"Guileless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... left home he placed the engagement ring upon her finger, naming no very distant period when he hoped to replace it by the wedding ring. Belinda Merril was worthy in every way of his affection, and loved him with all the sincerity of a pure and guileless heart. I almost wonder that the shadows which were even then gathering in what to them had ever been a summer sky, did not cast a chill over her heart. In due time Arthur went to the city. I could not help my fears, lest his pleasing manners and love of company should ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... woodcraft mysteries; Himself to Nature's heart so near That all her voices in his ear Of beast or bird had meanings clear, Like Apollonius of old, Who knew the tales the sparrows told, Or Hermes, who interpreted What the sage cranes of Nilus said; A simple, guileless, childlike man, Content to live where life began; Strong only on his native grounds, The little world of sights and sounds Whose girdle was the parish bounds, Whereof his fondly partial pride The common features magnified, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... unimpaired, and from time to time he blew his nose with portentous fervour. Indeed, the manner in which he accomplished this latter feat was marvellous in the extreme, for, though that member emitted sounds equal to those of a trumpet in intensity, he could yet, with his accompanying air of guileless dignity, evoke the waiter's undivided respect—so much so that, whenever the sounds of the nose reached that menial's ears, he would shake back his locks, straighten himself into a posture of marked solicitude, and inquire afresh, with head slightly inclined, whether the gentleman ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... wrap such garments In true artistic style About myself departing, And wear as sweet a smile And be as guileless as the flowers My friends would never sigh; 'Twould reconcile them to my death ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... over the symptoms of Lamour's Disease. About five she retired to her severely simple apartments in the big brownstone office building devoted to physicians, corner of Fifty-eighth Street and Madison Avenue. Here she took tea, read a little, dined all alone, and retired about nine. This was the guileless but determined existence of Rosalind Hollis, M.D., according to McConnell, the detective ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... of artless Maid, Sweety flow'ret of the rural shade! By love's simplicity betray'd. And guileless trust, Till she, like thee, all soil'd, is laid Low ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... guileless speech, I'm making a good thing out of him. When he is slightly more reformed, and has passed his Higher Standard, or whatever the authorities think fit to exact from him, I shall select a pretty little ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... them. Whenever they were captured they were so surprised, so humiliated, so innocent, meek and subdued, that it would never occur to an honest man that they could know how to handle a bolo or a gun. But experience taught that the most guileless in looks were the worst desperadoes of all. My first sight of a squad of these captives is a thing not to be forgotten. They were a scrubby lot of hardly human things, stunted, gnarled pigmies, with no hats or shoes, and scarcely a rag of ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... intuition to discern what were the motives in a simple, guileless, and noble soul for the fanaticism of Madame Hulot's love. Having fully persuaded herself that her husband could do her no wrong, she made herself in the depths of her heart the humble, abject, and blindfold slave of the man who had made her. It must be noted, too, that she was gifted ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... companies. In the following year, the people of Georgia rose in their wrath, turned out the corrupt legislators, and forced the passage of a rescinding act. Meantime, sales had been made by the Yazoo speculators to guileless purchasers, who now appealed to Congress for relief. In 1798, Congress enacted a law providing for commissioners who should confer with Georgia regarding these conflicting claims. At the same time the Territory ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... was a learned scholar And indefatigable student of philosophy and letters, An able and successful instructor of youth, Of genuine uprightness and guileless simplicity A devout, benevolent ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... still remained to Hitty Hyde,—the freshness of inexperience. Her soul was as guileless and as ignorant as a child's; and she was stranded on life, with a large fortune, like a helmless ship, heavily loaded, that breaks from its anchor, and drives headlong upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... but the recollections of Sarah were more vivid. There is a period in the life of every woman when she may be said to be predisposed to love; it is at the happy age when infancy is lost in opening maturity—when the guileless heart beats with those anticipations of life which the truth can never realize—and when the imagination forms images of perfection that are copied after its own unsullied visions. At this happy age Sarah left the city, and she had brought with her a picture of futurity, faintly ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... be gracious to our prayers for what shall be! For I praise him as a man most zealous in the rearing of horses, and delighting in ever-open hospitality, and bent on peace and on the welfare of his city, with guileless soul. ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... Village; his father's establishment, a mixture of farm and parsonage, furnished hints, it is said, for the rural economy of the Vicar of Wakefield; and his father himself, with his learned simplicity, his guileless wisdom, his amiable piety, and utter ignorance of the world, has been exquisitely portrayed in the worthy Dr. Primrose. Let us pause for a moment, and draw from Goldsmith's writings one or two of those pictures which, under feigned names, represent ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... was a lot of poor fools who had had a flag waved in their eyes, and had sold themselves for a shilling to the landlords of their country. In one of the Socialist papers that Jimmie read, there appeared every week a series of comic pictures in which the working man was figured as a guileless fool by the name of "Henry Dubb". Poor Henry always believed what he was told, and at the end of each adventure he got a thump on the top of his nut which caused stars to sprout over the page. And of the many adventures ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... Pemberton, Hefty Hollingsworth, Bunch Bingham, Buster Brown, Beef McNaughton, and Pudge Langdon, who had been attacked in a fashion similar to Butch's spasm, concealed grins of delight, and made strenuous efforts to appear guileless, as Track-Coach Brannigan approached T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. To that cheery youth, who was brushing the dirt from his immaculate track togs, and bowing to the cheering youths in the ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... fixed his gaze on me. Though not my own mother's child, yet the dear lad is brother to me; for mother is mother all the world over. With his guileless face, his gentle eyes, his innocent youth, he looked at me. And I, a woman—of his mother's sex—how could I hand him poison, just because ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... themselves; considering his Prussian Majesty to be, in fact, a mere rotatory Clothes-horse for drying the Imperial linen on; and to have no intellect at all, because he was without guile, and had no vulpinism at all. In which they were very much mistaken indeed. History is proud to report that the guileless Prussian Majesty, steadily attending to his own affairs in a wise manner, though hoodwinked and led about by Black-Artists as he had been, turned out when Fact and Nature subsequently pronounced upon it, to have had more ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Francisco; for she was fast succumbing to the influence of a woman with whom some of the opposite sex seemed very familiar, considering the fact that the latter was as much a stranger to them (when first we started out) as she was to me. Besides, the pretty young graduate evidently was a very guileless, convent-raised girl. Matters assumed such a condition at the close of the third day of our journey that I felt it incumbent upon me to invite the latter into my section for the sake of some friendly advice. She appeared to take it all in good part and promised to act upon it. Had ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... here just now," he said, wondering how he could turn to advantage the unexpected visit, and the impending information that the guileless old man was about to give under the mistaken idea that Andy was ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... congenial amongst those who surrounded him. He was a man of society, and never stopped to think that the glowing, enthusiastic creature, whose eyes gazed up so confidingly to him, as he conversed of literature and poesy, or whose lips overflowed with earnest, eloquent words, was an innocent, guileless child, into whose Undine nature he had summoned the soul. He had been many years engaged, heart and hand, to another; and circumstances alone had delayed the fulfillment of that engagement. This Agnes knew nothing of, and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... operative, with a sheepishly guileless air. "It was just a bit from an English musical comedy of two or three years back, I think. It's got a silly-sounding name—something like 'There's a ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... world, and gazed on scenes As beautiful as rest beneath the sun. I trust he will remember all his life That to his best achievement, and the spot Nearest to heaven his youthful feet have trod, He has been guided by a guileless lamb. It is an omen which his mother's heart Will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... still shone on the earth or not. The perspiration of the literary labour dropped from his brow. A delightful enthusiasm urged him on. It was the liberation of his inner life, the letting out of his soul into the wide world. And the zeal of his guileless vanity (first awakened by the offer of five hundred pounds from a publisher) seemed something ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... kingdom. An elderly man, with a tall, serene forehead, a large dark eye and a long grey beard, he presented an image of vast wisdom and reverend probity. He possessed—an especial treasure for a statesman in that plotting age—a singularly honest visage. Never was that face more guileless, never was his heart more completely worn upon his sleeve, than when he was harbouring the deepest or most dangerous designs. Such was the "good fellow," whom that skilful reader of men, Henry of France, had sent to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... least, but I did not like to tell him to go away. He was a young fellow, certainly more than ten years younger than myself; I had not been—I won't say in that place, but within sixty miles of it, ever since the year '67; yet his guileless physiognomy of the open peasant type seemed strangely familiar. It was quite possible that he might have been a descendant, a son, or even a grandson, of the servants whose friendly faces had been familiar to me in my early childhood. As a matter ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... mantel. Another star had risen and set, and sent its missives only to the ashes of his grate, and now this very night, hidden in his desk, lay long, close-written, criss-crossed, exquisite pages, the outpourings of a young and guileless and glorious nature, and they, too, lay, as did that early Stella's, unread, unheeded, almost undesired, for the man was inflamed by this dauntless woman's defiance of him, and the devil in him was urging: woo her, win her, conquer her, crush her, ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... flew the sunny days, Joy and gladness sending; Life becomes a song of praise When true hearts are blending. Guileless truth Won the Youth, Kept him there, A prisoner; While dear Love From above Poured down enduring dreams, In calm ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... lived a worthy wood-chopper, who had a daughter named Catherine; a pretty little maiden of sixteen, and yet the wisest woman in the kingdom of Kaboutermannekensburg. Shrewd as she was, she had yet the best, the kindest, and the most guileless heart in the world; and many a sick man, troubled woman, and grieved child had cause to bless her and her wisdom. One winter, when labor was cheap and bread expensive, the wood-chopper, whose name was Peter Kurtz, chopped his ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... again saw the strange youth, or man. The being was nearly six feet high, and powerfully built, like a strong man of twenty-five. His face was childish even to the degree of silliness. The mouth opened like a flytrap; the eyes were small and intensely guileless. Only a few wrinkles, and a few hairs, which grew wide apart on his cheeks and chin, indicated his manhood. But the oddest feature was the falling away of his forehead, at an angle which a dirty greased cap, pulled over his brow, could ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... for a reward," he said. "He who shall win and keep her favor may have his hurts dressed and his belly dosed. Her enemies may rot." "Who is fool enough to be her enemy?" asked King, the altogether mild and guileless. ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... should be lavished on the lieutenant-commander of the Neptun. I longed to tell him that in all probability he would be relieved from Heemskirk's visitations also. I did not do so only from the fear (absurd, I admit) of arousing some sort of suspicion in his mind. As if with this guileless comedy father such a thing ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... in to take the niece's place, insisting upon the latter taking a ride or drive, her uncle would join in the request, and Althea was compelled to go. Nor was it such a hardship. Thornton was ever ready to accompany her. And now, in presence of this guileless girl, he did, indeed, seem transformed. He was attentive, kind and gentle, he hastened to comply with her every wish, to ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... going out. We were anxious to know what was going on in the world. An intense longing for a glimpse of Stock Exchange quotations existed in some quarters; others were dying to "back" horses; and there were guileless people whose sorrows were epitomised in a sigh for a letter, or two, (or a dozen) from home, and corresponding assurances that all was well there. We speculated a good deal on the probable depth of the piles ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... necessarily melancholy thing, in this imperfect world the humorist sighs as often as he smiles. What I mean by it is a keen perception of the rich incongruities and absurdities of life, its undue solemnity, its guileless pretentiousness. To be true humour, it must not be at all a cynical thing—as soon as it becomes cynical, it loses all its natural grace; it is an essentially tender-hearted quality, apt to find excuse, ready to condone, eager to forgive. The possessor of it can never be ridiculous, ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... home missions. When we remember that it is only since 1811 that they have emerged from numerical insignificance, we find their contribution to the planting of the church in the new settlements to be a highly honorable one. By a suicidal compact the guileless Evangelical party agreed, in 1835, to take direction of the foreign missions of the church, and leave the home field under the direction of the aggressive High-church party. It surrendered its part in the future of the church, and determined ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... situations. He made the most of his chance for a quaint parable, applicable to the courts, the church and science of Europe. As the story runs on, midst many and sudden adventures, the Babylonian reads causes from events in guileless fashion, enthusiastic as Sherlock Holmes, and no less efficient—and all the while, behind this innocent mask, Voltaire is insinuating a comparison between the practical results of Zadig's common sense and the futile mental cobwebs ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... was; he had a mistrustin' of it, somehow—and he went and told her, and it brought her, hearin' you was dangerous, and she calculated she might be o' use to ye now, for some, they be sich friends!" said Grandma, making this observation with the most guileless enthusiasm. "And Becky, she wa'n't much brought up, and used to be as wild and harum-scarum as any of 'em; but I allus said that there was a good deal to Becky, after all. Wall, George Olver, he recognized where she ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... give a desperate bite, the Pompilus would not dare to expose the tip of her abdomen to their deadly scratch. The shamming of death is exactly what enables the huntress to succeed in her dangerous operation. They say, O guileless Epeirae, that the struggle for life has taught you to adopt this inert attitude for purposes of defence. Well, the struggle for life was a very bad counsellor. Trust rather to common sense and learn, by degrees, at your own cost, that to hit back, above all if you can do so promptly, is still ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... the walls; a French window opened on to the lawn at the far end of the room; a large bowl of blue hyacinths, growing in a bed of pebbles, stood on the reading table. Mr. Kent was small, gray-haired, with a clear pink complexion and a guileless ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... mercenary bard his homage pays: With honest pride I scorn each selfish end, My dearest meed a friend's esteem and praise: To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays, The lowly train in life's sequester'd scene; The native feelings strong, the guileless ways; What Aiken in a cottage would have been— Ah! tho' his worth unknown, far ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... as she turned her head on one side, gazing up at the narrow streak of blue sky which was visible between the roofs, her dark eyes shone with a guileless, rapturous light, as if they were piercing ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... of Peter Neelands' efforts at solving their new difficulty, he soon began to think of it more favorably, coming to this by a process known as elimination. No one else wanted to go; he could not think of anything else. Peter would not do any harm—he was as guileless as a blue-eyed Angora kitten, and above all, he was willing and anxious to get into the game. This would give him an opportunity. So Mr. Banks suddenly made up his mind that he would authorize a cheque to be ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... Martin was quite guileless, and looking down at his coat in a puzzled way, as if to make doubly sure, replied, "No, it cannot be my clothes, for they are the same." Then, brightening, as the possible reason occurred to him: "Perhaps it may be my shaven face; you see, the barber made ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... songs we hear sung is truly appalling: we find a charming maid, love for whom might honour any man yet born, singing "Less than the dust,... even less am I," and so on. Lies, all lies, even though she lie melodically with charm and with apparent conviction. We have passionate love-songs sung by guileless individuals who would be inexpressibly shocked if you explained to them the meaning of the sentiment to which they had been giving utterance. There are operatic scenas, dealing with abduction and all sorts of uncomfortable situations, and again youngsters declaim of their somewhat ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... itself sometimes in the love of birds and of flowers, and one sees the rosebush or the canary bird in a dwelling from which is banished every trace of luxury. But the little child, with its sweet, spiritual eyes, its thousand bird-like tones, its prattling, endearing ways, its guileless, loving heart, is a full and perfect answer to the most ardent craving of the soul. It is a whole little Eden of itself; and the poor woman whose whole life else is one dreary waste of toil, clasps her babe to her bosom, and feels ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... dinner table and went away in wounded pride and incredulity. The one who is supposed to "know a little" likes to keep his position, and the Spanish proverb is exemplified: "En tierra de los ciegos, el tuerto es rey" (In the blind country the one-eyed are kings). The native is most guileless and ignorant, as can well be understood when his language is an ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... seeking; but His followers are constantly confident that he can, and are therefore his constant and ready tools for this or that party or interest. They sell themselves to monarchy or democracy, to capital or labour, with the same guileless innocence of what is happening to them, with the same simple-minded incapacity to learn anything from the lessons of the past. There are no short cuts to spiritual ends, and those ends can never be accomplished by secular means. The interests of the Kingdom of God can never ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... changing for the worse, she could not feel quite at ease concerning him. For there ever came back to her the thought of her son,—her wandering but still beloved Hugh; and many and earnest were the prayers that ascended both for the guileless child and the erring, sinful man, that through all the snares and temptations of life they might be ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... merriment behind the guileless innocence of her eyes, but they came to the surface only after the ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... OEDIPUS'S (and incidentally inaudible to cigarette smokers in the foyer) gives notice of the resumption of the play, while at the end of the Acts the curtain flutters up and down at a feverish pace as if the idea was to get in as many "calls" as possible before the applause stops. Are we as guileless as all that, I wonder? And, anyway, no such manoeuvre was necessary. The applause was hearty, the laughter spontaneous, and anybody who cares for plays made and played with brains should go and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... see Victor?" exclaimed the guileless Selma. "Why didn't you say so? I'd have told you at once that he was in Indianapolis and wouldn't be back for two or ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... star of the Ripton attack was evidently de Freece. The bowler at the other end looked fairly plain. He sent them down medium-pace, and on a good wicket would probably have been simple. But to-day there was danger in the most guileless-looking deliveries. ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... and dressed up in her things. Then, with her fair tousled hair and large blue eyes, open as a rule with a startled expression as though she had only just awakened into an astonishingly exciting world, she was altogether as unprotected and as guileless and as honest as any human being alive. I don't know whether Semyonov felt her innocence and youth—I expect he considered very little beside the plans that he had then in view.... and innocence had never been very interesting to ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... worthy one Who, turning from the world, as thou, Before life's pathway had begun To leave its spring-time flower and sun, Had sealed her early vow; Giving to God her beauty and her youth, Her pure affections and her guileless truth. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the blushing-wreath refuse, Though harsh her notes, yet guileless is my Muse. Unwont at Flattery's Voice to plume her wings, A Child of Nature, as she ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... pastoral romance, nor of the chivalrous and metaphysic passion of Provence; it was a fierce, consuming fire which quickly burnt itself out. He was a vulgar and unoriginal seducer who stole favours in the dark by pretending to be the lady's chosen lover, or induced guileless maids to trust him under promise of marriage, then rode away as fast as his horse could carry him. The monotony of his methods and their success are an outrage to the intelligence of the sex. But for all his scoffing he remained a true Catholic, devoutly believing ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... than this, but I get the definition by inverting a phrase of her dedication. Potter, by the way, or Lord Pinkerton, as he is now, owns a series of newspapers "not so good as The Times nor so bad as The Weekly Dispatch" (guileless piece of camouflage this!), and Mrs. Potter ("Leila Yorke") is a novelist who might have written The Rosary. Two of the young Potters, Jane and Johnny, though they both when up at Oxford joined the Anti-Potter League, do not thereby escape being Potterites. They cling to materialistic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... arranged by herself, was a pattern of neatness and simplicity; the work she had knitted, lay beside her; her writing-book was on the desk she leaned upon. - From the mournful ruin of such bereavement, there had slowly risen up this gentle, tender, guileless, grateful-hearted being. ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... up at my Physical Culture Studio again, the day after Lawyer Judson has explained for us the fine points of that batty will of Pyramid's, I'm about as friendly and guileless as a dyspeptic customs inspector preparin' to go through the trunks of a Fifth avenue dressmaker. He comes in smilin' and chirky, though, slaps me chummy on the ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... a wondering how it could be that so many, gentle and guileless as this woman-child, recoiled from the thought of the perfect One. Why were they not always and irresistibly drawn toward the very idea of God? Why, at least, should they not run to see and make sure whether God was indeed ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... cast a quick, suspicious glance at the speaker; but there the latter stood, with as open and guileless an expression on his handsome features, as was ever seen in ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... which developed late. He was only just beginning to preach with effect, and his literary power was practically undeveloped. He might have chosen to live a harmless, quiet, beauty-loving life, kindly and guileless, in a sort of religious aestheticism; though the vivid desire for movement and even excitement that characterised his later life would perhaps have in ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... mingled in scenes of gayety from her earliest days, and from the pleasure which her presence was sure to diffuse, and perhaps, it may be added, from a nature singularly guileless, that could see no evil in what appeared to her but as innocent indulgences, she was led into expenses and frivolous gratifications which were by no means essential for a mind like hers. Dishonest tradesmen took advantage of her inexperience and extreme easiness, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... conflict in her bosom between apprehension and love when she comes to take the sleeping poison. Shakespeare is blamed for the mixture of low characters. If this is a deformity, it is the source of a thousand beauties. One instance is the contrast between the guileless simplicity of Juliet's attachment to her first love, and the convenient policy of the nurse in advising her to marry Paris, which excites such indignation in her mistress. 'Ancient damnation! oh most wicked ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... my eyes with such a guileless expression that, for an instant, I thought she might be tired of her old, heartless life, and long to be better. I stood looking with some perplexity into the fire, scarce knowing what to say; but, turning my eyes suddenly, I saw a mocking gleam ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... Scotland on the very night the burglary is to be committed is not a trap to catch him, but a coincidence. Then, after drinking himself nearly blind, he sets forth with a revolver to commit a burglary on the house of the judge who tried him, on Hill's bare word that everything is all right. Guileless, ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... tradition parades his coral islet barefooted, bullying guileless natives out of their copra, coco-nut oil and pearl-shell; his chief diet, turtle and turtle eggs and fish; his drink, rum and coco-nut milk—the latter only when the former is impossible. When a wreck ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... heath-roofed shieling; now it dies Away, now rises full; it is the song Which He who listens to the hallelujahs Of choiring seraphim delights to hear; It is the music of the heart, the voice Of venerable age, of guileless youth, In kindly circle seated on the ground Before ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... 'You did not let me finish. I was going to add, Dr. Tattersby, that a week's acquaintance with that lovely woman, a full knowledge of her peculiarly exalted character and guileless nature, makes the alternative of guilt that affects her integrity clearly preposterous, which, by a very simple process of elimination, fastens the guilt, beyond all peradventure, on your shoulders. At any rate, the ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... disillusioning, and that they shock the mind of the young, are both alike entirely false. As Canon Lyttelton remarks, in urging that the laws of the transmission of life should be taught to children by the mother: "The way they receive it with native reverence, truthfulness of understanding and guileless delicacy, is nothing short of a revelation of the never-ceasing beauty of nature. People sometimes speak of the indescribable beauty of children's innocence. But I venture to say that no one quite knows what it is who has foregone the privilege of being the first ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... much pity for the poor mothers whose children were left on earth, that he allowed them to look down upon them from highest heaven—to see them always, to hear them always, and sometimes to send fair guardian angels to protect therein. Thanks to this guileless illusion, the orphans, persuaded that their mother incessantly watched over them, felt, that to do wrong would be to afflict her, and to forfeit the protection of the good angels.—This was the entire ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Hamburg. The pleasant impression then made by its agreeable and lovely melodies has not faded the less that, after hearing many of our stormy and exciting modern operas, one often and ardently {11} longs for the restful charm and guileless pleasure of a piece ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... was rather coarsely baited; it would hardly have deceived the most guileless and unsuspecting. Harold Purling at a glance could read between the lines; he could trace effect to cause, and readily understood why his mother was ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... mind of Evelyn was cultivated and well informed. Her heart, perhaps, helped to instruct her understanding; for by a kind of intuition she could appreciate all that was beautiful and elevated. Her unvitiated and guileless taste had a logic of its own: no schoolman had ever a quicker penetration into truth, no critic ever more readily detected the meretricious and the false. The book that Evelyn could admire was sure to be stamped with the impress of the noble, the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... saying it, or is it the thing itself?" Marion asked, coolly. "I tell you, girls, it is impossible to know whether the man who dresses well, and calls on you at stated intervals, looking and talking like a gentleman, is not a very Satan, who will lead away the pretty guileless, unsuspecting young girl who is worth his trouble; and the leading often and often commences with a dance; and the young girl may never have been allowed to dance with him at all had not stately and entirely unexceptionable ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... may'st thou ever be what now thou art, Nor unbeseem the promise of thy spring; As fair in form, as warm yet pure of heart, Love's image upon earth without his wing, And guileless beyond hope's imagining." ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... lapse of nearly a month, Adrian received a letter from a friend in London, requesting his immediate presence for the furtherance of some important object. Guileless himself, Adrian feared no deceit. I rode with him as far as Staines: he was in high spirits; and, since I could not see Idris during his absence, he promised a speedy return. His gaiety, which was extreme, had the strange effect of awakening ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... terribly shaken and agitated: little more than a child in years, injustice and sorrow had taught her the emotions of age, yet she was a guileless child in the world's ways, as events ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... you, so as not to terminate this inchoate comedy. At the same time I am here to help out Alcmena, poor innocent, denounced as disloyal by her lord, Amphitryon. For it would be sinful of me, if the storm I have brewed should descend on the head of guileless Alcmena. ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... no means presented to the reader as a favorable type of her nation—for, of course, every one knows there are plenty of sweet, unselfish, guileless American girls, who are absolutely incapable of such unblushing marriage-scheming as hers,—but what else could be expected from Marcia? Her grandfather, the navvy, had but recently become endowed with Pilgrim-Father Ancestry,—and ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... social code, that Mr. Mavick and Mrs. Mavick would simply laugh in his face at such a preposterous idea. And yet he knew that he had her sympathy in his ambition, that to a certain extent she was interested in him. The girl was too guileless to conceal that. And then suppose he should become famous—well, not exactly famous, but an author who was talked about, and becoming known, and said to be promising? And then he could fancy Mavick ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... It's part of my job, of course, huntin' Fritzes, but it's more than a job with him: it's a holy mission. That's why I'm a bit frightened of him really." The speaker searched the visitor's face with his guileless blue eyes. "I'm afraid of meeting him one day, unexpectedly, before I can establish our identity!" His quick smile flashed across his sunburnt ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... her worth to spy You need but gaze on Ellen's eye; Not Katrine in her mirror blue, Gives back the shaggy banks more true, Than every free-born glance confess'd The guileless movements of her breast; Whether joy danced in her dark eye, Or woe or pity claim'd a sigh, Or filial love was glowing there, Or meek devotion pour'd a prayer. Or hate of injury call'd forth The indignant spirit of the North. One only passion unreveal'd, With maiden pride, ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... Byron? Or the Pass of St. Bernard without remembering the faithful hounds of the great monastery? But the cat is a secret and alien creature, selfish and mysterious, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. See her purring on the hearth-rug in front of the fire, and she seems the picture of innocence and guileless content. All a blind, my dear fellow, all a blind. Wait till night comes. Then where is demure Mistress Puss? Is she at home keeping vigil with the good dog Tray? No, the house may be in blazes or ransacked by burglars for all she cares. She is out on the ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... apologised and protested, and showed himself willing to accept the assurance that Cicely was as simple and guileless as his own little maid; and Mr. Talbot, not wishing to be sent adrift with Cicely at that time of night, and certainly not to put such an affront on the good, if over-anxious father, was pacified, but the cordial ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... painful and abhorent to me; though subsequent experience has thrown, even that, far into the back ground. It was my initiatory lesson upon subjects which ought never to enter the imagination of girlhood: my introduction into a region which should never be approached by the guileless and the pure." (page 61) One or two individuals (Roman Catholic) soon formed a close intimacy with me, and discoursed with a freedom and plainness I had never, before encountered. My acquaintances, however, had been brought up in convents, or familiar with ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... Others held Enrica dishonored, that was clear. Was she dishonored? He was bound to her by every tie of honor. He loved her. She had a charm for him no other woman ever possessed, and she loved him. A women's eye, he told himself, had never deceived him. Yes, she loved him. Yet if Enrica were as guileless as she seemed, how could she conceal from him she had another lover—less loved perhaps than he—but still a lover? And this lover had refused to marry her? That was the stab. That every one in Lucca should know his future bride had been scouted by another ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... quickly than these two young things had ever known them to go, and the daily meetings, utterly guileless and free from flirtation, were the best part of the day; but there was a new note in Joan's laugh as she swung out of the wood and went ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... sign, and did not color; he remained quite calm, and assumed an air of guileless curiosity as he ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... He speaks not, he moves not; yet he draweth breath softly: I have seen men a-dying, and not thus did the end come. Surely God who made all forgets not love's rewarding, Forgets not the faithful, the guileless who fear not. Oh, might there be help yet, and some new life's beginning! —Lo, lighter the mist grows: there come sounds through its dulness, The lowing of kine, or the whoop of a shepherd, The bell-wether's tinkle, or clatter of horse-hoofs. A homestead is nigh us: ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... the engine when you hear its bell; Beware, O camel, when resounds the whistle's shrill, unholy swell; And, native of that guileless land, unused to modern travel's snare, Beware the fiend that peddles books—the awful peanut-boy beware. Else, trusting in their specious arts, you may have reason to condemn The traffic which the knavish ply ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... the shepherd sent to lead, Through pastures green, the Master's sheep? What guileless "Israelite indeed" The folded flock may ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... cried my unknown, "I love to hear thy innocent story and look on thy guileless face. There is, alas! so much of the contrary in this world, so much terror and crime and blood, that we who mingle with it are only too glad to forget it. Would that we could shake off our cares as men, and be boys, as thou ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I have done, and say no more; The little I have said may serve to show The guileless heart in silence may grieve o'er The wrongs to whose exposure it is slow: I leave you to your conscience as before, 'T will one day ask you why you used me so? God grant you feel not then the bitterest grief!- Antonia! ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... you are most innocent!" interrupted La Tour, impetuously; "yours was a heart too guileless to deceive, too firm in virtuous principle to be sullied, even by a union with the vicious and depraved. No, Adele, I have never cherished one feeling of resentment towards you; you, like myself, was the victim of that baseness, which invented a tale of falsehood to deceive you, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... though he never let on, caught the sly remark. Less guileless than he looked was Lacy, a little man, forever lighting his pipe. He struck another match now, and between puffs delivered a belated message. So many years senior was Lacy to his skipper that he used to talk to ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... the pressure of his honest hand, and in the wide realms of England no two people were happier than they were; for they were faithful, guileless, and true, honest and virtuous, and no shadow cast by a thought of future misfortune ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... known ye, could have wished you other than ye were, ye guileless, affectionate, honest, simple creatures?—simple both, in spite of all the learning of the one, all the prejudices, whims, irritabilities, and crotchets of the other. There you are, seated on the height of the old Roman camp, with a volume of the Stratagems of Polyaenus ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and wished to be able to refute idiocy, but she found herself continuing to read because she was interested in a way she had not expected. She began to see things. Once she made a remark which was prophetic. She made it in answer to a guileless observation concerning the gold mines with which Boston was supposed ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to Buckhorn to do some telegraphing he should have done Saturday night. My suspicions about his slyness, by the way, were quite unfounded. It was the guileless-eyed Terry who led those railway officials out to the spot where he'd already secretly tested for water and found signs of it. And Terry can't even understand why Dinky-Dunk is so toweringly angry ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... embrace Maud Gorka, and play tennis with that same friend so gayly, so innocently. I have seen that she could not bear the presence of Maitland in a room, and yet she asked the American to take her portrait.... Is she guileless?... Is she a hypocrite? Or is she tormented by doubt-divining, not divining-believing, not believing in-her mother? Is she underhand in any case, with her eyes the color of the sea? Has she the ambiguous mind at once of a Russian and an Italian?... This would be a solution of the problem, that ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... Madame Novikoff at a luncheon party in Mayfair. "I believe you know my great friend, Stead?" she said, by way of opening our conversation at the table. I told her I had known him for many years. "And what do you think of him?" she asked, with an air of innocent curiosity that sat well upon her guileless countenance. "Is he not wonderful? I think him, for my part, one of the greatest men alive. What do you think?" I replied, in a more restrained spirit, that I thought him extremely able, and that he had certainly ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... a heart-broken lover, despairin' an' wailin', Claim pity, your pity let fa' upon me. Like you I was blest with content, an' was cheerie,— My pipe wont to play to the cantiest glee, When smilin' an' kind was my Mary, sweet Mary, While Mary was guileless, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Kane held the well-founded idea that in time Jennie would yield to him physically, as she had already done spiritually. Just why he could not say. Something about her—a warm womanhood, a guileless expression of countenance—intimated a sympathy toward sex relationship which had nothing to do with hard, brutal immorality. She was the kind of a woman who was made for a man—one man. All her attitude toward sex was bound up with ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... unfortunate employer, who was always in bed and turned his face to the wall as soon as any one mentioned business to him,—the old mother was left alone to struggle with the disaster, with the limited, guileless knowledge of a village widow, who knows what a stamped paper is, and a signature, and who considers honor the most precious possession on earth. Her yellow cap appeared on every floor of the great mansion, overlooking the bills, introducing reforms among the servants, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the royalists seized this instrument as a means of discrediting the Republic, asserting that it had been organized through the influence of German-Jewish immigrants who were enriching themselves at the expense of the thrifty but guileless French. It was also asserted that Jews in the army were betraying its secrets to their German kindred. As the army was universally popular, this was an effective blow at the Jews. The denouement was the arrest of Captain Dreyfus, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... importance during the revolutionary movement of the eighteenth century, and found a strong exponent in Rousseau. 'Let us sweep away all conventions and institutions of man's making and get back to the simplicity of a primitive age.' The man of nature is guileless, and his natural instincts would preserve him in uncorrupted purity if they were not perverted by the artificial usages of society. So profoundly did this theory dominate the thoughts of men that its influence may be detected not only in the political fanaticism which found expression ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... has completely cleansed souls, how guileless and how pure they may be! Nor am I speaking of the Elect, such as I saw at La Trappe—merely of young novices, little priestlings whom I have known. They had eyes like clear glass, undimmed by the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... like clockwork toys, A lecturer papa employs To puff and praise Our modest ways And guileless character - Our well-known blush - our downcast eyes - Our famous look of mild surprise (Which competition still defies) - Our celebrated "Sir!!!" Then all the crowd take down our looks In pocket memorandum books. To diagnose, Our modest ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... few, without pretence To tricks of courtly eloquence, But full of pure and simple thought, And with a guileless feeling fraught, And said in accents which conferred Poetic charm ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... commodiously come to land with our boat; offering us also of their victuals to eat." Again, at another place, one of the sailors who had landed with a few articles designed as presents, found himself treated in the kindest manner. "These guileless people conducted him to the shore, and held him some time in a close embrace, with great love, clapping him fast about, in order to evince their regret at parting."—See Varrazano's Letter in Hakluyt, and New York ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... of his inner life from the first, should be kept closely united in the reader's mind with that other idea of his adhesion to "guileless nature" which was such a favorite theme with Father Hecker. No one could be more emphatic than he in asserting the necessity of the supernatural for the attainment of man's destiny. How could it be otherwise, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... have been so different a year To what has been; the summer's guileless play Not all a jest, comes back to me to-day In added sweetness, and provokes a tear. Strange pictures rise, pass on, and disappear. Drawn from your tender words of yesterday When, looking in my eyes in the old way You told me of your life, ...
— Poems • Sophia M. Almon
... nest of snow-white doves, What wealth could price for me your guileless loves? My earthly cherubim, my precious pearls, My pretty flock of loving little girls, My stores of happiness with least alloy, My treasuries of hope and trembling joy! Yon toothless darling, nestled soft and warm On a young yearning mother's cradling ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of his own, he was not a methodical enough man to travel with a gown and slippers in his valise), was labouring to recover his niece; Mistress Prissy, with her cloak huddled round her, was making magnanimous efforts to aid her uncle; while the poor little sufferer—guileless, affectionate Mistress Fiddy—lay pale, faint, and chill, with life flickering beneath her half-closed eyelids and in the gushes of her fitful breath. Master Rowland's trouble rendered him outwardly cold and hard, as it does some men; yet Mistress Fiddy's closing eyes turned ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... admiration, for he was a distinctly handsome man, and had an air and bearing far above good Jack Henderson, or any of her old admirers in her native village. After a moment's pause, while she nervously pinched the corners of the paper bag containing the Bath buns, she looked up with her clear guileless eyes ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... of Cranmer. Hook, Life of Cranmer.] at Cambridge was Thomas Cranmer, a learned and amiable divine with marked leanings towards the New Learning; who in his early graduate days had fallen under the influence of the teaching at Cambridge of Erasmus; in scholarship subtle and erudite, in affairs guileless and easily swayed; timorous by nature, but capable of outbreaks of audacity as timid persons often are: a gentle and lovable man, but lacking in that robust self-confidence needed by one who would take a resolutely independent line; a man intended to be a student and ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... turn pale at a word, a gesture, on her part. I have seen her embrace Maud Gorka, and play tennis with that same friend so gayly, so innocently. I have seen that she could not bear the presence of Maitland in a room, and yet she asked the American to take her portrait.... Is she guileless?.... Is she a hypocrite? Or is she tormented by doubt-divining, not divining-believing, not believing in-her mother? Is she underhand in any case, with her eyes the color of the sea? Has she the ambiguous mind at once of a Russian and an Italian?.... ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... papal licence as usual. What did these fellows come for? Was it to make confusion worse confounded? Alas! Alas! If we had only been as we were in the golden age, these friars would never have had a chance—not they! We too are not as the monks of old were; they lived the guileless life—austere, hard, self-denying, saintly! What are ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... stopped right there, but, as the demon of ill luck would have it, he had gone to a distant convention. So she sallied forth, brimming with eagerness to snatch this lovely brand from the burning, to turn this fair, motherless, guideless, possibly guileless girl to the contemplation of her dangers, to the knowledge of her peril, to banish Willett from the dove-cote,—wily hawk that he was,—and settle forthwith the fate of that young scamp Brannan. She did ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... a fat man, with beady and guileless eyes sunk in under an immense forehead, imagined that Udal's visit was a pretext for overhearing the words of rage and discomfiture that in that Papist centre might be let drop about the new Queen. For Udal, because Privy Seal had set him ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... his wise and guileless sway Win every recreant today, And sorrow's vast and holy wave Blend all our hearts around his grave! Let the faithful bondmen's tears, Let the traitor's craven fears, And the people's grief and pride, Plead against the parricide! Let us throng to pledge ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... operation with the bodkin, but I still rejoiced to call him master, and to know that though years had changed his looks, and sobered his childish exuberance, the same true heart still beat close to mine, and remained still as warm and guileless as when little Charlie Newcome, with me in his pocket, first put his ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... regarded and tortured as the accomplice of this desperate villain; jail or the execution ground awaited him. He plead with this one and with that. With sympathy they heard, but in stolid silence. The spy, who had accosted him, knew the old man well—holy, pure, somewhat simple and guileless of mind, he was object of reverence and gentle derision of the parishioners who sought his service in every trouble. The man spoke to the do[u]shin, explained the matter. The do[u]shin took him to the yoriki seated beneath ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... engraving of dinner-cards; Wetherall, with his perpetual nervous nod of acquiescence, his air of agreeing with people before he knew what they were saying; Jack Stepney, with his confident smile and anxious eyes, half way between the sheriff and an heiress; Gwen Van Osburgh, with all the guileless confidence of a young girl who has always been told that there is no one richer than ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... satisfy with paltry things the immensity of the relation between them. Moreover, when a man has accustomed himself to deal with great subjects, he becomes unamusable, unless he preserves in the depths of his heart a certain guileless simplicity and unconstraint which often make great geniuses such charming children; but the childhood of the heart is a rare human phenomenon among those whose mission it is to see all, know all, ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... woman-doctrine, naively unscrupulous, flitted through my mind. The salad of unprincipled notions she put into these girl-friends' heads! Good innocent creature, worthy wife, excellent mother (of the strict governess type), she was as guileless of consequences as any determinist philosopher ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... were round and guileless. "See any sea-serpents on your way over? I've heard there are ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... shot if I understand you! I never pretended to be guileless. Come: is it because I raised a laugh against your cousin ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... loves is separated from him by moral barriers. If he breaks through these he injures irreparably his own sense of what is due to his God and his fellow man. His instincts of charity, humor, and love rebound upon him. He is too Christian for England, and too guileless for life. This is a worthy theme, and yet if we judge this novel on the highest plane it fails miserably. For Mr. Hutchinson stacks the cards. He gives his hero his way and his salvation, after much suffering, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... prayed her to sit down. Baptiste stood in the doorway; his attitude betokened a reluctance to enter, and a desire to be quickly dismissed. After a long interval, the viscount, slowly raising his head, was again struck by the perturbed mien of the guileless old man, whose native simplicity, warmth, and ingenuousness would have melted any mask he attempted to assume. Maurice had almost abandoned all expectation that he would receive any information from the domestics; but he ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Miriam. Marvelling at the whiteness of her skin, they deem she is a witch or Moon Maiden come hither by enchantment. Yet must she on no account be hurt or disregarded, they say, since she is wholly guileless of evil spells, and under the special protection of Issa Ben Miriam, seeing that she ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... and piqued by these changes, and being a born flirt tried all her powers on David, veiled under guileless girlishness. She was very pretty, very charming, and at times most lovable and sweet when all that was best in her shallow little heart was touched. But it was evident to all that her early acquaintance with the hard ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... fascinating is rather a strong word? She's the most easy-going and engaging little person in the world, but fascinating . . .? Fascination suggests the effect of paint and fixed smiles and lights and spangles upon old men with bald heads, the effect of the wily serpent upon the guileless bird." ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... aside all smaller questions of the relative value of different earthly means to the attainment of a life hidden with Christ in God, Christians of all forms who are one in spirit have found help from "John Keble's Christian Year, and think of its guileless author with kindly affection. Within five- and-twenty years of its publication, a hundred thousand copies had been sold. The book is still diffused so widely, in editions of all forms, that it may yet go on, until the circle of the years shall be no ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... Emile's feelings in the matter. That is the only question that concerns us." With this she swept out of the room, leaving the major at first speechless with honest indignation, and then after the fashion of all guileless natures, a little uneasy and suspicious of his own guilelessness. For a day or two after, he found himself, not without a sensation of meanness, watching Rose when in Emile's presence, but he could distinguish nothing more than the frank satisfaction she showed equally ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... tiger roars and ended with the nightmare screams of a child. I have never been so frightened in my life. And there was a snake song, a soft, wavy, piano, pianissimo effect, all malignant stealth and horror, and running through it were the guileless and insistently hungry twitterings of baby birds in the nest. But there were comical pieces, too, in which ludicrous adventures befell unsophisticated monkeys; and there was a whole series of spring-fever songs—some of them just rotten and nervous, and some of ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... the rose began to blaw, An' the harebell an' the violet adorn'd ilk bonnie shaw; 'Twas then my love cam courtin' me, and wan my youthfu' heart, An' mony a tear it cost my love ere he could frae me part; But though he 's in a foreign land far, far across the sea, I ken my Jamie's guileless heart ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... courteous, and generally liked by men, to whom he was genial and good-natured. Though he was not himself aware of the fact, he was very dear to his father, who in his own silent way almost admired and certainly liked the openness and guileless freedom of a character which was very opposite to his own. The father, though he had never said a word to flatter the son, did in truth give his offspring credit for greater talent than he possessed, and, even when appearing to scorn them, would ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... straggled a line of gnarled willows, marking the wanderings of some guileless brook long since swallowed up and lost in the mazes of the great city like many another young life fresh from green fields and sunny hill-sides. This desert of weeds and sun-dried, yellow grass, this kraal for scraggly trees and broken benches, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the future conduct of both young people. It had not been satisfactory from Forsythe's point of view; that is, he had not been so easily able to disabuse the father's mind of suspicion, nor to establish his own guileless character as he had hoped; and some of the remarks Rogers made led Forsythe to think that the father understood just how unpleasant it might become for him if his brother-in-law ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... But these men have now died out, or become respectable citizens. The colonials may be said to resemble the Americans only in one point, in their aptitude for business. Some people have come out here in the expectation of "taking in" the guileless colonist, but the biter has been bit. I have heard of one manufacturer of pills who soon found ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... she answered. Then she ran away, for to arrange such a meeting seemed the most desirable thing in the world to her at that moment. To Sabina she went as fast as her legs could take her, and appreciating that he had sent this guileless messenger to ensure a meeting without preliminaries and without prejudice, Sabina hid her feelings and specified a ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... young; you do not know what complications may arise," replied Mrs. Challoner, with the gloomy forethought of middle age. She thought she knew the world better than they, but in reality she was almost as guileless and ignorant as her daughters. "Until you begin, you do not know the difficulties that will beset you," she ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... trance, That in all day-light thoughts, and shaded dreams, Haunts the deep soul for ever. As she went, Grace lapt its mantle o'er her, like the gold On fleecy-bosomed clouds in sunny skies. O Spirit! she was beautiful! a thing Guileless and pure, as though her youth had past With Heaven's own children in the light of God, Thence come to make a paradise of earth, And breathe the transports of transcendant bliss Like floral exhalations through ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... would watch him with great eyes. What meant this change? the guileless philosopher would ask himself, and wonder if he had judged his brother too harshly all through life; or if it was his plain speaking in their last quarrel which had put things in their true light to him, and awakened some innate ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... of thy parent dear, Serious infant worth a fear: In thy unfaltering visage well Picturing forth the son of TELL, When on his forehead, firm and good, Motionless mark, the apple stood; Guileless traitor, rebel mild, Convict unconscious, culprit child! Gates that close with iron roar Have been to thee thy nursery door; Chains that chink in cheerless cells Have been thy rattles and thy bells; Walls contrived for giant ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... a guileless look, A still word,—strings of sand! And yet they made my wild, wild heart Fly down to ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... we were ardently attached. Our greatest favourite, if we loved one more than the other, was our sister Nina, for she was the youngest. She was the most fascinating and lovely, though we confessed that if she had a fault, her disposition was too yielding and confiding—guileless herself, she could not credit that guile existed in others. Hers was one of those characters which, from its very innocence, would be held more sacred in the eyes of an upright, honourable man, though it exposes ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... dreams with a vision of happiness, he called up the guileless face of Mademoiselle Angelique Bontems, the companion of his childhood. Until he came to boyhood his father and mother had made no objection to his intimacy with their neighbor's pretty little daughter; but when, during his brief holiday ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... confidence in Walter had been his preservative from misanthropy; and when vexed at the recollection of his own imprudent frankness and folly, in provoking the resentment of powerful foes, he soothed his galled spirit by considering, that the guileless simplicity of his nature, which had raised those foes, had also secured him a faithful friend. That bright creation of his fancy disappeared, a chaos of duplicity, dark contrivance, and injustice remained: Walter proved false, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... as one of his victims. Her beauty was so striking, of such an exquisitely tender type, that no woman actually rivalled her as queen of beauty. Distinguished by blond hair, dark blue eyes, a most sympathetic voice, and a complexion of rare whiteness mingled with red, she was guileless, animated, gentle, modest, graceful, unaffected, and ingenuous; although slightly lame, she was, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... great capacity for affection—she was one of those women who have to love, and be loved. Her guileless face, her appealing eyes, seemed to beseech the protection of a masculine shield in a world which has no mercy for the weak. She was born to be guided, to be led. It was my fear of her simple trustful disposition ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... locks, appear instead. What though to fashion's garish eye they seem Untutored and ungainly? still to me, Than folly's foppish head-gear, lovelier far Are they, because bespeaking mental toil, Labor assiduous, through the golden days (Golden if so improved) of guileless youth, Unwearied mining in the precious stores Of classic lore—and better, nobler still, In God's own holy writ. And scatter here And there a thread of grey, to mark the grief That prematurely checked the bounding ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... and my daughter, so that the evil one, who had long gone about our village like a roaring lion, and who now threatened to devour me, might not prevail against us, but might be forced to depart from me and from my child as from our guileless Saviour in the wilderness. But to this none answered a word; and I heard right well, as we drove away, that many spat out after us, and one said (my child thought it was Berow her voice), "We would far sooner lay fire under thy coats ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... council of three was sitting in debate. The subject under discussion was that other note which George had written and so ill-advisedly entrusted to one whom he had taken for a guileless gardener. The council consisted of Lord Marshmoreton, looking rather shamefaced, his son Percy looking swollen and serious, and Lady Caroline Byng, ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... whom the Worcester lawyers of this time like best to remember was Peter C. Bacon. He was the Dominie Sampson of the Worcester Bar. I suppose he was the most learned man we ever had in Worcester, and probably, in Massachusetts. He was simple and guileless as a child; of a most inflexible honesty, devoted to the interest of his clients, and an enthusiastic lover of the science of the law. When, in rare cases, he thoroughly believed in the righteousness of his case, he was irresistible. But in general he was full ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... such a naive trusting person (HARRY laughs—CLAIRE gives him a surprised look, continues simply). Such a guileless soul that I thought flying would do something to a man. But it didn't take us out. We just ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... most seductive and ingratiating charm, a cup was handed to my wife. What to do she did not for the moment know. "Could such a gift be guileless?" she asked herself. "No." And yet the Wenuses looked friendly. Finally her martial spirit prevailed and my wife repulsed the cup, adjuring the rank and file to do the same. But in vain. Every member of my wife's wing of that fainting army greedily grasped a cup. Alas! what could they know of the ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... in this world than the guileless, hot-headed, intemperate, open admiration of a junior. Even a woman in her blindest devotion does not fall into the gait of the man she adores, tilt her bonnet to the angle at which he wears his hat, or interlard her speech with his pet oaths. And Charlie ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... believed in the Tennessee land—Jane Clemens's favorite cousin, James Lampton, the courtliest, gentlest, most prodigal optimist of all that guileless race. To James Lampton the land always had "millions in it"—everything had. He made stupendous fortunes daily, in new ways. The bare mention of the Tennessee land sent him off into figures that ended with the purchase of estates in England adjoining those of the Durham Lamptons, whom he always ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a road in the direction of the river, I met a guileless man who gave me some information of the name and locality of a ferryman, who had formerly acted in that capacity, though now no one was allowed to cross. Carefully noting all the facts I could draw out of this man, I strolled on and soon fell in with another, ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... again, born of water and of the Spirit: in other words, he must be brought out from his impurity and wickedness into a new and Divine life of holiness, awakened to a conscious experience of purity, truth, and love, the great prime elements in the reign of God. He must be guileless and lowly. "Whosoever will not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... feelings which gave her poignant misery still clung to her. She despised herself for her weakness; but she loved Leon. The sentiment was too deeply implanted in her bosom to be eradicated; too strong to be resisted. It was the first love of a young and guileless heart, and had ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... of her discreet eyes, and marked their stolen glance of quick inspection upon the short, dark locks and strong young form still bent over the last strokes of the writing. But when he straightened up, carefully shut the book, and fixed his brown eyes upon hers in guileless expectation of instructions, he saw nothing to indicate that he was not the entire stranger ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... whiter than the starry jasmine that climbed the balustrade,—a woman, a Frenchwoman born in Russia, who said as I approached her, "I had almost given you up." She had seen me as I left the copse. With what perfection do all women, even the most guileless, understand the arrangement of a scenic effect? The movements of the servants, who were preparing to serve breakfast, showed me that the meal had been delayed until after the arrival of the diligence. She had not ventured to come ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac |
