"Naturalness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... missed, he stopped, listening, but without acute fear, knowing it improbable that they could dream of seeking in the grounds, and as a matter of fact their minds were a mere paralysis of holy wonder; so presently he had the little body in a two-foot grave, arranged surface and dead leaves to naturalness, leapt ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... steadfast contemplation of the throng, a psychic wave overflowed and lifted all the great assembly. This was spectacle, this was drama! The oldest of all the first principles stirred under the stimulus, and with savage naturalness sucked in the ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... type, and breaks fresh ground in fiction.... All the leading characters in the book—Almayer, his wife, his daughter, and Dain, the daughter's native lover—are well drawn, and the parting between father and daughter has a pathetic naturalness about it, unspoiled by straining after effect. There are, too, some admirably graphic passages in the book. The approach of a monsoon is most effectively described.... The name of Mr. Joseph Conrad is new to us, but it ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... Respectability stalked abroad when they were afoot. The whole Square wriggled uneasily as though God's eye were peculiarly upon it. The meals in the parlour became solemn collations, at which shone the best silver and the finest diaper, but from which gaiety and naturalness seemed to be banished. (I say 'seemed' because it cannot be doubted that Aunt Harriet was natural, and there were moments when she possibly considered herself to be practising gaiety—a gaiety more desolating than her severity.) The younger generation was extinguished, pressed ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... was not upon Cora that his chief bitterness turned. Cora had always been the constant, open enemy: warfare between them was a regular condition of life; and unconsciously, and without "thinking it out," he recognized the naturalness of her seizing upon the deadliest weapon against him that came to her hand. There was nothing unexpected in that: no, the treachery, to his mind, lay in the act of Laura, that non-combatant, who had furnished the natural and habitual enemy with this scourge. At all times, and with or without ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... intelligent octogenarian had no need of indulgence. Her Memoirs possess irresistible attraction, grace, exquisite naturalness, and we are convinced that when they are published—as they must be sooner or later—they will ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... but round its sides tangled beds of syringa in full flower, red and black currants nearly ripe, pretty wild roses and lilac almost looked homely, while white and yellow marguerites shadowed dear little wild strawberries, and a general air of naturalness prevailed. We had reached the very centre of our enchanted castle! How often had this courtyard been the scene of revelry, of tournaments and joustings, at which lovely woman had smiled and distributed her favours ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... please. But he noticed only one among them, Felicia, on her feet in the centre of a group of men, discussing some question as though she were in her studio, and watching the duke come towards her, while tranquilly taking her sherbet. She greeted him with perfect naturalness. Those near had discreetly retired to a little distance. There seemed to exist between them, however, notwithstanding what de Gery had overheard with regard to their presumed relations, nothing more than a quite ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... them"—he is speaking of figures and ornament in language—"from translations, because it is impossible to reproduce them with the same grace with which the original author used them. For each language has, I know not what peculiarity of its own; and if you force yourself to express the naturalness (le naif) of this, in another language, observing the law of translation, which is, not to expatiate beyond the limits of the author himself; your words will be constrained, cold and ungraceful." Then he fixes the test of all good translation:—"To ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... more and more disgusted with the preaching that I hear!... Why cannot a man act himself, be himself, and think for himself? It seems to me that naturalness alone is power; that a borrowed word is weaker than our own weakness, however small we may be. If I reach a girl's heart or head, I know I must reach it through my own, and not from bigger hearts ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... volumes which the year has brought to our table this one stands out facile princeps—a gem of the first water, bearing upon every one of its pages the signet mark of genius.... All is told with such simplicity and perfect naturalness that the dream appears to be a solid reality. It is indeed a Little Pilgrim's ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... under the yoke of bondage, or that, having been once enslaved, it should even now have hardly attained to perfect freedom? Then there are preachers whose great concern is to maintain "the dignity of the pulpit," and this concern is allowed to crush out their naturalness and brightness and humour—every quality that is human and pleasant and alluring. It is on record that even so great and wise a preacher as Dr. Dale of Birmingham had to confess that his own mighty ministry had suffered because of a certain stateliness of composition and delivery which had militated ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... heels") add subtly to our belief that what Defoe is telling us is true. Notice also that such expressions ("the least capful of wind," "half dead with the water I took in," "ready to burst with holding my breath") without being pretentious may yet be forceful. Notice finally the naturalness and lift of the sinewy idioms ("I fetched another run," "I had no clothes to shift me," "I had like to have suffered a second shipwreck," "It wanted but a little that all ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... three hundred words. One hundred are often better. The short composition gives an opportunity for the study of accuracy of expression. What details to include; in what order to arrange them that they produce the best effect, both of vividness and naturalness; and the influence of the point of view and the purpose of the author on the unity of description should be kept constantly present in the exercises. Careful attention should be paid to choice of words, for on right words depends in a large degree the vividness of a description. Right words ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... Shrewsbury, and immortalise every step of it by some fond enigmatical conceit. I would swear that the very milestones had ears, and that Harmer-hill stooped with all its pines, to listen to a poet, as he passed! I remember but one other topic of discourse in this walk. He mentioned Paley, praised the naturalness and clearness of his style, but condemned his sentiments, thought him a mere time-serving casuist, and said that "the fact of his work on Moral and Political Philosophy being made a text-book in our Universities was a disgrace to the national character." We parted at the six-mile stone; and ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... constant juxtaposition of concrete and metaphysical language; swift alternations between the most intensely anthropomorphic, the most subtly philosophical, ways of apprehending man's communion with the Divine. The need for this alternation, and its entire naturalness for the mind which employs it, is rooted in his concept, or vision, of the Nature of God; and unless we make some attempt to grasp this, we shall not go far in our understanding ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... language during the past quarter of a century is in nothing more apparent than in the average quality of modern dialogue. Tolerably well-written dialogue is nowadays the rule rather than the exception. Thirty years ago, the idea that it was possible to combine naturalness with vivacity and vigour had scarcely dawned upon the playwright's mind. He passed and repassed from stilted pathos to strained and verbal wit (often mere punning); and when a reformer like T.W. Robertson tried to come a little nearer to the truth of life, he was apt to fall ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... down temporarily in the Jersey woods. Between 8 and 9 A.M. a full concert of birds, from different quarters, in keeping with the fresh scent, the peace, the naturalness all around me. I am lately noticing the russet-back, size of the robin or a trifle less, light breast and shoulders, with irregular dark stripes—tail long—sits hunch'd up by the hour these days, top of a tall bush, or some tree, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... people. This is not the modern notion of navet, for nowadays we call navet an uncritical attitude toward one's environment, and its importance in our profession is, perhaps, due to the fact that—pardon me—many of us practice it. Naturalness, openness of heart, lovable simplicity, openness of mind, and whatever else the efflorescence of navet may be called, are fascinating qualities in children and girls, but they do not become the criminal judge. It is nave honestly ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... presence of the learned doctors. There he manifested some of his powers of discernment, interior and natural philosophy, unsophistocated love, simplicity of expression, kindness of disposition, and universal sympathy and benovolence. These he displayed with all the naturalness and spontaneousness resulting from the promptings of an uncorrupted and purely-organized ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... the world appears to us? Now for my rebellion. I would carve as we are made; as we dispose ourselves; aye, I would display a man's soul in his face and write his history on his brow. I would people Egypt with a host of beauty, grace and naturalness—" ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... painful, were not the harmony of art so rare, the interlacing of those many figures in a simple round so exquisite. The noblest tranquillity and the most passionate emotion are here fused in a manner of adorable naturalness. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... but this they will not do so long as they adhere to the notion that criticism belongs of right to the professional musician, and will eventually be handed over to him. As for the critic, he may recognize the naturalness and reasonableness of a final resort for judgment to the factor for whose sake art is (i.e., the public), but he is not bound to admit its unfailing righteousness. Upon him, so he be worthy of his office, weighs the duty of first determining ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... literary merit of Fritz Reuter (1810-1874), the great regenerator and rejuvenator of Low German as a literary language. His lasting merit in the field of the village story is that by his exclusive use of dialect he threw an effective safeguard around the naturalness of the emotional life of his characters, and through this ingenious device will for all time to come serve as a model to writers in this particular domain. For dialectic utterance does not admit of any super-exaltation of sentiment; at any rate, it helps to detect such at first glance. But there ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... doctor, I want to congratulate you on your son's last book. You must have helped him to the material for so truthful a picture of American manners in the days when we were young. I fear we have not improved much since then. There was a simplicity, a naturalness in society fifty years ago, that one looks in vain for now. There was, it seems to me, much less regard paid to money, and less of morbid social ambition. Don't you think so, ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... (2) As to the naturalness of egoism. Both the professional moralist and the man in the street may hesitate to admit that a man should neglect his own interests, and may find it natural that he should cultivate them assiduously. But it is only the exceptional man who maintains that he should ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... explanation. The circumstances of my life were such that never before had I been brought into contact with a similar temperament or a similar practice. When they were thus suddenly presented to me they seemed endowed with a most attractive simplicity, with a naturalness, with what I must call a wholesomeness; the objections I felt to be overstrained, unreal, morbid. Varvilliers' feet were on firm ground; on what shaking uncertain bog of mingled impulses, emotions, fancies, and delusions might not those who blamed ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... seducing my susceptible friend here. Like many of us, he has been captivated by her naturalness, her naivete, her clear good eyes,—that look of nature that is always art! May I relate the idyl of your tragic passion, dear Dubois, ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... upon a wonderful career of conquest, which lasted nine years. The story of what he accomplished during the first seven is given in his "Commentaries," as they are called, which are still read in schools, on account of the incomparable simplicity, naturalness, and purity of the style in which they are written, as well as because they seem to give truthful accounts of the events they describe. Sixty years before this time the Romans had possessed themselves of a ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... of her, the little luring devil of her, irresistible as they were, were no more irresistible than the naturalness, the truth ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... find the journey tiring?" he asked in a voice that surprised him by its naturalness; and she answered that, on the contrary, she had seldom travelled with ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... Father Lasse had been right. The greatest miracles were in himself—Pelle, who resembled hundreds of millions of other workmen, and had never yet had more than just enough for his food. Man was really the most wonderful of all. Was he not himself, in all his commonplace naturalness, like a luminous spark, sprung from the huge anvil of divine thought? He could send out his inquiring thought to the uttermost borders of space, and back to the dawn of time. And this all-embracing power seemed to have proceeded ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... lips became set, and her eyes—she looked—" She hesitated for a word, and dropped to the homely, "She looked as if she would bite with annoyance that he should be here. The expression was gone in a moment; she spoke with an ease and naturalness that was astonishing, even disgusting; but it had been there. I ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... architect, belonging to a completely different world, struggling not to be overawed by an elegance to which they were unaccustomed, and unable to sustain a large share in the general conversation. But this difficult conversation Anna directed with her usual tact and naturalness, and indeed she did so with actual enjoyment, as Darya Alexandrovna observed. The conversation began about the row Tushkevitch and Veslovsky had taken alone together in the boat, and Tushkevitch began describing the last boat races ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... the art of painting. His Madonna of the Rocks, and Virgin on the Lap of Saint Anne, in the Louvre, exhibit the very perfection of pyramidal composition. It is however in his masterpiece, The Last Supper, that he combines geometrical symmetry and precision with perfect naturalness and freedom in the grouping of individually interesting and dramatic figures. Michael Angelo, Andrea del Sarto, and the great Venetians, in whose work the art of painting may be said to have culminated, recognized and obeyed those mathematical laws of composition known to their immediate ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... with a situation like that, a man becomes reconciled, justifies easily the part he is playing, and comes to understand, in a universe where logic counts for so little and sentiment and the impulse of the heart for so much, the inevitableness and naturalness of war. Suddenly the world is up in arms. All mankind takes sides. The same faith that made him surrender himself to the impulses of normal living and of love, forces him now to make himself the instrument through which a greater force works out its inscrutable ends through the impulses ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... with perfect instances of it. De Quincey and Coleridge are two of the best illustrations whom I can recall, while certain analytical character-sifters in modern novels seem the farthest remote from such genial naturalness. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... with a purpose, and, as she forgot it, she carried it out. Never before had Claude understood completely why she had gained her position in London and Paris, realized fully her fascination. Her delightful naturalness, her pleasure, her almost boyish gaiety, her simplicity, her humor took him captive for the moment. She explained that she had left her companions and stolen ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... ago a man came at his own request to see me. I hardly knew him; but I could see at once that he was in the grip of some hard conflict, which withered his natural bloom. I do not know how all came to be revealed; but in a little while he was speaking with simple frankness and naturalness of all his troubles, and they were many. What was the most touching thing of all was that he spoke as if he were quite alone in his experience, isolated and shut off from his kind, in a peculiar horror of ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... baroness, you will never again be as you were, flinging all body and soul into the fire of passion, and yearning for motherhood! Such times can never be the same. We burn, even desire, and consume our dreams. Child of aristocracy, you found in this South Sea eyot the freedom your atavism, or shall I say, naturalness, craved, and you drank your cup to the lees and thought it good. I shall not be the one to point a finger at you, nor even to think too vivid the scarlet of my toilet set. That flamboyant outside my window, once yours, is as garish, and yet lacks no consonance ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... public appearance. Even the stoical appearance of the people is passing away under the influence of the new order of society, with its new, dominant ideas. Education is bringing the nation into a large and throbbing life. Naturalness is taking the place of forced repression. A sense of the essential equality of man is springing up, especially among the young men, and is helping to create a new atmosphere in this land, where, for centuries, ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... sentimentalizes his Camille, suggests the mood of the whole narrative: a large-minded, large-hearted comprehension of humankind, an insistence on spiritual tests, yet with the will to tell the truth and present impartially the darkest shadows. It is because George Eliot's people are compounded with beautiful naturalness of good and bad—not hopelessly bad with Hetty, nor hopelessly good with Adam—that we understand them and love them. Here is an element of her effectiveness. Even her Dinah walks with her feet firmly planted upon the earth, though her mystic vision ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... valuable is it as a reminder of the essential constructive task of which the two primary generalizations of Socialism we have so far been developing are but the outward and visible forms. There is no untutored naturalness in Socialism, no uneducated blind force on our side. Socialism is made of struggling Good Will, made out of a conflict of wills. I have tried to let it become apparent that while I do firmly believe not only in the splendour and nobility of the Socialist dream but in its ultimate practicality, ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... think what a deep current of melancholy was under your Mother's Humour. Not 'under,' neither: for it came up as naturally to the surface as her Humour. My mother always said that one great charm in her was, her Naturalness. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... moment's pause, only to find, too late, that all warmth and naturalness had left her with the effort. Fluent dream-practice is only too apt to make one uncomfortably crude ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... day has become a greater favorite with boys than "Harry Castlemon," every book by him is sure to meet with hearty reception by young readers generally. His naturalness and vivacity leads his readers from page to page with breathless interest, and when one volume is finished the fascinated reader, like Oliver Twist, ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... all right. You seem...." She checked herself, with the reproach upon her tongue, reflecting that, after all, she was most fond of Wade because of his naturalness. Maxwell Frayne, for instance, was without a peer in spinning graceful phrases; but he spun ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... that my comparison between the old and the new was merely to prove that a goodly number of our grandmothers had more blood in their veins, far more humor and wit, and certainly a greater amount of naturalness, kind-heartedness and simplicity than the majority of our emancipated professional women who fill our colleges, halls of learning, and various offices. This does not mean a wish to return to the past, nor does it condemn woman to her old sphere, the ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... tools. Helen's looks at the moment were unabashed: she was trying to remember what Zebedee had said, both for its own sake and to gauge its effect on Notya to whose memory it was clear enough, and its naturalness, the slight and unmistakable change in his voice as he spoke to Helen, hurt her so much with their reminder of what she had missed that pain made ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... Moon Eng Muoi hath made offers of lendings, bestowing upon other Chinese girls gifts of hairpins and bracelets and hath been of so great meekness, unlike her disposition of naturalness, that all Chinese girls say, "Unto Eng Muoi hath come the Goddess of Mercy." Now all know it is the God of the foreigner that ...
— Seven Maids of Far Cathay • Bing Ding, Ed.
... is to be "natural." To be unnatural rather is their object. Hence the costume, hence the mask, hence the movement and gesture. And how effective such "unnaturalness" can be in evoking natural passion only those will understand who have realised how ineffective for that purpose is our "naturalness" when we are concerned with Sophocles or Shakspere. The Japanese have in their No dance a great treasure. For out of it they might, if they have the genius, develop a modern poetic drama. How thankful would hundreds of young ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... mother afterwards in Altavilla and exchanged a remark with her," he gravely returned with assumed naturalness. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... parsonage at Sesenheim, a village near Strassburg. Now Herder's teaching bore fruit in an outburst of real song (1, 2 and 4). The influence of the Volkslied is clearly discernible in the unaffected naturalness, spontaneity, and simplicity of these lyrics. Thus das Heidenroeslein, which symbolizes the tragic close of the sweet idyll of Sesenheim, is to all intents and ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... most beautiful, lovely, and charming creature I have ever known and admired. I love you as a girl whose innocence, naturalness, and goodness, fill my heart with ecstasy and profound emotion; by whose side I should like to spend my whole life, and united with whom I should wish to seek for a lonely island of happiness to dream there—remote from the world, its prejudices and follies—a sweet, blissful love-life, ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... ape till he seems it. With such naturalness can a being endowed with an immortal spirit enter into that of a monkey. But where's your tail? In the pantomime, Marzetti, no hypocrite in his monkery, prides ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... people of a class and tradition far removed from his own. Sensitive to an extreme and quick to resent a slight, he was at the same time finely responsive to kindness, and his conduct was governed by a tact and frank naturalness that are among the not least surprising of his powers. In spite of the fervor and floridness of some of his expressions of gratitude for favors from his noble friends, Burns was no snob; and it was characteristic of him to give up a visit to the Duchess of ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... almost see him in his "brown coat and velvet breeches," lifting his "cocked hat" to an angel, or keeping an unsavory spirit at arm's length with that "gold-headed cane" which his London host describes as his inseparable companion in walking. His graphic descriptions have always an air of naturalness and probability; yet there is a minuteness of detail at times almost bordering on the ludicrous. In his Memorable Relations he manifests nothing of the imagination of Milton, overlooking the closed gates of paradise, or following the "pained fiend" in his flight through chaos; ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... without regret;" said Walter, with the sanguineness of his years. Aram looked upon him wistfully; the bright eye, the healthy cheek, and vigorous frame of the youth, suited with his desire to seek the conflict of his kind, and gave a naturalness to his ambition, which was not without interest, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... progress. It seems incredible that woman, in spite of the tremendous pressure that Nature will put upon her, may revert weakly to type. The most powerful of all the forces working for Nature and against feminism will be the quite brutal and obscene naturalness of war, and the gross familiarity of civilization with it for so long a period. There is reversion to type with a vengeance! The ablest of the male inheritors of the accumulated wisdom and experiences and civilizing influences of the ages were ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Apothecary, speaks with a hungry voice, walks with a tottering step, moves with a helpless gait, which plainly shows that he never studied the part—he must have starved for it. Where will this confounded naturalness end? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... striking down through, of having the lid of one's smaller consciousness lifted off. In the long run his inspiration can be had or not as he wills. He knows that it is the supreme reasonableness in him, the primeval, underlying naturalness in him, rising to its rights. What he feels when he is inspired is that the larger laws, the laws above the other laws, have taken hold of him. He knows that the one law of inspiration is that a man shall have the freedom of himself. Most problems and worries are based ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... "but it seems to me there is some good stuff in it, Pen, my boy. There's a certain greenness and freshness in it which I like somehow. The bloom disappears off the face of poetry after you begin to shave. You can't get up that naturalness and artless rosy tint in after days. Your cheeks are pale, and have got faded by exposure to evening parties, and you are obliged to take curling-irons, and macassar, and the deuce-knows-what to your whiskers; they curl ambrosially, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... laughter, intent upon making a favorable impression. But he saw only one, Felicia, who stood in the centre of a group of men, holding forth as if in her own studio, and tranquilly sipping a sherbet as she watched the duke's approach. She welcomed him with perfect naturalness. Those who stood by discreetly withdrew. But, in spite of what de Gery had overheard concerning their alleged relations, there seemed to be only a good-fellowship entirely of the mind between them, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... all other book-children are cold creations of literature; she alone is the real thing. All the quaintness of children, its originality, its tenderness and its teasing, its infinite uncommon drollery, the serious earnestness of its fun, the fun of its seriousness, the naturalness of its plays, and the delicious oddity of its progress, all these united for dear Little Prudy to embody ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... herself felt the delight of existence. She says of Joy "It is the great uplifter of men, the great upholder. For life to be fruitful, life must be felt as a blessing." In all she wrote we feel the rare charm of perfect ease and naturalness, combined with the cadences of beauty. We never feel that she is "posing." And yet the author of the bitter attack "Lui et elle," accused her of continual "posing." Edonard de Musset wrote with an envenomed pen, (but we must ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... time did not justify such naturalization. The appropriate occasion for the transfer was postponed until after American political independence had been secured; and when occasion did not arise, the naturalness of the transfer was perverted and obscured ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... essays of the writings of Jane Austen, George Sand, Charlotte Bronte and Thackeray, show the soundness of George Eliot's critical judgment. She fully appreciated Jane Austen's artistic skill, as she did George Sand's impassioned love of liberty and naturalness. She also saw how tame are Miss Austen's scenes, how humanly imperfect are Thackeray's characters. Her own work is wanting in Jane Austen's artistic skill and finish, but there is far more of originality and character in her books, more of thought and purpose. Miss Austen tells her ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... for some one to admire, some one whose ideals and personality were congenial, whatever their position or occupation. I have also, on the whole, always preferred comfort to show, simple to elaborate living. This I trace to the simple comfort and naturalness of my old home. ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... evening meal was announced, and, to maintain appearances, she went out and joined the family; the naturalness of her part was very difficult to sustain. Gerhardt observed her subdued condition without guessing the depth of emotion which it covered. Bass was too much interested in his own affairs to pay particular attention ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... place. She was one of the glories of Paris, for she became the fashion outside the theater. For the first time the great classic plays were given, not in the monotonous singsong which had become a sort of theatrical convention, but with all the fire and naturalness of life. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... revealed by science. So far all was hopeful. But it soon became apparent, that each poet's practical success in carrying out the theory was, paradoxically enough, in inverse proportion to his belief in it; that those who like Wordsworth, Southey, and Keats, talked most about naturalness and freedom, and most openly reprobated the school of Pope, were, after all, least natural and least free; that the balance of those excellences inclined much more to those who, like Campbell, Rogers, Crabbe, and Moore, troubled their heads ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... bare arms, smiling and twisting about, their satin-shod feet resting upon gray velvet footstools, seemed to him, as they occupied the slanting floor, to move in a cloud of dust, and to be robbed of all naturalness ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... contrary, people of uncommonly honest bearing and frank speech. Their offences evidently impose small burden on their conscience, and they have the air of those who have never known what it is to have the Furies on one's track. Rosalind was struck with the charming naturalness and gaiety of every one we met in our first ramble on that delicious and never-to-be-forgotten morning when we arrived in Arden. There was neither assumption nor diffidence; there was rather an ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... personifies the Deity with the greatest ease and naturalness. The primitive man interprets the whole world about him by the analogy of his own activity. He sees in all the phenomena of nature the presence of personal beings,—beings who act and suffer and enjoy and love and hate as ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... sincereness with which Wordsworth feels his subject, and also from the profoundly sincere and natural character of his subject itself. He can and will treat such a subject with nothing but the most plain, first hand, almost austere naturalness. His expression may often be called bald, as, for instance, in the poem of Resolution and Independence; but it is bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness which is full of grandeur. . . Wherever we meet with the successful balance, in Wordsworth, of profound ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... a running sketch of the chance guests, Graham heard scarce half she said, so occupied was he in trying to sense his way to an understanding of her. Naturalness was her keynote, was his first judgment. In not many moments he had decided that her key-note was joy. But he was dissatisfied with both conclusions, and knew he had not put his finger on her. And then it came to him—pride. That was it! It was in her eye, in ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... women would hurry the courses and then withdraw to a side of the veranda, to sit sadly by themselves. If a quieter man, or some young fellow from Camberton, slipped away from the dining-room and joined them, they would talk gayly, simulating ease and naturalness. ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... literary form, nor does it appear to have been the aim of any of our masters. Indeed, it may be well in passing to point out to pupils how fatal to success in writing is the attempt to imitate the style of any man, De Quincey included; it is always in order to emphasize the naturalness and spontaneity of the "grand style" wherever it is found. The teacher should not inculcate a blind admiration of all that De Quincey has said or done; there is opportunity, even in this brief essay, to exercise the pupil in applying the commonplace tests of criticism, although it should ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... it is in itself—in its very nature against the growth of the body and soul of man after a certain time—is nevertheless the chief of those urging forces which shall bring us to simplicity and naturalness at the last. Manhood is built quite as much by learning to avoid evil as by cultivating the aspiration ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... suggest the naturalness, the humanness, as well as the God-likeness of the work of atonement that is going on all over the world, as it climbs and swings slowly up out of the darkness and into the light of life. Jesus the great atoning sacrifice? Yes, but thousands ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... dances, and in none of them did he fail to be pleasing and intelligible, not even where, as especially in his sacred music, he made use—a sparing use—of contrapuntal devices, imitations, and fugal treatment. The naturalness, fluency, effectiveness, and practicableness which distinguish his writing for voices and instruments show that he possessed a thorough knowledge of their nature and capability. It was, therefore, not an empty rhetorical phrase to speak of him initiating his ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... He also wrote histories of England, of Rome, of Animated Nature. All this was done as professional, nay, almost as hack work; but always in a very pleasant, lively, and readable style. Ease, grace, charm, naturalness, pleasant rhythm, purity of diction— these were the chief characteristics of his writings. "Almost to all things could he turn his hand"— poem, essay, play, story, history, natural science. Even when satirical, he was good-natured; and his Retaliation is the friendliest and ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... of the present day has become a greater favorite with boys than "Harry Castlemon;" every book by him is sure to meet with hearty reception by young readers generally. His naturalness and vivacity lead his readers from page to page with breathless interest, and when one volume is finished the fascinated reader, like Oliver Twist, asks ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... interpretation of the words. The forms of style employed in this opera according to circumstances are so varied, that now we seem to hear Gluck, now Traetta, now Sacchini, now Mozart, now Handel; for the gravity, the learning, the naturalness, the suavity of their conceptions, live and blossom again in 'Zelmira.' The transitions are learned, and inspired more by considerations of poetry and sense than by caprice and a mania for innovation. The vocal parts, always natural, never ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... quite sincerely profess. Whether we know it or not, we are in such matters the children of some educational or philosophical system, which, preached at our ancestors long ago, has come at last to envelop us with the apparent naturalness of the air we breathe. It is a spiritual liberation of the first order, to envisage such an atmosphere as what it truly is, only a system of ethics effectively inculcated, and to compare the principles we live by with those we thought we lived by. Hearn was contriving illumination for the Japanese ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... deaths to the supernatural influence of e rem chaugala, or to jurn-win, two spirits of the jungle and the sea. The death is avenged by the nearest relation of the deceased, who shoots arrows at the invisible enemy. The negroes of Central Africa entertain precisely similar ideas about the non-naturalness of death. Mr. Duff Macdonald, in Africana, writes: 'Every man who dies what we call a natural death is really killed by witches.' It is a far cry from the Blantyre Mission in Africa to the Eskimo of the frozen North; but so uniform is human nature ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... first by the unaffected naturalness of his words, was unfeignedly relieved at finding him restored to the normal. Usually his supply of light-hearted badinage was unceasing. He knew exactly when and how to season it with more serious statements. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... a European as childish and monstrous, but one must admire many praiseworthy traits in the play itself, for instance the naturalness with which the players often declaim monologues lasting for a quarter or half an hour. The extravagances which here shock us are perhaps on the whole not more absurd than the scenes of the opera of to-day, or the buskins, masks, and peculiar dresses, which the Greeks ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... days would write to his friend Langton, in Lincolnshire: "I shall delight to hear the ocean roar, or see the stars twinkle, in the company of men to whom Nature does not spread her volumes or utter her voice in vain." And let us observe, that the naturalness of his feeling keeps him to ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... of the plump, despairing Tommy he had liked, however. There had been a fine naturalness about it and a fine practicalness in her prompt order to the elderly nurse that the richly-caparisoned donkey should be sent to her. This had at once made it clear to the donor that his gift was too valuable to be ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... colossal things; everything pleased him this morning. The speed of the isvos, the bickering humor of the osvotchicks, the elegance of the women, the fine presences of the officers and their easy naturalness under their uniforms, so opposed to the wooden posturing of the Berlin military men whom he had noticed at the "Tilleuls" and in the Friederichstrasse between two trains. Everything enchanted him—the ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... find. Every figure is individual and true to life, with his or her special virtues and foibles, so that any grown person who picks up the volume will find it a world in miniature and will watch eagerly for the special characteristics of each child to reappear. Naturalness, generosity, and forbearance are shown throughout not by precept but by example. The story is at once entertaining, healthy, and, in the best sense of a word often misused, sweet. Insipid books do no one any good, but few readers of whatever age they may be will fail to enjoy ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... purple shadow of royalty and nestle down among the brighter purple of the heather; she loved to go off on wild incognito expeditions and be addressed by the simple peasants without her awesome titles; even loved to be at times like the peasants in simplicity and naturalness, to feel with her "guid mon," like a younger Mistress Anderson with her "jo John." She seemed to enjoy all weathers at Balmoral. I am told that she used to delight in walking in the rain and wind and going out protected only by a thick water-proof, the hood ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... years after his death under the title of "Country Rhymes for Children," there is no question. The internal evidence confirms the external. The book is thoroughly in Bunyan's vein, and in its homely naturalness of imagery recalls the similitudes of the "Interpreter's House," especially those expounded to Christiana and her boys. As in that "house of imagery" things of the most common sort, the sweeping of a room, the burning of a fire, the ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... misunderstanding," Katharine interposed. "Nothing at all." She moved a few paces across the room, as if she intended to leave them. Her preoccupied naturalness was in strange contrast to her father's pomposity and to William's military rigidity. He had not once raised his eyes. Katharine's glance, on the other hand, ranged past the two gentlemen, along the books, over the tables, towards the door. She was paying the least possible ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... silent meal, and little, after all, was eaten, though brave attempts at cheerfulness and naturalness were made by all three. Bertram, especially, talked, and tried to make sure that the shadow on Billy's face was at least not the one his own conduct ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... be exceedingly companionable and entirely without self-consciousness and egotism. He is a ready and entertaining talker and tells a story as well as he writes one. He has, too, a keen sense of the humorous. This naturalness and this sense of humor may be noticed readily in the story, "A Reward of Merit" selected from ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... the distant horizon, with full knowledge of the situation, to be content with "what is here and now"; and herein is the essence of classical feeling. But by us of the present moment, certainly—by us for whom the Greek spirit, with its engaging naturalness, simple, chastened, debonair, tryphes, habrotetos, khlides, khariton, himerou, pothou pater, is itself the Sangrail of an endless pilgrimage, Coleridge, with his passion for the absolute, for something fixed where all is moving, his faintness, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... flattering words, as ye know, nor a cloak for covetousness."—1 Thessalonians ii. 2. Hundreds of such undesigned coincidences may be found in the New Testament, confirming the veracity of the several historians and letter writers, and giving that impression of the naturalness and truth of the story, which can neither be described nor disputed. The reader who desires to prosecute this interesting branch of the evidences of Christianity will find an ample collection of these coincidences ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... There is little naturalness in the extravagant passion of the second story, but until sensationalism cloyed the public palate, realism was an unnecessary labor. By placing the events in some romantic country like Spain, Portugal, Italy, ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... him more vital energy than his predecessors, is more athletic in his struggles with the unlucky wights he visits, and can coerce mortals to do his will by the laying on of hands as well as by the look or word. He speaks with more emphasis and authority, as well as with more human naturalness, than the earlier ghosts. He has not only all the force he possessed in life, but in many instances has an access of power, which makes man a poor protagonist for him. Algernon Blackwood's spirits of evil, for example, have a more awful potentiality than ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... joined with the ancient. A knowledge of the modern Greek language appeared to him the natural completion of the study of old Greek; and it was his acquaintance with the popular songs of modern as well as of ancient Hellas that gave the color which imparted such a vivid expression of truth and naturalness to his own Greek songs. It was thus that the "Griechen Lieder" arose, which appeared in separate but rapid numbers, and found great favor with the people. But even these "Griechen Lieder" caused anxiety to the paternal ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... With a perfect naturalness she raised a warning palm against him, and at that instant the quartette party began their performance. She had not even turned an eye in his direction, and he was a little piqued. The hand which had motioned him ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... on her set lips the unalterability of her determination. It was on his tongue to suggest that it was easy to compromise, but there was that about her which checked him. Above all things there was a naturalness about her, an absence of artificiality, the emanation of a strong and vigorous womanliness. The very freedom of her speech was purity itself. The dark places of life had been bared to her and she did not conceal the fact or minimise it but she spoke of it as something outside of herself, ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... mentioned but there is a real stimulus toward all that is bad, assuring to the criminal, to the sinner, that he will be pardoned, that he will be free from punishment, that however badly he may act and however sinful he may be, without the least effort, with the greatest ease and naturalness, he will obtain what he wishes and will triumph on earth as well as ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... the Eperquerie landing, and the tumbling about in a small boat until the steamer came, did not greatly appeal to them. Moreover, Lady Elspeth's clear eyes had noticed the signs of their clouding, in spite of their efforts after naturalness, for to experienced eyes there is nothing so unnatural as the attempt to be natural. If Mrs. Pixley noticed nothing it was probably because her faculties had not yet fully recovered from the shock to which they had been subjected. If she noticed she said nothing, having no desire, ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... whom I speak I cut out at once. I told Mr. Gray never to put them into costume again. Why! sticks and stones have more grace of movement and naturalness than those two poor creatures—positively!" cried the moving picture director, ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... probably derived his information. It contains also lists of the coincidences between the Acts and St. Paul's and St. Peter's Epistles, of their points of contact with the contemporary history of the outer world, and of the incidents which show the naturalness and veracity of the narrative. The introduction closes with an excellent chronological table from ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... the charm and delight with which he had made the acquaintance of the English "prose-idyll," and took it for granted that it was a real picture of English life. Despite all the machinery of Mr. Jenkinson's schemes, who could doubt it? Again and again there are recurrent strokes of such vividness and naturalness that we yield altogether to the necromancer. Look at this perfect picture—of human emotion and outside nature—put in in a few sentences. The old clergyman, after being in search of his daughter, has found her, and is ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... admirably relieved against each other, and Nancy herself as irresistible as she is natural. To be sure, she is a wonderful child, but then she manages to make you believe she was a real one. Indeed, reality and naturalness are two of the charms of a story that both reaches the heart and engages the mind, and which can scarcely fail to make for itself a large audience. A great deal of delightful talk and interesting incidents are ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... the story, the occasional stiffness of the style. It is the style of the refined scholar, perhaps also of the bookman and the too conscious critic. Occasionally it lacks spontaneity, directness and naturalness. It might unbend more and forget ceremony. But it is picturesque, forcible, clear, and bears us along with its swing ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... determined to try. So as she walked towards the fretful mare which a negro was with difficulty restraining, I stepped forward, doffed my hat, and with "Permit me, Miss Salome," I bent, and hollowed my hand for the reception of her foot. With the naturalness and grace of a queen she placed the sole upon my palm, and I lifted her to the spring as though she had been a feather, and she sank into the saddle and grasped the reins, which she proceeded to draw taut with no uncertain hold. With my cheeks burning slightly—I was not used to ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... nature; the Dutch, on the contrary, to literal truth and a minute exactness in the detail, as I may say, of nature modified by accident. The attention to these petty peculiarities is the very cause of this naturalness so much admired in the Dutch pictures, which, if we suppose it to be a beauty, is certainly of a lower order, which ought to give place to a beauty of a superior kind, since one cannot be obtained but by ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... characteristic of the art of the Abbey Players is naturalness. It is not that their personalities happen to coincide with certain types of Irish character, but that they know so well the types of the folk-plays, and even the characters who are not types that appear in the folk-plays, that they are able to portray them to the life. The Abbey Players ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... better, by reason of his extreme naturalness, but his unbecoming conduct at the time of the Fouquet trial proved painful to his Majesty, who considered ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... undertake, grandfather." She dropped on her knees beside the bed, and clasped his hand with a frankness and naturalness quite strange and wonderful to him. He raised her fingers to his lips, and kissed ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... be born. nacimiento birth. nacion f. nation. nacional national. nada nothing. nadie nobody, anybody. naranja orange. nariz f. nose, nostril. narrar to narrate. naturaleza nature. naturalidad f. naturalness. naufragio shipwreck, wreck. naufrago wrecked. nave f. ship, nave. nayade naiad, water nymph. nazareno Nazarene. necesario necessary. necesidad f. necessity. necesitar to need, want. necio foolish. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... a fine art for those who possess the talent of never being pressed for time. A peasant had brought his horse to the bank; the river, to both peasant and Percheron, was evidently considered as a personal possession—as are all rivers to those who live near them. There was a naturalness in all the life abroad in the fields that gave this Normandy highroad an incomparable charm. An Arcadian calm, a certain patriarchal simplicity reigned beneath the trees. Children trudged to the river bank with pails and pitchers to be filled; women, with rakes and scythes in hand, crept ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... woman; she sobbed unrestrainedly; then, recovering herself, said shamefacedly, "After all, it isn't poetry." The reason, I suppose, why she thought it could not be poetry was because it was so much nearer life than "art." The simplicity of the scene; the naturalness of the dialogue; the homeliness of the old leech-gatherer; these all seemed to be outside the realm of the heroic, the elevated, the sublime,—the particular business of poetry, as she mistakenly thought. The ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... theologian was bent to setting this majestic figure apart from mankind to secure Him sovereignty over us by separation from us. How different is that from the simple pictures drawn of Him, from the naturalness of His life, from the love which He had for homes and human friendships, from the life which earned the illuminating rebuke of being called ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... I write, of giving any idea of the impressiveness of the old man; now that I have written down his talk, it seems abrupt and even strained. It was neither. The perfect naturalness and tranquillity of it all, the fatherly smile, the little gestures of his frail hand, interpreted and filled up the gaps, till I felt as though I had known him all my life, and that he was to me as a dear father, who saw my needs, and even loved me ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... them habitually. The former are apt to forget themselves occasionally, or they overact their part, or if they succeed in sustaining a perfect elegance of deportment that is really pleasing as an effort of art, they always want the grace of naturalness and simplicity which belongs to the Manners of those who have made courtesy and refinement their own by loving them. It is only when we act as we love to act, that our Manners are truly our own. If we cultivate the external forms of politeness from an indirect motive, that ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... character of composition, as it were a principle of reflection, by which lines close in upon or recede from each other. We have, in a former paper in this Magazine, treated of this principle—to dwell on it now would take us far from our purpose. As to the ability of all persons to judge of the naturalness of a picture, the translator doubts the correctness of the affirmative opinion of his author. He remarks, that "it requires considerable practice and experience to enable one to judge how much art can do; what is the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various |
