"Infantine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... something carefully enclosed between two layers of cotton-wool, on removing which there appeared a little baby's hand most delicately represented in the whitest marble; all the dimples where the knuckles were to be, all the creases in the plump flesh, every infantine wrinkle of the soft skin being lovingly recorded. "The critics condemn minute representation," said Powers; "but you may look at this through a microscope and see if it injures the general effect." Nature herself never made a prettier or truer little hand. ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... present in their froward boyhood, playing at the mischievous games of war, and diplomacy, and stock-gambling, and site-refusing, and it is not quite agreeable for quiet honest people to be living amongst them. But there would be nothing gained by going back to that more infantine state of society in which the Jarl Einar carved into a red eagle the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... not possible to be made or acquired; must, necessarily, exist at his birth, whatever may be the period when, or the circumstance by which, the dormant spark is first awakened into action. Parents, it is true, are in general great observers of infantine occurrences; and very apt to be presageful of wonderful results expected from trivial causes. Few parents, however, are so blessed, as to have children who possess genius: of those who are, some silently treasure up their hopes, which may be buried with them ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... one, to-morrow like to-day? Joy has not found her yet, nor ever will— Is it this thought which, makes her mien so still, Her features so fatigued, her eyes, though sweet, 70 So sunk, so rarely lifted save to meet Her children's? She moves slow; her voice alone Hath yet an infantine and silver tone, But even that comes languidly; in truth, She seems one dying in a mask of youth. 75 And now she will go home, and softly lay Her laughing children in their beds, and play Awhile with them before they sleep; and then She'll light her silver lamp, which fishermen Dragging ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... analytic understanding. Now, for the most part analytic studies are continuous, and not to be pursued by fits and starts, or fragmentary efforts. Mathematics, for instance, intellectual philosophy, &c, were all become insupportable to me; I shrunk from them with a sense of powerless and infantine feebleness that gave me an anguish the greater from remembering the time when I grappled with them to my own hourly delight; and for this further reason, because I had devoted the labour of my whole life, and had dedicated ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... woman, a great talker. I have not seen much of her, as she is confined to her room by a sore throat; but I have seen half a dozen of her companions. I mean not her children, but her dogs. To see a woman without any softness in her manners caressing animals, and using infantine expressions, is, you may conceive, very absurd and ludicrous, but a fine lady is a new species to me of animal. I am, however, treated like a gentlewoman by every part of the family, but the forms and parade of high life suit not ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... civilized nations of Europe. In fact, every man in the early period of his life constructs a heaven for himself, as those who study the ways of children are aware, and this has given rise to a new science of infantine psychology, set forth in the writings of Taine, Darwin, Perez, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... up she became used to the duties imposed upon her. Associating constantly with the servants, they considered her their equal, and taunted her when, relying on her infantine recollections, she laid claim to noble descent, by calling her in derision "Mademoiselle French General." She knew full well that she was entitled to better treatment, and that, in the absence of paternal authority, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... a boy—e'en now What am I more? And you were infantine When first I met you; why, your hair fell loose On either side! My fool's-cheek reddens now Only in the recalling how it burned That morn to see the shape of many a dream —You know we boys are prodigal of charms To her we dream of—I had heard of one, Had dreamed ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... kind of lisp, not disagreeable, but childish. I soon saw also that there was more than girlish—a somewhat infantine expression in her by no means small features; this lisp and expression were, I have no doubt, a charm in Edward's eyes, and would be so to those: of most men, but they were not to mine. I sought her eye, desirous to read there the ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... crumbling and dust. In broad daylight, under the magnificent splendour of the life-giving sun, one realises clearly that all here is dead, and dead since days which the imagination is scarcely able to conceive. And the ruin appears utterly irreparable. Here and there are a few impotent and almost infantine attempts at reparation, undertaken in the ancient epochs of history by the Greeks and Romans. Columns have been put together, holes have been filled with cement. But the great blocks lie in confusion, and one ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... almost touching her hostess did she lift her eyes from the ground. Then she stood still, looked up calmly, and said, in a drawling and infantine voice: ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... London, Vaughan found his secretary with the usual heaps of letters. One envelope, addressed in a large and rather infantine hand, was put aside for him. The ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... the slightest fullness which the sculptor would choose for the embodying of his ideal of the best blending of modesty with complete beauty; and her throat and arms—oh, with what an inexpressible pathos of loveliness, so to speak, was moulded, under an infantine dewiness of surface, their delicate undulations. No one could be in her presence without acknowledging the perfection of her form as a woman, and rendering the passionate yet subdued homage which the purest beauty fulfills its human errand by inspiring; but, while Palgray made ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... proud moment in Mr Squeers's life, when he witnessed that burst of enthusiasm in his young child's mind, and saw in it a foreshadowing of his future eminence. He pressed a penny into his hand, and gave vent to his feelings (as did his exemplary wife also), in a shout of approving laughter. The infantine appeal to their common sympathies, at once restored cheerfulness to the conversation, and ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... associate them, —to think in a certain manner,—to judge well or ill. They point out to him various objects, which they accustom him either to love or to hate, to desire or to avoid, to esteem or to despise. It is thus opinions are transmitted from fathers, mothers, nurses, and masters, to man in his infantine state. It is thus, that his mind by degrees saturates itself with truth, or fills itself with error; after which he regulates his conduct, which renders him either happy or miserable, virtuous or vicious, estimable or ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... showed a joy that was almost infantine, agreed to catechize the old man and confer with him twice a week. Thus the conversion attributed to Ursula and to a spirit of sordid calculation, was the spontaneous act of the doctor himself. The abbe, who for fourteen years had abstained from touching the wounds of that heart, though ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... indulgence of the public in these interpolations, I may remark I have only treated them to a very cursory glance; considering that, in the present mutable state of legislation in Queensland, to enter more fully into detail would be inadvisable. The colony is young, but the government is infantine; though, notwithstanding that it is little more than two years old, it has proved itself indefatigable, concise, and beneficial in its workings; and many a local incubus has been removed, and many a long felt desideratum been ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... some tarts from the Latin Quarter were dancing in a ring on a patch of worn turf singing an infantine roundelay. With hats fallen on their shoulders, and hair unbound, they held one another by the hands, playing like little children. They still managed to find a small thread of fresh voice, and their pale countenances, ruffled by brutal caresses, ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... the scholar critic comprehends fully the lessons taught; but to pretend to go before the masters, and to set up a post with his Number 20 marked upon it, and to bid his master reach it if he can, is the puerile play of an infantine intellect, or very conceited mind! And so we give M. De Piles, and all his followers, a slap in the face, and bid them go packing with Number 20. We will not condescend to pull to pieces this fantastic scheme, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... antagonist. As we got up we saw the shaggy tails of our dogs wagging vehemently outside a cavern, within which it did not seem possible that any large animal could be hidden. Now Boxer would rush further in, now Toby, while a whimpering sound, mingled with an occasional infantine growl, showed us that the cave was alone occupied by the cubs of which we were in search. Fearing that the animals would be injured, we called off the dogs, when their bloody mouths and the brown hair sticking to their jaws, proved that they had had a battle with the occupants ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... forty years ago, and turning perpetually upon the deeper questions of metaphysics and religion; we will even indulge ourselves with a short extract from one of the "Conversations with Children," reported verbatim by an apparently concealed auditress, and eliciting many a cunning bit of infantine wisdom, besides the following finer rhapsody, which Mr. Alcott succeeded in charming out of the lips of a boy six ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... be said to vegetate like plants, or live, like brutes, according to instinct, and not as human creatures, guided by reason. To those who had the direction of my earliest years I leave the task of relating the transactions of my infancy, if they find them as worthy of being recorded as the infantine exploits of Themistocles and Alexander,—the one exposing himself to be trampled on by the horses of a charioteer, who would not stop them when requested to do so, and the other refusing to run a race unless kings were to enter the contest against him. Amongst such ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... aisle. The angel, holding a flaming sword in his right hand, is conducting the child. This child is, in my opinion, the most wonderful of all the creations of Murillo; the form is that of an infant about five years of age, and the expression of the countenance is quite infantine, but the tread—it is the tread of a conqueror, of a God, of the Creator of the universe; and the earthly globe appears to tremble beneath ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... the years of my infantine tyranny till, when at the age of fourteen, I became possessed with a strong desire to be sent to a public school. My father was sitting in his large arm-chair, in the porch, after tea, when I made this request, which, at first, he ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... Palliser? The British Constitution, indeed! Had she married Burgo they would have been in sunny Italy, and he would have told her some other tale than that as they sat together under the pale moonlight. She had a little water-coloured drawing called Raphael and Fornarina, and she was infantine enough to tell herself that the so-called Raphael was like her Burgo—no, not her Burgo, but the Burgo that was not hers. At any rate, all the romance of the picture she might have enjoyed had they allowed her to dispose as she had ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... we may call it); a second and, in all manner of ways, an improved one. The young Fritz swallowed no shoe-buckles; did not leap out of window, hanging on by the hands; nor achieve anything of turbulent, or otherwise memorable, in his infantine history; the course of which was in general smooth, and runs, happily for it, below the ken of rumor. The Boy, it is said, and is easily credible, was of extraordinary vivacity; quick in apprehending ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... slept through all noises with infantine simplicity, made no answer, but a peculiar snort from the negro, who lay not far off on his other side, told that he ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... in our heart. And in our eagerness to restore this confidence we are content deliberately to ignore the fact that the result would have been exactly the same had the cause of our excess or imprudence been—to use the terms of our infantine vocabulary—heroic or innocent. If on an intensely cold day I throw myself into the water to save a fellow-creature from drowning, or if, seeking to drown him, I chance to fall in, the consequences of the chill will be absolutely the ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... with a pair of the biggest black eyes, and a natural instinct for gorging itself with unripe fruits and hard nuts, which, added to its maternal sustenance that it was still enjoying, proved the mill-like character of its infantine digestion. For two months we thought this young Hercules was a promising boy, until by an accident we discovered it was a "young lady" Linobambaki! When we arrived at Trooditissa these children were in rags and filth, but under ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... prevent one from bringing shame on the parent! So that, contrary to every principle of justice, the bad is rewarded for the badness; and the good punished for the goodness. Natural affection, remembrance of infantine endearments, reluctance to abandon long-cherished hopes, compassion for the sufferings of your own flesh and blood, the dread of fatal consequences from your adhering to justice; all these beat at your heart, and call on you to give ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... shelves, on which books and antiquities were arranged in scrupulous order. Here and there, on separate stands in front of the shelves, were placed a beautiful feminine torso; a headless statue, with an uplifted muscular arm wielding a bladeless sword; rounded, dimpled, infantine limbs severed from the trunk, inviting the lips to kiss the cold marble; some well-preserved Roman busts; and two or three vases from Magna Grecia. A large table in the centre was covered with antique bronze lamps and small ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... that my brother and myself were playing one evening in a sandy lane, in the neighbourhood of this Pett camp; our mother was at a slight distance. All of a sudden, a bright yellow, and, to my infantine eye, beautiful and glorious object made its appearance at the top of the bank from between the thick quickset, and, gliding down, began to move across the lane to the other side, like a line of golden light. Uttering a cry of pleasure, I sprang forward, and seized it nearly by the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... however, referred to the restlessness produced by the weather. It occurred to her also that the vacuously amiable Adele had once or twice regarded her with the same precocious, childlike curiosity and infantine cunning she had once before exhibited. All this did not, however, abate her admiration for both—perhaps particularly for this picturesquely gentlemanly young fellow, with his gentle audacities of compliment, his caressing attentions, and his unfailing and equal address. ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... half dreamy, as in Geraldine, his junior by one year; while the grace of all the attitudes of his slender lissome figure showed to advantage beside Felix's more sturdy form, and deliberate or downright movements; while Clement was paler, slighter, and with rather infantine features, and shining wavy brown hair, that nothing ever seemed to ruffle, looked so much as if he ought to have been a girl, that Tina, short for Clementina, was his school name. Fulbert, stout, square, fat-cheeked, and permanently rough ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Parisian demi-monde, that exaggerated elegance of a fashion plate which only the most exquisite of women could redeem from vulgarity. Plush, brocade, peacock's feathers, golden bangles, mousquetaire gloves, a bonnet of purple plumage set off by ornaments of filagree gold, an infantine little muff of lace and wild flowers, buttercups and daisies; and hair, eyebrows and complexion as artificial as the flowers on ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... he pondered it; then asked with an accent that pierced her because it was so infantine, so shamelessly mendicant of comfort: "She ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Sir Francis. 'What mean this passion, young sir? Methought you came hither convinced that both the religion and the habits in which the young lady had been bred up rendered your infantine contract most unsuitable. What hath fallen out to make this change ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be to me as Clerval was, or any woman another Elizabeth? Even where the affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence, the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain. They know our infantine dispositions, which, however they may be afterwards modified, are never eradicated; and they can judge of our actions with more certain conclusions as to the integrity of our motives. A sister or a brother can never, unless indeed such symptoms have ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... quick, wrathful glance along the horizon on either side, and then, mounting a remote hillock which still hid him from the beach, he sat there and kept watch and ward. From time to time the strong sea-breeze brought him the sound of infantine screams and shouts of girlish laughter from the unseen shore; he only looked the more keenly and suspiciously for any wandering trespasser, and did not turn his head. He lay there nearly half an hour, and when the sounds ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... near him, under cover of his hat, by contracting his left eye, and applying his right thumb to the tip of his nose). It had been objected to Bung that he had only five children ('Hear, hear!' from the opposition). Well; he had yet to learn that the legislature had affixed any precise amount of infantine qualification to the office of beadle; but taking it for granted that an extensive family were a great requisite, he entreated them to look to facts, and compare data, about which there could be no mistake. Bung was 35 years of age. Spruggins—of whom he wished to ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Pope to his ducal title; and the reader may imagine the little allowance that would be made by a haughty and angry prince for the rebellious courtesy thus shewn to a detested rival. Tasso, furthermore, who had not only an infantine hatred of bitter "physic," but reasonably thought the fashion of the age for giving it a ridiculous one, begged hard, in a manner which it is humiliating to witness, that he might not be drenched with medicine. The duke at length forbade his writing to him any ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... healthy open air, of life upon the road, of casual joys and wayside pleasure, snatched with careless heart by men whose tastes are natural. There is very little of the alcove or the closet in this verse; and the touch upon the world is so infantine, so tender, that we are indulgent to the generalities ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... simplicity was an article of belief with La Cibot (and be it noted that this faith in simplicity is the great source and secret of the success of all infantine strategy); La Cibot, therefore, could not suspect Schmucke of deceit when he came to say to her, with a face half of distress, half ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... woods and hillsides yielded that "would do for Tommy." Surrounded by playthings such as never child out of fairyland had before, it is to be hoped that Tommy was content. He appeared to be serenely happy, albeit there was an infantine gravity about him, a contemplative light in his round gray eyes, that sometimes worried Stumpy. He was always tractable and quiet, and it is recorded that once, having crept beyond his "corral,"—a hedge ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... himself as a person entirely different from his sisters. For Annet and Linnet merely looked puzzled; to them the book was a book, just as the hill upon which they sat was a hill, and they had never troubled their heads about such a thing as an author. But Matthew Henry opened his infantine eyes ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... name from scrofa, "a burrowing pig," signifying the radical destruction of important glands in the body by this undermining constitutional disease. Possibly the quaint lines which nurses have long been given to repeat for the amusement of babies while fondling their infantine fingers bear a hidden meaning which pointedly imports the scrofulous taint. This nursery distich, as we remember, personates the fingers one by one as five little fabulous pigs:—the first small piggy doesn't feel well; and the second ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... wert thou then? A child most infantine, Yet wandering far beyond that innocent age In all but its sweet looks and mien divine; Even then, methought, with the world's tyrant rage A patient warfare thy young heart did wage, 860 When those soft eyes of scarcely conscious thought Some tale, or thine own fancies, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... babes and children earned for him the sobriquet of 'Namby Pamby,' 'a term which has been incorporated into the English language to designate mawkish sentiment. Namby was the infantine pronunciation of Ambrose, and Pamby was formed by the first letter of Philips's surname and that reduplication of sound which is ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... certain apish drollery and humour which exhibited itself in the lad, and a liking for some of the old man's pursuits, the first of the twins was the grandfather's favourite and companion, and would laugh and talk out all his infantine heart to the old gentleman, to whom the younger had seldom a word to say. George was a demure, studious boy, and his senses seemed to brighten up in the library, where his brother was so gloomy. He knew the books before he could well-nigh carry them, and read in them ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... a production of Mrs. Bardell's. The large man was always home precisely at ten o'clock at night, at which hour he regularly condensed himself into the limits of a dwarfish French bedstead in the back parlour; and the infantine sports and gymnastic exercises of Master Bardell were exclusively confined to the neighbouring pavements and gutters. Cleanliness and quiet reigned throughout the house; and in it ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Susan, the baby that clung to thy knee, And prattled around thee in infantine glee, Has grown up, she's married and two blooming boys Have stirred in her ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... that an invitation to court should have caused a fluttering in the bosom of an inexperienced young woman. But it was the duty of the parent to watch over the child, and to show her that on one side were only infantine vanities and chimerical hopes, on the other liberty, peace of mind, affluence, social enjoyments, honorable distinctions. Strange to say, the only hesitation was on the part of Frances. Dr. Burney was transported ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... The Lady Anna,—when Lady Anna had been more poorly clad and blessed with less of the comforts of home than any of them. Years would roll by, and they should live to know that the Lady Anna,—the sport of their infantine cruelty,—was Lady Anna indeed. And as the girl became a woman the dream was becoming a reality. The rank, the title, the general acknowledgment and the wealth would all be there. Then came the first great decisive triumph. Overtures ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... his foot a source of pain and uneasiness to him His early acquaintance with the Sacred Writings Instances of his quickness and energy Death of his father 1792—1795; Sent to a day-school at Aberdeen His own account of the progress of his infantine studies His sports and exercises 1796—1797. Removed into the Highlands His visits to Lachin-y-gair First awakening of his poetic talent His early love of mountain scenery Attachment for Mary Duff 1798. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... imagination. They belong to the generation of the fauns; like fauns, they combine a certain savage wildness, a dithyrambic ecstasy of inspiration, a delight in rapid movement as they revel amid clouds or flowers, with the permanent and all-pervading sweetness of the master's style. When infantine or childlike, these celestial sylphs are scarcely to be distinguished for any noble quality of beauty from Murillo's cherubs, and are far less divine than the choir of children who attend Madonna in Titian's 'Assumption.' But in their boyhood and their ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the innocent and sunny hours of childhood.[A] As to innocence, the remark of a certain ancient and reverend man, though sour, was critically accurate,—that "it is the weakness of infants' limbs, and not their minds, which are innocent." It is most true. Many an impotent infantine screech or slap or scratch embodies an abandonment and ecstasy of utter uncontrolled fury scarcely expressible by the grown-up man, though he should work the bloodiest murder to express it. And what adult manifestation, except in the violent ward of an insane ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... "See Nicholas, whom in his tender age, The willing people shall elect their lord; He who shall laugh to scorn the civil rage Of the rebellious Tideus and his horde; Whose infantine delight shall be to wage The mimic fight, and sweat with spear and sword: And through the discipline such nurture yields, Shall flourish as the ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... of all sorts were treated at the Hotel Dieu: surgical maladies, chronic maladies, contagious maladies, female diseases, infantine diseases, &c. Every thing was admitted, but all presented an ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... is the second baptismal name of Mr. Browning's son; and, in his infantine mouth, it became (we do not exactly guess how), the "Penini," shortened into "Pen," which some ingenious interpreters have derived from the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... hands and walking under the dais borne by four religious in dalmatics accompanied by the community and by several strangers singing hymns and canticles. Numbers of children preceeded the Blessed Sacrament, exercising the solemn functions which had been allotted to them. This infantine band, clad in white surplices girded with different colors, resembled angels and presented a spectacle at once beautiful and edifying to the beholder. The Protestants who were present appeared to be ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul
... lightens the struggle for existence. But does the study of nature allow of the maintenance of those local revelations which are called Mosaism, Christianity, Islamism? These religions founded upon an infantine cosmogony, and upon a chimerical history of humanity, can they bear confronting with modern astronomy and geology? The present mode of escape, which consists in trying to satisfy the claims of both science and faith—of the science which contradicts all the ancient beliefs, and the faith which, in ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... law to obey him, thinking his future life too short for expiation. There was another object, for which he also thought life too short, and that was to secure the happiness of Alice—whom he loved with a purity and intensity that was deepened by her helplessness and almost infantine artlessness. He knew that her blindness was hopeless, but it seemed to him that he loved her the more for her blindness, her entire dependence on his care. It would be such a holy task to protect and cherish her, and ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the fresh and unconscious grace which marks the productions of primitive times." Now, there is some truth in this criticism; for it is a mark of man's early ingenuity, in many arts, to seek complexity (where you would expect simplicity), and yet to lend to that complexity an infantine naturalness. One can see this phenomenon in early decorative art, and in early law and custom, and even in the complicated structure of primitive languages. Now, just as early, and even savage, races are our masters in ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... man of sixty, well-preserved, with the soft, infantine quality which grease paint imparts to the skin. He had an enormous head, large dark eyes, sly and humorous, in which, as his shallow whimsical thoughts flitted through his brain, mischief glinted. He was surrounded with portraits ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... faded with anxiety. She watched her princely Lord with an eye full of care, and could scarcely spare attention for the lovely child who clung to her side, and whose brilliantly fair complexion, wavy flaxen hair, high brow, and perfectly formed though infantine features, already promised that remarkable beauty which distinguished the countenance of Richard II. On the other side of the Prince sat his sister-in-law, the Countess of Cambridge, a Spanish Infanta; and her husband, Edmund, ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... eyes, besides, are generally brighter—they shelter a more liquid light than the blue or grey. Southern eyes have generally most beautiful whites. And as to the charm of the childish figure, there is usually an infantine slenderness in the little Southener that is at least as young and sweet as the round form of the blond child. And yet the painters of Italy would have none of it. They rejected the dusky brilliant pale little Italians all about them; they ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... of thought familiar to savage tribes that to us, trained through long centuries of progressive knowledge, seems in the highest degree absurd and even incomprehensible. As a matter of every-day practice we cannot, if we would, go back to that infantine state of mind which regards not only our fellow men and women, but all objects animate and inanimate around us, as instinct with a consciousness, a personality akin to our own. This, however, is the savage ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... young face (according to the tale handed down by old women) looked out from under a gray conical hat, trimmed with white ostrich-feathers, and her little toes peeped from a buff petticoat worn under a puce gown. Her features were not regular: they were almost infantine, as you may see from miniatures in possession of the family, her mouth showing much sensitiveness, and one could be sure that her faults would not lie on the side of bad temper unless ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... genealogy, who would not be glad to seize a fair opportunity to let it be known "] then a child of about four months old. She had the appearance of listening to him. His motions seemed to her to be intended for her amusement; and when he stopped, she fluttered, and made a little infantine noise, and a kind of signal for him to begin again. She would be held close to him; which was a proof, from simple nature, that his figure was not horrid. Her fondness for him endeared her still more to me, and I declared she should have five ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... by the men's extraordinary isolation of mind; you may not understand his thought now, but, when you visit the North Sea, the meaning will flash on you. Isolation—that is the word; the men know little of the world; they are infantine without being petty; they have no curiosity about the passage of events on shore, and their solid world is represented by an area of 70 feet by 18. They are always amusing, always suggestive, and always superhumanly ignorant of the commonest concerns that affect the lives of ordinary ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... a tale, my mother oft breathed in my infantine ears, of a bright star that once skirted the literary horizon, and ere long darkly disappeared; of a lofty, sensitive nature, that met a staggering blow, and reeled to earth, no more to soar aloft. And, though I have never known the details of that early disappointment, I regard, with overflowing ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... highly accomplished artist has always reduced himself as nearly as possible to this condition of infantine sight. He sees the colours of nature exactly as they are, and therefore perceives at once in the sunlighted grass the precise relation between the two colours that form its shade and light. To him it does not seem shade and light, but bluish green ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... before anybody told me; for suddenly the whole story came back just as I heard it from my father, not as I've read it in books of history. So vividly did he paint each detail, that I used to grow hysterical in my infantine way, and he was scolded by mother for "filling the child's ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... colossi like those of Rubens. There is a Saint Christopher by Titian, a kind of bronzed and bowed Atlas with his four limbs straining to bear the weight of a world, and on his neck by an extraordinary contrast, the tiny, soft, and laughing bambino, whose infantine flesh has the delicacy and grace of a flower. Above all, there are a dozen mythological and allegorical paintings by Tintoret and Veronese, of such brilliancy and such intoxicating fascination that a veil seems to fall from our eyes and we discover an unknown world, a paradise of delights ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... delicately tinted infantine complexion which only accompanies red hair; his eyes were brightly blue; his features well chiselled, with the exception of the lips, which were clumsily cut and loosely held together. He came down to breakfast in a not very agreeable mood, ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... upon the intellect which had elevated them to power. Man, because he could not but acknowledge the majesty of Nature, fell into childish exultation at his acquired and still-increasing dominion over her elements. Even while he stalked a God in his own fancy, an infantine imbecility came over him. As might be supposed from the origin of his disorder, he grew infected with system, and with abstraction. He enwrapped himself in generalities. Among other odd ideas, that of universal equality gained ground; and in the face of analogy ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... pale and aged face which had visited him at Tonquin in his dreams, and a fair face that he had never before thought so beautiful, more oval than he remembered it, with blue eyes soft and tender, and a mouth with a sweet infantine expression of sincerity and goodness. His mother stretched out her trembling arms, gave a great cry, ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... say, the cicalas around us keep up their perpetual sonorous chirping. The mountain smells delicious. The atmosphere, the dawning day, the infantine grace of these little girls in their long frocks and shiny coiffures-all is redundant with freshness and youth. The flowers and grasses on which we tread sparkle with dewdrops, exhaling a perfume of freshness. ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... if a child sheds its first hair, like its first teeth? I've never given much thought to infantine phenomena of any kind; still, I'm inclined to believe now that there must be such cases. Of course, we know a type of blond, nee brunette; for instance, Mrs. Senter, young Burden's fascinating aunt, whom we suspected of having ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... transformation of him was passing before my eyes? Was there ever such a puzzle of a man as this? Who that saw him now, intently pursuing his new train of thought, would have recognized him as the childish creature who had awoke so innocently, and had astonished Benjamin by the infantine nonsense which he talked? It is said, and said truly, that there are many sides to every human character. Dexter's many sides were developing themselves at such a rapid rate of progress that they were already beyond ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... fifteen, seemed scarcely twelve, and he had the infantine intelligence of a child of five, resembling in an extraordinary degree his great-great-grandmother, Aunt Dide, the madwoman at the Tulettes. He had the slender and delicate grace of one of those bloodless little kings with whom a race ends, crowned with their long, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... of the hurried infantine accent the protest was so emphatic, and, above all, fraught with such pent-up reproach and disgust, that I turned about sympathetically. But Johnnyboy had already thrown down his spoon, slipped from his high chair, and was marching out of the room as fast as ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... different from that reverential love which he had bestowed upon her when she was still pure. He remembered the poorness of her raiment, the meekness of her language, the small range of her ideas. The sweet soft coaxing loving smile, which had once been so dear to him, was infantine and ignoble. She was a plaything for an idle hour, not a woman to be taken out into the world with the high name ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... door opened suddenly, and a very pretty girl with dark eyes came and took the baby away with an apology. I immediately said to myself: "My cousin has been privately married, that pair of dark eyes has cost him his liberty, and that child is an infantine relation of mine!" This discovery remained a long time a secret in my own breast, and I affected a complete absence of suspicion during the rest of my stay at Greenock, but it was afterwards fully confirmed. My cousin had, in fact, married at the early age of nineteen, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... recently failed in business, in consequence of which he himself was at present supporting a second establishment. He sighed, and reflected that it was a thankless task to rear a family. The infantine troubles of teething, whooping-cough, and scarlatina were trifles as compared with the later annoyance and difficulties of dealing with striplings who had the audacity to imagine themselves grown-up, and competent to have a say in ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... who displayed unexampled energy throughout the whole of this war, was about five feet three inches in height, and was distinguished by an almost infantine character of face, and a voice low and soft as the tones of a flute. It was thought that she habituated herself to that style of speaking to conceal her really masculine nature, and to interest her audience. Her voice, notwithstanding its sweet ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... however, was only applicable to these natives when expressing their strong feelings. In other respects, particularly in their physical actions, they were most manly; and the thick black beards and moustaches that clothed the chins of most of the men seemed very much the reverse of infantine. The children were so exactly like to their parents in costume that they seemed miniature representations of them. In fact, were a child viewed through a magnifying glass it would become a man, and were a man viewed through a diminishing glass he would become ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... yourself adequate to taking a heavy weight. But we defy you really to conform to your conditions with any but a light one. Make the thing you have to convey, make the picture you have to paint, at all rich and complex, and you cease to be clear. Remain clear—and with the clearness required by the infantine intelligence of any public consenting to see a play—and what becomes of the 'importance' of your subject? If it's important by any other critical measure than the little foot-rule the 'produced' piece has to conform to, it is predestined to ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... moment she was puzzled. To her, Hugo's speech sounded insincere. But the glance of the eye that she encountered was so caressing, the curves of his mouth were so sweetly infantine, that she accused herself of harsh judgment, and remembered Hugo's foreign blood and Continental training, which had given him the habit, she supposed, of saying "pretty things." She could not doubt his sincerity when ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... but finer in feature and more graceful in form—not so strong, and fading sooner. Many of the children are perfectly beautiful, but the cherub beauty changes soon, and the women particularly look old and withered while yet young in years. Infantine beauty seems peculiar to the country, for even the children of emigrants born there are much handsomer than those born at home. Such are some of the traits of the natives—then comes the wide circle of emigrants, each (at least the older ones) retaining ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... Cancel from one of these prerogatives to the end of the sentence. Substitute: of every polity even in the most infantine condition. ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... of words our babe, with its diminutive baby, seems not akin. Skeat, rejecting the theory that it is a reduplicative child-word, like papa, sees in it merely a modification (infantine, perhaps) of the Celtic maban, diminutive of mab, "son," and hence related to maid, the particular etymology of which is ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... and farther into the experience of motherhood. At the same time there is an increase in the dignity of the Madonna and in her importance as an individual. In the Mater Amabilis she is subordinate to her child, absorbed in him, so to speak; his infantine charms often overmatch her own beauty. When she rises to the responsibilities of her high calling, she is, for the time being, of equal interest and importance. AEsthetically, she is now even more attractive than ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... less, but of infinitely more, architectural knowledge than if he had commenced and completed the palace with his own hands. Not unwarrantably, perhaps, may Mr. Lewes, reflecting that his own and every other human organism's genesis has consisted of at least three stages, oval, foetal, and infantine, wonder why he was not formed all at once, 'as Eve was mythically affirmed to be taken from Adam's rib, and Minerva from Jupiter's head,' and why he was not brought forth full dressed in an indefinitely expansible suit of clothes. Not quite inexcusably, perhaps, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... Suddenly, in the midst of her reading, a cry of pain from the child startled Margery. She sprang up, and ran to him; and she found that in running about, he had contrived to fall down a step which intervened between the landing and the antechamber, whereby he had very slightly bruised his infantine arm, and very greatly perturbed his infantine spirit. Geoffrey was weeping and whining piteously, and his mother lifted him up, and carried him into her bedroom, where she examined the injured arm, and discovered that ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... Goal of Infantine Hope, Unknown, mystic Felicity Sangrael of childish quest much sought, aethereal "Real Tea" Thy faintest tint of yellow on the milk and water pale Like Midas' stain on Pactolus, gives joy ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... first portion of the "Napoleon Museum," collected by Mrs. Sainsbury, and which had long been on exhibition. The prices fetched were ridiculously low, as the following examples will show. Among the bronzes, an infantine bust of the King of Rome, formerly in the possession of Josephine, at Malmaison, cost 20 guineas, sold for 1 pound 10s. A drawing in sepia, by Debret, of Napoleon visiting the wounded on the field, after the battle ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... qualifies my regard for O. vexillarium. Cattleyas are so obtrusively beautiful, they have such great flowers, which they thrust upon the eye with such assurance of admiration! Theirs is a style of effect—I refer to the majority—which may be called infantine; such as an intelligent and tasteful child might conceive if he had no fine sense of colour, and were too young to distinguish a showy from a charming form. ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... blue eyes capable of languishing into moist appreciation of a woful heart-history, or sparkling rapturously at the news of a triumphant wooing; her little fat hands were swift and graceful, and her complexion so infantine in its clear white and pink as to lead many to believe and some—I need not say of which gender—to practise clandestinely upon the story that she had bathed her face in warm milk, night and morning, for forty years. The more sagacious averred, however, that the secret of her continued ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... was depicted in your tear-bathed faces. The long blonde hair of my little girl fell upon her shoulders. She dared not raise her eyes, neither did you; you held each other by the hand, closely clasped. Despite the terror that disfigured her face, I beheld my daughter in her singular and infantine beauty—accursed beauty! At sight of her Trymalcion's dead eyes lighted up and glistened like glowing coals in the middle of his wrinkled, paint-covered visage. He stood up, stretched out his emaciated arms towards my daughter ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... forget her own infantine agony of suspense as she sat, a tiny girl of five, in the audience, listening to Absalom's mistakes. But Eli Darmstetter, the ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... race of children. The science of electricity was in its infancy; the laws of force were misunderstood; men did not know what heat really was. They knew next to nothing of the history of the globe, and they accounted for the existence of varying species of plants and animals by means of the most infantine hypotheses. A complete revolution—vital and all-embracing—has altered our modes of thought, so that the man of 1887 can scarcely bring himself to conceive the state of mind which contented the man of 1837. We have dark ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... out some only. The very early and interesting Posy of Gillyflowers of Humphrey Gifford (1580) exhibits the first stage of our period, and might almost have been referred to the period before it; the same humpty-dumpty measure of eights and sixes, and the same vestiges of rather infantine alliteration being apparent in it, though something of the fire and variety of the new age of poetry appears beside them, notably in this most ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... that he saw was of a delicate little fairy form; a complexion of pearly white, with a cheek of the hue of a pink shell; a fair, sweet, infantine face surrounded by a fleecy radiance of soft golden hair. The vision appeared to float in some white gauzy robes; and, when she spoke or smiled, what an innocent, fresh, untouched, unspoiled look ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... recollections dated from his stay with his parents in garrison in Jersey. This must have been about the year 1811 or 1812, when he was therefore two or three years old. He used to say he remembered the relieving of guard in Jersey; that he had an infantine recollection of a military guard-room by night; and remembered a "Lady Fanny," the wife, as he believed, of the colonel of the regiment, who showed some slight kindness towards ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... those of virtue; for it is the heart which is the great mover of all actions—and the moment a child can distinguish between a smile and a frown, from that moment should instruction commence—an instruction suited indeed to infantine capacities, but which should be enlarged as the child's capacities expand. It is very bad policy to suffer the first years of a child's life to pass without instruction; for if good be not written on the mind, there is sure to be evil. It is a mother's duty ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... this year happened fortunately to be ushered into existence by a sharp frost and a bright sunny sky, the boulevards were not the black rivers of mud and slush that they are apt to be in the first days of the infantine year. Prince Louis Napoleon Buonaparte was only First President as yet; and Paris was by no means the wonderful city of endless boulevards and palatial edifices that it has since grown to be under ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... extended. They were always neatly dressed, even the commonest of coolies, and their festive dresses were marvels. As traders they were grave and patient; as servants they were sad and civil, and all were singularly infantine in their natural simplicity. The living representatives of the oldest civilization in the world, they seemed like children. Yet they kept their beliefs and sympathies to themselves, never fraternizing with the fanqui, or foreign devil, or ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... "Missis was, she dared say, glad enough to get rid of such a tiresome, ill-conditioned child, who always looked as if she were watching everybody, and scheming plots underhand." Abbot, I think, gave me credit for being a sort of infantine Guy Fawkes. ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... her, not by her beauty, though that was marked, but by her cordial, unaffected manner of placing her two hands in ours, and by her infantine sweetness of expression. Whatever she might have gone through, I saw she had not suffered. There was no line or track of experience, on her broad, tranquil brow, nor was there the hushed, restrained ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... and after noon Autumn's evening meets me soon, Leading the infantine moon And that one star, which to her Almost seems to minister Half the crimson light she brings From the sunset's radiant springs: And the soft dreams of the morn (Which like winged winds had borne To that silent isle, which lies 'Mid remember'd agonies, The frail bark of this lone ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... man opened his eyes and smiled as he saw that innocent infantine face looking down ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... pretty with that untouched, infantine prettiness, before which old and young go helplessly down. She was small and plump, with a full, white throat and neck, and soft, rounded hands and wrists, that were dimpled like a baby's. Her brown hair was drawn back from the low forehead, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... in solitude, the thumbs your County Council took from me, and your endearments scarcely will replace! Where, Madam, lay the harm in sucking them? The dog will lick his foot, the cat her claw, his paws sustain the hibernating bear—and you decree no law to punish them! Yet, in your rage for infantine reform, you rushed this most ridiculous enactment—its earliest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... to the palace, whither she insisted on having the peacock removed, and put into her chamber. All the ladies of the court, who had not seen Rosetta, then came to pay their respects to her, and brought her a variety of presents, which she received with such infantine grace and pretty gratitude, as to delight everybody. The king and his brother were thinking, meanwhile, how they should contrive to find the king of the peacocks. At length they had Rosetta's picture taken, and a speaking likeness it ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... Toby, using his right hand muffler like an infantine boxing-glove, and punishing his chest for being ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... of Dame Prentiss, best remembered by infantine loves, those pretty preludes of more serious passions; by the great forfeit-basket, filled with its miscellaneous waifs and deodauds, and by the long willow stick by the aid of which the good old body, now stricken in years and unwieldy in person could stimulate the sluggish faculties or check ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... said, that however well adapted the plan recommended may be for the infantine scholars for whom it was designed, yet, it does not follow that it may be equally advantageous for those of a more advanced age; and if by this it is meant, that the very same lessons, &c., are not equally applicable in both ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... Are still too infantine to take to heart A loving father's absence, when I come To town ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... their portion with the eagerness of real hunger, and with hearts glowing with gratitude; though in a style of infantine simplicity, they tanked their generous benefactress for ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... suffer the infantine throes, When my flesh was a cushion for any long pin— Whilst they patted my body to comfort my woes, Oh! how little they dreamt ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... often does the story turn, like the novels for elder people, upon a marriage! Some king's son in disguise marries the beautiful princess. What idea has a child of marriage?—unless the sugared plum-cake distributed on such occasions comes in aid of his imagination. Marriage, to the infantine intelligence, must mean fine dresses, and infinite sweetmeats—a sort of juvenile party that is never to break up. Well, and the notion serves to carry on the tale withal. The imagination throws this temporary bridge over the gap, till time and experience ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Mary," said Mrs. Robarts, and Mary replied, "Oh, no, of course not, ma'am." In these days Mrs. Robarts was ordinarily very busy, seeing that there were six children in the house, four of whom had come to her but ill supplied with infantine belongings; and now, as usual, she went about her work immediately after breakfast. But she moved about the house very slowly, and was almost unable to give her orders to the servants, and spoke sadly ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... ridicule which was perpetually flowing against the Royal Society, was the almost infantine simplicity of its earliest members, led on by their honest zeal; and the absence of all discernment in many trifling and ludicrous researches, which called down the malice of the wits;[257] there was, too, much of that unjust contempt between the parties, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... dear friend, the friend of my youth. Still she is present with me, and I hear her soft voice warbling as I stray over the heath. Fate has separated me from another, the fire of whose eyes, tempered by infantine tenderness, still warms my breast; even when gazing on these tremendous cliffs sublime emotions absorb my soul. And, smile not, if I add that the rosy tint of morning reminds me of a suffusion which will ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft |
