"Childishly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... across the meadows by that path on several occasions, and in the dead silence of the brilliant night vivid recollections of a warm summer's evening long past came back to me—sweet remembrances of days when we were childishly happy ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... corrupte in princes courtes, nor to doe many feates. And this weyed, wee are to knowe what Phillip ys in the West Indies; and that wee be not abused with Spanish braggs, and made to beleve what he is not; and so, drawen into vain feare, suffer fondly and childishly our owne utter spoile. And therefore wee are to understande that Phillippe rather governeth in the West Indies by opinion, then by mighte; ffor the small manred of Spaine, of itself being alwayes at the best ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... I pay no attention to them, even to the extent of despising their judgment as rash. For it is not unknown that Lactantius, a writer of prominence in other lines although but little versed in mathematics, spoke very childishly about the form of the earth when he ridiculed those who declared that it was spherical. Hence it should not seem strange to the learned if some shall look upon us in the same way. Mathematics is written for mathematicians, to whom these labors of ours will seem, if I mistake ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... it very childishly, the same cock-and-bull story that the old Frenchman had been at last night. What to make of it, I knew no more than the dead. Here we seemed to be on as fair an island as the whole Pacific might show you; and yet these ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... Wherefore all this heat at the present moment? Grant that the propositions denounced as erroneous were so in very deed, why should criminals standing under the shadow of public vengeance ready to descend, so childishly misuse the interval, mercifully allowed for their own defence, in reading lectures upon abstract political speculations, confessedly bearing no relation to any militant interest now in question? Quite as impertinent it would be, when called upon for the answer upon 'Guilty or not Guilty?' ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... first heard of the sexual act," she writes, "it appeared to me so absurd that I took little notice. About the age of 10 I discussed it a good deal with other girls, and we used to play childishly indecent games—out of pure mischief and not from any ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... "you cannot go on seeing Alice, or have anything to do with any of that family. You are quite a child, and childishly headstrong I well know, but I ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... during her lifetime she was highly respected, and after her death the natives of the country venerated her; and it is her name the country bears. She it is who sends thunder and lightning, who destroys the crops when she is vexed, for they childishly believe, that Dobaiba becomes angry when they fail to offer sacrifices in her honour. There are deceivers who, under the pretence of religion, inculate this belief among the natives, hoping thereby to increase the number of gifts offered by the latter to the ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... very cruel to me." The voice was childishly broken and muffled. He looked down at her, slowly realising that it was a child he still was dealing with—a child with a child's innocence, repelled by the graver phase of love, unresponsive to the deeper emotions, bewildered by the glimpse of ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... he likes over-ripe fish, and brazed dog, and cat, and rat, and will eat his own uncle with relish. He is a sociable animal, yet he turns aside and hides behind his shield when his mother-in-law goes by. He is childishly afraid of ghosts and other trivialities that menace his soul, but dread of physical pain is a weakness which he is not acquainted with. He knows all the great and many of the little constellations, and has names for them; he has a symbol-writing by means of which he can ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... struck me as childishly garrulous, stupidly prolix, swollen with comments not interesting in themselves and leading to nothing. Mr. Hardy possesses the power of being able to shape events; he can mould them to a certain form; that he cannot breathe into them the spirit of life I have already ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... that feeling. So much the more affecting was it, when the sanity of his perceptions and his remembrances returned; but these intervals were of slower and slower occurrence. In this condition, silent or babbling childishly, self- involved and torpidly abstracted, or else busy with self-created phantoms and delusions, what a contrast did he offer to that Kant who had once been the brilliant centre of the most brilliant circles for rank, wit, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... childishly timid manner, leaned on the table with both elbows and linked fingers, listening, watching everything with an almost breathless intelligence ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... our boyish sports,—but here used for how different a purpose! Were these the records of days, or weeks, or months? The only furniture of the cells is a raised platform of wood, the sole bed of the miserable inmate. The Italian visitors, before leaving, childishly vent their useless rage at the sight of these places of confinement, by breaking to pieces the windows and shutters, and scattering their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... she broke the connection. Impotent fury lashed Lord's mind—anger at Don Howard, because the engineer was one of his key men; and, childishly, anger at Don's sister because she was the one who had broken the news. If it had come from almost anyone else it would, somehow, have seemed less disastrous. Don's was the fourth desertion in less than a week, and the loss of trained personnel ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... they believe that the book is as old as it was asserted to be. The defects of the Zohar are in keeping with this imposture. Absurd allegories are read into the Bible; the words of Scripture are counters in a game of distortion and combination; God himself is obscured amid a maze of mystic beings, childishly conceived and childishly named. Philosophically, the Zohar has no originality. Its doctrines of the Transmigration of the Soul, of the Creation as God's self-revelation in the world, of the Emanation from the divine essence ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... felt somewhat uneasy.... It seemed to me that all the Americans would turn and eye us, the representatives of a nation which has not as yet learned the axioms of law, and which draws childishly false conclusions from premises.... ...
— The Shield • Various
... have begun to perceive that it is hardly worth while to hire men at exorbitant prices to deface articles which they cannot read and condemn books which they cannot understand; and the common sense of Russia has long since revolted against a system which is still as uselessly and childishly vexatious as when pilloried in imperishable language a century ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... might really have contributed to the severity of this sentence. Grebel, during an earlier sojourn there, had sown the seed, of which these were the ripened fruits. They burnt the Bible, because it said: "The letter kills." They sported with puppets; led about dancing apes tied to a string; wept childishly, and were comforted with apples, and cast off all their clothes, because they must become like little children, of whom alone was the kingdom of heaven. Yea, in the end, one of them, Leonard Schucker, desired the death of his ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... the very ablest of them napping; for they are so subtle that they will sometimes tell you the truth because they think you will suppose it to be a lie. I do not wish to catch them napping, however; I cling to the wisdom of ignorance, and childishly enjoy the way in which things work themselves out— the cul-de-sac resolving itself at the very last moment into a promising corridor toward the outer air. At every rebuff it is my happiness to be hopelessly bewildered; and I gape ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... which showed how much she felt the obtrusive condescension to her level. I greatly pitied her, and sometimes, in fact, my emotion at the sight of her struggles with her limitations almost overcame me and I was obliged to get up and go. She was childishly affectionate. If M'Kay came in and happened to go up to her and kiss her, her face brightened into the sweetest and happiest smile. I recollect once after he had been unusually annoyed with her he repented just as he was leaving home, and put his lips to her head, holding it in both ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... either sought to take the initiative of laws in the spirit of the party of Order, or even exaggerated their severity in their enforcement and administration, he, on his part, sought to win popularity by means of childishly silly propositions, to exhibit the contrast between himself and the National Assembly, and to hint at a secret plan, held in reserve and only through circumstances temporarily prevented from disclosing its hidden treasures to the French ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... I did but play this little jest with hope to surprise you into some display of your art, as not doubting you would blast the guards with occult fires, consuming them to ashes on the spot, a marvel much beyond mine own ability, yet one which I have long been childishly curious to see." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... carriage, a beauty and perfection of features, a rich coloring no canvas could depict. Her skin was of warm olive hue, with tinges of red in the cheeks and the lips cherry-ripe. Her eyes were dark brown, large, melting, childishly introspective. Her hands were shapely, and her little bare feet, arched, rosy-nailed, were like flowers on the sand. She wore the thinnest of sheer white cotton tunics, and there were flamboyant flowers in the shining dark hair that tumbled to ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... of the syllables. It was, of course, only a bad, underbred habit that showed bad education and a false idea of good manners. And yet this intonation and manner of speaking impressed Alyosha as almost incredibly incongruous with the childishly simple and happy expression of her face, the soft, babyish joy in her eyes. Katerina Ivanovna at once made her sit down in an arm-chair facing Alyosha, and ecstatically kissed her several times on her smiling lips. She seemed quite ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... time Stanton lay and considered the matter judicially from every possible point of view. "It would have been rather pleasant," he mused "to know who 'we' were." Almost childishly his face cuddled into the pillow. "She might at least have told me the name of the ostrich!" ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... childishly with her knuckles; she stared at him for a moment unrecognisingly, then, as memory returned, she ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... there in his house, was failing fast, men said. He prattled childishly, and his talon-like hands were pitifully palsied. He would scarcely see another spring, and in the fight that was coming his wise old tongue would no longer be available for counsel. So toward the younger and more robust ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... never been so childishly unreasonable as this before, and yet I loved her more madly than ever; but I did not like this allusion to Travers, a rising barrister, who lived with his sister in a pretty cottage near the station, and had shown symptoms of ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... and somewhat in dread of the coming interview. Now and again he would recur to the scene which was just over, support himself by the remembrance of the silence that gives consent, and exult as a happy lover. But even this feeling was not without a shade of remorse. Had he not shown himself childishly weak thus to yield up the resolve of many hours of thought to the tears of a pretty girl? How was he to meet his lawyer? How was he to back out of a matter in which his name was already so publicly ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... dinner, had the fire lighted and the table spread when she came. She had run up the stairs and was out of breath, bringing in a whiff of the night's fresh dampness, and childishly glad to be there. She made no attempt to hide it, laughing as she slid out of her coat and tossed her hat on a chair. With her feet in their worn, high-heeled shoes held out to the fire, her hands rosily transparent against the blaze, she filled the room ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... sorry—I forgot." She introduced them. "Mr. Kettering—Miss Leighton. . . . Mr. Kettering has been looking over the house; I hope he will buy it," she added childishly. ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... chief characters the Rat, the Mole, the Toad,—they are human beings, and they are meant to be nothing but human beings. Were it otherwise, the spectacle of a toad going through the motor-car craft would be merely incomprehensible and exasperating. The superficial scheme of the story is so childishly naive, or so daringly naive, that only a genius could have preserved it from the ridiculous. The book is an urbane exercise in irony at the expense of the English character and of mankind. It is entirely successful. ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... by one of the attendants which seemed to me childishly absurd, but it was nevertheless tried. The plan was to send a man to the prisoners, who was to make them believe that he had obtained entrance into their dungeon upon some other pretence, but that he had in reality come to treat with them for the purchase ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... many of these love affairs, and not infrequently causes the lovers to hate each other; in which case they childishly look upon each other as the cause instead of the occasion of the torment. Also under the spur of the taunts of mates the lovers are stimulated to say things to or about each other that lead to estrangement. In some instances, ...
— A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes • Sanford Bell
... morning. Eve was at an age when the wild-rose tints of a complexion fostered by judicious walks and schoolroom teas had not yet yielded to the baneful influence of late dinners and the other orgies which society conducts in an unduly-heated atmosphere. Her figure was still almost childishly slim, but graceful, and straight enough to defy criticism in the ball-room or the saddle. Her eyes were gray, with a curious, starry expression in their depths, which always suggested that the smile which was so often on her lips was quite ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... beneath her dignity to attempt a utilitarian justification for herself. Yet in the verse of the last century and a half there are occasional passages which give the impression that Poetry, with childishly averted head, is offering them to us, as if to say, "Don't think I would stoop to defend myself, but here are some things I might say ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... out of your heart, beyond the reach of Leshy: and the nearest you can come to regaining youth is to behave childishly." ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... in that time I had found in her thrice that number of moods. She could be as gay and sweet as the morning, as dark and vengeful as the storms that came up of afternoons, pensive as the twilight, stately as the night,—in her there met a hundred minds. Also she could be childishly frank—and tell you nothing. ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... to Carteret very notable; and, yes—although she might disport herself in this childishly frolic fashion—it was idle to call her, or pretend her any longer a babe. For cause to him unknown, through force of some experience of which he remained ignorant, she had undeniably come into the charm and mystery of her womanhood—a very fair and noble blossoming ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... to love her with moderation and discretion."—"I am afraid I shall be guilty of some sin in spite of all my endeavours," says Joseph; "for I shall love without any moderation, I am sure."—"You talk foolishly and childishly," cries Adams.—"Indeed," says Mrs Adams, who had listened to the latter part of their conversation, "you talk more foolishly yourself. I hope, my dear, you will never preach any such doctrine as that husbands can love their wives too well. If I knew you had such ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... warned him in vain, in an admirable speech delivered on May 3d, that France had everything to lose by aiding in bringing about the unity of Germany. The emperor obstinately persisted, proposing to tear up those treaties of 1815 which, two years before, he had childishly declared to be no longer in existence. His proposition of a congress, however, failed through the refusal of Austria and the petty states to take part in it. He next signed with Austria a secret treaty ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... a hedger's. Both as to his dress and to himself, he was of an overlapping rhinoceros build, with folds in his cheeks, and his forehead, and his eyelids, and his lips, and his ears; but with bright, eager, childishly-inquiring, grey eyes, under his ragged eyebrows, and broad-brimmed hat. A very odd-looking ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... either wipe it off, or else suck down sweet and bitter together; so is it with some Christians, let God embitter all the sweets of this life, that so they might feed upon more substantiall food, yet they are so childishly sottish that they are still huging and sucking these empty brests, that God is forced to hedg up their way with thornes, or lay affliction on their loynes, that so they might shake hands with the world before it bid ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... childish, answer not him. "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." But answer yourselves, and answer too your children, when they ask you what has moved you thus—answer, I say, not childishly, but childlike: "We have gone back, for a moment at least, to England's childhood—to the mood of England when she was still young. And we are showing thereby that we are not yet decayed into old age. That if we ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... was also true that he was equally skilled in getting people into it. If he ultimately doubled their joys and halved their sorrows he inevitably first doubled their sorrows and halved their savings. Like the witch in Macbeth: "Double, double toil and trouble." His aims were childishly simple: First, to find out how much money his victim had, and then to ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... woke late. He had slept heavily. Pussum was still asleep, sleeping childishly and pathetically. There was something small and curled up and defenceless about her, that roused an unsatisfied flame of passion in the young man's blood, a devouring avid pity. He looked at her again. But it would be too cruel to wake her. He subdued himself, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... stunned over the loss of that moth, which she had childishly named the Yellow Emperor, that she scarcely remembered the blow. She had thought no luck in all the world would be so rare as to complete her collection; now she had been forced to see a splendid Imperialis destroyed ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... to the worthy provincials, who, considerably disgusted by his aristocratic manners, were all studying him with sarcastic intent. This needs an explanation. At twenty-two, young people are still so near childhood that they often conduct themselves childishly. In all probability, out of every hundred of them fully ninety-nine would have behaved precisely as Monsieur Charles ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... "little fool" who was only lacking in the higher form of reason, the ruling power of the intellect; but of the lesser, the subordinate reasoning faculties, he had plenty—even to the point of cunning. Fanatically, childishly devoted to "the cause" or rather in reality to Pyotr Verhovensky, he acted on the instructions given to him when at the meeting of the quintet they had agreed and had distributed the various duties for the next day. When Pyotr Stepanovitch gave him the job of messenger, he succeeded ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... {336} Tobias, and falling in love with her he asks for her hand. In the first act we see the priest uniting the young couple. The Knight recognizes in the old man a traveller, whom he once saved from robbers, and is glad to see him. Undine behaves most childishly and finally says that she has no soul. She is herself grieved, and the others do not believe her. Hugo now tells them of the proud and beautiful Berthalda, whose scarf he received in a tournament, and who sent him away on this ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... this ghastly business in its true aspect. Look at the lighter side of Viviette's character. She is gay, fond of admiration, childishly fond of teasing, a bright creature of bewildering moods. Would she be safe in your hands? Might you not one day again see things red before your eyes ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... ever believed that folk, whether black or white, work more willingly if they see the aim and purpose of their toil, I told them as they set about the task what our intent was. It pleased them, and they worked with a will, being indeed childishly eager to begin the bombardment before the ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... in all she did, until the Palazzetto Borgia should be as beautiful as the Palazzo Braccio itself, though of course it was much smaller. Then she scrawled on the walls again, trying to explain to him, in childishly futile sketches, her ideas of decoration, and he would come down from his scaffold and do his best with a few broad lines to show her what she had really imagined, till she clapped her small, dusty hands with delight and was ultimately carried off by her governess to be ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... one curious instant he looked out over the village, his fastidious scholar's soul absorbed by some intellectual irritation, of which Rose understood absolutely nothing. She stood bewildered, silent, longing childishly to speak, to influence him, but not ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... general was marvellous, incredible. I have already mentioned that up to the time of his death he kept his almost childishly fresh complexion. Illness was a thing unknown to him, in spite of his excesses; the strength of his constitution never once showed signs of giving way. When any other man would infallibly have been seriously ill, or even ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... press-cutting agencies which have added either a new luxury or a new terror to public life. But Mr. Chamberlain's action had many roots. First, like many others, very free in their comments and attacks, he is almost childishly sensitive. Watch him in the House of Commons when an attack is being made upon him which he does not like, and the fierce and domineering temper reveals itself in the fidgety movement, the darkened brow, the deeper pallor on the white-complexioned ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... too childishly open to be misunderstood. Mr. Desmond's spirits are rising with marvellous rapidity; indeed, for the past two minutes he feels as if he ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... challenge to the individual soul. Elgar's work is indeed the typical musical expression of recent Roman Catholic developments; but there are others also. There was Perosi, the Benedictine priest, whose oratorios, tentative, childishly sincere mixtures of Palestrina and Wagner, were forced upon Europe in the late 'nineties with the full driving power of his Church, and who, when his musical insufficiency became palpable, was dropped in favour of Elgar himself, whose sudden rise into deserved fame coincides ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... form of instrument gives us what Mr. Charles Reade describes as the invention of Italy, namely "the four corners."[20] The same author in speaking of the order of invention remarks that he is puzzled "to time the Violono, or as we childishly call it (after its known descendant) the Double Bass. If I were so presumptuous as to trust to my eye alone, I should say it was the first of them all." With this opinion I entirely agree, and I am also in unison with Mr. Reade in believing that the large ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... childishly miserable face that stared indignantly through glittering tears, rose before his eyes. He forgot that he had ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... so childishly, Corporal! We have to be on the road again to-morrow. What good purpose will it serve if we allow ourselves to be over-fatigued and so fit for nothing?... After all, a bad night will not last forever!... We must manage to put ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... say that I felt a little jealous of Mr. Percivale. The negative reason was that I had not yet learned to love him. The only cure for jealousy is love. But I was ashamed too of Wynnie's behaving so childishly. Her face flushed, the tears came in her eyes, and she rose, saying, with a little choke ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... Well, I thought, childishly pleased, at least I am not one of the innumerable nameless faces that pour in and out of the library daily. "What else was there supposed to be?" ...
— "To Invade New York...." • Irwin Lewis
... She had thought childishly, shallowly last night that she had had no faith, and could live with none. That was because she had not conceived what it would be to try to live without faith, because she had not conceived that the very ground under her feet could give way. At that very moment she had ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... flying to Grandma now, perfectly, childishly confident that Grandma would and could fix up everything. She began to talk as soon as she opened the door. But what she saw in Grandma's kitchen sent the words ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... So she ended her letter, with youthful and characteristic dignity, childishly unaware, apparently, that there was more to read between the lines than in the ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Delmia feebly groped her way to her sister's side, and throwing her shrunken arms about her, tried to win her back to consciousness by childishly calling her endearing names. ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... North and South. The war sprang from the inherent antipathy between two forms of political organization radically hostile to each other. Is the war over, will it ever be over, if we allow the incompatibility to remain, childishly satisfied with a mere change of shape? This has been the grapple of two brothers that already struggled with each other even in the womb. One of them has fallen under the other; but let simple, good-natured Esau beware ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... enjoy his heroics in peace. He would find an excuse; meanwhile, give him quiet and solitude to digest his bitterness. He cursed himself for the unworthiness of his thoughts. What a pass had he come to when he grudged a little kudos to a rival, grudged it churlishly, childishly. He flung from him the self-reproach. Other people would wonder at his ungenerousness, and his sulky ill-nature. They would explain by the first easy discreditable reason. What eared he for their opinion when he knew the far greater shame ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... cracked from side to side, isn't it? I am sorry. For life is not so easily disposed of. And there is only life to look at now, and life is a bewilderingly complex business, you will find, because the laws of it are so childishly simple—and implacable. And one of these laws seems to be that in our little planet, might ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... cannot you see that the mischief is done! You behave shamefully, and now you talk childishly. You have made these children disloyal, and what hold can I have on them except through their loyalty? You have thrown me back at the start—I cannot bear to think how far—and you talk as if some foolish violence could ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dear Clementina, I do assure you, it really hurts my feelings to hear you talk so childishly. 'When it comes to the heart!' 'affections engaged!' You talk of falling in love as if it were a terrible fall: for my part, I should pity a person much more for falling down stairs. Why, my dear, where is the mighty height from which Miss Tracey could fall? She does not live in ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... time or particle of matter may be gathered the relations of a solar system or the experiences of a life; that a universe may be compressed into an atom, or a molecule expanded into a macrocosm; therefore I expect nobody to sneer at my Rosamond as childishly nappy in her simple honeymoon, or at me for making extravagant and unsupported assertions, when I say that this hour and a half, and these four miles out to Clarendon Park and back,—the lifting and the tucking ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... chuckled. "I'll admit, though, I think Ross is correct. Don's done little we three didn't when first given the robe of invisibility. We experimented, largely playfully, even childishly." ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... evening I came to him again. He was somewhat fretful from his illness. A gentleman asked him, whether he had been abroad to-day. 'Don't talk so childishly, (said he.) You may as well ask if I hanged myself to-day.' I mentioned politicks. JOHNSON. 'Sir, I'd as soon have a man to break my bones as talk to me of publick affairs, internal or external. I have lived to see things all as bad as they ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... to be ashamed of yourself," Barbara said hotly. "Apart from the meanness and deceitfulness of it all, you have behaved most childishly, and I shall always think less of ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... "I have got my new mamma to love me, even if he does not. 'Mamma—mamma Constance!' how pretty that sounds. Oh, that is what I shall always call her from this time—'Constance,' as usual, you know, with 'mamma' before it." And I kept repeating "mamma Constance," childishly. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... measures, and the dancers swung with it. Sir Nigel walked dutifully through the Lancers once with his wife, and once with his beautiful sister-in-law. Lady Anstruthers, in her new bloom, had not lacked partners, who discovered that she was a childishly light creature who danced extremely well. Everyone was kind to her, and the very grand old ladies, who admired Betty, were absolutely benign in their manner. Betty's partners paid ingenuous court to her, and Sir Nigel found he had not been mistaken in his estimate of the dignity his ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... slightly offended, I was childishly fond of chocolate, and the act seemed so inexplicably discourteous. We walked to the house in silence, neither of us speaking, until we reached the side entrance. Here the princess paused by the nail-studded ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... trod the green knolls of Paradise with Eve. He will be young when he sits upon the grave of the thousandth generation of our posterity, listening to the beating of his own heart, or sporting with his butterfly consort, as childishly as if he were no older than the daisy under his foot. His empire is a theme of which the tongue never grows weary, or utters all that seems to come quivering and gasping to the lips for utterance. We think, more than we ever spoke, of love; and if we have a curiosity when we ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... enough; and now take particular care that we do not again unwittingly expose ourselves to the reproach of talking childishly. ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... way alone. Starling was the chief attraction, but I, too, was the centre of a curious, chaffering crowd. The braves were unwontedly good-humored, childishly pleased with the evening's excitement, and I amused them still further by shrugging at them and making great faces of contempt. When one offered me a meal cake I kicked at him and trampled the food into ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... understand that I care for Hubert with all my heart," said Vera, much less childishly than Magdalen ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... who, to the old gentleman's unfailing delight, used to call him "Codd Colonel." "Tell little F—— that Codd Colonel wants to see him"; and the little gown-boy was brought to him: and the colonel would listen to him for hours, and hear all about his lessons and his play; and prattle, almost as childishly, about Dr. Raine and his own early school-days. The boys of the school, it must be said, had heard the noble old gentleman's touching history, and had all got to know and love him. They came every day to hear news of him; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... juggernauts of his country, should actually deny their very existence. It was one more proof to him of the extreme caution necessary in all anthropological investigations before accepting the evidence even of well-meaning natives on points of religious or social usage, which they are often quite childishly incapable of describing in rational terms to outside inquirers. They take their own manners and customs for granted, and they cannot see them in their true relations or compare them with the similar manners and ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... first knew her, and for some time after, she was childishly untidy and negligent in her dress: her frocks were tossed on, as if buttons and strings were unnecessary incumbrances,—one sleeve off the shoulder, the other on,—and her soft, silky hair brushed 'any how': but Miss Emma Roberts, whose dress was always in good taste, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... so to speak. Responsibility laid, and felt to be laid, upon us is a steadying and ennobling influence. And it was better that the demoniac should learn to stand calmly, when apparently alone, than that he should childishly be relying on the mere external presence of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... will," said Mrs. Reade, as she rose to go, looking straight into her friend's eyes with joyful earnestness, "and I am so glad. Good bye," and she retreated as unceremoniously as she had come, leaving Mrs. Hayden to wonder why she should be so childishly pleased over that invitation. It never occurred to her that Mrs. Reade should be so glad to come merely to tell more about this new ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... her first quick survey of the room she knew so well. Her preoccupied maid was childishly questioning the busy Israel as he and the man out on the basement ladder removed bricks from the edges of the ragged opening ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... smiling, childishly lady-like way in which the little girls exchanged their greetings and then intertwined their little arms as they proceeded on their way together, Sadie's fishy ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... had committed flashed suddenly upon my perception. The blunder itself would have been unimportant, had not my own folly and impetuosity rendered it otherwise—in my disappointment at not finding some words upon the slip, I had childishly torn it in pieces and thrown it away, it was ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to spend hours over her instructions in chess on that pleasant balcony in the shade of the house. Though really only a year older than Dennet Headley, she looked much more, and was so in all her ways. It never occurred to her to run childishly wild with delight in the garden and orchard as did Dennet, who, with little five-years-old Will Streatfield for her guide and playfellow, rushed about hither and thither, making acquaintance with hens and chickens, geese and goslings, seeing cows and goats milked, watching butter churned, bringing ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... weary the tough spirit; this attack he will neither understand nor conquer!"' Fearlessly also, and in a manner which would have been impossible to him at the Wartburg, he spoke out against the grievous 'sin at Worms, when the truth of God was so childishly despised, so publicly, defiantly, wilfully condemned;' it was a sin of the whole German nation, because the heads had done this, and no one at the godless Diet had opposed them. He reproached himself with having, in order to please good friends ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... careless touch; Endurance hardens with a word; She holds a trifle with a clutch So strangely, childishly absurd, That he ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... can't scrape together the money for a cow, we must cut expenses somehow. Perhaps you could stop stuffing your nostrils with that dirty snuff? And you ought at any rate to be able to sell that fancy fox skin you play with so childishly. ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... Countess hated her the more for that. To value so lightly the thing for which Olga Loschek would have given her soul, this in itself was hateful. But there was more. The Countess saw much with her curiously wide, almost childishly bland eyes; it was only now that it occurred to her to turn what she knew of Hedwig and ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... harmony and die in mutual accord, but circumstances here were extraordinary, abnormal. Hardship, monotony, fatigue score the very soul; constant close association renders men absurdly petulant and childishly quarrelsome. Many are the heartaches charged against those early days ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... The grammar might be childishly faulty, but the feeling of the speech was without a flaw, and from the heart Daisy would have accepted Mrs. Yorke as she was, and thought it no shame or embarrassment to escort her anywhere; but bonny Allie was a lady of high degree, with an eye for appearances and the proprieties, and ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... and childishly pleased to see him that I ought to have been disarmed. She went off with him to the bookstall, while I looked after her luggage, and they stood there chattering and laughing until I joined them, and then ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to his, childishly, lovingly. "I will be good," she said. "I will be good. I will never say such ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... any one, trusting to the puppy's own attractions to plead for it. It had seemed to Benjamin that nobody could resist that puppy. But Grandfather Wellman had all his life preferred cats to dogs, and now he was childishly fond of Seventoes. Benjamin's mother often said that she didn't know what grandsir would do ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... I'm awake, Harry, at last, and see things as they are; things now so childishly obvious that it seems incredible I could have gone on so long without recognizing them. People prate about appreciation of artists of various kinds and of their work, grow maudlin over it by artificial light in the ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... Harold broke it by saying, "You would smile to know how childishly my last walk here haunts me; I really must go and see that love-stricken friend of mine. But you, I suppose, take no ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... do you say? Shall we go?" repeated Sanine calmly, as if he had decided to do something important. Novikoff felt that Sanine knew all that was troubling him, and, though in a measure comforted, he Was yet childishly abashed. ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... in which he lives, he cannot expect any character of redress from the General Government. So in order to supply this needed protection, this conspiracy of which I have spoken has been formed to attempt to unite all Negroes in a body to do that which the whimpering government childishly but truthfully ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... childlike and her face so childishly beautiful that we all smiled with amusement and pleasure. Yolanda saw the smiles and turned on us, pouting though almost ready to laugh. She rose from her chair, stamped her foot, stood irresolutely for a moment, and then breaking into a ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... to you that I had reflected about the matter for three days, and drawn up, and learned by heart, this little speech in order to address it to the mistress of ceremonies at the first opportunity. I am really tired of being treated so childishly, when I am a woman, and may ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... to die out of her, and she looked at him as she did in the days before Rudyard Byng came across her path—eagerly, childishly, eloquently, inquiringly. He was the one man who satisfied the intellectual and temperamental side of her; and he had taught her more than any one else in the world. She realized that she had "Tossed him violently ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
