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More "Guileless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of artless Maid, Sweety flow'ret of the rural shade! By love's simplicity betray'd. And guileless trust, Till she, like thee, all soil'd, is laid Low ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... guileless speech, I'm making a good thing out of him. When he is slightly more reformed, and has passed his Higher Standard, or whatever the authorities think fit to exact from him, I shall select a pretty little ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... them. Whenever they were captured they were so surprised, so humiliated, so innocent, meek and subdued, that it would never occur to an honest man that they could know how to handle a bolo or a gun. But experience taught that the most guileless in looks were the worst desperadoes of all. My first sight of a squad of these captives is a thing not to be forgotten. They were a scrubby lot of hardly human things, stunted, gnarled pigmies, with no hats or shoes, and scarcely a rag of ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... intuition to discern what were the motives in a simple, guileless, and noble soul for the fanaticism of Madame Hulot's love. Having fully persuaded herself that her husband could do her no wrong, she made herself in the depths of her heart the humble, abject, and blindfold slave of the man who had made her. It must be noted, too, that she was gifted ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... companies. In the following year, the people of Georgia rose in their wrath, turned out the corrupt legislators, and forced the passage of a rescinding act. Meantime, sales had been made by the Yazoo speculators to guileless purchasers, who now appealed to Congress for relief. In 1798, Congress enacted a law providing for commissioners who should confer with Georgia regarding these conflicting claims. At the same time the Territory ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... was a learned scholar And indefatigable student of philosophy and letters, An able and successful instructor of youth, Of genuine uprightness and guileless simplicity A devout, benevolent ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... still remained to Hitty Hyde,—the freshness of inexperience. Her soul was as guileless and as ignorant as a child's; and she was stranded on life, with a large fortune, like a helmless ship, heavily loaded, that breaks from its anchor, and drives headlong upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... but the recollections of Sarah were more vivid. There is a period in the life of every woman when she may be said to be predisposed to love; it is at the happy age when infancy is lost in opening maturity—when the guileless heart beats with those anticipations of life which the truth can never realize—and when the imagination forms images of perfection that are copied after its own unsullied visions. At this happy age Sarah left the city, and she had brought with her a picture of futurity, faintly ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... be gracious to our prayers for what shall be! For I praise him as a man most zealous in the rearing of horses, and delighting in ever-open hospitality, and bent on peace and on the welfare of his city, with guileless soul. ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... Village; his father's establishment, a mixture of farm and parsonage, furnished hints, it is said, for the rural economy of the Vicar of Wakefield; and his father himself, with his learned simplicity, his guileless wisdom, his amiable piety, and utter ignorance of the world, has been exquisitely portrayed in the worthy Dr. Primrose. Let us pause for a moment, and draw from Goldsmith's writings one or two of those pictures which, under feigned names, represent ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... was a lot of poor fools who had had a flag waved in their eyes, and had sold themselves for a shilling to the landlords of their country. In one of the Socialist papers that Jimmie read, there appeared every week a series of comic pictures in which the working man was figured as a guileless fool by the name of "Henry Dubb". Poor Henry always believed what he was told, and at the end of each adventure he got a thump on the top of his nut which caused stars to sprout over the page. And of the many adventures ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... Pemberton, Hefty Hollingsworth, Bunch Bingham, Buster Brown, Beef McNaughton, and Pudge Langdon, who had been attacked in a fashion similar to Butch's spasm, concealed grins of delight, and made strenuous efforts to appear guileless, as Track-Coach Brannigan approached T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. To that cheery youth, who was brushing the dirt from his immaculate track togs, and bowing to the cheering youths in the ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... fixed his gaze on me. Though not my own mother's child, yet the dear lad is brother to me; for mother is mother all the world over. With his guileless face, his gentle eyes, his innocent youth, he looked at me. And I, a woman—of his mother's sex—how could I hand him poison, just because ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... themselves; considering his Prussian Majesty to be, in fact, a mere rotatory Clothes-horse for drying the Imperial linen on; and to have no intellect at all, because he was without guile, and had no vulpinism at all. In which they were very much mistaken indeed. History is proud to report that the guileless Prussian Majesty, steadily attending to his own affairs in a wise manner, though hoodwinked and led about by Black-Artists as he had been, turned out when Fact and Nature subsequently pronounced upon it, to have had more ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Francisco; for she was fast succumbing to the influence of a woman with whom some of the opposite sex seemed very familiar, considering the fact that the latter was as much a stranger to them (when first we started out) as she was to me. Besides, the pretty young graduate evidently was a very guileless, convent-raised girl. Matters assumed such a condition at the close of the third day of our journey that I felt it incumbent upon me to invite the latter into my section for the sake of some friendly advice. She appeared to take it all in good part and promised to act upon it. Had ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... here just now," he said, wondering how he could turn to advantage the unexpected visit, and the impending information that the guileless old man was about to give under the mistaken idea that Andy was ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... congenial amongst those who surrounded him. He was a man of society, and never stopped to think that the glowing, enthusiastic creature, whose eyes gazed up so confidingly to him, as he conversed of literature and poesy, or whose lips overflowed with earnest, eloquent words, was an innocent, guileless child, into whose Undine nature he had summoned the soul. He had been many years engaged, heart and hand, to another; and circumstances alone had delayed the fulfillment of that engagement. This Agnes knew nothing of, and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... operative, with a sheepishly guileless air. "It was just a bit from an English musical comedy of two or three years back, I think. It's got a silly-sounding name—something like 'There's a ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... world, and gazed on scenes As beautiful as rest beneath the sun. I trust he will remember all his life That to his best achievement, and the spot Nearest to heaven his youthful feet have trod, He has been guided by a guileless lamb. It is an omen which his mother's heart Will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... still shone on the earth or not. The perspiration of the literary labour dropped from his brow. A delightful enthusiasm urged him on. It was the liberation of his inner life, the letting out of his soul into the wide world. And the zeal of his guileless vanity (first awakened by the offer of five hundred pounds from a publisher) seemed something ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... kingdom. An elderly man, with a tall, serene forehead, a large dark eye and a long grey beard, he presented an image of vast wisdom and reverend probity. He possessed—an especial treasure for a statesman in that plotting age—a singularly honest visage. Never was that face more guileless, never was his heart more completely worn upon his sleeve, than when he was harbouring the deepest or most dangerous designs. Such was the "good fellow," whom that skilful reader of men, Henry of France, had sent to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... least, but I did not like to tell him to go away. He was a young fellow, certainly more than ten years younger than myself; I had not been—I won't say in that place, but within sixty miles of it, ever since the year '67; yet his guileless physiognomy of the open peasant type seemed strangely familiar. It was quite possible that he might have been a descendant, a son, or even a grandson, of the servants whose friendly faces had been familiar to me in my early childhood. As a matter ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... mantel. Another star had risen and set, and sent its missives only to the ashes of his grate, and now this very night, hidden in his desk, lay long, close-written, criss-crossed, exquisite pages, the outpourings of a young and guileless and glorious nature, and they, too, lay, as did that early Stella's, unread, unheeded, almost undesired, for the man was inflamed by this dauntless woman's defiance of him, and the devil in him was urging: woo her, win her, conquer her, crush her, ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... flew the sunny days, Joy and gladness sending; Life becomes a song of praise When true hearts are blending. Guileless truth Won the Youth, Kept him there, A prisoner; While dear Love From above Poured down enduring dreams, In calm ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... lived a worthy wood-chopper, who had a daughter named Catherine; a pretty little maiden of sixteen, and yet the wisest woman in the kingdom of Kaboutermannekensburg. Shrewd as she was, she had yet the best, the kindest, and the most guileless heart in the world; and many a sick man, troubled woman, and grieved child had cause to bless her and her wisdom. One winter, when labor was cheap and bread expensive, the wood-chopper, whose name was Peter Kurtz, chopped his ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... again saw the strange youth, or man. The being was nearly six feet high, and powerfully built, like a strong man of twenty-five. His face was childish even to the degree of silliness. The mouth opened like a flytrap; the eyes were small and intensely guileless. Only a few wrinkles, and a few hairs, which grew wide apart on his cheeks and chin, indicated his manhood. But the oddest feature was the falling away of his forehead, at an angle which a dirty greased cap, pulled over his brow, could ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... for a reward," he said. "He who shall win and keep her favor may have his hurts dressed and his belly dosed. Her enemies may rot." "Who is fool enough to be her enemy?" asked King, the altogether mild and guileless. ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... should be lavished on the lieutenant-commander of the Neptun. I longed to tell him that in all probability he would be relieved from Heemskirk's visitations also. I did not do so only from the fear (absurd, I admit) of arousing some sort of suspicion in his mind. As if with this guileless comedy father such a thing ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... in to take the niece's place, insisting upon the latter taking a ride or drive, her uncle would join in the request, and Althea was compelled to go. Nor was it such a hardship. Thornton was ever ready to accompany her. And now, in presence of this guileless girl, he did, indeed, seem transformed. He was attentive, kind and gentle, he hastened to comply with her every wish, to ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... going out. We were anxious to know what was going on in the world. An intense longing for a glimpse of Stock Exchange quotations existed in some quarters; others were dying to "back" horses; and there were guileless people whose sorrows were epitomised in a sigh for a letter, or two, (or a dozen) from home, and corresponding assurances that all was well there. We speculated a good deal on the probable depth of the piles ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... necessarily melancholy thing, in this imperfect world the humorist sighs as often as he smiles. What I mean by it is a keen perception of the rich incongruities and absurdities of life, its undue solemnity, its guileless pretentiousness. To be true humour, it must not be at all a cynical thing—as soon as it becomes cynical, it loses all its natural grace; it is an essentially tender-hearted quality, apt to find excuse, ready to condone, eager to forgive. The possessor of it can never be ridiculous, ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... home missions. When we remember that it is only since 1811 that they have emerged from numerical insignificance, we find their contribution to the planting of the church in the new settlements to be a highly honorable one. By a suicidal compact the guileless Evangelical party agreed, in 1835, to take direction of the foreign missions of the church, and leave the home field under the direction of the aggressive High-church party. It surrendered its part in the future of the church, and determined ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... situations. He made the most of his chance for a quaint parable, applicable to the courts, the church and science of Europe. As the story runs on, midst many and sudden adventures, the Babylonian reads causes from events in guileless fashion, enthusiastic as Sherlock Holmes, and no less efficient—and all the while, behind this innocent mask, Voltaire is insinuating a comparison between the practical results of Zadig's common sense and the futile mental cobwebs ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... was; he had a mistrustin' of it, somehow—and he went and told her, and it brought her, hearin' you was dangerous, and she calculated she might be o' use to ye now, for some, they be sich friends!" said Grandma, making this observation with the most guileless enthusiasm. "And Becky, she wa'n't much brought up, and used to be as wild and harum-scarum as any of 'em; but I allus said that there was a good deal to Becky, after all. Wall, George Olver, he recognized where she ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... give a desperate bite, the Pompilus would not dare to expose the tip of her abdomen to their deadly scratch. The shamming of death is exactly what enables the huntress to succeed in her dangerous operation. They say, O guileless Epeirae, that the struggle for life has taught you to adopt this inert attitude for purposes of defence. Well, the struggle for life was a very bad counsellor. Trust rather to common sense and learn, by degrees, at your own cost, that to hit back, above all if you can do so promptly, is still ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... the walls; a French window opened on to the lawn at the far end of the room; a large bowl of blue hyacinths, growing in a bed of pebbles, stood on the reading table. Mr. Kent was small, gray-haired, with a clear pink complexion and a guileless ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... mercenary bard his homage pays: With honest pride I scorn each selfish end, My dearest meed a friend's esteem and praise: To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays, The lowly train in life's sequester'd scene; The native feelings strong, the guileless ways; What Aiken in a cottage would have been— Ah! tho' his worth unknown, far ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... as she turned her head on one side, gazing up at the narrow streak of blue sky which was visible between the roofs, her dark eyes shone with a guileless, rapturous light, as if they were piercing ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... of Peter Neelands' efforts at solving their new difficulty, he soon began to think of it more favorably, coming to this by a process known as elimination. No one else wanted to go; he could not think of anything else. Peter would not do any harm—he was as guileless as a blue-eyed Angora kitten, and above all, he was willing and anxious to get into the game. This would give him an opportunity. So Mr. Banks suddenly made up his mind that he would authorize a cheque to be ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... Martin was quite guileless, and looking down at his coat in a puzzled way, as if to make doubly sure, replied, "No, it cannot be my clothes, for they are the same." Then, brightening, as the possible reason occurred to him: "Perhaps it may be my shaven face; you see, the barber made ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... songs we hear sung is truly appalling: we find a charming maid, love for whom might honour any man yet born, singing "Less than the dust,... even less am I," and so on. Lies, all lies, even though she lie melodically with charm and with apparent conviction. We have passionate love-songs sung by guileless individuals who would be inexpressibly shocked if you explained to them the meaning of the sentiment to which they had been giving utterance. There are operatic scenas, dealing with abduction and all sorts of uncomfortable situations, and again youngsters declaim of their somewhat ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... itself sometimes in the love of birds and of flowers, and one sees the rosebush or the canary bird in a dwelling from which is banished every trace of luxury. But the little child, with its sweet, spiritual eyes, its thousand bird-like tones, its prattling, endearing ways, its guileless, loving heart, is a full and perfect answer to the most ardent craving of the soul. It is a whole little Eden of itself; and the poor woman whose whole life else is one dreary waste of toil, clasps her babe to her bosom, and feels ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... dinner table and went away in wounded pride and incredulity. The one who is supposed to "know a little" likes to keep his position, and the Spanish proverb is exemplified: "En tierra de los ciegos, el tuerto es rey" (In the blind country the one-eyed are kings). The native is most guileless and ignorant, as can well be understood when his language is an ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... seeking; but His followers are constantly confident that he can, and are therefore his 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 ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... changing for the worse, she could not feel quite at ease concerning him. For there ever came back to her the thought of her son,—her wandering but still beloved Hugh; and many and earnest were the prayers that ascended both for the guileless child and the erring, sinful man, that through all the snares and temptations of life they might be ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... merriment behind the guileless innocence of her eyes, but they came to the surface only after the ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... OEDIPUS'S (and incidentally inaudible to cigarette smokers in the foyer) gives notice of the resumption of the play, while at the end of the Acts the curtain flutters up and down at a feverish pace as if the idea was to get in as many "calls" as possible before the applause stops. Are we as guileless as all that, I wonder? And, anyway, no such manoeuvre was necessary. The applause was hearty, the laughter spontaneous, and anybody who cares for plays made and played with brains should go and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... see Victor?" exclaimed the guileless Selma. "Why didn't you say so? I'd have told you at once that he was in Indianapolis and wouldn't be back for two or ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... star of the Ripton attack was evidently de Freece. The bowler at the other end looked fairly plain. He sent them down medium-pace, and on a good wicket would probably have been simple. But to-day there was danger in the most guileless-looking deliveries. ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... and dressed up in her things. Then, with her fair tousled hair and large blue eyes, open as a rule with a startled expression as though she had only just awakened into an astonishingly exciting world, she was altogether as unprotected and as guileless and as honest as any human being alive. I don't know whether Semyonov felt her innocence and youth—I expect he considered very little beside the plans that he had then in view.... and innocence had never been very interesting to ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... worthy one Who, turning from the world, as thou, Before life's pathway had begun To leave its spring-time flower and sun, Had sealed her early vow; Giving to God her beauty and her youth, Her pure affections and her guileless truth. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the blushing-wreath refuse, Though harsh her notes, yet guileless is my Muse. Unwont at Flattery's Voice to plume her wings, A Child of Nature, as she ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... pastoral romance, nor of the chivalrous and metaphysic passion of Provence; it was a fierce, consuming fire which quickly burnt itself out. He was a vulgar and unoriginal seducer who stole favours in the dark by pretending to be the lady's chosen lover, or induced guileless maids to trust him under promise of marriage, then rode away as fast as his horse could carry him. The monotony of his methods and their success are an outrage to the intelligence of the sex. But for all his scoffing he remained a true Catholic, devoutly believing ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... than this, but I get the definition by inverting a phrase of her dedication. Potter, by the way, or Lord Pinkerton, as he is now, owns a series of newspapers "not so good as The Times nor so bad as The Weekly Dispatch" (guileless piece of camouflage this!), and Mrs. Potter ("Leila Yorke") is a novelist who might have written The Rosary. Two of the young Potters, Jane and Johnny, though they both when up at Oxford joined the Anti-Potter League, do not thereby escape being Potterites. They cling to materialistic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... arranged by herself, was a pattern of neatness and simplicity; the work she had knitted, lay beside her; her writing-book was on the desk she leaned upon. - From the mournful ruin of such bereavement, there had slowly risen up this gentle, tender, guileless, grateful-hearted being. ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... up at my Physical Culture Studio again, the day after Lawyer Judson has explained for us the fine points of that batty will of Pyramid's, I'm about as friendly and guileless as a dyspeptic customs inspector preparin' to go through the trunks of a Fifth avenue dressmaker. He comes in smilin' and chirky, though, slaps me chummy on the ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... a wondering how it could be that so many, gentle and guileless as this woman-child, recoiled from the thought of the perfect One. Why were they not always and irresistibly drawn toward the very idea of God? Why, at least, should they not run to see and make sure whether God was indeed ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... cast a quick, suspicious glance at the speaker; but there the latter stood, with as open and guileless an expression on his handsome features, as was ever seen in ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... which developed late. He was only just beginning to preach with effect, and his literary power was practically undeveloped. He might have chosen to live a harmless, quiet, beauty-loving life, kindly and guileless, in a sort of religious aestheticism; though the vivid desire for movement and even excitement that characterised his later life would perhaps have in ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... mingled in scenes of gayety from her earliest days, and from the pleasure which her presence was sure to diffuse, and perhaps, it may be added, from a nature singularly guileless, that could see no evil in what appeared to her but as innocent indulgences, she was led into expenses and frivolous gratifications which were by no means essential for a mind like hers. Dishonest tradesmen took advantage of her inexperience and extreme easiness, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... conflict in her bosom between apprehension and love when she comes to take the sleeping poison. Shakespeare is blamed for the mixture of low characters. If this is a deformity, it is the source of a thousand beauties. One instance is the contrast between the guileless simplicity of Juliet's attachment to her first love, and the convenient policy of the nurse in advising her to marry Paris, which excites such indignation in her mistress. 'Ancient damnation! oh most wicked ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... my eyes with such a guileless expression that, for an instant, I thought she might be tired of her old, heartless life, and long to be better. I stood looking with some perplexity into the fire, scarce knowing what to say; but, turning my eyes suddenly, I saw a mocking gleam ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... Scotland on the very night the burglary is to be committed is not a trap to catch him, but a coincidence. Then, after drinking himself nearly blind, he sets forth with a revolver to commit a burglary on the house of the judge who tried him, on Hill's bare word that everything is all right. Guileless, ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... tradition parades his coral islet barefooted, bullying guileless natives out of their copra, coco-nut oil and pearl-shell; his chief diet, turtle and turtle eggs and fish; his drink, rum and coco-nut milk—the latter only when the former is impossible. When a wreck ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... heath-roofed shieling; now it dies Away, now rises full; it is the song Which He who listens to the hallelujahs Of choiring seraphim delights to hear; It is the music of the heart, the voice Of venerable age, of guileless youth, In kindly circle seated on the ground Before ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... 'You did not let me finish. I was going to add, Dr. Tattersby, that a week's acquaintance with that lovely woman, a full knowledge of her peculiarly exalted character and guileless nature, makes the alternative of guilt that affects her integrity clearly preposterous, which, by a very simple process of elimination, fastens the guilt, beyond all peradventure, on your shoulders. At any rate, the ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... disillusioning, and that they shock the mind of the young, are both alike entirely false. As Canon Lyttelton remarks, in urging that the laws of the transmission of life should be taught to children by the mother: "The way they receive it with native reverence, truthfulness of understanding and guileless delicacy, is nothing short of a revelation of the never-ceasing beauty of nature. People sometimes speak of the indescribable beauty of children's innocence. But I venture to say that no one quite knows what it is who has foregone the privilege of being the first ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... much pity for the poor mothers whose children were left on earth, that he allowed them to look down upon them from highest heaven—to see them always, to hear them always, and sometimes to send fair guardian angels to protect therein. Thanks to this guileless illusion, the orphans, persuaded that their mother incessantly watched over them, felt, that to do wrong would be to afflict her, and to forfeit the protection of the good angels.—This was the entire ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Hamburg. The pleasant impression then made by its agreeable and lovely melodies has not faded the less that, after hearing many of our stormy and exciting modern operas, one often and ardently {11} longs for the restful charm and guileless pleasure of a piece ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... was rather coarsely baited; it would hardly have deceived the most guileless and unsuspecting. Harold Purling at a glance could read between the lines; he could trace effect to cause, and readily understood why his mother was ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... mind of Evelyn was cultivated and well informed. Her heart, perhaps, helped to instruct her understanding; for by a kind of intuition she could appreciate all that was beautiful and elevated. Her unvitiated and guileless taste had a logic of its own: no schoolman had ever a quicker penetration into truth, no critic ever more readily detected the meretricious and the false. The book that Evelyn could admire was sure to be stamped with the impress of the noble, the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... saying it, or is it the thing itself?" Marion asked, coolly. "I tell you, girls, it is impossible to know whether the man who dresses well, and calls on you at stated intervals, looking and talking like a gentleman, is not a very Satan, who will lead away the pretty guileless, unsuspecting young girl who is worth his trouble; and the leading often and often commences with a dance; and the young girl may never have been allowed to dance with him at all had not stately and entirely unexceptionable ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... may'st thou ever be what now thou art, Nor unbeseem the promise of thy spring; As fair in form, as warm yet pure of heart, Love's image upon earth without his wing, And guileless beyond hope's imagining." ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... lapse of nearly a month, Adrian received a letter from a friend in London, requesting his immediate presence for the furtherance of some important object. Guileless himself, Adrian feared no deceit. I rode with him as far as Staines: he was in high spirits; and, since I could not see Idris during his absence, he promised a speedy return. His gaiety, which was extreme, had the strange effect of awakening ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... terribly shaken and agitated: little more than a child in years, injustice and sorrow had taught her the emotions of age, yet she was a guileless child in the world's ways, as events ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... you, so as not to terminate this inchoate comedy. At the same time I am here to help out Alcmena, poor innocent, denounced as disloyal by her lord, Amphitryon. For it would be sinful of me, if the storm I have brewed should descend on the head of guileless Alcmena. ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... no means presented to the reader as a favorable type of her nation—for, of course, every one knows there are plenty of sweet, unselfish, guileless American girls, who are absolutely incapable of such unblushing marriage-scheming as hers,—but what else could be expected from Marcia? Her grandfather, the navvy, had but recently become endowed with Pilgrim-Father Ancestry,—and ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... social code, that Mr. Mavick and Mrs. Mavick would simply laugh in his face at such a preposterous idea. And yet he knew that he had her sympathy in his ambition, that to a certain extent she was interested in him. The girl was too guileless to conceal that. And then suppose he should become famous—well, not exactly famous, but an author who was talked about, and becoming known, and said to be promising? And then he could fancy Mavick ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... It's part of my job, of course, huntin' Fritzes, but it's more than a job with him: it's a holy mission. That's why I'm a bit frightened of him really." The speaker searched the visitor's face with his guileless blue eyes. "I'm afraid of meeting him one day, unexpectedly, before I can establish our identity!" His quick smile flashed across his sunburnt ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... her worth to spy You need but gaze on Ellen's eye; Not Katrine in her mirror blue, Gives back the shaggy banks more true, Than every free-born glance confess'd The guileless movements of her breast; Whether joy danced in her dark eye, Or woe or pity claim'd a sigh, Or filial love was glowing there, Or meek devotion pour'd a prayer. Or hate of injury call'd forth The indignant spirit of the North. One only passion unreveal'd, With maiden pride, ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... Byron? Or the Pass of St. Bernard without remembering the faithful hounds of the great monastery? But the cat is a secret and alien creature, selfish and mysterious, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. See her purring on the hearth-rug in front of the fire, and she seems the picture of innocence and guileless content. All a blind, my dear fellow, all a blind. Wait till night comes. Then where is demure Mistress Puss? Is she at home keeping vigil with the good dog Tray? No, the house may be in blazes or ransacked by burglars for all she cares. She is out on the ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... apologised and protested, and showed himself willing to accept the assurance that Cicely was as simple and guileless as his own little maid; and Mr. Talbot, not wishing to be sent adrift with Cicely at that time of night, and certainly not to put such an affront on the good, if over-anxious father, was pacified, but the cordial ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... painful and abhorent to me; though subsequent experience has thrown, even that, far into the back ground. It was my initiatory lesson upon subjects which ought never to enter the imagination of girlhood: my introduction into a region which should never be approached by the guileless and the pure." (page 61) One or two individuals (Roman Catholic) soon formed a close intimacy with me, and discoursed with a freedom and plainness I had never, before encountered. My acquaintances, however, had been brought up in convents, or familiar with ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... Others held Enrica dishonored, that was clear. Was she dishonored? He was bound to her by every tie of honor. He loved her. She had a charm for him no other woman ever possessed, and she loved him. A women's eye, he told himself, had never deceived him. Yes, she loved him. Yet if Enrica were as guileless as she seemed, how could she conceal from him she had another lover—less loved perhaps than he—but still a lover? And this lover had refused to marry her? That was the stab. That every one in Lucca should know his future bride had been scouted by another ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... quickly than these two young things had ever known them to go, and the daily meetings, utterly guileless and free from flirtation, were the best part of the day; but there was a new note in Joan's laugh as she swung out of the wood and went ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... sign, and did not color; he remained quite calm, and assumed an air of guileless curiosity as he ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... He speaks not, he moves not; yet he draweth breath softly: I have seen men a-dying, and not thus did the end come. Surely God who made all forgets not love's rewarding, Forgets not the faithful, the guileless who fear not. Oh, might there be help yet, and some new life's beginning! —Lo, lighter the mist grows: there come sounds through its dulness, The lowing of kine, or the whoop of a shepherd, The bell-wether's tinkle, or clatter of horse-hoofs. A homestead is nigh us: ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... the engine when you hear its bell; Beware, O camel, when resounds the whistle's shrill, unholy swell; And, native of that guileless land, unused to modern travel's snare, Beware the fiend that peddles books—the awful peanut-boy beware. Else, trusting in their specious arts, you may have reason to condemn The traffic which the knavish ply ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... the shepherd sent to lead, Through pastures green, the Master's sheep? What guileless "Israelite indeed" The folded flock may ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... cried my unknown, "I love to hear thy innocent story and look on thy guileless face. There is, alas! so much of the contrary in this world, so much terror and crime and blood, that we who mingle with it are only too glad to forget it. Would that we could shake off our cares as men, and be boys, as thou ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I have done, and say no more; The little I have said may serve to show The guileless heart in silence may grieve o'er The wrongs to whose exposure it is slow: I leave you to your conscience as before, 'T will one day ask you why you used me so? God grant you feel not then the bitterest grief!- Antonia! ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... you are most innocent!" interrupted La Tour, impetuously; "yours was a heart too guileless to deceive, too firm in virtuous principle to be sullied, even by a union with the vicious and depraved. No, Adele, I have never cherished one feeling of resentment towards you; you, like myself, was the victim of that baseness, which invented a tale of falsehood to deceive you, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... though he never let on, caught the sly remark. Less guileless than he looked was Lacy, a little man, forever lighting his pipe. He struck another match now, and between puffs delivered a belated message. So many years senior was Lacy to his skipper that he used to talk to ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... the pressure of his honest hand, and in the wide realms of England no two people were happier than they were; for they were faithful, guileless, and true, honest and virtuous, and no shadow cast by a thought of future misfortune ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... known ye, could have wished you other than ye were, ye guileless, affectionate, honest, simple creatures?—simple both, in spite of all the learning of the one, all the prejudices, whims, irritabilities, and crotchets of the other. There you are, seated on the height of the old Roman camp, with a volume of the Stratagems of Polyaenus ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and wished to be able to refute idiocy, but she found herself continuing to read because she was interested in a way she had not expected. She began to see things. Once she made a remark which was prophetic. She made it in answer to a guileless observation concerning the gold mines with which Boston was supposed ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to Buckhorn to do some telegraphing he should have done Saturday night. My suspicions about his slyness, by the way, were quite unfounded. It was the guileless-eyed Terry who led those railway officials out to the spot where he'd already secretly tested for water and found signs of it. And Terry can't even understand why Dinky-Dunk is so toweringly angry ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... embrace Maud Gorka, and play tennis with that same friend so gayly, so innocently. I have seen that she could not bear the presence of Maitland in a room, and yet she asked the American to take her portrait.... Is she guileless?... Is she a hypocrite? Or is she tormented by doubt-divining, not divining-believing, not believing in-her mother? Is she underhand in any case, with her eyes the color of the sea? Has she the ambiguous mind at once of a Russian and an Italian?... This would be a solution of the problem, that ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... Madame Novikoff at a luncheon party in Mayfair. "I believe you know my great friend, Stead?" she said, by way of opening our conversation at the table. I told her I had known him for many years. "And what do you think of him?" she asked, with an air of innocent curiosity that sat well upon her guileless countenance. "Is he not wonderful? I think him, for my part, one of the greatest men alive. What do you think?" I replied, in a more restrained spirit, that I thought him extremely able, and that he had certainly ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... a heart-broken lover, despairin' an' wailin', Claim pity, your pity let fa' upon me. Like you I was blest with content, an' was cheerie,— My pipe wont to play to the cantiest glee, When smilin' an' kind was my Mary, sweet Mary, While Mary was guileless, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Kane held the well-founded idea that in time Jennie would yield to him physically, as she had already done spiritually. Just why he could not say. Something about her—a warm womanhood, a guileless expression of countenance—intimated a sympathy toward sex relationship which had nothing to do with hard, brutal immorality. She was the kind of a woman who was made for a man—one man. All her attitude toward sex was bound up with ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... unfortunate employer, who was always in bed and turned his face to the wall as soon as any one mentioned business to him,—the old mother was left alone to struggle with the disaster, with the limited, guileless knowledge of a village widow, who knows what a stamped paper is, and a signature, and who considers honor the most precious possession on earth. Her yellow cap appeared on every floor of the great mansion, overlooking the bills, introducing reforms among the servants, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the royalists seized this instrument as a means of discrediting the Republic, asserting that it had been organized through the influence of German-Jewish immigrants who were enriching themselves at the expense of the thrifty but guileless French. It was also asserted that Jews in the army were betraying its secrets to their German kindred. As the army was universally popular, this was an effective blow at the Jews. The denouement was the arrest of Captain Dreyfus, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... importance during the revolutionary movement of the eighteenth century, and found a strong exponent in Rousseau. 'Let us sweep away all conventions and institutions of man's making and get back to the simplicity of a primitive age.' The man of nature is guileless, and his natural instincts would preserve him in uncorrupted purity if they were not perverted by the artificial usages of society. So profoundly did this theory dominate the thoughts of men that its influence may be detected not only in the political fanaticism which found expression ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... has completely cleansed souls, how guileless and how pure they may be! Nor am I speaking of the Elect, such as I saw at La Trappe—merely of young novices, little priestlings whom I have known. They had eyes like clear glass, undimmed by the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... like clockwork toys, A lecturer papa employs To puff and praise Our modest ways And guileless character - Our well-known blush - our downcast eyes - Our famous look of mild surprise (Which competition still defies) - Our celebrated "Sir!!!" Then all the crowd take down our looks In pocket memorandum books. To diagnose, Our modest ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... few, without pretence To tricks of courtly eloquence, But full of pure and simple thought, And with a guileless feeling fraught, And said in accents which conferred Poetic charm ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... commodiously come to land with our boat; offering us also of their victuals to eat." Again, at another place, one of the sailors who had landed with a few articles designed as presents, found himself treated in the kindest manner. "These guileless people conducted him to the shore, and held him some time in a close embrace, with great love, clapping him fast about, in order to evince their regret at parting."—See Varrazano's Letter in Hakluyt, and New York ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... of his inner life from the first, should be kept closely united in the reader's mind with that other idea of his adhesion to "guileless nature" which was such a favorite theme with Father Hecker. No one could be more emphatic than he in asserting the necessity of the supernatural for the attainment of man's destiny. How could it be otherwise, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... have been so different a year To what has been; the summer's guileless play Not all a jest, comes back to me to-day In added sweetness, and provokes a tear. Strange pictures rise, pass on, and disappear. Drawn from your tender words of yesterday When, looking in my eyes in the old way You told me of your life, ...
— Poems • Sophia M. Almon
... nest of snow-white doves, What wealth could price for me your guileless loves? My earthly cherubim, my precious pearls, My pretty flock of loving little girls, My stores of happiness with least alloy, My treasuries of hope and trembling joy! Yon toothless darling, nestled soft and warm On a young yearning mother's cradling ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of his own, he was not a methodical enough man to travel with a gown and slippers in his valise), was labouring to recover his niece; Mistress Prissy, with her cloak huddled round her, was making magnanimous efforts to aid her uncle; while the poor little sufferer—guileless, affectionate Mistress Fiddy—lay pale, faint, and chill, with life flickering beneath her half-closed eyelids and in the gushes of her fitful breath. Master Rowland's trouble rendered him outwardly cold and hard, as it does some men; yet Mistress Fiddy's closing eyes turned ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... admiration, for he was a distinctly handsome man, and had an air and bearing far above good Jack Henderson, or any of her old admirers in her native village. After a moment's pause, while she nervously pinched the corners of the paper bag containing the Bath buns, she looked up with her clear guileless eyes ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... of Cranmer. Hook, Life of Cranmer.] at Cambridge was Thomas Cranmer, a learned and amiable divine with marked leanings towards the New Learning; who in his early graduate days had fallen under the influence of the teaching at Cambridge of Erasmus; in scholarship subtle and erudite, in affairs guileless and easily swayed; timorous by nature, but capable of outbreaks of audacity as timid persons often are: a gentle and lovable man, but lacking in that robust self-confidence needed by one who would take a resolutely independent line; a man intended to be a student and ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... turn pale at a word, a gesture, on her part. I have seen her embrace Maud Gorka, and play tennis with that same friend so gayly, so innocently. I have seen that she could not bear the presence of Maitland in a room, and yet she asked the American to take her portrait.... Is she guileless?.... Is she a hypocrite? Or is she tormented by doubt-divining, not divining-believing, not believing in-her mother? Is she underhand in any case, with her eyes the color of the sea? Has she the ambiguous mind at once of a Russian and an Italian?.... ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... papal licence as usual. What did these fellows come for? Was it to make confusion worse confounded? Alas! Alas! If we had only been as we were in the golden age, these friars would never have had a chance—not they! We too are not as the monks of old were; they lived the guileless life—austere, hard, self-denying, saintly! What are ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... stopped right there, but, as the demon of ill luck would have it, he had gone to a distant convention. So she sallied forth, brimming with eagerness to snatch this lovely brand from the burning, to turn this fair, motherless, guideless, possibly guileless girl to the contemplation of her dangers, to the knowledge of her peril, to banish Willett from the dove-cote,—wily hawk that he was,—and settle forthwith the fate of that young scamp Brannan. She did ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... a fat man, with beady and guileless eyes sunk in under an immense forehead, imagined that Udal's visit was a pretext for overhearing the words of rage and discomfiture that in that Papist centre might be let drop about the new Queen. For Udal, because Privy Seal had set him ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... his wise and guileless sway Win every recreant today, And sorrow's vast and holy wave Blend all our hearts around his grave! Let the faithful bondmen's tears, Let the traitor's craven fears, And the people's grief and pride, Plead against the parricide! Let us throng to pledge ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... operation with the bodkin, but I still rejoiced to call him master, and to know that though years had changed his looks, and sobered his childish exuberance, the same true heart still beat close to mine, and remained still as warm and guileless as when little Charlie Newcome, with me in his pocket, first put his ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... regarded and tortured as the accomplice of this desperate villain; jail or the execution ground awaited him. He plead with this one and with that. With sympathy they heard, but in stolid silence. The spy, who had accosted him, knew the old man well—holy, pure, somewhat simple and guileless of mind, he was object of reverence and gentle derision of the parishioners who sought his service in every trouble. The man spoke to the do[u]shin, explained the matter. The do[u]shin took him to the yoriki seated beneath ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... engraving of dinner-cards; Wetherall, with his perpetual nervous nod of acquiescence, his air of agreeing with people before he knew what they were saying; Jack Stepney, with his confident smile and anxious eyes, half way between the sheriff and an heiress; Gwen Van Osburgh, with all the guileless confidence of a young girl who has always been told that there is no one richer than ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... satisfy with paltry things the immensity of the relation between them. Moreover, when a man has accustomed himself to deal with great subjects, he becomes unamusable, unless he preserves in the depths of his heart a certain guileless simplicity and unconstraint which often make great geniuses such charming children; but the childhood of the heart is a rare human phenomenon among those whose mission it is to see all, know all, ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... woman-doctrine, naively unscrupulous, flitted through my mind. The salad of unprincipled notions she put into these girl-friends' heads! Good innocent creature, worthy wife, excellent mother (of the strict governess type), she was as guileless of consequences as any determinist philosopher ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... were round and guileless. "See any sea-serpents on your way over? I've heard there are ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... shot if I understand you! I never pretended to be guileless. Come: is it because I raised a laugh against your cousin ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... loves is separated from him by moral barriers. If he breaks through these he injures irreparably his own sense of what is due to his God and his fellow man. His instincts of charity, humor, and love rebound upon him. He is too Christian for England, and too guileless for life. This is a worthy theme, and yet if we judge this novel on the highest plane it fails miserably. For Mr. Hutchinson stacks the cards. He gives his hero his way and his salvation, after much suffering, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... prayed her to sit down. Baptiste stood in the doorway; his attitude betokened a reluctance to enter, and a desire to be quickly dismissed. After a long interval, the viscount, slowly raising his head, was again struck by the perturbed mien of the guileless old man, whose native simplicity, warmth, and ingenuousness would have melted any mask he attempted to assume. Maurice had almost abandoned all expectation that he would receive any information from the domestics; but he ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Miriam. Marvelling at the whiteness of her skin, they deem she is a witch or Moon Maiden come hither by enchantment. Yet must she on no account be hurt or disregarded, they say, since she is wholly guileless of evil spells, and under the special protection of Issa Ben Miriam, seeing that she ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... and piqued by these changes, and being a born flirt tried all her powers on David, veiled under guileless girlishness. She was very pretty, very charming, and at times most lovable and sweet when all that was best in her shallow little heart was touched. But it was evident to all that her early acquaintance with the hard ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... fascinating is rather a strong word? She's the most easy-going and engaging little person in the world, but fascinating . . .? Fascination suggests the effect of paint and fixed smiles and lights and spangles upon old men with bald heads, the effect of the wily serpent upon the guileless bird." ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... aside all smaller questions of the relative value of different earthly means to the attainment of a life hidden with Christ in God, Christians of all forms who are one in spirit have found help from "John Keble's Christian Year, and think of its guileless author with kindly affection. Within five- and-twenty years of its publication, a hundred thousand copies had been sold. The book is still diffused so widely, in editions of all forms, that it may yet go on, until the circle of the years shall be no ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... Emile's feelings in the matter. That is the only question that concerns us." With this she swept out of the room, leaving the major at first speechless with honest indignation, and then after the fashion of all guileless natures, a little uneasy and suspicious of his own guilelessness. For a day or two after, he found himself, not without a sensation of meanness, watching Rose when in Emile's presence, but he could distinguish nothing more than the frank satisfaction she showed equally ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... tiger roars and ended with the nightmare screams of a child. I have never been so frightened in my life. And there was a snake song, a soft, wavy, piano, pianissimo effect, all malignant stealth and horror, and running through it were the guileless and insistently hungry twitterings of baby birds in the nest. But there were comical pieces, too, in which ludicrous adventures befell unsophisticated monkeys; and there was a whole series of spring-fever songs—some of them just rotten and nervous, and some of ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... the rose began to blaw, An' the harebell an' the violet adorn'd ilk bonnie shaw; 'Twas then my love cam courtin' me, and wan my youthfu' heart, An' mony a tear it cost my love ere he could frae me part; But though he 's in a foreign land far, far across the sea, I ken my Jamie's guileless heart ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... courteous, and generally liked by men, to whom he was genial and good-natured. Though he was not himself aware of the fact, he was very dear to his father, who in his own silent way almost admired and certainly liked the openness and guileless freedom of a character which was very opposite to his own. The father, though he had never said a word to flatter the son, did in truth give his offspring credit for greater talent than he possessed, and, even when appearing to scorn them, would ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... straggled a line of gnarled willows, marking the wanderings of some guileless brook long since swallowed up and lost in the mazes of the great city like many another young life fresh from green fields and sunny hill-sides. This desert of weeds and sun-dried, yellow grass, this kraal for scraggly trees and broken benches, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the future conduct of both young people. It had not been satisfactory from Forsythe's point of view; that is, he had not been so easily able to disabuse the father's mind of suspicion, nor to establish his own guileless character as he had hoped; and some of the remarks Rogers made led Forsythe to think that the father understood just how unpleasant it might become for him if his brother-in-law ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... But these men have now died out, or become respectable citizens. The colonials may be said to resemble the Americans only in one point, in their aptitude for business. Some people have come out here in the expectation of "taking in" the guileless colonist, but the biter has been bit. I have heard of one manufacturer of pills who soon found ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... she answered. Then she ran away, for to arrange such a meeting seemed the most desirable thing in the world to her at that moment. To Sabina she went as fast as her legs could take her, and appreciating that he had sent this guileless messenger to ensure a meeting without preliminaries and without prejudice, Sabina hid her feelings and specified a ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... young; you do not know what complications may arise," replied Mrs. Challoner, with the gloomy forethought of middle age. She thought she knew the world better than they, but in reality she was almost as guileless and ignorant as her daughters. "Until you begin, you do not know the difficulties that will beset you," she ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... trance, That in all day-light thoughts, and shaded dreams, Haunts the deep soul for ever. As she went, Grace lapt its mantle o'er her, like the gold On fleecy-bosomed clouds in sunny skies. O Spirit! she was beautiful! a thing Guileless and pure, as though her youth had past With Heaven's own children in the light of God, Thence come to make a paradise of earth, And breathe the transports of transcendant bliss Like floral exhalations through ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... would watch him with great eyes. What meant this change? the guileless philosopher would ask himself, and wonder if he had judged his brother too harshly all through life; or if it was his plain speaking in their last quarrel which had put things in their true light to him, and awakened some innate ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... of thy parent dear, Serious infant worth a fear: In thy unfaltering visage well Picturing forth the son of TELL, When on his forehead, firm and good, Motionless mark, the apple stood; Guileless traitor, rebel mild, Convict unconscious, culprit child! Gates that close with iron roar Have been to thee thy nursery door; Chains that chink in cheerless cells Have been thy rattles and thy bells; Walls contrived for giant ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... a guileless look, A still word,—strings of sand! And yet they made my wild, wild heart Fly down to ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... we were ardently attached. Our greatest favourite, if we loved one more than the other, was our sister Nina, for she was the youngest. She was the most fascinating and lovely, though we confessed that if she had a fault, her disposition was too yielding and confiding—guileless herself, she could not credit that guile existed in others. Hers was one of those characters which, from its very innocence, would be held more sacred in the eyes of an upright, honourable man, though it exposes ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... dreams with a vision of happiness, he called up the guileless face of Mademoiselle Angelique Bontems, the companion of his childhood. Until he came to boyhood his father and mother had made no objection to his intimacy with their neighbor's pretty little daughter; but when, during his brief holiday ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... confidence in Walter had been his preservative from misanthropy; and when vexed at the recollection of his own imprudent frankness and folly, in provoking the resentment of powerful foes, he soothed his galled spirit by considering, that the guileless simplicity of his nature, which had raised those foes, had also secured him a faithful friend. That bright creation of his fancy disappeared, a chaos of duplicity, dark contrivance, and injustice remained: Walter proved false, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... as one of his victims. Her beauty was so striking, of such an exquisitely tender type, that no woman actually rivalled her as queen of beauty. Distinguished by blond hair, dark blue eyes, a most sympathetic voice, and a complexion of rare whiteness mingled with red, she was guileless, animated, gentle, modest, graceful, unaffected, and ingenuous; although slightly lame, she was, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... great capacity for affection—she was one of those women who have to love, and be loved. Her guileless face, her appealing eyes, seemed to beseech the protection of a masculine shield in a world which has no mercy for the weak. She was born to be guided, to be led. It was my fear of her simple trustful disposition ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... locks, appear instead. What though to fashion's garish eye they seem Untutored and ungainly? still to me, Than folly's foppish head-gear, lovelier far Are they, because bespeaking mental toil, Labor assiduous, through the golden days (Golden if so improved) of guileless youth, Unwearied mining in the precious stores Of classic lore—and better, nobler still, In God's own holy writ. And scatter here And there a thread of grey, to mark the grief That prematurely checked the bounding ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... and my daughter, so that the evil one, who had long gone about our village like a roaring lion, and who now threatened to devour me, might not prevail against us, but might be forced to depart from me and from my child as from our guileless Saviour in the wilderness. But to this none answered a word; and I heard right well, as we drove away, that many spat out after us, and one said (my child thought it was Berow her voice), "We would far sooner lay fire under thy coats ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... council of three was sitting in debate. The subject under discussion was that other note which George had written and so ill-advisedly entrusted to one whom he had taken for a guileless gardener. The council consisted of Lord Marshmoreton, looking rather shamefaced, his son Percy looking swollen and serious, and Lady Caroline Byng, ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... whom the Worcester lawyers of this time like best to remember was Peter C. Bacon. He was the Dominie Sampson of the Worcester Bar. I suppose he was the most learned man we ever had in Worcester, and probably, in Massachusetts. He was simple and guileless as a child; of a most inflexible honesty, devoted to the interest of his clients, and an enthusiastic lover of the science of the law. When, in rare cases, he thoroughly believed in the righteousness of his case, he was irresistible. But in general he was full ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... such a naive trusting person (HARRY laughs—CLAIRE gives him a surprised look, continues simply). Such a guileless soul that I thought flying would do something to a man. But it didn't take us out. We just ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... most seductive and ingratiating charm, a cup was handed to my wife. What to do she did not for the moment know. "Could such a gift be guileless?" she asked herself. "No." And yet the Wenuses looked friendly. Finally her martial spirit prevailed and my wife repulsed the cup, adjuring the rank and file to do the same. But in vain. Every member of my wife's wing of that fainting army greedily grasped a cup. Alas! what could they know of the ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... in this world than the guileless, hot-headed, intemperate, open admiration of a junior. Even a woman in her blindest devotion does not fall into the gait of the man she adores, tilt her bonnet to the angle at which he wears his hat, or interlard her speech with his pet oaths. And Charlie ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... believed in the Tennessee land—Jane Clemens's favorite cousin, James Lampton, the courtliest, gentlest, most prodigal optimist of all that guileless race. To James Lampton the land always had "millions in it"—everything had. He made stupendous fortunes daily, in new ways. The bare mention of the Tennessee land sent him off into figures that ended with the purchase of estates in England adjoining those of the Durham Lamptons, whom he always ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a road in the direction of the river, I met a guileless man who gave me some information of the name and locality of a ferryman, who had formerly acted in that capacity, though now no one was allowed to cross. Carefully noting all the facts I could draw out of this man, I strolled on and soon fell in with another, ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... again, born of water and of the Spirit: in other words, he must be brought out from his impurity and wickedness into a new and Divine life of holiness, awakened to a conscious experience of purity, truth, and love, the great prime elements in the reign of God. He must be guileless and lowly. "Whosoever will not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... feelings which gave her poignant misery still clung to her. She despised herself for her weakness; but she loved Leon. The sentiment was too deeply implanted in her bosom to be eradicated; too strong to be resisted. It was the first love of a young and guileless heart, and had ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... of her discreet eyes, and marked their stolen glance of quick inspection upon the short, dark locks and strong young form still bent over the last strokes of the writing. But when he straightened up, carefully shut the book, and fixed his brown eyes upon hers in guileless expectation of instructions, he saw nothing to indicate that he was not the entire stranger ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... whiter than the starry jasmine that climbed the balustrade,—a woman, a Frenchwoman born in Russia, who said as I approached her, "I had almost given you up." She had seen me as I left the copse. With what perfection do all women, even the most guileless, understand the arrangement of a scenic effect? The movements of the servants, who were preparing to serve breakfast, showed me that the meal had been delayed until after the arrival of the diligence. She had not ventured to come ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... dance five times with Captain Quin?' said I; and oh! strange delicious charm of coquetry, I do believe Miss Nora Brady at twenty-three years of age felt a pang of delight in thinking that she had so much power over a guileless lad of fifteen. Of course she replied that she did not care a fig for Captain Quin: that he danced prettily, to be sure, and was a pleasant rattle of a man; that he looked well in his regimentals too; and if he chose to ask her to dance, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... afraid trouble is ahead for that little girl. Oh, if her father could only be with her all the time. Outsiders can do so little because their authority is so limited and those who HAVE the authority are either too guileless or debarred by their stations. Dr. Llewellyn, Harrison and Mammy are the only ones who have the least right to say one ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... suspicious of a horse (or man) without guile. I wondered what was the particular weakness of this exceptionally trained, noble, and guileless creature. I have only one prejudice in horseflesh—I do not like a white one. So, of course, when the hunter arrived he was, white as marble, from mane to tail and hoofs; his very eyes were of a cheap china colour, suggestive of cataractine blindness. The only relief was a morbid tinge ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... this land. Throughout the whole being of the Greek there reigned supreme a quick susceptibility, out of which sprang a gladsome serenity of temper, and a keen enjoyment of life; acute sense, and nimbleness of apprehension; a guileless and child-like feeling, full of trust and faith, combined with prudence and forecast. These peculiarities lay so deeply imbedded in the inmost nature of the Greeks that no revolutions of time and circumstances ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... upheld as an epitome of every perfection above and below the sun. Had it been possible for them to conceive that Mary could have been received with anything short of rapture, Lady Juliana's letter might in some measure have opened the eyes of their understanding; but to the guileless sisters it seemed everything that was proper. Sorry for the necessity Mrs. Douglas felt under of parting with her adopted daughter, was "prettily expressed;" had no doubt it was merely a slight nervous affection, "was kind and soothing;" and the assurance, more than once repeated, that ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... singing. O, note the conjunction here of these two thoughts that had never subsisted in disjunction, the love for Hamlet, and her filial love, with the guileless floating on the surface of her pure imagination of the cautions so lately expressed, and the fears not too delicately avowed, by her father and brother concerning the dangers to which her honour lay exposed. Thought, affliction, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... unusual; he had sat on a pile of wood alone, not even romping with Dick and Harry till he felt the Hour of Judgment had passed. And then, deciding that there was no punishment forthcoming, he had leaped and frisked, and seemed so guileless that Baldy's contempt for his own kind made life hardly ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... came a stranger to Walgett town, To Walgett town when the sun was low, And he carried a thirst that was worth a crown, Yet how to quench it he did not know; But he thought he might take those yokels down, The guileless yokels of Walgett town. ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... Olver, he got a hold of where Becky was; he had a mistrustin' of it, somehow—and he went and told her, and it brought her, hearin' you was dangerous, and she calculated she might be o' use to ye now, for some, they be sich friends!" said Grandma, making this observation with the most guileless enthusiasm. "And Becky, she wa'n't much brought up, and used to be as wild and harum-scarum as any of 'em; but I allus said that there was a good deal to Becky, after all. Wall, George Olver, he recognized where she was ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... The guileless old seaman superintending the O.S.N. service imagined that the last three days had exhausted every startling surprise the political life of Costaguana could offer. He used to confess afterwards that the events which followed ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... sleeves were rolled up. The sun glinted on her uncovered hair, blazed in the bright tin basin into which she was dropping scarlet peppers. She appeared younger than he had remembered her; her arms were youthful and softly dimpled; her brow seemed again the calm, guileless brow of a girl; her eyes, as she raised them in greeting, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... supposed to "know a little" likes to keep his position, and the Spanish proverb is exemplified: "En tierra de los ciegos, el tuerto es rey" (In the blind country the one-eyed are kings). The native is most guileless and ignorant, as can well be understood when his language is ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... "Gedge and I. Little stunts, you know.... It's part of my job, of course, huntin' Fritzes, but it's more than a job with him: it's a holy mission. That's why I'm a bit frightened of him really." The speaker searched the visitor's face with his guileless blue eyes. "I'm afraid of meeting him one day, unexpectedly, before I can establish our identity!" His quick smile flashed across his sunburnt face ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... be, in fact, a mere rotatory Clothes-horse for drying the Imperial linen on; and to have no intellect at all, because he was without guile, and had no vulpinism at all. In which they were very much mistaken indeed. History is proud to report that the guileless Prussian Majesty, steadily attending to his own affairs in a wise manner, though hoodwinked and led about by Black-Artists as he had been, turned out when Fact and Nature subsequently pronounced upon ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of nearly a month, Adrian received a letter from a friend in London, requesting his immediate presence for the furtherance of some important object. Guileless himself, Adrian feared no deceit. I rode with him as far as Staines: he was in high spirits; and, since I could not see Idris during his absence, he promised a speedy return. His gaiety, which was extreme, had the strange effect of ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... threw himself at the governor's feet, which he tried to kiss. He said that the Castilians were in truth good men, and that the reports that the Indians had had hitherto were malicious. The people that acted thus could only have good bowels and a guileless heart—this is their peculiar mode of expression. His wife was given to him, whereat he was very happy. They talked so well to the Chief Tupas, that he came in the morning with a great following of his slaves, friends, and relatives, the most gallant that could come ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... flashed out. An old man behind the picket fence looked up, and straightened himself, and gazed—under a shading hand. Then he came along the driveway and stood in the white gate, waiting their approach. He had a red, guileless face and white hair. The face held a look of childish interest as they drew up. "You ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... glad to hear Harry say this, for it showed that my mother's instruction had not been thrown away on him. Indeed, besides being thoroughly guileless and honest, he possessed as much natural intelligence ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... such garments In true artistic style About myself departing, And wear as sweet a smile And be as guileless as the flowers My friends would never sigh; 'Twould reconcile them to my ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... fixed! The die is cast! For me home hath no joy! Oh, pardon then all follies past, And bless your wayward boy! And thou, from whom for aye to part Grieves more than tongue can tell, May Heaven preserve thy guileless heart, Sweet ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... perfectly natural that Mrs. Gray should be the last person to know of the division which had slowly set in between the two sisters and their factions. Charitable and guileless herself, it was difficult for her to ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... tale that was told to me, By a battered and shattered son of the sea: To me and my messmate, Silas Green, When I was a guileless ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... short hand, some miles distant from the patient. They are equaled in numbers by the hypnotists, or hypnotic doctors, who profess to throw their patients into a trance and cure them by suggestion. I heard of one cure in which the guileless American is made to lie in an open grave; this is called "the return to nature." Again, patients are cured by being buried in hot mud or in hot sand. I have seen a salt-water cure, where patients were made to remain in the ocean ten hours a day. ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... story; she wanted a richer sympathy than Doctor Mary's common-sense afforded; out of this need the revelation came to Gertie in innocent confidence, and, with the narrator's tacit approval, ran through the family and its intimate friends. If Cynthia had been as calculating as she was guileless, she could not have done better for herself. Mrs. Naylor's motherliness, old Naylor's courtliness, Gertie's breathless concern and avid appetite for the fullest detail, everybody's desire to console and cheer, all these were at her service, ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... of the world, his confidence in Walter had been his preservative from misanthropy; and when vexed at the recollection of his own imprudent frankness and folly, in provoking the resentment of powerful foes, he soothed his galled spirit by considering, that the guileless simplicity of his nature, which had raised those foes, had also secured him a faithful friend. That bright creation of his fancy disappeared, a chaos of duplicity, dark contrivance, and injustice remained: Walter proved false, his sister unnatural, his King a tyrant. ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... he was; open-faced and guileless as the day. Farm-bred, raw-boned, slow of speech, clear of eye, no vices, no habits that pulled a man down, unless a fondness for his briar-root pipe might be so classed. But in the way Mackenzie smoked the pipe it was ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... exposed to a common danger, a danger that leads the stronger to care instinctively for the weaker, and the weaker to recognize that it is nobler to give than to receive. At last, in the unexpected entrance of the innocent Tom Simson and the guileless Piney Woods, the outcasts find a common challenge to the native goodness that had long lain dormant within them. Innocence and guilelessness may be laughed at, as they are here, but their appeal is often stronger than the appeal of disciplined virtue ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... Still do I see the sun in all his majesty rising, For on that day I gain'd my husband; the son of my youth too Gained I during that earliest time of the wild desolation. Therefore commend I you, Hermann, for having with confidence guileless Turn'd towards marriage your thoughts in such a period of mourning, And for daring to woo in war and ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... impart To thee—thy parents' sole delight: To me—an angel, pure as light. Sent on this earth to cheer and bless, Like sunbeam in a wilderness, With fascination's form and face, And all the charms that please and grace. A guileless heart, a lovely mind, A temper ardent, yet refined, And in the early dawn of youth, Taught to love honour, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... power to live them out. One of those nights that "are not made for slumber" found us lingering beneath the odorous vines which interlocked their gay blossoms around the slight columns of the veranda, until even the gray surprise of dawn,—the "soft, guileless consolations" of our cigars, as Aeschylus says of certain other incense, the cool, fragrant breezes, gentle as remembered kisses upon the brow, the tremulous tenderness of the star-beams, the listening hush of midnight, having swayed us to a mood of pensiveness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... chaplain, a fat man, with beady and guileless eyes sunk in under an immense forehead, imagined that Udal's visit was a pretext for overhearing the words of rage and discomfiture that in that Papist centre might be let drop about the new Queen. For ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... seventeen to possess. A little cynical curve of the red mouth, a little contemptuous glance from those brown eyes, showed one that she took her measurements of individuals by a gauge of her own, and that she had not that guileless trust in human nature that is supposed to belong to young womanhood. The full expression indicated an independence that seemed a breath caught from the wild beauty of ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... suspected he should suffer some harm or that he felt contempt for me? Well, if he had any suspicions he convicted himself most clearly of conspiring against us. For no one that has not endured any injury is suspicious toward us nor does one become so as a result of an upright and guileless mind: no, it is those who have prepared to wrong others that are ready to be suspicious of them because of their own conscience. If, again, nothing of this sort was at the bottom of his action, but he merely looked down on us and insulted us with overweening words, ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... urgently, No. She looked up vindictively at the gaping congregation, which seemed spellbound in wanton curiosity, wherewith was mingled not a little religious dread. And then, again, she turned her eyes down upon the innocent face beside her bosom, so guileless, to be the cause of such varying passions in the throng about it. No, she could not give it up. All the old maternal instincts were aroused in her, and the firmness of her will was redoubled by the sentiment of love for her grandchild. Was it not her son's child, then, as ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... to Jimmie it was a lot of poor fools who had had a flag waved in their eyes, and had sold themselves for a shilling to the landlords of their country. In one of the Socialist papers that Jimmie read, there appeared every week a series of comic pictures in which the working man was figured as a guileless fool by the name of "Henry Dubb". Poor Henry always believed what he was told, and at the end of each adventure he got a thump on the top of his nut which caused stars to sprout over the page. ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... accompany them. Alas! feelings which gave her poignant misery still clung to her. She despised herself for her weakness; but she loved Leon. The sentiment was too deeply implanted in her bosom to be eradicated; too strong to be resisted. It was the first love of a young and guileless heart, and had grown ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... the Lord of heaven and earth cradled, a little Child, in the manger. He remembered, too, the humble child smiling its guileless good-will at the fence. He ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Clarian. Indeed, the lad was remarkable for a peculiar spiritual beauty of person and sweetness of manner that made almost every one love him. He was, in fact, lovely, in the etymological sense of that misused word, and people softened towards him as to a young, guileless child. I have known men cease swearing when he drew near, drop ribaldry, and take up some more innocent topic, simply through an unconscious impulse of fitness,—feeling that such things had no business to be repeated in his presence. And they were right; for a purer spirit than Clarian's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... becoming so accustomed to Bressant's undisguised manners that she forgot to be disturbed by this guileless compliment. Many hours afterward, when she was alone in her chamber, the words recurred to her, devoid of the version his manner had given them, and then they brought the blood gently ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... demands with a freedom from embarrassment which at a later age will be impossible to him. He stands his ground, too, under any fire of cross-examination. The rattan would dislodge him, but unfortunately his guileless countenance too often shields him from this searching and wholesome instrument. When he is sent for a hack buggy and returns after half- an-hour, with a perplexed face, saying that there is not one to be had anywhere, who would suspect that he has ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... another. Hippolyte enjoyed exerting his power over his gentle little friend, and many concessions were made to him by Adelaide, who, timid and devoted to him, was quite deceived by the assumed fits of temper, such as the least skilled lover and the most guileless girl can affect; and which they constantly play off, as spoilt children abuse the power they owe to their mother's affection. Thus all familiarity between the girl and the old Count was soon put a stop to. She understood the painter's melancholy, ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... hand of so guileless a maiden as sweet Dorothy," interrupted the dismayed lover. "His hands are stained ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... when properly washed, a certain air of cherubim that instantly struck the observer; his tousled tow hair had a cathedral tone, his cheek was guileless and his big blue eyes had an upward cast toward the angels which, as in the present moment when he was industriously exchanging a check labeled Baltimore to a trunk bound for Jersey City, was absolutely convincing. But from the limit whence the cherub continueth not the imp began. His ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... abundance of fresh stores on board. The captain gave his steward some order, and I remember that the guileless young man asked me if I could manage, besides other things, a few cans of milk and a cheese. When I offered my Montevideo gold for the supplies, the captain roared like a lion and told me to put my money up. It was a glorious outfit of provisions ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... brooch the folds combined Above a heart more good and kind. Her kindness and her worth to spy, You need but gaze on Ellen's eye; Not Katrine, in her mirror blue, 375 Gives back the shaggy banks more true, Than every free-born glance confessed The guileless movements of her breast; Whether joy danced in her dark eye, Or woe or pity claimed a sigh, 380 Or filial love was glowing there, Or meek devotion poured a prayer, Or tale of injury called forth The indignant spirit of the North. ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... break away from him, and on her lip there broke that beautiful smile of hers; withal a little tremulous just then. It is rare on a grown woman's lip, a smile so very guileless and free; mostly it belongs to children. Yet not ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... the operative, with a sheepishly guileless air. "It was just a bit from an English musical comedy of two or three years back, I think. It's got a silly-sounding name—something like 'There's ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... have been following is a harmonious whole from beginning to end. The child tells of the youth, the youth promises a noble man, and the promise is more than fulfilled. He was guileless; no dark ways of forbidden pleasure ever heard the sound of his footstep. There was no barter of conscience for ambition's prize. He was fearless; from beginning to end there was no halt from want of courage. Nor did he rush forward before the light came to show the ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... fast succumbing to the influence of a woman with whom some of the opposite sex seemed very familiar, considering the fact that the latter was as much a stranger to them (when first we started out) as she was to me. Besides, the pretty young graduate evidently was a very guileless, convent-raised girl. Matters assumed such a condition at the close of the third day of our journey that I felt it incumbent upon me to invite the latter into my section for the sake of some friendly advice. She appeared to take it all in good ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... determined to break through the reserve of one of the four friends and question him. Now, the one to whom he felt the most drawn, and who seemed naturally to excite the sympathies of all classes, was the kind, gay, simple Monsieur Alain. By what strange path could Providence have led a being so guileless into this monastery without a lock, where recluses of both sexes lived beneath a rule in the midst of Paris, in absolute freedom, as though they were guarded by the sternest of superiors? What drama, what event, had made him leave his own road in life, and ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... red, a guileless look, A still word,—strings of sand! And yet they made my wild, wild heart Fly down to ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... night there were several braw, braw lads of Barbie Water. There were Tarmillan the doctor (a son of Irrendavie), Logan the cashier, Tozer the Englishman, old Partan—a guileless and inquiring mind—and half a dozen students raw from the west. The students were of the kind that goes up to College with the hayseed sticking in its hair. Two are in a Colonial Cabinet now, two are in the poorhouse. So ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... a tall, serene forehead, a large dark eye and a long grey beard, he presented an image of vast wisdom and reverend probity. He possessed—an especial treasure for a statesman in that plotting age—a singularly honest visage. Never was that face more guileless, never was his heart more completely worn upon his sleeve, than when he was harbouring the deepest or most dangerous designs. Such was the "good fellow," whom that skilful reader of men, Henry of France, had sent ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... more respectfully. It was impossible to make him contradict himself. The prosecutor questioned him first in detail about the family life of the Karamazovs. The family picture stood out in lurid colors. It was plain to ear and eye that the witness was guileless and impartial. In spite of his profound reverence for the memory of his deceased master, he yet bore witness that he had been unjust to Mitya and "hadn't brought up his children as he should. He'd have been devoured by lice when he was little, if it hadn't been for me," he added, describing ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... with a vision of happiness, he called up the guileless face of Mademoiselle Angelique Bontems, the companion of his childhood. Until he came to boyhood his father and mother had made no objection to his intimacy with their neighbor's pretty little daughter; but when, ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... Cranmer.] at Cambridge was Thomas Cranmer, a learned and amiable divine with marked leanings towards the New Learning; who in his early graduate days had fallen under the influence of the teaching at Cambridge of Erasmus; in scholarship subtle and erudite, in affairs guileless and easily swayed; timorous by nature, but capable of outbreaks of audacity as timid persons often are: a gentle and lovable man, but lacking in that robust self-confidence needed by one who would take a resolutely independent line; a man intended to be a student and forced by an unkind ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... prisoners and therefore guiltless of every offence—indeed, where is the prisoner, but who, according to himself, is not more sinned against than sinner, and where the convicted rogue but, with his tongue, shall disprove all men's testimony? So here sit three guileless men, spotless of soul and beyond all thought innocent of every sin soever. Yonder is Rob, a robber, and here sit ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... my life, my awl to me!" He cried, his flame addressing— "If I 'adze such a love as yours, I'd ask no other blessing!" "I am rejoist to hear you speak," The maiden said with laughter— "For tho' I hammer guileless girl, It's plane what you are rafter. Now if file love you just a bit, What further can you ax me? Can—will you be content with that, Or will you further tacks me?" He looked handsaw her words were square— "No rival can displace me— Yes, one more favor I implore, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... into question. Robespierre made an energetic defence of his great rival in the hierarchy of revolution, and the defence saved Danton from the mortal ignominy of expulsion from the communion of the orthodox. On the other hand, Anacharsis Clootz, that guileless ally of the party of delirium, was less fortunate. Robespierre assailed the cosmopolitan for being a German baron, for having four thousand pounds a year, and for striking his sans-culottism some notes higher than the regular pitch. Even M. Louis Blanc calls this an iniquity, and sets ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... plan of following periods of great harshness by spells of mildness, sent Count Inouye as Envoy Extraordinary, to smooth over matters. He issued a decree restoring the late Queen to full rank. She was given the posthumous title of "Guileless, revered" and a temple called "Virtuous accomplishment" was dedicated to her memory. Twenty-two officials of high rank were commissioned to write her biography. But the King was still kept a ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... and with weakish legs, as yet unversed in the wiles of waiterhood, and but too evidently of a romantic temperament, and deeply (it were not too much to add hopelessly) in love with some young female not aware of his merit. This guileless youth, descrying the position of affairs, which even his innocence could not mistake, limited his waiting to languishing admiringly against the sideboard when Bella didn't want anything, and swooping at her when ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... ten-roomed, stone-built house of rather mournful aspect in Deadham village—able to rest from their ineffectual labours, support the Church, patronize their poorer and adulate their richer neighbours to their guileless hearts' content. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... from his high estate of a law-abiding street-hawker and driven to insult, really this time, the majesty of the social order in the person of another police- constable. It is not an act of revolt, and still less of revenge. Crainquebille is too old, too resigned, too weary, too guileless to raise the black standard of insurrection. He is cold and homeless and starving. He remembers the warmth and the food of the prison. He perceives the means to get back there. Since he has been locked up, he argues with himself, for uttering words which, as a matter of fact he did ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... likely that many New Yorkers were familiar with the face of David Morrison. It was a peculiarly guileless, kind face for a man of sixty years of age; a face that looked into the world's face with something of the confidence of a child. It had round it a little fringe of soft, light hair, and above that a big blue Scotch bonnet of the ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... her sleep, and she rose upon one elbow to bend upon the sleeper a gaze of ardent admiration. "Ah, beautiful little chick! how guileless! indeed, how deficient in that respect!" She sat up in the bed and hearkened; the bell struck for midnight. Was that the hour? The fates were smiling! Surely M. Assonquer himself must have wakened her to so choice an opportunity. She ought not to despise ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... authors claim it was the one which wounded the Saviour's side,—Amfortas sadly returned to Montsalvatch, where the mere thought of the veiled Holy Grail increased his pain by intensifying his remorse. There, one day, he read on the rim of the cup, that his wound was destined to be healed by a guileless fool, who would accidentally climb the mountain and, moved by sympathy, would inquire the cause of his suffering ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... to hate poor Schubart, or even seriously to dislike him. A joyful, piping, guileless mortal, good nature, innocence of heart, and love of frolic beamed from every feature of his countenance; he wished no ill to any son of Adam. He was musical and poetical, a maker and a singer of sweet songs; humorous also, speculative, discursive; his speech, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... himself absorbed in conversation with the old rancher's wife. Zen seemed to pay but little attention to him, and for the first time he began to realize what consummate actresses women are. Had Transley been the most suspicious of husbands—and in reality his domestic vision was as guileless as that of a boy—he could have caught no glint of any smoldering spark of the long ago. Grant found himself thinking of this dissembling quality as one of nature's provisions designed for the protection of women, much as the sombre plumage ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... to have them battered down. When a woman begins to talk about her duty, regard for appearances or religion, the objections she raises are so many redoubts which she loves to have carried by storm. But on the guileless Lucien these coquetries were thrown away; he would have advanced of ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... attempted earnestness—had violently broken away, but a remedy to this grief, for reasons too many to tell, dwelt in the possible duration, could it only not be arrested, of two other lives, one of these her own, the second the guileless Henry's. The single gentlewomen, to a remarkable number, whom she regarded and treated as nieces, though they were only daughters of cousins, were such objects of her tender solicitude that, she and Henry and Albert being alike childless, the delightful thing to think of was, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... boundary of utter defeat as he labored over the uneven road at the end of a blistering summer day, trundling his bicycle at his side. There was a suit-case strapped to the handlebar of the bicycle, and in that receptacle were the wares which this guileless peddler had come into that land to sell. He had set out from Omaha full of enthusiasm and youthful vigor, incited to the utmost degree of vending fervor by the representations of the general agent for the little ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... at the head of the village, and "sael" meant prosperity or health of the best. It is the "sel" in the German "Selig" and the "sil" in our "silly," which once represented in the best sense well-being of the innocent. So our old poets talk of "seely sheep;" but as the guileless are apt prey to the guileful, silliness came to mean what "blessed innocence" itself now stands for in the language of men who, poor fellows, are very much more foolish. So Selborne has a happy old pastoral name. The fresh, full spring, called the "Well Head," which gives its name to Selborne, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... may be one of its inhabitants. I did not recognise his features, but this was owing to the dusky atmosphere and to the singularity of his garb. Inglefield has two servants, one of whom was a native of this district, simple, guileless, and incapable of any act of violence. He was, moreover, devoutly attached to his sect. He ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... held the well-founded idea that in time Jennie would yield to him physically, as she had already done spiritually. Just why he could not say. Something about her—a warm womanhood, a guileless expression of countenance—intimated a sympathy toward sex relationship which had nothing to do with hard, brutal immorality. She was the kind of a woman who was made for a man—one man. All her attitude toward sex was bound up with love, tenderness, service. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... delicious reverie. How infinitely superior Rose is to all these people whose lives I can picture around me. Two women sit cackling beside me on the bench: they are at once guileless and bad, with their mania for eternally wagging tongues that know no rest. A little farther on, a good housewife is shaking her troublesome child; a stout, overdressed woman of the shop-keeping class is ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... beauty, and their easy existence, their dress is of a simple and graceful order. Many of their light robes and shining veils are woven from silky fibres which grow on the trees, and tinged with beautiful dyes. Bright, witty, and ingenious, as well as guileless, chaste, and happy, I can only compare them to grown-up children—but the children of a god-like race. Thanks to the purity of their blood, and the gentleness of their dispositions, together with their favourable circumstances, they live almost exempt from disease, or pain, or crime, ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... deliciously self-sufficient, so magnificently critical of established reputations in contemporary letters and art. We sniffed and snorted, noses in air, at popular idols, while ourselves weighted down with a cargo of guileless enthusiasm only asking opportunity to dump itself at an idol's feet. We ached to burn incense before the altar of some divinity; but it must be a divinity of our own discovering, our own choosing. We scorned to acclaim ready-made, second-hand goods. Then we encountered Pogson—Heber Pogson. Our fate, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... Endymion's guileless heart was strongly uplifted. Not a question did he ask as to heating arrangements, save to show a mild spark in his eye when he saw the two fireplaces. Plumbing was to him, we saw, a matter to be taken on faith. His paternal heart was slightly ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... always have the chance to act the woman written in her face, the tart, thinking, handsome creature that Ibsen prefers. Nigel Debrullier looks the buttoned-up Pastor Manders, even to caricature. But the crawling, bootlicking carpenter, Jacob Engstrand, is changed into a respectable, guileless man with an income. And his wife and daughter are helpless, conventional, upper-class rabbits. They do not remind one of the ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... Fascinating Facts, the guileless, pink-cheeked youth who had driven her home the night of her first visit to the Fengers, shortly after her coming to Haynes-Cooper's, had proved her faithful slave, and she had not abused his devotion. Indeed, she hardly considered it that. The sex side of her was ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... guarding. But near noon of the second day, we were overtaken by an old, long-whiskered man and a boy of possibly fifteen. They were riding in a light, rickety vehicle, drawn by a small Spanish mule and a rough but clean-limbed bay mare. The strangers appealed to our sympathy, for they were guileless in appearance, and asked so many questions, indicating that ours might have been the first herd of trail cattle they had ever seen. The old man was a free talker, and innocently allowed us to inveigle it out of him that he had been down on ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... things sweeter in this world than the guileless, hot-headed, intemperate, open admiration of a junior. Even a woman in her blindest devotion does not fall into the gait of the man she adores, tilt her bonnet to the angle at which he wears his hat, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the minutes, until she should see him again. Never concealing from any of us how dearly she loved him. She was truly as guileless as a ...
— Edna's Sacrifice and Other Stories - Edna's Sacrifice; Who Was the Thief?; The Ghost; The Two Brothers; and What He Left • Frances Henshaw Baden
... father whose youth in the eighteen-twenties had been passed without polish in the game of cricket. Old Jolyon would speak quite openly of swipes, full tosses, half and three-quarter balls; and young Jolyon with the guileless snobbery of youth had trembled lest his sire should be overheard. Only in this supreme matter of cricket he had been nervous, for his father—in Crimean whiskers then—had ever impressed him as the beau ideal. Though never canonised himself, Old Jolyon's natural fastidiousness and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Well may sages bow to thee, Dear, loving, guileless Infancy! And sigh beside their lofty lore For one untaught delight of thine; And feel they'd give their learning's store, To know again thy ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... demonstrates that the guileless Simpkin and the equally guileless Marshall had paid Borrow for the right to publish Faustus, and even though part of the payment was met by a bill, I think we may safely find in the transaction whatever verity there may be in ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... said Bateman, in fear of Freeborn; "we'll have none of your Popery. It will be a simple, guileless chapel, in which the Church Service will ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... "I love to hear thy innocent story and look on thy guileless face. There is, alas! so much of the contrary in this world, so much terror and crime and blood, that we who mingle with it are only too glad to forget it. Would that we could shake off our cares as men, and be boys, as ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... proceeded from weakness of mind or sincerity of heart, and which of the two personages was really guilty; but, ages afterwards, such is the effect of blind, popular clamor and unrighteous judicial proceedings, that the condemned lives in history as a victim and all but a guileless being. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... But those guileless innocents who imagine Miss H—s entitled to sympathy are sadly mistaken. She, her fool friends or relatives paid a good round price for that "puff," and fully expected that the "artist," as well as the penny-a- liner, would indulge in a ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... sword, The patriot too his noble blood has pour'd; Here too the sweet Recorder of the brave Has sat and sung upon her hero's grave. Then cease, romantic maid! ah, cease to rove; The very wood-dove loves its native grove: Oh! then, let Nature bid thy guileless heart Here shed its love, and all its warmth impart; And on the land that gave thee birth bestow The fondness which it ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... believe you are most innocent!" interrupted La Tour, impetuously; "yours was a heart too guileless to deceive, too firm in virtuous principle to be sullied, even by a union with the vicious and depraved. No, Adele, I have never cherished one feeling of resentment towards you; you, like myself, was the victim of that ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... Hroar-Helgi story, in which the brother who is slain is avenged by one of his descendants, it was easy and natural for it to fall in with the "exile-return" type. The type is not an artificial type, it is founded on human nature. The guileless and weak must yield to the designing and strong. History teems with illustrations of the fact that he wears the crown who can win it and hold it. Where a kingdom is the prize, a man is under a mighty temptation when he sees that he can seize it by brushing ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... acquiescence, his air of agreeing with people before he knew what they were saying; Jack Stepney, with his confident smile and anxious eyes, half way between the sheriff and an heiress; Gwen Van Osburgh, with all the guileless confidence of a young girl who has always been told that there is no ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... duty to her relation; or, what was worse, of pity for his moroseness. This faint suspicion became, in a little while, a strong certainty; and I confined myself more closely to my books, and looked into my cousin's guileless, enthusiastic face, with coldness. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... good spirits, which prevented him from entirely sinking the man in the politician. He had some enemies in the little court, whose Duke and Duchess were personally so attached to him. A prosperous life such as his could not fail to attract envy, and his frank, guileless character gave plenty of occasion for suspicion. But the only answer which he vouchsafed to his ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... spiritual Fenelon never suspected where this friendship was to lead. Even when Madame Guyon slipped into his simple, little household as a servant under an assumed name, he was inwardly guileless. This proud woman with the domineering personality now wore wooden shoes and the garb of a scullion. She scrubbed the floors, did laundry-work, cooked, even worked in the garden looking after the vegetables and the flowers, that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... Siren, her sisters and brothers, and a number of handsome friends of her own age, pinned wary eyes upon us. The dimples were in abeyance, for the guileless angels guessed the subject of conversation, ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... simplicity and child-like truthfulness more and more with each word she spoke; but her quiet dignity of manner was something to which he was unused; to his inexperience she seemed almost a fine lady, in spite of her sweet and guileless speech. Draxy, on the other hand, was a little repelled by the Elder's whole appearance. He was a rougher man than she had known; his pronunciation grated on her ear; and he looked so strong and dark she felt a sort of fear of him. But ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... things in his memory, while most Tahitians had no detailed knowledge of them, being crammed with the lore of theology, of saints, of automobiles, and moving pictures, and prize-fights for money. Matatini Afaraauia, son of Faaruia, of chiefly descent, a boy of seven, and of a guileless, bewitching disposition, made me his intimate friend, and through his sharp eyes I discovered phenomena that might have escaped my untutored mind. He lifted a stone, and beneath it was a spider larger than a tarantula. It was tabu to Tahitians, harmless, and a voracious eater of ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... and swore without having seen or heard the slightest thing of interest to an old "Zoner." A dirt-train rumbled by now and then. He strove to amuse himself by watching the innocent games of two little Spanish switch-boys not far away. They were enjoying themselves, as guileless childhood will, between their duties of letting a train in and out of the switch. Well on in the second half of the morning another diminutive Iberian, a water-boy, brought his compatriots a pail of water and carried off the empty bucket. The boys hung over the edge of the pail a sort of ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... in his society on my own. I did not make my infatuation conspicuous by walking with him in the streets, but otherwise I did not attempt to disguise the partiality I felt for him. Had I mixed more with other girls before entering society I might have been less guileless. But as it was, I never thought of tempering by coquetry the satisfaction visible in my face whenever ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... buoyantly about her. A few months before, Althea would have been gravely disturbed by their lack of reverence; she saw it now with guilty satisfaction. Miss Buckston, among the nets they spread for her, plunged and floundered like a good-tempered bull—at first with guileless acquiescence in the game, and then with growing bewilderment. They flouted gay cloaks before her dizzy eyes, and planted ribboned darts in her quivering shoulders. Even Althea could not accuse them of aggressiveness or rudeness. They never put themselves forward; ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... of two men, Nathaniel and Demas, encountering a pretender to miracles, a Simon Magus of the scriptures. Nathaniel is guileless, sweet-hearted and of strong moral sense, but in worldly matters rather a simpleton. Demas is a sharp man, who gets on well in the world, quick of eye and shrewd of wit, hard-headed and not to be imposed upon by his ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... a man so sort of guileless," affirmed Boyne. "Not that I have had a lot of experience, but in a lawyer's office you are bound to see considerable ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... marvellously guileless for a war correspondent," he said. And he turned on his heel and stalked ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... forms. They prayed, seated in their chairs, as willingly as, reversed, upon their knees; no ritual having any significance for them. My Mother was sometimes extremely gay, laughing with a soft, merry sound. What I have since been told of the guileless mirth of nuns in a convent has reminded me of the gaiety of my ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... back without seeming to admit that the cap has fitted. It was atrocious how middle-class young women nowadays ran after young men of birth and fortune. A girl would stoop to anything in order to catch five hundred thousand. Guileless youths should be thrown among their natural equals. It was a mistake to let them see too much of people of a lower rank who consider themselves good-looking. And the clever ones were the worst: they pretended to ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... sorrows of the gentle Herzeleide, or the awful anguish of Amfortas, or the deep rumblings of Klingsor's black art, or the fascinating music of the flower-maidens. Often came the pure tones that told of the guileless One, or the strong chords of mighty faith, or the ebb and swell of mystic bells, or the glory of the sacred Spear. Now came the regal blasts for Parsifal, and often and through it all, the splendid music of the Grail itself. The music was like a fragrant atmosphere to the drama, ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... outcast of fortune,[340] and the utter simplicity of his heart was guileless as a child's—ever open to the designing. The noble spirit of a Duke of Norfolk once rescued the long-lost historian of Rawleigh from the confinement of the Fleet, where he had existed, probably forgotten by the world, for six years. It was by an act of grace that the duke ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... regard for you, so as not to terminate this inchoate comedy. At the same time I am here to help out Alcmena, poor innocent, denounced as disloyal by her lord, Amphitryon. For it would be sinful of me, if the storm I have brewed should descend on the head of guileless Alcmena. ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... of thy grief, Too deep, too recent for relief, Oh! why impatient must I press So early on a friend's distress! Why am I eager thus to prove, To him who feels excess of love, The tender liking we bestow On fair and guileless things below? On Love and Joy without pretence, On kind and playful Innocence! The pleas'd idea Memory kept, The partial glance which never slept, When hopes arose oft render'd vain, Of seeing Keswick ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham
... very beginning his actions were in apparent contravention of the manifesto was attributed by the Lutherans to the sinister influence of such bitter, baiting, and unscrupulous theologians as Eck, Cochlaeus, and Faber, who, they claimed, endeavored to poison and incite the guileless heart of the Emperor. Thus the Lutherans would not and could not believe that Charles had deceived them,—a simple trust, which, however, stubborn facts finally ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... a morbid dread of being thought a gushing girl, this guileless woman too well concealed from the world under a manner of carelessness the warm depths of her strong emotions. But now there was no reserve. In her distraction, instead of advancing further she walked up and down, beating the air with her fingers, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... 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
... not leave her all the evening. She watched the pretty, gentle Amy, flitting about among her father's guests, with a feeling which, but for the guileless sweetness of the girl's face, the innocent unconsciousness of every look and movement, might have grown to bitterness at last. She watched her ways and words with Mr Millar, wishing, in her look or manner, to see some demand for his admiration and attention, ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... never-resting, vagrant, home-destroying guests, who enter unbidden into the human soul! Hark, the rustling of their raven-hued plumage! They take wing, they fly aloft; 't is the shriek of the vulture, swooping down upon the guileless dove. ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... on the edge of his chair, his elbows supported on the broad arms, leaning forward, partly bowed with his age, and partly with an intentness of curiosity that glittered innocently in his guileless eyes. A dear old character! Sweet in his sentiments, sweet in his language, sweet in the expression ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... came to Archie. He was normally a guileless young man, but even to him the extreme fishiness of the part played by Herbert Parker had become apparent. "I say, you know, it looks to me as if friend Parker had been having us all on a bit, what? I mean to say ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... soul and sense Had thrill'd my guileless Genevieve; The music and the doleful tale, The ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... girl he loves is separated from him by moral barriers. If he breaks through these he injures irreparably his own sense of what is due to his God and his fellow man. His instincts of charity, humor, and love rebound upon him. He is too Christian for England, and too guileless for life. This is a worthy theme, and yet if we judge this novel on the highest plane it fails miserably. For Mr. Hutchinson stacks the cards. He gives his hero his way and his salvation, after much suffering, by a series ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... and sense Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve; The music and the doleful tale, The rich ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... our little company in the gig. First-rate fellows they were, all three of them, knowing their vocation to its smallest detail, and thoroughly at home aboard a ship in blue water, though ashore they were as guileless and helpless as babes, ready to fall an easy prey to the first land shark that got scent of them. If I could be sure of arranging at Punta Arenas for their conveyance to England, either as shipwrecked seamen or otherwise, and thus discharging my responsibility ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... Would be empty without the seeing eye, That form and color, movement and rhythm Are not true elements of heaven Till passed through transforming power of thought; For eye seeth only what soul hath wrought. Ah! Beauty, thou the flowering art Of the upright mind and guileless heart. ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... lavished on the lieutenant-commander of the Neptun. I longed to tell him that in all probability he would be relieved from Heemskirk's visitations also. I did not do so only from the fear (absurd, I admit) of arousing some sort of suspicion in his mind. As if with this guileless comedy father such ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... unscrupulous, flitted through my mind. The salad of unprincipled notions she put into these girl-friends' heads! Good innocent creature, worthy wife, excellent mother (of the strict governess type), she was as guileless of consequences as any ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... not art, but necessity; yet the most accomplished art could have devised nothing so effectual to hold her lover. His strong sense had always protected him from the tricks of matchmaking mammas and their guileless maids. Had Emilia made one effort to please him, once concealed a dislike, once affected a preference, the spell might have been broken. Had she been his slave, he might have become a very unyielding or a very heedless despot. Making him her slave, she kept him at the very height ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the Foe a dauntless Front he reared, Ne'er from his lips was aught assuming heard; Modest, though brave; though firm, in manners mild, Strong in resolve, though guileless as a child; To honor true, in probity correct; To falsehood [stern] and urgent to detect; To party strange, to calumny a foe; The good Samaritan to sons of woe; At a late hour he heard the fatal call, Obeyed and died, wept and ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... Florence—Florence, so ingenuous and true—so worthy of the love that he had borne her, and had whispered in his last faint words—whose guileless heart was mirrored in the beauty of her face, and breathed in every accent of her gentle voice—did that young breast hold any other ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... ballad work is small in quantity and may be dismissed briefly. "Alice du Clos" has good lines, but is unimportant as a whole. The very favourite poem "Love" is a modern story enclosing a mediaeval one. In the moonshine by the ruined tower the guileless Genevieve leans against the statue of an armed man, while her lover sings her a tale of a wandering knight who bore a burning brand upon his shield and went mad for the love of "The ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... heavens were blue, warm was the air. The fragile creature, without knowing anything, or recognising anything, or understanding anything, softly floating in musings which are not thought, felt itself in safety in the midst of nature, among those good trees and that guileless greenery, in the pure and peaceful landscape, amid the rustle of nests, of flowing springs, of insects, of leaves, while over all there glowed the great innocency of the ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... was always courteous, and generally liked by men, to whom he was genial and good-natured. Though he was not himself aware of the fact, he was very dear to his father, who in his own silent way almost admired and certainly liked the openness and guileless freedom of a character which was very opposite to his own. The father, though he had never said a word to flatter the son, did in truth give his offspring credit for greater talent than he possessed, and, even when appearing to scorn them, would listen to the young ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Paoli's militia. Luckily, he knew all the fords, and in the hill-villages off the road the inhabitants showed no suspicion of us, but took it for granted that we were the good Paolists we passed for. Marc'antonio answered all their guileless questions by giving out that we were two roving commissioners travelling northward to delimit certain pievi in the Nebbio, at the foot of Cape Corso—an explanation which secured for us the best of victuals as ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... that the boss was masking, while Moncrossen accepted the other's guileless expression at its face value, and his pendulous lips widened into a grin of genuine relief as he greeted ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... whose head was stored with nearly as much of human knowledge as mortal head could hold, took simple, guileless little Sam by the hand, and led him into the garden of knowledge. Unless I am mistaken, these two will pick more flowers than they will dig potatoes in the aforesaid garden, but I don't think that two such honest souls will gather much unwholesome fruit. The danger is that they will waste ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... While she felt the most eager and burning desire to penetrate the mystery in which Oliver's history was enveloped, she could not but hold sacred the confidence which the miserable woman with whom she had just conversed, had reposed in her, as a young and guileless girl. Her words and manner had touched Rose Maylie's heart; and, mingled with her love for her young charge, and scarcely less intense in its truth and fervour, was her fond wish to win the outcast back to ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... sweet yet deceiving dreams,' so that the soul thinks everything here good and valuable, unless it obtain divine and chaste Love as its physician and preserver. For Love brings the soul through the body to truth and the region of truth, where pure and guileless beauty is to be found, kindly befriending its votaries like an initiator at the mysteries. And it associates with the soul only through the body. And as geometricians, in the case of boys who cannot yet be initiated into the perception of incorporeal and impassive ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... often heard That years would blunt the feelings of the soul, And apathy ice the once-glowing heart. Injurious prejudice! Dear, guileless friend! Thou read'st mankind, but saw not, or forgot Their faults and vices; for thy breast was still The residence of sweet Simplicity, Daughter of letter'd Wisdom, and the friend Of Love and Pity. Happy soul, farewell! ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... thoughts are folded As graciously to rest As a dove's stainless pinions Upon her guileless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... stamp of the Beaubien, and through her the leader of the most exclusive social set in the metropolis, is difficult to say. But thus does the human mind often seek to further its own dubious aims through guileless innocence and trust. Perhaps Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had likewise a slight trace of that clairvoyance of wisdom which so characterized the girl. But with this difference, that she knew not why she was led to adopt ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... excellent good-sense, like my aunt, who will help your career, defend you from attacks, and say for you the things that you cannot say for yourself? Am I not, on the contrary, generous in bidding you reserve your love for the coming angel with the guileless heart? If the motto Noblesse oblige sums up the advice I gave you just now, my further advice on your relations to women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, "Serve ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... gentle heart. Her figure seemed to speak a child, but there was a something in that face, bright, glowing as it was, which yet would tell of somewhat more than childhood—that seventeen summers had done their work, and taught that guileless heart a sterner tale ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
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