"Naivete" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... experience smiled in spite of himself at Burt's frank enthusiasm and naivete. The whole affair was so different from anything that he had ever looked forward to! Instead of a few formalities between himself and a wealthy suitor whom his wife, and therefore all the world, would approve of, here he was listening to a farmer's son, with the consciousness that he must yield, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... me with your nonsense. Mamma! . . . I'm sick and tired of listening to it! I like Miss Mela because she isn't a scarecrow like those others," saucily prattled Sophie and smiled with childish naivete at Niedzielska, who ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... feeling flattered, when the emperor alights from his carriage on the public promenade at Vienna and pays her some pretty compliments, "just as if he had been at one of our little Wednesday suppers." There is a charm in the simple naivete with which she tells her friends how cordially Maria Theresa receives her at Schonbrunn, and she does not forget to add that the empress said she had the most beautiful complexion in the world. She repeats quite naturally, and with a slight ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... the greatest naivete, so that her absolute faith in herself, her genius, and her mission, did not astonish him. The words seemed to flow naturally from ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... What extraordinary moral naivete! How could they appreciate that after the firing squad had done its work and the body of the woman had been given hasty burial ...
— The Case of Edith Cavell - A Study of the Rights of Non-Combatants • James M. Beck
... naivete that would be unusual in an unpaid attache of Legation, this sudden leap from his own to his opponent's ground, after two years and a half of dogged resistance, might have roused Palmerston to inhuman scorn, but instead of derision, well earned by Russell's old attacks on himself, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... be ascertained without discovering his engine-turned repeater, and hearing its fascinating music: then the fanciful chain, the precious stones in golden robes, and last of all, the family pride described in true heraldic taste and naivete. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... we heard much of naivete—it was the fashion among the schools and the lesser individuals to use this term in describing the work of anyone who sought to distinguish himself by eccentricity of means. It was often the term applied to bizarrerie—it was fashionable ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... filled the house with newspapers, and she never looked at them, never had the idea of looking at them, unless occasionally at the 'Signal' for an account of a wedding or a bazaar. In which case she would glance at the world for an instant with mild naivete, shocked by the horrible things that were apparently going on there, and in five minutes would forget all about it again. Here the whole of England, Ireland, and Scotland was at its front doors that night waiting for ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... of advertisements, and particularly of that one which announced "the 3-dollar hat with the 5-dollar look," all very European! It was pleasant to be convinced in such large letters that even shrewd America is not exempt from that universal human naivete which is ready to believe that in some magic emporium a philanthropist is always waiting to give five dollars' worth of goods in exchange ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... made his face show a boyish enthusiasm ... almost a naivete. "Maybe Mr. Panek has already told you about me. I'm looking for a chance to make a flock of credits ... and I'm not too particular ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... her expressed contempt, one by one fell away. Vivian and the Baroness were left alone, and conversed much together. The lady displayed, on every subject, engaging ignorance, and requested information on obvious topics with artless naivete Vivian was convinced that her ignorance was not affected, and equally sure that it could not arise from imbecility of intellect; for while she surprised him by her crude questions, and her want of acquaintance with all those ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... returned the iron-founder, with grave naivete. "And, yes, I guess she meant it. But that reminds me. She knew I was looking for you and she gave me a note—let me see, I've got it here somewhere; oh, yes, here it is—gilt ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... Naivete.—Naivete is the language of pure genius and of discerning simplicity. It is the most simple picture of a refined and ingenious idea; a masterpiece of art in him in whom it is ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... phenomena, and final interpretation of them as a whole are, have been, and always will be the marks of the enduring in all literature, whether poetry or prose." [Footnote: Lewis Worthington Smith, "The New Naivete," Atlantic, April, 1916.] To quote another critic: "A rock, a star, a lyre, a cataract, do not, except incidentally and indirectly, owe their command of our sympathies to the bare power of evoking reactions in a series of ocular envelopes or auditory ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... but it comes out with delicious naivete in the working classes. Now, educated people like to read of scenes that are familiar to them, though I grant you that the picture must be idealised if you're to appeal to more than one in a thousand. The working classes detest anything ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... clear and soft, with a kind of hectic colour—forehead remarkably good: her hair is of the dark gloss, curl, and colour of Lady J * *'s: her figure is light and pretty, and she is a famous songstress—scientifically so; her natural voice (in conversation, I mean) is very sweet; and the naivete of the Venetian dialect is always pleasing in the mouth of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... young lady had the grace of one born to the instrument. As she took the sticks in her hands and struck a chord upon the outstretched strings, her face assumed a new expression; so far, we must confess, there had been much "naivete" in it, now she felt at ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... was no possibility of concealing the date of our first knowledge of each other. And then she adverted, with a blush, to the extreme recency of this date. To wed immediately would be improper—would be indecorous—would be outre. All this she said with a charming air of naivete which enraptured while it grieved and convinced me. She went even so far as to accuse me, laughingly, of rashness—of imprudence. She bade me remember that I really even know not who she was—what ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... account to the end thereof, aught but sheer, open, monstrous, undisguised humbug? I said, before, that you should have a history of these people by Dickens or Theodore Hook, but there is little need of professed wags;—do not the men write their own tale with an admirable Sancho-like gravity and naivete, which one could not desire improved? How good is that touch of sly indignation about the LITTLE CATAFALQUES! how rich the contrast presented by the economy of the Catholics to the splendid disregard ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... vulgarly ignorant of all foreign languages, but is frank enough to criticize, the Italians' use of their own tongue. He says they spell the name of their great painter "Vinci, but pronounce it Vinchy" —and then adds with a naivete possible only to helpless ignorance, "foreigners always spell better than they pronounce." In another place he commits the bald absurdity of putting the phrase "tare an ouns" into an Italian's mouth. In Rome he unhesitatingly believes the legend that St. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... polished and refined intelligence, found the nil admirari attitude of "Mark Twain" no more enlightening nor suggestive than the stoicism of the North American Indian. This mirthful and mock-innocent naivete, so alien to the delicate and subtle spirit of the French, found instant response in the heart of the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic peoples. The English and the Germans, no less than the Americans, rejoiced in this gay fellow with his combination of appealing ignorance and but ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... only on our own defense but on our vital foreign assistance program. Your recent passage of the Foreign Assistance Act sent a signal to the world that America will not shrink from making the investments necessary for both peace and security. Our foreign policy must be rooted in realism, not naivete or self-delusion. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... most amazing and amusing figure on the great stage of politics. The outlines of his character are familiar to everybody, for his whole life is spent in the full glare of publicity. We know his impulsiveness, his naivete, his heady fits of wild passion, his spacious curiosity and quick grasp of detail, his portentous lack of humour and delicacy, his childish vanity and domineering will. A character so romantic, spontaneous, and robust must always be a favourite with the British people, who, were his lunacies less ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... was put out to nurse and our older boy, Casimir, who was seven, began, for lack of his mother's care, to come and go as he pleased. The assurance and cheek of street boys began to develop in him. He startled me by his knowledge and his naivete. But at the same time he was a natural innocent—a little dreamer. In the matters of street life that arise among children he had, as a rule, the worst of it. He was a born believer of all that might be told him. Such children develop into artists or ne'er-do-wells. It was too soon to worry ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... followers; for the big men in Russian literature are all Realists. Romanticism is as foreign to the spirit of Russian Realism as it is to French Classicism. What is peculiarly Slavonic about Pushkin is his simplicity, his naivete. Though affected by foreign models, he was close to the soil. This is shown particularly in his prose tales, and it is here that his title as Founder of Russian Literature is most clearly demonstrated. ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... contribution cannot be summarized so briefly; its scattered chronicle must be sought in the minutes of trustees' meetings, where it modestly evades the public eye, in the academic formalities of presidents' reports and the journalistic naivete of college periodicals; in the diaries of early graduates; in newspaper clippings and magazine "write-ups"; in historical sketches to commemorate the decennial or the quarter-century; and from the lips of the pioneers,—teacher and student. For, in ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... scene is told with a charming naivete. No wonder that The Nights has been made the basis of a national theatre ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... see her mother in robes of sin irritated Kirkwood. For Phil to call her an amusing person was sheer childish naivete. Phil was the victim of an infatuation which he could understand now that his wife began to live again in his imagination. He had read in books that the maternal instinct will assert itself after long separations, where mother and child are without other clue than ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... eternal friends, or rather friendships—since she existed in abstractu as far as he was concerned. For she did not find him at all physically moving. Physically he was not there: he was oddly an absentee. But his naivete roused the serpent's tooth of her ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... fourteen-year-old school-boy. Thrown upon the world, his mind found itself fit for the world, and embraced it all. Nothing of that mind was lost in the infinite. Himself a poet, he knew only the poetry of action. He limited to the earth his powerful dream of life. In his terrible and touching naivete he believed that a man could be great, and neither time nor misfortune made him lose that idea. His youth, or rather his sublime adolescence, lasted as long as he lived, because life never brought him a real maturity. Such is the abnormal ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... figure very bad. The only pretty feature in her face was her eyes, which were indeed wonderful, being large and black, and instinct with such an extremely pleasing expression of mingled gravity and naivete that she was bound to attract attention. In everything she was simple and natural, so that, whereas Katenka always looked as though she were trying to be like some one else, Lubotshka looked people straight in the face, ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... countess had succeeded in rising to her seat without awakening her keeper, she made a gesture of childlike joy which revealed the touching naivete of her nature. But the half-formed smile on her burning lips was quickly suppressed; a thought came to darken that pure brow, and her long blue eyes resumed their sad expression. She gave a sigh and again laid her hands, not without precaution, on the fatal conjugal pillow. Then—as ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... I always said? Beware of wimple folks. They are the deep ones. Their naivete is nothing but a disguise. Here we have a case in point. This boy, from all accounts, is the pure type of the callous murderer. He stutters. He makes uncalled-for gurglings of a bestial nature. He has pendulous ears, and certain other stigmata of degeneration which are familiar to all conversant ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... pulled off my cap, and the colonel laughed as he lifted his wide straw hat. I guessed he laughed at a certain naivete in the girl's way of ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... being there, I stopped them and bade them tune up, and at the same time seizing the maid Wheedle, away we flew. We danced, we whirled, we twirled. Ale upon this! My head was lost. "Why don't it last for ever?" says I. "I wish it did," says she. The naivete enraptured me. "Oooo!" I cried, hugging her, and then, you know, there was no course open to a man of honour but to offer marriage and make a lady of her. I proposed: she accepted me, and here I am, eternally ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... conscientious defenders, chosen from Republican jurists, two of whom were then in San Luis to do what they might before Juarez. The other two spent eloquence and acumen on the court's seven tawny brows. Their first point came from Maximilian himself. It was complacent, this point. The naivete of it ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... we find already outlined with surprising definiteness, and at the same time with an almost childlike naivete, a careless, mirth-provoking nonchalance, in the Carmina Vagorum. They remind us of the Italian lyrics which Lorenzo de' Medici and Poliziano wrote for the Florentine populace; and though in form and artistic intention ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... the extreme naivete of Leblanc seems to have been mitigated by duplicity. He went on with the general pacification of the world as if the Balkan submission was made in absolute good faith, and he announced the disbandment ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... dropped in now and then, and chatted with her. Her sweet face and her naivete won Phoebe's heart; and one day, as happiness is apt to be communicative, she let out to her, in reply to a feeler or two as to whether she was quite alone, that she was engaged to be married to a gentleman. "But he is not rich, ma'am," said Phoebe plaintively; ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... own suspicions, was to be forearmed, he was in reality unconscious of the degree to which he had proved susceptible to the lady's blandishments, if indeed she had employed blandishments and had not merely given him the evidence of a good heart upon which his youth and naivete had made a ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... features of the Austrians, and of Grillparzer as one of them? Grillparzer said these features are an open heart and a single mind, good sense and reliable intuition, frankness, naivete, generosity, modest contentment with being while others are up and doing. The Austrians are of mixed blood, and partake of South European characteristics less prominent among the purer blooded Teutons of the north. They have life on easier ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... what the "free agreement" of the bourgeois entrepreneur is, and we can only admire the "absolute" naivete of the man who sees in it the precursor of communism. It is exactly this Anarchic "arrangement" that must be got rid of in order that the producers may cease to be the slaves of ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... have an account," I said, smiling at her naivete. "Where are the letters accompanying the subscriptions in money or in kind? Pardon, a little practical advice, Natalie: it's absolutely necessary to keep those letters. You ought to number each letter and make a special note of it in a special ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... purpose that you might be prepared," Pyotr Stepanovitch said hurriedly, with surprising naivete, running up to the table, and instantly staring at the corner of the letter, which peeped out from ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Semiramis has been 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, as an ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... his Mission prosper, and he praised with enthusiasm the waters, the bananas, and the dairy-produce of the district. The sight of our instruments, our books, and our dried plants, drew from him a sarcastic smile; and he acknowledged, with the naivete peculiar to the inhabitants of those countries, that of all the enjoyments of life, without excepting sleep, none was comparable to the pleasure of eating good beef (carne de vaca): thus does sensuality obtain an ascendancy, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... woman is intriguing in its very naivete, and now as she stood before me, slim and graceful in her well-cut walking costume, a quick flicker of red flaming in her cheeks and her eyes alight with that sweet tantalizing look in which expectation and a hot pride were mingled, I wondered and felt sick at heart. Desirable ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... ubiquity. His principal and most favourite post was of course by the side of the ladies, who, sensible of his extreme attention to their safety, began to converse with him in almost the tone of familiar friendship, and appeared to take great pleasure in the naivete, yet shrewdness, of his conversation. Yet Quentin did not suffer the fascination of this intercourse to interfere with the vigilant ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... will be one of great interest, firstly to all those who visit the theatre, secondly to readers of Shakspeare, and thirdly to all who relish originality and naivete of character, such as Mr. Hackett displays abundantly, from the rising of the curtain even to the going down of the same, in his book. There are no men who live so much within their profession as actors, or are so earnest in their faith ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to expect. He was always cheerful and animated, often, indeed, boisterous in his mirth; entered with spirit into convivial society; contributed largely to its enjoyments by solidity of information, and the naivete and originality of his character; talked often without premeditation, and laughed loudly ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... on the astounding ignorance of the world, and especially of the world of industry, which is betrayed with so much naivete by this socialist of the Christian pulpit. He knows so little of the commonest facts of history that he looks upon steel as a ready-made product of nature, and all the mills of the steel trust as merely a means of monopolising knives, bridges, rails, ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... and sentiment; and though it is the "Prioress" who tells a story against the Jews which passes the legend of Hugh of Lincoln, yet it would be very hazardous to seek any irony in this legend of bigotry. In general, much of that naivete which to modern readers seems Chaucer's most obvious literary quality must be ascribed to the times in which he lived and wrote. This quality is in truth by no means that which most deeply impresses itself upon the observation of any one able ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... refuse hearty sympathy. And how masterly is his treatment on all occasions! How he turns about and rounds off every subject in his own mind before he expresses it! And then, when all is matured, what wit, spirit, irony, and persiflage, and what heartiness, naivete, and grace, are unfolded at every step! His songs have every year made millions of joyous men; they always flow glibly from the tongue, even with the working-classes, whilst they are so far elevated above the level of the commonplace, that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... calamity. It forms no bar to society, and few people are so cruel as to blame it, though all discuss it. And it is here that the harshness of American and English society toward the erring woman (harshness which is not injustice, but half- justice only) contrasts visibly to our advantage over the bad naivete and lenity of the Italians. The carefully secluded Italian girl is accustomed to hear of things and speak of things which, with us, parents strive in every way to keep from their daughters' knowledge; and while her sense of delicacy is thus early blunted, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... speech lacks the sophisticated technique of older literatures. But, perhaps because of this very limitation, it is much more alert to the variety and life of the human substance with which it deals. It does not take the whole of life for granted and it often reveals the fresh naivete of childhood in its discovery of life. When its sophistication is complete, it is the sophistication of English rather than of American literature, and is derivative rather than original, for the most part, in its criticism of life. I would specifically except, however, from this criticism the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "but when I saw him chasing that meagre apparition, I said to Bennington, 'I have found out the real Peter Schlemil!' 'Who?'(asked his grave lordship, with serious naivete) 'Mr. Aberton,'said I; 'don't you see him running after his shadow?' But the pride of the lean thing is so amusing! He is fifteenth cousin to the duke, and so his favourite exordium is, 'Whenever I succeed to the titles of my ancestors.'It was but the other day, that he heard two or three ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... medieval naivete and superstition, in assuming a freer attitude towards theological authority, and in developing a new conception of the value of individual personality, men looked to the guidance of Greek and Roman thinkers, and called up the spirit of the ancient world to exorcise the ghosts of the dark ages. ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... it was not on that account any the less entertaining. Two or three berths away a brawny Scot of monster dimensions, who was convalescent after an acute attack of rheumatism, would every night before getting into bed say, with a certain naivete, and without any sense of proportion, that he was going to his "little nest." And yet people accuse Scotsmen of a lack of imagination. On either side of me lay a typhoid patient—each delirious. The one on my right ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... erotic novels was rather pink about the gills. He wondered how much of the girl's naivete was natural and how much pose. On the whole, judging from her antecedents and environment, he decided that it was largely pose, but thought none the less of her for that. The artificial always interested ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... heard at Mrs. Thomas's dressmaking shop. Those formal phrases, the very flower of small-town proprieties, and the flat commonplaces, nearly all hypocritical in their origin, became very funny, very engaging, when they were uttered in Lena's soft voice, with her caressing intonation and arch naivete. Nothing could be more diverting than to hear Lena, who was almost as candid as Nature, call a leg a 'limb' or a house ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... and held him upright, with the seeming merriment in my eyes which I did not allow to stray from his. He thought I was mad, then he thought he was—then I recalled him to the dangers and exigencies of the moment by saying, with forced naivete: ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... with which Moore gives himself up to be manipulated by Lord Byron, the naivete with which he shows all the process, let us a little into the secret of the marvellous powers of charming and blinding which ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... following extract from a letter to the London and China Express, of 5th July 1875, part of which we have ventured to reproduce in italics, surpasses, both in fiction and naivete, anything it has ever been our lot to read on either side of this much-vexed question:—"The fact is, that this tremendous evil is utterly beyond the control of politicians, or even philanthropists. Nothing but the divine power of Christian ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... like circumstances at court, would have made you famous," I said, pleased alike with her naivete and her wisdom. ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... Sheila, with refreshing naivete. 'How does it feel? does it even in the slightest degree affect ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... bearded man of forty, with tall and muscular frame, may have only an infantile grade of intelligence, following the conversation while it is kept on the plane of an eight-year-old intellect, but incapable of grasping any real thought, and staring with the open-mouthed naivete ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... the piano-solo pieces a muddle of confused difficulties and childish melodies. You call it naivete. I call it puerility. I never saw a man that was less capable of developing a theme than Tchaikovsky. Compare him to Rubinstein and you insult that great master. Yet Rubinstein is neglected for ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... Particularly when he realized that this girl could break the arm of any spaceport thug in the galaxy. She was a strange mixture of naivete and strength, unlike anyone he had ever met before. Once again he realized that he had to visit the planet that produced people like ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... Robbia soul,—through its purity and limpid candour, through its shining, sweetly wholesome homeliness, down to the crystal sincerity burning recessed in the shrine. It is the fashion to say of Angelico da Fiesole that his was a naivete which amounted to genius: a thin phrase, which may nevertheless pass to qualify the inspired miniaturist. The religiosity of the Della Robbia, while no less naive, is really far other. It is not Gothic ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... you know them! But it is that, Mr. Howard, which has interested me in your favor—you have so much naivete, and ignorance of the moral turpitude of the old world, that I feel convinced you never could be guilty of such an ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... which would cause anguish to his esthetic sense. The law under which his striving proceeds is the fundamental one of balance, and the critical artist obeys it whether he be the maker of vignettes for a newspaper, or the painter who declares for color only, or the man who tries hard to produce naivete by discarding composition. The test to which the sensitive eye subjects every picture from whatsoever creed or camp it comes is balance or equipoise, judgment being rendered without thought of the law. After the picture has ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... not seem to grasp the significance of the enterprise. She saw nothing beyond the even gravel road-bed, the uninteresting trestles and bridges and cuts and fills, the like of which she had seen many times before, and her comment was childlike. O'Neil, however, appeared to find her naivete ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... "and what has happened to me? The woman on whose bosom my child rested is the most abandoned of creatures. I loved her just as if she belonged to another world—a world of innocence. And now I am satisfied that she was the go-between, and that her naivete was a mere mask concealing an unparalleled hypocrite. I imagined that truth and purity still dwelt in the simple rustic world—but everything is perverted and corrupt. The world of simplicity is base; aye, far worse ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... sound of her voice, her frank ingenuousness, and her unmistakable youth. In the habit of being crushed by Miss Avondale's unrelenting superiority, he found himself apparently growing up beside this tall English girl, who had the naivete of a child. After a few commonplaces she suddenly turned her gray ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... scarce, trunk elongated and cylindrical. Limbs thick and plump, tapering from the root to the extremities. Good fat layers over the entire body. Reproductive organs those of a little boy. Infantile mental state: light-heartedness, naivete, timidity, easily evoked tears and laughter, promptly aroused but fugitive wrath: excessive ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... narrative. Particularly cynical is the closing sentence: "'And here's Mother,' finished poor Auntie with a sigh of relief." The ordinary fairy stories told to children are bits of actual Teutonic mythology, and should be related with a grave, absolute simplicity and naivete. However, as a psychological study of the typical childish auditor, the sketch as a whole is highly meritorious. We are inclined to wonder at the possible meaning of the strange word "alright," which appears ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... in the Northman's face. He spoke to his companion, who made answer; then he replied with the naivete ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... they hated the Germans and thought that they must make war on the Germans, and they were a cruel people, guilty of many atrocities. So the Fatherland had fought to conquer the enemies who planned her destruction. A peculiar, childlike naivete accompanied his intelligence, trained to run in certain grooves, which is the product of the German type of popular education; that trust in his superiors which comes from a diligent and efficient paternalism. He knew nothing of the atrocities which Germans ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... and distraite).—"The squire—yes, very true—quite proper." (Then, looking up, and with naivete) "Can you believe me? I never thought of the squire. And he is such an odd man, and has so many English prejudices, that really—dear me, how vexatious that it should never once have occurred to me that Mr. Hazeldean had a voice in the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... or so interesting as that of Godwin or even Morley. In no life that I have read are the mental characteristics of our poet so ably drawn,—"his practical good sense," his love of books, his still deeper love of nature, his naivete, the readiness of his description, the brightness of his imagery, the easy flow of his diction, the vividness with which he describes character; his inventiveness, his readiness of illustration, his musical rhythm, his gaiety and cheerfulness, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... the delicate naivete and sparkling espieglerie, interchanged with true love pathos, of her duet with Belletti, from Rossini's I Turchi in Italia, the music being in the same voice with that of his 'Barber of Seville.' The ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... met delighted in drawing her out—it was a pastime that took the lead at dinner-parties, to an extent which her hostess often thought preposterous—and she responded with naivete and vigour, perfectly aware that she was scoring all along the line. Upon many charming people she made the impression that she was a type of the most finished class of what they called 'English society girls,' that she represented ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... fierce stammering; while Louis deliberately continued a viva voce self-examination, with his own quaint naivete, betraying emotion only by the burning ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... general rule, I should warn the young artist against the imitation of "naivete" and so-called "quaintness;" especially in our designs for Church embroidery as it is hardly a noble quality in art, though we look on it with a tender pity, half-way between admiration and contempt, when we find it inevitably in mediaeval work; struggling to overcome ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... Gilbertine! This is not the bridal-day she expected." Then, with irresistible naivete, entirely in keeping with her fairy-like figure and girlish face, she added: "I think it was just horrid in the old woman to die the night ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... emotion's development are generally spontaneous, profuse, and unrestrained. There is an absence of shyness, of any sense of shame, of the feeling of self-consciousness. The children have as yet no notion of the meaning of sex. Their naivete in this regard has not been destroyed by the social suggestion that such actions are wrong and vulgar. They are natively happy and free in their ignorance. The individual differences among children are as ...
— A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes • Sanford Bell
... liked moving pictures before. Here they are presented differently than in America. Some of the plays I've seen have the naivete and simplicity of a confession. Others interpret abnormal, psychopathic characters whose feelings and thoughts are expressed by the actors with a fine and vivid realism. There is the exultation of life, and the despair, ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... and indeed Esther was a lovely girl, who had but one fault—she did not love me. She had the naivete to tell me so, and indeed to confess that she ardently loved another, a poor clerk of her father's, who, when their love was discovered, a short time before, had been turned out of the house. They loved each other none the less glowingly ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... asleep, she could hear him coughing. He is a queer, naive man, thought Nadya, and in all his dreams, in all those marvellous gardens and wonderful fountains one felt there was something absurd. But for some reason in his naivete, in this very absurdity there was something so beautiful that as soon as she thought of the possibility of going to the university, it sent a cold thrill through her heart and her bosom and flooded ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... said she, a little crossly. She added with one of her gushes of naivete, "and I shall be unhappy too if ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... as good or as bad as a chaperon. For Betty's innocence was deeply laid, and had survived the shock of all the waves that had beaten against it since her coming to Paris. It was more than innocence, it was a very honest, straightforward childish naivete. ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... by frightening him into exertion. After swallowing a glass of warm wine, well sugared, and spiced with tincture of cinnamon, he licked his lips, sucked the edges of his glass, and said: 'Thank ye, doctor; but for you I should have been dead,' with a naivete which I can never forget, and which even now mingles pleasing associations with the thoughts ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... he was with everyone in the regiment, and how satisfied his father was with him. Berg evidently enjoyed narrating all this, and did not seem to suspect that others, too, might have their own interests. But all he said was so prettily sedate, and the naivete of his youthful egotism was so obvious, that he disarmed ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Western life of twenty years ago. The reckless cowboy, the bucking broncho, the hardy miner, the English tenderfoot, the coquettish belle, and all the foibles and extravagances of Western social life, are depicted with a naivete and satire, tempered with sympathy and pathos, which no ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... we may sail from isle to isle over a sunny sea, dallying with the time, secure of a cloudless sky and of the greetings of innocence and love wheresoever the breeze may waft us. There is in truth a holy purity, an innocent naivete, a childlike grace and simplicity, a freshness, a fearlessness, an utter freedom from affectation, a yearning after all things truthful, lovely and of good report, in the productions of this early time, which invest them with a charm peculiar in its kind, and which ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... her naivete, and Wolsey's lips wore a smile, as he plucked the king by the sleeve and took him over to the window, out ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... to be loaded to the very muzzle, a mixture of pebbles, slugs, and bits of iron being crammed into the barrel over a charge of a couple of ounces of powder. On our inquiring why it was so heavily charged, the man told us with much naivete, that it was to kill nine men, illustrating the method by which this wholesale destruction was to be accomplished, by planting the butt on his hip and whirling the muzzle from right to left in ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... at the naivete of some of my companion's remarks. He asked the most intimate questions in the coolest possible manner, and if I had not already resolved to be absolutely frank with my new comrades in arms I should have been somewhat embarrassed to find replies for some of them. He ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... certainly misread all the songs and sayings. He kept the idea in his mind and went on regarding her in the light of it with a pondering smile, turning it over and finding a lively pleasure in his curious acumen in such an unwonted direction. It was a very flower of emotional naivete, though a moment later he cast it from him as a weed, grown in idleness; and indeed it might have abashed him to say what concern it had in the mind of the Order of St. Barnabas. It was gratifying, nevertheless, to have his observation ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... to hoisting the flag of Norway. In his noble qualities and in his faults, in his genius and in his weak points, he as thoroughly bears the stamp of Norway as Voltaire bore that of France. His boldness and his naivete, his open-heartedness as a man and the terseness of his style as an artist, the highly wrought and sensitive Norwegian popular sentiment, and the lively consciousness of the one-sidedness and the intellectual needs of his fellow-countrymen that has driven him to Scandinavianism, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... us as an innocent, simple, genuine young character, full of mother's milk. It was like the smell of early spring in the country to come in contact with you. Your honesty of nature, your sincerity in that absurd religion of yours, your general NAIVETE of mental and spiritual get-up, all pleased us a great deal. We thought you were going ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... succeeded by the transformation scene—the red robbers becoming white ones—to all of which he was witness. After that the card-playing by the camp fire, during which the chief came to his tent, and did what he could to draw him. In this part of his narration, the mulatto with modest naivete, hints of his own adroitness; how he threw his inquisitor off the scent, and became at length disembarrassed of him. He is even more reticent about an incident, soon after succeeding, but referred to it at an early ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... Lord by his Providence put a cloud over the Moon, thereby giving us the opportunity to draw off those horse." Yet this elect of God ruthlessly massacres surrendered Irish garrisons. "Sir," he writes with almost childish naivete, "God hath taken away your eldest son by a cannon shot." We do not need Carlyle's warning that he was not a hypocrite. Does not Marvell, lamenting his death, record in words curiously like Bismarck's that his ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... with naivete, and Jack was consoled for the tyranny by which she was oppressed by seeing her go away in excellent spirits, and with her shawl wrapped so gracefully around her, and her travelling-bag carried as lightly as she carried all the burdens ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... only in his maturer style. All composers up till then, if they ventured to use bits of popular melody at all, gave them the scholastic turn, either because they liked it, or because the habit was strong. The fact that Haydn gave it in its naive form, invented themes which in their deliberate naivete suggest folk-song and dance, hints at what his later music proves conclusively, that he found his inspiration as well as his raw ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... been an exaggeration. It probably was. Jean and her women would want to show there had been provocation. (In a ballad he is accused of having thrown a plate at dinner in her face.) But there is a naivete, a circumstantial air, about the "biting of her in the arm'' which gives it a sort of genuine ring. How one would like to come upon a contemporary writing which would throw light on the character of John Kincaid! Growing sympathy ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... actually a pupil of Rembrandt. His much prized and rare genre pictures treat very simple subjects, and consist seldom of more than two or three figures, generally of women. The naivete and homeliness of his feeling, with the addition sometimes of a trait of kindly humour; the admirable lighting, and a touch resembling Rembrandt in impasto and vigour, render his pictures very attractive. In the National Gallery, besides The Card Players, are The Cradle, The Dutch ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... of the Virgin always in accordance with a poor child's dreams—akin to some coloured figure in a missal, an ideal compounded of traditional beauty, gentleness, and politeness. And the same dreams showed themselves in the naivete of the means which were to be employed and of the object which was to be attained—the deliverance of nations, the building of churches, the processional pilgrimages of the faithful! Then, too, all the words which fell from Heaven resembled one another, calls ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... egg-punch; see, there is a glass of it left over; it will do for my breakfast. I love cold punch, so you need not trouble to bring me any chocolate." With these words, the little maid sprang nimbly from the bed, ran with the naivete of an eight-year-old child to the table, where she settled herself in the corner of the sofa, drew her bare feet up under her, and proceeded to breakfast on the left-over punch ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... absolutely changed. No more of the girlish alternations of timidity and petulance, the adorable naivete, the reveries, the tears, the playfulness... It was an entirely new and hitherto unknown being who now sat and laughed at him, and informed him to his face that she had never had the faintest feeling for him of any kind, except loathing and contempt—contempt ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... does. It shows as plainly the receptiveness and docility of the modern Italian, as the illustrations given above show his freshness and naivete when left to himself. The drawing is just such as we try to get our own young people to do, and few English elementary schools in a small country town would succeed in turning out so good a one. I have nothing, therefore, but praise both for the pupil and the teacher; but about ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... Karr, Wolff, Pixis, and Clara Wieck —and all Germans, generally speaking. Schmucke was a great musical composer doomed to remain a music master, so utterly did his character lack the audacity which a musical genius needs if he is to push his way to the front. A German's naivete does not invariably last him through his life; in some cases it fails after a certain age; and even as a cultivator of the soil brings water from afar by means of irrigation channels, so, from the springs of his youth, does the Teuton draw the simplicity which disarms suspicion—the perennial ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... reply was, "Oh, will you indeed? Thank you." Which naivete actually raised her mother's colour with annoyance. But if she had a rod laid up, Viola did not feel it then; she looked radiant, and though I don't believe three words passed between the partners, that waltz was the glory of the evening ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his eyebrows, well-marked crescents of reddish-brown above his ruddy face, and assumed thereby a physiognomy of almost childlike naivete. "Ah, well, on Friday, then;—though Friday is unlucky, and one rarely shines on a day of abstinence, anyhow. It's all a fallacy about fish being food for the brain. Meat, red meat, is what the brain requires." He slapped his forehead. ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... truth and reality in splendid simplicity. This supreme quality, this ability to make the complex simple, the power to subordinate the non-essential, gave to his conversation, to his lectures, to his writings, and in no less degree to his personality, a direct and charming naivete that at once challenged attention and ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... a personal experience. It was soon after my return from study abroad, while I was seeking a suitable position in a city hospital. This particular place was all but secured when another post was offered to me by the head of one of the largest medical institutions in town. With youthful naivete, I expressed my appreciation of the offer but explained my reasons for wishing to secure the appointment I had been seeking. Incensed by the fact that I did not directly jump at his offer, the noted doctor brought the interview rapidly to ...
— Some Personal Recollections of Dr. Janeway • James Bayard Clark
... they will be accidents, and will not affect the general tendency of the exhibitions nor the direction in which the Academy is striving to lead English art. Under the guidanceship of the Academy English art has lost all that charming naivete and simplicity which was so long its distinguishing mark. At an Academy banquet, anything but the most genial optimism would be out of place, and yet Sir Frederick Leighton could not but allude to the disintegrating ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... manger, the adoration of the Three Kings, and various Herod scenes. Protestant influence was shown by the introduction of Luther's "Vom Himmel hoch," but the general character was very much that of the old mysteries, and the dialogue was full of quaint naivete.{27} ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... "Naviete charms me at fifteen," and his eye glanced at Helen, then was retracted, then returning to his point of view, "at eighteen perhaps may do," and his eyes again turned to Helen, "at eighteen—it captivates me quite," and his eye dwelt. "But naivete at past fifty, verging to sixty, is quite another thing, really rather too much for me. I like all things in season, and above all, simplicity will not bear long keeping. I have the greatest respect possible for our learned and excellent friend, but I wish this could be any way suggested ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... naivete).—"And how could it be otherwise, when he has been carrying all his fellow-creatures in his breeches' pockets? Now he has got rid of that dead weight, I should not be surprised if he swam ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
