with a quaint simplicity and naivete, which gave them a fresh charm for her; and under this new aspect of things, she brightened up, began to lose her fits of dreaminess, to chatter as in old times, and cheered many an hour of the musician's solitary life. The American artist, too, left Florence about this time ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... 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 ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... that is misleading, directly, when I think of her curled close against me on the rocks, her hand on my arm and all my veins tingling under it. She was all woman. And yet who but me who knew her can ever have heard from the lips of any woman such absolute naivete, such crystal frankness? It was like those dear talks with some lovely, loved and loving child. But that, again, gives you no proper idea. For no child's throat sounds such deep, bell-like tones, such sweet, swooping cadences. And no child's eyes meet yours with that clear beam, only to soften ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... that 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
... prepared for a powerful and sympathetic personality, that curious mixture of naivete and hard sophistication, and she had ascribed her interest in him to curiosity in exploring what to her was a completely foreign type. In her own naivete it had never occurred to her that men outside her class were gentlemen as she understood the term, and she still supposed Clavering ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... will expect to rule everywhere except in the kitchen, and as you value a quiet life you had better take care that the kitchen produces what pleases him. On occasion he will assert his authority with some violence and naivete. No one can be long amongst Germans, or even read many German novels, without coming across instances of what I mean. For example, there was once a quarrel between lovers that all turned upon a second glass of champagne. ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... indeed. These were the materials which Kalidasa, the Attic dramatists, and the bards of the Nibelungen found ready, awaiting their artistic treatment. But the mythology of the New World, with all its pretty and agreeable naivete, affords hardly enough, either of variety in situation or of complexity in motive, for a grand epic or ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... vulgarly ignorant of all foreign languages, but is frank enough to criticize, the Italians' use of their own tongue. He says they spell the name of their great painter "Vinci, but pronounce it Vinchy"—and then adds with a naivete possible only to helpless ignorance, "foreigners always spell better than they pronounce." In another place he commits the bald absurdity of putting the phrase "tare an ouns" into an Italian's mouth. In Rome he unhesitatingly believes the legend that St. Philip Neri's heart was so inflamed ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... 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 ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... ingenuousness, and her unmistakable youth. In the habit of being crushed by Miss Avondale's unrelenting superiority, he found himself apparently growing up beside this tall English girl, who had the naivete of a child. After a few commonplaces she suddenly turned her gray ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... expect to? Poor 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 ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... said the governor, "that your visit to Aden has had such a tragical interruption; but since it has occurred, I am glad to have the privilege of meeting a lady so brave as Mrs. Falchion."—The bookmaker had introduced us all with a naivete that, I am sure, amused the governor, as it certainly did his aide-de-camp. "We should not need to fear the natives if we had soldiers as fearless," ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... following Gloria down a garden-walk between tall rose-bushes, her parasol brushing gently the June-blooming leaves. Most inconsiderate, he thought, as they reached the road. He felt with injured naivete that Gloria should not have interrupted such innocent and harmless enjoyment. The whiskey had both soothed and clarified the restless things in his mind. It occurred to him that she had taken this same attitude several times before. Was he always to retreat ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... sparkle of youth. The rambles of years in the beautiful grounds of Esterhazy had attuned his soul to communion with nature, and this work plainly shows his power of putting into tones the secrets nature revealed to him. Blissful joyousness and child-like naivete are among its ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... country tavern, and unable to repress his exultation in what seemed their sympathetic presence. They were charmed to have invited his guileless confidence, to have evoked possibly all the simple poetry of his soul; it was what might have happened in Italy, only there so much naivete would have meant money; they looked at each other with rapture. and Basil answered warmly while the waiter flushed as at a personal compliment: "Yes, it 's a nice hotel; one of the best I ever saw, East or West, in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Brows and lashes scarce, trunk elongated and cylindrical. Limbs thick and plump, tapering from the root to the extremities. Good fat layers over the entire body. Reproductive organs those of a little boy. Infantile mental state: light-heartedness, naivete, timidity, easily evoked tears and laughter, promptly aroused but fugitive wrath: ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... were being unintelligible. They were only thinking too concisely or too rapidly for the reader. But don't you try to produce that sort of illusion. Try to say things like Newman or Ruskin—big, beautiful, profound, delicate things, with an almost childlike naivete. That is the most exquisite kind of charm, when you find that half-a-dozen of the simplest words in the language have expressed a thought which holds you spell-bound with its truth and loveliness. That is what lasts. ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the talking when we were all gathered together. Yank and I did the listening and Talbot the interpellating. Johnny swarmed all over himself like a pickpocket, and showed us everything he had in the way of history, manners, training, family, pride, naivete, expectations and hopes. He prided himself on being a calm, phlegmatic individual, unemotional and not easily excited, and he constantly took this attitude. It was a ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... 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; ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... simplicity of the language as if they 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 features which are the most essential and most telling. For instance, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... it," she confessed, with a naivete he could not but question, for he thought he saw a roguish gleam in ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... Naivete.—Naivete is the language of pure genius and of discerning simplicity. It is the most simple picture of a refined and ingenious idea; a masterpiece of art in him in ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... know,—I 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 ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... extravagant hopes of our 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
... what the "free agreement" of the bourgeois entrepreneur is, and we can only admire the "absolute" naivete of the man who sees in it the precursor of communism. It is exactly this Anarchic "arrangement" that must be got rid of in order that the producers may cease to be the slaves of ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... died 1693, was actually a pupil of Rembrandt. His much prized and rare genre pictures treat very simple subjects, and consist seldom of more than two or three figures, generally of women. The naivete and homeliness of his feeling, with the addition sometimes of a trait of kindly humour; the admirable lighting, and a touch resembling Rembrandt in impasto and vigour, render his pictures very attractive. In the National ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... generous to German soldiers or civilians if thereby he might save time and set aside impediments. He took a strong liking to Bertie, though he showed it little outwardly. The latter probably in his naivete and directness unveiled his full purpose to this gum-chewing, grey-eyed American. When the news of Mrs. Warren's death had reached Bertie through a circuitous course—Praed-Honoria-Rossiter—he ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... antiquity are generally inspired with a purer sentiment and a loftier purpose than the modern; and it may be said of them all that when they do step into the mud it is not to tarry and wallow in it; it is rather with the unconscious naivete of ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... Mulrady and Mamie, accompanied by a taciturn and discreet Chinaman, carrying their scant luggage, were on their way to the high road to meet the up stage, the father gazed somewhat anxiously and wistfully into his daughter's face. He had looked forward to those few moments to enjoy the freshness and naivete of Mamie's youthful delight and enthusiasm as a relief to his wife's practical, far-sighted realism. There was a pretty pink suffusion in her delicate cheek, the breathless happiness of a child in her half-opened little ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... little girl she gave her roses not to the spick and span Madonna of the Church, but to the poor, dilapidated Virgin, "at our street-corner in a lonely niche," with the babe that had sat upon her knees broken off: or that passage, with its exquisite naivete, where Pompilia relates why she called her boy Gaetano, because she wished "no old name for sorrow's sake," so chose the latest addition to the saints, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... let herself go and laughed as heartily as she pleased. She had heard men say before, but always with more or less of a languishing air, inevitably ridiculous in a man, that they thought it about time they were getting married; but she could not remember anything to compare with Sam Turner's naivete in ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... rouses the suspicion in the reader that he has very little, since a man always affects something, be its nature what it may, that he does not really possess. And this is why it is praise to an author to call him naive, for it signifies that he may show himself as he is. In general, naivete attracts, while anything that is unnatural everywhere repels. We also find that every true thinker endeavours to express his thoughts as purely, clearly, definitely, and concisely as ever possible. This ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... said Crawford, who had been laughing a little, spite of his low spirits, at the naivete of the relation. "It was modesty and not want of personal courage that drove you out of ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... literatures. 