"Simple-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Pichegru has a brother, an aged ecclesiastic, who resides in Paris; let his dwelling be searched, and should he be absent, it will warrant a suspicion that Pichegru is here; if, on the contrary, his brother should be at home, let him be arrested: he is a simple-minded man, and in the first moments of agitation will betray the truth. Everything happened as I had foreseen, for no sooner was he arrested than, without waiting to be questioned, he inquired if it was a crime to have received ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Simple-minded Bud readily accepted the wily half-breed's explanations and surmises, and fell into the trap he was preparing. This was to hold up the express-agent and rob him of the money Payson was expecting, on securing which it was McKee's intention to flee the country ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... than appear discourteously anxious to get rid of me. So, with the excuse that I must needs be going, having another appointment, I left the good fellow and strolled around to the chapel, where I sat enjoying the sight of those simple-minded Kanakas at their devotions till it was time to return on board. Before closing this chapter, I would like, for the benefit of such of my readers who have not heard yet of Kanaka cookery, to say that it is simplicity itself. A hole is scooped in the earth, in which a fire is made (of ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... th' Epworth League was a safe-blower be night th' man that'd catch him'd be a la-ad with gr-reat powers iv observation an' thrained habits iv raisonin'. But crime, Hinnissy, is a pursoot iv th' simple minded—that is, catchable crime is a pursoot iv th' simple-minded. Th' other kind, th' uncatchable kind that is took up be men iv intellict is called high fi-nance. I've known manny criminals in me time, an' some iv thim was fine men an' very happy in their home ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... the dreary regions of the far North are, generally speaking, industrious, sober, simple-minded, and contented. They have few pleasures, and their lives are toilsome. But in whatever region we find them—in the fishing villages of the northernmost coast of Norway or Lapland, and even in Greenland—they fondly believe their country to be the best ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... akin. However simple-minded a saint may be, he will nevertheless have a dash of genius in him; and however many errors of temperament, or of actual character, a genius may possess, he will still exhibit a certain nobility of disposition by which he shows his kinship with ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... an opportunity of observing the Aborigines in their original state, it is not very difficult to distinguish the guilty from the innocent, for they are a simple-minded race, little skilled in the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Grahame's task was no longer difficult. Her confidence once given to another, she could not recall to bestow it upon her mother, from whom, the more she mingled in society, the more she became estranged; and Annie became at once her confidant and adviser. Eager to prove she was not the simple-minded being she was believed, Caroline confided her designs, with regard to St. Eval, to Miss Grahame, who, as may be supposed, heightened and encouraged them. Had any one pointed out to Caroline she was acting with duplicity, departing from ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... communicated with two gentlemen in this country, stating that a wealthy relative had died possessed of considerable property, among which was a box of gold from Klondike, value L12,000. For various plausible reasons he was willing to dispose of it to them for L2,000. The good, simple-minded souls went to New York, and handed solid English money to that amount over to Mr. Albert Blair Hunter, of Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A. For what? A bar of brass worth perhaps twenty ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... . . with a trembling hand." When the lad tendered payment she declined the money, and patted his face, murmuring some unintelligible words. Obviously there was nothing in the boy's nature now that appeared strange to simple-minded folk. Probably the intercourse with other boys at Edinburgh and Norwich had been beneficial in its effect. Keenly interested in everything around him, George fell to speculating as to whether he could learn Irish and speak to the people in ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... did put an end to much of it, and at the present time it is largely sporadic. Yet there will always be a halo about the heads of the real Camorrists and Mafiusi—the Alfanos and the Rapis—in the eyes of their simple-minded countrymen in ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... the world in quest of a living, to the hero of that celebrated work and his faithful friend Strap; with this difference, however, that while each of us applied to himself the part of Roderick, neither was willing to assume the humble character of the honest but simple-minded Strap. In the course of our discussion Strictland lost his temper, and indulged in language towards myself that I was not disposed to pass lightly over. The next morning, the little uninhabited island of Orchilla being in sight, the wind light and the weather pleasant, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... favorite with all her friends, for she was unselfish, loving, and straightforward. She was slow to think evil of people, and was generally affectionately rapturous over the girls and boys who came to visit her at Glendower. Although the only child of very wealthy parents, she was too simple-minded to be spoiled. She received lots of flatteries, but they did her no harm, because she failed to see them. Her beautiful face was praised to her many times, but no one yet had seen a conscious or conceited expression ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... celebration of the sacrament, which in any case could not be rightly kept so long as sectarian hostility and lack of love prevail in the contending visible churches.[12] Under these circumstances, Coornhert, who was intensely concerned for the sincere, simple-minded souls, perplexed by the maze of varying sects and parties, refused to found a new sect or to head a new schismatic movement. On behalf of those who could not {113} conform, he pleaded for freedom of conscience and for the right to live in the world undisturbed ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... of it to anyone except to her confessor, and he, a simple-minded man of great learning and a total lack of knowledge of the world, was completely at a loss ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... If this big-hearted, simple-minded countryman had come to New York to buck the stock market, it was time to sound a warning. But had he, on such short acquaintance, the right to warn? The captain was shrewd in his own way. Might not the ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... constant and ready tools for this or that party or interest. They sell themselves to monarchy or democracy, to capital or labour, with the same guileless innocence of what is happening to them, with the same simple-minded incapacity to learn anything from the lessons of the past. There are no short cuts to spiritual ends, and those ends can never be accomplished by secular means. The interests of the Kingdom of God can never be forwarded by alliance with the powers of this world; the ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... mean it?" she said with the indulgent incredulity one shows to the simple-minded—"But just think! The session will go on, every one says, till quite the end of September. Isn't that enough of itself to make a party discontented? All our big measures are in dreadful arrears. And my father believes so much of the friction might have been avoided. He is all in favour ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... certain Apollodorus, [52] who was an enthusiastic lover of the master, but for the rest a simple-minded man. He exclaimed very innocently, "But the hardest thing of all to bear, Socrates, is to see you put ...
— The Apology • Xenophon
... you're right,' the simple-minded boatman replied; 'no more smuggling after this day for me!' And there ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... simple-minded baby, I would take a regiment of Bateses for your sake. Why this is not ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... said B., much relieved. "You would be trying to palm off one or other of them on some simple-minded peasant for German, if ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... handsome face grew red with anger, but still she did not venture a word, she had not lived three years with Dr. Grey without finding out that when the master of the house did choose to exercise authority, he must be obeyed. He very seldom interfered, especially as regarded the children; like most simple-minded men, he was humble about himself, and left a great deal to his womankind; but when he did interfere it was decisive. Even Miss Gascoigne felt instinctively that she might have wrangled and jangled for an hour and at the end of it he would have said, almost as gently as ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Turkey Track regions. The Southern mountaineers have little affinity, socially or politically, with the people of the settlements. There were never any slaveholders among them, and the few isolated negroes were treated with almost perfect equality by the simple-minded mountain dwellers. ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... Lee, in an access of malice and rage akin to madness he called them together and assigned each his part in the new crime which had risen in his mind out of the abandoned abduction scheme. This plan was as brief and simple as it was horrible. Powell, alias Payne, the stalwart, brutal, simple-minded boy from Florida, was to murder Seward; Atzerodt, the comic villain of the drama, was assigned to remove Andrew Johnson; Booth reserved for himself the most conspicuous role of the tragedy. It was Herold's duty to attend ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... Now this simple-minded piper Such a kindly nature had That he lifted up the viper And bestowed her in his plaid. "Though the Scot is stern, at least he No unhappy creature spurns, 'Sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,'" Quoth the ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... the straightforward and simple-minded Vicar that one of his own flesh and blood could come to this! He was stultified, shocked, paralysed. And if Angel were not going to enter the Church, what was the use of sending him to Cambridge? The University as a step to anything but ordination seemed, to ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... for he come to me this afternoon, when I was restin' a spell on account o' the hot sun, and he was awful low-sperrited, 'n' he asked me every namable kind of a question you ever hearn tell of, and all so simple-minded that I jest turned him inside out 'thout his knowin' what I was doin'. Well, when I found out what he was up to I could 'a' stopped him then 'n' there, tho' I don' know 's I would anyhow, for I shouldn't like livin' in a 'sylum any better ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... one of those political spectacles at which the simple-minded stare, and the politic smile; when, after the most cruel civil war of words,[411] Cartwright wrote very compliant letters to his old rival, Whitgift, now Archbishop of Canterbury; while the Archbishop was pleading with the Queen in favour of the inveterate Republican, declaring that had Cartwright ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... was all Charlie. He was a thief, an' I was sech a simple-minded old fool I never knowed what he was. I let him go ahead, an' I set in the house with a white apurn tied on me an' thought I was havin' an easy time. I set here and let him rob my neighbors that I ain't never harmed er cheated out of a cent, and soon's he thought he was found ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... the lane. The woman rose when she saw my friend. "Come in," said she; and we followed her into the house. It was a wretched place; and the smell inside was sickly. I should think a broker would not give half-a-crown for all the furniture we saw. The woman seemed simple-minded and very illiterate; and as she stood in the middle of the floor, looking vaguely round she said, "Aw can hardly ax yo to sit deawn, for we'n sowd o' th' things eawt o'th heawse for a bit o' meight; but there is a cheer theer, sich as it is; see yo; tak' that." ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... of this simple-minded old man was more precious to Mr. Tryan than any mere onlooker could have imagined. To persons possessing a great deal of that facile psychology which prejudges individuals by means of formulae, and casts them, without further trouble, into duly ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... simply furnished as to leave no shadow of opportunity for concealment or trick, was the residence of honest piety and rural simplicity. All who ever knew them bore witness to the unimpeachable character of the good mother, while the integrity of the simple-minded farmers who were father and brother to the sisters who have since become so celebrated as the "Rochester Knockers" ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... inextricable mesh in which God has ensnared me while my reason and freedom were asleep, while I was following with docile steps the path He had Himself traced out for me, distracting thoughts crowd themselves upon me. God knows that I was simple-minded and pure; I took nothing upon myself; I walked with free and unflagging steps in the path which He disclosed before me, and behold this path has led me to the brink of a precipice! God has betrayed me! I never doubted but that a wise ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... meals and drunk many hundreds of cups of coffee in the grunting society of Sir Paul, all that Mr. Prohack could be sure of knowing about Sir Paul was, first, that he had an absolutely unspotted reputation; second, that he was a very decent, simple-minded, kindly, ignorant fellow (ignorant, that is, in the matters that interested Mr. Prohack); third, that he instinctively mistrusted intellect and brilliance; fourth, that for nearly four years he had been ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... rogue who has but one horse," I observed contemptuously. "You are only a footpad, a simple-minded marquis ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... to Washington to obtain authority to call out Col. Sumner with the United States troops at Fort Leavenworth. He also wrote to Col. Sumner to hold himself ready to march at a moment's notice. And now this simple-minded Gov. Shannon, Ex-Governor of Ohio, who had come to Kansas to waste in a few short months the ripe honors he had been so carefully hoarding up for a life-time, bethought himself that it was time for him to go and look with ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... militarism, talking to General von Lichtenstein, the most powerful and astute man in all Europe. But for the German accent and magnificent uniform it might have been in the Union Club in New York, and he himself talking to a very nice, rather simple-minded old gentleman, who was flattered by the ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... bread; and whose great exploit and daily exercise is that of lifting the great table in the common room with his teeth. An iron-jawed fellow he is, with every muscle in his well-knit body to match. Fortunately, though a Goliath in strength, he is as simple-minded and ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... richness to the side of the beautiful room of the Academy on which it hangs; but the same room contains two or three works less known to fame which are equally capable of inspiring a passion. "The 'Annunciation' struck me as coarse and superficial": that note was once made in a simple-minded tourist's book. At Venice, strange to say, Titian is altogether a disappointment; the city of his adoption is far from containing the best of him. Madrid, Paris, London, Florence, Dresden, Munich —these are the homes of ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... advice-givers, with a better opinion of their own wisdom than any one else was willing to endorse. Such men became "file-leaders," or "pivot-men," because the taciturn people of the west, though inclined to undervalue a mere talker, were simple-minded enough to accept a man's valuation of his own powers: or easy-tempered enough to spare themselves the trouble of investigating so small a matter. It was of little consequence to them, whether the candidate was as wise as he desired to be thought; and since, in political affairs, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... Senator would fear himself, or for himself, as he investigated himself, when the blame had already been put publicly on some one else, some simple-minded old soul who could go back to his cotton fields in Mississippi and forget all about it, strong in his innocence, even though shorn of reputation, ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... let the subjects under their influence see many things and objects that are not there in reality. To this power are due the frequent reports of apparitions of Buddha, seen generally by single individuals, and the visions of demons, the accounts of which alone terrify the simple-minded folk, and cause them to pay all their spare cash in donations to ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... come up, and when he saw his master stretched out, with no sign of life, his eyes filled with tears, and he thrust himself over his master's body, crying and wailing like a little child. It was pitiful to see the sorrow and the devotion of the poor, simple-minded fellow, bewailing his master's fall from the blow of a mere stick. And he ended his tribute by thanking him for the great generosity he had always shown; for Don Quixote, for but eight months of service, had given him the best island that was afloat ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a unique character. Before enlisting he had been pastor of the leading Congregational church of the city. He was a powerful pulpit orator, a kind-hearted, simple-minded gentleman of the old school, not at all fitted for the hardships and exposure that he had to undergo while following the fortunes of General Custer's troopers in Virginia. Army life was too much for him to endure, and it was as much as he could do to ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... care of that," said I, quite easy in mind. "Mowbray Langdon's president, isn't he? Well, he's my closest friend." I spoke quite honestly. It shows how simple-minded I was in certain ways that I had never once noted the important circumstance that this "closest friend" had never invited me to his house, or anywhere where I'd meet his up-town ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... Jenny, as he lay on the rug outside her chamber-door. "You treat me like a child, father," said Jenny. "I thought, Jinny," said the father apologetically,—"I thought I heard sounds as if you was takin' on inside, and, listenin' I fell asleep."—"You dear, old simple-minded baby!" said Jenny, looking past her father's eyes, and lifting his grizzled locks one by one with meditative fingers: "what should I be takin' on for? Look how much taller I am than you!" she said, suddenly lifting herself up to the extreme of her superb ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... Sam Lucas kept hammering away at the stern front of the defendant witness. He had expected to break him down, simple-minded country lad that he supposed him to be, in a quarter of that time, and draw from him the truth of the matter in every detail. It was becoming evident that Joe was feeling the strain. The tiresome repetition of the questions, the unvarying denial, the sudden sorties of the prosecutor ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... of Purpose. Let us take a very simple illustration. Across many of the hills in Cumberland the way from one village to another is marked by white stones placed at short intervals. We may easily imagine a simple-minded person asking how they came there, or what natural law could account for their lying in that position; and the physical antecedents of the fact—the geological history of the stones and the physiological structure of the men who moved ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... him like a flint-tipped arrow. Ah, well, they would never quarrel again like that, he told himself. She loved him so, and would forgive him after he had talked quietly to her, and told her what an ass he was. She was simple-minded and awfully ignorant to pitch those old Indian laws at him in her fury, but he could not blame her; oh, no, he could not for one moment blame her. He had been terribly severe and unreasonable, and the horrid McDonald temper had got the better of him; and he loved her so. Oh! ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... gloomy childhood was over and I knew my aunt, death took her from me all too soon. Monsieur de Mortsauf, to whom I vowed myself, has repeatedly, nay without respite, smitten me, not being himself aware of it, poor man! His love has the simple-minded egotism our children show to us. He has no conception of the harm he does me, and he is heartily forgiven for it. My children, those dear children who are bound to my flesh through their sufferings, to my soul by their characters, to my nature by their innocent happiness,—those ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... nurse, had not a little to do with this. She was one of those simple-minded humble Christians who, all unknowingly, plant in many minds the good seed which grows up and ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... of the town. His name was Captain Obediah Hickson and he had once been a sailor, though he told so many different versions of his life at sea, that it was hard to say where truth began and fiction left off. Still he might not have meant to deceive any one, for he was rather simple-minded. ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... then they did voluntarily what they had hitherto suffered patiently. They were resolved that the Gospel character of a Christian should be theirs. Still, as before, Christ spoke of His followers as poor and weak, and lowly and simple-minded; men of plain lives, men of prayer, not "faring sumptuously," or clad in "soft raiment," or "taking thought for the morrow." They recollected what He said to the young Ruler, "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... of France and England, there was no civil war, bringing into the midst of the plantations the demoralizing influences of the camp, harassing the simple-minded freedmen with constant fear of reverses, which would consign them to a worse bondage than they had ever known, and tending, in the absence of all civil law and the restraints of a well-ordered society, to draw away the laborer from ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... believed that Baron Larrey was the most virtuous, intelligent, useful, and unselfish man in existence; in fact, it is doubtful if any man of his time commanded from this truly great man so much admiration or respect, either for bravery, courage, intelligence, or activity, as the great and simple-minded Larrey. As observed by Napoleon of his bravest general,—poor Marshal Ney, the bravest of the brave, the rear guard of the grand army, the last man to leave Russian soil,—Ney was a lion in action, but a fool in the closet. All his generals had some great distinguishing characteristic, beyond ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... (John vii. 49), yet delighted to legislate for them, binding heavy burdens and grievous to be borne. Many of the people were doubtless too intent on work and gain to be very regardful of the minutiae of conduct as ordained by the scribes; many more were too simple-minded to follow the theories of the rabbis concerning the aloofness of God from the life of men. These last reverenced the scribes, followed their directions, in the main, for the conduct of life, yet lived in fellowship with God as their fathers had, trusting in his faithfulness, and ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... a benevolent, simple-minded old gentleman, is the founder of the Pickwick Club. He and three other members, Mr. Winkle, Mr. Snodgrass, and Mr. Tupman, form the Corresponding Society of the club, and they travel over England together, meeting with many laughable adventures. They ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... unscrupulous and pitiless humbugs in their dealings with their own sex—which, whatever they may say, they despise at heart—that I am happy to be able to say, Mrs. Vane proved true as steel. She was a noble-minded, simple-minded creature; she was also a constant creature. Constancy is a rare, a ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... accept anything, and though money was repeatedly offered to him he always declined it. Dedjazmatch Goji, in command of 500 spearmen, a tall old man, was as big a fool as he was bulky; he loved but one thing, tej, and worshipped but one being, Theodore. Bitwaddad Bakal, a good soldier, a simple-minded man, in charge of the Imperial household, and a few insignificant ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... the Sacred Person really burst upon their view, the excitement was beyond description. Young and old, women and children, fell simultaneously upon their knees, and tears and sobs mingled with the blessings showered upon His Majesty by thousands of his simple-minded, affectionate people. ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... gnawing conscience that I had ever called her lawn fete the climax of frivolity. The dear little soul! who would have suspected that she had such a worthy motive for her ball? But, do you know, sometimes in fashionable life we catch a glimpse of the simple-minded, homely kindliness which we are taught to believe exists only among horny-handed farmers, rough miners, and ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... tumult—a small voice which she refused to listen to. "What I ever saw in him I don't know," she sneered, goading herself to further bitterness and stiffening her courage. "I never really cared for him; I'm too wise for that. I don't care for him now. I detest the poor, simple-minded fool. I—HATE him." So she fought with herself, drowning the persistent piping of that other voice. Then her eyes dropped to that fatal paper in her lap and suddenly venom fled from her. She wondered if Cavendish would tell Pierce that he had given her the pink ticket. Probably not. ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... whenever she was questioned concerning the matter, she did only reply by a very grave shake of the head, each vibration of which (particularly when accompanied by a pursing of the mouth, and a mysterious looking round) more and more convinced her simple-minded auditors (i.e. some of them, for it is not to be denied that there were a few incredulous ones who, either from former experiences, or natural sagacity, or some cause unknown, hesitated not to declare it to be their fixed ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... mixed character of the council, and the choice of the courses open before it. As Socrates describes the incident, the disputes were running so high, from the mere pleasure of argument, that there seemed likely to be no end to the controversy, when suddenly a simple-minded layman, who by his sightless eye or limping leg bore witness of his zeal for the Christian faith, stepped among them and abruptly said, "Christ and the apostles left us not a system of logic nor a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... the lady who kept the house was very gracious. Now, the lady was good-looking, but she was rather too fat; there was an amiable look about her, even when she was carving beef; and by degrees we became intimate, and I found her a very worthy creature, and as simple-minded as a child, although she could look sharp after her customers. It was, and is now, a most thriving establishment—nearly two hundred people dine there every day. I don't know how it was, but I suppose I first fell in love with her beef; and then with her fair self; and finding myself well received ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... Central Provinces which escaped subversion by the Gonds, and it enjoyed a comparatively tranquil existence till A.D. 1740, when Ratanpur fell to the Marathas almost without striking a blow. "The only surviving representative of the Haihayas of Ratanpur," Mr. Wills states, [538] "is a quite simple-minded Rajput who lives at Bargaon in Raipur District. He represents the junior or Raipur branch of the family, and holds five villages which were given him revenue-free by the Marathas for his maintenance. The ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... or so like Clarence over there," she had vouchsafed, "men are such simple-minded children of nature! All you have to do is to treat them like hounds and tell them what to do, ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... be sinful, they rendered her so happy, and took away from her all fear. It was so shocking, too," she thought, "to think so ill of men—our fellow-creatures, and the creatures of a perfect Father. She loved her brother—he was so simple-minded, and so kind to her, too; how could she call him ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... laugh outright, at the manner in which Jason betrayed a sneaking consciousness of crime, as he saw my meek, innocent, simple-minded, just and warm-hearted mother lay the cards on the table that evening. His sense of guilt was purely conventional, while my mother's sense of innocence existed in the absence of false instruction, and in the purity of her intentions. ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... up and down over her fat shoulders, isn't she decidedly of the Restoration! And the uncle who wants to confiscate his nephew's grisette! And Antoine, the good fat tinsmith so polite at the theatre! The Russian is a simple-minded, natural man, a character that is not easy ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... easily without undue cramping in an ordinary handwriting upon a postcard. It is the second question that needs answering. And the reason why the second question has to be asked and answered is this, that several of the Allies, and particularly we British, are not being perfectly plain and simple-minded in our answer to the first, that there is a division among us and in our minds, and that our division is making us ambiguous in our behaviour, that it is weakening and dividing our action and strengthening and consolidating the enemy, and that unless we can drag this slurred-over division ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... alight. He had come to a sceptical stage in his mental evolution, a stage in which he was to remain for a considerable time, gradually modifying it in a conservative direction. One wonders what the simple-minded and stalwart Bjoernson thought of being quietly told (March 28, 1884) that the lower classes are nowhere liberal-minded or self-sacrificing, and that "in the views expressed by our [Norwegian] peasants there is not an atom more of real Liberalism than is to be found ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... in order to show the inn and to see us settled in it. Then he left, for I could not prevail upon him to sit down and chink glasses. It was but a cottage-inn on the open hillside, and I doubt if the simple-minded people who kept it would have accepted us for the night but for the introduction. Husband and wife gave up their room to us, and where they went themselves I could not guess, unless it was to the loft or fowl-house. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... the anxious watchers on the ship, and a second signal was sent. How astonished that simple-minded Irish telegraph-operator was! Five minutes passed, and then the answer came. The chief electrician gave a loud cheer, which was repeated by every man on board, from the captain ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... we shall have to succumb. And the worst of all is that being masters of the intervening country, with emissaries in all the villages along their route, they improve their opportunity by tampering with our simple-minded farmers. Here in Three Rivers the disaffection among our own people is already quite marked, and I very much fear that this new source of ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... those points? Wouldn't the minds of those men work in that way? Instead of choosing distances of seven feet, nineteen feet, twenty-three feet, wouldn't they first think of ten, twenty, thirty and so on? It's the simplest way, and they were rough, simple-minded men." ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... promoted to be an upper servant, and my permanent personal attendant (December 1865). He has all the independence and elevated feelings peculiar to the Highland race, and is singularly straightforward, simple-minded, kind-hearted, and disinterested; always ready to oblige, and of a discretion rarely to be met with. He is now in his fortieth year. His father was a small farmer, who lived at the Bush on the opposite side to Balmoral. He is the second of nine brothers—three ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... but other things not in accord with it it discards and expels. That there is present in love every capacity for receiving truths in harmony with itself, and a longing to conjoin them to itself, has been made clear also by the fact that some who were simple-minded in the world were taken up into heaven, and yet when they were with the angels they came into angelic wisdom and heavenly blessedness, and for the reason that they had loved what is good and true for its own sake, and had implanted it in their life, and ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... property holders in the town, was a simple-minded, true-hearted, honest man, named Jones. His father had left him a large farm, a goodly portion of which, in process of time, came to be included in the limits of the new city; and he found a much more profitable employment in selling building lots than in tilling the soil. ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... promise, then? I suppose, though, it was because you loved Dick so much," simple-minded Andy said, trying to remember if there was not a passage somewhere which read, "For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... a nuisance! I dont know what to do. You know, Juggins, your cool simple-minded way of doing it wouldnt go down ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... before the hour appointed for the dinner, there was another arrival betokened by the clatter of hoofs and grinding wheels in the courtyard; and then entered a gentleman of different mien from the bluff, ruddy, simple-minded, yet worldly Englishmen around him. He was a tall, dark man, with a black moustache and almost olive skin, a slender, lithe figure, a flexible face, quick, flashing, mobile. His deportment was graceful; his dress, though it seemed ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... battle! On the one side devotion, simple-minded loyalty and a fighting heart in a body of such mechanical perfection as Mars had never seen before or since. On the other side a primal beast, just as huge, rage-driven, ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... shrewdness, of which, in common with many other simple-minded persons, he possessed a considerable share, warned him there was something more here than appeared at first sight—some mystery of which time alone was likely to afford the elucidation. Time he resolved accordingly to gain, and that without putting ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... would they have said if someone had predicted this flight? The answer to that was easy; at that time, high-school songbooks featured a well-known piece entitled "Darius Green and His Flying Machine." Darius, it seems, was a simple-minded lad who actually thought ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... sulked, but his invincible optimism and good humor got the better of him, and he thought only of his old partner's good fortune. He wrote him regularly, but always to one address—a box at the San Francisco post-office, which to the simple-minded Uncle Billy suggested a certain official importance. To these letters Uncle Jim ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... prevails that Elliston's robes were carried to America by Lucius Junius Booth, the actor, who long continued to assume them in his personation of Richard III., much to the astonishment of the more simple-minded of his audience, who naively inquired of each other whether the sovereigns of Great Britain were really wont to parade the streets of London in such attire? Among other royal robes that have likewise descended to the stage, mention may also be made of the coronation dress of the late ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... to ask many people before he could find out where Miss Betsy Trotwood lived. It was outside the town, in a cottage with a little garden. Here she lived all alone, except for a simple-minded old man, whom she called Mr. Dick, who was a relative of hers, and who did nothing all day but fly big kites and write petitions to the king, which he began every morning and never finished. All the neighbors thought Miss Betsy Trotwood a most queer old woman, but those who knew ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... limn with loving care, but sparing none of their weaknesses, was characterised by a friendly reviewer as a lot of engaging ruffians. This gave me some food for thought. Was it, then, in that guise that they appeared through the mists of the sea, distant, perplexed, and simple-minded? And what on earth is an "engaging ruffian"? He must be a creature of literary imagination, I thought, for the two words don't match in my personal experience. It has happened to me to meet a few ruffians here and there, ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... yet time; to keep his mother's fortune himself rather than deliberately transfer it to the keeping of a stranger. He threatened that, if he refused, he would take away his daughter, the device of an old hand to influence a young man in love. To be brief, he so wrought upon the simple-minded young man, who was, moreover, a slave to the charms of his new bride, as to mould him to his will and move him from his purpose. Pontianus went to his mother and told her what Rufinus had said to him. But he made no impression on her steadfast character. On the contrary, she rebuked ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... any fear of ill consequences. Had their calling been more stealthy they would not have worried about him; prospectors went unquestioned among all sorts of law breakers then, owning something of the same immunity which simple-minded persons always got from the Indians. He came in at evening and rolled up in his blankets after cooking his supper; and in the morning he went forth again into the hills. ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... a man of the world he would have divined that the present was a rare opportunity for catching his bumptious young friend by the ear, and making him carry out his threat then and there. But, being a simple-minded new boy, unlearned in the ways of the world, he merely said "Pooh!" and walked on, leaving his assailant in possession of the field, calling out "coward!" and "sneak!" after him till he was out ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... Lucy's pure instinct, as might have been the case had my lord been over-adept. It was nice in her martyrdom to have a true friend to support her, and really to be able to do something for that friend. Too simple-minded to think much of his lordship's position, she was yet a woman. "He, a great nobleman, does not scorn to acknowledge me, and think something of me," may have been one of the half-thoughts passing through ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 'Simple-minded old fellow,' thought Waring, lighting a fresh pipe; 'has lived around here all his life apparently. Think of that,—to have lived around here all one's life! I, to be sure, am here now; but then, have I not been—' And here followed a revery of remembrances, that glittering network of gayety ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... it is wrong to say "If he paints the mountain faithfully from the form and colour point of view it will suggest all those other associations to those who want them," unless, as is possible with a simple-minded painter, he be unconsciously moved by deeper feelings, and impelled to select the significant things while only conscious of his paint. But the chances are that his picture will convey the things he was thinking about, and, in consequence, instead ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... at this relation; for said sermons must have been before him when he began the Large Catechism with the words: "This sermon is designed and undertaken that it might be an instruction for children and the simple-minded." (575, 1.) This was also Roerer's view, for he calls the Large Catechism "Catechism preached by D. M.," a title found also in the second copy (Nachschrift) of the third series: Catechism Preached by Doctor Martin Luther. In the conclusion of the first edition of the Large Catechism, Luther ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... motor overhauled and passed the battered stage lumbering along, bereft of its passengers, sunk to the level of carrying the baggage for its contemptuous aristocratic supplanter; and as Lee Virginia looked up at the driver, she caught the glance of a simple-minded farm-boy looking down at her. Tom Quentan no longer guided the plunging, reeling broncos on their swift and perilous way—he had sturdily declined to "play second fiddle to ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... difficult to see why Marcius is considered to have been a simple-minded and straightforward character, while Alkibiades has the reputation of a false and tricky politician. The latter has been especially blamed for the manner in which he deceived and outwitted the Lacedaemonian ambassadors, by which, as we learn from Thucydides, he brought the truce between ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... of those good, simple-minded creatures, educated abroad, who, when invited to fight, simply bow, and load two pistols, and get themselves called at six; instead of taking down tomes of casuistry and puzzling their poor brains to find out whether they are gamecocks or ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... woods with a fish-pole over their shoulders and a creel by their sides, or with their heads together on the porch of some cross-roads store, bartering eggs and butter for cotton cloth and brown sugar. All these simple-minded, open-aired, out-of-doors old fellows, with the bark on them, ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... from ours. Her parents were dead, and as she was an only child, she had never known the love of brother or sister; and the aunt who brought her up was a strict narrow-minded sort of person, with manners that must have been singularly uncongenial to my affectionate, simple-minded Jessie. Poor Jessie! I could not help giving her one of my bear-like hugs at this, so well did I know the meaning of that sigh; and there is no telling into what channel our talk would have drifted, only just at that ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... garrison were the only men-at-arms in De Moor's whole squadron. But those amphibious Zeelanders and Hollanders, perfectly at home in the water, expert in handling vessels, and excellent cannoneers, were more than a match for twenty times their number of landsmen. It was a very simple-minded, unsophisticated contest. The attempt to board the Black Galley was met with determined resistance, but the Zeeland sailors clambered like cats upon the bowsprits of the Spanish galleys, fighting with cutlass and handspike, while a broadside or two ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... obeyed the King, or in other words, the dictates of her own heart, imprudently embarking upon a career of passion, for which a temperament wholly different from hers was needed. It is not simple-minded maidens that one wants at Court to share the confidence of princes. No doubt natures of that sort—simple, disinterested souls are pleasant and agreeable to them, as therein they find contentment such as they ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... had a wonderful charm for him. So much so, that on the following week, thanks to a letter from Baron Moser, he was admitted into the service. A cruel disenchantment awaited him. He had seen the results, but not the means. His surprise was like that of a simple-minded frequenter of the theatre, when he is admitted for the first time behind the scenes, and is able to pry into the decorations and tinsel that are so dazzling at ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... like manner men differ in regard to want of sense. Those who are most out of their wits we call 'madmen,' while we term those who are less far gone 'stupid' or 'idiotic,' or, if we prefer gentler language, describe them as 'romantic' or 'simple-minded,' or, again, as 'innocent' or 'inexperienced' or 'foolish.' You may even find other names, if you seek for them; but by all of them lack of sense is intended. They only differ as one art appeared to us to differ from another or one disease from ...
— Alcibiades II • An Imitator of Plato
... attempt to learn the identity of Ormuz Khan, he had covered his tracks with his customary care. He had sufficient faith in his knowledge of disguise, which was extensive, to believe that those mysterious persons who were interested in his movements remained unaware of the fact that the simple-minded visitor from Vancouver who had spent several hours in and about the Savoy, and Paul Harley of Chancery Lane, were one and ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... high degree of spirituality could hardly be expected from Uncle Joe at that late day; but he was a Christian after a pattern of his own —kind-hearted, grateful, simple-minded, and full of good humor. His strength gradually declined, and he was taken to the county hospital, where his patience and cheerfulness conciliated and elicited kind treatment from everybody. His memories went back to old Virginia, and his hopes looked up to the heaven of which ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... method of these German plotters, Hugh," said Mr. Cook. "Very often they get some simple-minded, ignorant fellow like Heinrich and make a tool of him. Heinrich hasn't got brains enough to think of ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... them knew the character or purpose of the exalted man on whom their Government was making war. Like simple-minded, brave sailors as they were, knowing nothing of the mysteries of political jealousies and intrigue, and believing that the men constituting the Government must be of high mental and administrative ability, they assumed that they were carrying out a flawless patriotic duty, never doubting the ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... animosity went out with a sputter and we talked large and fine. I don't care; I like to once in a while. I don't travel on stilts much, yet it does a man good to play pretty now and then; besides, you can say things in the Spanish that are all right, but would sound simple-minded in English. English is the tongue to yank a beef critter out of an alkali hole with, but give me Spanish when I want ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... the trances, of which she had divers and many,[310] consequent upon her illness, told wondrously things done and said in other places whereat she was neither herself present, nor yet had heard no report thereof." To simple-minded people who believed in Romanism and the legends of the saints, the natural explanation of such a marvel was, that she must be possessed either by the Holy Ghost or by the devil. The archbishop's bailiff, not feeling himself able to decide in a case of so much gravity, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... along, hoping they will find some bars down where they can break into the clover pasture. They will take the tune as an inextricable conundrum, and give it up. Besides that, Pisgah, Ortonville and Brattle Street are old fashioned. They did very well in their day. Our fathers were simple-minded people, and the tunes fitted them. But our fathers are gone, and they ought to have taken their baggage with them. It is a nuisance to have those old tunes floating around the church, and sometime, just as we have got the music as fine as an opera, to have a revival of religion come, ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... over. I will wager that he is thinking of nothing on earth at this moment but of making that poor old lady feel at her ease and enjoy her game. A stranger, looking on, would imagine him to be just a kind-hearted, simple-minded fellow. Yet there is not one of us three who has wit enough to get a single word from him against his will. You shall see. There is an excellent opportunity here. I suppose both of you read his speech at the ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... temper, "for he also coude speke no frenshe, but wolde have hadde eggys; and she understode hym not." Fortunately, a friend happened to join him in the house, and he acted as interpreter. The friend said that "he wolde have eyren; then the goode wyf sayde that she understod hym wel." And then the simple-minded but much-perplexed Caxton goes on to say: "Loo! what sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, eggs or eyren?" Such were the difficulties that beset printers and writers in the close of the ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... surety, no," replied the simple-minded Sampson. "Nathless, it was I who did educate Miss Lucy in all useful learning,—albeit it was the housekeeper who did teach her those unprofitable ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... pleased, for business men are all simple-minded, and have therefore that degree of communion with fanatics. The King, for some reason, looked, for the first time in his ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... voice I am at once endearingly intimate with. This announces feminine depravities in my affections. I am feminine, morbid, perverse. But above all perverse, almost everything perverse interests, fascinates me. Wordsworth is the only simple-minded man I ever loved, if that great austere mind, chill even as the Cumberland year, can be called simple. But Hugo is not perverse, nor even personal. Reading him was like being in church with a strident-voiced preacher shouting from out of a terribly sonorous pulpit. "Les Orientales...." ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... forest to ring with its echoes. As the pious leader of the expedition stepped on shore, he took Rene by the hand, and both kneeling on the sands, gave thanks to Him who guided them thus far in safety in their perilous wanderings. Though the simple-minded Indians could not understand what Laudonniere said or was doing, they were so anxious to show their respect and love for him that all knelt when he did and maintained a ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... may be, in fact, more desirable than the better educated skilled laborer, or the still better educated professional or business man. There may be a great demand here for unskilled labor. Again, the moral qualities of the untaught but industrious, simple-minded, unspoiled countryman may be far more wholesome for the communities to which he comes than those of the educated, town-bred, unsuccessful business or professional man, the misfit skilled laborer, or the actual loafer and sharper of ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... slowly. "I have heard a good many people called impostors. Did it ever occur to you that the blame of the imposture might possibly lie with the person imposed on? I have heard of people falling into the delusion that a certain modest and simple-minded man was a great politician or a great wit, although he had never claimed to be anything of the kind; and then, when they found out that in truth he was just what he had pretended to be, they called out against him as an impostor. I have heard, too, of young gentlemen accusing women of imposture ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various |
