"Credulous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... changes of vestments, of the identical earthen vessels—veritable relics of the old religion of Numa!—the vessels from which the holy Numa himself had eaten and drunk, set forth above a kind of altar, amid a cloud of flowers and incense, and many lights, for the veneration of the credulous or the faithful. ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... preserve the traditions just mentioned, and second, to give a certain class of ambitious men and women sufficient influence through their acknowledged power of exorcism and necromancy to lead a comfortable life at the expense of the credulous. The persons admitted into the society are firmly believed to possess the power of communing with various supernatural beings—manidos—and in order that certain desires may be realized they are sought after and ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... of his craft. As he was a perfect shot, so also he was a finished horseman; and his skill not only secured him against capture, but also helped him to the theft of such horses as his necessities required, or to the exchange of a worn-out jade for a mettled prancer. Once upon a time a credulous farmer offered twenty pounds and his own gelding for the Captain's mount. Hind struck a bargain at once, and as they jogged along the road he persuaded the farmer to set his newly-purchased horse at the tallest hedge, the broadest ditch. The bumpkin failed, as Hind ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... unrest, of rebellion that ranged from dislike to a primitive, hot hate. Of his own land and life he heard nothing, not even when his face was again turned toward the east. Nor did he think of it. As now he saw them, the rules and principles and standards of his former existence were petty and credulous. But he assured himself he had not abandoned those standards. He had only temporarily laid them aside, as he had left behind him in London his frock-coat and silk hat. Not because he would not use them again, but because in the Congo ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... announced by smoke signals to their friends, she was successful in persuading some of her more immediate friends to bring her across to the mainland within a short distance of where the vessels lay. The blacks were credulous enough to believe that as she had been so long with them and had been so well treated, she did not intend to leave them,—only 'she felt a strong desire to see the white people once more and shake hands with them': adding that she would be certain to purchase some ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... justified all Lady Geraldine's predictions, and surpassed her ladyship's most sanguine hopes. Even I, albeit unused to the laughing mood, could not forbear smiling at the humour and ease with which her ladyship played off this girl's credulous vanity. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... sincere; he esteemed the virtues of Pertinax, but those virtues would forever have confined his ambition to a private station. Severus pronounced his funeral oration with studied eloquence, inward satisfaction, and well-acted sorrow; and by this pious regard to his memory, convinced the credulous multitude, that he alone was worthy to supply his place. Sensible, however, that arms, not ceremonies, must assert his claim to the empire, he left Rome at the end of thirty days, and without suffering himself to be elated by this ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... story of my loving him and preferring him to others. The king is so simple and so conceited that he will believe me; and then we can go and tell others how credulous the king is, and can enjoy a ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... tactics, or astoundingly confident in the prowess of his arms. From the reckless, magnificent manner in which the dervishes comported themselves in the earlier stages of the fight that ensued, I incline to the belief that the Khalifa and his men, true to their crass, credulous notions, were overweeningly confident in themselves. A fatal fault, they underrated their opponents. His Emirs, Jehadieh, and Baggara had so often proved themselves invincible in their combats against natives of the Soudan, that they had come to hold that none would face their battle ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... the Pharisee are still with us. "Establish the credibility of the miracles of Jesus, or, better still, let Him work a miracle to-day, and we will believe," they say. This age is credulous; it hungers to believe the extraordinary. Yet, while it is running after folly, it is blind to the most extraordinary fact, the most stupendous miracle that ever took place, although it goes on right before its eyes and is open to every kind of proof. ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... a man who awakes with a start—not very clearly at first, then with feverish coherence, at times with recklessness almost eloquent. Still only half awakened himself, still scarcely convinced, scarcely credulous that this miracle of an hour had been wrought in him, here under the sky and setting sun and new-born leaves, he spoke not only to her but of her to himself, formulating in words the rhythm his pulses were beating, interpreting this surging ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... 'Peace between Church and State' is never more than a suspension of hostilities. The modern Papacy, true to the despotic principles it has followed for the last 1600 years, is determined to wield sole dominion over the credulous souls of men; it must demand the absolute submission of the cultured State, which, as such, defends the rights of reason and science. True and enduring peace there cannot be until one of the combatants lies powerless on the ground. Either ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... strongly upon the sterling worth of Senor Alvaros' character, and the very high esteem in which that gentleman was held by all who enjoyed the privilege of his acquaintance; and mildly reproached the Englishmen for being so credulous as to believe the unsupported story of such an unmitigated ruffian as Panza had appeared to be. The fact that the character of a Spanish officer and gentleman could be so easily smirched was dwelt upon by him at some length, but more in sorrow than in anger; and he did ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... which Dame Van Winkle is supposed to have sat, while she was berating her idle and incorrigible lord and master, is also shown to the visitor, and the more credulous ones gaze with interest upon a flagon which they are assured is the very one out of which Rip Van Winkle drank. The only thing needed to complete the illusion is the appearance of the old dog, which the man who had so grievously overslept himself was sure would ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... The methods employed to capture victims, by means of speciously worded circular letters disguised as personal communications, are an imposition, if not an actual fraud, on the ignorant and credulous. ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... I would believe that she could deceive me. Desgenais himself, while preaching to me after his manner, joked me about the ease with which I could be duped. The story of my life was an incontestable proof that I was credulous rather than suspicious; and when the words in that book suddenly struck me, it seemed to me I felt a new being within me, a sort of unknown self; my reason revolted against the feeling, and I did not dare ask whither all that ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... antiquarian research, and published many volumes on British and Roman antiquities, in which he displays unflagging industry and an exuberant fancifulness; "I have used his materials," says Gibbon, "and rejected most of his fanciful conjectures"; his credulous works on the supposed Druidical remains at Stonehenge and elsewhere gained him the title ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... him a dozen times, and once cut the ground under his belly, but never killed him. They are extremely hard to get even if shot, for they manage to run into their burrows somehow, even if mortally wounded. The Texans believe they go back even when quite dead; but then they are rather credulous, for some of them believe that the rattlesnake lives on friendly terms with the inmates of the burrows. The rattlesnakes were very numerous, for one day I killed seven. The first one I saw threw me into a curious instinctive state of fury, and I smashed it into ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... lean idle slights Their thoughts suggest to flatter their starv'd hopes! As if I knew not how to entertain These straw-devices; but, of force must yield To the weak stroke of their calumnious tongues. What should I care what every dor doth buz In credulous ears? It is a crown to me That the best judgments can report me wrong'd; Them liars; and their slanders impudent. Perhaps, upon the rumour of their speeches, Some grieved friend will whisper to me; Crites, Men speak ill of thee. So they be ill men, If they spake worse, 'twere ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... to be believed, {12} and I am afraid I must own that, much as I like them, I find them a little credulous, the Virgin in this chapel is more remarkable than she appears at first sight; she used originally to have her face turned in admiration towards the infant Christ, but at the very first moment that she heard the bells begin to ring for ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... How all which makes him worthy of more love Must train his ear to catch the siren croon That never else had reached his upland home! And he who failed in proof, how should he arm Another against perils? Ah, false hope And credulous enjoyment! How should I, Life's fool, while wakening ready wit in him, Teach how to shun applause and those bright eyes Of women who pour in the lap of spring Their whole year's substance? They can offer To fill the day much fuller than I could, And yet teach night surpass it. Can my means ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... a man of one idea who could see no evil on his own side and no good on the other, as a good fighter and a good hater he has had few equals. His supreme devotion to the cause he embraced made him credulous of evil in his foes, and capable of using deceit and of applauding political murder. Of his first preaching against Romanism it was said, "Other have sned [snipped] the branches, but this man strikes ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... intelligent, benevolent, sympathetic, philanthropic, self-reliant; possessed of all the qualities, in fine, which inspire respect and confidence in their fellow men, and cause them to be recognized as leaders. Others are timid, ignorant, feeble-minded, credulous, prone to lean upon others, hero worshippers; people whose natural bent it is to follow some one in whom they put faith. The sentiment of loyalty is inherent in the human breast, and will find an object whereon to fasten. At one time it is an Alexander; then a Washington, a Napoleon, or a Wellington; ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Red Indian moon worshipper with his death rattle awhile and harking back to Europe, Norway stands out as the richest country in legendary lore, for old-time superstitions have lingered among the simple and credulous people, living pent up on the horrid crags, where torrents leap from cliff to valley. Their tales of goblins and spirits, tales of trolls, gnomes, and a legendary host of other uncanny creatures, point to the former nature and ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... her cheek was close against his breast. "What could I do?" she murmured. "A man in sorrow and trouble may go to a woman for sympathy and support and the world will not gainsay or misunderstand him. But a woman—weaker, more helpless, credulous, ignorant, and craving for light—must not in her agony go to a man for succor ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... author was ever more superstitious and more credulous, at the same time that he terms this privilege one of the most valuable and most noble rights of the church of Rouen,[96] admits that the origin of it is lost in obscurity. He adduces, however, an historical document, to prove its existence during the reign of the Norman Dukes; ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... tale is laid on other shoulders. On a quite recent voyage a talkative passenger confidently stated having seen a shark 70 feet long. I ventured to measure out that distance on the ship's deck, and asked him and his credulous listeners to regard and consider it. It gained me ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... observe that the surgeon thought I was insane, for he quoted the above case as a parallel to mine. This I remonstrated against; and, although I could perceive a credulous smile upon his features, I at once cheerfully agreed to put myself under his care. When he retired for the evening, I found that I was indebted for my escape from death to a strange circumstance—the death of my uncle, my father's brother, who had returned from the West Indies some years before ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... good journalist must be somewhat effeminate—that is, at the command of the public, supple in following unconsciously the shades of public opinion, wavering and varying, sceptical and credulous, wicked and devout, a braggart and a true man, enthusiastic and ironical, and always convinced ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... at once angular and softly sensuous, like a blossom-laden branch; the pure pearl colour of her skin, the pure bright colours of her hair and eyes and mouth; the passionate and funny, shrewd and credulous pattern of her features; and that dozing smile, that looked as if her soul had ceased to run up and down enquiringly and was resting awhile to enjoy the sweetness that was its own climate. He would never forget her as she was looking then. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... looking for one of those almost incredible excuses which are sometimes accepted by credulous old men when violent passions seize them in ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... make it very irregular. The canon law had now grown up to its full strength. The enlargement of the prerogative of the Pope was the great object of this jurisprudence,—a prerogative which, founded on fictitious monuments, that are forged in an ignorant age, easily admitted by a credulous people, and afterwards confirmed and enlarged by these admissions, not satisfied with the supremacy, encroached on every minute part of Church government, and had almost annihilated the episcopal jurisdiction throughout Europe. Some canons had given the metropolitan ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... assassin of honor, the wretch who breaks the peace of families, who robs virgin innocence of its charms, who triumphs over the ill-placed confidence of the inexperienced, unsuspecting, and too credulous fair, is received and caressed, not only by his own sex, to which he is a reproach, but even by ours, who have every conceivable reason to despise and avoid him. Influenced by these principles, I am neither ashamed nor afraid openly to avow my sentiments ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... with him, fits his Lunacie, What ere I forge to feede his braine-sicke fits, Do you vphold, and maintaine in your speeches, For now he firmely takes me for Reuenge, And being Credulous in this mad thought, Ile make him send for Lucius his Sonne, And whil'st I at a Banquet hold him sure, Ile find some cunning practise out of hand To scatter and disperse the giddie Gothes, Or at the least make them ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... only bring scandal to Rudyard Byng's honourable wife, who had been insulted by the lover of Al'mah and the would-be betrayer of an honest girl—of Jigger's sister.... Yes, you may well start. I know of what stuff you are, how you had the soul and body of one of the most credulous and wonderful women in the world in your hands, and you went scavenging. From Al'mah to the flower-girl! . . . I think I should like to kill you myself for what you tried to do to Jigger's sister; and if it wasn't here"—he handled the little steel weapon ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... story, under the name of Rudolph. If you doubt these facts, strange as they may appear, go to the Rue du Temple, No. 17, and inform yourself; paint to yourself the features of the august person spoken of, and you will easily acknowledge that you are the most credulous, good-natured husband who has ever been so sovereignly deceived. Do not neglect this advice; otherwise it will be supposed that you, also ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... For they are at once proud and humble; bold in wickedness, and pusillanimous cowards; compassionate and cruel; negligent and lazy; but for their own affairs, whether evil or good, careful and watchful; easily credulous, but incapable of understanding, and fickle, after so oft repeated sacred teachings. They are very much inclined to attend the church, and its feasts and solemn rites, but it is necessary to oblige them by the rigor of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... circumstances all lent themselves to the scheme of spiritual domination. The fight was for the cross against the crescent; the symbol of the quarrel was visible and tangible. The Spaniards were poor and ignorant and credulous. The priests were enough superior to lead and guide them, and not so far above them as to be out of the reach of their sympathies and their love. They marched with them. They shared their toils and dangers. They stimulated their hate of the enemy. They taught ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... whom Madame Adelaide was specially implacable), were incensed at the marriage, not only from their hatred to Austria, but because it had accomplished the ambition of an obnoxious favourite to give a wife to the Dauphin of their kingdom. On the credulous and timid mind of the Prince, then in the leading strings of this pious sisterhood, they impressed the misfortunes to his country and to the interest of the Bourbon family, which must spring from the Austrian influence through the medium of his bride. No means were ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... credulous and ignorant people, but it has nothing surprising for me. Let Ennana and the wise men come. They will ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... Traylor that Mr. Lincoln's reproach had been the saving of him. A judgment was rendered in favor of the plaintiffs for the full amount of their claim with costs. The character of Lionel Davis had been sufficiently revealed. Even the credulous Mrs. Kelso turned against him. Mr. Lincoln's skill as a lawyer was recognized in the north as well as in the middle counties. From that day forth no man enjoyed a like popularity in ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... they hied, in bands of thirties and sixties; the hoofs of their asses might be heard clattering in the passes of the stony hills; the girls might be seen bounding in lascivious dance in the streets of many a town, and the beldames standing beneath the eaves telling the 'buena ventura' to many a credulous female dupe; the men the while chaffered in the fair and market-place with the labourers and chalanes, casting significant glances on each other, or exchanging a word or two in Rommany, whilst they placed some uncouth animal in a particular ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... constitutions were genuinely produced, the effects when fairly examined and analysed, were very unsatisfactory—not to be relied upon for any systematic truthfulness or any practical purpose, and rendered very mischievous to credulous persons by the superstitions they tended to produce. Zee received my answers with much benignant attention, and said that similar instances of abuse and credulity had been familiar to their own scientific experience in the infancy of their knowledge, ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... way; but the scoundrel missed his aim and only wounded his victim. Fearful lest the young king, who was faithful to Coligny, should discover her part in the attempted murder, the queen mother invented a story of a great Huguenot conspiracy. The credulous king was deceived, and the Catholic leaders at Paris arranged that at a given signal not only Coligny, but all the Huguenots, who had gathered in great numbers in the city to witness the marriage of the Protestant Henry of Navarre with the king's sister, should be massacred ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... from the restaurant and toy-shop could not be mistaken for Santa Claus even by the credulous fancy of the children, and Mrs. Marlow stepped ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... faith—in science. I am informed that there are more than 2,000 unvaccinated children in the schools of this city at the present moment, and all because a piece of legislation allows any unintelligent, prejudiced or credulous parent to decide on the momentous question of the ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... quite right. The reading of that letter has revolutionized my character. I am a changed woman, Dorothy, and thoroughly ashamed of myself. When I remember how I have deluded that poor, credulous young man, in making him believe I understood even the fringe of what he spoke about, it fills me with grief at my perfidy, but I am determined to amend my ways if hard study will do it, and when ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... senseless declamation merited a serious refutation; perhaps he did not wish to appear despicable in the eyes of the ladies; and he would not be silent on the subject, he says, lest any one should consider him as the credulous Spaniards are made to believe by their priests, that a heretic is a kind of rhinoceros or a dog-headed monster. Milton says, that he does not think any one ever considered him as unbeautiful; that his size rather approaches ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... strategy. Feigning to be driven out of the city, he secretly joined Don Sancho, and offered to deliver the city into his hands if the king would only accompany him to a side gate. Notwithstanding adverse omens, the credulous Sancho, believing him, rode off, only to meet his death at the postern gate, inside of which his ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... would go to work in a more direct way, and with gross and palpable artifice, which yet the credulous Timon was too blind to see, would affect to admire and praise something that Timon possessed, a bargain that he had bought, or some late purchase, which was sure to draw from this yielding and soft-hearted lord a gift ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... hall. He is a little elderly man with bulging credulous eyes and earnest manners. He is dressed in a blue serge jacket suit with an unbuttoned mackintosh over it, and carries a soft black ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... more dominated by the opinion of your contemporaries than by that of the fore-running or following generation. He held his countenance in excellent command, and did not meddle even by a word. You could be sure, however, that he was no credulous person who accepted everything ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... interested in these historical associations; they looked at all with that credulous admiration which leaves no room for examination or discussion. Madeleine read the name written under every piece of workmanship, and her sister answered ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... as a matter of gaol discipline, and due care was taken that the food of the Hindu prisoners should be prepared by cooks of the same or superior caste. Nevertheless, false reports were disseminated, and the credulous Hindu population was led to believe that the prisoners' food was in future to be prepared by men of inferior caste, with the object of defiling and degrading those for whom it was prepared. The news of what was supposed to have happened in the gaols spread from town to town and from village ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... whither most of their friends and relatives have gone before them. They seem simple and primitive enough at first sight, and yet they are as strange and incomprehensible a race as any in the world. They are as superstitious, as credulous of marvels, fairies, magicians, and omens, as the men whom St. Patrick preached to, and at the same time they are shrewd, skeptical, sensible, and bottomless liars. Upon the whole, I met with no nation on my travels whose company I enjoyed so much, or who inspired ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... "a republic! a republic!" The alarmed king conceded, tampered with his own concessions, and at last abdicated. His son and successor made a great flourish of proclamations and promises, throwing himself upon the popular sympathy until time enabled him to forswear himself. The credulous people who believed the oaths of kings, generally paid afterwards the penalty of their credulity in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... requisite capacity, also accepted the opinion. These, again, were trusted by many others, whose laziness suggested to them that it was better to believe at once, than to go through the troublesome task of testing the matter for themselves. Thus the number of these lazy and credulous adherents grew from day to day; for the opinion had no sooner obtained a fair measure of support than its further supporters attributed this to the fact that the opinion could only have obtained it by the cogency ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... her)—I did not proceed to gratify them, or to follow up my advantage by any action which should declare, "I think you a common adventurer, and will see whether you are so or not!" Yet any one but a credulous fool like me would have made the experiment, with whatever violence to himself, as a matter of life and death; for I had every reason to distrust appearances. Her conduct has been of a piece from the beginning. In the midst of her closest and falsest endearments, she has always (with one ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... themselves, and hence all have a deep concern in the subject of health. The strong popular prejudice against the doctors who advertise is due to the fact, that by this method so many ignorant charlatans are enabled to palm off their worthless services upon the uneducated and credulous; but the practice of such imposition should not cause a presumption against the public announcement of real skill, for the baser metal bears conclusive evidence that the pure ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... themselves brave under fire, and loyal to their salt in sharp extremities; but they are the most credulous and excitable soldiery in the world. They regarded steam and electricity as so much magic; and they fully believed that the British Government was binding India with chains, when it was only laying down railway lines and telegraph wires. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... nothing definable in the situation, which might well resolve itself into a huge joke on the part of the other two; but Lily had a vague sense that the subject of their experiment was too young, too rich and too credulous. Her embarrassment was increased by the fact that Freddy seemed to regard her as cooperating with himself in the social development of Mrs. Hatch: a view that suggested, on his part, a permanent interest in the lady's future. There were moments when Lily found ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... father), and lord Lumley (a catholic peer closely connected with the house of Howard). The design was now imparted to Leicester, who entered into it with an ostentation of affectionate zeal which ought perhaps to have alarmed the too credulous duke. As if impatient to give an undeniable pledge of his sincerity, he undertook to draw up with his own hand a letter to the queen of Scots, warmly recommending the duke to her matrimonial choice, which immediately received the signatures of the three nobles above mentioned ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... should be sisters. They were an interesting study to me. Clare, shallow, credulous, weak in the intelligence, conventional, emotional, sensitive, of the eternal type of orthodox and timid woman, with profound powers of passion, and that touch of melodrama, that sense of a situation, which might lead ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... policy of the Ministers when it does not coincide with his own ideas and purposes." And again: "It was currently reported in the Midland and Northern counties, and actually stated in a Scotch paper, that Prince Albert had been committed to the Tower, and there were people found credulous and foolish enough to ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... be feared that the hero of this chronicle began life as an impostor. He was offered to the credulous and sympathetic family of a San Francisco citizen as a lamb, who, unless bought as a playmate for the children, would inevitably pass into the butcher's hands. A combination of refined sensibility and urban ignorance of nature ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... did seem manifest to him, Dr. Grantly, that Mrs. Proudie absolutely believed the report which she promulgated so diligently. The wish might be father to the thought, no doubt; but that the thought was truly there, Dr. Grantly could not induce himself to disbelieve. His wife was less credulous, and to a certain degree comforted him; but that evening he received a letter which greatly confirmed the suspicions set on foot by Mrs. Proudie, and even shook his wife's faith in Lord Dumbello. It was from a mere acquaintance, who in the ordinary course of things would not have ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... for orders the passengers gather from their different compartments to detail excitedly to each other what they have seen. There is always an honest superenthusiast who believes he has seen rhinoceroses, lions, or leopards. He is looked upon with envy by the credulous, and with ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... turpentine might be mixed with the waters from a pine-swamp, but this supposition did not quite satisfy me. I mentioned the fact to some philosophical friends on my return to England, but it was not much attended to. I suppose I was thought a little too credulous. ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... cruelties which they committed in the cities of Egypt, of Cyprus, and of Cyrene, where they dwelt in treacherous friendship with the unsuspecting natives; and we are tempted to applaud the severe retaliation which was exercised by the arms of the legions against a race of fanatics, whose dire and credulous superstition seemed to render them the implacable enemies not only of the Roman government, but of human kind. The enthusiasm of the Jews was supported by the opinion, that it was unlawful for them to pay taxes to an idolatrous master; and by the flattering promise which they derived ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... say, for we found our tastes and enjoyments the same as ever. My brother-in-law explained to us the nature of the delusion we had all experienced, the physical conditions, the mental processes, the church machinery by which such excitements are worked up, and the impositions to which credulous minds are necessarily subjected. As we had all been through that period of depression and humiliation, and had been oppressed at times with the feeling that all our professions were arrant hypocrisy and that our last ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... number of venomous reptiles, by which he caused himself to be successively bitten, professing to secure immunity by reason of a secret compound which he offered for sale at a round figure. Convinced that the fellow was an imposter, and his wares valuable only as a means of depleting the pockets of the credulous, Mr. Drummond loudly asserted the inefficacy of the nostrum, as well as the innocuousness of the reptiles, which he assumed to be either naturally harmless, or rendered so by being deprived of their fangs; and in proof thereof insisted upon being ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... to cherish thoughts of his lost love, Virginia Dare, and marvel on the wonders of her death. Then it came to pass that when fruit came upon this vine, lo! it was purple in hue instead of white like the other grapes, and yielded a red juice. Full of superstition, and still credulous of marvels, O-kis-ko imagined the change to be due to the magic arrow buried at its root. He gathered the grapes and pressed the juice from them, and lo! it was red—it was the semblance of blood, Virginia Dare's blood, absorbed ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... Praiseworthy for preaching to his property on Sundays; and to the requisite end the good Elder felt himself in duty bound to inculcate humility in all things that would promote obedience to a master's will. Of course, one sermon was quite sufficient; and this the credulous property had listened to for more than three years. The effect was entirely satisfactory, the result being that the honest property were really impressed with a belief, that to evince Christian fortitude under suffering and punishment was the best means of cleansing ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... gave himself body and soul to the task of preparing his over-sanguine, credulous people for the possible ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... into which he has come. His imagination is quite as hungry as his stomach. And again and again it is stronger than his other appetites. You can easily engage his imagination in a story which will make him forget his dinner. He is credulous and superstitious, and open to all wonder. In this, he is exactly like the savage races. Both gorge themselves on the marvelous; and all the unknown is marvelous to them. I know the general impression is that children must be governed through their stomachs. I think they can be controlled quite ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Hitherto, credulous good-nature had been too ready to furnish excuses for reasonable fears. Why was the Spaniard, so superfluously punctilious at times, now heedless of common propriety in not accompanying to the side his departing guest? Did indisposition ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... past the rude, disfigured statue he thought of all the stories his mother, an uncompromising clerical and a woman of credulous faith, had told him of the patron of Alcira, particularly the legend of the enmity and struggle between San Vicente and San Bernardo, an ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... For she is credulous and good-hearted, and she believes everything from the goodness of her heart and... and... and she is like that... yes... You must excuse her," said Sonia, and again she got up ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... frigate. "As likely the Frenchman come to finish us off, or maybe only the Flying Dutchman again," said Stubbs. I thought that I detected a gleam of humour in his eye, as if he was not quite so credulous as he pretended to be. As the stranger approached, the belief that she was the Phoebe gained ground. At length those who knew her best said that there was no doubt about the matter. They were right. Before dark she hove-to close to us, and a boat with a ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... murderous, convivial indiscretions. Alas! Dough-Boy! hard fares the white waiter who waits upon cannibals. Not a napkin should he carry on his arm, but a buckler. In good time, though, to his great delight, the three salt-sea warriors would rise and depart; to his credulous, fable-mongering ears, all their martial bones jingling in them at every step, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... love this generous, old-fashioned entertainer! One nearly always sees them clinging to the close whorls of flowers that are strung along the stem, and of course transferring pollen, in recompense, as they journey on. A more credulous generation imported the plant for its alleged healing virtues. What is the significance of its Greek name, meaning a lion's tail? Let no one suggest, by a far-stretched metaphor, that our grandmothers, in Revolutionary days, enjoyed pulling it ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... the rejection of the offer thenceforth would bring condemnation. Signs and miracles were promised to "follow them that believe," thus confirming their faith in the power divine; but no intimation was given that such manifestations were to precede belief, as baits to catch the credulous wonder-seeker. ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... jealous, but resolved I have the faithful'st wife in Italy. "For this I find, where jealousy is fed, Horns in the mind are worse than on the head. See what a drove of horns fly in the air, Wing'd with my cleansed and my credulous breath: Watch them, suspicious eyes, watch where they fall, See, see, on heads that think they have none at all. Oh, what a plenteous world of this will come, When air rains horns, all men be sure ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... their names and idiosyncrasies, and began to take a certain interest in them. Above all had the case of Frielinghausen appealed to her. The sympathetic little seamstress saw in him something of the romantic disguised prince; and it amused her to make the credulous Wiegandt a little jealous, until at last she would assure him with a hearty kiss that he was ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... speaking to (who was fond of a joke), "she has good reason, for I know she is marked with a great ugly rat on her bosom, so naturally, that it even appears to be running." Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous. Madam de Menthon resolved to make use of this discovery, and one day, while Madam de Warrens was at cards with this lady's ungrateful favorite, she contrived, in passing behind her rival, almost to overset the chair she sat on, and at the same instant, very ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... whom she actually surpassed in penurious inventions. Their daily existence had something mysterious and problematical about it. The old woman rarely took bread from the baker; she appeared so seldom in the market, that the least credulous of the townspeople ended by attributing to these strange beings the knowledge of some secret for the maintenance of life. Those who dabbled in alchemy declared that Maitre Cornelius had the power of making gold. Men of science averred that he had found the Universal ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... case against the prisoner, and, after deliberating eight or ten hours and being out all night, they returned a verdict of guilty. Flechter broke down and declared bitterly that he was the victim of a conspiracy upon the part of his enemies, assisted by a too credulous prosecuting attorney. Everybody admitted that it was an extraordinary case, but the press was consistent in its clamor against Flechter, and opinion generally was that he had been rightly convicted. On May 22nd he ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... juggleries were not without effect. They satisfied some credulous men, and inflamed the courage and imaginations of a few youths. The enrolments of volunteers were more numerous: a certain number of pupils of the schools of law and physic offered their services, and traversed the streets of ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... obsolete use in medicine. It is one of the numerous plants which have shaken off the superstitions which a credulous populace wreathed around them. Almost none but the least enlightened people now attribute any medicinal virtues whatever ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... had returned to his native land now nearly twenty-five years, when a Franciscan monk traversed the whole of Asia, from the Black Sea to the extreme limits of China, passing by Trebizond, Mount Ararat, Babel, and the island of Java; but he was so credulous of all that was told him, and his narrative is so confused, that but little reliance can be placed upon it. It is the same with the fabulous travels of Jean de Mandeville. Cooley says of them, "They are so utterly untrue, that they have not ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... natural child reject the still more monstrous falsifier, Gomora; but adopts them both, according to the custom of novelists; and not the slightest objection is raised. Then descending lower and still lower; disregarding alike the warning of Lord Bacon 'a credulous man is a deceiver,' and of Tacitus fingunt simul creduntque—he rakes up even a devotee, Boturini, and makes him also an historic authority, without overtaxing public credulity; though this wretch, as we have seen, out-Munchausens ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... little longer among us, you will find that little is to be believed which interests the prevailing passions, and happens beyond the limits of our own senses. Let us not then, my dear friend, embark our happiness and our affections on the ocean of slander, of falsehood, and of malice, on which our credulous friends are floating. If you have been made to believe that I ever did, said, or thought a thing unfriendly to your fame and feelings, you do me injury as causeless as it is afflicting to me. In the present contest in which you are concerned, I feel no ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... in connection with these numbers. I look on your statement as founded on mere rumors, which you have believed with too much facility, or based entirely on supposition, induced by having perchance heard that I had sent the work to Salomon; I cannot, therefore, but feel some coolness towards such a credulous friend, though I still ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... and the artillery of advanced peoples, so the mental products, the fairy tales, and myths of rude races have everywhere a strong family resemblance. They are produced by men in similar mental conditions of ignorance, curiosity, and credulous fancy, and they are intended to supply the same needs, partly of amusing narrative, partly of crude explanation ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... the period of the Missouri Compromise. Reports of the agitation and of the debates in Congress were eagerly scanned by those Negroes in Charleston who could read; rumor exaggerated them; and some of the more credulous of the slaves came to believe that the efforts of Northern friends had actually emancipated them and that they were being illegally held in bondage. Nor was the situation improved when the city marshal, John J. Lafar, on January 15, 1821, reminded those ministers or ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... cried Sally; "how in the world could you know that?" forgetting that she herself had just told her so. And it is thus that these hags pick out of the credulous all which they afterwards ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... well-natured bosom all recollection of their differences, and, remote as he was from every means of learning that Richard's disgrace was in reality only the just, as well as natural consequence, of his own unsuccessful intrigues, the good but credulous Baronet at once set it down as a new and enormous instance of the injustice of the existing Government. It was true, he said, and he must not disguise it even from Edward, that his father could not have sustained such an insult as was now, for the first time, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... which goes to show how easy it may be for a masked pretender to impose on credulous humanity, for nothing is more clearly established in modern knowledge than the fact that "gale repercutee" was simply a name to hide a profound ignorance; no such disease exists or ever did exist. Gale itself is a sufficiently ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... I come to you from my cousin—from Florence—there has been some misunderstanding between you. I called on her to-day after you left the house. Her grief affected me. I have only just quitted her. She has been told by some gossip or other some story or other—women are credulous, foolish creatures;—undeceive her, and, I dare say, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... persuasive than the manner in which Jean de Bourgogne introduces his hero. He is an honest man, somewhat naive and credulous perhaps, but one who does not lack good reasons to justify if need be his credulity; he has read much, and does not hide the use he makes of others' journals; he reports what he has seen and what others ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... night! thou poor Forlorn! Remorse that man on his death-bed possess, Who in the credulous hour of tenderness Betrayed, then cast thee forth to Want and Scorn! The world is pitiless: the chaste one's pride 5 Mimic of Virtue scowls on thy distress: Thy Loves and they that envied thee deride: And Vice alone will shelter Wretchedness! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... retreat was not without effect on the morale of either army. McClellan was as exultant as he was credulous. "I have just learned," he reported to Halleck at 8 A.M. on the 15th, "from General Hooker, in advance, that the enemy is making for Shepherdstown in a perfect panic; and that General Lee last night stated publicly that he must ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... about twelve years ago. He'd had some money, and he'd bought shares in a couple of hunter-ships and staked a few captains who'd had bad luck and got them in debt to him. He also got in with Morton Hallstock, who controlled what some people were credulous enough to take for a government here. Before long, he was secretary of the Hunters' Co-operative. Old Simon MacGregor, who had been president then, was a good hunter, but he was no businessman. He came to depend very heavily ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... from the frenzied lips of the half-maddened bridegroom, as his glance flashed on Hazen. "Had you no mercy? Have you no mercy now, that you should torture her young, credulous soul with these fanciful obligations; obligations which no human being has any right to impose upon another, whatsoever the Cause, ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... you have become to me a loathsome spectre, before which my soul shudders, and which I must execrate! You have crushed my life, and even robbed my death of its sanctity; for now it is no longer the martyrdom of my love, but only the savage mockery of my credulous heart. Oh, Geraldine, how beautiful it would have been to die for you!—to go to death with your name upon my lips!—to bless you!—to thank you for my happy lot, as the axe was already uplifted to ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... guessing. But "thought transference," tapping the mental wires of another person, would have accounted for every case, with, perhaps, the exception of that in which an unknown detail was added. This confession will, undoubtedly, seem weakly credulous, but not to make it would be unfair and unsportsmanlike. My statement, of course, especially without the details, is ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... fort, while engaged in this foul murder, but all escaped unhurt. Maun Sing had sworn by the holy Ganges, and still more holy head of Mahadeo, that his friend should suffer no personal hurt in this interview; and the credulous and no less cruel and rapacious Gurgbunsies were lulled into security. The three persons who murdered Hurpaul, were Nujeeb Khan, who has left Mann Sing's service, Benee Sing, who still serves him, and Jeskurun Sing, who has ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... on earth, lying in words and in writing, lying to Heaven and earth, lying in every thing. Our great men treat Russia like a child, but there is no small degree of credulity in believing us to be so credulous." ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... demos.su, joined Usenet. Some readers needed convincing that the postings from it weren't just another prank. Vadim Antonov, senior programmer at Demos and the major poster from there up to mid-1991, was quite aware of all this, referred to it frequently in his own postings, and at one point twitted some credulous readers by blandly asserting that he *was* ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... might know of his correspondent, he answered that he knew nothing; but the fact of his intimacy and acquaintance with the ex-parsons Strongly and H——, his friends and patrons, was "a good sign of his honesty and honor." The shrewd Jesuit professors smiling at the poor child's credulous and confiding disposition, told him that, as he had such an opinion of the worth and honor of the fraternity of dominies, he might commit his brother to the charge of one, and especially as he stood in very great danger to his faith and morals where he was at present. His situation ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... was fully executed. It may have been that the unduly favourable representations made to the College respecting John Shakespeare's social and pecuniary position excited suspicion even in the habitually credulous minds of the heralds, or those officers may have deemed the profession of the son, who was conducting the negotiation, a bar to completing the transaction. At any rate, Shakespeare and his father allowed three years to elapse ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... billet from his bosom:—"I have kept this writing alone, as thou knowest," continued the abbot, "for our guidance. Listen again to the confessions of yonder rebellious and it may be credulous priest:— ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... that part of the room where they were sitting. He saw that Sidney was recovered from his temper shown in the former conversation, and had subsided into his own natural element, and was pouring into the credulous ear of the young lady his ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... mankind; apologising for the earlier ravings of the Poughkeepsie seer, and considering his later eclectico-pantheist farragos as great utterances: while, whenever he talked of Nature, he showed the most credulous craving after everything which we, the countrymen of Bacon, have been taught to consider unscientific-Homoeopathy, Electro-biology, Loves of the Plants a la Darwin, Vestiges of Creation, Vegetarianisms, Teetotalisms-never mind what, provided it was unaccredited ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... said, coldly, as this dagger-thrust struck home to my heart. "I only knew him when he was quite a boy. He seemed to me then of a warm and loving temperament, generous to a fault, perhaps over-credulous, yet he promised well. His father thought so, I confess I thought so too. Reports have reached me from time to time of the care with which he managed the immense fortune left to him. He gave large sums away in charity, did ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... terrible than day, Where dead delights, and fair lost faces stray, To make us weary at our wakening; And of that long-lost path to the Divine We dream, as some Greek shepherd erst might sing, Half credulous, of easy Proserpine And of the lands that ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... furnished by two considerations. First, there were old authoritative sages and poets who loved to speculate and dream, and who published their speculations and dreams to reign over the subject fancies of credulous mankind. Secondly, the conception was intrinsically harmonious, and bore a charm to fascinate the imagination and the heart. The fragmentary visions, broken snatches, mystic strains, incongruous thoughts, fading gleams, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... simple. The cloth is made, I was habitually assured by Manbos, by enchantment, under the direction of the priestesses in the lofty mountain fastnesses of Mandyaland.[17] No other explanation will satisfy the credulous Manbo. He can not possibly understand how the fanciful and elegant designs on Mandya cloth can be produced by other than ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... "It will be your turn to repent when Caesar comes. Then will come a day of reckoning with false witnesses, shameless calumniators who disturb peaceful households, while credulous idiots—" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... what causes the doctor, when ailing, to send for his rival, and not sit down and examine his own tongue in the chimney Bass, or write his own prescription at his study-table? I throw out these queries for intelligent readers to answer, who know, at once, how credulous we are, and how sceptical, how soft and how obstinate, how firm for others and how diffident about ourselves: meanwhile, it is certain that our friend William Dobbin, who was personally of so complying a ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... philosophers. In the mean time, there are, on the one hand, sceptical philosophers, who think there is nothing certain in nature, because there is misconception in the mind of man; on the other hand, there are many credulous amateurs, who go to nature to be entertained as we go to see a pantomime: But there are also superficial reasoning men, who think themselves qualified to write on subjects on which they may have read in books,—subjects ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... already began to give way to fear; and the bravest were not altogether free from apprehension that some awful catastrophe was about to occur. The Javanese declared that it portended great convulsions in their country, and perhaps the overthrow of the ruling powers. Some of the more credulous of the seamen began to connect it, in some way or other, with the sudden disappearance ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... met him I commented with some surprise on his new departure. Frawde was quite candid, and said it had been necessary to do something in order to patch up his much-ploughed character before Collections. He had been plausible, and Fadmonger credulous. ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... no longer found such a credulous and frightened people as they had been accustomed to on other occasions. Their calumnious stories of the white man (whose vigilant and not very lenient control troubled them a great deal) made little or no impression. They knew the white man ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... the tricks which place one word for another. One can read in Livy that Hannibal overcame the Alps by means of vinegar. No elephant ever uttered such a stupidity. Livy? Not at all. Livy was not a beast; it is you who are, foolish instructor of credulous youth! Livy did not say aceto which means vinegar, but aceta ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... sandbanks that stud the bed. The only antiquities found in the "Muttali"' were a stone cut into parallel bands, and the fragment of a basalt door with its pivot acting as hinge in the upper part: it reminded me of the Graco-Roman townlets in the Hauran, where the credulous discovered "giant Cities" and similar ineptitudes. Our search for Midianite money was in vain; Mr. Clarke, however, picked up, near the sea, a silver "Taymur," the Moghal, with a curiously twisted ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... had occurred which must have shown the most credulous believer in Boer prowess that their cause was indeed lost. On that date Paul Kruger, a refugee from the country which he had ruined, arrived at Lourenco Marques, abandoning his beaten commandos and his deluded burghers. How much had happened since those distant days when as a little ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... told not a few lies; indeed, he had agreed with everything the adventurers seemed to desire, and spun them the yarns he had heard from the Spaniards, which tales he knew would gratify his new audience. And well-nigh a score of brave but credulous men shook hands with one another most gleefully, rubbed those same hands in joyous anticipation, and confidently looked forward to fabulous wealth and the glories of the city of marble and gold, the ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... for Amy. Poor Amy! she was but the shadow of her former self, but a shadow very pretty and pleasant to look on. Hester's heart was sore to think of such a bright, good honest creature married to a man like her brother. But she was sure however credulous she might have been, she had done nothing to be ashamed of. Where there was blame it ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... then, come to this? If none beside Will stand for justice, then, at least, will I. I'll rend the woof of cunning into shreds, And lay its falsehoods open to the day. Most reverend primate! art thou, canst thou be So simple-souled, or canst thou so dissemble? Are ye so credulous, my lords? My liege, Art thou so weak? Ye know not—will not know, Ye are the puppets of the wily Waywode Of Sendomir, who reared this spurious Czar, Whose measureless ambition, while we speak, Clutches in thought the spoils of Moscow's wealth. Is't left for me to tell ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... length came upon a load of slates, inscribed with magical characters. Prelati pretended great wrath, and upbraided the Evil One for his deceit, in which denunciation he was heartily joined by de Retz. But so credulous was the Seigneur that he allowed himself to be persuaded to afford Satan another trial, which meant, of course, that Prelati led him on from day to day with specious promises and ambiguous hints, until he had drained him of nearly all his remaining substance. He was then preparing ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... and he has sworn to wed none but you. Which, therefore, will you choose, to accompany us to Rome, and there be made empress, or to wait here until the emperor can come to you?" The princess thought deeply for a time, and then replied: "I would not be too credulous, or too hard of belief. If the emperor loves me and would wed me, let him find me in my father's house, and make me his bride in my ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... century, if indeed they are extinct even now at the beginning of the twentieth. Writing in the latter part of the nineteenth century Mr. Ch. Cuissard tells us that he himself witnessed in Touraine and Poitou the superstitious practices which he describes as follows: "The most credulous examine the ways in which the flame burns and draw good or bad omens accordingly. Others, after leaping through the flames crosswise, pass their little children through them thrice, fully persuaded that the little ones will then be able to walk at once. In some places the shepherds make their ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... Scotch children believe in ghosts, and some under peculiar conditions continue to believe in them all through life. Grave ghosts are deemed particularly dangerous, and many of the most credulous will go far out of their way to avoid passing through or near a graveyard in the dark. After being instructed by the servants in the nature, looks, and habits of the various black and white ghosts, boowuzzies, and witches we often ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... disbelieve it."[336] But it must be recollected that Dion was writing his history when Philostratus wrote; and one of them may have taken the account from the other; moreover, he is well known to be of a credulous turn of mind, and far from ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... Author's note.—"The spiders are affected by the weather and serve as barometers.—It shall always be a moot point whether the Doctor really believed in cobwebs, or was laughing at the credulous." ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... presumption of exposure to criticism. Strether, on the other hand, encaged and provided for as "The Ambassadors" encages and provides, has to keep in view proprieties much stiffer and more salutary than any our straight and credulous gape are likely to bring home to him, has exhibitional conditions to meet, in a word, that forbid the terrible FLUIDITY of self-revelation. I may seem not to better the case for my discrimination if I say that, for my first care, I had thus inevitably to set him up ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... of the supposed incidents attending Pascal’s conversion, there never was a more absurd fancy than that Pascal’s mind suffered any eclipse in the great change that came to him. He may have been credulous, he may have been superstitious. The miracle of the Holy Thorn may be an evidence of the one, and the unnatural asceticism of his later years a proof of the other. But to speak of the author of the ‘Provincial Letters,’ of the problems ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... has been enacted in six states and a campaign for its general enactment is under way. But let not the credulous investor suppose that even such a law would guarantee him against loss. The Secretary of the American Mining Congress, Mr. James F. Callbreath, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... could razzle-dazzle with sonorous phrases, and depend upon credulous old women to turn them into accurate predictions of things to come, he was safe enough. But faced with ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... been wise he would have seen that the rejoicing was from the lips outward; that fine words were not gold; that Rome and its factions were just where he had left them, or had descended one step lower. But Cicero was credulous of flattery when it echoed his own opinions about himself. The citizens, he persuaded himself, were penitent for their ingratitude to the most illustrious of their countrymen. The acclamations filled ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... rolled, and the dreary leagues interposed between her and her lover; when new images presented themselves; when the fever slaked, and reason returned,—doubt broke upon the previous despair. Had she not been too credulous, too hasty? Fool, fool! Audley have been so poor a traitor! How guilty was she, if she had wronged him! And in the midst of this revulsion of feeling, there stirred within her another life. She was destined to become a ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... all avenues to sensations that might impair her powers; she would not give way either to shame and remorse for herself, or to pity or indignation against the prisoner; she would attend only to the accuracy of the testimony that was required of her as an expiation of her credulous incaution; but such was the tension of her nerves, that, impassive as she looked, she heard every cough, every rustle of paper; each voice that addressed her seemed to cut her ears like a knife; and the chair that was given to her after the administration of ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sketch of John Cotton, remarks that "the hen, which brings not forth without uncessant sitting night and day, is an apt emblem of students." Certainly the hen is an apt emblem of the "uncessant" sitter, the credulous scratcher, the fussy ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... as his hearers. In his dreams he had truly seen what he hoped would come to pass. I afterwards had good reason to know that he had strong foundation for his prophecies. He was still uttering his awful communications to his wondering and credulous hearers; the Montoneros were still drinking, smoking, and feasting; and some other travellers (Spanish, negro, and native, among whom was a Spanish priest, a landowner near Cuzco, and a shopkeeper) were either taking their suppers or seeking repose, when ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... only daughter is the rational soul of us, which is here delivered for protection to five soldiers—that is, to the five senses,—to preserve it from the devil, the world, and the flesh. But, alas! the too-credulous soul, desirous of gazing upon the gaudy vapors ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... a positive distaste may grow up, which, in the intellectual order, may amount to a spontaneous and unreasoning disbelief in that which appears to be in opposition to the more familiar concept, and this at all times. It is often and truly said, "that past ages were pre-eminently credulous as compared with our own, yet the difference is not so much in the amount of the credulity, as in the direction which ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... clever old colored frauds. In spite of his contempt, the submarine boy found himself interested. He had heard about the charms, spells, incantations and other humbugs practised on colored dupes and on some credulous whites by these greatest of all quacks. The voodoo methods of "healing" are brought out of the deepest jungles of darkest Africa, yet there are many ignorant people, even among the whites, who believe steadfastly in the "cures" wrought by ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... consort doing the shining most of the time while he loafed in the Paris saloon. He lived at the Annexe, and told me that he was not really a boot-cleaner, but was going around the world on a wager of twenty thousand dollars, "without a cent." He, too, had a credulous circle, who paid him often five francs for a shine to help him win his bet by arriving at the New York City Hall on a fixed date with a certain sum of money earned by his hands. He raised the American flag over his stand, and ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... met difficulties, answered objections, dealt with obstacles with a brave patience that marks him as a veritable hero. [Footnote: A story was set about by Granville Sharpe, whose prejudices led him to be unjustly credulous, that at his first interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Seabury, in answer to the objections raised by his Grace, turned abruptly on his heel, saying, "If your Grace will not grant me consecration, I know ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... trader who was coming there to live, and would sell us goods very cheap, and that the soldiers were to remain to keep him company. We were pleased at this information ad hoped that it was all true, but we were not so credulous as to believe that all these buildings were intended merely for the accommodation of a trader. Being distrustful of their intentions, we were anxious for them to leave off building and go back down ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk
... his senses in an unknown place, and is so terrified as to be quite ready to make restitution to Na.nefer.ka.ptah. The episode, which is not creditable to Egyptian society, seems to be intended for one of the vivid dreams which the credulous readily accept ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie |
