niaiserie

• “In Pauline this finesse was partially concealed by a languor and indecision of manner and an occasional assumption of 'niaiserie'; or almost infantine simplicity; but this only threw people the more off their guard, and made her finesse the more sure in its operation.”

  Complete Project Gutenberg Collection of Memoirs of Napoleon

• “niaiserie'; or almost infantine simplicity; but this only threw people the more off their guard, and made her finesse the more sure in its operation.”

  The Memoirs of Napoleon

• “SIMPLICITÉ, _f. _, qualité de ce qui est simple; niaiserie.”

  French Conversation and Composition

• “The thorough and shameless commercialism of Sex has alas! been reserved for what is called ` ` Christian civilization, '' and with it (perhaps as a necessary consequence) Prostitution and Syphilis have grown into appalling evils, accompanied by a gigantic degradation of social standards, and upgrowth of petty Philistinism and niaiserie.”

  Pagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning

• “To see anything honest in such a man as Paul, whose home was at the centre of the Stoical enlightenment, when he converts an hallucination into a proof of the resurrection of the Saviour, or even to believe his tale that he suffered from this hallucination himself -- this would be a genuine niaiserie in a psychologist.”

  The Antichrist

• “Lorsqu'on dédie un livre, on prévoit l'heure où l'ami le prend, jette un coup d'oeil et dit: 'Pourquoi m'a-t-il dédié une niaiserie pareille?”

  The Lake

• “Berlioz even went so far as to describe the overture as _une niaiserie incroyable_, and the vocal part sometimes shows the influence of the empty formulas from which Gluck was trying to escape.”

  The Opera A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions of all Works in the Modern Repertory.

• “The thorough and shameless commercialism of Sex has alas! been reserved for what is called "Christian civilization," and with it (perhaps as a necessary consequence) Prostitution and Syphilis have grown into appalling evils, accompanied by a gigantic degradation of social standards, and upgrowth of petty Philistinism and niaiserie.”

  Pagan and Christian creeds: their origin and meaning

• “For after all there is an amount of innocence and absent-mindedness in matters of daily human life, which is not only _niaiserie_, but comes very near to moral wrong.”

  Robert Elsmere

• “When he was gone she stood awhile, thoughtfully peeling the last bud; and then, awakening from her reverie, flung it and all the crowd of floral nobility impatiently on the ground, in an ebullition of displeasure with herself for her _niaiserie_, and with a quickening warmth in her heart of hearts.”

  Tess of the d'Urbervilles

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