#ingenuousness

[j-august]

St. Aubert was pleased with him: 'Here is the real ingenuousness and ardour of youth,' said he to himself; 'this young man has never been at Paris.'

Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho

[sofaduel]

But but it wasn’t

I thought about this quote the other day and had to double check it. Perspicacity is “the quality of having a ready insight into things; shrewdness”. Ingenuousness is “candid; sincere” or “innocent; naive”. 

All he said was that Jimmy was smarter than he was naive...

[neo-somaliana]

Through the ingenuousness of her age beamed an ardent mind, a mind not of the women but of the poet; she did not please, she intoxicated.

Alexandre Dumas