"Ingenuousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scenes are graphically portrayed; and yet with that simplicity and ingenuousness which carries with it a conviction of ...
— The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave • William Wells Brown
... with pantomime; and his features, voice and gestures are so expressive that even Europeans who cannot understand a word of Arabic divine the meaning of his tale. The audience stands breathless and motionless surprising strangers[FN303] by the ingenuousness and freshness of feeling hidden under their hard and savage exterior. The performance usually ends with the embryo actor going round for alms and flourishing in air every silver bit, the usual honorarium being a few ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... face, gestures, pantomime, all are different, all are purely her own. She is a creature of contrasts, and suggests at once all that is innocent and all that is perverse. She has the pure blue eyes of a child, eyes that are cloudless, that gleam with a wicked ingenuousness, that close in the utter abasement of weariness, that open wide in all the expressionlessness of surprise. Her naivete is perfect, and perfect, too, is that strange, subtle smile of comprehension that closes the period. ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... arms bare above the elbow. She had the ivory complexion of the province, more delicate than I had yet seen, and beyond that I shall not attempt to describe her, save to add that she was such a strange mixture of innocence and ingenuousness and coquetry as I had not imagined. Presently her gaze was fixed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... I found myself staring into the face, which might well belong to a woman between sixty and seventy, so faded it was and reticulated with wrinkles; and into a pair of eyes that wavered between ingenuousness and a childish cunning; and from them down to her slim ankles and a pair of dancing-shoes, so fairy-like and diminutive that they seemed scarcely ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... Napoleon Bonaparte; and the deepest interest is excited in the literary world to know how the great master of romance and fiction acquits himself in the execution of his task. In the preface to this elaborate history, Sir Walter, with considerable ingenuousness, informs us that "he will be found no enemy to the person of Napoleon. The term of hostility is ended when the battle has been won, and the foe exists no longer." But to our task: we shall attempt an analysis of the volumes before us, and endeavour ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... questions of a similar nature, he thought "that he was given that way rather than otherwise." She explicitly denies that her governess ever advised her to marry the admiral without the consent of the council; but relates with great apparent ingenuousness, the hints which Mrs. Ashley had thrown out of his attachment to her, and the artful attempts which she had made to discover how her pupil stood ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... contrast, and the entrancing strains of music a perplexing one. Now, to the observer who sees things relatively, it must seem strange that the modern man who happens to be gifted with exceptional talent should as a child and a youth so seldom be blessed with the quality of ingenuousness and of simple individuality, that he is so little able to have these qualities at all. As a matter of fact, men of rare talent, like Goethe and Wagner, much more often attain to ingenuousness in manhood than during the more tender years of childhood and youth. And this ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... incarnation of grace and child-like ingenuousness, plainly allowed her preference for the young German painter to be seen. And Traugott warmly returned her affection. He grew so accustomed to the society of the pretty child (she was but fifteen), that ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... particularly attentive to Done. Jim was flattered by her open preference, dazzled by her bright eyes and glowing cheeks, and piqued by her bantering manner, for she still implied that he might be allowed indulgences because of his beardless, boyish face and his seeming ingenuousness. As a protest against this attitude, Done was impelled to drink rather more rum than was good for him, and under the influence of the fiery spirit he lost some thing of his habitual reserve, and a fight with Quigley was only averted by the tactful ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... Force, after all, was but an instrument in the hands of his commanding officers, and not in their full confidence; for when the commission and instructions found on Jumonville were read before him, he professed not to have seen them before, and acknowledged, with somewhat of an air of ingenuousness, that he believed they had a hostile tendency. [Footnote: Washington's letter to Dinwiddie, 29th ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... upon the circumstance. Yes, my lord, I felt it necessary to apologize to Emily Moseley for presuming to aspire to the honor of possessing so much loveliness and virtue. The accidental advantages of rank and wealth lose all their importance, when opposed to her delicacy, ingenuousness, ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... that so resembled Ozzie in its daintiness; he saw the decision on her brow, the charm in her eyes, and the elegance in her figure and dress, and he came near to bursting with pride. "She's got character enough to beat even me," he reflected contentedly, thus exhibiting an ingenuousness happily rare among fathers of brilliant daughters. And even the glimpse of the cupboard kitchen, where the washing-up after a chafing-dish breakfast for two had obviously not yet been accomplished—even this touch seemed only ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... individuals, it seemed to be her pleasure that night to be like everybody else. She did it on opulent lines; there was a richness in her agreement that the going was as hard as iron on the Ellenborough course, and a soft ingenuousness in her inquiries about punkahs and the brain-fever bird that might have aroused suspicion, but after a brief struggle to respond to the unusualness she ought to have represented, Alicia's guests gratefully accepted her on their own terms instead. ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... handsome—with large features, not finely cut, and a look of mingled nobility and ingenuousness—the latter amounting to simplicity, or even innocence; while the clear outlook from his full and well opened hazel eyes indicated both courage and promptitude. His dark brown hair came in large curling masses from under his bonnet. ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... again, and yet so far from him. Life was hard for this young senator with his multiplied honors, his wealth, and prestige. Marina had always given impetus to his life; now it was he who watched and cared for her, while she seemed to have no will for anything, yet had lost that old charming ingenuousness which had underlain her power. He had promised himself, out of his new pathetic yearning when she had begun to improve, that never again should she know an ungratified wish, yet now he feared that she would give him no opportunity ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... of La Font's acting is the complete truth in one short sentence: Nature's triumph over art; reversing the copy-book axiom! But the Lord deliver us from Plessy's mechanical ingenuousness!! ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... frown upon the face of the elder officer, added to the perfect ingenuousness of Faulkner's speech, satisfied Brant that he had not only elicited the truth, but that Miss Faulkner had been successful. But he was sincere in his suggestion that her relationship to the young officer would incline the division commander to look leniently upon his ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... of youth, Mr. Waverley, lays it open to the plans of the more designing and artful; and one of your friends at least—I mean Mac-Ivor of Glennaquoich—ranks high in the latter class, as, from your apparent ingenuousness, youth, and unacquaintance with the manners of the Highlands, I should be disposed to place you among the former. In such a case, a false step, or error like yours, which I shall be happy to consider as ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... her instincts were so strong and noble that she was eager to repair any errors into which she might be betrayed. Lavish in her generosity to others, she was personally frugal, even penurious. A certain brusque and original frankness, and the ingenuousness with which she betrayed every impression, often involved her in compromising positions, which would have been fatal to a woman in her position less pure and upright in her essential nature. Fond of dolls, toys, and trifles, she was also devoted to ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... wisdom. Let us conceal the corruptions of the world from this innocent child, let us remove from her everything that can destroy her primitive naivete; this is why we choose this dwelling for her—a moral sanctuary, where the priestesses of virtue, and doubtless always under pretext of their ingenuousness, take the most ingenuous but ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... believed there was as great a number out of the Church as there was in it that followed the teaching of Christianity. He was among the believers, with his utmost energy alert to save and comfort the unbelievers. He believed in everything and everyone. The ingenuousness of his nature was childlike in its unchallenged faith and its tender instincts. His unworldliness was almost legendary in its belief of human nature. I remember he was asked once whether he believed in Santa Claus, and in his ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... our faults when we are blamed is modesty; to discover them to one's friends in ingenuousness, is confidence; but to preach them to all the world, if one does not take care, ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... lass; ye do indeed," he said, looking up at her with an assumed ingenuousness which, had she known him better, would have warned her to beware. "Gin I kent where the lad was I'd be the vairy first to let you, and the p'lice, ken it too; eh, Wullie! he! he!" He chuckled at ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... Square, feeling not a whit less jealous than she had set out. There seemed, it is true, something about Bridget Rosser to which she was scarcely accustomed in her own personal friends; something difficult to describe. It might be due to an innate ingenuousness, or, in part, to the quasi-Bohemian life she had probably lived during the ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... destiny, he wore his culture as lightly as a flower. Even after he had left college, he retained the sunny outlook, the gladsomeness and the bloom of boyhood. Wherever he went he carried with him an atmosphere of joy. Fresh ingenuousness and glowing enthusiasm were part of his charm. There was a rich vein of the romantic in his character, but the cast of his mind was philosophical. He had no patience with superficiality masquerading as wisdom, and was quick to detect a fallacy in reasoning. ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... strewed with the fallen olive blooms; the firefly was in the myrtle hedge; heaven and earth wore a mantle of surpassing beauty. Torella welcomed me kindly, though seriously; and even his shade of displeasure soon wore away. Some resemblance to my father—some look and tone of youthful ingenuousness, lurking still in spite of my misdeeds, softened the good old man's heart. He sent for his daughter, he presented me to her as her betrothed. The chamber became hallowed by a holy light as she entered. Hers was ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... the ingenuousness of the young virtuoso that he undertook to come forward at the close of the concert with a free fantasia before a public in whose eyes few improvisers, with the exception of Beethoven and Hummel, have as yet found favour. If the young man by a manifold change of his themes aimed especially ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... struck speechless. In the face of such candour, such perfect ingenuousness, he was at a ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... called on me a good many years ago, so many that he has probably forgotten his literary effort,—and read as specimens of his literary workmanship lines like those which I will favor you with presently? He was an able-bodied, grown-up young person, whose ingenuousness interested me; and I am sure if I thought he would ever be pained to see his maiden effort in print, I would deny myself the pleasure of submitting it to the reader. The following is an exact ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and, hearing the Devil descant in so pious a tone, she felt an irresistible desire to see the wonders of his box, and to bestow alms upon the devout old showman. The Devil was sent for. Even he was struck by her wondrous beauty, her gentle manners, and her ingenuousness; but he became only so much the more desirous to confuse her senses and entrap her. She placed her enthusiastic eye to the window of the box. The Devil preluded with a few proverbs and wise saws, and unfolded to her view ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... a mountain, but it was of one that weighs me to the earth. Your inexplicable conduct and cruel indifference have heaped it on my feelings, Alida. You have said that there is no hope for Oloff Van Staats; and one syllable, spoken with your native ingenuousness and sincerity, has had the effect to blow all my apprehensions from that quarter to the winds. There remains only to account for your absence, to resume the whole of your power over one who is but too readily disposed to confide in all ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... The perfect ingenuousness with which Ela put these questions, and the plaintive appeal against the hard requirements of social laws in the mountains, which was expressed in his voice and accent, were so indescribably ludicrous that both my husband and myself laughed convulsively. "I never tell ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... her single- hearted love, a fidelity that ennobled her nature, and a simplicity that betokened perfect purity of thought Nor was this extraordinary confidence without its advantages to Eve; for, thrown so early among the artificial and calculating, it served to keep her own ingenuousness of character active, and prevented that cold, selfish, and unattractive sophistication, that mere women of fashion are apt to fall into, from their isolated and factitious mode of existence. When Eve, therefore, put the questions to her nurse, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... they bore him to death, and there never had entered into his heart a feeling or idea of real affection until he met LAURA. He fell for a moment under the spell of her fascination, and then, with cold logic, he analyzed her, and found out that, while outwardly she had every sign of girlhood,—ingenuousness, sweetness of character and possibility of affection,—spiritually and mentally she was nothing more than a moral wreck. He observed keenly her efforts to win him and her disappointment at her failure—not that she ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... mankind in general more extensively than Sir Francis, but he is far less acquainted with the feelings and associations of the English mind. There is also a wariness about him, which I do not like so well as the imprudent ingenuousness of the baronet. He seems to me to have a cause in hand—Hobhouse versus Existing Circumstances—and that he considers the multitude as the jurors, on whose decision his advancement in life depends. ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... apprehensive. They could not understand that big men are sometimes actuated by whims. Here they saw the controllers of the great P. K. & R. system behind this insignificant project in the north woods. They gave these shrewd railroad men no credit for ingenuousness. And the resolve that was thereupon made at secret conclave of the timber men to fight that first encroachment on their old-time domains and rights was a stern and a bitter resolve. The knowledge of it would have mightily astonished—might have daunted effectually a certain young engineer who was ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... argumentative. Deerslayer, on the other hand, manifested a very different temper, proving by the moderation of his language, the fairness of his views, and the simplicity of his distinctions, that he possessed every disposition to hear reason, a strong, innate desire to do justice, and an ingenuousness that was singularly indisposed to have recourse to sophism to maintain an argument; or to defend a prejudice. Still he was not altogether free from the influence of the latter feeling. This tyrant of the human mind, which ruses on it prey through a ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... is only at such long intervals that I see a person with ingenuousness and enthusiasm, that when I do meet one, I get a real joy ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... some more money, Simon," answered the old man with an ingenuousness that made the reply more stinging ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... was born here. Happy too had it been for him, had he here closed his eyes before he entered upon the wider theatre of the world! During his early days passed at Navarre, he is said to have shewn an ingenuousness of disposition and some traits of generosity, which gave rise to hopes that were miserably falsified by his future life.—The present edifice, however, a modern French Chateau, retains nothing more than the name of the structure which was built by the queen, and which was levelled ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... fisherman ran on, with an air of simple and charming ingenuousness; while I reflected that here possibly was a light and aimless creature whom I had mentally convicted of ungracious designs, that, although his presence in Wallencamp, as a representative of the great world I believed I had left behind me, was rather mal a propos, it might be that I ought to consider ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... lively brain, when she saw that he took umbrage at anything the least risky. Her cigarettes horrified him, so she threw them out of the window, and never smoked again. She even quelled the sensuality of her self-surrender, and veiled it with a show of shame-faced backwardness and the adorable ingenuousness of a schoolgirl on her honeymoon. She strove to obliterate the remembrances of the heathenish abandonment of the first days, with their unrestrained impulses, testifying all too plainly to the fact that she was a woman ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... cooler air, there was no brand of duplicity on his brow; neither was there any stamp of candour: it was simply a finely-formed, square, smooth young brow. And the slow absent glance he cast around at the upper windows of the houses had neither more dissimulation in it, nor more ingenuousness, than belongs to a youthful well-opened eyelid with its unwearied breadth of gaze; to perfectly pellucid lenses; to the undimmed dark of a rich brown iris; and to a pure cerulean-tinted angle of whiteness streaked with the delicate shadows of long ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... Newspaper with a criticism in it? The author is one Gilfillan, a young Dissenting Minister in Dundee; a person of great talent, ingenuousness, enthusiasm, and other virtues; whose position as a Preacher of bare old Calvinism under penalty of death sometimes makes me tremble for him. He has written in that same Newspaper about all the notablest men of his time; Godwin, Corn-law Elliott and I know not all whom: if he publish ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... had lost Gustave. To Julie the loss of Gustave was the loss of all that makes life worth having. On her part, Isaura was moved not only by the beauty of Julie's countenance, but still more by the childlike ingenuousness of ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... blamed for not having yielded to it. She said that the schalischim appeared furious, that he had shouted a great deal, and that he had then fallen asleep. Salammbo told no more, through shame perhaps, or else because she was led by her extreme ingenuousness to attach but little importance to the soldier's kisses. Moreover, it all floated through her head in a melancholy and misty fashion, like the recollection of a depressing dream; and she would not have known in what way or in what words to ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... and pleasing, and their lively ingenuousness is extremely seductive. Their accomplished management of the fan has made it peculiarly their own weapon, and it has been converted into an important auxiliary to their natural good looks, both in attack ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... women fell at his feet? 'The graces of his person,' says one whom he honoured by an intrigue, 'the irresistible sweetness of his smile, the tenderness of his melodious, yet manly voice, will be remembered by me till every vision of this changing scene are forgotten. The polished and fascinating ingenuousness of his manners contributed not a little to enliven our promenade. He sang with exquisite taste, and the tones of his voice, breaking on the silence of the night, have often appeared to my entranced senses like more than mortal melody.' But besides his graces of person, he ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... let me know you as you are, that all your faults may be laid bare to my inspection; and what is to be the consequence—that you are, as you said you would be, lowered in my estimation? no, dear and candid girl, you are not, and while you retain such ingenuousness of disposition, you never can be. Wrong you certainly were to encourage such despondency, when so very many blessings were around you; but when once you become sensible of an error, it is already ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... said the girl. She wondered how much he guessed, and she saw his keen eyes probe her with a glance. But her ingenuousness, if it did not disarm him, at least dulled the ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... blue envelopes from Samuel & Samuel, is bent on marrying for money the very Diana that George loves for her blue hyacinth eyes. There is a misunderstanding between George and Diana (of such a childlike ingenuousness as to suggest that really this too easy spot-stroke should be barred to playwrights), and the idiotic girl promptly engages herself to Richard, who is of course in love with a patently naughty married woman. The most reckless of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... simple villagers are the determined murderers they would seem to be. No brighter intellects in Ireland, no better hearts, no more hospitable hosts in the Emerald Isle. They are very superstitious. There you have it all. 'Tis their beautiful ingenuousness that makes them so easily led astray. What do these simple country folks, living on their farms, without books, without newspapers, without communication with large centres—what do they know about intricate State affairs? What can they do but listen to the priest, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... remained standing. He had said these things in a loud, rapid, hoarse voice, with a sort of irritated and savage ingenuousness. Once he paused to salute some one in the crowd. The sort of affirmations which he seemed to fling out before him at random came like hiccoughs, and to each he added the gesture of a wood-cutter who is splitting wood. When he had finished, the audience burst into a laugh. He ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... are somewhat exhausted, give them the opportunity of an honourable settlement. Sir, I did not think it my duty to conceal my opinion, Her Majesty's Government having admitted that they had felt it their duty to refuse a proposition of that character. I should have felt that I was wanting in that ingenuousness and fair play in politics which I hope, whoever sits on that bench or this, we shall always pursue, if, when the true interests of the country are concerned, agreeing as I did with the Government, I did not express frankly ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... the bargain to which he was consenting remained unknown. My friend Vaudreix also undertook to persuade M. de Gesvres to sell his chapel. The negotiations were conducted with entire good faith on the side of my friend Vaudreix and with charming ingenuousness on the side of Mr. Harlington, until the day when the Rubenses and the carvings from the chapel were in a safe place and Mr. Harlington in prison. There remains nothing, therefore, to be done but to release the unfortunate American, because he was content to play the modest ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... miller's trade, was surprising to no one; and that he should unbosom himself to a friend of his own age, and indulge together with him in romantic visions of adventure, was, to all who remembered their own boyhood, an illustration of the freshness and ingenuousness of the character that thus unfolded itself. Where there were day-dreams, there was no room for plots ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tactics, which are emphasized by insincere gestures, by looks of feigned ingenuousness, by artful intonations of the voice and even by the snare of cunning silence, are characteristic to some ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... circumstances. These habitual sources of dissimulation and envy exist not among them. When they deceive their enemies and their rivals, it is because they consider themselves in a state of warfare with them; but in other circumstances they are frank and ingenuous. It is this ingenuousness alone that has scandalised you respecting our women, who, hearing love constantly spoken of, and surrounded by its seductions and examples, conceal not their sentiments, and if it may be so expressed, give even, to ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... Bart's off-handed ingenuousness had completely disarmed the men. He pretended to be busy petting the horse, but saw Buck Tolliver slip back to his brother, and a few quick questions and answers passed between them. Then Buck came up ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... lady of her. Never before had he studied the acting method of Wayne with a definite aim in view. Now he watched until he himself became the awkward country boy. He was primed with the Wayne manner, the appealing ingenuousness, the simple embarrassments; the manly regard for the old mother, when word came that Baird was ready for him ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... replied with ingenuousness, 'My life, I have nothing to say.' But, as the repartee did not occur to him, he contented himself with coming in from the balcony and standing at the side ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... fall, he thought more contemptuously of Mary Ann. Idealise her as he might, see all that was best in her as he tried to, she remained common and commonplace enough. Her ingenuousness, while from one point of view it was charming, from another was but a pleasant synonym for silliness. And it might not be ingenuousness—or silliness—after all! For, was Mary Ann as innocent as she looked? The guilelessness of the ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... was too much surprised to be joyous, but he thanked his uncle with something of the cordial ingenuousness and grace ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... not just 'busting' himself with Titanic intellectualities, but who is a readable dramatic critic.... Mr. Hale is a modest and sensible, as well as an acute and sound critic.... Most people will be surprised and delighted with Mr. Hale's simplicity, perspicuity and ingenuousness." ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... proboque, &c. Writers were now beginning to pride themselves on their classical reading. The present occasion, it must be owned, was a very good one for introducing the passage from Horace. The previous words have an affecting ingenuousness; and, indeed, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... disguise to permit the weakness to escape, when he knew how much it would pain the sensitive and faithful being who had yielded her affections to him with a singleness and devotion which arose nearly as much from her manner of life as from natural ingenuousness. ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to whom the book doubtless recalled the memory of their spring-time, shared Falstaff's ingenuousness, and remained faithful to Lyly; if men or letters, after some years of enthusiasm, ceased to imitate him, his book was for a long time continuously read, and it was reprinted again and again even in the ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... of refined ingenuousness about her that was particularly attractive. She walked well, holding her skirt tightly about her as only a true Parisienne can, and displaying a pair of extremely neat ankles. She inquired about me—how long had I been in the Count's service, how I liked him, and such-like; while I, by careful ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... of the stage, who picks up pocket-books and never looks into them, and who is too simple even to know that honesty has its opposite, represents the still lingering mistake, that an unintelligible dialect is a guarantee for ingenuousness, and that slouching shoulders indicate an upright disposition. It is quite true that a thresher is likely to be innocent of any adroit arithmetical cheating, but he is not the less likely to carry home his master's corn in his shoes and pocket; a reaper is not given to writing ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... lot in a world whereof we know none of the purposes. It is simply a matter of having a little less pride and of looking a little more fraternally upon existences that are much more fraternal than we believed. There is no secret about the almost puerile ingenuousness of Von Osten's methods and Krall's. They start with the principle that the horse is an ignorant but intelligent child; and they treat him as such. They speak, explain, demonstrate, argue and mete out rewards or punishments like a ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... thinks he has a new thought, or striking thought, thinks himself justified in writing a volume. Of this I would not complain if he would have the ingenuousness to inform the reader, in a nota bene, on what page the new idea could be found, so that, if he paid for the book, he should be spared the trouble of hunting for the kernel in the bushel of compiled and often incongruous chaff, in ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... feats that had been done, and all the bright things that had been said; all the triumphs, and all the failures, and all the scrapes; how popular one master had made himself, and how ridiculous another; all was detailed with a liveliness, a candour, and a picturesque ingenuousness, which would have made the fortune of ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... studio in Rue Brea, they found Mrs. Brown, Molly and Judy trying not to look expectant, but, as Judy said, "ready to pop with curiosity." Elise ran to Mrs. Brown, and throwing her arms around her dear chaperone, hid her blushing face on her shoulder; while Mr. Kinsella, with boyish ingenuousness, said: "Well, what do you think? Elise and I have ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... light blue eyes that could look with such apparent ingenuousness out of his plump, bland face there was the subtle mind of a psychologist. Barnstable, true to his attitude of the plain business man, would have been the first to ridicule the idea publicly if anyone had ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... half-truths, for a course which any decent man must, in conscience, have followed. He composed a seething editorial, tore it up, substituted another wherein he made reply to the charges, in a spirit of ingenuity rather than ingenuousness, for The Patriot case, while sound, was one which could not well be thrown open to The Patriot's public; and planned vengeance when ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... its cause. All he did was to accelerate the fall,—though we are quite prepared to admit that he did it in a way which makes one recoil with horror from this almost instantaneous decline and fall to the depths. He possessed the ingenuousness of decadence: this constituted his superiority. He believed in it. He did not halt before any of its logical consequences. The others hesitated—that is their distinction. They have no other. What is common to both Wagner and "the others" consists in this: the decline of all organising power, ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... the rhetoric of which he had such an endless supply, the virtues and the accomplishments which his observant eye has discovered in himself, the new Praetorian Prefect. Such a course would certainly not be often pursued by a modern statesman, but there is a pleasing ingenuousness about it which to some minds will be more attractive than our present methods, the "inspired" article in a hired newspaper, or the feigned reluctance to receive a testimonial which, till the receiver suggested it, no ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... when we are blamed is modesty; to discover them to one's friends, in ingenuousness, is confidence; but to preach them to all the world, if one does not take care, ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... becomes self-conscious. He reflects; and his reflexion has the characteristic melancholy of youth when it is forced suddenly to bethink itself, and for a moment feels already old, feels the temperature of the world about it sensibly colder. Its very ingenuousness, its sincerity, will make the utterance of what comes [14] to mind just then somewhat shrill ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... so they do!" ejaculated the cleaner, eagerly—too eagerly for perfect ingenuousness. "That's why I said 'Poor dear!' and spoke of her pretty face. I am sorry for young folks when they get into trouble, aint you? You and me might lie here and no one be much the worse for it, but a sweet lady ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... should do in the matter of Madame Piriac's impending visit to Audrey Moze at Flank Hall, and through the texture of these difficult topics she could see, as it were, shining the sprightly simplicity, the utter ingenuousness, the entirely reliable fidelity of Mr. Gilman. She felt, rather than consciously realised, that he was a dull man. But she liked his dullness; it reassured her; it was tranquillising; it was even adorable. She liked also his attitude towards Moze. She had never suspected, no one had ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... are sayings and repartees of his left still upon record, which seem to show that he not ignobly accommodated himself to his present circumstances; as may appear in part from the ingenuousness of the avowal he made on coming to Leucadia, which, as well as Syracuse, was a Corinthian colony, where he told the inhabitants, that he found himself not unlike boys who have been in fault, who can talk cheerfully with their brothers, but are ashamed to see their father; ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... aims in the war. The expenditure of life and treasure should be stopped and the government should sue for peace, unless its armies can be relied upon to act in hearty subordination to its view of the existing exigencies. The general should meet it with absolute ingenuousness and the promptest and clearest decision. He should act at once or ask to be relieved in time to let another carry out the plan. Mr. Davis, like Mr. Lincoln on several occasions, had reason to feel that a prolonged discussion had in fact ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... well-knit figure, whose high, square brow, benign smile, and frank earnestness bespoke a man of moral energy, vigorous intellect, and warm, candid, tender soul. Traces of suffering, of thought, of stern purpose were, indeed, apparent; but with and above them, the ingenuousness and the glow of a brave and ardent man. This was ELEUTARIO FELICE FORESTI,—subsequently, and for years, the favorite professor of his beautiful native language and literature in New York,—the favorite guest and the cherished friend in her most cultivated homes and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... difficulty to keep him from abusing my friend Augusta. He had once danced with her, and their commerce had not been much to her advantage. I defended her upon the score of her amiable simplicity and unaffected ingenuousness, but I could not have the courage to contradict him when he said he had no notion she was very brilliant by the conversation he had had with her. Augusta, indeed, is nothing less than brilliant: but she is natural, artless, and very affectionate. just before she went to dance her minuet, upon ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... one of them has been reversed: so that he said of himself, "I was the justest judge that England has had for fifty years; and I suffered the justest sentence that had been inflicted for two hundred years." He did not excuse himself. His ingenuousness of confession astonished everybody, and moved the hearts of his judges. It was his misfortune to be in debt; he had pressing creditors; and in two cases he accepted presents before the decision was made, but was brave ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... triumphs is the way in which, almost to the last, "M. de Santillane," despite the rogueries practised often on and sometimes by him, retains a certain gullibility, or at least ingenuousness. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... had been by Blanche de Gibeaumex, had the additional pain of knowing it, for Angele was too candid to conceal anything from him. She used to tell him: "Sir, some one told me this; some one did that to me; some one took so and so away from me; I saw that; I felt so and so." And by her ingenuousness she caused her lord to suffer torments beyond imagination. He endured them like a Stoic. Still he finally had to tell the simple creature that she was a goose, and to box her ears. This, for him, was the beginning of a reputation ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... knew how, on a familiar footing in his family, and giving lessons in painting to his daughter. Edmund Dunning had no intentions that any other lessons should be given, and it accordingly grieved him when he discovered the terms on which the young people stood to one another, and which their ingenuousness could not conceal. With this relation he had made himself acquainted as soon as he suspected it, by inquiring of Eveline, who frankly told him the whole truth. Arundel loved her, but dared not, on account of the distance that separated him from her father, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... the subsequent remarkable journey made to the moon by its inventor, he has succeeded beyond measure in alternately astounding, convincing and delighting his readers. Told in a straightforward way, with an air of ingenuousness that disarms doubt, the story chronicles most marvelous discoveries and adventures on the mysterious planet. Mr. Hering's many illustrations are admirable. Altogether the book is one of the most original and entertaining volumes that has appeared ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Sairmeuse was following him, and motioned him to stop. The baron paused, greatly surprised; Martial, with that air of ingenuousness which he knew so well how to assume, and in ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... called to her in the deference which he now always used with her, "Here's a package here for you, Clementina—Miss Claxon," and he gave her an oblong parcel, addressed in a hand strange to her. "Who is it from?" she asked, innocently, and Fane replied with the same ingenuousness: "I'm sure I don't know." Afterwards he thought of having retorted, "I haven't opened it," but still without being certain that he would have had the courage to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a virtue of necessity, though it argues lack of ingenuousness, is perhaps preferable to the wholly honest demonstration of snarling over one's misfortunes. It may result in good even to the hypocrite, who occasionally surprises himself with the pleasure he finds in wearing a front of nobility, and is thereby induced to consider ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... cast into a white-hot furnace. Every moment he had to wipe his streaming face with his bare fore-arm; he had flung off his coat, and had turned up the sleeves of his shirt high above the elbows; but he kept on his head the large cocked hat with white plumes. His ingenuousness cherished this sign of his rank as Commandante of the National Guards. Approving and grave murmurs greeted his periods. His opinion was that war should be declared at once against France, England, Germany, and the United States, who, by introducing railways, mining enterprises, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... met his friendly advances with the immodesty of innocence, artless effrontery, the liberties taught by life in the country, the happy folly of a nature abounding in high spirits, and with all sorts of ignorant hardihood, unblushing ingenuousness and rustic coquetry, against which her cousin's vanity was without means of defence. The child's presence deprived Germinie of all hope of repose. Mere girl as she was, she wounded her every minute in ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... shrewdness of the sage with the naivete of the child. Those who criticise the United States because, with the experience of all the ages behind her, she is in some points vastly defective as compared with the nations of Europe are as much mistaken as those who look to her for the fresh ingenuousness of youth unmarred by any trace of age's weakness. It is simply inevitable that she should share the vices as well as the virtues of both. Mr. Freeman has well pointed out how natural it is that a colony should rush ahead of the mother country in some ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... was after the model of English royal speeches; but one can feel at this day it was spoken in all ingenuousness and sincerity, and that the utterance—remarkable already for clearness and distinctness—for the first time, of the set words, ending in the solemn promise to do a Sovereign's duty, must have thrilled the hearts both of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... letter "very apropos," while a surgeon was sounding his bladder to ascertain whether he had a stone. "I never saw a fellow more astonished than he was," wrote Lord Sefton in his reply, "at seeing me laugh as soon as the operation was over. Nothing could be more first-rate than the royal Edward's ingenuousness. One does not know which to admire most—the delicacy of his attachment to Madame St. Laurent, the refinement of his sentiments towards the Duke of Clarence, or his own ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... satisfaction of discussion, and then they drew him to express his own views. "Then," says Marmontel, "he threw himself into the subject with warmth—as simple, as natural, as sincere as he is systematic and sophistic in his works. Nothing is less like the ingenuousness of his character and ordinary life, than the artificial and premeditated simplicity of his works. Helvetius was the very opposite in his character of what he professes to believe; he was ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... "Hush, hush!" Once more she gazed at the princess, who was talking and laughing gayly with her husband and Count Kalkreuth. "How her cheeks glow, and what tender glances she throws him!" murmured Louise. "Ah! the prince has fallen a victim to his ingenuousness! Verily, he is again praising the merits of his friend. He tells her how Kalkreuth saved his life—how he received the blow meant for his own head. Poor prince! You will pay dearly for the wound Kalkreuth ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... Her wide-eyed ingenuousness making me more suspicious, she answered, "Waiting to see if you'd appear." Then she stopped being truthful: "You forget ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... the other, Livia Ocellina, a very rich and beautiful woman, by whom it is supposed he was courted for the nobleness of his descent. They say, that she was farther encouraged to persevere in her advances, by an incident which evinced the great ingenuousness of his disposition. Upon her pressing her suit, he took an opportunity, when they were alone, of stripping off his toga, and showing her the deformity of his person, that he might not be thought to impose upon her. He had by Achaica two sons, Caius and ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... words have been differentiated in comparatively modern times. 'Ingenuity' was once used for 'ingenuousness'.] ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... "Pump-pie-King pie with raisins and mince." The expression on Sam's face was celestial. No other word could describe it. There was also an underlying expression of triumph which made me suspicious of his apparent ingenuousness, and as the lubras had done little else but make faces at themselves in the looking-glass for two days (I was beginning to hate that looking-glass), I appealed to ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... voice, and with the greatest ingenuousness, he recounted to the Prince the whole history of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mr. Belknap," she said at last, and with charming ingenuousness, "this is not a matter for my judgment; I rely upon you entirely; pray do not hesitate, but continue your investigations in whatever direction your judgment leads you. I wish Mr. Lamotte was here to confer with you; but, if he were here," and her face became ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the City of London—who had been sent into the House of Commons as a Radical reformer. This well-meaning person had permitted himself to become satisfied that there was something to be said for one of the Opposition amendments, and in a moment of rash ingenuousness he voted for it. He was immediately afterwards formally censured by his constituents and by the body to which he officially belonged. He was informed by solemn resolutions that he had been sent into the House of Commons to help the Government in passing the Reform Bill, and ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... any impression of a want of innocence the day before when they discussed the case in the divorce court which he had won, she now swept it from his mind. He found her ingenuousness charming. Her eyes helped her. They were big, grey, wide-open like a child's. He found himself looking interestedly for the simple questions that they turned upon him. In the box at the theatre, they leant back in their seats and talked in undertones through the acts and Mrs. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... gulps. She looked deliriously young, and fragile and appealing, her delicate slenderness revealed by the flimsy garment she wore. Excitement and anticipation lent a glow to her eyes, colour to her cheeks. Al, glancing expertly at the ingenuousness of her artfully simple coiffure, the slim limpness of her body, her wide-eyed gaze, laughed a wise ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... visit of that evening, it was because he had resolved not to consult any one and to lead his own inquiry. He was succeeding in the beginning; he had certainly perceived Madame Steno's white gown upon the terrace, while radiant Maud explained his unexpected return with her usual ingenuousness. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... rooms. During the transit the thread of the argument was lost, and while Hogg was lighting the candles Shelley frankly said that he was not competent to argue the point, as he had little knowledge of either German or Italian literature. Then Hogg with equal ingenuousness confessed that he knew but little of Italian and nothing ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... drawside and watch Lena herd her cattle. Later in the summer, when Lena went home for a week to visit her mother, I heard from Antonia that young Lovett drove all the way out there to see her, and took her buggy-riding. In my ingenuousness I hoped that Sylvester would marry Lena, and thus give all the country girls a better position ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... than one smile among the auditory. He noticed it, and a spark of defiance flashed up at the bottom of his heart. From time to time he loudly asked if "those people there" were not abusing his ingenuousness. ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... purity of Cockney accent, was a man of five-and-forty, dressed in a new suit of ready-made tweeds, the folding crease strongly marked down the front of the trousers and the coat sleeves rather too long. His face bore a strong impress of vulgarity, but at the same time had a certain ingenuousness, a self-absorbed energy and simplicity, which saved it from being wholly repellent; the brow was narrow, the eyes small and bright, and the coarse lips half hid themselves under a struggling reddish growth. In these lineaments lurked a family resemblance ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... courses in his terrible allegory of "La Coupe et les Levres:" the idea recurs throughout his works, conspicuously in the Confession d'un Enfant du Siecle, which is Madame Sand's best apology. But if his excesses had destroyed his ingenuousness, she destroyed his faith in human nature, and on her will ever rest the brand he set in the burning words of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... the appearance of ingenuousness, was forced to further definition. "I don't think, darling, that in your sympathy, your solicitude, where young talent is concerned, you quite realize how much you give, how much you can be made use of. The man admires you, ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... no complicity with the actions of the gang, whatever might have been her companion's confederation. In the prescience of a true lover, he knew that she must have been deceived and kept in utter ignorance of it. There was no look of it in her lovely, guileless eyes; her very impulsiveness and ingenuousness would have long since betrayed the secret. Was it left for him, at this very outset of his passion, to be the one to tell her? Could he bear to see those frank, beautiful eyes dimmed with shame and sorrow? ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... amazed. I could not make her out in the least. Had all her ingenuousness been assumed? If it had, then I had been sadly ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... natural thing for Caesar to give John a glimpse, at least, of whatever floated in and out of his mind. John, being himself a creature of reserves, could not quite understand this unlocking of doors, but he appreciated his privileges. Caesar's ingenuousness, sympathy, and impulsiveness, seemed the more enchanting because John himself was of the look-before-you-leap, think-before-you-speak, sort. One Sunday evening they were hurrying back to Chapel, when they passed a woman carrying a heavy child. The poor creature appeared ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... reluctantly to the conclusion that there was no other way of attaining her end than by deceiving her tried companion and protector. It was revolting to one so sincere and natural, so pure of heart, and so much disposed to ingenuousness as Mabel Dunham, to practise deception on a friend like June; but her own father's life was at stake, her companion would receive no positive injury, and she had feelings and interests directly touching herself which would ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... the Moor, is the most perfect type of the despot of that age, and, as a kind of natural product, almost disarms our moral judgement. Notwithstanding the profound immorality of the means he employed, he used them with perfect ingenuousness; no o ne would probably have been more astonished than himself to learn that for the choice of means as well as of ends a human being is morally.responsible; he would rather have reckoned it as a singular virtue that, so far as possible, he had abstained from too free a use of the punishment ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... services." Touched by Bradley's sincerity and discreet intelligence, Sir Robert was equally frank. During the recital of his Californian investments—a chronicle of almost fatuous speculation and imbecile enterprise—Bradley was profoundly moved at the naive ignorance of business and hopeless ingenuousness of this old habitue of a cynical world and an intriguing and insincere society, to whom no scheme had been too wild for acceptance. As Bradley listened with a half-saddened smile to the grave visions of this aged enthusiast, he remembered the ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... Public Opinion. Dress; Miss Sedgwick's view of it; connected with virtues. Mrs. Hancock. Exposure of Health. Affectation; of extreme sensibility; of insensibility. Conversation for Effect. Entertainments. Nominal Morality. Two guards, Moral Independence, and Ingenuousness. Dangers in regard to your own Sex. Envy. The Swiss sisters. Jealousy. Detraction. Ridicule. Flattery. Cultivate Gentleness. Dr. Bowring in regard to Ladies in the East. Kind Feelings. "The art of being Pleased." Good Sense. Good Taste. ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... to read how much of this was real ingenuousness, how much affected simplicity. He saw only a candid inquiring face with a faint shade of surprise in its quiet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... flashing eyes, the silken touch of their delicate fingers, sent the blood rushing through my veins like a stream of lava; but in their gentle accents, the simple ingenuousness of their expressions, the childlike innocence of their faces, I regarded them only as two beautiful children kneeling ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... than I do the little heifers, because I have to give them up. I don't like to have things I love go away. You see you mustn't think of going to New York until the spring is all over and summer comes for good," she continued, with the most delightful ingenuousness, as she shaped the last of the ten flowers and glanced from her task at him with the most solicitous concern. "Of course, you feel as if the smash your lung got in that awful rock slide has healed all up, and I know it has, but you'll have to do as the doctor tells you about ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... this ingenuousness? this unexampled, this beautiful sacrifice to intuitive integrity? Yes! with my curses!—I loaded her with execrations, I reviled her in language the most opprobrious, I insulted her even for her confession! I invoked all evil upon her from the bottom of ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... attractive. I loved her brother, and his features still survive in her. The only relation she has left is a distant one, on whose regard and protection she has therefore but slender claims. Her mind is rich in all the graces of ingenuousness and modesty. The curiosity she felt respecting me made me grateful as for a token of regard. I was therefore not backward to unfold the true ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... you go too far I'll pull you up, but we needn't bother about it in the meantime. You were obviously born a hustler, but you have an ingenuousness that disarms resentment. In fact, you quite upset our views of ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... examples of ingenuousness are sufficiently characteristic of the morality of the system. In La Maison Tellier Guy de Maupassant has depicted with his masterly pen the psychology of the prostitute, the proxenet, and ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... profession and his pride to simulate and to dissemble, he had a native ingenuousness which was extremely awkward and very surprising, for, the moment he was intimate with you, he told you everything. Though he intended to make a person his tool, and often succeeded, such was his susceptibility, and so strong were his sympathetic qualities, ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... boy, there is a self-consciousness about all forced things, and the hallmark of the Bohemian is an absolute ingenuousness." ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... entire person was simplicity, ingenuousness, whiteness, candor, and radiance, and it might have been said of her that she was transparent. She produced a sensation of April and daybreak, and she had dew in her eyes. She was the condensation of the light of dawn ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... sole purpose of procuring embers at which to roast their chestnuts. I will not return to the subject of the gun; you know all about it. It seems that there was some good in this explosive gun, and that he who invented it united a sort of genius with ingenuousness, inexperience, and ignorance enough to make one weep. Nothing can be said against the private character of the man. He had a few debts, and his tradespeople felt considerable anxiety when he left Vienna ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... generous boyhood, rendered a little piquant, by the dash of archness, roguery, and fun, that a man-of-war is tolerably certain to impart to a lad of spirit. Nevertheless, his countenance retained an expression of ingenuousness and of sensitive feeling, that was singularly striking in one of his sex, and which, in spite of her beauty of feature, hair, and complexion, formed the strongest attraction in the loveliness of Mildred; that expression, which had so much struck and charmed Bluewater—haunted ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... qualified to write on vital statistics in America who is not familiar with the investigation of Dr. Billings. Let the reader compare the following quotation as to the relative birth rate of the races, and, noting date of data upon which the conclusion is based, decide for himself as to the ingenuousness of Mr. Hoffman's reluctant admission: "Dr. Billings, in his luminous report on the vital statistics of the United States (1886) shows that 1000 colored women (age from 15 to 49) give birth to 164 children, and 1000 white women to only 127, yearly; that is to say, three colored women ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... say that—the other day, when I saw you—I had no idea of mentioning the Works to you, other than to explain my position—not an idea.... And then, when we talked—well, I did," he said with a kind of naked ingenuousness, as if no one could have been more surprised about it all than he.... "I can't explain it, so that it won't still seem peculiar to you.... It's only that I do feel somehow that—that knowing people makes a ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... This ingenuousness made the general smile; and, with a friendly nod, he desired Eugene to offer his respects to his mother, and to call upon ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... pounce. He glanced at his uncle's judicial mask, knowing utterly the distaste for sentimental encounters that it covered. He detested his aunt's aloofness. He was almost angry with this little woman's ingenuousness that put her so candidly ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... the course of this voyage in company with Mark Twain, we at length discover, under his good-fellowship and apparent ingenuousness, faults which we should never have expected. He has in the highest degree that fault of appearing astonished at nothing—common, we may say, to all savages. He confesses himself that one of his great pleasures is to horrify ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... of Francis; but Italy is not Germany nor England, and the thirteenth century would have been astonished indeed at the prudery of the Bollandists. The incident is simply a new manifestation of Francis's character, with its ingenuousness, its exaggerations, its longing to establish a complete harmony, a literal correspondence, between ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... a doubt of it," said Peter soberly, though very much amused at his employer's ingenuousness. Here then, was the weak spot in the armor of this relentless millionaire—his daughter. The older one and her child were dead. That accounted for the toys in the cabin. Peggy sounded interesting'—if nothing else, for ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... better not write at all, but just go down as if you went merely to enjoy yourself; and dont on any account let Marian suspect that you have heard anything. Goodness knows what mischief you might make, in your—your ingenuousness!" ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... the Garden of Eden at Scotland Yard—probably because the unwary might have thought him full of innocence. His smooth, bronzed boyish face showed ingenuousness and candour in every line. A glittering diamond pin adorned his necktie, a massive gold chain spanned his waistcoat, a gold ring with a single great ruby was on his finger. That was the only ostentation about him, and his quiet, well-cut clothes ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... consequence it is for men, in their names of mixed modes, and consequently in all their moral discourses, to define their words when there is occasion: since thereby moral knowledge may be brought to so great clearness and certainty. And it must be great want of ingenuousness (to say no worse of it) to refuse to do it: since a definition is the only way whereby the precise meaning of moral words can be known; and yet a way whereby their meaning may be known certainly, and without leaving any ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... really pretty, said nothing, and gave pleasure by her very lack of artificiality. To her I might have been favourably inclined because of her ignorance, had she not gloried in this, and tried to emphasize her difference from the others by a piquant ingenuousness. One day I discovered that she had plenty of wit, and straightway I ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... arduous of real concerns. If we are led up to none of the enkindled summits of the soul, and plunged into none of its abysses, that is no reason why we should fail to be struck by the pale flame of strenuous self-possession, or touched by the ingenuousness and simplicity of the speaker's accents. A generation continually excited by narratives, as sterile as vehement, of storm and stress and spiritual shipwreck, might do well, if it knew the things that pertained to ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... has a simplicity and concision, which are unknown in this age of popular fiction. Even their lack of invention is admirable: as the same woodcut might be used to represent Guy, Earl of Warwick, or the last highwayman who suffered at Tyburn, so the same enterprise is ascribed with a delightful ingenuousness to all the heroes who rode abroad under the stars to fill ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... to observe, not myself," said Athos, interrupting himself with a melancholy smile, "one of the counts of my province—that is to say, of Berry—noble as a Dandolo or a Montmorency, at twenty-five years of age fell in love with a girl of sixteen, beautiful as fancy can paint. Through the ingenuousness of her age beamed an ardent mind, not of the woman, but of the poet. She did not please; she intoxicated. She lived in a small town with her brother, who was a curate. Both had recently come into the country. They came nobody knew whence; but when seeing her so ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... I'll put it off for a month or two, TOBY," he said, blushing with the ingenuousness of youth. "You see I'm so fresh from college, that it would ill become me to plunge into public affairs. It's all very well for a young fellow like me to get up at the Union; but here it's different. You're very good to say ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... in the mountains when, one evening, sitting beside him in this way, she said, with that adorable and almost childish ingenuousness which he loved ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood |
