"Childlike" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Klingsor continues his report of the skirmish laughs more and more uncontrollably. "They yield, they flee, each of them carries home his wound! Ha! How proudly he stands upon the rampart! How the roses bloom and smile in his cheeks, as, in childlike amazement, he gazes down upon the solitary garden! ... Hey! Kundry!" But with her laughter ending in a scream, Kundry has abruptly vanished. "What? Already at work?" muses Klingsor. "Ha ha! I knew the charm which will always bring you ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... rare melody in the voice which uttered these words with joyous, almost childlike freedom, which pleased Maria no less than the officer's familiar manner annoyed her. With a hasty movement she raised her head, looked steadily into the young man's handsome ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... something into his beard. Meeting his childlike gaze of admiration, she turned away and put her arm round Barbara's waist. The ladies went indoors to take off their things, accompanied by Adrian, who wanted a lover's word with Doria on the way. Jaffery followed her ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... childlike faith, be devoted to God all the days of my life, put my trust in Him and at all times thank Him for His grace. I believe in Jesus Christ, the Saviour and Redeemer. Him who first loved me I will love in return, and will show this love by love to my parents, ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... will never see the day. Do the old men mind it, as a matter of fact? Why, no. They were never merrier; they have their grog at night, and tell the raciest stories; they hear of the death of people about their own age, or even younger, not as if it was a grisly warning, but with a simple childlike pleasure at having outlived some one else; and when a draught might puff them out like a guttering candle, or a bit of a stumble shatter them like so much glass, their old hearts keep sound and unaffrighted, and they go on, bubbling ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had time to reflect whether she ought to have given it. Could she be happy with him? was he a real Christian? did he love the same Saviour she loved herself? Oh, these thoughts pressed heavily upon her spirit, but she spread out her cares first before her heavenly Father, and then with full childlike openness before her earthly parent—that loving mother from whom she had ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... thus that the almost childlike spirit of the Milanese painters felt the antique; how differently from their Roman brethren! It was thus that they interpreted the lines of their ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... club, for the woods are full these days of volunteers who, leading rather decorative lives in times of peace, have been shaken awake by the war into helping out overtaxed embassies, making beds in hospitals, doing whatever comes along with a childlike delight in the novelty of work. This young man wore a Red Cross button now and paused long enough to impart the following—characteristic of the things we non-combatants hear daily, and which, authentic or not, help ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... home, if you'll take me," she said, in a half whisper, looking up at Tito with wide blue eyes, and with something sweeter than a smile—with a childlike calm. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... first time. The interest, possibly very slight, which he showed in my affairs, seemed to me, lonely and rejected as I was, an image of paternal love. His hospitable care contrasted so strongly with the neglect to which I was accustomed, that I felt a childlike gratitude to the home where no fetters bound me and where I was ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... that unmistakable cry so human in its agonizing tone, warned us of the approach of a panther. Coming closer and closer, the animal prowled round our tent, sounding his childlike wail. It was too dark to get a glimpse of him, though we watched, weapons in hand, for his nearer approach. Saddles had hunted the beast in his Louisiana lairs, and was eager to make him feel the weight of his lead. We succeeded in driving him off once, but he returned and skulked in the bushes ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... hand! Slowly the hat was lifted, but as quickly as light six able-bodied men were on their feet and half way to the door before we realized the cowardliness of it. We forced ourselves back inside the store very slowly, all of us rather ashamed of our ridiculous and childlike fear. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... Tucson I have," Johnny suppressed a grin. Bland's ignorance, his childlike helplessness away from a town tickled him. "But that's all right, Bland. We'll make 'em think we're gods or something. They might make you a chief, Bland—if they don't take a notion to offer you up as a burnt offering to some other god that's got ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... another locality; and being a good fellow who usually won the hearts of his creditors, it was not until after his death that a multitude of small claims came buzzing about his daughter's ears; and it was these as much as anything which had made her accept with childlike insouciance the arrangement of the friends who packed her away to her relatives with all the ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... astray by the nateral desire 'at a man has to think weel o' his ain forbears—for 'at he was a forbear o' my ain, I canna weel doot, the name bein' by no means a common ane, in Scotland ony way—I'm sayin', it seems to me, that it's jist a darin' way, maybe a childlike way, o' judgin', as Job micht ha' dune, 'the Lord by himsel';' an' sayin', 'at gin he, Martin Elginbrod, wad hae mercy, surely the Lord was not less mercifu' than he was. The offspring o' the Most High was, as it were, aware o' the same spirit i' the father o' him, ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... in the slightest degree irritated or grieved by her tirade. But the childlike changeableness and facility of her emotions touched him. He savoured her youth, and himself felt curiously young. It was the fact that within the last year ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... extremity, the Spirit of God, employing the inspired guide, had brought her to Jesus, as the troubled and sinful were brought to Him of old. He had given her rest. He had helped her save her sister, and with childlike confidence she was just looking, lovingly and trustingly, into His divine face, and He was smiling away all her fear and pain. She seemed to feel sure that her mother would get well, that Laura would grow stronger, that they would all learn to know ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... father's, singularly genial, and his appearance very prepossessing. He had as yet no doubt concerning the soundness of any fundamental Christian doctrine, but his mind was already too active to allow of his being contented with my mother's childlike faith. There were points on which he did not indeed doubt, but which it would none the less be interesting to consider; such for example as the perfectibility of the regenerate Christian, and the meaning of the mysterious ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... fortunate ones. The household of these two women was a curious one. Both were childlike, placing side by side in a common domain, inexperience and ambition, the tranquility of an accomplished destiny and the fever of a life plunged in struggle, all the different qualities manifest even in the serene style of dress affected by this blonde ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... the pale hyacinth, a child of fourteen, was quiet and thoughtful; her great deep blue eyes had a musing look, but the childlike smile still played around her lips: I was not able to blow it away, nor did I ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... pride in impressing his auditors with the vastness of his information, acquired by reading and study. He had, moreover, a kind of childlike vanity in making men feel that he was not only extraordinary, but greatly their superior, even when they got him to talk on their own subjects. This habit was especially pronounced ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... attraction of delicate colour. What in the whole world of art more rejuvenating than Angelico's "Coronation" (in the Uffizi)—the happiness on all the faces, the flower-like grace of line and colour, the childlike simplicity yet unqualifiable beauty of the composition? And all this in tactile values which compel us to grant the reality of the scene, although in a world where real people are standing, sitting, and kneeling we know not, and care not, on what. It is true, the ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... lamps tended by saint and sage. O framed for calmer times and nobler hearts! O studious Poet, eloquent for truth! Philosopher! contemning wealth and death, Yet docile, childlike, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... auction to the highest bidder. He could not understand it, but somewhere deep within the sensitive child was struck a note of pain, the echoes of which have never left him throughout his strenuous life. He felt dimly in his childlike way the loneliness of his mother. He has never forgotten it. Lonely indeed she was. She had but one friend to turn to, and that one friend was her brother, Richard Lloyd, the village shoemaker up in North Wales. To him she wrote ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... is said to fluctuate between childhood and womanhood. Let me add that these seeming fluctuations depend much on the company she is in: the budding virgin is princess of chameleons; and, to confine ourselves to her two most piquant contrasts, by her mother's side she is always more or less childlike; but, let a nice young fellow engage her apart, and, hey presto! she shall be every inch a woman: perhaps at no period of her life are the purely mental characteristics of her sex so supreme in her; thus her ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... amidst visions of green fields and laughing waters, and in fond delusion gathered the daisies and chased the butterflies. Changeling transferred into that lowest world of Art from the cradle of civil Nature, her human child's heart yearned for the human childlike delights. All children love the country, the flowers, the sward, the birds, the butterflies; or if some do not, despair, O Philanthropy, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "Childlike, I strove to pick them up, But stumbling forward, sunk, O'er the wild pea and buttercup, ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... from head to foot with a grave sort of curiosity, their great mouths open, displaying pearly teeth of which a white man might well be proud. "You is a good man, capt'n — we knows dat," they said; and when I asked why, the answer showed their childlike faith. "'Cause you couldn't hab come all dis way in a paper boat if de Lord hadn't helped you. He dono help ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... our little sailor-boys, though their hearts are childlike still, have the spirit of gallant veterans. Elbows on the parapet of the sea-wall, they gaze out into the offing. It is more than the blue line marking the faint division between sea and sky that they see. Their eyes care little for the soft, changing colours of the ocean or ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France
... nature, all his instincts of gaiety, so long suppressed by his constant anxiety and disappointment, came out and betrayed themselves in roars of laughter, bursts of animal spirits and a picturesque need of childlike exuberance and riot. ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... of Death upon Dolly, who had saved her! Her heart seemed crushed. If Aimee had been there; but Aimee was not, so she stretched out her hands to the man she had so innocently loved. And as she so knelt before him,—so fair, in the childlike abandon of her grief, so guileless and trusting in her sudden, sweet appeal, so helpless against the world, even against herself,—his man's heart was touched and stirred as it had never been before,—as even Dolly herself ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "Easy—easy? It is childlike," he said in ecstasy. "I have long thought of it, sure. An' thar is a big store of whisky thar, eh, boss? Good—good! And what time ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... was his almost childlike confidence {260} disturbed by a suspicion of bad faith, of intentional delay in issuing the passports, of excuses to hold him back at Yakutsk till the jealous fur traders could send secret complaints to St. Petersburg. Much less was he ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... shield me from the ills That still beset my path, not trying me With snares beyond my wisdom or my strength, He knowing I shall use them to my harm, And find a tenfold misery in the sense That in my childlike folly I have sprung The trap upon myself as vermin use Drawn by the cunning bait to certain doom. Who wrought the wondrous charm that leads us on To sweet perdition, but the self-same power That set the fearful engine ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... with a body bowed down with age, behold then this repenting sinner walking to that public worship which he had so long neglected; with weak and failing eyes he opens the scripture; at the age of seventy he begins to inquire with childlike simplicity into the nature of the gospel, and knowing how short his time is, he makes ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... the certainty of Belknap's perfidy was not removed by the attitude of the President, nor by the vote of the Senate on the article of impeachment—37 guilty, 25 not guilty-for the evidence was too convincing. The public knew by this time Grant's childlike failing in sticking to his friends; and 93 of the 25 Senators who voted not guilty had publicly declared they did so, not because they believed him innocent, but because they believed they had no jurisdiction over ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... cried, in the childlike distress of a simple soul discovering itself the cause of catastrophe, for his boots were smeared all over with ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... by, slowly at first, then quicker, for the young native woman whom he had married a year before had aroused in him a sort of unspoken affection for her artless and childlike innocence, and this deepened when her first child was born; and sometimes, as he worked at his old trade of boat-building—learned before he joined the King's service—he would feel ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... protectors of the integrity from foreign invasion of the rights of Chinkie's Flat nodded "Good evening" to Ah San, and walked back across the road to the "Digger's Best," and the Chinamen, with silent, childlike patience, resumed their loads and trotted along after their leader. They disappeared over the hill, and ere darkness descended the glare of their camp fires was casting steady gleams of light upon the dark waters of the still pool ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... close my eyes, lie down on one of my sofas, . . . and recall that good day at Diodati which effaced a thousand pangs I had felt there a year before. You have made me know the difference between a true affection and a simulated one, and for a heart as childlike as mine, there is cause there for an eternal gratitude. . . . When some thought saddens me, then I have recourse to you; . . . I see again Diodati, I stretch myself on the good sofa of the Maison Mirabaud. . . . Diodati, that image of a happy life, ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... latter could not have said that God modelled the first man out of moistened clay, or have adopted the singular account of the formation of Eve in ii. 21-23. The latter story in particular (see Eve) shows us how childlike was the mind of the early men, whose God is not "wonderful in counsel'' (Isa. xxviii. 29), and fails in his first attempt to relieve the loneliness of his favourite. For no beast however mighty, no bird however graceful, was a fit ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... explaining the extraordinary richness of this nature by the analysis of its results, by his changeable character, by the frankness which ever made his heart speak that which it felt, by his excessive sensitiveness, which made him the slave of momentary impressions, by his almost childlike delight and astonishment at things, Moore does not arrive at the true causes of the phenomenon. He registers, it is true, certain effects which become causes when they draw upon the head of Lord Byron certain false judgments, and open ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... drew near him in love secure Cooling his forehead's hot fever; Gently their message of innocence pure Made him a childlike believer. ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... with her simple, soft air of perfect assurance, twisting her shower of bright, golden curls; with her gentle, childlike face, and soft, beseeching, blue eyes, and dimpling little mouth, looking back on her, out of the mirror. By these the little queen had always ruled from her cradle, and should she not rule now? Was it any wonder that John was half out of his wits with joy at thought of possessing her? ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... asks my home-sick soul below, For something loved, yet undefined; So mourns to mingle with the flow Of music from the Eternal Mind; So murmurs, with its childlike sigh, The melody it learned above, To which no echo may reply Save ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... startled eyes that were as round, and almost as large, as plums. Her face was round, too, and faintly childlike. Her hair was dark-brown, and done up in a strange and indeterminate coiffeur that was as charming as it was disconcerting. Her ankle-length dress was white, and there was a bow on the bodice that matched the plum-blueness ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... the properties of excellence which belong to a Primer for a childlike people, as well as ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... she trusted that when she could venture again into the open air she would be more capable of enduring the friction of the world. In May she felt stronger, and saw visitors, among whom was Hans Andersen, "very earnest, very simple, very childlike."[82] A little later she was cast down by the death of Cavour—"that great soul which meditated and made Italy"; she could hardly trust herself to utter his name. It was evident to Browning that the journey to France could not be undertaken without serious ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... halted thus the lieutenant again began to bellow profanely. Regardless of the vindictive threats of the bullets, he went about coaxing, berating, and bedamning. His lips, that were habitually in a soft and childlike curve, were now writhed into unholy contortions. He swore by all ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... Incredible as it might appear, he became conscious that it was not only possible that he could tell this girl, this stranger, the hidden sorrow of his life, but that he actually wished to tell it! He wanted to hear what she would say; to see how she would look. Those childlike eyes would look very beautiful, softened with the light of sympathy and consolation. He wanted to see that light shining ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... profoundly moved by little Amy's sacrifice to the powers of life, and he was further touched by the heartrending spectacle of Jane. Jane doing all she knew for him; Jane, so engaging in her innocence, hiding her small, childlike charm under dark airs of assumed maternity; Jane, whose skirts fluttered wide to all the winds of dream; Jane with an apron on and two little girls tied to the strings of it; Jane, adorable in disaster, striving to be discreet ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... given than this recently published testimony to the relations between Queen and poet: "Mrs. Tennyson told us that the poet laureate likes and admires the Queen personally very much, and enjoys conversation with her. Mrs. Tennyson generally goes too, and says the Queen's manner towards him is childlike and charming, and they both give their opinions freely, even when those differ from the Queen's, which she takes with perfect good humour, and is very animated ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... glances at his companion supplied no clue; P. Sybarite's face remained as uncommunicative as well-to-do relations by marriage; his shadowy, pale and wistful smile denoted, if anything, only an almost childlike pleasure in anticipation of the ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... fact, for a shell which he was not going to leave for some time, his cabin presented a very comfortable appearance; the doctor took a scientific or childlike pleasure in arranging his scientific paraphernalia. His books, his specimens, his cases, his instruments, his physical apparatus, his thermometers, barometers, field-glasses, compasses, sextants, charts, drawings, phials, powder, and medicine-bottles, all ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... was sweeter that night for the prayer breathed by the lowly negro, and even the wild tumult in Adah's heart was hushed by Sam's simple, childlike faith that God would bring ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... child," said the woman who took care of him in his last illness; "if he has done amiss, it was from ignorance rather than wickedness." A charming and a curious being, serious and simple, profound and childlike, winning by reason of his very vagaries, his good-natured originality, his helplessness in common life, La Fontaine knew how to estimate the literary merits as well as the moral qualities of his illustrious friends. "When they happened ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... those happy mortals. But what a strange artists' household was that of those two women, equally childlike, contributing to the common stock inexperience and ambition, the tranquillity of an accomplished destiny and the feverish activity of a life in its prime, all the differences indeed that were indicated by the contrast between that blonde, white ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... good to see Blythe laughing at Pee-wee's heroic effort to dispose of the commissary stores which his companions loaded upon him. It was a laugh of simple, genuine pleasure, almost childlike. ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... adoption of sons. It gathers all such into a family, so delivering their prayer from selfish absorption in their own joys or needs. As our Father 'in Heaven,' He is lifted clear above earth's limitations, changes, and imperfections. So childlike familiarity is sublimed into reverence, our hearts are drawn upward, and freed from the oppressive and narrowing attachment ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... then he distinguished Praying Donald's low, deep voice raised in supplication; then Grandaddy had been fighting again and they had come to pray for him. The boy crept miserably back to his bed and, childlike, soon fell asleep. ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... Kingdom of Heaven is of the childlike, of those who are easy to please, who love and who give pleasure. Mighty men of their hands, the smiters, and the builders, and the judges, have lived long and done sternly, and yet preserved this lovely character; and among our carpet interests and two-penny ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... grammars, and dictionaries; his scientific papers, lives of saints, and devotional poetry. He cast about for a new interest: pitched on gardening, and was to be seen all day, with spade and water-pot, in his childlike eagerness, actually running between the borders. Another step of decay, and he must leave his garden also. Instantly a new occupation was devised, and he sat in the mission cutting paper flowers and wreaths. His diocese was not great enough for his activity; the churches of the ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was, said Professor Scheibner, a man of keen mind, but in his investigations apt to see "by preference" what lay in the path of his theory. He could "less easily" see what was against his theory. He was childlike and trustful in character, and might easily have been deceived by an impostor. He expected everyone to be honest and frank as he was. He started with the assumption that Slade meant to be honest with him. He would have ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... lovely Critias." These are but "apophthegms" (23) too trivial, it may be thought, to find a place in history. Yet I must deem it an admirable trait in this man's character, if at such a moment, when death confronted him, neither his wits forsook him, nor could the childlike sportiveness ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... perhaps, was lavished by any other man upon any other department of study. His conspicuous and beautiful love of truth, his unflinching candour, his transparent fearlessness and honesty of purpose, his childlike simplicity, his modesty of demeanour, his charming manner, his affectionate disposition, his kindliness to friends, his courtesy to opponents, his gentleness to harsh and often bitter assailants, kindled in ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... attitude and every movement. The most striking thing about her, however, was the expression of her eyes and her face. There was about her brow the glory of perfect innocence. Her eyes had a glance of unfathomable melancholy, mingled with childlike trust in the particular person upon whom her gaze was fastened. Minnie was considered by all her friends as a child—was treated as a child—humored, petted, coaxed, indulged, and talked to as a child. Minnie, on her part, thought, spoke, lived, moved, and acted as a child. She fretted, ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... personality influenced him considerably. She did not strike him, even remotely, as the sort who would deliberately do anything dishonest. And though Buck knew there were women who might be able to assume that air of almost childlike innocence, he did not believe, somehow, that in her case it was assumed. At any rate a little delay would do no harm. By accepting the proffered job he would be able to study the lady and the situation at his leisure. Also—and this he told himself ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... support and glorify simplicity. Indeed it required simplicity as a foil for its own delicate gorgeousness. The lithe slenderness of her figure was enhanced by the transformation. Her long hair hung in heavy braids that gave an almost childlike girlishness to her appearance. Alexander, he thought, ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... there is that singular form of the religious spirit which has been so constantly misunderstood, and which, except in a very few persons, seems so rare nowadays—the faith which is implicit without being imbecile, childlike without being childish, devout with a fearless familiarity, the spirit to which the Dies Irae and the sermons of St Francis were equally natural expressions, and which, if it could sometimes exasperate itself into the practices of the Inquisition, found a far commoner ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... go away—and he would have to take her with him. It seemed ridiculous that a woman of thirty, of masculine character, should require a chaperon in a brother of equal age; but Peter knew the singular blending of childlike ignorance with this Amazonian quality. He had made his arrangements for an absence from Atherly of three or four years, and they departed together. The young fair-haired lawyer came to the stage-coach office to see them off. Peter could detect no sentiment in ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... leaned back on the moss for a moment's rest, and then springing up recommenced to sing. She stood very straight and tall, her hands locked together behind her, like a schoolgirl reciting a lesson; somehow this childlike attitude added by its simplicity to the woman's dignity. Her head was held a little back, chin tilted upwards, and the eyes looked far away as though they beheld a whole world of dreams and lovely melody beyond ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... that, in the end, she succeeded in fitting herself to her new surroundings. Innocently enough, and with a harmless, almost childlike, affectation, she posed a little, and by so doing found the solution of the incongruity between herself—the Laura of moderate means and quiet life—and the massive luxury with which she was now surrounded. Without knowing ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... with the childlike simplicity displayed by the taker of the oracle In the particular case wherein a pipe was employed, the party wished to discover whether it would be safe for him to proceed on a journey the following day. The pipe by a slight gyratory motion at once intimated its ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... Skippy Bedelle, who had assumed the trials and tribulations of manhood, had profited by the first disillusionments. The trusting, childlike faith was gone forever and in his new, skeptical attitude towards human nature—Toots Cortrelle excepted—he had determined to part with ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... ways of these people are so childlike and simple in many things, and partly from one's own swindling tendency to take one's self in (a tendency really fatal to all sincerity of judgment, and incalculably mischievous to such downfallen peoples as have felt the baleful ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... afford to lose. For we find, as we arrange the allegory and romance, and the real, historic bits, in a way to suit our wiser time, that the lessons they hold are as true for us as they were for the childlike people who cherished them ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... is sitting, the male feeds her regularly. She calls to him on his approach, or when she hears his voice passing by, in the most affectionate, feminine, childlike tones, the only case I know where the sitting bird makes any sound while in the act of incubation. When a rival male invades the tree, or approaches too near, the male whose nest it holds pursues and reasons or ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... touch of his fingers under her chin, caressing and persuading, Diana's face was lifted to view. It was like a pearl, for the childlike purity of all its lines; it was like enough a rose, too; like an opening rose, for the matter of that. Her thoughts went back to the elegance of Mrs. Reverdy and Gertrude Masters, and she wondered in herself ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... since their marriage, he left her alone, and went to where Sybil Grandon smiled her sunniest smile, and put forth her most persuasive powers to keep him at her side, expressing so much regret that he did not bring his charming little wife, who completely won her heart, she was so childlike and simple-hearted, laughing so merrily when she discovered the flour on her hair, but not seeming to mind it in the least. Really, she did not see how it happened that he was fortunate enough to win such a domestic treasure. ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... me now and then, that, for the inward make of mind, which the Spirit-prince Phosphorus required as a condition of marriage with me and my sisters, men have a name at present, which, in truth, they frequently enough misapply: they call it a childlike poetic mind. This mind, he says, is often found in youths, who, by reason of their high simplicity of manners and their total want of what is called knowledge of the world, are mocked by the populace. Ah, dear Anselmus, beneath the Elder-bush thou understoodest my song, my look; thou lovest the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the Basque province—small, muscular and proud, agile of movement and with bodies beautifully trained; plain of speech and childlike in deed. ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... sounds of hoofs below, and leans over the balustrade, a bright smile parting her lips, the sunlight streaming on her hair, looking quite childlike in her soft white gown, which clings ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... very old-fashioned and queer," said Geraldine, pulling the wrap over the grass stains and looking up into his eyes with a childlike appeal that made him set his teeth. "It was my mother's and you said 'white.' ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... that she made, the young man—it was Te—filo —turned and saw her. Her eyes were fixed upon him, wide with wonder, and her hands half raised in childlike rapture, while her slender figure, so different from the heavier forms of the Indian girls, gave her, to his eyes, the look and bearing of one of the very angels he had been copying. It was a marvel on ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... the signal. He hopes that none of our ships have struck, and his devoted friend reassures him that none have and never will. He commissions Hardy to give "dear Lady Hamilton his hair and other belongings," and asks that his "body shall not be thrown overboard." Hardy is then asked in childlike simplicity to kiss him, and the rough, fearless captain with deep emotion kneels and reverently kisses Nelson on the cheek. He then thanks God that he has done his duty, and makes the solemn thoughts that are troubling his last ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... about forty; the three others between twenty-five and thirty. The youngest, whom they called Sylvestre or "Lurlu," was only seventeen, yet already a man for height and strength; a fine curly black beard covered his cheeks; still he had childlike eyes, bluish-grey in hue, and sweet and tender ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... and their miracles destroys the innate simplicity of man and his childlike purity. An infernal power takes hold of him who so errs, and forces him to commit various sins and give himself ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... of barbarous maltreatment and inhuman oppression! After all these years of unremitting toil, the negro was pushed out into the world without one morsel of food, one cent of money, one foot of land. Naked and unarmed he was pushed forward into a dark cavern and told to beard the lion in his den. In childlike simplicity he undertook the task. Soon the air was filled with his agonizing cries; for the claws and teeth of the lion were ripping open every vein and crushing every bone. In this hour of dire distress the negro ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... Mary entered, in her simple white short-gown and skirt, her eyes calmly radiant, and her whole manner having something serious and celestial. She came directly towards him and put out both her little hands, with a smile half-childlike, half-angelic; and the Doctor bowed his head and covered his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Dialogue chiefly centres in the youth Charmides, with whom Socrates talks in the kindly spirit of an elder. His childlike simplicity and ingenuousness are contrasted with the dialectical and rhetorical arts of Critias, who is the grown-up man of the world, having a tincture of philosophy. No hint is given, either here or in the Timaeus, of the infamy which attaches to the name of the latter in Athenian history. ...
— Charmides • Plato
... honest face—not pretty, but so perfectly candid and true—with the sun shining on the lint-white hair, and the bright blue eyes meeting his, guileless as a child's. Ay, and however they were dimmed with care and washed with tears—oceans of bitterness—that innocent, childlike look never, even when she was an old woman, quite ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... thoroughly subdued and purified; when the emotions are rested and calm, and when the oscillation of the intellect ceases and perfect poise is secured, then, and not till then, does consciousness become one with the Infinite; not until then is childlike wisdom and profound ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... at her steadily before answering. The flare of the torch revealed a childlike sincerity in her face, and he knew she did not realize the construction he might have been justified in according her impulsive confession. His heart throbbed silently. A wave of tenderness welled within ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... led, Andras preserved, nevertheless, a sort of youthful buoyancy. Many men of thirty were less fresh in mind and body than he. He was one of those beings who die, as they have lived, children: even the privations of the hardest kind of an existence can not take away from them that purity and childlike trust which seem to be an integral part of themselves, and which, although they may be betrayed, deceived and treated harshly by life, they never wholly lose; very manly and heroic in time of need and danger, they are by nature peculiarly exposed to treasons and deceptions ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... me the smallest cause for murmuring or complaint. I endeavoured not to be unworthy of his liberality and confidence; and the daughter, who perceived the conflict in his breast, redoubled her attention, and made more evident her unimpaired and childlike love. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... her to the farther end of the hollow where she licked his foot until the pain left. At the same time she chided him for his disobedience and again tried to impress upon him the peril of venturing too near the outer world while she was away. And childlike, Warruk remembered the lesson for a ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... hard bed. For hours he had fought off this terrible languor with a desperation born of terror for those he had left behind him, who looked to him as their only hope. Now he resigned their fate to the big man whose eyes had looked so kindly into his, with a childlike feeling of rest and content. He lay thus until the sun rose high in the heavens the next morning, when he was awakened by the insistent neighing of his horse which had risen almost to a cry ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... Oichalia had offered his daughter Iole in marriage to the hero who could excel himself and his sons in shooting with arrows. Heracles saw Iole, the blue-eyed and childlike maiden, and he longed to take her with him to some place near the Garden of the Hesperides. And Iole looked on him, and he knew that she wondered to see him so tall and so strongly knit even as he wondered to see ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... Hans, who, with a childlike trust, pinned his faith to the Great Medicine. This, he remarked, was the worst veld through which he had ever travelled, but as the Great Medicine would never consent to be buried in that stinking mud, he had no doubt that we should come safely through it some time. I replied that this wonderful ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... on long tramps, she always dressed in a blue blouse and the apparel of a man, saying that skirts were not made for bushes. She walked before me in the sand with a firm step and such a charming melange of feminine delicacy and childlike temerity, that I stopped every few moments to look at her. It seemed that, once started, she had to accomplish a difficult but sacred task; she walked in front like a soldier, her arms swinging, her voice ringing through the woods in song; suddenly she turned, ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... match-boxes, watches, furs, and jewellery were all passed in review, and we were asked the price of each article, and whether we had brought them out from England. Our table knives seemed to cause them the greatest astonishment, and as the Sheffield steel glanced in the sun, they were quite childlike in their delight; certainly our English cutlery was a great contrast to the jagged iron knives which served them at table. In our turn, we admired their quaint old silver ornaments, but when we testified a desire to purchase, we failed to ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... constant through the wide vicissitude, He has confessed the Giver of his joys, And kissed the hand that took them; and whene'er Bereavement has oppressed his soul with grief, Or sharp misfortune stung his heart with pain, He has bowed down in childlike faith, and said, "Thy will, O God—Thy will be done, not mine!" His gentle wife, a dozen summers since, Passed from his faithful arms and went to heaven; And her best gift—a maiden sweetly named— His daughter Ruth—orders the ancient ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... table was Dominic Le Mierre, evidently the worse for drink, which, however had not made him idiotic, but which had maddened him into wild and extravagant excitement. Beside him was Blaisette Simon, dressed in a quaint muslin gown which accentuated her childlike and piquante beauty. Her father, easy-going Mess' Simon, looked on smilingly at the orgie around him, and seemed not in the least disturbed when Dominic drew his arms round Blaisette and kissed her repeatedly. She gave an affected little scream and pretended to be shocked, but Dominic laughed ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... and I are like steps, with you half way between us. I'm twenty and she's forty," smiled Isabel, with childlike frankness. ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... person of this fair young maiden. The word "dazzling" might be applied without exaggeration to the lustrous whiteness of a complexion tinged in the cheeks as though by the reflection of a sea-shell. Her full, dewy lips disclosed milky rows of childlike teeth within. Her eyes were of the clearest azure; but, in spite of their expression of mingled tenderness and gayety, one who could pause to lay the finger upon an imperfection, would note that something was ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... takes place in somebody's nursery corner at twilight, when you are waiting for "that cheerful tocsin of the soul, the dinner-bell," or around somebody's fireside just before the children's bedtime; but the same scene is enacted every few days in the presence of the fresh-hearted, childlike kindergartner, of all women the likeliest to find the secret of eternal youth. She chooses the story as one of the vessels in which she shall carry the truth to her circle of little listeners, and you will never hear her say, like the needy knife-grinder, "Story? God bless ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... small, slender body showing through, the hair, platted for the night, in two pig-tails that hung forward, one over each small breast, the tired face between the parted hair made Alice look childlike and pathetic. ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... write to your grandfather in the morning," said Martin, with almost comical gravity and an unconscious touch of patronage. How childlike the old are to the ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... goodness, at the right moment I recollected your clear, silvery, childlike laughter. Right in the midst of my petty scruples it resounded in my ears, as at the time when you ridiculed my gravity. Do you still remember ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... tulle with a red rose at one side simply emphasized her hollow cheeks and sunken eyes. . . . She moved listlessly and smiled mysteriously to herself as though unconscious that every one was silent and watchful; then the surprised smile transfigured her, she kissed the other women with childlike abandon, leaving the men ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... of the miserable vermin, thought of him as I had often watched thus his dying agonies, when a cruel urchin of eight or ten. Boys are horribly cruel, sir; boys, women, and savages. All childlike things are cruel; cruel from a want of thought and from perverse ingenuity, although by instinct each of these is so tender. You may not have observed it, but a savage is as tender to his own young as a boy is to a favorite puppy-the same boy ...
— The Man In The Reservoir • Charles Fenno Hoffman
... feel a personal interest in the truth. You must study it as the directory of your life. When you open this blessed book, let this always be the sincere inquiry of your heart: "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" Come to it with this childlike spirit of obedience, and you will not fail to learn the will of God. But when you have learned your duty in God's word, do it without delay. Here are two very important points of Christian character, quite too much overlooked. (1.) An earnest desire to know present duty. ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... to the ship, bringing citizens. One of these citizens was a faded, diminutive old gentleman, who approached our most ancient passenger with a childlike joy in his twinkling eyes, halted before him, folded his arms, and said, smiling with all his might and with all the simple delight that was in him, "You don't know me, John! Come, out with it now; you know ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... did something to offend the natives," observed Randolph Rover. "As you can see, they are simple and childlike in their ways, and as quickly offended on one hand as they are pleased on the other. All of you must be careful in your treatment of them, otherwise we may get ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... childlike little man! He tried to tell me how glad he had been to entertain me. "Why," he said, "I was plumb glad to see you and right sorry to have you go. Why, I would jist as soon talk to you as to a nigger. Yes'm, ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart |
