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Ingenuous   Listen
adjective
Ingenuous  adj.  
1.
Of honorable extraction; freeborn; noble; as, ingenuous blood of birth.
2.
Noble; generous; magnanimous; honorable; upright; high-minded; as, an ingenuous ardor or zeal. "If an ingenuous detestation of falsehood be but carefully and early instilled, that is the true and genuine method to obviate dishonesty."
3.
Free from reserve, disguise, equivocation, or dissimulation; open; frank; as, an ingenuous man; an ingenuous declaration, confession, etc. "Sensible in myself... what a burden it is for me, who would be ingenuous, to be loaded with courtesies which he hath not the least hope to requite or deserve."
4.
Ingenious. (Obs.) Note: (Formerly) printers did not discriminate between... ingenuous and ingenious, and these words were used or rather printed interchangeably almost to the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Synonyms: Open; frank; unreserved; artless; plain; sincere; candid; fair; noble; generous. Ingenuous, Open, Frank. One who is open speaks out at once what is uppermost in his mind; one who is frank does it from a natural boldness, or dislike of self-restraint; one who is ingenuous is actuated by a native simplicity and artlessness, which make him willing to confess faults, and make known his sentiments without reserve. See Candid.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ingenuous" Quotes from Famous Books



... forty years later, gives the natives an equally good character: "These savage people being politikely and gently handled, much good might be wrought upon them: for I have had apparant proofes of their ingenuous and subtle dispositions, and that they are a people full ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... He had made the acquaintance of Anna Schulthess, a young lady of considerable means, and sought her hand in marriage. His letter to her, proposing marriage, is remarkable for its frankness, for the ingenuous confession of his own weaknesses, and for its correct estimate of himself. A few quotations from this letter must suffice.[135] "My failings, which appear to me the most important in relation to the future, are ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... presents her with a sponge, and observes that the civilisation of a nation is judged by the amount of soap it uses. "In much embarrassment I applied myself to this unaccustomed task," continues the ingenuous Backfisch, "and I managed it so cleverly that everything around me was soon swimming. To make matters worse, I upset the water-jug, and now the flood spread to the washstand, the floor, the bed curtains, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... scarce believe they ever lived,—and only differing from his ancient congener of the monastery by his skill in making ten words do the duty of one. His are the fatal books without which no gentleman's library can be complete; his the storied pages which ingenuous youth is invited to turn, and is apt to turn four or five together. With him something is still always sure to transpire in the course of these negotiations, still the traditional door is opened to the inroad of democratic innovation, still it is impossible to interpret the motives ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... difficult indeed to select from them such a collated edition as might in any degree suit the taste of 'these more light and giddy-paced times.'" Notes on some others of the ballads say that "a few conjectural emendations have been found necessary," but no one of these remarks would seem really ingenuous in a modern scholar when we consider how far the "conjectural emendations" extended. Moreover, changes were often made without the slightest clue ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... stranger. She introduced us to each other in a manner that indicated the respect which she entertained for us both. I surveyed and listened to him with considerable attention. His aspect was noble and ingenuous, but his sunburnt and rugged features bespoke a various and boisterous pilgrimage. The furrows of his brow were the products of vicissitude and hardship, rather than of age. His accents were fiery and energetic, and the impassioned boldness of his address, as ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... thief had been convicted of looting various apartments in New York City of over eighty thousand dollars' worth of jewelry, the female owners were summoned to identify their property. The writer believes that in every instance these ladies were absolutely ingenuous and intended to tell the absolute truth. Each and every one positively identified various of the loose stones found in the possession of the prisoner as her own. This was the case even when the diamonds, emeralds and pearls had ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... consigned to the house appointed for all living, may love of country and pride of country glow with equal fervor among those to whom our names and our blood shall have descended! And then, when honored and decrepit age shall lean against the base of this monument, and troops of ingenuous youth shall be gathered around it, and when the one shall speak to the other of its objects, the purposes of its construction, and the great and glorious events with which it is connected, there shall rise from every youthful breast the ejaculation, 'Thank ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... ages ago," she said with an ingenuous smile, which would have disarmed Chase if he had been prepared for anything else. As a matter of fact, he had approached her in the light of an adventurer who expects nothing and ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... too long, and half mistrusted her; had he never known Elinor so thoroughly, he would not have understood Mrs. Creighton. He involuntarily compared the two together; both were particularly clever, well-bred, and graceful; but Harry felt that one was ingenuous, amiable, and natural, while he knew that the other was worldly, bright, but cold, and interested in all her views and actions. Elinor's charm lay in the perfect confidence one reposed in the firmness of her principles, the strength of her affections, softened as they ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... recognized the admirable qualities she had personally sacrificed for a life of dissipation. In the privacy of her room at the hotel she had read the first copy of the Millville Tribune and shrieked with laughter at the ingenuous editorials and schoolgirl essays. Then she grew sober and thoughtful, envying in her heart the sweetness and simplicity so apparent in every line. Here were girls who possessed something infinitely higher than journalistic ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne

... She kept her absolutely ingenuous eyes upon his. "If you could see the place where I live you wouldn't ask that. I live in Brickdust Row. They call it that because there's red dust from the bricks crumbling over everything. I've lived there for more than four years. There's no place to receive company. You can't have ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... But there are times when a critic of literature feels that if only there were one single tangible and measurable fact about a book—if it could be weighed like a statue, say, or measured like a picture—it would be a support in a world of shadows. Such an ingenuous confession, I think it must be admitted, goes to the root of the matter—could we utter our sense of helplessness more candidly? But still among the shadows there is a spark of light that tempts us, there is a hint of the possibility that behind them, beyond ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock

... in assuring Connor that the apology given for his intoxication on the preceding night had escaped his memory. It was fortunate for him, indeed, that O'Donovan, like all candid and ingenuous persons, was utterly devoid of suspicion, otherwise he might have perceived, by the discrepancy in the two accounts, as well as by Flanagan's confusion, that he was a person in whom it might not be prudent ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... home, and took his cornet upstairs. Then he came to see us. He was an ingenuous youth, sordidly shabby and dirty. His fair hair was long and uneven, his very high starched collar made one aware that his neck and his ears were not clean, his American crimson tie was ugly, his clothes looked as ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence

... was told by the affidavits in an ingenuous manner, with a wealth of simple homely detail that carried on its face an appearance of truth calculated to deceive the elect, had not the elect been somewhat prepared by their investigation made some eleven ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... his eyes rested on Lord Wisbeach's ingenuous countenance, Willie paused, and his face assumed the expression of his photograph in ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... struggle for responsible government really meant. In the parishes along the Richelieu, indeed, Papineau and his followers made a greater commotion; but, except in Bellechasse and L'Islet, the contented habitants of the St. Lawrence forgot the seditious procession almost as soon as it passed. These ingenuous enfants du sol had no political aspirations beyond the preservation of their religion, their language, and their ancient customs; and, in spite of the bitter prophecies of peripatetic agitators, they refused to believe that their peace and comfort and quiet life were in any ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... ethics; which were taught in the schools, quoted in the law-courts, recited in the streets; and from which the teacher drew his moral instances, the rhetorician his allusions, the artist his models, every man his conception of the gods. Let us imagine some candid and ingenuous youth, turning to his Homer and repeating, say, the following passage ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... government with ample means to carry on excavations on a large scale. If the first success may be considered as merely a great piece of good fortune, the following ones were certainly due to intelligent, untiring labor and ingenuous scholarship. We see the results in Botta's voluminous work "Monuments de Ninive"[B] and in the fine Assyrian collection of the Louvre, in the first room of which is placed, as is but just, the portrait of the man to whose efforts and devotion it ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... little on the distinction. Pride in skepticism is a peculiar distinction of young men. It takes years and maturity to make the discovery that the power of faith is nobler than the power of doubt; and that there is a celestial wisdom in the ingenuous propensity to trust, which belongs to honest and noble natures. Elderly skeptics generally regard their unbelief ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... variety, they are the best short tales which have been produced anywhere during the same years. But it is impossible not to admit that they have grave faults, which exclude them from all possible recommendation to young and ingenuous readers. No bibliography of them can be attempted, the publishers of M. Guy de Maupassant having reprinted his lesser stories so frequently, and with such infinite varieties of arrangement, that the positive sequence of these little masterpieces has been ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... I wished I had accepted her offer. And I wrote her, care of the Eos Artworks ... an ingenuous letter, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... an affectation, as we discern in such little trifles as her suddenly using the word "thou" in a letter to Hookham where she had previously been using the ordinary colloquial "you." That she was not quite ingenuous we also detect in the fast-and-loose conduct which enabled her, while affecting to become what Shelley deemed her to be, also to play into the hands of very inferior people, who must sometimes have counselled her against him behind his back; and this, I am sure, is what he means by "Oh! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... that I wished to think of it in advance, to feel that it was in my pocket, not to mix it with satisfactions more superficial and usual In the little game of new sensations that I was playing with my ingenuous mind, I wished to keep my visit to the author of Beltraffio as a trump card. It was three years after the publication of that fascinating work, which I had read over five times, and which now, with my riper judgment, ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James

... people to have, ought to be entrusted with the power, or whether they ought to have a power which their personal interest leads to the abuse of. I am sure no candid man will hesitate about the answer; and it may also safely be left with ingenuous men to say whether the misconduct which we sometimes see in the press had not better be borne with, than to run the risk of confiding the power of correction to men who will be constantly urged by their own feelings to destroy ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... disposition of refined existence. It was, indeed, very different, and is, in Merimee's romance. In his gallant hero, Bernard de Mergy, all the promptings of the lad's virile goodness are in natural collusion with that sentiment du fer. Amid his ingenuous blushes, his prayers, and plentiful tears between-while, it is a part of his very sex. With his delightful, fresh-blown air, he is for ever tossing the sheath from the sword, but always as if into bright natural sunshine. ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... would approve, of course; she would say that she had complete confidence in his sagacity, but all the inflections of her voice, all her gestures and glances, would indicate to him that in her opinion he was a singularly ingenuous creature, the natural prey of sharpers, and that the chances of their not being ruined by his incurable simplicity were exceedingly small. His immense reputation in the Treasury, his sinister fame as the Terror of the departments, would not weigh an atom in her general judgment of the concrete ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... control. Therefore Admiral Dewey's recognition of Aguinaldo as a factor in the hostilities was nothing more nor less than a legitimate stratagem to facilitate his operations against the Spaniards. Dewey simply neutralized a possible adverse force by admissible military artifice, and Aguinaldo was too ingenuous to see that he was being outwitted. The fighting section of the Filipinos was intensely irritated at not having been allowed to enter and sack the capital. They had looked forward to it as the crowning act of victory. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... There was some subtle change in his very nature, in the whole impression he gave out, or so it seemed to Calvert. There was an air of flippancy, of careless gayety, about Beaufort now very unlike the ingenuous candor, the boyish simplicity, of the Beaufort who had served as a volunteer under Rochambeau in the war ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... out of the mouth of the maiden Learn my own fate, for towards her I cherish the most trustful feelings That any man ever cherish'd towards any woman whatever. That which she says will be good and sensible,—this I am sure of. If I am never to see her again, I must once more behold her, And the ingenuous gaze of her black eyes must meet for the last time. If to my heart I may clasp her never, her bosom and shoulders I would once more see, which my arm so longs to encircle: Once more the mouth I would see, from which one kiss and a Yes will Make me happy for ever, a No for ever undo me. But now ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... young thrasher, excepting that he was perhaps somewhat lighter in color and a little less glossy of coat, looked at that moment as old as he ever would. Nothing but his ingenuous ways, and his soft baby-cry "chr-er-er" revealed his tender age. His curiosity when he found himself in an unfamiliar place or on a strange tree was amusing. He looked up and down, stretching his neck in his desire to see everything; he ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... elopement. You did not care for him. But you were bored, your youth was being wasted, you longed for the unexpected, for adventure ... in a word, you accepted with the very definite intention of keeping your admirer at arm's length, but also with the rather ingenuous hope that the scandal would force your uncle's hand and make him account for his trusteeship and assure you of an independent existence. That is how you stand. At present you have to choose between placing yourself in ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... again as Sanna, and this gave her early an idea of the two natures which existed in her, as they exist in every person. This idea attained to perfect clearness in Susanna's religious instruction,—the only instruction which poor Susanna ever had. But how infinitely rich is such instruction for an ingenuous mind, when it is instilled by a good teacher. Susanna was fortunate enough to have such a one, and she now became acquainted in Barbra with the earthly demon which should be overcome in Sanna, the child of heaven, which makes free and ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer

... affluence, clad in his little damask suit, shocking his father with a question at the very first verse of the Bible, which they began to read together when he was six years old, and which held many a box on the ear in store for his ingenuous intellect. He remembered his early efforts to imitate with chalk or charcoal the woodcuts of birds or foliage happily discovered on the title-pages of dry-as-dust Hebrew books; how he used to steal into ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... that the magistrate asks not what may be done by law, but does that which must necessarily be done in that case. But it is a degree of good in evil, a degree that carries hope and comfort in it, when we may have recourse to that which is written, and that the proceedings may be apert, and ingenuous, and candid, and avowable, for that gives satisfaction and acquiescence. They who have received my anatomy of myself consult, and end their consultation in prescribing, and in prescribing physic; proper and convenient remedy; for if they should come in again and chide ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... then," said Frederick and to Richard's amazement he squared his shoulders and heaved a long sigh, as of relief. "Excuse me, please, I've got to hustle. Melissa—" He stopped in painful confusion. It had been on the tip of his ingenuous tongue to blurt out something that would have spoiled all that had gone before. It had to do with Melissa's present whereabouts and her oft- repeated claim that if Flanders kept Miss Fairweather waiting long enough he'd lose ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... try to explain her reasoning, her contempt for convention. It would be gratuitous. As for him, women had never constituted a temptation. He knew that he loved this simple, ingenuous girl with a tenderness of passion that was wholly free from the dross of mesmerism. With that he ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... ingenuous, and it was plain that the girl gave us this story through a certain nervousness, for she twisted her sewing in her fingers ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Latinity. In the epilogue presented at one of these exhibitions, about 1815, in connection with the performance of Terence's Phormio, the following balderdash (with much else, as applied to American life and manners) was introduced and spoken by these ingenuous and virtuous British youth, before a large ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles

... renewed blush, an ingenuous look, and a hesitating effort, she said, 'INDEED, I have been telling them how very kind you are. Mamma will be so pleased ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... And with this ingenuous avowal, at which Pepeeta smiled appreciatively, they laid their baskets down, and Steven began preparing ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... she views them without illusions, and braves them without fear; for she is full of reliance on her own strength, and her reliance seems to be shared by all who are about her. An American girl scarcely ever displays that virginal bloom in the midst of young desires, or that innocent and ingenuous grace which usually attends the European woman in the transition from girlhood to youth. It is rarely that an American woman at any age displays childish timidity or ignorance. Like the young women of Europe, she seeks to please, but she knows precisely the cost ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... progress they had made in the arts and sciences. In this European tour he decided to omit Spain, because the arts there were but little cultivated, and France, because he disliked the pompous ceremonials of the court of Louis XIV. His plan of travel was as ingenuous as it was odd. An extraordinary embassage was sent by him, as Emperor of Russia, to all the leading courts of Europe. These embassadors received minute instructions, and were fitted out for their expedition with splendor which ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... lingering and luxuriating upon the titles—"my ambassador to his Brittanic Majesty," "my ambassador to the German Emperor," and so on—amused and a little, but only a little, astonished me; I had always known that he was a through-and-through snob. For nearly an hour I watched his ingenuous, childish delight in bathing himself in himself, the wonderful fountain of all these honors. At last he finished, laid down his list, took off his nose-glasses. "Well, Harvey, what do you think?" he asked, and waited with sparkling eyes for my ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... ennobled. But my thoughts went wanderting back at my breakfast to-day to those far-away times, the fresh memory of which was still reverberating about my childhood, when the last new Duke was an ardent and ingenuous young patriot, who never dreamed of being a peer, and who hoped to refashion his country to the harp of Amphion. So I turned, with assuredly no feeling of disrespect, to that corner of my library where the peches de jeunesse stand—the little books of early verses which the respectable authors ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... deal more than I quite know what to do with, it seems to me a very ignoble one. It chokes up everything that makes life worth living; it leaves so little time for the constant and regular practice of those ingenuous arts which faithfully to have learned is said to soften the manners, and make one an agreeable ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... moderate terms, and it may be that he is taking his revenge in cutting up the poor girl's story. I know this very well, that some personal pique or favoritism is at the bottom of half the praise and dispraise which pretend to be so very ingenuous and discriminating. (Of course I have been thinking all this time and ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... blonde in complexion; her hair was of a very pretty light shade of brown, and perfectly straight; her eyes a clear, honest gray; and her skin as delicate and fair as a child's. Her manner was modest and ingenuous, and her language ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... unusual in his appearance. But now his hopes rose higher than ever. She had been very gracious, certainly, and invited intimate companionship. Dennis felt that she must have read his feelings in his face and manner, and, to his ingenuous nature, any encouragement seemed to promise ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... Patrick under the yoke of slavery, and compelled her to be a servant unto him. And among other servile works enjoined to her, he had commanded her to clean with shovels all the offices within the fort, and to carry forth the soil from the stables. But the woman, having an ingenuous mind, and understanding that all power was from God, and that all things were ordained of God, made of her necessity a virtue, and patiently bore the servitude imposed on her. Then the boy Patrick, compassionating his nurse's affliction, ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various

... these, by his manner, he asked all: confidence without reserve, troubles, doubts, distresses, material or otherwise. And this manner of his prevailed. The hearts of his people opened to him as freely as his own opened to receive them. He was a good man and, partly by reason of this ingenuous, unsuspicious mind, an invaluable ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... but lacks the Postscript. The misprint "ingenious" for "ingenuous youth," in footnote (p. 7) to line 56, which belongs to the Fourth Edition of 1811, and was corrected by Byron for the Fifth ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... a revealing severity of attire, like spoiled nuns with carmine lips, suffering in ingenuous problems of the passions, agonized in shuddering tones; or else they went to concerts to hear young violinists, slender, with intense faces and dramatic hair, play concertos that irritated Linda with little shivers ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... protest that she had originally left him to. He could recall but two direct echoes of her in all the bitter years—both communicated by Bill Frankle, disappointed and exposed and at last quite remarkably ingenuous sneak, who had also, from far back, taken to roaming the world, but who, during a period, used fitfully and ruefully to reappear. Herbert Dodd had quickly seen, at their first meeting—every one met every one sooner or later at Properley, ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James

... of criticism and general literature, was entrusted to the care of the present Editor. The volumes now offered to the public are the first results of that arrangement. They must in any case stand in need of much indulgence from the ingenuous reader;—'multa sunt condonanda in opere postumo'; but a short statement of the difficulties attending the compilation may serve to explain some apparent anomalies, and to preclude some ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... that I now show you in this old parchment is of this import?" Whom did he call upon, knowing in ancient hands, (and such undoubtedly he might have found,) to establish, by the testimony of his own eyes, the antiquity, not of one, but of all these Mss? If an ingenuous youth (asMr.W. justly observes), "enamoured of poetry, had really found a large quantity of old poems, what would he have done? Produced them cautiously, and one by one, studied them, and copied their style, and exhibited sometimes a genuine, ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone

... whether from the spirit of contradiction, from feeling herself more than ordinarily offended by her guardian's praise of this lady, or that there was a reserve in Miss Fenton that did not accord with her own frank and ingenuous disposition, so as to engage her esteem, certain it is that she took infinite satisfaction in hearing her beauty and virtues depreciated or turned into ridicule, particularly if Mr. Dorriforth was present. This was painful to him upon many accounts; perhaps an anxiety for his ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... taking my ease in my camp chair, luxuriously whiffing away at my after-breakfast cheroot, when who should step gingerly into the room but Manager Fred Gahagan. The clouds of the previous evening had entirely disappeared from his ingenuous countenance, which was puckered up in the most insinuating manner, with what I was wont to call his 'borrowing smile;' for Fred was oftentimes afflicted with impecuniosity—a complaint common enough amongst us subs;—and when the fit was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... lie under very great obligations. The story of the poem, like most of my poems, is connected with my own story, and to give you the one, I must give you something of the other. I cannot boast of Mr. Creech's ingenuous fair dealing to me. He kept me hanging about Edinburgh from the 7th August 1787 until the 13th April 1788 before he would condescend to give a statement of affairs; nor had I got it even then, but for an angry letter I wrote him, which irritated his pride. "I could" not a "tale," ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... acknowledged that I know a great deal about her,' Clara replied. And then the conversation was at an end. Clara had not been quite ingenuous, as she acknowledged to herself. She was aware that her aunt would not permit herself to repeat rumours as to the truth of which she had no absolute knowledge. She understood that the weakness of her aunt's caution was due to the old lady's sense ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope

... to this ingenuous criticism is dated the 4th of August. His requesting two young women to study and criticise a book which he has heard strongly condemned as immoral,—his own obvious familiarity with what he has not read but does not scruple to censure,— his transparently jealous anticipation of its ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... Marat, that had to be uttered with an air of religious devotion, and other names, such as those of Caesar, Augustus, or Napoleon, that ought never to be mentioned unaccompanied by a torrent of invective. Even in the French Sorbonne this ingenuous fashion of conceiving ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... impressed with the ingenuous and solemn manner of the traveler, and all but the father found immediate relief in his declaration. Some of the cast-off clothes of the captain, which had been removed with the goods from the city, ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... The ingenuous flatteries of her little court irritated her now: she no longer felt either amused or pleased by the extravagant compliments lavished upon her beauty and skill by portly Squire John, by Sir Timothy Harrison or the more ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... vigorous qualities that made Spain great. Menendez y Pelayo has called him the symbol of Spanish nationality in virtue of the fact that in him there were united sobriety of intention and expression, simplicity at once noble and familiar, ingenuous and easy courtesy, imagination rather solid than brilliant, piety that was more active than contemplative, genuine and soberly restrained affections, deep conjugal devotion, a clear sense of justice, loyalty to his sovereign tempered by the courage to protest against injustice to ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon

... you nothing more?" inquired Mr. Walters, as William handed him the money for the shoes and mentioned the new order. He had been pleased with the boy's ingenuous honesty shown a day or two before, and was now in a more sunny humour than usual. The old watchman, too, had come in for a half-hour's chat, and was sitting in the back shop, from whence Mr. Walters had come. "What did she give you?" he repeated, as ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers

... hopes for the success of other plans that lay very near his heart. As the thought of Anne Bernard occurred to him, and he reflected upon the goodness of his generous benefactor, it seemed, to his ingenuous mind, as if he were half guilty of a wrong in withholding any part of his confidence from Mr. Pownal, and he felt strongly tempted to admit him into the inner sanctuary of his soul. But a feeling natural in such cases, and the consideration that he was not perfectly ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... amounting almost to simplicity; and this would have been the impression produced upon an observer, but for a pair of lively spiritual eyes that sparkled in sockets somewhat sunken. These, combined with a well-formed mouth, and lips of a sarcastic cut, relieved the otherwise too ingenuous expression of his features, and proved that the young man was capable, when occasion required, of exhibiting a considerable power of repartee and acute observation. Just then the predominant expression upon his ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... something," resumed Guloseton, "in your countenance and manner, at once so frank, lively, and ingenuous, that one is not only prepossessed in your favour, but desirous of your friendship. I tell you, therefore, in confidence, that nothing more amuses me than to see the courtship I receive from each party. I laugh at all the unwise and passionate contests in which others are engaged, and I would ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of the heroine's male relatives as to whether Bluntschli was good enough for her, their ingenuous attempts to impress him, by describing the style in which she was accustomed to live, and his unimpressed response that his father had so and so many table-cloths, so many horses, so many hundreds of plates, etc. Who ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... reference to Mr. Burroughs at Casco Bay and Salem Village, and a considerate survey and scrutiny of all that has reached us from the day of his arrest to the moment of his death, have left a decided impression, that he was an able, intelligent, true-minded man; ingenuous, sincere, humble in his spirit; faithful and devoted as a minister; and active, generous, and disinterested as a citizen. His descendants, under his own name and the names of Newman, Fowle, Holbrook, Fox, Thomas, and others, have been numerous and respectable. The ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... little to say. Given the premises of the man, his conclusions were unquestionable. And the premises were a selfishness so tranquil, so ingenuous, so fresh, I might say, that I couldn't work up the proper indignation. It was something so perfect as to challenge admiration. On the whole, however, it afforded a poor subject for conversation; so we remained there, taciturn, I on my door, half-submerged ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... well as I could. She was quite ingenuous and quite sincere. I should be a welcome guest as Christopher's fiancee, and there was no use my feeling bitter about ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn

... between Diane and the handsome minstrel was steadily growing. By what subtle hints, by what ingenuous bursts of confidence, by what bewildering flashes of inherent magnetism he contrived to cement it, who may say? But surely his romantic resources like his irresistible charm of speech and manner, were varied. A rare flower, an original and highly commendable bit of woodland ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... we listened to an interesting discussion of this question:—Which was the more important year to Europe,—1859 or 1860? The question is one that may be commended to the attention of those ingenuous young gentlemen, in debating-societies assembled, who have not yet settled whether Brutus, Cassius, & Co. were right in assassinating "the mighty Julius," or whether Mary Stuart was a martyred saint or a martyred sinner, or whether the cold chop to which Cromwell ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... Square, in the year 1784. I was brought thither by my father, Richard Shackleton, the friend from their childhood of Edmund Burke. My dear father told thee that Goldsmith's would now be the deserted village; perhaps thou dost not remember this compliment, but I remember the ingenuous modesty which disclaimed it. He admired 'The Village', 'The Library,' and 'The Newspaper' exceedingly, and the delight with which he read them to his family could not but be acceptable to the author, had he known the sound judgement and the exquisite taste which ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... thoroughly enjoy a dance,' he said, turning to Lady Kelsey. 'My tastes are ingenuous, and I can only hope you've enjoyed your evening as ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham

... over beforehand, I concluded that when the questioner, of either sex, was young, love would very probably be the topic; the flesh, not the spirit, would be the predominant interest. Being an ingenuous young man of the average sort, and desperately in love with Susan, let us say, I should naturally assist the supernatural being, if at a loss, to understand that the one thing wanted was information about Susan. I therefore ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... house for supper, Nickie and the ingenuous Millie loitered by the open kitchen window, and Nickie saw and heard things of no little interest to him professionally. Farmer Dickson and three neighbours were comparing bottles of Dr. ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... carriage: "Above all things, not a word of this at home. It would kill your father." He knew her so well, he was so sure of closing her mouth by that thought, the villain, that he came the next day as if nothing had happened, effusive as always and with the same ingenuous face. She never did mention the incident to her father or to anybody else. But from that day a change took place in her, as if the springs of her pride were relaxed. She became capricious, had fits of lassitude, a curl of disgust in her smile, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... truth; Beneath the spreading Platan's tent-like shade, [8] Or by Missouri's rushing waters laid, "Old father Thames" shall be the Poets' theme, Of Hagley's woods the enamoured virgin dream, And Milton's tones the raptured ear enthrall, Mixt with the roar of Niagara's fall; In Thomson's glass the ingenuous youth shall learn A fairer face of Nature to discern; Nor of the Bards that swept the British lyre Shall fade one laurel, or one note expire. Then, loved Joanna, to admiring eyes Thy storied groups in scenic pomp shall rise; Their high soul'd strains and Shakespear's ...
— Eighteen Hundred and Eleven • Anna Laetitia Barbauld

... mountains. Sometimes I would see a sweet little boy six or eight years old playing there; he was the son of the concierge. There was something in his face which seemed that of a suffering angel; in his fair hair curled on his forehead, and in his intelligent and ingenuous countenance, that reminded me of the innocent faces of the children of my own province. Indeed, I discovered that his family had come originally from a village near that in which my father resided, had ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine

... characteristics of an ingenuous and honest document. I cut it out of the paper and filed it away where I came very near not finding it again. But I was unfortunate enough to find it after a ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... understands the logic of numbers better than your coward of a master. But I'll have my answer. Are you going to Blois? No! To Tours? No! Amboise? Ah! your eyes have a tongue of their own. You cannot have lived very long in Valmy, my ingenuous friend. Why to Amboise? You won't tell? But, by God, you shall! Do you think I'll be baulked for a scruple?" His hand crept to his hilt as he spoke; now, with a swift wrench the blade was out and its point at Beaufoy's ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... ready to conclude that dangers are past, that doubts and fears are entirely removed; but as long as we are in this world, we shall find the expediency of our Lord's exhortation—'Watch and pray.'—(J. B.). [65] Here is a display of a truly Christian spirit, in that open and ingenuous confession of her fault, taking all the blame upon herself, and excusing Mercy. This is not natural to us, but the grace of Christ humbles the heart, and silences the tongue to self-justifying pleas. O for more ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... hypocrites shall not deceive us into thinking them saints; but neither shall they deceive us into thinking them hypocrites. And an increasing number of cases will crowd into our field of inquiry, cases in which there is really no question of hypocrisy at all, cases in which people were so ingenuous that they seemed absurd, and so absurd ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... translations also from Greek originals, now lost, and from Persian and Syriac, &c.; besides works of their own people. Four years ago the French instituted an Armenian professorship. Twenty pupils presented themselves on Monday morning, full of noble ardour, ingenuous youth, and impregnable industry. They persevered with a courage worthy of the nation and of universal conquest, till Thursday; when fifteen of the twenty succumbed to the six and twentieth letter of the alphabet. It is, to be sure, a Waterloo of an Alphabet—that must be said for them. But ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various

... need of ten rubles to buy bread for his family, or whose last sheep has been seized for a tax-debt of seven rubles, and who cannot raise those rubles by hard labor, cannot grow accustomed to this. We think that all this appears natural to poor people there are even some ingenuous persons who say in all seriousness, that the poor are very grateful to us for supporting them ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi

... utterly unworthy of an ingenuous mind, are not yet to be ranked with flagitious enormities, nor is it necessary to incite sanguinary justice against them, since they may be adequately punished by detection and laughter. The traveller who describes cities which he has never seen; the squire, who, at his return from London, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... cautious how he carried his contempt of the general prejudice in favour of religion and Christianity further than an implied objection or a sneer. If he had an opportunity of talking in private with an ingenuous and intelligent youth, he sometimes attempted to make a proselyte, and showed much address in bribing the vanity of inexperience, by suggesting that a mind like his ought to spurn the prejudices impressed upon it in childhood; and when ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... girl created a diversion—being palpably an adventuress out of a job and impressing none of the quartette as being interesting enough to deserve one,—but the two girls who followed her were bright and sprightly creatures, disarmingly graceful and ingenuous, of whom the entire quartette approved. They were twin sisters, they said, Dolly and Molly, and they had always had places together ever since they had begun ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley

... grovelling morals, aiming to produce the "greatest happiness of the greatest number," a system which has too long been taught among the students of our colleges and high schools. But he properly belongs to the Private Eudaimonists; for this interpreter of ethics to the ingenuous youth of England and America says, "Virtue is the doing good to mankind in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness. According to which definition, the good of mankind is the subject, the will of God the rule, and everlasting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... to-day bespeak grateful hearts and a freshened recollection of the virtues of the Father of his Country. And it will be so, in all time to come, so long as public virtue is itself an object of regard. The ingenuous youth of America will hold up to themselves the bright model of Washington's example, and study to be what they behold; they will contemplate his character till all its virtues spread out and display themselves ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various

... whom we cannot help believing, under pain of ceasing to be her sons, to be the greatest, the most beautiful and the most amiable of mothers, just as you think of yours, sir; just as you feel regarding your excellent American land. We, sir, being perhaps carried away by an ingenuous filial illusion, are persuaded that to know our Uruguay is to love her; and for this reason we have desired that you should know her; for this reason we cherish the hope that, when you have returned to your country and ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... modest corner of the critical world exactly a hundred and seventeen years ago. Its parent, notwithstanding this perhaps venial indiscretion, was apparently an honest and modest gentleman; and the play itself, which this ingenuous theorist was fain, with all diffidence, to try whether haply he might be permitted to foist on the apocryphal fatherhood of Shakespeare, is not without such minor merits as may excuse us for wasting a few minutes on examination of the theory which seeks ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... Cibot!" said Pons, "what would have become of me if it had not been for you and Schmucke?" He felt touched by this horrible prattle; the feeling in it seemed to be ingenuous, as it usually is in ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... jist plaze to order me to go, I can't help meself, and so your own sowl will be damned, beggin' yer honor's pardon,' sez I, 'and not mine.' The officers all laughed, and the owld man, sez he, 'Teddy, you're quite ingenuous!' 'Thank yer honor,' sez I, 'but I'll cotton to Ichabod Green in that line, since he invinted the new ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... his fantastic fraud and give it up. Not a little tacit conversation passed between us in this way, but he had always the best of it. If I said: "Oh, come now, with ME you needn't keep it up; plead guilty, and I'll let you off," he wore the most ingenuous, the most candid expression, in the depths of which I could read: "Oh, yes, I know it exasperates you—that's just why I do it." He took the line of earnest inquiry, talked about Balzac and Flaubert, asked me if I thought Dickens DID exaggerate and Thackeray OUGHT to be called ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James

... what her money was wanted for, puckered her brows over the letters that, through an oversight, had remained in her hands. She held one out to Gerald to translate. It was from the united chorus-singers of Florence, a simple, direct, and ingenuous appeal for a gratuity. Another letter was from a poor young girl who wished for money to buy her wedding outfit. Another from a poor man ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... Welsh wizard". Lloyd George was duly impressed with Plaatje and undertook to present his case to General Jan Smuts in the South African government, a supposedly liberal fellow-traveller. But Smuts, whose notions of liberalism were patronizingly segregationist, fobbed off Lloyd George with an ingenuous reply. ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... Address to that ingenuous young American a remark upon the slightness of the legs of her work-table,—she blushes—her lively fancy has given them personality. Were she a wealthier miss, she would give them, besides, neat cambric trowsers with lace borders. With less refinement, and with inexcusable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... the scheme outlined in Hamilton's first report aroused even more bitter opposition. With a fine audacity he proposed the assumption of state debts. It is difficult to believe that Hamilton was perfectly ingenuous in stating his reasons for this move. He apprehended, he said, that the States would be hampered in satisfying their creditors because they had surrendered one important source of revenue to the central Government, duties on imports. ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... 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 ingenuous fancy of popular superstition. ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... in any doubt after this ingenuous communication, Mr. Murray, the publisher, was in none. (Lockhart, v. 169.) He wrote to Scott on December 14, 1816, rejoicing in the success of the Tales, "which must be written either by Walter ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... the youngest, the freshest thing imaginable; he was overtall and gawky, his cheeks were as delicately rosy as apple blossoms, and his smile was an epitome of ingenuous interest and frank wonder. It was as if some quality of especial fineness, lingering unspotted in Hunter Kinemon, had found complete expression in his son David. A great deal of this certainly was due ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... wise, (5) or by his own unaided talent, that Themistocles came so to surpass his fellow-citizens that when the services of a capable man were needed the eyes of the whole community instinctively turned to him?" Socrates, with a view to stirring (6) Euthydemus, answered: There was certainly an ingenuous simplicity in the belief that superiority in arts of comparatively little worth could only be attained by aid of qualified teachers, but that the leadership of the state, the most important concern of all, was destined to drop into the lap of anybody, no matter whom, like an accidental ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... of how diamonds are obtained is ingenuous in its reckless defiance of fact. He says that in the mountains "there are certain great deep valleys to the bottom of which there is no access. Wherefore the men who go in search of the diamonds take with them pieces of meat," which they throw into this deep valley. He relates that ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... understood by Ambrose, even if he heard them, so full was he of conflicting feelings, now ready to cast himself before their feet, and entreat the Dean to help him to guidance, now withheld by bashfulness, unwillingness to interrupt, and ingenuous shame at appearing like an eavesdropper towards such dignified and venerable personages. Had he obeyed his first impulse, mayhap his career had been made safer and easier for him, but it was while shyness chained his limbs ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... had justice done him. People laugh over his fun in the "Memoirs of Scriblerus," and are commonly satisfied to think it Pope's. Smollett insured his literary life in "Humphrey Clinker"; and we suppose his Continuation of Hume is still one of the pills which ingenuous youth is expected to gulp before it is strong enough to resist. Goldsmith's fame has steadily gained; and so has that of Keats, whom we may also fairly reckon in our list, though he remained harmless, having never taken a degree. On the whole, the proportion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... beautiful youth, like that of Goethe. His love of nature, for which he was willing to make, and did make, sacrifices, will always be inspiring to the youth of noble and gentle proclivities; his personal beauty, his humanity, his love-life, his domestic virtues, enthrall the ingenuous mind; and his appreciation—shown in his beautiful compositions—of the valleys of the great river, La Belle Riviere, through which its waters, shadowed by the magnificent forests of Ohio and Kentucky, wandered—all of these things have from youth up shed a sweet fragrance over ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various

... of soft words, and that look of ingenuous simplicity by which I am so well known to you and all my friends, I coaxed her into the belief that I was nothing worse than a rejected contributor, an autograph collector, an author with a volume of poems to dispose of, or other disagreeable but ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... with for the first time in his native wilds there is frequently a fearless intrepidity of manner, an ingenuous openness of look, and a propriety of behaviour about the aboriginal inhabitant of Australia, which makes ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... word-play, such as depends upon the talker's own mood for its point or its pointlessness. Between two young people of equal years it might have had meanings to penetrate, to sigh over, to question. Colville found it delicious to be pursued by the ingenuous fervour of this young girl, eager to vindicate her sincerity in prohibiting him from his own ironical depreciation. Apparently, she had a sentimental mission of which he was the object; he was to be convinced that he was unnecessarily morbid; he was to be cheered ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... which would be discreditable in a third-form schoolboy. To substantiate that assertion, and rescue the disputed word "Britaine" henceforth for ever from the rash tampering of the meddlesome sciolist, I beg to advertise the ingenuous reader that the clause,— ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various

... entreating Nicholas by a gesture to keep silent; and the uncle and nephew looked at each other for some seconds without speaking. The face of the old man was stern, hard-featured, and forbidding; that of the young one, open, handsome, and ingenuous. The old man's eye was keen with the twinklings of avarice and cunning; the young man's bright with the light of intelligence and spirit. His figure was somewhat slight, but manly and well formed; and, apart from all the grace of youth and comeliness, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... half-breed, who had been quick to descry the horseman moving through the brush. McFann had been expecting Talpers, and he was none too pleased to find that the trader had sent the gossiping cowpuncher in his stead. Andy, being one of those ingenuous souls who never can catch the undercurrents of life, rattled on, all unconscious of the effect of ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman

... in Yasmini's daring they took ingenuous delight in Tess, persuading Yasmini to interpret questions and reply or, very rarely, bringing with them some duenna who ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... Priscilla, "well score off him. For the immediate present we've got to wait and watch his every movement with glittering eyes and cynical smiles concealed behind our ingenuous brows. You needn't say 'ingenuous' isn't a real word, because it is. I put it in an English comp. last term and got full marks, which shows that it must ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham

... and looked at him with inquiring interest. He was quite sure he would go on. This was a thing he had seen before—an utter freedom from the insular grudging reserve, a sort of occult perception of the presence of friendly sympathy, and an ingenuous readiness to meet it half way. The youngster, having missed his fellow-traveler, and probably feeling the lack of companionship in his country rides, was ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... aloud; speak out, speak one's mind; be free with one, call a spade a spade. Adj. artless, natural, pure, native, confiding, simple, lain, inartificial[obs3], untutored, unsophisticated, ingenu[obs3], unaffected, naive; sincere, frank; open, open as day; candid, ingenuous, guileless; unsuspicious, honest &c. 939; innocent &c. 946; Arcadian[obs3]; undesigning, straightforward, unreserved, aboveboard; simple-minded, single-minded; frank-hearted, open-hearted, single-hearted, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... dissevered from the most obsolete University still frequented by young ingenuous living souls, is that of manifold collision and communication with the said young souls; which, to every one of these coevals, is undoubtedly the most important branch of breeding for him. In this point, as the ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... collection of facts is presented to your notice, with the hope that they will have that effect which facts always have on every candid and ingenuous mind. They exhibit clearly the dangers to which slaveholders are always liable, as well as the safety of immediate emancipation. They furnish, in both cases, a rule which admits of no exception, as it is always dangerous to do wrong, and safe to do right. Please to examine carefully the whole ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin

... his last utterance; his spirit passed, his ingenuous, resolute face and his wide open eyes still turned on the battle. The flies already were beginning to buzz about Francoise's head and settle there, while lying on his bed little Charles, in an access of delirium, was calling on his mother in pitiful, beseeching tones to give ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... the procureur-general's sarcasms, which he thinks so witty, they are quite delightfully diverting and ingenuous. "It seems to be generally recognised that elective office, irrespective of all professional aptitude, is the normal means of access to a paid appointment." What else does he expect? It is eminently democratic that the marked absence of professional ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... manner were quite enough to arrest him where he stood with a pleased surprise in his fresh and ingenuous face. She looked at him more closely. He was, in spite of his long silken mustache, so absurdly young; he might, in spite of that youth, be so absurdly man-like! What was he doing there? Was he a farmer's son, ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte

... service was over and he could join her, he said, as though with the most delicate attention, "Mademoiselle, as far as I can judge, you cannot have failed to be lucky in your collection, being so deserving and so beautiful." "Alas! Sir," replied Javotte in the most ingenuous fashion, "you must excuse me. I have just been counting it up with the Father Sacristan, and I have only made 65 livres 5 sous. Now, Mademoiselle Henriette made 90 livres a little time since; 'tis true she collected all through ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... open to the solicitations of novelty, more ready to try new methods. A noticeable defect of the French drama, in the first half of the nineteenth century, was the pronounced artificiality of its characters and plots. Whatever the kind of play exhibited, the same stereotyped noble fathers, ingenuous maidens, coquettes, and Lotharios strutted on the boards. Whatever else changed, these did not. Only their costumes differed. Moreover, the adventures in which the dramatis personae displayed themselves contained always the same sort of tricks for bringing about the denouement. ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... have occurred to him. He knows nothing of Monsieur Hector except that he is a 'hairy romantic,' and that whatever he wrote it was not Batti, batti; but that nothing is enough. 'Whether this little picture is a likeness or not,' he is ingenuous enough to add, 'who shall say?' But,—and here speaks the bold but superior Briton—'it is a good caricature of a race in France, where geniuses poussent as they do nowhere else; where poets are prophets, where romances ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... sweeter and fresher than ever, and was the same ingenuous, unspoiled girl, whose sunny disposition no amount of wealth ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane

... easily believing that, and glad to have such a secret and sincere and devout book in his hand,—it is only he who will truly enjoy the book, and who will gather the same gain out of it that its author enjoyed and gained out of it himself. In short, the properly prepared and absolutely ingenuous reader of the Religio Medici must be a second Thomas ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte

... seen me before,—and with my books and maps about me, I may have looked like some public, yet mysterious character. I felt a pleasant sensation of having interest taken in me, and, wishing to make an ingenuous return, looked up with a casual smile at one of the party. Again to my surprise, this proved to be a very charming young lady, and I timidly became aware that the others were equally pretty in their several styles. Not knowing what else to do under the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... made in a luckless Hobart Town whaleship, which he had left at Sydney in disgust and without a penny in his pocket. Like Barry, he had been attracted to the Mahina by the fact of her being engaged in the island trade, and indeed had only joined her two days before Barry himself. His cheerful, ingenuous manner, combined with his smart seamanship, made the chief officer take a great liking to him, and even Barradas, gruff and surly and ever ready to deal out a blow, admitted that Velo was, next to the boatswain, the best sailorman of ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke

... not be corporal Punishment." "That is as may be," returned he, "and hath alreadie been settled by an Authoritie to which I submit, and partlie think you will dispute, and that is, the Word of God. Pain of Body is in Realitie, or ought to be, sooner over and more safelie borne than Pain of an ingenuous Mind; and, as to the Shame,—why, as Lorenzo de' Medici sayd to Soccini, 'The Shame is in the Offence rather than ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... times have the laws, which guard the peace of our little community, been called in, to check the excesses of his turbulent passions, by supplying the weakness of more ingenuous motives. Still this person discovered, in the midst of this wreck of moral excellence, a few remaining qualities, on which charity might fix the hope of his recovery to virtue, usefulness and happiness. But these were few, and mostly ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... have reported, that it would be very extraordinary, if there were no mention of that class of subjects which involves all that we have and all that we hope, not merely for ourselves, but for the dear people whom we love best,—noble men, pure and lovely women, ingenuous children,—about the destiny of nine-tenths of whom you know the opinions that would have been taught by those old man-roasting, woman-strangling dogmatists.—However, I fought this matter with one of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... of children generally is—about herself and her aunt and her home and her friends—all her friends seemed children like herself, though younger—Clemmy the chief of them. Clemmy was the one who had taken a fancy to Kenelm. And amidst all the ingenuous prattle there came flashes of a quick intellect, a lively fancy—nay, even a poetry of expression or of sentiment. It might be the talk of a child, but certainly ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... among the prime in worth, An object beauteous to behold; Well born, well bred; I sent him forth Ingenuous, ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... at breakfast, tapping meditatively on the apex of a boiled egg, when his daughter swished into the room, saluted her interesting parent by depositing a light kiss on his bald and ingenuous head, and took ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... but anxious to hear the story of Bower's love making, made no secret of her own sorrows. "Miss Wynton was my friend," she said with ingenuous pathos. "She never met Mr. Bower until I introduced her to him a few days before she came to Switzerland. You may guess what a shock it gave me when I heard that he had followed her here. Even then, knowing how strangely coincidence ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... of state for the Steam Department. At the expense of this eminent nobleman, he will be sent to prosecute his studies at the university of Tombuctoo. To that illustrious seat of the muses all the ingenuous youth of every country will then be attracted by the high scientific character of Professor Quashaboo, and the eminent literary attainments of Professor Kissey Kickey. In spite of this formidable competition, however, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... doctrines assumed by the literary men when occasionally they treat the related topics. I think that our popular theology has gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitions it has displaced. But men are better than this theology. Their daily life gives it the lie. Every ingenuous and aspiring soul leaves the doctrine behind him in his own experience; and all men feel sometimes the falsehood which they cannot demonstrate. Few men are wiser than they know. That which they hear in schools and pulpits ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... The ingenuous self-love of Lord Arthur Redburn, M.P., was severely wounded by the notion that, after all, he had been made a cat's-paw of by a jealous wife. He had been flattered by this girl's exceeding friendliness; he had given her credit ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... or thrice. Perhaps he quadruples his stake, nay, perchance, hits on the lucky number. It turns up, and he receives thirty-five times the amount of his mise. Thenceforth it is all over with that ingenuous British youth. The Demon of Play has him for his own, and he may go on playing and playing until he has lost every florin of his own, or as many of those belonging to other people as he can beg or borrow. Far more ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... though it were a brother's or a father's. I, it seems, had been prepared for at least some slight appearance of discomposure on Edith's part, and was consciously surprised at a manner which simply expressed an ingenuous gratification at my admiration. I refer to this momentary experience because it has always seemed to me to illustrate in a particularly vivid way the change that has taken place not only in the customs but ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... is easy to observe, that the above entirely refers to the predestinarians of the Dissenting party; whatever may be said of them, it must be acknowledged, they act a far more honest and ingenuous part than the predestinarians who are Ministers of the established Church. As Dissenting Ministers are maintained by the voluntary contributions of their hearers, their hearers are at liberty to withdraw their assistance; ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor

... pickles, tea, coffee, and boiled beef, which surprised the poor Major, sipping a cup of very feeble tea, and thinking with a tender dejection that Lord Steyne's dinner was coming off at that very moment. The ingenuous ardour of the boys, however, amused the Major, who was very good-natured, and he became the more interested when he found that the one who travelled inside with him was a lord's son, whose noble father Pendennis, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... need. Thus I implore Your competent, well famous good-hearted liberal magnanimous benevolent generosity to respond me in Your beneficent relief as soon as possible, according to Your kind grand clemence of Your good ingenuous genteel humanity. I wish You a ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... only officer I saw at my house on the day stated, but narrated every occurrence that took place, and all the conversation that look place at the interview, to the best of my recollection. If I am censured for having been too ingenuous in my communication, I trust it will be admitted, that as ingenuousness disclaims all connexion with guilt, it is indicative only of ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney

... and absolute affections which appear from century to century on this earth, where they blossom, like the aloes of Isola Bella, twice or thrice in a hundred years. Whoever had seen the lad as he ran away would have loved the ingenuous chivalry of his most ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac

... at all times prove disappointing places to the young and ingenuous soul, who goes up to them eager for literature, seeing in every don a devotee to intellectual beauty, and hoping that lectures will, by some occult process—the genius loci—initiate him into the mysteries of taste ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... rain still continued this afternoon, I proposed to Mrs. Anderson she should show me the house. The excellent creature, busy with the dairy, offered me Annie as her substitute. We went from cellar to garret, and the child's companionship and her ingenuous prattle successfully beguiled a couple of hours. The house in reality consists of two houses placed at right angles to each other. The older part, built between two and three hundred years ago, is inhabited by the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various

... Hearts; and a wonderful elaborate politeness that he had inherited from his youth—from the days of Brummell. And, whilst all his belongings were rotting into dust, he retained an extraordinarily youthful and ingenuous habit of mind. It was that, or a little of it, that gave the charm ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad



Words linked to "Ingenuous" :   ingenuousness, sincere, heart-to-heart, artless, undistorted, naive, innocent, disingenuous, naif, open, candid



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