"Namby-pamby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... statue, but also with those of his son Raymond Berengarius IV., and of Beatrix, Queen of Naples, the wife of the latter. The monument is, however, a hoax. The statues are there, but are modern, of the namby-pamby school, and of the original tomb possibly a crocket and a cusp ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... originality. The veriest sophomore ought to be "rusticated" for such conceited phrases as "beautiful budburstiness of bosom,"—"her twin eyes shone forth liquidly lustrous"—and innumerable expressions in the same namby-pamby dialect. But dellacruscan folly is but a trifle compared with the immoral tendency of the descriptions of the gahzeeyah, or dancing girls of Egypt, and the luscious comments on their polluted ways and manners. We thought the Harpers had done ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... rather a namby-pamby person," he thought, "with nothing but her beauty to recommend her. That wonderful gift of beauty has such power to bewitch the most sensible man ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... which a great poet is entitled. For Mrs. Browning was a great poet, and not, as is idly and vulgarly supposed, only a great poetess. The word poetess is bad English, and it conveys a particularly bad compliment. Nothing is more remarkable about Mrs. Browning's work than the absence of that trite and namby-pamby elegance which the last two centuries demanded from lady writers. Wherever her verse is bad it is bad from some extravagance of imagery, some violence of comparison, some kind of debauch of cleverness. Her nonsense never arises from weakness, but from a confusion of powers. ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... conventions. Neither eyes, nor mind, nor heart could be deceived by it for a moment: if they were, then they must wish to be so.—They did wish to be so. Germany was delighted with that doting, childish art, an art of brutes let loose, and mystic, namby-pamby ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... would do her good to model something strong and natural. She'll never amount to anything if she keeps on making namby-pamby gods and pet kittens,' answered irreverent Dan, remembering that when he was last here Bess was vibrating distractedly between a head of Apollo and her Persian cat ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... philosophic cloak before the world, caused him to abandon himself in the 'Spectator', even more unreservedly than Steele would have done, to iterated efforts for the help of a friend like Ambrose Philips, whose poems to eminent babies, 'little subject, little wit,' gave rise to the name of Namby-pamby. Addison's quietness with strangers was against a rapid widening of his circle of familiar friends, and must have made the great-hearted friendship of Steele as much to him as his could be to Steele. In very truth it 'doubled all his store.' Steele's heart was open to enjoyment of all kindly intercourse ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Mr. Culpepper, hastily. "Now, look here; you go on a different tack. Take a glass of ale like a man or a couple o' glasses; smoke a cigarette or a pipe. Be like other young men. Cut a dash, and don't be a namby-pamby. After you're married you can be as ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... these lines are written the wits of Queen Anne's days contemptuously gave the name of Namby-Pamby, in ridicule of Ambrose Philips, who has used it in some instances, as in the lines on Cuzzoni, to my feeling at least, very deliciously; but Wither, whose darling measure it seems to have been, may show, that in skilful hands it is capable ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... rejoice when we see working men starving and ill-clad, for in that way their eyes will be opened. The brute who gets the uttermost farthing out of the toil of his wage-slaves is more a friend to us and our cause than any namby-pamby Socialist, such as the late Dukeling of New Wanley. Socialist indeed! But enough. We have probably heard the last of this parvenu and his loudly trumpeted schemes. No true friend of the Revolution can ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... between the Imperio-Davido-classical school of French art, and the namby-pamby mystical German school, which is for carrying us back to Cranach and Duerer, and which ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Johnson himself. Behind all his learning lay something which no learned language could conceal. "On s'attend a voir un auteur et on trouve un homme." Authors then, as now, were often thought to be fantastical, namby-pamby persons, living in dreams, sharing none of the plain man's interests, eager and querulous about trifles and unrealities, indifferent and incapable in the broad world of life. Nobody could feel that ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... Boy when he surprised Mr. Tupman and Aunt Rachel in the arbour, or when he pinched Mr. Pickwick's leg in order to attract his attention. But, after all, Ivanhoe and Rowena, as THACKERAY remarked, are a poor namby-pamby pair, and the real heroine is Rebecca. The Opera ends with a "Rebecca Riot." Every one wishes success to the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... these ginks better than we do, and they've put the boots into them from the start," growled Tom. "There's been no namby-pamby dealing with the Huns in the bridge- heads where they've held control. They've made the Boches walk Spanish. If they didn't uncover when the flag went by, they knocked their hats off for them. They know that the only argument that a Hun understands is force, and ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... small unburnt portion of his remains fathoms deep below the soil in an old burying ground near Kanturk. And there had been a good earl, as is always the case with such families; but even his virtues, according to tradition, had been of a useless namby-pamby sort. He had walked to the shrine of St. Finbar, up in the little island of the Gougane Barra, with unboiled peas in his shoes; had forgiven his tenants five years' rent all round, and never drank wine or washed himself after the ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... had an opportunity before, so now I make haste to say that I thank you for showing me that a fellow need not be of the namby-pamby kind because he lets the stuff alone. I used to think that boys with any spirit must drink and carouse, occasionally, but I've learned better now. I watched ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... mending rapidly, a wonderful constitution; but it was touch and go. Marjorie was simply wonderful, I'll do her that credit. Between ourselves, Hugh, I always regarded Marjorie as rather weak, namby-pamby, early Victorian—you know what I mean; but she's a woman, and it has touched her. She wouldn't leave him. Honestly, I believe she did more for ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... superiority about it. He was not "stuck up," in his claim of knowledge. He "had had a chance," and took no credit to himself for it. This pleased her, won her confidence—if, already, that had not been done by his frank face, in spite of his fancy clothes and her assumption that he was a namby-pamby weakling. ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... among the broadsides that our noblest ballads are found. The first attempt to collect popular ballads was made by the compiler of three volumes issued in 1723 and 1725. The editor is said to have been Ambrose Phillips, whose name and style combined to produce the word 'namby-pamby.' Next came Allan Ramsay, with 'the Evergreen, a collection of Scots poems wrote by the ingenious before 1600.'—'By the ingenious,' we note; not by the 'elegant.' The tide is already beginning to turn; pitch-forked ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... Iden's solicitor, from whom he had borrowed money, overtook her, walked his horse, and began to talk to her in his perky, affected, silly way. Of all the fools in Woolhorton town there was none equal in pure idiotcy to this namby-pamby fellow—it was wonderful how a man of Iden's intelligence could trust his affairs to such a man, the more so as there was at least one good lawyer in the place. This is very characteristic of the farming race; they will work like negroes ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... will go with me and the girls, but he does it with a bad enough grace. He's dreadfully tired of Miss Rae; and, to tell you the truth, Mae, she is rather namby-pamby—very different from Miss Hopkins, and then, besides, he had so set his heart ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... your last book much better than the rest of them; but I don't like your heroine. She strikes both Julia and myself [Julia is his wife, who is acquainted with no literature but the cookery-book] as rather namby-pamby. The descriptions, however, are charming; we both recognised dear old Ramsgate at once. [The original of the locality in the novel being Dieppe.] The plot is also excellent, though we think we have some recollection of it elsewhere; but it must be so difficult ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... we have a piece of namby-pamby 'to the Small Celandine,' which we should almost have taken for a professed imitation of one of Mr Philip's prettyisms. Here is ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... those girls, who give evidence of no more thought than is evinced by their namby-pamby chatter, call their existence living? They mistake pertness for wit; audacity for cleverness; disrespect to old age for independence; and general bad manners for individuality. Has nobody ever trained these girls ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... Steele, and a Whig in politics; held several lucrative posts, chiefly in Ireland; wrote pastorals in vigorous and elegant verse, and also some short sentimental verses for children, which earned for him from Henry Carey the nickname of "Namby-Pamby" (1678-1749). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood |
