"Childhood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the next day to the Ross estate, which he rented, had Sam brought back to the home of his childhood in charge of a good-natured white attendant, and installed in one of the little cottages on the lawn. He ordered Lynch to arrest the keeper of the poor, and hold him on a charge of assault with intent to kill, awaiting the action ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... of my own joyous childhood, spent in the sweet companionship of fishes, brooks, and butterflies, birds, crickets, grasshoppers, whispering trees and fragrant wild flowers, and the thousand and one playfellows of Nature which the good God has placed within reach of the happy country children. I think of the ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... hypermetropia both the near and far point of vision are concerned, and there is no distinct vision at any distance without a strain. It is a defect in the focus, dependent upon the form of the eyes, and exists in childhood. The axis of the eyeball is too short, and the focus falls beyond the retina, which is too near the cornea. In childhood this strain may pass unnoticed, but, sooner or later it manifests itself by a sense of fatigue, dizziness, ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... or common enough to be given local names, as have the birds. I have been compelled to use their scientific names to assist in identification, and at times I have had to resort to technical terms, because there were no other. Frequently I have written of them under the names by which I knew them in childhood, or that we of Limberlost Cabin have ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... that he would rather a boy should learn to lisp all the bad words in the language than grow up without a mother. Froude's interrupted studies were nothing compared to a childhood without love, and there was nobody to make him feel the meaning of the word. Fortunately, though his father was always at home, his brother was much away, and he was a good deal left to himself after Robert's death. ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... of our young folks. It requires genius to conceive a purely imaginary work which must of necessity deal with the supernatural, without running into a mere riot of fantastic absurdity; but genius Miss Ingelow has, and the story of Jack is as careless and joyous, but as delicate, as a picture of childhood. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... of the inmost heart, There, must the Sage explore the Magian's art; There, seek the long-lost Nature's steps to track, Till, found once more, she gives him Wisdom back! Hast thou—(O Blest, if so, whate'er betide!)— Still kept the Guardian Angel by thy side? Can thy Heart's guileless childhood yet rejoice In the sweet instinct with its warning voice? Does Truth yet limn upon untroubled eyes, Pure and serene, her world of Iris-dies? Rings clear the echo which her accent calls Back from the breast, on ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... as the moment of parting is nearer, Each long cherish'd object is fairer and dearer. Not a grove or fresh streamlet but wakens reflection Of hearts still and cold, that glow'd with affection; Not a breeze that blows over the flowers of the wild wood, But tells, as it passes, how blest was her childhood. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... you may not grieve, may not shed a single tear for me. So hear me, Carl, hear me! I am not what you believe. My foot is not accustomed to the soft paths of life—the world of splendor and honor is not mine. From my earliest childhood I have walked in obscurity and humiliation, in disgrace and shame, a ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach
... resolution wavered. It was hard to go and leave behind the scenes of merry childhood and all the pleasant recollections connected with the home; and as she sat there undecided, many pleasant recollections rushed back into her memory and pleaded powerfully with her tender heart. ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... own garden, mechanically saluting my own wife, who, smiling sweetly, uttered this cordial greeting? For a moment or two my brain became confused; the familiar veranda with its clustering roses and jasmine swayed unsteadily before my eyes; the stately house, the home of my childhood, the scene of my past happiness, rocked in the air as though it were about to fall. A choking sensation affected my throat. Even the sternest men shed tears sometimes. Such tears too! wrung like drops of blood ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... of men; thousands of voices sent up a volume of sound so mighty, that the straining, groaning organ-pipes could not dominate that harmony. But the shrill sound of children's singing among the choristers, the reverberation of deep bass notes, awakened gracious associations, visions of childhood, and of man in his strength, and rose above that entrancing harmony of human voices blended in ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... were coming upon her shoulders. In the dark she would rise and cry, "Calm me, O God, and keep me calm." Then she would go and look at the sleeping children and comfort herself with the sight. "Surely," she would say, "I have more reason to trust God than childhood has after all the way He has ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... In childhood the instinctive criminal may be recognised by an excessive vanity which will often tempt him to steal, the thefts being generally confined to articles of personal adornment or which give an occasion to "swagger." When accused he will deny the charge ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... time and wave a hand, and then pass through the Slap; and it seemed to him as if something went along with her out of the deepest of his heart. And something surely had come, and come to dwell there. He had retained from childhood a picture, now half obliterated by the passage of time and the multitude of fresh impressions, of his mother telling him, with the fluttered earnestness of her voice, and often with dropping tears, the tale of the "Praying Weaver," on the very scene of his brief tragedy and long repose. And now ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Kindly was five-and-forty or thereabouts; her face a little sad when you looked at it carelessly in its repose, but commonly it seemed cheerful, full of thought and generosity, and handsome withal; for, as her brother told her, "God administered to you the sacrement of beauty in your childhood, and you will walk all your ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker
... Sovereign, should pursue with respect to her most private servants. Such was my indignation at this cruel wish to dismiss every object of her choice, especially one from whom, owing to long habits of intimacy since her childhood, a separation would be rendered, by her present situation, peculiarly cruel, that nothing but the circumstances in which the Court then stood could have given me patience ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... letter, beginning formally: "My dear Marcia," and asking after her health. It brought back a little of the unacquaintedness she had felt when he was at home, and which had been swept away in part by her knowledge of his childhood. But it went on quite happily telling all about his journey and describing minutely the places he had passed through and the people he had met on the way; detailing every little incident as only a born writer and observer could do, until she felt as if he were talking ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... boy, had shown an especial aptitude for chess, and even as a child he had seemed to know the men when first, by some accident, he saw them. The rector being struck by this exception to the ways of childhood—whose manner it is to take chess-men for "dollies," or roll them about like nine-pins—at once included in the education of "Izunsabe," which he took upon himself, a course of elemental doctrine in ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... the Germans returned this feeling. The arrival of the Americans was really cheering to them. The prisoners disliked the French because they had been taught to do so from childhood. They hated the English because that was the hate with which they went ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... and I'll beat ye your dying march. I have heard, murmured Starbuck, gazing down the scuttle, that in violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues; and that when the mystery is probed, it turns out always that in their wholly forgotten childhood those ancient tongues had been really spoken in their hearing by some lofty scholars. So, to my fond faith, poor Pip, in this strange sweetness of his lunacy, brings heavenly vouchers of all our heavenly homes. Where learned he that, but ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... love. Is there anything wonderful in that? It is a way these continental people have of doing things, you see. The Count Waldemar and my niece were betrothed to each other in their childhood. There is a very great attachment between them—at least on her part. The child seems to think that there is but one man in the world and his name is Waldemar ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... of that, I thought, as I went on alone with my vision of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad. From my childhood I had seen the big road, as I saw it to-day, sweeping in a bright track over the entire South, lengthening, branching, winding away toward the distant horizon, girdling the cotton fields, the rice fields, and the coal fields, like a protecting arm. One by one, I saw now, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... up something worse than pork to-night," and Jarvis swung into the saddle with the lithe skill acquired from childhood days on ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... Charles Lamb, on the other hand—as we see, for instance, from his essay on the Old Benchers of the Inner Temple—delighted in the Temple and all its ways. The sense of its charm may be said to have been born and bred in him, for he was born and spent his childhood in Crown Office Row. In later life, for seventeen years from 1800, he and his sister occupied chambers now no longer in existence, first in Mitre Court Buildings, and afterwards in Inner Temple Lane, from the back windows ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... must differ. There is such a thing as genius, and where that is there is but small question of rules or even of youth or age, maturity or immaturity. And even apart from the question of genius the mind of childhood is a very precious thing, and "the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." Nay, the mere fact of youth with its trials, is a great thing; we shall never again have such a chance, such fresh, responsive hearts, ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... appeal to kindly sympathy, and its sharp claws to fear; while the child's mother has a constant opportunity to inculcate kindness and care for weak and ignorant creatures. Then the dog becomes the out-door playmate and guardian of early childhood, and he also guards himself by cries of pain, and protects himself by his teeth. At the same time, his faithful loving nature and caresses awaken corresponding tenderness and care; while the parent again has a daily opportunity to inculcate these virtues toward the helpless and dependent. ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... parish, among the companions of his childhood, he was called to Torrington, Connecticut, where he continued preaching two years to large audiences.[10] It is said that at Torrington a leading citizen was much displeased that the church should have "a nigger minister," and, to show his disrespect, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... Dear, innocent child! How sweetly thou recallest The long-forgotten legend, That in my early childhood My mother told me! Upon my brain It reappears once more, As a birth-mark on the forehead When a hand suddenly Is laid upon it, ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... meanest of his men, sharing their coarse food and hard lodging, and often marching on foot by their side over the roughest country and in the wildest weather. His powers of endurance extorted the wonder even of those sturdy mountaineers who had been inured from childhood to the extremes of hunger and fatigue. More than a century after his death it was still told with admiration how once, after chasing Mackay from dawn to sunset of a summer's day over the ruggedest part of the Athole ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... childhood she has been taught that toadstools are poison. Some are, of course, boy, so are some wild fruits, but it would be rather a deprivation for us if we were to decline to eat every kind ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... time the opposite though allied peculiarity of childhood—the absence of the emotional developments of puberty which deepen and often cloud the mind a few years later—is also making itself felt. Extravagant as his beliefs may appear, the child is an uncompromising rationalist and realist. His supposed imaginativeness is ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... honors were paid to them as emblems of immortality. And now," said Miss Harson, "the last of these famous trees is a noble lime tree which grew on the farm belonging to the ancestors of Linnaeus, the great naturalist, beneath the shade of which he played in childhood, and from which his ancestors derived their surname. That noble tree still blossoms from year to year, beautiful ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... meek yet intelligent countenance, which spoke of sorrow far beyond her years; and a decided expression of placidity, which none but the people of God wear, was stamped upon her delicate features and glowing in her mild blue eye. She had been in early childhood encompassed by the heavy clouds of worldly sorrow: she had wept over the tomb of both her parents; but now that she could think calmly of her afflictions, she could kiss the rod which chastened her, and praise God for thus testifying his exceeding ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... that with all her soul, yet nothing would come of it. It was gone! Gone past recall! When Tita's affairs were wound up, it was found that all should be sold, not only her other two houses, but the old home—the one beloved of her childhood. Oakdean came to the hammer a ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... (hotel) was first introduced in Scotland during the author's childhood, and was so pronounced ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... at hand which was felt as a heavy blow by all to whom the cause of Israel was dear, but more especially so by the Asmonean brethren, who from their childhood had regarded their father with reverence ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... If you will not believe me, hear a brief of it, as it was not many years since publicly preached at Paul's cross, [2029]by a grave minister then, and now a reverend bishop of this land: "We that are bred up in learning, and destinated by our parents to this end, we suffer our childhood in the grammar-school, which Austin calls magnam tyrannidem, et grave malum, and compares it to the torments of martyrdom; when we come to the university, if we live of the college allowance, as Phalaris objected to the Leontines, [Greek: pan ton endeis plaen limou kai ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Southern States was languishing, and its inhabitants emigrating for want of some object to engage their attention and employ their industry, when the invention of this machine at once opened views to them which set the whole country in active motion. From childhood to age it has presented to us a lucrative employment. Individuals who were depressed with poverty, and sunk in idleness, have suddenly risen to wealth and respectability. Our debts have been paid off. Our capital has increased, ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... a niche on one side, strikes the quarter hours from twelve to one; and four figures—Childhood, Youth, Manhood, and Old Age—pass slowly before him. In a niche, on the other side is an angel turning an hour-glass. The clock is in the south transept ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... suggestions of her dress, and the way her warm youth became it, drew her back to memories of a childhood nestled in beauty and gentle ways, before her handsome prodigal father had died, and her mother's face had grown pinched in the long struggle with poverty. But those memories were after all less dear to Justine than the grey years following, when, growing up, she had helped to clear a space in ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... bosom of the ocean. Soon, the blended sky and water were the only objects on which the eye could rest; and Arthur Stanhope felt his spirits rise, as he again launched forth on the changeful element which he had loved from childhood. Nothing occurred to interrupt their passage, till they had advanced far up the Bay of Fundy, when the wind suddenly died away, and left them becalmed, within a few hours sail of the St. John's. This accident was ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... bright spirits of ancient Athens. The morning sun of Europe, the dawning vision of all that we Europeans could be or mean, dawns again in the soul. As an old or invalid man, or one at least who in middle years has sinned and gone astray, one looks back to the innocence and promise of childhood. Here shone the light of our being undimmed; here was kindled in Europe the faith of the ideal. Yonder is Mars Hill from which St. Paul showed the new way when the light was growing dim. For Greece identified man in part with the Divine, but the new religion gave forgetful humanity its altar of remembrance, ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... honoured Lady, while I speak, I pray, That you put off, as garments overworn, Forbearance and respect, remorse and fear, And all the fit restraints of daily life, 210 Which have been borne from childhood, but which now Would be a mockery to my holier plea. As I have said, I have endured a wrong, Which, though it be expressionless, is such As asks atonement; both for what is past, 215 And lest I be reserved, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... in these efforts an anticipation of modern mechanics; in him they were rather dreams, thrown off by the over-wrought and labouring brain. Two ideas were especially fixed in him, as reflexes of things that had touched his brain in childhood beyond the measure of other impressions—the smiling of women and ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... in Newgate, and during a Life of continu'd Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv'd Honest, and dies a Penitent. Written from her ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... him in the chase, watched over him on the march, and gave length of days to his wife and children. Hair, of a quality like this, was not to be profaned by the touch of human hands. I was assured that it had never been cut nor combed from his childhood upward, and, that when any part of it fell from his head, he treasured up that part with care: meanwhile, it did not escape all care, even while growing on the head; but was in the special charge of a spirit, who dressed it while the owner slept. All this might be; but the spirit's style ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... given to the movements of a lively young person with a bright complexion. Such attention would have been demonstrative and complimentary; and in the present case Felix might have passed for an undispirited young exile revisiting the haunts of his childhood. He kept looking at the violent blue of the sky, at the scintillating air, at the scattered and ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... rule had passed away, and in its place she was forced to see a grim iron bond of death laid over her domain. And her father—no longer the grave, kindly old man—had become the ruthless tyrant. All these bright, laughing voyageurs, playmates of her childhood, were in reality executioners of a savage blood-law. She could not ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... of her husband, the marquise received letters from her grandfather, M. Joannis de Nocheres, begging her to come and finish her time of mourning at Avignon. Having been fatherless almost from childhood, Mademoiselle de Chateaublanc had been brought up by this good old man, whom she loved dearly; she hastened accordingly to accede to his invitation, and ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... very short. The sun in autumn may be bright and clear, but the seed which has not been sown until then will not vegetate. A man may have vigour and energy in manhood and maturity, but the work which ought to have been done in childhood and youth cannot be done in old age. A chance once gone in this world ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... with all her soul over the tumult and caresses of Amour and her momentary power over the dog, and because she had slept her fill, and passed the night without a man, and because of the Trinity, according to dim recollections of her childhood, and because of the sparkling sunny day, which it so seldom befalls ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... one of the most curious and least to be expected transformations of poetic versatility—for it is even amazing how he could know the life into which he thus plunged joyous, as if he had been familiar with it from his childhood. King James was not without an object amid all the laughter and the pranks of his holiday. The King's cheerful ridicule of the clumsy fellows who could not draw the bow was intended, with a prick of scorn ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... so early a date, could be seen to be the meaning of the War of 1812 in the progress of the national history. The people, born by war to independence, had by war again been transformed from childhood, absorbed in the visible objects immediately surrounding it, to youth with its dawning vision and opening enthusiasms. They issued from the contest, battered by adversity, but through it at last fairly possessed ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... had it been possible for her, in a word, to have supposed that the Marchese Ludovico loved her, he was the man whom she could most readily have taught herself to love. They had been, to a certain degree, acquaintances from an early period of their childhood. He was the only young man she had ever known with anything like the same degree of intimacy; and Ludovico, as we know, was not devoid of qualities calculated to win ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... gentlest, holiest of teachers—was with him in his childhood. Fairholm Cottage, where his aunt lived, was situated in the beautiful Vale of Ayrton, and a clear stream ran through the valley at the bottom of Mrs Trevor's orchard. Eric loved this stream, and was always happy as ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... childhood to youth, the legends of the hero that each wandering minstrel had changed to suit his fancy, were collected and fused into one by some great poet, who by his power of unification made this written ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... to their daughter in a manner hardly to be described. She was the only one left to them; for the others, of whom two had been boys, had died in infancy or childhood; and, in the event, Marjorie had absorbed the love due to them all. She was a strain higher than themselves, thought her parents, and so pride in her was added to love. The mother had made incredible sacrifices, first to have her educated by a couple of old nuns who still survived in ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... farm of my childhood, the names of Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, Buffalo Bill and other renowned frontiersmen were ever on the lips of my parents. Their reckless bravery that took no thought of self, their diplomatic cunning that cleverly ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... head one day—when the novel was complete in the rough—an astonishing idea because it had not developed long ago. A thing which had mystified her since childhood, a smouldering wonder why it should be, and until now she had never felt the urge to investigate. She tucked the mission Bible under her arm, and crooking a finger at Rollo, went forth to the west ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... I have met with are proficient in this species of knowledge, the faculty for acquiring which appears to be innate with them. Exigencies of woodland and prairie-life stimulate the savage from childhood to develop faculties so important in the arts of ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... of death lessens as the period of puberty approaches. Yet, even in the last years of childhood there is a greater liability to disease and a larger proportionate loss of life than ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... pleasure in tumbling around on the floor, playing with a bright-colored marble or two as you did when a child? The world was in its childhood when God taught the people in this way. He has given them just as wonderful lessons since, but lessons more suited to men and women who have learned to think and reason. We don't like to be ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... from his childhood to observe all kinds of manifestations, was a marvelous reader of the minds of men, and, merely because Mynheer Jacobus Huysman interrupted a conversation to look out into the dark, he knew that he expected something. And whatever it was it was important, ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... an intolerable and monstrous falsehood!" cried I, interrupting, him. "I never laid a hand on a woman to take away her life, and have even shunned their society from my childhood. I know nothing of my mother's exit; nor of that young lady's whom ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... and the fellow, wanting to secure for himself alone the honour of palming it off upon the Duke of Florence, abstained from taking his partner Antonio Landi into the secret. Now Landi had been my intimate friend from childhood, and when he saw that I enjoyed the Duke's confidence, he called me aside (it was just before noon at a corner of the Mercato Nuovo), and spoke as follows: "Benvenuto, I am convinced that the Duke will show you a diamond, which he seems disposed to buy; you ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... walk, on account of some malformation of his limbs. He learned to talk, too, very late and very slowly. Besides the general feebleness of his constitution, which kept him back in all these things, there was an impediment in his speech, which affected him very much in childhood, and which, in ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... man, whether he is born rich or poor, is obliged to do something in this world—to occupy himself, to work. Woe to those who lead slothful lives. Sloth is a dreadful illness and must be cured at once, in childhood. If not, when we are old it can ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... and my thought. It is a sign perhaps of a somewhat vain disposition. The future is nothing; but the past is myself, my own history, the seed of my present thoughts, the mould of my present disposition. It is not in vain that I return to the nothings of my childhood; for every one of them has left some stamp upon me or put some fetter on my boasted free-will. In the past is my present fate; and in the past also is my real life. It is not the past only, but the past that has been many years in that tense. The doings and actions of last year are ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... atrocities that were perpetrated. And these are the crimes that France and Belgium will remember after indemnities have been paid, after borders have been re-established and after generations shall have past. The horrors of blazing villages, of violated womanhood, of mutilated childhood, of stark and senseless butcheries, will flash before the minds of French and Belgian men and women when Germany's name shall be mentioned long after the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... finally climbed Holiday's Hill to get a comprehensive view. The whole town lay spread out below me then, and I could mark and fix every locality, every detail. Naturally, I was a good deal moved. I said, 'Many of the people I once knew in this tranquil refuge of my childhood are now in heaven; some, I trust, are in the other place.' The things about me and before me made me feel like a boy again—convinced me that I was a boy again, and that I had simply been dreaming an unusually long dream; but my reflections spoiled all that; for they forced me to say, 'I see fifty ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... converted into common, and would have shown how the last effort of abstraction invented prepositions and auxiliaries. The theologian would have proved that language must have had a divine origin, because in childhood, while the organs are pliable, the intelligence is wanting, and when the intelligence is able to frame conceptions, the organs are no longer able to express them. Or, as others have said: Man is man because he has the gift of speech; and he could not have ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... those perilous seas like the book that has been called a great three-decker to carry tired people to Islands of the Blest? "The immortal fragment," says Sir Richard Burton, who perhaps knew the Arabian Nights as did no other European, "will never be superseded in the infallible judgment of childhood. The marvellous imaginativeness of the Tales produces an insensible brightness of mind and an increase of fancy-power, making one dream that behind them lies the new and unseen, the strange and unexpected—in fact, all ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... of age when I began my career as articled pupil with the Miss Bagshots of Albury Lodge, Fendale, Yorkshire. My father was a country curate, with a delicate wife and four children, of whom I was the eldest; and I had known from my childhood that the day must come in which I should have to get my own living in almost the only vocation open to a poor gentleman's daughter. I had been fairly educated near home, and the first opportunity that arose for placing me out in the world had been ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... self-transcending Reality that absolutely satisfies and is what he has always sought. "This is He, this is He," the mystic exclaims: "There is no other: This is He whom I have waited for and sought after from my childhood!"[7] ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... found that I had travelled some hundreds of miles, and, strange to say, my horse was as good as when it had started. From what I could gather from the signs on the road (I have been accustomed to Forestry from my earliest childhood), it seemed to me that, while I was slumbering, I must have passed Macclesfield, Ramsgate, Richmond (both in Surrey and in Yorkshire), and was now close to the weirdest spot in all phantom-populated Wiltshire—a place in its rugged desolation suggestive of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... right, but now through necessity beholds their grossest wrongs, comes the pain of self-condemnation. It is a condemnation haunting me unto death. Had I been ignorant of Clotilda's history, the fiendish deed of those who wronged her in her childhood had not now hung like a loathsome pestilence around my very garments. That which the heart rebukes cannot be concealed; but we must be obedient to the will that directs all things;—and if it be that we remain blind in despotism until misfortune opens our eyes, let the cause of the calamity ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... tired and ready for a fine dinner and an early bed, both of which the good inn supplied. It was my daily programme; a healthy life "far from the world," as Amedee said, and I was sorry when the serpent entered and disturbed it, though he was my own. He is a pet of mine; has been with me since my childhood. He leaves me when I live alone, for he loves company, but returns whenever my kind are about me. There are many names for snakes of his breed, but, to deal charitably with myself, ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... in much—my childhood," she said in a low voice, dropping her eyes before his ardent gaze, "as my father said. My mother was lovely to see, but not bigger than I was at twelve—so petite, and yet so perfect in form—like a lark or a canary. Yes, and she could sing—anything. Not like me with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the fuss was about. She was happy in her new world—just as happy as she had been in the old one—with the difference that she was possibly now more sensitive to the beauty that surrounded her. In the time of her childhood she had lived purely for the moment; sufficient unto each day had been its particular physical joys; now she knew that the future held more for her, that the life which she had taken for granted would not go on for ever. Strange things must happen, possibly things more strange than ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... got to his feet once more, the men, astonished, questioned him, not being able to understand what he had done. He replied, in faltering tones, that he had had for a moment a fit of abstraction, or rather a return to the days of his childhood, that he imagined he had to pass his time under a tree, just as street-boys rush in front of vehicles driving rapidly past, that he had played at danger, that, for the past eight days, he felt this desire growing stronger within him, ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... "Balsorah," a European corruption common in his day, the childhood of Orientalism in Europe. The Hindostani versions have "Bansra," which ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Thy full-orbed presence captivates his eye; Or when, 'mid shadows grim upon the walls, Are sent thy pallid rays, 'Tis awe his bosom fills, And trembling joy that thrills His tiny frame, and fastens his young gaze: Thy spell is on that heart, And childhood may depart, But it shall gather strength with youthful days; For oft as thou, capricious moon! Shalt wax and wane, He, now perchance a love-sick swain, Will watch thee at night's stilly noon, Pouring his passion in an amorous strain: Or, with the mistress ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... all by herself on the moor, and the friendly stars looked down at her, and the moon came out and shone on her poor forsaken little figure, an old verse she used to say in her early childhood returned to her memory. It was the verse of a hymn—a hymn her mother was fond of, and used often to sing, particularly about the time of the New Year, to ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... but all chance-wise, of people and things once dear, or of people and things indifferent. Once more the poor fellow is back at his home in fair Provence, and sees the sun-dial that stood in his childhood’s garden; sees part of his mother, and the long-since-forgotten face of that little dead sister (he sees her, he says, on a Sunday morning, for all the church bells are ringing); he looks up and down through the universe, and owns ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... always been the case that success is changeable; and there is no luck in the matter. It has gone with your family as with mine to have by turns the better lot. I am little beyond childhood in years; and at any rate we could not have defended ourselves, as we did not expect any attack on the way. It may turn out better with ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... still in the same frame of mind. So she was on the morning of the 4th; but suddenly, without even having to contend against preliminary subterfuges, she ran out into the garden, cut three lengths of rush, plaited them as she used to do in her childhood and at twelve o'clock had herself driven to the station. She was uplifted by an eager curiosity. She was unable to resist all the amusing and novel sensations which the adventure, proposed by Renine, promised ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... to suffer in anticipation all the pangs of coming shame, poverty, and humiliation. With remorse returned the virtuous impressions of childhood, instilled into her tender mind by her penitent mother. She longed to return to the circle nature had destined for her, but which seemed more difficult now than to commence a new disguise. Although she yielded in all virtuous impulses to that ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... right. When in childhood I was confined to the house, I offered my heart in my wistful gaze to outside nature in all its variety through the openings in the parapet of our inner roof-terrace. In my youth the world of men in the same way ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... spoke to Collins alone for a few minutes, then began to wander in his mind He babbled feebly of childhood days back in his Kentucky home. The word most often on his lips was "Mother." So, with his head resting on Neil's arm and his hand in that of his friend, he slipped away to ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... what deep melancholy, what ineffaceable regrets we feel, when as age comes on we look back, when we see our friends fallen upon the road one after the other, above all when we visit the beloved scenes of our childhood, those homes of other years, that witnessed our first start in terrestrial existence, our first games, our first affections—those affections of childhood that seemed eternal—when we wander over those fields and valleys and hills, when we ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... branches, sat a young girl sketching. She was intently engaged, but as her eyes were ever and anon raised from her paper to the opening glade, and one of the old trees, the Fairies had no difficulty in recognizing their protegee, Hermione. The laughing face of childhood had become sobered and refined by sentiment and strength, but contentment and even enjoyment beamed in her eyes as she thoughtfully and earnestly pursued her beautiful art. The little beings who hovered around her in that sweet spot, almost forgot they were not in Fairy land; the ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... him come to talking love to her, was to talk of their childhood and how he had adored her then. Her own remembrance of those days of budding girlhood was dim, but he seemed to remember everything about her, and she could but be touched as he reminded her of scores of little incidents and scenes ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... solemnly. And again she felt the strong conviction, that whatever his father had been, or his mother, of whom they had heard nothing till she was dead, Ascott could not have lived all these years of his childhood and early boyhood with his three aunts at Stowbury without gaining at least some good, which might counteract the hereditary evil; as such evil can be counteracted, even as hereditary disease can be gradually removed by wholesome and careful rearing ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... C. Smith, daughter of Peter H. Day, was a native of New York city. Her education was provided for by her energetic widowed mother, to whom she ascribes the secret of her success. From early childhood she showed strong power of mind, and inherited from her mother that force and determination of purpose which prefigure success in whatever is undertaken. As a pupil, she was prompt and energetic, and never failed to win one of the Ridgeway ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... naturally claimed as youngest. But when it appeared that she was one of the spring-flowers of the human family, so soon withdrawing thither whence they come, he found that she began to pull at his heart, not merely with the attraction betwixt childhood and age, in which there is more than the poets have yet sung, but with the dearness which the growing shadow of death gives to all upon whom it gathers. The eyes of the child seemed to nestle into his bosom. Every morning he paid her a visit, and ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... That amiable creature had been trained well, and had learned obedience. Blessed quality! Would that the human race—especially its juvenile section—understood better the value of that inestimable virtue! The pony began to pull back at the sound of "wo!" Its portion in childhood had probably been woe when it refused to recognise the order. The result was that poor Tolly's right arm, over which was thrown the pony's rein, had to bear the strain ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Yes; our childhood's home is that, I suppose, be it a cottage or a castle, revisited in imagination at life's close," sighed ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... all through her childhood her family was saving and pulling together to build a fine big house. They worked along for years until, when she was a young lady, they finally accomplished it; built a big three-story house that was ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... Steele in the Spectator, No. 157, two years after Johnson's birth, describes these savage tyrants of the grammar-schools. 'The boasted liberty we talk of,' he writes, 'is but a mean reward for the long servitude, the many heartaches and terrors to which our childhood is exposed in going through a grammar school.... No one who has gone through what they call a great school but must remember to have seen children of excellent and ingenuous natures (as has afterwards appeared in their manhood); I say no man ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... circumstances and position in life. It is of the highest importance that the student of Scripture not only know these facts, but ponder them long and carefully, till he fully understands their deep significance. He has been accustomed from childhood to see all the books of the Bible comprised within the covers of a single volume. He can hardly divest himself of the idea that their authors, if not exactly contemporary, must yet somehow have understood ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... not, indeed, the presumption to correct Rousseau, or to substitute an expurgated "Emile" for the authentic "Emile." We have simply wished to draw the attention of the teachers of childhood to those pages of this book which have least grown old, which can still be of service, can hasten the downfall of the old systems, can emphasize, by their energy and beauty of language, methods already inaugurated and reforms already undertaken. These methods and reforms cannot ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... round their feet. Yet their short spell of soldiering had changed them from honest-faced yokels into fierce-eyed, half-shaven, gaunt-cheeked fellows, who could carry arms or port pikes as though they had done nought else since childhood. ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... way of convincing these barbarians that their prisoners were not of some hated, hostile tribe. Evidently the tradition of the outer world had long since perished as a belief among them. The patriarch's faith in it had come to be considered a mere doting second childhood vagary, just as the tradition of the Golden Age was held to ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... suited for him, but at least came somehow most conveniently to his practice. But for the loss of her consoling and continual company there would have been almost joy on his part at this returning to the scene of his childhood. He went back to it on a summer day figuring to himself the content, the carelessness that had been his there before, and thinking, poor fool, they were waiting where ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... happy days of childhood, By the river's rushing tide, Where the crystal waters murmured Over all the ripples wide, It was perfect joy to angle Through the spring time's laughing day Though we only caught the minnows And the ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... BERTRAM SMITH—the discovery of his appreciation (shared by myself, the elder STEVENSON, and other persons of discernment) for the romantic possibilities of the map. There is an excellent map in the beginning of Days of Discovery (CONSTABLE), showing the peculiar domain of childhood, the garden, in terms that will hardly fail to win your sympathy. But not in this alone does Mr. SMITH show that he has the heart of the matter in him; every page of these reminiscences of nursery life proclaims a genuine ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... egotistical, and these traits of character I inherited from him. But while I honestly inherited combativeness, stubbornness and egotism from my father, these characteristics became very objectionable to him when displayed by myself. So from my earliest childhood days there was a continual tug of war between us to see who would be ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... after his wife's death and became Bishop of Amiens under the Restoration. Marie Louise, who died December 17, 1847, aged fifty-six, lived in surroundings directly hostile to Napoleon's glory. Her ideas in her last years grew to resemble those of her childhood, and she was perpetually denouncing the principles of the French Revolution and of the liberalism which pursued her even in the Duchy of Parma. France has reproached her with abandoning Napoleon, and still more perhaps for having given two obscure successors to the most ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... when, by sudden opening Virgil's book, they lighted upon some verse, as it is reported by many, whereof the histories of the Emperors' lives are full. As of Albinus, the governor of our island, who, in his childhood, met ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... call'd me back to many a glade, My childhood's haunt of play, Where brightly 'mid the birchen shade Their waters glanced away: They call'd me with their thousand waves Back to ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... left a very distinct record of herself in letters, romances, memoirs and portraits, written out of an abounding fullness of nature, but with infinite detail and royal contempt for precision and orthography. She talks naively of her happy childhood, of her small caprices, of the love of her grandmother, Marie de Medicis, of her innocent impressions of the people about her. She dwells with special pleasure upon a grand fete at the Palais Royal, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... almost exactly the same. More than that, they continually came upon little habits, sayings, even superstitious customs at births, weddings, funerals, and other occasions, which they had been familiar with at home from childhood, and which they had been told by nurses and old servants should be observed and respected because they were family peculiarities, handed down from times so ancient nobody could have counted the years. Still greater was the astonishment of those who discovered ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 34, July 1, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... faithful he had been to his mother and sister. Jerome listened with bliss, and shame that he should find it bliss. Then Lucina and he remembered together, with that perfect time of memory which is as harmonious as any duet, all the episodes of their childhood. ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... national freedom in thought and in action; to Priestley the philosophical thinker; to that Priestley who held a foremost place among the 'swift runners who hand over the lamp of life,' and transmit from one generation to another the fire kindled, in the childhood of the world, at the Promethean ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... September of 1796 that the calamity befell which has tinged the story of Charles and Mary Lamb with the sombrest hues of the Greek tragedy. The family were still in the Holborn lodgings,—the mother an invalid, the father sinking into a second childhood. Mary, in addition to the burden of ministering to her parents, was working for their support with ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb |
