"Babble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... King: "Have hope, O friend! Yea, Death disgraced is hard; Much honour shall be thine"; and called the Captain of the Guard, Yar Khan, a bastard of the Blood, so city-babble saith, And he was honoured of the King — the which is salt to Death; And he was son of Daoud Shah, the Reiver of the Plains, And blood of old Durani Lords ran fire in his veins; And 'twas to tame an Afghan pride nor Hell nor Heaven ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... one, the big brown one. I sat down on a fallen pillar and held her in my arms... Silent after the first babble was over. And after a little while the lizards came out and ran about again, as though nothing unusual was going on, as though nothing had changed... It was tremendously still there, the sun high and the shadows still; even the shadows of the weeds upon the entablature were still—in spite ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... enthusiasm with which He baptizes all His true servants, and let it because we know the sweetnesses that excel, take from us all liability to be tempted away by the vulgar and coarse delights of earth and of sense. Let us keep ourselves clear of the babble that is round about us, and be strong because we ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... babble," cried the Orsini, rudely. "Tell me, old lord; just as I entered, I saw an old friend (one of your former mercenaries) quit the palace—may ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... whirl and flutter! They whisper, babble, twirl, and splutter! They glimmer, sparkle, stink and flare— A true witch-element! Beware! Stick close! else we shall severed be. Where ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... was drowsed again with slumber, from which she woke only on being placed in the bottom of a skiff to turn over into a deeper dream than before. Flor nodded triumphantly to her companion, in the beginning, keeping pace beside him with short runs,—there could be no fear of babble about that of which one knew nothing,—and took her seat at last in the boat as he directed, while with a long pole he pushed out into the deeper water away from the shadow of the shore, and then went steering between the jags and gnarls, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... voice from below kept up a constant babble of, "Three men to be set aboard Thames... three men to ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... me feel that the soil inside the Pomoerium is holy ground: others talk of the grandeur of Rome; you make me realize its grandeur: others prate of their love for Rome: you, saying little, make me tingle with a subtly communicated sense of how you love Rome: others babble of how life away from Rome is not life, but merely existence; of how any dwelling out of Rome is exile, of how they long for Rome; you, by some sorcery, make me not only feel how you long for Rome, but have awakened in me a longing for Rome. I have never been out ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... corner with him, pour punch into every hollow of his poor head until his secrets jump out like wet mice. Make him chatter, especially about the elections. Go, little man, and take good care not to get overheated yourself and babble. ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... scoff and jeer and babble of him As of a prince whose manhood was all gone, And molten down ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... bizarrely those half-fabulous names fell from Signet's lips in the turquoise and gold of the afternoon. It was like the babble of some monstrous and harmless mythology. And all the while, as he kicked his bare heels on the deckhouse and harassed me with his somnolent greed for "talk," one could see him wondering, wondering, in the back ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... rode high in the blue eternity; it was a very triumph of glorious Night; the river ran babble-murmuring in deep soft syllables; the fountain kept rushing moonward, and blossoming momently to a great silvery flower, whose petals were forever falling like snow, but with a continuous musical clash, into the bed of its exhaustion ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... this," commanded Leonard, thrusting a hand under the prostrate man's shirt and feeling for his heart. The request set loose a babble. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... babble of many voices in many keys, talk mingling with laughter more or less melodiously subdued, he made his way up the great staircase. As he neared the landing, there sounded the shrill squeak of a violin and a 'cello's deep harmonic growl. His hostess, small, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... There was a babble of voices outside and a rattle and creak of gates. Malcolm crept to the one window which the office held (he guessed it was here that Cherry had written his "statement"), ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... in the romance: that is certain. Jasper, waking, makes experiments on the talk of the old woman, the Lascar and Chinaman in their sleep. He pronounces it "unintelligible," which satisfies him that his own babble, when under opium, must be unintelligible also. He is, presumably, acquainted with the languages of the eastern coast of India, and with Chinese, otherwise, how could he hope to understand the sleepers? He is being watched by the hag, who ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... cause just such confusion and delay. It was very evident that we had spoiled some plan. The need of a soldier's training would be plain to anyone that heard the babble of our voices in that corner, conjecturing, advising, urging this and that. We are still very far from the state in which we could be trusted to go into battle and obey every order just as it came. The reasons for this I figure out ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... In the babble of voices Simon suddenly heard a man cry out sharply. The pain in the man's voice cut into Simon's heart like a knife. Simon scanned the crowd, but in the darkness could not see him. No one moved to ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... And so this slanderous babble rattled on. There was something unfathomable in their hatred of the musician. They were just as agreed on this point as they would have been if Daniel had broken open their strong boxes, smashed their windows, and betrayed their honour ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... dusk. And therefore the air was silent save for one soft hiss that fell. And therefore the tongues about him had ceased their babble. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... Jimphy eagerly to Lady Cecily's table. Lensley was glad to sit with her: Boltt was glad to be certain of his supper. Lensley enjoyed listening to Cecily's babble because he could always be certain of getting something out of her speech that would just fit into his next novel: Boltt liked his contiguity to members of the governing class. They completely ignored Henry after they had ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... crime, Some giant guilt, but whose I knew not. All These things malign, by sight and sound revealed, Were sin-begotten; that I knew—no more— And that but dimly, as in dreadful dreams The sleepy senses babble to the brain Imperfect witness. As I stood a voice, But whence it came I knew not, cried aloud Some words to me in a forgotten tongue, Yet straight I knew me for a ghost forlorn, Returned from the illimited inane. Again, but in a language that ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... long discussion, which lasted for weeks, as a period of deadly boredom,—vain disputes over words, a metaphysical jumble, and most tedious babble; the Assembly was turned into a Sorbonne lecture-room," and all this while chateaux were burning, while town-halls were being sacked, and courts dared no longer hold assize, while the distribution of wheat was stopped, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... A babble of talk began and ran the round of the passengers, breaking out among a group of younger people into a ripple of laughter. For a quarter of an hour this went on, then, to the amazement of all on board, the captain, after glancing anxiously at the compass-card, sternly called out "Silence!" Meanwhile ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... arose once more a painful apprehension in his mind. He hurried half-dressed to the nursery to ask for news of the child, but was met by the nurse with the most cheerful countenance, with little Tom holding by her skirts, in high spirits, and fun of babble and glee. ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... lizard on him paused, A phantom made of many phantoms moved Before him haunting him, or he himself Moved haunting people, things and places, known Far in a darker isle beyond the line; The babes, their babble, Annie, the small house, The climbing street, the mill, the leafy lanes, The peacock-yewtree and the lonely Hall, The horse he drove, the boat he sold, the chill November dawns and dewy-glooming downs, The gentle shower, the smell of dying leaves, ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... leisure, she joined him in his imitative worship, delighting in the unconscious fashion in which the sonorous phrases of convention rolled off from her son's baby lips. And then, one day, Scott's memory failed him in his invocation. There came a familiar phrase or two, and then a babble of meaningless syllables, ending in a long-drawn and relieved Amen. An instant later, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Who can describe the babble of our explanations and appeals to Mary Ellen's hospitality, and her reproaches for the fright we had given her? Howbeit, when the first clamour subsided, we perceived that Mary Ellen's Mr. Watlin was ensconced behind ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... with it the gurgling of the old woman. It was impossible and incredible, that mingling in the fetid air of those two sounds, as if the babble of clear spring water had suddenly broken into and merged with the turgid roll of a city sewer. Mick sat up. "But ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... from their seats, and there was a great babble of voices. As in a dream, Jessie saw them all file slowly out of the room, each one casting that backward look of horror upon her as they went. The door closed slowly after Miss Duncan; then she was alone with the detective and Mrs Varrick, ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... in English life and literature since the armistice. I agreed that I did discover such a chaos, but that it seemed to me a chaos which was an end rather than a beginning, a chaos in which the Tower of Babel had fallen, and men had come to babble with more and more complete dissociation of ideas, or else, on the other hand, were clinging desperately to such literary and social traditions as had been left, while their work froze into a new Augustanism comparable to that of the early years ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... know the motives of our fellow- creatures! How prone we are to misjudge the actions of others! Bessie was no flirt, but a high-minded, conscientious girl, with an ambition— an ambition which she did not babble about to the world, and therefore the world failed to appreciate her, as it nearly always fails to appreciate those who do not take it into ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... one lived in a crowd, and already each class had furnished youthful adorers eager to sit at the feet of the pretty new mistress, and bring her offerings of chocolates and flowers; for five long days there was always a crowd, always a hum and babble of voices, but at the end of the ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and there was a sound as if his companion had given his mouth a pat, for from pretty close at hand there was the low babble of voices. ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... uncomfortable woman to go about with shifts and contrivances. Her open face, with its broad forehead and the clear, steady eyes of darkest blue, claimed truth as a prerogative. The blush which had faded from her cheeks appeared on his, and he began to babble some foolish word about his unworthiness when the Princess-mother interrupted him ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... door had been opened, somewhere. The next moment brought a new whiff of cold, fresh air and the sound of a motor, then silence again, sudden and profound, from the street-side. A deep, almost dramatic voice silenced the confused babble. ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... went up to his room, and sat down at his window. His curtain was pulled high. He looked out into the darkness and tried to think, but directly a door slammed, and a shrill babble of feminine tongues began in the room below. Belinda ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... D'Argenton and of their friend at Tours, which annoyed Jack intensely, for he would have wished neither person to have been mentioned in Cecile's pure presence, and over and over again he stopped the careless babble of his mother who had no such scruples. They urged Madame D'Argenton to remain to dinner, but she had already lingered too long, and was uneasily occupied in inventing a series of excuses for her delay, which should be in ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... you no helps me to? Upon my live. All trees have very deal bear. A throat's ill. You shall catch cold one's. You make grins. Will some mutton? Will you fat or slight? Will you this? Will you a bon? You not make who to babble. You not make that to prate all day's work. You interompt me. You mistake you self heavily. ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... lasciviousness each of the gestures that had shone with such clear colours in his sight, dulling each of the sentences by which she had displayed to him her trimly-kept mental accoutrement until they became simpering babble, falsifying his minute memory of the scene until it became a record of her lust instead of his. Something deep in him stated quietly and glumly that he was now doing a wrong far worse than the thing that he had planned, and, though he would not ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... that respected him so much; the whole world to him—for to us the limits of the universe are strictly defined by those we know. There is nothing for us outside the babble of praise and blame on familiar lips, and beyond our last acquaintance there lies only a vast chaos; a chaos of laughter and tears which concerns us not; laughter and tears unpleasant, wicked, morbid, contemptible—because heard imperfectly ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... was such a babble of exclamations that hardly a word of what was said could be understood. And in the midst of this the cadets gave a rousing cheer for Clearwater Hall and ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... at him as if he were an obscene bird, looked at him with ever-increasing hate, with their fingers itching for the trigger of a gun. Pap had his weakness. He liked to babble of his own cuteness; he liked to sit upon a sugar barrel in the village store and talk of savoury viands, so to speak, and sparkling wines in the presence of fellow-citizens who lacked ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... LATIN SCHOOL or GYMNASIUM, for higher teaching up to eighteen or so; and IV. THE UNIVERSITY (with TRAVEL), for the highest possible teaching on to the age of about five- and-twenty. From the little babble of the Infant School about Water, Air, Fire, Iron, Bird, Fish, Hill, Sun, Moon, &c., all on the plan of exercising the senses and making Things and Words go together, up to the most exquisite training of the University, he shows how there might be a progress and yet a continuity ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... means unplaced in the running for greatness, both are in the highest degree artificial: while Lamb's way of writing, complex as it is, necessitating as it must have done not a little reading and (as would seem almost necessary) not a little practice, seems to run as naturally as a child's babble. The very tricks—mechanical dots, dashes, aposiopeses—which offend us now and then in Sterne; the unfamiliar Latinisms which frighten some and disgust others in Browne, drop from Lamb's lips or pen like the pearls of the Fairy story. Unless you are born out of sympathy with Elia, you never ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... when the lips of the invalid moved to murmur some loving words or to babble of the flowers in the Valley. She was in no pain but she was very tired. She was not unhappy, for the two whom she loved and who loved her were with her and though she was tired she soon would rest—in Heaven. When she spoke of going the man's ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... friends was improving. Fathers, brothers, masters, and servants, came in quest of them, bringing food and bedding, and by exorbitant fees to the jailers obtained for them shelter in the gloomy cells. Mothers could not come, for a proclamation had gone out that none were to babble, and men were to keep their wives at home. And though there were more material comforts, prospects were very gloomy. Ambrose came when Kit Smallbones returned with what Mrs. Headley had sent the captives. He looked sad and dazed, and clung to his ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... United States of the World, a union of states whose state boundaries are determined by what I have defined as the natural map of mankind. I cannot understand those pacifists who talk about the German right to "expansion," and babble about a return of her justly lost colonies. That seems to me not pacificism but patriotic inversion. This large disposition to hand over our fellow-creatures to a Teutonic educational system, with "frightfulness" in reserve, to "efficiency" on Wittenberg lines, leaves me—hot. The ghosts of the ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... thing in a dream the grey buildings drew nearer, The babble rose louder and the organ's whine clearer, The hurdle came closer, he rushed through its top Like a comet in heaven that ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... an upper floor, his literal headlong tumble and rattle of dismay down a steep staircase occupying the centre of the stage, on his discovery of the rifling of his chest. Long was I to have in my ears the repeated shriek of his alarm, followed by a panting babble of wonder and rage as his impetus hurled him, a prostrate scrap of despair (he was a tiny figure, yet "so held the stage" that in his company you could see nobody else) half way across the room. I associate a little uncertainly ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... hair caught up under a gray toque that matched her coat perfectly, she was not my Olivia of the tam-o’-shanter, who had pursued the rabbit; nor yet the unsophisticated school-girl, who had suffered my idiotic babble; nor, again, the dreamy rapt organist of the chapel. She was a grown woman with at least twenty summers to her credit, and there was about her an air of knowing the world, and of not being at all a person one would make foolish ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... no charm, nor did I fear mortal weapon or mortal foe, for in God was my trust, and He was able to hold me scathless, or to take me when He would. And then, John, a fancy seized me, a foolish fancy of romance perhaps, but still I mind not thy knowing, so thou 'lt not babble of it to others. I asked the old man could he put what I had just said into the same tongue with that heathen charm, and so shape it that I could have it carved upon my blade above the sun and moon and stars, which ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... bear on for us to better times the tokens of our reverence for the Life of Man upon the Earth. For we indeed freed from the bondage of foolish habit and dulling luxury might at last have eyes wherewith to see: and should have to babble to one another many things of our joy in the life around us: the faces of people in the streets bearing the tokens of mirth and sorrow and hope, and all the tale of their lives: the scraps of nature the busiest of us would come across; birds and beasts and the little ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... flowed conversationally towards the door and the sunny green, while the organ played deafeningly. But play as exultantly as it might, it could not drown the babble of human voices. Every one wanted to utter those excitable commonplaces that seem somehow to cover at such ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... A babble of voices told of pursuit,—shouts and gutturals that strung out from the camp all through the gorge and were beginning to ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... dropped on some Saturday or other a Caine or a Barclay; to have it restored to me a moment later by a courteous fellow-passenger—courteous, but with a smile of gentle pity in his eye as he glimpsed the author's name. "Thanks very much," I would stammer, blushing guiltily, and perhaps I would babble about a sick friend to whom I was taking them, or that I was running out of paper-weights. But he never believed me. He knew that he would have said something like ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... Country, a babble of black spume . . . Faith, an eyeball in the sand . . . Mother, a nail through a broken hand— A kissing fume— And out of her breast the bloody bubbling milk-red breath ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... Joan burst upon the group or Gilbert make his appearance, sour, immaculate and with raised eyebrows. He studied Mrs. Jekyll, with her brilliantly made-up face, her apparent lack of guile, and her ever-watchful eye. He paid tribute to his copious wife for her determined babble of generalities, well-knowing that she was bursting with suppressed excitement under the knowledge that Alice had come to try and patch up a lost cause. He chuckled at the feline manners of the little lady whom they had all known so long as Mrs. Edgar Lee Reeves, her purring ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... and the frailties of their neighbors. Some, more alive to the big events of a clashing world, repeated the meagre news of the ha'penny press and dwelt with prideful fervor on the latest bit of heroism reported from the front. Now and again an outburst of raucous humor echoed above the babble of cockney tongues. The maudlin clamor of "a pore lone lidy 'oos 'subing 'ad desarted 'er" failed to arouse anyone's curiosity. Ladies in their cups are not a rarity in Walthamstow. In side streets, lads in khaki, many of ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... Where was I, then?—From childhood I was wont To dream and dream, and babble foolishly Of things that were not and could never be. That habit clung to me, and mocks me now. For, as the youth lives ever in the future, So the grown man looks alway to the past, And, young or old, we know not how to live Within the present. In my dreams I was A mighty hero, girded for great ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... to the door, and Roddy, frowning gravely, sank back into his chair, the long silence was broken by a babble of whispered questions and rapid answers. Even to those who understood no English the pantomime had been sufficiently enlightening. Unobtrusively the secret agents of Alvarez rose from the tables and stole into the night. A half-hour later it was known in ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... fevered mind had recurred to early scenes and the babble which came to my ears was all of mining camps in the Rockies and the dicker of horses. Perhaps the uneasy movement of my horse pulling at the end of his tether ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... the bay, That the good old barque of England May in safety sail away: Though the tongue of fiercest Faction In its Folly may deride, Still he stands in lofty learning Like a giant o'er the tide, While the murmuring wavelets passing Far beneath his kingly hand, Looking upward, blindly babble Where they cannot understand. ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... of prostrating the most vigorous frame, of clouding the most splendid intellect, of benumbing the most delicate moral feelings, of palsying the most eloquent tongue, of teaching those on whose lips listening senates hung, to mutter and babble with the drunkard, and of entombing the most brilliant talents and hopes of youth, wherever man can be induced to drink. The establishment of every distillery, and every dram-shop, and every grocery where it is sold, secures the certainty that many a man will thereby become ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... they were all three in their places, and Francis could see as little as he could hear of what passed. But the dinner seemed to go merrily; there was a perpetual babble of voices and sound of knives and forks below the chestnut; and Francis, who had no more than a roll to gnaw, was affected with envy by the comfort and deliberation of the meal. The party lingered over one dish after another, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was a growing murmur of voices and a great tramping of feet. A caravan had come in. A violent babble of uncouth sounds burst out on the other side of the planks. All the carriers were speaking together, and in the midst of the uproar the lamentable voice of the chief agent was heard 'giving it up' tearfully for the twentieth time that day.... He rose slowly. 'What a frightful row,' he said. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... he to do with rabble? Froth is better than their babble; Let him toss them flakes of froth, To pronounce his ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... a low, childish wail, and for a time that was all Mary heard. Presently, however, she became aware of a feeble moaning in the adjoining chamber, the sound of a human sea in trouble—mixed with a wandering babble, which to Letty was but as the voice of her own despair, and to Mary was a cry for help. She abandoned the attempt to draw anything from Letty, and went into the next room, the door of which stood wide. There lay Tom, but so changed that Mary took a ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... Saco Water as their mothers and their fathers did before them. The paths through the pine woods along the river's brink are trodden smooth by their restless, wandering feet; their eager, curious eyes search the waysides for adventure, but their babble and laughter are oftenest heard from the ruins of an old house hidden by great trees. The stones of the cellar, all overgrown with blackberry vines, are still there; and a fragment of the brick chimney, where swallows build their nests ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... first batch of canoes reached the ship, and the occupants, men, women, and children, clambered up the brig's side, and then rushed aft to the poop to rub noses with Packenham and Denison, after the custom of the country, and then for a time a wild babble of voices reigned. ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... unlike her; he's fond of outward appearance. Gentle maiden, deem me not cold and void of all feeling, If I disclose my father's nature to you, who're a stranger. Yes, such words have never before escaped, I assure von Out of my mouth, which is little accustom'd to babble and chatter; But you have managed to worm all my secrets from out of my bosom. Well, my worthy father the graces of life holds in honour, Wishes for outward signs of love, as well as of rev'rence, And would doubtless be satisfied with an inferior ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... a lecture for the cook. The motor shot up the drive into a babble and halted at the steps. Someone immense rose from a chair and leaped down the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... tips were pinned together with a thorn, and one great buttercup nodded in the doorway like a sleepy sentinel. Nelly stared and smiled, listened, and looked about on every side. Nothing was seen but the quiet meadow and the shady grove, nothing was heard but the babble of the brook and the cheery ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... which seems to have two, nay, many meanings, as well as of that prolix and ponderous style, le stile empese; and of that no less useless bombastic style, and finally of that mode of concealing the most awful poverty of thought under a babble of inexhaustible chatter that resembles a clacking mill and is just as stupefying: one may read for hours together without getting hold of a single clearly defined and definite idea. The Halleschen, afterwards called the Deutschen Jahrbuecher, furnishes almost throughout excellent examples ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... of panels, the cracking of hinges. The door was giving; now only the pike-shafts held it. Then came a pause. From far down the staircase a murmur of amazement swept upward; a babble of talk ensued. Silence fell. Cercamorte let out a ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... time they let him babble on, conscious that his remarks meant nothing. And then a horrible thought began to steal over the mind of James Barker. He began to think that the King's remarks did not ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... companies, to report his sermon to all the birds in the universe. A grasshopper remained a week with St. Francis during the absence of the Virgin Mary, and pittered on his head. He grew so companionable with a nightingale, that when a nest of swallows began to babble, he hushed them by desiring them not to tittle-tattle of their sister, the nightingale. Attacked by a wolf, with only the sign-manual of the cross, he held a long dialogue with his rabid assailant, till the wolf, meek as a lap-dog, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... was silence. From within the house came the continuous babble of voices and laughter, the clink of cutlery on china. The young people spent a long time over their supper. By-and-by the waiter returned to the veranda, deposited a plate of colored ices upon Ariel's knees with a noble ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... for circumstances to bring the change Dissent rings out finely, and approval is a feeble murmur Do you judge of heroes as of lesser men? Empanelled to deliver verdicts upon the ways of women Fantastical Finishing touches to the negligence Gone to pieces with an injured lover's babble Gradations appear to be unknown to you He had to go, he must, he has to be always going He stormed her and consented to be beaten His violent earnestness, his imperial self-confidence I have learnt as ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... unaccustomed to anything stronger than the "crystal spring," was sitting upright in the bed, perfectly delirious. His hair had been rubbed up, and stood out like so many needles of iron gray. He did not (like Falstaff) "babble of green fields," but of the "watery Neptune." "I soon found out where I was," he cried out to me, laughing; and then he went wandering on, his words taking flight into regions where no one could follow. Charles Lamb has commemorated this immersion of his old friend, in his (Elia) ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... game had reached a point of unusual intensity; the players were deeply engrossed; the spectators had fallen silent, with bright eyes fixed upon the mounting stakes. When the tension broke Norvin saw that Caesar had lost again, and smiled at the excited conversation which ensued. There was a babble of laughter, of curses, of expostulation, shafts of badinage flew at the Sicilian merchant. In the midst of it he raised a huge, hairy fist and brought it down, smiting the table until the coins, the cards, and the glasses leaped. His face ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... here subsists, while throughout the peninsula foreign dominion, clerical oppression and voluptuous or academical inertia reduces man to the system of the antechamber, the subtleties of dilettantism and the babble of sonnets. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... my advice. Avoid The places where thou seest much drapery, Colours, and gold, and plumes, and heraldries, And such new-fanglements. But, above all, Take care how evil chance or youthful wandering Bring thee upon the house of Idle Babble." "What place is that?" said I; and he resumed;— "Enchantresses dwell there, who make one see Things as they are not, ay and hear them too. That which shall seem pure diamond and fine gold Is glass and brass; and coffers that look ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... chatter over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles; I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... companion in hours of sorrow or of feasting. To those who come skilled in its language, it can discourse sweetly of all things, and drive away all thoughts that annoy and cares that vex the soul. To those who touch it, not knowing how to draw forth its speech, it will babble strange nonsense, and rave with uncertain moanings. But thy knowledge is born with thee, and so my lyre is thine. Wherefore now let us feed the herds together, and with our care they shall thrive and multiply. There is no ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... "Don't babble like a fool!" Kennon said with disgust. "How could I land a spacer here without being spotted? You sound like a two-credit novel. And even if I did—would it be a can like this?" Kennon played the torch over the blue-black durilium protruding from ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... groans beneath religion's iron age, And priests dare babble of a God of Peace— Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood, Murdering the while, uprooting every germ Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all, Making the earth ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... copies, we were always learning or saying lessons. In the early morning Mr. Sandsome sat erect and bright, his face animated, his ruddy eyes keen and observant, the cane hanging but uncertainly upon its hook. There was a standing up of classes, a babble of repetition, now and then a crisis. How long the days were then! I have heard that scientific people—Professor C. Darwin is their leader, unless I err—which probably I do, for names and dates I have hated from my youth up—say the days grow longer. Anyhow, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... well. So we fared for a while and were fain, till he set down my feet on the grass, And kissed me and stood up himself, and away through the wood did he pass. And then came back the she-wolf and with her I played and was fain. Lo the first thing I remember: wilt thou have me babble again?" ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... with certain of the petty details that make or mar the smooth running of an establishment like his, when his ear, trained to detect the first note of discord in the babble which filled his big room by night, caught an ominous note in the hum of the street crowd outside. He lifted his head from examining a ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... baby face nestling at his throat, the girl coming to him with her trials and triumphs. His heart swelled so that he could not have spoken, but deep in his throat he muttered a dumb prayer. And how he suffered that day, hearing her babble mixed with moanings every time the door opened. ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... a curious babble or chatter, almost as if the sound-proof door—if there was such a thing—of a parrot cage had been suddenly opened. It came from somewhere at the rear of the house and was, apparently, produced by a number of feminine voices all speaking ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Then a babble of inquiry and speculation broke out Where was the thing going? What was it doing? What did its sudden swift voyage mean? For the rest of the day the camp was less sleepy than usual. Men everywhere discussed ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... to the Roman world. Tall dreams seem madness. Hamlet's feigned madness puzzles us even yet. Many an auditor heard Columbus with a smile ill-concealed behind his beard. All high ideality sounds a madman's babble. To see a true life live truly will strike many as a jest, and others as pathos ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... some humble person called 'Tiddy Doll,' a dealer in gingerbread and such foolish wares. But he could tell me nothing of those early preachings of our revered founder in Moorfields, which would have been more pleasant to me than all this vain babble about drolls and jesters, gingerbread bakers ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... our confrontation of human destinies. Hardy is the last of that great line. If we long for sweetness—as we do long for it, and with how poignant a pain!—we must seek it out, like men who rush dusty and irritable from the babble and fever of the town. The rhythm of the earth never enters into their gait; they are like spies among the birds and flowers, like collectors of antique furniture in the haunts of peace. The Georgians snatch at nature; they are never part of it. And there is some element of this ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... vein; Chirrup of robin and blue-bird in the white-blossomed apple and pear; Carpets of green on the meadows spangled with dandelions; Lowing of kine in the valleys, bleating of lambs on the hills; Babble of brooks and the prattle of fountains that flashed in the sun; Glad, merry voices, ripples of laughter, snatches of music and song, And blue-eyed girls in the gardens that blushed like the roses ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... heart is cold, Because of a silent tongue! The lute of faultless mould In silence oft hath hung. The fountain soonest spent Doth babble down the steep; But the stream that ever went Is ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... father sat smiling placidly and obviously living over again his youthful days when he also was a sailor lad relating the same kind of stories in the same old way. The girls asked all sorts of questions, and the merry babble was kept up until Mrs Burnside reminded her husband that it was long past the usual time for prayers, and that they had better postpone the narrative until the morrow. A chapter suitable for the occasion was given out, and they read ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... of the day from the four corners of the world, the tales of love and death, of fire and flood, of strife and pestilence, and under eight thousand miles of shivering sea, whispers the babble of two hemispheres. ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... not for thee to down on thy knees, and say over a many Scripture words only; for that thou mayest do, and yet do nothing but babble. But if thou from a sense of thy baseness canst groan out thy heart's desire before the Lord, He will hear thee, and grant thy desire; for He can tell what is the meaning of the groanings of the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... little Picture; and certainly, to Prussian men, not without weight of meaning. Nor perhaps to Picture-Collectors and Cognoscenti generally, of whatever country,—if they could forget, for a moment, the correggiosity of Correggio, and the learned babble of the Sale-room and varnishing Auctioneer; and think, "Why it is, probably, that Pictures exist in this world, and to what end the divine art of Painting was bestowed, by the earnest gods, upon poor mankind?" I could advise it, once, for a little! ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... do not think. And thinking seems to come hardest to the comfortable woman. A woman told me candidly and honestly not long ago that she was too comfortable to be interested in other people, and I have admired her for her truthfulness; she had diagnosed her own case accurately, and she did not babble of woman's sphere being her own home—she frankly admitted that she was selfish, and her comfort had caused it. I believe God intended us all to be happy and comfortable, clothed, fed, and housed, and there is ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... three miles into the heart of the wilderness, another deep glen, shut in by the same sloping heather-covered hills, suddenly opens to the right. There are no cliffs, no overhanging trees, not even a bush, but all along the stream, "with its soft, dark babble," lie heaps and half-circles of stone nearly buried in the turf, and almost hidden by the tall ferns and foxgloves. And this is what we went out for to see! These are the ruins of the Doones' huts. There could not be anything more disappointing. Two ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... the soul that knows thy love, O Purest, There is a temple peaceful evermore. And all the babble of life's angry voices Dies hushed in ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... together, and thank God you are rid of a knave. Ver. If he will not stand when he is bidden he is none of the prince's subjects. Dog. True, and they are to meddle with none but the prince's subjects.—You shall also make no noise in the streets: for, for the watch to babble and talk, is most tolerable, and not to be endured. 2 Watch. We will rather sleep than talk: we know what belongs to a watch. Dog. Why, you speak like an ancient and most quiet watchman; for I cannot see how sleeping ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... through the worth of the bribe, who cannot be intimidated because they no longer fear, and who cannot be cheated because they have seen true values. Hence your new censorship and its methods. Rebels must be drowned in a babble of words. They must be suppressed by the action of the unthinking masses rolled up upon them. They must be ground to powder lest they should turn ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... he has a long tongue. Besides, he'll see the Westerleys and my other friends in Paradiso, and babble to them." ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... palsied lips find dialect, I should be heard, and understood. My whole soul rose focussed to the effort—my body jerked itself upwards. At that moment I knew my spirit truly great, genuinely sublime. For I did utter something—my dead and shuddering tongue did babble forth some coherency. Then I fell back, and all was once more the ancient Dark. On the next day when I woke, I was lying on my back in my little boat, placed there by God knows whose hands. At all events, one ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... of it was that my assertion and brag were true. With reticence and modesty present, I could never have dared tell Scotty my small-boat estimate of him. But it is ever the way of John Barleycorn to loosen the tongue and babble the ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... earth that all men everywhere could see to which spot on the surface it pointed. Or, had they been devout men, they would have listened for heavenly voices—it is always your devout man who tries to hear other things than the babble of the Babel in which he lives—they, too, could have heard the angelic chorus like the shepherds in the fields and on the hillsides that ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... men did not bestow a thought on the subject, but yielded willingly to the attractions of pleasure. Bonaparte, who was delighted at having provided a diversion for the gossiping of the Parisian salons, said to me one day, "While they are chatting about all this, they do not babble upon politics, and that is what I want. Let them dance and amuse themselves as long as they do not thrust their noses into the Councils of the Government; besides, Bourrienne," added he, "I have other reasons for encouraging this, I see other advantages in it. Trade is languishing; ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... and mine; and Fate grudges that even these few poor hours, which make the sum of it, should be spent together. Think how long a man and woman can live side by side at best. Yet every Sunday of your life you go to church and babble about a watchful, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... not characteristic of her; she didn't understand, and never would. Catherine's step awoke him; the awaking was painful, and he couldn't collect his thoughts enough to answer Catherine; and feeling that he must appear to her daft, he tried to speak, but his speech was only babble. ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... If the Roman Catholics had pretended that the phenomenal bread and wine were changed into the phenomenal flesh and blood, this objection would have been legitimate and irresistible; but as it is, it is mere sensual babble. The whole of Popery lies in the assumption of a Church, as a numerical unit, infallible in the highest degree, inasmuch as both which is Scripture, and what Scripture teaches, is infallible by derivation ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Toleration, and in league for battering it down. Through the rest of the community there was but little voice for Toleration. The frantic and idiotic stringency of the Presbyterians of 1644-6 was now, indeed, rather out of fashion, and a certain mild babble about a Limited Toleration was common in the public mouth. But the old leaven was at work in many quarters; occasional pamphlets from the Presbyterian camp still wailed lamentably about "the effects of the present Toleration, especially as to ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... only children and babies. Fifty banded together for such purposes! Is it possible? Three would be quite sufficient, and then they should be sure of one another—not babble over their cups. The babies! Then to hire unreliable people to change the notes at the money changers', persons whose hands tremble as they receive the rubles. On such their lives depend! Far better to strangle yourself! The man goes in, receives the change, counts some over, the last portion he ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... as long as he could, though he found it hard not to talk when he had so much to say. And feeling, at last, that he was in danger of choking over the babble that surged up from within him, Daddy Longlegs decided that he would go and call on Rusty Wren, who lived in the cherry tree ...
— The Tale of Daddy Longlegs - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... sat in his place, looking up at the little girl, who was smiling to herself as she watched the blue dragon-flies dance among the ferns, a blackbird tilt on the alderboughs, and listened to the babble of the brook. ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott
... olives! So should I hear behind in the woodland The peasants talking. Either a woman, A wrinkled granddame, stands in the sunshine, Stirs the brown soil in an acre of violets— Large odorous violets—and answers slowly A child's swift babble; or else at noon The labourers come. They rest in the shadow, Eating their dinner of herbs, and are merry. Soft speech Provencal under the olives! Like a queen's raiment from days long perished, Breathing aromas of ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was, Certainly. Bullfinch (who is by nature of a hopeful constitution) then began to babble of green geese. But I checked him in that Falstaffian vein, urging ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... smell of peaches and grapes piled in barrows and barrels scented the air, as it scents the memory still. The odour of a peach brings back to me all the magic-lantern impressions of a stranger—memories of dazzling, dancing, tropical light, bustle, babble, and gayety; they made me feel that I had never been alive before, and the people of the old seaport, active as I had thought them, became in a bewildered retrospect as slow and quiet as snails. But far sweeter ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... the holidays have come! No longer the hum, babble and shouts of children are heard in and around those huge buildings, the County ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... darkened deck was broken with a confusion of sounds. A babble of voices; a woman passenger's scream; shuffling of feet; and above it ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... escaped her lips. The steps had evidently gone into the stable, and had come out thence. Her faltering strength could scarcely support her to the door. And then she saw lying in the straw Elnathan Daniel, beginning to babble and gurgle again, and to grow very pink with joy over a new toy—a man's glove, a red woollen glove, accidentally dropped in the straw. She caught it from his hands, and turned it about curiously. She had knit ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Of simple trust with treachery of words; The joy of hearing withered in her heart. For now she felt that faithless messengers Could pass the open and unguarded gates Of sound, and bring a message all untrue, Or half a truth that makes the deadliest lie, Or idle babble, neither false nor true, But hollow to the heart, and meaningless. She heard the flattering voices of deceit, That mask the hidden purposes of men With fair attire of favourable words, And hide the evil in the guise ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... sunlight. The earth sent forth fragrant exhalations. A gentle breeze lent a tonic quality to the atmosphere. The leaves sparkled with dew, and the stream in the bottom flashed in the sunlight, filling the woods with its sonorous babble. So inviting was the scene that despite their haste, the boys could not resist the temptation to drop their hooks in promising pools as they moved along. Without half trying, they accumulated a dozen fine ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... crowd their thick melodies; But yet, to common eyes, life's poetry Something has faded, and the cause of this May be that Man, no longer at the shrine Of Woman, kneeling with true reverence, In spite of field, wood, river, stars and sea, Goes most disconsolate. A babble now, A huge and wind-swelled babble, fills the place Of that great adoration which of old Man had for Woman. In these days no more Is love the pith and marrow of Man's fate. Thou who in early years feelest awake To finest impulses from nature's ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... overhead, And flowers adorn each mossy bed; The waters babble as they run— One thing is lacking, only one: If Mary were but here to-day, I would believe your ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke
... babble, Duane. I've years of silence to make up for. Let me talk like a fool; you know I'm not one.... Oh, the happiness of this one night!—the happiness of it! I never shall have enough dancing, never enough of pleasure.... I—I'm perfectly mad over pleasure; ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... slowly to his tent and stretched himself on a blanket by the side of the snoring tall soldier. In the darkness he saw visions of a thousand-tongued fear that would babble at his back and cause him to flee, while others were going coolly about their country's business. He admitted that he would not be able to cope with this monster. He felt that every nerve in his body ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... or two." It was a warm night, and when the organ recital was over, John and Jane Barclay, after the custom of the town, sat on a terrace in front of the house talking of the day's events. Music always made John babble. ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... silence. As though by some curious instinct which they both shared, they glanced across the table to where Granet had become the centre of a little babble of animated conversation. Geraldine averted her eyes almost at once, and looked down at her plate. There was a shade of ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a faithful nurse little Juli gradually grew stronger, both physically and mentally. The little girl's wan cheeks began to be rosy, the convulsions and fever attacked her less frequently. Besides the faint "Baba," she learned to babble "Duni," (instead of Kuni) and afterward "Mother," and many other words. At last she talked nearly as well as other children of her age. All this afforded the lame girl a wealth of sweet joys wholly new to her, which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... charming conversations with him. He was a perfect gentleman, with an ease of manner so fascinating and rare, showing high breeding, and a voice rich and full. Whenever he spoke, his words came out clear from the surrounding babble and all the noise of the ship, so that I could always tell where he was. He is one of the primitive men, in contradistinction to the derivative (as Sarah Clarice once divided people). He seemed never at a loss on any subject soever; and when the passengers were trying feats of skill and physical ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... that Phidias' statue must borrow gold from the sun, but since that is unproved, it is absurd to talk of a deficit. Moreover, gold cannot be borrowed from the sun. Therefore what Protagoras says is mere babble, and deserves no answer. On the other hand, will Phidias answer this question? 'When you have made Athene up there on the Parthenon, have ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... me I was to turn down beside the school-house for Dunure. And so, when I found a lone house among the snow, and heard a babble of childish voices from within, I struck off into a steep road leading downwards to the sea. Dunure lies close under the steep hill: a haven among the rocks, a breakwater in consummate disrepair, much apparatus for drying nets, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and forwards, one of a merry procession, on the terrace by the lakeside. The gay toilets of the women, their bright-coloured hats and sunshades, made the terrace look like a great bank of monstrous moving flowers. The band played brisk accompaniments to the steady babble of voices, Italian, English, German. The pure air was shot with alien scents—the women's perfumery, the men's cigarette-smoke. The marvellous blue waters crisped in the breeze, and sparkled in the sun; ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... sights in these times is that of poor creatures, on platforms, in parliaments and other situations, making and unmaking "Laws;" in whose soul, full of mere vacant hearsay and windy babble, is and was no image of Heaven's Law; whom it never struck that Heaven had a Law, or that the Earth—could not have what kind of Law you pleased! Human Statute-books, accordingly, are growing horrible to think of. An impiety and poisonous futility every Law of them that ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... over his knees, and took my place opposite to him on the other side of the fire; and thus we kept our strange vigil, while slowly above us broke the grim, cold dawn of early spring-time, which even the birds do not brighten with their babble. ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... The silver babble of the creek, The willow-whisper—the day's end, With murmur of the village street, A called ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... not sure that they were not blue false bubbles that would burst in a moment and leave clear annihilation. He could see the darkness in them, as if they were only bubbles of darkness. He was afraid that one day he would break down and be a purely meaningless babble ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... "I have always been a royalist. I have let others babble, and have done as I saw fit. I understood my course, and knew my own object. If I committed a fault as a single individual, I could make it good again; but if I committed it jointly with three or four others, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... in with the troopers of Horn, rendered it expedient for us to return to Namur with only half the object of his highness accomplished. But the babble of the old chaplain had acquainted us with nearly all we wanted to know,— namely, the number and disposal of the Statists, and the position taken up ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... away from the babble of sound, and they went down the first set of steps and joined the procession that was picking its way over the ties toward ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... the true poet. Its teachings drop in tears, and the heart receives them kneeling, and is in no hurry to babble to the world all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... followed, wandering through the lone mountain-land, the sharp sting of life grew blunted and the wandering merged half into a dream. Smoke would become abruptly conscious, to find himself staring at the never-ending hated snow-peaks, his senseless babble still ringing in his ears. And the next he would know, after seeming centuries, was that again he was roused to the sound of his own maunderings. Labiskwee, too, was light-headed most of the time. In the main their efforts were unreasoned, ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... to himself saying things which, if spoken on the silver screen, would cause him to dash to the box-office and demand his money back. Let him attempt to do it on orange juice, and what ensues? Shame seals his lips, or, if it doesn't do that, makes him lose his morale and start to babble. Gussie, for example, as we have seen, babbles of ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... class. Ten guineas per night—five hundred for the season—is the price exacted for a first-rate opera-box; and as the exclusives usually arrive at the close of the opera, or, if earlier, keep up a perpetual babble during its performance, they clearly come for the dancing.—"On voit l'opera, et l'on ecoute le ballet," used to be said of the Academie de Musique. But it might be asserted now, with fully as much truth, of the Queen's Theatre, where the evolutions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... Projectors who had discovered every kind of remedy for the little evils with which the State was touched, except the remedy of setting to work in earnest to root out a single sin, poured their distracting babble into any ears they could lay hold of, at the reception of Monseigneur. Unbelieving Philosophers who were remodeling the world with words, and making card-towers of Babel to scale the skies with, talked with unbelieving Chemists who had an eye ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... eloquence will succeed where my plain speech has failed." And to the tall Sagamore he said: "My brother, this is Ensign Loskiel, of Colonel Morgan's command—my comrade and good friend. What this man's lips tell you has first been taught them by his heart. Squirrels chatter, brooks babble, and the tongues of the Iroquois are split. But this is a man, Sagamore, such as are few among men. For he lies not even to women." And though his countenance was very grave, I saw ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... it's essential in the long run. They have their ways of doing things here. I encourage it, of course; Yulia Mihailovna, in the first place, Gaganov too.... You laugh? But you know I have my policy; I babble away and suddenly I say something clever just as they are on the look-out for it. They crowd round me and I humbug away again. They've all given me up in despair by now: 'he's got brains but he's dropped from the moon.' Lembke invites me to enter the ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... as the giant forces sent a crack, like a great knife, through one of the frozen mountains. He had listened to those sounds for five months, and in those five months he had heard no other voice but his own and MacVeigh's and the babble of an Eskimo. Only once in four months had he seen the sun, and that was on the morning that MacVeigh went south. So he had gone half mad. Others had gone completely mad before him. Through the window his eyes rested on the five rough ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... Babble of comment and argument! It was a picked fight—anybody could see that. Why should Lapierre come north in the Flagg interests? Lapierre had never worked in a Flagg crew. It was begun so suddenly and was ended so soon! A minute's flash of drama against the ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... not believe in them when that bit of worm-eaten cloth is all I have to show for them; but to convince you, to enchant and astound the world, I need only the hand of Raphael. His brain I already have. A pity, you will say, that I haven't his modesty! Ah, let me boast and babble now; it's all I have left! I am the half of a genius! Where in the wide world is my other half? Lodged perhaps in the vulgar soul, the cunning, ready fingers of some dull copyist or some trivial artisan, who turns out by the dozen his easy prodigies of touch! But it's not for me to sneer ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule. Not William the Silent only, but all the considerable men I have known, and the most undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, forbore to babble of what they were creating and projecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do thou thyself but hold thy tongue for one day: on the morrow, how much clearer are thy purposes and duties; what wreck and rubbish have those mute workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... holding her hand in his, had pushed up her sleeve and was kissing her arm, as he talked, up as far as her elbow and down again to the tips of her fingers. She did not even attempt to draw her hand away, she was still in that state of apathy, where all her senses seemed dulled; and so she let him babble on, murmuring his adoration and his rose-colored ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow |
