"Artless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... respectable old town had not seen any thing like it for many a long day; the ostlers at the hotel talked of it; the boys followed the carriage, and hung on the slats of the fence to see the party alight, and said to one another in their artless ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... by the vivacity with which this artless narrative was related, pressed Miranda to continue the history of her adventures. The actress laughingly protested that she must first refresh herself with one of the ices he had so handsomely provided; and meanwhile ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... opportunity in those glad days was when some freak of manner in friend or visitor suggested a new game. We used to wish, sometimes, that these kind people understood how much pleasure they were giving to the artless babe who was studying them with such interest, while they, all unconscious of their real use, imagined probably she was thinking of nothing more serious than sweets. After an hour in the bungalow, Chellalu would wander off, apparently ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... during the interregnum. Nursery Legitimists will be against him to a man; Republicans likewise, after a queer sniff at his pretensions, it is to be feared. For me, I have so little command over him, that in spite of my nursery tastes, he drags me whither he lists. It is artless art and monstrous innovation to present so wilful a figure, but were I to create a striking fable for him, and set him off with scenic effects and contrasts, it would be only a momentary tonic to you, to him instant death. He could ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... explicitness and at the 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 Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... coin, averaging about sixty-four to the 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 and ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... I am Syumarasmi by name. I have come here for acquiring knowledge. Desirous of doing good to myself I have started this conversation in artless candour and not from desire of disputation. The dark doubt has taken possession of my mind. O illustrious one, solve it to me. Thou hast said that they who take the path of the good (viz., Yoga), by which Brahma is attained, realise its fruits by the direct evidence ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... distance from Coeslin. All the peasants and peasant-women came to meet me, dressed in their holiday attire, and the supervisor of the village, to whose hat a large bouquet had been fastened, stepped up to the carriage to deliver an address to me. It contained but a few artless words; the kind-hearted man begged me, in the name of the people, to do their village the honor to alight, and partake of some refreshment, for they desired to entertain the "mother of the country," that the inhabitants ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... unable to speak a word. The whole thing sounded so wildly improbable and yet she was obviously speaking the truth. She is, I should say, a girl of no imagination and, being entirely artless, could not possibly have invented such a thing. At last I found my voice, which sounded rather hollow. 'What a ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... punishment, then everywhere habitual, was enforced as prodigally in convents as in colleges. It was a simple and summary means of swift execution, sometimes, in a rude and simple age, carried out in the churches themselves. The Fabliaux show us an artless picture of manners, where, after confessing husband and wife, the priest gave them the discipline without any ceremony, just as they were, behind the confessional. Scholars, monks, nuns, were all punished in ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... numerous bits were lacking in the reconstruction, for here is the singular and sinister enigma spread out before him, not unlike a map of Central Africa, with voids and spaces of terra incognita, which the artless standard-bearer explored in ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... Yorkshire Gipsy, a 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 habits of ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... anxious, perhaps, to know whether much of her trouble might not be merely the result of fancies which could be reasoned and explained away, was careful to avoid anything like corroboration. He let her talk in her own simple and artless way; and the girl spoke to him, after a little while, with an earnestness which showed how deeply she felt her position. At the very outset she told him that her love for her husband had never altered for a moment—that all the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... plainly audible in the adjoining room. Teresa involuntarily covered Fanny's head, which was hidden in her breast, as if she feared that this artless tale would win her credence, and so deceive her youthful mind, for young girls are so very credulous. Why, they even inquire of the flowers, "Does he love me, or does he not love me?" What will they not do, then, if any one looks straight ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... 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 at it to see if he could discover the secret of his mother's ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... kindly welcome Jenny brings him ben;{15} A strappin' youth; he takes the mother's eye; Blythe Jenny sees the visit's no ill ta'en; The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye.{16} The youngster's artless heart o'erflows wi' joy, But, blate and lathefu', scarce can weel behave; The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can spy What makes the youth sae bashfu' an' sae grave; Weel pleased to think her bairn's ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... Royal Irish Constabulary, who had been summoned from Galway to the scene of action. From every side soldiers and constabulary—soldiers in everything but name—converge upon Ballinrobe and Claremorris, townlets, which, if one could quite believe their artless inhabitants, are Arcadian in their simplicity, prosperous to every degree short of the payment of rent, and absolutely safe as to ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... begun afresh with the life and message of Jesus Christ, coloured, if at all, by local and temporal backgrounds, by the experience of the earlier German mystics who helped them to interpret their own simple and sincere experiences. They are as naive and artless as little children, and they expect, as all enthusiasts do in their youth, that they have only to announce their wonderful truths and to proclaim their "openings" in order to bring the world to the light! They go ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... is beautiful," she said, with artless delight, "and he's good, and he studies so hard. He has taken care of me ever since mama died. Here is his name on the program. He is not the valedictorian, but he has an honor for ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... sweet domestic cheer she diffused through the house with her harmless little gossip about this and that, and the artfully artless kindnesses to him she mingled with all, could have blamed him? He was given to melancholy and to musing; his cheek was sometimes pale, and his step languid; and he saw, all too often, troublesome phantoms coming to meet him. This disposition in another would have incited the keenest ridicule ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... the English." And in his history of the English language, speaking of our Saxon ancestors, to whom we must, I suppose, go for that Teutonic original which he so strongly recommends, he observes that, "their speech having been always cursory and extemporaneous, must have been artless and unconnected, without any modes of transition or involution of clauses, which abruptness and inconnection may be found even in their later writings." Of the additions which have been made to this our original poverty, who shall say what ought to be rejected, and what retained? who shall say what ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... dawn of his manhood he had found that second consciousness for which young men and young women go about looking into each other's faces, with their sweet, artless aim playing in every feature, and making them beautiful to each other, as to all of us. He had found his other self early, before he had grown weary in the search and wasted his freshness in vain longings: the lot of many, perhaps ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... inflicted on the sweetest and truest of women? Nothing saved us from a parting as absolute as the parting that follows death but the confession that had been wrung from me at a time when my motive spoke for itself. The artless avowal of her affection had been justified, had been honored, by the words which laid my heart at her feet when ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... the native missionary finished his narrative. I was particularly struck with the artless simplicity of his account, and the faith and perseverance he and his companions had exhibited, so worthy of imitation. I felt ashamed as he spoke of white men, when I recollected how many act in a way so totally ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... brought with us from Whitecross Street. A mute sexton welcomed us at the door, and held back for us the curtain of the homely quadrangular interior, where we found twoscore or more of such simple folk as Fox might have preached to in just such a place. The only difference was that they now wore artless versions of the world's present fashions in dress, and not the drabs of out-dated cut which we associate with Quakerism. But this was right, for that dress is only the antiquated simplicity of the time when Quakerism began; and the people we now saw were more fitly dressed than if they had worn it. ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... woman—she was Miss Poyle, the vicar's sister, a robust unmodulated person—had the happy inspiration and the unusual courage to address herself across it to Vereker, who was opposite, but not directly, so that when he replied they were both leaning forward. She enquired, artless body, what he thought of Lady Jane's "panegyric," which she had read—not connecting it however with her right-hand neighbour; and while I strained my ear for his reply I heard him, to my stupefaction, call back gaily, his mouth full of bread: "Oh, ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... was artless and confiding to a degree, and the servant could not help feeling that as from visitor to common serving-man this state of things was highly improper. His conclusion was that one of two things must be the explanation—either that this was a begging ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... something I needed—that appointment for Hagley. What I said about Senators an' such was all wild words—nothin' in 'em. Why, how could there be, Senator?" This query was a happy afterthought which Sanders craftily suggested in a designedly artless manner. ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... [Footnote: Pliny, xxxv. 12.] 