"Credulous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sages knew two thousand years ago, and socialistic philanthropists and scientific savans could put to blush Moses and Solomon and David, to say nothing of Paul and Peter, and other reputed oracles of the ancient world, inasmuch as they were so weak and credulous as to believe in miracles, and a special Providence, and a personal God,—yet we find in the sermons of Chrysostom, preached even to voluptuous Syrians, no commonplace exhortations, such as we sometimes hear addressed to the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... of being impracticable and artificial attaches by rights not to those who insist on resolute, persistent, and uncompromising efforts to remove abuses, but to a very different class—to those, namely, who are credulous enough to suppose that abuses and bad customs and wasteful ways of doing things will remove themselves. This credulity, which is a cloak for indolence or ignorance or stupidity, overlooks the fact that there are bodies of men, more or less numerous, attached by every selfish interest they ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... as no such monuments could exist, no rites, no ceremonies demonstrating the truth of this appeal could be in observance. Thus, if I should now invent the tale about something done two thousand odd years ago, a few might, peradventure, be credulous enough to believe me; but if I were to say that ever after, even to this day, every male had his nose slit and his ears bored in memory of this event, it would be absolutely impossible that I should gain credit for my story, because the universality of the falsehood being manifest, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... supposed direful consequences that would follow the triumph of Atheism I have not dealt with at length. These are the bugbears which the designing normally employ in order to frighten the timid and credulous. Mental uprightness and moral integrity are certainly not the property of one religion, nor can it be said with truth that they belong to any. And examining the histories of religion it is a fair assumption that in whatever direction ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... time he explained satisfactorily, to my credulous mind, the cause of his sudden retreat from Bristed Hall, and gave me reason to believe that the statements his brother had made concerning him were untrue and ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... enfranchisement, and had a public rejoicing in the occasion. But the delusion could not escape the discrimination of Mr. P. He detected it at once, and exposed it, and incurred the displeasure of the credulous people of color by refusing to participate in their premature rejoicings. He soon succeeded however in convincing his brethren that the new provision was a mockery of their wrongs, and that the assembly had only added insult to past injuries. Mr. P. now urged the colored people to be ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... foreigner who kept religion entirely outside politics. And the British Government, when established, has so carefully avoided offence to caste or creed that on one great occasion only, the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, have the smouldering fires of credulous fanaticism ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... rank which he had lately held in his country, he soon finds his way to their hearts, by the dignity and elegance of his demeanor, the light and beauty of his conversation, and the seductive and fascinating power of his address. The conquest was not difficult. Innocence is ever simple and credulous. Conscious of no designs itself, it suspects none in others. It wears no guards before its breast. Every door and portal and avenue of the heart is thrown open, and all who choose it enter. Such was the state of Eden, when the serpent entered ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... George declared. "Men who live in the frozen woods get credulous and believe extraordinary things, and tales of wonderful lodes are common in the mining belts. Father heard something of the kind and brooded over it until he came to believe he had located the ore. He had too ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... are too fabulous to admit of any sound theories being built on them; and some have even gone so far as to reject all the received accounts of families or tribes of men of gigantic stature, as worthy only of the belief of credulous ages. It may indeed be difficult to imagine whole districts and countries peopled with gigantic races so formidable that we can hardly conceive any other people subsisting in contact with them. But that individuals, and even families, of extraordinary stature and ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... would not," do it without example in the Greek tongue, (where Would Not, is put sometimes for Could Not, in things inanimate, that have no will; but Could Not, for Would Not, never,) and thereby lay a stumbling block before weak Christians; as if Christ could doe no Miracles, but amongst the credulous. ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... Mather not less than four hundred. The Rev. John Norton, in his sketch of John Cotton, remarks that "the hen, which brings not forth without uncessant sitting night and day, is an apt emblem of students." Certainly the hen is an apt emblem of the "uncessant" sitter, the credulous scratcher, the fussy cackler who ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... indicates its obsolete use in medicine. It is one of the numerous plants which have shaken off the superstitions which a credulous populace wreathed around them. Almost none but the least enlightened people now attribute any ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... through; so that when the unfortunate elks settled themselves to sleep, the booby-traps came into operation. Having no joints in their legs, the poor beasts were unable to rise, and so became an easy prey to the savage Teuton. Herodotus, too, was somewhat credulous in the matter of animals; Sir John Mandeville was not always to be trusted; and even Bernard von Breydenbach, who made a journey to the Holy Land about 1485, beheld strange beasts, like Spenser's giaunts, 'hard to be beleeved.' But perhaps the palm among these mediaeval monsters is held by ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... had laid down their arms and been pardoned, inviting them to follow their example. The result of further parley was, that on the express promise of his Royal Highness that they should receive pardon, and that neither their persons nor those of their wives or children should be touched, the credulous Vaudois, still hoping for fair treatment, laid down their arms, and permitted the ducal troops to take ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... upon a bench to rest near the "wishing tree," a dwarf chestnut so well known to residents of the District, and I have been impressed by the many superstitious persons, both men and women, who have stopped for a moment and silently stood under its branches. Many are the credulous believers in its power to satisfy human desires, and the season when its branches are full of nuts is regarded by these as a specially propitious time for their realization. With many persons this tree is the basis ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... is more disgraceful than to be made game of? One must take heed not to put himself in the condition of the character in the play of The Heiress: [Footnote: Epicleros, a comedy by Caecilius Statius, of whose works only a few fragments, like this, are extant. Next to the braggart soldier, a credulous old man-generally a father-who could have all manner of tricks played upon him without detecting their import, was the favorite butt for ridicule ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... the remainder of the summer, and when autumn came I was conscious of having undergone a mental change. Whereas I was formerly trusting, credulous, and optimistic, at least toward all except myself, I was become suspicious even of the seal of sincerity, weighed words, and applied the scalpel of analysis to others' motives as well ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... of arming him with weapons he does not know how to use, you take from him one universal among men, common sense: you teach him to allow himself always to be led, never to be more than a machine in the hands of others. If you will have him docile while he is young, you will make him a credulous dupe when he is a man. You are continually saying to him, "All I require of you is for your own good, but you cannot understand it yet. What does it matter to me whether you do what I require or not? You ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... are over; me no more[90] The charms of maid, wife, and still less of widow, Can make the fool of which they made before,— In short, I must not lead the life I did do; The credulous hope of mutual minds is o'er, The copious use of claret is forbid too, So for a good old-gentlemanly vice, I think I must take up ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... to our people, desirous of the right, but lukewarm in faith and too credulous in the illusions of the old world, the powerlessness of monarchy to insure the safety of Italy, and the irreconcilability of papacy with the free progress of humanity. The dualism of the middle ages is henceforward a mere form without life or soul; the Guelph and Ghibelline insignia ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... elegant, and his description of diseases accurate. Alexander of Tralles was the first to open the jugular vein in disease, and employed iron and other useful remedies, but he lived in superstitious times, and was very credulous. For epilepsy, he recommended a piece of sail from a wrecked vessel, worn round the arm for seven weeks.