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 of life. I would specifically except, however, from this criticism ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Artlessness. — N. artlessness &c. adj; nature, simplicity; innocence &c. 946; bonhomie, naivete, abandon, candor, sincerity; singleness of purpose, singleness of heart; honesty &c. 939; plain speaking; epanchement[Fr]. rough diamond, matter of fact man; le palais de verite[Fr]; enfant terrible[Fr]. V. be artless &c. adj; look one in the face; wear ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... make Alphonse jealous," she interjoined, with excessive naivete. That made them all laugh. The right hand jealous of the left! The heart jealous of the soul! But for that matter, the Creole husband is never jealous; with him the gangrene passion is one which has ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... lies in his child-like and sincere naivete, in his unaffected interest in and picturesque view of nature and all that happens in nature. These qualities, it is true, are those pre-eminently of the "Works and Days": the literary values of the "Theogony" are of a more technical character, skill ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... polished and refined intelligence, found the nil admirari attitude of "Mark Twain" no more enlightening nor suggestive than the stoicism of the North American Indian. This mirthful and mock-innocent naivete, so alien to the delicate and subtle spirit of the French, found instant response in the heart of the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic peoples. The English and the Germans, no less than the Americans, rejoiced in this gay fellow with his combination of appealing ignorance and ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... reply was, "Oh, will you indeed? Thank you." Which naivete actually raised her mother's colour with annoyance. But if she had a rod laid up, Viola did not feel it then; she looked radiant, and though I don't believe three words passed between the partners, that waltz was the glory of the evening ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... her own age; neither was she aware that through this omission she was spared the necessity of a confidante or a rival—both equally revealing to her thoughtless enjoyment. They took their rides together openly and without concealment, relating their adventures afterwards to Aunt Viney with a naivete and frankness that dreamed of no suppression. The city-bred Cecily, accustomed to horse exercise solely as an ornamental and artificial recreation, felt for the first time the fearful joy of a dash across a league-long plain, with ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... girl pleads with her father to make peace, with humorous naivete argues with the counsellors of state, tries to bribe the seers, and finally resorts to magic. When nothing avails, she secures Carme's aid. The lock is cut, the city falls, the girl is captured by Minos—in true Alexandrian technique the catastrophe comes ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... 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 any other night! Yet ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... by the same 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 ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... house came to clear away, and the band being there, I stopped them and bade them tune up, and at the same time seizing the maid Wheedle, away we flew. We danced, we whirled, we twirled. Ale upon this! My head was lost. "Why don't it last for ever?" says I. "I wish it did," says she. The naivete enraptured me. "Oooo!" I cried, hugging her, and then, you know, there was no course open to a man of honour but to offer marriage and make a lady of her. I proposed: she accepted me, and here I am, eternally tied to this accurst ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... finer fellow in the service," Osborne said, "nor a better officer, though he is not an Adonis, certainly." And he looked towards the glass himself with much naivete; and in so doing, caught Miss Sharp's eye fixed keenly upon him, at which he blushed a little, and Rebecca thought in her heart, "Ah, mon beau Monsieur! I think I have YOUR ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... to be a lawyer, and I don't suppose you have forgotten all your law, if you are in the grocery business now." There was about the woman the very naivete of ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... engaging sentiment, and the most refin'd simplicity of manners; but he wants that rustic wildness and naivete in delineation characteristic of the Sicilian, and of the composition ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... him, he avoided a greater tragedy. In a 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 ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... he saw two exchanging glances, but then he threw in a jesting word and the thread was broken. He was playing for his life, and he played well, for he misled them with his cheerfulness and naivete, so that they could not tell whether he knew anything or not. ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... of her naivete, and of the excellent advice she gave to others, there were, for several years, innumerable difficulties with regard to the Archduchess Magdalen's confessor, Father Hezcovaus. He was infirm in health, and needed much waiting upon, ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... she, a little crossly. She added with one of her gushes of naivete, "and I shall be unhappy too if you ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... suffered had shaped her feet in goose fashion and made her figure very bad. The only pretty feature in her face was her eyes, which were indeed wonderful, being large and black, and instinct with such an extremely pleasing expression of mingled gravity and naivete that she was bound to attract attention. In everything she was simple and natural, so that, whereas Katenka always looked as though she were trying to be like some one else, Lubotshka looked people straight in the face, and sometimes fixed them so ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... 