"Babel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... most of our northern States, who have such a propensity for setting the church on the summit of some high hill where not a tree or shrub adorns the grounds, and the aspiring steeple seems, like Babel, to be striving vainly to reach ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... published his Chaldean Account of Genesis in 1876, he was of opinion that the Creation Tablets in the British Museum contained descriptions of the Temptation of Eve by the serpent and of the building and overthrow of the Tower of Babel. The description of Paradise in Genesis ii seems to show traces of Babylonian influence, and the cylinder seal, Brit. Mus. No. 89,326, was thought to be proof that a Babylonian legend of the Temptation existed. In fact, George Smith printed a copy of the seal in his book (p. 91). ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum
... bring her dead to life! The soldier lad; the market wife; Madam buying fowls from her; Tip, the butcher's bandy cur; Workmen carting bricks and clay; Babel passing to and fro On the business of a day Gone three thousand years ago— That you cannot; then be done, Put the goblet down again, Let the broken arch remain, Leave the dead men's ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... feet, kissing my hands and crying out I was a saint and all the rest of it, and one even saw a halo round my head. It was too crowded in the prayer-room. I took a bigger room, and then we had a regular tower of Babel. The devil got hold of me completely and screened the light from my eyes with his unclean hoofs. We all behaved as though we were frantic. I read, while the old maids and other females sang, and then after standing ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... now, with one general Babel of information about deceased—nobody offering to read the riot act or seeming to discountenance the insurrection or disapprove of it in any way—but the head twin drowned all the turmoil and held his own ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... any writer whatever, I should not have offered it indirectly, but openly, frankly, and in the spirit of liberal candor due to an honorable contemporary.] At this very day, a French and an English economist have reared a Babel of far more elaborate errors on this subject; M. Say, I mean, and Mr. Malthus: both ingenious writers, both eminently illogical,—especially the latter, with whose "confusion worse confounded" on the subject of Value, if reviewed by ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... "By Babel's streams we sat and wept When Zion we thought on, In midst thereof we hanged our harps The ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... in rags, Negroes, Tunisians, hotel waiters in white aprons, pushing and shouting, plucking at his clothes, fighting over his luggage; one grabbing his preserves another his medicine chest and, in a screeching babel of noise, throwing at his head the improbable names of hotels.... Deafened by this tumult, Tartarin ran hither and thither,struggling, fuming, and cursing after his baggage, and not knowing how to communicate with these barbarians, harangued them in French, ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... too. The sweet voices of pleading affections, the loud cry of desires and instincts that roar for their food like beasts of prey, the querulous complaints of disappointed hopes, the groans and sobs of black-robed sorrows, the loud hubbub and Babel, like the noise of a great city, that every man carries within, must be stifled and coerced into silence. We have to take the animal in us by the throat, and sternly say, 'Lie down there and be quiet.' We have to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... orders had been disobeyed. Five prisoners had been dismissed, and were already out of his reach: two others were waiting while their captors debated on their fate. Then Hamilton, furious that any of "Babel's brats" should be let go, slew one of these with his own hand, to stay any such unreasonable spirit of mercy, "lest the Lord would not honour us to do ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... concerto was written. In his later life Rubinstein lived like a prince in a beautiful estate near St. Petersburgh. The list of his works is something enormous. Of operas and dramatic works there are twelve, several of which, such as "The Tower of Babel," "Paradise Lost" and "Moses," are biblical operas, a type of dramatico mystical work created by Rubinstein. It contains the gravity and depth of oratorio combined with the intense realism of the stage. There are ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... objection to possessing them, provided the things necessary to happiness could be added to them. Of themselves, they are insufficient to meet the wants of the heart. Instead of being discontented with my plain home, I shall prize it the more highly in consequence of my visit to this great Babel. Do not think I am ungrateful to my dear uncle and to his wife for their efforts to amuse me and make me happy. I should not be your ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... Cunningham—I wholly intended to see you, but now I fear I cannot, as my stay is grown so short; so, if I cannot, here is a "good bye," and God bless you, and as you are aware of my ignorance in travelling about your great Babel, being insufficient to do so in most cases without a guide, which is not always to be procured, you must allow me to make up for the omission by a shake of the hand on paper, as hearty as your imagination ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... set foot on shore, following a great negro porter, he was almost stupefied by the babel of tongues; but, fortunately, a policeman took him in hand and had him directed, together with his enormous collection of luggage, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... would speak to her in German. Our conversation was not long. Her Austrian dialect and my Lower-Saxon are so different that, till you have practised, you are not mutually intelligible in them. Accordingly we were not. A by-stander would have split with laughing at the Babel we made of it; each catching only a word here and there, and guessing the rest. This Princess was so tied to her etiquette, she would have reckoned it a crime against the Reich to speak to me in a foreign language; for she knew ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... or 700 homeless fugitives, who have left their all behind them and fled in terror, frequently on foot, for many miles, and carrying their possessions on their backs. The majority are old men, women, and children. In the babel of voices are frequently heard pitiful cries of poorly fed children, shrieks of more lusty ones, and groans and wailings of mothers who still seem stunned and stupefied by their ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... There rages, utters vain and mighty things. Some dream of triumphs, and exalted names, Some of dear gold, and some of beauteous dames; Whilst in the midst of their huge sleepy boast, An angel scatters death through all the host. The affrighted tyrant back to Babel hies, There meets an end far worse than that he flies. Here Hezekiah's life is almost done! So good, and yet, alas! so short 'tis spun. The end of the line was ravelled, weak, and old; Time must go back, and afford better hold, To tie a new thread to it of fifteen years. 'Tis done; the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... revelry was enacted in the little glade beside which Madam Rothsay and Edith Hester had been left helplessly bound by their captors. From the moment of the girl's brave effort to warn the camp, these two had listened with straining ears to the babel of sounds by which the whole course of the tragedy was made plain to them. They shuddered at the volleys, at the screams of the wounded, and at the triumphant yells of the victors. They almost forgot their own wretched position in their horror at the fate of their recent ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... restricted sense, is preferable to a system of teaching which, professing so much, really does so little for the mind. Shut your college gates against the votary of knowledge, throw him back upon the searchings and the efforts of his own mind; he will gain by being spared an entrance into your babel. Few indeed there are who can dispense with the stimulus and support of instructors, or will do anything at all, if left to themselves. And fewer still (though such great minds are to be found), who will not, from such unassisted attempts, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... dominating geniuses of the world, such as Homer, Saint Augustine, Shakespeare and Moliere; but for the mind that has accurate vision, how many rocks are overturned on this Enceladus, what staircases are forgotten in his Tower of Babel, as in his Jardies house! Balzac was half a woman, as George Sand was half a man. He had a woman's curiosities, he had also her contradictions. Balzac believed himself religious; but his church was the witches' ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... top of a low mound whence he could see dimly a number of dark figures scurrying hither and thither. From their actions and from the babel of shouts, commands, oaths and shooting that came from the little clearing around the huts, he judged that they were engaged ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... Tower of Babel. The location of this tower. Specific purpose of the tower. Traditions of such a tower. The civilization of the ancient world. Two great empires of antiquity. Language and literature. Motive of their civilization. Lessons of the period. ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... was received with a chorus of derision by those to whom it was addressed, and the noise was increased so furiously, that it resembled the clamor of Babel. ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Dutch. I overlooked the same fact, but it gave me no trouble whatever. There was no united Germany then, and my pupils disagreed continually about the pronunciation of their own language, which seemed, like that of Babel, intelligible to nobody. I composed their quarrels by confining their minds to English solely, and harmony was restored each ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... pitifull pedagogue," and contained an amusing account of a house where the Puritan element was still in the ascendant. A numerous company is present, and each little group being occupied with its own subject, the general effect is that of another Babel. While one is engaged in quoting the classics, another confides to his neighbors how much ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... very babel of sounds, of groans, of weeping. The ship's surgeon himself seemed paralysed before the sight of the carnage around him. You looked along the length of the vessel, and it was as though you looked upon the scene of a bloody battle, for there were dead almost in heaps, ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... so much seen of the eye as imagined of the mind or fancy. Hence, romance is historically contrasted with reality, with many unfortunate results when we come to its modern applications. The issue has been a Babel-like ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... "Cargoes" were being unladen here; Liddell-and-Scott was officiating as a cricket ball there; a siege was going on round this door, and a hand-to-hand scrimmage between the posts of that. A few of the placid ones were quietly unpacking in the midst of the Babel, and one or two were ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... straight to its mark. As the gaily plumaged creature fluttered to earth its companions and the little monkeys set up a most terrific chorus of wails and screaming protests. The whole forest became suddenly a babel of hoarse screams and ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... went on; the wind piled up steadily in violence; and the sea rose till the sodden vessel rode it with a very babel of shrieks, and groans, and complaining sounds. Toward morning, a terrific squall powdered up against them and hove her down, and a dull rumbling was heard in her bowels to let them know that once more her cargo ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... he could not imagine. The great crowds, the blare of bands, the gala dress and the babel of voices all reminded him of the country fairs that he had often attended with Pedro, in the ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... veritable babel of tongues, punctuated by embracings; but in the end the retinue and the baggage were got off up the drive, followed by the children and the little Spanish-looking boy, with whom they had already made ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... sad procession! The conquerors ride proudly on the high ground with the captive host in full view. The tower of Babel and the walls of their magnificent city are visible in ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... sadness of it all haunted me, and paralysed my speech; and I swerved off again at every threatened allusion. We sat on for awhile, they on either side of the roomy fireplace, and I between them, whilst the good woman and her daughters washed up the tea-things. The clatter of the dishes, and the babel of many voices, made it impossible for us to speak freely on the subject nearest our hearts. At length we rose to go. I noticed, on the part of my two aged companions, a peculiar reluctance to separate. Each longed, yet dreaded, ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... bottle-holders, stroked, caressed, poked toward each other, and finally liberated. The big black cock plunged instantly at the little gray one and struck him on the head with his spur. The gray responded with spirit. Then the Babel of many-tongued shoutings broke out, and ceased not thenceforth. When the cocks had been fighting some little time, I was expecting them momently to drop dead, for both were blind, red with blood, and so exhausted ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Hence, ever since the attention of scholars was first directed to the subject of Babylonian topography, opinion has been divided on the question before us, and there have not been wanting persons to maintain that the Birs-i-Nimrud is the true temple of Belus, if not also the actual tower of Babel, whose erection led to the confusion of tongues and general dispersion of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... noon, and the great belfry above the Gothic Cloth Hall in the Grande Place was casting a lengthening shadow athwart the crowded square. Above the Babel of voices sounded on a sudden the note of a horn, and there was a cry of "The Duke! The Duke!" followed by a general scuttle of the multitude to leave a clear way down the middle of the ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... successive evaporations of human society,—in a word, species of formations. Each wave of time contributes its alluvium, each race deposits its layer on the monument, each individual brings his stone. Thus do the beavers, thus do the bees, thus do men. The great symbol of architecture, Babel, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... passed the firewood and halted at command. Every man was tearing himself loose, even Matthewson. Hats and mittens were flying in the air. Men were shaking hands, it did not matter with whom, and bubbling over in a general incoherent babel. ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... had proved successful. He then spoke at some length in regard to his diocese. He emphasized its diversity in climate and productions, the wide range of its plant life, the great number of indian tribes which occupied it, the Babel of tongues within it, its vast mineral wealth. A Mexican by birth, the archbishop is, in part, of English blood and was educated, as a boy, in England. He speaks English easily and well. He showed us many curious and interesting things. Among these was a cylindrical, box-like figure of a rain-god, ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... and sceptre of the great. But who are these that, linking hand in hand, Transmit across the twilight waste of years The flying brightness of a kindled hour? Not always, nor alone, the lives that search How they may snatch a glory out of heaven Or add a height to Babel; oftener they That in the still fulfilment of each day's Pacific order hold great deeds in leash, That in the sober sheath of tranquil tasks Hide the attempered blade of high emprise, And leap like lightning to the ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... professors of the art of thinking have drawn up for our instruction. These rules may be good enough as servants, but we have let them become the worst of masters, forgetting that philosophy is made for man, not man for philosophy. Logic has been the true Tower of Babel, which we have thought to build so that we might climb up into the heavens, and have no more miracle, but see God and live—nor has confusion of tongues failed to follow on our presumption. Truly St. Paul said well that the just shall live by faith; and the question "By what faith?" is a ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... here we are in Paris!" And then it was all confusion, for the guards were throwing open the doors to the compartments, and streams of people were meeting on the platform, in what seemed to be inextricable confusion amid a babel of sounds. And it wasn't until Polly was driving up in the big cab with her part of Mr. King's "family," as he called it, through the broad avenues and boulevards, interspersed with occasional squares and gardens, and ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... alone the Morning Street, Filled with the silence strange and sweet: All seems as lone, as still, as dead, As if unnumbered years had fled, Letting the noisy Babel be Without a breath, a memory. The light wind walks with me, alone, Where the hot day like flame was blown; Where the wheels roared and dust was beat, The dew ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... of the high words, laughter, and vituperation which made a babel of the courtroom, Cary spoke to his opponent. "Mr. Rand, do you remember that frosty morning, long ago, when you and I first met? I came upon you in the woods, and together we gathered chinquapins. Does it seem long to you since ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... speaking, although it was littered with many household effects which had no business in a bedroom. It was, indeed, used as a storehouse for such wares as the proprietor of the shop only offered to a chosen few. The atmosphere of the room must have been a very Tower of Babel, where strange foreign bacilli from all parts of the world rose up and ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... declared his innocence; but at the same time a throng of accusers arose upon the other side, crying how he had been found last night in Sir Daniel's house, how he wore a sacrilegious disguise; and in the midst of the babel, Sir Oliver indicated Lawless, both by voice and gesture, as accomplice to the fact. He, in his turn, was dragged from his seat and set beside his leader. The feelings of the crowd rose high on either side, and while some dragged the prisoners to and fro to favour their escape, others cursed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from every section of the United States. As regarded educational advantages, the institution was unexceptionable; the professors were considered unsurpassed in their several departments, and every provision was made for thorough tuition. But what a Babel reigned outside of the recitation room! One hundred and forty girls to spend their recesses in envy, ridicule, malice, and detraction. Anxious to shake off the loneliness which so heavily oppressed her, Irene at first mingled freely among her companions; but she ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... guesses where! They fill me with small deer, these negroes, Bedouin Arabs, swashbucklers, adventurers from every land, and ragged settlers who poison me with their pipes, and all jabbering a language that the Tower of Babel itself could make nothing of! And, furthermore, you should see how they treat me—I mean, how they never treat me: never a brush or a wash. They begrudge me grease for my axles. Instead of my good fat quiet horses ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... messages from the Waldorf, from the Wanamaker station, from the police wireless. Never had he heard so many messages or imagined that the air could be so filled with talk. And had he not been a very able operator, he would have been so confused by the babel that he would have understood none of it clearly. But he tuned sharply, shutting out interfering vibrations, and caught clearly message after message. But every message that he intercepted was sent by ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... mass of humanity, most of them about to perish, went up a babel of sounds which in its sum shaped itself to one prolonged scream, such as might proceed from a Titan in his agony. All this beneath a brooding, moonlit sky, and on a sea as smooth as glass. Upon the ship, which now lay upon her side, the siren still sent up its yells for succour, and some brave ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... October, a four-seated fly might have been seen at the door of Putnam's hotel, on the roof of which was being piled a Babel of luggage, the inside being already full. Into another vehicle, our party—i.e., three of us—entered, and ere long both the carriages were on the banks of the river, where the steamer was puffing away, impatient for a start. The hawsers were soon cast off, and we launched forth ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... the president listened. Only an ex-wrestler in the wheat pit could have picked intelligence out of the Babel ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... Numidian lion, on her rock the city lay, Nothing daunted though surrounded, and with scanty store of bread; Her fierce eyes, two flags of crimson, stared through battle all the day, One on Babel Wad's high key-stone, and ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... interesting book the history of ancient America is unfolded, from its first settlement by a colony that came from the Tower of Babel, at the confusion of languages to the beginning of the fifth century of the Christian era. We are informed by these records that America in ancient times has been inhabited by two distinct races of people. The first were ...
— The Wentworth Letter • Joseph Smith
... moment (which since first telling of the 'Tower of Babel' story has somewhat fallen from grace as a symptom of unity among mankind), or rather, subsuming it as one of the most essential exhibitions of rationality, and indeed its chief instrument, we come ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... mad efforts to get closer to the Rostra and to a small group of magistrates, who, with grave faces, were clustered at the foot of its steps. These latter spoke to each other in whispers, but such a babel of sounds swelled up around them that they might safely have screamed ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... into the house; and while he was signing to a man to take the horse's head, she was out again, the gaslight catching her eyes so that they glared like a tigress's, her child in her arms, and a whole Babel of explaining tongues behind her. How she did it neither she nor Raymond ever knew, but in a second she had flown to her perch, saying hoarsely, "Drive me to Dr. Worth's. They were drugging her. I don't know whether I was in time. No, not a word"—(this to those behind)— "never let me see ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sauntered slowly through the Vier Marchi, nodding right and left to people who greeted him. It was Saturday and market day in Jersey. The square was crowded with people. All was a cheerful babel; there was movement, colour everywhere. Here were the high and the humble, hardi vlon and hardi biaou—the ugly and the beautiful, the dwarfed and the tall, the dandy and the dowdy, the miser and the spendthrift; young ladies gay in silks, laces, and scarfs from Spain, and gentlemen ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... movements of the bare, upturned feet; while the gondoliers landed their passengers to a lively refrain of "Stali!" their curses and appeals to the Madonna blending not discordantly with the general babel of sound which gives such a sense of companionship in Venice—human voices calling in ceaseless interchange from shore to shore, resonant in the brilliant atmosphere, quarrels softened to melodies across the water, cries of the gondoliers telling ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... our commander, and we made an earthwork away off on one side of the road (leaving the other side to take care of itself) and camped outside it in tents! But the Regular Army fellow had not the heart to suggest the demolition of our Towers of Babel, and the foundations remain to this day to attest the genius of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... fatigue and privation had broken the ranks, discipline was lost. There was no way in which it could be maintained in a vast body of isolated individuals, lacking every necessity, walking on their own, without understanding why; for in this disorderly mass there ruled a veritable babel of tongues. A few regiments, mainly those in the Guard, held together. Almost all the troopers of the cavalry, having lost their horses, were formed into infantry battalions, and those of their officers who ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... clatter of dishes downstairs and babel of voices that he did not hear a sleigh drive ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... which our valley bars, this wall of stone, From which its present name we closely trace, Were by disdainful nature rased, and thrown Its back to Babel and to Rome its face; Then had my sighs a better pathway known To where their hope is yet in life and grace: They now go singly, yet my voice all own; And, where I send, not one but finds its place. There too, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... about your Tower of Babel! It wasn't in the same class as that row. Twenty men trying to talk all at ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... not readily miss. She cheered herself, however, by putting dainty finishing touches here and there, seeing that the lamp was lighted in the "harem" outside, and was busy placing fairy lamps among the shrubs which were to screen the band, when a babel of voices from outside warned her that the visitors were approaching. Footsteps came nearer and nearer, and a chorus of exclamations greeted the sight of the "harem." The door stood open, Peggy waited for Rosalind's voice to call and bid her share the honours, ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... (discord), in which each stanza showed a change of metre and melody. The descort of Raimbaut de Vaqueiras is written in five dialects, one for each stanza, and the last and sixth stanza of the poem gives two lines to each dialect, which Babel of strange sounds is intended, he says, to show how entirely his lady's heart has changed towards him. The ballata and the estampida were dance-songs, but very few examples survive. Certain ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... suing, sighing, wooing, sad and merry hours, Blisses tasted, kisses wasted, building Babel's towers! Hearts were aching, hearts were breaking, lashes wet with dew, When the ships touched the lips of islands Sappho knew; Yearning breasts and burning breasts, cold at last, are hid Amid the glooms of carven tombs in ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... colors; the streets swarm with humanity,—humanity in all shapes, manners, forms,—laughing, pushing, jostling, crowding, a mass of men and women and children, as varied and as assorted in their several individual peculiarities as ever a crowd that gathered in one locality since the days of Babel. ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... never have admitted, from the time the stone-masons and hod-carriers struck work upon the tower of Babel, (for want of a circulating medium of speech, that would be taken at par by all hands, down to the present Anno Domini, 1834, and twenty-second of October,) that any of their sisterhood ever fell in love "at sight," ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... heat," said Porter; and Allis noted how calm and restful his voice sounded after the exultant babel of the hoarse-throated watchers. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... also appears to be a custom-house and emporium for wool, cotton, and other products of the tributary country. Horses, camels, and merchandise crowd the central court, and rising fifty feet above all this confusion and babel is a wooden tower known as a tullar. This is a dilapidated framework of poles that sways visibly in the wind, the uses of which at first sight it is not easy to determine. Some of the natives motion for us to ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the clatter of dishes and pans and a babel of women's voices, the shrill commands of old Mrs. Bolum rising above them. The feast was preparing. Its hour was at hand. Apollo never was a match for Bacchus, and Perry Thomas could not command attention once Mrs. Bolum appeared on the scene. He realized ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... commence again. At this moment intellect has seized upon the seven-league boots of the fable, which fitted everybody who drew them on, and strides over the universe. How soon, as on the decay of the Roman empire, may all the piles of learning which human endeavours would rear as a tower of Babel to scale the heavens, disappear, leaving but fragments to future generations, as proofs of pre-existent knowledge! Whether we refer to nature or to art, to knowledge or to power, to accumulation or destruction, bounds have been prescribed which man can never pass, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... effects had left London by steamer direct for Cyprus, I therefore found them, upon my arrival from Egypt, in the charge of Mr. Z. Z. Williamson, a most active agent and perfect polyglot; the latter gift being an extreme advantage in this country of Babel-like ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... my life,—and that is saying a great deal,—that institutions such as this will be the means of refining and improving that social edifice which has been so often mentioned to-night, until,—unlike that Babel tower that would have taken heaven by storm,—it shall end in sweet accord and harmony amongst all ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... and several of his subordinates; ten minutes after Braga and one of the bank officials came, the only passengers in their boat, and at once joined the police on the after deck and stood with them waiting and watching the boats as they arrived. In the mean time babel reigned around the ship. About three score boats surrounded her, the owners selling to the passengers everything from oranges to monkeys, ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... the Democrats. It was the business of the managers to determine which one, or which ones, among the voices of discontent, represented truly this controlling body of voters. They thought they knew. Two cries, at least, that rang loud out of the Babel of the hour, should be heeded. One of these harked back to Niagara. In the anxious ears of the managers it dinned this charge: "the Administration prevented negotiations for peace by tying together two demands, the Union must ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... replied, making him hear with difficulty, for I was unused to speak in such a babel, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "reform. I never knew anybody need it as much as I. I never do things anyway, and then I do them wrong, and then I forget all about them. Mother says I'm improving. She says my room used to look like a perfect Babel, and now I keep the wardrobe door shut, and dust it out—sometimes. Then there's my mending. I came out here so's to be quiet and keep at it. The poor dear woman is so afraid I won't learn to do things in a lady-like ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... we woke early. Mules, donkeys, camels, horses, and mares were screaming and kicking, and the men running about cursing and swearing. In such a Babel it was impossible to feel drowsy. I felt very faint as we set out from Jayrud. The salt marshes in the distance were white and glistening, and the heat spread over them in a white mist which looked like a mirage bearing fantastic ships. We breakfasted at the next ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... getting unpleasantly hot, and the horses caked with sweat and dust, a halt would be called in some shady tope, where the tents rose as if by magic, fires were rapidly lighted by the attendants, and, amidst quite a babel of tongues, breakfast was prepared, while parroquets of a vivid green shrieked at us from the trees, squirrels leaped and ran, and twice over we arrived at a grove to find it tenanted by a troop of chattering monkeys, which mouthed and scolded at us till our ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... guiding, informing, protecting; making this great beautiful labyrinth of wonders, that might be so puzzling, so wearisome, so dangerous, a place of comfort, of safety, of delight. My friend, when I think what a Babel this place would be without the Columbian Guard, ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... faint or seizure and, looking up, directed his attendants to return the magical ebony rods which burned without being consumed to one of the hide bags that contained his medicines. The assembly began to break up amidst a babel of ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... men, young boys, beware of schoolmasters; They will infect you, mar you, blear your eyes: They seek to lay the curse of God on you, Namely, confusion of languages, Wherewith those that the Tower of Babel built Accursed were in the world's infancy. Latin, it was the speech of infidels; Logic hath nought to say in a true cause; Philosophy is curiosity; And Socrates was therefore put to death, Only for he was a philosopher. Abhor, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... the fur away and spread it out on the roof of the dugout to freeze. Then he cut some fresh meat from the carcass, and afterwards dragged the remainder down the hill and left it for the dogs. The squabble began as soon as he returned to Aim-sa. A babel of fierce snarling and yapping proceeded as the ruthless beasts tore at the still warm flesh. And in less than a minute other voices came up from the woods, heralding the approach of some of the famished forest creatures. Nick gave no heed. The dogs must defend their own. Such is the law of ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... was glad to have come, for half the world was here. There could have been nothing like it since the Tower of Babel. The country around her was a vast tract of men sick with longing for the ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... distinctive dress, short and sturdy Gurkhas, yellow Saddhus, Jats stalking proudly, brawling knots of sailormen from the Port, sleek Mahrattas, polluted Sansis, Punjabis, Bengalis, priests, beggars, dancing girls; a blaze of colour ever shifting, a Babel of tongues never stilled, a seething scum on a witch's brew ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... into one another's arms. They could talk now of the flood for the danger had passed from them. The dormitories were a babel of voices. A score of girls talked at once and not one listened ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... walls, and tenantless houses stand here and there like the ghosts of buried hope. Down by the river stands the furnace, grim and silent as the extinct crater of Popocatepetl; and the great hotel on the hill looks like the tower of Babel two thousand years after the confusion of tongues. The last of the speculators, with his blue nose and his old battered plug hat which resembles an accordion that has been yanked by a cyclone, stands ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... along the bank, from the village above, people were assembling hurriedly, a babel of oaths, of ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... might be haunted, I can assure you that when I went to bed no subject was farther from my thoughts than the subject of ghosts. I returned to my room at about half-past eleven. The storm was then at its height—all was babel and confusion—impenetrable darkness mingled with the wildest roaring and shrieking; and when I peeped through my casement window I could see nothing—the panes were shrouded in snow—snow which was incessantly dashed against them with cyclonic fury. I fixed a comb in ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... Walworth could afford to take matters easily now. For the last five minutes the Bermondsey bird did most of the music; still it was a hopeless case. Success was not on the cards. By-and-by, time was again called. Babel recommenced, and the ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... men dancing round him; while another party were collected round a man who was singing, at the top of his voice, a song which seemed to afford his auditors infinite amusement. In spite of the strange Babel of sounds, however, the weary seamen and two boys at length fell back and ...
— Sunshine Bill • W H G Kingston
... protected. Meanwhile he is not without a sort of national ambition; but it is of a new kind for him. They believe themselves to be the most ancient of people, retaining the original language that was spoken before the dispersion of Babel, and by consequence the identical language that was spoken by Adam. An interesting excursion might be made on this subject, seemingly so far at variance with the conclusions of learned ethnographers. Their deductions are from undoubted facts, and tend to their conclusion with a force that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... disputing the fact that the age is material, mercantile, money-making. For six eager, rushing days it is absorbed in the pursuit of money or fame or pleasure. Then God strikes the note of his silence in among the clashing sounds of earth's Babel and calls mankind to make a day unlike the other days. It is his merciful thoughtfulness for the race which has created this special day for men. Is it too much to ask that on this one day men think of something else besides politics, ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... achad), a Hebrew name, mentioned only once in the Old Testament (Gen. x. 10), for one of the four chief cities, Akkad, Babel, Erech and Calneh, which constituted the nucleus of the kingdom of Nimrod in the land of Shinar or Babylonia. This Biblical city, Akkad, was most probably identical with the northern Babylonian city known to us as Agade (not Agane, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a babel of shouts and cries, a rush and trampling of feet, but I sped all unheeding, my gaze ever upon the loathed, fleeing shape of this vile blackamoor. I was hard on his heels as he scrambled up the quarter-ladder and within a yard of him as ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... convinced the other; the Roman Catholic became a Protestant, and the Protestant became a Roman Catholic! Dr. Lancelot Andrewes, chairman of one of the two companies that met at Westminster, was probably the most learned man in England. They said of him that if he had been present at the tower of Babel he could have interpreted for all the tongues present. The only trouble was that the world lacked learning enough to know how learned he was. His company had the first part of the Old Testament, and the simple dignity of the style they used shows how scholarship and simplicity go easily together. ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... can testify," Bardolph assented. "Had each one of them a tongue, they would raise a clamor beside which Babel were as an heir weeping for his rich uncle's death; their testimony would qualify you for any mad-house in England. And if their evidence go against the doctor's stomach, the watchman at the corner hath three teeth—or, rather, hath them no longer, ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... the low-lying portion of Newlyn. Here it burst through the alleys and narrow passages, drowned the basements of many tenements, isolated cottages, stores and granaries, threatened nearly a hundred lives startled from sleep by its sudden assault. Then, under the raging weather and in that babel of angry waters, brave deeds were done by the fisher folk, who chanced to be ashore. Grave personal risks were hazarded by many a man in that turbid flood, and not a few women and children were rescued with utmost danger to their saviors' lives. Yet the petty rivalry of ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... give place, no, not for an hour.' His picture was doubtless a highly exaggerated one. The discretionary powers which some of the schemes of comprehension proposed to give would not have left the Church of England a mere scene of confusion, an unseemly Babel of anarchy and licence. A sketch might be artfully drawn, in which nothing should be introduced but what was truthfully selected from the practices of different London Churches of the present day, which might easily make a foreigner imagine that in the National Church uniformity and order ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... of the fallen state of man in his vile environment of flesh here below. The soul, in its earthly sojourn, embodied here, is as much mutilated and degraded from its equipped and pure condition in its lofty natal home, the archetypal world of Truth above the base Babel of material ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... A Babel of eager voices arose then, but Mr. Smith was not listening now. He was watching Mr. Jim's face, and ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... 