[30] For colic, he recommended the heart of a lark attached to the right thigh, and for pain in the kidneys an amulet depicting Hercules overcoming a lion. To exorcise gout, he ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... mentioned the trials in his correspondence as new proof of the reality of witchcraft.[42] The pious Bishop Hall saw in them the "prevalency of Satan in these times."[43] Thomas Ady, who in 1656 issued his Candle in the Dark, mentioned the "Berry Assizes"[44] and remarked that some credulous people had published a book about it. He thought criticism deserved for taking the evidence of the gaoler, whose profit lay in having the ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... poem. One was at the eastern end of Loch Earn, where the pretty modern village of St. Fillans now stands, under the shadow of Dun Fillan, or St. Fillan's Hills, six hundred feet high, on the top of which the saint used to say his prayers, as the marks of his knees in the rock still testify to the credulous. The other spring is at another village called St. Fillans, nearly thirty miles to the westward, just outside the limits of our map, on the road to Tyndrum. In this Holy Pool, as it is called, insane folk were dipped with certain ceremonies, and then left bound all night in the open ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... thing, even at the risk of an irksome repetition, I must insist upon, lest I seem to favour the credulous, superstitious view. Plattner's absence from the world for nine days is, I think, proved. But that does not prove his story. It is quite conceivable that even outside space hallucinations may be possible. That, at least, the reader ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... degrees and conditions of fools," his daughter declared calmly. "A man with a perfectly acute brain may have simply idiotic impulses towards credulity, and a credulous man is always a fool. Anyhow, I know ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the wood to dig up the treasure. They worked hard for some time, and at length came upon a load of slates, inscribed with magical characters. Prelati pretended great wrath, and upbraided the Evil One for his deceit, in which denunciation he was heartily joined by de Retz. But so credulous was the Seigneur that he allowed himself to be persuaded to afford Satan another trial, which meant, of course, that Prelati led him on from day to day with specious promises and ambiguous hints, until he had ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... famous story, that being on her deathbed, Queen Catherine prayed the king to allow her to see her daughter for the last time, and that the request was refused. Pole was not in England at the time. He drew his information from Catholic rumour, as vindictive as it was credulous; and in the many letters from members of the privy council to him which we possess, his narrative is treated as throughout a mere wild collection of fables. I require some better evidence to persuade me that this story is any truer than the rest, when we know that ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... it was by law established; and that he would always take care to defend and support the Church. Great public acclamations were raised over this fair speech, and a great deal was said, from the pulpits and elsewhere, about the word of a King which was never broken, by credulous people who little supposed that he had formed a secret council for Catholic affairs, of which a mischievous Jesuit, called FATHER PETRE, was one of the chief members. With tears of joy in his eyes, he received, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... gasped the steward. "It will be your turn to repent when Caesar comes. Then will come a day of reckoning with false witnesses, shameless calumniators who disturb peaceful households, while credulous idiots—" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the frenzied lips of the half-maddened bridegroom, as his glance flashed on Hazen. "Had you no mercy? Have you no mercy now, that you should torture her young, credulous soul with these fanciful obligations; obligations which no human being has any right to impose upon another, whatsoever the Cause, holy ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... had ever prided himself on his truth-fronting intellect, and had freely uttered his scorn of the credulous mob! He who was his own criterion of moral right and wrong! No wonder he felt like a whipped cur. It was the ancestral vice in his blood, brought out by over-tempting circumstance. The long line of base-born predecessors, the grovelling hinds and mechanics ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... exercises, productive systems, intellectual methods, and various new theories, for the purpose of teaching grammar, may serve to deceive the ignorant, to amuse the visionary, and to excite the admiration of the credulous; but none of these things has any favourable relation to that improvement which may justly be boasted as having taken place within the memory of the present generation. The definitions and rules which constitute the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... astronomer Herschel was observing the southern sky from the Cape of Good Hope, the most clever hoax was perpetrated that ever was palmed upon a credulous public. Some new and wonderful instruments were carefully described as having been used by that astronomer, whereby he was enabled to bring the moon so close that he could see thereon trees, houses, animals, and men-like human beings. He could ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... corresponding to the entire clergy of Protestant churches). Then there were such unworthy charlatans as the pardoners and professional pilgrims, traveling everywhere under special privileges and fleecing the credulous of their money with fraudulent relics and preposterous stories of edifying adventure. All this corruption was clear enough to every intelligent person, and we shall find it an object of constant satire by the authors of the age, but it was too firmly established ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... double murder. Don't forget that you had access to the Vandam mansion, that you substituted the deadly for the harmless capsules. Don't forget that your rappings announced the death of one of your victims and urged the other, a cruelly wronged and credulous old man, to leave millions to you who had deceived and ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... horse-hair vests, sacking sheets, and the "bitter bite of the flea,"—sad entertainment for gentlemen! Instead of wise and merry talk, wherein he excelled, solitary confinement in a wooden cell (the brethren now foist off a stone one upon credulous tourists) with willing slavery to stern Prior Basil. The long days of prayer and meditation, the nights short with psalmody, every spare five minutes filled with reading, copying, gardening and the recitation ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... expression of the mask, the sanctity under the long eyelashes, the half extinguished smile playing around the mouth of sorrow, the element of ghostliness, a being far removed from death and equally far removed from life—all this caused his feeling to swell into one of credulous devotion. His entire future seemed to depend upon coming into possession of the mask. Without a moment's hesitation or consideration ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... to regard John Aubrey as a credulous and gossiping narrator of anecdotes of doubtful authority, and as an ignorant believer of the most absurd stories. This notion was grounded chiefly upon the prejudiced testimony of Anthony a Wood, and on the contents of the only work ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... sides. Too much has been said lately, however, in justification of the poorer classes who were thus wakened suddenly to a distrust of the aristocracy; and too little has been said of the proud recoil of the aristocracy in the face of a sudden, credulous perversion of its motives—a perversion inspired by the pinching of the shoe, and yet a shoe that pinched one class as hard as it did another. It is as unfair to charge the planter with selfishness in opposing the appropriation ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... of the stories recorded of this animal I might get accused, if not of being a romancer myself, at all events of being a too credulous propagator of other people's romances. It is told of it that it will discover hidden stores, and, digging them up out of the snow, carefully smooth the surface over again; that it will avoid every trap set for ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... told me a most curious story. We have all heard of the Indian "rope-trick," but none of us have met a person who actually saw it with his own eyes: the story never reaches us at first-hand, but always at second- or third-hand, exactly like the accounts one heard from credulous people in 1914 of the passage of the 75,000 Russian soldiers through England. No one had actually seen them, but every one knew somebody else whose wife's cousin had actually conversed with these mysterious Muscovites, or had seen ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... with ague, and with the fit strong on him had crawled away to Spinny Lane, and had there been nursed by the mother and daughter whom he had ill used, deserted, and betrayed. "When the devil was sick the devil a monk would be;" and now his wife, credulous as all women are in such matters, believed the devil's protestations. A time may perhaps come when even—But stop!—or I may chance to tread on the corns of orthodoxy. What I mean to insinuate is this; that it was on the cards that Mr. Mollett would now ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... of the beggars whom they resemble a step further, and who find it easier to extort a pittance from the spectator, by simulating deformity and debility from which they are exempt, than by such honest labour as their health and strength enable them to perform. In the meantime the credulous public pities and pampers a nuisance which requires only the treadmill and the whip. This art, often successful when employed by dunces, gives irresistible fascination to works which possess intrinsic merit. We are always desirous to know something of the character and situation of those whose ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... opiniative[obs3]; opinioned, opinionate, opinionative, opinionated; self-opinioned, wedded to an opinion, opinitre; bigoted &c. (obstinate) 606; crotchety, fussy, impracticable; unreasonable, stupid &c. 499; credulous &c 486; warped. misjudged &c. v. Adv. ex parte[Lat]. Phr. nothing like leather; the wish the father to the thought; wishful thinking; unshakable conviction; "my mind is made up - don't bother me ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... man takes everything seriously. A prisoner lying under sentence of death would listen to the madman who should tell him that by pronouncing some gibberish he could escape through the keyhole; for suffering is credulous, and clings to an idea until it fails, as the swimmer borne along by the current clings to the branch that ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... is not requisite to tell a fine story; and a fine story is always agreeable to a credulous listener. An agent of the Society goes into a place, and finds no difficulty in procuring a pulpit from which to address a congregation. The benevolent pastor, who, perhaps, has had neither time nor opportunity to examine the principles of the Society, readily ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... of the Church attest as having seen, or having been authentically informed of, must conclude that they were either very credulous, or deceived the people. To refuse to believe the marvels which have reached us by an uniform and universal tradition, is to call in question all tradition; to render all its channels suspicious, and to cause it to be looked upon as ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... concedes to us that he wanted to murder him, as though to say, you can see for yourselves how truthful I am, so you'll believe all the sooner that I didn't murder him. Oh, in such cases the criminal is often amazingly shallow and credulous. ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Shakespeare's harshest word. Posthumus, then, is presented to us in the beginning of the play as perfect, a model to young and old, of irreproachable virtue and of all wonderful qualities. In the course of the play, however, he shows himself very nimble-witted, credulous, and impulsive, quick to anger and quicker still to forgive; with thoughts all turned to sadness and to musing; a poet—ever in extremes; now hating his own rash errors to the point of demanding the heaviest punishment for them; now swearing that he will revenge ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... burst, and the attentions of the police became so embarrassing that the Princess was glad to escape from the scene of her brief triumphs with her cavaliers (Von Embs' liberty having been purchased by that "credulous old fool," de Marine) to Frankfort, leaving a wake ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... comfortable as they are. It seems there is quite a group of ex-politicians in Tientsin who are much interested in psychical research. Considering that China is the aboriginal home of ghosts, I can't see why the western investigators don't start their research here. These educated Chinese aren't credulous, so there is nothing crude ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... spreading daily, and that, too, in the name of the Sovereign. Generals, colonels, and other field officers of the Imperial army were at the head of it, without any one of them being summoned by the King to answer for his conduct. The eyes of the too credulous natives were now opened, and still more when the King refused to sanction the acts for the levying of troops and raising of funds for the suppression of the rebellion, although the Diet had been convened chiefly for ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... clear to me that my unfortunate brother in the Lord had fallen a victim to the hatred of his fiendish enemy, to the delusion of his judge and the witnesses, and to his own credulous imagination. ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... the sudden spread of Orangeism might well appear incredible at first to an intelligent reader of our day not acquainted with this singular chapter of history. But it was afterwards made perfectly certain that a large number of credulous persons were prevailed upon to join the Orange ranks by the positive assurance that the Duke of Wellington had formed the determination to seize the crown of England and to put it on his own head, and that the Duke of Cumberland was the only man who could save the realm from this treasonable ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... energy of one man sought to justify his ambition over the herd. Deeming himself one of the most honourable spirits of his age, he believed in no honour which he was unable to feel; and, sceptic in virtue, was therefore credulous of vice. ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... strength. The enlargement of the prerogative of the Pope was the great object of this jurisprudence,—a prerogative which, founded on fictitious monuments, that are forged in an ignorant age, easily admitted by a credulous people, and afterwards confirmed and enlarged by these admissions, not satisfied with the supremacy, encroached on every minute part of Church government, and had almost annihilated the episcopal jurisdiction ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... authority. "I tell the tale as 'twas told to me," by the schoolmaster of Naemanslaws, in the shire of Ayr; and if the incident never occurred, then must he have been one of the greatest liars that ever taught the young idea how to shoot. For our single selves, we are by nature credulous. Many extraordinary things happen in this life, and though "seeing is believing," so likewise "believing is seeing," as every one must allow who reads ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... said, coldly, as this dagger-thrust struck home to my heart. "I only knew him when he was quite a boy. He seemed to me then of a warm and loving temperament, generous to a fault, perhaps over-credulous, yet he promised well. His father thought so, I confess I thought so too. Reports have reached me from time to time of the care with which he managed the immense fortune left to him. He gave large sums away in charity, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... my feast, and my behavior at it, held at first the credulous inhabitants of the city firmly to their preconceived opinion. True, it was soon stated in the newspapers that the whole story of the journey of the king of Prussia had been a mere groundless rumor: but a king I now was, and must, spite of everything, a king remain, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... relates chiefly to the territory comprised in the present Republic of San Salvador. It shows Palacio to have been an intelligent observer, and a kindly, well-disposed man,—not free from the superstitions of his time and race, but less credulous than many of his contemporaries. His report is full of matter of value to the historical inquirer, and of entertainment for the general reader. His stories of the manners of the people, and his accounts of the animals of the district are brief, but characteristic. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... of the supposed incidents attending Pascal’s conversion, there never was a more absurd fancy than that Pascal’s mind suffered any eclipse in the great change that came to him. He may have been credulous, he may have been superstitious. The miracle of the Holy Thorn may be an evidence of the one, and the unnatural asceticism of his later years a proof of the other. But to speak of the author of the ‘Provincial Letters,’ of the problems on the Cycloid, ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... Horatio to maligne? Or what might mooue thee, Bel-imperia, To accuse they brother, had he beene the meane? Hieronimo, beware! thou art betraide, And to intrap they life this traine is laide. Aduise thee therefore, be not credulous: This is deuised to endanger thee, That thou, by this, Lorenzo shoulst accuse. And he, for thy dishonour done, show draw Thy life in question and thy name in hate. Deare was the life of my beloved sonne, And of ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd
... We once were sufficiently credulous to believe in the honesty of LOUIS-PHILIPPE; we sympathised with him as a bold, able, high-principled man fighting the fight of good government against a faction of smoke-headed fools and scoundrel desperadoes. He has out-lived our good opinion—the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... are more apt to profit by anthropology is composed of those in whom there is a decided predominance of good. In some cases they are deficient in selfish and combative energy, do not know how to assert their rights, are credulous and confiding. Children of that character if reared by timid and over-fond parents, are deprived of the rough contact with society that is necessary to their development. There are many whom the lack of self-confidence, the lack of ambition, and lack of business energy condemn to ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... know (For Fate decreed it so), Long since the world hath set its heart to live; Long since, with credulous zeal It turns life's mighty wheel, Still doth for labourers send Who still their labour give, And still expects ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Rich Man Who Gave His Fair Daughter in Marriage to the Poor Old Man e. Story of the Rich Man and His Wasteful Son f. The King's Son Who Fell in Love with the Picture g. Story of the Fuller and His Wife h. Story of the Old Woman, the Merchant and the King i. Story of the Credulous Husband j. Story of the Unjust King and the Tither i. Story of David and Solomon k. Story of the Thief and the Woman l. Story of the Three Men and Our Lord Jesus i. The Disciple's Story m. Story of the Dethroned King Whose ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... "very grave"? Not because it was mere dialectics! The only part of the story that seems grave today is the part that Abelard left out; the part which Saint Bernard, thirty years later put in, on behalf of William. We should be more credulous than twelfth-century monks, if we believed, on Abelard's word in 1135, that in 1110 he had driven out of the schools the most accomplished dialectician of the age by an objection so familiar that no other dialectician was ever silenced by it—whatever ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... the descent and alliances of an old family by finding out the names used by different slaves on the estate. Those of the same name were a little clannish, preserving traditions of the family from which their fathers had come, and magnifying its importance. In childhood I often listened with credulous ears to wondrous tales of the magnificence of my forefathers in Virginia and Maryland, who, these imaginative Africans insisted, dwelt in palaces, surrounded by brave, handsome sons, lovely, virtuous daughters, and countless devoted servants. The characters of many Southern ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... thus indicates the belief that not only do crocodiles shed tears, but that sympathizing passengers, turning to commiserate the reptile's woes, are seized and destroyed by the treacherous creatures. That quaint and credulous old author—the earliest writer of English prose—Sir John Mandeville, in his "Voiage," or account of his "Travile," published about 1356—in which, by the way, there are to be found accounts of not a few wonderful things in ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... am not jealous, but resolved I have the faithful'st wife in Italy. "For this I find, where jealousy is fed, Horns in the mind are worse than on the head. See what a drove of horns fly in the air, Wing'd with my cleansed and my credulous breath: Watch them, suspicious eyes, watch where they fall, See, see, on heads that think they have none at all. Oh, what a plenteous world of this will come, When air rains horns, all men ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... say that, to me, the appearance was not like a reality. No vessel could carry such sail in the gale; but yet, there are madmen afloat who will sometimes attempt the most absurd things. If it was a vessel, she must have gone down, for when it cleared up she was not to be seen. I am not very credulous, and nothing but the occurrence of the consequences which you anticipate will make me believe that there was anything ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... perceived suddenly the force of Fyne's qualifying statement, "to a certain extent." It would have been infinitely more kind all round for the law to have shot, beheaded, strangled, or otherwise destroyed this absurd de Barral, who was a danger to a moral world inhabited by a credulous multitude not fit to take care of itself. But I observed to Fyne that, however insane was the view she held, one could not declare the girl mad on ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... for wonder with everybody, and no one will believe that they are constructed of other than solid material. Even the credulous, who are permitted to tap one of Parmentier's boots as a convincing test, cannot help sharing the ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... Eleemosynary Age Primeval Belief Credulous Blame Culpable Breast Pectoral Being Essential Bosom Graminal, sinuous Boy, boyish Puerile Blood, bloody Sanguinary, sanguine Burden Onerous Beginning Initial Boundary Conterminous Brother Fraternal Bowels Visceral ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... probable course in this matter was founded entirely upon belief in the truthfulness of your statement that Mr. Lindsay had no claim on your heart. Only a short time since you assured me of this fact, and my faith in your candour must plead pardon for my present profound surprise. Certainly I was credulous enough to consider you ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... arrow whistled through the air, and in another moment the owl fell fluttering to the ground completely transfixed; but it underwent no change, as was expected by the credulous archer. ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... should be a panic; and it was natural that the people should, in a panic, be unreasonable and credulous. It must be remembered also that they had not at first, as we have, the means of comparing the evidence which was given on different trials. They were not aware of one tenth part of the contradictions and absurdities which Oates had committed. The blunders, for example, into which ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... between the higher doctrines of the northern faith and the religion of ancient Persia is at once accounted for by the tradition of the Odin migration from the East. A writer the reverse of credulous expresses himself thus on that subject: 'We know that the Scandinavians came from some country of Asia.... This doctrine was in many respects the same with that of the Magi. Zoroaster had taught that the conflict between Ormuzd and Ahriman (i.e. light and darkness, the Good and Evil ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... wholly wanting in the Greek mind; and perhaps also some difference of views on the subjects of truth and honesty. But the main points, the easy, athletic, strongly logical and argumentative, yet fanciful and credulous, characters of mind, would be very similar in both; and the most serious change in the substance of the stuff among the modifications above suggested as necessary to turn the Scot into the Greek, is that effect of softer climate and surrounding luxury, inducing the practice of various ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... wish to develop in our children, merely because they show themselves to be credulous at an age when they are naturally ignorant and immature? Of course, credulity may exist in adults; but it exists in contrast with intelligence, and is neither its foundation nor its fruit. It is in periods of intellectual darkness that credulity germinates; ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... resentment was never on private grounds, and it was without rancour. He spent his whole life in opposition, and was not embittered; his mind remained constructive after thirty years spent in criticism. His experience of political life and of English Ministers had rid him of any credulous faith in mankind; yet his instinct was always to perceive the best in men. The friend who knew him best in Convention, and who had seen him in his darkest hours then and long ago, said this of him: "He was always an optimist." The speaker did not mean—he could not have meant—that ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... beside my cot and lulled me to sleep, or told me stories of the war. There was a childlike and simple quality in his own nature, which made me reach out to him and confide in him as I would have done to one of my own age. Later, I scoffed at this virtue in him as something old-fashioned and credulous. That was when I had reached the age when I was older, I hope, than I shall ever be again. There is no such certainty of knowledge on all subjects as one holds at eighteen and at eighty, and at eighteen I found his care and solicitude irritating ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... may console. A belief in karma not only consoles, it explains. As such it is not suited to those who accept things on faith, which is a very good way to accept to them. It may be credulous to believe that Jehovah dictated the ten commandments. But the commandments are sound. Moreover it is perhaps better to be wrong in one's belief's than not to ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... John Knox. A born partisan, a man of one idea who could see no evil on his own side and no good on the other, as a good fighter and a good hater he has had few equals. His supreme devotion to the cause he embraced made him credulous of evil in his foes, and capable of using deceit and of applauding political murder. Of his first preaching against Romanism it was said, "Other have sned [snipped] the branches, but this man strikes at the root," and well nigh the latest judgment passed upon him, that of Lord Acton, is that ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... fashionable; whereupon, police forces and the clergy would disband, Wall Street and Fifth Avenue would go thundering down. Hence, for him were provided those Y. M. C. A. night bookkeeping classes administered by solemn earnest men of thirty for solemn credulous youths of twenty-nine; those sermons on content; articles on "building up the rundown store by live advertising"; Kiplingesque stories about playing the game; and correspondence-school advertisements that shrieked, "Mount the ladder to thorough ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... it; but they liked his alternative less; and there were two or three men in the room, besides, who were secretly on King's side, but hardly cared to betray their opinions in the face of so much opposition. They did not care to seem too credulous. It was they who suggested with a half-humorous air of concession that no harm could be done by sending a committee of investigation to discover whether it were true that living men were held for experimental purposes beneath that Tirthanker temple; ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... her fire to-night, could only repeat the words of her letter. She had taken out a daguerreotype of her husband, and was looking at it. He was a small man; young; dressed in a suit of rusty black, with a certain subdued, credulous, incomplete air about him, like a man forced at birth into some iron mould of circumstance, and whose own proper muscles and soul had never had a chance of air to grow. A homely, saddened, uncouthly shaped face,—one that would be sure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... to add that the ordinary Russian peasant, though in some respects extremely credulous, and, like all other people, subject to occasional panics, is by no means easily frightened by real dangers. Those who have seen them under fire will readily credit this statement. For my own part, I have had opportunities ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... pleasures of a man, whom they probably detest, are generally the objects of pity, however their conduct may be disapproved; but a parent, who should be the cause of reducing them to such a state, would be execrated; but the assertion is as absurd as ridiculous, and the writer must have been very credulous to suppose, that the principal trade of one of the largest cities in the world, whose population cannot be less than a million of souls, should consist in buying and selling ladies of pleasure. Buying females in ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... satin, and blazing with jewels. How the villagers stared. They had flatly refused to believe that this last little stranger was the first one, and had made great fun of Margary and her mother for being so credulous. But they had not minded. They had given their guest a little pallet stuffed with down, and a pillow stuffed with rose-leaves to sleep on, and fed him with the best they had. His father, in his gratitude, offered Margary's mother rich rewards; ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... fostered rather than checked by the uncertain gropings of contemporary science. Hence, the credulous acceptance of relics like those sold by the "Pardoner," and of legends like those related to Chaucer's Pilgrims by the "Prioress" (one of the numerous repetitions of a cruel calumny against the Jews), ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Youth! credulous of happiness, throw down Upon this turf thy wallet—stored and swoln With morrow-morns, bird-eggs, and bladders burst— That tires thee with its wagging to and fro: Thou too wouldst breathe more freely for it, Age! Who lackest heart to laugh at ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... child's eager interest and pliant imagination that Bessie looked and listened,—susceptible, credulous, unfastidious. To her, the Osmyn of the night was radiant with all heroic qualities and manly graces, the weakly simulated sorrow of Almeria brought real tears to her eyes, and she drew her white shoulders forward with a shudder when the wooden Zara kindled into cursing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... and not upon more palpable accidental circumstances. Left to myself now, I speedily resolved this case into a few suppositions, positive to me as facts. The girl had been present at the murder. She was not naturally reticent: was instead an exceptionally confiding, credulous woman. Her motive for silence, therefore, must have been a force brought to bear on her at the time of the murder stronger than her love for Merrick, and which was still existing and active. Her refusal to meet her lover I readily interpreted to be a fear of her own weakness—dread lest she ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... more barricades of flagstones—no more assaulting his Majesty's troops with cobbles. I cannot feel friendly toward my quondam fellow-American, Napoleon III., especially at this time,—[July, 1867.]—when in fancy I see his credulous victim, Maximilian, lying stark and stiff in Mexico, and his maniac widow watching eagerly from her French asylum for the form that will never come—but I do admire his nerve, his calm self-reliance, his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... The credulous and confiding are ever the dupes of knaves and impostors. Ask those who have lost their property how it happened, and you will find in most cases it has been owing ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... a queer old man; a very medley of contradictions; shrewd and simple; credulous and penetrating; a master penman of the school of Swift and Cobbett; even in his odd picturesque personality whimsically attractive; a man to be reckoned with where he chose to put his powers forth, as Seward ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... ever looked on mankind in the lump to be nothing better than a foolish, head-strong, credulous, unthinking mob; and their universal belief has ever had extremely little weight with me.... I am drawn by conviction like a Man, not by a halter like ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... You have more than matched the rival pastors That tute a credulous Fatherland; And we admit that you are proved our masters When there is dirty work in hand; But in your lore I notice one hiatus: Your Kaiser's scutcheon with its hideous blot— You've no corrosive in your apparatus Can out ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... engaged in their avocations abroad. There is a very small tent about the middle of the place; it belongs to a lone female, whom one frequently meets wandering about Wandsworth or Battersea, seeking an opportunity to dukker some credulous servant-girl. It is hard that she should have to do so, as she is more than seventy-five years of age, but if she did not she would probably starve. She is very short of statue, being little more than five feet and an inch high, but she is wonderfully strongly ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... success with moderation, and to meet reverses with fortitude. She loved her husband, and with a spirit as high and undaunted as his own, and a mind far more noble and generous, she cherished his honor, as the only treasure which violence or injustice could never wrest from him. Affection is always credulous, and fortunately for her happiness she gave no belief to the high charges which were publicly alleged against him; but placed the most undoubting trust in his assurance, that they were the baseless calumnies of an enemy. Even the many dark shades in his character, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... was one of a numerous class of people who are termed, in the west, "money diggers," living a sort of vagrant life, imposing upon the credulous farmers by pretending that they knew of treasure concealed, and occasionally stealing horses and cattle. Joseph Smith was the second son, and a great favourite of his father, who stated everywhere that Joe had that species of second sight, which enabled him to discover where treasure was hidden. ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... through the night! thou poor Forlorn! Remorse that man on his death-bed possess, Who in the credulous hour of tenderness Betrayed, then cast thee forth to Want and Scorn! The world is pitiless: the chaste one's pride 5 Mimic of Virtue scowls on thy distress: Thy Loves and they that envied thee deride: And Vice alone will shelter Wretchedness! O! I could weep to think that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... "Better be over-credulous than over-sceptical," replied Potts. "Even at my lodging in Chancery Lane I have a horseshoe nailed against the door. One cannot be too cautious when one has to fight against the devil, or those in league with him. Your witch ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... garret, that had opened, she had inserted the neck of an old bottle, in such a manner that when there was the least wind, most doleful and lugubrious wailing sounds proceeded from it, which, in a high wind, increased to a perfect shriek, such as to credulous and superstitious ears might easily seem to be that ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... earth, I know that it is universally admitted in good society that the prince of Darkness is a gentleman; and that is enough for me. As to your Life Force, which you think irresistible, it is the most resistible thing in the world for a person of any character. But if you are naturally vulgar and credulous, as all reformers are, it will thrust you first into religion, where you will sprinkle water on babies to save their souls from me; then it will drive you from religion into science, where you will snatch the babies from the water sprinkling and inoculate them ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... were so ignorant, how happened the priests to be so wise? If the people were so credulous, why were not the priests credulous too? "Like people, like priests," is a proverb approved by experience. Among so many nations and through so many centuries, why has not some one priest betrayed the secret of ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... thing that Robbie wanted to set his mind easy about, and that was the viking's amulet. In common with all the lads in the school, he had heard of the wonderful powers attributed to this little stone; and, like them, he was thoroughly credulous of its ability to preserve me from personal harm, vet anxious as I was myself to put it to ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... suffrage; but no one confides in him. Owen does not, nor the Rev. Mr. Marshall of Kirkintilloch, nor yet the conspirators of Sheffield or Newport. Toryism scarcely thanks him for fighting its battles; Whiggism abhors him. There is no one credulous enough to believe that his aims rise any higher than himself, or blind enough not to see that even his selfishness is so ill-regulated as to defeat its own little object. His lack of the higher sentiments, the more generous feelings, the nobler aims, neutralizes ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... that 'the interests of Servia are identical with those of Turkey.' For, should the disruption of the Ottoman empire take place—the probability of which is at any rate no greater than in the time of our grandfathers—it will not be effected by internal revolution, but by foreign intervention; and credulous must he be who can believe in the disinterestedness of those who would lend themselves to such a measure. Thus, in the partition which would ensue, Servia might find even her former ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... (Note in British Museum Catalogue). The work, which was first published in French during the latter part of the fourteenth century, achieved an immense popularity, the marvels that it relates being readily received by the credulous folk of that ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... at the rough sink in one corner of the room. I replaced the phial, locked the cabinet, and concealing the broken bottle in my dressing-gown, lest I should meet one of the servants, I retraced my steps to my own room. I was not wholly credulous of its marvellous properties, although Hilyard was not given to boasting or lying—except to women—but I believed it at least to be a poison, and I believed that it defied analysis, as ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... averse to guiding events, to put it mildly. He had ingratiated himself, perhaps, with the clairvoyant and Davies. Constance had often heard before of clairvoyants and brokers who worked in conjunction to fleece the credulous. Now another and more serious element than the loss of money was involved. Added to them was a divorce detective—and honor itself was at stake. She remembered the doped cigarettes. She had heard of them ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... ffrench men in the woods with the Indians; that I had 2 shipps & expected another; that I was building a Fort; to conclude, all that I said unto young Guillem, Master of the New England shipp, I said the same unto Mr Bridgar, & more too. He took all for currant, & it was well for me hee was so credulous, for would hee have ben at the troble I was of travelling 40 leagues through woods & Brakes, & lye on the could ground to make my Discoverys, hee wold soon have perceaved my weakness. I had reason to hide ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... entirely in a false friend, who is the most worthless wretch living. At the same time he has given his heart to a creature, who is the greatest coquette and the most perfidious of her sex, and he is so credulous as to be confident she is a Penelope, and his false friend a Cato. He embarks on board his ship in order to go and fight the Dutch, having left all his money, his jewels, and