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More "Babble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the shepherd, who knew only the pastoral pipe that gathered his sheep, refers to with contempt. He uses a very rare word of uncertain meaning, which is probably best rendered in some such way as the Revised Version does: 'They sing idle songs.' To him their elaborate performances seemed like empty babble. Worse than that, they 'devise musical instruments like David.' But how unlike him in the use they make of art! What a descent from the praises of God to the 'idle songs' fit for the hot dining-halls and the guests ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... The memorandum-book alluded to—on the first leaf of which he had written in his neatest hand (as if to encourage himself to begin) "Affectation"— contains, besides the names of three of the intended personages, Sir Babble Bore, Sir Peregrine Paradox, and Feignwit, nothing but unembodied sketches of character, and scattered particles of wit, which seem waiting, like the imperfect forms and seeds in chaos, for the brooding of genius to nurse them into system ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... to you whether she has a soul or not," says the voice, "provided she can babble pleasantly at dinner and play cribbage with ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... There was a wild babble of questions and answers, and it was a long time before all had calmed down enough ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... "were made to mourn." If they conceive a joke, their sad, sharp voices and angular gesticulations make it miscarry. Now and then they rebel against their constitutions, poor fellows, and try to imitate the jovial ancestors they have read of; babble shrilly of noctes coenaeque Deum, petits soupers, and what not. It is mostly idle talk. They know too well that digestion does not wait upon appetite in the evening,—and that they will feel better for the next week, if they restrict their debauch to dandelion coffee and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... he to do with rabble? Froth is better than their babble; Let him toss them flakes of froth, To pronounce his ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... to his tent and stretched himself on a blanket by the side of the snoring tall soldier. In the darkness he saw visions of a thousand-tongued fear that would babble at his back and cause him to flee, while others were going coolly about their country's business. He admitted that he would not be able to cope with this monster. He felt that every nerve in his body would ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... Celia. I didn't care for her at first, but she is so deliciously blind! Anything more exquisitely unserviceable as a chaperon I can't imagine. Absorbed in antiquity, she ignores the babble of contemporaneous lovers. That any man could look at Kitty when he could look at a cathedral passes her comprehension. I do not presume too greatly on her absent-mindedness, however, lest she should turn unexpectedly and rend ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... man babble those excuses? It was because he scented danger. He was not by nature suspicious, but—what possible motive, except murder, could this man have for enticing him to that cave? Acquaintance in the open valley was all ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... of prostrating the most vigorous frame, of clouding the most splendid intellect, of benumbing the most delicate moral feelings, of palsying the most eloquent tongue, of teaching those on whose lips listening senates hung, to mutter and babble with the drunkard, and of entombing the most brilliant talents and hopes of youth, wherever man can be induced to drink. The establishment of every distillery, and every dram-shop, and every grocery where it is sold, secures the certainty that many a man will thereby become a drunkard, and ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... might apply that description to Browne's poetry; he might urge that the breezes which blew down these leafy alleys and over those trim parterres were not more grateful than the fragrance exhaled from the 'Pastorals'; that the brooks and birds babble and twitter in the printed page not less blithely than in that western Paradise. What so pleasant as to read of May-games, true-love knots, and shepherds piping in the shade? of pixies and fairy-circles? of rustic ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the Courts of Justice (Chancery and King's Bench) were held here, and as the hall was also lined with shops, and the babble and walking to and fro were incessant, it is not wonderful that justice was sometimes left undone. It would be difficult—nay, impossible—to tell in detail all the strange historic scenes enacted in Westminster ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... up-stream with a heavier note, and was distinguishable at much greater distances, and the boats in passing through some of the heavier rapids did so in the midst of a din quite different from the gentle babble of the shallow stream far toward its source. The boom of the bad water far below ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... his oats behind the girth. Not so much in the way of shoulders," and so on. And so her eyes asked: "Is this man trustworthy in money matters; is he likely to try to play the lover; is he likely to let his women be troublesome? Is he, above all, likely to babble ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... process to a knot of merchants, who, with bent brows and eager eyes, were already forming a Company for its adoption. Here floated the latest anecdote of Bolivar; and there a murmur of some new movement of Cochrane's. And then the perpetual babble about 'rising states,' and 'new loans,' and 'enlightened views,' and 'juncture of the two oceans,' and 'liberal principles,' and 'steamboats to Mexico,' and the earnest look which every one had in the room. How different to the vacant gaze that we have ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... The River, jaded and forlorn, Welters and wanders wearily—wretchedly—on; Yet in and out among the ribs Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles Of some dead lake-built city, fall of skulls, Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories, Lingers to babble, to a broken tune (Once, O the unvoiced music of my heart!) So melancholy a soliloquy It sounds as it might tell The secret of the unending grief-in-grain, The terror of Time and Change and Death, That ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... in company, two lights of altogether a different nature; but the party get into a rattling conversation, in which the noisy babble of the College Cubs ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... pleasant afternoon musing over these papers. Their variety is endless, and the dispositions of mind displayed by these librarians are wide as the poles asunder. Some of them babble like babies, others are evidently austere scholars; some are gravely bent on the best methods of classifying catalogues, economizing space, and sorting borrowers' cards; others, scorning such mechanical details, bid us regard libraries, and consequently librarians, as the primary ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... babble of passengers who were herded in the cabin with brigands guarding them. George Prince, bareheaded, but shrouded in his cloak, showed in a patch of light behind Moa. He looked my way and then ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... desired them, would not come. His arm went to her neck and settled there. His hand caressed her hair, her cheek. He kissed her eyes, her lips, her languid hands; and the words that came were only an infantile babble of regrets and apologies, assurances that he did love her, that he had never loved any one before, and never would love any ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... King: "Have hope, O friend! Yea, Death disgraced is hard; Much honour shall be thine"; and called the Captain of the Guard, Yar Khan, a bastard of the Blood, so city-babble saith, And he was honoured of the King — the which is salt to Death; And he was son of Daoud Shah, the Reiver of the Plains, And blood of old Durani Lords ran fire in his veins; And 'twas to tame an Afghan pride nor Hell nor Heaven ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... exclaimed Nevill. "I don't think De Mora can have got home yet from the palace. I saw him having supper. Suppose I dart back, flutter gracefully round him, babble 'tile talk' a bit—he's a tile expert after my own heart—then casually ask what Arabs he's got staying with him. If Maieddine's in his house it can't be a secret—incidentally I may find out where the fellow comes from ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... slitherings of the wheels the grinding and squeaking of the brake, had made them all enemies. She had sat tense and averted, seeing the general greenery, feeling that the cool flowing air might be great happiness, conscious of each form and each voice, of the insincerity of the exclamations and the babble of conversation that struggled above the noise of their going, half seeing Pastor Lahmann opposite to her, a little insincerely smiling man in an alpaca suit and a soft felt hat. She got down the steps without his assistance. With whom should she take refuge?... ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... matter for these! But Giotto, you, Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it— Oh, never! it shall not be counted true— 235 That a certain precious little tablet Which Buonarroti eyed like a lover— Was buried so long in oblivion's womb And, left for another than I to discover, Turns up at last! ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... the Pomoerium is holy ground: others talk of the grandeur of Rome; you make me realize its grandeur: others prate of their love for Rome: you, saying little, make me tingle with a subtly communicated sense of how you love Rome: others babble of how life away from Rome is not life, but merely existence; of how any dwelling out of Rome is exile, of how they long for Rome; you, by some sorcery, make me not only feel how you long for Rome, but have ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... and there was a sound as if his companion had given his mouth a pat, for from pretty close at hand there was the low babble of voices. ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... discussing these matters, trying to find out the truth about them, writing books and building churches—our civilization is going to drift just precisely as those other civilizations which have been guided by the same dreadful fatalism have drifted—towards the Turkish goal. "Kismet. Man is a fool to babble of these things; what he may do is of no avail; all things will happen as they were pre-ordained." And the English Turk—the man who prefers to fight things out instead of thinking ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... fell still again, save for the babble of the brook, and there I lay, bound, and heard only the stream in the silence of ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... Babble of comment and argument! It was a picked fight—anybody could see that. Why should Lapierre come north in the Flagg interests? Lapierre had never worked in a Flagg crew. It was begun so suddenly and was ended so soon! A minute's flash of drama ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... carefulness on the littered settee, and Rabeira started up with a wild scream of fright and a babble of oaths. Kettle shut ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... vibrates, and thus produce the human bleat. We narrow or widen or check or stop the flow of this sound by the lips, the tongue, the teeth, and thus articulate, or break into joints, the even current of sound. The sound varies with the degree and kind of interruption, as the "babble" of the brook with the shape and size of its impediments,—pebbles, or rocks, or dams. To whisper is to articulate without bleating, or vocalizing; to coo as babies do is to bleat or vocalize without articulating. Machines are easily made that bleat not unlike human beings. A bit of India-rubber ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... had been supplied with his monastic drink, and the waiter had retired, Trent looked across the table with significance. 'In this babble of many conversations,' he said, 'we can speak as freely as if we were on a bare hillside. The waiter is whispering soft nothings into the ear of the young woman at the pay-desk. We are alone. What do you think of that interview ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... seen there, and said they would bet he never had enough money to buy that one. Maybe he could buy a medium-sized one, but not that. All of them kept a repellent manner for any passing boy who might be selfishly moved to join them. The spendthrift let them babble, preserving a rather grim silence. The whale of a melon was indeed a noble growth, and its price was thirty-five cents. The announcement of this caused a solemn hush to fall upon the sycophants; a hush broken by the cool, masterful tones ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... them, or find someone on the spot to do what is necessary. When there are no mineral waters or sea baths to give a place importance, Germans say they have come there to do a Luftkur. A delightful Frenchwoman who has written about England lately is amused by our everlasting babble about a "change." This one needs a change, she says, and that one is away for a change, and the other means to have a change next week. So the Germans amuse us by their eternal "cures." One tries air, and the ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... evinced that my friend was in the melancholy condition of those in whom the principle of animal life has unfortunately survived that of mental intelligence. He gazed a moment at me, but then seemed insensible of my presence, and went on—he, once the most courteous and well-bred—to babble unintelligible but violent reproaches against his niece and servant, because he himself had dropped a teacup in attempting to place it on a table at his elbow. His eyes caught a momentary fire from his irritation; but he struggled in vain for words to express himself adequately, as, looking ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... has swung away from the idea of the dream as a warning or a prophecy, he has accepted the even more untrue conception of dreaming as the mere sport of sleep,—the "babble of the mind," the fantastic and insignificant freak-play of undirected mental processes, or the result of physical sensations without relation to the rest of mental life. No wonder, then, that Freud's startling ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... Argument seemed child's babble indeed under the smile of Night. And the face of the woman, left alone at her window, was a little like the face of this warm, sweet night. It was sensitive, harmonious; and its harmony was not, as in some faces, cold—but seemed to tremble and glow and flutter, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... listening to the babble of some children who lay on the grass near by, I resumed my walk, and, meeting a Welshman in the village street, I asked him my nearest way back to Rhyl. "Dim Sassenach," said he, after a pause. How odd that an hour ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... artistic temperament,' as Mrs. Hand calls it. It must be awfully trying, though, not to be able to babble when you're pleased. It's such a relief to get it out of your system. I'd simply burst if I tried to keep quiet ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... pray is not for thee to down on thy knees, and say over a many Scripture words only; for that thou mayest do, and yet do nothing but babble. But if thou from a sense of thy baseness canst groan out thy heart's desire before the Lord, He will hear thee, and grant thy desire; for He can tell what is the meaning of the groanings of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... efface all traces and memory of my degradation. Was not I struck by two vile slaves, who will babble through the city? Was not I held down by an executioner? These arms, which have wound round the master of the world, and no other, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... library and shut the door. The room rested him, after the babble across. He lighted a cigar, and stood for a moment before Natalie's portrait. It had been painted while he was abroad at, he suspected, Rodney's instigation. It left him quite cold, ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... salary and we live in a poky house and I do the cooking. I'd think it awfully funny if it was happening to any of my friends—but this is terrible! Well, goat-tending tells, doesn't it? And after all we have done for him—to babble on about honesty and earning and all those socialistic ideas. He is a dangerous man, papa; really. ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... share, The talk flies fast, and scandal fills the air; It makes a sober person's head go round, At these assemblies, just to hear the sound Of so much gab, with not a word to say; And as a learned man remarked one day Most aptly, 'tis the Tower of Babylon, Where all, beyond all limit, babble on. And just to tell you how this point came ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... companies, to report his sermon to all the birds in the universe. A grasshopper remained a week with St. Francis during the absence of the Virgin Mary, and pittered on his head. He grew so companionable with a nightingale, that when a nest of swallows began to babble, he hushed them by desiring them not to tittle-tattle of their sister, the nightingale. Attacked by a wolf, with only the sign-manual of the cross, he held a long dialogue with his rabid assailant, till the wolf, meek as a lap-dog, stretched ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... soul in torment, listening to music in heaven. I stood, stiff and numb in horror, staring into the gulf. The roar of the cataract was smothered to a babble. The rainbow vibrated tremulously to the dropping harmonies. I saw the familiar shadow as it gided to my feet. A soft hand thrilled me with its touch, and the old ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... Then a babble of inquiry and speculation broke out Where was the thing going? What was it doing? What did its sudden swift voyage mean? For the rest of the day the camp was less sleepy than usual. Men everywhere discussed the ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... the way I came through. One morning I was just getting out of bed, "this gibberish, this jargon" as the enemy likes to call it, began to come. The Lord said, "Let it babble!" I let. The babble increased, and by night I was up to my neck. I let. I still let. That's all. Someone else does the work, and it does not ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... in a way which offended people with mental blinders. He declares that the war quite completely knocked humbug on the head and bashed shams irreparably. "Rebels," says he, meaning those who speak their mind and write of things as they see them, "must be drowned in a babble ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... you have just heard? I can explain it in a few words. There are two kinds of music: one, petty, poor, second-rate, always the same, based on a hundred or so of phrases which every musician has at his command, a more or less agreeable form of babble which most composers live in. We listen to their strains, their would-be melodies, with more or less satisfaction, but absolutely nothing is left in our mind; by the end of the century they are forgotten. But the nations, from the ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... remittance was reduced to $100 a month. I can't get drunk like a gentlemen on that—you couldn't yourself—and it's an inhuman outrage. It may drive me to reform—I've thought of it. You're such a sympathetic listener, Doc. It makes me babble." His hand was on the door-knob. "Since you've nothing to say I suppose you mean to stick to your story, but you must admit, Doc, I've at least been as much of a gentleman as a rattlesnake. I'm rattling before ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... The babble on this announcement was tremendous. Gatty and Felix shook hands on the spot, and congratulated each other on the probable fulfilment of their secret wishes. Madame turned deadly pale, and sunk into a seat. My cousin tossed up her head, and said "anything is better than this confounded ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... little restaurants and cafes around us were wide open, with customers drinking coffee and chatting merrily at the small tables outside. The sound of a guitar strumming softly in the distance mingled with the clatter of chinaware and the babble of voices. ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... John, "I guessed by thy insolent babble thou wert no true lover of the long-bow, and I see thou darest not adventure thy skill among such merry-men as ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... has become accustomed to his new food (whether he likes it or not) or begins to babble a word or two, he is given a name that usually recalls the place where he was born, some particular event of the moment or the way he may have of making use of a word often, ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... young chap said sunthin' here, but it was entirely unbeknown to me; though I thought I heard the murmur of his voice makin' a sort of a tinklin' accompinment to my thoughts, sunthin' like the babble of a brook a runnin' along under forest boughs, when the wind with its mighty melody is sweepin' through 'em. Great emotions was sweepin' along with power, and couldn't be stayed. And I went right on, not sensin' a ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... quarter, and so close that one might almost have hove a biscuit on board, all was confusion with him; the hands being busy taking in their canvas in a slipshod, lubberly way that would have disgraced a collier; while the babble of tongues must have been deafening, judging from what we ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... morality, conduct, life are Surveyed from every point of the compass, but from an eminence always. Austerity holds no place in his philosophy; he finds room even "for the hours that babble aloud in their wantonness." But all those who follow him are led by smiling wisdom to the heights where happiness sits enthroned between goodness and love, where virtue rewards itself in the "silence that is the walled garden ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... and mine; and Fate grudges that even these few poor hours, which make the sum of it, should be spent together. Think how long a man and woman can live side by side at best. Yet every Sunday of your life you go to church and babble about a ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... said. "She is truly 'Manlia,' though called, against custom, for my dead Marcius. When Claudians change the toga for the paludamentum, and Ogulnians cease to babble of Greek philosophy, then shall a Manlian be lacking in the spirit of our order—ay, and in ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... the Castle, with a panegyric on her dead nephew, and an astonished dissertation on the strange fact that Olivia had not had a woman with her during this sad time. She ascribed her abstinence from this stimulant to her desire to be alone with her grief. Olivia encouraged her harmless babble by a vague murmur at the right points, and continued to look pathetic. It was all her aunt by marriage needed, and it left Olivia free to think her own thoughts. She gave but few of them to her dead husband; the living claimed ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... hullabaloo came up from below. A roar of laughter and the babble of male voices was mixed with the rumble of wheels and the pistol-like crack ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... up, too, staring out at her husband; and a quick babble of talk and exclamations from behind made itself audible in spite of the ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... his voice above the excited babble. "Please be calm, everyone! We'll have the lights ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... gaping monotony of this jargon, full of the vowel a, is admirably suited to the mouth of the vast, half-stupid speaker. It is like a babble of the gigantic infancy ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... burning with regret, and vanity, and love of pleasure; his head without habits of activity or principles of judgment, a whirlpool where fantasies and hallucinations and 'fragments of science' were chaotically jumbled to and fro. But he could babble college-latin; and talk with a trenchant tone about the 'revolutions of Philosophy.' Such accomplishments procured him pardon from his parents: the precentorial spirit of his father was more than reconciled on discovering that Daniel could also preach and play upon the organ. The good old ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... the doings of the day from the four corners of the world, the tales of love and death, of fire and flood, of strife and pestilence, and under eight thousand miles of shivering sea, whispers the babble ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... desk before her departure, a proceeding which provoked indignant sniffs from the witnesses; but, sublimely indifferent to public opinion, she put the key in her pocket, and stalked from the room. The girls gave her a few moments' grace to get out of earshot, then broke into a babble ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... any more of either. I remember that His Majesty consulted with the chancellor as to the form of the oath, and that he spoke for a long time in an undertone to the cardinal: after which the last-born child was given into the charge of the midwife, and as they were always afraid she would babble about his birth, she has told me that they often threatened her with death should she ever mention it: we were also forbidden to speak, even to each other, of the child whose birth we ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of conifers, and in two places tall cascades. The nearer ground was strewn with glaciated boulders and supported nothing but a stunted Alpine vegetation of compact clustering stems and stalkless flowers. No river was visible, but the air was full of the rush and babble of a torrent close at hand. A bleak and biting wind was blowing. Ever and again a snowflake drifted past. The springless frozen earth under Bert's feet felt strangely dead and heavy after ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... the cheap trip to Edinboro, juist to hae a bit look round the metrolopis, as Sandy ca'd it to the fowk i' the train. He garred me start twa-three times sayin't; I thocht he'd swallowed his pipe-shank, he gae sic a babble. ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... Mac-o-chee: Through a lilied memory Plays the wayward little creek Round thy home at hide-and-seek— As I see and hear it, still Romping round the wooded hill, Till its laugh-and-babble blends With the silence while it sends Glances back to kiss the sight, In its babyish delight, Ere it strays amid the gloom Of the glens that burst in bloom Of the rarest rhyme for ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... soft touch now and then to support her voice, has warbled some sweet, sad melody intertwined with the longings or regrets of some tender-hearted poet, it has seemed to me that so to hush the rustling of the silks and silence the babble of the buds, as they call the chicks of a new season, and light up the flame of romance in cold hearts, in desolate ones, in old burnt-out ones,—like mine, I was going to say, but I won't, for it isn't so, and you may laugh to hear me say it isn't so, if you ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... me see. What a curious sensation! To caress the figures of my madness! Then there is no longer any sanity in me. For my fingers are aware of hair. Ah, dear child, Mallare is completely mad since at last his senses betray him. But they betray him sweetly. For though I babble to myself you have no existence, though I smile at the thought of caressing a phantom, my senses derive a mysterious pleasure from this contact with nothingness. Curious ... curious ... come closer, Rita. Now smile at me. Yes, your lips move. You are an automaton born of ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... brook, or, as they say in Indiana, the "branch[26]," that something happened which brought him to a sudden decision. Ralph never afterward could forget that brook. It was a swift-running little stream, that did not babble blatantly over the stones. It ran through a thicket of willows, through the sugar-camp, and out into Means's pasture. Ralph had just passed through the thicket, had just crossed the brook on the half-decayed log that spanned it, when, ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... watching the crowd. Besides the universal tension, there were laughter and hope and exhilaration in the faces. The enthusiasm of this boyish multitude warmed one. The girl wished to get into this spirit—to be one of them. Then suddenly from the babble at their elbows came a discordant note, not long nor loud, only a few words, penetrating and harsh with the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... need? If they had consulted him a little on this matter, it appears to me that he might have addressed them pretty nearly thus: 'Gentlemen, it is not the arguers who do harm; philosophy can gang its ain gait without risk;' the people either do not hear it at all or let it babble on, and pay it back all the disdain it feels for them. I do not argue myself, but others argue, and what harm comes of it? We have arranged that my great influence in the court and my pretended omnipotence should serve you as a pretext for allowing a free, peaceful course to the sportive ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... one's last hour. And, I don't know how it is, but I still want to go on living. Only, my little sir, don't you repeat my words; we must respect the clergy—it's only fools that don't respect them; and I'm to blame to babble nonsense in my ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... buried, and the song of hope is hushed for ever, then revenge mounts the chariot and gathers the reins in her hands of steel; and beyond the writhing hearts whose blood dyes her rushing wheels sees only the goal. Some wise anatomists of that frail yet invincible sphinx—woman's nature, babble of one weighty fact, one conquering law,—that only the mother-joy, the mother-love, fully unseals the slumbering sweetness and latent tenderness of her being; for me, maternity opened the sluices of a sea of hate and gall. Had I never felt the velvet touch of tiny fingers ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... was beginning to ramble and babble incoherently, her memories of her own and the experiences of others all confused in her mind. When she had about finished a story about how one of the slave women, "bust de skull" of the head of her marster,'" 'cause she was nussin a sick baby an' he tell her she got to git ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... inartistic when a poor woman at the Adelphi says, "Do you think I will sell my own child?" But poor women in the Battersea High Road do say, "Do you think I will sell my own child?" They say it on every available occasion; you can hear a sort of murmur or babble of it all the way down the street. It is very stale and weak dramatic art (if that is all) when the workman confronts his master and says, "I'm a man." But a workman does say "I'm a man" two or three times every day. In fact, it is tedious, possibly, to hear ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... amusing study—in moderation, and for boys. But protracted too long, it becomes a perfect plague. Your philosopher is a complete novice in the life comme il faut.... I like very well to see a child babble and stammer; there is even a grace about it when it becomes his age. But to see a man continue the prattle of the child, is absurd. Just so with your philosophy." The consequence of this prevalent spirit of universal skepticism was a general laxity of morals. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... muttered the hermit; "but what do I care for the world's babble? Yes, she was of the highest and grandest type. Then," he continued, "then I thought the world could never contain another equal to her. So I forsook it and repaired to this mountain fastness to spend the remainder of my life alone—to ...
— Options • O. Henry
... dexterity. He had a large, but not, I think, very remunerative practice amongst the poaching, deer-stealing, smuggling community of those parts, to whom it was of vital importance that the hurts received in their desperate pursuits should be tended by some one not inclined to babble of the number, circumstances, or whereabouts of his patients. This essential condition Lee, hypocrite and knave as he was, strictly fulfilled; and no inducement could, I think, have prevailed upon him to betray ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... way to the door, and Roddy, frowning gravely, sank back into his chair, the long silence was broken by a babble of whispered questions and rapid answers. Even to those who understood no English the pantomime had been sufficiently enlightening. Unobtrusively the secret agents of Alvarez rose from the tables and stole into the night. A half-hour ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... quietly into the vestibule and the company burst into an incongruous babble. Dorn listened to their voices, again firm and self-sufficient, chattering formalities. He watched Rachel adjusting her hat with over-eager gestures. Her eyes were avoiding him. She seemed breathless, her head squirming under the necessity of having to remain for another ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... Germany. My political ideal is the United States of the World, a union of states whose state boundaries are determined by what I have defined as the natural map of mankind. I cannot understand those pacifists who talk about the German right to "expansion," and babble about a return of her justly lost colonies. That seems to me not pacificism but patriotic inversion. This large disposition to hand over our fellow-creatures to a Teutonic educational system, with "frightfulness" in reserve, to "efficiency" on Wittenberg lines, leaves me—hot. The ghosts ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... sit down in a corner with him, pour punch into every hollow of his poor head until his secrets jump out like wet mice. Make him chatter, especially about the elections. Go, little man, and take good care not to get overheated yourself and babble. ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... storm-strewn path; it talks beneath tall precipices and high banks,—a voice that has been the same for innumerable ages; and yet, if you listen, you will perceive a continual change and variety in its babble, and sometimes it seems to swell louder upon the ear than at others,—in the same spot, I mean. By and by man makes a dam for it, and it pours over it, still making its voice heard, while it labors. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... said Athos, with his usual careless generosity, giving him his own, "and be a good lad. Remember, if you talk, if you babble, if you get drunk, you risk your master's head, who has so much confidence in your fidelity, and who answers for you. But remember, also, that if by your fault any evil happens to d'Artagnan, I will find you, wherever you may be, for the purpose of ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... half. The men are fishers, for there is no other occupation to be followed on the sterile rock. Every day also the level sweep of sands is wandered over by the women and children, who seek for cockles in the little pools; the babble of whose voices echoes far through the quiet air, and whose shadows fall long and unbroken on the brown wilderness. Now and then the black-robed figure of a priest, or of one of the brothers dwelling in the monument on the top ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... vent to a low, gurgling sound, and made up his mind to babble a few words about the caverns; but his throat was dry, and his tongue refused ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... by the river?" I heard him babble to his cabman, with wilful breadth of speech. "Then drive there, mon, ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... sneer. As well tell reasonable Irishmen that the world is flat, or that a straight line between two given points is the longest, or that the sun moves round the moon, or any other inane absurdity contrary to the evidence of science and their senses. The English Gladstonians who babble about brotherly love and conciliation should move about Dublin in disguise. Disguise would in their case be necessary to get at the truth, for Paddy is a shrewd trickster, and delights in humbugging this species of visitor, whom he calls "the slobbering Saxon." Then if they would return ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... of his glory and his name, Forgetful of his princedom and its cares. And this forgetfulness was hateful to her. And by and by the people, when they met In twos and threes, or fuller companies, Began to scoff and jeer and babble of him As of a prince whose manhood was all gone, And molten down in mere uxoriousness. And this she gathered from the people's eyes: This too the women who attired her head, To please her, dwelling on his boundless love, Told Enid, and they saddened her the more: And day by day she thought ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... were. But my father's unlike her; he's fond of outward appearance. Gentle maiden, deem me not cold and void of all feeling, If I disclose my father's nature to you, who're a stranger. Yes, such words have never before escaped, I assure von Out of my mouth, which is little accustom'd to babble and chatter; But you have managed to worm all my secrets from out of my bosom. Well, my worthy father the graces of life holds in honour, Wishes for outward signs of love, as well as of rev'rence, And would doubtless ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... and worn and twisted with years, and women aged to all appearance as the Fates themselves. They sat together in knots and talked—God only knows what they found to discuss—in low equable tones, curiously in contrast to the strident babble with which natives are accustomed to make day hideous. Now and then an access of that sudden fury which had possessed me in the morning would lay hold on a man or woman; and with yells and imprecations the sufferer would attack the steep ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... conscious; nor, indeed, have I found words since. I ran sideways, shouting; I dug glad heels into the squelching soil; I splashed diamond showers from puddles with a stick; I hurled clods skywards at random, and presently I somehow found myself singing. The words were mere nonsense,—irresponsible babble; the tune was an improvisation, a weary, unrhythmic thing of rise and fall: and yet it seemed to me a genuine utterance, and just at that moment the one thing fitting and right and perfect. Humanity would have rejected it with scorn, ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... clothed, move through the meadows, splash in the river, and rest beneath the palm-trees, which meet in graceful clusters here and there, as if striving to get beneath one another's shadow. Dirty villages swarm and babble on the river's brink. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... bounteous year of fruit. The smell of peaches and grapes piled in barrows and barrels scented the air, as it scents the memory still. The odour of a peach brings back to me all the magic-lantern impressions of a stranger—memories of dazzling, dancing, tropical light, bustle, babble, and gayety; they made me feel that I had never been alive before, and the people of the old seaport, active as I had thought them, became in a bewildered retrospect as slow and quiet as snails. But far sweeter to me than the fragrance ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... maketh light of Thee, And sets at naught Thy holy word, For tongues that babble blasphemy, And impious hands that hold the sword— Grant vengeance, ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... veranda the group of figures in the field were partly visible. We saw ghostly wraiths now among them—apparitions three or four feet above the ground. They solidified and dropped to earth, with their comrades gathering over them. The babble of voices in a strange tongue reached us. New ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... boats. They had never seen the princess go down before. Half the men were under water in a moment; but they had all, one after another, come up to the surface again for breath, when—tinkle, tinkle, babble, and gush! came the princess's laugh over the water from far away. There she was, swimming like a swan. Nor would she come out for king or queen, chancellor or daughter. She ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... own ill nature," said Ellen stoutly. "But let us cease this moral babble, as Milton says. I wish you'd tell me why you're surprised that I should be clever, though you were quite cairtain that he would have chosen a ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... simple contrivances; but no smile crossed the face of Angelo. He ate and drank to sustain his strength, as a weapon is sharpened; and having done, he gathered up what was left, and lay at her feet with his eyes fixed upon an old grey stone. She, too, sat brooding. The endless babble and noise of the water had hardened the sense of its being a life in that solitude. The floating of a hawk overhead scarce had the character of an animated thing. Angelo turned round to look at her, and looking upward as he lay, his sight was smitten by spots ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wren is something that must be heard to be appreciated; words can no more describe it than they can paint the sky at evening, or translate the babble of the ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... enemies of all degrees, From sandlot orators and sandlot fleas To fallen gentlemen and rising louts Who babble slander at your drinking bouts, And, filled with unfamiliar wine, begin Lies drowned, ere born, in more congenial gin. But most attend, ye persons of the press Who live (though why, yourselves alone can guess) In hope deferred, ambitious still to shine By hating me at half a cent ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... the steady hissing of rain on the shrubs outside his window. But suddenly that silence was shattered and shredded into fragments by a scream from somewhere close at hand outside in the black garden, a scream of supreme and despairing terror. Again, and once again it shrilled up, and then a babble of awful words was interjected. A quivering sobbing voice that ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... A babble of talk began and ran the round of the passengers, breaking out among a group of younger people into a ripple of laughter. For a quarter of an hour this went on, then, to the amazement of all on board, the captain, after glancing anxiously at the compass-card, ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... joy, a rapture that vents itself in manly tears, perhaps, and certainly in womanly tears. But really is it any such emotion? Honestly is not it a cruel embarrassment, which all the hypocritical pretences cannot hide? The old friends smile and laugh, and babble incoherently at one another, but are they genuinely glad? Is not each wishing the other at that end of the earth from which he came? Have they any use for each other such as people of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... fellow has become accustomed to his new food (whether he likes it or not) or begins to babble a word or two, he is given a name that usually recalls the place where he was born, some particular event of the moment or the way he may have of making use of a word often, ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... grown-ups for this once. She rattled along to me about the club dances at home, and how they was going to have better music this year, and how the assembly hall had been done over in a perfectly dandy colour scheme by the committee she was on, and a lot of girlish babble that took up much room ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... interview with Le Gardeur. Bigot told me that my friend unfortunately at that moment was unfit to be seen, and had refused himself to all his city friends. I partly believed him, for I heard the voice of Le Gardeur in a distant room, amid a babble of tongues and the rattle of dice. I sent him a card with a few kind words, and received it back with an insult—deep and damning—scrawled upon it. It was not written, however, in the hand of Le Gardeur, although signed by his name. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... whose kindly words come to me Voiced only in lost lisps of ink and pen, If I had power to tell the good you do me, And how the blood you warm goes laughing through me, My tongue would babble baby-talk again. ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... jargon through the fields, Your bobolinkish gabble, Your fine anacreontic glee, Your tipsy reveller's babble! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... her swains were no longer contented to sit behind her chair all the evening, seeing an empty corner of the stage across Georgia's ivory shoulder, and hearing the voices of invisible actors in the brief pauses of Georgie's subdued babble. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles, I bubble into eddying bays, I babble ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... legs, he wishes to ride on the necks and shoulders of all flesh. The small enchanter nothing can withstand, no seniority of age, no gravity of character; uncles, aunts, grandsires, grandams, fall an easy prey: he conforms to nobody, all conform to him; all caper and make mouths, and babble, and chirrup to him. On the strongest shoulders he rides, and pulls the hair of ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... land, if a marvel it seemeth that men ever sought Thy wastes for a field and a garden fulfilled of all wonder and doubt, And feasted amidst of the winter when the fight of the year had been fought, Whose plunder all gathered together was little to babble about; Cry aloud from thy wastes, O thou land, "Not for this nor for that was I wrought Amid waning of realms and of riches and death of things worshipped and sure, I abide here the spouse of a God, and I made and I make ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... you ran straight," said Christian, with sympathy in her voice. Piercing her weariness and preoccupation was the feeling that he had something to say that lay under this babble of conversation. He was wrapping himself in a cloak of verbiage, but above the cloak his tormented eyes met hers, and the pain ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... for the marriage of the clergy glow with admiration. "Da mihi uxorem," he commences. "Get me a wife, Frederick, after my own heart, such as you know I should like—neat, young, fairly educated, modest, patient; one with whom I may joke and play, and yet be serious; to whom I may babble and talk, mixing hearty fun and kisses together; one whose presence will lighten my anxiety and soften ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... which sent a short message to the Archon proposing that the people of the country should send to him and his one-half of their yearly wealth for ever, "or," so the message proceeded, "take the consequences." Upon the Archon communicating this to the people there arose at once an infinity of babble, some saying one thing and some another, some proposing to pay neighbouring savages to come in and fight the invaders, others saying it would be cheaper to compromise with a large sum, but the most part agreeing that the wisest thing would ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... of ingenuity that he could not bear to discourage it. They set themselves, therefore, to making the presence of the Lump at Ricksborough Court plausible. Fortunately he was too young to spoil their plan by indiscreet babble, had he been a babbling child. To the minds of the servants at Ricksborough Court, minds so carefully trained in the board schools of England, his pregnant grunts would ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... a lecture for the cook. The motor shot up the drive into a babble and halted at the steps. Someone immense rose from a chair and leaped down the space ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... gentlemen consider you are some sort of a fool," a tall, lean Yankee youth observed, as he listened to the babble. ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... Schilsky listened to the babble of compliments with that mixture of boyish deference and unequivocal superiority, which made him so attractive to women. He was too good-natured to interrupt them and free himself, and would have stood as long as they liked, if Furst had not come to the rescue and led him to the piano. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... to the landlady's babble about the Cronins, for he was going to spend the evening with them; he had been introduced to her father, a tall, thin, taciturn man, who had somewhat gruffly, but not unkindly, asked him to come to spend the evening with them, ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... back on the courtyard and for the first time noted Kayak Bill's attitude. He followed the direction of the old man's gaze and beheld the incoming vessel just as the white men and Indians behind him broke out in a babble of ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... wood-bird sang my last night's dream, A brown wren was the Daniel That pierced my trance its drift to tell, Knew my quarrel, how and why, Published it to lake and sky, Told every word and syllable In his flippant chirping babble, All my wrath and all my shames, Nay, God is witness, gave ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... stillness in the room; then a babble of exclamations broke out as Sylvester, his expression of dumb surprise giving place to one of fury, struggled to free himself from the ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... want an amanuensis," said Thorny, dropping book and pencil one day, after a brief interval of silence, broken only by the whisper of the young leaves overhead and the soft babble ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... not answer. Germain bent over her. She was sleeping. She had fallen back, overcome, stricken down, as it were, by slumber, as children are who sleep before they cease to babble. ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... Country, a babble of black spume . . . Faith, an eyeball in the sand . . . Mother, a nail through a broken hand— A kissing fume— And out of her breast the bloody bubbling ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... last, Umbezi began to babble excuses, yes, and to declare that all his tale was false. His fat cheeks fell in, he ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... and cocked an ear toward the door. A faint hubbub was now percolating through from the receptionist's lobby. It grew louder. Suddenly the door opened, letting in a roaring babble, as Geraldine ... the usually poker-faced secretary ... leaped through and slammed it shut again. Her eyes, behind their thick lenses, were round and a ...
— If at First You Don't... • John Brudy
... she made a bandage and rubbed the wound with ointment before tying it up. Then her fingers seemed to play about his temples and along his cheeks and neck. She was the professional nurse now, absorbed, sexless. Heritage ceased to babble, his eyes ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... the latest sister-birth. Swift are her wings to cleave the air, swift-foot she treads the earth: 180 A monster dread and huge, on whom so many as there lie The feathers, under each there lurks, O strange! a watchful eye; And there wag tongues, and babble mouths, and hearkening ears upstand As many: all a-dusk by night she flies 'twixt sky and land Loud clattering, never shutting eye in rest of slumber sweet. By day she keepeth watch high-set on houses of the street, Or on ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... for you, Hermia—that is why. I can't any longer be with you without reaching forth to take you——you're mine by every law of God or Nature. Philosophy! Who cares? Your lips have babbled it. Let them babble it ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... the King: "Have hope, O friend! Yea, Death disgraced is hard; Much honour shall be thine"; and called the Captain of the Guard, Yar Khan, a bastard of the Blood, so city-babble saith, And he was honoured of the King — the which is salt to Death; And he was son of Daoud Shah, the Reiver of the Plains, And blood of old Durani Lords ran fire in his veins; And 'twas to tame an Afghan pride nor Hell nor Heaven could bind, The King would make ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... were any one he could kill for her that day —a little joke at the expense of the abbots. With the exception of the potentates among the high clergy with whom Madame Imperia managed to accommodate her little tempers, she ruled everyone with a high hand in virtue of her pretty babble and enchanting ways, which enthralled the most virtuous and the most unimpressionable. Thus she lived beloved and respected, quite as much as the real ladies and princesses, and was called Madame, concerning which the good Emperor Sigismund replied to a ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... Noma with admiration, "but in it I see a flaw. The woman will say that she had the drug from you, or, at the least, will babble ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... knowing very little more of Wheaton than he did before, and obviously nothing of the great authorities on maritime law, inflicts upon his readers page after page of argument upon the Trent affair, not half so delightful as the pretty babble of the ball-room belle. With all due respect to Mr. Trollope, and his attractions, we are quite sure that we would much sooner get our international law from the lips of the fair Bostonian than ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... jargon, such speech of estacados and palisados, such comparisons of light horse and heavy, of pikemen and musqueteers, of Lanzknechte, Leaguers, and on-falls, that the unused ear became bewildered with the babble. At last, on some question of fortification, the Mayor drew his outworks with the spoons and knives, on which Saxon opened his parallels with lines of bread, and pushing them rapidly up with traverses and covered ways, he established himself upon the re-entering angle of the Mayor's redoubt. ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... aunt Celia. I didn't care for her at first, but she is so deliciously blind! Anything more exquisitely unserviceable as a chaperon I can't imagine. Absorbed in antiquity, she ignores the babble of contemporaneous lovers. That any man could look at Kitty when he could look at a cathedral passes her comprehension. I do not presume too greatly on her absent-mindedness, however, lest she should turn unexpectedly and ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... you'll run down the murderer of my brother," Miss Rhoda exulted, while Miss Sarah began to babble volubly of what she called ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... with his usual careless generosity, giving him his own, "and be a good lad. Remember, if you talk, if you babble, if you get drunk, you risk your master's head, who has so much confidence in your fidelity, and who answers for you. But remember, also, that if by your fault any evil happens to d'Artagnan, I ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... could not say it. Somehow the words, although he desired them, would not come. His arm went to her neck and settled there. His hand caressed her hair, her cheek. He kissed her eyes, her lips, her languid hands; and the words that came were only an infantile babble of regrets and apologies, assurances that he did love her, that he had never loved any one before, and never would love any ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... out and joined the group. He stood near Ferguson, mingling his voice with the others. For a little time the talk flowed easily and much laughter rose. Then suddenly above the good natured babble came a harsh word. Instantly the other voices ceased, and the men of the group centered their glances upon the range boss, for the harsh word had come from him. He had been talking to a man named Tucson and it was to the latter that he had ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... fortnight Jeanne was sent back into the silence, and to her own thoughts, which must have grown heavier and heavier as the weary days went on, and no sound of approaching deliverance came, no rumour of help at hand. All was quiet and safe at Rouen; amid the babble of the courtyard which she might hear fitfully when her guardians were quieter than usual, there was not one word which brought the hope of a French army at hand, or of any movement to rescue her. All was silent in the world around, ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... artificial: while Lamb's way of writing, complex as it is, necessitating as it must have done not a little reading and (as would seem almost necessary) not a little practice, seems to run as naturally as a child's babble. The very tricks—mechanical dots, dashes, aposiopeses—which offend us now and then in Sterne; the unfamiliar Latinisms which frighten some and disgust others in Browne, drop from Lamb's lips or pen like the pearls of the Fairy story. Unless you are born out of sympathy ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... and shows what Nature's justice is.... I confess, Socrates, philosophy is a highly amusing study—in moderation, and for boys. But protracted too long, it becomes a perfect plague. Your philosopher is a complete novice in the life comme il faut.... I like very well to see a child babble and stammer; there is even a grace about it when it becomes his age. But to see a man continue the prattle of the child, is absurd. Just so with your philosophy." The consequence of this prevalent spirit of universal skepticism was a general laxity of morals. The ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... now and then by a growling roar as the giant forces sent a crack, like a great knife, through one of the frozen mountains. He had listened to those sounds for five months, and in those five months he had heard no other voice but his own and MacVeigh's and the babble of an Eskimo. Only once in four months had he seen the sun, and that was on the morning that MacVeigh went south. So he had gone half mad. Others had gone completely mad before him. Through the window his eyes rested on the five rough wooden crosses that marked their ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... to those innocent intruders, nor did his brow clear till she had shepherded them within the inner fold. Fortunately, the refreshments were in this section, so that once therein, few of the sheep strayed back, and the jiggling wail of the violin was succeeded by a shrill babble of tongues and the clatter of cups and spoons. "Get me an ice, please—strawberry," she ordered John during one of these forced intervals in manual flirtation; and when he had steered laboriously to and fro, he found a young actor beside her their hands dispart. He stood over ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... afterward the hero of his sudden adoration had not uttered one syllable about jails, criminals, robberies, or crimes of any sort. In fact he had talked really very little. What he had done had been to smile, nod, and let the other fellow babble. It had, to be sure, been a delightful experience to find yourself a lion, and everything you did of interest to your listener; but you did not learn much about the business of being a detective, reflected Walter, ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... toil of a month of nights—was as the work of an ant in the dust. Beside her interest in his gossip of the schools, the coffee-house, the street corner, my exposition of the Sonnets of Petrarca was as the babble of school children at play in the Pra; beside her attentions to his clumsy caresses, her tenderness to me hour after hour was but the benevolence of a kindly woman to a lad left on her hands. Oh, bitter tonic discovery! How bitter it was I leave my reader to determine. I do not feel equal to the ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... men? Empanelled to deliver verdicts upon the ways of women Fantastical Finishing touches to the negligence Giant Vanity urged Giant Energy to make use of Giant Duplicity Gone to pieces with an injured lover's babble Gradations appear to be unknown to you He had to go, he must, he has to be always going He stormed her and consented to be beaten Hesitating strangeness that sometimes gathers during absences His violent earnestness, his imperial ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not Nature's—night and noon He sits upon the great white throne, And listens for the creature's praise. What babble we of days and days? The Dayspring ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... chequered scenes of life as they come. What signifies whether the elements are serene or turbulent, when a private old man slips away? What has he and the world's concerns to do with one another? He may sigh for his country, and babble about it; but he might as well sit quiet and read or tell old stories; the past is as important to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... find fault with your selfe and with none other, the best waye to live honestlye and quiettly in the court. [d] Carrye noe tales, be noe co{m}mon teller of newes, be not inquisitive of other menn's talke, for those that are desirous to heare what they need not, co{m}monly be readye to babble what they shold not. [e] Vse not to lye, for that is vnhonest; speake not everye truth, for that is vnneedfull; yea, in tyme and place a harmlesse lye is a greate deale better then a hurtfull truth. [f] Use not dyceing nor carding; the more yow use them the lesse yow wilbe esteemed; ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... they need are complimentary stalls, To know the leading actor, to be round At dress rehearsals, or behind the scenes, To hear the row the actor-manager Had with the author or the leading lady, Then to recount the story at the Garrick, Where, lingering lovingly on kippered lies, They babble over chestnuts and their punch And stale ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... retired to bed, the silent Soldier bubbled with humour and insisted on dancing with Anton. Evans, P.O., was imparting confidences in heavy whispers. Pat' Keohane had grown intensely Irish and desirous of political argument, whilst Clissold sat with a constant expansive smile and punctuated the babble of conversation with an occasional 'Whoop' of delight or disjointed witticism. Other bright-eyed individuals merely reached the capacity to enjoy that which under ordinary circumstances might have passed ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... color now. And nowhere do wide bottom-lands wave and sing in such seemly grace, so decked with yellow flowers, with odd sweet william and the small wild rose. And nowhere now on earth, I know, is there any stream to murmur so sweetly and so comfortably, to say such words to any dreaming boy, to babble of a work well done, of conscience clear and of a success and happiness to come. All that was in the river. If I listen very hard, and imagine very high and very deep, I can almost pretend to hear them now, those old words, heard when I was young. ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... heart that knows thy love, O Purest, There is a temple, sacred evermore, And all the babble of life's angry voices Die in hushed stillness ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... indulgences themselves, if understood in the right sense, that he wishes to be attacked, but the loose babble of those who sold them. Blessed, he says, be he who protests against this, but cursed be he who speaks against the truth of apostolic indulgences. He finds it difficult, however, to praise these to the people, and at the same time to teach them ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... about them, writing books and building churches—our civilization is going to drift just precisely as those other civilizations which have been guided by the same dreadful fatalism have drifted—towards the Turkish goal. "Kismet. Man is a fool to babble of these things; what he may do is of no avail; all things will happen as they were pre-ordained." And the English Turk—the man who prefers to fight things out instead of thinking things out—takes ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... long ascent of the Arkansas Divide, the mountains, gashed by deep canyons, came sweeping down to the valley on my right, and on my left the Foot Hills were crowned with colored fantastic rocks like castles. Everything was buried under a glittering shroud of snow. The babble of the streams was bound by fetters of ice. No branches creaked in the still air. No birds sang. No one passed or met me. There were no cabins near or far. The only sound was the crunch of the snow under Birdie's feet. We came to a river over ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... Harriet, though beautiful, egotistical, and self-satisfied, was not quite weak enough for him. She had some genuine self-respect amidst much false pride, and if she did not talk like an oracle, neither would she babble like one crazy; she would not permit herself to be treated quite as a doll, a child, a plaything; she expected to be ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... School and Harrow playgrounds to London, and, later on, to Bath. London did not make him much more industrious or more careful than he had been at Harrow-on-the-Hill. It was far pleasanter to translate the honeyed Greek of Theocritus, with its babble of Sicilian shepherds, its nymphs and waters and Sicilian seas, than to follow the beaten track of ordinary education. It was vastly more entertaining to translate the impassioned prose of Aristaenetus into impassioned verse, especially in ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... on his radio and cried for help. It was a bare hundred miles or less to that wonderful world below, but there was the Heaviside layer, and the weak signals beat but feebly against it. All that seeped through by some instant's freak of transmission was a fragment of incoherent babble to reach the uncomprehending ear of an Arkansas ham and give that gentleman uneasy sleep for some ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... A murmurous babble of life buzzed about the hamlet, pierced through by the shrill undertones of the wrangling children, most of whom had paused in their play to scan ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of the diplomatic game never to reveal, even to an ally, what you know; tomorrow the ally may be the enemy. Harleston might yield the letter to superior force or to trickery, but he would never babble of it. ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... shone benignantly through the leaves of maple and elm; and the young grass was irregular, untouched as yet by the mower—as we like it best who love our Madison! A week-old moon hung in the sky—ample light for the first hay-ride of the season that is moving toward Water Babble to the strains of guitar and banjo and boy and girl voices. It's unaccountable that there should be so much music in a sophomore—or maybe that's a fraternity affair—Sigma Chi or Delta Tau or Deke. Or mayhap those lads wear a "Fiji" pin on their waistcoats; I seem to ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... breeches so tattered that they barely covered his nakedness. While he lay thus, dismally depressed by so sad a pickle as that into which he found himself plunged, he was strongly and painfully aware of an uproarious babble of loud and drunken voices and a continual clinking of glasses, which appeared to sound as from a tap-room beneath, these commingled now and then with oaths and scraps of discordant song bellowed out above the hubbub. His wounded head beat with tremendous and straining painfulness, ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... door closed quietly. Don Loris' retainers stared at each other. The locking-dogs grumbled for half a second, sealing the door tightly. Don Loris' retainers began to babble protestingly. ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... the soul that knows thy love, O Purest, There is a temple peaceful evermore. And all the babble of life's angry voices Dies hushed in stillness ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... handwriting," exclaimed Evelyn, and then there ensued such a babble of wonder and delight and excited speculation as to its contents that Lucile was finally obliged to shout, "If you will only sit down, girls. I'll see what's inside, and please stop making such an unearthly noise—we'll ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... you whether she has a soul or not," says the voice, "provided she can babble pleasantly at dinner and play ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... other folk standing by, who had a good sport to hear her chide, but little they looked for this chance, till it was done ere they could stop it. They said they heard her tongue babble in her head, and call, "Whoreson, whoreson!" twice after the head was off the body. At least, thus they all reported afterward unto the king, except only one, and that was a woman, and she said that she heard ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... divide His tyranny to weakness; or the smoke Of burning towns, the cries of female helplessness, Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy, 40 Horribly massacred, ascend to Heaven In honour of His name; or, last and worst, Earth groans beneath religion's iron age, And priests dare babble of a God of peace, Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood, 45 Murdering the while, uprooting every germ Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all, Making the earth ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Haro! a l'aide mon prince, on me fait tort!" preserves the custom of Normandy, and of Rollo the Dane, in Jersey, so that the sound of it "makes the workman drop his tools, the woman her knitting, the militiaman his musket, the fisherman his net, the schoolmaster his birch, and the ecrivain his babble, to await the judgment ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... ever, then revenge mounts the chariot and gathers the reins in her hands of steel; and beyond the writhing hearts whose blood dyes her rushing wheels sees only the goal. Some wise anatomists of that frail yet invincible sphinx—woman's nature, babble of one weighty fact, one conquering law,—that only the mother-joy, the mother-love, fully unseals the slumbering sweetness and latent tenderness of her being; for me, maternity opened the sluices of a sea of hate and gall. Had I never ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... "Enough of this babble," cried the Orsini, rudely. "Tell me, old lord; just as I entered, I saw an old friend (one of your former mercenaries) quit the palace—may ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... their seats, and there was a great babble of voices. As in a dream, Jessie saw them all file slowly out of the room, each one casting that backward look of horror upon her as they went. The door closed slowly after Miss Duncan; then she was alone with the detective ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... food, or does the land we have explored bring forth only poisonous reptiles and the deadly upas? Is it a land in which the very principles of art and of human nature are turned upside down? Its language the babble ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... sour, immaculate and with raised eyebrows. He studied Mrs. Jekyll, with her brilliantly made-up face, her apparent lack of guile, and her ever-watchful eye. He paid tribute to his copious wife for her determined babble of generalities, well-knowing that she was bursting with suppressed excitement under the knowledge that Alice had come to try and patch up a lost cause. He chuckled at the feline manners of the little lady whom they had all known so long as Mrs. Edgar Lee Reeves, her purring voice, her ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... wretch, Raynor, called yesterday, and his babble set me almost wild. He never runs down—that is to say, when he exterminates a score of reputations, more or less, he does not pause between one reputation and the next. (By the way, he inquired about you, and his manifestations ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... a sou'westerly wind blew the big wet snowflakes under the protecting glass awning into the lobby itself. The favoured playgoers minced daintily through the slush to their waiting cars, then taxis came into the procession of waiting vehicles, there was a banging of cab doors, a babble of orders to the scurrying attendants, until something like order ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... this stranger, he is one who would seem to have suffered some great wrong, the continued thought of which has unhinged his mind; his heart seems broken—dead. I have, sitting beside his delirious couch, heard him babble a terrible indictment against some man; I have also heard him pray, and his prayers have ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... leaving for the front he heard much of it from his elder professional colleagues. The really inexplicable thing was the way in which the victims—ignorant people, for the ill-smelling and widely shunned house could now be rented to no others—would babble maledictions in French, a language they could not possibly have studied to any extent. It made one think of poor Rhoby Harris nearly a century before, and so moved my uncle that he commenced collecting historical data on the house after listening, some time subsequent to his return from the ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... had her own way she would still have married Ada to Yorke Clayton. When Ada told her that she had got over her foolish love, it was the mere babble of unselfishness. Feel a passion for such a man as Yorke Clayton, look into the depth of his blue eyes, and fancy for herself a partnership with the spirit hidden away within, and then get over it! Edith was guilty here of the folly of judging of her sister as herself. ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... Levy's hoose by the river?" I heard him babble to his cabman, with wilful breadth of speech. "Then drive there, mon, like ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... rolling fireballs; their hair was moist and dishevelled. The old fortune-teller rocked to and fro in her chair, like those legless plaster figures that sway upon convex loaded bottoms. All four began to mutter incoherent sentences, and babble unintelligible wickednesses. Still the anointing of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... calm mind rejects as absurdities. Then Tasso, with his enchanted forests and his other improbabilities; are they more than childish tales? tales, too, not in fancy to be compared with those of that venerable dry-nurse, Mother Bunch. Compare the poets that babble of green fields with those who deal in the actions and passions of men, such as Shakspeare, and it must be confessed that it is not those who have looked at external nature who are the true poets, but ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... necks, or fall to fisticuffs; the room is full of a horrid, close scent made up of a hundred odors, and noise enough for a hundred voices. No one has any notion of what he is eating or drinking or saying. Some are depressed, others babble, one will turn monomaniac, repeating the same word over and over again like a bell set jangling; another tries to keep the tumult within bounds; the steadiest will propose an orgy. If any one in possession of his faculties should come in, he would think that ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... command at the beginning of no articulate sounds; then they learn these and syllables; after this also words of one syllable; then they speak short words of more than one syllable and sentences, but frequently babble forth words they have heard without understanding their ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... Keawe did the speaking. She ate not a bite, but who was to observe it? for Keawe cleared the dish. Kokua saw and heard him, like some strange thing in a dream; there were times when she forgot or doubted, and put her hands to her brow; to know herself doomed and hear her husband babble, ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wife—starting again, he calls it—while he earns a salary and we live in a poky house and I do the cooking. I'd think it awfully funny if it was happening to any of my friends—but this is terrible! Well, goat-tending tells, doesn't it? And after all we have done for him—to babble on about honesty and earning and all those socialistic ideas. He is a dangerous man, papa; really. ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... morals, religion, and common-sense. If Father Lamson or Abby Folsom were borne by main force from an antislavery meeting, and the non-resistants pleaded that these protestants had as good right to speak as anybody, and that what was called their senseless babble was probably inspired wisdom, if people were only heavenly minded enough to understand it, it was but another sign of the impending anarchy. And what was to be said—for you could not call them old dotards—when the younger protestants of the time came walking through ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... days after Tess's arrival Clare, sitting abstractedly reading from some book, periodical, or piece of music just come by post, hardly noticed that she was present at table. She talked so little, and the other maids talked so much, that the babble did not strike him as possessing a new note, and he was ever in the habit of neglecting the particulars of an outward scene for the general impression. One day, however, when he had been conning one of his music-scores, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... hours of sorrow or of feasting. To those who come skilled in its language, it can discourse sweetly of all things, and drive away all thoughts that annoy and cares that vex the soul. To those who touch it, not knowing how to draw forth its speech, it will babble strange nonsense, and rave with uncertain moanings. But thy knowledge is born with thee, and so my lyre is thine. Wherefore now let us feed the herds together, and with our care they shall thrive and multiply. There is ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... instinctively, but the actual song, and even the call notes, are learned from their parents or foster-parents. These sounds are no more innate than language is in man, as has been proved by Davies Barrington.[58] The first attempt to sing "may be compared to the imperfect endeavor in a child to babble." Prof. Whitney says, if the last transition forms of man "could be restored, we should find the transition forms toward our speech to be, not at all a minor provision of natural articulate signs, but an inferior system of conventional signs, in ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... father sat smiling placidly and obviously living over again his youthful days when he also was a sailor lad relating the same kind of stories in the same old way. The girls asked all sorts of questions, and the merry babble was kept up until Mrs Burnside reminded her husband that it was long past the usual time for prayers, and that they had better postpone the narrative until the morrow. A chapter suitable for the occasion was given out, and they read verse and verse about ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... sojourn in Belait.[14] And to her incitements and his own inclination and desires was added that which made revenge and my brother's death the chiefest things in all the world to Ibrahim Mahmud, and it happened thus.... But do I weary the Sahib with my babble?" ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... talked all the while with pitiable vehemence. Indeed, it was a continuous babble, ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... was my trust, and He was able to hold me scathless, or to take me when He would. And then, John, a fancy seized me, a foolish fancy of romance perhaps, but still I mind not thy knowing, so thou 'lt not babble of it to others. I asked the old man could he put what I had just said into the same tongue with that heathen charm, and so shape it that I could have it carved upon my blade above the sun and moon and stars, which those Persian ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... improve things, These pert good-for-nothings, 700 These impudent writers Must needs shout in chorus: 'But whose fault, then, is it, That you thus exhausted And wasted your country?' But I say—you duffers! Who could foresee this? They babble, 'Enough Of your lordly pretensions! It's time that you learnt something, 710 Lazy Pomyeshchicks! Get up, now, ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... before them. The paths through the pine woods along the river's brink are trodden smooth by their restless, wandering feet; their eager, curious eyes search the waysides for adventure, but their babble and laughter are oftenest heard from the ruins of an old house hidden by great trees. The stones of the cellar, all overgrown with blackberry vines, are still there; and a fragment of the brick chimney, where swallows build their nests from year to year. A ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Montanus by name—who, in his boundless desire for leadership, gave the adversary opportunity against him—first became inspired; and falling into a sort of frenzy and ecstasy raved and began to babble and utter strange sounds, prophesying in a manner contrary to the traditional and constant custom of the Church from the beginning.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} And he stirred up, besides, two women [Maximilla and ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... curious jumble in company, two lights of altogether a different nature; but the party get into a rattling conversation, in which the noisy babble of the College Cubs is satirically ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... thousand times nicer. She is so quiet when there are people around that it looks as though she were bashful, but she really isn't a bit. She just never says anything unless it's worth saying, and I wish you could see her look at me when I babble on." ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... voices of the two others rang like bells. He did not scowl at Coke; he merely looked at him as if be gently disdained his mental calibre. In fact all the talk seemed to tire him; it was childish; as for him, he apparently found this babble ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... hidden from them by the thick boughs, but through the screen of delicate, aromatic leaves they could see the bridge of rock. Around them was the stir and murmur of the summer afternoon—the wind in the trees, the whir of insects, the song of birds, the babble of the water—but far above, where the great arch cut the sky, the world seemed asleep. The trees dreamed, resting against the crimson and gold of the heavens. The Indian's appreciation of the wonders of nature was limited—with a grunted, "All ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... youth with Kitty who had clambered roughly into the picture. Blue Bonnet hated him fiercely for a few seconds. Then the rest came up with a babble of voices and exclamations and she resigned herself, with a sigh, to the fact that the gift of silence, being golden, is ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... and with ominous visages, such as are never seen in London; martial music, marching regiments, with gorgeous generals on horseback, with shining swords; church processions; wedding pageants crowding in and out of superb churches; newspapers, shop-signs, and chatter, all in French, even down to the babble of the small children. And the background of this parade was always the pleasant, light-hued buildings, the majority of them large and of a certain uniformity of aspect, as if they had been made in co-operation, and to look pretty, instead of independently ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... deposited its passengers at King's Cross on time. All the station approaches were crowded with hurrying passengers. Taxicabs and "growlers" were mixed in apparently inextricable confusion. There was a roaring babble of instruction and counter-instruction from police-men, from cab drivers, and from excited porters. Some of the passengers hurried swiftly across the broad asphalt space and disappeared down the stairs toward ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... Dumont, "that long discussion, which lasted for weeks, as a period of deadly boredom,—vain disputes over words, a metaphysical jumble, and most tedious babble; the Assembly was turned into a Sorbonne lecture-room," and all this while chateaux were burning, while town-halls were being sacked, and courts dared no longer hold assize, while the distribution of wheat was stopped, and while society was in course ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... her lips—"He is in love with me!" She was glad when people praised his talent, and perhaps was even more pleased when she heard him called handsome. When she was alone, thinking of him, with no indiscreet babble to annoy her, she really imagined that in him she had found merely a good friend, one that would always remain content ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... I babble of bitter chills— And icy trees—and snowy fallows? Why do I shudder as twilight spills A ghostly gray and the bent moon sallows The moor with her wicked flame? Why do the gibbering croons of the hag In her hut by the wood Go muttering, muttering in my blood— Till the hoot of an ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... is thoughtful and, nevertheless, knows nothing or wishes to know nothing of God, can endure giving a despised and tedious life, a life which is fleeting as a stream, as a sleep, even as a blade of grass that soon withers; we spend our years as in a babble of talk. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... great babble of voices, some shrieks, and more confusion, and the guests ran pell-mell down the great stairs and out the castle door. To Peter's dismay, Aunt Jane was not among them. So into the castle he rushed again, calling at the top of his voice, "Aunt Jane! Aunt Jane!" He ran through ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... with the outward calm that became a young man of nearly three and twenty, but one was alive to one's finger-tips with pleasing little stimulations. The custom house examination excited one, the strangeness of a babble in a foreign tongue; one found the French of City Merchants' and Cambridge a shy and viscous flow, and then one was standing in the train as it went slowly through the rail-laid street to Boulogne Ville, and one looked out at the world in French, porters ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... "To-night we babble to the stars and dream vain dreams as other fools have done before us. To-morrow rests—perhaps—with heaven; but, depend upon it, Messire de la Foret, whatever we may do to-morrow will be foolishly performed, because we are both besotted by bright ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... at once, while Richard talked right on, until they reached the riverside where the lunch was spread; and then the babble was complete. ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... Cupples had been supplied with his monastic drink, and the waiter had retired, Trent looked across the table with significance. 'In this babble of many conversations,' he said, 'we can speak as freely as if we were on a bare hillside. The waiter is whispering soft nothings into the ear of the young woman at the pay-desk. We are alone. What do you think of that ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... not use in the pulpit. I told him the certain consequence would be, that he would fall into grievous errors. Sometimes he has five or six pages together of the purest eloquence, and then an outbreak of almost madman's babble.[1] ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... and of some humble person called 'Tiddy Doll,' a dealer in gingerbread and such foolish wares. But he could tell me nothing of those early preachings of our revered founder in Moorfields, which would have been more pleasant to me than all this vain babble about drolls and jesters, gingerbread ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... and my butcher have at heart The selfsame aims as he to whom we pay Tribute for every pound of coal we burn. Their scope is narrower, but their act the same As his—against whose millions all the tongues Of little tricksters in each corner store Babble and rail and shriek! ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... of sorrow or of feasting. To those who come skilled in its language, it can discourse sweetly of all things, and drive away all thoughts that annoy and cares that vex the soul. To those who touch it, not knowing how to draw forth its speech, it will babble strange nonsense, and rave with uncertain moanings. But thy knowledge is born with thee, and so my lyre is thine. Wherefore now let us feed the herds together, and with our care they shall thrive and multiply. There is no ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... than new-found friends To whom much silence makes amends For the much babble vain While yet ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... as to what Sparta and Greece were, and having been informed, he ironically begged the Lacedaemonian envoy to thank his compatriots for the good advice with which they had honoured him; "but," he added, "take care that I do not soon cause you to babble, not of the ills of the Ionians, but of your own." He confided the government of Sardes to one of his officers, named Tabalos, and having entrusted Paktyas, one of the Lydians who had embraced his cause, with the removal of the treasures of Croesus to Persia, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... brow clear till she had shepherded them within the inner fold. Fortunately, the refreshments were in this section, so that once therein, few of the sheep strayed back, and the jiggling wail of the violin was succeeded by a shrill babble of tongues and the clatter of cups and spoons. "Get me an ice, please—strawberry," she ordered John during one of these forced intervals in manual flirtation; and when he had steered laboriously to and fro, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... said calmly. Gerard uttered a cry of horror, and started to his feet; she read his thought. "Useless," said she quietly. "My nose hath bled; none ever yet survived to whom that came along with the plague. Bring no fools hither to babble over the body they cannot save. I am but a woman; I love not to be stared at; let none see ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... at the beginning of no articulate sounds; then they learn these and syllables; after this also words of one syllable; then they speak short words of more than one syllable and sentences, but frequently babble forth words they have heard without understanding ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... this small brook; fearing, perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing loquacity, it should whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth surface of a pool. Continually, indeed, as it stole onward, the streamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet, soothing, but melancholy, like the voice of a young child that was spending its infancy without playfulness, and knew not how to be merry among sad acquaintance and events of ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of hats a score of tricolour flags fluttered in the dusty air, and wild strains of the Marseillaise dominated the roar and babble of a thousand tongues wagging together. The steps of the great building were thronged with men, and on the bases of the statuary orators harangued high heaven, for no man had ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... party of Holland, and in cashiering all functionaries suspected of English tendencies. Especially he became most intimate with Count Moeurs, stadholder of Utrecht—the hatred of which individual and his wife towards Leicester and the English nation; springing originally from the unfortunate babble of Otheman, had grown more intense than ever,—"banquetting and feasting" with him all day long, and concocting a scheme; by which, for certain considerations, the province of Utrecht was to be annexed to Holland under the perpetual stadholderate ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... which he sometimes has need? If they had consulted him a little on this matter, it appears to me that he might have addressed them pretty nearly thus: 'Gentlemen, it is not the arguers who do harm; philosophy can gang its ain gait without risk;' the people either do not hear it at all or let it babble on, and pay it back all the disdain it feels for them. I do not argue myself, but others argue, and what harm comes of it? We have arranged that my great influence in the court and my pretended omnipotence should serve you as a pretext for allowing a free, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... by the middle of the forenoon, having climbed more than five thousand feet since leaving Lu Ting Ch'iao. Just before reaching the top we descended into a cup-like hollow, a huge dimple lined with the rich greens and gay reds of the rhododendron, and merry with the babble of many tiny waterfalls. I exclaimed with delight at the vision of beauty, and even the coolies grinned appreciatively. It would have been a place to dream away a day had it not been as wet as a shower bath. Nearing the pass, we heard weird sounds above us, not unlike the cries of rejoicing uttered ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... seemed mingled babble coming from everywhere. The timber of the sound was very strange. It held no suggestion of how far away from me the voices might be. There were so many of them I could only think they were scattered about the ship; and yet they all seemed together. After a moment, ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... or less to that wonderful world below, but there was the Heaviside layer, and the weak signals beat but feebly against it. All that seeped through by some instant's freak of transmission was a fragment of incoherent babble to reach the uncomprehending ear of an Arkansas ham and give that gentleman uneasy sleep for some ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... push open the door, fearing to draw attention to myself; and when I did succeed in lifting the latch and making a small crack, I was so astonished by the sudden lull in the general babble, that I drew hastily back and was for descending the ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... upon the group or Gilbert make his appearance, sour, immaculate and with raised eyebrows. He studied Mrs. Jekyll, with her brilliantly made-up face, her apparent lack of guile, and her ever-watchful eye. He paid tribute to his copious wife for her determined babble of generalities, well-knowing that she was bursting with suppressed excitement under the knowledge that Alice had come to try and patch up a lost cause. He chuckled at the feline manners of the little lady whom ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... Belait.[14] And to her incitements and his own inclination and desires was added that which made revenge and my brother's death the chiefest things in all the world to Ibrahim Mahmud, and it happened thus.... But do I weary the Sahib with my babble?" ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... a curious jumble in company, two lights of altogether a different nature; but the party get into a rattling conversation, in which the noisy babble of the College Cubs ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... as to leave the maximum impression of each incident unimpaired by needless details. Some of these stories were little short of miraculous; but they were dignified by the manner of telling, which never for an instant degenerated into the babble ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... where Jeanne had begun her life in Detroit. Children played about, brown Indian babies, grave-faced even in their play, vivacious French little ones calling to each other in shrill patois, laughing and tumbling and climbing. Had she once been wild and merry like them? Then Pani would babble of the past and stroke the soft curls and call her "little one." What ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... bristling with half-burned saplings, and but partially illumined by the moon. The babble of the brook flowing through its ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... his body pressed against the wall, stood still, waiting for other voices, for Galloway's, for Vidal Nunez's. But after Kid Rickard's jarring mirth it was strangely still in the Casa Blanca; no noise of clicking chips bespeaking a poker game, no loud-voiced babble, no sound of a man walking across ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... reader his delight. Nay, and this wit, so little recognised, is the necessary organ of that philosophy which we so much admire. That style is therefore the most perfect, not, as fools say, which is the most natural, for the most natural is the disjointed babble of the chronicler; but which attains the highest degree of elegant and pregnant implication unobtrusively; or if obtrusively, then with the greatest gain to sense and vigour. Even the derangement of the phrases from their (so-called) natural order is luminous for the mind; and ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out the pit, carrying on its heated breath a drifting sheet of incandescence that fluttered and pulsated like a thing alive. Mado switched on the sound mechanism of the rulden and the roaring of the pillar of flame came to their ears. There were other sounds as well; the babble of alien voices and the rumble ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... followed the volley had ceased and as the two proceeded down the sandy street in silence, a light appeared suddenly in the Red Front, from whose doors issued a babble of voices as of many men talking at once. Dismounting, Colston and Endicott entered to see Barras standing upon the bar in the act of lighting the second of the two huge swinging lamps. "Looks like there'd been a battle," grinned Colston, eyeing ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... was to turn down beside the school-house for Dunure. And so, when I found a lone house among the snow, and heard a babble of childish voices from within, I struck off into a steep road leading downwards to the sea. Dunure lies close under the steep hill: a haven among the rocks, a breakwater in consummate disrepair, much apparatus for drying nets, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... present a most singular spectacle, the entire population of the vicinity being seemingly turned into them. Hand- organs, fiddles, and cymbals, plied by strolling musicians, mix with the songs of the seamen, the babble of women and children, and the groaning and whining of beggars. From the various boarding-houses, each distinguished by gilded emblems outside—an anchor, a crown, a ship, a windlass, or a dolphin—proceeds the noise of revelry and dancing; ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... at last she took her hands away and turned her face on him, his lover's observation saw how beautifully she wept. Her eyes were not red, her face was calm. He took heart from her glance, began to babble foolish love words. But she ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... faintest sound of calling lamb or far-off owl, could catch, with ears refined to a demigod's, the ineffably quiet rubbing of the millions of grass-blades, as though he could almost hear the evening falling.... From afar came the babble of the others as to what they might think they were going to be; for himself he could be anything, scale any heights, beat triumphantly through all things. He felt the swelling earth bearing him up, as though he were one with its strength and fertility, one with its irresistible ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... various names. As Baal he was popular with the Phoenicians; as Belus or Bel he had the honor to be served by the priest Berosus, who wrote the famous account of the Deluge; as Babel he had a tower partly erected to his glory on the Plain of Shinar. From Babel comes our English word "babble." Under whatever name worshiped, Baal is the Sun-god. As Beelzebub he is the god of flies, which are begotten of the sun's rays on the stagnant water. In Physicia Baal is still worshiped as Bolus, and as Belly he ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... the year '92—the year of leanness—the scene a spot between Sukhum and Otchenchiri, on the river Kodor, a spot so near to the sea that amid the joyous babble of a sparkling rivulet the ocean's deep-voiced thunder was ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... embrasure of a window: he brought him refreshments—which the young man devoured uncouthly—he neglected his fashionable guests, whose unceasing French babble proclaimed their ability to get on by themselves, to gain an insight into this gifted young man's soul. He regarded each new person as a complicated piece of wheelwork, which it was the wise man's business ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... glide on with murmurs low, And birds are singing 'mong the thickets deep, And fountains babble, sparkling as they flow, And with their noise ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... the babble of passengers who were herded in the cabin with brigands guarding them. George Prince, bareheaded, but shrouded in his cloak, showed in a patch of light behind Moa. He looked my way and then ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... marvel at has shown me what you can't see. That instinct you say you envy has opened my eyes. I tell you I'm going mad. Time and again I've seen the writing upon the wall. I walk with Insanity of nights. Three months ago I chucked my revolver into the lake, or I shouldn't be here to-day. You babble of madness; I tell you I know the jade. Why, there are nights when the stars slip and the world lies on her side, and only the woods of Gramarye keep me from falling off. I climb from tree to tree, man. They're like the rungs of a ladder, with their tops swaying in the ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Through the babble of many voices in many keys, talk mingling with laughter more or less melodiously subdued, he made his way up the great staircase. As he neared the landing, there sounded the shrill squeak of a violin and a 'cello's deep harmonic growl. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... was such a babble of exclamations that hardly a word of what was said could be understood. And in the midst of this the cadets gave a rousing cheer for Clearwater Hall and everybody connected ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... appeared so formidable in his day, as well as many others that have since been raised on equally plausible grounds, have passed away before the progress of science, and now seem like the silly prattle of children, or the insane babble of madmen. But although such difficulties have been swept away, and our field of vision cleared of all that is painful and perplexing, nay, brightened with all that is grand and beautiful, we seem to be farther than ever from comprehending the whole of the ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... Catholic pulpits as heretics and children of the devil. They were still forbidden to honour the memory of Hus. They were still forbidden to print books without the consent of the Archbishop. But the King snapped them short. He told the estates to end their babble, and again ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... moss-grown stones and bits of walls; little else; but a number of those lying soft and sunny in the September light. Soft, and sunny, and lonely; no trace of human habitation any longer, where once human activity had been in full play. Silence, where the babble of voices had been; emptiness, where young feet and old feet had gone in and out; barrenness, where the fruits of human industry had been busily gathered and dispensed. Something in the quiet, sunny scene stilled ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... and the wayward complaining of lutes. Indeed, wherever Monna Vittoria went she seemed to carry with her an atmosphere of subtle seclusion, of a cloistered lusciousness, of dim, green, guarded gardens, where the sighs of love's novices are stifled by the drip of stealthy fountains and the babble of fantastic birds. I suppose it was no more than my fancy, or a trick of my memory confusing later things with earlier, that makes me now, as I write, seem to recall what seemed like a smile on the face of the pagan effigy of Love as Madonna Vittoria swam ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... highest truth, being incomprehensible to the man of realities, as the highest man is, and largely above his level, will be a great unreality and falsehood to an unintellectual man. The profoundest doctrines of Christianity and Philosophy would be mere jargon and babble to a Potawatomie Indian. The popular explanations of the symbols of Masonry are fitting for the multitude that have swarmed into the Temples,—being fully up to the level of their capacity. Catholicism was a ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... to do with rabble? Froth is better than their babble; Let him toss them flakes of froth, To ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... unable to contain himself for pain. The author goes on to relate that, for want of this third bite, she bore one dead child, and two living. My own case," continued the Reverend William, "was somewhat similar. Lydia's unrelieved babble reacted upon her bulk, and awoke in me an absorbing, fascinating desire to strike her. I longed to see her quiver. I fought against the feeling, stifled it, trod it down: it awoke again. It filled my thoughts, my dreams; it gnawed me like a vulture. ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and repeating that he quite understood, to stop the old man's babble. Then he advised the architect to try and put his invention in practice; but he only shrugged his shoulders—it was years since he had left off trying anything. After all, what did it matter to him whether his system was applied or no? He ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... by the agitation which he had excited within her. All these thoughts and fears were in his mind as he held her upraised in his arms, and looked wildly around for some means of restoring her. A fountain was playing not far away, under the trees, and the babble of running water came to his ears amidst the deep stillness. There he carried his precious burden, and dashed water in her face, and chafed her hands, and murmured all the time a thousand words of love and tenderness. To him, in his intense anxiety, the moments ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... himself and the princes, his brothers. At the Montespan chateau, I admit, he would have learned to ride an unbroken horse, as well as to shoot hares, partridges, and big game; he would also have learned to talk loud, to use bad language, to babble about his pedigree, while ignorant of its history or its crest; in fine, he would have learned to despise his mother, and probably to hate her. Educated under my eyes, almost on the King's lap, he soon learned the customs of the Court and all that a well-born ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... thoughts and our feelings; that it shall interpret our ideals to us in that universal language which has grown up in the course of ages. We have a right to reject with pity or with scorn the stammerings of incompetence, the babble of lunacy, or the vaporing of imposture. But mutual understanding implies a duty on the part of the public as well as on the part of the artist, and we must give as well as take. We must be at the pains to learn something of the language of art in which we bid the artist ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... But Giotto, you, Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it— Oh, never! it shall not be counted true— That a certain precious little tablet Which Buonarroti eyed like a lover, Was buried so long in oblivion's womb And, left for another than I to discover, Turns up at ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... thinking about men. He began to remember the evening all over again, dusting with lasciviousness each of the gestures that had shone with such clear colours in his sight, dulling each of the sentences by which she had displayed to him her trimly-kept mental accoutrement until they became simpering babble, falsifying his minute memory of the scene until it became a record of her lust instead of his. Something deep in him stated quietly and glumly that he was now doing a wrong far worse than the thing that he had planned, and, though he would not listen, it was making him so sensible ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... me babble, Duane. I've years of silence to make up for. Let me talk like a fool; you know I'm not one.... Oh, the happiness of this one night!—the happiness of it! I never shall have enough dancing, never enough of pleasure.... I—I'm perfectly mad over ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... again, the splitting of panels, the cracking of hinges. The door was giving; now only the pike-shafts held it. Then came a pause. From far down the staircase a murmur of amazement swept upward; a babble of talk ensued. Silence fell. Cercamorte let out ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... "Have hope, O friend! Yea, Death disgraced is hard; Much honour shall be thine"; and called the Captain of the Guard, Yar Khan, a bastard of the Blood, so city-babble saith, And he was honoured of the King—the which is salt to Death; And he was son of Daoud Shah, the Reiver of the Plains, And blood of old Durani Lords ran fire in his veins; And 'twas to tame an Afghan pride nor Hell nor Heaven could bind, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... class had furnished youthful adorers eager to sit at the feet of the pretty new mistress, and bring her offerings of chocolates and flowers; for five long days there was always a crowd, always a hum and babble of voices, but at the end of the week ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... living and the dead. Oft have I known thee, Hogarth, weak and vain, Thyself the idol of thy awkward strain, Through the dull measure of a summer's day, In phrase most vile, prate long, long hours away, 460 Whilst friends with friends, all gaping sit, and gaze, To hear a Hogarth babble Hogarth's praise. But if athwart thee Interruption came, And mention'd with respect some ancient's name, Some ancient's name who, in the days of yore, The crown of Art with greatest honour wore, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... discovery of the dead and the wounded hound. Then followed a babble of voices, still swelling as fresh pursuers reached the spot. The hunters, as usual on a surprise, were wasting time, and the hunted ones were making the most ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the pinewood's whispers, Babble of brooks unseen, Laughter of winds when they find the blossoms, Brushing ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... and binds you for weary days and nights,—in which life hovers doubtfully, and the lips babble secrets that you cherish. It is astonishing how disease clips a man from the artificialities of the world! Lying lonely upon his bed, moaning, writhing, suffering, his soul joins on to the universe of souls by only natural bonds. The factitious ties of wealth, of place, of reputation, vanish ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... feet on the grass, And kissed me and stood up himself, and away through the wood did he pass. And then came back the she-wolf and with her I played and was fain. Lo the first thing I remember: wilt thou have me babble again?" ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... composed mainly of thorny plants. As, however, she felt sorry for the honest giant, without any thought, having squatted near his foot, she began to extract delicately at first the bigger splinters and afterwards the smaller, at which work she did not cease to babble and assure the elephant that she would not leave a single one. He understood excellently what she was concerned with, and bending his legs at the knee showed in this manner that on the soles between the hoofs covering his toes there were also thorns which caused him ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Lord Monmouth had descended from the phaeton; several passengers had assembled; the door of a contiguous house was opened; there were offers of service, sympathy, inquiries, a babble of ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... upon me, and then recommenced the gesticulation and babble of the two. At length she appeared satisfied with the understanding at which they arrived. I was growing uneasy at their prolonged volubility, when Monsieur Pilot pirouetted ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... for a blanket; each time the man came, Peter begged more frantically than ever. He was ill, he had been injured in the explosion, he needed a doctor, he was going to die! But there was never any answer. Peter would lie there and shiver and weep, and writhe, and babble, and lose consciousness for a while, and not know whether he was awake or asleep, whether he was living or dead. He was becoming delirious, and the things that were happening to him, the people who were tormenting ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... for buying, impatience to get in and impatience to get out, the fragrance of pine and holly decorations, the smell of hot varnish and hot people and cheap furs, the babble of excited voices and shrieks of exhausted children, it was the true Christmas spirit. Peter Rolls's store in general, and the toy department in particular, were having what would be alluded to later in advertisements as ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... purpose of the Journey, the gathering of material for anatomical study of the human heart. The notes are numerous and lengthy, constituting a quarter to a third of the book, but are replete with padding, pointless babble and occasional puerile inaccuracies. They are largely attempts to explain and to moralize upon Yorick's emotions,—averbose, childish, witless commentary. The Wortregister contains fourteen pages in double ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... approached now came up-stream with a heavier note, and was distinguishable at much greater distances, and the boats in passing through some of the heavier rapids did so in the midst of a din quite different from the gentle babble of the shallow stream far toward its source. The boom of the bad water far below this ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... loathsome cant! Day-labourer, slave of toil and want! I hate thy babble vain and hollow. Thou art a worm, no child of day: Thy god is Profit—thou wouldst weigh By pounds the Belvidere Apollo. Gain—gain alone to thee is sweet. The marble is a god! ... what of it Thou count'st a pie-dish far above it— A dish wherein ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... served to emphasize the dismal havoc everywhere. "So this was once a city," one mused to himself; "and these streets, now sounding with the footfalls of some returning sentry, did they once echo with the roar of traffic? And those demolished shops, were they once filled with the babble of the traders? Over yonder in that structure, which looks so much like a church, did the faithful once come to pray and to worship God? Can it be that these courtyards, now held in the thrall of death-like silence, once rang to the laughter of the little children?" One said ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... great doctor, I see, and I wish that some one of those gentlemen were here to take up your arguments and to check your babble. ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere
... the stillness was the babble of the fountain, and from far away the fitful strains of a band of ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... plan," exclaimed Nevill. "I don't think De Mora can have got home yet from the palace. I saw him having supper. Suppose I dart back, flutter gracefully round him, babble 'tile talk' a bit—he's a tile expert after my own heart—then casually ask what Arabs he's got staying with him. If Maieddine's in his house it can't be a secret—incidentally I may find out where the fellow comes from and ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... conferences with the great financier were most confidential, and Sully was as secret as the grave. But Henry never could keep a secret even when it concerned his most important interests, and nothing would serve him but he must often babble of his great projects even to their minutest details in presence of courtiers and counsellors whom in his heart he knew to be devoted to Spain and in receipt of pensions from her king. He would boast to them of the blows by which he meant to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... embodies. We have risen to see that it were a good bargain to barter all the material wealth it holds for the priceless spiritual ideas it represents. France babbles about 'going to war for an idea.' We don't babble. We buckle on our armor and fight, we practical, money-making Yankees, who are said to value everything by dollars, and, after two years of tremendous fighting, are half amazed ourselves to find we have been fighting solely for ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... ready to go," said the Shaggy Man, putting his fingers to his ears to shut out the monotonous babble of those around ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... each other's necks, or fall to fisticuffs; the room is full of a horrid, close scent made up of a hundred odors, and noise enough for a hundred voices. No one has any notion of what he is eating or drinking or saying. Some are depressed, others babble, one will turn monomaniac, repeating the same word over and over again like a bell set jangling; another tries to keep the tumult within bounds; the steadiest will propose an orgy. If any one in possession of his faculties should come in, he would ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... Angel's face was so beautiful and so tender and so reverent, she could not have been frightened, even if it had seemed wholly real. He knelt before her, and his lips moved, but, as in a dream, silently. All the familiar music of the world went on—the bird-songs, the whisper of the wind, the babble of the brook, the rumour of the village. They all went on—there was no pause, no hush, no change—nothing to startle her—only, somehow, they seemed all to draw together, to become a single sound. All the sounds ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... neighbourhood. Her influence in fact over the poor is a strange mixture of good and evil, of real benevolence with an interference that saps all sense of self-respect, of real sympathy and womanly feeling with a good deal of womanly meddling, curiosity, and babble. ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... the young stranger's peculiarity did not seem likely to find any very speedy solution. Every new suggestion furnished talk for the gossips of the village and the babble of the many tongues in the two educational institutions. Naturally, the discussion was liveliest among the young ladies. Here is an extract from a letter of one of these young ladies, who, having received at her birth the ever-pleasing name of Mary, saw fit to have herself called Mollie ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sold and paid for; but neither buyer nor seller defined the nature of the bargain. On the whole, it was as well that Mr. Gibson spent so much of his time from home. He sometimes thought so himself when he heard his wife's plaintive fret or pretty babble over totally indifferent things, and perceived of how flimsy a nature were all her fine sentiments. Still, he did not allow himself to repine over the step he had taken; he wilfully shut his eyes and ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... pre-eminence of the work you have just heard? I can explain it in a few words. There are two kinds of music: one, petty, poor, second-rate, always the same, based on a hundred or so of phrases which every musician has at his command, a more or less agreeable form of babble which most composers live in. We listen to their strains, their would-be melodies, with more or less satisfaction, but absolutely nothing is left in our mind; by the end of the century they are forgotten. But the nations, from the beginning of time till our own day, have cherished as a ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... make it grow. The mother of the newborn can hold its little hand and make it drop the seeds into the earth. As the child grows she must show it the green shoots when they pierce the brown soil. She must babble to it of its Blue Flower. By the time it is pleased by color it will love the blossoms, and the spell of happiness and good fortune will begin to work for it. It is not one person here and there who must plant the flower, but each and every one. To those who have not land about them, all the land ...
— The Land of the Blue Flower • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... burst of delighted laughter, she disappeared in the lake. A cry of horror ascended from the boats. They had never seen the princess go down before. Half the men were under water in a moment; but they had all, one after another, come up to the surface again for breath, when—tinkle, tinkle, babble and gush! came the princess's laugh over the water from far away. There she was, swimming like a swan. Nor would she come out for king or queen, chancellor or daughter. But though she was obstinate, ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... from their seats, and there was a great babble of voices. As in a dream, Jessie saw them all file slowly out of the room, each one casting that backward look of horror upon her as they went. The door closed slowly after Miss Duncan; then she was alone with the detective and Mrs ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... continued, sweetly; "I shall write of the ineffable glory of first love. I shall babble of green fields and the keen odours of spring and the shamefaced countenances of lovers, met after last night's kissing. It will be the story of love that stirs blindly in the hearts of maids and youths, and does not know that it is love,—the love which manhood has half forgotten and ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... short pause, and the rattle of the little copper-plate of the letter-box as if something had been dropped in; the babble of merry ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... about to devour manners, morals, religion, and common-sense. If Father Lamson or Abby Folsom were borne by main force from an antislavery meeting, and the non-resistants pleaded that these protestants had as good right to speak as anybody, and that what was called their senseless babble was probably inspired wisdom, if people were only heavenly minded enough to understand it, it was but another sign of the impending anarchy. And what was to be said—for you could not call them old dotards—when the younger protestants of the time came walking through the sober streets of Boston ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... around me a babble of exclamations and conjectures. Murmurs of interest rose even from our captive band. Then came Slinker's ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... gazing mechanically on the ripples, and had allowed his mind to be hushed into complete vacuity by the delicate babble of the water over the pebbles, when suddenly a flash of colour seemed to grow upon his consciousness, and he saw a man and woman walking together down the very path that led to the cave where he had been dreaming. He placed his hand to his forehead and tried to think. ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... straggling shrub, the only one for rods, hung over the brink. I silently sank to a seat behind it, lest I disturb the singer, and remained without movement. The baffling carol went on for some seconds, and for the only time in my life I wished I could put a spell upon brook-babble, that I ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... fool, but she desired her company, for she belonged to the order of sociable drunkards, for whom drink has no flavour without company, and who can no more drink alone than men can smoke in the dark. Ada was an ideal companion, rarely breaking the thread of her ceaseless babble, and never forgetting to pay for her share. It was little enough she could squeeze out of Aaron, and often she drank for the ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... be a kinship between the voices of the marsh dwellers. Most of them seem to have a muddy, aquatic note. The boom of the frog sounds like some great stone dropped into the water; the little marsh wren's song is the "babble and tinkle of water running out ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... a babble of voices answered the orderly's announcement. "Raoul! Raoul!" half-a-dozen were calling, and then one spoke ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... closed that Phebe turned into Whitefriars Road. She had taken a train from Upchurch, leaving her father to return home alone with the empty wagon. It was a strange sight which met her. The usually quiet street was thronged from end to end, and the babble of many voices made all sounds indistinct. Even on the outskirts of the crowd there were men, some pale and some red with anxiety, struggling with elbows and shoulders to make their way through to the bank, in the vain hope that it ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... heart is cold, Because of a silent tongue! The lute of faultless mould In silence oft hath hung. The fountain soonest spent Doth babble down the steep; But the stream that ever went ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... the best feeling. The rector and his wife, ignoring their own sentiments, made haste to smooth away the little difficulty that had thus unexpectedly arisen, and in a few minutes all was in a pleasant clatter and babble with the pouring of tea, cutting of huge three-decker cakes, and passing of large, solid plates holding pyramids of equally large and solid sandwiches. Ringfield, devoting himself to the English visitors and the person in black silk, who was the widow of a deceased ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... of the royal breast were during the perusal of this extraordinary dialogue of birds, which has come to him through St. Mary Axe—? Manifold probably: manifold, questionable; but not tragical, or not immediately so. Certainly it is definable as the paltriest babble; no treason visible in it, nor constructive treason; but it painfully indicates, were his Majesty candid, That his Majesty is subject to spies in his own House; nay that certain parties do seem to fancy they have got his Majesty by the nose, and are ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... scarcely a hundred and a half. The men are fishers, for there is no other occupation to be followed on the sterile rock. Every day also the level sweep of sands is wandered over by the women and children, who seek for cockles in the little pools; the babble of whose voices echoes far through the quiet air, and whose shadows fall long and unbroken on the brown wilderness. Now and then the black-robed figure of a priest, or of one of the brothers dwelling ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... fussing with certain of the petty details that make or mar the smooth running of an establishment like his, when his ear, trained to detect the first note of discord in the babble which filled his big room by night, caught an ominous note in the hum of the street crowd outside. He lifted his head from examining ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... or stop the flow of this sound by the lips, the tongue, the teeth, and thus articulate, or break into joints, the even current of sound. The sound varies with the degree and kind of interruption, as the "babble" of the brook with the shape and size of its impediments,—pebbles, or rocks, or dams. To whisper is to articulate without bleating, or vocalizing; to coo as babies do is to bleat or vocalize without articulating. Machines are easily made ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... Guicciardini—the toil of a month of nights—was as the work of an ant in the dust. Beside her interest in his gossip of the schools, the coffee-house, the street corner, my exposition of the Sonnets of Petrarca was as the babble of school children at play in the Pra; beside her attentions to his clumsy caresses, her tenderness to me hour after hour was but the benevolence of a kindly woman to a lad left on her hands. Oh, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... women, who bore conclusive witness to the fall of man by insisting on walking up the broad-aisle of the meeting-house in a costume which that event had put forever out of fashion! About their treatment of witches, too, there has been a great deal of ignorant babble. Puritanism had nothing whatever to do with it. They acted under a delusion, which, with an exception here and there (and those mainly medical men, like Wierus and Webster), darkened the understanding of all Christendom. ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... madhouse, Garshin would have been alive to-day, Barantsevitch would not have been so depressed and we should not be so dull and ill at ease as we are, and you would not feel drawn to the theatre and I to Sahalin. But criticism maintains a dignified silence or gets out of it with idle trashy babble. If it seems to you authoritative it is because it is stupid, conceited, impudent, and clamorous; because it is an empty barrel one cannot ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... answer me: "What difference does all that make?" But everything makes a difference, and we are dying of humbug, of ignorance, of self-confidence, of scorn of grandeur, of love of banality, and imbecile babble. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... someone on the spot to do what is necessary. When there are no mineral waters or sea baths to give a place importance, Germans say they have come there to do a Luftkur. A delightful Frenchwoman who has written about England lately is amused by our everlasting babble about a "change." This one needs a change, she says, and that one is away for a change, and the other means to have a change next week. So the Germans amuse us by their eternal "cures." One tries air, and the other water, and the next iron, and the fourth sulphur, while the number and ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... to the door, and Roddy, frowning gravely, sank back into his chair, the long silence was broken by a babble of whispered questions and rapid answers. Even to those who understood no English the pantomime had been sufficiently enlightening. Unobtrusively the secret agents of Alvarez rose from the tables and stole into the night. A ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... JULIA. This babble shall not henceforth trouble me. Here is a coil with protestation!—[Tears the letter.] Go, get you gone; and let the papers lie: You would be fingering them, ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... ... gabble-gabble!' My window glimpses larch and heather. I hardly hear the tuneful babble, Not knowing nor much caring whether The text is praise or exhortation, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... to the heart that knows thy love, O Purest, There is a temple, sacred evermore, And all the babble of life's angry voices Die in hushed stillness at its ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... seat, clutching at these material things round me as with a last effort to hold my own. But that was no longer possible; I was overcome. I stood for a moment looking round me feebly, feeling myself begin to babble with stammering lips, which was the alternative of shrieking, and which I seemed to choose as a lesser evil. What I said was, "What am I to do?" and after a while, "What do you want me to do?" although ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... darkling shades and deep-mouthed baying of hellhound Touch not with horror of dread little Erotion dear. Now was her sixth year ending, and melting the snows of the winter, Only a brief six days lacked to the tale of the years. Young, amid dull old age, let her wanton and frolic and gambol, Babble of me that was, tenderly lisping my name. Soft were her tiny bones, then soft be the sod that enshrouds her, Gentle thy touch, mother Earth, gently she rested on thee! A. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... horn, though I call not the blast either a 'recheate' or a 'morte'—I can cheer my dogs on the prey, and I can flay and quarter the animal when it is brought down, without using the newfangled jargon of 'curee, arbor, nombles', and all the babble of the fabulous Sir ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... had met Hughes. His company grated on me. It was impossible to think of Patsy Dale with the fellow's cruel babble ringing in my ears. I remained silent and he garrulously recounted some of his many exploits, and with gusto described how he had trapped various victims. It was his one ambition of life. He cared ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... you then, if it be not to rouse in us the discontent that is alone divine? Would you have me go fat and happy, listening to your babble of kingfishers and cuckoos, while my brothers and sisters in ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... that which is nought'—indeed the necessity of doing this, if at all, now, was one of the reasons which make me go on to that last request of all—at once; one must not be too old, they say, to begin their ways. But, in spite of all the babble, I feel sure that whenever I make up my mind to that, I can be rich enough and to spare—because along with what you have thought genius in me, is certainly talent, what the world recognizes as such; and I have tried ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... notial f. Rheumatic f. Cheerful and buxom f. Flaunting and braggadocio f. Solemn f. Egregious f. Annual f. Humourous and capricious f. Festival f. Rude, gross, and absurd f. Recreative f. Large-measured f. Boorish and counterfeit f. Babble f. Pleasant f. Down-right f. Privileged f. Broad-listed f. Rustical f. Duncical-bearing f. Proper and peculiar f. Stale and over-worn f. Ever ready f. Saucy and swaggering f. Diapasonal f. Full-bulked f. Resolute f. Gallant and vainglorious f. Hieroglyphical f. Gorgeous ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... as they two strolled out through the grove at the back of the log house. There was a splendid pool there, boulder-surrounded; a thoroughly romantic sort of spot in Gloria Gaynor's fancies, a most charming background for springtime loitering. The gush and babble of the bright water tumbling in, rushing out, filled the air singingly. Gloria wanted to ask Mr. King about a certain little bird which she had seen here, a little fellow who might have been the embodiment of the stream's joy; she knew from her father that King was an intimate ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... mother's lame knee, and too much else to relate here. Senorita Diane was exceedingly loquacious: her little tongue wove in and out of the new idiom with surprising facility, forever wagging in a low, sweet babble of nothings. Adelle, as has been sufficiently indicated, absorbed passively the small and the large facts of life. Diane was like a twittering bird on a tiny twig that shook with the vehemence of her expression. ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... God!" answered the boy, and turning within Arden's clasp, began to babble of London streets and the Triple Tun. The claw-like hands had dragged themselves from Nevil's hold, and the spirit could be no longer caught by the voice of authority, ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... records of His past words and deeds as garnered in these Gospels and expounded by His Apostles, is the source of your growing knowledge of Him? If we would keep our hearts and minds clearer than we do of the babble of earthly voices, and be more loyal and humble and constant and patient in our sitting on the benches in Christ's school till the Master Himself came to give us His lessons, these great words of my text would not, as they so often do in the mass of professing Christians, lack the verification ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... arrival Clare, sitting abstractedly reading from some book, periodical, or piece of music just come by post, hardly noticed that she was present at table. She talked so little, and the other maids talked so much, that the babble did not strike him as possessing a new note, and he was ever in the habit of neglecting the particulars of an outward scene for the general impression. One day, however, when he had been conning one of his music-scores, and by force of imagination was hearing the tune in his head, he ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... on one together and tell me now at once, for I who am old grow weary and would sleep. Then if it can be given I will give it; and if I cannot give it, I will get me back to my own house and show my face no more at Ulundi, who do not desire to listen again to fools who babble like contending waters round a stone and yet never stir the stone because they ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... could such a man as Mr Cairns, looking down from the height of his great soberness and the dignity of possessing the oracles and the ordinances, do other than contemn the enthusiasms and excitements of ignorant repentance? How could such as he recognize in the babble of babes the slightest indication of the revealing of truths hid from the wise and prudent; especially since their rejoicing also was that of babes, hence carnal, and accompanied by all the weaknesses and some of the vices which it had required the ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... pebbly beach, knelt down upon the thin sward, and repeated a prayer. Meantime the population gathered; behind them canoe after canoe touched the shore; before them there was a swift, tumultuous hurrying from the villages; presently they were surrounded by a compact, eager, barbaric multitude. The babble of its wonder turned to silence as the priest rose, extended his fat hands, ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... captain believe his story, without revealing Montano. He started to hold up his badge, realized the Lhari captain could not see color, and dropped it again, while Vorongil bent over to pick up the fallen gun. "Are you sunstruck or mad, Bartol? What's this babble?" ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... Mr. Lincoln and his Aide, Halleck, went to Acquia Creek to visit Hooker, to have a peep into his plans, and, of course to babble about them. I hope Hooker will most politely ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... came through. One morning I was just getting out of bed, "this gibberish, this jargon" as the enemy likes to call it, began to come. The Lord said, "Let it babble!" I let. The babble increased, and by night I was up to my neck. I let. I still let. That's all. Someone else does the work, and it does ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... gloom, The River, jaded and forlorn, Welters and wanders wearily—wretchedly—on; Yet in and out among the ribs Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles Of some dead lake-built city, fall of skulls, Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories, Lingers to babble, to a broken tune (Once, O the unvoiced music of my heart!) So melancholy a soliloquy It sounds as it might tell The secret of the unending grief-in-grain, The terror of Time and Change and Death, That wastes ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... behind their gateways; here were creameries that conjured the country to the eager senses, and laundries that exhaled a very aroma of work in the hot steam that poured through their windows and in the babble of voices that arose from the women who stood side by side, iron in hand, bending over the long, spotless ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... kinship between the voices of the marsh dwellers. Most of them seem to have a muddy, aquatic note. The boom of the frog sounds like some great stone dropped into the water; the little marsh wren's song is the "babble and tinkle of water running out ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... several frozen seconds, and then all at once Chris became aware as he stood rigid with horror by the boat that the sailors of the Mirabelle had rushed out from the coolness of the shore to stand stiff and appalled beside him. A babble of voices broke out, and one by one the boats were hastily launched, heading back to the ship, leaving Chris shaking and unnerved on the sand. Over the water as brawny backs bent to the oars ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... announced the discovery of the dead and the wounded hound. Then followed a babble of voices, still swelling as fresh pursuers reached the spot. The hunters, as usual on a surprise, were wasting time, and the hunted ones were making ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... gleich ich selle Babble Beem, Sie schtehn wie Brieder dar; Un uf'm Gippel—g'wiss ich leb! Hockt alleweil 'n Schtaar! 'S Gippel biegt sich—guk, wie's gaunscht— 'R hebt sich awer fescht; Ich seh sei' rothe Fliegle plehn, Wann er sei' Feddere wescht; ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... began to babble excuses, yes, and to declare that all his tale was false. His fat cheeks fell in, he ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... flame from out the pit, carrying on its heated breath a drifting sheet of incandescence that fluttered and pulsated like a thing alive. Mado switched on the sound mechanism of the rulden and the roaring of the pillar of flame came to their ears. There were other sounds as well; the babble of alien voices and ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... childless widow of a Common Councilman of London, one morning met the Twins in the village. They greeted her politely and made to escape. But she was in the mood, her most constant mood, to babble. She stopped them, and with a knowing air, and ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's flesh, Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous, Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination, Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams, Words babble, hearing and touch callous, No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex; Such from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence, Such a result so soon—and ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Gladys Armstrong. In a long skirt, with her hair caught up under a gray toque that matched her coat perfectly, she was not my Olivia of the tam-o’-shanter, who had pursued the rabbit; nor yet the unsophisticated school-girl, who had suffered my idiotic babble; nor, again, the dreamy rapt organist of the chapel. She was a grown woman with at least twenty summers to her credit, and there was about her an air of knowing the world, and of not being at all a person ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... into the library and shut the door. The room rested him, after the babble across. He lighted a cigar, and stood for a moment before Natalie's portrait. It had been painted while he was abroad at, he suspected, Rodney's instigation. It left him quite ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... little joke at the expense of the abbots. With the exception of the potentates among the high clergy with whom Madame Imperia managed to accommodate her little tempers, she ruled everyone with a high hand in virtue of her pretty babble and enchanting ways, which enthralled the most virtuous and the most unimpressionable. Thus she lived beloved and respected, quite as much as the real ladies and princesses, and was called Madame, concerning ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... "indefiniteness," as she called it. She knew people were wont to ask, "Who is she? Where is her family?" and to look with some misgiving on a girl too rich to pass unnoticed, yet too poor to own a family and a past about which she was free to babble. She found that riches set one out from the crowd as does the search-light which cannot be dodged nor dimmed, and sometimes she would have flung every dollar away, and given up all her pet schemes, just to have crept into the safe shelter of ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... preventive against cold. Dyer, unaccustomed to anything stronger than the "crystal spring," was sitting upright in the bed, perfectly delirious. His hair had been rubbed up, and stood out like so many needles of iron gray. He did not (like Falstaff) "babble of green fields," but of the "watery Neptune." "I soon found out where I was," he cried out to me, laughing; and then he went wandering on, his words taking flight into regions where no one could follow. Charles Lamb has commemorated ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... in a babble of voices as a bevy of "Swimming Girls" descended from the enchanted regions above and scurried out upon the stage. Through the double curtain the orchestra could be faintly heard; ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... recherche arrangements of man utterly failed to supply. While dazzled by the glitter and splendor of "Le Bocage," she shivered in its silent dreariness, its cold, aristocratic formalism, and she yearned for the soft, musical babble of the spring-branch, where, standing ankle-deep in water under the friendly shadow of Lookout, she had spent long, blissful July days in striving to build a wall of rounded pebbles down which the crystal ripples would fall, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... the neighborhood of the door had cut into the babble like a knife into butter; a rough, rasping voice, loud and compelling, which caused the conversation of the members of the ensemble to cease on the instant. Only Mr Saltzburg, now in a perfect frenzy of musicianly fervor, continued to assault the decrepit piano, unwitting ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... concern in her voice, 'and I not there, but only a pack of giddy maids, who had not wit enough between them to keep a discourteous stranger in his place and prevent his being rude to an old friend! Nay, now, maidens, speak not all together. Ye are too young and do but babble. Let Bridget continue, or my Margaret. Either of them I can trust.' But 'young Margrett' was bending her head still lower, seemingly over ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... said sunthin' here, but it was entirely unbeknown to me; though I thought I heard the murmur of his voice makin' a sort of a tinklin' accompinment to my thoughts, sunthin' like the babble of a brook a runnin' along under forest boughs, when the wind with its mighty melody is sweepin' through 'em. Great emotions was sweepin' along with power, and couldn't be stayed. And I went right on, not ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... wrath like a man in two minds about returning and demanding compensation. Then he seemed to think better of it, and we moved forward; but twice again before we reached dry land he turned and addressed the soldiers in furious Spanish across the babble of the ford. ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... of a plan," exclaimed Nevill. "I don't think De Mora can have got home yet from the palace. I saw him having supper. Suppose I dart back, flutter gracefully round him, babble 'tile talk' a bit—he's a tile expert after my own heart—then casually ask what Arabs he's got staying with him. If Maieddine's in his house it can't be a secret—incidentally I may find out where the fellow comes from ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the crown, and dropping lightly to the shoulders. Later I saw these comely maidens crouching on the ground in the market-place, and selling their wares, with much glitter of eyes, teeth, and earrings, and a continual babble of bargaining. ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... you, but better for me. A woman is never tired with carrying her own child' (which was not true; but there was sufficient truth in it to make it be believed by both mistress and servant), 'and if Monsieur could care for anything, he would rejoice to hear the babble of his little son.' So Aimee caught the evening coach to London at the nearest cross-road, Martha standing by as chaperon and friend to see her off, and handing her in the large lusty child, already crowing with delight at the sight ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and watch the way of the field. He sat apart from his friends, seeing the lines ride by. All in a moment inexplicably, as when in a race of the tide comes a sudden thwart gust of wind and changes the face of the day, there was a scurry, a babble of voices, the stampede of men fighting to kill: the Turks with Christians on their backs came trampling, struggling together. A sword glinted close to Richard—'Death to the Angevin devil!' he heard, and turning received in mid shield De Gurdun's sword. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... flocking out. The little stranger yielded to the temptation to linger long enough to watch the five girls pass in whom she had become interested. They were among the last to emerge and, the moment they reached the steps, their voices rose in a confused babble, each one determined to make herself ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... monotonous. In Fraeulein von Schoenau's room, this bright morning, there were sounds of gay chatter, and many a clear, good-natured laugh. Marietta Volkmar had come for a little gossip with her old friend, and as usual during such visits, the laughter and the babble knew no end. Toni sat in the window-seat, and near her stood Willibald, who, by his mother's special orders, was to ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... Phebe were not on intimate terms. Never fond of children and none too fond of being disturbed in the pursuit of her varying hobbies, Phebe had scant patience with the vagaries of her small nephew. His ingratiating ways annoyed her; his shrill babble distracted her; her sense of order revolted at the omnipresent pails of sand which marked his pathway. Mac was revelling, that summer, in the possession of unlimited supplies of sand, and, not content with having it on the beach, he surreptitiously lugged it up to Valhalla and ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... Alan Hawke. "Who the devil can this French-English woman be anyway." He realized that some subtle game depended upon the memories of the past strangely evoked by the artless Anstruther's babble. As he strolled back to the smoking-room, he saw the maitre d'hotel slyly deliver a twisted bit of paper to the all too unconcerned looking young Adonis, and the gleam of a napoleon shone out in the grave faced Figaro's hand. "Now for our ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... talk to-day had more of the characteristics of old age than ordinarily, as though, in her great satisfaction, the mind relaxed and the tongue inclined to babble. Though May was absent less than a quarter of an hour, the old ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... therein; and could read strange meanings from them—sometimes even received wondrous hints for the direction of celestial inquiry, from what, to any other, and it may be to the fool himself, was but a ceaseless and aimless babble. Such power lieth in words. It is not then to be wondered at, that the sounds I have mentioned should fall on the ears of Elsie, at such a moment, as a message from God Himself. This then—all this dreariness—was but a passing show like the ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... lame knee, and too much else to relate here. Senorita Diane was exceedingly loquacious: her little tongue wove in and out of the new idiom with surprising facility, forever wagging in a low, sweet babble of nothings. Adelle, as has been sufficiently indicated, absorbed passively the small and the large facts of life. Diane was like a twittering bird on a tiny twig that shook with the vehemence of her expression. She reacted instinctively ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... hands of the physicians, who were often driven to use what seemed cruel measures to cause the tumours to break—the only chance of recovery for the patient—the shriek of some maddened or delirious patient, or the unintelligible murmur and babble from a multitude of sick. Moreover, they inhaled the pungent fumes of the burning drugs and vinegar which alone made it possible to breathe the atmosphere tainted by so much pestilential sickness. The boys held their own bottles of vinegar to their noses as they stole towards the house, feeling ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Godfredo called him, but he found delays And causes why he should his cabin keep, At length perforce he comes, but naught he says, Or talks like those that babble in their sleep. His shamefacedness to Godfrey plain bewrays His flight, so does his sighs and sadness deep: Whereat amazed, "What chance is this ?" quoth he. "These witchcrafts strange or nature's ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... dancing with Anton. Evans, P.O., was imparting confidences in heavy whispers. Pat' Keohane had grown intensely Irish and desirous of political argument, whilst Clissold sat with a constant expansive smile and punctuated the babble of conversation with an occasional 'Whoop' of delight or disjointed witticism. Other bright-eyed individuals merely reached the capacity to enjoy that which under ordinary circumstances might have passed without ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... still it is!" said Phillis, in an awe-struck voice. "When we are tired we must come here to rest ourselves. How prettily those baby waves seem to babble! it is just like the gurgle of baby laughter. And look at Laddie splashing in that pool: he is after that poor little crab. Come here, you rogue!" But Laddie, intent upon his sport, only cocked his ear ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... new-mown grass, seemed peculiarly delightful to Mr. Temple. Of late years he had been doomed to close confinement in a capital city; but all his tastes were rural, and, as he said, he feared he should expose himself to the ridicule Dr. Johnson throws on those "who talk of sheep and goats, and who babble of green fields." ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... of the three ever forgot, Laurie watched the tableau. Then, rising briskly, he ostentatiously stretched himself, and in loud, cheerful tones answered Rodney's steady babble. ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... with certain of the petty details that make or mar the smooth running of an establishment like his, when his ear, trained to detect the first note of discord in the babble which filled his big room by night, caught an ominous note in the hum of the street crowd outside. He lifted his head from ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... God's beautiful world! With the sky so blue and white; the woods so—so every wonderful color; the river so dark and babble-y, chattering over the stones that it had more to say than it had time to say it in; the birds singing and flying; the air so soft and warm; and nobody here but me! Well, I'm glad that even I am here, just a little girl like me, to tell ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... listened, but could make no sense of the confused babble about "heavy boots;" "All right, old fellow;" "Jerry's off;" and "The ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... came out and joined the group. He stood near Ferguson, mingling his voice with the others. For a little time the talk flowed easily and much laughter rose. Then suddenly above the good natured babble came a harsh word. Instantly the other voices ceased, and the men of the group centered their glances upon the range boss, for the harsh word had come from him. He had been talking to a man named Tucson and it was to the latter that ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... considerable dexterity. He had a large, but not, I think, very remunerative practice amongst the poaching, deer-stealing, smuggling community of those parts, to whom it was of vital importance that the hurts received in their desperate pursuits should be tended by some one not inclined to babble of the number, circumstances, or whereabouts of his patients. This essential condition Lee, hypocrite and knave as he was, strictly fulfilled; and no inducement could, I think, have prevailed upon him to betray the hiding-place of a wounded ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... impersonal and cold, Controlling all, itself controlled, Maker and slave of iron laws, Alike the subject and the cause; From vain philosophies, that try The sevenfold gates of mystery, And, baffled ever, babble still, Word-prodigal of fate and will; From Nature, and her mockery, Art; And book and speech of men apart, To the still witness in my heart; With reverence waiting to behold His Avatar of love untold, The Eternal Beauty new ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Adelphi says, "Do you think I will sell my own child?" But poor women in the Battersea High Road do say, "Do you think I will sell my own child?" They say it on every available occasion; you can hear a sort of murmur or babble of it all the way down the street. It is very stale and weak dramatic art (if that is all) when the workman confronts his master and says, "I'm a man." But a workman does say "I'm a man" two or three times ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... up, the green buds opened into leaves, the bluebells and primroses bloomed, the apple and peach blossoms burst exquisitely white and pink against the blue sky. Oak Creek fell to a transparent, beautiful brook, leisurely eddying in the stone walled nooks, hurrying with murmur and babble over the little falls. The mornings broke clear and fragrantly cool, the noon hours seemed to lag under a hot sun, the nights fell like dark mantles ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... Hegio aside) Hegio, this fellow was looked upon as a raving maniac in Elis, so don't you let him fill your ears with his babble. Why, at home he chased his father and mother about with a spear, and every once in a while he has an attack of the disease that people spit on.[D] So get out of his reach, ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... gabble Memory's magic tricks the senses! Plain I hear the streamlet babble, Smell the tar on ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... blossoming rose, When the wine-blood of youth ran tingling and throbbing in every vein; Chirrup of robin and blue-bird in the white-blossomed apple and pear; Carpets of green on the meadows spangled with dandelions; Lowing of kine in the valleys, bleating of lambs on the hills; Babble of brooks and the prattle of fountains that flashed in the sun; Glad, merry voices, ripples of laughter, snatches of music and song, And blue-eyed girls in the gardens that blushed like ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... Don Loris' retainers stared at each other. The locking-dogs grumbled for half a second, sealing the door tightly. Don Loris' retainers began to babble protestingly. ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... swing on the dull, gray morning when Moses Ansell took his way through the Ghetto. It was near eleven o'clock, and the throng was thickening momently. The vendors cried their wares in stentorian tones, and the babble of the buyers was like the confused roar of a stormy sea. The dead walls and hoardings were placarded with bills from which the life of the inhabitants could be constructed. Many were in Yiddish, the most hopelessly corrupt and ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... sacred memories. It spoke of home and holy influences, of mother love and father's blessing and children's hope and faith. It filled his heart with reverence and his eyes with tears. The babble and chat for an instant were silenced, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... my advice. Avoid The places where thou seest much drapery, Colours, and gold, and plumes, and heraldries, And such new-fanglements. But, above all, Take care how evil chance or youthful wandering Bring thee upon the house of Idle Babble." "What place is that?" said I; and he resumed;— "Enchantresses dwell there, who make one see Things as they are not, ay and hear them too. That which shall seem pure diamond and fine gold Is ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... doctor's nature, and of his firm friendship for Valentine. That he did continue most persistently to dwell upon it, and with a keen suspicion, must be due to the present desolation of his circumstances, and to the vain babble of the blue-coated Methuselah, whose intellect roamed incessantly through a marine past, peopled with love episodes ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... song and dance, laughter and cries confused Of banqueters beside the meats and wine. They, lifting in their hands the beakers brimmed, Recklessly drank, till heavy of brain they grew, Till rolled their fluctuant eyes. Now and again Some mouth would babble the drunkard's broken words. The household gear, the very roof and walls Seemed as they rocked: all things they looked on seemed Whirled in wild dance. About their eyes a veil Of mist dropped, for the drunkard's sight is dimmed, And the wit dulled, when rise the fumes to the brain: ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... drowsed again with slumber, from which she woke only on being placed in the bottom of a skiff to turn over into a deeper dream than before. Flor nodded triumphantly to her companion, in the beginning, keeping pace beside him with short runs,—there could be no fear of babble about that of which one knew nothing,—and took her seat at last in the boat as he directed, while with a long pole he pushed out into the deeper water away from the shadow of the shore, and then went steering between the jags and gnarls, that, half protruding from the dark expanses, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... examine a little further this "babble of green fields" and of bare nature in general as superior to artificial imagery, for the poetical purposes of the fine arts. In landscape painting, the great artist does not give you a literal copy of a country, but he invents and composes one. Nature, in ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... richer crops, and the valleys decked out with a more luxuriant and warmly coloured vegetation. Shechem lies in an actual amphitheatre of verdure, which is irrigated by countless unfailing streams; rushing brooks babble on every side, and the vapour given off by them morning and evening covers the entire landscape with a luminous haze, where the outline of each object becomes blurred, and quivers in a manner to which ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Never in all my life had I seen Miss Ruth so full of vivacity or girlish charm. Her laughter was like the music of bells; the jest, the kindly word was for every man; and yet sometimes I, at her side, could look deep into those grey-blue eyes to read a truer story there. And in the babble of the talk she would whisper some treasured word to me, or touch my hand with her own, or say, "Jasper, it must be well, it must be well with us!" Of that which lay above in the darkening East, ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... before, though on the whole I managed to collect what he meant. I was sure he had not power enough of vision to observe me in the dim reddish light of the cook-room, and this being so, he could not know I was present, more particularly as he could not hear me, yet he persisted in his poor babble, which was a behaviour in him that, more than even the matter of his speech, persuaded ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... devour manners, morals, religion, and common-sense. If Father Lamson or Abby Folsom were borne by main force from an antislavery meeting, and the non-resistants pleaded that these protestants had as good right to speak as anybody, and that what was called their senseless babble was probably inspired wisdom, if people were only heavenly minded enough to understand it, it was but another sign of the impending anarchy. And what was to be said—for you could not call them old ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... Maternal craft; that rocked me so often in thy heart of oak, I grieve to tell how I deserted thee on the broad deep. So far from home, with such a motley crew, so many islanders, whose heathen babble echoing through thy Christian hull, must have grated harshly ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Stunned with his importunate babble, and anxious only for rest and quiet, poor Shaw-nee-aw-kee eagerly assented, and the chief took ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... he said in an undertone. And, indeed, the next moment it appeared but too true, for with a laugh the poor creature began a babble of her child and its beauty. "Just like its father. Dark eyes and brown hair. Won't he be glad to see it when he comes? Have you children?" she suddenly ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... it over afterward the hero of his sudden adoration had not uttered one syllable about jails, criminals, robberies, or crimes of any sort. In fact he had talked really very little. What he had done had been to smile, nod, and let the other fellow babble. It had, to be sure, been a delightful experience to find yourself a lion, and everything you did of interest to your listener; but you did not learn much about the business of being a detective, reflected Walter, a bit mortified by his ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... quoth Umslopogaas, "or if you must babble, speak those words which you would say ere you bid ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... there was a sound as if his companion had given his mouth a pat, for from pretty close at hand there was the low babble of voices. ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... his moderation. The conviction that the duke's government would only cease with the termination of his public career was so general, that the moment he was installed in office, the whigs smiled on him; political conciliation became the slang of the day, and the fusion of parties the babble of clubs and ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... Australia, and to such other countries as would listen. The task was not pleasant, and it had its dangers, too, of a certain kind. But Shorland had had difficulty and peril often in his life, and he borrowed no trouble. Proceeding along the Rue de l'Alma, and listening to the babble of French voices round him, he suddenly paused abstractedly, and said to himself "Somehow it brings back Paris to me, and that last night there, when I bade Freeman good-bye. Poor old boy, I'm glad better days are coming for him. Sure to be better, if he marries Clare. Why didn't ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to the deck (Crushed them) or water (and drowned them) or rolled With the sea-romp over the wreck. Night roared, with the heart-break hearing a heart-broke rabble, The woman's wailing, the crying of child without check— Till a lioness arose breasting the babble, A prophetess towered in the tumult, a virginal ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... "Don't babble like a fool!" Kennon said with disgust. "How could I land a spacer here without being spotted? You sound like a two-credit novel. And even if I did—would it be a can like this?" Kennon played the torch over the blue-black durilium ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... her quietly into the vestibule and the company burst into an incongruous babble. Dorn listened to their voices, again firm and self-sufficient, chattering formalities. He watched Rachel adjusting her hat with over-eager gestures. Her eyes were avoiding him. She seemed breathless, her head squirming under the necessity of having to remain for another moment ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... Norah began to babble to Anna. "You know, I just thought I never would get this old thing on." She was speaking of her dress. "Aileen wouldn't ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... dependance multiplied, hope the spirit of English liberty will hinder or destroy, let them, instead of compiling grammars and dictionaries, endeavour with all their influence to stop the license of translators, whose idleness and ignorance, if it be suffered to proceed, will reduce us to babble a dialect of France.' Ib. p. 49. 'I have rarely admitted any words not authorised by former writers; for I believe that whoever knows the English tongue in its present extent will be able to express his thoughts without further ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... was the year '92—the year of leanness—the scene a spot between Sukhum and Otchenchiri, on the river Kodor, a spot so near to the sea that amid the joyous babble of a sparkling rivulet the ocean's ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... be busy and fill your pitcher, come, O come to my lake. The water will cling round your feet and babble its secret. The shadow of the coming rain is on the sands, and the clouds hang low upon the blue lines of the trees like the heavy hair above your eyebrows. I know well the rhythm of your steps, they are beating in my heart. Come, O come ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore
... two escaping alike. As different are they as the current of our individual lives; now quietly gliding in, but not off, the racket on either side; now confidently asserting themselves by a semi-turbulent merriness; now all babble and bubble and surface; now dark, deep, and masterful through hidden force under a calm countenance; now tearing, and dashing, and running away with ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... eight o'clock train from Winchester. To-morrow evening I shall be sitting on a form in a big bare class-room, listening to the babble of a lot of girls pretending to learn ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... a bright letter of New York gossip published in the New York Star, called "Bab's Babble." Edward had read it, and saw the possibility of syndicating this item as a woman's letter from New York. He instinctively realized that women all over the country would read it. He sought out the author, made arrangements with her and with former ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... it matter to you whether she has a soul or not," says the voice, "provided she can babble pleasantly at dinner and ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... he's fond of outward appearance. Gentle maiden, deem me not cold and void of all feeling, If I disclose my father's nature to you, who're a stranger. Yes, such words have never before escaped, I assure von Out of my mouth, which is little accustom'd to babble and chatter; But you have managed to worm all my secrets from out of my bosom. Well, my worthy father the graces of life holds in honour, Wishes for outward signs of love, as well as of rev'rence, And would doubtless be satisfied with an inferior servant ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... rightly of the mountains nam'd! Through the long chain of Alps from mound to mound, And o'er th' eternal snows, like Echo, bound; Like Echo, when the hunter-train at dawn Have rous'd her from her sleep; and forest-lawn, Cliffs, woods, and caves her viewless steps resound, And babble of her pastime!" ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... she poured forth a babble of lamentations, wringing her hands, and rubbing her lips together. She was a woman passed of thirty, but thin still and fair like her brother in the face, for she was ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... sweet, delicious freshness of the air, some voice in the mellow babble of the stream, leaping in and out of sight between the alders, some smile of light, lingering on the rising corn-fields beyond the meadow and the melting purple of a distant hill, reached to the seclusion of his heart. He was soothed and cheered; his ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... and turning the welfare of the men and the horses over to his foreman, the rancher led Transley and Linder along a path through a grove of cottonwoods, across a footbridge where from underneath came the babble of water, to "the house," marked by a yellow light which poured through the windows and lost itself in the ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... breast at that instant. He had an impulse, never felt before, to go down on his knees where the child lay, to take it in his arms, to draw it to him, to fondle it, to call it his own, and to pour over it the inarticulate babble of pain and love that was bursting from his tongue. But some one was kneeling there already, and in his jealous longing he realised that his passionate ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... Go babble at the ball and rout, And smirk with high-born dames who doubt: Thy flames are quenched, thy fires are out, ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... I mean quite the opposite," she said. "I don't think that I've anything whatever to tell you that's of the very smallest importance. I only just want to babble and be glad. I am glad, oh, so frightfully glad! You are the nicest aunt that anybody ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... Whitefriars Road. She had taken a train from Upchurch, leaving her father to return home alone with the empty wagon. It was a strange sight which met her. The usually quiet street was thronged from end to end, and the babble of many voices made all sounds indistinct. Even on the outskirts of the crowd there were men, some pale and some red with anxiety, struggling with elbows and shoulders to make their way through to the bank, in the vain hope that it would not be too ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... will not stand when he is bidden he is none of the prince's subjects. Dog. True, and they are to meddle with none but the prince's subjects.—You shall also make no noise in the streets: for, for the watch to babble and talk, is most tolerable, and not to be endured. 2 Watch. We will rather sleep than talk: we know what belongs to a watch. Dog. Why, you speak like an ancient and most quiet watchman; for I cannot see how sleeping should offend: only, have ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the extreme dreariness to me, poor little boy, of perching on those uncomfortable, old-fashioned, grown-up seats, too high for my little legs, too wide for my short thighs, so that I sat backless above and dangling below. What had I to do with those grown-up sermons? Men's talk is babble to a child, as much as children's to a man. The wind that blew past my ears meant as much, and sounded better. Or what were the prayers to me, or the singing? This perfunctory, formal early piety of mine had much influence, long afterward, by natural reaction. Nothing can better shadow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... from the sapling upward; and if they endure long enough, they grow to be traditionally observed and honored, and connected with the fortunes of old families, till, like Tennyson's Talking Oak, they babble with a thousand leafy tongues to ears that can ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... which was not in her estimation absolutely reprobate and godless, and brought forward all the comforting arguments which a pious Christian can command for the edification and encouragement of those who mourn a beloved friend; but to Gorgo all this well-meant discourse was as the babble of an unknown tongue; and it was only when, at length, Marianne went up to her and drew her to her motherly bosom, to kiss her, and bid her be welcome under Clelnens' roof till Porphyrius should be at home again, that she understood that the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... My window glimpses larch and heather. I hardly hear the tuneful babble, Not knowing nor much caring whether The text is praise or exhortation, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... labours upon Guicciardini—the toil of a month of nights—was as the work of an ant in the dust. Beside her interest in his gossip of the schools, the coffee-house, the street corner, my exposition of the Sonnets of Petrarca was as the babble of school children at play in the Pra; beside her attentions to his clumsy caresses, her tenderness to me hour after hour was but the benevolence of a kindly woman to a lad left on her hands. Oh, bitter tonic discovery! How ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... not for thee to down on thy knees, and say over a many Scripture words only; for that thou mayest do, and yet do nothing but babble. But if thou from a sense of thy baseness canst groan out thy heart's desire before the Lord, He will hear thee, and grant thy desire; for He can tell what is the meaning of the groanings of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the stairs, they drifted slowly along the walk, watching the crowd. Besides the universal tension, there were laughter and hope and exhilaration in the faces. The enthusiasm of this boyish multitude warmed one. The girl wished to get into this spirit—to be one of them. Then suddenly from the babble at their elbows came a discordant note, not long nor loud, only a few words, penetrating and harsh with the metallic ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... deepest scaur that is scratched down the abrupt side of the lower range of the mountain, we find it, as we anticipated, the channel of a clear dancing stream, which amuses us with its babble for several hundred feet of the ascent. Some time ere we had reached the base of the hill we had lost sight of the summit, and there was before us only the broad steep bank, with its surface of alternate stone and heather, and a few birch-trees ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... of Art: For there are a great many, who do, I don't know after what Manner, affect the Copia and Variation of Phrase, when they don't know how to express it once right. It is not enough for them to have babbled once, but they must render the Babble much more babbling, by first one, and then by another turning of it; as if they were resolv'd to try the Experiment, how barbarously they were able to speak: And therefore, they heap together, certain simple synonymous Words, that are so contrary one to the other, that ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... again into a babble of excited talk, of which I could make out only a word here and there. They lifted me up, seeing how sick and weak I felt, and seated me in a strange, but very comfortable chair. I felt dazed. The two were still ...
— The Man Who Saw the Future • Edmond Hamilton
... reveal to none that he hath received the gift from the hand of the servant of the stars. For THEY do their work in secret, and when men sleep; therefore they love not the babble of mouths, and he who reveals ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... to adore aunt Celia. I didn't care for her at first, but she is so deliciously blind! Anything more exquisitely unserviceable as a chaperon I can't imagine. Absorbed in antiquity, she ignores the babble of contemporaneous lovers. That any man could look at Kitty when he could look at a cathedral passes her comprehension. I do not presume too greatly on her absent-mindedness, however, lest she should turn unexpectedly and rend me. I always remember ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... away: Though the tongue of fiercest Faction In its Folly may deride, Still he stands in lofty learning Like a giant o'er the tide, While the murmuring wavelets passing Far beneath his kingly hand, Looking upward, blindly babble Where they ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... in London; martial music, marching regiments, with gorgeous generals on horseback, with shining swords; church processions; wedding pageants crowding in and out of superb churches; newspapers, shop-signs, and chatter, all in French, even down to the babble of the small children. And the background of this parade was always the pleasant, light-hued buildings, the majority of them large and of a certain uniformity of aspect, as if they had been made in co-operation, and to look pretty, instead of independently and incongruously, as ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... had been lately kindled: for their smoke was rising in thick columns, part of it falling again to the earth. Around the fires, and through the smoke, flitted the forms of the Indians. They appeared to be cooking and feasting. Some of them staggering over the ground, kept up an incessant babble—at intervals varying their talk with savage whoops. Others danced around accompanying their leaps with the monotonous "hi-hi-hi-ya." All appeared to have partaken freely of the fire-water of Taos. A few more seriously disposed were grouped ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... what it might. Strange things were said by one and another, till the rebuke of the house-mistress quelled them into far-off whispers. For a time after there was uneasiness, constraint, and silence; then the chill fear thawed by degrees, and the babble of ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... language of what were to her the holiest hours of her existence, which is thus hypocritically used to blind and rock her in a cradle of deception. If corrupt, she maybe brought to answer to it all the same, and she will do her part of the play, and babble words, and fret and pout deliciously; and the old days will seem to be revived, when both know they are dead; and she will thereby gain any ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and literature since the armistice. I agreed that I did discover such a chaos, but that it seemed to me a chaos which was an end rather than a beginning, a chaos in which the Tower of Babel had fallen, and men had come to babble with more and more complete dissociation of ideas, or else, on the other hand, were clinging desperately to such literary and social traditions as had been left, while their work froze into a new Augustanism comparable to that of the early ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... sea, in whose waves the tropical sun seemed to have fused his beams; and beneath that fair, sinless, peaceful sky, wafted by a balmy breeze over those smiling, transparent, golden waves, a bloodthirsty Pirate bore down on them with a crew of human tigers; and a lady babble babble babble babble babble babble ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... dead woman, the baby face nestling at his throat, the girl coming to him with her trials and triumphs. His heart swelled so that he could not have spoken, but deep in his throat he muttered a dumb prayer. And how he suffered that day, hearing her babble mixed with moanings every time the door opened. Once ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... questions of life, and wait serenely and vigilantly for a response, one, two, ten years, a lifetime, wellnigh an eternity, if need be, not falling into despondencies and despairing skepticisms because the universe forbears to babble and tattle its secret ere yet he half or a thousandth part guesses how deep and holy that secret is, but quietly, heroically asking and waiting. And toward this posture of asking the profound and vital words assist us by being heard,—which is their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the sound of quick nervous footsteps with an odd halt in their fall on the gravel walk outside. The three girls ran to the door in a tumultuous greeting, even Jemima losing her staidness for the occasion. Ralph could hear only the confused babble of tongues and the expressions, "Now you hear, father—" "Now you understand—" "Listen to me, father—" as one after another took up ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... gashed by deep canyons, came sweeping down to the valley on my right, and on my left the Foot Hills were crowned with colored fantastic rocks like castles. Everything was buried under a glittering shroud of snow. The babble of the streams was bound by fetters of ice. No branches creaked in the still air. No birds sang. No one passed or met me. There were no cabins near or far. The only sound was the crunch of the snow under Birdie's feet. We came to a river over which ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... was content. Lo-Lale was a kind husband, and he was constantly studying to advance her happiness, but he was meditative and silent; he loved the woody solitudes, while she was fond of company, babble, sport, and especially of swimming and surf-riding. Presently it was noticed that she laughed less. She did not welcome Lo-Lale when he returned from his walks or his communings with Nature on the hills. The voice of the sea was calling her,—and the voice ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... and rattle of dismay down a steep staircase occupying the centre of the stage, on his discovery of the rifling of his chest. Long was I to have in my ears the repeated shriek of his alarm, followed by a panting babble of wonder and rage as his impetus hurled him, a prostrate scrap of despair (he was a tiny figure, yet "so held the stage" that in his company you could see nobody else) half way across the room. I associate a little uncertainly with the same night the sight ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... that respected him so much; the whole world to him—for to us the limits of the universe are strictly defined by those we know. There is nothing for us outside the babble of praise and blame on familiar lips, and beyond our last acquaintance there lies only a vast chaos; a chaos of laughter and tears which concerns us not; laughter and tears unpleasant, wicked, morbid, contemptible—because heard imperfectly by ears rebellious to strange sounds. To Lingard—simple ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... trees surrounding the thicket. A regiment might have beaten the wood pretty thoroughly, and yet have failed to find it. The gorse was so thick in all the outer part of the clump that dogs would leave its depths un-searched. Yet, lying there in the shelter one could hear the splashing babble of the brook only fifty yards away, and the singing of a girl at the mill a ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... mills, twisting at the bottom of a gorge. One cliff-like wall or the other lay to the sun all day, so that the way was lined with a profusion of every wild thing that turns green and blooms in the Lowlands of Scotland. And it was filled to the brim with bird song and water babble. ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... He flew upstairs and returned with a pitcher of water. When he got back Ruth was sitting up. The look of terror was gone from her face. She smiled at him, a faint, curiously happy smile. He flung himself on his knees beside her, his arm round her waist, and burst into a babble of self-reproach. ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... in the steeple the dull bell swinging Over the furrows ill ploughed by Death! Hark the bird-babble, the loud lark singing! Hark, from the sky, what ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... the moment the excitement of her pleading was over—'Rachel, are you mad?—Fly, fly, fly!' was always sounding in her ears. The little street of Gylingden, through which they were passing, looked strange and dream-like. And as she listened to Mrs. Crinkle's babble over the counter, and chose his toys for poor little 'Fairy,' she felt like one trifling on the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of Dr. Bunting she heard the songs of far-away birds, and because beneath the rumble of a printing press she could get the babble of a brook, because Z was near and life was strong, the woman vanquished the girl, and she threw this over to ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... the store. No; he didn't want any marked-down collars or cuffs; he conveyed an impression to the solicitous clerk of some one waiting for some one. Patiently, uncomplainingly! With an unseeing eye for the hurrying and scurrying myriads! Time passed; he remained oblivious to the babble of voices. Timon in the wilderness, Diogenes in his tub, could not have been mentally more isolated from annoying human consociation than was at the moment Mr. Heatherbloom, perched on a rickety stool amid a conglomeration of ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... have turned the household upside down, and thrown the neighbourhood into confusion; and do you come to me then with airs of assumed modesty—do you sit down like a sage and criticise my explanation of the readings, and whatever idle babble you say has come into my head? Have you come full of envy, and dejected because nothing is sent you from home; and while the discussion is going on, do you sit brooding on nothing but how your father or your brother are disposed towards ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... son Hordedef said, "Thy state is that of one who lives to good old age; for old age is the end of our voyage, the time of embalming, the time of burial. Lie, then, in the sun, free of infirmities, without the babble of dotage: this is the salutation to worthy age. I come from far to call thee, with a message from my father Khufu, the blessed, for thou shalt eat of the best which the king gives, and of the food which those have who follow after him; ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie
... skies were fairer and shores were firmer, And the blue sea over the white sand rolled— Babble and prattle, and prattle ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... the doctor's turn to be thrilled with horror. There were not many situations which would yield such a sensation to his seasoned nerves. He sat in silence while the babble of the card-table broke in upon them again. "We had a double ruff if you had returned a heart." "I was bound to clear the trumps." They were ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to that wonderful world below, but there was the Heaviside layer, and the weak signals beat but feebly against it. All that seeped through by some instant's freak of transmission was a fragment of incoherent babble to reach the uncomprehending ear of an Arkansas ham and give that gentleman uneasy sleep for ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... silence used at the tables of the wiser sort, and generally throughout the realm, and likewise the moderate eating and drinking. But the poorer countrymen do babble somewhat at table, and mistake ribaldry and loquacity for wit and wisdom, and occasionally are cup-shotten; and what wonder, when they who have hard diet and small drink at home come to such opportunities ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to-day, Barantsevitch would not have been so depressed and we should not be so dull and ill at ease as we are, and you would not feel drawn to the theatre and I to Sahalin. But criticism maintains a dignified silence or gets out of it with idle trashy babble. If it seems to you authoritative it is because it is stupid, conceited, impudent, and clamorous; because it is an empty barrel one ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... he was ranging up on our port quarter, and so close that one might almost have hove a biscuit on board, all was confusion with him; the hands being busy taking in their canvas in a slipshod, lubberly way that would have disgraced a collier; while the babble of tongues must have been deafening, judging from ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... 'sensitive, artistic temperament,' as Mrs. Hand calls it. It must be awfully trying, though, not to be able to babble when you're pleased. It's such a relief to get it out of your system. I'd simply burst if I tried to keep quiet when I ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... folk standing by, who had a good sport to hear her chide, but little they looked for this chance, till it was done ere they could stop it. They said they heard her tongue babble in her head, and call, "Whoreson, whoreson!" twice after the head was off the body. At least, thus they all reported afterward unto the king, except only one, and that was a woman, and she said that ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... Idiots.—Children have command at the beginning of no articulate sounds; then they learn these and syllables; after this also words of one syllable; then they speak short words of more than one syllable and sentences, but frequently babble forth words they have heard without understanding ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... opened, somewhere. The next moment brought a new whiff of cold, fresh air and the sound of a motor, then silence again, sudden and profound, from the street-side. A deep, almost dramatic voice silenced the confused babble. ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... artist with our thoughts and our feelings; that it shall interpret our ideals to us in that universal language which has grown up in the course of ages. We have a right to reject with pity or with scorn the stammerings of incompetence, the babble of lunacy, or the vaporing of imposture. But mutual understanding implies a duty on the part of the public as well as on the part of the artist, and we must give as well as take. We must be at the pains to learn something ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... filling their heads with the indiscriminate plunder of all the old rubbish which lies scattered in books. They always seem intoxicated with their own knowledge, and for all merit are rich in importunate babble. Unskilful in everything, void of common sense, and full of absurdity and impertinence, they decry everywhere ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... hurried through the village, crossed the dark bridge and approached a ramshackle house from which a babble of voices rose in strident argument. The excited chorus abated at Terry's sharp knock and the door was thrown open to disclose the belligerent figure of Tony Ricorro, the leader of the Italian colony. Recognizing the reefered ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... to Fifi and Nini were elaborate and complicated by bursts of laughter. The Tziganes recommended Captain Sengoun to go home and seek further adventures on his pillow; and had it not been for the gay babble of the fountain and the persistent perfume of flowers, he ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... little fellow has become accustomed to his new food (whether he likes it or not) or begins to babble a word or two, he is given a name that usually recalls the place where he was born, some particular event of the moment or the way he may have of making use of a word often, or of pronouncing ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... carrying on its heated breath a drifting sheet of incandescence that fluttered and pulsated like a thing alive. Mado switched on the sound mechanism of the rulden and the roaring of the pillar of flame came to their ears. There were other sounds as well; the babble of alien voices ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... which constitutes or sustains the grand life of the soul here subsists, while throughout the peninsula foreign dominion, clerical oppression and voluptuous or academical inertia reduces man to the system of the antechamber, the subtleties of dilettantism and the babble of sonnets. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... Such a babble of voices and questions asked, would have deafened any one not concerned in the meeting. But every one, even Sary, had a heart interest in the returned scouts, and no one took the trouble to bottle up ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the darkling shades and deep-mouthed baying of hellhound Touch not with horror of dread little Erotion dear. Now was her sixth year ending, and melting the snows of the winter, Only a brief six days lacked to the tale of the years. Young, amid dull old age, let her wanton and frolic and gambol, Babble of me that was, tenderly lisping my name. Soft were her tiny bones, then soft be the sod that enshrouds her, Gentle thy touch, mother Earth, gently she rested ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... tendencies this nation embodies. We have risen to see that it were a good bargain to barter all the material wealth it holds for the priceless spiritual ideas it represents. France babbles about 'going to war for an idea.' We don't babble. We buckle on our armor and fight, we practical, money-making Yankees, who are said to value everything by dollars, and, after two years of tremendous fighting, are half amazed ourselves to find we have been fighting solely for a half-dozen ideas the world can lose only at the cost ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... was similar in most respects, except that command return was made on the thirty-first orbit after the astronaut's failure to de-orbit at the end of the thirtieth. His incoherent babble of moons, stars, and worlds was no more helpful than ...
— Egocentric Orbit • John Cory
... by the best feeling. The rector and his wife, ignoring their own sentiments, made haste to smooth away the little difficulty that had thus unexpectedly arisen, and in a few minutes all was in a pleasant clatter and babble with the pouring of tea, cutting of huge three-decker cakes, and passing of large, solid plates holding pyramids of equally large and solid sandwiches. Ringfield, devoting himself to the English visitors and the person in black silk, who was the widow of a deceased ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... decline and fall? Conjecture was keen, but investigation was difficult. Father Goriot was not communicative; in the sham countess' phrase he was "a curmudgeon." Empty-headed people who babble about their own affairs because they have nothing else to occupy them, naturally conclude that if people say nothing of their doings it is because their doings will not bear being talked about; so the highly respectable merchant became a scoundrel, and the late beau was an ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... that, and there followed a little indistinct babble of argument. I went on slowly in the circuit I had marked out, watching these ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... probabilities were he would be round the corner in Forty-fifth Street, trying to find a mythical boarding house and a mythical hall boy named Fred, before the foremost of the runners behind overtook and seized him. Then would follow shouts, yells, a babble of accusations, denials of all wrongful intent by the frightened captive and explanations by him to the policeman of his ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... reader might apply that description to Browne's poetry; he might urge that the breezes which blew down these leafy alleys and over those trim parterres were not more grateful than the fragrance exhaled from the 'Pastorals'; that the brooks and birds babble and twitter in the printed page not less blithely than in that western Paradise. What so pleasant as to read of May-games, true-love knots, and shepherds piping in the shade? of pixies and fairy-circles? of rustic bridals ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... breast. I sat half stunned by his irrelevant babble. Suddenly he gripped my forearm in an impressive and cautious manner, as if to lead me into a ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... silently. When at last she took her hands away and turned her face on him, his lover's observation saw how beautifully she wept. Her eyes were not red, her face was calm. He took heart from her glance, began to babble foolish love ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... rear of the store. No; he didn't want any marked-down collars or cuffs; he conveyed an impression to the solicitous clerk of some one waiting for some one. Patiently, uncomplainingly! With an unseeing eye for the hurrying and scurrying myriads! Time passed; he remained oblivious to the babble of voices. Timon in the wilderness, Diogenes in his tub, could not have been mentally more isolated from annoying human consociation than was at the moment Mr. Heatherbloom, perched on a rickety stool amid a conglomeration of females ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... when the holy stars were shining, ah, how softly the little brook murmured to them! you could almost fancy it did not babble so loudly as in the day-time, for fear lest it should wake the sleeping ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... into the vestibule and the company burst into an incongruous babble. Dorn listened to their voices, again firm and self-sufficient, chattering formalities. He watched Rachel adjusting her hat with over-eager gestures. Her eyes were avoiding him. She seemed breathless, her head squirming under the necessity of having to remain for another moment before the eyes ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... came to the city, and each night, homeless, slept out in the open, under the trees of Olivet, and the blue. Now, He rudely shocks them by clearing the temple areas of the market-place rabble and babble, and now He is healing the lame and maimed in the temple itself, amid the reverent praise of the multitude, the songs of the children, and the scowling, muttered protests of the chief priests. Calmly, ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... beginning to ramble and babble incoherently, her memories of her own and the experiences of others all confused in her mind. When she had about finished a story about how one of the slave women, "bust de skull" of the head of her marster,'" 'cause she was ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... shouting; I dug glad heels into the squelching soil; I splashed diamond showers from puddles with a stick; I hurled clods skywards at random, and presently I somehow found myself singing. The words were mere nonsense,—irresponsible babble; the tune was an improvisation, a weary, unrhythmic thing of rise and fall: and yet it seemed to me a genuine utterance, and just at that moment the one thing fitting and right and perfect. Humanity would have rejected it with scorn, Nature, everywhere singing ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... the great gate on the east side—a dark entrance kept by a porter who saluted him—and rode through into the court; and here, indeed, was the company; for out of the windows of the low hall on his left came a babble of tongues, while two or three gentlemen with pots in their hands saluted him from the passage door, telling him that Mr. Thomas FitzHerbert was within. Mr. Fenton was one of these, come over from North ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... telling a German he intends to have him shot. Lord Cromer is a Junker. Mr. Winston Churchill is an odd and not disagreeable compound of Junker and Yankee: his frank anti-German pugnacity is enormously more popular than the moral babble (Milton's phrase) of his sanctimonious colleagues. He is a bumptious and jolly Junker, just as Lord Curzon is an uppish Junker. I need not string out the list. In these islands the Junker is ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... and Dangerfield glared at his bloody shirt-sleeve, and laughed a chilly sneer; 'no, Sir, but I'll punish you, with Doctor Sturk's declaration against the babble of poor Zekiel Irons. I'll quickly ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... injured; his heart burning with regret, and vanity, and love of pleasure; his head without habits of activity or principles of judgment, a whirlpool where fantasies and hallucinations and 'fragments of science' were chaotically jumbled to and fro. But he could babble college-latin; and talk with a trenchant tone about the 'revolutions of Philosophy.' Such accomplishments procured him pardon from his parents: the precentorial spirit of his father was more than reconciled on discovering that Daniel could also preach ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... unreal in the atmosphere, charged as it seemed to be with some omen of impending happenings; something unreal in that whispered warning, those few hoarsely uttered words which had stolen to his hearing across the clusters of drooping roses; the absurd babble of the woman, who sat there with tragic things under the powder with which ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to go to sleep. So he snuggled his glossy, roguish face down into the baby's lap and shut his eyes. And the baby, filled with delight over such a novel and interesting plaything, shook her yellow hair down over his black fur and crooned to him a soft, half-articulate babble of endearment. ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... dining-room, empty and silent, the electric lights burning, the tray with whiskey, siphon and cigarette-box marking the midnight hour. Then we have the stumbling, fumbling entrance of Jack Barthwick, beatifically drunk, his maudlin babble, and his ill-omened hospitality to the haggard loafer who follows at his heels. Another example of a high-pitched opening scene may be found in Mr. Perceval Landon's The House Opposite. Here we have a midnight ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... and Faith and Ernest carried Gladys off to a place they called the grove. The farmhouse was painted in light yellow and white. It was built on a grassy slope, and at the foot of a gentle hill a pretty pond lay, and out from this flowed a brook. If one kept quite still he could hear the soft babble of the little stream even from the piazza. Nearer by was a large elm-tree, so wide-spreading that the pair of Baltimore orioles who hung their swaying nest on one limb scarcely had a bowing acquaintance with the robins who lived on the other side. The air was full of ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... Wagner, the feeling that prompted it may be understood by all who love him and who stand every other music, so long as it is real music. Immediately after listening to "Tristan and Isolda" all other operas seem away from the point, to be concerned with the secondary issues of life, to babble without fervour or directness of unessential matters. This does not mean that "Tristan" is greater than "Don Giovanni" or the "Matthew" Passion—for it is not—but that it speaks to each of us in the most modern language of the most engrossing subject in the world, of oneself, of one's own soul. ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... to eight in the evening the hickory fire in the hall was pouring a sheet of flame up the chimney, the house was in a drench of gas- light from the ground floor up, the guests were arriving, and there was a babble of hearty greetings, with not a voice in it that was not old and familiar and affectionate; and when the curtain went up, we looked out from the stage upon none but faces dear to us, none but faces that were lit up ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... hovel Lord Asterisk's unwritten novel. It's full of wit, and full of fashion, And full of taste, and full of passion; It tells some very curious histories, Elucidates some charming mysteries, And mingles sketches of society With precepts of the soundest piety. Thus I babble to the host Who adore the "Morning Post;" If they care for what I say. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... Greek debate I care little about. I would much rather have read a paper on the subject. Till a man can write he cannot speak— except, as Carlyle would say, 'in a confused babble of words and ideas.'" ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... to go," said the Shaggy Man, putting his fingers to his ears to shut out the monotonous babble of ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... sweet companion in hours of sorrow or of feasting. To those who come skilled in its language, it can discourse sweetly of all things, and drive away all thoughts that annoy and cares that vex the soul. To those who touch it, not knowing how to draw forth its speech, it will babble strange nonsense, and rave with uncertain moanings. But thy knowledge is born with thee, and so my lyre is thine. Wherefore now let us feed the herds together, and with our care they shall thrive and multiply. There is no more cause ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... world that respected him so much; the whole world to him—for to us the limits of the universe are strictly defined by those we know. There is nothing for us outside the babble of praise and blame on familiar lips, and beyond our last acquaintance there lies only a vast chaos; a chaos of laughter and tears which concerns us not; laughter and tears unpleasant, wicked, morbid, contemptible—because heard imperfectly ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... Hagen treats the evil prophecy as lightly as does Siegfried himself. In not unnatural sequence to Siegfried's reference to the water-birds, he remarks: "I have heard it reported, Siegfried, that you understand the language of the birds. Is it true?" "I have not heeded their babble this many a day—" Siegfried is saying, when Gunther's heavy and preoccupied mien is borne upon him; he breaks off to reach him his drink-horn, cheerily rallying him: "Drink, Gunther, drink! Your brother brings it to you!" Gunther, oppressed by his dark doubt of Siegfried, is not prompt in ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... unfortunately, without its weakness. The whole pandemonium of fairy devils, of all varieties of fantastic ugliness, both in form and feature, and of all sizes from one to four feet, seemed to have suddenly assembled about me. At length, after a great babble of talk among themselves, in a language unknown to me, and after seemingly endless gesticulation, consultation, elbow-nudging, and unmitigated peals of laughter, they formed into a circle about one of their number, who scrambled upon a stone, and, much to my surprise, ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... they are only children and babies. Fifty banded together for such purposes! Is it possible? Three would be quite sufficient, and then they should be sure of one another—not babble over their cups. The babies! Then to hire unreliable people to change the notes at the money changers', persons whose hands tremble as they receive the rubles. On such their lives depend! Far better to strangle yourself! The man goes in, receives the change, ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... face nestling at his throat, the girl coming to him with her trials and triumphs. His heart swelled so that he could not have spoken, but deep in his throat he muttered a dumb prayer. And how he suffered that day, hearing her babble mixed with moanings every time the door opened. Once the ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... he said. "She is truly 'Manlia,' though called, against custom, for my dead Marcius. When Claudians change the toga for the paludamentum, and Ogulnians cease to babble of Greek philosophy, then shall a Manlian be lacking in the spirit of our order—ay, and in ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule. Not William the Silent only, but all the considerable men I have known, and the most undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, forbore to babble of what they were creating and projecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do thou thyself but hold thy tongue for one day: on the morrow, how much clearer are thy purposes and duties; what wreck and ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... Whatever's the matter now?" cried Dorothy, as the copper man continued to babble these unmeaning words, which no one could understand at all because they had ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the country I cease to view man as separate from the rest. As the river runs through many a clime, so does the stream of men babble on, winding through woods and villages and towns. It is not a true contrast that men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever. Humanity, with all its confluent streams, big and small, flows on and on, just as does the river, from its source in birth to its sea of death;—two ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... flowed conversationally towards the door and the sunny green, while the organ played deafeningly. But play as exultantly as it might, it could not drown the babble of human voices. Every one wanted to utter those excitable commonplaces that seem somehow to cover at such times ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... lips, their faces steeped in a strange, unholy rapture. Sometimes they would rise and walk a few paces with outstretched arms, till the arms closed as though they clasped something invisible, to which they bent their heads to babble awhile. Then they walked back to their rugs again, ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... a dream the grey buildings drew nearer, The babble rose louder and the organ's whine clearer, The hurdle came closer, he rushed through its top Like a comet in heaven that ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... and cries confused Of banqueters beside the meats and wine. They, lifting in their hands the beakers brimmed, Recklessly drank, till heavy of brain they grew, Till rolled their fluctuant eyes. Now and again Some mouth would babble the drunkard's broken words. The household gear, the very roof and walls Seemed as they rocked: all things they looked on seemed Whirled in wild dance. About their eyes a veil Of mist dropped, for the drunkard's ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... of the bell rang out above the babble of the men's voices and the shuffling noise of their feet moving about, the four strokes being sounded in pairs, "cling-clang, cling-clang!" like a double postman's knock, a slim gentlemanly young man, with brown hair and beard and moustache, who was dressed in a natty ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... those innocent intruders, nor did his brow clear till she had shepherded them within the inner fold. Fortunately, the refreshments were in this section, so that once therein, few of the sheep strayed back, and the jiggling wail of the violin was succeeded by a shrill babble of tongues and the clatter of cups and spoons. "Get me an ice, please—strawberry," she ordered John during one of these forced intervals in manual flirtation; and when he had steered laboriously to and fro, he found ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... Haldimand, Governor of Canada, she may be useful, being lately untethered from the convent and no more than seventeen or eighteen, and vain, no doubt, of her beauty, and so, I conclude, prone to babble if flattered. ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... Were there another God with vows to gain, To Him for succour I would surely go: Nor could I be called impious, if I turned In this great agony from one who spurned, To one who bade me come and cured my woe. Nay, Lord! I babble vainly. Help! I cry, Before the temple where Thy reason burned, Become a ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... not the indulgences themselves, if understood in the right sense, that he wishes to be attacked, but the loose babble of those who sold them. Blessed, he says, be he who protests against this, but cursed be he who speaks against the truth of apostolic indulgences. He finds it difficult, however, to praise these to the people, and at ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... talked, up as far as her elbow and down again to the tips of her fingers. She did not even attempt to draw her hand away, she was still in that state of apathy, where all her senses seemed dulled; and so she let him babble on, murmuring his adoration and his rose-colored dreams ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... the spot to do what is necessary. When there are no mineral waters or sea baths to give a place importance, Germans say they have come there to do a Luftkur. A delightful Frenchwoman who has written about England lately is amused by our everlasting babble about a "change." This one needs a change, she says, and that one is away for a change, and the other means to have a change next week. So the Germans amuse us by their eternal "cures." One tries air, and the other water, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... which it would be shameful to live, but we shall never do anything which may bring about results such as those before us." That would be a fair and temperate mode of talking—far different from the airy babble ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... he bitterly. "There, behind me, stands Death, watching my every movement. What's Bebel to me? Just a babbler, who babbles about this. And then some other fool will babble about that. It is all the same to me! If I don't die ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... cease thy loathsome cant! Day-labourer, slave of toil and want! I hate thy babble vain and hollow. Thou art a worm, no child of day: Thy god is Profit—thou wouldst weigh By pounds the Belvidere Apollo. Gain—gain alone to thee is sweet. The marble is a god! ... what of it Thou count'st a pie-dish far above ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... in league for battering it down. Through the rest of the community there was but little voice for Toleration. The frantic and idiotic stringency of the Presbyterians of 1644-6 was now, indeed, rather out of fashion, and a certain mild babble about a Limited Toleration was common in the public mouth. But the old leaven was at work in many quarters; occasional pamphlets from the Presbyterian camp still wailed lamentably about "the effects of the present Toleration, especially as to the increase ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... been frightened, even if it had seemed wholly real. He knelt before her, and his lips moved, but, as in a dream, silently. All the familiar music of the world went on—the bird-songs, the whisper of the wind, the babble of the brook, the rumour of the village. They all went on—there was no pause, no hush, no change—nothing to startle her—only, somehow, they seemed all to draw together, to become a single sound. All the sounds ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... never-ceasing loquacity, it should whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth surface of a pool. Continually, indeed, as it stole onward, the streamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet, soothing, but melancholy, like the voice of a young child that was spending its infancy without playfulness, and knew not how to be merry among sad acquaintance and events of ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and more complicated as the years went on. It is interesting to think of this stern and often savage genius, who loved to hate, and whose hate was almost less terrible than his love, babbling and prattling in little half caressing sentences, as a mother might babble over her first child. Pedantic writers have professed to find in Swift's use of this "little language" the coming shadow of that insanity which struck him down in ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... well: but this time thou hast done ill, whereas thou hast been spying on my ways; whereof may come heavy trouble but if we look to it. Well is it for thee that thou hast none unto whom thou mightest babble; for then must I needs have slain thee here and now. But for this first time I pardon thee, and thou hast escaped ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... away; She died to see you fondle a menial: These blows you dealt now, but what elder wounds Received them to such purpose suddenly? What had you caused her to remember most? What things would she be like to babble over In the wild helpless hour when fitful life No more can choose what thoughts it shall encourage In the tost mind? She has suffered you twice over, Your animal thoughts and hungry powers, this day, Until I knew ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... vessel, preparing to labour or look on. And though the White Pig was allowed to be three-quarters of a mile from the nearest point, the mighty voice of Captain Zeb rode over the flickering breadth of sea, and through the soft babble of the waves ashore. The wind was light from southwest, and the warp being nearly in the same direction now, the Blonde began to set her courses, to catch a lift of air, when the tide should come busily working under her. And this would be the best ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... to-night-at once," she said firmly. "To-morrow you will stay in bed till noon-at any rate, till I come. I promise you that you shall not be treated with further indignity. Your friends will stand by you, the world will be with you, if you do nothing rash, nothing that forces it to babble and scold. But you must play its game, my dearest. I'll swear that the worst has not happened. She drove him to his club, and, after a man has had a triumph, a woman will not drive him to his club if—my darling, you must trust me! If there must be the great smash, let it be done in a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... supplied with his monastic drink, and the waiter had retired, Trent looked across the table with significance. "In this babble of many conversations," he said, "we can speak as freely as if we were on a bare hill-side. The waiter is whispering soft nothings into the ear of the young woman at the pay-desk. We are alone. What do you think of that interview of this afternoon?" He ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... downward and struck the metal paving outside, Randall heard a wild babble of cries from inside. A moment he and Lanier gazed frenziedly around them, then were running with great leaps along the base of the building from which they had ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... must babble about The Merry Men, my favourite work. It is a fantastic sonata about the sea and wrecks. Chapter I. "Eilean Aros"—the island, the roost, the "merry men," the three people there living—sea superstitions. Chapter II. "What the Wreck had brought to Aros." Eh, boy? ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... recall this intoxicating babble, that I may picture to you the woman as she is, confirm all I have said of her, and let you into the secret of what happened later. But how shall I describe the accompaniment of the words? She sought ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... certain that a peculiar style of gossip, of babble, and of miniature intriguing, invests the atmosphere of little 'townishness,' such as often entangles the more thoughtful and dignified of the residents in troublesome efforts at passive resistance or active ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... looked into it, sir, but they can't get anything but babble out of the old fellow. He thinks ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... be a poor man's wife—starting again, he calls it—while he earns a salary and we live in a poky house and I do the cooking. I'd think it awfully funny if it was happening to any of my friends—but this is terrible! Well, goat-tending tells, doesn't it? And after all we have done for him—to babble on about honesty and earning and all those socialistic ideas. He is a dangerous man, ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... But once set her talking, she will forget your presence, and babble like the brook. How much she has told the poets, and the men of science! How much she will tell you, too, if you ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... brethren ... gabble-gabble!' My window glimpses larch and heather. I hardly hear the tuneful babble, Not knowing nor much caring whether The text is praise or exhortation, Prayer or thanksgiving ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... long as he could, though he found it hard not to talk when he had so much to say. And feeling, at last, that he was in danger of choking over the babble that surged up from within him, Daddy Longlegs decided that he would go and call on Rusty Wren, who lived in the cherry tree near ...
— The Tale of Daddy Longlegs - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... for greatness, both are in the highest degree artificial: while Lamb's way of writing, complex as it is, necessitating as it must have done not a little reading and (as would seem almost necessary) not a little practice, seems to run as naturally as a child's babble. The very tricks—mechanical dots, dashes, aposiopeses—which offend us now and then in Sterne; the unfamiliar Latinisms which frighten some and disgust others in Browne, drop from Lamb's lips or pen like the pearls of the Fairy story. ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... kinsvo'k an' nai'bours did zay ov her chile, (Under the high elem tree), That a prettier never did babble or smile Up o' top ov a proud mother's knee; An' his mother did toss en, an' kiss en, an' call En her darlen, an' life, an' ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... as I did from her babble! The letters have told us the same thing, but they were like the histories of other times. Camps, prisoners, barracks, mutilation, widowhood, death, sudden gains, social upheavals,—it is the old, hideous story of war come true of our day and ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... with its everlasting clack 445 Set all men's ears upon the rack. No sooner cou'd a hint appear, But up he started to picqueer, And made the stoutest yield to mercy, When he engag'd in controversy. 450 Not by the force of carnal reason, But indefatigable teazing; With vollies of eternal babble, And clamour, more unanswerable. For though his topics, frail and weak, 455 Cou'd ne'er amount above a freak, He still maintain'd 'em, like his faults, Against the desp'ratest assaults; And back'd their feeble lack of ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... was only broken when the lips of the invalid moved to murmur some loving words or to babble of the flowers in the Valley. She was in no pain but she was very tired. She was not unhappy, for the two whom she loved and who loved her were with her and though she was tired she soon would rest—in Heaven. When she spoke of going the man's heart stood still with terror. He ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... against all the mysteries of Christianity. If the Roman Catholics had pretended that the phenomenal bread and wine were changed into the phenomenal flesh and blood, this objection would have been legitimate and irresistible; but as it is, it is mere sensual babble. The whole of Popery lies in the assumption of a Church, as a numerical unit, infallible in the highest degree, inasmuch as both which is Scripture, and what Scripture teaches, is infallible by derivation only from an infallible decision of the Church. Fairly undermine or blow up this: and all ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... are greening overhead, And flowers adorn each mossy bed; The waters babble as they run— One thing is lacking, only one: If Mary were but here to-day, I would believe your ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke
... a pace or two behind the major, slipping and staggering at every second yard, was aware—though he could not see him—of young Corporal Sam close at his shoulder. The lad talked to himself as he ran: but his talk was no more than a babble of quiet unmeaning curses, and the sergeant, who understood how the lust of fighting works in different men, did not trouble to answer until, himself floundering up to his knees in a saltwater pool, he flung out a hand for ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... were fairer and shores were firmer, And the blue sea over the white sand rolled— Babble and prattle, ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... village street let in a noise as tumultuous as the sea was silent. The hubbub of a perpetual babble, all the louder for being compressed within narrow space, was always to be heard; it ceased only when the village slept. There was an incessant clicking accompaniment to this noisy street life; a music played from early dawn to dusk over the pavement's rough cobbles—the click clack, click ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... mischief, hoping perhaps to melt her yet to take the all-day drive with him. But she sat silent during the return to the village, answering his volubility only by yes or no when absolutely necessary. She let him babble away about college life and tell incidents of his late pastorate, at some of which he laughed immoderately; but he could not even bring a smile ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... there. It was like stealing from the Lord. It'll bring him bad luck. Mostly it was in the Gospels—just a bank-note here and there—sixty-one dollars and seventy-three cents it was." She seemed to be talking to herself rather than to the man and woman at her side. She went on—sometimes a babble they could not comprehend, as in pity and wonder they stood over her. Then again her voice rose, "He took it from the book of God. Oh, my son, my son! I ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... Irishmen that the world is flat, or that a straight line between two given points is the longest, or that the sun moves round the moon, or any other inane absurdity contrary to the evidence of science and their senses. The English Gladstonians who babble about brotherly love and conciliation should move about Dublin in disguise. Disguise would in their case be necessary to get at the truth, for Paddy is a shrewd trickster, and delights in humbugging this species ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... in the Bubble Babble Syndicate, Limited," explained the parson, tearfully, "and we have consequently lost every thing we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... puppies into sin," a medical man who has had much to do with boys' schools exclaimed to me in the bitterness of his soul. The small house of the young boy's soul, full of the song of birds, the fresh babble of the voices of sisters, all the innocent sights and sounds of an English or American home, swept and garnished till now by such loving hands, but left empty, unguarded, and unwatched, for the unclean spirit to lift the latch and enter in and take possession—the ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... on my defence. You at least shall not misunderstand me, Lyra. One intense regret I have; that I did not live in the time of the Amazons. They were free from this question of marriage; this babble of love. Why am I so persecuted? He will not take a refusal. There are sacred reasons. I am supported by every woman having the sense of her dignity. I am perverted, burlesqued by the fury of wrath I feel at their incessant pursuit. And I despise Mr. Osier and Mr. Swithin because they have an air ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fast, man," quoth Umslopogaas, "or if you must babble, speak those words which you would say ere you bid ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... was tired to death of hearing about the box, and heartily wished that Quicksilver, or whatever was the messenger's name, had left it at some other child's door, where Pandora would never have set eyes on it. So perseveringly as did she babble about this one thing! The box, the box, and nothing but the box! It seemed as if the box were bewitched, and as if the cottage were not big enough to hold it, without Pandora's continually stumbling over it, and making ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... writing copies, we were always learning or saying lessons. In the early morning Mr. Sandsome sat erect and bright, his face animated, his ruddy eyes keen and observant, the cane hanging but uncertainly upon its hook. There was a standing up of classes, a babble of repetition, now and then a crisis. How long the days were then! I have heard that scientific people—Professor C. Darwin is their leader, unless I err—which probably I do, for names and dates I have hated from my youth up—say the days grow longer. Anyhow, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... the murderer of my brother," Miss Rhoda exulted, while Miss Sarah began to babble volubly of what she ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... words, although he desired them, would not come. His arm went to her neck and settled there. His hand caressed her hair, her cheek. He kissed her eyes, her lips, her languid hands; and the words that came were only an infantile babble of regrets and apologies, assurances that he did love her, that he had never loved any one before, and never would love any one again. ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... Constable, "are there left no ancient servants of the House, that could speak out as well as you?" "Humph!" answered the huntsman—"men are not willing to babble when Randal Lacy is cracking his thong above their heads. Many are slain, or starved to death—some disposed of—some spirited away. But there are the weaver Flammock and his daughter Rose, who know as much of the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... up his hand to restrain her toothless babble. Nur-el-Din had stirred and was sitting up, rubbing her eyes. Then she caught sight of Desmond and scrambled rather unsteadily to ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... I spoken a word contrary to my opinion? It is not fit for me, a girl of twenty, to go disputing and dragooning as you would have me; but a little savoir faire, a grain of common sense, thrown in among the babble, always works. Don't you remember how Mrs. Ward's sister told us that a whole crowd of tottering Chinese ladies would lean on her, because they felt her firm support, though it was out ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... voice rising clear and strong above the babble of Mammon, asked, in the closing chapters of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... yet a cold shuddring dew Dips me all o're, as when the wrath of Jove Speaks thunder, and the chains of Erebus To som of Saturns crew. I must dissemble, And try her yet more strongly. Com, no more, This is meer moral babble, and direct Against the canon laws of our foundation; I must not suffer this, yet 'tis but the lees And setlings of a melancholy blood; 810 But this will cure all streight, one sip of this Will bathe the drooping spirits in delight Beyond the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... In the babble of voices Simon suddenly heard a man cry out sharply. The pain in the man's voice cut into Simon's heart like a knife. Simon scanned the crowd, but in the darkness could not see him. No one moved to let ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... so he went to the starting-point, whence he surveyed the course. There it lay, no more than a lane leading down between ranks of brown-faced men whose eyes were turned upon him. On the top rail of the corral perched Willie, revolver in hand. The babble of voices ceased, the strident laughter stilled, Speed heard the nervous Tustle of feminine skirts. Skinner was standing like a statue, his toe to ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... actual time it was exactly ten minutes. Then a cavalcade tramped down the hall. He heard their voices, and Hal Dozier was among them. About him flowed a babble of questions as the men struggled for the honor of a word from the great man. Perhaps he was coming to his room to form the posse and issue general instructions for ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... alcoves, and the wayward complaining of lutes. Indeed, wherever Monna Vittoria went she seemed to carry with her an atmosphere of subtle seclusion, of a cloistered lusciousness, of dim, green, guarded gardens, where the sighs of love's novices are stifled by the drip of stealthy fountains and the babble of fantastic birds. I suppose it was no more than my fancy, or a trick of my memory confusing later things with earlier, that makes me now, as I write, seem to recall what seemed like a smile on the ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... be proved that Phidias' statue must borrow gold from the sun, but since that is unproved, it is absurd to talk of a deficit. Moreover, gold cannot be borrowed from the sun. Therefore what Protagoras says is mere babble, and deserves no answer. On the other hand, will Phidias answer this question? 'When you have made Athene up there on the Parthenon, ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... mound, And o'er th' eternal snows, like Echo, bound; Like Echo, when the hunter-train at dawn Have rous'd her from her sleep; and forest-lawn, Cliffs, woods, and caves her viewless steps resound, And babble of ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... said the King: "Have hope, O friend! Yea, Death disgraced is hard; Much honour shall be thine"; and called the Captain of the Guard, Yar Khan, a bastard of the Blood, so city-babble saith, And he was honoured of the King — the which is salt to Death; And he was son of Daoud Shah, the Reiver of the Plains, And blood of old Durani Lords ran fire in his veins; And 'twas to tame an Afghan pride nor Hell ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... woman's faith! With a great clatter, I strode into the porch, thrust open the door, and stepped in. There was a shout of delight, a babble of, "It's our Noll! It's our Noll!" and Kate leaped into my arms and ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... to guess who. Ever since you discovered that first attempt, ever since we became certain there was a plot going on to clear out every one in succession to the Chobham estates—and that was jolly plain, though the fools of police did babble about no evidence, as if pistol bullets come from nowhere and poisoned cups ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... that text, Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, &c.; and most satisfying and agreeable to Mr. M'Ward, Mr. Brown and others, who were sadly misinformed by the indulged, and those of their persuasion, that he could preach nothing but babble against the indulgence, cess-paying, &c. But here he touched upon none of these things, except in prayer, when lamenting over the deplorable case of Scotland ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... that my assertion and brag were true. With reticence and modesty present, I could never have dared tell Scotty my small-boat estimate of him. But it is ever the way of John Barleycorn to loosen the tongue and babble the secret thought. ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... honest woman, show thyself to thy worshippers, who are worn with regretting thee all these thirteen years. Hush the noise of battle, be a true Lysimacha to us.[361] Put an end to this tittle-tattle, to this idle babble, that set us defying one another. Cause the Greeks once more to taste the pleasant beverage of friendship and temper all hearts with the gentle feeling of forgiveness. Make excellent commodities flow to our markets, fine heads of garlic, early cucumbers, apples, pomegranates ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... still alive! I cannot realize how a person who is thoughtful and, nevertheless, knows nothing or wishes to know nothing of God, can endure giving a despised and tedious life, a life which is fleeting as a stream, as a sleep, even as a blade of grass that soon withers; we spend our years as in a babble of talk. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... and listened, but could make no sense of the confused babble about "heavy boots;" "All right, old fellow;" "Jerry's off;" and "The ink ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... jumble in company, two lights of altogether a different nature; but the party get into a rattling conversation, in which the noisy babble of the College Cubs is satirically ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
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