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, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... glided, group after group; and through the foliage, spied sweet forms of maidens, like Eves in Edens ere the Fall, or Proserpines in Ennas. Artless airs came from the shore; and from the censer-swinging roses, a bloom, as if from ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. It was no miraculous work, either as respects the difficulties overcome or as respects the consummation attained; nor was it made so by all the high-sounding words, which the Roman world of quality lavished in favour of Lucullus and the artless multitude in praise of Pompeius. Pompeius in particular consented to be praised, and praised himself, in such a fashion that people might almost have reckoned him still more weak-minded than he really ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... loneliness most felt when in a crowd, the want of congenial companionship. Her unassuming modesty and poor opinion of her own worth, saved her heart from the sharp pangs of envy at the thought of her sister's superiority: and thus, even in the impure atmosphere of the palace, did this artless maiden live on, humbly looking up to one infinitely her inferior, and dwelling in love and peace. Her greatest enjoyments were of a kind despised by Clotilda. It was her delight to steal away from the gay assembly, where she was never missed, and ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... sofa. Occasionally she would even read aloud a few pages with her musical and sympathetic voice, but would soon throw down the book with an air of exhaustion, and plead that he would read to her. In her weakness there was nothing repulsive, and without calculation she made many artless appeals to his strength. He generously responded, saying to himself, "Poor little thing! she has a hard time of it. With her great black eyes she might be a beauty if she only had health and was like other girls; but as it is, she is so ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... improve in this precious power. Simplicity, naturalness, a truthful air and manner are, indeed, more frequently the result of labor than their opposites. It is hard, in this world of artifice, to be perfectly artless. ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... over the whole composition, there can be little doubt but that more pathetic situations and sentiments, that is, those which have a greater proportion of pain connected with them, may be endured in metrical composition, especially in rhyme, than in prose. The metre of the old ballads is very artless; yet they contain many passages which would illustrate this opinion; and, I hope, if the following Poems be attentively perused, similar instances will be found in them. This opinion may be further ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... was. And a courteous, versatile, and vivacious companion I found him. Rare tales he told me, too, of better days than these, and rarest of his own never-more-returning youth. He loved his childhood, talked on of it with an artless zeal, his eyes a nest of singing-birds. How contrite he was for spirit lost, and daring withheld, and hope discomfited! How simple and urbane concerning his present lowly demands on life, on love, and on futurity! All this, too, with such packed winks and mirth and ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... of her auburn curls and noble mien— Who froze my hopes and triumphed in my fears, Now sheds her graces in the waste of years. Changed to unlovely is that breast of snow, And dimmed her eye, and wrinkled is her brow; And querulous the voice by time repressed, Whose artless music stole me from my rest. Age gives redress to love; and silvery hair And earlier wrinkles ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... remorse; and, though Beauclerc did not watch, or play the spy upon her countenance, he could not help sometimes observing the flitting colour—the guilty changes of countenance—the assumed composure: that mind, once so artless, began to be degraded—her spirits sank; she felt that she "had lost the sunshine of a soul without ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... opportunity to study and find out for myself what the public wants, and afterward I would endeavor to use the knowledge gained in my writing. The public desires nothing but what is absolutely natural, and so perfectly natural as to be fairly artless. It can not tolerate affectation, and it takes little interest in the classical production. It demands simple sentiments that come direct from the heart. While on the lecture platform I watched the effect that my readings had on the audience ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... preferring his courier, M. l'Eclair." These last words completely destroyed all attempts at preserving my gravity, and I burst into the most uncontrollable laughter, which, however, soon gave place to a painful recollection of how soon this young and artless creature, as simple as she was beautiful, was likely to lose this open-heartedness in the hands of her seducer. "Sophie," said I to her at last, "this unfortunate affair forbids my retaining you any longer in my service; I am compelled to send you from me. I trust this ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... Felice was seated in one of them, with her coat still huddled about her, she looked around with artless curiosity, and watched as in a dream, while the Major put his hand on Margot's ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... of artless maid, Sweet floweret of the rural shade! By love's simplicity betrayed, And guileless trust, Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid Low ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... artless fashion Cynthia's son went about the creation of his own special Sunday-school class and when he got through the result was startling. It was the largest and somebody said the weirdest Sunday-school class ever seen in Green Valley. Indeed, when Mr. James D. Austin, ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... inspected the stream attentively from a central point of view. We found the island damp, and went back to the bank, and up the stream, and over the bridge, and down the stream again; and then, for the first time, the sweet girl turned appealingly to me, and confessed that she had exhausted her artless knowledge of the locality. It was exactly a week from the day when I had first followed her into the fields with my fishing-rod over my shoulder; and I had never yet caught anything but Alicia's hand, and that not with ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... with the proudest and noblest in the land! But love needs not the aid of words; and the sentiments of the heart, beaming in an ingenuous countenance, are more forcible than any language which the lips can utter. Lucie was too artless to disguise the feelings which she was, as yet, scarce conscious of cherishing; but Arthur read in the smile and blush which ever welcomed his approach, the sigh which seemed to regret his departure, and the eloquent ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... To be petted and diminutived by a butterfly—it was like that; for though the child was a year older than she, six years of marriage had made a baby of her. Her audacities of old had become artless prattle, her sallies were skips in the air. Yet to be purred over by a kitten was pure joy. "You darling!' You darling little Sancie! You beautiful, pale, Madame-de-Watte- ville kind of person! Oh, my treasure—and I thought I should never see you again!" So she cooed while she cuddled, Sanchia, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... unconventional," murmured Alan Hawke. "Who the devil can this French-English woman be anyway." He realized that some subtle game depended upon the memories of the past strangely evoked by the artless Anstruther's babble. As he strolled back to the smoking-room, he saw the maitre d'hotel slyly deliver a twisted bit of paper to the all too unconcerned looking young Adonis, and the gleam of a napoleon shone out ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... 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 and his ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... 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 only ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... 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 ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... wiping his nose with the back of his hand bent down industriously over his bit of rope. A few laughed. Others stared doubtfully. The ragged newcomer was indignant—"That's a fine way to welcome a chap into a fo'c'sle," he snarled. "Are you men or a lot of 'artless canny-bals?"—"Don't take your shirt off for a word, shipmate," called out Belfast, jumping up in front, fiery, menacing, and friendly at the same time.—"Is that 'ere bloke blind?" asked the indomitable scarecrow, looking ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... listeners, almost the only dry-eyed one, but he was not dry-eyed because he felt the artless story least. Again and again he rose from his chair restlessly, and Grizel thought he scowled at her when he was really scowling at himself; as soon as she had finished he cleared the room brusquely of all intruders, and then he ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... the Nabob. Escorted by his friends, he occupied, filled the main aisle all by himself, talking in a loud tone, gesticulating, so proud that he seemed almost handsome, as if, by dint of gazing long at his bust in artless admiration, he had caught a little of the splendid idealization with which the artist had softened the vulgarity of the type. The head at an elevation of three-fourths, free from the high rolling collar, gave rise to contradictory opinions from the spectators concerning ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... man was a dangerous companion for a young, simple, and artless girl like Micheline. His adventures were bound to please her imagination, and his beauty sure to charm her eyes. Cayrol was a prudent man; he watched, and it was not long before he perceived that Micheline treated the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... which I have a special affection. One is an old friend who has often persuaded me that this world is rather a place for smiles than for gloom; and the other is a new book of stories which have life in them, which make their effect with a seemingly artless certainty and leave the pleased reader with the impression that they are, if anything, a shade or so too short. Both these things I have obtained in One Kind and Another (SECKER), by Mr. BARRY PAIN. "The Journal of Aura Lovel," with which Mr. PAIN leads ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... 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 expression of countenance. ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... sudden, one day he began to feel 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-yue? ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... blue—nay, it was the one point on which he attained to a kind of tearful certainty. 'I'll take my davy on it,' he asseverated. They proved to have been as black as sloes, very little and very near together. So much for the evidence of the artless! And the fact, or rather the facts, acquired? Well, they had to do not with the person but with his clothing. The man wore knee-breeches and white stockings; his coat was 'some kind of a lightish colour—or betwixt that and dark'; and he wore a 'mole- skin weskit.' As if this were not enough, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... been as strange to him as castanets in his palms. Guile takes alertness, adroitness; and the slim pennyworth of these that he could command he used up, no doubt, on Fontenette. I noticed that after an hour with the Creole he always looked tortured and exhausted. With us he was artless to the tips of his ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... from the head and front of her great Jove Intuition. Logic, says the ancient platitude, hangs by the end of a philosopher's beard; and an American woman would as soon grow hair on her face as admit reason to her soul. Therein, doubtless, lies her charm, her artless allurements, her enigmatic ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... settled down again into a busy home life. But it was no longer the home life of the past. The year of absence had left a profound impression upon her character. Her mind and heart had undergone a rapid development. She was only twenty-two on her return, and had still all the fresh, artless simplicity of a young girl, but there was joined to it now the maturity of womanhood. Of the rest of the year a record is preserved in letters to her cousin. These letters give many little details respecting her daily tasks and the life she led in the family ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... estimating the influence that she exercised over him, her sense of the interest taken in her by Ovid was the proud sense that makes girls innocently bold. Whatever the others might think of his broken engagement, her artless eyes said plainly, "My feeling is ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... 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
... 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
... was it with thee, Margy, When, innocent and artless, Thou cam'st here to the altar, From the well-thumbed little prayer-book, Petitions lisping, Half full of child's play, Half full of Heaven! Margy! Where are thy thoughts? What crime is buried Deep within thy heart? Prayest thou haply for thy mother, who Slept over into long, long pain, on ...
— Faust • Goethe
... Bluebell, in the artless vernacular of a school-girl, half turning her shoulder with an ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... 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 during which he had presided over the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... 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
... with what took place in the center of the battlefield. On the field between Borodino and the fleches, beside the wood, the chief action of the day took place on an open space visible from both sides and was fought in the simplest and most artless way. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... to remember now) that she would carry the child to the Deil's Hags, sit with him on the Praying Weaver's Stone, and talk of the Covenanters till their tears ran down. Her view of history was wholly artless, a design in snow and ink; upon the one side, tender innocents with psalms upon their lips; upon the other, the persecutors, booted, bloody-minded, flushed with wine: a suffering Christ, a raging Beelzebub. Persecutor was a word that knocked upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... talk of 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... of temper in all conditions, and no lady, in high or low life, could endure them with a better grace than Phoebe. Whilst Mr. and Mrs. Hill were busied abroad, there came to see Phoebe one of the widow Smith's children. With artless expressions of gratitude to Phoebe this little girl mixed the praises of O'Neill, who, she said, had been the constant friend of her mother, and had given her money every week since the fire happened. ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... Patron? JOHNSON knew, And well that lifelike portrait drew. He is a Patron who looks down With careless eye on men who drown; But if they chance to reach the land, Encumbers them with helping hand. Ah! happy we whose artless rhyme No longer now must creep to climb! Ah! happy we of later days, Who 'scape those Caudine Forks of praise! Whose votive page may dare commend A Brother, or a private Friend! Not so it fared with scribbling man, As POPE says, ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... so in those of others, by the desertion of such a lover, for she had sense enough to discern the superiority of Lionel over all her other admirers. She could appreciate his worth, but she could not controul her own too long indulged inclinations, and was still too artless to conceal the wrong bias they had taken. The disappointment had a visible effect upon her temper: she grew peevish, and dissatisfied with every thing about her. She resolved to leave no means untried to regain the heart of Lionel, and ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... the slowness of promotion, cooking a potato or a sausage in the stove for his luncheon, reading the newspaper down to the editor's signature, and advertisements in which some country cure expresses his artless gratitude at being cured at last of an obstinate disease. In recompense for this daily captivity, M. Violette received, at the end of the month, a sum exactly sufficient to secure his household soup and beef, with a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... strange compound; under an appearance of the most artless simplicity she concealed an iron will, and had hidden from every one of her family, and even from her most intimate friends, her firm resolve to become the Duchess of Champdoce. All her rambles in ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... his countenance was the countenance of the goddess that thou servest or of mine own bright sun-god; nay, rather 'twas as thine own. Even so, even so looked he when he won the heart of her that was his foe, and lofty was his carriage like to thine. But in thee still brighter shines an artless glory, and on thee is all thy father's beauty. Yet mingled therewith in equal portion is something of thy wild mother's fairness. On thy Greek face is seen the fierceness of the Scythian. Hadst thou sailed o'er the sea with thy sire to Crete, for thee rather had my sister spun ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... would this form of artless grace Inure to penance, thoughtlessly attempts To cleave in twain the hard acacia's stem[19] With the soft edge of a ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... We call it artless, with still a hint of depreciation in the word, or at least of wonder that we should be so moved by such simple means. It is a kind of cottage-poetry, and has that beauty which in a cottage moves us more than ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... be in artless, fearless innocence; looking mildly at you with its neck not too much stretched, as if uneasy in its situation; or drawn too close into the shoulders, like one wishing to avoid a discovery; but in moderate, perpendicular length, supporting the head horizontally, which ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... conventionalized wood-carving art has developed — beautiful eating spoons with figures of men and women carved on the handles and food bowls cut in animal figures are everywhere found; while in Bontoc only the most crude and artless wood carving is made. In language there is such a difference that Bontoc men who accompanied me into the northern part of the large Quiangan area, only a long day from Bontoc pueblo, could not converse with Quiangan men, even about such common things as travelers ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... And the artless simplicity of Shelley's technique—much more really simple than the conscious "childishness" exquisite though that is, of a Blake or Verlaine—lends itself so wonderfully to the expression of youth's ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... possession of the growing intelligence, so that the child suffers under the load of secret knowledge but gradually becomes enabled to shoulder the burden. Of all these things we have a description at once so charming, so serious, and so artless, that it cannot fail to be of supreme interest to educationists ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... love, 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, ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... began, and Cherry sat entranced from the moment the curtain rose till it fell again. She had never seen anything of the sort before, and was perfectly captivated and carried away, living in the glamour of absolute enchantment, and amusing her fashionable companions almost as much by her artless admiration and enthusiasm as the players did by ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... him 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
... of the person who performed it. Blank, indeed, would the evangelists have looked, had any one told them what an enormous theory of systematic meddling with nature was destined to grow out of their beautiful and artless narratives. ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... been moved and melted by her fascination. What was the cold patrician beauty of Miss Paget's face when compared with the changeful charm of this radiant girl, with the flashing gray eyes and piquant features, and all those artless caprices of manner which made her arch loveliness irresistible? Diana's heart grew sick and cold as she watched these two day by day, and saw the innocent school-girl's ascendancy over the adventurer. The attributes ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... that should balk even the justice of a poet's imagination. A loose, dark cloak, flung open, showed a rich gown beneath. Her eyes changed swiftly with every little shade of thought. Within one moment they would be round and artless like a child's, and long and cozening like a gypsy's. One hand raised her gown, undraping a little shoe, high-heeled, with its ribbons dangling, untied. So heavenly she was, so unfitted to stoop, so qualified to charm and command! Perhaps she had seen David coming, and ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... forgotten, the imputation of murder drops, like a thing unworthy of notice.[96] Johannes Mueller, a great Swiss celebrity, writes that the British Constitution occurred to somebody, perhaps to Halifax. This artless statement might not be approved by rigid lawyers as a faithful and felicitous indication of the manner of that mysterious growth of ages, from occult beginnings, that was never profaned by the invading wit of man;[97] but it is less grotesque than it appears. ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... has engaged himself," said one mother, "dear innocent boy; his greatest ambition is that he may one day creep into a clergyman's ear. That is a very artless and loveable wish; and being engaged will keep him steady. What happiness for ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... 