Word: naivet
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...general American attitude that conventional sexual intercourse is the only "proper" expression of sexual desire-and, worse, the legislating of that attitude-is a hangover from the Puritan fathers, from whom so few of us descended. The prudery and naiveté of such an attitude must also make us a laughingstock in nations of more wisdom and maturity...
...movie he wrote in collaboration with Director Billy Wilder, concerns a middle-aged Manhattan husband who spends the summer in the city while his wife and son are enjoying the Maine breezes. Into his enforced celibacy comes the girl upstairs, an uninhibited hoyden from Denver who powerfully blends naiveté with sex-she dunks potato chips in champagne, begs for "more sugar" in her martini, artlessly boasts of posing in the nude, feels that it is all right to do "anything," with Ewell since there is no danger of his wanting to marry her. Ewell is already equipped with...
...Religion, Modern Man and the Cross) which emphasized the social importance of religion; after a long illness; in New Haven, Conn. A critic of religious orthodoxy for its own sake, Dr. Schroeder believed that in their scramble for faith and religious security, postwar Americans had sacrificed the "moral naiveté" which had made his own generation "mount ethical horses and ride off rapidly in every direction," convinced that they could make the world "a kinder, more beneficent" place...
...small, square hands. Matisse knew his field as well, perhaps, as one man can. He tilled it conscientiously, and enlarged it courageously. Yet he maintained that painting is more instinctive than intellectual-a matter of fun, not formulae. "The important thing," he insisted, "is to keep the naiveté of childhood. You study, you learn, but you guard the original naiveté. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard, or love is within the lover...
Scriptwriter Frank Fenton, an old pro of 20 years and about 20 films in Hollywood, has written scenes and characters with the freshness-and some of the clean-limbed naiveté-of a first novelist. His dialogue is always clear and quick, and occasionally it reaches down to pluck some nerve of real human sensibility. Apart from the poem he gave one of the Confederate prisoners to speak ("Faith was ... a jungle/ Where two children trod/ Looking for violets/ Angleworms and God"), the bravos for Bravo should go largely...