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More "Artless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she might be fighting for her life, set out to tell her story. She proved at her best and spoke well. She kept her temper and chose her words. The things that she had thought to speak, indeed, escaped her, but her artless and direct narrative did not ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... Marychurch to Stourmouth. Dinner followed, shortly after which Damaris vanished, along with her governess-companion, Miss Theresa Bilson—a plump, round-visaged, pink-nosed little person, permanently wearing gold eyeglasses, the outstanding distinction of whose artless existence consisted, as Tom gathered from her conversation, in a tour in Rhineland and residence of some months' duration at the university town ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... plaintive song. It was not long before a small bird of beautiful plumage flew upon the tree, beneath which she usually sat, and, with its sweet and artless notes, seemed to respond to her voice. It was a bird of strange character, such as she had never seen before. It came every day and sang to her, remaining until it became dark. Her fond imagination soon led her to suppose that it was the spirit of her lover, and her visits to ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... placed himself near the lovely Caprioletta, whose artless and innocent conversation had already made an ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... waste our schoolboy art To gild this notch of time; Forgive me, if my wayward heart Has throbbed in artless rhyme. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... girl; and she reflected that young men at times discover that the little-thought-of playmates of their childhood have grown up wondrous fair to look upon. Blanche's curiosity, too, was also much exercised on this subject, and young ladies, in their own artless fashion, can cross-examine in such cases as adroitly as a Queen's Counsel. On one point there was much unanimity, namely, that it was a great triumph for the Grange, and most satisfactory that Jim Bloxam's defeat should have been ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... complex works of man, Heaven's easy, artless, unencumbered plan, No meretricious graces to beguile, No clustering ornaments to clay the pile. From ostentation as from weakness free, It stands like the cerulean arch we see, Majestic in its ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... to know how far the feeling expressed in this artless effusion coexisted with a faith in the atonement and mediation of ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to the kitten and talked artless nonsense to it to fill up the pause that followed, and Lady Kingsmead powdered her nose with a bit of chamois skin that lived in a silver box full of Fuller's ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... not help smiling at this artless outburst from the young candidate for cricket honours, and replied, "I like him too, for he came and watched our practice too, ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... argument, which was very simple; and also my surprise at its nature. All this sounds a very old story now! And yet it is not such a long time ago. I must conclude that I had still preserved much of my pristine innocence in the year 1907. It seems to me now that even an artless person might have foreseen that some criticisms would be based on the ground of sordid surroundings and the ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... 'S blood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?' Guildenstern ought to have said: 'Much, my lord! Here is an actor who has been summering in the country, and has caught a glimpse of pathetic fact commoner than the dust in the road, and has built it up in a bit of drama as artless as a child would fancy, and yet it swells your heart and makes you cry. Your mystery? You have no mystery to an honest man. It is only fakes and frauds who do not understand the soul. The simplest willow whistle is an instrument more complex than man.' That is what I should have ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Lord's Prayer, the Creed, prayers and hymns, and some Latin should be taught. In the second, the Latin grammar, Latin authors, and religion. In the third, completion of the grammar, difficult Latin authors, rhetoric, and logic. Williams calls this "Melanchthon's somewhat artless ideas of a proper school system," which he excuses as being "marked possibly by the crudity of a first effort at organization, but more probably controlled in form by the fewness of teachers in the schools ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... wed, In her artless manner said, "Dear, I think I'd better Choose a hobby, lest I find Household duties cramp the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... intolerable. I gaped at the slim, brown-haired girl. Surely she would resent this. Traitor if she pleased, she was still a woman. But she only looked up wistfully into Woodford's face and smiled as artless, winning, merry a smile as ever was born on ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... what heresy means," answered Dona Leonor, in an artless tone. "My dear father taught me what I know about the loving Jesus— that He is the only friend in whom human beings can really trust. It was the sure knowledge of this which comforted him through his illness, and made his deathbed so happy and glorious. ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... serious than this, I cordially embraced my friends, while they wept for joy in my arms. Their happiness was now complete, and the multitude returned with us, shouting for joy, to Rarik's dwelling, where an Eb, or artless opera, was represented; the subject,—my crew of the Rurik and myself: each song celebrated one of us individually, and the praises of the whole were chanted in the concluding chorus. I regretted much that I could not understand them better. The words, moll (iron), aidarah (friend), tamon ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... the sides, doors of every form and age; dormer windows, windows square, pointed, embattled, with stone mullions garlanded with elaborate reliefs. This masquerade of styles troubles the mind, yet not unpleasantly; it is unpretending and artless; each century has built according to its own fancy, without ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... In such artless amusements the day passed, a day that remains forever an idyl of simple loveliness to me, such as any man is the richer for having known. When darkness overtook us, we made for ourselves the softest of ferny beds, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... prosperous horse-dealer, who, becoming wealthy, came up to town, and, amongst other sights, was shown a goldsmith's window. His sole remark was that the man must be a big thief indeed to have so many spoons and watches all at once. The expression of opinion was as naive and artless as that of Blucher, when observing that London was a magnificent city 'for to sack.' Mr. Smith's benevolent intentions speak for themselves. But if he hopes to make the Gipsy ever other than a Gipsy, to transform the Romany into a Gorgio, of to alter ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... from the French border and were little influenced by the now well-developed art of the troubadours and trouvres. They got their impulse rather from the simple love-messages and dance-songs which had long been current in Latin, probably also in artless German verses. These trifles were now translated, so to speak, into the terms of chivalrous sentiment. The art of the minnesingers culminated in the fascinating songs of Walter von der Vogelweide, and then, as their numbers increased, it gradually degenerated ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... easily detected the attachment of Isabella Singleton to Dunwoodie. Delicate and retiring herself, it never could present itself to her mind that this love had been unsought. Ardent in her own affections, and artless in their exhibition, she had early caught the eye of the young soldier; but it required all the manly frankness of Dunwoodie to court her favor, and the most pointed devotion to obtain his conquest. This done, his power was durable, entire, and engrossing. But the unusual occurrences ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... fresh turf, the crooked course of a rural footpath. "It's the Forest of Arden," Sir Claude had just delightfully observed, "and I'm the banished duke, and you're—what was the young woman called?—the artless country wench. And there," he went on, "is the other girl—what's her name, Rosalind?—and (don't you know?) the fellow who was making up to her. Upon my word he IS making ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... of my own on the family of Her Highness, I shall leave her to pursue her beautiful and artless narrative of her parentage, early sorrows, and introduction to Her ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... of bargains in politics, marm," he stated, dryly, "that takes more'n two to put 'em through when the pinch comes." He enjoyed the discomfiture that her artless confession brought to the Duke. The old man looked him up and down. That this Niles whom he himself had helped into office, who had been taking private toll from the liquor interests of the county as his predecessors ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... verdant canopy, and cast a most refreshing shade; under my feet lay a carpet of Nature's velvet; grass intermingled with moss, and embroidered with the evening dew; jessamines, united with woodbines, twined around the trees, displaying their artless beauties to the eye, and diffusing their delicious sweets through the air. On either side, the boughs rounding into a set of regular arches, opened a view into the distant seas, and presented a prospect of the convex heavens. The little birds all joyous and grateful for the favours ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... haste. But he is incorrigible. He returns, and this time brings a still longer and more pretentious poem. Some applaud; others disapprove. Encolpius, seized with a fit of melancholy, thinks of hanging himself, but is persuaded to live by the artless caresses of a fair boy whom he has loved. Several adventures of a similar kind follow, and the book, which towards the end becomes very fragmentary, ends without any regular conclusion. Enough has been given to show its general character. It is something between a Menippean satire and ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... came across Captain Andrews, and soon discovered from that artless warrior that he also was bound for Latchford, with a view to ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Captain Kittridge. Mrs. Kittridge was in her glory. Solemn and lugubrious to the last degree, she supplied in her own proper person the want of the whole corps of mourners, who generally attract sympathy on such occasions. But what drew artless pity from all was the unconscious orphan, who came in, led by Mrs. Pennel by the one hand, and with the little ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Their artless notes were sweet, Grace ran through every line; Their breasts with rapture swelled, Their looks were all divine: Delight o'er all My senses stole, And heaven's pure ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... his maddest mirthful mood, Strange pangs would flash along Childe Harold's brow, As if the memory of some deadly feud Or disappointed passion lurked below: But this none knew, nor haply cared to know; For his was not that open, artless soul That feels relief by bidding sorrow flow; Nor sought he friend to counsel or condole, Whate'er this grief mote be, which he ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... head full of Roman castrametation and geometrical problems, a prince, scarce emerged from boyhood, presents himself on that stage where grizzled Mansfelds, drunken Hohenlos, and truculent Verdugos have been so long enacting, that artless military drama which consists of hard knocks and wholesale massacres. The novice is received with universal hilarity. But although the machinery of war varies so steadily from age to age that a commonplace commander of to-day, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... skin, too, has the rare ivory delicacy of old age, of old age gently dealt with and protected. The light is unobtrusive yet luminous—morning sunshine. The picture is utterly simple; the more so for its touch of incompleteness. The masses are broad, artless. It is tender, reverential, a sweet and solemn glorification of old age, and of the old ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... years. When he came he was not at first communicative. He seemed to take more interest than he used to do in the Mission, I noticed. He had always been a hero among the Mashona boys: that was no new thing. And I was thankful indeed to see that he had not lost his old artless art of making friends with them. So many things might have conspired to rob him of it. He stayed but a month in all at the Mission, and he said little all that time, but his eyes were full of thought as I talked to him passing on to him hopes, disappointments, joys of ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... knowing that confidences beget confidences, I plied him with much of interest and suggestion from my real and fictitious past. And it was after the third whisky of the third visit of that sort, if I remember rightly, that a propos of some artless expansion of a little affair that had touched and left me in my teens, that he did at last, of his own free will and motion, break the ice. "It was like that with me," he said, "over there at Aldington. It's just ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... to Rebecca. I wondered if she had taken to heart anything in the acquaintance she was said to have had with Mr. Rollin, before I came to Wallencamp, which had caused the change in her. I did not believe she had. The girl was too artless and simple to have concealed so completely the resentment she would naturally have cherished—too childish to have borne it so silently. As far as the fisherman was implicated in the affair, even if he had trifled a little ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... I never left her without my affectionate surprise increasing at the sight of so many graces in a person who was not the more vain because of it. Were she seated or standing, speaking or walking, it always seemed to me that she was absolutely artless, and that she thought of nothing less than appearing to be ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... products of all the mystics, the Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis. [Sidenote: Thomas a Kempis, c. 1380-1471] Written in a plaintive minor key of {33} resignation and pessimism, it sets forth with much artless eloquence the ideal of making one's personal life approach that of Christ. Humility, self-restraint, asceticism, patience, solitude, love of Jesus, prayer, and a diligent use of the sacramental grace of the eucharist are the means recommended to form the character ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... distance with their eyes shut. No boy wants to write familiar things to a forgotten aunt with her eyes shut. His thoughtless elders require him not only to write to her under these discouragements, but to write to her in an artless and childlike fashion. ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... forth, my simple lay, Whose accents flow with artless ease, Like orient pearls at random strung. A Persian Song of ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... courtesy to her hoyden mistress, but partly at the burning, blushing indignation she beheld in the artless ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... emotion facile, so also it generally renders expression simple; that is to say a truly religious painter will very often be ruder, quainter, simpler, and more faulty in his manner of working, than a great irreligious one. And it was in this artless utterance, and simple acceptance, on the part of both the workman and the beholder, that all noble schools of art have been cradled; it is in them that they must be cradled to the end of time. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... unearthly innocence which the advancing tide of sophistication has still left in some parts of the United States—that sweet, proud, pathetic conviction of the American girl that evil is not a vital force in any world that she knows. The young man before her smiled at her in as artless an unconsciousness as her own. They might have been a pair ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... which I can look through, as the balloon-voyagers tell us they see from their hanging-baskets through the translucent waters which the keenest eye of such as sail over them in ships might strive to pierce in vain? Why has the child trusted me with such artless confessions,—self-revelations, which might be whispered by trembling lips, under the veil of twilight, in sacred confessionals, but which I cannot look at in the light of day without a feeling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... in heroic poetry. One knows—at least every schoolboy has known—that a passage of Homer, rolling along in the hexameter or trumped out by Pope, will give one a hot glow of pleasure and raise a finer throb in the pulse; one knows that Homer is the easiest, most artless, most diverting of all poets; that the fiftieth reading rouses the spirit even more than the first—and yet we find ourselves (we are all alike) painfully pshaw-ing over some new and uncut barley sugar in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... Julia, her bright face gleaming radiantly with the pure lustre of her artless spirit, "I am glad to see him; I do prize his coming; I do love Paullus. Why, then, should I dissemble, when to do so were dishonest, and were ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... his great guns to bear. He named a pound, then two, then three. Out of the maniap's one person after another came to join the group, some with mere excitement, others with consternation in their faces. The pretty girl crept to my side; it was then that—surely with the most artless flattery—she informed me of my likeness to her father. Tamaiti the infidel sat with hanging head and every mark of dejection. Terutak' streamed with sweat, his eye was glazed, his face wore a painful rictus, his chest heaved ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... own race amongst other animals all new and strange to Europeans. The prints of the foot of man alone were familiar to us. But here he was living in common with other animals, simply on the bounty of nature; artless, and apparently as much afraid of us, and as shy, as other animals of the forest. It seemed strange, that in a climate the most resembling that of Milton's paradise, the circumstances of man's existence ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... who cannot yet eat his bread and jam without smearing his face all over, takes a delight in fashioning clay into little figures that are astonishingly lifelike for all their artless awkwardness. He takes a knife and makes the briar root grin into all sorts of entertaining masks; he carves boxwood in the semblance of a horse or sheep; he engraves the effigy of his dog on sandstone. Leave ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... a stir of intense interest among the listening directors in the hall. This was news, indeed! Mingled with the interest was surprised amusement at the prisoner's artless assumption that he had any choice about what he would ...
— Oneness • James H. Schmitz
... a magistrate of Caen, where he resided during almost the whole of the sixteenth century. The religious wars were then raging; and he relates, in a most entertaining and artless manner, the history of the events of which he was an eye-witness. His work, as is justly observed by Huet, is a treasure, that has preserved the recollection of a great variety of the most curious details, which would otherwise have been neglected ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... the unstudied ease and simplicity of the veery's strain, he is a great master of technique. In his own artless way he does what I have never heard any other bird attempt: he gives to his melody all the force of harmony. How this unique and curious effect, this vocal double-stopping, as a violinist might term it, is produced, is not certainly known; but it would seem that it must be by an arpeggio, ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... little repertory of old songs and ballads, that she could produce without hesitation from memory,—"My mother bids me bind my hair," or "Bid your faithful Ariel fly," and such-like old songs, in which there is more melody than in a hundred new ones, and which she sang in a simple, artless fashion that pleased the elder people greatly. Dulce could do more than this, but her voice had never been properly tutored, and she sang her bird-music in bird-fashion, rather wildly and shrilly, with small respect to rule and ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... practice to prophesy for his second son a career of ruin and disgrace. There is an advantage in this artless parental habit. Doubtless the father is interested in his son; but doubtless also the prophet grows to be interested in his prophecies. If the one goes wrong ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shock, the poor girl recovered herself with admirable courage. She raised her head, and eyed the lawyer without uttering a word. In its artless consciousness of innocence the look was nothing less than sublime. Addressing herself to Mr. Troy, Lady Lydiard pointed to Isabel. "Do you see guilt ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... "What an artfully artless little creature you are, Belle! You mean to imply that, if Brian asks you to be Mrs. Beresford, you will say 'Yes,' for the pleasure of ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... soldier-like demeanor. Loyal, frank, and virtuous, of a serious disposition, and great simplicity of heart, he was well chosen as a mediator with rash and profligate men; being calculated to calm their passions by his sobriety; to disarm their petulance by his age; to win their confidence by his artless probity; and to awe their licentiousness by ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... rejoicings here at Milan, however, proceed from affectation, is a choice comfort: the Lombards possess the skill to please you without feigning; and so artless are their manners, you cannot even suspect them of insincerity. They have, perhaps for that very reason, few comedies, and fewer novels among them: for the worst of every man's character is already well known to the rest; but be his conduct ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... a check blanket coat, which she unbuttoned as they watched her. Beneath it, suitable to the occasion, was a white dress, and Sir William, looking at it, felt a glow of tenderness for this artless child who had blundered into the privacy of the ante-room. Something daintily virginal in Dolly's face appealed to him; he caught himself thinking that her frock was more than a miracle in bleached cotton—it was moonshine ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... graceless creature of our modern life, his ill-made clothes, his clumsy, half-fearful, half- brutal bearing, his coarse defective speech, his dreary unintelligent work, his shabby, impossible, bathless, artless, comfortless home; one is provoked to suggest him in some phase of typical activity, "enjoying himself" on a Bank Holiday, or rejoicing, peacock feather in hand, hat askew, and voice completely gone, on some occasion of public festivity ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... pride: Nor do Arabian perfumes vainly spoil The native use and sweetness of his oil. Instead of these, his calm and harmless life, Free from th' alarms of fear, and storms of strife, Does with substantial blessedness abound, And the soft wings of peace cover him round: Through artless grots the murmuring waters glide; Thick trees both against heat and cold provide, From whence the birds salute him; and his ground With lowing herds, and bleating sheep does sound; And all the rivers, and the forests nigh, ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... feeling being, whose mind is too keen for his frame, and wears it out. I have not spoken to him above thrice in my life, for he is a Dissenter, and has rarely come in my way. The document is a sort of record of his feelings, after the perusal of "Jane Eyre;" it is artless and earnest; genuine and generous. You must return it to me, for I value it more than testimonies from higher sources. He said, 'Miss Bronte, if she knew he had written it, would scorn him;' but, indeed, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... that his love was genuine. Daphne seemed the very incarnation of desirable, artless, heart-refreshing womanliness, but his memory could not dwell with her long; anxiety concerning Chello's report only too quickly interrupted it, as soon as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... seeking information of the early childhood of Rupert Ray, Archibald Pennybet, and Edgar Gray Doe. Not without misgiving do I offer the result of these researches, for I fear all the time lest my self-conscious hand should profane Rupert's artless narrative. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... evidence, and calculating with a judgment by no means to be despised, from the bearing, the turn of features, and the complexion of the victim, the probability whether he was making a frank and artless confession, or had still the secret desire to impose on the royal examiner, or from a different motive was disposed to make use of the treacherous authority which the situation afforded, to gratify his revenge upon some person towards whom he ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... some few objects interesting; Mr. Wendover said it would be a very good place to find a thing you couldn't find anywhere else—it illustrated the prudent virtue of keeping. They took note of the sarcophagi and pagodas, the artless old maps and medals. They admired the fine Hogarths; there were uncanny, unexpected objects that Laura edged away from, that she would have preferred not to be in the room with. They had been there half an hour—it had grown much ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... Cymbeline, in Shakespeare's play of the name, a perfect female character, pronounced "the most tender and the most artless ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... our deists are the product of a reason which has been evangelized without their own knowledge. They have not invented, but have received the thought, which constitutes the support of their life. A mind of ordinary cultivation is free henceforward from all danger of falling into the artless error of J.J. Rousseau, when he pretended that even though he had been born in a desert island and had never known a human being, he would have been able to draw up the confession of faith of the Vicaire Savoyard. ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... names; and her eyes, her nose, and her chin, and so on; and then I would touch her lips, and say, 'What's them?' And she'd say. 'Bhileau?' And then I'd kiss her, and say, 'What's that?' And she'd say. 'Pog.' But she was so artless, and so was I; we didn't know that's not usual unless people are courtin; for we hadn't seen anything ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the Tartars are frank and artless, forming a marked contrast to the formal reception of strangers among the Chinese. 'On entering, you give the word of peace, amor or mendon, to the company generally. You then seat yourself on the right of the head ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... distance of time, to pronounce. When he died, at seventy-three, Fenelon could say of him (in Latin), "La Fontaine is no more! He is no more; and with him have gone the playful jokes, the merry laugh, the artless graces, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... "Artless, old mother!" thought Keene. "She knows nothing of the doings of this son of her's." Then, thinking of the forger whom he had come so near capturing that evening, Keene said: "You are from New York, I believe, ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... in, and young and old With smiling eyes its smiling eyes behold, And artless, babyish joy; A playful welcome greets it through the room, The saddest brow unfolds its wrinkled gloom, To greet the ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... in the other half; and the severe moral discipline thus endured, made her mad, as equivalent vexation would have made a man the reverse of that word. Flippant social satirists cannot dwell with sufficient sarcasm upon the difference between the invincible amiability affected by artless girls in society and their occasional bitterness of aspect in the privacy of home; never stopping to reflect that there are sore private trials for these industrious young crochet creatures in which the thread of the most equable female existence is necessarily worsted. Miss POTTS, then, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... said Mr. Rogers. "But unless I'm a Dutchman, it used to be The Gabriel's antimacassar"—and with that Mr. Rogers winked, for he had (as the other knew to his cost) an artless, primitive sense of pleasantry. "A gage d'amour, I'll bet any ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... brother, ere you squeeze my hand so devoutly, that I am not your artless country maid," exclaimed Helen, laughing; then, after a moment's pause, she cries, gayly, "ah! I have it, Frank; you must masquerade a little, that's all—win your bride under false colors, as a sailor ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... completely overcome. Throwing himself upon his father's neck, he broke into convulsive sobs, kissing him again and again, and giving way to the most passionate grief. The scene was affecting beyond description. All hearts were melted by the child's artless exhibition of filial love and sorrow. He loved his father with a devotion that knew no bounds, as he had reason to love him. Without this paternal friend, life would lose its charm to him, and he "would never ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... She was rather small in stature for one of her age, but she was very well formed, and her movements were agile and graceful. Her face was not as pretty as it might have been, but her expression was artless and winning. Her light brown hair hung in curls upon her shoulders, and contributed not a little to make up the deficiency in what the painters and sculptors would call a finely ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... that Hamlet's grief should assume a comprehensive form. The Queen had drawn the world in her train. Nobles and people, councillors and courtiers, the honoured statesman, the artless maiden, had joined her, had connived, were her accomplices. They had, parted among them, all the vices appropriate to her Court, her people. The world was betrayed to Hamlet in all its meanness and littleness: and ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... attentions. Amy also both baffled and interested her. She could not immediately accept of this genuine child of nature, whose very simplicity was puzzling. It might be the perfection of well-bred reserve, such complete art as to appear artless. Miss Hargrove had been in society too long to take anything impulsively on trust. Still, she was charmed with the young girl, and Amy was also genuinely pleased with her new acquaintance. Before they parted a horseback ride was arranged, at Burt's suggestion, for the next afternoon. This was ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... personality had a curious attraction for him in their tranquil meetings. Her hair was arranged with scrupulous exactitude each day, in the very latest fashionable style—a token of the convent-bred child's artless delight at being allowed to share in the vanities of this carnal world. The little dimpled hands, that sat so daintily on the trim wrists, were always busy with some fancy work, which the bent head and the downcast eyes followed intently. The eyes looked up when ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... to her niece in the true spirit of noblesse oblige, even while she sees that that loyalty is costing her own happiness. But most of all the soul of this little play is in that triumph of simple girlish naivete, Leonie, so true, so artless, disarming all rivalry, and winning every spectator's heart, as she all but loses and then gains her lover's. These traits are Legouve's. They are not qualities that will stand on the stage alone. They need the setting of Scribe's stage-craft, ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... skein; of course the thread Got tangled, snarled and twisted; "Have Patience!" cried the artless maid, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... as Cromwell, and artless as Macchiavelli! Begins his orders with an honourable mention of God, closes them with 'Put all deserters in irons,' and in between gives ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Because of its cleverness, avoidance of long sentences, and of classical inversions, Dryden's prose is essentially modern. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is the world's most popular story of adventure, told in simple and direct, but seemingly artless, prose. Of all the prose writers since Swift's time, few have equaled him and still fewer surpassed him in simplicity, flexibility, directness, and lack of affectation. The essays of Steele and Addison constitute a landmark. No preceding English prose shows so much grace of style, delicate ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... uncontrollable emotion. Then she called together the other children, and again heard the story. It came disjointedly from each in turn, but most fluently, most picturesquely, most convincingly, from the lips of Augustus Adolphus Schmidtt and the fair Josephine. When they had finished their artless recital, Miss Clarkson sought Fraulein von Hoffman. That afternoon, beside the big open fire in the children's winter play-room, Fraulein von Hoffman addressed her young charges in words brief but pointed, and as she talked ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... looked with sharper eyes after black-letter volumes than almost any of his predecessors or successors—while we grant Thomas Hearne a considerable portion of scholarship, an inflexible integrity, as well as indefatigable industry, and that his works are generally interesting, both from the artless style in which they are composed, and the intrinstic utility of the greater part of them, yet let our admiration be [Transcriber's Note: superfluous 'be'] "be screwed to its sticking place," when we think upon the wonderous genius of the aforesaid Thomas ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... each other fifty or sixty years ago present a striking contrast when placed side by side with those of the present day. The native simplicity, the artless manners, and the honest motives of all betokened a purity of heart and life that was truly charming. We mourn the absence of these marks of genuine piety, when at the present day, we see artistic display, formality, stiffness, and ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... a pike staff, plain as the sun at noon-day, plain as the nose on one's face, plain as the way to parish church. explicit, overt, patent, express; ostensible; open, open as day; naked, bare, literal, downright, undisguised, exoteric. unreserved, frank, plain-spoken &c (artless) 703; candid (veracious) 543; barefaced. manifested &c v.; disclosed &c 529; capable of being shown, producible; inconcealable^, unconcealable; no secret. Adv. manifestly, openly &c adj.; before one's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... but He would have them become childlike. The distinction is important. Those who belong to Christ must become like children in obedience, truthfulness, trustfulness, purity, humility and faith. The child is an artless, natural, trusting believer; the childish one is careless, foolish, and neglectful. In contrasting these characteristics, note the counsel of Paul: "Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men."[814] Children ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... one which any person can try with astonishing results upon an artless, unsuspicious sitter), a slate, on which, before the sitter's visit, a message has been written, is lying face downward on the table when the seance begins. There are other slates on an adjoining table within easy reach of the Medium. In order that the Medium may be brought into ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... put on his clerical air and told his artless tale; but neither of the men could understand English, so they went to a waggon that was standing about fifty yards away, to fetch somebody ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... been accustomed to the common religious phraseology. He is such a babe in such things, that his expressions are sometimes strikingly artless. At one time I was speaking of his sufferings, he looked up with a smile, and hesitating how to express the ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... a boat to sail! These children had such a brave and haughty beauty, and their dress being of purple and fine linen, I supposed their name must be Berkeley or Clarendon, but was grieved to learn from the artless darlings that it was Muggins! However, their kisses were unexceptionable, whatever their origin ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... winter evening, with the trickling golden currents and the quivering firelight playing on her dress, and the last rays of the sunshine melting into golden threads in her hair? How can I picture the look of girlish innocence on her face, the artless grace of her manner, her delicate feminine ways, and the dainty arrangement of her toilet? How can I tell of the irresistible charm that pervades every article about her, from the little French boot resting on the rug, to the ruffle that circles her ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... had seen in the eyes of a little cow-boy, then nine years old, the artless admiration which children feel for everything that is out of the common way. She made him her page, and taught him to groom a horse with the nicety and care of an Englishman. She saw in the lad a desire to do well, a bright intelligence, and a total ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... daughter of Kanwa? The saintly man, though descended from the great Kasyapa, must be very deficient in judgment to habituate such a maiden to the life of a recluse. The sage who would this form of artless grace Inure to penance—thoughtlessly attempts To cleave in twain the hard acacia's stem With the soft edge of a blue lotus leaf. Well! concealed behind this tree, I will watch her without raising her suspicions. ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... the greedy surge, from rock to rock, Sweeps down the dread abyss with desperate shock? While she, within her lowly cot, which graced The Alpine slope, beside the waters wild, Her homely cares in that small world embraced, Secluded lived, a simple artless child. Was't not enough, in thy delirious whirl To blast the stedfast rocks! Her, and her peace as well, Must I, God-hated one, to ruin hurl! Dost claim this holocaust, remorseless Hell! Fiend, help me ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... taste and the inherited appetites of her savage forefathers, a dominant passion for sweets. So far as we could learn, she subsisted principally upon puddings and tea. Through the same primitive instincts, no doubt, she loved praise. She openly exulted in our artless flatteries of her skill; she waited jealously at the head of the kitchen stairs to hear what was said of her work, especially if there were guests; and she was never too weary to attempt emprises ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... charm the spectre from his prey. Thou still had'st liv'd, to bless my aching sight, Thy comrade's honour, and thy friend's delight: Though low thy lot, since in a cottage born, No titles did thy humble name adorn, To me, far dearer, was thy artless love, Than all the joys, wealth, fame, and friends could prove. For thee alone I liv'd, or wish'd to live, (Oh God! if impious, this rash word forgive) Heart broken now, I wait an equal doom, Content to join thee in thy ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... have me believe. That, in fact, explains my connection with the affair. Believe me when I say that I am interested only in seeing justice done to both of you young people, and in making sure that you do not deceive each other. It is an impulse of artless youth to trick itself in glowing colors, but you should know the whole truth about Buddy and he about you. If, after you are thoroughly acquainted with each other, you still maintain a mutual regard I shall have nothing further ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... says Betsinda, 'and I sewed Your Royal Highness's shirt-buttons on too, if you please, Your Royal Highness,' cries this artless maiden. ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Brandl, "just as he was leaving London with some friends for a morning's excursion; he seated himself in a recess on Westminster Bridge, and was not to be moved from his place till he had finished the little book. Southey, again, owned in 1832 that for forty years, he had taken the sweet and artless style of Bowles for a model." [8] In the first chapter of his "Biographia Literaria" (1817) Coleridge tells how, when he had just entered on his seventeenth year, "the sonnets of Mr. Bowles, twenty in number and just then published in a quarto pamphlet, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... artless Galileans, methinks, must have been on the mental level of the Tripolitan savage running beside my horse: it needs no very cunning marabout to convince him that his little troubles will be set aright in a world hereafter, where he shall sit comfortably enthroned and listen ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... This artless preamble was not enough to satisfy the love of precision which is the essential characteristic of the Egyptians. When they wished to represent the double in his sepulchral chamber, they left out of consideration the period in his existence ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... with her in French, bowed and scraped before her, and called her "chere Maman"—a term to which she always responded in a tone of similar lightness and with her beautiful, unchanging smile. Only the lachrymose Lubotshka, with her goose feet and artless prattle, really liked our stepmother, or tried, in her naive and frequently awkward way, to bring her and ourselves together: wherefore the only person in the world for whom, besides Papa, Avdotia had a spark of affection ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... truthful, artless, impartial, simple, unbiased, fair, ingenuous, sincere, unprejudiced, frank, innocent, straightforward, unreserved, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... is but a means to an end: for the composer, that he may express himself clearly and convincingly, and for the listener, that he may readily receive the message set forth. In Haydn's music we find the expression of a real personality—though of an artless, child-like type, without great depth of emotion or the tragic intensity of a Beethoven. Haydn was not a philosopher, or a man of broad vision. During his epoch, artists hardly dared to be introspective. His imagination gave birth to music, simple though it was, as freely as the earth puts forth ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... from the dining-room window, and after some moments of maidenly hesitation rambled out into the garden in a reverse direction to Mr. Fortescue's steps, and encountered him with an air of artless surprise. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... I love her. No, no; I tell you I hate her, I loathe her; but in spite of hatred, in spite of loathing, she exercises over my imagination an irresistible fascination—a fascination you can never feel in that intensity which haunts my dreams of early manhood. You knew her not a guileless, artless girl just blooming into early maidenhood. But enough of these maddening memories of the past. It were better, doubtless, that I never see her more, for in my hatred I might kill her. But mark you, Arthur, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... love was fired For fair Alexis, his own master's joy: No room for hope had he, yet, none the less, The thick-leaved shadowy-soaring beech-tree grove Still would he haunt, and there alone, as thus, To woods and hills pour forth his artless strains. "Cruel Alexis, heed you naught my songs? Have you no pity? you'll drive me to my death. Now even the cattle court the cooling shade And the green lizard hides him in the thorn: Now for tired mowers, ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... facing a bit of terrace to the South. It was in the pages of this magazine that I made my first acquaintance with the poetry of Viharilal Chakravarti. His poems appealed to me the most of all that I read at the time. The artless flute-strains of his lyrics awoke within me the music of fields ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... the news was conveyed to the mother. As the young companions surrounded it in the abandon of grief that tender and artless youth alone feels, had I not known that not a tie of consanguinity existed between them, I might have thought them a band of sisters mourning their broken number. It was a scene I never expect and sincerely hope never to witness again. It made the deeper impression upon ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... school-master "boarded around" and it was his week with the Turners, and Chad was glad, for he already loved the tall, gaunt, awkward man who asked him question after question so kindly—loved him as much as he revered and feared him—and the boy's artless, sturdy answers in turn pleased Caleb Hazel. And when Chad told who had given him Jack, the master began to talk about the faraway, curious country of which the cattle-dealer had told Chad so much: where ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... adorn our purses, Hitherto an artless place; More than pictures, songs, or verses, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 25, 1893 • Various
... ma with something or other, or hadn't made herself tidy, so that Lydia had to wait on Mr. Thorne. But it was always with the same air of its being something very droll and amusing to do, and there were always some artless mistakes which required giggling apologies. Nor could he doubt that he was in her thoughts during his absence. She had a piano down stairs on which she accompanied herself as she sang, but she found time ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... mysteries backward, and knows the answer to his riddle before he states its terms. He deliberately supplies his reader, also, with all manner of false scents, well knowing them to be such; and concocts various seeming artless and innocent remarks and allusions, which in reality are diabolically artful, and would deceive the very elect. All this, I say, must be conceded; but it is not unfair; the very object, ostensibly, of the riddle story is to prompt you to sharpen your wits; and as you are yourself the real ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... the "Village Minstrel" in the following candid and artless strain, "a sort of defiant parody on the Highland poets", of the natural features of ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... have been the general charm of his manner, his noble presence, his elevated sentiments, his rich, full, ringing English voice. Whatever it may have been, however, she did not conceal the pleasure which his society afforded her. She was artless and open; her feelings expressed themselves readily, and were made manifest in her looks and gestures. Still, there was a melancholy behind all this which Windham could not but notice—a melancholy penetrating far beneath the surface talk ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... like the crudely artless interruption of a person whose perceptions left much to be desired. T. Tembarom knew what it sounded like. If Palliser lost his temper, he would get over the ground faster, and he wanted him to ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... this play impress themselves so strongly upon the attention of the reader, that they can draw no aid from critical illustration. The fiery openness of Othello, magnanimous, artless, and credulous, boundless in his confidence, ardent in his affection, inflexible in his resolution, and obdurate in his revenge; the cool malignity of Iago, silent in his resentment, subtle in his designs, and studious at once of his interest ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... and her wish to be civil to her visitor. He is sympathetic—cynics may not believe that the sympathy is often genuine—but he has his duty to do. He does not expect her consciously to betray her husband, but his eyes are busy while he puts artless questions. An incautious word, the evasion of a question may give him the hint he seeks, or, on the other hand, she may be too alert and his ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... this art of intellectual intercourse, and because she exercised it in a perfectly natural and artless manner, that she charmed so many of those who made her acquaintance, and that they rarely paused to consider whether she was prettier or plainer, taller or shorter, more or less prepossessing, than the women ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... for this artless and unreserved communication, but could not, when it was over, forbear enquiring by what early misery she had already, though so very young, spent two years in nothing ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... isn't at all what I mean. Now cut out the artless prattle and let me find some sense in this ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... In an artless tale, without episodes, the mind of a woman, who has thinking powers is displayed. The female organs have been thought too weak for this arduous employment; and experience seems to justify the assertion. Without arguing physically about possibilities—in ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... of certain sticks or counters, there was also an opportunity for the player who was manipulating them to deceive by dexterous sleight of hand. The simplest form in which this is found is guessing in which hand a small stone or bone is held. It would hardly seem that this artless effort could be transformed into an amusing and exciting game; yet it has attracted the attention of all travellers, and scarcely any writer, who treats of the habits of the Pacific coast Indian, fails to ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... for tea and consolation. I had not been the merriest company. I had spoken gloomily of the cosmos, and when Adolphus the Chow dog had walked down the room in his hind legs, I had railed at the futility of canine effort. To Lola, who had put forth all her artillery of artless and harmless coquetry in voice and gesture, in order to lure my thoughts into pleasanter ways, I exhibited the querulous grumpiness of a spoiled village octogenarian. We discussed the weather, which was worth discussing, ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... days of innocence when taking exercise in the conventual gardens, and even at their devotions in the chapel. The novice Madeleine, on one occasion, was reprimanded for concealing her bosom with the altar-cloth at communion. She was originally of a pure and artless mind; and only gradually and stealthily she was corrupted by the pious arguments of her priest. This man, Picart by name—one of that extensive class the 'tristes obsc[oe]ni,' of whom the Angelos and Tartuffes[126] are representatives—succeeded to the vacant office of directing confessor ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... with his artless talk of her, the child persuaded him to take some rest, to walk abroad, to do almost as he desired him. And, when the day came, on which they must remove her, in her earthly shape, from earthly eyes forever, he led him away, that ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... tire of admiring her as she shaped a flower from the materials sorted before her, padding the wire stem and adjusting the leaves. She displayed the genius of a painter in her bold attempts; she copied faded flowers and yellowing leaves; she struggled even with wildflowers, the most artless of all, and the most elaborate ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... plainest habits, and with minds as undisguised and artless.... At one door were young matrons, at another the elders of the people, at a third the youths and maidens, gaily chatting or singing together while the ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... acidulous Auntie Priscilla at the Vicarage, "actually married him after a week's acquaintance—fancy!—the last thing in the world she had ever supposed ... etc." (Auntie Priscilla had smiled in her peculiarly unpleasant way as the artless letter enlarged upon the strangeness of her ingenuous niece's marrying the rich man about whom her innocent-minded brother ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... he could have heard, no human voice, not even hers, could so have moved and softened him. The artless words in which she had told him of her love for this same Cricket were once more freshly spoken; her trembling, earnest manner at the moment was again before him; her pleasant voice—oh, what a voice it was for making household ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... In those artless words, still entirely unsuspicious of the character of the woman he had to deal with, Allan put the weapon she wanted ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... came back with singular vividness: he saw the Past as he had not seen it while it was the Present;—remembrances of home, recollections of infancy, recurred to him with terrible intensity,—the artless pleasures and the trifling griefs, the little hurts and the tender pettings, the hopes and the anxieties of those who loved him, the smiles and tears of slaves ... And his first Creole pony, a present from his father the day after he had proved himself able to recite his prayers correctly in ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... to that," said Dacres, "this little thing is just like a child, and in her very simplicity does not know what love is. Engagement! By Jove, I don't believe she knows the meaning of the word! She's perfectly fresh, artless, simple, and guileless. I don't believe she ever heard a word of sentiment or tenderness from ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... This artless little narrative is specially designed To illustrate the workings of the Gallic statesman's mind; And till they change those processes and mould their ways anew, It is not yet in Paris that I want ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... what certain indications of manner had already hinted to me, that Rosalind was more artless than I had at first supposed. She was a woman of the world, in that she lived in it, and loved its gaieties, but there was still in her heart no little of the child, as is there not in the hearts of ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... small allowance he seemed to make either for her own experience or for her imagination. "He thinks I'm a barbarian," she said, "and that I've never seen forks and spoons;" and she used to ask him artless questions for the pleasure of hearing him answer seriously. Then when he had fallen into the trap, "It's a pity you can't see me in my war-paint and feathers," she remarked; "if I had known how kind you are to the poor savages I would have brought over my native costume!" ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... unaffected kindness, took me by the hand, drew me to a seat next to her own, and asked so cordially after my father, my uncle, my whole family, that in five minutes I felt myself at home. Lady Ellinor listened with a smile (though with moistened eyes, which she wiped every now and then) to my artless details. At ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... curious questions of his companion. 'Frisco Kid was interested in everything, especially in Mrs. Bronson and Bessie. Of the latter he could not seem to tire, and poured forth question after question concerning her. So peculiar and artless were some of them that Joe could ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... the characters and such the state of morals of the court into which this beautiful and artless princess, Maria Antoinette, but fifteen years of age, was to be introduced. As she left the palaces of Vienna to encounter the temptations of the Tuileries and Versailles, Maria Theresa wrote the following characteristic letter to the future ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... kindly welcome Jenny brings him ben;[20] A strappan youth; he taks the mother's eye; Blithe Jenny sees the visit's no ill ta'en; The father cracks[21] of horses, pleughs, and kye. The youngster's artless heart o'erflows wi' joy, But, blate[22] an' laithfu',[23] scarce can weel behave; The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can spy What makes the youth sae bashfu' an' sae grave; Weel pleas'd to think her bairn's respected like ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... Providential! And Prince K—-, taken into the secret, was ready enough to adopt that mystical view too. "It will be necessary, though, to make a career for him afterwards," he had stipulated anxiously. "Oh! absolutely. We shall make that our affair," Mikulin had agreed. Prince K—-'s mysticism was of an artless kind; but Councillor Mikulin was astute ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... very looks for a sufficient character; that London was a very wicked, vile, place; that she hoped I would be tractable, and keep out of bad company; in short, she said all to me that an old experienced practitioner in town could think of, and which was much more than was necessary to take in an artless inexperienced country maid, who was even afraid of becoming a wanderer about the streets, and therefore gladly jumped at the first offer of a shelter, especially from so grave and matron-like a lady, for such my flattering fancy assured me ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... artistically. But everything seemed against her. It was late, and she was tired. Everyone was too busy with their own affairs to help her, and the little girls were only hindrances, for the dears fussed and chattered like so many magpies, making a great deal of confusion in their artless efforts to preserve the most perfect order. The evergreen arch wouldn't stay firm after she got it up, but wiggled and threatened to tumble down on her head when the hanging baskets were filled. Her best tile got a splash ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... everything—where she went, what she did, even what she thought—in simple, artless language that made me know her better, in the thorough workings of her nature, than during those long months of ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... shed on the brief flower of youth The withering knowledge of the grave; 445 From me remorse then wrung that truth. I could not bear the joy which gave Too just a response to mine own. In vain. I dared not feign a groan, And in their artless looks I saw, 450 Between the mists of fear and awe, That my own thought was theirs, and they Expressed it not in words, but said, Each in its heart, how every day Will pass in happy work and play, 455 Now he is ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... a rare gift for composing stories for children. With a light, yet forcible touch, she paints sweet and artless, yet natural and ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... letter, my comrade, through its brilliant witticisms and beneath the frank and artless gayety with which you have sprinkled it, a tinge of sadness and despondency which pains me. You are unhappy, my friend: your present situation does not suit you; you cannot remain in it, it was not ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... innocently enough, whose sweethearting went no farther than her artless lips. There was not a spice of mischief in the girl. What she had told La Testolina had been no more than the truth: Master Baldassare was good to her—better than you would have believed possible in such a crabbed ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... his influence, never acknowledged, because they never reflected on, his superiority; they were quite tractable, therefore, without running the smallest danger of being servile; and their unthinking, easy, artless insensibility was as acceptable, because as convenient, to Mr. Yorke as that of the chair he sat on, or of the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... checking her horse and looking in his face. A quick conviction that she was on the point of some confession sprang into his mind, but unfortunately showed in his face. She beat back his eager look with a short laugh. "There, don't speak, and don't look like that. That remark was worthy the usual artless maiden's invitation to a compliment, wasn't it? Let us keep to the subject of yourself. Why, with your political influence, don't you get yourself appointed to ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... more confident of her charm than Magsie to-night. A flushed self-satisfaction was present on her face during every second of the ten minutes she gave them; her laughter was self-conscious, her smile full of artless gratification; she could not speak to any member of the little group unless the attention of everyone present was ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... can enter the kingdom of power. When an awkward giant like Abraham Lincoln rose to the sublimest heights of oratory he did so because of the greatness of his soul—his very ruggedness of spirit and artless honesty were properly expressed in his gnarly body. The fire of character, of earnestness, and of message swept his hearers before him when the tepid words of an insincere Apollo would have left no effect. But be sure you are a second Lincoln before ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... myself the temper of my people. And this is not to be learned by Edward, Prince of Wales, seated in the midst of proud nobles at his father's court; but it may be learned by a humble wayfarer, who travels from place to place seeking information from whence it may truly be culled—namely, from the artless sons of the soil, who speak not to please their listener but as ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to this effect, in the central motive of the poem, is that Venus herself is no artless virgin, no innocent Chloe, corresponding to a rustic Daphnis. She is already wife, mother, adulteress, femme entretenue, before she meets the lad. Her method of treating him is that of a licentious queen, who, after seducing page or groom, keeps the instrument of her pleasures in seclusion ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... repeated her plaintive song. It was not long before a small bird of beautiful plumage flew upon the tree, beneath which she usually sat, and, with its sweet and artless notes, seemed to respond to her voice. It was a bird of strange character, such as she had never seen before. It came every day and sang to her, remaining until it became dark. Her fond imagination soon led her to suppose that it was the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... tenderness, Ah, Monsieur, he said, had you but beheld her as I did with these eyes at that affecting instant with her dainty tucker and her new coquette cap (a gift for her feastday as she told me prettily) in such an artless disorder, of so melting a tenderness, 'pon my conscience, even you, Monsieur, had been impelled by generous nature to deliver yourself wholly into the hands of such an enemy or to quit the field for ever. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Impulsive and ingenuous as she was, the girl had, at first, drawn near to her cousin, simply and naturally, obeying the law of attraction that draws the young toward the young. She had 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 ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... not unnatural that Hamlet's grief should assume a comprehensive form. The Queen had drawn the world in her train. Nobles and people, councillors and courtiers, the honoured statesman, the artless maiden, had joined her, had connived, were her accomplices. They had, parted among them, all the vices appropriate to her Court, her people. The world was betrayed to Hamlet in all its meanness and littleness: and he looked ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... up to an effective brevity, and with the fragrance of that admirable age of literature all about it. Here, then, there is something of the original Italian colour: in this narrative Shakespeare may well have caught the first glimpse of a composition with nobler proportions; and some artless sketch from his own hand, perhaps, putting together his first impressions, insinuated itself between Whetstone's work and the play as we actually read it. Out [173] of these insignificant sources Shakespeare's play rises, full of solemn ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... rapidly and with such earnestness that I was balked of understanding what he said sentence by sentence. The next day my companion wrote out a summary of what the Governor had said and I had tried to say in reply. As a brief report of a talk of three hours' duration it is plainly imperfect. The artless account is of some interest, however, because it furnishes an impression at once of an engaging simplicity and sincerity in the Japanese character and of the pressure ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... platform-commonplace. As a lamented London Maggid told me, "There still live some real soldiers of God." Such are those who use persuasion from the pulpit, such as shine through the example of their own humane Jewishness and such as capture our hearts by artless beautiful tales of ...
— Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago • Hannah Trager
... pediments and attics, consoles and urns, labored to express the childlike sentiment of the spire. But even the great Sir Christopher Wren, with his sixty steeple-towers, and all his followers to this day, have not succeeded in a translation so unnatural. Spirituality and the artless grace of inspiration are wanting to the spires of the Renaissance, and so they struggle up painfully into the sky. And it is very rare to find those who have gone back even to Gothic models building a spire which touches our affections, or claims affinity with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... of expression I was evidently ignorant, and I then mentioned my loss of hearing as a bar to this branch of usefulness, His rejoinder was the overflowing of a truly Christian heart, very much touched by an artless account of the Lord's dealings with me; and greatly did my spirit rejoice at having found a brother in the faith thus to ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... She was so artless—so unaffected by the conventions of the world—in a word, so natural in expressing her thoughts, that the man who had given the best years of his life to feed the vicious, grossly sensual and bestial imaginations of his readers was deeply moved. He was puzzled ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... be supposed that by this comparison I am suggesting that the talk of Mme. de Peyronnet and her daughters was naturalistic and so artless. It was nothing of the kind. Though original and spontaneous, it was the result, consciously or unconsciously, of a distinct artistic intention. When they talked, they talked their best, as does the writer of good familiar letters. ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... softness of the beard, which fell in waves over his throat to his breast, never a soldier but would have laughed at him in encounter, never a woman who would not have confided in him at sight, never a child that would not, with quick instinct, have given him its hand and whole artless trust; nor might any one have said he ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... frame, and wears it out. I have not spoken to him above thrice in my life, for he is a Dissenter, and has rarely come in my way. The document is a sort of record of his feelings, after the perusal of "Jane Eyre;" it is artless and earnest; genuine and generous. You must return it to me, for I value it more than testimonies from higher sources. He said, 'Miss Bronte, if she knew he had written it, would scorn him;' but, indeed, Miss Bronte does not scorn him; ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... coco-brandy, he has been driven from his house into the woods. "A mouse that dwelt in a cat's ear" had a more easy resting-place; and yet I have never seen a man that bore less mark of years. He must show us the church, still decorated with the bishop's artless ornaments of paper—the last work of industrious old hands, and the last earthly amusement of a man that was much of a hero. In the sacristy we must see his sacred vessels, and, in particular, a vestment which was a "vraie curiosite," ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... proper to stand with those whom old acquaintance or kindred gave some title to her good offices. In addition to all those motives to a candid treatment of me, there were others which owed their efficacy to her maternal regard for me, and to the artless and unsuspecting generosity of ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... the charm of this artless reply, and repeated it in l'Epreuve (see Introduction, p. lxiii), with the added epigram of Lisette: "Et quel est donc cet homme qui s'appelle lui ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... quickly toward his companion, studied his artless, hopeful countenance for a moment, and then looked away with ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... nature, which I can look through, as the balloon-voyagers tell us they see from their hanging-baskets through the translucent waters which the keenest eye of such as sail over them in ships might strive to pierce in vain? Why has the child trusted me with such artless confessions,—self-revelations, which might be whispered by trembling lips, under the veil of twilight, in sacred confessionals, but which I cannot look at in the light of day without a feeling of wronging ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the true spirit of noblesse oblige, even while she sees that that loyalty is costing her own happiness. But most of all the soul of this little play is in that triumph of simple girlish naivete, Leonie, so true, so artless, disarming all rivalry, and winning every spectator's heart, as she all but loses and then gains her lover's. These traits are Legouve's. They are not qualities that will stand on the stage alone. They need the setting of Scribe's ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve
... Merlin turned, and the two men strolled together down town. While they yet talked, Lawrence Newt observed that the eyes of his companion studied every carriage that passed. He did it in a very natural, artless way; but Lawrence Newt smiled with his eyes, and at length said, as if Arthur had asked him the question, "There ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... upon the open door and glanced in. There, to her astonishment, she saw the domestic group already described, and to her eyes dominated by the "most beautiful and perfectly elegant" young man she had ever seen. But let not the incautious reader suppose that she succumbed as weakly as her artless charges to these fascinations. The character and antecedents of that young man had been already delivered to her in the kitchen by the other help. With that single glance she halted; her eyes sought the ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... excerpts. Whatever else may transpire it is certain that labour such as his bears the assurance of unsullied happiness and overflowing joy. It is quaint, simple, unassuming; without affectation, full of pathos, and gently sensitive. He was a man who knew no guile, and his sweet and artless nature is faithfully portrayed in the outpourings of an impressionable, poetic soul. To dance with rustic maidens on the lea; to sing by moonlight to the piper's strain; to be happy, always happy, such is the theme, delicate and refined, ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... world—something must have gone wrong, terribly wrong, it was clear! They were coming towards him; he had meant to avoid them at first, but now his curiosity would not allow this, and he threw himself in their way, affecting an artless surprise and pleasure at being the first to welcome them back. Mark did not appear at all disconcerted to see him, and Mabel could not be frigid to anybody just then in the flush of happy expectation, which she did not try to conceal; ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... confidences, I plied him with much of interest and suggestion from my real and fictitious past. And it was after the third whisky of the third visit of that sort, if I remember rightly, that a propos of some artless expansion of a little affair that had touched and left me in my teens, that he did at last, of his own free will and motion, break the ice. "It was like that with me," he said, "over there at Aldington. ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... utmost awe by the villagers. The paper speaks of him as "our esteemed and talented townsman, Col. W.," and alludes to his "beautiful and accomplished wife," who, by the way, was formerly waiter in an oyster saloon, and won the Colonel's affection by the artless manner in which she would shout: ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various
... When my father took me to Italy, I continued averse to public company. In such seclusion, the presence of Sackville, being almost my only pleasure, chased from my mind its usual reserve, and gradually and surely won upon the awakened affections of my heart. Artless and unwarned, I knew not the nature of the passion which I cherished until it had gained an ascendancy ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... He made great improvement in the mechanical part of his art, and also was the first who covered his picture with a thin varnish, both to preserve it and bring out the colors. He invented ivory black. His distinguishing excellence was grace, "that artless balance of motion and repose, springing from character, founded on propriety, which neither falls short of the demands nor overleaps the modesty of Nature." [Footnote: Fuseli, Lect. I.] His great contemporaries may have equaled him in perspective, accuracy, and finish; but he added ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... read again to us in these days, even as we listen to the simple, grave, artless airs into which those rural peoples threw all their young heart, we cannot help marking a great inspiration; and we are moved to pity as we reflect ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... little stool at her aunt's feet, turned an artless, inquiring face up to her. "What are the 'sights' of La ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... conversation between Wilhelmina and Ramsay, to show not only what influence he had already gained over the artless yet intelligent girl, but also the way by which he considerately prepared her for the acknowledgment which he resolved to make to her on some future opportunity; for, although Ramsay cared little for deceiving the father, he would not have ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... third part of Rhetoric," as the dressing up of thought. Rhetoric to him had not in theory become style, but style is the only part which he finds interesting enough to treat. His schemes and tropes are of course the rhetorical figures; but let him explain them in his own artless way. "A scheme is the fashion of a word, sayyng or sentence, otherwyse wrytten or spoken then after the vulgar and comon usage. A trope is a movynge and changynge of a worde or sentence, from thyr owne significacion into another ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... baronetcy—by telling her partner in a quadrille, quite innocently, that "she should know his figure anywhere." The man had a hump, and one leg shorter than the other; but he thought Emily was dying for him, and proposed within a fortnight. Emily is an artless creature—"good, common-sense," Aunt Deborah calls it—and so she threw over Harry Bloomfield and married the hump and the legs that didn't match and the chance of the baronetcy forthwith; and now they say he beats her, and I ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... and sister. She appealed to Dr. Harlowe, in her sweet, bewitching way, which always seemed irresistible; but he only gave her a genial smile, called me "a brave little girl," and bade me "God speed." "I wish Richard Clyde were here," said she, in her own artless, half-childish manner, "I am sure he would be on my side. I wish brother Ernest would come home, he would decide the question. Oh, Gabriella, if you ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... enamored with her artless grace that they were soon united in marriage, and he took her to his mansion to grace its stately halls as she had the cabin of the Indian chief, her father, who was considered by the Indians equal in ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... rupee. However, you soon come to know the coolies by sight, and after some experience are rarely 'taken in,' but many young beginners get 'done' most thoroughly till they become accustomed to the tricks of the artless ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... has a rare gift for composing stories for children. With a light, yet forcible touch, she paints sweet and artless, yet natural ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... acts, which was to be put on the stage by Poquelin de Moliere, as D'Artagnan called him, or Coquelin de Voliere, as Porthos styled him. Loret, with all the charming innocence of a gazetteer,—the gazetteers of all ages have always been so artless!—Loret was composing an account of the fetes at Vaux, before those fetes had taken place. La Fontaine sauntered about from one to the other, a peripatetic, absent-minded, boring, unbearable dreamer, who kept buzzing and humming at everybody's elbow a thousand ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... impulsively and threw both arms about his neck. "I want to see you work out your problem. I will help you. You can go with me—and I can always live with you—and some day—some day—" She buried her face in his shoulder. The artless girl had never seemed to think it unmaidenly to declare her love for him, to show him unmistakably that she hoped ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... hands, striving to gain control of himself. In the early days of his misfortunes the necessity for straining every effort had kept him from brooding upon his losses, and finally a numbness of despair had seized him. But to-night the child's artless talk had brought back vividly the old home scene. He could see it now, as he had seen it so often in the light of a summer evening. The sparkling sea, with the tang of salt water wafted up over his fields; the rippling ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... "Religious as Cromwell, and artless as Macchiavelli! Begins his orders with an honourable mention of God, closes them with 'Put all deserters in irons,' and in between gives points to ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Denmark of the middle ages, whether judged historically or poetically. We know nothing of the authors of these poems, which treat of the heroic adventures of the great warriors and lovely ladies of the chivalric age in strains of artless but often exquisite beauty. Some of the subjects are borrowed in altered form from the old mythology, while a few derive from Christian legend, and many deal with national history. The language in which we receive these ballads, however, is as late as the 16th or even the 17th ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... heresy means," answered Dona Leonor, in an artless tone. "My dear father taught me what I know about the loving Jesus— that He is the only friend in whom human beings can really trust. It was the sure knowledge of this which comforted him through his illness, and made his deathbed so happy and glorious. ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... never to take your little brother's "chewing-gum" away from him by main force; it is better to rope him in with the promise of the first two dollars and a half you find floating down the river on a grindstone. In the artless simplicity natural to this time of life, he will regard it as a perfectly fair transaction. In all ages of the world this eminently plausible fiction has lured the obtuse infant to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sentimental brother, ere you squeeze my hand so devoutly, that I am not your artless country maid," exclaimed Helen, laughing; then, after a moment's pause, she cries, gayly, "ah! I have it, Frank; you must masquerade a little, that's all—win your bride under false colors, as ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... There is nothing about Locker which is not natural. As he is, so (apparently) does he speak: far more candidly and with more of self-revelation than Praed, more candidly than Mr Austin Dobson, who is apt to veil his personality behind a mask of elegant antiquarianism. But Locker is more artless and naive (which qualities are in him not the least inconsistent with irony) than any modern writer, except, perhaps, R. L. Stevenson now and then; and with the latter naivete itself is sometimes an artifice. Mr Brander Matthews rightly lays stress on ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... the people, and wisdom shall die with you," he struck twelve. When the sons of Jacob went down into Egypt and Joseph put up the price of corn, took their money, and then secretly replaced the coin in the sacks, he showed his artless love of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... grown-up playfellow, from her childhood to that day. She had romped with him in her frocks, she had gone on romping with him in her gowns. He had never been long enough separated from her to have the external changes in his daughter forced on his attention. His artless, fatherly experience of her had taught him that she was a taller child in later years—and had taught him little more. And now, in one breathless instant, the conviction that she was a woman rushed over his mind. He felt it in the trouble of her bosom pre ssed against his; ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Then she called together the other children, and again heard the story. It came disjointedly from each in turn, but most fluently, most picturesquely, most convincingly, from the lips of Augustus Adolphus Schmidtt and the fair Josephine. When they had finished their artless recital, Miss Clarkson sought Fraulein von Hoffman. That afternoon, beside the big open fire in the children's winter play-room, Fraulein von Hoffman addressed her young charges in words brief but pointed, and as she talked the mission of Ivan at Locust Hall took on a new ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... see the result. Religion becomes gloomy, anxious, and austere; it ceases to breathe cheerfulness and joy around; the gentler graces die before it; fear treads fast in the footsteps of hope; a stiff formality introduces cant in the place of what is natural and artless; the heart is stretched on a rack of self-torturing doubts and anxieties. The biographies and private journals of many eminent saints show us how little happiness they had in their religion,—how they were tortured ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... and as usually befalls Virginia maidens, never has been able to get rid of it. Redbud is a lovely little creature, whom it is a delight to look upon. She has a profusion of light, curling hair, a fine fresh, tender complexion, deep, mild eyes, and a mouth of that innocent and artless expression which characterizes childhood. She is about sixteen, and has just emerged from short dresses, by particular request and gracious permission from Miss Lavinia, who is major-domo and manager in general. Redbud is, therefore, clad in the morning-dress of young ladies ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... as much as you please,' said the nurse; 'I do not care for that: I shall not dress you for crying and roaring, but for being good and speaking with civility.' Just as she said these words, the door opened, and in came the lady whom I before saw, and whose name I afterwards found was Artless. As soon as she entered, the nurse addressed her, saying, 'Pray, madam, is it by your desire that Miss Nancy behaves so rudely, and bids me dress her directly, and change the buckles in her shoes, ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... wisely left alone, and an abundance of pink mallow, growing very thickly, gave a touch of bright colour to the grass. He stopped for a while considering the grave of a child, who had died at the age of five years, with an artless epitaph painted on a wooden cross. The grave was piously tended, though it bore a date of some ten years back; there were little rose-trees growing there, and a border of pansies, all the work, Hugh fancied, of children, doing gentle honour to ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was the smile of Mr. Juniper Gallivant. Merry and artless was the flash of his bright blue eyes. Brisk and chipper was the step at which his dainty feet bore him along Broadway. Warm and impulsive was the grasp ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... in the whole theatre, that secretly, in their hearts, the audience had flung themselves into the riot with her, the oldest and staidest of them, as perhaps they had often wanted to do when they heard a jolly tune like that. It was artless, graceless. One only needed ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... self-sufficing intellect; in Glyndon, the young Englishman, the mingled strength and weakness of human nature; in the heartless, selfish artist, Nicot, icy, soulless atheism, believing nothing, hoping nothing, trusting and loving nothing; and in the beautiful, artless Viola, an exquisite creation, pure womanhood, loving, trusting and truthful. As a work of art the romance is one of great power. It is original in its conception, and pervaded by one central idea; but it would have been improved, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... might indeed have been said at that time to be positively ordered. Wasn't the fact that the dancing passion was so out of proportion to any social resource just one of the signs of the natural?—and for that matter in both sexes alike of the artless kindred. It was shining to us that Jim Pendleton had a yacht—though I was not smuggled aboard it; there the line was drawn—but the deck must have been more used for the "German" than for other manoeuvres, often doubtless under the lead of our cousin Robert, the eldest of the many light irresponsibles ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... can gaze Alike on all the world. But paint an eye In whose half-hidden, steady light I read A truth-inquiring mind; a fancy, too, That could array in sweet poetic garb The truth he found; while on his artless harp He touched the gentlest feelings, which the blaze Of winter's hearth warms in the homely heart. And oh! recall the look of faith sincere, With which that eye would scrutinize the page That tells us of offended God appeased By ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... Claude a glass of champagne, which the guest of honor politely refused by spilling it down the neck of Harry Pifflemind in such an artless monkey way that the other ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... hymns, and some Latin should be taught. In the second, the Latin grammar, Latin authors, and religion. In the third, completion of the grammar, difficult Latin authors, rhetoric, and logic. Williams calls this "Melanchthon's somewhat artless ideas of a proper school system," which he excuses as being "marked possibly by the crudity of a first effort at organization, but more probably controlled in form by the fewness of teachers in the schools ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... drew herself up rigidly. She had heard enough of Horace's artless chatter the summer before, to understand his mother's jealousy. Mrs. Oliver lived in a panic of fear lest the money that should be ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... delightful dreams and pictures from a mind filled to the brim with poetic loveliness. Since that time Miss Jackson has written vast quantities of verse; always rich and musical, and if one may speak in paradox, always artless with supreme art. None of these poems is in any sense premeditated or consciously composed; they are more like visions of the fancy, instantaneously photographed for the perception of others, and unerringly framed in the most appropriate ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Stephen and Thomas) he appears to have continued to assist with more amiability than wisdom. He hunted, belonged to the Yeomanry, owned famous horses, Maggie and Lucy, the latter coveted by royalty itself. 'Lord Rokeby, his neighbour, called him kinsman,' writes my artless chronicler, 'and altogether life was very cheery.' At Stowting his three sons, John, Charles, and Thomas Frewen, and his younger daughter, Anna, were all born to him; and the reader should here be told that it is through the report of this second Charles ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... too," he continued, "that you might have had that adorable young lady, Miss Waboose, who—in spite of her heathenish name—is the most charming, artless, modest young creature I ever saw. Oh! Punch, Punch, what a consummate ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... slightly, and looked at John with some suspicion. But John put on so innocent and artless a look that Mr. Mudge at once dismissed the idea that there was any covert meaning in what he said. Meanwhile Paul, from his hiding-place in the bushes, had listened with anxiety to the foregoing colloquy. When John described ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... in politics, marm," he stated, dryly, "that takes more'n two to put 'em through when the pinch comes." He enjoyed the discomfiture that her artless confession brought to the Duke. The old man looked him up and down. That this Niles whom he himself had helped into office, who had been taking private toll from the liquor interests of the county as his predecessors ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... husband and I think he makes enemies by his impulsive temper. You know what musicians are. They talk right out. We think his enemies put difficulties in his way. And so nothing is settled. We keep waiting and here we are. Elsa wants to marry. She wants children!" exploded the artless Frau. ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... outstretched hand, stooping and bowing his huge bulk as he came in a manner that to a less artless mind than Mr. Graham's might have suggested a touch of the obsequious. His furtive but watchful eye had already marked the fact that it was at Mr. Poe's desk—not his own—that Mr. Graham sat—which was ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... vile, place; that she hoped I would be tractable, and keep out of bad company; in short, she said all to me that an old experienced practitioner in town could think of, and which was much more than was necessary to take in an artless inexperienced country maid, who was even afraid of becoming a wanderer about the streets, and therefore gladly jumped at the first offer of a shelter, especially from so grave and matron-like a lady, for such my flattering ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... instruction from them than from her teaching. When we truly feel that the heart speaks, our own opens to receive its instructions, nor can all the pompous morality of a pedagogue have half the effect that is produced by the tender, affectionate, and artless conversation of a sensible woman on him who ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... room remind you of childish days?" cried the artless damsel. "It used always to be summer or Christmas then; and we had tea here in such beautiful china, so different from the ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... our gardening, and out of which he would from day to day select for his table just the plants we had marked for ours. He also nibbled our young beans; and so at last we were reluctantly obliged to let John Gardiner set a trap for him. Poor old simple-minded hermit, he was too artless for this world! He was caught at the very first snap, and found dead in the trap,—the agitation and distress having broken his poor woodland heart, and killed him. We were grieved to the very soul when the poor fat old fellow was ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... perversity that I have ever seen, she certainly is the most marvelous phenomenon of innocence that can be imagined. She lives in that atmosphere of infamy with a calm and triumphing ease which is either wonderfully profligate or entirely artless. Strange scion of an adventuress, cast upon the muck-heap of that set, like a magnificent plant nurtured upon corruption, or rather like the daughter of some noble race, of some great artist, or of some grand lord, of some prince or dethroned king, ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... sudden pangs shot thro' each aching heart, When, Death, thy messenger dispatch'd his dart? Thy dread attendants, all-destroying Pow'r, Hurried the infant to his mortal hour. Could'st thou unpitying close those radiant eyes? Or fail'd his artless beauties to surprise? Could not his innocence thy stroke controul, Thy purpose shake, and soften all thy soul? The blooming babe, with shades of Death o'er-spread, No more shall smile, no more shall raise its head, But, like a branch that from the tree ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... the trick that had been played upon him, although as yet he could not fully credit it. What mainly bewildered him was that Clara, whom he had always supposed to be as artless as a child—Clara, whom he had cared for as an elder and a father—should have been able to keep a secret and devise a plot ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... advantageously known. Mr. GREEN of IPSWICH has spoken of it as a charming composition: reflecting, in a very natural and vivid manner, the series of interesting images which touch'd the sensibility of a young, an artless, but a most intelligent observer of Nature; plac'd in a situation highly favourable to observation, though in fact not often productive of it. That Originality in such a subject is invaluable: and that this Poem appears to him (I know few men so qualified to ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... an excitable nature," she observed, and seated herself upon the divan; "and you, dear Mr. Erwyn, who know women so thoroughly, will overlook the agitation of an artless girl placed in quite unaccustomed circumstances. Nay, I myself was affected ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... through the Park, Zoe facing the three of them in the soft gray interior of the Daab limousine. She was absolutely artless. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... which Joinville tells what he has to tell. From one point of view it may be truly said that no higher praise could be bestowed on any style than to say that it is simple, natural, straightforward, and charming. But if his indiscriminate admirers had appreciated this artless art, they would not have applied to the pleasant gossip of an old general epithets that are appropriate only to the masterpieces ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... pin, the gift of his particular aunt, was all this time within a few inches of Culver's nose, the inquiry was decidedly artless. ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... graveyard, into which his windows looked; but that was neither his purpose nor his fault. None of the sleepers, at all events, interrupted their slumbers to upbraid him. He had done according to his own artless conscience and the recipes of licensed physicians, and he looked no further, but pounded, triturated, infused, made electuaries, boluses, juleps, or whatever he termed his productions, with skill and diligence, thanking Heaven that he was spared to do so, when his contemporaries generally were ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the help of an art we had lost, but have found again in the sepulchers of the East—the art of preserving the remains of the dead from the outrages of corruption—the greatest power in the universe. O Lelia, deny the youth of the world if you can, when you see it stop in artless ignorance before the lessons of the past, and begin to live on the forgotten ruins ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... utterance to such subtle reflections, we both fell into artless meditation; we set to work to detect in ourselves the inscrutable phenomena of the origin of thoughts, which Lambert hoped to discover in their earliest germ, so as to describe some day the unknown process. Then, after much discussion, often mixed up with childish notions, ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... hurried survey of the camp, lessening the distance between herself and one of the light wagons with a gait in which grace was entirely subservient to speed; then, with one capacious wrench of the arms, she loosened the spring seat from the wagon and bore it to the governess with an artless air of triumph. It was difficult, under these circumstances, to explain to Mrs. Yellett that without that symbol of scholastic authority, a desk, the wagon seat was useless. Nevertheless, Mary set forth, with all her eloquence, ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... ashamed of myself when I came to the end of this artless prayer. I had got their secret. I could see them kneeling round the Mission forms, two or three with crumpled papers in their hands. They were unutterably shy of religious expression, and to read was their only chance. The boys on ...
— The Comrade In White • W. H. Leathem
... readers will be as glad as I feel myself, to conclude the dull detail of the last chapter. If they please, they may turn from the subtle intricacies of the law, to contemplate the simple, undisguised workings of nature, in her most artless colouring. ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... ever guess why her cheeks burned scarlet, and why she was so sorry when haying-time was over? She was sweet, innocent, artless, and their love was very natural, tender, innocent. It's a pity that all loves can not remain in just that idyllic, milkmaid stage, where the girls and boys awaken in the early morning with the birds, and hasten forth ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... At this artless question all the members of the tribunal looked at each other with a smile of pity; but over there at the window a ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... weakness—so ashamed, that I was resolved to subdue it at the instant, and to guard against the like for the future. Yet, at that moment, I more than half regretted that I could not permit her to enjoy a triumph which she so well deserved to glory in—her youth, her beauty, her artless innocence, and her manner, equally beyond comparison or description. But her indifference, Belford! —That she could resolve to sacrifice me to the malice of my enemies; and carry on the design in so clandestine a manner—and yet love her, as I ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... a vast undertaking; but where there is a will there is always a way, and soon it was evident that each had found "a little chore" to do for sweet charity's sake. Not a word was said at the weekly meetings, but the artless faces betrayed all shades of hope, discouragement, pride, and doubt, as their various attempts seemed likely to succeed or fail. Much curiosity was felt, and a few accidental words, hints, or meetings in queer places, were very exciting, ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... far be the villain, divested of feeling, Wha 'd blight, in its bloom, the sweet flower o' Dumblane. Sing on, thou sweet mavis, thy hymn to the e'ening, Thou 'rt dear to the echoes of Calderwood glen; Sae dear to this bosom, sae artless and winning, Is charming young Jessie, the flower ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... love—I would believe Thy words were truth; Nor deem that thou wouldst e'er deceive My artless youth: But when we part, Within my heart A small voice whispers low— Beware! Beware! Fond girl, the snare! it's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various
... Miss Theo—except, to be sure, on that one day when she had just happened to drop her scissors, and he had naturally stooped down to pick them up? Why was she blushing? Were not youthful cheeks made to blush, and roses to bloom in the spring? Not that mamma ever noted the blushes, but began quite an artless conversation about this or that, as she sate down brimful of ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... an artless accent which revealed either a pure heart or inscrutable depths. How could a woman, who had been the friend of Duclos and the Marechal de Richelieu, refrain from trying to read the riddle of this marriage? Aunt and niece were standing on the ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... Continue, I pray you, your thrilling disclosures as long as my cousin's ears can contain them!" And with a mocking courtesy she swept away, leaving the other two girls with an indefinable sense of guilt and disgrace. Poor Peggy! She had been so happy, all her troubles forgotten, pouring out her artless recital of home affairs; but now her face darkened, and she ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... fragile and sweet as ever in a dress of azure thibet cloth, her light hair hanging in clusters of wavy curls over her small shoulders. She leaned gracefully on the arm of Lindenwood, and looked in his face with a gentle, artless ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... the incensed father conducted his accusation with so much intemperance, producing likelihoods and allegations for proofs, that, when Othello was called upon for his defense, he had only to relate a plain tale of the course of his love; which he did with such an artless eloquence, recounting the whole story of his wooing as we have related it above, and delivered his speech with so noble a plainness (the evidence of truth) that the duke, who sat as chief judge, could not help confessing that a tale so told would have won his ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... a little significant sigh. "That's the key to the mystery, I believe. I couldn't endure to be kept off. Now I've as good a right as any one!" she added with artless elation. Isabel was duly diverted, but there was a certain melancholy in her view. Henrietta, after all, had confessed herself human and feminine, Henrietta whom she had hitherto regarded as a light keen flame, a disembodied voice. It was a disappointment ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... in haste. But he is incorrigible. He returns, and this time brings a still longer and more pretentious poem. Some applaud; others disapprove. Encolpius, seized with a fit of melancholy, thinks of hanging himself, but is persuaded to live by the artless caresses of a fair boy whom he has loved. Several adventures of a similar kind follow, and the book, which towards the end becomes very fragmentary, ends without any regular conclusion. Enough has been ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... dear madam, let me explain at once the object of my visit. I am an old man—a father, and a widower—but I am also" (oh, crafty Allcraft!) "a simple and an artless man. My words are few, but they express my meaning faithfully. There was a time when, placed in similar circumstances to your own, I would have given the world had a friend stepped forward to remove me for a season from the scene of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... up now! Of what use was it to pretend anything after that? Martin heaved a sigh of delight. For days the secret had trembled on his tongue, making life uncomfortable and unnatural. Constitutionally it was his habit to let slip from that artless member anything that lurked at its tip and as a result he held secrets in abhorrence. Now the truth was out and he for one was glad it was. He would no longer be dreading an encounter with the O'Dowds or be under the trying necessity ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... whole personality had a curious attraction for him in their tranquil meetings. Her hair was arranged with scrupulous exactitude each day, in the very latest fashionable style—a token of the convent-bred child's artless delight at being allowed to share in the vanities of this carnal world. The little dimpled hands, that sat so daintily on the trim wrists, were always busy with some fancy work, which the bent head and ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... discontent, finding fault with this and turning up his nose at that; and going in and coming out he was simply full of ennui. And as all the girls in the garden were just in the prime of youth, and at a time of life when, artless and unaffected, they sat and reclined without regard to retirement, and disported themselves and joked without heed, how could they ever have come to read the secrets which at this time occupied a place in the heart of Pao-y? ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... which then at least prevailed universally in Grecian music, the solemn choral song, of which we may form to ourselves some idea from our artless national airs, and more especially from our church-tunes, had no other instrumental accompaniment than a single flute, which was such as not in the slightest degree to impair the distinctness of the words. Otherwise it must hare increased ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... him and torment him so! Why, by the very fact that he put the purse prominently before you, first under the chair and then in your lining, he shows that he does not wish to deceive you, but is anxious to beg your forgiveness in this artless way. Do you hear? He is asking your pardon. He confides in the delicacy of your feelings, and in your friendship for him. And you can allow yourself to humiliate ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... And so ends this artless narrative. The little man was at school again, God bless him, while his brother lay scalped upon ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... greet the courtly throng? Did no fair flower of English loveliness On timid lute sustain some artless song, Her meek brow bound with smooth unbraided tress? For Music knew not yet the stately guise, Content with simplest notes to touch the soul, Not from her choirs as when loud anthems rise, Or when she bids orchestral ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... there that the artless virgin utters her first confessions; there, that the plighted maid reveals the beatings of her heart; there, that the blushing bride unveils the secrets ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... their faces still remained. And they have preserved too, in an extraordinary degree, the brightness of their antique paintings, the fresh tints of their costumes, of their robes of turquoise blue, or lapis, or emerald-green, or golden-yellow. It is an artless kind of fresco-work, which nevertheless amazes us by remaining perfect after thirty-five centuries. All that these people did seems as if made for immortality. It is true, however, that such brilliant colours are not found in any of the other Pharaonic monuments, and that here ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... apply study to the ordering of one's outward movements: for Ambrose says (De Offic. i, 18): "A becoming gait is one that reflects the carriage of authority, has the tread of gravity, and the foot-print of tranquillity: yet so that there be neither study nor affectation, but natural and artless movement." Therefore seemingly there is no virtue about the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... well as a beautiful, view. God's world did look bigger and greater from The Overlook. Sitting by her side, the minister held the girl's hand, and listened to her artless expressions. She told him quite frankly what all this view meant to her,—how it helped and soothed her worried spirit, brought comfort to her grieving heart. Here were many square miles of God's Footstool under ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... he turned away from the record, but the book fell open of itself at a full-page insert of the Decalogue, illuminated by some artless printer with gaudy splotches of gold, red and blue and green initials, and silly curlicues of arabesque, as if the man had been ignorant of what they meant, those ten ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... transparent that all men see him through. He is a man to make friends wherever on earth courage and integrity are esteemed,—the rarest of heroes, a pure idealist, with no by-ends of his own. Many of us have seen him, and everyone who has heard him speak has been impressed alike by his simple, artless goodness and his sublime courage. He joins that perfect Puritan faith which brought his ancestor to Plymouth Rock, with his grandfather's ardor in the Revolution. He believes in two articles—two instruments, shall I say?—the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence; ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... as time ran on, Zosephine, like all the rest of Carancro, began to look up with a certain deference, half-conscious, half-unconscious, to the needy young man who was nobody's love or lover, and yet, in a gentle, unimpassioned way, everybody's; landless, penniless, artless Bonaventure, who honestly thought there was no girl in Carancro who was not much too good for him, and of whom there was not one who did not think him much too good for her. He was quite outside of all their gossip. How could they know that ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
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