"Naif" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... distressed his father and scandalized Beacon Street by avowing scepticism that seemed to solve no old problems, and to raise many new ones. The less aggressive protest of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was, from an old-world point of view, less serious. It was naif. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... thought self-evidently sound and just. Americans were surprised to find how completely it was overlooked in the contemporaneous European discussion—how general was the sympathy with the Spanish request for arbitration, and how naif the apparently genuine surprise at the instant and unqualified refusal to consider it. Even English voices joined in the chorus of encouraging approval that, from every quarter in Europe, greeted the formal Spanish appeal for an opportunity to try over in another forum ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... foreign object, moving so meteorically before her, an ambiguous creature of wilfulness and Destiny. And, to her surprise, where she had dreaded antagonisms, she discovered only sympathies. He was, she said, "so quiet, so simple, naif even, so pleased to be informed about things he does not know, so gentle, so full of tact, dignity, and modesty, so full of kind attention towards us, never saying a word, or doing a thing, which could put me out... There is something fascinating, melancholy, and engaging ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... there are a few men who hold the opinions of another age, past or future. Being a lump of simplicity, his sceptism was as naif as his enthusiasm. He affected to look on the religious ceremonies of his day as his models, the heathen philosophers, regarded the worship of gods and departed heroes: mummeries good for the populace. But here ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade |
