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Nakedness   Listen
Nakedness

noun
1.
The state of being without clothing or covering of any kind.  Synonyms: nudeness, nudity.
2.
A bleak and desolate atmosphere.  Synonyms: bareness, bleakness, desolation.
3.
Characterized by an attitude of ready accessibility (especially about one's actions or purposes); without concealment; not secretive.  Synonym: openness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Nakedness" Quotes from Famous Books



... a passage in the book before him, "see what a preacher of the word has said!" and Aubrey recited one of the most dangerous maxims in priestcraft, as reverently as if he were quoting from the Scripture itself. "'The nakedness of truth should never be too openly exposed to the eyes of the vulgar. It was wisely feigned by the ancients that Truth did ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Excellency will find some of his poems in Von der Hagen's four immense volumes, but I recommend you to take your notions of Ritter Tannhaeuser's poetry rather from Wagner. Certain it is that the Pagan divinities lasted much longer than we suspect, sometimes in their own nakedness, sometimes in the stolen garb of the Madonna or the saints. Who knows whether they do not exist to this day? And, indeed, is it possible they should not? For the awfulness of the deep woods, with their filtered green light, the creak of the swaying, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... to spy out the nakedness of the land," whispered Judy to Mr. Kinsella, who had been having a long talk with her. Pierce had had so much to say of this delightful young lady that his uncle was determined to make her acquaintance and find out if she were the kind of girl to ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... my heart had been full before, it overflowed now. Poverty is not so shameful as the shifts to which it drives men. I had been compelled some days before, in order to make as good a show as possible—since it is the undoubted duty of a gentleman to hide his nakedness from impertinent eyes, and especially from the eyes of the canaille, who are wont to judge from externals—to remove such of my furniture and equipage as remained to that side of the room, which was visible from without when the door was open. This left ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... are—after centuries of refining. But the feelings handed down to Clemence had come through ages of African savagery; through fires that do not refine, but that blunt and blast and blacken and char; starvation, gluttony, drunkenness, thirst, drowning, nakedness, dirt, fetichism, debauchery, slaughter, pestilence and the rest—she was their heiress; they left her the cinders of human feelings. She remembered her mother. They had been separated in her childhood, in Virginia when it was a province. She remembered, ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... Nakedness therefore, the want of houses, and of all these unnecessaries, which we consider as so very necessary, are not such mighty evils in respect to these primitive men, and much less still any obstacle to ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... face in his hands and ran his fingers through his hair. Then, as if he conceived himself to be unobserved behind this shelter, he let himself go; and I became the witness of an agony, a passion, a self-abandoned nakedness, to the utter shedding of all reticences and decencies, with nothing but those thin hands and that ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... and fatal far—the photograph's evidence was not required. No man who saw, as I saw, the faces of Michael Blake and Angus Strachan side by side need wait for other evidence. Often had I seen them thus before—but never in the nakedness of passion. ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... the Elizabethan translator of Homer, expressing himself in his preface thus: 'Though truth in her very nakedness sits in so deep a pit, that from Gades to Aurora and Ganges few eyes can sound her, I hope yet those few here will so discover and confirm that, the date being out of her darkness in this morning of our poet, he shall now gird his temples ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... coats were of every colour, shape, and size. Green and blue and brown and grey; some were of red, though not a little soiled, being evidently of ancient date, while there were long coats and great coats and short coats and spencers and cloaks; indeed, every species of covering invented to hide the nakedness of the human body. While the men themselves were tall and short and thin and stout and straight and crooked. No one had been refused admission into the corps. Their arms were as various in construction as their ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... of this sad tale, has touchingly described in no exaggerated terms the sufferings of the wretched crowd who were exposed for nearly three days and nights to the worst of physical and mental evils—hunger, thirst, cold, and nakedness—in their most aggravated form, rendered still more painful by the almost utter hopelessness of their condition, while they watched the repeated failures of Lieutenant Harvey and Mr. Callam in their attempts to send a boat to their relief. We need not therefore dwell on this subject further ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly

... story. The actual stage of to-day..is a moral abomination. In Chicago, at least, it is trampling on the Sabbath with defiant scoff. It is defiling our youth. It is making crowds familiar with the play of criminal passions. It is exhibiting women with such approaches to nakedness as can have no other design than to breed lust behind the onlooking eyes. It is furnishing candidates for the brothel. It is getting us used to scenes that rival the voluptuousness and licentious ages of the past." As never before to-day, has the ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy

... But I'll take pity on your nakedness. For I can see just how ridiculous you look, and so Will help you with your tunic if close up I ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes

... Love can scarce keep holiday: Love without his bow is straying! Come, ye nymphs, Love goes a Maying. His torch, his shafts, are laid aside— From them no harm shall you betide. Yet, I rede ye, nymphs, beware, For your foe is passing fair; Love is mighty, ye'll confess, Mighty e'en in nakedness; And most panoplied for fight When his charms are bared to sight. He ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... different departments, and the invitation was supplemented by a special request from our silent partner, the Senator, to spend at least a month at the capital. For years I had been promising my wife to take her on a visit to Virginia, and now when the opportunity offered, womanlike, she pleaded her nakedness in the midst of plenty. I never had but one suit at a time in my life, and often I had seen my wife dressed in the best the frontier of Texas afforded, which was all that ought to be expected. A day's notice was given her, the eldest children were sent to their grandparents, ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... top I found that it consisted of a chain of hills composed of a very hard sandstone, or quartz rock, similar to that of D'Urban's group. The summit was bare, not only of trees but even of grass, or any vegetation. This nakedness was however the more favourable for my chief object, which was to obtain a view of the distant country. The weather was not very auspicious, the sky being cloudy, and slight showers fell occasionally. The height of these hills is not considerable, the summit of that which I ascended was ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... hereafter, no matter what comes of it. Anything is better than a long, wearing falsehood, or than those hideous little shams that we were always afraid to touch for fear they would melt and show us our own nakedness. That is what I loathe about my life, and that is what I've done with now forever. I am myself now for the first time since I was born, and at last I shall let my own nature teach ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... offspring down to the end of the world. We learn another thing from this passage. God usually confirms his promise with an outward sign. In the third chapter above we read of the coats of skin with which he covered the nakedness of the first parents as token of his protection ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... follow us, until we paid a thousand times for what we had done. And then my father dragged him as he would have dragged a rat to the edge of a piece of bush, and there he tore his clothes from him until the brute was naked; and in that nakedness he scourged him with whips until his arms were weak, and John Graham was unconscious and like a great hulk of raw beef. When it was over, we ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... this story, likewise, he painted the drunkenness of Noah, with the contemptuous action of his son Ham—in whom he portrayed Dello, the Florentine painter and sculptor, his friend—with Shem and Japhet, his other sons, who are covering him up as he lies showing his nakedness. Here, likewise, he made in perspective a cask that curves on every side, which was held something very beautiful, and also a pergola covered with grapes, the wood-work of which, composed of squared ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari

... is indeed, since with the mighty, sovereign power of the Almighty it controls all the thoughts, and feelings, and volitions of the human mind. Now we see this scheme as it is in itself, in all its nakedness, just as it is presented to us by its own most able and enlightened defenders. And seeing it thus removed from all contact with the scheme of natural necessity, we ask, whether agents can be justly held accountable for acts thus determined ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... pusht them farther into a Labrinth, from whence it was impossible they could ever find their way out, but with infinite Loss to their Reputation, like a Sheep in a thick Wood, that at every Briar pulls some of the Wool from her Back, till she comes out in a most scandalous Pickle of Nakedness ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe

... he might overstep discretion, by obtruding beyond the limits imposed by modesty. He glanced furtively upwards at the place where Maso bad posted himself, and muttered something of an intention to profit by its present nakedness. ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... to wonder where they were to sleep, for they could not sleep downstairs, they could not sleep in a doghole smelling of oil, they could not sleep on deck, they could not sleep—She yawned profoundly. It was as Helen had foreseen; the question of nakedness had risen already, although they were half asleep, and almost invisible to each other. With St. John's help she stretched an awning, and persuaded Mrs. Flushing that she could take off her clothes behind this, and ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... Inventions crowd to save him from the poor man's bitter doom, And well-taught skill, to grace with comfort's ray his humblest home. No more o'er weakness shall exult the mighty and the proud— No more in nakedness shall 'plain his lot ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... our existence we were as ungainly a lot of children as could well be imagined. To look at our long, scrawny necks and big heads so disproportioned to the size of our bodies, which were scantily covered with a fuzzy down that scarcely concealed our nakedness, who would have thought that in time we would develop into such handsome birds as the bobolink family is universally ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson

... brute forms were evolved. Mr. Wallace[299] considers that "Natural Selection" alone could not have produced so large a brain in the savage, in possessing which he is furnished with an organ beyond his needs. Also that it could not have produced that peculiar distribution of hair, especially the nakedness of the back, which is common to all races of men, nor the peculiar construction of the feet and hands. He says,[300] after speaking of the prehensile foot, common without a single exception to all the apes and lemurs, "It is difficult to see why the prehensile power should ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... Methodists. A proud family, brought low by Mr. Hoover and his crowd. Had to sell our land. 'Spect us would have starved, as us too proud to beg. Thank God, Mr. Roosevelt come 'long. Him never ask whether us democrat or 'publican nor was us black or white; him just clothe our nakedness and ease de pains of hunger, and goin' further, us goin' to be took care of in our old age. Oh, how I love dat man; though they ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... This unfrocked monk, has known how to appear Dimitry to the people. Shamelessly He clothed himself with the name of the tsarevich As with a stolen vestment. It only needs To tear it off—and he'll be put to shame By his own nakedness. The means thereto God hath Himself supplied. Know, sire, six years Since then have fled; 'twas in that very year When to the seat of sovereignty the Lord Anointed thee—there came to me one evening A simple shepherd, a venerable old man, Who told me a strange secret. "In my young days," He ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin

... for the sites of the encampments are converted into barren esplanades, like those of the squares in French cities, where not a blade of grass is allowed to grow. As to the other symptoms of devastation and obstruction, such as deserted houses, unfenced fields, and a general aspect of nakedness and ruin, I know not how much may be due to a normal lack of neatness in the rural life of Virginia, which puts a squalid face even upon a prosperous state of things; but undoubtedly the war must have spoilt what was good, ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... most other animals are well protected. Leaving danger out of the question, it may be asked whether we have not here the origin of clothing? The assumption of the upright posture may have made primitive man aware of his nakedness. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various

... the supernatural beauty that comes over the island so often in rainy weather, so we basked in the vague enjoyment of the sunshine, looking down at the wild luxuriance of the vegetation beneath the sea, which contrasts strangely with the nakedness above it. ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... justly-reprobated and despised parties, are allowed no apology at all: though reduced to the begging of their bread, the world grants them no excuse. The sentence on them is: 'You shall suffer every hardship; you shall submit to hunger and nakedness; you shall perish by the way-side, rather than you shall surrender your person to the dishonour of the female sex.' But can we, without crying injustice, pass this sentence upon them, and, at the same time hold it to be proper, decorous, and delicate, that widows shall surrender their ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... protection, affluence, splendour, or even a competency. The slights, and hatred of men, and even pretended friends, gloomy prisons, and tortures, the society of barbarians of uncouth speech, miserable accommodations in wretched wildernesses, hunger, and thirst, nakedness, weariness, and painfulness, hard work, and but little worldly encouragement, should rather be the objects of their expectation. Thus the apostles acted, in the primitive times, and endured hardness, as good soldiers of Jesus Christ; and though we, living in a ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... eternal weight of glory." "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God!... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... punish him, he will say to himself: 'These people have done nothing for my bringing up, for my education, nothing to improve my lot, nothing to make me better, nothing to make me a man. These people have not given me to eat and to drink, have not visited me in prison and nakedness, and here they have sent me to penal servitude. I am quits, I owe them nothing now, and owe no one anything for ever. They are wicked and I will be wicked. They are cruel and I will be cruel.' That is what he will say, gentlemen of the jury. ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... 'the purple light of love' is not a dim reflection of the smiles of celestial bliss. It does not appear till the middle of life, and then seems like 'another morn risen on midday'. In this respect the soul comes into the world 'in utter nakedness'. Love waits for the ripening of the youthful blood. The sense of pleasure precedes the love of pleasure, but with the sense of pleasure, as soon as it is felt, come thronging infinite desires and hopes of pleasure, and love is mature as soon as born. It withers and it dies almost ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... before her the necessity for going presently, very soon, back to the camp and Nigel, and they woke up in her the secret woman, the woman who still retained the instincts of a lady. This lady realized, almost as Eve realized her nakedness, the humiliation of that rush through the night from one camp to another, the humiliation that lay in the fact that it was she who sought the man, that he had her brought to him, did not trouble to come to her. She reddened ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... was to decide his success: however, he hoped for the best; and in these hopes, by an intemperate confidence in the fortitude of his head, and the depth of his discretion, Mynheer might possibly oversee both in his new vineyard; and by discovering his nakedness, become a ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne

... good works, almsgivings, church-goings, church-buildings. Not to his own experiences, faith's assurances, frames or feelings. The matter was too terrible to be plastered over in that way, or in any way. He was face to face with God alone, in utter weakness, in utter nakedness of soul, He cried to God ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley

... garments, held out a little longer, and Hulda also got some sewing of children's under-garments. But with the return of winter, Hulda's illness returned, and then the beloved books began to leave bare the nakedness of the plastered walls. At first, Hulda, refusing to be visited by doctors who charged, struggled out bravely through rain and fog to a free dispensary, where she was jostled by a crowd of head-shawled Polish crones, and where a harassed Christian ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... Adam and Eve became naked. Before, their bodies had been overlaid with a horny skin, and enveloped with the cloud of glory. No sooner had they violated the command given them than the cloud of glory and the horny skin dropped from them, and they stood there in their nakedness, and ashamed.[69] Adam tried to gather leaves from the trees to cover part of their bodies, but he heard one tree after the other say: "There is the thief that deceived his Creator. Nay, the foot of pride shall not come against me, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... enough now that the old environment is gone. The new thrift has laid bare the nakedness of the land. It has found the villagers unequipped with any efficient mental habits appropriate to the altered conditions, and shown them to be at a loss for interesting ideas in other directions. They cannot see their way any longer. They have no ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... district-attorney directed the attention of the jury to this stupid attitude, evidently deliberate, which denoted not imbecility, but craft, skill, a habit of deceiving justice, and which set forth in all its nakedness the "profound perversity" of this man. He ended by making his reserves on the affair of Little Gervais and ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... of her cheeks. She had spoken boldly enough, even though towards the end of her sentence her voice had grown very low. When she had finished, however, it seemed as though the memory of her words were haunting her, as though she suddenly realised the nakedness of them. She buried her face in her hands, and he saw her shoulders heave as though she were sobbing. He stood very close and for the first time he touched her. He held the fingers of her hand gently in his. ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... around, you are not distracted from noting each marble man, in his niche against the wall, or at the base of a marble pillar. Space, distance, light, regularity, are to be preserved, even if the result should be a degree of nakedness. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... said the yeomanry, whose heads were so hot that they had forgotten their nakedness ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... departure had the appointments and authority of an ambassador, though no public character. By some mistake of the queen's orders the court of France had been disgusted, and Bolingbroke says in his letter, "Dear Mat,—Hide the nakedness of thy country, and give the best turn thy fertile brain will furnish thee with to the blunders of thy countrymen, who are not much better politicians ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... them stationed lodges, homes of transmigration for the spirits of men in process of being purged from their offences: we need not regard them as Avatars of Vishnu, or incarnations of Apis, visible deities craving the idolatries of India and Egypt. The truth commends itself by mere simplicity: nakedness betrays its Eve-like innocence of guile or error: those living creatures whom we call brutes and beasts, have, in their degree, the breath of God within them, as well as His handiwork upon them. And, candid theologian, tell me why—in that Millenium ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... voice, in his look and in his unexpected and violent acts; for he is not always master of himself. At certain times the varnish of cold politeness and icy sportiveness with which he ordinarily conceals his passions, scales off suddenly and falls into dust, and his soul appears in its nakedness. During the first weeks of my residence here he controlled himself in my presence, now I have the honor of possessing his confidence, and he no longer deems it necessary to hide his face from me, nor does he try ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... and here his tones sank, in a last recognition of all he was losing forever, "if there is suffering in a once proud man flinging from him the last rag of respect with which he sought to cover the hideous nakedness of an unsuspected crime, it is lost in the joy of doing justice to the son who would take advantage of circumstances to assume ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... bellowing at her heels, 630 Wades deep in blood new-spilt; yet for to-morrow Shapes out new work of great uncommon daring, And inly pines till the dread blow is struck. But, hold! I've gone too far; too much discover'd My father's nakedness, and nature's shame. Here let me pause, and drop an honest tear, One burst of filial duty and condolence, O'er all those ample deserts Death hath spread, This chaos of mankind.—O great man-eater! ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... living, struggling, human soul, tied down into that crooked hulk of a body and forced to slave for it? You that are so tender-hearted to everything—you that pity the body in its fool's dress and bells—have you never thought of the wretched soul that has not even motley to cover its horrible nakedness? Think of it shivering with cold, stilled with shame and misery, before all those people—feeling their jeers that cut like a whip—their laughter, that burns like red-hot iron on the bare flesh! Think of it ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich

... played upon, and yet that they are being treated with an insulting precaution which would be more in place in a lunatic asylum than in a gathering of presumably responsible men and women. In the end one is made to feel how far more purifying and ennobling than this is the spectacle of absolute nakedness, even on the stage, ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... would not enter the village, and his party remained, therefore, in the open all night. The next morning, as he expected, Myonga sent his prime minister, who declared that the ladies of his court had nothing to cover their nakedness, and that something more must be paid. This caused fresh difficulties, the drums beat, and at length, much against his inclination, Speke paid some more yards of cloth for the sake of Grant, who might otherwise have been annoyed by ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... through the gross nakedness of streets without people, till we reached the railway station, which was very fairly knocked about, but, as my friends said, nothing like as much as the cathedral. Then we had to cross the end of a long street ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling

... and court manners of a bygone day, written in the phrase of the period. The result was 'Fireside Conversation in the Time of Queen Elizabeth', or as he later called it, '1601'. The 'conversation' recorded by a supposed Pepys of that period, was written with all the outspoken coarseness and nakedness of that rank day, when fireside sociabilities were limited only to the loosened fancy, vocabulary, and physical performance, and not by ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain

... girl, who held in her arms a baby brother, whose destitution she endeavoured to conceal. It was a touching sight; that suffering girl, just stepping into womanhood, hiding against her young bosom the nakedness of the little creature she loved. Another fine boy, whose neatly-patched clothes had not one piece of the original stuff apparently left in them, stood behind his mother, with dark, glistening eyes fastened upon me, as if amused, and wondering who I was, and what business I could have there. A ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar. Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory, do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... the new proprietor, after a lengthened and painful examination of the dilapidations, and general nakedness of his estate—'this is embarrassing. Citizen Destouches was right. I must raise money upon the property, to replace what those brigands have carried off. I shall require three thousand francs at ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various

... Republic, who bore the name either of Atrius Umber or Umbrius Ater: and this man being ordered on some expedition, the soldiers refused to follow him. They did right. We remember that Mr. Coleridge used facetiously to call the well-known sister of Dr. Aikin, Mrs. Barbauld, 'that pleonasm of nakedness'—the idea of nakedness being reduplicated and reverberated in the bare and the bald. This Atrius Umber might be called 'that pleonasm of darkness;' and one might say to him, in the words of Othello, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... usual uneasy couch behind the Speaker's chair, Undy had greatly failed. The leader of a party whose struggles for the religion of his country had hitherto met but small success, saw at a glance the opportunity which fortune had placed in his way; he spied with eagle eye the nakedness of that land of promise which is compressed in the district round the Treasury benches; the barren field before him was all his own, and he put and carried his motion for closing ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... widows, fatherless and motherless children are enough to pierce the hardest of hearts. Likewise it is a very sorrowful spectacle to see those that escaped with their lives with not a mouthful to eat, or bed to lie on, or clothes to cover their nakedness or keep them warm, but all they had consumed to ashes. These deplorable circumstances cry aloud to your Honour's most wise consideration how steps may speedily be taken to deliver us out of the hand of our persecutors the cruel and ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... streaked with the stain of rain and clay. He had pinned the rents about his knees together, but he seemed so insecurely covered that a strong wind might expose him, or a sudden start burst his seams and scant contrivances to shield his nakedness. He touched his hat in a moment when he caught the quick eye of the landlord's wife upon him again, and moved ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... games and sports and ran to us, and we walked on quietly, though we knew not whether the meeting was to be for death or life. But that kind folk gathered round us, and asked us no story till they had fed us, and bathed us, and clad us after their fashion. And then, despite the nakedness and poverty wherein they had first seen us, they would have it that we were gods sent down to them from the world beyond the mountains by their fathers of old time; for of Holy Church, and the Blessed Trinity, and the Mother of God they knew no more than did ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... groaned Eunana. "I took off my mantle and covered sacred nakedness. I wanted to take him to the palace but I the lord commanded me to stay where I was, and ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... practically not to be had; so of coffee, sugar, salt, and the small rations generally. This, however, was the least part of the trouble, for the condition of the army as to clothing and shoes was simply appalling. When many had not even rags to cover their nakedness, and none were clad as civilized men should be to face the winter's snows and rains, it was nonsense to talk of campaigning. Grant saw this at a glance when he reached our camps. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxii. pt. ii. pp. 19, 43.] ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... on which if a man is content to remain uncertain, he is a fool or a brute; points respecting which it is no more possible for a genuine sceptic—for I speak not of the thoughtless lover paradox, or the queer dogmatist who resolves that nothing is true—to still the soul, than nakedness can render us insensible to cold; or hunger cure its own pangs by saying, 'Go to, now; I have nothing to eat.' The generality of mankind are insensible to these questions only because they imagine, even though it may be ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... enough that he is where he is. If only the others could be there also; if only those tramps could lie down for a little in the sunshine, and those children warm their feet, this once, upon a kindlier earth; if only there were no cold anywhere, and no nakedness and no hunger; if only it were as well with all men as it is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... significance and are more revealing of the spirit within. We seek divine truth and spiritual blessings more directly than he. It would be therefore a mistake for us to expect that practical, unpoetic mind of ours in the Oriental, or to present religious truth to him in its nakedness, unadorned and unenforced by rite and ritual. It has been, and, to some extent, continues to be the fault of our Congregational Missions in India that they try to lift the native Christian to those ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... spoke of as an attention to the delicacy of Lord Rochford. But whether the compliment was to one or both, to this nation it was the same. By this transaction the condition of our Court lay exposed in all its nakedness. Our office correspondence has lost all pretence to authenticity; British policy is brought into derision in those nations, that a while ago trembled at the power of our arms, whilst they looked up with confidence ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... what so fine a genius, had he fallen in a more happy age, and had followed better models, was capable of producing. The ancient satirists often used great liberties in their expressions; but their free-* *dom no more resembles the licentiousness of Rochester, than the nakedness of an Indian does that of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... was bare from neck to elbow; at every step one of his knees and part of a lean thigh protruded their nakedness through a large rent; a strip of grimy, blood-stained linen, torn right down to the waist, dangled solemnly in front of his legs. There was a horrible raw patch amongst the roots of his hair just above his temple; there was blood in his nostrils, the stamp of excessive anguish on his ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... eastern shore of the Lake of Gennesaret Jesus was encountered by a man whose suffering and nakedness are types of the anguish and shamelessness of sin. He could not be controlled; he was dwelling among the tombs, and these, too, are pictures of the helplessness and loneliness and hopelessness which evil passions ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman

... the aboriginal women never conceived the idea of weaving fibers together in textiles, but were contented with the skins of animals for warmth of body covering. The two alternatives of so close and warm a substance as tanned skins, or nakedness, seem to a civilized mind to demand some intermediate substance. This, however, was not felt as a want, at least not to the extent of inspiring a textile. Perhaps we should never have had the unique porcupine quill embroidery except for the close-grained skin foundation, ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler

... abominable; their hovels appear sinks of the vilest poverty and filth; their dress is at best rags; their food frequently of the vilest carrion, and occasionally, if report be true, still worse: thus they live in filth, in rags, in nakedness. The women are fortune-tellers. Of course both sexes are thieves of the first water. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... property the deceased has—lodge, arms, or ponies—if a will was made, it was carefully carried out; if not, all was scrambled for by the relatives. I have often had, when a man wanted to go out of mourning, to supply the necessary clothing to cover his nakedness. ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow

... every one was admonished of his folly, by the laird laughing, like a being out of his senses, at the number of bald heads and shaven crowns that his device had brought to light, and by one and all of us experiencing the coldness of the air on the nakedness of ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... certain sleight whereby he slung it across his shoulder, but no reason in the world for tossing it upon the hearse with a slam. They covered its nakedness with velvet, and the cocher, having taken a cigar from his pocket, and looking much as if he would like to smoke, put it back again sadly, cracked his whip, and the cortege went on. The croquemorts kept a little way ahead, sauntering upon the sidewalk, and their cloaks ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... bones that bleach upon the plains, Only the fleshless skeletons that lie In ghastly nakedness and silence, cry Out mutely that ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... ruined wall. I am afraid the reader will lose patience with my habit of constantly referring to the landscape of Italy as if that were the measure of the beauty of every other. Yet I am still more afraid that I cannot apologise for it, and must leave it in its culpable nakedness. It is an idle habit; but the reader will long since have discovered that this was an idle journey and that I give my impressions as they came to me. It came to me, then, that in all this view there was something transalpine, with a greater smartness and ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... crudity, would seem chaste compared with the hosts of this temple. For here, on the contrary, the figures might be those of living people, palpitating and voluptuous, who had posed themselves for sport in these consecrated attitudes. The throat of the beautiful goddess, her hips, her unveiled nakedness, are portrayed with a searching and lingering realism; the flesh seems almost to quiver. She and her spouse, the beautiful Horus, son of Iris, contemplate each other, naked, one before the other, and their laughing eyes are intoxicated ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... is no mistaking that sign. This unmusical "conk" is sweeter than the "kerchunk" of the bull-frog. Probably these birds are not idiots, and probably they turned back south again after spying out the nakedness of the land; but they have made their sign. Next day there is a rumor that somebody has seen a bluebird. This rumor, unhappily for the bird (which will freeze to death), is confirmed. In less than three days everybody has seen a bluebird; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... begone in thy nakedness! Clothe thyself on the hillside! Let none see thee until thou art far away! Rot as thou wilt, but dare not to name ...
— The Little Hunchback Zia • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... beggars description. Their dress was as varied as pieces in a crazy quilt. Here was a matronly dame in clean apparel, but without shoes; her husband perhaps lacked both shoes and hat. Youngsters of all sizes were running about with scarcely enough clothing to cover their nakedness. Some suits and dresses were so patched that it was impossible to tell what was the original cloth. The color of practically everybody's clothing ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... altogether take the view of the Heathen which you would get in an Exeter Hall meeting. Does not expatiate on their ignorance, their blackness, or their nakedness. Does not at all think of the Florentine Islington and Pentonville, as inhabited by persons in every respect superior to the kings of the East; nor does he imagine every other religion but his own to be log-worship. Probably the people who really worship ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin

... an Apostle, unmarried, pure, in fast and nakedness, and at length a martyr, is a higher idea than that of one of the old Israelites sitting under his vine and fig-tree, full of temporal goods, and surrounded by sons and grandsons. I am not derogating from Gideon or Caleb; I am adding ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... that man? He has no money in his pocket, all that he can pawn he has pawned long ago, his stomach is as empty as his purse, and the whole of the clothes upon his back, even if sold on the best terms, would not fetch a shilling. There he stands, your brother, with sixpennyworth of rags to cover his nakedness from his fellow men and not sixpennyworth of victuals within his reach. He asks for work, which he will set to even on his empty stomach and in his ragged uniform, if so be that you will give him something for it, but his hands are idle, for no one employs ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... nakedness on all-fours! And so I told the fellow, who by some cunning calculations about wind, and sun, and so forth, which he imparted to my uncomprehending ears, brought me suddenly to the top of a little crag, below which, some hundred yards off, the whole herd stood, stags, hinds—but ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... proper medical attention; that they were shot by sentinels, beaten by officers, and subjected to the most cruel punishments upon the slightest pretexts; that friends at the North were refused the privilege of clothing their nakedness or feeding them when starving; and that these outrages were perpetrated not only with the full knowledge of, but under the orders of E. M. Stanton, United States Secretary of War. We have proven these things by Federal as ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson

... of gold with which to weave a garment to cover her nakedness, the plutocrat melts the threads into sovereigns for his ...
— Wise or Otherwise • Lydia Leavitt

... nakedness of the entire tract was likewise very extraordinary. Elsewhere, in various quarters of the globe, there may be sterile rocks, but there are none so adamant as to be altogether unfurrowed by the filaments engendered in the moist ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... when he washed his servants' feet, so now As father of his family he clad Their nakedness with skins of beasts, or slain, Or, as the snake, with youthful coat repaid; And thought not much to ...
— Milton • John Bailey

... confess That sublunary science is but guess; Matters of fact to man are only known, And what seems more is mere opinion; 200 The standers-by see clearly this event; All parties say they're sure, yet all dissent; With their new light our bold inspectors press, Like Cham, to show their fathers' nakedness, By whose example after ages may Discover we more naked are than they; All human wisdom to divine is folly; This truth the wisest man made melancholy; Hope, or belief, or guess, gives some relief, But to be sure we are deceived ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... day, Removed far off; then, pitying how they stood Before him naked to the air, that now Must suffer change, disdained not to begin Thenceforth the form of servant to assume; As when he washed his servants feet; so now, As father of his family, he clad Their nakedness with skins of beasts, or slain, Or as the snake with youthful coat repaid; And thought not much to clothe his enemies; Nor he their outward only with the skins Of beasts, but inward nakedness, much ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... asked, "Was it not the practice in old Bethlem—not in the late gallery, but in the gallery pulled down—for eight, ten, or more patients to be fastened to the tables, almost in a state of perfect nakedness?" he replied, "Yes; they used to think they tore their clothes all to pieces; some of them would do that." "In point of fact, were they not fastened to the tables, sitting in a state of perfect nudity?" Answer: "They used to be so at the ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... even a joint-stool or bundle of straw. My night sack and my two trunks being brought me, I was shut in by great doors with huge locks, and remained at full liberty to walk at my ease from chamber to chamber and story to story, everywhere finding the same solitude and nakedness. ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... that this seems almost the necessary end at least of writers. "Les Blancs et les Bleus" (for instance) is of an order of merit very different from "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne"; and if any gentleman can bear to spy upon the nakedness of "Castle Dangerous," his name I think is Ham: let it be enough for the rest of us to read of it (not without tears) in the pages of Lockhart. Thus in old age, when occupation and comfort are most needful, the writer must ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... remember her shabby gown, her fireless room, the queer couch that was her bed, the hunger and the nakedness of ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... clearly had been a cataclysm within itinerary times. Some gigantic landslide must have sliced the mountain off into the gorge below, and instead of a path we had been following its still unlaid phantom. The new-born character of the chasm explained its shocking nakedness. But it was an uncomfortable sight to see a path in all its entirety vanish suddenly into ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... of your adoration engaged in her ordinary duties! She fetches a jar of water from the well. Barefoot she treads the well-known path. Those nude pellucid feet are fairer in their nakedness than the most delicate chaussure of silk and satin. The wreaths and pearl circlets, the pins of gold and drupes of coral, the costliest coiffures of the dress circle,—all seem plain and poor compared with the glossy neglige of ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... meet off Alexandria at dawn. There was not a great deal of settled sleep that night, for all men were busy packing kit-bags and putting in order shore-going clothes. The days of decks, bare feet and semi-nakedness were at an end, and to-morrow would start again the life of boots and puttees, saddles and tents. Men stood in small groups along the deck, shown only by the embers of pipes and the occasional glow of a match. They watched the low ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... of hands marked land enough to support black poplars, and we rounded a crumbly sand bank just in time to see the seven-banded birch canoe of a little old hunter, Sam Ba'tiste Buck—eighty years old he was—squatting in the bottom of the birch canoe, ragged almost to nakedness, bare of feet, gray-headed, nearly toothless but happier than an emperor—the first living being we had seen for a week in the muskegs. We camped together that night on the sandbars—trading Sam Ba'tiste flour and matches for a couple of ducks. He had been storm-stead ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... race, forswear charity, crush down every prompting of benevolence, and if he can have the palace and equipage of the prince, and the table of a sybarite, become a blind man, and a deaf man, and a dumb man, when he walks the streets where hunger moans and nakedness shivers? ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... fearless honesty, truthfulness, and love of wisdom. But such a God does not know what to do with all that respectable trumpery and pomp. "Keep that," he would say, "for thyself and those like thee, and whoever else require it! I—have no reason to cover my nakedness!" One suspects that this kind of divinity and philosopher perhaps lacks shame?—He once said: "Under certain circumstances I love mankind"—and referred thereby to Ariadne, who was present; "in my opinion man is an agreeable, brave, inventive animal, that has not his equal upon earth, he ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... two or three hundred of these stragglers—Winnebagoes, chiefly, about Prairie du Chien—men, women, and children, many of whom had scarcely the fragments of a filthy blanket to hide their nakedness or screen them from the cold—strolling and straggling about in squads of from two to a half dozen each, begging for whiskey, or cold potatoes, or crusts of bread. One old female, doubtless turned of threescore and ten, half naked, was gathering up from the dirt and ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake

... the shovel found no rock. A rough line of piled stones severed it from surrounding lands, and a few trees stood there, promising summer shade, though, darkly moist along every budded twig, they now swayed in tuneless nakedness. Here the dead of Fort St. John were buried; and those approaching figures entered a gap of the inclosure instead of going on to the camp. Three of La Tour's soldiers, with Father Jogues and his donne, had come to bury ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... got him before election!" And this is how the reverend gentleman had been "got"—crimped into an outward bound windjammer, with naught but a ragged red shirt and a pair of dungaree pants to cover his nakedness; and he found, when he made his disclosure of identity, that the high place of authority was occupied by a man who enjoyed and ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... of conquering a foot of land from France, Spain, or Holland. No; we are at war on the defensive to protect what is left, or more truly to stave off, for a year perhaps, a peace that must proclaim our nakedness and impotence. I would not willingly recur to that womanish vision of something may turn up in our favour! That something must be a naval victory that will annihilate at once all the squadrons of Europe—must wipe off forty ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... as he turned toward the south, after tracing with his sword upon the sand a line from east to west, "on that side are toil, hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm, desertion, and death; on this side, ease and pleasure. There lies Peru with its riches: here, Panama and its poverty. Choose, each man, what best becomes a brave Castilian. For my part, I go to the south." So saying, he crossed ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... Denderah stands apart from habitations, in a still solitude upon a blackened mound. From far off I saw the facade, large, bare, and sober, rising, in a nakedness as complete as that of Aphrodite rising from the wave, out of the plain of brown, alluvial soil that was broken here and there by a sharp green of growing things. There was something of sadness in the scene, and again I thought of Hathor as the "Lady of the Underworld," ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... that I say shall even be brought to pass: if I find thee again raving as now thou art, then may Odysseus' head no longer abide upon his shoulders, nor may I any more be called father of Telemachos, if I take thee not and strip from thee thy garments, thy mantle and tunic that cover thy nakedness, and for thyself send thee weeping to the fleet ships, and beat thee out of the assembly ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... cleaving behind the hovel-wall of that dense female, Mounted and tense, spread-eagle, out-reaching out of the shell In tortoise-nakedness, Long neck, and long vulnerable limbs extruded, spread-eagle over her house-roof, And the deep, secret, all-penetrating tail curved beneath her walls, Reaching and gripping tense, more reaching anguish in uttermost tension Till suddenly, in the spasm of coition, tupping ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence

... heavier on them than on the Southern inhabitants; for the Bohea tea used by a Northern freeman will pay more tax than the whole consumption of the miserable slave, which consists of nothing more than his physical subsistence and the rags that cover his nakedness.... Let it not be said that direct taxation is to be proportioned to representation. It is idle to suppose that the general government can stretch its hand directly into the pockets of the people scattered over so vast a country.... He would sooner submit himself ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay

... history of mankind like a Utopian. But the Utopian negation of all reality by no means preserves us from its influence. Denied upon one page of a Utopian work, it takes its revenge on another, where it often appears in all its nakedness. Thus Proudhon "denies" the State. "The State—no, no—I will none of it, even as servant; I reject all government, even direct government," he cries ad nauseam. But, oh! irony of reality! Do you know how he "invents" the constitution of value? It ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff

... picturesque, but still with lively and attractive, descriptiveness? He might have thrown aside, with the same scorn, the mass of ecclesiastical fiction which envelops the early history of the church, stripped off the legendary romance, and brought out the facts in their primitive nakedness and simplicity—if he had but allowed those facts the benefit of the glowing eloquence which he denied to them alone. He might have annihilated the whole fabric of post-apostolic miracles, if he had left uninjured by sarcastic insinuation those of the New Testament; he might have cashiered, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... to get along," replied Paul, reservedly. He did not wish to reveal the nakedness of the land to ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... this proud race, And thee alone from out the anchored host I trust to honest voice conditions here. Carpen: Sire! dost thou seek a true, unvarnished tale, Or rather wouldst a colored picture please? Francos: Truth is so hidden in her various garbs That nakedness alone presents her fair; Hence ornament and furbelow disdain, And Hebe-like unbedecked let her stand forth. Carpen: It were indeed a most stupendous mind Which, as the argonaut with mining pan Doth sift pure gold from ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... next day cousin Sally arrived. She had not come to spy out the nakedness of the land,—not for the purpose of making contrasts between her own condition in life and that of Mr. Cartwright,—but from pure love. She had always been warmly attached to her cousin; and the years during which new life-associations had separated ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur

... difference between this cynical disorder and d'Arthez's neat and self-respecting poverty! A warning came with the thought of d'Arthez; but Lucien would not heed it, for Etienne made a joking remark to cover the nakedness of a reckless life. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... mischief, drifted here and there in arm-locked groups of a dozen, smiling, whispering among themselves, ready to collapse toward a common centre of giggles if addressed by one of the numerous woods-dandies, Indian men stalked singly, indifferent, stolid. Indian children of all sizes and degrees of nakedness darted back and forth, playing strange games. The sound of many voices ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White

... mean or course (sic) soever could seem tedious or burthensome unto him, so he might but find some good master, by whose charity he might relieve his present necessity: for his great ambition was but to keep his body from nakedness and his stomach from hunger, and told him withal how long it was since he ...
— The History of Sir Richard Whittington • T. H.

... to think of this? Was it because of the husband's pride of possession over his wife? No. It was because I placed the fullest trust upon love. I was vain enough to think that I had the power in me to bear the sight of truth in its awful nakedness. It was tempting Providence, but still I clung to my proud determination to come out victorious ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... necessity. And this is threefold. 1. To cover thy nakedness, and hide thy shame. 2. To defend thy body from the cold of winter, and heat of summer. 3. For necessity, to hold in the life of the body. So put on Jesus Christ this wedding garment; and, 1. He shall cover the shame of thy ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... and Roederer, with an air as composed as if the former had still been an Abbe and the confessor of the latter. Next came Madame Murat, whom three hours before I had seen in the Bois de Boulogne in all the disgusting display of fashionable nakedness, now clothed and covered to her chin. She was followed by the pious Madame Le Clerc, now Princesse Borghese, who was sighing deeply and loudly. After her came limping the godly Talleyrand, dragging his pure moiety by his side, both with ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... besides being painted in a fantastic style, were also decorated with flowers and feathers. Martin could not help feeling that, however absurd the idea of painting the body was, it had at least the good effect of doing away to some extent with the idea of nakedness; for the curious patterns and devices gave to the Indians the appearance of being clothed in tights,—and, at any rate, he argued mentally, paint was better than nothing. Some of the flowers were artificially constructed out of beetles' wings, shells, fish-scales, and feathers, and were exquisitely ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... Nimrod, soon after descended into the vaults below, followed by a negro bearing a lantern. Here they unbolted one of the cells, dragged forth a dejected-looking mulatto woman, her rags scarcely covering her nakedness. The poor wretch, a child born to degradation and torture, whose cries were heard in heaven, heaved a deep sigh, then gave vent to a flood of tears. They told how deep was her anguish, how she struggled ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... You've neither money nor men nor powder. Half a dozen broken captains who must starve if there's no fighting afoot, as many more who've put their souls in the priests' hands and see with their eyes—these and a few score boys without a coat to their backs or breeches to their nakedness—d'you think to oust old ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman

... degree forced or hoarse. And the result of this was the entire absence of that murmur which one has come to regard as characteristic of the orchestra. If a wrong note was played, there was nothing to hide its nakedness. It was as though a penetrating flood of cold white light were poured upon the music and made it transparent: one perceived every remotest and least significant detail with a vivid distinctness that can only be compared with a page of print seen ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... the boys all felt intensely uncomfortable, not so much even at Hilaria's presence as at this sudden nakedness of thought and emotion. Doughty, set on justifying himself at least as far as accuracy went, held on. "I heard it at once when I went to my uncle's at Penzance last holidays. Everyone knows it down there. Of course Ruan knew it all ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... the doctor cried. "Mark my word, the day of the common people has dawned. This mudsill of the world has learned to read and write and begun to think. He has tasted of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and begins dimly to see his own nakedness. He will never be content again until he turns the world upside down. My country will lead the ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... me go to the physician, and how far wouldst thou have me go with the physician? I know thou hast made the matter, and the man, and the art; and I go not from thee when I go to the physician. Thou didst not make clothes before there was a shame of the nakedness of the body, but thou didst make physic before there was any grudging of any sickness; for thou didst imprint a medicinal virtue in many simples, even from the beginning; didst thou mean that we should be sick when thou didst so? when thou madest them? ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... to me than cutting down an old and well-remembered French forest I have loved; and solving all its mystery, and laying bare the nakedness of the land in a way so brutal and expeditious and unexpected. It reminds one of the manner in which French market-women will pluck a goose before it's quite dead; you bristle with indignation to see it, but ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... was confused when at the first her riches were taken from her, her confusion at the sight of her nakedness is infinitely more painful. She cannot bear to appear before her Bridegroom, so deep is her shame. But she must remain, and run hither and thither in this state. What! is it not even permitted to her to hide herself? No; she must appear thus in public. The world begins to think less highly ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon

... triumphant home-coming, and of how much he must have read in order to become so learned. And, while I thought of all this, my consciousness awoke little by little, until my own ignorance suddenly stood clearly before me in all its horrible nakedness. ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland

... regret the swoon from which he had emerged into consciousness. Looking down at his person, he beheld that his clothes had all been taken away from him, and that he was now clad in a shirt with only one sleeve, and a pair of breeches so tattered that they barely covered his nakedness. While he lay thus, dismally depressed by so sad a pickle as that into which he found himself plunged, he was strongly and painfully aware of an uproarious babble of loud and drunken voices and a continual clinking of glasses, ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... secret corridors, that were hid from the vulgar eye, while thin partitions only separated them from the apartments of the Doge, which, like the specious aspect of the state, concealed the nakedness and misery within, by their gorgeousness and splendor! On reaching the attic, Jacopo stopped, and ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... bestowing high praise upon a copper-plate which a certain Bazzacco had made from the Last Judgment, but criticising the picture as "licentious and likely to cause scandal with the Lutherans, by reason of its immodest exposure of the nakedness of persons of both sexes in heaven and hell." It is not clear what Aretino expected from Enea Vico. A reference to the Duke of Florence seems to indicate that he wished to arouse suspicions among great and ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... bent or stubborn heather, were subjected to the discipline of the plough, and produced a golden harvest of grain. Woods sprang up as if by magic, from the roots of the old Caledonian forest, to hide the nakedness of the land and redeem the national reproach. The towns and boroughs—which had never recovered from the terrible blow inflicted upon them by the failure of the Darien scheme, in which nearly the whole capital of Scotland was embarked, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... spring crops for ten miles, till we entered among the ravines of the river Sindh, whose banks are, like those of all rivers in this part of India, bordered to a great distance by these deep and ugly inequalities. Here they are almost without grass or shrubs to clothe their hideous nakedness, and have been formed by the torrents, which, in the season of the rains, rush from the extensive plain, as from a wide ocean, down to the deep channel of the river in narrow streams. These streams cut their way easily through the soft alluvial soil, which must once have formed the bed of a vast ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... to be very convenient to hold down a crotalus with, if he should happen to encounter one. He knew the aspect of the ledge from a distance; for its bald and leprous-looking declivities stood out in their nakedness from the wooded sides of The Mountain, when this was viewed from certain points of the village. But the nearer aspect of the blasted region had something frightful in it. The cliffs were water-worn, as if they had been gnawed for thousands of years by hungry waves. In ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... his nest very little. Why should he? He may migrate tomorrow and build another. He is like the passenger pigeon that lays its eggs and rears its young upon a little platform of bare twigs. Our poverty and nakedness is in this respect, I think, beyond dispute. There is nothing nest-like about our homes, either in their interiors or exteriors. Even wealth and taste and foreign aids rarely attain that cozy, mellowing atmosphere that pervades not only the lowly birthplaces but the halls ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... which we need not prosecute farther. [OEuvres de Frederic, xii. 70-73 (WRITTEN at Freiburg, 6th November, when his Majesty got thither, and found the Bridge burnt).] A certain heartiness and epic greatness of cynicism, life's nakedness grown almost as if innocent again; an immense suppressed insuppressible Haha, on the part of this King. Strange TE-DEUM indeed. Coming from the very heart, truly, as few of them do; but not, in other points, recommendable at all!—Here, of the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle



Words linked to "Nakedness" :   altogether, naked, raw, condition, sociability, undress, glumness, openness, closeness, birthday suit, status, sociableness, gloominess, gloom, nude



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