"Guileless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... direct enough at any rate. It was as formal as an invitation to a dinner, and as guileless. The thing he thought he wanted lay within his reach. He had merely to say yes. He did say yes; but first he looked about him instinctively, as for guidance. He looked at the stars twinkling high above the distant Libyan Plateau; at the long arms of the Desert, gleaming ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... quick inspection upon the short, dark locks and strong young form still bent over the last strokes of the writing. But when he straightened up, carefully shut the book, and fixed his brown eyes upon hers in guileless expectation of instructions, he saw nothing to indicate that he was not the entire stranger ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... back her hair from blowing across her face and gazing at him wide-eyed, with a wicked assumption of guileless innocence, "at the Mission San Jose there is a very old and very wise woman. She lives in a tule hut behind the very walls of the Mission, and the Indians go to her by night when dreams have warned them that death threatens. She is a terribly wise old woman, Senor, for she can look into the past ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... and the Sudras adoring the Brahmanas and the Kshatriyas, waited upon the Vaisyas. And Santanu residing in Hastinapura, the delightful capital of the Kurus, ruled the whole earth bounded by seas. He was truthful and guileless, and like the king of the celestials himself conversant with the dictates of virtue. And from the combination in him of liberality, religion and asceticism, he acquired a great good fortune. He was free from anger and malice, and was handsome ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... turned not from the rose-cheek of the maiden, nor refused the touch of the ruby lip; but they loved her too well to sully by one wronging thought the tender confidence of perfect innocence, or cause her guileless heart a single pang. For womanhood was holy in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... upon his gun, attracted ever and anon by the twinkling host above, a throng of unwonted memories crowded upon him. He thought of his guileless youth; the uncontaminated days of enjoyment ere he had mingled with the designing and heartless associates who strove to entice him from the path of virtue; of the hopes of budding manhood; of ambitious schemes to ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... sympathies were as boundless as her waist, welcomed them with wide smiles, delighting in the broken French of Billy and Harrison, and deftly tempting them to fresh excursions in her language. She put a question in infantile French to Bob presently, whereupon that guileless youth, with a childlike smile, answered her with a flood of idiomatic phrases, in an accent purer than her own—collapsing with helpless laughter at her amazed face. After which, Madame neglected her other patrons to ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... a little chilling to the social affections; and though the companion would in the end acquit him of any malice or untruth, yet it mars conversation. Hence, no equal companion stood in affectionate relations with one so pure and guileless. "I love Henry," said one of his friends, "but I cannot like him; and as for taking his arm, I should as soon think of taking the ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... prosperity, and St. John's Church in Bridgeport, especially, to be one of the strongest and most flourishing in the diocese. The silent influence of a good life carried him along smoothly, and left its gentle impress wherever he was known. "A faithful pastor, a guileless and godly man," is a part of the inscription upon the marble monument erected over his ashes in the Mountain Grove Cemetery at Bridgeport, a few years since, by his son William, and these words sum up very appropriately ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... poor victims done to deserve such fearful punishment? What heinous crime had they committed to be sentenced to death and destruction by such a painful, torturing process? Whose sin was visited on the guileless heads of little infants and innocent children who had perished in those flames? Could not they have been spared? or that loving and beautiful young couple, just on the brink of life and happiness, and now sent to eternity together by such a fearful ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... in the innocent readiness of little children to learn the explanation of by far the greatest fact within the horizon of their minds. The way they receive it, with native reverence, truthfulness of understanding, and guileless delicacy, is nothing short of a revelation of the never-ceasing bounty of Nature, who endows successive generations of children with this instinctive ear for the deep harmonies of her laws. People sometimes speak of the indescribable beauty of children's innocence, ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... efficacious pistol which she carried about in case of an emergency. Betty was one who could aim steadily and shoot straight when occasion demanded. It was a latent antagonist who entered Mrs. Forrester's drawing-room on that Monday afternoon, Karen, all guileless, following after. Mrs. Forrester and the Baroness were alone and, in a deep Chesterfield near the tea-table, Madame von Marwitz leaned an arm, bared to the elbow, in cushions and rested a meditative head on her ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Clara were so entirely innocent of all intrigue. They gave simply what was in them without calculation of future profit, and with the most guileless trust in others, never suspecting that they were not as simple as themselves. Therefore Verschoyle cursed his own indolence which had committed him both to the Imperium and the ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... was visited by reporters, photographers, and ingenious strangers who benevolently offered to invest his money in enterprises with certified futures. When he was not engaged in declining a gold mine in Colorado, worth five million dollars, marked down to four hundred and fifty, he was avoiding a guileless inventor who offered to sacrifice the secrets of a marvelous device for three hundred dollars, or denying the report that he had been tendered the presidency of ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... to make her life count. She wasted no time on what did not at once attract her spirit, except of necessity. And yet she genuinely delighted in the small events of a day such as please and awe children. And the reason they loved her so was because they knew she brought the same guileless point of view to solve their bewilderment from larger experience. And yet ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... have been in all things utterly innocent and guileless. The luck of war had been terribly against them, they considered, but the right remained with them. They were virtuous. Their opponents had not only been the aggressors at the outset, but had shown themselves little better than savages by the manner in which they had conducted the war; and, to crown ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... Englishman, with an inborn love of fine horse-flesh and a guileless nature. Some years before he had fallen into the hands of a promoter, and had bartered a goodly proportion of his worldly belongings for a horse-ranch in Dakota, to be taken possession of immediately. ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... did, under the same roof with the nymphs who had long bodied forth his pictorial ideal, was to invite a public avowal of his proposed championship of free art. He was lured the farther into this quagmire by the guileless questioning of one of his listeners, who lingered in obvious fascination after his fellows had departed, and, in happy ignorance that the cherubic youth was the son of an artist of distinction, and himself no ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... hers; We often stole away among the pines— That stately cluster on the sloping hill— And conned our lessons from the selfsame book, And learned to love each other o'er our tasks, While in the pine-tops piped the oriole, And from his branch the chattering squirrel chid Our guileless love and artless innocence. 'Twas childish love perhaps, but day by day It grew into our souls as we grew up. Then there was opened in the prospering town A grammar school, and thither went Pauline. I missed her and was ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... be what now thou art, Nor unbeseem the promise of thy spring, As fair in form, as warm yet pure in heart, Love's image upon earth without his wing, And guileless beyond Hope's imagining! And surely she who now so fondly rears Thy youth, in thee, thus hourly brightening, Beholds the rainbow of her future years, Before whose ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... that, after pining For the sweet absent mother—hears Her voice—and, round her neck entwining Young arms, vents all his soul in tears;— So, by harsh custom far estranged, Along the glad and guileless track, To childhood's happy home, unchanged, The swift song wafts the wanderer back— Snatch'd from the coldness of unloving Art To Nature's mother arms—to Nature's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... knowledge of the world, but a kind of social concern. None of us is likely to forget that on the authority of Holy Writ the serpent became familiar with mankind very shortly after his appearance on earth, and whispered injurious secrets into guileless ears. Ever since the scene in the Garden of Eden, war between man and the serpent has prevailed, and now, if we are to credit the sayings of the wise, the end of all reptiles, if not actually in view, cannot be long postponed. Is it not mete, therefore, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Wood! And here I stand before thee, all glorious in my nakedness, and so fulfilled of wisdom, that I can make this wilderness to any whom I love more full of joy than the kingdoms and cities of the world—and thou!—Ah, but it is the Enemy that hath done this, and made the guileless guileful! Yet will I have the upper hand at least, though thou suffer for it, ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... die confuse With the golden sunbeam's hues. Let no wreath, with artful twine. The flowing of his locks confine; But leave them loose to every breeze, To take what shape and course they please. Beneath the forehead, fair as snow, But flushed with manhood's early glow, And guileless as the dews of dawn, Let the majestic brows be drawn, Of ebon hue, enriched by gold, Such as dark, shining snakes unfold. Mix in his eyes the power alike, With love to win, with awe to strike; Borrow from Mars his look of ire, From Venus her soft glance of fire; Blend them in such ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... were reached four days later. By Cooke the Indians were called "friendly, guileless and singularly ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... your chance with her. If she likes you she shall have you. I am quite aware you are poor,—that you are a curate on a hundred and fifty a year; but you are well connected and a gentleman, and as guileless as a young Nathaniel. I could not desire a better husband for ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... sweet sleep of purity and peace, and buried by the birds when we were dead! Some such picture, with no real world in it, bright with the light of our innocence, and vague as the stars afar off, was in my mind all the way. I am glad to think there were two such guileless hearts at Peggotty's marriage as little Em'ly's and mine. I am glad to think the Loves and Graces took such airy forms ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... Martin was quite guileless, and looking down at his coat in a puzzled way, as if to make doubly sure, replied, "No, it cannot be my clothes, for they are the same." Then, brightening, as the possible reason occurred to him: "Perhaps it may be my shaven face; you see, the barber made an error in the trimming of my decorations ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... genlemens Irish? I never know that," purred the guileless Bedr; but Fenton brought him to his bearings. All questions were to be from us to him. So Bedr "fired away": and there, within a stone's throw of the train getting up steam for Khartum, we listened to a strange tale—as strange, and as great an anachronism as ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... would appear that the Patharis have not much to learn from the owners of buried treasure or the confidence or three-card trick performers of London, and their methods are in striking contrast to the guileless simplicity usually supposed to be a characteristic of the primitive tribes. Mr. White states that "All the property acquired is taken back to the village and there distributed by a panchayat or committee, whose head is known as Mokasi. The Mokasi ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... failure of Home Rule measures, twice in this decade, stirred Irish-American antagonism. The accession to power of Lord Salisbury, reputed to hold the United States in contempt, and later the foolish indiscretion of Sir Lionel Sackville-West, British Ambassador at Washington, in intervening in a guileless way in the presidential election of 1888, did as much to nourish ill-will in the United States as the dominance of Blaine and other politicians who cultivated the gentle art of twisting the tail of ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... originated by chance. The subject was, What was the most absorbing and longest-lived passion in the human breast? What was the passion so powerful that it would almost induce the generous to be mean, the careless to be cautious, the guileless to be deeply designing, and the dove to emulate the serpent? A daily editor of vast experience and great acuteness, who was one of the company, considerably surprised us by saying with the greatest confidence that ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... ideas was irresistible. You are like her—in your utter simplicity and guileless ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... head was stored with nearly as much of human knowledge as mortal head could hold, took simple, guileless little Sam by the hand, and led him into the garden of knowledge. Unless I am mistaken, these two will pick more flowers than they will dig potatoes in the aforesaid garden, but I don't think that two such honest souls will gather much unwholesome fruit. The danger is that they will ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... guileless man with a strong dislike for the admiral's blundering—a dislike that all the seamen shared—and for people of the Topnambo kidney who affected to be above his dinners. He assured me that I had burst upon those gentry roaring... "like the Bull of Bashan. You ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... hours of my loathing! He speaks not, he moves not; yet he draweth breath softly: I have seen men a-dying, and not thus did the end come. Surely God who made all forgets not love's rewarding, Forgets not the faithful, the guileless who fear not. Oh, might there be help yet, and some new life's beginning! —Lo, lighter the mist grows: there come sounds through its dulness, The lowing of kine, or the whoop of a shepherd, The bell-wether's tinkle, or clatter of horse-hoofs. A homestead is nigh ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... chaplain, a fat man, with beady and guileless eyes sunk in under an immense forehead, imagined that Udal's visit was a pretext for overhearing the words of rage and discomfiture that in that Papist centre might be let drop about the new Queen. For Udal, because Privy Seal had set him with the Lady Mary, passed amongst the Papists ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... the influence of a woman with whom some of the opposite sex seemed very familiar, considering the fact that the latter was as much a stranger to them (when first we started out) as she was to me. Besides, the pretty young graduate evidently was a very guileless, convent-raised girl. Matters assumed such a condition at the close of the third day of our journey that I felt it incumbent upon me to invite the latter into my section for the sake of some friendly advice. ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... positive disadvantage of being silent about. He would rather give no account of the matter at all than expose himself to the ridicule that such a story would infallibly excite. Couldn't one see them in advance, the clever, taunting things the daily and weekly papers would say? Peter Baron had his guileless side, but he felt, as he worried with a stick that betrayed him the granite parapets of the Thames, that he was not such a fool as not to know how Mr. Locket would "work" the mystery of his marvellous find. Nothing could help it on better with the public than the impenetrability of the secret ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... Spirits of Evil, the never-resting, vagrant, home-destroying guests, who enter unbidden into the human soul! Hark, the rustling of their raven-hued plumage! They take wing, they fly aloft; 't is the shriek of the vulture, swooping down upon the guileless dove. ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... towards me, and more than one looked at the fair young girl with a franker admiration than I cared about, while she was happily unconscious of it. It would seem that she must lately have left the convent, for the guileless pink and white of that pure life lingered on her face, while her eyes danced with an excitement out of all proportion to the moment. What should she know of Napoleon I, and how rejoice for France when she knew but little of the dark days through which the great general ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... of his honest hand, and in the wide realms of England no two people were happier than they were; for they were faithful, guileless, and true, honest and virtuous, and no shadow cast by a thought of ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... influence. Such boys were above criticism. The moral tone was not low so much as strangely indifferent. A boy's private life was his own affair, and public opinion exercised no particular moral sway. Yet vague and guileless as I myself was, I gratefully record that I never came in the way of any evil influence whatever at Eton, in any respect whatever. Talk was rather loose, and one believed evil of other boys easily enough. To express open disapproval would have been held to be priggish; ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... comparison. We met often. She was an artless creature sir, and gave her love to me long, long before she knew the price of such a gift. She doated on her father, and it was a virtue that I understood. She was very fair to look at; timid as the fawn—as guileless; a creature of poetry, sent to be a dream, and to shed about her a beguiling unsubstantial brightness. All things looked practicable and easy in the light in which she moved. The difficulties of life were softened—its ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... are most innocent!" interrupted La Tour, impetuously; "yours was a heart too guileless to deceive, too firm in virtuous principle to be sullied, even by a union with the vicious and depraved. No, Adele, I have never cherished one feeling of resentment towards you; you, like myself, was the ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... sun glinted on her uncovered hair, blazed in the bright tin basin into which she was dropping scarlet peppers. She appeared younger than he had remembered her; her arms were youthful and softly dimpled; her brow seemed again the calm, guileless brow of a girl; her eyes, as she raised them in greeting, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... acres in the disputed territory for the sum of $500,000 to four land companies. In the following year, the people of Georgia rose in their wrath, turned out the corrupt legislators, and forced the passage of a rescinding act. Meantime, sales had been made by the Yazoo speculators to guileless purchasers, who now appealed to Congress for relief. In 1798, Congress enacted a law providing for commissioners who should confer with Georgia regarding these conflicting claims. At the same time the ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... guileless body I cook the bread and eat. Give me the soul he does not need Now, for conception sweet. Hear, or my lord and husband Shall send me from his door And take to his side a fairer bride Whose breast ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... my hand, and made a few good-natured compliments on her beauty and her tidy appearance. She had a simple, guileless expression, and met my half-bantering remarks with an innocent frankness that charmed me. She was only sixteen, but had developed into a beautiful woman. Her form was slight and graceful, with just enough embonpoint to give the appearance of full health; and her thin, delicate features, large, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "and not only in the West. I assure you, speaking as the director of an insurance concern in Shanghai, that you have no monopoly in inventive chicanery. Insurance people must always be on their guard, but never more so than among the guileless Celestials. I can give you a case in point. Not long ago we received a visit from the wife of one of our policy-holders, saying that her husband was dead and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... wished to be able to refute idiocy, but she found herself continuing to read because she was interested in a way she had not expected. She began to see things. Once she made a remark which was prophetic. She made it in answer to a guileless observation concerning the gold mines with which Boston was supposed ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Witness your face, on which time refuses to leave a trace, and,' he added earnestly, 'happiness—rather a peaceful and contented mind—has come to me at last. When my tender wife, loyal and true, looks up at me with her guileless eyes, full of love and trust, I feel I am thrice blest in possessing her. And, Mary, the sight of our babe thrilled me strangely. The little crumpled bit of humanity, thrusting out her tiny hands, as if to ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... naive trusting person (HARRY laughs—CLAIRE gives him a surprised look, continues simply). Such a guileless soul that I thought flying would do something to a man. But it didn't take us out. ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... and sense Had thrill'd my guileless Genevieve; The music and the doleful tale, The rich and ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... to George. Her eyes rested on him, as he sat opposite to her, and she felt happy and proud. Now and then he looked at her, and an affectionate smile came to his lips. She was delighted with his slim handsomeness. There was a guileless look in his blue eyes which was infinitely attractive. His mouth was beautifully modelled. She took an immense pride in the candour of soul which shone with so clear a light on his face, and she was affected as a stranger might have been by the exquisite charm of manner which ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... of her life, the earnestness with which she promulgates her peculiar views, and the indomitable courage and perseverance with which she bears defeat and misfortune. No longer in the bloom of youth—if she ever had any bloom—hard-featured, guileless, cold as an icicle, fluent and philosophical, she wields today tenfold more influence than all the beautiful and brilliant female lecturers that ever flaunted upon the platform ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... crystalline. "By having accepted, from the first, so guilelessly—yes, so guilelessly, themselves—her guileless idea of still having her father, of keeping ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... is the fate of artless Maid, Sweety flow'ret of the rural shade! By love's simplicity betray'd. And guileless trust, Till she, like thee, all soil'd, is ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... have heard Dr. Shrapnel say that. And, by-the-way, Cecilia—will you? can you?—take me for the witness to his character. He is the most guileless of men, and he's the most unguarded. My good Rosamund saw him. She is easily prejudiced when she is a trifle jealous, and you may hear from her that he rambles, talks wildly. It may seem so. I maintain there is wisdom in him when conventional ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... quick eyes glanced for a moment at the colonel's face, but no reply was made to the supposition. Then the colonel fell to his guileless Offenbach again. There is nothing so innocent as the meditative rendering of a well-known tune. A popular air is that which ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... referred to, for she handed out over the pulpit a package just exactly the shape of what I had supposed, in my guileless innocence, was a portion of the female form. That is, I had suspected it was not all human form, but didn't know. That was also full of medicines, of which quinine was the larger part, though there was about ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... that they shock the mind of the young, are both alike entirely false. As Canon Lyttelton remarks, in urging that the laws of the transmission of life should be taught to children by the mother: "The way they receive it with native reverence, truthfulness of understanding and guileless delicacy, is nothing short of a revelation of the never-ceasing beauty of nature. People sometimes speak of the indescribable beauty of children's innocence. But I venture to say that no one quite knows what it is who has foregone the privilege of being the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... countless bays, coves and inlets were unmolested. Wherever a safe harbor occurred a small village had clustered about it and the larger islands only were inhabited. The residents of these hamlets were mainly engaged in fishing or coasting, and of a guileless nature. They were honest themselves, and not easy to suspect dishonesty in others. Into these ports Wolf could sail unsuspected, and, like the cunning fox he was, easily dupe them by his role of innocent trader ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... should not fear to ask you for mercy on her young head—her inexperienced life. Our Divine Master granted mercy even to the guilty. Will you refuse it then to this trembling and innocent girl, for whose guileless intention, in this terrible accident, I answer before man and God, and with my life and soul. Come here, Miss Clifford! Take off your veil. Tell Mr. Blanchard, in the simple language of truth, how this incident ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... nature dealt most lovingly with the inhabitants of this land. Throughout the whole being of the Greek there reigned supreme a quick susceptibility, out of which sprang a gladsome serenity of temper, and a keen enjoyment of life; acute sense, and nimbleness of apprehension; a guileless and child-like feeling, full of trust and faith, combined with prudence and forecast. These peculiarities lay so deeply imbedded in the inmost nature of the Greeks that no revolutions of time and circumstances have yet been able to destroy them; nay, it may be asserted ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... thy welcome; cold on thee Looked the cold earth, my snowdrop frail and fair. Again that day; but wintry though it be, Come to thy Mother's heart: no frost is there. What sparkles in thy dark and guileless eye? Life's joyous dawn alone undimmed by care! Thou gift of God, canst thou then wholly die? Oh no, a soul immortal flashes there; And for that soul now spotless as thy cheek— That infant form the Almighty's hand has sealed— Oh, there are thoughts a mother ne'er can ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... expanse!" said he, changing his tone and language together. "The guileless race whose bones whiten this rocky den once ranged over that lovely landscape in peace and freedom. The white savages came, and were received as brethren. They threw off the mask, and repaid friendship and love with bonds and tortures. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... was not." This is certainly a glorious antithesis to Hume's position. Whether we take it to illustrate the Saint's extreme lack of humour, or a subtler depth of humour veiled under stolidity, or his rigorous veracity, or his guileless confidence in the veracity of others, we certainly cannot approve it as an example of the attitude we ought to observe with regard to every newly recounted marvel. Truly there might be more liberality, more enlightenment, more imagination in such a ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... I have seen her turn pale at a word, a gesture, on her part. I have seen her embrace Maud Gorka, and play tennis with that same friend so gayly, so innocently. I have seen that she could not bear the presence of Maitland in a room, and yet she asked the American to take her portrait.... Is she guileless?.... Is she a hypocrite? Or is she tormented by doubt-divining, not divining-believing, not believing in-her mother? Is she underhand in any case, with her eyes the color of the sea? Has she the ambiguous mind at once of a Russian and an Italian?.... This ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... crown officials then in authority over the Province, history and poetry have indelibly branded the stigma of an unnecessary edict of expulsion, which devastated one of the fairest regions of America, and tore seven thousand guileless and peaceful people from a scene of rural felicity rarely equaled on earth, to scatter them in the misery of abject poverty, among strangers speaking a strange tongue and hating their religion. The agents who faithfully executed ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... dollars by the work of his hands (reinforced by head and heart); and left a discard of nineteen thousand sketches to the British Nation. Was ever such an example of concentration, energy and industry known in the history of art? Corot, six feet one, weight two hundred, ruddy, simple, guileless, singing softly to himself as he walked, in peasant blouse, and sabot-shod, used to come up to Paris, his birthplace, two or three times a year, and the gamins would follow him on the streets, making remarks irrelevant and comments uncomplimentary, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... it is impossible to satisfy with paltry things the immensity of the relation between them. Moreover, when a man has accustomed himself to deal with great subjects, he becomes unamusable, unless he preserves in the depths of his heart a certain guileless simplicity and unconstraint which often make great geniuses such charming children; but the childhood of the heart is a rare human phenomenon among those whose mission it is to see all, know all, and ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... foreign port, We've first-class wine and cakes." The youth with guileless look replied, "I'll take what ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... gallantry and skill for the protection of his life against the attacks of open foes; and my only fears arise when I reflect on his utter insensibility to danger, and think how the admirable qualities of his own guileless, confiding nature may facilitate the designs of ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... into a delicious reverie. How infinitely superior Rose is to all these people whose lives I can picture around me. Two women sit cackling beside me on the bench: they are at once guileless and bad, with their mania for eternally wagging tongues that know no rest. A little farther on, a good housewife is shaking her troublesome child; a stout, overdressed woman of the shop-keeping class is flaunting her ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... process of evolution toward their ideals: just as nations and men are. Doubtless, when Jack's mechanism is perfected, his guilt will disappear. A little way above the florets the club enlarges abruptly, forming a projecting ledge that effectually closes the avenue of escape for many a guileless victim. A fungus gnat, enticed perhaps by the striped house of refuge from cold spring winds, and with a prospect of food below, enters and slides down the inside walls or the slippery colored column: ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... A berry red, a guileless look, A still word,—strings of sand! And yet they made my wild, wild heart Fly down to ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... daily visits for a week to make satisfactory impress on the Colonel's mistrustful fears, but the Cap'n was patient. In the end, Colonel Ward, having carefully viewed this astonishing conversion from all points, accepted the amity as proof of the guileless nature of a simple seaman, and on his own part reciprocated with warmth—laying up treasures of friendship against that possible day of discovery and wrath ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... do, Tom," answered his mother, meekly. "And this disobedient girl shall mind me, too." Rita had never in all her life disobeyed a command from either father or mother. She was obedient from habit and inclination, and in her guileless, affectionate heart believed that a terrific natural cataclysm of some sort would surely occur should she even think ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... little bit. I'm afraid trouble is ahead for that little girl. Oh, if her father could only be with her all the time. Outsiders can do so little because their authority is so limited and those who HAVE the authority are either too guileless or debarred by their stations. Dr. Llewellyn, Harrison and Mammy are the only ones who have the least right to say ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Foe a dauntless Front he reared, Ne'er from his lips was aught assuming heard; Modest, though brave; though firm, in manners mild, Strong in resolve, though guileless as a child; To honor true, in probity correct; To falsehood [stern] and urgent to detect; To party strange, to calumny a foe; The good Samaritan to sons of woe; At a late hour he heard the fatal call, Obeyed and died, wept ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... went downstairs to meet Florrie, who looked younger and more brilliant than ever in a dress of white and silver brocade. Florrie's husband, a dreamy, quiet man,—the safe kind of man, Gabriella reflected, who inevitably marries a dangerous woman—regarded his noisy wife with a guileless admiration which was triumphantly surviving a complete submergence in the sparkling shallows of Florrie's personality. He was a man of sense and of breeding. He possessed the ordinary culture of ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... her voices in his ear Of beast or bird had meanings clear, Like Apollonius of old, Who knew the tales the sparrows told, Or Hermes, who interpreted What the sage cranes of Nilus said; A simple, guileless, childlike man, Content to live where life began; Strong only on his native grounds, The little world of sights and sounds Whose girdle was the parish bounds, Whereof his fondly partial pride The common features magnified, As Surrey hills ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... after the lapse of nearly a month, Adrian received a letter from a friend in London, requesting his immediate presence for the furtherance of some important object. Guileless himself, Adrian feared no deceit. I rode with him as far as Staines: he was in high spirits; and, since I could not see Idris during his absence, he promised a speedy return. His gaiety, which was extreme, had ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... and future chances—the fate which might be before him—the wife, the child perhaps, from whom unseen he might be about to part. Oh, how he wished that night's work undone! and that with a clear conscience at least he might say farewell to the tender and guileless being by whose love he had ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... minister of the New Meeting, Mr. Bowen, an advocate of religious freedom, charged the Baptists (particular though they were) with reviving old Calvinistic doctrines and spreading Antinomianism and other errors in Birmingham; with the guileless innocence peculiar to polemical scribes, past and present. Mr. Dissenting minister Bowen tried to do his friends in the Bull Ring a good turn by issuing his papers as from "A Consistent Churchman." ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... him as a great Uranian baby, full of querulousness and peevishness, and eating greedily, with a sort of guileless wonder that anyone should scold him for it, every species of forbidden fruit that grows in the garden of life! How infantile really, when one thinks of it, and how humorously solemn the man's inordinate gravity over the touch of soft fabrics and the odour of rare perfumes! One seems to ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... enchanted garden Madame Nilsson, in white cashmere slashed with pale blue satin, a reticule dangling from a blue girdle, and large yellow braids carefully disposed on each side of her muslin chemisette, listened with downcast eyes to M. Capoul's impassioned wooing, and affected a guileless incomprehension of his designs whenever, by word or glance, he persuasively indicated the ground floor window of the neat brick villa projecting obliquely ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... dignity, "perhaps we had better not discuss this until we know something of Emile's feelings in the matter. That is the only question that concerns us." With this she swept out of the room, leaving the major at first speechless with honest indignation, and then after the fashion of all guileless natures, a little uneasy and suspicious of his own guilelessness. For a day or two after, he found himself, not without a sensation of meanness, watching Rose when in Emile's presence, but he could distinguish nothing more than the frank satisfaction she showed ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... own characters, they scorn the human and travesty the divine; they gather a company of guileless youths, and feed them with solemn chatter upon Virtue and quibbling verbal puzzles; in their pupils' presence they are all for fortitude and temperance, and have no words bad enough for wealth and pleasure: when they ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... Lord's from Stanhope Gate with a father whose youth in the eighteen-twenties had been passed without polish in the game of cricket. Old Jolyon would speak quite openly of swipes, full tosses, half and three-quarter balls; and young Jolyon with the guileless snobbery of youth had trembled lest his sire should be overheard. Only in this supreme matter of cricket he had been nervous, for his father—in Crimean whiskers then—had ever impressed him as the beau ideal. Though never canonised himself, Old Jolyon's natural fastidiousness ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... inadvertently slipt in. He and his dog Tray are much the same honest, simple-hearted, faithful, affectionate creatures—if Tray could but read! His mind cannot take the impression of vice: but the gentleness of his nature turns gall to milk. He would not hurt a fly. He draws the picture of mankind from the guileless simplicity of his own heart: and when he dies, his spirit will take its smiling leave, without having ever had an ill thought of others, or the consciousness ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... means presented to the reader as a favorable type of her nation—for, of course, every one knows there are plenty of sweet, unselfish, guileless American girls, who are absolutely incapable of such unblushing marriage-scheming as hers,—but what else could be expected from Marcia? Her grandfather, the navvy, had but recently become endowed with Pilgrim-Father Ancestry,—and her maternal uncle was a boastful pork-dealer in Cincinnati. It ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... inferior race that can skin Levi Long to his pelt in a gamble is providin' no fit associates for guileless an' confidin' children o' the ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... marvellously guileless for a war correspondent," he said. And he turned on his heel and ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... tears aghast That from his lips the words had passed, Though guileless he his soul possessed And faith still ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... that the stranger was talented, handsome, wealthy, everything that a lady would desire in her favored suitor. If he did not release her, she was not free, and could he be adamant to the captivating charms of guileless, spiritual, beautiful May! ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... the crucified Saviour, a Jew was his murderer, a Moor was his reviler. A Protestant wore to their bloodshot eyes the semblance of the torturer who had mocked and scourged the meek Redeemer, who had crowned his guileless head with thorns, who had pierced and slain him. The rack, the gibbet, and the stake were not enough to glut the pious hate this priestly trickery inspired. It was not enough that the doubter's life should go out in the blaze of the crackling fagots, but it must ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... a company, that one may be asked who is the second in each, how group Alpha is, or how the group Beta; again let him salute the group Rho; the name of the letters following its own proper sign. And upon the simpler and more guileless place the name Iota; and upon those who are more ill-tempered and less righteous the letter Xi. And thus in harmony with the principles and the life and manners of them arrange the names of the letters, only the spiritual ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... fair to see, There dwelt, when sin was yet to be, A guileless Serpent up a tree, Sniffing the virgin breezes; Till EVE (the huzzy!), one fine day, With evil purpose came his way, And led that simple worm astray By low ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... But it was obvious, he told himself, that the little old lady didn't mean what she was saying. She smiled at him again, and her smile was as sweet and guileless as the smile on the face of his very ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... us, by sundry signs, where we might most commodiously come to land with our boat; offering us also of their victuals to eat." Again, at another place, one of the sailors who had landed with a few articles designed as presents, found himself treated in the kindest manner. "These guileless people conducted him to the shore, and held him some time in a close embrace, with great love, clapping him fast about, in order to evince their regret at parting."—See Varrazano's Letter in Hakluyt, and New ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... queen, We lived as children till but recently. As such our hands were joined in marriage vows, And then as guileless children lived we on. But children grow, with the increase of years, And ev'ry stage of our development By some discomfort doth proclaim itself. Often it is a sickness, warning us That we are diff'rent—other, though the same, And other ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... came a stranger to Walgett town, To Walgett town when the sun was low, And he carried a thirst that was worth a crown, Yet how to quench it he did not know; But he thought he might take those yokels down, The guileless ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... this woman and judge her soberly for herself. Her mind measured to its full extent the evils which the innovative spirit of the age—described to her as so dangerous for young souls by the rector—would have upon her only child, until then so guileless; as pure as an innocent girl, and beautiful with ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... neglect of the world, his confidence in Walter had been his preservative from misanthropy; and when vexed at the recollection of his own imprudent frankness and folly, in provoking the resentment of powerful foes, he soothed his galled spirit by considering, that the guileless simplicity of his nature, which had raised those foes, had also secured him a faithful friend. That bright creation of his fancy disappeared, a chaos of duplicity, dark contrivance, and injustice remained: Walter proved false, his sister unnatural, his King a tyrant. So different were these ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... up of just such little children—those who had died before they knew anything of the sin and wickedness of this world; or having known it, having grown old and gray beneath its heavy burden, had laid all at the feet of Jesus, and in spirit gone back to helpless, guileless ...
— Effie Maurice - Or What do I Love Best • Fanny Forester
... word, not a sign of apology. She could not have been more astounded had a thunder-bolt struck at her feet, nor more bereft of action. She must have sat there fully ten minutes without movement. From Thomas, the guileless, this! What did it mean? She could not understand. Had he instantly begged forgiveness, had he made protestations of sentiment, a glimmering would have been hers. Nothing; he had kissed her and walked away: ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... to his race, he glided into her hut, just before the setting of the sun, he had chased the traces of passion from his brow, and met her with a calm and satisfied mien. So perfect was the dissimulation that even one less guileless than the woman would have been deceived. In the present case, the preoccupation of her mind in Holden's favor ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... gown for a moment, but soon lost all fear, for there was something attractive to her in the old man's snow-white hair and venerable face, as, surely, there is commonly a sweet sympathy between the guileless childhood of infancy and the holy childhood of God—fearing old age. So she shyly drew towards him, and let him place her on his knee; and then she looked up wonderingly at him, as his tears fell fast on her brown hair, and his voice ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... could dim. That he was good and honourable, she believed; and, therefore, had faith in him. Yet had his sudden appearance and injunction of silence disturbed her, as we have seen, very deeply. Her guileless heart shrunk from concealment, as if it were something evil. How bewildered were all her perceptions, usually so calm! A sense of relief had been felt, the instant she saw that her father's mind was no longer in doubt on the question of Mr. Lyon's return from the South—relief, that he was deceived ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... in the speech of a former Prime Minister on the fiscal question (1903) became in course of telegraphing "guileless monsters," and so reached the Bristol press. Fortunately, the newspaper proof readers were wide awake, and the error ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... Mrs. Gibson, heard the news with consternation. She had long been aware of the state of her brother's affections, this indeed arguing no especial insight, since an infant in arms would have possessed sufficient intuition to read the heart of the guileless Thomas. Mrs. Gibson had regarded Persis in the proprietary light of a prospective sister-in-law, even going so far as to criticize her with the frank freedom which is the prerogative of kinship. When the first rumor of ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... them flow sacrifices and Havya and Kavya, and milk and curds and ghee. Hence, O chief of the deities, kine are sacred. Afflicted by hunger and thirst, they bear diverse burdens. Kine support the Munis. They uphold all creatures by diverse acts, O Vasava, kine are guileless in their behaviour. In consequence of such behaviour and of many well-performed acts, they are enabled to live always in regions that are even above ours. I have thus explained to thee today, O thou ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... were in apparent contravention of the manifesto was attributed by the Lutherans to the sinister influence of such bitter, baiting, and unscrupulous theologians as Eck, Cochlaeus, and Faber, who, they claimed, endeavored to poison and incite the guileless heart of the Emperor. Thus the Lutherans would not and could not believe that Charles had deceived them,—a simple trust, which, however, stubborn facts finally ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... pays; With honest pride I scorn each selfish end; My dearest meed, a friend's esteem and praise: To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays, The lowly train in life's sequestered scene; The native feelings strong, the guileless ways; What Aiken in a cottage would have been; Ah! though his worth unknown, far happier ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... the guileless rites retain'd, And customs of our sires maintain'd? Where has the ancient Welsh remain'd? O! ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... his unpleasant encounter with Major Cragiemuir, Ah Moy arrived at his place of business in Four-and-a-half Street, a mass of bruises, and with a heart full of hatred for his assailant. Perhaps, after all, the fellow had meant no harm. In his guileless, imitative way he had simply tried to do what he had often seen American young men do. Had he not frequently observed big Policeman Ryan kiss the red-haired widow who kept the lodging-house around on Missouri Avenue? Did not Muggsy Walker—across ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... painfully displease me. It was a canting, sentimental, shallow little book, yet something about it cheered my gloom and made me smile; I was amused with the gambols of this unlicked wolf-cub muffled in the fleece, and mimicking the bleat of a guileless lamb. Portions of it reminded me of certain Wesleyan Methodist tracts I had once read when a child; they were flavoured with about the same seasoning of excitation to fanaticism. He that had written it was no bad man, and while ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... father, this would, doubtless, have been true enough. But though he had known him for so many years, and was privy to much of his history, he did not yet understand Philip Caresfoot. His own open and guileless nature did not easily suspect evil in another, more especially when that other was the father of her whom he looked upon as the earthly incarnation of all ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... too guileless for this wicked world? She prattled on, Selincourt and Laura lending an indulgent ear, Selincourt, like any other man of his type, touched by her innocence, Laura faintly irritated: and meanwhile Isabel through her black lashes watched, ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... his movements were peculiar, sudden, and abrupt, as the impulse seized him; and in gliding through the streets, or along the beach, he was heard laughing and talking to himself. Withal, he was a harmless, guileless, gentle creature, and would share his mite with any idle lazzaroni, whom he often paused to contemplate as they lay lazily basking in the sun. Yet was he thoroughly unsocial. He formed no friends, flattered no patrons, resorted to none ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... nest of snow-white doves, What wealth could price for me your guileless loves? My earthly cherubim, my precious pearls, My pretty flock of loving little girls, My stores of happiness with least alloy, My treasuries of hope and trembling joy! Yon toothless darling, nestled soft and warm On a young yearning mother's ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... no hurry; his mood was rather one contemplative and genial. He was a round and cherubic little man, with the face of a guileless child, the acumen of a successful counsel for soulless corporations (that is to say, of a high order), no particular sense of humor, and a great appreciation of good eating. And Maitland was famous in ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... cried my unknown, "I love to hear thy innocent story and look on thy guileless face. There is, alas! so much of the contrary in this world, so much terror and crime and blood, that we who mingle with it are only too glad to forget it. Would that we could shake off our cares as men, and be boys, as thou ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... me with an indignant pity. I tried in vain to sleep. In the darkness of night our plan came to seem like an atrocious outrage upon a guileless, defenceless ne'er-do-well. For my share of the guilt, I resolved to convey to Potts privately on the morrow a more than perfunctory promise of aid, should he find himself distressed at any time in what he would doubtless term his ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... productive. 'Save my country!' cried the Pagan to his deities. 'Save my soul!' cries the Christian at his altars. We, who are without a god, murmur to the great unknown forces of Nature: 'Let me save others some little portion of this pain entailed on all simple and guileless things, that are forced to live, without any fault of their own at their birth, or any will of their own ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida |
