"Gabble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and Nan saw then that there were at least twenty girls in the room. Some had joined the procession from other corridors. Now they all began to gabble at once, and Amelia pounded frantically ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... resort for country boys. And nothing was so sweet to me, when I was a boy, as the newly cut clover-hay where I sat with two or three companions, watching the barn swallows chattering their incomprehensible gabble and gossip from the doors of their mud houses in the rafters. And what stories we told and what talks we had. In the city who does not remember the old-fashioned cellar-door, sloping down to the ground? These were always ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... comfort, and the next she slackened the strings and let it back upon her neck, in a passion at it for making her too hot. Her talk was a wild, somewhat weird, farrago of utterly meaningless balderdash, mere inarticulate gabble, snatches of old Jacobite ballads and exaggerated phrases from the drama, to which she suited equally exaggerated action. She "babbled of green fields" and Highland glens; she prophesied "the drawing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which to store them, pulled Cleena's apron from her waist and piled them in that. She sat on, silently regarding him. For a few minutes she honestly believed that he was a genuine specimen of the "little people" who were said to make green Erin their favorite home. But when he began to gabble in a hoarse, excited tone of how he had long been expecting this "find"; how he had watched his opportunity when all the household should be absent that he might disobey and use the explosive that would lessen his labor so greatly, she came back ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... injustice—these were things far removed from the planets of the Ages that sparkled like jewels in the vault of Night. A vagrant breeze whispered in the valley sedges to the placid lake. High in the air, invisible, migrating wavies winged into the south, the distant gabble of their ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... confess that I cannot remember quite 'a thousand.' It is at least difficult to imagine more unmitigated expressions of contempt and aversion. Mackintosh, says Mill, uses 'macaroni phrases,' 'tawdry talk,' 'gabble'; he gets 'beyond drivelling' into something more like 'raving'; he 'deluges' us with 'unspeakable nonsense.' 'Good God!' sums up the comment which can be made upon one sentence.[562] Sir James, he declares, 'has got ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... stock o' them two fellers so as to gabble about 'em when their backs is turned," said John Milton gloomily to himself, with a dismal premonition of the prolonged tea-table gossip he would be obliged to ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... my head aches badly!" said Henrietta. She wished to rid herself of this uncalled-for gabble, in order that she might devote herself ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... foot of the hill, and these were distant and feeble, through an open window—left open that the asthmatic keeper of the establishment might be supplied with breath—he heard a stertorous snore. On the other side matters were not so silent. There were groans, and yells, and gabble from the reeking and sleepless patients, who had been penned up for the long and terrible night. Concluding that every thing was as safe for his operations as it would become at any time, he slowly felt his way ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... were men seen generally alone, or at most in pairs. They were quiet, waxy pale, dressed always neatly in soft black hat, white shirt, long black coat, and varnished boots. In the face of a general gabble they seemed to remain indifferently silent, self-contained and aloof. To occasional salutations they ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... He here alludes to an odd fancy or trick of his own;—whenever he was at a loss for something to say, he used always to gabble over "1 2 ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... it in so roughly it made us sick and faint. There were other things done hurriedly, carelessly; we could not follow them. The last was the rubbing on of ashes—she had been a worshipper of Siva—also they covered the closed eyes with ashes and patted them down flat. And all the time the gabble of the women mocked at the silence of death. There was no reverence, no sense of solemnity; the ceremonial so full of symbol to its makers, the thinkers of Vedic times, was to them simply a custom, a set of customs, to be followed and got through as quickly as might be by heedless ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... anonymously in the Fortnightly Review[31] in the winter of 1893-4, and of which he told me he was the writer, he had given a character sketch of what he called 'The Rhetoricians.' Their performances since the Union were summarised in the phrase 'a century of unremitting gabble,' and he regarded it as a sad commentary on Irish life that such brilliant talents so largely ran to waste in ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... fierce that salt wind blew, a-yearn to drive me to the shore's edge and whirl me over! How fresh and tameless it beats against me yet, blowing the cobwebs from my brain as that real breeze outside the pier could never do! When my monitory friends gabble of change of air I inhale that wind and am strong. For the child is of the elements, elemental, and the man of the complexities, complex. And so that good salt wind blows across my childhood still, though it cannot sweep away the mist that ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... or interfere with you unduly. I know, my dear friend, what a serious fellow you are; but do tell me, just tell me, how can you justify the Mass, as it is performed abroad; how can it be called a 'reasonable service,' when all parties conspire to gabble it over as if it mattered not a jot who attended to it, or even understood it? Speak, man, speak," he added, gently shaking him by ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... not understand French. He sat in the crowded court room, very weary and bored, listening to the unceasing, explosive French that now one official and now another uttered. It was just so much gabble to Ah Cho, and he marvelled at the stupidity of the Frenchmen who took so long to find out the murderer of Chung Ga, and who did not find him at all. The five hundred coolies on the plantation knew that Ah San had done the killing, and here was ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... and the House to plunge on in the dark, it becomes a government of chance and not of design. The imputation was one of those artifices used to despoil an adversary of his most effectual arms; and men of mind will place themselves above a gabble of this order. The last session of Congress was indeed an uneasy one for a time: but as soon as the members penetrated into the views of those who were taking a new course, they rallied in as solid a phalanx as I have ever seen act together. Indeed ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... see now and then wretched election meetings, as of late in New York, where a worn-out FERNANDO WOOD and others like him gabble as much treason as they dare. It is all played out—Mozart, Tammany, and all the trash. Rummy, frowsy candidates, treating Five-Point graduates, and shoulder-hitting bravos yelling at the polls, are beginning to be disgusting and anti-national elements. Their very existence is an insult to these ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the old croakers who were getting into their trowsers would reply with—"Oh, stop your gabble, will you? don't be in such a hurry, now. You feel sweet, don't you?" with other exclamations, some of which were ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... their enemies, among which last the very worst, in their opinions, were their parents, guardians, and masters. "The character of Dick," said Hodgkinson more than once to this writer, "is not overcharged." Our youngsters were quite pat at stage gabble, and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... that gabble an insult to you, walking along and minding your own business?" His heat was alarming; he shook his fist ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... understands me, and necessarily understands me—I know them only too well. Even to endure my seriousness, my passion, he must carry intellectual integrity to the verge of hardness. He must be accustomed to living on mountain tops—and to looking upon the wretched gabble of politics and nationalism as beneath him. He must have become indifferent; he must never ask of the truth whether it brings profit to him or a fatality to him.... He must have an inclination, born of strength, for questions that no one has the courage for; the courage for the forbidden; ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... boy thought he was too good to sit and listen to such gabble. "Now listen to me, you crows!" said he. "I think you ought to be ashamed of yourselves to talk about all your wickedness. I have lived amongst wild geese for three weeks, and of them I have never heard or seen anything but good. You must have a bad chief, since he permits you to rob and ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... simple question Kate showed considerable alarm. "Gracious heavens!" she cried, "you must not stop talking to him; he will turn you inside out, and I shall be undone. Nay, you must gabble these words out, and then run away as hard as you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... young lady generally aspires to be a governess. But then she must know everything—music, drawing, French, German, Latin, mathematics, algebra; all that she must have at her finger-ends, and be able to gabble political economy, science, and metaphysics to boot. All that is beyond you—unattainable as the stars. But you needn't break your heart about it. She doesn't get much. Her wages are about equal to those of a kitchen-maid, who can't spell, but only peel potatoes. And the more learned ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... bought a pebble of him, (This pebble i' sooth, sir, which I hold i' my hand) - And paid for't, LIKE a gen'lman, on the nail. "Did I o'ercharge him a ha'penny? Devil a bit. Fiddlepin's end! Got out, you blazing ass! Gabble o' the goose. Don't bugaboo-baby ME! Go double or quits? Yah! tittup! what's the odds?" There's the transaction ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... cold, the wind was rising, and the waves of the noble Tagus began to be crested with foam. I told the boy that it was scarcely possible for the boat to carry so much sail without upsetting, upon which he laughed, and began to gabble in a most incoherent manner. He had the most harsh and rapid articulation that has ever come under my observation in any human being; it was the scream of the hyena blended with the bark of the terrier, though it was by no means an index of his disposition, which I soon found ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... go to the theatres; the playbills, however, are not seductive. If you go in, you will find the house nearly empty; the actors gabble their parts with as little action as possible. You see they are bored, and they bore us. Sometimes when some actor, naturally comic, says or does something funny, the audience laughs, and then suddenly leaves off and looks more serious than before. Laughter seems ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... Goujet, who came but rarely, lest the gossips in the neighborhood should take it upon themselves to gabble. Once in about ten days he made his appearance in the evening and installed himself in a corner in the back shop with his pipe. He rarely spoke but laughed at all ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... she abominates. She thinks Turner might approve of Suarez in his black and white stripes, but the Guanaco crater reminds her of Gustave Dore, who always exaggerated his tone values. I learn that sort of gabble by heart. Jennie's a good sort, yet ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... gabble like a pack of old women," laughed Jack, as the friendly argument about the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... frenzied gabble Mrs. Scutts told him. "You must be 'im," she said, clutching him by the coat and dragging him towards the door. "They've never seen 'im, and ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... by a gander and his flock of geese that stood round him; shook their wings and set up their goose-gabble. It was day then, although there was still a star in the sky. He threw furze-roots where there was a glow, and made a fire blaze up again. Then the dogs of the town came down to look at him, and then ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... Christian world; by whose gyronomonic circumbilvaginations, as by two celivagous filopendulums, all the autonomatic metagrobolism of the Romish Church, when tottering and emblustricated with the gibble-gabble gibberish of this odious error and heresy, is homocentrically poised. But what harm, in the devil's name, have these poor devils the Capuchins and Minims done unto him? Are not these beggarly devils sufficiently wretched already? Who can imagine that ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... examination that she intended, she went to work. In her younger days she had worked much at schools, and was really an able and spirited teacher, liking the occupation; and laying hold of the first book in her way, she requested Conrade to read. He obeyed, but in such a detestable gabble that she looked up appealingly to Fanny, who suggested, "My dear, you can read better than that." He read four lines, not badly, but then broke off, "Mamma, are not we to have ponies? Coombe heard of a pony this morning; it is to be seen at the 'Jolly Mariner,' ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... repeated, with a laugh. "Why, I hold daily conversations with any blessed thing in this house, from the veranda to the chimney-stack, with any stick of furniture, from the footstool to the towel-horse. I get more out of it than the gabble at the Club. You look surprised. Listen! I took this thing up in my leisure hours in the Department. I had read much about the conversation of animals. I argued that if animals conversed, why shouldn't ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... Forth rush with gabble I store Vrimle; A countless rabble; De grave, de soge The earth they're upturning, Skatten at foroge. For the treasure burning. Men intet Guld! But there's no gold! Deres Haab har bedraget: Their hope is mistaken; De see kun det Muld, They see but the mould, Hvoraf det er taget. ...
— The Gold Horns • Adam Gottlob Oehlenschlager
... said the Cap'n, eagerly, forgetting for the moment the presence of Constable Nute, "those wimmen might gabble a little at you and make threats and things like that—but—but—there isn't anything they can do, you understand!" He winked at Mr. Parrott. "You know ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... found myself among a rough crowd of men in the 'tween decks of a large ship. The air was dim and close. From the row of heavy guns and great ports, several of which were open, I knew her to be a battleship and of large size. From the gabble of talk all round me I knew ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... no isolation is allowed. If you take a book and begin to read in a remote corner of a parlor or piazza, some idle matron or idiotic girl will tranquilly invade your poor little bit of privacy and gabble of her affairs and the day's gossip. There is no escape unless you mount to your ten-by-twelve cell and sit (like the Premiers of England when they visit Balmoral) on the bed, to do your writing, for want of any other conveniences. Even such retirement is resented ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... Markham—"Wildgoose you should be called. You have been moistening your own throat to some purpose, and using it to gabble tunes very suitable to the ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... th' hauf, an' when aw come to think on it, aw remember he didn't behave just as aw could ha' liked him if he'd just been wed to me, th' first day they wor wed, for he'd hardly a word to say to awr Emma at dinner time, but he could gabble fast enuff to that lass o' Amos's, an' if shoo wor a child o' mine aw'd awther tak' some o' that consait aght on her or else aw'd tak' th' skin off ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... sentiment of the country. On this measure I addressed the House in a brief speech, the spirit of which was heartily responded to by my constituents and the people of the loyal States generally. They believed in a vigorous prosecution of the war, and were sick of "the never-ending gabble about the sacredness of the Constitution." "It will not be forgotten," I said, "that the red-handed murderers and thieves who set this rebellion on foot went out of the Union yelping for the Constitution which they had conspired to overthrow by the blackest perjury and treason that ever ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... up de Spain with his eyes, and de Spain not only ached to hear him speak but was resolved to make him. Sandusky had stood motionless from the instant he entered the room. He knew all about the preliminary gabble of a fight and took no interest in it. He did not know all about de Spain, and being about to face his bullets he had prudence enough to wonder whether the man could have brought a reputation to Sleepy Cat without having done something to earn it. What Sandusky was sensibly ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... Under the moon and sun. It's aye the rabble, And I to gabble, And hey! for the tale ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... not appear to impress either of them. Nobody in the bridal party, crowding together on both sides of the altar, looked as though the service was of the slightest interest and moment. Indeed, this was hardly to be wondered at; for the priest, so far as I could understand his gabble, took the larger portion for read, after muttering the first words of the rubric. A little carven image of an acolyte—a weird boy who seemed to move by springs, whose hair had all the semblance of painted wood, and whose complexion was white and red like ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... subject for which I never cared." And so on. There are curious and worthless creatures enough in any pot-house all day long; and there is incessant talk in omnibus, train, or street by we know not whom, about we care not what. Yet if a printer and a bookseller can be induced to make this gabble as immortal as print and publication can make it, then it straightway is literature, and in due ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... right, and must gabble a bit, now I know that I haven't lost an eye. You see, Fraser, the beast, although he was ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... moreover, do not grow upon their backs, although they look very much as if they did. They come over here in large numbers from other countries, chiefly from France; and in London abound in Leicester-square, and are constantly to be met with under the Quadrant in Regent-street, where they grin, gabble, chatter, and sometimes dance, to the no ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Whereupon the Captain, emitting an inconceivably terrific imprecation, which no one ever dared to repeat and which consequently is lost to tradition, declared that the first he'd never feared, the second was parson's gabble, and as to the third, never should his dead toes be nearer any church than for the last forty years his living feet had been! If so be as he wasn't drowned at sea, he'd ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... like it was in the old days before I rose to being the chief glory of Calderside. Conversation was one-sided then, and all on your side instead of mine. 'Here again, Martlow,' you'd say, and then they'd gabble the evidence, and you'd say 'fourteen days' or 'twenty-one days,' if you'd got up peevish and that's all there was to our friendly intercourse. This time, I make no doubt you'll be asking me to stay at the Towers to-night. And," he went on blandly, enjoying every wince that twisted Sir William's ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... a shrug: "It is bondmaids' gabble. There is little need to say that a dwarf cursed Eric's sword, to explain how it comes that he has been three times exiled for manslaughter, and driven from Norway to Iceland and from Iceland to Greenland. He quarrelled and slew wherever he settled, because ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... be accorded titles, be authorized by official robes, and solemnly installed in the chairs of the elders. Just snatched from the cradle and hastily weaned, they mouth the rules of Priscian and Donatus; while still beardless boys they gabble with childish stammering the Categorics and Peri Hermeneias, in the writing of which the great Aristotle is said to have dipped his pen in his heart's blood. Passing through these faculties with baneful haste and a harmful diploma, they lay violent hands upon Moses, and sprinkling ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... talking with Mr. Balfour to-day was his obviously unaffected interest in Ireland as a country rather than in Ireland as a cock-pit. It is the condition of Ireland, and not the gabble of parties at Westminster about the condition of Ireland, which is uppermost in his thoughts. This, I should say, is the best ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... watching the feeble, automatic procession of ideas, he noticed that they arrived in an order that was not the order of sanity, that if he took note of the language they clothed themselves in, he found he was listening as it were to the gabble of idiocy or aphasia. At such moments he trembled ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... and mental inertia that would drive an Englishman mad. A Boer farmer, sitting on his stoep, large and strong, but absolutely lethargic, is the very incarnation of the spirit of the veldt. At the same time, when one remembers the clatter and gabble of our civilisation, it is impossible to deny him a certain dignity, though it may be only the dignity ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... no test of genius, taste, judgment, or natural capacity. Competitive Examination takes for its norma: 'It is better to learn many things ill than one thing well'; or rather: 'It is better to learn to gabble about everything than to understand anything.' This is not the way to discover the wood of which Mercuries are made. I have been told that this precious scheme has been borrowed from China: a pretty fountain-head ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... us your collection. It is nearing the time when we must go home, for father has had to-day to listen to an unparalleled amount of gabble ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... case, for he was like the rest of the tribe, always ready to fight with words, not acts; but in the midst of his gabble Joan interrupted with the ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... I write to you to set the matter straight. I inclose with this the pages of feeble scribble-scrabble which the creature Sharpin calls a report. Look them over; and when you have made your way through all the gabble, I think you will agree with me that the conceited booby has looked for the thief in every direction but the right one. You can lay your hand on the guilty person in five minutes, now. Settle the case at once; forward your report to me at this place, and tell Mr. Sharpin that ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... discussions, that at the best are very second-rate eloquence, and at the worst are respect destroying, mind destroying gabble, there are various forms of "ethical" teaching, advocated and practised in America and in the elementary schools of this country. For example, a story of an edifying sort is told to the children, and comments are elicited upon the behaviour of the characters. "Would you have done that?" ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... of pride lingered on his lips; outside the solitary lascar told off for night duty in harbor, perhaps a youth fresh from a forest village, would stand motionless in the shadows of the deck listening to the endless drunken gabble. His heart would be thumping with breathless awe of white men: the arbitrary and obstinate men who pursue inflexibly their incomprehensible purposes,—beings with weird intonations in the voice, moved by unaccountable feelings, actuated by ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... all at once ceased offering her advice and sympathy she felt it a distinct relief. She had not the remotest idea that she was become the centre of an awe-stricken sympathy, that her little world had fallen back and stood gaping at her and hers as they might at one abnormally stricken: if their gabble ceased very suddenly and no more idlers came in for a chat by the fireside she was not the one to fret; she had always plenty to do without idle women hindering her, and, now the girl had her sick fit on her, all the work ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... rubbish we have.... His tenaciousness of what is grand and lofty, is more praiseworthy than his delight in what is low and disagreeable. His pedantry accords better with didactic pomp than with illiterate and vulgar gabble; his learning engrafted on romantic tradition or classical history, looks like genius.... His tragedy of the Fall of Sejanus, in particular, is an admirable piece of ancient mosaic.... The depth of knowledge and gravity of expression ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... glad to know one person in the country who doesn't gabble his head off. You haven't answered any of my questions, and you've made me feel as if you'd found a dangerous, wild woman that morning. It isn't very flattering, but I ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... 'Gabble-gabble ... brethren ... gabble-gabble!' My window glimpses larch and heather. I hardly hear the tuneful babble, Not knowing nor much caring whether The text is praise or exhortation, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... go bodily into half a quarter of it—would be swallowed up like a mouthful, and never seen again! Castle Warlock was twice as old—that was something! but why had not Lady Joan told him hundreds of stories about Cairncarque, instead of letting him gabble on about their little place? But she could not love her castle as he did his, for she had no such father in it! That must be what made the difference! That was why she did not care to talk about it! Was he actually going to see her again? and would she be to him ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... and the dignitaries thereof. They go about setting men by the ears, bringing down to the minds of the commoner sort high matters that are not meet for such to handle, and inciting them to chatter and gabble over holy things in unseemly wise. Whereso they preach, 'tis said, the very women will leave their distaffs, and begin to talk of sacred matter—most unbecoming and scandalous it is! I avise you, my son, to have none ado with such, and to keep to ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... like my Oscar, tolerate My Archer[9] of the Dauntless Grammar, Nay, e'en my Moore[10] I estimate Not too unkindly, 'spite his clamour; But I prefer my roses still To all the garlic in their garden— Let Hedda gabble as she will, I'll stay with Rosalind, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... wind is not so cold As the bright smile he sees me win, Nor the host's oldest wine so old As our poor gabble, sour and thin. ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... you limb from limb! I've put enough of other people's private lives on the screen! My own stays off! I'm not going to have even a phoney screen-show built around Babs and me for people to gabble about!" ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... gabble away full tilt for an hour on this subject, unconscious that I had taken the measure of him, and was grinning broadly to myself. Then I diverted him by inquiring how long since the wire fence on our right had been put up. It bore evidence of recent erection, and had replaced an old ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... custom, Herr Carovius failed to show the slightest interest in her gabble; at least he made no concessions to her. Nor did he fuss and fume; he gazed into space, and seemed to be thinking about many serious things all at the same time. His silence made Philippina raging mad. She jumped up and left without saying good-bye to him, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... six consecutive good lines." He would only admit two good verses in Gray's exquisite "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard," where it would take a very acid critic to find two bad ones. "Tristram Shandy" would not live. "Hamlet" was gabble. Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" was poor stuff, and he never wrote anything good except "A Tale of a Tub." Voltaire was illiterate. Rousseau was a scoundrel. Deists, like Hume, Priestley, or Gibbon, could ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... earthen tea-pot covers. His ears are round, and stick forward like a weasel's; his form is square and supple, and he stands more than perpendicular. Ready and sharp is he for a joke, cold and unfeeling in manner, and troublesome as the varlet blackbirds that sit on a tree and gabble and moot, while other birds ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... simply, refused to picture Mrs. Nevill Tyson in Rome. Her presence in the Eternal City seemed something less than her footprint in its dust or her shadow on its walls. Nothing is more irritating than to have your dream of a place destroyed by the light-hearted gabble of some idiot who has seen it; but Mrs. Nevill Tyson spared your dreams. The most delicate ideal would have been undisturbed by the soft sweep of her generalities, or the graceful flight of her fancy from the ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... nearest to perfection in practice. It seems a very safe and reasonable contrivance for occupying the attention of the country, and is certainly a better way of settling questions than by push of pike. Yet, if one should ask it why it should not rather be called government by gabble, it would have to fumble in its pocket a good while before it found the change for a convincing reply. As matters stand, too, it is beginning to be doubtful whether Parliament and Congress sit at Westminster and Washington ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... last awake; and I then learnt that the cause of their great silence was a wish to leave my repose as undisturbed as possible. I thanked them all, and was greatly relieved; and now there was no end to the gabble, which nearly made us forget the cause which ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... begged him. "I'm beginning to enjoy your company—though I can't exactly say why. And I'd like to gabble with you for an hour or two. I don't see ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... us would had to foot it to the ranch, and that one wouldn't have been me. Huh! Does me good to hear your nonsense gabble again. I declare it does. When did you ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... here's our Tiguamy, and we shall know whether those Things can speak. So advancing to him, some of 'em gave him their Hands, and cry'd, Amora Tiguamy; which is as much as, How do you do? or, Welcome Friend; and all, with one din, began to gabble to him, and ask'd, if we had Sense and Wit? If we could talk of Affairs of Life and War, as they could do? If we could hunt, swim, and do a thousand Things they use? He answer'd 'em, We could. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... not!" Laurie returned. "It must have acted as a fine check, though, on people who just wanted to gabble." ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... alike, and each one labelled in plain figures twenty marks. I don't pretend to speak German fluently, but I can generally make myself understood with a little effort, and gather the sense of what is said to me, provided they don't gabble. I went into the shop. A young girl came up to me; she was a pretty, quiet little soul, one might almost say, demure; not at all the sort of girl from whom you would have expected such a thing. I was never more ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... heart by this cold and grinning kindness as much as by the harshness of Keller or the coarse German banter of Nucingen. The familiarity of the man, and his grotesque gabble excited by champagne, seemed to tarnish the soul of the honest bourgeois as though he came from a house of financial ill-fame. He went down the stairway and found himself in the streets without knowing where he was going. As he walked along the boulevards and reached the Rue Saint-Denis, ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... windows—doing everything, in fact at once. This fellow C—— is an original, who knows how to make his Chinese slave with the greatest industry and sets them an admirable example himself. A rather desperate lot are these servants, although most of them are professed Roman Catholics, and can gabble French learned years ago at Monseigneur F——'s. And that reminds me: no one has thought of the gallant bishop during the past few days. That shows how indifferent the abnormal makes one; the French Legation has attempted once ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... been in the cathedral before—indeed, we attended the service daily, and I had been appalled, rather than astonished, by what I saw and heard: the unintelligible service—the irreverent gabble of the choristers and readers—the scanty congregation—the meagre portion of the vast building which seemed to be turned to any use: but never more than that evening, did I feel the desolateness, the ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... and short dimity bedgown, and clean white cap, with a black silk handkerchief over it, tied under her chin. At her feet sat the grandfather of all the cats; and opposite her sat, on two benches, twelve or fourteen neat, rosy, chubby little children, learning their Chris-cross-row; and gabble enough they ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... he shot his angry questions, like bullets, from the fireside. "Haven't they done anything yet, eh? How much longer do you reckon that roomful of old women will gabble in Richmond? Why, we might as well put a flock of sheep to decide upon ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... gabbling as fast as 'e could gabble, 'here's five or six shillings. If the other one comes and won't go away tell 'er I've gone to the Pagoda Music-'all and you'll take 'er to me, keep 'er out all the evening some'ow, if you can, if she comes back too soon keep ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... slumber? Ma'am, are you going to leave us?" he asked, seeing that Mrs. Cranceford was on her feet. "But of course you have duties to look after, even though you might not be glad to escape an old man's gabble. I call it gabble, but I know it to be wisdom. But I beg ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... of speech would submit themselves. But most commonly a sudden impulse sent Jacob leaping away into some antic or active amusement, when, instead of following the recitation he would return upon the foregoing words most ready to his tongue, and mouth or gabble, with a see-saw suited to the action of his limbs, a verse on which Mordecai had spent some of his too scanty heart's blood. Yet he waited with such patience as a prophet needs, and began his strange printing again undiscouraged on ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... the only people in Homeburg who had lunch at noon, and as early as 1900 they ate it from the bare table. She was the only woman in Homeburg who could "look in" on an afternoon gabble of any kind for a few minutes and get away with it without insulting the hostess. When she shook hands with you, you always grabbed in the wrong place, no matter how much thought you put into it, and while you were ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... and was on the point of marching upon them, when they began slowly to walk towards the group who were plucking bunches of woodbine from the hedge across the little stream, at the risk of tumbling in, and distributing the flowers among the ladies, amidst a great deal of laughing and gabble. Then Miss Gertrude made Mr. Mervyn rather a haughty and slight salutation, her aunt thought, and so dismissed him; he, too, made a bow, but a very low one, and walked straight off to the first ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Sorbietrees, and our good master here, o' the Charlies-hope.—Aweel, sir, and then the inferior sort o' people, ye'll observe, are kend by sorts o' by-names some o' them, as Glaiket Christie, and the Deuke's Davie, or maybe, like this lad Gabriel, by his employment; as for example, Tod Gabble, or Hunter Gabble. He's no been lang here, sir, and I dinna think onybody kens him by ony other name. But it's no right to rin him doun ahint his back, for he's a fell fox-hunter, though he's maybe no just sae clever as some o' the folk hereawa wi' ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... hearth and home, To scour the stairs and search the bin for flour, To bear the burden of maternity? Is this the wife they wove who framed our law And pillared a bright land on smiling homes? Down all the stretch of street to the last house There is no shape more angular than hers, More tongued with gabble of her neighbours' deeds, More filled with nerve-ache and rheumatic twinge, More fraught with ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night? Is there no respect of place, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... while endeavouring to force the Envoy either to mount on horseback or to move more quickly, struck him; and that, seeing Conolly's eyes fastened upon him with an expression of intense indignation, he had altered the phrase and said, 'I mean I pushed him.' After an immense deal of gabble, a proposal for a renewal of the treaty, not, however, demanding all the guns, was determined to be sent to the cantonments, and Skinner, Lawrence, and myself were marched back to Akber's house, enduring en route ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... pride, various large presses, set in the wall, and piled to the top with clean and comfortable children's clothing. We came presently to where the boys were reciting their catechism. An ecclesiastic was hearing them;—they seemed ready enough with their answers, but were allowed to gabble off the holy words in a manner almost unintelligible, and quite indecorous. They were bright, healthy-looking little fellows, ranging apparently from eight to twelve in age. They had good play-ground ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Dr. Mathys," interrupted the royal lady, "and the quacks repeat it from their masters Hippocrates and Galen. Such parrot gabble does not please me. To my woman's reason, it seems rather that when the mind is ill we should try a remedy whose effect upon it has already been proved, and I think ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Reformed Church. For it was the Remonstrants who had possession of the churches at Rotterdam, and the printer's distich is valuable as pointing out that the name of Orange was beginning to identify itself with the Contra-Remonstrant faction. At this time, on the other hand, the gabble that Barneveld had been bought by Spanish gold, and was about to sell his country to Spain, became louder than a whisper. Men were not ashamed, from theological hatred, to utter such senseless calumnies against a venerable statesman whose long life had been devoted to the cause of his country's ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... everybody went to business:— everybody but Hugh and Holt, who had nothing to do. Class after class came up for repetition; and this repetition seemed to the new boys an accomplishment they should never acquire. They did not think that any practice would enable them to gabble, as everybody seemed able to gabble here. Hugh had witnessed something of it before,—Phil having been wont to run off at home, "Sal, Sol, Ren et Splen," to the end of the passage, for the admiration of his sisters, and so much to little Harry's amusement, that Susan, however ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... still awake, Pleasing most when most I speak; The delight of old and young, Though I speak without a tongue. Nought but one thing can confound me, Many voices joining round me; Then I fret, and rave, and gabble, Like the labourers of Babel. Now I am a dog, or cow, I can bark, or I can low; I can bleat, or I can sing, Like the warblers of the spring. Let the lovesick bard complain, And I mourn the cruel pain; Let the happy swain rejoice, And I join my helping ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... they cannot do for themselves;—the work they cannot do, cause we will not look at them, cannot see them, and have forgotten their ancient language, being too much immersed in a rubbishing gabble of our own. ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the great tributary marshes, alive with water-fowl of every description, whose gabble and flapping wings could be heard at a long distance. He camped in the vast hardwood forests that covered the western point of the peninsula that extends west from Lake Ontario to the river connecting Lake Huron with Lake Erie. He shot big bustards and wild turkeys in the bush, ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... 'em, pay their keep, But gabble's the short cut to ruin; It's gratis, (gals half-price,) but cheap At no rate, ef it henders doin'; Ther' 's nothin' wuss, 'less 't is to set A martyr-prem'um upon jawrin': Teapots git dangerous, ef you shet Their lids down on 'em with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... heard some such sentimental gabble as this before from my slaves, my lord," said Abrazza to Media. "It ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... hypocrites,—ye Uncle Tom's Cabin hypocrites,—ye Beecher hypocrites,—ye Rhode Island Consociation hypocrites! Oh, your holy twaddle stinks in the nostrils of God, and he commands me to lash you with my scorn, and his scorn, so long as ye gabble about the sin of slavery, and then bow down to me, and buy and spin cotton, and thus work for me as truly as my slaves! O ye fools and blind, fill ye up the measure of your folly, and blindness, and shame! And this ye are doing. Ye have, like the French infidels, ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... Meanwhile, amid this gabble of 'sects and schisms,' this disputation which makes a simple mind take refuge in the epigram attributed to Swift on Handel and Bononcini,[234] criticism and popular intelligence have been unanimous upon two points, first, in manifesting a general dislike for Italian art after the date of Raphael's ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... put a wig on, and old E * * * *, who had scratched hers off, Lady S * * *, the Dowager E * * *, and a Lady Say and Sele, with her tresses coal-black, and her hair coal-white. Well! it was all delightful, but not half so charming as its being over. The gabble one heard about it for six weeks before, and the fatigue of the day, could not well be compensated by a mere puppet-show; for puppet-show it was, though it cost a million. The Queen is so gay that we shall not want sights; she has been at the Opera, the Beggar's Opera and the Rehearsal, and two ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... soon ceases to pay any attention; we all know the futile and petty irascibility of the shallow-minded. Synge was like a mastiff who bites without warning. Irony was the common chord in his composition. He studied life and hated death; hated the gossip of the world, which seemed to him the gabble of fools. Physically he was a sick man, and felt his tether. He thought it frightful that he should have to die, while so many idiots lived long. He never forgave men and women for their folly, and the only reason why he did not forgive God was because he was ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... to play out of doors with him, the spoiled boy hissed at her, and said, "You are an ugly old cat!" Then slamming the door after him, he went into the barn-yard, where the screaming of the pigs, the gabble of the geese, and the clucking of the hens, soon proclaimed that he was venting his ill-temper on the dumb creatures who had their home there. Poor Charlie! the indulgence of his mother, and the almost constant absence of his father from home, had made him a very unhappy, ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... among them set out with the deliberate purpose of becoming the beggars of men's votes; of winning an office the chief worth of which, in their eyes, lies in its emoluments?—when even the glorious and far-sounding voice of fame for them means only the gabble and ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... Just then Miss Gabble came up our steps, and shortly after entered the parlor. She was one of those dreaded beings, who always filled me with the direst confusion. She sat right down by my side and squeezed ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... you." Ann came suddenly down to earth, and tried to focus her attention on. Miss Caroline's hospitable gabble. "Such a lot of people here this afternoon, too.... I'm so pleased. And a beautiful day, isn't it? Even Mr. Coventry has been tempted out of his shell. He'll be quite a social acquisition to the neighbourhood ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... pye-ball'd languages; 'Twas English cut on Greek and Latin, Like fustian heretofore on satin. It had an odd promiscuous tone, As if h' had talk'd three parts in one; Which made some think when he did gabble, Th' had heard three labourers of Babel; Or Cerberus himself pronounce A leash of languages at once. This he as volubly would vent As if his stock would ne'er be spent; And truly, to support that charge, He had supplies as vast as large: For he could coin or counterfeit New words with little ...
— English Satires • Various
... before said, with a blazing flambeau of bog-fir, all streaming down the mountain sides, along the roads, or across the fields, and settling at last into one broad sheet of fire. Many a loud laugh might then be heard ringing the night echo into reverberation; mirthful was the gabble in hard guttural Irish; and now and then a song from some one whose potations had been, rather copious, would rise on the night-breeze, to which a chorus was subjoined by a dozen voices ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... matter which must be read to a sick person, do it slowly. People often think that the way to get it over with least fatigue to him is to get it over in least time. They gabble; they plunge and gallop through the reading. There never was a greater mistake. Houdin, the conjuror, says that the way to make a story seem short is to tell it slowly. So it is with reading to the sick. I have ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... who took to the profession simply for the love of it, can't complain on that score. But to have an interloping she-doctor take a family I've attended ten years, out of my hands, and to hear the hodge-podge gabble about physiological laws, and woman's rights, and no taxation without representation, they learn ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... tongue!" cried the dame, angrily. "What business has you to gabble on so while you ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... print of goodness wilt not take, Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee, Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage, Know thine own meaning,[387-96] but wouldst gabble like A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes With words that made them known. But thy vile race, Though thou didst learn, had that in't which good natures Could not abide to be with; therefore wast ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... spent much time in the comparative quiet of his club. Few intellects can be so amply stored as to continue brilliant through decades of much speaking, and the sparkle of Mrs. Orr's conversation was gradually shrouded in the weariness of what a blunt neighbor termed her "inveterate gabble." As it must be, this woman of exceptional opportunities early lost true sensitiveness, and, both as guest and hostess, ignored the offense of inconsiderate and self- seeking interruptions. She broke into the speech of others with crude abandon. The itch to ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... Pompeian idlers scribbled on the walls, while Vesuvius was brooding its fiery conspiracy under their feet, bring the scene nearer home to us than the letter of Pliny, and deepen the tragedy by their trifling contrast, like the grave-diggers' unseemly gabble in Hamlet. Perhaps our judgment of history is made sounder, and our view of it more lifelike, when we are so constantly reminded how the little things of life assert their place alongside the great ones, and how healthy ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... superfluous to note that the "a" in "Gabler" should be sounded long and full, like the "a" in "Garden"—NOT like the "a" in "gable" or in "gabble." ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... summertide, I remember with a strange feeling that there are people who, of their free choice, spend day and night in cities, who throng to the gabble of drawing-rooms, make festival in public eating- houses, sweat in the glare of the theatre. They call it life; they call it enjoyment. Why, so it is, for them; they are so made. The folly is mine, to wonder that they fulfil ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... rainy season began, I ceased fishing and took to the gun, for now three or four kinds of duck made their appearance, and one moonlight night an immense number alighted in the creek just below the hut, and kept up an incessant gabble and ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... his marches was discovering things. Wonder of wonders, this curious people called "baccy" tabac! "And if yer wants a bit of bread yer awsks for pain, strewth!" He loved to hear the French gabble to him in their excited way; he never thought that reciprocally his talk was just as funny. The French matches earned unprintable names. But on the whole he admired sunny France with its squares of ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... said Robert, 'for they do gabble it fast. I heard a fellow chattering in the steerage, coming up the river yesterday morning: by the way, he and Andy had struck up a friendship: and such bowing as they had to each other's ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... It's rude to gabble!" she told herself resentfully. "And I know some French meself. 'J'ai, tu as, il a, nous sommes, vous etes, ils sont.' Listen at that, now!" She felt a momentary thrill of triumph in her achievement, ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... now bustled about silently, a tyrant to the other servants sent down from the Court. Every day also the headgroom and the huntsman came, and in the village Gaston's humble friends discussed the mystery, stoutly defending him when some one said it was "more nor gabble, that theer saying o' the poacher ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... trilling snatches of her topical song as she creamed off her make-up, came to them through the sulky gloom of the corridor. Behind the closed door of Miss De Voe's dressing room, the gabble of the pink satin ponies was like hash in the chopping. Overhead, moving scenery created a remote sort of thunder. She stood looking up at him, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... and went off a-snoring in each other's arms. They both got powerful mellow, but I noticed the king didn't get mellow enough to forget to remember to not deny about hiding the money-bag again. That made me feel easy and satisfied. Of course when they got to snoring we had a long gabble, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... this time to thoroughly convince Buckhurst of my ability to gabble platitude. My desire that he should view me as a typical ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... therefore: it is the only copy of my sending that has crossed the water. Ill printed (there are many errors, one or two gross ones), ill written, ill thought! But in fine it is off my hands: that is a fact worth all others. As to its reception here or elsewhere, I anticipate nothing or little. Gabble, gabble, the astonishment of the dull public brain is likely to be considerable, and its ejaculations unedifying. We will let it go its way. Beat this thing, I say always, under thy dull hoofs, O dull Public! trample it and tumble it into all sinks and ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson |