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 art, nevertheless ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... softened light of this golden 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 ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... intercourse with the peasantry, of whose habits and modes 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 cheer ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... The pure and artless Tao of Lao Tzu, etherealised by the lofty speculations of Chuang Tzu, has long since become the vehicle of ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... sisterly interest in my future wife, and has adroitly managed to let me know of her niece, a certain Anna Ruthven, who, inasmuch as I am tired of city belles, will undoubtedly suit my fancy, said Anna being very fresh, very artless, and very beautiful withal. She is also niece to Mrs. Meredith, whose only brother married very far beneath him, when he took to wife the daughter of a certain old-fashioned Captain Humphreys, a pillar, no doubt, in your church. ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... the painful fascination of the bird with the boa, who hated to see him there, and dreaded to see him depart, who had not yet extracted all the confirmation of his persuasions that he required, for Vaudemont easily enough parried the artless questions of Camilla—pressed him to stay with so eager a hospitality, and made Camilla herself falter out, against her will, and even against her remonstrances—(she never before had dared to remonstrate with either father or mother),—"Could not you stay a few days ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the paint-box where he had been holding high carnival with Bertram's tubes of paint, and demanded if Bertram ever saw a more delightful, more entrancing, more altogether-to-be-desired model. She was so artless, so merry, so frankly charmed with it all that Bertram could not find it in his heart to be angry, notwithstanding his annoyance. But when at four o'clock, she took herself and her cat cheerily up-stairs, he lifted his hands ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... 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 ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... moment that her eyes were full of tears. This little scene is not only charming and touching, it is very significant, suggesting a combination of such qualities as are not always found united: sovereign good sense and readiness, blending with quick, artless feeling that sought no disguise—such feeling as again betrayed itself when on her ensuing proclamation the new Sovereign had to meet her people face to face, and stood before them at her palace window, composed but sad, the tears running ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... not of others alone, but, if I may be allowed the expression, of ourselves, find a void of so many years in our lives, which has silently brought us from youth to maturity, from mature age to the very verge of life! Still, however, I shall not regret having composed, though in rude and artless language, a memorial of past servitude, and a testimony of present ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... inward grace; In her dark eyes I have seen Sorrows of the Nazarene; In the proud and perfect mould Of her body I behold, Rounded in a single view, The good, the beautiful, the true; And when her spirit goes up-winging On sweet air of artless singing, Surely the heavenly spheres rejoice In union with ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... 'From what is it derived?' 'What does he know of "Blackwood's Magazine?"' 'Can he quote any parallel allusion in Byron?' You can ask all that: but you are not getting within measurable distance of it. Your mind is not even moving on the right plane. Or let me turn back to some light and artless Elizabethan thing—say to the Oenone duet ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... now read. In reference to this poetry of twelve hundred years ago, Mr. Aston—perhaps the greatest authority on the subject—remarks: "While the eighth century has left us little or no prose literature of importance, it was emphatically the golden age of poetry. Japan has now outgrown the artless effusions described in the preceding chapter, and during this period produced a body of verse of an excellence which has never since been surpassed. The reader who expects to find this poetry of a nation just emerging from the barbaric stage of culture ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... see? But she seems to have taught the marchese—and it is a secret no more, and not beautiful at all." He begins to wonder to himself, and grows suddenly homesick under disenchantment. He has many artless, touching things to say concerning his happiness with his sister in his own country, there far away on the lonely ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... 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
... riding 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
... to gratify all the innocent wishes, of those about her. The character of a woman undistinguishing in her favours, and whose darling employment is to increase the number of her admirers, is in the highest degree unnatural. Such was not the character of Imogen. She was artless and sincere. Her tongue evermore expressed the sentiments of her heart. She drew the attention of no swain from a rival; she employed no stratagems to inveigle the affections; she mocked not the respect of the simple shepherd with delusive ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... in Scotland, and so on. For four-and-twenty hours Mollie would be drilled, put through her facings, lectured, and made generally miserable; but by the next morning or so the educational cleaning would be over. 'Mother wasn't in a mood for teaching,' Mollie would say in her artless fashion as she carried away ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... prosecute his researches, for out of this merciless dissection comes life. But we need not be surprised at the feverish heat which, after these orgies of dialectics, can only be calmed by the kisses of the artless creature in whom nature lives and smiles. Woman restores us to communication with the eternal spring in which God reflects Himself. The candour of a child, unconscious of its own beauty and seeing God clear as the daylight, is the great revelation of the ideal, just as the unconscious ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... not he pictures all his relatives at a 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 ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... parodied by him in a simpler and more useful device. By alleging a moral purpose he is enabled to gratify the prurience of his public and to raise them in their own muddy conceit at one and the same time. The plea serves well with those artless readers who have been accustomed to consider the moral of a story as something separable from imagination, expression, and style—a quality, it may be, inherent in the plot, or a kind of appendix, exercising ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... still-debated question of his degree of guilt. The wonderful buccaneering adventures of Bartholomew Sharp and his companions, 1680-1682, at the Isthmus of Panama and all along the west coast of South America, are newly illustrated by long anonymous narratives, artless but effective. And indeed, to speak more generally, it is hoped that there are few aspects of the pirate's trade that are not ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... 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 looked sullen and ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... 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 of water, which left a sepia ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... then 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 barefoot across the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... a man of limited means, in a public position, his time not his own. Yes. He owned to me in the parlour of my farmhouse that he had been very much concerned then at the possible consequences. But as he was making this artless confession I said to myself that, whatever consequences and complications he might have imagined, the complication from which he was suffering now could never, never have presented itself to his mind. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... nature as my guardian's, experienced in the world and forced to contemplate the miserable evasions and contentions of the family misfortune, found an immense relief in Mr. Skimpole's avowal of his weaknesses and display of guileless candour; but I could not satisfy myself that it was as artless as it seemed or that it did not serve Mr. Skimpole's idle turn quite as well as any other ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... in the most apparently artless, natural, purposeless manner! But the same end was always kept steadily in view. What I have witnessed this morning convinces me of your aims. Your movements were so skilfully managed that they scarcely seemed open to suspicion. The most specious coquetry has ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... dignity, the King's ease with him, their conversation, in which the King courteously draws from Johnson knowledge of that in which Johnson is expert, Johnson's manly bearing and voice throughout—all is set forth with the unadorned vividness and permanent effect which seem artless enough, but which are characteristic ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... Mr Rayner, I like midshipmen very much?" she said, in her artless way. "My brother Oliver is a midshipman, and as I am very fond of him, I like all midshipmen for his sake. At first I was inclined to like you because you were a midshipman, but now ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... Jenny Lind, and the affair was a bewildering dream of sweetness and beauty. Her face and movements are full of poetry and feeling. She has the artless grace of a little child, the poetic effect of a wood-nymph, ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... her, had looked into her truthful eyes, had gazed upon her sunny face, which mirrored faithfully every thought and feeling, he was more than satisfied, and to love that beautiful girl seemed to him an easy matter. She was so childlike, so artless, so different from anyone whom he had ever known, that he was interested in her at once. But Arthur Carrollton never did a thing precipitately. She might have many glaring faults; he must see her more, must know her better, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... a noble drama is Job, the Hebrew Faust! How wise the proverbial sayings! What pure passion and lofty imagination stir through the pages of the greater prophets! Where are to be found letters like those of Paul? What biographies have the artless simplicity of the Synoptic Gospels, or the mystic spirituality of the Gospel according to ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... were unspeakably fair, with the fine white teeth, fair complexion, and ruddy cheeks, common to other branches of the Celtic race, but nowhere so characteristic as among the fair maidens of Cambria. It was, no doubt, those sweet shining faces, wreathed with free artless smiles, that had caused the lady-killers ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid |
