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Ingenuous   /ɪndʒˈɛnjuəs/   Listen
Ingenuous

adjective
1.
Characterized by an inability to mask your feelings; not devious.  Synonym: artless.
2.
Lacking in sophistication or worldliness.  Synonym: innocent.  "His ingenuous explanation that he would not have burned the church if he had not thought the bishop was in it"



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"Ingenuous" Quotes from Famous Books



... of a master mind as a lucid, vigorous, discriminating, and satisfactory refutation of the various false philosophies which have appeared in modern times to allure ingenuous youth to their destruction. Dr. Buchanan has studied them thoroughly, weighed them dispassionately, and exposed their falsity and emptiness. His refutation is a clear stream of light from beginning ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... small and noisy and irritating cranks. I have met scores of them. They are intense, but shortsighted. Some are delightfully ingenuous, with the lovable simplicity of the child. Others are of a morbid and carping disposition, with an inordinate ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... like Yvon, the ducal morion, to have in the fist, like Esplandian, a living flame, or, like Phyles, father of Polydamas, to have brought back from Ephyra a good suit of mail, a present from the king of men, Euphetes; it suffices to give one's life for a conviction or a loyalty. This ingenuous little soldier, yesterday a peasant of Bauce or Limousin, who prowls with his clasp-knife by his side, around the children's nurses in the Luxembourg garden, this pale young student bent over a piece ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... ribbons of the curtain; it would be necessary to secure the note with something; he returned along the veranda to the steps, where he had noticed a small irregular stone lying, which had evidently escaped from Richelieu's bag of treasure specimens, and had been overlooked by that ingenuous child. It was of a pretty peacock-blue color, and, besides securing a paper, would be sure to attract her attention. He placed his note on the inside ledge, and the blue stone atop, and went away with a ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... unswerving affinity towards light amusement and entertainments of a no-class kind; and in place of a wise aloofness, befitting a wearer of the third Gold Button and the Horn Belt-clasp, in situations of critical perplexity, seems by his own ingenuous showing to have maintained an unparalleled aptitude for behaving either with the crystalline simplicity of a Kan-su earth-tiller, or the misplaced buffoonery of a seventh-grade body-writher taking the least ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... youngest, the freshest thing imaginable; he was overtall and gawky, his cheeks were as delicately rosy as apple blossoms, and his smile was an epitome of ingenuous interest and frank wonder. It was as if some quality of especial fineness, lingering unspotted in Hunter Kinemon, had found complete expression in his son David. A great deal of this certainly was due to his mother, a thick solid woman, who retained more than a trace of girlish ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... conscious truth to hide, To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, 70 Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride With incense kindled at ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various

... offer, the fact of its having been made, is a bond of union from which neither party gets free—Sir Stratford Manvers had proposed: had she accepted him? did she love him? ay, did she love him?—a question apparently easy to answer, but to an ingenuous spirit which knows not how to analyze its feelings, impossible. Sir Stratford was young, handsome, clever—but there was a certain something, a je ne scais quoi about him, which marred the effect of all these qualities. A look, a tome that jarred with the rest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... servitude, the many heartaches and terrors to which our childhood is exposed in going through a grammar school.... No one who has gone through what they call a great school but must remember to have seen children of excellent and ingenuous natures (as has afterwards appeared in their manhood); I say no man has passed through this way of education but must have seen an ingenuous creature expiring with shame, with pale looks, beseeching sorrow and silent ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... confess at once that at first, at least, I very much admired the curate. I am not referring to my admiration of his fine figure—six feet high and straight as an arrow—nor of his handsome, open, ingenuous countenance, or his candid blue eye, or his thick curly hair. No; what won my heart from an early period of my visit to my cousins, the Poltons, of Poltons Park, was the fervent, undisguised, unashamed, confident, and altogether matter-of-course manner in which he made love ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope

... she could not pry into the lad's private affairs. Her brother retorted that a youth, in his physically helpless condition, who was really ingenuous, would have poured out his life's history into the ears of so sympathetic a woman, and have bored her to tears with the inner secrets ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... expressive way, as "slap-up." She had received him quite like an old friend; treated him to eau sucree, of which beverage he expressed himself a great admirer; and actually asked him to dine the next day. But there was a cloud over the ingenuous youth's brow, and I ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Reserve Battalion has an almost unique reputation as an angler. Scattered elements of the regiment carry his piscatorial heroics to obscure corners of the earth. Majors on the Pushti Kuli range recount the episode of the ingenuous troutling which, having apparently conceived a violent passion for the Colonel, literally forced itself upon the hook seven times within a short afternoon. Captains on the Sultanitza Planina rehearse the epic incidents of how the Colonel snatched victory from defeat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various

... which embody a people's effort to understand their relations to the great unknown. They are essentially religious, symbolic, mystic, subtle, full of fears and propitiations, involved, often based on the forgotten,—altogether unlike in their approach to the ingenuous and confident child. They are full of the struggle of life. Hardly before the involved introspections and theories of adolescence can we expect the real beauty and poignancy of a genuine myth to be even dimly understood. And why offer the shell without the spirit? ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell

... remembered that Ben Reed, a graduate of a theological seminary, who could talk tears into the eyes of an Apache, was the slickest stock thief west of the Mississippi. He was well aware that a pair of mild eyes and gentle, ingenuous manners are many a rogue's most valuable asset, and though the bug-hunter talked frankly of his pilgrimages into the hills, there was always a chance that his pursuit was a pose, ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... Adelaide Lacey in the paper, with her hair done this way. She's going to marry a duke, you know." It was characteristic of Rosetta Muriel thus to excuse her lapse into simplicity, but though the ingenuous explanation was the truth, it was not the whole truth. Even Rosetta Muriel was not quite the same girl for having come in contact with Peggy Raymond, and her poor little undeveloped, unlovely self was reaching out gropingly to things a shade higher than those ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith

... suited so perfectly, and her obvious childish pleasure communicated itself to me. The spirit of youth in her knocked on my rather jaded heart, and I opened to it. That was beautiful and strange. I talked with her, and I felt myself younger, ingenuous rather than cynical, inclined even to a radiant, though foolish, optimism. She was very natural, very imperfect in worldly education, full of fragmentary but decisive views on life, quite unabashed in giving them forth, quite inconsiderate in ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens

... ample means to carry on excavations on a large scale. If the first success may be considered as merely a great piece of good fortune, the following ones were certainly due to intelligent, untiring labor and ingenuous scholarship. We see the results in Botta's voluminous work "Monuments de Ninive"[B] and in the fine Assyrian collection of the Louvre, in the first room of which is placed, as is but just, the portrait of the man to whose efforts and devotion it ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... one must, one must, though I have nothing of the expected to tell you. I have known Limehouse for many years, and have smiled many times at the articles that appear perennially on the wickedness of the place. Its name evokes evil tradition in the public mind. There are ingenuous people who regard it as dangerous. I have already mentioned its sinister atmosphere; but there is an end of it. There is nothing substantial. These are the people who will tell you of the lurking perils of certain quarters of ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... morals, aiming to produce the "greatest happiness of the greatest number," a system which has too long been taught among the students of our colleges and high schools. But he properly belongs to the Private Eudaimonists; for this interpreter of ethics to the ingenuous youth of England and America says, "Virtue is the doing good to mankind in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness. According to which definition, the good of mankind is the subject, the will of God the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... insincerity. Besides, the thought of being experimented upon in this way, did not in the least tend to soften his feelings towards the fair one. He believed in frankness, honesty and reciprocal sincerity. He liked a truthful, ingenuous mind, and turned instinctively from ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur

... bashfulness impressed one in the case of the weaker sex! There, it was altogether pleasing. Young Ocock's gaucherie had recalled the little maid Polly's ingenuous confusion, at finding herself the subject of conversation. He had not once consciously thought of Polly since his return. Now, when he did so, he found to his surprise that she had made herself quite a warm little nest in his memory. ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... than Vogotzine; suffering and languid, she was fatally at the mercy of the first lie which should caress her ear and stir her heart. From the first, therefore, she had loved Michel; she had, as she herself said, believed that she loved him with a love which would never end, a very ingenuous love, having neither the silliness of a girl who has just left the convent, nor the knowledge of a Parisienne whom the theatre and the newspapers have instructed in all things. Michel, then, could give to this ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... Peace respectfully took leave of her governess, and hastened to the arbour, where her little friends were met, in expectation of her coming. She told them how well pleased their governess was with them all, for the ingenuous confession of their faults in their past lives; and she then declared Mrs. Teachum's kind permission to them to take another walk ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding

... tenth part of learning stood or fell with the clergy: nor could I ever but hold it for a sordid and unworthy speech of any churchman who had a competency left him. If therefore ye be loath to dishearten utterly and discontent, not the mercenary crew of false pretenders to learning, but the free and ingenuous sort of such as evidently were born to study, and love learning for itself, not for lucre or any other end but the service of God and of truth, and perhaps that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise which God and good men have consented ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton

... make love for seven years, at the same time to be as sincere as ever creature was, and yet never to compromise myself by overtures that might have been foolish as regarded my own interests, or misleading as regarded hers. Most truly I loved this beautiful and ingenuous girl; and had it not been for the Bath and Bristol mail, heaven only knows what might have come of it. People talk of being over head and ears in love—now, the mail was the cause that I sank only over ears in love, which, you know, still left a trifle of brain to overlook the whole conduct of the ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... said he, in a peremptory tone, "spare yourself the trouble of torturing your invention; for, after all, I am pretty certain that I shall want capacity to comprehend the discussion of your lemma, and consequently be obliged to all the pangs of an ingenuous mind that I refuse my assent to ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... Our ingenuous and ingenious friend furthermore observed, that the demolition of Drury Lane Theatre by fire, its reconstruction under the auspices of the celebrated Mr. Whitbread, {2} the reward offered by the Committee for an opening address, and the public recitation of a poem composed expressly ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith

... however remote from my knowledge or pursuits. It was not my constituents in Westminster who laid this burthen on me: they kept with remarkable fidelity to the understanding on which I had consented to serve. I received, indeed, now and then an application from some ingenuous youth to procure for him a small government appointment; but these were few, and how simple and ignorant the writers were, was shown by the fact that the applications came in about equally whichever party was in power. My invariable answer was, that it ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... to his modern countrymen as the epitome of the noble and vigorous qualities that made Spain great. Menendez y Pelayo has called him the symbol of Spanish nationality in virtue of the fact that in him there were united sobriety of intention and expression, simplicity at once noble and familiar, ingenuous and easy courtesy, imagination rather solid than brilliant, piety that was more active than contemplative, genuine and soberly restrained affections, deep conjugal devotion, a clear sense of justice, loyalty to his sovereign ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon

... with Norry Parker recently that has troubled me a great deal. He said that you seemed both unwell and unhappy, and he felt that I was in some way responsible for your depression. Of course, we both know how ingenuous and romantic Norry is; he can find tragedy in a cut finger. I recognize that fact, but what he told me has given me no end of worry just ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks

... Clare, both being wards in Chancery interested in the great suit of "Jarndyce v. Jarndyce." Richard Carstone is a "handsome youth, about nineteen, of ingenuous face, and with a most engaging laugh." He marries his cousin Ada, and lives in hope that the suit will soon terminate and make him rich. In the meantime he tries to make two ends meet, first by the profession of medicine, then ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... are plenty of persons ingenuous enough to think that Mr. David is actually in a cataleptic sleep, one of the characters ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various

... hunting season, take the ugliest road out of Oxford, by the seven bridges, because there you may see farthest along the straight highway from the crown of the bridges, and number the ingenuous youth as on hunters they pace, or in hack or in dogcart or tandem they dash along to the "Meet." Arrived there, if the fox does get away—if no ambitious youngster heads him back—if no steeplechasing ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... desditz ecclesiasticques," is Claude Haton's ingenuous admission respecting his fellow priests of this period, "estoient fort vicieux encores pour lors, et les plus vicieux estoient ceux qui plus resistoient auxditz huguenotz, jusques a mettre la main aux cousteaux et ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... to those Scottish Episcopalians who complained to him of their sufferings and implored his protection was well weighed and well guarded, but clear and ingenuous. He wished, he said, to preserve, if possible, the institution to which they were so much attached, and to grant at the same time entire liberty of conscience to that party which could not be reconciled to any ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Blitzenberg sat by himself at a table in the dining-room of the Hotel Mayonaise, which, as everybody knows, is the largest and most expensive in London. He was a young man of a florid and burly Teutonic type and the most ingenuous countenance. Being possessed of a curious and enterprising disposition, as well as the most ample means, he had left his ancestral castle in Bavaria to study for a few months the customs and politics of England. In the language he was already proficient, and he had promised ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston

... not foresee, these ingenuous legislators, that if property is retainable by intent alone—nudo animo—it carries with it the right to let, to lease, to loan at interest, to profit by exchange, to settle annuities, and to levy a tax on a field which intent reserves, while the ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... attributes the flow of his ideas to a sudden inspiration. The interlocutor Protarchus, the son of Callias, who has been a hearer of Gorgias, is supposed to begin as a disciple of the partisans of pleasure, but is drawn over to the opposite side by the arguments of Socrates. The instincts of ingenuous youth are easily induced to take the better part. Philebus, who has withdrawn from the argument, is several times brought back again, that he may support pleasure, of which he remains to the end the uncompromising ...
— Philebus • Plato

... circle, from a nervous sense— An agonising poignant consciousness— That I must stand aloof, nor mingle with The wise and good in rational argument, The young in brilliant quickness of reply, Friendship's ingenuous interchange of mind, Affection's open-hearted sympathies? But feel myself an isolated being, A very wilderness of ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... was tall and majestic, his limbs strong and well-proportioned, his features regular, his countenance open and ingenuous, bearing all those characteristical marks which physiognomists assert denote an honest and ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... must give up the pleasures of leisure, of an unembarrassed mind, and of a free, unsuspicious temper. You must learn to do hard, if not unjust things; and as for the embarrassment of a delicate and ingenuous spirit, it is necessary for you to get rid of it as fast as possible. You must not stop to enlarge your mind, polish your taste, or refine your sentiments; but must keep on in one beaten track, without turning aside to the right hand or the ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child

... a missionary! Not a whaler! not a member of his Majesty's Government! not even Secretary of the Navy! Ah, Heaven! it is too blissful to be true; alas, I do but dream. And yet that noble, honest countenance—those oblique, ingenuous eyes—that massive head, incapable of—of—anything; your hand; give me your hand, bright waif. Excuse these tears. For sixteen weary years I have yearned for a moment ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... wanted was a tailor! He would give a hundred for the right to tell this scare to the boys at the club, but Webb's ingenuous confidence did not merit betrayal. Still, nothing should prevent him from telling Kitty, who knew how to keep a secret. He picked up the newspaper and resumed his computation of averages (batting), chuckling audibly ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... little favors it. But where the words of an author, taken literally, compared with some other passage in his writings, admitted to be authentic, involve a palpable contradiction, it hath been the custom of the ingenuous commentator to smooth the difficulty by the supposition that in the one case an allegorical or tropical sense was chiefly intended. So by the word 'native' I may be supposed to mean a town where I might have been born,—or where it might be desirable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... gathering his stifled breath, "Let me entreat you, sir," said he, "to hope better things. The world is ever tyrannical; it warps our sorrows to edge them with keener affliction. Let us not be slaves to the names it affixes to motive or to action. I know an ingenuous mind cannot help feeling when they sting. But there are considerations by which it may be overcome. Its fantastic ideas vanish as they rise; they teach ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... among the prime in worth, An object beauteous to behold; Well born, well bred; I sent him forth Ingenuous, innocent, and bold." ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... The ingenuous southerner thus poured out his projects into the night with many expressive gestures, and from time to time, as they walked rapidly to and fro in the vast and deserted square, majestically surrounded by its ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... possession of superior charms; but whether from the spirit of contradiction, from feeling herself more than ordinarily offended by her guardian's praise of this lady, or that there was a reserve in Miss Fenton that did not accord with her own frank and ingenuous disposition, so as to engage her esteem, certain it is that she took infinite satisfaction in hearing her beauty and virtues depreciated or turned into ridicule, particularly if Mr. Dorriforth was present. This was ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... certain that if she became anxious about their movements I should have no chance to play off my little game. All went as I could wish, we threw his mother off her guard, and she then began to show closer attention to me. I acted the ingenuous and innocent youth to perfection, but at the same time, in thinking of her charms, I let my prick get up to half-stand, so as to show its large proportions under my trousers. I very soon perceived that it had struck her notice, and her attention became concentrated upon me. She questioned ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... the materials as should consist of criticism and general literature, was entrusted to the care of the present Editor. The volumes now offered to the public are the first results of that arrangement. They must in any case stand in need of much indulgence from the ingenuous reader;—'multa sunt condonanda in opere postumo'; but a short statement of the difficulties attending the compilation may serve to explain some apparent anomalies, and to preclude ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... Knight! Our eldest Son is kept in reserve for some such Heroine! If you would be famous, if you would make a perfect thing of this Crusade, if you would render the lives of your fellow mortals longer and happier, if you would win that noble and ingenuous youth, our ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various

... would have had no saving merit whatsoever. But His holiness remained inviolate; and now it is the ground and the pattern of ours. It is not enough that you be meek and lowly; it is not enough that you be simple and ingenuous; it is not enough that you be sympathetic and affectionate; you must be holy. "Jesu's is a ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King

... what should pass between a teacher and ingenuous youths. As it is, what does pass? The teacher is a lifeless body, and you are lifeless bodies yourselves. When you have had enough to eat today, you sit down and weep about tomorrow's food. Slave! if you have it, well and good; if not, you will ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus

... in the Danish language with a tall man, of robust build. This fine fellow must have been possessed of great strength. His eyes, set in a large and ingenuous face, seemed to me very intelligent; they were of a dreamy sea-blue. Long hair, which would have been called red even in England, fell in long meshes upon his broad shoulders. The movements of this native were lithe and ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... Marchioness of Salisbury is of this family. Perhaps, of these Unitarian preachers, one of the most distinguished was Dr. William Enfield, whose 'Speaker' was one of the books placed in the hands of ingenuous youth, and whose 'History of Philosophy' was one of the works to be studied in their riper years. Norwich, indeed, was full of learned men. Its aged Bishop, Bathurst, was the one voter for Reform, much to the delight ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... seen anything more lovely and more charming than this old painting on wood, which was stiff enough indeed in its outline, but delightfully refreshing and ingenuous. ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

... the detective's design to entrap her into a series of falsehoods he might easily have done so. But there was no object in pursuing that course. He met her ingenuous gaze with a little lift of his shoulders. "This is mere foolishness, Lady Eileen. I want to give you the opportunity of stating frankly what occurred from the moment you got Robert Grell's letter this morning. You know this story of the dressmaker would fall to pieces ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... eager in the enjoyment of this gay world of pleasure and activity as any girl come up for her first season. Perhaps this notion occurred to the astute and experienced Lieutenant Ogilvie, who considered it his duty to warn his youthful and ingenuous friend. ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... been the impression produced upon an observer, but for a pair of lively spiritual eyes that sparkled in sockets somewhat sunken. These, combined with a well-formed mouth, and lips of a sarcastic cut, relieved the otherwise too ingenuous expression of his features, and proved that the young man was capable, when occasion required, of exhibiting a considerable power of repartee and acute observation. Just then the predominant expression ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... hereditary estates, who is well known on Newmarket Heath, and prominent among the gilded youth who throng the doors of the Gaiety Theatre; but he has studied politics about as much as Barnum's new white elephant, and the idea of rendering service to the State has not yet commenced to dawn on his ingenuous mind. If by any means it could be legitimate, and I hold it is illegitimate, to stigmatize any individual as enjoying great riches for which he has neither toiled nor spun, such a case would be the case ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... to linger in the society of the Duc de Saint Simon and Cardinal de Retz, it does not follow that I mean to introduce modern and ingenuous youth to the society of these gentlemen. Each man has his pet book. I still retain a great affection for a man of my own age who gives on birthdays and great feasts copies of "The Wide, Wide World" and "Queechy" to his grandchildren and their friends! Could you believe that? He ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... one by these pious Bolognese, who are the most devout people I ever lived amongst, but I think not much visited by travellers. It is painted by Albano, and represents the Redeemer of mankind as a boy scarce thirteen years old: ingenuous modesty, and meek resignation, beaming from each intelligent feature of a face divinely beautiful, and throwing out luminous rays round his sacred head, while the blessed Virgin and St. Joseph, placed on each ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... thirteen years of age, and in personal appearance somewhat alike, save that the face of the brown-haired boy was more open, ingenuous, and pleasing than that of his companion, whose hair and eyes were black as night. A jolt of the cars caused Maude to lay her chubby hand upon the shoulder of the elder boy, who, being very fond of children, caught it within his own, and in this way made ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes

... errand was, and asking whether he might come up and see Doctor Holmes any time the next day. Edward naively told him that he could come as early as Doctor Holmes liked—by breakfast-time, he was assured, as Edward was all alone! Doctor Holmes's amusement at this ingenuous note ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... and stole another glance at him. The expression of his face was ingenuous, not to say simple. She resolved to risk it. So far he had always won in their brief encounters, and monotony was always distasteful to her, especially monotony ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... need of things which he had already ordered, which, before she had been enticed into expressing a wish for them, were then speeding across the Continent toward her. Every hour brought her some fresh and ingenuous sign of his thought and of his devotion. He treated these tributes as a matter of course; if she failed to observe them and to see his handiwork in them he let them ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis

... failure of the annual graduating class to make its expected impression on the world has its pathetic side. Youth is credulous—as it always ought to be—and full of hope—else the world were dead already—and the graduate steps out into life with an ingenuous self-confidence in his resources. It is to him an event, this turning-point in the career of what he feels to be an important and immortal being. His entrance is public and with some dignity of display. For a day the world stops to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... orphan girl, warm of heart and single of purpose. Ingenuous as a babe, and made strong by love. Her adventures are the theme of the novel bearing her name.—Arthur Sherburne Hardy, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... "My ingenuous friend! Do you still think that's any reason? The fact is, Bessy wasn't awake, she wasn't even born, then.... She is now, and you know the infant's first conscious joy is ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... by motives of humanity. You must believe what you are told—that the sole motive is to get results. The eagerness with which all heads of model establishments would disavow to me any thought of being humane was affecting in its naivete; it had that touch of ingenuous wistfulness which I remarked everywhere in America—and nowhere more than in the demeanor of many mercantile highnesses. (I hardly expect Americans to understand just what I mean here.) It was as if they would ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett

... cannot provide it any longer without money, having not received a penny since the King's coming in. So the King spoke to my Lord Chamberlain; and many such mementos the King do now-a-days meet withall, enough to make an ingenuous man mad. I to Deptford, and there scolded with a master for his ship's not being gone, and so home to the office and did business till my eyes are sore again, and so home to sing, and then to bed, my eyes ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... worthy Friend, I am much pleased with your discourse, for that you seem to be so ingenuous, and so modest, as not to stretch arguments into Hyperbolicall expressions, but such as indeed they will reasonably bear; and I pray, proceed to the justification, or commendations of Angling, which I also long ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton

... favourably inclined the Emperor might be towards him, have appeared before the Emperor, the Estates, and the delegates of the Pope; moreover, no safe-conduct would have availed him. Luther seems, nevertheless, to have been ingenuous enough to think the contrary. At least, he wrote to a friend that the Elector had bidden him remain at Coburg; why, he knew not. To another friend, however, he alleged as a reason, that his going would not have been safe. But his prince ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... partial to her than to her sisters, who had been just married. I had paid great attention to her, for she had a fine voice, and did credit to my teaching, and there was a great intimacy between us, arising on my part from my admiration of her ingenuous and amiable disposition, which even her mother's example to the ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... is exposed, from his own want of experience, as well as from the selfishness, envy, malice, and base indifference of mankind. To secure a favourable prepossession, I have allowed him the advantages of birth and education, which in the series of his misfortunes will, I hope, engage the ingenuous more warmly in his behalf; and though I foresee, that some people will be offended at the mean scenes in which he is involved, I persuade myself that the judicious will not only perceive the necessity of describing those ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... the Italian climate seem naturally fitted to dispose the poetic soul to the dreams of rural life, and the language seems, by its graceful simplicity, peculiarly adapted to express the feelings of a class of people whom we picture to ourselves as ingenuous and infantine in their natures. The manners of the Italian peasantry are more truly pastoral than those of any other people, and a bucolic poet in that fair region need not wander to Arcadia. But Sannazzaro, like all the early pastoral poets of Italy, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... straight ahead. I am told he bore himself with dignity even when some of our more ingenuous citizens paused to converse with him concerning his new motor-car. He is even said to have managed a smile when his ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... Temple of Nemesis has been opened again," answered Socrates. "Aristophanes has never been ingenuous hitherto; now he is so with a vengeance. Very well, Aristophanes, I sympathise with you that you can no more scoff at me. I pardon you, but I cannot help you to stage your comedies. That is asking too much. ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... to combine and connect words and phrases, is shown by joining the words together, several being written without lifting the pen from the paper. The more simple and ingenuous the method of attaching the words, the greater will be the ability. When this joining of words is carried to extremes, it may be taken as a sign of ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn

... so many words the "voix du sang," trusting that, even if the revelation were not formally made, "Nature would send the boy some impulse" of filial affection. It is hard to believe—but it is the fact—that, well within the present century, such ingenuous nonsense as this was gravely presented to the public of a leading theatre, by an author of keen intelligence, who, but for an unhappy accident, would now be at the zenith of his career. There are few more foolish conventions than that of the "voix du sang." Perhaps, however, the rising generation ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... Her ingenuous youth from Ontario's shore who visits the ruins of London is one of the many claimants to the honour of having suggested Lord Macaulay's celebrated ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)

... too, was looking sweeter and fresher than ever, and was the same ingenuous, unspoiled girl, whose sunny disposition no amount of wealth ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane

... obliged to stretch himself to his full height to avoid being strangled. He heard Esmay clap her hands, and steps descending from the gallery; then his captor stood before him. He was a boy of Constans's own age, but of shorter, sturdier build. A pleasant, ingenuous face it was, flushed now with the joy ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... better, though the last object the author appears to have in view is to educate. This "Greek girl brought up in a Turkish household" writes to amuse, entertain and charm, and her success is abundant. Whether it is attributable to the romantic particulars of the Turkish household or to the ingenuous personality of the Greek girl, I hesitate to say, since both are so captivating; but this I know, that, considered as descriptive sketches or personal episodes, each of the twenty-two chapters is a separate delight. For the ready writer material ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various

... laughed at this ingenuous admission, and then Wraysford said, "Well, I'll have you; but mind, I'm awfully particular, and knock my fags about tremendously, ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... service against the Turks. But chance willed that he won no distinction. He did his duty under dreary circumstances, while to his hatred of war was added the weight of his loss when he heard that Mary had fallen in love. He was an ingenuous, kindly youth—a typical Lennox, who had developed an accomplishment at Harrow and suffered for it by getting his nose broken when winning the heavy-weight championship of the public schools in his nineteenth year. In the East ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... use to me, boy," warned the Duke. There had been appeal in his face and his voice at the beginning. But this disloyalty in the presence of the girl pricked him. She was still in the hook of Harlan's arm, and from that vantage-point flung a glance of childishly ingenuous triumph at him. "Not that tone ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... youngest son of Edward III. In his nineteenth year he succeeded his grandfather as viscount Hereford, and coming to court attracted the merited commendations of her majesty by his learning, his abilities, and his ingenuous modesty. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... acknowledgment of the interest that might play there through some inevitable thoughts. These were, for that matter, intensely in keeping with the ancient scene and air: they dealt with the exquisite difference between that tone and type of ingenuous adolescence— in the mere relation of charmed audition—and other forms of juvenility of whose mental and material accent one had elsewhere met the assault. Civilised, charmingly civilised, were my loquacious neighbours—as how had n't they to be, one asked one's self, through the use of ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... ingenuous lad, with the callow simplicity of a theological college still untouched, and had arrived on the preceding Monday at the Free Kirk manse with four cartloads of furniture and a maiden aunt. For three days he roamed from room to room in the excitement of householding, ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... come to lay down rules for its Composure: But tho it ought to imitate Comedy in its common way of discourse, yet it must not chose old Comedy for its pattern, for that is too impudent, and licentiously abusive: Let it be free and modest, honest and ingenuous, and that will make it agreeable ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin

... pangs of conscious truth to hide, To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride With incense kindled at ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... such letters, and the verse that I now show you in this old parchment is of this import?" Whom did he call upon, knowing in ancient hands, (and such undoubtedly he might have found,) to establish, by the testimony of his own eyes, the antiquity, not of one, but of all these Mss? If an ingenuous youth (asMr.W. justly observes), "enamoured of poetry, had really found a large quantity of old poems, what would he have done? Produced them cautiously, and one by one, studied them, and copied their style, and exhibited sometimes a genuine, and sometimes a fictitious piece? or blazed the ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone

... said the lady; "you know, in the country, or you do not know, the ministers are half farmers, but I suppose not more than half; just such a mixture as will suit Fleda, I should think. She has not told me in so many words, but it is easy to read so ingenuous a nature as hers, and I have discovered that there is a most deserving young friend of mine settled at Queechy that she is by no means indifferent to. I take it for granted that will be the end of it," said Mrs. Evelyn, pinching her sofa cushion in a great many successive places, with ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... comely and the other radiant with youth. They stood there smiling, though already slightly frightened, while the monk lighted some long, slim candles. He was a man with a bossy brow, the large, massive jaw of an obstinate believer and pale eyes bespeaking an ingenuous soul. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... to a discriminating public, with a lively confidence that the advanced intelligence and freedom of the age will yield it an ingenuous reception. ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn

... the observer, the inquirer into things began to take shape almost in infancy. Why should I not describe my first discoveries? They are ingenuous in the extreme, but will serve notwithstanding to tell us something of the way in which tendencies first show themselves. I was five or six years old. That the poor household might have one mouth less to feed, I had been placed in ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... few days before on the terrace. On this occasion too Madame Clairin was entertaining him, but as her sister-in-law came in she surrendered her post and addressed herself to our hero. Longmore, at thirty, was still an ingenuous youth, and there was something in this lady's large assured attack that fairly intimidated him. He was doubtless not as reassured as he ought to have been at finding he had not absolutely forfeited her favour by his want of resource during their last interview, and a suspicion ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James

... eyes to the portrait of Aunt Rose, and as I looked at her severe, wrinkled face, I thought of all those women's souls which we do not know, and which we suppose to be so different from what they really are, whose inborn and ingenuous craftiness we never can penetrate, their quiet duplicity; and a verse of De Vigny returned ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... sweep. They gather up again and softly bear All the sweet lives that late were overwhelmed And lost to sight, all that in them was good, Noble, and truly great, and worthy of love— The lives of infants and ingenuous youths, Sages and saintly women who have made Their households happy; all are raised and borne By that great current in its onward sweep, Wandering and rippling with caressing waves Around green islands with the ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... is sixteen. Her aunt presents her with a sponge, and observes that the civilisation of a nation is judged by the amount of soap it uses. "In much embarrassment I applied myself to this unaccustomed task," continues the ingenuous Backfisch, "and I managed it so cleverly that everything around me was soon swimming. To make matters worse, I upset the water-jug, and now the flood spread to the washstand, the floor, the bed curtains, even to my clothes lying on the ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... tanned by exposure to the weather; but although his complexion was somewhat brown, it wanted that tinge of red peculiar to the natives of the Pacific. He spoke English correctly both in grammar and pronunciation; and his frank and ingenuous deportment excited in every one the liveliest feelings of compassion and interest. His companion was a fine handsome youth, of seventeen or eighteen years of age, named George Young, son of one of ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... in books often exercise. It seems to be run on such lavish lines for the prices charged that I found myself looking hungrily for its address. I wish the author had not referred to her hero as having "mobile digits" and burdened her ingenuous story with anything so important as a prologue. By making the villain's deserted offspring not one baby girl only, or even twins, but triplets, Miss EVERETT GREEN provides waitresses all of one family for the "Silver Tea-shop," and that, though a happy arrangement, is a little too uncommon to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various

... It never seems to have occurred to Frederick that the possession of genius might imply a quality of spirit which was not that of an ordinary man. This was his great, his fundamental error. It was the ingenuous error of a cynic. He knew that he was under no delusion as to Voltaire's faults, and so he supposed that he could be under no delusion as to his merits. He innocently imagined that the capacity for great writing was something that could be as easily separated from the owner ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... discovered that an emerald cross of hers was worth four thousand dollars; and finally the sun burst forth when, through the agency of the accidental young man, her property was found to be very valuable, and she more valuable still—to the young man. It sounds ingenuous, doesn't it? But not nearly so easy to write as it seems, for to produce anything as artless as June ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various

... reduced them to satellites, yet inspired an enthusiastic attachment. I hear from one witness, as early as 1829, that "all the girls raved about Margaret Fuller," and the same powerful magnetism wrought, as she went on, from year to year, on all ingenuous natures. The loveliest and the highest endowed women were eager to lay their beauty, their grace, the hospitalities of sumptuous homes, and their costly gifts, at her feet. When I expressed, one day, many years afterwards, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... dissention) of pumping him daily thereby to discover whether he was deceitful in his thoughts and inclinations; but certainly he had nothing in him but what was consistent with the best principles, both as a religious Christian and a grateful friend; and indeed; I found every thing he said was ingenuous and innocent, that I had no room for suspicion, and, in spite of all uneasiness, he not only made me entirely his own again, but also caused me much to lament that I ever conceived ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe

... in his little damask suit, shocking his father with a question at the very first verse of the Bible, which they began to read together when he was six years old, and which held many a box on the ear in store for his ingenuous intellect. He remembered his early efforts to imitate with chalk or charcoal the woodcuts of birds or foliage happily discovered on the title-pages of dry-as-dust Hebrew books; how he used to steal into ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... had returned home, and was taking my ease in my camp chair, luxuriously whiffing away at my after-breakfast cheroot, when who should step gingerly into the room but Manager Fred Gahagan. The clouds of the previous evening had entirely disappeared from his ingenuous countenance, which was puckered up in the most insinuating manner, with what I was wont to call his 'borrowing smile;' for Fred was oftentimes afflicted with impecuniosity—a complaint common enough amongst us subs;—and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... Gorgias as Hippocrates in the Protagoras to the other great Sophist. He is the sophisticated youth on whom Socrates tries his cross-examining powers, just as in the Charmides, the Lysis, and the Euthydemus, ingenuous boyhood is made the subject of a similar experiment. He is treated by Socrates in a half-playful manner suited to his character; at the same time he appears not quite to understand the process to which he is being subjected. For he is exhibited as ignorant of the ...
— Meno • Plato

... scroll of fervid truisms and hap-hazard generalities, as often disputable as not, if often acute and striking, always ingenuous and pleasant, was, like all his other writings, warmly welcomed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... "However," pursued the ingenuous parti, "I spoke to her as one might have done to another chap, you know. I said, 'You're frightened of something.' She didn't answer. 'You're afraid that I'm going to ask you to marry me.' 'Yes,' she answered. 'Well, I'm not. I'm not such a cad.' And after that we got on all ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... family for a long time. Many curious things have happened there worthy of being rescued from oblivion, and though my relatives would now like to relieve me of this task, because I have found it necessary to point out to certain ingenuous ones among them the truth which they were endeavoring to conceal, I rejoice that I have sufficient leisure to chronicle for future generations of Ueberhells the wonderful life and doings of their progenitor as I learned them from my grandmother ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... and pine-needles. One arm was lashed to his side with a silk sling and he held a huge bunch of glowing red berries in his free hand. They were branches of the red, coral-strung buck bushes and Caroline had never seen them before. Their gorgeousness fairly took her breath and she exclaimed with the ingenuous ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess

... sciences. In this European tour he decided to omit Spain, because the arts there were but little cultivated, and France, because he disliked the pompous ceremonials of the court of Louis XIV. His plan of travel was as ingenuous as it was odd. An extraordinary embassage was sent by him, as Emperor of Russia, to all the leading courts of Europe. These embassadors received minute instructions, and were fitted out for their expedition with splendor which should add to the renown of the Russian ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... relieved by action. Sympathy, at least, he must have; and he knew no man, to whom he would willingly talk of Cornelia. The little jests and innuendoes sure to follow his confidence would be intolerable if associated with a creature so pure and so ingenuous. ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr

... of the features of the young warrior forced itself on their notice. They felt it might be a being partially benighted in the vale of ignorance, but it could not be one who would willingly devote his rich natural gifts to the purposes of wanton treachery. The ingenuous Alice gazed at his free air and proud carriage, as she would have looked upon some precious relic of the Grecian chisel, to which life had been imparted by the intervention of a miracle; while Heyward, though accustomed to ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... of doors; and since make-believe is a matter of course in diplomatic intercourse it is right and seemly, of course, that no overt recognition of unavowed facts should be allowed to traverse this run of make-believe within the precincts of diplomatic intercourse. But in any ingenuous inquiry into the nature of peace and the conditions of its maintenance there can be no harm in conveniently leaving the diplomatic make-believe on one side and looking to the circumstances that condition the case, rather ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... nay clothes, by the rapidity of the motion, as it does from a water-spaniel after having been in that element. It is singular to think what a strong authority vanity has over the principles and passions in the weakest and strongest moments of both; I never was remarkable, at that open, ingenuous period of my life, for secrecy; yet did I now take especial care not to invest either this attempt at the miraculous, or its concomitant failure, with anything like narration. It was, however, an act of devotion that had a vile effect on ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... but try on flounced gowns, and count their jewels, and go out to balls and operas—and they will want me to do the same—and play at cards all Sunday! 'Lady Caergwent,' they will say, 'it is becoming to your position!' And then the young countess presented a remarkable contrast in her ingenuous simplicity," continued Kate, not quite knowing whether she was making a story or thinking of herself—for indeed she did not feel as if she were herself, but somebody in a story. "Her waving hair was only confined by an azure ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... that his speeches, if art-less, are yet full of imagery. His cool and clear mind does not despise the charm of warm color, just as his robust constitution is not void of nervous irritability. His ingenuous appearance, with which he is apt to surprise an audience, should not win our ready confidence, for all who have had to do with him know that his astonishingly intimate remarks are calculated to mislead by their ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... captain appeared to have sunk was the placidity of conscious power, was scarcely probable; yet that adventitious aids existed for De Stancy he could not deny. The link formed by Charlotte between De Stancy and Paula, much as he liked the ingenuous girl, was one that he could have wished away. It constituted a bridge of access to Paula's inner life and feelings which nothing could rival; except that one fact which, as he firmly believed, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... To the schoolmaster—whose motto would seem too often to be the counsel of the irate old lady in Dickens, "Give him a meal of chaff!"—Charles Lamb's critical methods are rich in suggestion. How many ingenuous boys, lads in the very flush and hey-day of appreciativeness of the epic virtues, have been parsed, declined, and conjugated into an utter detestation of the melodious names of Homer and Virgil! Better far for such victims had they, instead of aspiring to the vanities ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... an idle inquiry. He tells us that he preferred "his larches to his laurels:" the wretched jingle expressed the mere worldliness that dictated it. In the same spirit of calculation with which he had at first embraced science and literature, he abandoned them; and his ingenuous confession is a memorable example of that egotistic pride which betrayed in the literary character the creature of ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... and many other cases, Newman seems to love to caricature himself, and to put his beliefs in that form in which they outrage common sense most completely. We can imagine nothing more calculated to drive a young and ingenuous mind into flippant scepticism than a course of Newman's sermons. The reductio ad absurdum of his arguments is not left to the reader to make; it is innocently provided ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge



Words linked to "Ingenuous" :   undistorted, ingenuousness, naive, candid, innocent, artless, naif, open, disingenuous, heart-to-heart, sincere



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