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 the Howard girls, were dancing all the evening. Adeline says it is all because I was not lively. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... more pert upon paper than they did upon her lips. Her naivete, the twinkling light in her eyes, and the smile flitting about her mouth, always modified greatly the expression of ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... is, 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. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... other men were departures from it. And the singularity is, her religious faith was never for an instant shaken - she remained as strict a Roman Catholic as when he married her from a convent. Her enthusiasm and cosmopolitanism, her NAIVETE and the sweetness of her disposition made her the best of company. She had lived so much the life of a Bedouin, that her dress and her habits had an Eastern glow. When staying with the Birds, she was attended by an Arab girl, one of whose duties it was to prepare her mistress' ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... talk to you of old times. General Brant," she went on, turning explanatorily to Boompointer, "married my adopted mother in California—at Robles, a dear old place where I spent my earliest years. So, you see, we are sort of relations by marriage," she added, with delightful naivete. ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... of the world at such times seemed to him the only sanity; these men used the powers that God had given them, were content with simple and unostentatious doings and interests, reached the higher vocation by their very naivete, and did not seek to fly on wings that were not meant to bear them. How sensible, Christopher told himself, was Ralph's ideal! God had made the world, so Ralph lived in it—a world in which great and small ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... sifting; and the value of their eyes depends on the amount of individual character they took with them, and of the previous culture that had sharpened and tutored the faculty of observation. In our conscious age the frankness and naivete of the elder voyagers is impossible, and we are weary of those humorous confidences on the subject of fleas with which we are favored by some modern travellers, whose motto should be (slightly altered) from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... 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 out ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... by a recent Roman Catholic writer as "la deplorable reponse de Honorius, ce monument de bonne foi surprise et de naivete confiante." It does not support the ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... till he was well-nigh distracted. Nor was Ralph any less disturbed. In his undemonstrative way he watched Nick, and suffered the acutest pangs of jealousy at what he believed was Aim-sa's marked preference. But the woman continued to stir the fire she had kindled with a childlike naivete which was less of the wild ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... upon German painting and religion. A new verb, "sternbaldisieren," was coined to parody a new movement in German art toward the medieval, religious spirit. It is this book which Heine had in mind when he ridiculed Tieck's "silly plunge into medieval naivete." Overbeck and Cornelius in Rome, with their pre-Raphaelite, old-German and catholicizing tendencies, became the leaders of a productive school. Goethe scourged it for its "mystic-religious" aspirations, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... 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 she left him without answer, ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... philosophy are often characterised by an astonishing naivete. "God being All-in-all, He made medicine," she tells us; "but that medicine was Mind. . . . It is plain that God does not employ drugs or hygiene, nor provide them for human use; else Jesus would have recommended and employed ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... to its final consummation under the Vth, when the conventions became fixed. In the time of Khaesekhemui, at the beginning of the IId Dynasty, the archaic character of the art has already begun to wear off. Under the same dynasty we still have styles of unconventional naivete, such as the famous Statue "No. 1" of the Cairo Museum, bearing the names of Kings Hetepahaui, Neb-ra, and Neneter. But with the IVth Dynasty we no longer look for unconventionality. Prof. Petrie discovered ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... despising herself for not having been more truly observant of their clothes, because in reality she had been so concentrated upon Mrs. Perce that she had never thought to spare an eye for Mrs. Perce's husband. She was thankful to have ridden off so easily upon her naivete. Meanwhile, having laughed amply, the ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... N. artlessness &c adj.; nature, simplicity; innocence &c 946; bonhomie, naivete, abandon, candor, sincerity; singleness of purpose, singleness of heart; honesty &c 939; plain speaking; epanchement [Fr.]. rough diamond, matter of fact man; le palais de verite [Fr.]; enfant terrible [Fr.]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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 ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... men who would make such a boast; but I think there are many women—beautiful, fascinating lazzaroni of the parlor and boudoir—who make their boast of elegant helplessness and utter incompetence for any of woman's duties with equal naivete. The Spartans made their slaves drunk, to teach their children the evils of intoxication; and it seems to be the policy of a large class in the South now to keep down and degrade the only working class they have, for the sake of teaching their ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... 