everything he had in the world to this virtuous creature, whom ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... because he refuses to acknowledge that the discoverer was right; then he confesses the truth, and readjusts his hocus-pocus to suit it. He does not ask us to pin our faith to fancies which seem real to a child in its infancy, yet he would have us credulous about those which were the outcome of the intellectual infancy of the race. What he can't get over in himself is the absence of any sense of humour. I'm real sorry for him at times, and I tell ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... personality was quenched, even for this life, by that one blow of the executioner's sword. Surely he had risen! There was a feverish dread that he would yet be confronted by the murdered man, whose face haunted his dreams. His courtiers, ready to take the monarch's cue, would be equally credulous. From one to another the surmise would pass—"John the Baptist is ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... always a tendency in human nature to be over-credulous as to our own achievements, and over-sceptical as to ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... them. Mme. Dauvray had a passion for fortune-tellers and rogues of that kind. Any one with a pack of cards and some nonsense about a dangerous woman with black hair or a man with a limp—Monsieur knows the stories they string together in dimly lighted rooms to deceive the credulous—any one could make a harvest out of madame's superstitions. But monsieur knows ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... pledge, up to the close of the session of 1859, more than eight years, has never been redeemed. The excuse urged has been always the same—the pressure of public business—an excuse, the sincerity of which cannot be accepted by the most credulous friends of his lordship's party. Mr. Disraeli declared that he desired to see the "great settlement of 1831" improved, in the sense of confirming "the proper territorial influence and power," which he assured the house was essential to the liberties of the English nation. Mr. Disraeli desired ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the coin in which I paid my way among this credulous race. Ninety per cent. of our visitors would have accepted the remark as natural in itself and creditable to my powers of judgment, but it appeared ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... miserable half-famished Chinese, living upon the water, are glad to get any thing in the shape of animal food, which they will even eat in a state of putrefaction. Yet, little scrupulous as they are with regard to diet, I am not credulous enough to believe the information of a Swedish author[9] to be correct in his statement of a cure for a certain disease, though "he has no reason to doubt of the fact," per [Greek: teknophagian] alternis diebus, alternis jejunio—by eating children ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... say, and go and tell your faithless mistress that she never shall again deceive the too credulous Cleonte. ...
— The Shopkeeper Turned Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere (Poquelin)
... better; the day after, improvement was more visible; and on the third day Waife paid his bill, and conducted her to the rural abode to which, credulous at last of his promises to share it with her for a time, he enticed her fated steps. It was little more than a mile beyond the suburbs of the town; and, though the walk tired her, she concealed fatigue, and would not suffer him to carry her. The ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which concealed the jaw and even the lips, each with his barsom in his hand, they marched in procession to their pynetheia, or fire altars, and standing around them performed for an hour at a time their magical incantations. The credulous multitude, impressed by sights of this kind, and imposed on by the claims to supernatural power which the Magi advanced, paid them a willing homage; the kings and chiefs consulted them; and when the Arian ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... an outcry against me on the part of the blockheads, who, strange to say, are the most credulous idolators of Enlightenment, and if knowledge were power, would rot on a dunghill, yet, nevertheless, I think all really enlightened men will agree with me, that when one falls in with detached sharpshooters from the general March of Enlightenment, it is no reason that we should make ourselves ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... there was not even a hut on the spot which is now a busy town, I used to play as a boy. Yonder is the Basingstoke canal, where, with willow wand and line of string from village shop, I used to beguile the credulous gudgeon and the greedy perch. Just up that lane to the right, on the road to Knap Hill—famed the world over for its hundreds of acres of rhododendrons—is the nurseryman's shed to which, in the summer, cart-loads of the small, ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... natural sandbanks that stud the bed. The only antiquities found in the "Muttali"' were a stone cut into parallel bands, and the fragment of a basalt door with its pivot acting as hinge in the upper part: it reminded me of the Grco-Roman townlets in the Haurn, where the credulous discovered "giant Cities" and similar ineptitudes. Our search for Midianite money was in vain; Mr. Clarke, however, picked up, near the sea, a silver "Taymr," the Moghal, with a curiously twisted ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... old Friend—a child! As light of heart, as free, as wild; As credulous of fairy tale; As simple in your faith, as frail In reason; jealous, petulant; As crude in manner; ignorant, Yet wise in love; as rough, as ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... all which makes him worthy of more love Must train his ear to catch the siren croon That never else had reached his upland home! And he who failed in proof, how should he arm Another against perils? Ah, false hope And credulous enjoyment! How should I, Life's fool, while wakening ready wit in him, Teach how to shun applause and those bright eyes Of women who pour in the lap of spring Their whole year's substance? They can offer To fill the day much fuller than I could, And ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... was all in the game. "I don't squeal when they catch me napping," he said, "and why should I look out for their interests?" But he never took advantage of the weak, the ignorant, the inexperienced, or the too credulous. His word was as good as gold. His principles were few and intensely practical, and he would willingly lose thousands of dollars rather than violate ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... downfall of mighty kings are awful events, that shake the physical as well as the moral world, and are often announced by forerunning marvels and prodigious omens. With such-like cautious preliminaries do the wary but credulous historiographers of yore usher in a marvellous event of prophecy and enchantment, linked in ancient story with the fortunes of Don Roderick, but which modern doubters would fain hold up as an apocryphal tradition of ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... doubt of it. Mind you, I trust them implicitly. But, outside their own line, they're credulous as ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... blushing a little; and Percy Beaumont stared a little also—but only with his fine natural complexion—glancing aside after a moment to see that his companion was not looking too credulous, for he had heard a great deal of American humor. "I daresay it is very ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... course of suspicion, perfidy, and cruelty which he pursued against the republican pride and moral dignity remaining amongst a few remnants of the Roman senate. He was succeeded by Germanicus' unworthy son, Caligula. After a few days of hypocrisy on the part of the emperor, and credulous hope on that of the people, they found a madman let loose to take the place of an unfathomable and gloomy tyrant. Caligula was much taken up with Gaul, plundering it and giving free rein in it to his frenzies, by turns disgusting or ridiculous. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Christian burial, but that the heart which was brought to Vancouver some time after the event, and which the Hawaiians stoutly maintained was that of Captain Cook, was no such thing; and that the whole affair was a piece of imposture which was sought to be palmed off upon the credulous Englishman. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... brother, San Tajin, continued to remain in the neighbourhood of the place. The Taeping commander laid a trap for him, into which he fell in what was, for a Chinese officer fully acquainted with the fact that treachery formed part of the usages of war in China, a very credulous manner. He expressed a desire to come over, presents and vows were exchanged, and at a certain hour he was to surrender one of the gates. The Imperial troops went to take possession, and were even admitted ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... just mentioned, and second, to give a certain class of ambitious men and women sufficient influence through their acknowledged power of exorcism and necromancy to lead a comfortable life at the expense of the credulous. The persons admitted into the society are firmly believed to possess the power of communing with various supernatural beings—manidos—and in order that certain desires may be realized they are sought after and consulted. The ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... of willingness to yield to such propositions for action and of inability to resist them, is indeed different from man to man. We all know the stubborn persons who are always inclined to resist whatever is proposed to them and who do not believe what is told them, and we know the credulous ones who believe everything that they see printed. But the degree of suggestibility changes no less from hour to hour with the individual. In a state of fatigue or under the influence of alcohol or under the influence of strong emotions, in hope and fear, the suggestibility is reenforced. ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... presume that a dull intellect should be found) that the cause of the Margrave's fainting-fit, described in the last chapter, was a groundless apprehension on the part of that too solicitous and credulous nobleman regarding the fate of his beloved child. No, young Otto was NOT drowned. Was ever hero of romantic story done to death so early in the tale? Young Otto was NOT drowned. Had such been the case, the Lord Margrave would infallibly have died at the close ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of this by letters which Ali wrote to the Pacha of Berat demanding the fugitive, thought that a man persecuted by his enemy would be faithful to himself, and took the supposed runaway into his service. The traitor made skilful use of the kindness of his too credulous protector, insinuated himself into his confidence, became his trusted physician and apothecary, and gave him poison instead of medicine on the very first appearance of indisposition. As soon as symptoms of death appeared, the poisoner fled, aided by the emissaries of Ali, with whom the court of Berat ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... better printer than proprietor. Like so many of his family, he was a visionary, gentle and credulous, ready to follow any new idea. Much advice was offered him, and he tried to follow ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... can't know how pleasant it is to be en rapport with you, though by holding such a fringe of a garment as a scrap of letter is. We don't see you, we don't hear you! 'Rap' to us with the end of your pen, like the benign spirit you are, and let me (who am credulous) believe that you care for us and think kindly of us in the midst of your brilliant London gossipry, and that you don't disdain the talk of us, dark ultramontanists as we are. You are good to us in so many ways, that it's a reason for being good in another way besides. At least, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... of Aheer—this profanation of the abode of marabouts! It is singular, nevertheless, that only a year ago some neighbouring tribes, thinking these holy men had too much wealth, carried off a large number of their camels. This is the much-vaunted place amongst the credulous Moorish merchants of the coast, where ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... Dolfos resolved to get the better of him by strategy. Feigning to be driven out of the city, he secretly joined Don Sancho, and offered to deliver the city into his hands if the king would only accompany him to a side gate. Notwithstanding adverse omens, the credulous Sancho, believing him, rode off, only to meet his death at the postern gate, inside of which ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... naturally credulous in our own favour. Having been so often caressed and applauded for docility, I was willing to believe myself really enlightened by instruction, and completely qualified for the task of life. I did not doubt but I ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... my father, Edward Moncton. A person less adapted to fill an important place in the mercantile world, could scarcely have been found. He had a genius for spending, not for making money; and was so easy and credulous that any artful villain might dupe him out of it. Had he been heir to the title and the old family estates, he would have made a first rate country gentleman; for he possessed a fine manly person, was frank and generous, and excelled in all ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... thus delivered to soldiers unused to battle was calculated to cause the credulous to think of friends, home—death, and it certainly had no tendency to inspire the untried volunteers with hope and confidence. The speech was, of course, the wild, silly vaporings of a ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... indeed, that Papias was foolish and credulous. But unhappily foolishness and credulity are not characteristic of any one form of Christian ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... the natives had to expect, there has not been one single concession or reward for the credulous Pedro A. Paterno, a Filipino, the only real agent of the miracle of the Peace, to whom they have denied even the modest ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... chamber where the damsel lay, marvelled to hear her cries, and forthwith entered, and asked what it meant. On sight of whom the lady rose and sorrowfully gave him her daughter's version of what had befallen her. But he, less credulous than his wife, averred that it could not be true that she knew not by whom she was pregnant, and was minded to know the whole truth: let the damsel confess and she might regain his favour; otherwise she must expect no mercy ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... told Yoshikiyo that in a dream which he had on the first day of the month, a strange being told him a strange thing, and, said he, "I thought it too credulous to believe in a dream, but the object appeared again, and told me that on the thirteenth of this month he will give me a supernatural sign, directing me also to prepare a boat, and as soon as the storm ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... priests, the arguments of orators, and the philosophy of the world, without any assistance from God, he must be in possession of more faith than is necessary to make him a Christian and continues an unbeliever from mere credulity. If the credulous infidel, whose convictions are without evidence and against evidence, should, after all, be in the right, and Christianity prove to be a fable, what harm could ensue from being a Christian? Are Christian rulers more tyrannical and their Christian subjects more ungovernable? Are the rich ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various
... impalpable to our sight in moments of less hallowed sentiment,—is indisputably the state of mind in which the imagination is most readily excited, and the understanding most favourably inclined to grant a credulous reception to its visions. The apartment also which was appropriated to Lord Londonderry, was calculated to foster such a tone of feeling. From its antique appointments; from the dark and richly-carved panels ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... inflict where they can have a blow. No less than death, and that a languishing and a terrible death will satisfie the rage of those formidable dragons." [Footnote: Discourse on Witchcraft, p. 19.] The pest was sure to spread in a credulous community, fed by their natural leaders with this morbid poison, and it next broke out in Salem village in February, 1691-2. A number of girls had become intensely excited by the stories they had heard, and two of them, who belonged to the family of the clergyman, were seized with ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... assented to by all who have ever had the curiosity to look into their writings; namely, "that they were as injudicious, violent, and factious as other men; that they were, for the greatest part, very credulous and superstitious in religion, as well as pitifully ignorant and superficial in the minutest punctilios ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer |
