"Prattle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have an eye, But never cry, And lips, but never prattle; You've fingers ten, Like brother Ben, But never shake ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... Because my face is torn and twisted makes me no different from you. I still feel and think. I am as able to love and hate as you. Was all your talk about honorable scars just prattle to mislead the men who risked the scars? Is all your much advertised kindliness and sympathy ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Belfield, without some-indelicate eulogy on her son ; or Lady Margaret, without indicating jealousy of her husband. Morrice is all skipping, officious impertinence, Mr. Gosport all sarcasm, Lady Honoria all lively prattle, Miss Larolles all silly prattle. If ever Madame D'Arblay aimed at more, as in the character of Monckton, we do not think that she succeeded well.(26) We are, therefore, forced to refuse to Madame D'Arblay a place in the highest rank of art; but ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... was in the act of making elaborate farewell bows to the assembled ladies. After the two silent hours of suffering that lay between herself and Axel, how strange it was, this noisy bustle of daily life. She caught fragments of what they were saying, fragments of the usual prattle, the same nothings that they said every day, accompanied by the same vague laughs. How strange it was, and how awful, the tremendousness of life, the nearness of death, the absolute relentlessness of suffering, and all ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... a divine hand to help, and a divine voice to comfort and a divine heart to sympathize. Thousands of mothers have been led into the kingdom of God by the hands of their little children. There were hundreds of mothers who would not have been Christians had it not been for the prattle of their little ones. Standing some day in the nursery, they bethought themselves: "This child God has given me to raise for eternity. What is my influence upon it? Not being a Christian myself, how can I ever expect him to become a Christian? ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... still new to her dignities, Eliza O'Neill was beginning to prattle in the most charming brogue ever heard across the Irish Channel, and to grow through beautiful childhood to witching girlhood. The daughter of a strolling actor who led his company of buskers through every county in Ireland from Cork to Donegal, the love of things theatrical ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... called "the twankies" by their brothers—went off after tea in the schoolroom to see the young pheasants with their father. They were lively and talkative, and the Squire laughed at them several times, as good-humoured men do laugh at the prattle of innocent childhood. Arrived at the pens he entered into a long and earnest conversation with his head keeper, and the twins knew better than to interrupt him with artless prattle at such a time as that. But going home again through the dewy park, he unbent once more and egged Nancy ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... not withstand such prattle. The blacksmith turned in some beans, the boys from Manchester divided their scanty store of flour and bacon, I brought some salt, some sugar, and some oatmeal, and as the small man put it away he chirped and chuckled ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... lady continued to prattle on. She had taken the girl's hand in hers, and was gently forcing her down on to a low stool beside her armchair. She was talking about Paul, and said something about Anne Mie, and then about the National Convention, and those beasts and savages, ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... come down to us. Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics, even more than by the manner in which they are treated. The Oriental philosophy approaches, easily, loftier themes than the modern aspires to; and no wonder if it sometimes prattle about them. It only assigns their due rank respectively to Action and Contemplation, or rather does full justice to the latter. Western philosophers have not conceived of the significance of Contemplation in their sense. Speaking of the spiritual ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... mistaken, for I must confess that the briny rivulets descended fast on my furrowed cheeks, she was such a winning Child, and had such a regard for me and always came and told me all her little things, and as she was now speaking, some of her little prattle was very taking, and the lively images of these things intrude themselves more into my mind than they should do, but there is allowance for moderate grief on such occasions. But when I am telling you of my own grief and sorrow, I know not what to say of the bereaved ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... Annie, and dispels the gathering shade. The flame dies down again, and you draw closer to my side. The pure moon looks in at the southern window, replacing the ruddier glow; while the fading embers lisp and prattle to one another, like drowsy children, more and more faintly, till ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... people who claim to have emancipated ourselves from the thraldom of wrong and error, bring down on our heads the curse that comes upon the wilfully barren, then it will be an idle waste of breath to prattle of our achievements, to boast of all that we have done. No refinement of life, no delicacy of taste, no material progress, no sordid heaping up of riches, no sensuous development of art and literature, can in any way compensate for the loss of the great fundamental ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... economy of Heaven is dark, And wisest clerks have miss'd the mark Why human buds, like this, should fall, More brief than fly ephemeral That has his day; while shrivell'd crones Stiffen with age to stocks and stones; And crabbed use the conscience sears In sinners of an hundred years. —Mother's prattle, mother's kiss, Baby fond, thou ne'er wilt miss: Rites, which custom does impose, Silver bells, and baby clothes; Coral redder than those lips Which pale death did late eclipse; Music framed for infants' glee, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... personal appearance during his malady, his first wish is for a barber, who is speedily sent to him by Bostana.—This old worthy Abul Hassan Ali Ebe Bekar the barber makes him desperate by his vain prattle. Having solemnly saluted to Nurredin, he warns him not to {20} leave the house to-day, as his horoscope tells him that his life is in danger. The young man not heeding him, Abul Hassan begins to enumerate all his talents as astrologer, philologer, ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... may call men than you, good friend, And my dear father: how features are abroad, I am skilless of; but, by my modesty, The jewel in my dower, I would not wish Any companion in the world but you; 55 Nor can imagination form a shape, Besides yourself, to like of. But I prattle Something too wildly, and my father's ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... of children," smiled Francisco on the evening before their departure. He was writing a novel, in addition to the other work for Carmony and Pixley. Sometimes it was hard work amid this unusual prattle by his usually sedate and silent parents. He tried to imagine the house without them; his life, without their familiar and cherished companionship.... It would be lonely. Probably he would rent the place, when his novel was finished ... take ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... that they had to their sins, yet that God was far from infusing any thing into their souls, that should in the least hinder, weaken, obstruct, or let them in seeking the welfare of their souls. Now, men will tattle and prattle at a mad rate about election and reprobation, and conclude that because all are not elected, therefore God is to blame that any are damned. But then they will see that they are not damned because they were not elected, but because they sinned; and also, that they sinned, ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... came and stood over the little lady, and looked down on her with faces of pity, which seemed blent with a serene and half-amused indulgence. It was a heavenly amusement, such as that with which mothers listen to the foolish-wise prattle of children ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... I never care For those lips that tongue-tied are: Tell-tales I would have them be Of my mistress and of me. Let them prattle how that I Sometimes freeze and sometimes fry: Let them tell how she doth move Fore or backward in her love: Let them speak by gentle tones, One and th' other's passions: How we watch, and seldom sleep; How by willows we do weep; How by stealth we meet, and then Kiss, and sigh, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... his evening prayers in Latin, as formerly (for the old gentleman was a Catholic, which was the sole cause of his falling under suspicion), he set off on a new score, as they were undressing, and continued to prattle until he had fairly talked both himself ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the reeds, like an old building in the lithe, hardy arms of the climbing ivy. You may watch the box where the good man of the inn keeps fish alive for his kitchen, one oily ripple following another over the top of the yellow deal. And you can hear a splashing and a prattle of voices from the shed under the old kirk, where the village women wash and wash all day among the fish and water-lilies. It seems as if linen washed there should be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... again? I sit night after night in my mother-in-law's "budwar," the crimson-satin chairs staring at me, the wedding-cake ornament with its silver leaves glittering in the electric light; I sit there listening vaguely to her admonitions and endless prattle of Augustus's perfections. I have now heard every incident of his childhood: what ailments he had, what medicines suited him best, when he cut all those superfluous teeth ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... yet then they shall be convinced, that God was far from infusing anything into their souls, that should in the least hinder, weaken, obstruct, or let them in seeking the welfare of their souls. Now men will tattle and prattle at a mad rate, about election and reprobation, and conclude, that because all are not elected, therefore God is to blame that any are damned: but then they will see, that they are not damned because ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was next to theirs, and as she sat sewing she could hear the children's talk, for they soon forgot to whisper. At first she smiled, then she looked sober, and when the prattle ceased she said to herself, as she glanced ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... tears not unredeemed by pride. But one shrinks when the tragedy deepens into black night, and is terrified when strong passions, falling on an evil day, work their hot wills, with no restraining or favorable fate. There are people whose life is a primrose path along which they dance and prattle, whose emotions are a pose, whose thoughts are an echo, whose trials are a graceful luxury; there are others whose way lies through dark ravines and beside raging torrents, over whose head the black clouds are ever lowering, and whom any moment the lightning may strike. This was their ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... heed to the foolish prattle of so-called gipsy fortune-tellers," said Don Carlos, smiling again. "The seer who foretold that I should meet and win you was King of the Spanish Gypsies, and his every prophecy ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... really succeeded in imitating it? We do not believe that Latin and Greek are an "obstructing nuisance," or that the student of Homer and Thucydides and Demosthenes and Plato and Aristotle and Caesar and Cicero and Tacitus is merely studying "the prattle of infant man," or "adding the ignorance of the ancients to the ignorance he was born with." We believe, on the contrary, that it was by such studies that Gibbon and Niebuhr and Arnold and Grote acquired their marvellous power of discovering ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... are my bedside books. If I wake at night, I have one or other of them to prattle me to sleep again. They talk about themselves for ever, and don't weary me. I like to hear them tell their old stories over and over again. I read them in the dozy hours, and only half remember them. I am informed that both of them tell coarse stories. ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not caricatures, and certainly in 'Robert,' the City waiter of Punch. But so irresistible is the derision of the woman that all Charles Keene's persistent sense of vulgarity is intent centrally upon her. Never for any grace gone astray is she bantered, never for the social extravagances, for prattle, or for beloved dress; but always for her jealousy, and for the repulsive person of the man upon whom she spies and in whom she vindicates her ignoble rights. If this is the shopkeeper the possession of whom is her boast, what ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... obliged her by gentle violence to resume her place. She complied without difficulty: She knew not that there was more impropriety in conversing with him in one room than another. She thought herself equally secure of his principles and her own, and having replaced herself upon the Sopha, She began to prattle to him with her usual ease ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... which is promptly curbed: As when in certain travel I have feigned To be an ignoramus in our art According to some preconceived design, And happed to hear the land's practitioners Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance, {240} Prattle fantastically on disease, Its cause and cure—and I must hold ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... spring seem to belong properly to the opening of the months. It is the season of the quickest expansion, of the warmest blood, of the readiest growth; it is the boy-age of the year. The birds sing in chorus in the spring—just as children prattle; the brooks run full—like the overflow of young hearts; the showers drop easily—as young tears flow; and the whole sky is as capricious as the mind of ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... on a bench in the doorway to rest. After a little while they noticed a number of swallows collected together under the eaves of the roof, and as these birds are such chatter-boxes, they began to prattle with one another. Having learned the language of birds, the children knew what ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... darkness and uproar of a thunderstorm he escapes from the guarded works. His adventures, during which he comes accidentally and unrecognized in contact with his brother's widow, his sister, and her children, who prattle of family matters in his hearing, and, after a few weeks' wandering, by his being recaptured while lying on the roadside unconscious from hunger and exhaustion. This part of the story concludes with the reception of this news by Lilian ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... would find her ere yet it was too late. He would discover that her better nature had already prevailed and that she had started back without being sent for. They would kneel side by side, hand in hand, at the bedside of the little one, who would recover and smile and prattle, and together they would face ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... it. If you blame her, she can say she has done wrong in a moment, and all is forgotten. Her mind can no more be wounded than the little brook where she loves to play. The bright waters close again, and smile and prattle as merry ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Pardon this prattle!—The heart will sometimes expand; and it is then weak enough to plead that the effusions of friendship claim attention, and respect. This is among the prejudices of our education, and I know not who has hitherto overcome them all. I can only say, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... abominable, the faces of the idle rich, longing for cheap adventures, the smell of perfumery instead of the scent of the cedars and the sea, the miserable dirty pier, the melancholy lights far out at sea, the prattle of young ladies and gentlemen who have crowded here in order to admire nature of which they have no idea—all this taken together produces such a depressing effect and is so overwhelming that one begins to blame oneself for being biassed and unfair.... At five o'clock in the morning I arrived at ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... work was over, they would ramble o'er the lea, And sit beneath the frondage of an elderberry tree, And ANNIE'S simple prattle entertained him on his walk, For public executions formed the subject of ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... lifetime of the late King it was his habit to pass very much of his time here; thus, this was really His Majesty's audience chamber. Here he would have his little daughter of whom he was passionately fond—taking a great delight in listening to her merry prattle, and her amusing remarks on whatever attracted her attention. The windows of the room look out on to the Dam, a large square, which is quite the busiest part of the city. The view from these windows is a never-ending source of interest to the little ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... Silvere, big children that they were, eager for love and liberty, sped, with generous fervour, athwart the sordid intrigues of the Macquarts and the Rougons. At intervals the trumpet-voice of the people rose and drowned the prattle of the yellow drawing-room and the hateful discourses of uncle Antoine. And vulgar, ignoble farce was turned into a ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... unprofitable" as Schopenhauer's, not proofs but quips and sallies alone are suitable. While perusing such passages, the reader will grasp the full meaning of Schopenhauer's solemn utterance to the effect that, where optimism is not merely the idle prattle of those beneath whose flat brows words and only words are stored, it seemed to him not merely an absurd but a vicious attitude of mind, and one full of scornful irony towards the indescribable sufferings of humanity. When a philosopher like Strauss ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the intimate stars Carelessly prattle of cosmic affairs. Flat on your back, with your nose pointing Mars, Search for the star who fled South from the Bears. Gaze for an hour at that little blue star, Giving him, cheerfully, wink for his wink; Shrink to the size of the being you ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... can we fail to shrink and suffer when they are cut asunder? When we have labored long in the light of hope, and lo! It goes out in darkness, and the blast of disappointment rushes upon us, can we help being sad? Can the mother prevent weeping when she kisses the lips of her infant that shall prattle to her no more; when she presses its tiny hand, so cold and still,-the little hand that has rested upon her bosom and twined in her hair; and even when it is so sweet and beautiful that she could strain it to her heart forever, it is laid away in the envious concealment ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... to his wife, caught her up rudely by one arm, and crushed her against his side, while he blazed defiant scorn upon Kano. "Come Dragon Wife," he said, in a voice that echoed through the space; "come back to our little home. No stupid old ones there, no prattle about painting. Only you and ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... thrust into flimsy coffins and buried one on top of another in a hole hastily dug for the purpose. Dismal stories like these reached us every day, but we were not morbidly impressed by them. Stella was a living charm against pestilence; her innocent playfulness and prattle kept us amused and employed, and surrounded us with an atmosphere that was physically and ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... Now, this silly prattle had been carried on in the arbor near the library, and Wesley, sitting under the curtain, had heard every word of it. Neither the words nor the unmistakable sounds that lips meeting lips make, which followed, served to soothe his angry ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... pleasure this light-hearted prattle of a pretty woman, agreed with her, gave her half-joking counsel, and altogether dropped at once into the tone habitual to him in talking to such women. In his Petersburg world all people were divided into utterly opposed classes. One, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... through Eleanor's society prattle, the guileless mind, the childish innocence. He recognises that as yet she is undeveloped—he mentally reviews her. She is absurd, improbable, and therefore fascinating. She is like a book with the best chapters ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... point to my desk and say, "There lie the proofs of my erudition—the highest prizes of my college class." But of what use they? The dry theories I had been taught had no application to the purposes of real life. My logic was the prattle of the parrot. My classic lore lay upon my mind like lumber; and I was altogether about as well prepared to struggle with life—to benefit either my fellow-man or myself—as if I had graduated in ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... asleep pretty assiduously too after that meal—a practice which I can well pardon in him—for, between ourselves, his wife, Maria Newboy, and his sister, Clarissa, are the loveliest and kindest of their sex, and I would rather hear their innocent prattle, and lively talk about their neighbors, than the best wisdom from the wisest man that ever wore ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at once a surprise and a recollection. Dear little book, I would say nothing about thee if I could help it, but a publisher pleads, and "No" is a churlish word. So for him I will say that I like thy prattle; that while travelling in a railway carriage on my way to the country of "Esther Waters," I passed my station by, and had to hire a carriage ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... moonbeams prattle, I hear a rattle Of hoofs on the chimney side; Then out on the snow I gaze below, "Hurrah! it's Kris ...
— The Goblins' Christmas • Elizabeth Anderson
... scraped before her, and called her "chere Maman"—a term to which she always responded in a tone of similar lightness and with her beautiful, unchanging smile. Only the lachrymose Lubotshka, with her goose feet and artless prattle, really liked our stepmother, or tried, in her naive and frequently awkward way, to bring her and ourselves together: wherefore the only person in the world for whom, besides Papa, Avdotia had a spark ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... hearing of him. Proportionably great was her surprise and joy at his sudden re-appearance, and his happiness was not less real at seeing once more those he so dearly loved. What with Bibi's eager questions, and the prattle of the little ones, an hour or two had glided away swiftly enough, when Boulanger suddenly asked what had ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... an heros; Maturusne senex, an adhuc florente juventa Fervidus; an matrona potens, an sedula nutrix; Mercatorne vagus, cultorne virentis agelli; Colchus, an Assyrius; Thebis nutritus, an Argis. The playful prattle in a frolick vein, And the severe affect a serious strain: For Nature first, to every varying wind Of changeful fortune, shapes the pliant mind; Sooths it with pleasure, or to rage provokes, Or brings it to the ground by sorrow's heavy strokes; ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... to her, and takes her hand, and would draw her away, and speaks to her in his prattle, and she understood him to mean that she should come with him to see the father. So she went, wondering what should next betide; and the little maiden went on the other side of her, holding by a fold of her skirt. ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... Bramble. And fluttering feed you with the Sirup, And if thence you put them by They to your white necke will flye, And if you expulse them there They'll hang vpon your braded Hayre; You so long shall see them prattle Till at length they'll fall to battle, 160 And when they haue fought their fill, You will smile to see them bill These birds my Lirope's shall be So thou'lt leaue him and ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... the stranger's turn to blush. And this little childish prattle seemed to have removed the barrier of strangership from between the two young people, who exchanged glances of a sort of merry vexation, and seemed to understand each other as ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... this jostling crowd, this babel of voices. What should he do, where should he go? To return to the yard and face the workmen was not to be thought of; if he went to his lodgings he would be called to dinner, and have to listen to the inane prattle of the school-master. That would be even more intolerable than this garish daylight, and these careless squads of men and women who paused in the midst of their laugh to turn and stare. Was there no spot in Stillwater where a broken man could ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... asleep. See how, O Wife, Night's finger on the lip of life Bids whist the tongue, so prattle-rife, Of busy Baby Charley. ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... ministry." Anything which diverted the labors of the clergy from the Church seemed to him an outrage and a degeneracy. How could they reach the state of beatific existence if they were to listen to the prattle of children, or be engrossed with the joys of conjugal or parental love? So he assembled a council, and caused it to pass canons to the effect that married priests should not perform any clerical office; that the people should not even be ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... motion to force out of sight the thoughts that for a moment threatened to define themselves in her mind. Suddenly she stopped; there were some children playing by the farm gate. They did not know that she was by, and she listened to their childish prattle unsuspected. To listen was an infinite assuagement, one that was overpoweringly sweet, and for some moments she almost forgot. But she woke from her ecstacy in deadly fear and great pain, for coming along the hedgerow the voice of a man was heard, and the children ran away. And ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... The young man gave a tender embrace to his companion, and went towards the tilbury which an old servant drove slowly to meet him. The lady had grown grave and almost sad. The child's prattle sounded unchecked through the last farewell kisses. Then the tilbury rolled away, and the lady stood motionless, listening to the sound of the wheels, watching the little cloud of dust raised by its passage along the road. Charles ran down ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... possible in giving her a clear field with her Sir Launcelot. Allen humored her, finding a real relief in this childish game which his little friend took so seriously. The one drawback was the amount of intimate information which she conveyed through the medium of her innocent prattle. Allen could not know what was coming next, and so was powerless to head off conversation upon subjects into which he knew he had no right to enter, for Patricia possessed the faculty of keeping herself well informed as to ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... had told me first something about herself: that she was a petted and somewhat spoiled only daughter; something of an heiress, too, if one might judge from her prattle about charming and costly costumes and a rather reckless expenditure of pin-money; and that she was betrothed to Gerald Trent, of the great Boston firm of Trent and Sons, with the full consent and approval of all concerned. What life could be more ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... thing that made her envious of other women. The idea of having a child of her own made her almost faint with longing—a baby to nurse, a little burden to wheel about in a perambulator, a companion to prattle to her all day while Will was busy down-stairs. If the hope of such joy had been taken from her by Mr. Barradine, oh, how immeasureably great ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... son and sent him back to his mother, who had better facilities for taking care of him. But the fact was he was too fond of the boy to be able to dispense with him, and he would rather bear the loss resulting from his mischief than miss his prattle ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... went those pretty babes, Rejoycing at that tide, Rejoycing with a merry mind, They should on cock-horse ride. They prate and prattle pleasantly, As they rode on the way, To those that should their butchers be, And ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... said, "come talk to me, for I know not what to do with my lone self today. Time hangs heavily in this gloomy house. I do verily think this Red Room has an evil influence over me. See if your childish prattle can drive away the ghosts that riot in these dark old corners—ghosts of a ruined and shamed life! Nay, shrink not—do I talk wildly? I mean not all I say—my brain seems on fire, little Beatrice. Come; it may be you know some grim old legend of this room—it must surely have one. Never ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... at the two sovereigns with a gloomy, inquiring glance. But suddenly his face brightened, and a smile played round his lips. "Ah," he cried, "I understand! Your majesties have overheard my prattle, and have sent for me to order me to be silent. But I cannot, your majesties; I cannot! I must give vent to my wrath, my vexation, and grief! I must be allowed to scold, for if I did not I would be obliged to weep, and it would be a disgrace for Blucher to act ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... engaged with the duties of her little household a week later, enjoying, as best she might, the lively prattle of the boys, when there was the noise of a wagon at the door, and closely following it a knock. "Papa! papa!" exclaimed the children, as with eager haste they preceded the mother. With scarcely less eagerness, Mary opened the door. Merciful God! "Temper ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... your empty prattle; And vow and swear 'tis true, There's more in one child's rattle, Than twenty fops ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... year) he always sent for them, and expressed a very great satisfaction in finding in their looks the charge he had given concerning them so well executed: but when they arrived at an age capable of entertaining him with their innocent prattle, what before was charity, improved into affection; and he began to regard them with a tenderness little inferior to paternal; but which still increased with ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... different occasions to present my official thanks, but I was invariably met at the door with word that he was sleeping and did not wish to be disturbed. The first two times I believed Mrs. McGurk; after that—well, I know our doctor! So when it came time to send our little maid to prattle her unconscious good-bys to the man who had saved her life, I despatched ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... eldest sister, And the next his arms, which glister, Whilst the third, with childish prattle, Cries, "when wilt ...
— The Talisman • George Borrow
... lay beneath the torturer's seeming cheerfulness, but she stifled her curiosity like the wise little woman she was and hastened to lay his supper before him. Through the progress of the meal—prepared by her in the way the torturer loved so well—she diverted him with her lively prattle. And at length, when she trod on the dog and caused it to give out a long-drawn howl, she made such a neat allusion to the Chamber and heretics that the torturer laughed till the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... thoughtfully upon this tribute as we went away. We had learned through the innocent prattle of our hostess's busy tongue that she desired a garden, but that Hans thought it a waste of time; that she had suggested open plumbing, and that Hans declined to go to the expense; that she saw little of her brothers nowadays, as Hans did not ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... is that I never suffer my children to join in the conversation of grown people, or foolishly imagine themselves on an equality with them, because they are permitted to prattle. I would have them give a short and modest answer when they are spoken to, but never to speak of their own head, or ask impertinent questions of persons so much older than themselves, to whom they ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... is, though Swift was among the staunchest of friends, he is not among the most sociable of authors. His writings are seldom in the vein either of tenderness or of merriment. We know of the tenderness of Swift only from a rare anecdote or from the prattle of the Journal to Stella. As for his laughter, as Mr. Whibley rightly points out, Pope was talking nonsense when he wrote of Swift as laughing and shaking in Rabelais's easy chair. Swift's humour is essentially of the intellect. He laughs out of his own bitterness ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... coffers overflow with pelf. Avoid the irreverent—the scoffer of hallowed things; and him who "looks upon the wine while it is red;" him too, "who hath a high look and a proud heart," and who "privily slandereth his neighbor." Do not heed the specious prattle about "first love," and so place, irrevocably, the seal upon your future destiny, before you have sounded, in silence and secrecy, the deep fountains of your own heart. Wait, rather, until your own character and that of him who would woo you, ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... sense that he ought to correct both the spirit and language of this insurrectionary speech, but Pansy pulled him along, and then swept him quite away with a torrent of prattle of the school, of her friends, of the teachers, of her life and its infinitely small miseries and pleasures. Pansy was voluble; never before had the colonel found himself relegated to the place of a passive listener. Nevertheless, he liked it, and as they passed on, under the shade ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... inch Italian and Neapolitan. Her youth had been all love, and her age was all superstition. She was garrulous, fond,—a gossip. Now she would prattle to the girl of cavaliers and princes at her feet, and now she would freeze her blood with tales and legends, perhaps as old as Greek or Etrurian fable, of demon and vampire,—of the dances round the great walnut-tree at Benevento, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... this afternoon, I proposed to Mrs. Anderson she should show me the house. The excellent creature, busy with the dairy, offered me Annie as her substitute. We went from cellar to garret, and the child's companionship and her ingenuous prattle successfully beguiled a couple of hours. The house in reality consists of two houses placed at right angles to each other. The older part, built between two and three hundred years ago, is inhabited by the Andersons themselves. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... we wor short we ne'er heeded, For that child fun us plenty to do. But we'd health, an we loved one another, Soa things breetened up after a while; An nah, that young lad an his mother, Cheer mi on wi' ther prattle ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... happy contented way, that took with him immensely. And now-a-days, no one ever saw the old gentleman going out of a morning, when Jasper was busy with his lessons, without Phronsie by his side, and many people turned to see the portly figure with the handsome head bent to catch the prattle of a little sunny-haired child, who trotted along, clasping his hand confidingly. And nearly all of them stopped to gaze the second time before they could convince themselves that it was really that queer, stiff old Mr. King of whom ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... the one hand the air is vocal with the mingled tumult of a vast and prosperous population. Every hillside smiles with an abundant harvest, every valley shelters a thriving village, the click of a busy mill drowns the prattle of every rivulet, and all the multitudinous sounds of business denote happy activity in every branch of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... had been debating in his mind whether this silly prattle was the result of real ignorance, snobbishness, or kindness of heart. He gave her the benefit of the doubt, however, and, wishing to show her that she might put her mind at rest as to his ability to overcome ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... their squalid degradation; they were sold into slavery for trifling debts; they had no homes. The poor man had no ambition or hope; his wife was a slave; his children were precocious demons, whose prattle was the cry for bread, whose laughter was the howl of pandemonium, whose sports were the tricks of premature iniquity, whose beauty was the squalor of disease and filth; he fled from a wife in whom he had no trust, from children ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... Speech. — N. speech, faculty of speech; locution, talk, parlance, verbal intercourse, prolation[obs3], oral communication, word of mouth, parole, palaver, prattle; effusion. oration, recitation, delivery, say, speech, lecture, harangue, sermon, tirade, formal speech, peroration; speechifying; soliloquy &c. 589; allocution &c. 586; conversation &c. 588; salutatory : screed: valedictory [U.S.][U.S.]. oratory; elocution, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... confine, jaded, bloated, sated— To set up vain pretence of being great, 'T is not so to be good; and, be it stated, The worthiest kings have ever loved least state: And tell them—But you won't, and I have prated Just now enough; but, by and by, I'll prattle Like Roland's horn[560] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... was turned to the savage, but not having the advantage of the glass, she could not see him, and continued her pleasant prattle. Like a dark, noiseless shadow, the Indian ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... qualities. In it we will drown our adversities, and in its fire consume our sorrows. Whoever has once seen the blissful chalice, will scorn the wine-cup. Glorious drink! thy color is the seal of purity, and reason proclaims it genuine. Drink with confidence, and regard not the prattle of fools, who condemn ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... older news that foreign sailor With the cheek of sea-tan stops to prattle To the young fig-seller with her basket 15 And the breasts that bud beneath ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... performances. He turned his knowing head one way, and then another, now sidewise toward the fruits, and then obliquely up at me, as I sat enjoying the repast, enlivening his gestures with gentle prattle, and yet never making a single demonstration in the direction of my food. He put me in such good humor that I was impelled to ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... in the volume is Old Christmas; one of the gems or sweets is Garry Owen, or the Snow-Woman, by Miss Edgeworth, for it abounds with good sentiment, just such as we should wish in the hearts and mouths of our own children, as a spice for their prattle. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... you would when I got to this point. You people who prattle about your Universal Laws never really consider the exact meaning of the term. My knowledge of the history of science is very vague, but I'm willing to bet that the first Law of Gravity ever dreamed up stated that things fell at such and such a speed, and accelerated ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... nature as well as dignity. Viola said, she had heard her father speak of Orsino, and that he was unmarried then. "And he is so now," said the captain; "or was so very lately, for, but a month ago, I went from here, and then it was the general talk (as you know what great ones do, the people will prattle of) that Orsino sought the love of fair Olivia, a virtuous maid, the daughter of a count who died twelve months ago, leaving Olivia to the protection of her brother, who shortly after died also; and for the love of this dear brother, they say, she has abjured the sight and company of men." Viola, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... tranquilly smoking my pipe before a blazing fire, may have as many charms as the best brig in which one may sometimes perish with hunger and thirst. Right or wrong, I imagine to myself again that the prattle of two or three little monkeys around me, may be as agreeable as the sound of the wind howling through the masts, or of Spanish balls whistling about one's ears. All this, Kate, signifies that I mean to marry; and who do you suppose has put this pretty whim ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... from the little maiden one word of what she heard or saw, after she entered these mysterious and secluded apartments. The slightest question concerning Master Heriot's ghost, was sufficient, at her gayest moment, to check the current of her communicative prattle, and render her silent. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Moses the existence of but one God, which he assigned as reason that our Lord Jesus cannot be true God on account of the impossibility of God and man being united in one being. Thus he gave us the prattle of his reason, which he made the sole standard for ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... her try her pretty wiles on me when I'm poverty stricken and penniless, when it won't do any more good to coax than if you were to prattle to a dead man at his tomb.[18] The money goes to my father, ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... the table if you have nothing else." Despite a certain stiffness of manner and speech, he was a man of kindly heart and simple, unworldly nature. After the first ice was broken, the most unintellectual person might prattle away to him at ease, for his sympathies were of the broadest. Both Mr. and Mrs. Stevenson had a deep affection for him, and "no matter who else was there, the evenings seemed ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez |