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 ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... 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, where mother and child are without ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... composed in the year 1837 and is of French origin and though its music breathes German humour and naivete, the French influence may be felt clearly. The persons show life and movement, the music is light-hearted, graceful ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... 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 our literature. ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... was put out to nurse and our older boy, Casimir, who was seven, began, for lack of his mother's care, to come and go as he pleased. The assurance and cheek of street boys began to develop in him. He startled me by his knowledge and his naivete. But at the same time he was a natural innocent—a little dreamer. In the matters of street life that arise among children he had, as a rule, the worst of it. He was a born believer of all that might be told him. Such children develop into artists or ne'er-do-wells. It was too soon to worry ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... and pulling from her pocket a large blue square of cotton, she tied it under her chin with the utmost naivete. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... mind and went on regarding her in the light of it with a pondering smile, turning it over and finding a lively pleasure in his curious acumen in such an unwonted direction. It was a very flower of emotional naivete, though a moment later he cast it from him as a weed, grown in idleness; and indeed it might have abashed him to say what concern it had in the mind of the Order of St. Barnabas. It was gratifying, nevertheless, to have his ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... one of great interest, firstly to all those who visit the theatre, secondly to readers of Shakspeare, and thirdly to all who relish originality and naivete of character, such as Mr. Hackett displays abundantly, from the rising of the curtain even to the going down of the same, in his book. There are no men who live so much within their profession as actors, or are so earnest in their faith in it; and this devotion is reflected unconsciously, but ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... all they were sent on the ordinary group excursions like the home correspondents themselves. Indeed, the wonder was—in view of the comparative ease with which neutral correspondents drifted about Europe: the naivete, to put it mildly, with which the wildest romances had been printed in American newspapers, that we were permitted to see as ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... royal courtesy. But they did not see the episode which followed the fatigue and excitement of the long formalities of the council, when the young queen rushed first of all to her mother's arms, there to indulge her feelings in a burst of tears, and then, with girlish naivete, claiming the exercise of her royal prerogative to procure for herself two hours of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... valued his lovely wife as he ought to have done. The striking her "divers times'' may have been an exaggeration. It probably was. Jean and her women would want to show there had been provocation. (In a ballad he is accused of having thrown a plate at dinner in her face.) But there is a naivete, a circumstantial air, about the "biting of her in the arm'' which gives it a sort of genuine ring. How one would like to come upon a contemporary writing which would throw light on the character of John Kincaid! Growing sympathy for Jean makes ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... St. Mary's Coll., St. Andrews, James accompanied him, and acted as Prof. of Hebrew and Oriental Languages. He wrote many poems, but his chief work was his Diary, an original authority for the period, written with much naivete, and revealing a singularly attractive personality. M., who for his part in Church matters, had been banished to England, d. at Berwick on his way ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... phrases, the very flower of small-town 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 ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... then cultivated. Nor was this mass of work entirely without influence on the romanticists of 1830. Theophile Dondey, wrote a poem on Roland, and Gerard de Nerval (Labrunie) hunted up the old popular songs and folklore of Touraine and celebrated their naivete and truly national character. Attention was directed to the Renaissance group of poets who preceded the Louis XIV. writers—to Ronsard and "The Pleiade." Later the Old French Text Society was founded for the preservation and publication of mediaeval remains. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... was declared fantastic and uninteresting; hence the changes. As a lyric drama, delightfully picturing the quaintness and simplicity of provincial life, not alone in the tunefulness of the music, but also in its pastoral naivete and what may be termed its folk-characteristics, it will hold a high place upon the stage as long as young and fresh voices can be found to ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... any old church; not because one shares its beliefs—creeds are increasingly unimportant—but because the church is an instrument of social welfare, and a man can do more good in combination with his fellows than when he stands alone. There is much truth in this doctrine, though it has a certain naivete, when looked at from the standpoint of the private soul ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... in the little book, and we must make room for one. It is full of naivete, brutal truth, and unembarrassed directness, and is the funniest (genuine) boy's composition I think ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... chaperon. For Betty's innocence was deeply laid, and had survived the shock of all the waves that had beaten against it since her coming to Paris. It was more than innocence, it was a very honest, straightforward childish naivete. ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... 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 ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... couldn't get it out of me." Abramka sighed. Mrs. Shaldin seemed to suspect his betrayal. "I am right, am I not? She has not had her dress made yet, has she? She waited to see my dress, didn't she? And she told you to copy the style, didn't she?" Mrs, Shaldin asked with honest naivete. "But I warn you, Abramka, if you give away the least little thing about my dress, then all is over between you and ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... humbled me since that day which men call Good Friday," he wrote to Mrs. Locke (May 6), "than ever I have been in my life. . . ." He had rejoiced in his task of peace-making, in which the Privy Council had practically failed, and had shown great naivete in trusting Bothwell. The best he could say to Mrs. Locke was that he felt no certainty about the fact that Bothwell had tempted Arran ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... refinement and good-breeding which the exquisite polish of his compositions would lead us to expect. He was always cheerful and animated, often, indeed, boisterous in his mirth; entered with spirit into convivial society; contributed largely to its enjoyments by solidity of information, and the naivete and originality of his character; talked often without premeditation, and laughed ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... stark and unromantic way. And he lacked a sense of humor. He'd proved it in the river. Joan answered his letters with an adorable primness that filled him with delight. It reflected Mr. Abbott. But her letters ended always with the naivete of a child. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... open house for the most diverse elements of feeling, and exercised an ennobling control upon each and all at will; Homer's naivete, Shakespeare's sympathy, Rousseau's enthusiasm, even Ossian's melancholy, found ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... were much lightened by the gay chat of one of the party, who, with the excellent practical sense of mature experience, and the kindest heart, united a naivete and innocence such as I never saw in any other who had walked so long life's tangled path. Like a child, she was everywhere at home, and like a child, received and bestowed entertainment from all places, all persons. I thanked her ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... whose naivete reminds me of the little Louise Schwerin of earlier days. Well, let us speak on that subject which interests most deeply all who know you; let us speak of your happiness. You sigh. Have you already paid your tribute? Do you realize the fleetness of ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... herself knew nothing of this plot. She besought the King to pardon the Constable,—a request which proves how great was her naivete. By royal command Richemont received back ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... Hindustani, as little versed as himself in the ways and speech of Franguestan. In this "considerable unhandsome fix," as it would be called on the other side of the Atlantic, the perplexities of the khan are related with such inimitable naivete and good-humour, that we cannot do better than give the account of them in his own words. "As I could neither ask for any thing, nor answer any question put to me, I passed the whole night without a morsel of food or a drop ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... George would not take him!" rejoined the good-hearted Sir Christopher, with forcible naivete. "No, no, Linden, we must not be so hard-hearted; we must forgive and forget;" and so saying, the baronet threw out his chest, with the conscious exultation of a man who has uttered a noble sentiment. The moral of this little history ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... moral naivete! How could they appreciate that after the firing squad had done its work and the body of the woman had been given hasty burial the victim's ...
— The Case of Edith Cavell - A Study of the Rights of Non-Combatants • James M. Beck
... 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 ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... case. This assumption suited his interest, as he sought a victim to whom he might charge the burning of Columbia. His statement in his "Memoirs," published in 1875, is a delicious bit of historical naivete. "In my official report of this conflagration," he wrote, "I distinctly charged it to General Wade Hampton, and confess I did so pointedly, to shake the faith of his people in him, for he was in my opinion boastful and professed to be the special ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... my bride, sire, and indeed Esther was a lovely girl, who had but one fault—she did not love me. She had the naivete to tell me so, and indeed to confess that she ardently loved another, a poor clerk of her father's, who, when their love was discovered, a short time before, had been turned out of the house. They loved each other none the less glowingly for all this. I shrugged my shoulders, ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... 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 to the disintegrating ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... fear of coming in violent contact with the really guilty. Mr O'Connell 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 in the higher ranks of life; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... Julian (Misopogon, p. 367, 362) discovers his own character with naivete, that unconscious simplicity which always constitutes ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... 