"Naivete" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... painter may produce the utmost relief he can by means of light and shade, but is peremptorily forbidden to use actual solidities on a plane surface. He must represent gold by colour, not by sticking gold on his fIgures. [This was done with naivete by the early painters, and is really very effective in the pictures of Gentile da Fabriano—that Paul Veronese of the fifteenth century—as the reader will confess if he has seen the "Adoration of the Magi," in the Florence Academy; but it could not be tolerated now]. Our ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... either," returned the iron-founder, with grave naivete. "And, yes, I guess she meant it. But that reminds me. She knew I was looking for you and she gave me a note—let me see, I've got it here somewhere; oh, yes, here it is—gilt ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... loved him dearly, but papa sent him away. Then there was Dick, the groom; but he laughed at me, and I suffered misery!" and she struck a tragic French attitude. "There is to be company here to-morrow," she added, rattling on with childish naivete, "and papa's sweetheart— Blanche Marabout—is to be here. You know they say she is to be ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... school-boy. Thrown upon the world, his mind found itself fit for the world, and embraced it all. Nothing of that mind was lost in the infinite. Himself a poet, he knew only the poetry of action. He limited to the earth his powerful dream of life. In his terrible and touching naivete he believed that a man could be great, and neither time nor misfortune made him lose that idea. His youth, or rather his sublime adolescence, lasted as long as he lived, because life never brought him a real maturity. Such ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... be one of his mental and eternal friends, or rather friendships—since she existed in abstractu as far as he was concerned. For she did not find him at all physically moving. Physically he was not there: he was oddly an absentee. But his naivete roused the serpent's tooth of ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... of silence in which Darrell studied the face before him; the same, yet not the same, as on that summer night. The childlike naivete, the charming piquancy, had given place to a sweet seriousness, but it was more tender, more womanly, ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... languid sense of all its inmost fibres. Our cheerfulness ran over, and the mild, pensive clerk was so magnetized by it that he came and sat down with us. He presently confided to me, with infinite naivete and ingenuousness, that, judging from my personal appearance, he should not have thought me the writer that he in his generosity reckoned me to be. His conception, so far as I could reach it, involved a huge, uplifted forehead, embossed with protuberant ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and repress the little evil that existed in the girl's soul. Mother and daughter had never been parted; thus Cecile had, what is more rare in young girls than is generally supposed, a purity of thought, a freshness of heart, and a naivete of nature, real, complete, ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... know what the "free agreement" of the bourgeois entrepreneur is, and we can only admire the "absolute" naivete of the man who sees in it the precursor of communism. It is exactly this Anarchic "arrangement" that must be got rid of in order that the producers may cease to be the ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... quickly corrected at the sound of her voice, her frank ingenuousness, and her unmistakable youth. In the habit of being crushed by Miss Avondale's unrelenting superiority, he found himself apparently growing up beside this tall English girl, who had the naivete of a child. After a few commonplaces she suddenly turned her gray eyes on ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... grim satire. The Prudence opposite is said to be a portrait of the Pope's mother, Giovanna Gaetani. She resembles nothing more than a duenna of the type of Martha in Goethe's Faust. Here, again, the allegory would point a scathing sarcasm, if we did not remember the naivete of ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... downstairs was not asleep, she could hear him coughing. He is a queer, naive man, thought Nadya, and in all his dreams, in all those marvellous gardens and wonderful fountains one felt there was something absurd. But for some reason in his naivete, in this very absurdity there was something so beautiful that as soon as she thought of the possibility of going to the university, it sent a cold thrill through her heart and her bosom and flooded them with ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... sonorous as the songs of Homer and the sea. 'Ce poete est le moins naif qui se puisse rencontrer, et il se degage de son oeuvre un parfum de naivete rustique.' {0g} They are, what a German critic has called them, mythologischen genre-bilder, cabinet pictures in the manner called genre, full of pretty detail and domestic feeling. And this brings ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... the idea in his mind and went on regarding her in the light of it with a pondering smile, turning it over and finding a lively pleasure in his curious acumen in such an unwonted direction. It was a very flower of emotional naivete, though a moment later he cast it from him as a weed, grown in idleness; and indeed it might have abashed him to say what concern it had in the mind of the Order of St. Barnabas. It was gratifying, nevertheless, to have his observation confirmed by the way in which Alicia leaned ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... summarized so briefly; its scattered chronicle must be sought in the minutes of trustees' meetings, where it modestly evades the public eye, in the academic formalities of presidents' reports and the journalistic naivete of college periodicals; in the diaries of early graduates; in newspaper clippings and magazine "write-ups"; in historical sketches to commemorate the decennial or the quarter-century; and from the lips of the pioneers,—teacher and student. For, in the words of the graduate ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... the currents set in one direction, and we may sail from isle to isle over a sunny sea, dallying with the time, secure of a cloudless sky and of the greetings of innocence and love wheresoever the breeze may waft us. There is in truth a holy purity, an innocent naivete, a childlike grace and simplicity, a freshness, a fearlessness, an utter freedom from affectation, a yearning after all things truthful, lovely and of good report, in the productions of this early ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... dues which at a later date fall to the priest were without doubt originally ordinary offerings, and amongst these are found even wool and flax (Deut. xviii. 4; Hos. ii. 7, 11 [A.V. 5, 9] ). But it is quite in harmony with the naivete of antiquity that as to man so also to God that which is eatable is by preference offered; in this there was the additional advantage, that what God had caused to grow was thus rendered back to Him. In doing this, the regular form observed is that a meal ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... and rustic chalet to exhibit their candidates. The method of procedure is eminently French, of course, and eminently naive, as even the intrigues and machinations of Balzac's bourgeoisie, although intended as marvels of finesse, seem so often naivete itself to our blunter and less-plotting minds. The mothers and daughters, or chaperons and charges, walk slowly arm in arm up and down one side the jetty, facing the counter-current of young men and men not young who have not lost interest in feminine ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... careful selection of the few grains of characteristic fact which I could find among Dietrich's lengthy professional reflections; but the chapter on which this scene is founded is remarkable enough to be given whole, and as I have a long-standing friendship for the good old monk, who is full of honest naivete and deep-hearted sympathy, and have no wish to disgust all my readers with him, I shall give it for the most part untranslated. In the meantime those who may be shocked at certain expressions in this poem, borrowed ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... lady had the grace of one born to the instrument. As she took the sticks in her hands and struck a chord upon the outstretched strings, her face assumed a new expression; so far, we must confess, there had been much "naivete" in it, now she felt at home; this ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... you know them! But it is that, Mr. Howard, which has interested me in your favor—you have so much naivete, and ignorance of the moral turpitude of the old world, that I feel convinced you never could be guilty of ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... he took Corydon's point of view entirely. She was beautiful and good; her naivete and guilelessness were the essence of her charm and how preposterous it was to expect her to think about newspapers, or to be familiar with the price of beefsteaks! As for him—he was a blundering creature, dull and pragmatical; he was a great spiny monster that she had drawn up ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... language, the work, for the most part, not only reading like the production of a native, but of one familiar with the most intimate resources of idiomatic English. A very few exceptions to this remark in some portions of the dialogue, whose naivete atones for their inaccuracy, only present the general purity of the composition in a more striking light. We sincerely trust that the writer, who has been so happily distinguished in the field of literary research, will be induced, by the success of this volume, to continue her ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... lofty pleasure-dome, which is said to resemble Chambord, and which takes its place in a long line of villas, without so much as a turnip-field to give it an air of seclusion or security. In this vainglorious craving for discomfort there is a kind of naivete which is not without its pathos. One proud lady, whose husband, in the words of a dithyrambic guide-book, "made a fortune from a patent glove-hook," boasts that her mansion has a glass-room on the second floor. Another vain householder deems it sufficient to proclaim that he spent two million ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... much of naivete—it was the fashion among the schools and the lesser individuals to use this term in describing the work of anyone who sought to distinguish himself by eccentricity of means. It was often the term applied to bizarrerie—it was fashionable ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... my cap, and the colonel laughed as he lifted his wide straw hat. I guessed he laughed at a certain naivete in the girl's way of ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... Those formal phrases, the very flower of small-town proprieties, and the flat commonplaces, nearly all hypocritical in their origin, became very funny, very engaging, when they were uttered in Lena's soft voice, with her caressing intonation and arch naivete. Nothing could be more diverting than to hear Lena, who was almost as candid as Nature, call a leg a "limb" or a house ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... publisher smiled. Theodora's girlish naivete was refreshing to him. He liked her face and manner, and he was curious to see more of this young aspirant for fame, so he pushed ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... of this plot. She besought the King to pardon the Constable,—a request which proves how great was her naivete. By royal command Richemont received back his ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... saw two exchanging glances, but then he threw in a jesting word and the thread was broken. He was playing for his life, and he played well, for he misled them with his cheerfulness and naivete, so that they could not tell whether he knew anything or not. He ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... an art which is genuinely characteristic of some section of the folk anywhere is to do what may be important and is sure to be interesting. But Mr. Tarkington no more displays the naivete of a true folk-novelist than he displays the serene vision that can lift a novelist above the accidents of his particular time and place. This Indianian constantly appears, by his allusions, to be a citizen of the world. He knows ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... were necessary for these pure-minded people, the modern revivalists of Shint[o] teach that all that is "of faith" now is to revere the gods, keep the heart pure, and follow its dictates.[17] The naivete of the representatives of Shint[o] at Chicago in A.D. 1893, was almost as great as that of the revivalists who wrote when Japan was a ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... impressed us as an innocent, simple, genuine young character, full of mother's milk. It was like the smell of early spring in the country to come in contact with you. Your honesty of nature, your sincerity in that absurd religion of yours, your general NAIVETE of mental and spiritual get-up, all pleased us a great deal. We thought you were going to be a ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... away, and the band being there, I stopped them and bade them tune up, and at the same time seizing the maid Wheedle, away we flew. We danced, we whirled, we twirled. Ale upon this! My head was lost. "Why don't it last for ever?" says I. "I wish it did," says she. The naivete enraptured me. "Oooo!" I cried, hugging her, and then, you know, there was no course open to a man of honour but to offer marriage and make a lady of her. I proposed: she accepted me, and here I am, eternally tied to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... burning modern picture, "The Steel Workers," on the opposite wall. In the reception room of this building are seven delightful small panels by Charles J. Taylor, showing the early life of Pennsylvania villages. They are painted in the quaint style of old colonial decorations and have charm, humor, naivete and beauty ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... into his arms and devour with kisses this sweet specimen of womanly tenderness, frank inconsistency, naivete, and archness. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... a woman is intriguing in its very naivete, and now as she stood before me, slim and graceful in her well-cut walking costume, a quick flicker of red flaming in her cheeks and her eyes alight with that sweet tantalizing look in which expectation and a hot pride were mingled, I wondered and felt ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... pp. 92-94: Scott, vol. vi. 343: Gauttier, vi. 376. The story is a replica of the Mock Caliph (vol. iv. 130) and the Tale of the First Lunatic (Suppl. vol. iv.); but I have retained it on account of the peculiar freshness and naivete of treatment which distinguishes it, also as a specimen of how extensively editors and scriveners ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... commercially, a good talking proposition. Deeper, it represented the urge of nationalism, which is one of the extraordinary phenomena of this remarkable war. The American, vague in his feeling of nationalism, refuses to take quite seriously agitation for the "unredeemed." Why, he asks with naivete, go to war for a few thousands of Italians ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... to judge where the naivete of the British Secretary of State ends and cynicism begins, for Sazonof could not have told to him more plainly than in these lines that all Russia's ostensible readiness for peace served no other purpose than to win time to complete the strategical ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... Man and his Intellect-Depth and Naivete of his Faith-His Goodness, Extreme Modesty, and Love of Truth-Attitude in Regard to his Masters-His Correspondents ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... esteem. Nothing interests him but the mechanics and the bureaucratic organization and the esprit de corps. Nor does he conceive that the current psychology of ruling and managing the earth will ever be modified. His simplicity, his naivete, his enthusiasms, his prejudices, his blindness, and his vanities are those of Stalky. And, after all, even the effect he aims at is not got. It is nearly got, but never quite. There is a tireless effort, ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... Mr. Caxton (with naivete).—"And how could it be otherwise, when he has been carrying all his fellow-creatures in his breeches' pockets? Now he has got rid of that dead weight, I should not be surprised if he swam ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fatigue and excitement of the long formalities of the council, when the young queen rushed first of all to her mother's arms, there to indulge her feelings in a burst of tears, and then, with girlish naivete, claiming the exercise of her royal prerogative to procure for herself two ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... said one man, who was noted in the place for his outspokenness, which would have been brutal had it not been for his naivete—"I heard she wasn't ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Lord St. George would not take him!" rejoined the good-hearted Sir Christopher, with forcible naivete. "No, no, Linden, we must not be so hard-hearted; we must forgive and forget;" and so saying, the baronet threw out his chest, with the conscious exultation of a man who has uttered a noble sentiment. The moral of this little history is that Lord St. George, having been pillaged "through ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... good-looking woman. Try to imagine yourself in that character at Klondyke five years ago. The place is teeming with gold. If you are content to leave the gold alone, as the wise leave flowers without plucking them, enjoying with perfect naivete its color and glitter and preciousness, no human being will ever be the worse for your knowledge of it; and whilst you remain in that frame of mind the golden age ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... through a difficult crisis. "We all know the Kaiser," says Mr. Fisher, "the most amazing and amusing figure on the great stage of politics. The outlines of his character are familiar to everybody, for his whole life is spent in the full glare of publicity. We know his impulsiveness, his naivete, his heady fits of wild passion, his spacious curiosity and quick grasp of detail, his portentous lack of humour and delicacy, his childish vanity and domineering will. A character so romantic, spontaneous, and robust must always be a favourite with the British people, who, were his ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... naivete of Leblanc seems to have been mitigated by duplicity. He went on with the general pacification of the world as if the Balkan submission was made in absolute good faith, and he announced the disbandment of the force of aeroplanes that hitherto guarded the council at Brissago upon ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... times appropriated paper to the uses of typography. In the fifteenth century, that naive and vigorous age, names were given to the various formats as well as to the different sizes of type, names that bear the impress of the naivete of the times; and the various sheets came to be known by the different watermarks on their centres; the grapes, the figure of our Saviour, the crown, the shield, or the flower-pot, just as at a later day, the eagle of Napoleon's time gave the name to the "double-eagle" ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... affection for his hero, and was very proud of Sancho Panza. It would have been strange indeed if he had not been proud of the most humorous creation in all fiction. He was proud, too, of the popularity and success of the book, and beyond measure delightful is the naivete with which he shows his pride in a dozen passages in the Second Part. But it was not the success he coveted. In all probability he would have given all the success of "Don Quixote," nay, would ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... she met delighted in drawing her out—it was a pastime that took the lead at dinner-parties, to an extent which her hostess often thought preposterous—and she responded with naivete and vigour, perfectly aware that she was scoring all along the line. Upon many charming people she made the impression that she was a type of the most finished class of what they called 'English society ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... because of this very limitation, it is much more alert to the variety and life of the human substance with which it deals. It does not take the whole of life for granted and it often reveals the fresh naivete of childhood in its discovery of life. When its sophistication is complete, it is the sophistication of English rather than of American literature, and is derivative rather than original, for the most part, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... poems have not only a peculiar kind of interest for the student of English poetry, but are intrinsically delightful, and will reward a careful and frequent perusal. Full of naivete, piety, love, and knowledge of natural objects, and each expressing a single and generally a simple subject by means of minute and original pictorial touches, these sonnets have a place of their ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown
... lies in his child-like and sincere naivete, in his unaffected interest in and picturesque view of nature and all that happens in nature. These qualities, it is true, are those pre-eminently of the "Works and Days": the literary values of the "Theogony" ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... of how Jim Hooker had personated him stopped short upon Clarence's lips. He could not bring himself now to add that revelation to the contempt of his small companion, which, in spite of its naivete, somewhat grated ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... generally refreshing. His family accepts the situation with perfect naivete. I am welcomed as Doro's chum with all the good-will in ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... Republican Convention to do the jobbery of Boss Barnes. What is there left but to gasp and wonder whether the words of the intellect have anything to do with the facts of life? What insight into reality can a man possess who is capable of discussing politics and ignoring politicians? What kind of naivete was it that led this educator ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... in now and then, and chatted with her. Her sweet face and her naivete won Phoebe's heart; and one day, as happiness is apt to be communicative, she let out to her, in reply to a feeler or two as to whether she was quite alone, that she was engaged to be married to a gentleman. "But he is not rich, ma'am," said Phoebe plaintively; "he has had trouble: ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... you told him that," Morton replied primly, albeit he was hard put to it to prevent himself from chuckling aloud over the naivete ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... purpose, her lips calm and scarlet, her eyes bright and hopeful. In fact, Joan had made her plans. She would wait till spring, partly to get back her full strength, partly to make further progress in her studies, but mostly in order not to hurt this hospitable Prosper Gael. The naivete of her gratitude, of her delicate consideration for his feelings, which continually triumphed over an instinctive fear, would have filled him with amusement, perhaps with compunction, had he been capable of understanding them. ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... is a pleasure to speak. Every woman who enjoyed the privilege of her friendship felt the magnetism and charm of a rare nature; while, with all her force and power, there was a childishness about her that impressed one with the idea that the naivete and innocence of childhood had never been wholly lost in the woman. I think it was in some measure owing to the fact that she was so near-sighted that there was a kind of appealing hesitancy about her movements that impelled ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... moving pictures before. Here they are presented differently than in America. Some of the plays I've seen have the naivete and simplicity of a confession. Others interpret abnormal, psychopathic characters whose feelings and thoughts are expressed by the actors with a fine and vivid realism. There is the exultation of life, and the despair, the aggression and apathy, the frivolity and the revolt. The ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... fellow came down every evening in spite of his cross mamma, and learned to tipple wine like papa, to swear like Mr. Hattersley, and to have his own way like a man, and sent mamma to the devil when she tried to prevent him. To see such things done with the roguish naivete of that pretty little child, and hear such things spoken by that small infantile voice, was as peculiarly piquant and irresistibly droll to them as it was inexpressibly distressing and painful to me; ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... This naivete confused Mrs. Armine. For a moment it seemed to be pushing away her anger, to be drawing the sting from her curiosity. But then the childishness of this strange rival stirred up in her a more acrid bitterness than she had known till now. And the wondering touch became intolerable ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... with your nonsense. Mamma! . . . I'm sick and tired of listening to it! I like Miss Mela because she isn't a scarecrow like those others," saucily prattled Sophie and smiled with childish naivete at Niedzielska, who was ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... polite little note. It was very short, and I tried not to make it too nice, and I said nothing at all about writing, only just remarked that it would be interesting to receive letters from India," said Bridgie, with a naivete which made Mademoiselle throw up her hands in delight. "He has written to me four times since then, and,"—her eyes began to dance, and a dimple danced mischievously in her cheek—"I enjoy writing to him so much that I answer them the very next day; but it would ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Institution, they meet on common ground in their admiration of the wax-work exhibition of Madame Tussaud; though the Khan, who was not sufficiently acquainted with the features of our public characters to judge of the likenesses, expresses his commendation only in general terms. But the Parsees, with the naivete of children, break out into absolute raptures at recognising the features of Lord Melbourne, "a good-humoured looking, kind English gentleman, with a countenance, perhaps, representing frankness and candour ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... the resignation of those destined for death, &c. He was a thoughtful man and unquestionably sensitive; but all that he said had the stamp of oriental thought, systematically arranged in advance and quite perfectly expressed at the moment, free from the immediate naivete ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... up, but they will be accidents, and will not affect the general tendency of the exhibitions nor the direction in which the Academy is striving to lead English art. Under the guidanceship of the Academy English art has lost all that charming naivete and simplicity which was so long its distinguishing mark. At an Academy banquet, anything but the most genial optimism would be out of place, and yet Sir Frederick Leighton could not but allude to the disintegrating influence of French ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... her studies, why, she did not know. But the whole thing seemed sham, spurious; spurious Gothic arches, spurious peace, spurious Latinity, spurious dignity of France, spurious naivete of Chaucer. It was a second-hand dealer's shop, and one bought an equipment for an examination. This was only a little side-show to the factories of the town. Gradually the perception stole into her. This was no religious retreat, no perception of pure learning. It was a little apprentice-shop ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... debtor for adventures on our own continent, narrated with naivete and vigor by a pen as direct and clear-cutting as the sword with which he shaved off the heads of the Turks, and for one of the few romances that illumine our ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... she needed him for a plaything. She spoke of Monteverde and their love with quiet cynicism, as if the doctor were her husband. She had to confide the secrets of her life to some one, with that imperious naivete that forces the guilty to confess. Little by little she let the master into the secret of her passion, telling him unblushingly of the most intimate details of their meetings, which were often in her own house. They took ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... this with the greatest naivete, so that her absolute faith in herself, her genius, and her mission, did not astonish him. The words seemed to flow naturally ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... shone in the Northman's face. He spoke to his companion, who made answer; then he replied with the naivete of a ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... on with all the eager naivete of a child, which Smoke found hard to reconcile with the full womanhood of her form ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... all speculation—simply as speculation—reaches its acme in the Essay on Bacon. The curious naivete with which Macaulay denounces all philosophy in that vigorous production excites a kind of perverse admiration. How can one refuse to admire the audacity which enables a man explicitly to identify philosophy with humbug? It is what ninety-nine men out of a hundred ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... it is here that the harshness of American and English society toward the erring woman (harshness which is not injustice, but half- justice only) contrasts visibly to our advantage over the bad naivete and lenity of the Italians. The carefully secluded Italian girl is accustomed to hear of things and speak of things which, with us, parents strive in every way to keep from their daughters' knowledge; and while her sense of delicacy is thus early blunted, while she is thus used to ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... The more he pondered upon his acquaintance with Jonathan Tinker, the more fascinating the erring mariner became, in his complex truth and falsehood, his delicately blended shades of artifice and naivete. He must, it was felt, have believed to a certain point in his own inventions: nay, starting with that groundwork of truth,—the fact that his wife was really dead, and that he had not seen his family for two years,—why should he not place implicit faith in all the fictions reared upon it? It ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... life; his style gain lucidity, impressiveness, incisiveness, pungency; but in the case of the poetical and the reflective writer it seems to me that something evaporates—some quite peculiar freshness, naivete, indiscreetness, which, can never be recaptured. Take a few typical instances. Coleridge lost the poetical gift altogether when he left his youth behind; Wordsworth wrote all his best poetry in a few early years; Milton lost his pure lyric gift. But the most ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of sterling character and many heroic qualities. Miss Arnold belonged to the stage by birth, and from earliest youth had been attached to the theatre in some capacity. It is a most miserable fate for a child, but she knew of nothing better. She came before the public with a naivete that was touching, and played her little airs on the piano and sung her little songs and uttered her childish sentences always to the very best of her ability, putting up with the late hours and the hasty and often scanty meals ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... it," she confessed, with a naivete he could not but question, for he thought he saw a roguish gleam ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... granted that the most extravagant hopes of our most reckless dreamers are fulfilled, that England is crowded out of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, and is involved in a long-lasting war with the native Indians. An impossibly large dose of political naivete is needed in order to make us believe that England would take this ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... him. His mind dwelt on her for a moment as he visioned her face with its bronze beauty, her dark, wild eyes flashing with apprehension for him, and as he did so his own eyes softened a little. He recalled the directness of her speech in their first conversation and smiled at the naivete of her estimate of himself. Then the smile died, leaving the absent, thoughtful look more pronounced, and in the same moment the vision of Miskodeed was obliterated by the vision of Helen Yardely—the woman of his own race, fair and ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... Lately, the director of one of these schools remarked with great satisfaction and still greater naivete: "This school is superior to all others of its kind in Europe, for nowhere else is what we teach taught in ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... For naivete that would be unusual in an unpaid attache of Legation, this sudden leap from his own to his opponent's ground, after two years and a half of dogged resistance, might have roused Palmerston to inhuman scorn, but instead of derision, well earned ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... which seems to indicate that to shine is not the aim of this young man, although his execution conquered difficulties the overcoming of which even here, in the home of pianoforte virtuosos, could not fail to cause astonishment; nay, with almost ironical naivete he takes it into his head to entertain a large audience with music as music. And lo, he succeeded in this. The unprejudiced public rewarded him with lavish applause. His touch, although neat and sure, has little of that brilliance by which our virtuosos announce themselves ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the same token, did not escape the attention of the interviewer. Her appealing charm of face and figure was accentuated by her daintiness and a fleeting suggestion of naivete in poise and expression when she was amused. His first glance revealed to Haines that her eyes were gray, the gray that people say indicates the possessor to have those priceless qualities—the qualities that make the sweetest women true, that make the maiden's eyes in truth the windows ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... of the Main Building with constantly gathering and dissolving little groups. These called out greetings to each other, and exchanged dolorous mutual condolences on their hard fate; all showing, with a helpless masculine naivete, their consciousness of the lovely, observant figure in the carriage below them. Of a different sort were the professors' wives, who occasionally drifted past on the path. Aunt Victoria might have been a blue-uniformed ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... a house! Pure as its master—yes, monseigneur, you are full of prudence and wisdom. Let us conceal the corruptions of the world from this innocent child, let us remove from her everything that can destroy her primitive naivete; this is why we choose this dwelling for her—a moral sanctuary, where the priestesses of virtue, and doubtless always under pretext of their ingenuousness, take the most ingenuous but least permitted ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... evenings were much lightened by the gay chat of one of the party, who, with the excellent practical sense of mature experience, and the kindest heart, united a naivete and innocence such as I never saw in any other who had walked so long life's tangled path. Like a child, she was everywhere at home, and like a child, received and bestowed entertainment from all places, all ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... evening dress? Where shall we sit? What time shall we get back? How are you going? What time must I be ready? Will you have dinner before you go or take sandwiches with you?"—how long the patter of questions would have run on it is hard to say, if the extreme naivete of the last one had not drowned them in universal laughter, and Isabel ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... the collections of Hakluyt and Purchas, this book of Raleigh's takes easily the foremost position. In comparison with the bluff and dull narratives of the other discoverers, whose chief charm is their naivete, the Discovery of Guiana has all the grace and fullness of deliberate composition, of fine literary art, and as it was the first excellent piece of sustained travellers' prose, so it remained long without a second in our literature. The brief examples which it has alone been possible ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... "divers times'' may have been an exaggeration. It probably was. Jean and her women would want to show there had been provocation. (In a ballad he is accused of having thrown a plate at dinner in her face.) But there is a naivete, a circumstantial air, about the "biting of her in the arm'' which gives it a sort of genuine ring. How one would like to come upon a contemporary writing which would throw light on the character of John Kincaid! Growing sympathy for Jean makes one wish it could ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... beautiful ode in his nineteenth idyl; but is very inferior, I think, to his original, in delicacy of point and naivete of expression. Spenser, in one of his smaller compositions, has sported more diffusely on the same subject. The poem to which I allude ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... dignity of bearing and address which won for them the admiration of women, and excited the jealousy of men. Vain and joyous, the host would have deemed himself wanting in courtesy to his guests, had he not evinced to them, which he did sometimes with a piquant naivete, the pride he felt in seeing himself surrounded by persons so illustrious, and partisans so noble, all striving through the splendor of the attire chosen to visit him, to show their high sense of the honor in which they ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... extract from a letter to the London and China Express, of 5th July 1875, part of which we have ventured to reproduce in italics, surpasses, both in fiction and naivete, anything it has ever been our lot to read on either side of this much-vexed question:—"The fact is, that this tremendous evil is utterly beyond the control of politicians, or even philanthropists. Nothing but the divine power of Christian life can cope with it, and though ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... that Marivaux could prevail upon himself to draw a description or a reflection to an end, feeling, as he did, that there was always something left unsaid. His struggle with himself and his apology to the reader are sometimes quite amusing in their naivete. "Me voila au bout de ma reflexion," he says: "j'aurais pourtant grande envie d'y ajouter quelques mots pour la rendre complete: le voulez-vous bien? Oui, je vous en prie. Heureusement que mon defaut la-dessus n'a rien de nouveau ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... bows of blue ribbon on the skirt and corsage, and a cluster of roses in her belt, she was as inconsistent and incongruous to the others as a fashion-plate would have been in the dry and dog-eared pages before them. Yet she carried it off with a demure mingling of the naivete of youth and the aplomb of a woman, and as she swept down the narrow aisle, burying a few small wondering heads in the overflow of her flounces, there was no doubt of her reception in the arch smile that dimpled her cheek. Dropping ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... the house with newspapers, and she never looked at them, never had the idea of looking at them, unless occasionally at the 'Signal' for an account of a wedding or a bazaar. In which case she would glance at the world for an instant with mild naivete, shocked by the horrible things that were apparently going on there, and in five minutes would forget all about it again. Here the whole of England, Ireland, and Scotland was at its front doors that night waiting for newsboys, and to ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... air had something very distinguished. The first time Guy saw her, he was strongly reminded both of Philip and of Mrs. Edmonstone, but not pleasingly. She seemed to be her aunt, without the softness and motherly affection, coupled with the touch of naivete that gave Mrs. Edmonstone her freshness, and loveableness; and her likeness to her brother included that decided, self-reliant air, which became him well enough, but which did not sit as appropriately ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with the really guilty. Mr O'Connell twitted them with the obvious fact, that they gave no protection under their bill by day, although it was notorious that almost all the assassinations were then perpetrated. Mr Sidney Herbert is reported, with great naivete, and innocently enough, to have offered the following reasons for the omission:—"He could show from proofs before him, that the murders which were committed in broad day were, generally speaking, murders perpetrated against persons in the higher ranks of life; and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... his face show a boyish enthusiasm ... almost a naivete. "Maybe Mr. Panek has already told you about me. I'm looking for a chance to make a flock of credits ... and I'm not too particular ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... Rigou, without replying to this naivete, "go over to Gaubertin's to-morrow morning. Tell him that my fellow-mayor and I" (striking Soudry on the thigh) "will break bread with him at breakfast somewhere about midday. Tell him everything, so that we may all have thought it over before we meet, for now's the time to make ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... discovering his engine-turned repeater, and hearing its fascinating music: then the fanciful chain, the precious stones in golden robes, and last of all, the family pride described in true heraldic taste and naivete. Of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... furthering the influence of the Church or the reputation of a saint—in general, by its relationship to matters of faith. Thus it happens that the chronicles of the monks and the lives of the saints, charming and interesting as they are in their naivete, their simplicity, their trustful credulity, and their pictures of a life and an attitude of mind so remote from ours, are filled with incidents given as facts that test the greatest faith, strain the most vivid imagination, and ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... as a new serving-maid. Such Artemisia was in name; but Cornelia, whose gratitude to Agias had known no bounds, took the little thing into her heart, and determined to devote herself to instructing an innocence that must not continue too long, despite its charming naivete. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... else; indeed, I am not aware that it was ever published. But had it been we should rarely hear it. Like Locke's music to "Macbeth" it bears an unpleasant reputation; to include it in any concert programme would be to court disaster. An idle superstition, perhaps, but there is much naivete in the artistic temperament. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... had the imprudence to laugh, with the result that the next moment two well- aimed bullets sang past his ears. Taking the hint, Borrow put spurs to his mule, and, followed by the terrified guide, soon outdistanced these official banditti. With great naivete he remarks, "Oh, may I live to see the day when soldiery will no longer be tolerated in any civilised, or ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... which Jack regarded the models, the draperies, and the studies on the walls. Certain it was that he was much more at his ease in the parlor, and when he and Sophy were once more alone at their meal, although he ate nothing, he had regained all his old naivete. Presently he leaned forward and placed his hand fraternally on her arm. Sophy looked up with ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... deadly instrument we discovered it to be loaded to the very muzzle, a mixture of pebbles, slugs, and bits of iron being crammed into the barrel over a charge of a couple of ounces of powder. On our inquiring why it was so heavily charged, the man told us with much naivete, that it was to kill nine men, illustrating the method by which this wholesale destruction was to be accomplished, by planting the butt on his hip and whirling the muzzle from right to left in a horizontal direction across us all, and telling us very pleasantly that if he were ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... mentor and manager. The precocious worldliness of her mentality amused while it sometimes astonished him. This comparatively ignorant girl of eighteen had no hesitation in guiding the man of more mature years, and succeeded through her naivete rather than by force of character. The weakest of women can dominate the strongest ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... not a practical leader. His pamphlet published in German in 1854, entitled If I had half a million dollars, reveals the naivete of his mind. He wanted to find money, not to make it. The society soon became involved in a controversy in which Cabet's immediate following were outnumbered. The minority petulantly stopped working but continued to eat. "The majority decided that those who would ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... of Chinese scholars know next to nothing about matters directly in the line of their studies, and in regard to which we should consider ignorance positively disgraceful. A venerable teacher remarked to the writer with a charming naivete that he had never understood the allusions in the Trimetrical Classic (which stands at the very threshold of Chinese study) until at the age of sixty he had an opportunity to read a Universal History prepared ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... well. He had engaged in play with those celebrated gamesters, my Lords of Chesterfield and March; and they both bore testimony to his coolness, gallantry, and good breeding. At his books Harry was not brilliant certainly; but he could write as well as a great number of men of fashion; and the naivete of his ignorance amused the old lady. She had read books in her time, and could talk very well about them with bookish people: she had a relish for humour and delighted in Moliere and Mr. Fielding, but she loved the world ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... frankness of her friendship was undisturbed by overmuch knowledge of her own attractions, and the possibility of less contentment on his side did not occur to her. Feeling herself so much older, in reality, than he, she assumed with delicious naivete, the role of confidant and general adviser. What time she could spare from Benis and the great Book she bestowed most ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Sir Simple Simon? How heartily we have laughed, White Heather and I, at your neat little ruses! It would pay you, by the way, to take White Heather into your house for six months to instruct you in the agreeable sport of amateur detectives. Your charming naivete quite moves our envy. So you actually imagined a man of my brains would condescend to anything so flat and stale as the silly and threadbare Old Master deception! And this in the so-called nineteenth century! O sancta simplicitas! When again ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... or twelve thousand crowns." Then she said with naivete "It was not a great sum to carry on a ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... Fred inquired, but as he glanced in seeming naivete at his companion, something he saw in the latter's eye warned him, and suddenly Fred thought it would ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... times. General Brant," she went on, turning explanatorily to Boompointer, "married my adopted mother in California—at Robles, a dear old place where I spent my earliest years. So, you see, we are sort of relations by marriage," she added, with delightful naivete. ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... that she herself had sent him away. And when he had left her she knew, as she knew now, that in her heart she did not want it. For she liked him—liked his society. She liked his care-free manner, his whimsical outlook upon her country, his many natural talents—his playing, and the naivete of his singing, while he often admitted that his voice hurt him, and so must hurt others. No, she had not wanted him to go away. And somehow it had never occurred to her that he would go for ever. But he was gone, and she could not resign herself. Yet there was no ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... those impressions into a connected body of phenomena, and final interpretation of them as a whole are, have been, and always will be the marks of the enduring in all literature, whether poetry or prose." [Footnote: Lewis Worthington Smith, "The New Naivete," Atlantic, April, 1916.] To quote another critic: "A rock, a star, a lyre, a cataract, do not, except incidentally and indirectly, owe their command of our sympathies to the bare power of evoking ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... lobsters and clams were the staple articles of Boat Club suppers, and over savory messes of these, helped down with much whisky and water, Aladdin and Beau Larch made the evening spin. Aladdin, talking eagerly and with the naivete of a child, wondered why he had never liked this man so much before. And Larch told the somewhat abject story of his life three times with an introduction of much ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... made you think of me, whom you never saw, to see another woman's profile," she retorted, with the faintest touch of asperity in her childlike voice. "But," she added, more gently and with a relapse into her adorable naivete, ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... the man whose life I had saved by frightening him into exertion. After swallowing a glass of warm wine, well sugared, and spiced with tincture of cinnamon, he licked his lips, sucked the edges of his glass, and said: 'Thank ye, doctor; but for you I should have been dead,' with a naivete which I can never forget, and which even now mingles pleasing associations with the thoughts of those ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... work entirely without influence on the romanticists of 1830. Theophile Dondey, wrote a poem on Roland, and Gerard de Nerval (Labrunie) hunted up the old popular songs and folklore of Touraine and celebrated their naivete and truly national character. Attention was directed to the Renaissance group of poets who preceded the Louis XIV. writers—to Ronsard and "The Pleiade." Later the Old French Text Society was founded for the preservation and publication of mediaeval remains. But in general the innovating ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... to her face, which had an expression of naive sophistication, or of sophisticated naivete, not at all likely to mislead the mature; nor to her carriage, which, though slightly self-conscious, was modest enough, and not a bit too demure. It was due to her dress, which, after all, was not quite so simple, either ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... certainly," said Crawford, who had been laughing a little, spite of his low spirits, at the naivete of the relation. "It was modesty and not want of personal courage that drove you out ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... her departure. There was something irresistibly feminine about Lulu's flight. She herself seemed to appreciate this. If anybody looked at her, she exhibited her accomplishments with an eagerness that had a charming touch of naivete. She dipped and dove endlessly. She dealt in little darts and rushes, bird-like in their speed and grace. She never flew high, but, on her level, her activity ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore |
