"Credulous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... goes, young girls are always growing up with the flush and fragrance and elusive fascinations of spring. To-day, a credulous tenderness and overwhelming faith in the past; to-morrow, a little doubtful, hesitatingly anticipative, with the watchwords of "The True, the Good, and the Beautiful;" and still concerned in the latest style of doing one's back hair, ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... although it is easy enough to destroy it by mischievous laws. If the hand of the Lord is heavy upon any country, if flood or drought comes, human wisdom is powerless to avert the calamity. Moreover, no law can guard us against the consequences of our own folly. The men who are idle or credulous, the men who seek gains not by genuine work with head or hand but by gambling in any form, are always a source of menace not only to themselves but to others. If the business world loses its head, it loses what legislation ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... on the street. For the second of welcome encounter this workman with the bandit mustache and the muddy overalls seemed nearer than any one else to the credulous youth which she was seeking to fight beside her, and she told him, as a cheerful anecdote, a ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... the credulous victim; many a remedy triumphantly puffed on the latter pages of the newspapers and magazines is no more effectual. Moreover, this rural simplicity is surpassed by certain old books which form the tomb of the science of a past ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... to him, "you imagine that we ought not to believe but what is a fundamental article, and that credulity is common only to the imbecile. You are mistaken: men of good sense are credulous." ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... the superstition equation had not paid off. He had failed to notice that they didn't really believe in their religions and superstitions, though they showed every indication of being extremely devout and credulous. He should have sold Earth, and ...
— The Glory of Ippling • Helen M. Urban
... by Sir Patient. But Isabella has betrothed herself to Lodwick, a son of the pedantic Lady Knowell: whilst Lucretia Knowell loves Leander, the alderman's nephew, in spite of the fact that she is promised by her mother to Sir Credulous Easy, a bumpkinly knight from Devonshire. Lodwick, who is a close friend of Leander, has been previously known to Sir Credulous, and resolving to trick and befool the coxcomb warmly welcomes him on his arrival in town. He persuades ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... towards political action, and gives up the "riots," so common during its infancy. It is more difficult to induce the working men of Western Europe, who have attained a certain degree of political development, to riot, than, for example, the credulous and ignorant Russian peasants. As the proletariat has shown no taste for the tactics of "riot," the companions have been forced to replace it by "individual action." It was especially after the attempted insurrection at Benevento ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... have said, who imparted the news. Lorne had come over with it in the afternoon, still a little dazed and unbelieving in the face of his tremendous luck, helped by finding her so readily credulous to thinking it reasonably possible himself. He could not have done better than come to Dora for a correction of any undue exaltation that he might have felt, however. She supplied it in ten minutes by reminding him of their wisdom in ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the only way to take it's as a game of skill. Listen to this. Not to lose at the game of life you must—I don't say cheat, but not be too sure your neighbour won't, and not be shocked out of your self-possession if he does. Don't lose, my dear—I beseech you don't lose. Be neither suspicious nor credulous, and if you find your neighbour peeping don't cry out; only very politely wait your own chance. I've had my revenge more than once in my day, but I really think the sweetest I could take, en somme, against ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... a very pleasant hour hooking shiners and chub, and an occasional perch that looked at a distance like a trout. The dominie, apropos of his friend's braces, told Alphonse Karr's story of the bretellier in the Jardin des Plantes, and the credulous sceptic who did not believe that a suspender tree existed. He knew that cotton grew on a shrub, and that caoutchouc exuded from a tree, and admitted the possibility of their natural combination, but thought his deceivers had reference to braces with ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... the only hermit's island on our eastern coasts which was imagined, in these credulous times, to be the occasional abode of evil spirits. According to Bede no one had dared to dwell alone on the island of Farne before St. Cuthbert selected it as his anchoret habitation, because demons resided there (propter demorantium ibi phantasias demonum). Vita Cuthberti, cap. 16. See also the ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... of honor. Certainly, why not? It is as easy given as broken. Are you really so credulous that you would take the word of such ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... nothing by this trip but the knowledge that there are but 980 of these islands, which an unscrupulous monarchy imposes upon a credulous people as a full thousand, and the gloom which would naturally pervade a man, after an occurrence of the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... side Mr. Ganns found himself much at one with his friend, Albert Redmayne. Peter's philosophy seemed to Brendon of a very mild quality, and he wondered how a man who looked at human nature in a spirit so hopeful, if not credulous, should yet own those extraordinary gifts the American possessed. Upon these, surely, and not his genial and elemental ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... to say sailors are superstitious now," he asserted. "They might have been, but my experience is that they are no more credulous than other people in these days. Anyway, I'm not. Life is a matter of chemistry. There's no mumbo jumbo about it, in my opinion. Chemical analysis has reached down to hormones and enzymes and all manner of subtle secretions discovered by this generation of inquirers; but ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... deal of luck. If the first were true, then this was a nerve of ice-tempered steel, an eye vulture-sharp, and a hand, miraculous, fast, and certain. To strike that swinging hand with a snap shot, when a miss meant a bullet fired at his own body at deadly short range—truly it would take a credulous man to believe that Donnegan had coldly planned to disable his ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... a fusion of interests between the Franco-Persian Oil Company and the Petroleum Consolidated—rumours which set the shares of both concerns jumping up and down like two badly trained jazzers. The directorate of both companies expressed their surprise that a credulous public could accept such stories, and both M. Jorris, the emperor of the Franco-Persian block, and George Y. Walters, the prince regent of the "Petco," denied indignantly that any ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... the credulous victim. This was the soul of her error. This scorn of others—of the opinions of the world around her, is the saddest error of which woman, who is the most dependant of all beings in the moral world, can ever be guilty. But such philosophy did not now deceive even the poor girl ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... that her satire fell to the ground. He was an entirely new sort to the spiteful child. The terrible advantage the person who will admit his faults cheerfully has over the one who has pride and evades was never more manifest. Jake Ransom pointed out to a credulous following the causes of Sadie's disaffection, and left the envious child in such a state of futile rage that she was ready to burst with her ill-directed fury. In the end the month's work had to be granted the tribute of success, and the term closed with a distinct triumph for Elizabeth and the ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... preaching pleased Madam Esmond from the first, and, I daresay, satisfied her as much as Mr. Whitfield's. Of course it cannot be the case at the present day when they are so finely educated, but women, a hundred years ago, were credulous, eager to admire and believe, and apt to imagine all sorts of excellences in the object of their admiration. For weeks, nay, months, Madam Esmond was never tired of hearing Mr. Ward's great glib voice and ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... glanced at, which was afterwards replenished. With the aid of its content, a newspaper, and some skimming of the cream of the pie-stock, Flora got through the remainder of the day in perfect good humour; though occasionally embarrassed by the consequences of an idle rumour which circulated among the credulous infants of the neighbourhood, to the effect that an old lady had sold herself to the pie-shop to be made up, and was then sitting in the pie-shop parlour, declining to complete her contract. This attracted so many young persons of both sexes, and, when the shades of evening began to fall, occasioned ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... discreet than his riotous dependents. His wife is reported to have remarked of a censure upon their elder son's addiction to equivocal society, that she had heard Ralegh in his youth showed similar tastes. Aubrey, whom nobody believes and everybody quotes, the 'credulous, maggotty-headed, and sometimes little better than crazed' antiquarian, as Wood, his debtor for much curious unsifted gossip, courteously characterizes him, relates how, at a tavern revel, Ralegh ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... from which this poet could be suspected of patriotism, and he altogether refuses to class him with the poets who have promoted revolution. Nevertheless, it is probable that this poet wished Freedom well. He was indefinitely hopeful for Italy; he was young, generous, and credulous of goodness and justice. His youth, his generosity, his truth, made him odious to Austria. One day he returned from a visit to Turin, and was arrested. He could have escaped when danger first threatened, but his faith in his own innocence ruined ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... The Count, my uncle, my father, your father... My flight, his displeasure, my loss of property—do you not see that all is a fiction, credulous knight? ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... She believed in the miracles wrought at his tomb, and had a hundred authentic stories of wondrous cures effected by the blessed king's rosaries, the medals which he wore, the locks of his hair, or what not. Esmond remembered a score of marvellous tales which the credulous old woman told him. There was the Bishop of Autun, that was healed of a malady he had for forty years, and which left him after he said mass for the repose of the king's soul. There was M. Marais, a surgeon in Auvergne, who had a palsy in both his legs, which was cured through ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... one of a numerous class of people who are termed, in the west, "money diggers," living a sort, of vagrant life, imposing upon the credulous farmers by pretending that they knew of treasure concealed, and occasionally stealing horses and cattle. Joseph Smith was the second son, and a great favourite of his father, who stated everywhere that Joe had that species of second sight, which enabled him to discover ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... of the churches of the monks in the island was formerly proverbial, but of late the rich perquisites which the priests were so long permitted to extort from the credulous public have been diverted so as to flow into the coffers of the crown. A military depotism brooks no rival in authority. The priests at one time possessed large tracts of land in Cuba, and their revenue therefrom, especially when they were improved as sugar plantations, was very large. These ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... offer thenceforth would bring condemnation. Signs and miracles were promised to "follow them that believe," thus confirming their faith in the power divine; but no intimation was given that such manifestations were to precede belief, as baits to catch the credulous wonder-seeker. ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... the Apocalypse and maintained that the battle of Armageddon was at hand. The epoch-marking battle of Waterloo in June of this year was sufficiently near the picture of blood painted in the Revelation to satisfy the credulous. ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... the efficacy of the charm, but there was an undercurrent of sentiment in favor of the supernatural. Against this I had fought. Perhaps it was merely for the joy of the argument that so often I had turned a fire of ridicule on the dearest traditions of the valley. Time and again, when some credulous one had lifted his voice in honest support of a silly superstition, I had jeered him into a grumbled, shamefaced disavowal. Once I sat in the graveyard at midnight, in the full of the moon, just to ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... confusion as long as each district preserved a distinct and independent account of its own Ragnar. But by possessing the resource of writing, men became able to consolidate the separate trains of events, and as it were, fuse two truths into one error. And this was what actually happened. The credulous Saxo put together the different exploits of both Ragnars, and ascribing the whole of them to his favorite hero, has involved in obscurity one of the most interesting parts of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... contradictions and oppositions; and I believe that this is not the worst of the descriptions. For they are at once proud and humble; bold in wickedness, and pusillanimous cowards; compassionate and cruel; negligent and lazy; but for their own affairs, whether evil or good, careful and watchful; easily credulous, but incapable of understanding, and fickle, after so oft repeated sacred teachings. They are very much inclined to attend the church, and its feasts and solemn rites, but it is necessary to oblige them by the rigor of the lash to attend mass on the prescribed ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... representative of the shrewdness of his class, had he been trying to sell horses to sailors. He was endeavoring to do nothing of the kind. These men were his friends, and he was speaking to them, not of the good qualities of his animals, but of the credulous natures of his customers. To illustrate this, he drew from his pocket a small object which he had received a few days before for some horses which might possibly be worth their keep, although he would not be willing to guarantee this ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... princely display. This populace that watched with joy the cruel torment of a bear or the execution of a Catholic also delighted in the romantic comedies of Shakespeare. This people, so appallingly credulous and ignorant, so brutal, childish, so mercurial compared with Englishmen of to-day, yet set the standard of national greatness. This absurdly decorated gallant could stab a rival in the back or write a penitential lyric. Each man ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... tendency in human nature to be over-credulous as to our own achievements, and over-sceptical as to those ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... tremor or a doubt; he would have as soon questioned the reality of the old farm-house and the faces of the family gathered about the table. Of the susceptibility of the nerves to morbid activity, or the powers of the overdriven brain to objectify its concepts, he had never even dreamed. He was a credulous and unsophisticated youth, dwelling in a realm of imagination rather than in a world of reality and law. He had much to learn. His education was about to begin, and to begin as does all true and effective education, in a spiritual temptation. The Ghebers say that when their ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... Nature, was very liberally supplied by the artist, to meet the wants of the catalogue of "organs." Professor Bumpus is seated in front of a row of women, —horn-combers and gold-beaders, or somewhere about that range of life,—looking so credulous, that, if any Second-Advent Miller or Joe Smith should come along, he could string the whole lot of them on his cheapest lie, as a boy strings a dozen "shiners" on a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... forced against his will into this servitude nor any foreign seaman on domestic voyages. Another evil tending to degrade and enslave the sailor was the allowance made by law of three months' advance wages on beginning a voyage. This apparently harmless and, to the credulous and inexperienced legislator, beneficial provision gave a chance to the sailors' boarding-house keeper and runner, or "crimp,'' as he or she is called, to "shanghai'' seamen and put them aboard drunk or drugged, with little or no clothing but what they had on their ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... with child-like, credulous affection We behold their tender buds expand; Emblems of our own great resurrection, Emblems of the bright and ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... husband. Late one evening came a thundering knock at my father's door, and as all the servants had retired, a youth who happened to be staying with us at the time, started, candle in hand, to answer it: Now the young man was of a credulous turn, and had just awakened from a snooze in his chair. Presently a loud shriek called all who were up in the house to the door, where, lying prostrate and faint, was found the youth, and standing over him, with eye-balls distended—making ineffectual efforts to speak—was the husband ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... women from Ford; but he was not to tell what, or to whom. He walked out; he was followed; but somewhere about St. Paul's they lost him. He came back, and said he had delivered the message, and the women exclaimed, "Then we are all undone!" Dr. Pellet, who was not a credulous man, inquired into the truth of this story, and he said, the evidence was irresistible. My wife went to the Hummums; (it is a place where people get themselves cupped.) I believe she went with intention to hear about this story of Ford. At first ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... might terrify a credulous and ignorant people, but it has nothing surprising for me. Let Ennana and the wise men come. ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... an accurate journal from the time he commenced to write about the country to the present, because there has been no period of time when I have been alive that I have not heard of Bancroft, and I should be equally credulous if President Lane should tell me that he was here at the founding of this Institution. But instead of bringing those volumes of Bancroft's here, and reading them to you on this occasion, I will let the reporters publish them as the ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... direct from his famous uncle. These, however, are conjectures, more or less probable. The story may derive from Fray Basilio Ponce de Leon or it may not. It is the kind of story that any unscrupulous person might easily invent and repeat to a too credulous visitor. As it stands, the evidence in its support is, on the face of it, unsatisfactory. The case for the story is perhaps not quite so weak as has been supposed;[200] ingenuity has shown that the case against it may, to some extent, be frittered away.[201] Still, there is ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... be," said Xodar, "when they find from whence you have come. That is but one of the superstitions which Issus has foisted upon a credulous humanity. She works through the Holy Therns who are as ignorant of her real self as are the Barsoomians of the outer world. Her decrees are borne to the therns written in blood upon a strange parchment. The poor deluded fools think that they are receiving the revelations of ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... during the remainder of the summer, and when autumn came I was conscious of having undergone a mental change. Whereas I was formerly trusting, credulous, and optimistic, at least toward all except myself, I was become suspicious even of the seal of sincerity, weighed words, and applied the scalpel of analysis to others' motives as well as to ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... ran any risk that day, 'twas because he was drunk. Oh, too credulous son of Cecrops,[116] do you accept that as a glorious exploit? A woman would carry a heavy burden if only a man had put it on her shoulders. But to fight! Go to! he would shit himself, if ever it came ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... slumber for ages, for no less purpose than to reserve it to the horny-handed son of toil of our glorious country. It will awaken to the clarion call of our wealth, our brains, and our genius." He then mentioned Corrigan and the Midland grant—another reservation of Providence, which a credulous and asinine Congress had bestowed, in fee-simple, upon a certain suave gentleman, named Marchmont—and disseminated such other details as a servile board of directors need know; and then he concluded with a flowery peroration that left his ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... tears, the tender kiss she gave me in parting, made it all as yet a mystery to me. I could only look upon her recent melancholy as a presentiment of our common misfortune; and while I was deploring the event which tore me from her, I was credulous enough to consider her fate as much deserving of pity ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... with Vada, a thought which filled him with dismay, and yet there was hope in his heart. But then where the head might easily enough fail his heart had accepted responsibility. There was a note in the woman's appeal which struck a responsive chord in his own credulous heart, and somehow he felt that his parting with Vada was not to be for long. He felt that Jessie would eventually come back to him. He felt, though he did not put the thought into words, that ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... feared; as though some demon sent Suspicion without form into the world, To whisper unimaginable things. Then thy fond arguing banished all but hope, Each wish, and every feeling, was with thine, Till I partook thy nature, and became Credulous, and incredulous, like thee. We, who have met so altered, meet no more. Mountains and seas! ye are not separation: Death! thou dividest, but unitest too, In everlasting peace and faith sincere. Confiding love! where is thy resting-place? Where is ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... power and the need of stern self-restraint. That Islam should seem to be more spiritual than Christianity seemed irony indeed, but an irony which seemed to have facts to prove it. An age of superstition, an age of credulous limits after the miraculous, an age when materialism made rapid progress among {159} the courtiers of the great city, was an age, it might well seem, which needed a protest against "iconoduly," as the iconoclasts termed the custom of the Eastern Church. And if the controversy could have been kept ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... not; that mountain was only a credulous hypothesis. As you see, there isn't the least mountain capable of attracting ships, of attracting their iron anchor after anchor and nail after nail, and you see it respects your shoes as much as any other land on ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... with the idea of the Builder and Sustainer of it all showing Himself in a burning bush, exhibiting His hinder parts, or behaving in other familiar ways ascribed to Him in the Jewish Scriptures, the incongruity must appear. Did this credulous prattle of the ancients about miracles stand alone; were it not associated with words of imperishable wisdom, and with examples of moral grandeur unmatched elsewhere in the history of the human race, both the miracles and their 'evidences' would have long since ceased to be the transmitted ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... of this ghastly superstition into a flame; and they were actuated partly by a desire to bring about a religious revival, which might stay for a while the hastening lapse of their own authority, and still more by that credulous scepticism of feeble-minded piety which, dreads the cutting away of an orthodox tumor of misbelief, as if the life-blood of faith would follow, and would keep even a stumbling-block in the way of salvation, if only enough generations had tripped over it to make it venerable. The witches ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Pharisee are still with us. "Establish the credibility of the miracles of Jesus, or, better still, let Him work a miracle to-day, and we will believe," they say. This age is credulous; it hungers to believe the extraordinary. Yet, while it is running after folly, it is blind to the most extraordinary fact, the most stupendous miracle that ever took place, although it goes on right before its eyes and ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... him as a faithful counsellor and an able Minister. As loyal as wise, he was, from 1789, an enemy to the French Revolution. He easily foresaw that the specious promise of regeneration held out by impostors or fools to delude the ignorant, the credulous and the weak, would end in that universal corruption and general overthrow which we since have witnessed, and the effects of which our ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to have been always open to express his astonishment at, sometimes, the most common and contemptible productions; and his paper in the Philosophical Transactions betrays such simplicity and ignorance that one is astonished how my Lord Oxford and the learned Bishop of Ely could have employed so credulous a bibliographical forager. A modern collector and lover of perfect copies will witness, with shuddering, among Bagford's immense collection of Title Pages, in the Museum, the frontispieces of the Complutensian Polyglot, and ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... indignation, or by the more amiable contrivances of patriotic and virtuous sentiment, Benjamin and Davis sought, if they could not convince legislators, at least to attract to their peculiar doctrines the impulsive and credulous masses among their own people. On the contrary, it was apparent that Northern statesmen, confident in the exercise of intellectual resources, relied on the intelligence and reason of their auditors and constituents, and seldom resorted to that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... become a mineral. He was all gold when he lay down, but rose All tincture; and doth not alone dispose Leaden and iron wills to good, but is Of power to make even sinful flesh like his. Had one of those, whose credulous piety Thought that a soul one might discern and see Go from a body, at this sepulchre been, And issuing from the sheet this body seen, He would have justly thought this body a soul, If not of any man, ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... are a certain number of people who always think dead men great and live men small.' The tendency is natural and is entirely worthy of blame. If a man is great when he is dead, then he was great when he was alive. It is but a re-echo of much of the folly talked during the war, when we were so credulous as to believe that every dead soldier was a saint and every live one a hero. Then, when the war was over, these hero worshippers quietly forgot that the soldiers had been heroes, put up stone crosses ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... was less credulous, and he was struck by Sam's hearty appearance. Certainly he looked very unlike a boy who did not ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... understand perfectly, Baron von Pollnitz, of which fault, amongst the many that you daily and hourly commit, I speak. You know that it has pleased you to declare the house, which I have just presented to Boden, to be yours, and that you have found credulous people who have lent ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... such grievous defects of it. For so it often happens, that when a rational medicine is not to be found, any improper and rash one is attempted. But such experiments are to be abandoned to itinerant quacks, and credulous old women. Though even in our days our art is not sufficiently purged of this filth in these cases; seeing the dung of some birds, and the hoofs of quadrupeds are still ordered to be swallowed down by the sick. But whereas chemistry has furnished us with the means of extracting the salts, ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... Fathers of the Church attest as having seen, or having been authentically informed of, must conclude that they were either very credulous, or deceived the people. To refuse to believe the marvels which have reached us by an uniform and universal tradition, is to call in question all tradition; to render all its channels suspicious, and to cause it to be looked upon as a questionable ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... own, so short was the interval of time, before I received the following note: "Dans toute l'Angleterre il n'y a qu'une voix contre moi, et c'est la mienne." Then followed the signature of a French lady of the eighteenth century, and these words: "What a dear, innocent, confiding, credulous creature you are! and how you do ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... tablespoonfuls, filling up the phial from the faucet at the rough sink in one corner of the room. I replaced the phial, locked the cabinet, and concealing the broken bottle in my dressing-gown, lest I should meet one of the servants, I retraced my steps to my own room. I was not wholly credulous of its marvellous properties, although Hilyard was not given to boasting or lying—except to women—but I believed it at least to be a poison, and I believed that it defied analysis, as ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... thoughts, manners, even the open, credulous eyes of the quiet folk dwelling about the Perdu, wore in greater or less degree the complexion of the neighborhood. How this came to be is one of those nice questions for which we need hardly expect definitive ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... farmer was a sensible man, as straight on the level of dull intelligence as other men; but so credulous was he in regard to the riches possessed by his wife's brother, that a very little tempted him to childish exaggeration of the probable amount. Now that Anthony himself furnished the incitement, he was quite lifted from the earth. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is another conceit of better notice, and whispered thorow the world with some attention; credulous and vulgar auditors readily believing it, and more judicious and distinctive heads not altogether rejecting it. The conceit is excellent, and, if the effect would follow, somewhat divine: whereby we might communicate like spirits, and confer on earth with Menippus in the moon. And this is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... But Raoul, less credulous than his old friend, had concluded from Porthos's recital that if Saint-Aignan was going to the king, Saint-Aignan would tell the king everything, and that the king would most assuredly forbid Saint-Aignan to obey ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... reckon with the opinion of the world, has recently attempted to put her conduct in a better light by trying to throw the responsibility for the war upon the Allies. But through all the gross falsehoods, which fail to deceive even the most credulous, the ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... be equally the beauty-spots of the mountains. How perplexing it is that advisers are always so kindly and willing to help, and always so undiscriminating. It is equally disastrous to be a sceptic and to be credulous. Banff is an ordinary little tourist-resort in mountainous country, with hills and a stream and snow-peaks beyond. Beautiful enough, and invigorating. But Lake Louise—Lake Louise is of another world. Imagine a little round lake 6000 feet up, a mile across, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... For you cannot help being more dominated by the opinion of your contemporaries than by that of the fore-running or following generation. He held his countenance in excellent command, and did not meddle even by a word. You could be sure, however, that he was no credulous person who accepted everything that ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... have begun to cut it up then and there. Certain bits of the fat and small pieces from each limb are laid upon the altar, and promptly consumed. These are the goddess's peculiar portion, and the credulous at least believe that she, though unseen, is present to eat thereof; certainly the sniff of the burning meat is grateful to her divine nostrils. The priest and the helpers are busy taking off the hide and securing the best joint—these are their "fees" for professional services. All the rest ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... of undesirable attention. I went alone, living with primitive Russian settlers and afterwards with the Indians. To gain a hold on them I studied the occult sciences and learned tricks that impose upon the credulous. To the white men I'm a crank, to the Indians something of a magician, but my search for the oil has gone on, and now while I already know where boring would be commercially profitable, I'm on the brink of tapping ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... vanities, all is vanity! How can I make a record of what passed within me, without seeming to be satirical? But I speak plain, serious words. As people call me credulous for acknowledging Catholic claims, so they call me satirical for disowning Anglican pretensions; to them it is credulity, to them it is satire; but it is not so in me. What they think exaggeration, I think truth. I am not speaking of the Anglican Church with any disdain, though to ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Minister would say to him: "If not for your own sake, be a believer for that of the public. Seriously, my dear Boulingrin, that there are moments when I wonder which of us two is the more credulous in respect of fairies. I never think of them, and you are always ...
— The Story Of The Duchess Of Cicogne And Of Monsieur De Boulingrin - 1920 • Anatole France
... place or climate as a means of recovery; he had tried that long enough. His physician, the one who served the community, assisted him constantly with advice and remedies, and once or twice he tried a sanitarium; he was apt to try anything suggested, being credulous about such matters. But his strength of body slowly faded away. He was more disturbed than surprised at this, and fought for life every ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... these foolish folk here. It's these stupid creatures who're just ready to fly at the throat of Providence and defy all—all superstition. Oh, yes, I know," she hurried on, as the man raised his strongly marked brows in astonishment. "You'll maybe think me a fool, a silly, credulous fool. But I know—I feel it here." She placed her hands upon her bosom with ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... position, and present peculiar views, in the light of the new sciences of which it is the exponent,—views not derived from the past, not in harmony with the orthodox literature of the day, nor tinged by any credulous fanaticism, but resulting from a half century of earnest and scientific ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... way into one of the daily papers, with many embellishments, brought crowds of believers in "the night side of nature" to our mischievous youngsters, who were ready to humor the credulous public to the top of its bent. Very many people looked ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... were in a frenzy of delight. This was the mountain so often discussed over the bivouac fires. Who of them had not heard of it, whether credulous or not? It was no fable, then. There it was before them, ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... at him, leering. Double-crossed? Did Holliday think he was that credulous? But he had tested Holliday's strength and feared it more than ever. When finally he had to rise he dodged the other with a swift, sideways wriggle. The ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... together, again at Nohant, the scenes began once more. Dudevant's irritability was increased by the fact that he was always short of money, and that he was aware of his own deplorable shortcomings as a financial administrator. He had made speculations which had been disastrous. He was very credulous, as so many suspicious people are, and he had been duped by a swindler in an affair of maritime armaments. He had had all the more faith in this enterprise because a picture of the boat had been ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... once fell from grace and disappeared in the maelstrom of the carnal world; in a few years he came back as penitent as he was penniless, with strange accounts of how men had fleeced him of all he possessed save the clothes—none too desirable—on his back. Men were so scarce that the credulous sisters and charitable deacons voted to accept his tales as true and receive him ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... by some practical joker for the purpose of frightening timid people and encouraging the credulous. I didn't want to spoil your little picnic, so I ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... shorten mine, Sancho," returned the bachelor, "if you are not the second person in the history, and there are even some who would rather hear you talk than the cleverest in the whole book; though there are some, too, who say you showed yourself over-credulous in believing there was any possibility in the government of that island offered ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... discerning reader is left to judge. In the Chevalier Duvall will be recognized one of those splendid villains, whose superb rascality is cloaked beneath the mantle of a fine person, elegant address, and the assumption of every quality likely to interest and please the credulous people whom he honors with his ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... characters! I trust thou art no impostor, and that thy revelation of blissful scenes of existence beyond death and the grave, is not one of the many impositions which time after time have been palmed on credulous mankind. I trust that in thee "shall all the families of the earth be blessed," by being yet connected together in a better world, where every tie that bound heart to heart, in this state of existence, shall be, far beyond our present conceptions, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Antiquities, roving, magotie-headed, and sometimes little better than crased: and being exceedingly credulous, would stuff his many Letters sent to A.W. with folliries and misinformations." ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... that the Ford was moving was he released from the panting tension. He glanced once at his favorite tree, elm twigs against the gold patina of sky, and fumbled for sleep as for a drug. He who had been a boy very credulous of life was no longer greatly interested in the possible and improbable adventures ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... the world seems to spin around. Hegel showed a sense in which being and not being are the same but that is a most abstract and purely methodological statement. What in the world is more opposite than love and hate, from every practical and truly psychological point of view? We must not be credulous about the unconscious and ascribe to it absurdities, nor must we lose our orientation for surely up and down, right and left, light and dark, do differ. If the unconscious can be used to cause a darkness in which everything loses its identity and fuses into ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... sceptical as Voltaire, as atheistic as a German professor, as practical as a Jew banker, as subtle as a Jesuit, he has as many ways of converting the folks among whom he is thrown as Panurge had of eating the corn in ear. For the simple and credulous—crosses and beads; for the hard-hearted and venal—material considerations; for the cultured and educated—a fine tissue of epigrams and anthropology; for the ladies—flattery and badinage. A spiritual ancestor of Anatole France's marvellous full-length figure of Jerome Coignard, Borrow's ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... respect to her)—I did not proceed to gratify them, or to follow up my advantage by any action which should declare, "I think you a common adventurer, and will see whether you are so or not!" Yet any one but a credulous fool like me would have made the experiment, with whatever violence to himself, as a matter of life and death; for I had every reason to distrust appearances. Her conduct has been of a piece from the beginning. ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... are fain to call themselves) Philosophers, having their eyes darken'd, and their Brains troubl'd with the smoke of their own Furnaces, began to rail at the Peripatetick Doctrine, which they were too illiterate to understand, and to tell the credulous World, that they could see but three Ingredients in mixt Bodies; which to gain themselves the repute of Inventors, they endeavoured to disguise by calling them, instead of Earth, and Fire, and Vapour, Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury; to which they gave the canting title of Hypostatical ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... put, Sir," said I, "a moving case, and in a generous manner. What, indeed, does not such a deceiver deserve?"—"And the more," said Mrs. Chapman, "as the most innocent heart is generally the most credulous."—"Very true," said my countess; "for such an one as would do no harm to others, seldom suspects any from others; and her lot is very unequally cast; admired for that very innocence which tempts some brutal ravager to ruin it."—"Yet, what is that virtue," said the dean, "which cannot ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... these sentences is from Horace (Epistle I. xviii. 69): "Fly from the inquisitive man, for he is a babbler." The second, "While each pleases himself we are a credulous crowd," seems to be varied from ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... limbs, and yellow face; clinging, loyal and brave, to the knightly honor, to the quaint, delicate fancies of his youth, that were dust and ashes to other men. In the very haggard face you could find the quiet purity of the child he had been, and the old child's smile, fresh and credulous, on the mouth. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... went away far from satisfied. She thought Miss Upjohn very credulous and prejudiced in Vava's favour, and the unworthy thought came into her head that it was because she was a protegee of the chairman of their board of governors. 'And because of that she won't believe a word against her,' said the young mistress to herself. Then, being, as has already been seen, ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... he who had ever prided himself on his truth-fronting intellect, and had freely uttered his scorn of the credulous mob! He who was his own criterion of moral right and wrong! No wonder he felt like a whipped cur. It was the ancestral vice in his blood, brought out by over-tempting circumstance. The long line of base-born predecessors, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... refreshing, in the midst of the open or covert defence and protection among us of the surviving remnant of Slavery at the South, granting for the moment that it is now reduced to that, and in the midst of such easy and over-credulous and mistaken assumptions of its complete, virtual destruction already, by undoubted friends of freedom, as in the case of the Times editor, General Grant, and numerous others, to listen to such hearty utterances, in the keynote of the right policy, as were made by Secretary Chase in his ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... but use their arts to secure loans from their new acquaintances. Not long since a foreigner, calling himself a Russian Count, and claiming to be sent here on a mission connected with the Russian navy, succeeded in borrowing from some credulous acquaintances, who were dazzled by his pretended rank, sums ranging from $500 to $2000, and amounting in the aggregate to $30,000. When the time of payment arrived, the Count had disappeared, and it was ascertained that ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Of clear estates, and to no faction sworn, Dear lovers of their king, and death to meet For country's cause, that glorious thing and sweet; To speak not forward, but in action brave, In giving generous, but in council grave; Candidly credulous for once, nay twice; But sure the devil cannot ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... more barricades of flagstones—no more assaulting his Majesty's troops with cobbles. I cannot feel friendly toward my quondam fellow-American, Napoleon III., especially at this time,—[July, 1867.]—when in fancy I see his credulous victim, Maximilian, lying stark and stiff in Mexico, and his maniac widow watching eagerly from her French asylum for the form that will never come—but I do admire his nerve, his calm self-reliance, his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... clergymen who accompanied the expedition were dead; one of them, Rev. Thomas James, died at sea before the colonists landed, and soon after the arrival Rev. Adam Scot succumbed. Paterson buried his wife in that soil, which, as he had assured his too credulous countrymen, exhaled health and vigor. Men passed to the hospital, and from thence to the grave, and the survivors were only kept alive through the friendly offices of the Indians. Affairs continued ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... through those long days and nights that he had spent alone on that isolated hilltop. As he glanced about him, the completed work loomed large and seemed like a monument to the indomitable will and prowess of this young fellow who seemed to him so simple and credulous—almost childlike in some ways. He wondered how Tom could ever have raised those upper logs into their places. It seemed to him that the trifling instance of thoughtlessness which was the cause of all this striving, was nothing at all, and in no way justified ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... that it is much greater, but that it is very near the size it seems to be: so that our eyes are either quite correct, or, at all events, not very incorrect. What becomes then of the exception, "If once...?" However, let us leave this credulous man, who does not believe that the senses are ever wrong,—not even now, when that sun, which is borne along with such rapidity that it is impossible even to conceive how great its velocity is, nevertheless seems to us to be ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... the night! thou poor Forlorn! Remorse that man on his death-bed possess, Who in the credulous hour of tenderness Betrayed, then cast thee forth to Want and Scorn! The world is pitiless: the chaste one's pride 5 Mimic of Virtue scowls on thy distress: Thy Loves and they that envied thee deride: ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... rebellion that ranged from dislike to a primitive, hot hate. Of his own land and life he heard nothing, not even when his face was again turned toward the east. Nor did he think of it. As now he saw them, the rules and principles and standards of his former existence were petty and credulous. But he assured himself he had not abandoned those standards. He had only temporarily laid them aside, as he had left behind him in London his frock-coat and silk hat. Not because he would not use them again, but because in the Congo they ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... smiling with a kind of bitter triumph. "No," said he, "I will take nothing at your hands; if I were dying of thirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips, I should find the courage to refuse. It may be credulous, but I will do nothing to commit ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... a name!" gasped Charlot, who in such matters was profoundly ignorant and correspondingly credulous. ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... proper, once for all, to give a true and fair statement of Johnson's way of thinking upon the question, whether departed spirits are ever permitted to appear in this world, or in any way to operate upon human life. He has been ignorantly misrepresented as weakly credulous upon that subject; and, therefore, though I feel an inclination to disdain and treat with silent contempt so foolish a notion concerning my illustrious friend, yet as I find it has gained ground, it is necessary to refute it. The real fact then is, that ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... defensive attitude, he deliberately rode up to them; after which the tracks indicated that they proceeded about three miles together, when the Indians most brutally killed and scalped my most unfortunate but too credulous friend, who might probably have saved his life had he not, in the kindness of his excellent heart, imagined that the savages would reciprocate his friendly advances. He was most woefully mistaken, and his life paid the forfeit of his generous and ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... the greater glory of some fine figment or other. It filled me, not with wrath at the work of Kaisers and Kings, for we know what is possible with them, but with dismay at the discovery that one's fellows are so docile and credulous that they will obey any order, however abominable. The very heavens had been fouled by this obscene and pallid worm, crawling over those eternal verities to which eyes had been lifted for light when night and trouble were over dark. God was dethroned ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... Under this title it is popular and efficacious; for, apart from an invisible select few, a pure abstract idea is only an empty term, and truth, to be apparent, must be clothed with a body. It requires a form of worship, a legend, and ceremonies in order to address the people, women, children, the credulous, every one absorbed by daily cares, any understanding in which ideas involuntarily translate themselves through imagery. Owing to this palpable form it is able to give its weighty support to the conscience, to counterbalance ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... anything to do with the other events of his narrative, Crowsfeather very candidly admitted he could not even conjecture. He was still at a loss whether to set down the conjurer for a pretender, or as a real oracle. Peter, however, was less credulous even than the chiefs. He had his superstitious notions, like all uneducated men, but a clear head and quick intellect placed him far above the weaknesses of the red man in general. On receiving a description of the person of the unknown "medicine-man," ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... suppressed. Such a man is a menace to the community! In the meantime, I must beg of you to dismiss him at once. Do not listen to him, do not allow him to influence you! You are only an impulsive, credulous girl, and he is using you as a mere tool for his own ends. I cannot imagine how you happened to fall into ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... the Scotch farmer would have of a pleasantness in blue hills and running streams, wholly wanting in the Greek mind; and perhaps also some difference of views on the subjects of truth and honesty. But the main points, the easy, athletic, strongly logical and argumentative, yet fanciful and credulous, characters of mind, would be very similar in both; and the most serious change in the substance of the stuff among the modifications above suggested as necessary to turn the Scot into the Greek, is that effect of softer climate and surrounding ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... in general upright and honest, therefore unsuspecting and credulous. They are too much engrossed with their own business to pry into the conduct of their neighbours, and too indifferent, in point of disposition, to interest themselves in what they conceive to be foreign to their own concerns. They are wealthy ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... herself to look into his face. There was something so monstrously unbelievable about his audacity that she could hardly believe her ears. What sort of a credulous stupid creature was he, she angrily asked herself, that in one breath he could all but confess to her that he was a spy and in the next beseech her to do him a favor. Yet there came to her now a remembrance of her duty to ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... be more credulous and imaginative than most. Probably why I'm a critic. And I really should know better." He looked down at ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... awake by bright torches, to bestow that light upon it which it began to lose. Some of them thought hereby to keepe the Moone in her orbe, whereas otherwise she would have fallen downe upon the earth, and the world would have lost one of its lights, for the credulous people believed, that Inchanters, and Witches could bring the Moone ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins
... meat so they can see if it tastes like regular food. They don't hardly believe these pictures where people dressed up like they had money are going into spasms of delight about it. Still, they don't know—poor credulous dubs! They think things you see in a Sunday paper might be true now and then, even if it is most always a pack of lies thought up by dissipated ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... boys sent from the restaurant and toy-shop could not be mistaken for Santa Claus even by the credulous fancy of the children, and Mrs. Marlow stepped forward eagerly ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... are sagacious, executive, intelligent, benevolent, sympathetic, philanthropic, self-reliant; possessed of all the qualities, in fine, which inspire respect and confidence in their fellow men, and cause them to be recognized as leaders. Others are timid, ignorant, feeble-minded, credulous, prone to lean upon others, hero worshippers; people whose natural bent it is to follow some one in whom they put faith. The sentiment of loyalty is inherent in the human breast, and will find an object whereon to fasten. At one time it is an Alexander; ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... said, coldly, as this dagger-thrust struck home to my heart. "I only knew him when he was quite a boy. He seemed to me then of a warm and loving temperament, generous to a fault, perhaps over-credulous, yet he promised well. His father thought so, I confess I thought so too. Reports have reached me from time to time of the care with which he managed the immense fortune left to him. He gave large ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... this, a positive distaste may grow up, which, in the intellectual order, may amount to a spontaneous and unreasoning disbelief in that which appears to be in opposition to the more familiar concept, and this at all times. It is often and truly said, "that past ages were pre-eminently credulous as compared with our own, yet the difference is not so much in the amount of the credulity, as in ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... shameless ignorance, the most polite corruption, the most unblushing baseness. I have no doubt that the picture is full of national exaggeration. Indeed, the method of Mutinelli (who I believe intends to tell the truth) in writing social history is altogether too credulous and incautious. It is well enough to study contemporary comedy for light upon past society, but satirical ballads and lampoons, and scurrilous letters, cannot be accepted as historical authority. Still there is no question ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells |