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, has lovely hands, excellent eyes, a good countenance, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... sending him that, and writing a polite little note. It was very short, and I tried not to make it too nice, and I said nothing at all about writing, only just remarked that it would be interesting to receive letters from India," said Bridgie, with a naivete which made Mademoiselle throw up her hands in delight. "He has written to me four times since then, and,"—her eyes began to dance, and a dimple danced mischievously in her cheek—"I enjoy writing to him so much that I answer them the very next day; but ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... intention had been translation rather than imitation and he would have abhorred the feeble new product, but this did not concern his successors— they were interested only in his technical principles. Moreover, in their naivete, they imagined they were improving on Jackson because their prints were counterfeit paintings while ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... said one man, who was noted in the place for his outspokenness, which would have been brutal had it not been for his naivete—"I heard she wasn't going to ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sparse and unkempt of growth, was as indeterminate and colorless as his complexion. It would seem that all the color of his frame had gone into his eyes, for they were startlingly blue. Also, they were laughing and merry eyes, within them much of the naivete and wonder of the child; and yet, in an unassertive way, they contained much of calm self-reliance and strength of purpose founded upon self-experience and experience ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... for his hero, and was very proud of Sancho Panza. It 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 Mayor, for one such success as Lope de Vega ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the Pisani, that he painted the "Family of Darius," which was sold to England by a member of the house in 1857. The royal captives, who are throwing themselves at the feet of the conqueror, are, with Paolo's usual frank naivete and disregard of anachronisms, dressed in full Venetian costume—all the chief personages are portraits of the Pisani family. The freedom and rapidity of execution, the completeness and finish, ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... my eye to me. This style of prothesis without apodosis is very common in Arabic and should be preserved in translation, as it adds a naivete to the style. We find it in Genesis iii. 2, "And now lest he put forth his ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... name; but Cornelia, whose gratitude to Agias had known no bounds, took the little thing into her heart, and determined to devote herself to instructing an innocence that must not continue too long, despite its charming naivete. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... coloured beads. So interesting a person I had not seen in the country, and on my remaining some moments with my eyes fixed on her, she recommenced the salutation. How is your health? &c., and smiling, asked with great naivete, whether I had not learned, during the last two months, a little more Arabic? I assured her that I had. Looking round to see if any body heard her, and having brought the hood over her face, she said, 'I first heard of your coming last night, and ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... it either," returned the iron-founder, with grave naivete. "And, yes, I guess she meant it. But that reminds me. She knew I was looking for you and she gave me a note—let me see, I've got it here somewhere; oh, yes, here it is—gilt monogram ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... am sure that nobody could have compelled you to it against your will.' 'Eh! monsieur, qui est-ce qui vous y obligeait?' The jest is 'old as the hills'—it was old before Dumas was born. So, too, with the amusing bit of naivete attributed to an English duchess, who, to express her deeply-seated religious prejudices, declared that she would sooner have a dozen Protestant husbands than one Catholic. The same point is expressed as follows, in a very witty but extremely wicked collection ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... cruel as to blame it, though all discuss it. And it is here that the harshness of American and English society toward the erring woman (harshness which is not injustice, but half- justice only) contrasts visibly to our advantage over the bad naivete and lenity of the Italians. The carefully secluded Italian girl is accustomed to hear of things and speak of things which, with us, parents strive in every way to keep from their daughters' knowledge; and while her sense of delicacy is thus early blunted, while she is thus used to know good ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... 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
... privations, and of unheard-of work. He is a fanatic, and fanaticism draws him on, even to the point of becoming an accomplished Jesuit. At moments he becomes simply stupid. Most of his lies are sewn with white thread.... In spite of this relative naivete, he is very dangerous, because he daily commits acts, abuses of confidence, and treachery, against which it is all the more difficult to safeguard oneself because one hardly suspects the possibility. With all that, Nechayeff is a force, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... moving 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, the ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... publication of the Brazilian Fishes, when I began to study the works of the older naturalists. Professor Dollinger had presented me with a copy of Rondelet, which was my delight for a long time. I was especially struck by the naivete of his narrative and the minuteness of his descriptions as well as by the fidelity of his woodcuts, some of which are to this day the best figures we have of the species they represent. His learning overwhelmed me; I would gladly have read, as he did, everything that had been written ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... heart—the sorrow of seeing 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 one seemed to love him. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... our own defense but on our vital foreign assistance program. Your recent passage of the Foreign Assistance Act sent a signal to the world that America will not shrink from making the investments necessary for both peace and security. Our foreign policy must be rooted in realism, not naivete or self-delusion. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Raoul laughed. The fair Indian, astonished at the sensation her observation produced, looked down and resumed her air of naivete. ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... child would have behaved as he did on certain occasions. The grave naivete of his attitude to the whole spectacle of life was like the solemnity of a child who takes very seriously every movement of the game which he is playing. A child is solemn when it is pretending to be an engine-driver ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... publisher smiled. Theodora's girlish naivete was refreshing to him. He liked her face and manner, and he was curious to see more of this young aspirant for fame, so he pushed ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... would convert the masses? And was not the personal appearance of the Virgin always in accordance with a poor child's dreams—akin to some coloured figure in a missal, an ideal compounded of traditional beauty, gentleness, and politeness. And the same dreams showed themselves in the naivete of the means which were to be employed and of the object which was to be attained—the deliverance of nations, the building of churches, the processional pilgrimages of the faithful! Then, too, all the words which fell from Heaven resembled one ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... 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 ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... plumb the depths of the Della Robbia soul,—through its purity and limpid candour, through its shining, sweetly wholesome homeliness, down to the crystal sincerity burning recessed in the shrine. It is the fashion to say of Angelico da Fiesole that his was a naivete which amounted to genius: a thin phrase, which may nevertheless pass to qualify the inspired miniaturist. The religiosity of the Della Robbia, while no less naive, is really far other. It is not Gothic at all, nor ascetic, nor mystic. It would be Latin, were it not blithe enough ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... the chateau of Francois I. to that of Louis XII., perhaps the naivete of that of the good king will give true artists more pleasure, while at the same time they admire the magnificent structure of the knightly king. The elegance of the two staircases which are placed at each end of the chateau of Louis XII., the delicate ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... For once the extreme naivete of Leblanc seems to have been mitigated by duplicity. He went on with the general pacification of the world as if the Balkan submission was made in absolute good faith, and he announced the disbandment of the force ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... and final interpretation of them as a whole are, have been, and always will be the marks of the enduring in all literature, whether poetry or prose." [Footnote: Lewis Worthington Smith, "The New Naivete," Atlantic, April, 1916.] To quote another critic: "A rock, a star, a lyre, a cataract, do not, except incidentally and indirectly, owe their command of our sympathies to the bare power of evoking reactions in a series of ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... melius eris,"—a motto which, together with the two distaffs taken as supporters, proves the modesty of the burgher families in the days when the Orders held their allotted places in the State; and the naivete of our ancient customs by the pun on "eris," which word, combined with the "i" at the beginning and the final "s" in "melius," forms the name (Serisy) of the estate from which the family take ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... delicious in their naivete, might seem to have been extracted from the libretto of an opera, but that they lack the sympathising chorus, who should have stood at hand, ready to chime in with 'he,' 'she,' and 'they,' to the 'I,' 'you,' and 'we' ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... 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 house. They took advantage of the blindness of the count, ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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
... summarized so briefly; its scattered chronicle must be sought in the minutes of trustees' meetings, where it modestly evades the public eye, in the academic formalities of presidents' reports and the journalistic naivete of college periodicals; in the diaries of early graduates; in newspaper clippings and magazine "write-ups"; in historical sketches to commemorate the decennial or the quarter-century; and from the lips of the pioneers,—teacher and student. For, in the words of the graduate thesis, ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... 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 ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various |
