Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Simple   /sˈɪmpəl/   Listen
Simple

noun
1.
Any herbaceous plant having medicinal properties.
2.
A person lacking intelligence or common sense.  Synonym: simpleton.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Simple" Quotes from Famous Books



... the simple truth: this I was at your house sooner than I; and, I swear to you, I was there before ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere

... about that princess on the "bare, brown, lonely moor" who was "as sweet and as fresh as an opening rosebud, and her voice was as musical as the whisper of a stream in the woods in the hot days of summer." There is not a flaw in it. It is so filled with simple beauty and tenderness, and there is so much of the genuine word-magic in its language, that one is carried away as by the spell of natural oratory. It has, too, that intimate sympathy with nature which is another racial note in these stories. The enchanted moor, with its silence, where no sound ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy

... a well-meaning man, thank God! and simple hotelier as I am, there is in me the blood of a gentleman. My father was a servant and officer of the late Marechal ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... that; but, Jack, although I have committed many a foul and execrable murder, for which I am full of remorse—although I feel how detestable has been my life—I tell you candidly that, although those crimes may appear to others more heavy than the simple one of theft, to me the one that lies most heavy on my soul is the robbing of my poor mother, and my whole treatment of her. Jack, will you do one favor to a dying man?—and it must be done soon, or it will be too late. Will you go to my poor mother, ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... circumstances over in his mind. After remaining there till five o'clock, and having fortified himself with sundry glasses of wine, he formed his resolution. He would make one struggle more; he would first go down to the widow, and claim his sister, as a poor simple young woman, inveigled away from her natural guardian; and, if this were unsuccessful, as he felt pretty sure it would be, he would take proceedings to prove her a lunatic. If he failed, he might still delay, ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... indebted for very much of the danger and suffering incident to the periods they are destined to pass through. Dr. Bull, in the true spirit of a physician and a gentleman, has by his perspicuous statements removed the first, and by his judicious and simple directions, anticipated the last of these fruitful sources of evil. There is no mother that will not be heartily thankful that this book ever fell into her hands; and no husband who should not present it to his wife. We cannot urge its ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.

... and which, if they had not been so checked, would long before this time have involved the finances of the General Government in embarrassments far greater than those which are now experienced by any of the States; of limiting all our expenditures to that simple, unostentatious, and economical administration of public affairs which is alone consistent with the character of our institutions; of collecting annually from the customs, and the sales of public lands a revenue fully adequate to defray all the expenses ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren

... estimated that upwards of four thousand people were employed. At the mill there is a fine deposit or bank of gravel, which the people respect as the property of Captain Sutter, though he pretends to no right to it, and would be perfectly satisfied with the simple promise of a pre-emption on account of the mill which he has built there at a considerable cost. Mr. Marshall was living near the mill, and informed me that many persons were employed above and ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant

... effectiveness in visualization. For these four sorts of visualization we may employ the symbols, V1, V2, V3, VB3. For the first of these the symbol V1 is not very satisfactory, since we will employ it for simple description which presents rather the idea of the thing than a mental picture, but it will perhaps be simpler to use it than to use a symbol for the word description. Having in mind the idea of a thing, we may by mental effort, if the ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith

... disconcerted at this grave, and but too just accusation, and I am sure I must look very simple;-but ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... King. She, from the shore and puny homes of men, Beyond the climber's sea-discerning ken, Swam, led by omens; and devoid of fear, Beheld her monstrous paramour draw near. She gazed; all round her to the heavenly pale, The simple sea was void of isle or sail— Sole overhead the unsparing sun was reared— When the deep bubbled and the brute appeared. But she, secure in the decrees of fate, Made strong her bosom and received the mate, And, men declare, from that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... how much fiction. We have the Union scout, the poor white, the negro, and other elements belonging both to the romance and reality of Southern life in these days of struggle. Are the exquisitely simple and heart-touching thoughts and expressions which fall from the lips of the poor white or scout, actually true, or are they the coinage of Mr. Kirke's own vivid fancy? Notwithstanding the hideous jargon in which they occur, if real they evince a high soul, even in the midst of ignorance, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... he'd wanted her on his trail, she'd never have been off it. If he didn't, and doesn't, care to be got at, finding him mayn't be as simple as it would be in Europe, where you can always resort to detectives if worst ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... is here question of a simple act of courtesy," said Bestuscheff, pressingly; "an act the omission of which may be attended with the most disagreeable consequences, perhaps indeed involve us in a war. Think of the peace of your realm, the welfare of your people, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... for most deny the implication—Raphael so delighted in material beauty that he became enslaved by it, till it diminished his spiritual insight. It is an incontestable truth that in Raphael, as in all the great Italian painters of his century, there was a falling away from the simple earnestness, the exceeding reverence, the endless patience, the self-abstraction, and self-devotion of the earliest Italian and Flemish painters. Therefore there has been within the last fifty or sixty years that movement in modern art, which is called Pre-raphaelitism, and which is, in fact, ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... causes them. The same remark applies to those "subjective sensations," as they are called, which are known to have as their physical cause subjective stimuli, consisting, in the case of sight, in varying conditions of the peripheral organ, as increased blood-pressure. Strictly speaking, such simple feelings as these appear to be, involve an ingredient of false perception: in saying that we perceive light at all, we go beyond the pure sensation, ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... was nicely covered, and laid in her own little drawer; and every morning she read a chapter before she went down stairs. She prayed that God would teach her by his Holy Spirit to understand what she read; and though her prayers were very simple, and she scarcely knew what words to use, yet she felt sure that he would hear her, because he has promised to do so, for the sake of his dear Son. And by degrees, as she began to love her Bible ...
— Aunt Harding's Keepsakes - The Two Bibles • Anonymous

... out of the disk in an amazingly simple way. They just seemed to float out, in the glimmering web. Then, suddenly, there wasn't any disk on the river at all—just a dull flickering where the sky had opened like a great, blazing ...
— The Mississippi Saucer • Frank Belknap Long

... the throne was much admired; and the correspondent of the States General acknowledged that he despaired of exhibiting in a French translation the graces of style which distinguished the original. Indeed that weighty, simple and dignified eloquence which becomes the lips of a sovereign was seldom wanting in any composition of which the plan was furnished by William and the language by Somers. The King informed the Lords and Commons that he had come down to pass ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... got her now just where he had been trying to put her. He had snared her, or given her an opportunity, according as she chose to take it. She could have availed herself of the latter by a look or a simple intonation, for the craving of his heart was such that his perceptions were acute for the slightest hint. Had she known that, it would have been easy for her to respond to him, playing her part with the loyalty with which she had begun it. As it was, his cold manner and his slightly ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... who was a wealthy, but very simple young man, used his utmost efforts to entertain and oblige her, and, flattered by the warmth of his own desire, he fancied that he succeeded; though, in a state of such suspence and anxiety, a man of ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... the matter with you, Miss Nelson?" demanded one of the teachers sharply, when Nancy had made an unusually brainless answer to a very simple question. ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe

... in nervous disease are crowded by men and women suffering from nerve trouble through failure to attain harmonious sexual relations in married life. But many of them might have escaped that fate had they only been able to take the simple Christian view of themselves and their natural functions. It was a God of love who made us as we are, and we only interfere with His plans for us when we try on this earth to live as if we were out of it, or call that unclean ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray

... battlements, and as he gazed around him, he saw that, since he had entered the castle, there had sprung up about it triple walls of defence that shut out wholly the forest from view. Then turned he to Annoure, and gravely he said: "Lady, greatly I marvel in what a simple knight may pleasure one that is mistress of so wondrous a castle as ye have shown me here; yet if there be aught in which I may render you knightly service, right gladly would I hear it now, for I must forth upon my way to render service to those whose knight I am sworn." "Nay, now, King Arthur," ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay

... It was so simple a manoeuvre by which Fate began the innocent game. The woman left a couple of books behind her on the table one night, and Henriot, after a moment's hesitation, took them out after her. He knew the titles—The House of the Master, ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood

... or fractions of a single unit, which is to pass into the idea of a multiplicity of smaller units, and in that case we are dealing with the relative, or the relation subsisting between two or more entities which are therefore limited by each other, and so have passed out of the region of simple unity which is the absolute. It is, therefore, a mathematical necessity that, because the originating Life- principle is infinite, it is a single unit, and consequently, wherever it is at all, the whole of it must be present. But because it is infinite, or limitless, it is everywhere, ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... the liming of the two love-birds, and she declared that everybody was in love in plays of that sort, and that was why she liked them; but as for those people playing the trick, they were very simple if they thought Beatrice didn't know she loved Benedick. Claudio fell woefully in her esteem in other respects also, and when he agreed to spy on Hero she said he ought to be ashamed ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... craving for true religion, which induced my mother to go to a poor church to worship, and to visit the drunken and helpless in their slums. I have never lost the desire for her singleness of mind, and simple loyalty to Christ and His Church. At the same time I have never lost my father's inquiring spirit, broad view, love of doctrine tempered by reason and founded on history and tested by human experience. When these two beloved ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey

... themselves hoodwink, For simple eyesight is a modest thing: They on the black abysm's brink Smile, and but when they fall bitterly think, What difference 'twixt the fool and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... mental stand on his part was a perfectly simple and natural one. To begin, he was a stranger to caste other than that of decent manhood. The only rank he had ever known was that of a ship's officer, and that was merely a condition of servitude. When ashore he regarded himself as the equal of any monarch under heaven and treated all men accordingly. ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... this moment is the influence of religious establishments on culture; and it is remarkable that Mr. Bright, who has taken lately to representing himself as, above all, a promoter of reason and of the simple natural truth of things, and his policy as a fostering of the growth of intelligence,—just the aims, as is well known, of culture also,—Mr. Bright, in a speech at Birmingham about education, seized on the very ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold

... Percy replied; "but yet it is quite simple and very easily understood, if we only keep in mind a few well established facts. Certainly the essential science of soil fertility is much less complicated than many of the political questions of the day, such ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins

... say much about what we may call the style of the author—his way of putting his thought, or manner of expressing it. But this you will notice: his words are few, plain, and simple; the arrangement of them is easy; and so what is said is said clearly. You are nowhere in doubt about his meaning unless it be in the second paragraph. It may puzzle you to see what their, they, and they in the second sentence of this paragraph stand for. ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... our enlisted men are trained as engine-tenders. Our engines are rather simple, in the main, and an enlisted engine-tender can run our engine room for hours at a stretch under ordinary conditions. Of course, if anything out of the usual should happen while Mr. Hastings were taking his trick in his berth, he would have to be ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock

... deeds to be worthy. But no one of them ever endeavored to speak justly in your behalf. 87. Again it is worth while to see the witnesses who, testifying to these things, accuse themselves, thinking that you are very forgetful and simple-minded, if, they think without fear to save the Thirty through you; but thanks to Eratosthenes and his fellow-rulers, it became a fearful thing to go even to the carrying out of the dead. 88. But these men, if saved, would again be ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias

... that all that was essential for me was obtainable there, even though I should never see anything more than was to be seen in journeying through the High Street, Camden Town, Tottenham Court Road, the Seven Dials, and Whitehall. I should have been guilty of a simple surrender to despair if I had not forced myself to make this discovery. I cannot help saying, with all my love for the literature of my own day, that it has an evil side to it which none know except the millions of sensitive persons who are condemned ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford

... instead of retracting and reprehending (from farther experience and reflection) the mode of compensation so strenuously urged in the enclosures, I am more and more confirmed in the sentiment; and if in the wrong, suffer me to please myself in the grateful delusion. For if, besides the simple payment of their wages, a farther compensation is not due to the sufferings and sacrifices of the officers, then have I been mistaken indeed. If the whole army have not merited whatever a grateful people can bestow, then have I been beguiled by prejudice, and built opinion on the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... his flesh and blood were as valueless as a pebble to a diamond, contrasted with the witchery of the words he had invested a few sheets of simple paper with! They searched his clothes—tore up his bed, broke up his furniture, powdered his few pieces of statuary, but all in vain—the sought for, dreaded, and hated documents, for which his Imperial highness would have secretly given ten—twenty—fifty thousand louis—was not ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... With the war and its desolating sights fresh in her memory, she saw, with sorrow and aversion, that social life was gayer than it had ever been, that the rush for wealth had become a fever, and that the simple ways and homely joys of the past were now remitted to the very elderly. The story of Dick's mad pursuit of Jack and the Caribees, after the disaster at Bull Run, was soon known in every home in the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... help in his war making. He is, in fact, more likely to be helping somebody else than asking for assistance for himself. The soldier has two basic functions: first, to keep himself whole and healthy; second, to kill the other fellow. To the end that he may do these two perfectly simple things, he has to carry about eighty pounds of weight all ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes

... with outraged law; and by these united efforts a Commission was obtained. The Commission sat, and, being conducted with rare skill and determination, squeezed out of an incredible mass of perjury some terrible truths, whose discovery drew eloquent leaders from the journals; these filled simple men, who love their country, with a hope that the Government of this nation would shake off its lethargy, and take stringent measures to defend the liberty of the subject against so cruel and cowardly a conspiracy, and to deprive the workmen, in their differences with the masters, of an unfair ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... against the barons, having now engaged themselves to assist the barons against the tyranny of the king, John found himself with but one friend in the world, and that was the Pope. "Innocent's view of the situation was very simple," writes Dr. Gardiner, "John was to obey the Pope, and all John's subjects were to obey John." Within a few weeks of the council being held at St. Paul's, the same sacred edifice witnessed the formality of affixing a golden bulla to the deed—the detestable deed ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... really thought I was done for! One more effort, madam, and you would have pulled it off. But then I'm such a simple chap! It seemed to me that you had come from the back of beyond, as an emissary of Providence, to call me to account; and, like a fool, I was about to give the thing back.... Ah, Mlle. Hortense—let me call you so: I used to know you by that name—Mlle. ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... stately, almost majestic in the stiffness of intense self-restraint, in her simple gray dress, her black silk hood somewhat back, her brown curls round her face, a red spot in each cheek, her earnest brown eyes fixed on the clerk as he gabbled out the words so awful to her, "The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... have, for the most part, been selected from the works of Octave Feuillet, . Laboulaye, Hgsippe Moreau, Flix Gras, and other well known writers. The text is easy and progressive, proceeding from the very simple to the more difficult by a regular gradation. Following the reading material, and based on it, are short English exercises to be translated into ...
— Contes et lgendes - 1re Partie • H. A. Guerber

... scarcely feel, probably, a slight pain; it is a simple prick, like a little blood-letting, less than the extraction ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... religion and human nature greater than before. I do not at this moment remember any striking English poem illustrating this fact; but there is a pretty little poem in French by Victor Hugo showing well the relation between successful love and religious feeling in simple minds. Here is an English translation of it. The subject is simply a walk at night, the girl-bride leaning upon the arm of her husband; and his memory of ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn

... who should be found disguised in the mint, or injuring Westminster Bridge. The third repealed various clauses in certain acts, which constituted the offences specified in them capital, and which were converted into simple felonies. Among the offences thus modified were, that of taking away any woman, whether maid, wife, or widow, for the sake of her fortune; the receiving of stolen goods; the destroying of trees, breaking ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... This homely, simple artist was a profound thinker; a sympathetic dreamer; a noble-hearted, generous man; so truthful and lovable that his virtues have been counted a weakness; and so ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... this point, one must know that true spontaneity is common to us and all simple substances, and that in the intelligent or free substance this becomes a mastery over its actions. That cannot be better explained than by the System of Pre-established Harmony, which I indeed propounded some years ago. There I pointed out that by nature every simple substance ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... told us, with the surface frankness of a Pole, the genesis of his literary debut of Almayer's Folly, his first novel, and in a quite casual fashion throws fresh light on that somewhat enigmatic character—reminding me in the juxtaposition of his newer psychologic procedure and the simple old tale, of Wagner's Venusberg ballet, scored after he had composed Tristan und Isolde. But, like certain other great Slavic writers, Conrad has only given us a tantalising peep into his mental ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... here on a God-send haunch of venison. Same day Mr. Hunter arrived, and Mr. Butler came with young Mr. Hamilton, an "admirable Crichton" of eighteen; a real prodigy of talents, who Dr. Brinkley says may be a second Newton—quite gentle and simple. Mr. and Mrs. Napier arrived on Wednesday, and spent two most agreeable days with us; he is an extremely well-informed man, and both are perfectly well-bred. Mr. Butler and Mr. Hamilton suited them delightfully. ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... and they stood watching the carcass, which still floated, from the simple fact that a shoal of fish were attacking it from below, while so many came swarming, up from lower down the stream, attracted by the odour of the pieces of the jaguar, and the many fragments which ascended and floated away, that ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... so," returned Dyer. "I've wanted that farm of his for some time past. When I took the mortgage on it my object was not a simple investment at legal interest; you know that I can do better with money than six ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... various parts of Europe 'unto ignorant people, handsomely made out the shape of man or woman. But these are not productions of nature but contrivances of art, as divers have noted.... This is vain and fabulous, which ignorant people and simple women believe; for the roots which are carried about by impostors are made of the roots of canes, briony, and other plants.' And the method of manufacture is then explained by the erudite doctor. ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... different-looking chap from when she had seen me last. With a beastly yellow-gray suit of prison clothes, his face scraped smooth every day, like a fresh-killed pig, and the look of a free man gone out of his face for ever—how any woman, gentle or simple, ever can know a man in gaol beats me. Whether or no, she knew me. I suppose she saw the likeness to Jim, and she told him, true enough, she'd never forget him nor ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... leaf-brown homespun made rather short, and quite plain, open at the neck, the sleeves coming to the elbow. A cloak of vivid scarlet, gathered in simple folds at neck, and falling to the ankles. Both dress and cloak may be made of cambric, using the unglazed side. Tan stockings. Moccasins. The latter may be made of cotton ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay

... Samuel, who is not a member of the family, is nevertheless adopted as a priest. The service for which a stated minister was needed was not that of offering sacrifice; this was not so regular an occurrence as not to admit of being attended to by one's self. For a simple altar no priest was required, but only for a house which contained ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... without any other recompense for their continence than the perpetual temptation it occasions,... 'The cause,' says Cardinal Richelieu, 'why a timorous mind perceives an impossibility in the most simple projects, when to an elevated mind the most arduous seems easy, is, because, before the latter the mountains sink, and before the former ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... with Mr. Brandenburg as to the necessity of dealing with the migrant before he reaches port, either of embarkation or disembarkation. He says our laws and restrictions are severe, and thoroughly and intelligently enforced, but fall short of their purpose for the simple reason that there is little or no control over the source of supply. "It is an effort to beat back the tide after it has rolled upon the shore, and in the vast multitude of arrivals many gain entrance legally whom the country would be ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose

... divine in nature. Diana, goddess of the moon, for example, became identified with Hecate of evil repute, chief of the witches. "In such a fashion the religion of Greece, that of Egypt, of Phoenicia and Asia Minor, of Assyria and of Persia, became mingled and confused in a simple demonology."[21] ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... he is happily exempt (as if a disability could come into any life but through the door of an ability); and her larger measure of the divine attributes, faith, hope, and love—love, as compassion and as maternity—are seen as simple weaknesses to which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Confucius (about 500 B.C.) said that to be well governed a nation must possess good music. Pythagoras, Aristotle, and Plato, in Greece, said the same thing, and their maxims proved a very important factor in the music of ancient times, for the simple reason that an art controlled by government can have nothing very vital about it. Hebrew music was utterly annihilated by laws, and the poetic imagination thus pent up found its vent in poetry, the result being some of the most wonderful works the ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... that one of my characters, Parson Christian, is a portrait of a dear, simple, honest soul long gone to his account, and that the words here put into his mouth are oftener his own ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... put me to a school in the neighbourhood, where I learned the first rudiments of my mother tongue, writing, reading, and simple arithmetic. The school closed at half-past four o'clock in the afternoon; when I returned to the Lodge, for so the cottage was called in which we resided, and which stood just within the park at the head of the ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... in the ranks who caused some trouble—Jock Winter. Not that Jock quarrelled, or did anything you could find fault with; but he was simple-minded and a hunchback, and some of the boys made fun of him. When Fred became captain he fairly hooted him out of the company. "No fair! no fair!" cried Willy, Joshua Potter, the Lyman twins, and two thirds of the other boys; but the captain had his way in ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May

... keeps the temperature of the cylinder high; besides, he encases it and leaves a space between cylinder and covering filled with steam. Thus he fulfils his law: "The cylinder is kept as hot as the steam that enters." "How simple!" you exclaim. "Is that all? How obviously this is the way to do it!" Very true, surprised reader, but true, also, that no condenser and closed cylinder, no ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... are not aware: it is reserved for practitioners to seize these shades of distinction. There must be a customary, and, as it were, every-day policy, in order to decide well without precipitation, without weakness, and without rigour. What would be a serious fault at Paris, would be a simple imprudence at Lyons, an indifferent thing elsewhere, and ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... seen in the ship and on the journey, you may be sure he had not lost sight of the need there was to get back out of this time of Atlantis into his own time. He knew that he must have got into these Atlantean times by some very simple accidental magic, and he felt no doubt that he should get back in the same way. He felt almost sure that the reverse-action, so to speak, of the magic would begin when the stone got back to the place ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit

... German Knights, who knew only their own tongue and so had difficulty in being understood, were allowed advocates. The Order, by its Statutes, discouraged litigation to the utmost, desiring to promote concord and harmony among its members, and for that reason all legal procedure was made as simple ...
— Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 • R. Cohen

... straight from Nan's room to the shopping district, where she purchased simple but complete outfits for Nan and the baby. The under garments and the baby's dresses she bought ready-made and also a neat wool suit for the girl and hats and wraps for both, but she bought enough pretty lawn and gingham to ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston

... "Simple, pious, honest man, Child of heaven while son of earth, We would praise, for praise we can, Thy good service, thy great worth; Through long years of prosperous place In the sunshine of the Crown, With man's favour and God's grace Humbly, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... method of bridging the gap between his many occupations was simple. When he had been hunting he found it hard to go to plowing: and if plowing, on the same day to turn to tanning or to mending a roof. When the pioneer had spent an hour in bartering with a neighbor he found it difficult to turn himself to the ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson

... of these towns (now best seen in Libourne) is very simple, and almost always practically the same — a square in the centre formed by the public buildings, with eight streets radiating from it, each guarded by a gate. An outer ditch or moat protected the wall or palisade, and the ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... after the queen-mother's interview with the king, the court was surprised by the intelligence that the physician had mistaken the malady of Louise von Schwerin; that it was not scarlet fever, as had been supposed, but some simple eruption, from which she was now ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... monkey she was sure it was another lion, and would not allow it to enter the door. But Gum had other ways of entering houses than by doors, and finally he was received as a lawful member of the family, for the simple reason that he could not be kept out. The new guest gave little trouble. Most of the day the monkey spent with Donald at the mine. He went off with him when he went to work in the morning, and gambolled round him ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond

... her enemy were still ringing in her ears—"alone with your lover;" it might be the common talk of the court for all she knew. She went silently on her way. She knew where Zoroaster dwelt. The curtain of his simple chamber was thrown aside and a faint light burned in the room. It was empty; a scroll lay open upon the floor beside a purple cushion, as he had left it, and his long white mantle lay tossed upon the couch which served him for ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... scholarly boy, supposed to be marked out for a clerical life, because a book was more to him than a bow, and he had been easily trained in good habits and practices of devotion; but all in a childish manner, without going beyond simple receptiveness, until the experiences of the last week had made a man of him, or more truly, the Pardon chapel and Dean Colet's sermon had made him a new being, with the realities of the inner ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... backs on each other, and, the one by favour of the Weaver and the other by favour of the Trent, watered between them the whole width of England, and poured themselves respectively into the Irish Sea and the German Ocean. What a county of modest, unnoticed rivers! What a natural, simple county, content to fix its boundaries by these tortuous island brooks, with their comfortable names—Trent, Mease, Dove, Tern, Dane, Mees, Stour, Tame, and even hasty Severn! Not that the Severn is suitable to the county! ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... preacher, and has left us, in his "Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations," [Footnote: Published at Lewiston, N. Y., in 1825, and reprinted at Lockport, in 1848. ] a record of singular value. His confused and imperfect style, the English of a half-educated foreigner, his simple faith in the wildest legends, and his absurd chronology, have caused the real worth of his book, as a chronicle of native traditions, to be overlooked. Wherever the test of linguistic evidence, the best of all proofs in ethnological questions, can be applied to his ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale

... vice—and he had none—some calculating conspiracy—and he was direct as the day—some base amusement or hidden habit or acrid disease would hold him in captivity and pervert his heart less than this simple aberration of behavior. Had he been a hunchback men would have overlooked it; a hideous goitre or wen they would not have resented; but extreme gentility or high-bred courtesy could not refrain from turning to look a second time at a man with a beautiful lady ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... what metal Saint Gilbert was made, that founded our Order. Was it out of pity, or out of bitter hardness, or out of simple want of understanding, that he framed our Rule, and gave us more liberty than other Sisters? Is it more or less happy for a lark that thou let him out of his cage once in the year in a small cell ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... what these can accomplish. Here is an earnest of what may be done in the future. From these windows the governing board of the International Union will look down upon the noble river that flows by the home of Washington. They will sit beneath the shadow of the simple and majestic monument which illustrates our conception of his character, the character that, beyond all others in human history, rises above jealousy and envy and ignoble strife. All the nations acknowledge his preeminent influence. ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... diplomacy is unaccompanied by honesty Mendacity may always obtain over innocence and credulity Never did statesmen know better how not to do Pray here for satiety, (said Cecil) than ever think of variety Simple truth was highest skill Strength does a falsehood acquire in determined and skilful hand That crowned criminal, Philip ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger

... these circumstances, it may well be supposed, had become a torment to me. For a long time they had lost even that slight power of stimulation which belongs to the irritation of difficulty. Easy and simple they had now become as the elementary lessons of childhood. Not that it is possible for Greek studies, if pursued with unflinching sincerity, ever to fall so far into the rear as a palaestra for exercising both strength and skill; but, in a school where the exercises are pursued, in common ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... of his friends was pleasing, simple, like the man, cordial on the part of the husband, as well as on the part of the wife, who, having been an actress, held to the religion of comradeship: On a table were small pitchers of beer and glasses; within reach was an old stone jar from Beauvais, full of tobacco. ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot

... nothing, though he thought a good deal. He guessed that one of the men alluded to was his comrade and the other Hallam, and there was a grim suggestiveness in the former's simple explanation, for it seemed that Alton understood quarter would not be given in the struggle he had embarked upon. There was also something disconcerting in the fact that they found the canoe where he indicated. That it had lain there since ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... "My instrument does certainly magnify to a marvellous extent, but not by the old device of the simple microscope, which merely focussed a large area of light rays into a small one. So crude a process could never show an atom to the human eye. I add much to that. I restore to the rays themselves the luminosity which they ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie

... Boston merchants, who think they are stimulating country farmers to healthy emulation by lavishing from thirty to forty thousand dollars on a barn and its appurtenant out-houses. With these preconceived ideas, it was an unexpected satisfaction to see quite a simple-looking, unassuming establishment, which any well-to-do farmer might make and own. The house is rather a large and solid-looking building, erected by Mr. Mechi himself, but not at all ostentatious of wealth or architectural taste. ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... more eagerness to make him a present because he was angry at his former refusal. Phokion however would not take them, and Alexander shortly afterwards died. The house of Phokion may be seen at the present day in Melite.[632] It is adorned with plates of copper, but otherwise is very plain and simple. ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... all likelihood know, she was simple-minded enough to think that the sale was in a way binding. She was as guiltless o' wrong-doing in that particular as a saint in ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... diameter and focal length of a simple achromatic lens; at what distance from it must a diaphragm of given diameter be placed to give the best ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various

... Cooper, being cooks, had kindled an unobtrusive fire in a crabhole, where three billies were soon boiling. And the tea, when cool enough, needed no light to escort a due proportion of simple provender into that mysterious laboratory which should never ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... lost in the abominable desire, in the priceless promise of that woman. He was not, of course, able to discern clearly the causes of his misery; but there are none so ignorant as not to know suffering, none so simple as not to feel and suffer from the shock of warring impulses. The ignorant must feel and suffer from their complexity as well as the wisest; but to them the pain of struggle and defeat appears strange, ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... an envelope, which was gummed and sealed with five simple seals, without the impenetrable stitches of silk, and enclosed with the fee to Mr. Flint. It was received again in a few days with this note:—'Dear Sir—I gave your sealed Spirit-letter three sittings and regret to state that I have ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission

... is to the heart; good words are cheerful and powerful of themselves, but much more from friends, as so many props, mutually sustaining each other like ivy and a wall, which Camerarius hath well illustrated in an emblem. Lenit animum simplex vel saepe narratio, the simple narration many times easeth our distressed mind, and in the midst of greatest extremities; so diverse have been relieved, by [3423]exonerating themselves to a faithful friend: he sees that which we cannot see for passion ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... a scene worth looking at; but Mrs. Grumbit never looked at it, for the simple reason that she could not have seen it if she had. Half way across her own little parlour was the extent of her natural vision. By the aid of spectacles and a steady concentrated effort, she could see the fire-place at the other end of the room; and the portrait of her deceased ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... whom a delicate shade of maiden reserve was just melting into the rich glow of a young wife's affection. Her name was Hannah, and her husband's Matthew—two homely names, yet well enough adapted to the simple pair who seemed strangely out of place among the whimsical fraternity whose wits had been set agog by the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... last in an offer on his own part in open court during his "summing up" to write for the jury from memory a better forgery of the Kauser signature than that written by Parker himself, and thus to show how simple a matter it was to learn to do so. He had taken up his pen and was about to give a sample of his handiwork in this respect when the defendant grasped her counsel's arm and whispered: "For God's sake, don't ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train

... home! No, no, the cold, false world is not for thee. At the proud court, with thy true heart thou wilt Forever feel a stranger among strangers. The world asks virtues of far other stamp Than thou hast learned within these simple vales. But go—go thither; barter thy free soul, Take land in fief, become a prince's vassal, Where thou might'st be lord paramount, and prince Of all thine own unburdened heritage! O, Uly, Uly, stay among thy people! Go not to Altdorf. Oh, abandon not The ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... young man; as well as ingenious. And he had a streak of quick-witted audacity which made him an ornament to his chosen profession. His method of work was simple. Coming to a rural neighborhood, he would stop at some local hotel, and, armed with clever patter and a sheaf of automobile insurance documents, would make the rounds ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... that simple "you" meant. It meant, with the help of the tone of voice, "What? your betrothed is charged with an abominable crime; there is overwhelming evidence against him; he is in jail, in close confinement; everybody knows he will be tried at the assizes, and he will be condemned—and you ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... codification and inquiry until it had made possible the great victories of Darwin and Huxley and Wallace. If we take Macaulay at the beginning of the epoch and Huxley at the end of it, we shall find that they had much in common. They were both square-jawed, simple men, greedy of controversy but scornful of sophistry, dead to mysticism but very much alive to morality; and they were both very much more under the influence of their own admirable rhetoric than they knew. ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... he continued gravely, "that all this is very hard upon Yeva, the star of my heart, with whom Allah has blessed me. The West has flowed in upon the East at Bosna-Seraj, and engulfed it. We are no more a simple Moslem city with the tastes of our fathers; and our women are no more satisfied to remain as they were, childish, ignorant, and unlettered. The spell of the Occident is upon the land. Vienna, Berlin, Paris, ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... that appealed instantly to Skippy and inspired confidence, something cool and dainty and at ease. She did not express either surprise or excessive delight at their entrance. There was something simple and frank about everything she did. He appreciated it and fell to wishing that Tootsie would be more like her, less coquettish and more ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... farmhouse where there's a sour-faced, square-jawed old pirate sittin' in a home made barrel chair smokin' his pipe and scowlin' gloomy at the world in gen'ral. It's Ross himself. Percey J. don't waste any hot air tryin' to melt him. He tells the old guy plain and simple who he is and what ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford

... this song, are few and simple, but they are made up from compounds which carry the whole of their original meanings, and are rather suggestive of the ideas floating in the mind than actual expressions of ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... remarked—to talk in a dream with a certain person, to dream a whole conversation, and then, all of a sudden, a singular phenomenon strikes the attention of the dreamer. He perceives that he does not speak, that he has not spoken, that his interlocutor has not uttered a single word, that it was a simple exchange of thought between them, a very clear conversation, in which, nevertheless, nothing has been heard. The phenomenon is easily enough explained. It is in general necessary for us to hear sounds ...
— Dreams • Henri Bergson

... denies, His heart was of abnormal size, Yet he'd have acted otherwise If he had been acuter. The end is easily foretold, When every blessed thing you hold Is made of silver, or of gold, You long for simple pewter. When you have nothing else to wear But cloth of gold and satins rare, For cloth of gold you cease to care - Up goes the price of shoddy: In short, whoever you may be, To this conclusion you'll agree, When every one is ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... habit of 'pinching' recreant slaves with red-hot iron pinchers, or for heinous offences pinching pieces of flesh out of them. The Moravian missionaries came to the islands and brought to the inhabitants the practice and precept of a simple Christianity. Their work among the slaves being especially helpful, the lot of the latter was lightened and masters were no longer allowed to exercise the power of life and death ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... counsels, not per se, but per accidens; and for precisely similar reasons. They took no account of the tendency of human nature to relax and seek its ease. When the gray-haired counsellor said, 'Be simple,' he said, 'Be bald and vulgar.' For the young men who listened aimed at simplicity, and therefore naturally argued, the simpler the better; in fact, the conversational style is best of all. Where, then, the need for elaborate preparation? We ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... some sort. And part of the truth is that there are a lot of women in the world who'll believe simply anything that you tell them. It's part of the truth, too, that there are scoundrels in the world who will take advantage of anybody's simple trust to fill their pockets. But that's not all," he went on, shaking his head, "no, that's not all. It's part of the truth that there is a mystery, and that human beings will go on searching whatever all the materialists and merchants in the world can try to do to stop them. I remember years ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... where is he, the simple fool, Who says that wars are over? What bloody portent flashes there, Across the Straits of Dover? Nine hundred thousand slaves in arms May seek to bring us under But England lives and still will live, For we'll crush the despot yonder. Are we ready, Britons all, To answer foes with thunder? ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... covered with dense forests, and savage man was struggling for existence with savage man and yet more savage beast, living in rude huts and ignorant of any kind of civilisation, Nature was hard at work deep below the slopes of those Adelsberg mountains. Age after age, with her simple tools of water, lime, and carbonic acid, she dug, scooped, carved, and built, fashioning by slow degrees vaulted chambers, halls with lofty domes, arches, and galleries, all gleaming like frosted silver set with diamonds, far more wonderful than Aladdin's ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... long-postponed investiture as a Grand Cross, in order that he may dine at this very banquet; and it has been announced to him that it is impossible, the king's health will not admit of it. When a simple investiture is impossible, a state banquet to the four orders is very probable. No," said Lady Marney with a sigh; "it is a great blow for all of us, but it is no use shutting our eyes to the fact. The poor dear king will ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... the time, beneath his quite genuine defiance, he was thinking what an idiot he had been to cheek the examiner, and how staggeringly simple it was to ruin years of industry by one impulsive moment's folly, and how iniquitous was a world in which such injustice ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... life to useless parade and display, Lunalilo left directions for a simple funeral, and that none of the old heathenish observances should ensue upon his death. So, amidst unbounded grief, he was carried to the grave with hymns and anthems, and the hopes of Hawaii were ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... rectitude and instinct for the right course saved him, as it has saved him many times since. I do not think that in any emergency he has to debate with himself long as to the right course to be pursued; he divines it by a kind of infallible instinct. His motives are so simple and direct that he finds a straight and easy course where another man, whose eye is less single, would flounder ...
— Camping with President Roosevelt • John Burroughs

... favourable, for, in relating it, he regarded Holly, who in turn regarded him, while Fleur seemed to be regarding with a slight frown some thought of her own, and Jon was really free to look at her at last. She had on a white frock, very simple and well made; her arms were bare, and her hair had a white rose in it. In just that swift moment of free vision, after such intense discomfort, Jon saw her sublimated, as one sees in the dark a slender white fruit-tree; caught her like a verse of poetry flashed before the eyes of the mind, or ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Meade's charming books for girls, narrated in that simple and picturesque style which marks the authoress as one of the first among writers ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow

... caught—caught by remorseless forced marches and strategy as neat as a trivet—in a great fork with bent prongs. On the sketches in this little book, to which I have sacrificed everything possible for clearness, the general simple scheme of the campaign may be apparent. The final position on July 5 was something like the diagram on page ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie



Words linked to "Simple" :   apiculate, elliptic, unproblematic, sheep, naif, archaism, sagittate, retarded, orbiculate, muggins, simple-minded, airhead, peltate, simple sentence, pandurate, idiot savant, spatulate, simple absence, sagittiform, arrow-shaped, simplistic, ninny, saphead, acerate, lyrate, schlemiel, ovate, plain, square, two-needled, changeling, naive, deltoid, imbecile, moron, forgetful person, shnook, five-needled, spatula-shaped, unsophisticated, smooth, undecomposable, nincompoop, herbaceous plant, simple harmonic motion, shlep, doofus, boob, complexness, dope, bladelike, spearhead-shaped, shlepper, dummy, person, poop, nebbish, swordlike, fiddle-shaped, acuminate, simplicity, reniform, linear, tomfool, unsubdivided, fool, sword-shaped, oblanceolate, three-needled, dolabrate, twerp, acerose, obtuse, oblong, panduriform, twit, subnormal, simple fracture, phytology, nebbech, simpleton, ensiform, cretin, round-eyed, easy, stupid, four-needled, elongate, scatterbrain, retard, stupe, unanalyzable, herb, complex, pudding head, cordiform, archaicism, simple mindedness, perfoliate, complexity, mortal, hastate, dingbat, cuneate, idiot, dolt, schlepper, poor fish, half-wit, pillock, pinhead, orbicular, dim-witted, caudate, obovate, dumbbell, twirp, space cadet, pudden-head, simple machine, simple sugar, acicular, shield-shaped, individual, somebody, sap, schlep, needle-shaped, booby, shlemiel, compound, unlobed, soul, dullard, dimwit, lanceolate, simple pistil, someone, wide-eyed, needled, lancelike, nitwit, stupid person, dolabriform, lame, schnook, kidney-shaped, wedge-shaped, heart-shaped, botany, cordate



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com