"Unsophisticated" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... itself to be the origin of this mischief, in order that the evil might be intercepted at its source, he proposed to demonstrate the futility of that science, and to appeal to the common sense and unsophisticated feelings of mankind, as the only infallible criterion on subjects in which it had formerly been made the standard. That his meaning was excellent, no one can doubt; whether he discovered the right remedy for the harm which he was desirous of removing, is much more questionable. To ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... I being unsophisticated, I understood what Vere believed, and why he looked at the lamp rather than at me. But even that matter had to yield ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... of a knowledge of social customs is widely felt is proved by the pathetic letters addressed to the editors of women's magazines and departments, asking for information to enlighten ignorance. Such letters range from the naive inquiry of the unsophisticated girl as to whether it is "proper" to allow her "gentleman friend" to kiss her good night, up to the plaint of the novice who doesn't know how to make her spoons and forks come out even at a dinner-party. Here in America, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... "would obviously be the destruction of all confidence. How much nobler and safer is the doctrine of the Scriptures, and of the unsophisticated language of man's moral constitution, that truth is obligatory on its own account, and that he who undertakes to signify to another, no matter in what form, and no matter what may be the right in the case to know the truth, is bound to signify according to the convictions of his own mind! He is ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... principal and central figure is that of a young female laden with corn, and holding a sickle in her right hand, and is a most exquisite, and, we had almost said, unparalleled piece of sculpture in its kind. In truth, the unsophisticated, self-willed, easy, rustic, grace, of this figure, is raised by the art of the sculptor ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... everything that Elizabeth did was nowhere more conspicuous than in this question of clothes. To keep in the rear of opportunity in matters of indulgence is as valuable a habit as to keep abreast of opportunity in matters of enterprise. This unsophisticated girl did it by an innate perceptiveness that was almost genius. Thus she refrained from bursting out like a water-flower that spring, and clothing herself in puffings and knick-knacks, as most of the Casterbridge girls would have done in her circumstances. Her triumph was tempered by circumspection, ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... warrior and his natural poet? Is there anything unpoetical in Ulysses striking the horses of Rhesus with his bow (having forgotten his thong), or would Mr. Bowles have had him kick them with his foot, or smack them with his hand, as being more unsophisticated? ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... of verbal impressionists, using his great gifts of straight feeling and right expression with a fine sincerity and a strong if, perhaps, not fully conscious conviction. His art did not obtain, I fear, all the credit its unsophisticated inspiration deserved. I am alluding to the late Stephen Crane, the author of "The Red Badge of Courage," a work of imagination which found its short moment of celebrity in the last decade of the departed century. Other books followed. ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... industrial system is athrob with energy. The purring of machinery, the rattle and roar of traffic, the clack and toot of the automobile, the clanging of bells, and the chatter of human tongues create a babel that confuses and tires the unsophisticated ear and brain. They become accustomed to the sounds after a time, but the noise registers itself continually on the sensitive nervous system, and many a man and woman breaks at last under the strain. ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... them. On another day she was able to join in the deer-stalking, scrambling for hours in the wake of the hunters, among the rocks and heather, when she was not "allowed," as she described it, to speak above a whisper, in case she should spoil the sport. It was a brief taste of an ideal, open-air, unsophisticated life, upon which there was no intrusion, except when stolid sightseers flocked to the little parish church of Blair Athol for the chance of "seeing royalty at its prayers, and hardly a regret beyond the lack of time to sketch the groups of keepers ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... Unsophisticated Will! There was, as he discovered, a wonderful difference between a dinner at Delmonico's and a dinner on the plains. For the one, the four corners of the earth are drawn upon to provide the bill of fare; for the other, all one ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... what Peters knows well enough, but which I gleaned by patient toil from that wicked though unsophisticated old segment of intelligence, that these two young persons had a most delightful, though extremely peculiar, wedding journey. The months had flown, until it was again December—the antarctic midsummer month, in which, and the greater part ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... evidently inclined to take the favourable view. He thinks the ordinary view of their falsehood and dishonesty is applicable only to the rabble of the cities and the frequenters of our courts, but is most unjust to the unsophisticated people of the country, whose truthfulness he extols. After the laudation of these honest and truthful people, I must say I was amused with the naivete of the learned Professor, when he goes on to show that the ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... artist—he looked more confident than most. It seemed to the girl he felt sure of being taken; sure that his name and position and, more than all, his developed, finished personality must count as much as that. And the girl knew that in the direct, unsophisticated judgments of the judges these things did not count ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... done with small shopkeepers in remote districts. The country-people who lived out of reach of such centres of fashion as Ardnaree and Clogher were sufficiently unsophisticated to prefer things which were really good. Hats and bonnets were not quite universal among the women in the mountain districts far back where they spoke Irish, and Mr. Quinn's head-kerchiefs were still in request. Even the ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... nowhere to go, and harder still if you have to seek shelter in a brightly lighted room, where music was being played. The boarding-houses for the fishermen, where thousands of our young men flocked in the spring to try for a berth in the seal fishery, were ridiculous, not to say calamitous. Lastly, unsophisticated girls coming from the outports ran terrible risks in the city, having no friends to direct and assist them; and the Institute which we had in mind was to comprise also a girls' lodging department. No provision was made for the accommodation of crews ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... was smooth, she had no wrinkles, and her neck was a pillar of softly moulded white flesh, around which a man might well string unset jewels, if he had them; for the tint and purity of her skin would be a better setting than platinum or fine gold. But the Clerk of the Court was really unsophisticated, or he would have seen that Carmen played the guitar badly because she was not interested in Jean Jacques' singing. He would have known that she had come to that stage in her married life when the tenure is pitifully insecure. He would have seen ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... is known from the folk-lore of even the most unsophisticated peoples that the heart was originally regarded as the seat of life, feeling, volition, and knowledge, and that the blood was the life-stream. The Aurignacian pictures in the caves of Western Europe suggest that these ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... And some sweet and profitable hours 'twas mine to spend among the fawn-orbed lasses of Puerto, with their childlike gaiety, their desire to please, and their fetching freedom from affectation. Would that the wines exported from the district were half as unsophisticated! These lasses were not learned in the "ologies" or the "isms," but they were sincere; and their locks flowed long and free, and when they laughed the coral sluices flying open gave scope to a full silvery music cascading between pales ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... afraid of wounding her feelings, because an engagement often becomes important in proportion as it has been anticipated. I began to write to ask your opinion respecting the propriety of sending to her, and feel as I write that I had better conquer my desire of contemplating unsophisticated nature, than give her ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... they had managed to say that John Harlow was an unsophisticated student, and that they would run him ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... the most unequal of English poets. There is little that is common to the inspired bard of Tintern Abbey, the Immortality Ode and the nobler Sonnets, and the unsophisticated scribe of Peter Bell and The Idiot Boy. Like Browning, he wrote too much to write well at all times, and if both poets were capable of the sublimest flights, they likewise descended to unimagined depths; but the fault of Wordsworth was perhaps the greater, because his bathos was the result ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... of France, were regiments formed of clerks, lawyers, merchants and other citizens, many of whom volunteered and were formed into an army to assist the regulars and Franc-tireurs in repelling the invasion. They were brave fellows but unsophisticated in the ways of war. They were well supplied with nice blankets and abundance of provisions as they were never camped far from their native places. This branch of the service was looked upon by the ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... surpass the innocence of the ladies' shoe-shops, the artificial-flower repositories, and the head-dress depots. They are in strange hands at this time of year—hands of unaccustomed persons, who are imperfectly acquainted with the prices of the goods, and contemplate them with unsophisticated delight and wonder. The children of these virtuous people exchange familiarities in the Arcade, and temper the asperity of the two tall beadles. Their youthful prattle blends in an unwonted manner with the harmonious ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... had her choice not of one, but of ten husbands, had she wished to do as her sister had done and taken the first eligible man who offered. But the idea of marrying for an establishment never entered her unsophisticated brain, and, as she had not yet met her beau ideal of a husband, she waited patiently, bearing the scoffs and jeers of her unsympathetic aunt without a murmur, and giving in return for her daily bread labor that in any other establishment would have yielded her no small remuneration. had any ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... another person and appearing ridiculous yourself. The first few weeks of the year we had teased Martha by telling her it was etiquette for freshmen to rise when addressed by sophomores and stuff like that. The little thing was so unsophisticated that we made up yards and yards of stories about the dangers of going walking alone or being out after dusk. One student really did have her purse snatched last year, and a senior saw a masked robber in the pines, and once a maid caught a glimpse of a face outside her window, and actually ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... back in his chair. The unsophisticated innocence of this boy from the country would be amusing if ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... love for children; he would not take any trouble about them, but they amused him, and he found pleasure in watching their unsophisticated ways. His good-natured, smiling face appealed to a certain part of Daisy Home, not a very high part certainly, but with the charming frankness of babyhood, the part appealed to ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... followed, a mere boy, with the end of his nose shot off: "Have you any painkiller? give it me quick, so that I can get back to fight." On either side, there was the same delight in sound and smoke and schoolboy cheering, the same unsophisticated ardour of battle; and the misdirected skirmish proceeded with a din, and was illustrated with traits of bravery that would have fitted a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cocktails in this play) strange things must have happened in "God's own country" under the banner of the Bird of Freedom. But never so strange as the effects you get on the stage when very English people play at being Americans. You have to be rather young and unsophisticated if such phrases as "He's putting it over on us," or "I'm not going to stand for that," generously peppered about the dialogue and recited in the purest of English accents, can persuade you to believe that you are getting the real local stuff. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... the ungrateful Pole, for whose education he had generously subscribed, were often unpliable to his views of the Pope; a good old English gentleman, though devoted, might be like Sir Robert Wingfield, simple, unsophisticated, and the laughingstock of foreigners.[24] A courtier, such as Lord Rochford, who could play tennis, make verses, and become "intime" at the court of Francis I., could not hold his own in disputes of papal authority ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... looked closely and paternally at it, almost indeed applying his nose to it. All at once, just as Sarah Brown was beginning to imagine that she could catch the tune and the time, the music ceased, apparently in the middle of a bar. Richard sneezed once or twice. That unsophisticated wizard was evidently enjoying himself in the practice of his art. One felt that magic was not encouraged in the Army, and that the supernatural orgy in which he was now indulging was the accumulated ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... of Europe are more finished than those of England, and while quiet and simplicity are the governing rules of good breeding everywhere, even in unsophisticated America, this quiet and simplicity is more gracious and more graceful in France than in the neighbouring island. As yet, I see no other difference in mere deportment, though there is abundance when one goes into the ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a larger life. I had spent my uneventful days thus far on my father's farm, and both he and my mother were filled with dismay at my determination to go to what was, to them, a city of untold lawlessness and full of pitfalls, where an unsophisticated country youth like myself would be beset with many temptations on every hand, and be led away from the straight and narrow path of his upbringing by his godly parents. And truly the change would be great from the quiet home at Windsor in the beautiful valley of the ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold
... who is a scientist and all brains, came bearing frenzied tales of Breck's indiscretions during his one year at the university where Will is now located, I simply smiled. Some people are so terribly naive and unsophisticated! ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... was most willingly accepted; and when they were seated over their wine, Mr. Pickwick, with sundry blushes, produced the following little tale, as having been 'edited' by himself, during his recent indisposition, from his notes of Mr. Weller's unsophisticated recital. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... out for them. If you go to Long Branch, or Newport, or Saratoga, or the White Mountains this summer, just look out for them. They are dreadful creatures at home in the cities, but doubly dreadful at these resorts. You are young, simple, unsophisticated. I was at your age. But I soon got over such weaknesses. You must very soon, or be a ninny. "Simple," "artless," "unsophisticated," and such terms mean simply softness. Whatever else you are, or are not, don't be soft. The mistake of my fruitless life has been that I believed, in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... got it from the mother of the Ettrick Shepherd, in 1801. The Shepherd's father had been a grown- up man in 1745, and his mother was also of a great age, and unlikely to be able to learn a new-forged ballad by heart. The Shepherd himself (then a most unsophisticated person) said, in a letter of June 30, 1801, that he was "surprized to hear this song is suspected by some to be a modern forgery; the contrary will be best proved by most of the old people, here about, having a great ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... examined it more closely and I saw then that it was a bad French cigar, artfully adorned about its middle with a second-hand band, which the waiter had picked up after somebody else had plucked it off one of the genuine articles and had treasured it, no doubt, against the coming of some unsophisticated patron such as I. And I doubt whether that could have happened anywhere except in Paris either. That is just it, you see. Try as hard as you please to see the real Paris, the Paris of petty larceny and small, ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... economy enquired diligently, with note book in hand, of the Princess of Fiji, whether she thought the influence of the missionaries beneficial or otherwise; whether she considered these preachers of a new religion really good or not; to which the unsophisticated child of nature responded naively, 'Good, very good—roasted; but not quite so good boiled,' and the professor gravely entered the answer in his philosophic note-book. It was a very ancient jest indeed, but it tickled the ribs of the house mightily, as ancient jests usually do, and they burst forthwith ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... There are a few in every society that live by their sensuous nature. Sunday must be a dead day to them—a dark room. No wonder they break through. But it is not so with the sturdy, unsophisticated laboring class in New England. If it came to a vote, you would find that the farmers of New England would be the defenders of the day, even if screwed up to the old strictness. Their instinct is right. It is an observance that has always worked its best effects upon the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Elfrida would be in the thick of it, and the fact that he was leaving Paris for three months or so, and hoped she would write to him when he came back. It was a letter precisely calculated to draw an unsophisticated amateur mind away from any other mortification, to pour balm upon any unrelated wound. Elfrida felt herself armed by it to face a sea of troubles. Not absolutely, but almost, she convinced herself on the spot that her solemn ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... born in an elevated place in himself was nothing, but everything in what went before, and what was to come after him. Without much speculation, but by the sure instinct of ingenuous feelings, and by the dictates of plain, unsophisticated, natural understanding, he felt that no great commonwealth could by any possibility long subsist without a body of some kind or other of nobility, decorated with honour, and fortified by privilege. This nobility forms the chain that connects the ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... for Nancy would not let him wear any other, and was a source of great amusement not only to the smugglers' wives, but also to little Lilly, who would listen to his conversation and remarks which were almost as naive and unsophisticated as her own. ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... been unduly depreciated,—depreciated, through the amalgamation during those centuries of the principle of which he was the representative with baser, or at least less precious matter—extolled, through the recurrence to that principle, in its pure, unsophisticated essence, in the present —in a word, to the simple Imaginative Christianity of the middle ages, as opposed to the complex Reasoning Christianity of recent times. Creeds therefore are at issue, and no exclusive ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... This unsophisticated, simple-hearted man, with the mind of an infant, was one of the most quick-witted, nimble-minded scholars ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... is it that the unsophisticated practices often strike deeper than the train'd ones? Why do our experiences perhaps of some local country exhorter—or often in the West or South at political meetings—bring the most definite results? In my time I have heard Webster, Clay, Edward Everett, Phillips, and ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the want of occasion, for this conversation, had sharpened the perceptions of the unsophisticated second officer of the Ferndale. He was alive to the slightest shade of tone, and felt as if this "I know the man" should have been followed by a "he was no friend of mine." But after the shortest possible break the old ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... the Assembly was supposed to begin at ten, and at this hour next morning the unsophisticated Henry Beechtree took his seat in the Press Gallery. He soon perceived his mistake. The show obviously was not going to begin for ages. No self-respecting delegate or journalist would come into the hall on the stroke of the hour. The superior thing, in this as in other departments of ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... not take more than a glance to convince the onlookers that he was no hardened criminal. If he had done wrong it had been the result either of impulse or mischief, and the dire result of his deed was a thing he had been too unsophisticated to foresee. The plight in which he now found himself plainly amazed and overwhelmed him and he looked ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... Lady Bassett uttered a faint, artificial laugh. "It is not a question of means at all. But, there, since you are so childishly unsophisticated, I need not open your eyes. It is enough for you to know that there is a sufficiently urgent reason for your marriage, and the sooner it can take place, the better. But in the meantime, let me counsel you to be as prudent as possible in all that you do. I assure ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... be evident to the meanest capacity that Sydney was making an absurd mistake as to the identity of the violinist. The most unsophisticated novel-reader in the world would cast contempt and ridicule on the present writers if they, in their joint capacity, introduced the young lady in white as actually Lady Pynsent's governess. To avoid misunderstanding on the point, therefore, it may as well be premised that she was in ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... them; they were genuine once," I said. "Probably Spaakenberg, which is so unsophisticated now, will be like Marken one day; and even at Volendam, though the people have kept their heads (which shows they have a sense of humor), they're not unaware of ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... to the district as a whole. The power for the pumps was from men, and to rescue anyone the fireman had to ascend a ladder, hunt for the person, and carry him or her back down the ladder, all done with unsophisticated gear. Injuries to firemen, or even their ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... associated by the ties of locality and common ancestry, and fettering them in the cast-iron bonds of custom and ceremonial observance. While the members of each group are thus held together by the ideas which appeal most profoundly to unsophisticated mankind, the various groups are automatically and by the same process held apart by the full force of those ideas. Thus are produced castes, with their deadening opposition to all progress; and thus arise crusades, wars of religion and persecutions. Religion and tradition ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... sailor Captain Vincent down through all the other officers to the impudent and important little midshipman, were her devoted slaves. Even Jack forward, usually entirely unresponsive to the doings aft on the quarterdeck, put on an extra flourish or so, and damning his eyes, after the manner of the unsophisticated sailorman, gazed appreciatively upon her beauty, envying those fortunate mortals privileged to radiate about her person. Vincent might be the captain, but Katharine was certainly the queen of the ship. Colonel Wilton, too, shone, not altogether by reflected lustre either; ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... glory of the noble red man of the forest; and was especially impressed by his unexampled faithfulness to those pale-faces who had ever been so fortunate as to eat salt with him. In planning my hermitage, I had pictured the most amicable relations with those unsophisticated children of nature, who should never want for salt while there was a spoonful in my barrel. I should win them to friendships as I had done railroad laborers, by caring for their sick children, and aiding their wives. Indeed, I think the Indians formed a large ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... as Chicago. Name, Allan Haslett. Dramatic criticism out there is still so unsophisticated as to be intelligent as well as honest—at ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... exclusively formed of women—of those who experience most directly the influence of things which touch thought through the senses—the presence of night, the expectation of morning, the nearness of wild, unsophisticated, natural things—the echoes, the coolness, the noise of frightened creatures as they climbed through the darkness, the sunrise seen from the hill-tops, the disillusion, the bitterness of satiety, the deep slumber which comes with the morning. Athenians visiting the Macedonian capital ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... a confidante of Margaret, that's all. That inestimable domestic is so much one of ourselves, it was hard for the unsophisticated mind to know exactly where to ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... this scheme, a real semblance to the foreign brandy flavor is maintained; the difference in duty upon English and foreign spirit enables the makers of the "capsuled" article to undersell those who vend the unsophisticated Cognac. ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... best of them; and who through the whole evening was bustling around the room, with a kind word for every one, and as much at home as if the house, and the company, and even the bride, belonged to him. And in fact, one or two of the guests—but they were unsophisticated people from the country—were for some time under the delusion that Harry was the bridegroom, instead of the quiet young fellow who was seen walking about the rooms, talking to the disagreeable old women, and getting partners for the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... Hesse, he obtained an interview also with Elector August, who referred him to his theologians. On August 18, 1569, Andreae held a conference with the Wittenbergers. They insisted that the basis of the contemplated agreement must be the Corpus Misnicum (Philippicum). When Andreae, unsophisticated as he still was with respect to the real character of Philippism, publicly declared that the Wittenbergers were orthodox teachers, and that the Corpus Misnicum contained no false doctrine he was supplied with a testimonial ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... not right in saying that a great change had come over Pauline? She, who only a few weeks ago, was the simplest and most unsophisticated of girls, now knew the meaning of that dreadful word—affectation. She not only knew what it was, but she knew that it must be avoided, and she took particular ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... you thinking more than any philosopher who ever existed. Their ideas are so fresh, so unsophisticated, so original. The atmosphere of the great unknown still seems to cling to their souls. They are not yet tainted with the world's impure air. They ask you questions impossible to answer, but which you are obliged to parry in an underhand manner, ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... reflection, to dry her tears, and she took a thick folio volume placed upon a table inlaid with enamel and medallions; it was the 'Astree' of M. d'Urfe—a work 'de belle galanterie' adored by the fair prudes of the court. The unsophisticated and straightforward mind of Marie could not enter into these pastoral loves. She was too simple to understand the 'bergeres du Lignon', too clever to be pleased at their discourse, and too impassioned to feel their tenderness. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... was not the revelation of the Holy Ghost. It was not that which elevated and kept me from all trials and temptations. But my inward spontaneous devotion was the kind I needed. I informed the elders of my opinion, and they concurred in it, only they regarded the inspiration of simple and unsophisticated spirits as a stepping-stone to a higher revelation, by virtue of removing pride, vanity, and self-will, those great barriers against ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... word, to the study of which one would like to direct the attention of the philologists, since traces of it are found in the conversation of folk of unsophisticated vocabulary outside the Clan van de Marck. Doubtless it is of Yankee origin, and hence old English. It may, of course, be derived according to Alice-in-Wonderland principles from "skip" and "hither" or "thither" or all three; but the claim is here ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... sending messages, take careful note of it. And keep your ears open for suspicious conversations. Because you are boys, people will be less careful in their talk when you are present than they would be with older people about. The more youthful and unsophisticated you can make yourselves appear, the better it ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... undertook the leadership of affairs. Beckoning Mr. Goodenough into Mr. Ransom's room, he softly closed the door upon the many inquiring ears about, and, assuming the manner most likely to encourage the unsophisticated but straightforward looking man with whom he had to ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... see, some particular person; or his lips drew themselves in, a symbol of meaning reticence. All this, moreover, not in such degrees as to make him patently ridiculous; by no means. Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw might exchange frequent glances, and have a difficulty in preserving decorum; but they were unsophisticated. Mrs. Lessingham smiled, indeed, when there came a reasonable pretext, but not contemptuously. Mr. Marsh's aspect, if anything, pleased her; she liked these avoidances of the commonplace. Cecily did not fail to inspect the new arrival. ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... the later wars with the Turks and Tartars, and in the campaigns of more modern times; they illustrate the warlike spirit, as well as the domestic relations of the Kozaks, and their skill in narrative, as well as their power of expressing in lyric strains the unsophisticated emotions of a ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... original, unthinking, unscientific, unlogical savage: in him there is at least some good; but, in a civilised, sophisticated, cold-blooded, mechanical, calculating slave of Mammon and the world, there is none—absolutely none. Sir, if I fall into a river, an unsophisticated man will jump in and bring me out; but a philosopher will look on with the utmost calmness, and consider me in the light of a projectile, and, making a calculation of the degree of force with which I have impinged the surface, the resistance of the fluid, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... replied Cecilia. She put in another word, which I never heard before, and I don't know what it means. She brought it with her from the South, I suppose. Unso—unsophy—no, unsophisticated—I think that was it. It sounded uncommon ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... that of the Confederation could be so constructed by the assembled wisdom of our country as to substitute for that Confederation a form of government dependent for its existence on the local interest, the party spirit, of a State, or of a prevailing faction in a State? Every man of plain, unsophisticated understanding who hears the question will give such an answer as will preserve the Union. Metaphysical subtlety, in pursuit of an impracticable theory, could alone have devised one that ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... Stephen Marshall. There was good stuff in him; all the fellows recognized that. Only he was woefully unsophisticated, abnormally innocent, frankly religious, and a little too openly white in his life. It seemed a rebuke to the other fellows, unconscious though it might be. He felt with the rest that the fellow needed a lesson. Especially since the bald way in which he had dared to stand ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... there is nothing not genial and delightful in Crummles and Mrs. Crummles and the Infant Phenomenon. Here Dickens has got into a region unlike the region of the pathetic, into a world that welcomes charge or caricature, the world of humour. We do not know, we never meet Crummleses quite so unsophisticated as Vincent, who is "not a Prussian," who "can't think who puts these things into the papers." But we do meet stage people who come very near to this naivete of self-advertisement, and some of whom are just as dismal as ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... reported belief, which places the Good Spirit "above the blue sky," and gives the Evil Spirit the Antipodes. Such, as it is mentioned by Loskiel and by Purchas, are the opinions of the Eastern Indians. These are obviously derived from the white people. The following may be pronounced the unsophisticated traditions of the different tribes on this point, and they ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... husband believes that he is going to live a plain unsophisticated life, according to nature and common sense, in company with one whom the hollowness and trickishness of society has never infected. He is not long in finding out his irreparable blunder. The lady is not received. People do not visit her, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... your letter was a complete surprise to me. It is seldom a woman is so unsophisticated in the ways of men that she is not aware when friendship passes the borderline and trespasses on the ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... wise and exemplary individual, a sort of martyr for principle; "you fellows have no idea of the happiness of a plain country gentleman, living without care or ceremony—having none of the restraints of society, none of your artificial wants—everything simple and unsophisticated. Why, if you knew what it was, you'd give up all thoughts of town, and be living in the country before another month ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... this work, she DIVIDED it into two; not being willing to sully the splendour of the plates by the supposed impurity of such a passage:—and the prints were accordingly bound APART. The passage—as applied to the FRENCH PEOPLE—requires neither comment nor qualification; and in the same unsophisticated view of religious duties, the latter part may be as strictly ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... political opinions may be discussed and disseminated among the sophisticated by lectures and printed pages, but to the common people they can only come through example—through a personality which seizes the popular imagination. The advantage of an unsophisticated neighborhood is, that the inhabitants do not keep their ideas as treasures—they are untouched by the notion of accumulating them, as they might knowledge or money, and they frankly act upon those they have. The personal example promptly rouses ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... and Picrea, and also what Shakespeare has sung or said about a certain Romeo and a lady called Juliet, we are certain that the affection between these grand personages was not more genuine, tender, and true, than that which bound the simple and unsophisticated hearts of Will Halket and Mary Brown. But at best we merely play on the surface of a deep subject when we try with a pen to describe feelings, and especially the feelings of love. We doubt, if even the said pen were plucked from Cupid's wing, whether it would help us much. We are ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... born with a record of thought on the brain, or an instinct of sensation on the heart. If I had never seen a printed volume, Nature would have offered my perceptions a varying picture of a continuous narrative, which, without any other teacher than herself, would have schooled me to knowledge, unsophisticated, but genuine. ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... night by the touch of his feet. He could pick up at once an exact dozen of pencils by the feeling, pace distances with accuracy, and gauge cubic contents by the eye. His smell was so dainty that he could perceive the foetor of dwelling-houses as he passed them by at night; his palate so unsophisticated that, like a child, he disliked the taste of wine - or perhaps, living in America, had never tasted any that was good; and his knowledge of nature was so complete and curious that he could have told the time of year, within a day or so, by the aspect of the plants. In ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the law. Yet even now different judges sometimes differ widely in the importance they attach to substantial justice and to legal technicalities; and even now one of the advantages of trial by jury is that it brings the masculine common sense and the unsophisticated sense of justice of unprofessional men into fields that would otherwise be often distorted by ingenious subtleties. It is, however, far less in the position of the judge than in the position of an advocate that the most difficult moral ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... had died down to allow Halfman a hearing began again with fresh vigor. It was obvious to the most unsophisticated listener that here was the fag end of a feast and the moment for the genial giving of toasts. Many voices swelled a loyal chorus of "The King, the King!" and had the great doors of the banqueting-hall been no other than bright ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of a convent life I was whirled into the maddest and wildest confusion, at least such did it seem to me then, when I was unsophisticated, and ignorant of the ways in which ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... and unsophisticated and would have made a splendid little chum, if only one out of every three men who met her had not been consumed with a desire to annex her for life by means ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... the absence of trivial submissive tendernesses, for which she makes amends by such large humane and generous compassion. "In Emily's nature," says her sister, "the extremes of vigour and simplicity seemed to meet. Under an unsophisticated culture, inartificial taste and an unpretending outside, lay a power and fire that might have informed the brain and kindled the veins of a hero; but she had no worldly wisdom—her powers were unadapted to the practical ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... have accompanied Anneke, and her party, all day, through that scene of unsophisticated mirth, and felt no want of interest. Her presence immediately produced an impression; even the native Africans moderating their manner, and lowering their yells, as it might be, the better to suit her more refined tastes. No one, in our set, was too dignified ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... ingenuousness of this old habitue of a cynical world and an intriguing and insincere society, to whom no scheme had been too wild for acceptance. As Bradley listened with a half-saddened smile to the grave visions of this aged enthusiast, he remembered the son's unsophisticated simplicity: what he had considered as the "boyishness" of immaturity was the taint of the utterly unpractical Mainwaring blood. It was upon this blood, and others like it, that Oldenhurst had for centuries waxed ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... had to consider the chapter he wrote in the great instrument as something in the nature of a campaign document to be employed at home, while Clemenceau guided a steamroller that stooped for nothing but France. The more or less unsophisticated idealism of Woodrow ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... what I mean, Edward. If she can be kept unspoiled; untainted; unsophisticated; with that sort of mixture of wisdom and simplicity which she has now. I wish we need not send ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... masqueraded as a padre, a black mackintosh serving as his priestly garb. Thus attired he went to the unsophisticated Tarahumares in the more remote valleys and made them send out messengers to advise the people that he had come to baptise them, and that they were all to gather at a certain place to receive his blessings. For each baptism he charged one goat, and by ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... surprising that at the same time I would imagine the pleasure I should have in embracing a girl who resisted, in inspiring her with timidity, in making her flee and in pursuing her; that was a part which I burned to play."[15] It is the instinct of the sophisticated and the unsophisticated alike. The Arabs have developed an erotic ideal of sensuality, but they emphasize the importance of feminine modesty, and declare that the best woman is "she who sees not men and whom they see not."[16] This deep-rooted modesty of women towards ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... wondered why it was—this strange boy had been much in society, and why should I, an unsophisticated, homely girl, bring such a shower ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... it would be a very simple matter to get the history of his master out of this guileless and unsophisticated being. He had been tried by all the village experts. The rector had put a number of well-studied careless questions, which failed of their purpose. The old librarian of the town library had taken note of all the books he carried ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Unsophisticated, and backward through inexperience, Sergius was nevertheless conscious of the embarrassing plight of the Princess. He had also a man's quick sense of the uselessness of resistance, except in the way of protest. To measure the stranger's probable influence with the Turks, he ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... walls: most of them empty, but a few containing the lamentable remnants of headless saints and angels. It is singular what a native animosity lives in the human heart against carved images, insomuch that, whether they represent Christian saint or Pagan deity, all unsophisticated men seize the first safe opportunity to knock off their heads! In spite of all dilapidations, however, the effect of the west front of the Cathedral is still exceedingly rich, being covered from massive base to airy summit with the minutest details of sculpture and carving: at least, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... scarcely knew herself what she felt, except a keenly appreciating sense of the writer's embarrassed feelings, and except, also, the pleasurable emotions which this timid and tender outpouring of an unsophisticated heart somehow afforded her. Ever since her singular interview with this remarkable girl, as described in a former chapter, Mrs. Elwood had not ceased to think of her as of some good angel, sent by an interposing Providence, in answer to the agonizing supplications ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... As these unsophisticated young creatures were attended by no jealous duennas, their proceedings were altogether informal, and void of artificial restraint. Long and minute was the investigation with which they honoured us, and so uproarious their mirth, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... girl was too unsophisticated to have meant it. Somehow that made it worse. Though she did not know it, he did. Unknown to herself, there was a response in the presence of Locke which was not inspired in his own society. He hurried her ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... will be no difficulty in pacifying and converting the peasants, countrymen, and villagers, who are so numerous that nearly all the land is covered with villages; for they are quite simple and unsophisticated, and suffer great oppression and tyranny. With the women, who are very numerous, there will be even less difficulty in introducing the faith, because of their virtue and great reserve, which is remarked by all who know of them—to such a degree ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... course," she said, "I thought you were white slavers. But I've got it now. The other game is different. Oh, I may come from a small town, but I'm not unsophisticated. You people didn't send my father those black hand letters he's been getting ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of youth, and of primitive, unsophisticated nations; while science may be called the religion of the mature man, full of experience and immersed in the actual. The Positivism of Comte, like the old myth-worship, sets up for its deity human nature idealized, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... An unsophisticated young imp, who had not long been in Hades, was cowering over a small fire in a distant corner, endeavoring to keep from freezing, when his Impious Majesty himself heard the youth soliloquizing: "When will LIE BIG, the editor of the Sun, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... traditions, its missionaries have introduced amongst them, and which must be only the more execrable, for their being a superstructure on so fair a foundation as that of the truths of the Gospel. At least, the savages, in their genuine unsophisticated state, have no such base, absurd, derogatory ideas of the Deity, as are implied by the doctrines of transubstantiation, purgatory, absolution, and the like fictions in the Romish church, which have been the more ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... neglect had visited them—they had been surrounded ever by both love and respect. The love came principally from their mother and from one another, but the respect came from all who knew them. The Mainwaring girls, in their plain dresses and with their unsophisticated manners, looked like ladies, and invariably ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... your enviable little Eden, 'cherubim and a flaming sword,' to guard its approaches from those who would endanger your peace; and above all, shield you from those, who would perplex and confuse your unsophisticated minds, by mysterious doctrines which they do not themselves comprehend! Remain steadfast to the faith, which your late father and benefactor has instilled into your minds, culled from the precepts of your Bible, and be content for the ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... child would, but knitted his brow with a perplexed air as he said, "Why don't the British government send a woman to find the source of the Nile? I must thank your unsophisticated brother's pride in his sister's epistolary accomplishments for my ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... creeping horrors with the utmost matter-of-course air. At this time he is one of the tamest birds in the orchard, and will allow you to approach within a few yards of him. I have even come within a few feet of one without seeming to excite his fear or suspicion. He is quite unsophisticated, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... unsophisticated and impossibly innocent shopgirl who—in the story—just escapes the loss of her honor; the noble young man who heroically "marries the girl"; the adventures of the debonaire actress, who turns out most surprisingly to be an angel of sweetness and ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... different. Esau is a rough and sunburnt hunter, ranges about in the desert, and lives from day to day without care: Jacob, a pious, smooth man, stays at home beside the tents, and understands the value of things which his unsophisticated brother disregards. The former is the favourite of his father, the autochthonous Isaac, the latter is preferred by the mother, the Aramaean Rebecca; the former stays in his own land and takes his wives from the original population of south Canaan and the Sinaitic peninsula, the latter emigrates, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... have not been drawn and trussed, in order that we may be filled, like stuffed birds in a museum, with chaff and rags, and paltry, blurred shreds of paper about the rights of man. We preserve the whole of our feelings still native and entire, unsophisticated by pedantry and infidelity. We have real hearts of flesh and blood beating in our bosoms. We fear God; we look up with awe to kings, with affection to Parliaments, with duty to magistrates, with reverence to priests, and with respect to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... more involved every minute," Mrs. Clephane sighed. "It's useless to try to make me comprehend. I want to hear what happened to you; such simple concrete doings are more adapted to my unsophisticated mind." ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... sea as to what sort of person he might be, and now fearing perhaps to wound him if he should turn out to be a very unsophisticated one, Sylvia obediently set her teeth to the lustrous, dark bark and tore off a bit, which gave out in her mouth a mild, pleasant aromatic tang, woodsy and penetrating, unlike any other taste she knew. "Good, isn't it?" said her ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... in the matter of style and quaint presuming on the reader's patience, is Sterne. But if one wishes to see how Richter is not sentimental, in spite of his incessant and un-American emotion, let him read Sterne, and hasten then to be embraced by Richter's unsophisticated feeling, which is none the less refreshing because it is so exuberant and has such a habit of pursuing all his characters. And where else, in any language, is Nature so worshipped, and so rapturously chased with glowing words, as some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... myself settled for the remainder of my life. I was passionately attached to Naka-poop, for such was the name of my young wife, and notwithstanding my French education, could not but acknowledge that her natural and unsophisticated manners were more graceful and more fascinating, than is all the studied address of my own countrywomen. She was of high rank in her own country, being nearly allied to the king; and for two years my life slipped away, in uninterrupted happiness and peace. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... when the water was still and one had to make long, delicate casts in order to drop one's fly along the edges of the lily pods. But the Babe was not making long, delicate casts. On such a day as this the somewhat unsophisticated trout of Silverwater demanded no subtleties. They were hungry, and they were feeding close inshore, and the Babe was having great sport. The fish were not large, but they were clean, trim-jawed, bright fellows, some of them not far short of the half-pound; and ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... affection of a King's daughter, tyrannical and Lear-like impotentia of the King himself, etc.—may be exaggerated, but cannot be denied. In the greatest of all by general acknowledgment, the far-famed Roland, the economy of pure story interest is pushed to a point which in a less unsophisticated age—say the twentieth instead of the twelfth or eleventh century—might be put down to deliberate theory or crotchet. The very incidents, stirring as they are, are put as it were in skeleton argument or summary rather than amplified into full ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... character, joined with great hardihood and gaiety,—which reminds us of Henry IV. and his Bearnois,—and carries with it, perhaps on account of that association, an idea of something more chivalrous and romantic—more honest and unsophisticated, than any thing we expect to meet with in this modern world of artifice and derision. There was great purity of morals accordingly, Mad. de L. informs us, and general cheerfulness and content in all this district;—crimes were never heard of, and lawsuits ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... not often find a pair of unsophisticated little girls won to her by her frankness and kindness, and dazzled by her goodness and greatness. How she awoke Fiddy's laugh with the Chit-Chat Club and the Silence Stakes. What harmless, diverting stories she told them of high life—how she had danced at Ranelagh, sailed upon the Thames, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... pine woods, beyond which were two or three fields of plow-land. The soil was thin, sandy where it was not rocky, and rocky where it was not sandy. It was a poor place, indeed, and had been poorly farmed until it was as lean as Pharaoh's second herd of kine. It speaks well for these unsophisticated philosophers that in four years they made this desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose; cultivating the finest market gardens and flower-gardens in Roxbury, planting orchards and vineyards, and growing pasturage for a ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... own reason, and have to be reminded of what lies without by specious and clamant exceptions—earthquakes, eruptions of Vesuvius, banjos floating in mid-air at a seance, and the like—a mind so fresh and unsophisticated is no despicable gift. I will own I think it a better sort of mind than goes necessarily with the clearest views on public business. It will wash. It will find something to say at an odd moment. It has in it the spring of pleasant and quaint fancies. Whereas I can imagine myself yawning all night ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... eager youth, with a mop of black shiny hair that he was always tossing back, bright glowing eyes, a great enthusiasm of manner, and an imagination alert to catch fire. The backwoodsman seemed attracted to the boy by this very quick and unsophisticated bubbling of candid youth; while the boy most evidently worshipped his older companion as a symbol of the mysterious frontier. The Northerner was named Rogers, but was invariably known as Yank. The Southerner had some such name as Fairfax, but was called Johnny, and later in California, for ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... this age, distinguished for almost everything more than sincerity, there are some people who would seem too delicate and refined to read their Bibles." And he concludes with the appeal,—"But the unsophisticated lovers of nature, who have not had the opportunity to acquaint themselves with the French language, I have no doubt will thank me for interpreting to them these honest and truthful fictions of the frank old JEAN, and will beg me to proceed no farther in the work of expurgation." ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... he seemed a smart but common sort of lad." For the unsophisticated Madame Dufour did not discover in the plain black frock and drab gaiters of the bearer of that letter the simple livery ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... preposterous. Such generosity savored of play acting, and Louise's manner was too airy to be genuine. Somehow she felt that she was being laughed at by this slender, graceful girl, who was scarcely older than herself; but she was too unsophisticated to know how to resent it. Louise insisted upon warding off her enmity, or at least establishing a truce, and Beth, however suspicious and ungracious, could find no ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... true that many of our writers have neglected to cultivate taste and the embellishments of style, but even these have written the language in its genuine idiom. In this respect Franklin and Washington, whose language is their hereditary mother-tongue, unsophisticated by modern grammar, present as pure models of genuine English as Addison and Swift. But I may go further, and affirm with truth that our country has produced some of the best models of composition. The style of President Smith, of ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... source of political and financial support. So he split off the "farming" from Organic Gardening and Farming magazine and started two new publications, one called The New Farm where safely away from less educated unsophisticated eyes he could discuss minor alterations in the organic faith without upsetting the readers of ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... make it a rule to swallow a few gnats a day, lest I should come to strain at them, and so bolt camels; but the whole question of lying is difficult. What is "lying"? Turning for moral guidance to my cousins the lower animals, whose unsophisticated nature proclaims what God has taught them with a directness we may sometimes study, I find the plover lying when she lures us from her young ones under the fiction of a broken wing. Is God angry, think you, with this pretty deviation from the letter of strict accuracy? or was it not ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... game is up. The three kingdoms have been well-nigh ransacked and exhausted. The country town is as bare as a bird's tail of anything but common-place stuff, bought in the London market, and (if any dweller in a distant city is simple enough to order it from the unsophisticated vendor) charged with a good profit and the freight up. Naturally the provincial dealer, if he stumbles on a gem or two in an accidental way, takes care that it is sold in no corner, unless it be at the corner of Wellington Street in the Strand. He considers that the value may be a matter of doubt, ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... excitement as she prettily accepted the invitation. Beneath their drooping lashes Diana's sagacious eyes read the thoughts of the girl quite accurately. Miss Von Taer enjoyed disconcerting anyone in any way, and Louise was so simple and unsophisticated that she promised to afford considerable ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... commendable throughout. All of the earlier histories have been carefully re-examined, a great mass of original material has been searched and the results of his studies are presented in systematic arrangement and in a clear and unsophisticated style."—The New York ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... sense. It is a pity you don't bring it to bear in the case of Silver, whom you trust because you have benefited him. Good-day, you very unsophisticated person. I ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... were not even Frenchmen, but a brace of London thieves, who had picked up a knowledge of French during a professional tour on the continent, and who had emigrated to America for the purpose of introducing their art among our unsophisticated countrymen. Charmant had been a jeweller, and this enabled him to counterfeit the gems obtained of Mr. Sandford, which he purposed disposing of at the first favorable opportunity. The boy believed that Charmant had them ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... an almost certainly pre-Exilic composition. This Psalm has been well termed a "prelude to the Song of Songs," for in a real sense Canticles is anticipated and even necessitated by it. In Ruth we have a romance of the golden corn-field, and the author chooses the unsophisticated days of the Judges as the setting of his tale. In Canticles we have a contrasted picture between the simplicity of shepherd-life and the urban voluptuousness which was soon to attain its climax in the court of the Ptolemies. So the poet ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... "unsophisticated" are frequently confused. The former suggests a type of behavior which is artless, spontaneous, and free from the restraints of custom. The latter implies fully as great lack of knowledge of social usage, and, in addition, conduct which is ...
— Stanford Achievement Test, Ed. 1922 - Advanced Examination, Form A, for Grades 4-8 • Truman L. Kelley
... rowth of auld nicknackets" as Burns ascribes to Captain Grose. To these rambles Scott owed much of the materials of his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border; and not less of that intimate acquaintance with the living manners of these unsophisticated regions, which constitutes the chief charm of one of the most charming of his prose works. But how soon he had any definite object before him in his researches seems very doubtful. "He was makin' himsel' ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Ulric Barberigo, a man totally destitute of all nobility, that alone excepted which belonged to wealth. This shone in the eyes of Francesca's parents, but failed utterly to attract her own. She saw, through the heart's simple, unsophisticated medium, the person of Giovanni Gradenigo only. Her sighs were given to him, her loathings to the other. Though meek and finally submissive, she did not yield without a remonstrance, without mingled ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... deceitful brook, was now finished, and I waited for the results. During much of the summer there was not a drop of water in the wide canal, save where a living spring trickled into it. The ordinary fall rains could scarcely more than cover the broad, pebbly bottom, and the unsophisticated laughed and said that I reminded them of a general who trained a forty-pound gun on a belligerent mouse. I remembered what I had ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... which is itself incapable of limitation. And there are other truths in the two latter sciences which, if they cannot pretend to rank in the class of axioms, are yet such direct inferences from them, and so obvious in themselves, and so agreeable to the natural and unsophisticated dictates of common-sense, that they challenge the assent of a sound and unbiased mind, with a degree of force and conviction almost equally irresistible. The objects of geometrical inquiry are ...
— The Federalist Papers |
