"Babble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attacked the intellectual fire-eaters, the patriots who insult other peoples and the Chauvinists generally. He defends France, the French army and French civilisation, against the brilliant novelist, Thomas Mann. Above all does he condemn the intellectual babble: "The wrong that these privy councillors and professors have done us with their 'Aufklaerungsarbeit' can hardly be measured. They have isolated themselves from humanity by their inability to ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... It was a multi-channel set designed for military use. A number of images were carried on the screen at one time, rows of heads or hazy backgrounds where the user had left the field of view. Many of the heads were talking at the same time and the babble of their voices ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... least," Jeanne answered frankly. "I am tired of mirrors and electric lights and babble. I prefer our present surroundings, and I should not mind at all if some of those disapproving ancestors of yours stepped out of their frames and took their places with ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... low, gurgling sound, and made up his mind to babble a few words about the caverns; but his throat was dry, and his tongue ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... Country, a babble of black spume . . . Faith, an eyeball in the sand . . . Mother, a nail through a broken hand— A kissing fume— And out of her breast the bloody bubbling milk-red breath ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... wheels the grinding and squeaking of the brake, had made them all enemies. She had sat tense and averted, seeing the general greenery, feeling that the cool flowing air might be great happiness, conscious of each form and each voice, of the insincerity of the exclamations and the babble of conversation that struggled above the noise of their going, half seeing Pastor Lahmann opposite to her, a little insincerely smiling man in an alpaca suit and a soft felt hat. She got down the steps without his assistance. With whom should she take refuge?... no Minna. There were ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... said. "I call it the greatest blessing in the world!" He glared at little Dicky. "Yes the greatest blessing in the world!" he said. "A child who doesn't babble or ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... could see to which spot on the surface it pointed. Or, had they been devout men, they would have listened for heavenly voices—it is always your devout man who tries to hear other things than the babble of the Babel in which he lives—they, too, could have heard the angelic chorus like the shepherds in the fields and on ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... shrill neigh of a horse. The trail swung under the left wall of the canon and ran along the noisy brook. She thought she heard shots and was startled, but she could not be sure. She stopped to listen. Only the babble of swift water and the sough of wind in the spruces greeted her ears. She went on, beginning to collect her thoughts, to conjecture on the significance of ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... primroses bloomed, the apple and peach blossoms burst exquisitely white and pink against the blue sky. Oak Creek fell to a transparent, beautiful brook, leisurely eddying in the stone walled nooks, hurrying with murmur and babble over the little falls. The mornings broke clear and fragrantly cool, the noon hours seemed to lag under a hot sun, the nights fell like dark mantles from the ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... narrow, then together rushed on like two prankish schoolboys out for a frolic; not long after joining hands, as it were, they leaped down an embankment, laughing, as one could fancy, listening to the babble the waters made, watching the sparkling of the flying spray. Ah! many a rainbow shimmered about the waterfall; right dangerous was the whirlpool above and below the fall. Deep down in the ravine the waters meandered, calmly tranquil: ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... chatter over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles, 40 I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles. ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... and Luttrell, with his arguments and reasons cut and dried and conned over pat for delivery, began nevertheless to babble. There were the Olympic Games. She herself must have seen how they were fatal to their own purpose. Troubles were coming—battles behind the troubles. All soldiers knew! They knew this too—the phrase of a young Lieutenant-Colonel lecturing at the ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... have to show for them; but to convince you, to enchant and astound the world, I need only the hand of Raphael. His brain I already have. A pity, you will say, that I haven't his modesty! Ah, let me boast and babble now; it's all I have left! I am the half of a genius! Where in the wide world is my other half? Lodged perhaps in the vulgar soul, the cunning, ready fingers of some dull copyist or some trivial artisan, who turns out by ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... than ever; a great running hither and thither, a rapping of hammers and a babble of voices sounded everywhere through the place, for the folk were building great arches across the streets, beneath which the King was to pass, and were draping these arches with silken banners and streamers of many colors. Great hubbub was going on in the Guild Hall of the town, also, for ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... Arkansas Divide, the mountains, gashed by deep canyons, came sweeping down to the valley on my right, and on my left the Foot Hills were crowned with colored fantastic rocks like castles. Everything was buried under a glittering shroud of snow. The babble of the streams was bound by fetters of ice. No branches creaked in the still air. No birds sang. No one passed or met me. There were no cabins near or far. The only sound was the crunch of the snow under Birdie's ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... the boastful promises of his friends would be fulfilled, did he still hope for rescue? If so, that hope must have died as he looked down on those set, grim faces staring straight ahead, on that sinister ring of steel. He began to babble. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... very graciously upon me, and then recommenced the gesticulation and babble of the two. At length she appeared satisfied with the understanding at which they arrived. I was growing uneasy at their prolonged volubility, when Monsieur Pilot pirouetted ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... For a lawyer I was born, and a lawyer I will be; one is never too old to learn."* All this while John had conned over such a catalogue of hard words as were enough to conjure up the devil; these he used to babble indifferently in all companies, especially at coffee houses, so that his neighbour tradesmen began to shun his company as a man that was cracked. Instead of the affairs of Blackwell Hall and price ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... animals and things connected with nature, and sometimes these seem only half true to the people who think about them. We sometimes hear it said of a person who is very quiet and does not speak much that "still waters run deep." This is true in Nature. A little shallow brook will babble along, while the surface of a deep pool will have hardly a ripple on it. But a quiet person is not necessarily a person of great character or lofty thoughts. Some people hardly speak at all, because, as a matter of fact, they find nothing to say. They ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... are swallowed up and stilled, And all the air by seeming with an awful sound is filled, The cry of the Niblung trumpet, as men reach the unwalled space: So whiles in a mighty city, and a many-peopled place, When the rain falls down 'mid the babble, nor ceaseth rattle of wheels, And with din of wedding joy-bells the minster steeple reels, Lo, God sends down his thunder, and all else is hushed as then, And it is as the world's beginning, and before the birth ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... find out the truth about them, writing books and building churches—our civilization is going to drift just precisely as those other civilizations which have been guided by the same dreadful fatalism have drifted—towards the Turkish goal. "Kismet. Man is a fool to babble of these things; what he may do is of no avail; all things will happen as they were pre-ordained." And the English Turk—the man who prefers to fight things out instead of thinking things out—takes the ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... may be lost," she thought. "But if, sooner or later, something happens which my lambkin, who thinks only of her sweet babble, does not dream, it will return to me with interest. Besides, she must see what maternal affection I feel for her." Then, with tender caution, she kissed the girl's glowing cheeks, and the blessing with which she at last dismissed her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ambushed among purple morning glories swinging in the dense shade of rustling corn; listening as in a dream to the laughter of reapers, whetting scythes in the blistering glare of meadow slopes, yet hearing all the while, the low, sweet babble of the slender stream that trickled through pine roots, down the hillside, and added its silvery tinkle to the lullaby crooned by the river to its fringe of willows, its sleeping ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... from below. A roar of laughter and the babble of male voices was mixed with the rumble of wheels and the pistol-like ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... and Dangerfield glared at his bloody shirt-sleeve, and laughed a chilly sneer; 'no, Sir, but I'll punish you, with Doctor Sturk's declaration against the babble of poor Zekiel Irons. I'll quickly ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... he demanded, did this foreigner affront his ears with demands for money; how dared he force his way into his presence and to his face babble of back pay? It was insolent, incredible. With indignation the president set forth the position of the government. Billy had been discharged and, with the appointment of his successor, the stranger in the derby hat, had ceased to exist. The government ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... conviction that the duke's government would only cease with the termination of his public career was so general, that the moment he was installed in office, the whigs smiled on him; political conciliation became the slang of the day, and the fusion of parties the babble of clubs ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... to ride on the necks and shoulders of all flesh. The small enchanter nothing can withstand, no seniority of age, no gravity of character; uncles, aunts, grandsires, grandams, fall an easy prey: he conforms to nobody, all conform to him; all caper and make mouths, and babble, and chirrup to him. On the strongest shoulders he rides, and pulls the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... "Ay, and when the land Was freed, and the Queen false, ye set yourself To babble about him, all to show your wit— And whether he were king by courtesy, Or king by right—and so went harping down The black king's highway, got so far, and grew So witty, that ye play'd at ducks and drakes With Arthur's vows on the great lake of fire. Tuwhoo! do ye see it? do ye see the ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... good vestments, in sacrifices, in clouds charged with rain, in full-blown lotuses, and in those stars that bespangle the autumnal firmament. I reside in elephants, in the cow pen, in good seats, and in lakes adorned with full-blown lotuses. I live also in such rivers as babble sweetly in their course, melodious with the music of cranes, having banks adorned with rows of diverse trees, and restored to by Brahmanas and ascetics and others crowned with success. I always reside in those rivers also that have deep and large volumes ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Water as their mothers and their fathers did before them. The paths through the pine woods along the river's brink are trodden smooth by their restless, wandering feet; their eager, curious eyes search the waysides for adventure, but their babble and laughter are oftenest heard from the ruins of an old house hidden by great trees. The stones of the cellar, all overgrown with blackberry vines, are still there; and a fragment of the brick chimney, where swallows ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... With Pepys, I fancy, the main motive was a simple happiness in chewing the cud of pleasure. The fact that so much of his pleasure had to be kept secret from the world made it all the more necessary for him to babble when alone. True, in the early days his confidences are innocent enough. Pepys began to write in cipher some time before there was any purpose in it save the common prudence of a secretive man. Having built, however, this secret and solitary fastness, he gradually became more daring. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... run; meander; gush, pour, spout, roll, jet, well, issue; drop, drip, dribble, plash, spirtle^, trill, trickle, distill, percolate; stream, overflow, inundate, deluge, flow over, splash, swash; guggle^, murmur, babble, bubble, purl, gurgle, sputter, spurt, spray, regurgitate; ooze, flow out &c (egress) 295. rain hard, rain in torrents, rain cats and dogs, rain pitchforks; pour with rain, drizzle, spit, set in; mizzle^. flow into, fall into, open into, drain into; discharge itself, disembogue^. [Cause a flow] ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a low voice, whose quality fended him from her almost as much as the conditional look she gave him. The excited babble of the sick woman overhead, mixed with Mrs. Newton's nasal attempts to quiet her, broke in upon ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... countenance as I last saw it was constantly before me. The babble of the people around seemed to me detestable. I answered at haphazard, and begged permission of Mademoiselle to keep my room for a day, as I thought I should be distracted if I could not get out of reach of M. ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... though one pierce a she-babe with a flint. But as for me, I would have none of these songs. For if I sing of such in the council, how shall I keep my wits? And if I think thereof, when at the chase, it may be that I babble it forth, and the meat hear and escape. And ere it be time to eat, I do give my mind solely to the care of my hunting-gear. And if one sing when eating, he may fall short of his just portion. And when, one hath eaten, doth not he ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... was rising in thick columns, part of it falling again to the earth. Around the fires, and through the smoke, flitted the forms of the Indians. They appeared to be cooking and feasting. Some of them staggering over the ground, kept up an incessant babble—at intervals varying their talk with savage whoops. Others danced around accompanying their leaps with the monotonous "hi-hi-hi-ya." All appeared to have partaken freely of the fire-water of Taos. A few more seriously disposed were grouped around four or five prostrate ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the silent Soldier bubbled with humour and insisted on dancing with Anton. Evans, P.O., was imparting confidences in heavy whispers. Pat' Keohane had grown intensely Irish and desirous of political argument, whilst Clissold sat with a constant expansive smile and punctuated the babble of conversation with an occasional 'Whoop' of delight or disjointed witticism. Other bright-eyed individuals merely reached the capacity to enjoy that which under ordinary circumstances might have passed without ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... white now, and leaning for support against the jamb, kept her piercing eyes on his face, though his would not meet their gaze; while Morton rolled great frightened orbs from one to the other, as from within came unconscious Molly's gleeful babble, and the baby's sweet little trills ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... to meddle with none but the Prince's subjects:—You shall also make no noise in the streets; for, for the watch to babble and talk, is most tolerable ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... other vocal organs took up that trilling wail, and those short, sharp chuckles of eagerness. Other questioning, wondering notes mixed with the cadence. Lacking qualities identifiable as human, the disturbance was still like the babble of a group of workmen who ...
— The Eternal Wall • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... voluptuous coloring; it had not become so banal as any of the French Louis'. And so Arabella had been instructed to drum into her head the names of the geniuses of that time, and their works, and she could now babble sweetly all about Giorgione, Paolo Veronese and Titian's later works without making a single mistake. And while the pictures bored her unspeakably, she took a deep pleasure in her own cleverness about them, and delighted in tracing the ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... sorrow or of feasting. To those who come skilled in its language, it can discourse sweetly of all things, and drive away all thoughts that annoy and cares that vex the soul. To those who touch it, not knowing how to draw forth its speech, it will babble strange nonsense, and rave with uncertain moanings. But thy knowledge is born with thee, and so my lyre is thine. Wherefore now let us feed the herds together, and with our care they shall thrive and multiply. There is ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... an interview with Le Gardeur. Bigot told me that my friend unfortunately at that moment was unfit to be seen, and had refused himself to all his city friends. I partly believed him, for I heard the voice of Le Gardeur in a distant room, amid a babble of tongues and the rattle of dice. I sent him a card with a few kind words, and received it back with an insult—deep and damning—scrawled upon it. It was not written, however, in the hand of Le Gardeur, although signed by his ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... well-patronized that night. The white-aproned waiters were running to and fro; the stout landlady in black silk and a lace cap was moving among her guests with beaming face; a soft babble of talk and laughter rose from every walk and corner. When Richard came to his chosen table he found it occupied by three ladies. Disappointed, he was turning to look for another place, when the voice ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... doomed to close confinement in a capital city; but all his tastes were rural, and, as he said, he feared he should expose himself to the ridicule Dr. Johnson throws on those "who talk of sheep and goats, and who babble ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... Norah began to babble to Anna. "You know, I just thought I never would get this old thing on." She was speaking of her dress. "Aileen wouldn't help ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... stranger's peculiarity did not seem likely to find any very speedy solution. Every new suggestion furnished talk for the gossips of the village and the babble of the many tongues in the two educational institutions. Naturally, the discussion was liveliest among the young ladies. Here is an extract from a letter of one of these young ladies, who, having received at her birth the ever-pleasing name of Mary, saw fit to have herself called ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was such a babble of exclamations that hardly a word of what was said could be understood. And in the midst of this the cadets gave a rousing cheer for Clearwater Hall and everybody ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... another; with their 'I thought that the battle should be fought;' or, 'it was my, opinion that the occasion ought not to be lost.' Your highness will have opportunity enough to display valor, and will never be weak enough to be conquered by the babble of soldiers." ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... who am old grow weary and would sleep. Then if it can be given I will give it; and if I cannot give it, I will get me back to my own house and show my face no more at Ulundi, who do not desire to listen again to fools who babble like contending waters round a stone and yet never stir the stone because they run two ways ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... never be there. But he could not say it. Somehow the words, although he desired them, would not come. His arm went to her neck and settled there. His hand caressed her hair, her cheek. He kissed her eyes, her lips, her languid hands; and the words that came were only an infantile babble of regrets and apologies, assurances that he did love her, that he had never loved any one before, and never would love any ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... so fast, man," quoth Umslopogaas, "or if you must babble, speak those words which you would say ere you ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... window frames forest and heather. I hardly hear the tuneful babble, Not knowing nor much caring whether The text is praise or exhortation, Prayer or thanksgiving, ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... illuminating moment he saw Toni as she was; a pretty, winning, half-educated little girl, to whom the world of art and literature was a sphere apart, its shibboleths mere meaningless babble in her ears, its greatest exponents but so many confusing names, divorced from any ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... the Cat. "Never mind, here's the Miller coming to shut you off. Ye-es, I have known—four—or five is it?—and twenty leaders of revolt in Faenza.... A little more babble in the dam, a little more noise in the sluice, a little extra splashing on ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... confused; then they brightened and greeted a new batch of drifters, and there was a babble of: ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... eyes, life's poetry Something has faded, and the cause of this May be that Man, no longer at the shrine Of Woman, kneeling with true reverence, In spite of field, wood, river, stars and sea, Goes most disconsolate. A babble now, A huge and wind-swelled babble, fills the place Of that great adoration which of old Man had for Woman. In these days no more Is love the pith and marrow of Man's fate. Thou who in early years ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... In the babble of voices Simon suddenly heard a man cry out sharply. The pain in the man's voice cut into Simon's heart like a knife. Simon scanned the crowd, but in the darkness could not see him. No one ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... in battle would cause just such confusion and delay. It was very evident that we had spoiled some plan. The need of a soldier's training would be plain to anyone that heard the babble of our voices in that corner, conjecturing, advising, urging this and that. We are still very far from the state in which we could be trusted to go into battle and obey every order just as it came. The reasons for this I figure out to ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... slowly to his tent and stretched himself on a blanket by the side of the snoring tall soldier. In the darkness he saw visions of a thousand-tongued fear that would babble at his back and cause him to flee, while others were going coolly about their country's business. He admitted that he would not be able to cope with this monster. He felt that every nerve in his body would be an ear to hear the voices, while other men would ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... soil inside the Pomoerium is holy ground: others talk of the grandeur of Rome; you make me realize its grandeur: others prate of their love for Rome: you, saying little, make me tingle with a subtly communicated sense of how you love Rome: others babble of how life away from Rome is not life, but merely existence; of how any dwelling out of Rome is exile, of how they long for Rome; you, by some sorcery, make me not only feel how you long for Rome, but have awakened in me a longing for Rome. I have never ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... among the others, and a suddenly crystallized hate on their faces. But Muller's hoarse shout cut through the babble that began, and rose over even the anguished shrieking of the cook. "Shut up, the lot of you! Bullard couldn't have committed the other crimes. Any one of you is a better suspect. Stop snivelling, Bullard, ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... night, when the holy stars were shining, ah, how softly the little brook murmured to them! you could almost fancy it did not babble so loudly as in the day-time, for fear lest it should wake the sleeping flowers ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... not have been frightened, even if it had seemed wholly real. He knelt before her, and his lips moved, but, as in a dream, silently. All the familiar music of the world went on—the bird-songs, the whisper of the wind, the babble of the brook, the rumour of the village. They all went on—there was no pause, no hush, no change—nothing to startle her—only, somehow, they seemed all to draw together, to become a single sound. All the ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... fancy-scars, Rehearse their bravery in imagined wars; As paupers, gathered in congenial flocks, Babble of banks, insurances, and stocks; As each if oft'nest eloquent of what He hates or covets, but possesses not; As cowards talk of pluck; misers of waste; Scoundrels of honor; country clowns of taste; Ladies of logic; devotees of sin; Topers ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... as she did babble about this one thing! The box, the box, and nothing but the box! It seemed as if the box were bewitched, and as if the cottage were not big enough to hold it without Pandora's continually stumbling over it and making Epimetheus stumble over ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... rest was lost in an incoherent babble, and with a deep sigh she fell lax into Cleggett's arms. The reaction from despair had been too much for her; it had come too suddenly; at the first word of reassurance, at the first ray of dawning hope, she had fainted. High-strung natures, intrepid in the face of ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... once, while Richard talked right on, until they reached the riverside where the lunch was spread; and then the babble was complete. ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... A babble of talk began and ran the round of the passengers, breaking out among a group of younger people into a ripple of laughter. For a quarter of an hour this went on, then, to the amazement of all on board, the captain, after glancing anxiously at the compass-card, sternly called out ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... else he sheer with it. Simple seemest thou, O solid Dutch-built Petion; if solid, surely dull. Nor lifegiving in that tone of thine, livelier polemical Rabaut. With ineffable serenity sniffs great Sieyes, aloft, alone; his Constitution ye may babble over, ye may mar, but can by no possibility mend: is not Polity a science he has exhausted? Cool, slow, two military Lameths are visible, with their quality sneer, or demi-sneer; they shall gallantly refund their Mother's Pension, when the Red Book is produced; gallantly be wounded in duels. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... "Du Kleiner! And she was down on her knees, and somehow her figure had melted into delicious mother-curves, with Bennie's head just fitting into that most gracious one between her shoulder and breast. She cooed to him in a babble of French and German and English, calling him her lee-tel Oscar. Bennie seemed miraculously to understand. Perhaps he was becoming accustomed to having strange ladies snatch him ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... sweet, delicious freshness of the air, some voice in the mellow babble of the stream, leaping in and out of sight between the alders, some smile of light, lingering on the rising corn-fields beyond the meadow and the melting purple of a distant hill, reached to the seclusion of his heart. He was soothed and cheered; his head lifted itself in the presentiment ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... actual time it was exactly ten minutes. Then a cavalcade tramped down the hall. He heard their voices, and Hal Dozier was among them. About him flowed a babble of questions as the men struggled for the honor of a word from the great man. Perhaps he was coming to his room to form the posse and issue general instructions ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... babble one sonorous voice rose insistently. Laughter and applause broke in upon it occasionally. There was a din in that corner of the lobby that attracted many of the ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... not Nature's—night and noon He sits upon the great white throne, And listens for the creature's praise. What babble we of days and days? The Dayspring he, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... and had the leisure, she joined him in his imitative worship, delighting in the unconscious fashion in which the sonorous phrases of convention rolled off from her son's baby lips. And then, one day, Scott's memory failed him in his invocation. There came a familiar phrase or two, and then a babble of meaningless syllables, ending in a long-drawn and relieved Amen. An instant later, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... mile from the Castle, with a panegyric on her dead nephew, and an astonished dissertation on the strange fact that Olivia had not had a woman with her during this sad time. She ascribed her abstinence from this stimulant to her desire to be alone with her grief. Olivia encouraged her harmless babble by a vague murmur at the right points, and continued to look pathetic. It was all her aunt by marriage needed, and it left Olivia free to think her own thoughts. She gave but few of them to her dead husband; the living ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... and largely contributed for their maintenance. But Virginia savouring not handsomely in England, very few of good conversation would adventure thither, (as thinking it a place wherein surely the fear of God was not), yet many came, such as wore black coats, and could babble in a pulpet, roare in a tavern, exact from their parishioners, and rather by their dissolutenesse destroy than feed ...
— Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - The Faith of Our Fathers • George MacLaren Brydon
... could find, in other society than his little playfellow's. He was tired to death of hearing about the box, and heartily wished that Quicksilver, or whatever was the messenger's name, had left it at some other child's door, where Pandora would never have set eyes on it. So perseveringly as did she babble about this one thing! The box, the box, and nothing but the box! It seemed as if the box were bewitched, and as if the cottage were not big enough to hold it, without Pandora's continually stumbling over it, and making ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... against the suspicion because of the thought that in some way her father might be dragged into the affair. It had been a cowardly attitude, and she was glad that she had shaken it off. As her brain, under the spur of the sudden excitement, resumed its function, her thoughts flitted to the agent's babble during the time she had been sending the telegram to her father. She talked rapidly, ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... poetry; he might urge that the breezes which blew down these leafy alleys and over those trim parterres were not more grateful than the fragrance exhaled from the 'Pastorals'; that the brooks and birds babble and twitter in the printed page not less blithely than in that western Paradise. What so pleasant as to read of May-games, true-love knots, and shepherds piping in the shade? of pixies and fairy-circles? ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... him so—far from it. The secret seemed so strange, so wonderful, so exquisite in its blending of pain and pleasure, that she did not tell any one. Hers was not the nature that could babble of the heart's deepest mysteries to half a score of confidants. To him first she would make the supreme avowal that she had become his by a sweet compulsion that had at last proved irresistible, and even he must again ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... gathers the reins in her hands of steel; and beyond the writhing hearts whose blood dyes her rushing wheels sees only the goal. Some wise anatomists of that frail yet invincible sphinx—woman's nature, babble of one weighty fact, one conquering law,—that only the mother-joy, the mother-love, fully unseals the slumbering sweetness and latent tenderness of her being; for me, maternity opened the sluices of a sea of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... idiot, cease thy loathsome cant! Day-labourer, slave of toil and want! I hate thy babble vain and hollow. Thou art a worm, no child of day: Thy god is Profit—thou wouldst weigh By pounds the Belvidere Apollo. Gain—gain alone to thee is sweet. The marble is a god! ... what of it Thou count'st a pie-dish far above it— A dish wherein ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... the Bubble Babble Syndicate, Limited," explained the parson, tearfully, "and we have consequently lost every thing we had in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... you discovered that first attempt, ever since we became certain there was a plot going on to clear out every one in succession to the Chobham estates—and that was jolly plain, though the fools of police did babble about no evidence, as if pistol bullets come from nowhere and poisoned ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... glide on with murmurs low, And birds are singing 'mong the thickets deep, And fountains babble, sparkling as they flow, And with their noise invite to ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... and forlorn, Welters and wanders wearily—wretchedly—on; Yet in and out among the ribs Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles Of some dead lake-built city, fall of skulls, Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories, Lingers to babble, to a broken tune (Once, O the unvoiced music of my heart!) So melancholy a soliloquy It sounds as it might tell The secret of the unending grief-in-grain, The terror of Time and Change and Death, That wastes this floating, ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... eyes, when they saw me, and they called the gayest of gay greetings, though they knew that I was going only for a little while, and that many of them had set foot on British soil for the last time. The steady babble of their voices came to our ears, and they swarmed below us like ants as they disposed themselves about the decks, and made the most of the scanty space that was allowed for them. The trip was to be short, of course; there were ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... safety sail away: Though the tongue of fiercest Faction In its Folly may deride, Still he stands in lofty learning Like a giant o'er the tide, While the murmuring wavelets passing Far beneath his kingly hand, Looking upward, blindly babble Where ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... fight!" she demanded. He did not reply, but shuffled his feet and cracked his knuckles harder than ever. The music of a waltz floated in to them over the babble of the kitchen, and he turned his head that way as if to listen. As he did so she crept past him, her eyes sparkling with fun from the depths of the bonnet. When he turned back to look ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... were armed with spears and clubs, and were clothed from head to foot in armour of coconut fibre; they all sprang to their feet with a babble of excitement as the white men drew near, but at a sign from Mrs. Tracey they at once stilled their voices, and sat ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... like this, Bucky, and it's you that knows the truth of what I say. They would have the whole thing cut open in a week once they got into some port with their pockets full of sovereigns and their skins full of rum, and their mouths full of babble in the public houses of their wealth and ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... journey towards the Rhine and Danube. Bonaparte and his officers watch the movements from an eminence. The soldiers, as they pace along under their eagles with beaming eyes, sing "Le Chant du Depart," and other martial songs, shout "Vive l'Empereur!" and babble of repeating the days of Italy, Egypt, Marengo, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... efface all traces and memory of my degradation. Was not I struck by two vile slaves, who will babble through the city? Was not I held down by an executioner? These arms, which have wound round the master of the world, and no ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... like stealing from the Lord. It'll bring him bad luck. Mostly it was in the Gospels—just a bank-note here and there—sixty-one dollars and seventy-three cents it was." She seemed to be talking to herself rather than to the man and woman at her side. She went on—sometimes a babble they could not comprehend, as in pity and wonder they stood over her. Then again her voice rose, "He took it from the book of God. Oh, my son, my son! I ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... probably from overstrain, his memory gave way. Everything in the past, Rodman included, vanished from his mind. A greater calamity one could not conceive. It was as though a violinist had lost a hand, a popular preacher his voice. His livelihood was gone. Much as his babble about Rodman had bored me I could not but feel some sorrow for him, fallen from his little pinnacle of fame and affluence. Judge, then, of my surprise when I passed him about a fortnight ago faultlessly dressed and wearing an air of great ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... enough to ensnare him had achieved something notable. Augustus, when he realized that his fate was sealed, and his night's lodging settled, wisely made the best of things, and listened, with a languorous air of complete comprehension, to the incoherent babble concerning pigs and heroes, moles and bonfires, which served Harold for a self-sung lullaby. Yet it may be doubted whether Augustus was one of those rare fellows ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... appear, But up he started to picqueer, And made the stoutest yield to mercy, When he engag'd in controversy. 450 Not by the force of carnal reason, But indefatigable teazing; With vollies of eternal babble, And clamour, more unanswerable. For though his topics, frail and weak, 455 Cou'd ne'er amount above a freak, He still maintain'd 'em, like his faults, Against the desp'ratest assaults; And back'd their feeble lack of sense, With greater heat and confidence? 460 As bones of Hectors, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... have had her own way she would still have married Ada to Yorke Clayton. When Ada told her that she had got over her foolish love, it was the mere babble of unselfishness. Feel a passion for such a man as Yorke Clayton, look into the depth of his blue eyes, and fancy for herself a partnership with the spirit hidden away within, and then get over it! Edith was guilty here of the folly of judging of her sister as herself. And as ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... which he had once appeared before crowded audiences—audiences that had been convulsed with laughter by his sallies of wit, delivered between bursts of noisy music. He seemed to have become altogether a better fellow; more frank, communicative, and submissive. He eagerly embraced every opportunity to babble about his past, and over and over again did he recount the adventures of the roving life he had led while in the employ of M. Simpson, the showman. He had, of course, traveled a great deal; and he remembered everything ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau |
