"Simplicity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... evening my letter came, the little old post-office and general store was crowded with people intensely anxious to hear from their boys or other relatives in the 61st Illinois. The distribution of letters in that office in those times was a proceeding of much simplicity. The old clerk who attended to that would call out in a stentorian tone the name of the addressee of each letter, who, if present, would respond "Here!" and then the letter would be given a dexterous flip, and went flying to him across the room. But on this occasion there ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... the historian to believe, with Robertson and Prescott, in the perfidy of Pizarro. It was very important for him to have the inca in his own hands, and to employ him as a tool, just as Cortes had done with Montezuma. He therefore took advantage of the honesty and simplicity of Atahualpa, who placed entire confidence in Pizarro's protestations of friendship and so was thrown off his guard, to arrange an ambuscade into which Atahualpa was certain to fall. There was not a scruple in the disloyal soul of the conqueror; he ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... she queried. Then, obtaining no response, she continued, with perfect simplicity: "Margaret's quite like a daughter to me, you know. Of course, she and the Colonel will come with us—at least, until affairs are a bit more settled. Even afterward—well, we have a large house, Billy, and I don't see that they'd be ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... Mis'ra wrote two other commentaries on the Pras'astapada-bhasya, namely Bhasyasukti and Ka@nada-rahasya. S'a@nkara Mis'ra (1425 A.D.) also wrote a commentary on the Vais'e@sika sutras called the Upaskara. Of these Nyaya-kandali of S'ridhara on account of its simplicity of style and elaborate nature of exposition is probably the best for a modern student of Vais'e@sika. Its author was a native of the village of Bhuris@r@s@ti in Bengal (Ra@dha). His father's name ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... and the principals upon which our republican institutions are founded recommend a proper adaptation of the revenue to the expenditure, and they also require that the expenditure shall be limited to what, by an economical administration, shall be consistent with the simplicity of the Government and necessary to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... have been the language of a people with few thoughts to express, but such thoughts as they had were beautiful in their simplicity and charm, sometimes wise and shrewd, and not rarely full of feeling. Thus laa-noo is old Manx for child, and it means literally half saint—a sweet conception, which says the best of all that is contained in Wordsworth's wondrous "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality." ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... as a balance for the heavy measures of the foreground and the interest is drawn back into the picture and to the upper left hand corner by the two cloud forms, over which is sharply thrown a barricade of cloud which turns the vision back into the picture. The simplicity of the three broad tones is appropriate to the sentiment of vastness which the picture contains. The figure seated in revery before this expanse supplies the mental element to the subject, the antithesis of which is the ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... place he went on to another and found changes, and new erections, and some device for throwing away money everywhere. It angered him to think that there was so little of simplicity left in the world that a man could not entertain his friends without such a fuss as this. His mind applied itself frequently to the consideration of the money, not that he grudged the loss of it, but the spending of ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... simplicity. There are four wheels on wooden axles, with rough but strong 'reaches.' A body, shaped something like an old-fashioned baby-cart, rests upon the reaches or on poles fixed over them. The hood protects against wind and rain from behind, and the best of the vehicles ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the simplicity of her dress was in almost too great contrast with its elegance—a contrived simplicity that left no room for any trace of careless youth or girlishness. Slender and rather delicate-looking, she had brown eyes, regular features, and soft, light-brown hair waving loosely about her face and hanging ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... other hand, heat being capable of rendering all these substances fluid, they may be, with the greatest simplicity, transported from one place to another; and they may be made to concrete altogether at the same time, and distinctly separate in any place. Hence, for the explanation of those natural appearances, which are so general, no further conditions are required, than the supposition of a sufficient ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... this subject, parallel with these modern accusations (p. 116) of Henry on the ground of "cajoling hypocrisy" we may lay the testimony borne by his contemporary, Walsingham,[92] to the unsuspecting simplicity of his mind, which exposed him to the (p. 117) overreaching designs of the unprincipled and crafty. In his Ypodigma Neustriae, a work expressly written for the use and profit of Henry, and with a view of putting him upon ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... might have spent his, days in the cloister, rather than in the din of hammering up hearths for the Anglo- Saxon. Perhaps it was that he had talked so long to the hills of Oceana, catching their simplicity and music. You were reminded of the measured English of an old and lovable book, just as you grew used to read in his face what he was to say, before the words had begun to flow. Never was there a face more quick to reflect the mind, more pliable to humour, more luminous at some ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... mysterious to us, whose very name and tongue are quite unknown. Their works still live all around us in Ireland, spread evenly through the four provinces, a world of the vanished past enduring among us into the present; and, so mightily did these old builders work, and with such large simplicity, that what they built will surely outlast every handiwork of our own day, and endure through numberless to-morrows, bridging the morning and evening twilight of ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... from the comparative simplicity of the bodies and forces with which it has to deal, and the approximate regularity of the paths of the heavenly bodies, may be regarded as the science in which the greatest possible certainty is attainable. It opens at once the widest field to the imagination, and the noblest ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... psychology which would be a kind of physiology of the internal sense and might possibly be capable of explaining the phenomena of that sense. But it could never be available for discovering those properties which do not belong to possible experience (such as the quality of simplicity), nor could it make any apodeictic enunciation on the nature of thinking beings: it would therefore ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... vividly recalls the simplicity of method employed in the complete restoration to health of one of olden time whose story has come ringing down the ages in the Book of Books. Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria, a mighty man of valor and honorable in the sight of all men, turned away in a rage when Elisha, the prophet ...
— How to Eat - A Cure for "Nerves" • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... grandee. It must be confessed, that the grandee loved the estaminet where he could play billiards with the first comer; that he had a passion for the gambling-house; that he was a loose and disorderly nobleman: but, in whatever company he found himself, a certain kindness, simplicity, and politeness distinguished him always. He bowed to the damsel who sold him a penny cigar, as graciously as to a duchess; he crushed a manant's impertinence or familiarity as haughtily as his noble ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... instances in which he ever differed with his friend, Mr. Fox, occurred during this session, upon the subject of a Bill which the latter introduced for the Repeal of the Marriage Act, and which he prefaced by a speech as characteristic of the ardor, the simplicity, the benevolence and fearlessness of his disposition, as any ever pronounced by him in public. Some parts, indeed, of this remarkable speech are in a strain of feeling so youthful and romantic, that they seem more fit to be addressed to one of those Parliaments of Love, which were held during ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... smile and partial closing of the eyes which always distinguishes Spenser Hale when he places on the table a problem which he expects will baffle me. If I said he never did baffle me, I would be wrong, of course, for sometimes the utter simplicity of the puzzles which trouble him leads me into an intricate involution entirely ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... wilderness. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that to our veteran borderer the field of literature should remain a "terra incognita." It is our army that unites the chasm between the culture of civilization in the aspect of science, art, and social refinement, and the powerful simplicity of nature. On leaving the Military Academy, a majority of our officers are attached to the line of the army, and forthwith assigned to duty upon our remote and extended frontier, where the restless and warlike habits of the nomadic tribes render the soldier's life almost as unsettled ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... read of the monthly ten thousand dollars which our ambassador will lavish upon Brook House! In justice to Mr. Reid it must be owned that he is simplicity itself, and by no one is it supposed that either he or Mrs. Reid have part in the publication of these details. He showed wisdom in a preference for his own household over the proffered royal quarters which would have been assigned him. He is chosen for his fitness, ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... the front and sides; which objection is finally obviated by the introduction of that rich and exquisite composition, the Corinthian capital. Thus is obtained an order of the most elegant and ornamented character, but possessing a happy simplicity and regularity of composition which renders it more easy of application than any other. In like manner in the later, which has been called the florid style of Gothic architecture, there are buildings astonishingly rich and elaborate; but we ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... was a tutor of Balliol, and lectured on Aristotle, and of him eager youth said, in the words of Omar Khayyam, "He knows! he knows!" What was it that Mr. Green knew? Where was the secret? To a mind already sceptical about masters, it seemed that the secret (apart from the tutor's noble simplicity and rare elevation of character) was a knack of translating St. John and Aristotle alike into a terminology which we then believed to be Hegelian. Hegel we knew, not in the original German, but in lectures and in translations. Reasoning from these inadequate premises, it seemed to me that Hegel ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... that we owe the progress of this [anti-slavery] revolution in America, and the formation of the Society in London." He speaks of the impressions he received in attending the meetings of these societies. "What serenity in the countenances of the members! What simplicity in their discourses; candor in their discussions; beneficence and energy in their decisions! With what joy they learned that a like Society was formed in Paris! They hastened to publish it in their gazettes, and likewise a translation of the first discourse [his own] pronounced in that society. ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... look of veneration. We must not take upon us to affirm that this was a mistake, although the Face may have looked no more kindly at Ernest than at all the world besides. But the secret was, that the boy's tender and confiding simplicity discerned what other people could not see; and thus the love, which was meant for all, ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... ears of a generation like ours, in which senseless luxury, the result of wealth which has increased faster than the power of rightly using it, has attained such enormous proportions, and is threatening, in commercial communities especially, to drown all noble aspirations, and Spartan simplicity, and Christian self-devotion, in its muddy flood. Surely never was Gideon's test more wanted for the army of the Lord of hosts ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the simplicity of the Indians, it is said that having seized a quantity of gunpowder belonging to the colonists, they planted it for seed, expecting to reap a full harvest of ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... that's their profession, And not simplicity, as they suggest.— The plagues of Egypt, and the curse of heaven, Earth's barrenness, and all men's hatred, Inflict upon them, thou great Primus Motor! And here upon my knees, striking the earth, ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... my arm and walked me up to his sanctum, a fine spacious chamber, beautified with that simplicity which throws a wonderful dignity over all, and tends to show how in omission so much more refinement is to be discovered than in ornament. Touches of the vicar's keen discernment of those things which are worthy ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... books for girls, written by popular authors. These are charming stories for young girls, well told and full of interest. Their simplicity, tenderness, healthy, interesting motives, vigorous action, and character painting will ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... and appreciative house to welcome the rentree of Madame ALBANI, who was simply perfection and the perfection of simplicity as the self-sacrificing heroine Elizabeth. From a certain Wagnerian-moral point of view, no better impersonator,—dramatically at least, if not operatically,—of the sensual Falstaffian Knight ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... is of more consequence, works truly excellent and capable of enlarging the understanding, warming and purifying the heart, and placing in the centre of the whole being the germs of noble and manlike actions, would have been the common diet of the intellect instead. For the first condition, simplicity,—while, on the one hand, it distinguishes poetry from the arduous processes of science, labouring towards an end not yet arrived at, and supposes a smooth and finished road, on which the reader is to walk onward easily, with streams murmuring by his side, and trees and flowers and human ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... for the Bishop as he stood close by Hare's couch. The Bishop put his hands into the bowl, anointing them with fragrant oil; then he placed them on the young man's head, and offered up a brief prayer, beautiful in its simplicity and ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... To a reader of our age and country this inconsistency is, at first, perfectly bewildering. The whole man seems to be an enigma, a grotesque assemblage of incongruous qualities, selfishness and generosity, cruelty and benevolence, craft and simplicity, abject villainy and romantic heroism. One sentence is such as a veteran diplomatist would scarcely write in cipher for the direction of his most confidential spy; the next seems to be extracted from a theme composed by an ardent schoolboy on the death of Leonidas. An ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... will render the solid ones absolutely useless; nay, such is the present turn of the world, that some valuable qualities are even ridiculous, if not accompanied by the genteeler accomplishments. Plainness, simplicity, and quakerism, either in dress or manners, will by no means do; they must both be laced and embroidered; speaking, or writing sense, without elegance and turn, will be very little persuasive; and the best figure in the world, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... she said simply, the simplicity lying merely in the broad outlines of her manner and speech. There were the semitone of voice and half-hidden expression of eyes which tell the initiated how very fragile is the ice of ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... performance I saw him in his box, "sitting still," as he said, watching with the singular grave intensity with which he watched life. It struck me then that he was the only person there sufficiently simple to be really interested in living people; and that it was this simplicity which gave him his charm. He found the life in a man very well worth wonder, even though the man were a fool, or a knave, or just down from Oxford. At the end of the play I saw him standing in his box, gravely watching the actors ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... enclose the ashes of the illustrious departed. Upon one is inscribed, 'Here repose the mortal remains of the ever-famed Jerry Abershaw'; upon another, 'Sacred to the memory of Poor Johnny Greenacre.' A third is remarkable for its touching simplicity—'Alas! Poor Thurtell!' Another, somewhat more elaborate, gives us 'Burke and Hare! As they were loving friends in life, so in death are they undivided! Erected by their affectionate disciples, Bishop ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... men become accustomed to the risks of military life, to danger and to death, and yet how their hearts cling to their fields and to the occupations of country life. The horrors of war are described with simplicity, and almost with enjoyment. But in the midst of these accounts one finds such phrases as these: "What crop do you intend to sow in such a field next year?" "How is the mare?" "Has the cow a fine calf?" ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... please. To adopt the metaphor of his nonsensical phrase, he laid brick upon brick on the tall chimney of his devoirs until, at length, the structure was stable and complete. The manners of the best society come around finally to simplicity; and as the girl's way was that naturally, they were on a mutual plane ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... talked so much about himself. Van Torp, he was sure, was in love with the singer; that was his weak side, and in whatever affected her he might behave like a brute or a baby, but would certainly act with something like rudimentary simplicity in either case. In Logotheti's opinion Northern and English-speaking men might be as profound as Persians in matters of money, and sometimes were, but where women were concerned they were generally little better than sentimental children, unless they were mere animals. ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... organism, with six or eight curves, and capable of movement in space. Its place in the scheme of existence is not wholly certain, but the probability seems that it is a protozoan, belonging to the lowest form of animal life. Its very simplicity makes it appalling; we do not understand how anything so innocent in appearance, can occasion such terrible ravages. In the course of the evolution of life how came it into being? We can only surmise. But once having gained a foothold in the body of a human being, the minute organism begins to ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... with quite well, Rosa Tilofsky Oswald says that Hainfeld bores him to death and that he shall get a friend to invite him somewhere. Nothing will induce him to spend the whole holidays here. His name for Ada is: "Country Simplicity." If he only knew how much she knows. Rosa T. he calls a "Pimple Complex" because she has two or three pimples. Oswald has some fault to find with every girl he comes across. He says of Dora: She is a green frog, ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... April ere it bloomed. It was thy voice, thy smile, Thy poisoned glances bright, Which taught me to revile The semblance of delight. Thy grace of girlish years Murdered my peace, my sleep. If I lose faith in tears, 'T is that I saw thee weep. I yielded to thy power A child's simplicity. As to the dawn the flower, So oped my heart to thee. Doubtless this helpless heart Was thine without defence. Were 't not the better part To spare its innocence? Shame! thou who didst beget My earliest, youngest woe. The tears are streaming yet Which first thou madest flow. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... new atmosphere and one very different from that in which we passed our stormy youth, for no sentiment of this kind softened life in earlier days or affected our Spartan simplicity. The very sight of a newcomer in a speckless suit, with an irreproachable tie and both tails on his glengarry bonnet, excited a profound emotion in the school and carried it beyond self-control. What could be expected of a fellow so bedecked ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... Tresillack house (I must explain) was simplicity itself. To the left of the hall as you entered was the dining-room; to the right the drawing-room, with a boudoir beyond. The foot of the stairs faced the front door, and beside it, passing a glazed inner door, you found ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... enchanting combination of opposites rarely blended into harmony. Her ignorance of much that girls know before they number half her years was so relieved by candid, innocent simplicity, so adorned by pretty fancies and sweet beliefs, and so contrasted and lit up by gleams of a knowledge that the young ladies we call well educated seldom exhibit,—knowledge derived from quick observation of external ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Vandyke, by which it had been made familiar to us. It is true that the minds of the spectators of this interesting sight were well prepared to receive this impression; but it is also certain that such a facility of belief had been occasioned by the simplicity and truth of Mr. Herbert's narrative, every part of which had been confirmed by the investigation, so far as it had advanced; and it will not be denied that the shape of the face, the forehead, an eye, and the beard, are the most important ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... somewhere; not all the way; but still somewhere. Without advertisement, without patronage, without a cent I could call my own, I put my wares on the market. I became Governor of Virginia in spite of everything you did, or did not do, to prevent it." There was a strange effectiveness in the simplicity of the man's speech. It was natural; it was racy; it was like nothing that Stephen had ever heard before. He wondered if it could be traced back to the phraseology of the circus? "Of course you think I am an extremist," concluded Gideon ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... The simplicity of this narration justifies its quotation here, as illustrative of the taste and manners that prevailed a hundred years ago. The lively emotion provoked by the "Nouvelle Heloise" is scarcely more foreign to our ideas and experience than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary feelings coexist in a state of greater simplicity, and, consequently, may be more accurately contemplated, and more forcibly communicated; because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings, and, from the necessary character of rural ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... (1566-72) in memory of his predecessor. In his youth the future Pope joined the Order of St. Dominic, and for years had acted as professor of theology, master of novices, and prior. He was noted specially for his simplicity and holiness of life, a holiness which it may be remarked had nothing in common with the morose rigour of Paul IV., for his humility, his love of silence and meditation, and for his kindness towards the poor and the suffering. As a man of ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... charm for the young Englishman, surfeited with the affectation of English girls, lay in her natural simplicity. ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... the Royal Palace of Hampton Court, and yeoman of the robes to Charles II., described by Evelyn as "page of the back stairs, a very simple, ignorant, but honest and loyal creature," contributed L1,000. However simple this man was, his simplicity manifested itself in a commendable direction. He is said to have given away his whole fortune in charity. It is to him we owe the statue of Charles II. in Roman dress which stands in the centre of the Hospital court. This statue is made of bronze, and there is a companion one of James II., a gift ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... sir, not at all. It is my manner of doing business, now for thirty years or more. Moles and fools, sir, work under-ground, and only get traps set for them; I travel entirely above-ground, and go ten miles for their ten inches. My strategy, sir, is simplicity. Nothing puzzles rogues so much, because they can ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... artist sees things too clearly as they are not to see also what they will be. He therefore skips the ignoble interlude of prevarication, quibble, and intrigue, and gives us Uncle Sam happy at last in his recovered simplicity. So we see him here, enjoying himself, as only a white man can, in a wholehearted spurning ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... understand how she was passing out of childhood. Yet while in stature she was like a child; in intellect, in force of character, in strength of clinging affection, she was a woman. There might be much of the simplicity of a child about her, there was little of the undeveloped girl, varying from day to day like an April sky, careless as to which way her own character is tending. So the two young people sat with their elders, ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... thirteenth century the 'Trovatori della transizione,' as they have been recently named, mark the passage from the Troubadours to the poets— that is, to those who wrote under the influence of antiquity. The simplicity and strength of their feeling, the vigorous delineation of fact, the precise expression and rounding off of their sonnets and other poems, herald the coming of a Dante. Some political sonnets of the Guelphs and Ghibellines (1260-1270) have about them ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... genuinely modern though as yet still imperfect conception of the marriage relationship was destined to emerge. The early Reformers in this matter acted mainly from an obscure instinct of natural revolt in an environment of plebeian materialism. The Puritans were moved by their feeling for simplicity and civil order as the conditions for religious freedom. Milton, in his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, published in 1643, when he was thirty-five years of age, proclaimed the supremacy of the substance of marriage over the form of it, and the spiritual autonomy of the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... again she answered with straightforward simplicity. 'Just before you came in, he said—; I don't know what he ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... huts and in marble halls— From Shepherdess up to Queen— Cared little for bonnets, and less for shawls, And nothing for crinoline. But now simplicity's not the rage, And it's funny to think how cold The dress they wore in the Golden Age Would seem in the ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... act with a certain note of gentleness, a quality mixed of spontaneity and intelligence. This is necessary for wholesome life in any age, but particularly amidst confused affairs and shifting standards. Genuineness is not mere simplicity, for that may lack vitality, and genuineness does not. We expect what we call genuine to have pith and strength of fiber. Genuineness is a quality which we sometimes mean to include when we speak of individuality. Individuality is lost the moment you ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... thought at first. Somehow, to bring a chugging, smelling, snorting automobile up to Sunnyside to stay seemed an insult to the peace and beauty and simplicity of his little tucked-away home. But when Jerry pleaded and even Mrs. Travis admitted it would be nice and reminded him that Silverheels was growing old, he yielded, and Uncle Johnny promised to order one immediately—he ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... broke the engagement, and Rodney, after relieving himself of more heretical opinions of spiritual simplicity and mystic madness, stalked unmelodiously away, slamming her door, and his ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... performance. When we consider the frailness of the ships, the immeasurable, extent of the unknown, the mutinies that were prevented or quelled, and the hardships that were endured, we can have no hesitation in speaking of Magellan as the prince of navigators. Nor can we ever fail to admire the simplicity and purity of that devoted life, in which there is nothing that seeks to be ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... "sudden angry gray arrow,"—imagine an angry gray arrow,—or by "flaming out into crimson anger," or "with wreathed neck and flaming cheek," or "with enkindled eye and vermeil cheek," both of which expressions we would recommend to lovers of simplicity. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... even go along together for a little way, his business is to follow the path of the latter after it diverges, and to show her floundering in the bog at the end of it. Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire. There is so brave a simplicity in her, that she can no more be made ridiculous than an oak or a pine. The danger of the satirist is, that continual use may deaden his sensibility to the force of language. He becomes more and more liable to strike ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Andrew Burnaby, who travelled in New England in 1759-1760, says that though it may "at first appear to be the effects of grossness of character, it will upon deeper research be found to proceed from simplicity and innocence." To this assertion, after some research, I can give—to use Sir Thomas Browne's words—"a staggering assent to the affirmative, not without some fear of the negative." Rev. Samuel Peters, in his General History of Connecticut, speaks at length upon the custom, and apparently ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the old world—a world made up apparently of a little land and a little water—we turn to an old papyrus, the oldest in existence, which tells us in familiar words, unsurpassed for their exquisite poetry and wondrous simplicity, of that great dateless time so full of ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... angry, because the song will not really be for me," Victoria answered with the simplicity which had often disarmed and disconcerted Maieddine. "And I shall be pleased, because in the desert it is ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Isabel, as they went upstairs, "and I sha'n't have one. I think I owe it to myself, and to the maids, Sue, to take that responsibility entirely!" Susan recognized the unchanged sweetness and dutifulness that had marked the old Isabel, who could with perfect simplicity and reason seem to make a virtue ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... poetry, until that tragedy of the egoist is no longer a play but a part of you, so many years of living, almost, added to one's life. Yes, it is all here, along with the forty-two-centimetre shells—good music and good beer and good love of both; simplicity, homely ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... in these mountains as well as out of them to prepare the food of the household. The Circassian still retaining much of the patriarchal simplicity of living, eats when he is hungry, without regard to set hours; nor is there any gathering of the family around the social board, every member generally taking his meals by himself, and the males under no circumstances eating with the females. The flesh of sheep and goats is the ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... elasticity of her movements. As M. de Richelieu had already remarked, she had adopted the costume best calculated to hide either graces or defects. She was dressed as a bat—a costume much in vogue, and very convenient, from its perfect simplicity, being composed only of two black skirts. The manner of employing them was at the command of everybody. One was fastened, as usual, round the waist; the masked head was passed through the placket-hole of the other. ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... the 6th of February to take the field with an army amounting, it is said, to thirty or forty thousand men, provided with a powerful artillery and accompanied by an immense baggage-train, wherein Charles delighted to display his riches and magnificence in contrast with the simplicity and roughness of his personal habits. At the rumor of such an armament the Swiss attempted to keep off the war from their country. "I have heard tell," says Commynes, "by a knight of theirs, who had ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... laughed. A laugh at such a time, and a laugh so full of simplicity and amusement brought the other ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Compositions for more than one Voice ought to be sung strictly as they are written; nor do they require any other Art but a noble Simplicity. I remember to have heard once a famous Duetto torn into Atoms by two renown'd Singers, in Emulation; the one proposing, and the other by Turns answering, that at last it[95] ended in a Contest, who ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... Genestas are met with now and again in the French army; natures that show themselves to be wholly great at need, and relapse into their ordinary simplicity when the action is over; men that are little mindful of fame and reputation, and utterly forgetful of danger. Perhaps there are many more of them than the shortcomings of our own characters will allow us to imagine. Yet, for all that, any one who believed that Genestas ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... introduces many refinements and subdivisions according to the predominance of the four humors, the harmonious combination of which means health, or eucrasia, while their perversion or improper combination leads to dyscrasia, or ill health. In treatment he had not the simplicity of Hippocrates: he had great faith in drugs and collected plants from all parts of the known world, for the sale of which he is said to have had a shop in the neighborhood of the Forum. As I mentioned, he was an eclectic, held himself aloof from the various schools of the ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... do not indeed find in any part of his voluminous Memoirs either deep reflection or vivid painting. But the narrative is distinguished by clearness, conciseness, good sense, and a certain air of truth and simplicity, which is singularly graceful in a man who, having done great things, sits down to relate them. On the whole, however, none of his writings are so agreeable to us as his Letters, particularly those which are written with earnestness, and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... soon we put to shame those who tried to interrupt us—and not only we ourselves, but other boys who did the same, were from that time never interfered with. Sure I am that our prayers were heard, and that the blessings we prayed for in earnestness and simplicity were given us. When we rose from our knees we found our courage much increased. The occasion had made us serious, and reminded us of our duties. I wish that it had been always so, that it were still always ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... has a double claim upon our attention as the inventor of the hygrometer and as the pioneer of the snow-peaks. He climbed the Buet as early as 1770, and wrote an account of his adventures on its summit and its slopes which has the true charm of Arcadian simplicity. He came to England, was appointed reader to Queen Charlotte, and lived in the enjoyment of that office, and in the gratifying knowledge that Her Majesty kept his presentation hygrometer in her private apartments, to the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... (he allowed himself at this point the more formal endearment), "I thought I was disgracefully transparent—I'm limpidity, simplicity itself. I've only one idea and one subject of conversation. Ask Edith. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... Deux Mondes, M. Jules Janet records the following experiment which, although simplicity itself, gives us a very vivid glimpse of a most ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... much invincible innocence of mind, to play the veteran well. The time to measure him best, to taste (in the old phrase) his gracious nature, was when he received his class at home. What a pretty simplicity would he then show, trying to amuse us like children with toys; and what an engaging nervousness of manner, as fearing that his efforts might not succeed! Truly he made us all feel like children, and like children embarrassed, but at the same time filled ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gradually fell into the habit of confiding her romance to Charlotte, who listened in perfect good faith to the fascinating details which Beth poured forth from day to day. Beth did not at first intend to impose on her credulity; but when she found that Charlotte in her simplicity believed the whole story, she adapted her into it, and made her as much a part of it as Hector the hero, and Dr. Angus Ambrose Cleveland, the confidential agent on whom their safety depended. Charlotte was Beth's ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the Rose. Many flowers are in certain senses more beautiful, but as, among women, she who charms is not always the most highly gifted with conventional attractions, so it is with the Queen of the Garden, whose proud simplicity is delicately blended with a familiar, friendly grace, which wins by the tenderest spell ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 220) says that 'Swift's delight was in simplicity. That he has in his works no metaphor, as has been said, is not true; but his few metaphors seem to be received rather by necessity than choice. He studied purity.... His style was well suited to his thoughts.... He pays no court to the passions; he excites neither surprise nor ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the preparation of this substance have been published, almost all of which, however, appear to complicate and mystify a process that is all simplicity. ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... As Henry IV. wished every man to have his pot au feu, so Sir Sedley Beaudesert, if he could have had his way, would have every man served with an early cucumber for his fish, and a caraffe of iced water by the side of his bread and cheese. He thus evinced on politics a naive simplicity which delightfully contrasted his acuteness on matters of taste. I remember his saying, in a discussion on the Beer Bill, "The poor ought not to be allowed to drink beer, it is so particularly rheumatic! The best drink in hard work is dry champagne,—not vtousseux; I found that out when ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... means; and this is especially the case with communities, because the stakes played for are the highest, freedom or empire, and, when all are acting together, each man irrationally magnifies his own capacity. In fine, it is impossible to prevent, and only great simplicity can hope to prevent, human nature doing what it has once set its mind upon, by force of law or by ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... simplicity, and inquired whether or not he had heard of the great flood from which only one man and his wife, and three sons with their ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... political intrigue, and then natural faculties in this way had not lain dormant or been injured by want of practice. In Pauline this finesse was partially concealed by a languor and indecision of manner and an occasional assumption of 'niaiserie'; or almost infantine simplicity; but this only threw people the more off their guard, and made her finesse the more sure in its operation. Pauline was handsome too, uncommonly graceful, and had all that power of fascination which has been attributed to the Bonaparte ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... is being more and more used, especially on the North Western. There is less use of brasswork for domes and fittings, although it is claimed for brass that it looks brighter and can easily be kept clean. There is greater simplicity of design generally, and the universal substitution of coal as coke for fuel, with its consequent economy; and last, but not least, the adoption of standard types of engines, are among the changes which have taken place in locomotive practice ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... had spoken, Mrs. Betts knew that it was spending her breath in vain to contradict; and Bessie went down to the drawing-room with an air of inexpensive simplicity very becoming to her beauty, and that need not alarm a poor gentleman who might have visions of her as a wife. Lady Latimer instantly accused and convicted her of that intention in it—in her private thoughts, ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... member of my family; and, indeed, all such vain gauds and toys, however suitable or necessary to the dignity of the British aristocracy, would be completely out of place among those who have been brought up on the severe, and I believe immortal, principles of republican simplicity. Perhaps I should mention that Virginia is very anxious that you should allow her to retain the box as a memento of your unfortunate but misguided ancestor. As it is extremely old, and consequently a good deal out of repair, you may perhaps think fit to comply with her ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... implicit in the natural badness of men, while Locke assumed their goodness and made his contract essential to their opportunity for moral expression. Nor did he, like Rousseau, seize upon the organic nature of the State. To him the State was always a mere aggregate, and the convenient simplicity of majority-rule solved, for him, the vital political problems. But Rousseau was translated into the complex dialectic of Hegel and lived to become the parent of theories he would have doubtless been the first to disown. Nor was Locke aided by his philosophic ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... unattainable, if possible, than heretofore. He knew little of women's dress, but in the style and cut of this particular gown there existed an indefinable something that warned him off. No mortal woman in such attire could fail to realize her own perfection. He also knew that the apparent simplicity of the hat and gown ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... storms;—wherein, I take it, the spirit of childhood is wiser than the spirit of the grown, until the latter learn that wisdom which men like my grandfather call faith, and so draw near again to the trustful simplicity of the earlier days. ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... had hoped so much from the energy and business acumen of his own countrymen, found that the conditions at home differed not much from those which he had found so exasperating abroad. Praise in plenty for the beauty and simplicity of his invention, but no money, either public or private, to enable him to put it to a practical test. His associates had left him to battle alone for his interests and theirs. F.O.J. Smith was in Portland, Maine, attending to his own affairs; Professor ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... as she was concerned. She was at least seeing things from Shaw's point of view. Her resentment was not against the policy of her brother, but the overbearing, petulant tyranny of her American sister-in-law. From the beginning she had disliked Evelyn; now she despised her. With the loyal simplicity of a sister she absolved Cecil of all real blame in the outrage of the morning, attributing everything to the cruelty and envy of the despot who held the purse-strings from which dangled the pliable fortunes of Bazelhurst. The Bazelhursts, one ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... no subject on which opinions differ so widely as this matter of finding the way to a place. To the man who knows, it is simplicity itself. Probably he really does imagine that he goes straight on, ignoring the fact that for him the choice of three roads, all more or less straight, has no perplexities. The man who does not know feels as if he were ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... because of the farewell which had to follow. With all his habits of self-control, he had never been able to feel quite sure that the word too much would not be said, that the glance too long would not be given. Her own simplicity, he told himself, had saved him from disaster. She showed her affection so fearlessly—with such tender and discerning trust—that his worst struggles were in solitude—not in her presence at all. It was when he was away from her immediate peaceful ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... Fifth Avenue house was left behind; here simplicity and quiet comfort held sway. Even the china wore no glitter, but was enamelled with green wreaths of vine-leaves; and the vases held only plumy ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... of former ages, a certain peevishness and undue fastidiousness towards the present, from which there seems no escape except into the deliberate vandalism which ignores tradition and in the search after originality achieves only the eccentric. But in such vandalism there is none of the simplicity and spontaneity out of which great art springs: theory is still the canker in its core, and insincerity destroys the advantages of a ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... met or wrote every week. Raphael, Esther never met nor heard from directly. She found Addie a sweet, lovable girl, full of frank simplicity and unquestioning piety. Though dazzlingly beautiful, she had none of the coquetry which Esther, with a touch of jealousy, had been accustomed to associate with beauty, and she had little of the petty malice of girlish gossip. Esther summed ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... The soft simplicity of Desdemona, confident of merit and conscious of innocence, her artless perseverance in her suit, and her slowness to suspect that she can be suspected, are proofs of Shakespeare's skill in human ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... the Angel Steeple above the roof-line where it had been left by Chillenden. The arch has been called a disfigurement, and as it was not originally intended such an opinion may be justifiable, and yet the beauty of the reticulated stonework and the consummate skill which conceived the bold simplicity of design is so satisfying that it is scarcely possible to wish that it were absent. Beneath this flying arch appears the splendid western screen, approached by the flight of steps necessitated by the crypt or undercroft, for, being on perfectly level ground, there would have been no need ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... the compass of discourses like the present, only give a very meagre and inadequate notion of the entire phenomena connected with the moon which the tides will explain. We have not unfrequently, for the sake of simplicity, spoken of the moon's orbit as circular, and we have not even alluded to the fact that the plane of that orbit is inclined to the ecliptic. A comprehensive theory of the moon's origin should render an account of the eccentricity of the moon's orbit; it must also involve the obliquity of the ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... "She's simplicity itself—it's her great quality. Vain complications don't exist for her, because she doesn't see them... that's what my people ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... courage of the gaolers who had him at their mercy, the narrator had not attempted to better his tale by the invention of perils. The history of the desperate project that had been planned and carried out five years before was related with grim simplicity which (because it at once bears the stamp of truth, and forces the imagination of the reader to supply the omitted details of horror), is more effective to inspire sympathy than elaborate description. The ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... of the author's manner, the unaffected elevation of his style, the conciseness, perspicuity and simplicity of his diction, are everywhere suited to his subject, which is solemn, novel, luminous, affecting,—a subject perhaps the most universally interesting to the human race that has ever been presented to their contemplation. It takes the most liberal and comprehensive view ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... "palace" of the mikado, but we must warn our readers not to associate ideas of splendor or magnificence with this word. The Emperor of Japan dwells not in grandeur, but in simplicity. From the earliest times the house of the emperor has resembled a temple rather than a palace. The mikado is himself half a god in Japanese eyes, and is expected to be content with the simple and austere surroundings of the images of the gods. There are no ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... cut bloom the daisy is charming in glass trays on a bed of moss, or even in small bouquets, mixed with the foliage of pinks, carnations, and rosemary. Such an arrangement has at least the merit of sweet simplicity, and somehow has also the effect of carrying our thoughts with a ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... came over me, for a childlike simplicity characterized the other ringleaders in this expedition. Clark had had acumen once, and lost it; St. Gre was a fool; Nick Temple was leading purposely a reckless life; the Citizens Sullivan and Depeau had, to say the least, a limited knowledge ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... endeavours to drown reflection in draughts of destructive poison. This, added to the contagious company of women of her own description, vitiates her mind, eradicates the native seeds of virtue, destroys that elegant and fascinating simplicity, which gives additional charms to beauty, and leaves, in its place, art, affectation, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... "The simplicity is beyond question." Blount returned the list of stockholders and fell back upon the pencil-sharpening. "It is quite elementary, as you say; but there is another phase of the transaction which seems to have escaped you. Are you aware that the present arrangement which you have so accurately ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... patriciate, now extinct in the control of the city which it builded so strenuously and maintained so heroically, is still insistent in all its art. This expresses their pride at once and their simplicity with a childish literality. At its best it is never so good as the good Italian art, whose influence is always present in its best. The coloring of the great canvases is Venetian, but there is no such democracy of greatness as in the painting at Venice; in decoration ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... simplicity which made the elder lady smile, and while mademoiselle re-adjusted the tiny flowers which formed the bouquet she had just presented to her, Mrs. Marston good-naturedly recounted to her all she knew of Sir Wynston Berkley, ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... people were present, sitting, kneeling, or walking about,—a freedom that contrasts very agreeably with the grim formalities of English churches and our own meeting-houses. Many persons were in their best attire; but others came in, with unabashed simplicity, in their old garments of labor, sunburnt women from their toil among the vines and olives. One old peasant I noticed with his withered shanks in breeches and blue yarn stockings. The people of whatever class are wonderfully tolerant of heretics, never manifesting any displeasure ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to feel pleasure from the sight and from the examination of the finest pictures of the great painters; that she may be able to draw a flower that happens to please her; and that she may unite in her dress elegance and simplicity. I should wish that her talents might be such, that they should neither excite the admiration of others, nor inspire her with vanity; I should wish that she should please by the general effect of her ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... to-day," as Henriette Fuerth truly says ("Erotik und Elternpflicht," Am Lebensquell, p. 11), "have not yet attained that beautiful naturalness out of which in these matters simplicity and freedom grow. And however willing we may be to learn afresh, most of us have so far lost our inward freedom from prejudice—the standpoint of the pure to whom all things are pure—that we cannot acquire it again. We parents of to-day have been altogether wrongly ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Balboa, dressed in a suit of pajamas engaged in superintending the roofing of a house. The officer, brilliant in silk and satin and polished armour, was astonished at the simplicity of Vasco Nunez's appearance. He courteously delivered his message, however, to the effect that yonder was the fleet of Don Pedro Arias de Avila, the new ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... old bush echoed to "Way Down Upon the Swanee River" and more modern songs, which aren't half so sweet as the old Christy Minstrel ditties. After they had exhausted all the choruses they knew, Harry "obliged" with one of Gordon's poems, recited with such boyish simplicity combined with vigour that it quite brought down the audience, who applauded so loudly that the orator was thankful for the ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... window, looking down, he were able to watch some shore, from whose security men were forever launching little cockleshell boats upon a limitless and angry sea.... From his height he can follow their fortunes, their brave struggles, their fortitude to the very end. He admires their courage, the simplicity of their faith, but his irony springs from his knowledge of the ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... not be referred to here; for he himself has related them in clear, life-like, homely terms which reveal one of the sources of his personal influence. Englishmen admire a man who is active without being fussy, who combines greatness with simplicity, whose kindliness is as devoid of ostentation as his religion is of mawkishness, and with whom ambition is ever the handmaid of patriotism. The character of a commander perhaps counts for more with British troops ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... his simplicity of manner, was a man of powerful and practical understanding. He had been an eminent scholar at his university, and was in a fair way for all its distinctions, when he thought proper to fall desperately in love. This, of course, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... have been difficult to make out that she smiled. "Mrs. Lowder." He did make out something, and then fairly coloured for its attestation of his comparative simplicity. "I call her on the whole the best. I can't imagine a ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... his kindly, gentle way, and his fine large eyes beamed benevolence. Nor was this any assumption or trick of manner, as Henry soon learned. The man's nature was one of absolute simplicity and generosity. With a vast knowledge of the woods and a remarkable experience, he was ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to me there is poetry in thy very name, and so would it be to all who delight in honesty, bonhommie, simplicity, and ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... educated at Eton College and Oxford University. He was fond of the classics and took up Demosthenes as he did the speeches of Lord Chatham. As an orator he was much indebted to the study of the Greek writers, for the simplicity of his tastes, his entire abstinence from everthing like mere ornament, the terseness of his style, the point and stringency of his reasonings, and the all-pervading cast of intellect which distinguishes his speeches even in the most vehement bursts ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... them all about it in the truthful simplicity of a man of God, and, thank God, they bad sense enough—yes, and love enough, charity enough, to accept his explanations, and to glorify God. Would to God we could get as much sense and charity ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... period of Salerno who had not yet been disturbed by Arabian culture or scholasticism, we cannot but admire the clear, charmingly smooth, light-flowing diction, the delicate and honest setting forth of cases, the simplicity of their method of treatment, which was to a great extent dietetic and expectant, and while we admire the carefulness and yet the copiousness of their therapy, we cannot but envy them a certain austerity in their pharmaceutic formulas ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... The story of Hercules seems of great antiquity, as appears from the simplicity of his dress and armour, a lion's skin and a club; and from the nature of many of his exploits, the destruction of wild beasts and robbers. This part of the history of Hercules seems to have related to times before the invention ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... For other fare than jonakin and mush. And though men fared and lodged very hard, Yet innocence was better than a guard. 'T was long before spiders and worms had drawn Their dingy webs, or hid with cheating lawn New England's beauties, which still seemed to me Illustrious in their own simplicity. 'T was ere the neighboring Virgin Land had broke The hogsheads of her worse than hellish smoke; 'T was ere the Islands sent their presents in, Which but to use was counted next to sin; 'T was ere a barge had made ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... this belief, read the manifesto of Professor Eucken, who represents such a large section of German opinion, and note the absolute sincerity of its tone—as well as its simplicity. ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... steadily in the face for about thirty seconds. His countenance was as calm as that of a reposing infant. I think it was simplicity, rather than mischief, with perhaps a youthful playfulness, that led him to this outbreak. I have often noticed that even quiet horses, on a sharp November morning, when their coats are beginning to get the winter roughness, ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... greatest interest to the layman and to the general anthropologist. We are informed that the Bantu languages "constitute a very distinct type of speech which, as contrasted with others amongst the group of Negro tongues, is remarkable as a rule for Italian melodiousness, simplicity and frequency of its vowel sounds, and the comparative ease with which its exemplars can be acquired and spoken by Europeans" (p. 15). "This one Negro language family now covers the whole of the southern third of Africa, with the exception of very small areas in the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... made to talk a good deal of her journey; and she told the story with so much simplicity, speaking with unfeigned gratitude and affection of the friendships she had made, and touching with quiet mirthfulness upon the droll events, as if she hardly knew herself that they were droll, that all—and ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... understood at the time, in order that the disciples might stretch up towards what was above them, and, by stretching up, might grow. I do not think that it is good to break down the children's bread too small. A wise teacher will now and then blend with the utmost simplicity something that is just a little in advance of the capacity of the listener, and so encourage a little hand to stretch itself out, and the arm to grow because it is stretched. If there are no difficulties there is no effort, and if ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... It is a rule, without any exception, in all kinds of composition, that the principal idea, the predominant feeling, should never be confounded with the accompanying decorations. It should generally be distinguished from them by greater simplicity of expression; as we recognise Napoleon in the pictures of his battles, amidst a crowd of embroidered coats and plumes, by his grey cloak and his hat without a feather. In the verses of Petrarch it is generally ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... painted clearly in his heart. She was girlishly slim. He had observed that her eyes were beautifully clear and gray in the sunlight, and her exquisitely smooth dark hair, neatly coiled and luxuriant crown of beauty, reminded him of puritanism in its simplicity. At times he doubted that she was twenty-three. If she had said nineteen or twenty he would have been better satisfied. She puzzled him and roused speculation in him. But it was a part of his business to see many things which others might ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... simplicity of an angel who would not be longer hindered by mundane society, she took up her pail, saying, "Good-day, sagamore," and swept on across ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... play till our own time had given us, in the author of Tragaldabas, one who could alternate without confusing the woodland courtship of Eliseo and Caprina with the tavern braggardism of Grif and Minotoro. The sweetness and simplicity of lyric or elegiac loveliness which fill and inform the scenes where Adriana, her sister, and the Syracusan Antipholus exchange the expression of their errors and their loves, belong to Shakespeare alone; ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... varied raptures of millinery, and with the rainbow range in their delicately floating, delicately clinging draperies. But their hats, their gowns, always express sentiment, even when they cannot always express simplicity; and the just observer is obliged to own that their calm faces often express, if not simplicity, sentiment. Their beauty is very, very great, not a beauty of coloring alone, but a beauty of feature ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... seeming, a thing to look at, to go get bravely had come into his mind in little pictures, like prints in a book. A thing of simplicity, simple as the sea, and as colorful and as wholesome and as beautiful. He thought of a little thatched and whitewashed house with a cobbled yard clean as a ship's decks, and a garden where the bluish green stalks and absurdly pretty flowers of ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... to know what became of the slaves after they had crossed the salt water. I told them, that they were employed in cultivating the land; but they would not believe me; and one of them putting his hand upon the ground, said with great simplicity, "Have you really got such ground as this to set your feet upon?" A deeply rooted idea that the Whites purchase Negroes for the purpose of devouring them, or of selling them to others, that they may be devoured hereafter, naturally makes the slaves contemplate a journey towards the Coast with ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... (you may depend upon it); and again seemed to me as, in several respects, the one perfectly Human Voice I had heard among my fellow-creatures for a long time. And then the "style," the treatment and expression,—yes, it is inimitable, best—Emersonian throughout. Such brevity, simplicity, softness, homely grace; with such a penetrating meaning, soft enough, but irresistible, going down to the depths and up to the heights, as silent electricity goes. You have done very well; and many will know it ever better by degrees.—Only one thing farther I will note: How ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... design, and they are almost always beautiful. It is melancholy to have to confess that in this, as in all their art, the Greek taste is inimitable; yet we may profit by the lessons it teaches us. These are: variety without redundancy; grace without affectation; simplicity without poverty; the appropriate, the harmonious, and the serene, rather than that which is astonishing, painful, or awe-inspiring. These principles were carried into the smallest arts, and we can trace them in the shaping of a cup ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... your politics and policies are summed up in the one intention to do well for yourself, great simplicity is given to your theories, if not to ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the point of bareness; austere, reduced to the most elemental necessities. Inevitably the order of their worship corresponded to the order of their society. It is certain, I think, that the white meeting-house with its naked dignity, the old service with its heroic simplicity, conveyed to the primitive society which produced them elements both of high formality and conscious reverence which they could not possibly offer to our luxurious, sophisticated and ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... you like simplicity That sucks its cheeks to make the dimple. But this domestic bourgeoisie You hate,—because ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... eye shall see," and seeing, recognise his divine dignity. In the next verse he is styled God, not to identify him, but as a matter of course in the narrative.—No sooner did the Judge take his seat, than "the earth and the heaven fled away." The simplicity and sublimity of this language are inimitable by human genius; and rarely if at all equalled, even by those who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. The first inspired writer uses language very ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... photographs, and industrial work, and a few by written work alone. In subject-matter and original thought, South Dakota's work compared favorably with that of other schools of like age and conditions, especially in simplicity and originality. ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... commenced relieved him of any embarrassment in regard to dispensing with military guards and sentries; but all pretentious accompaniments of authority were foreign to his nature, and he always showed, by the severe simplicity of his life, that he felt he was one of the people, and that it was his duty as well as his pleasure to permit all who had any occasion to see him to have free access to him, without the necessity of going through any ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... Italian women for the simplicity of their church-attire: their black dresses and lace veils make a picturesque contrast with the gorgeous ceremonials of the high altar. But there was something in this quiet toilet, so fresh and simple and girl-like, that struck me as the one touch ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... light than the sudden flash of a shirt-front or the tremor of a lock of hair. The goddess reigned. And round about the hall, the guardians of decorum, the enemies of Aphrodite, enchanted too, watched with the simplicity of doves the great Aphrodisian festival, blind to the eternal verities of a satin slipper, a ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... properly called apologetic. Unless we fall back into quietism which would tell us to read a Kempis and say our prayers and wait, we must address ourselves first of all to making Christianity attractive; and then to making it intelligible. And if we do not find it against Gospel simplicity to address ourselves, as we continually do, to the intelligence of the semi-educated, we cannot allege that scruple as a reason why we should not address ourselves to the fully educated,—to those who eventually form and guide the ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... evening they arrived at a house built with equal elegance and simplicity, where nothing favored either of prodigality or avarice. The master of it was a philosopher, who had retired from the world, and who cultivated in peace the study of virtue and wisdom, without any of that rigid and morose severity so commonly ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... making the reformation complete; and the rather, as in the present series and the one to be proposed, there would be so many points of very near approximation, as, aided in the same manner by tables, would not increase their difficulties, perhaps, indeed, would lessen them by the greater simplicity of the links by which the several members of the system are connected together. Perhaps, however, I was wrong in this supposition. The representatives of the people in Congress are alone competent to judge of the general disposition of the people, and to what ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... have the two enormous superiorities: first, that the Irish Protestant rioters really believe in Protestant theology; and second, that the Irish Protestant rioters do really riot. Among these people, if anywhere, should be found the cult of theological clarity combined with barbarous external simplicity. Among these ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... bordered with the principality, Gerolstein, an extinct grand duchy, among the number. On the south it marched with the comparatively powerful kingdom of Seaboard Bohemia, celebrated for its flowers and mountain bears, and inhabited by a people of singular simplicity and tenderness of heart. Several intermarriages had, in the course of centuries, united the crowned families of Grunewald and Maritime Bohemia; and the last Prince of Grunewald, whose history I purpose to relate, drew his descent ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... man, in simplicity a child," nothing gloomy, narrow, or pharisaical entered into the composition of Eugene Field. Like Jack Montesquieu Bellew, the editor of the Cork Chronicle, "his finances, alas! were always miserably low." This followed from his learning how to spend money freely before he was forced to earn it ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... most ardent wishes attend you, good Sir, that you may find in this land a virtuous simplicity, a happy recess from the intriguing politics and vitiating refinements of the European world. That your patriotic virtues may add to the vigour of our happy Constitution and that the blessings of this country may be abundantly remunerated into your ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith |