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 remodelling the world with words, and making card-towers of Babel to scale the skies with, talked with Unbelieving Chemists who had an eye on the transmutation of metals, at this wonderful gathering accumulated by Monseigneur. Exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding, which was at that remarkable time—and has been since—to be known by its fruits of indifference ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... pretty good. Though, in truth, at present one might wonder where the dancers are to find space for their gyrations. The whole area of the floor is covered by a gay crowd, all chattering away in a very Babel of tongues. Some royal highness or other is expected to-night, it seems, and it isn't etiquette to begin dancing before he or she arrives. But a few minutes may well be spent in a quick survey of the assembled guests. All peoples, nations and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... of the command had been literally beside themselves, such words would have brought them to a proper frame of mind; but as it was, the temperate reply seemed to inflame their anger, and on the moment there was a very babel of outcries, amid which it was only possible to distinguish the demand that the force be led toward Fort Schuyler without delay, regardless of any message which the sergeant ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... the attention of each voyager. Every barge had a new-comer alongside and near enough to talk across the water. Therefore a great babel and confusion arose in which rational conversation became impossible. Then vessels essayed to approach nearer one another and the formation began to break. The right oars of one boat and the left of another would be withdrawn and the vessels ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... has no more right to build itself a temple of that sort than to erect a Tower of Babel. Such a habitation is not decent for a mere mortal man. But, after all, I suppose poor Carabas had no choice. Fate put him there as it sent Napoleon to St. Helena. Suppose it had been decreed by Nature that you and I should be Marquises? We wouldn't ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the boxes and demijohns were brought forward and put down the mob began to grow excited at the thought of the drink. She foresaw trouble and disaster, but though her voice was now too feeble to be heard in the babel of sound, she was not yet at the end of her resources. Divesting herself of as many of her garments as was possible, she threw them over the stuff, thus giving it the protection of her own body, ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... 18, Mic. iii. 4, Zech. vii. 3? How, then, is it that the prophet, now on the watch tower, looking round about him to take up the people's condition, and being led by the Spirit so far as to the case of the captives in Babel, can find no prayer, no calling? And was not Daniel so too? Dan. ix. 13. Lo, then, here is the construction that the Spirit of God putteth on many prayers and fastings in a land, "There is none calleth on thy name," there is none ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... and chattering enough to turn the head of a neophyte like myself. Mueller, however, was in his element. He took me up one row and down another, pointed out all that was curious, had a nod for every grisette, and an answer for every touter, and enjoyed the Babel like ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... talk at Babel's Tower This interchange of tedious chat! War can be made in half-an-hour And why should Peace take more than that? All this procrastination, worst of crimes, Annoys the Paris Politician of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... of Nimrod, or Babel, is situated on the Arabian side of the Tigris, in a great plain, seven or eight miles from Babylon. Being ruined on every side, it has formed a great mountain, yet a considerable part of the tower is still standing, compassed and almost covered up ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... in company with two or three of the neighbors, who had run hither to see what was going on, and I ordered a pint of wine and a dish of sauerkraut. Annette came near betraying me. "Goodness!" she cried, "is it possible!" But one exclamation, more or less, in such a babel of voices possessed but little significance. It passed unnoticed, and, while I ate with a ravenous appetite, I listened to the examination to which Dame Gredel was subjected as she lay back in a large armchair, her ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... is allotted to the merely fashionable, or to that shallow mixture of the dramatic and pictorial, which is usually designated the artistic world. Moreover, scraps of conversation reached the ear that led the hearer to conclude that the house was in its way a miniature Babel. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... disguise the place, however, as they will, and plaster the walls with bad pictures as they please, it will be hard to think of any family but one, as one traverses this vast gloomy edifice. It has been humbled to the ground, as a certain palace of Babel was of yore; but it is a monument of fallen pride, not less awful, and would afford matter for a ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... the afternoon the jury retired to consider their verdict, and as the judges at the same moment withdrew to their chamber, the pent-up feelings of the crowded audience instantly found vent in loud Babel-like expressions and interchange of comments on the charge, and conjectures as to the result. "Waiting for the verdict" is a scene that has often been described and painted. Everyone of course concluded that half-an-hour would in any case elapse before the anxiously watched jury-room door would ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan |
