United States or Andorra ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Valentin listened and questioned, many of his questions making Newman laugh loud at the naivete of his ignorance of the vulgar processes of money-getting; smiling himself, too, half ironical and half curious. And yet he was serious; he was fascinated by Newman's plain prose version of the legend of El Dorado.
In this sense the Roman aristocracy had been at all times hereditary; in fact, it had displayed its hereditary character with great naivete in the old custom of the senator taking his sons with him to the senate, and of the public magistrate decorating his sons, as it were by anticipation, with the insignia of the highest official honour the purple border of the consular, and the golden amulet-case of the triumphator.
The law under which his striving proceeds is the fundamental one of balance, and the critical artist obeys it whether he be the maker of vignettes for a newspaper, or the painter who declares for color only, or the man who tries hard to produce naivete by discarding composition.
"For I want to talk to you of old times. General Brant," she went on, turning explanatorily to Boompointer, "married my adopted mother in California at Robles, a dear old place where I spent my earliest years. So, you see, we are sort of relations by marriage," she added, with delightful naivete.
With these words, the little maid sprang nimbly from the bed, ran with the naïveté of an eight-year-old child to the table, where she settled herself in the corner of the sofa, drew her bare feet up under her, and proceeded to breakfast on the left-over punch and biscuits. "There! that was a good breakfast," she said, after she had finished her meal. "Oh, I almost forgot. Has mama sent for me?"
It is pure naivete to say that reason is not contrary to faith. The truth is, that now already in order to save mere fragments of the sacred writings, it has been necessary to accommodate them to the new certainties, by taking refuge in the assertion that they are simply symbolical!
Buvat undertook the commission without suspecting any trick, and executed it with his ordinary naïveté. The dealer, accustomed to such propositions, turned them round and round with a disdainful air, and, criticising them severely, said that he could only offer fifteen francs each for them.
But for him, a modern traveller could spend his time peacefully admiring the scenery instead of feeling himself bound to dog the simple and grotesque of the world for the sake of their too-human comments. It is his fault if a peasant's naivete has come to outweigh the beauty of rivers, and the remarks of clergymen are more than mountains.
Spirits came to Swedenborg with a wind, but it was only strong enough to flutter papers; 'the cause of which, as he remarks with naivete, 'I do not yet understand'. If Swedenborg had gone into a Medicine Lodge, no doubt, in that 'close place, the phenomena would have been very much more remarkable. In 1853 Pere Arnaud visited the Nasquapees, and describes a seance.
Some are sentimental, or religious, to the last degree, while others reek with an indecency of speech that would shroud the Tenderloin in blushes. Both kinds are equally popular in the camps, and both are of the most astounding naïveté. Of the worst of them, even, the simple-minded woodsmen are not in the least ashamed. They seem unconscious of their enormity.
Word Of The Day