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Childhood   Listen
noun
Childhood  n.  
1.
The state of being a child; the time in which persons are children; the condition or time from infancy to puberty. "I have walked before you from my childhood."
2.
Children, taken collectively. (R.) "The well-governed childhood of this realm."
3.
The commencement; the first period. "The childhood of our joy."
Second childhood, the state of being feeble and incapable from old age.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Childhood" Quotes from Famous Books



... short letter suggested it. That his betrothed was lost to him he understood, but he would not admit it. How was it possible that Micheline should forget him? All his childhood passed before his mind. He remembered the sweet and artless evidences of affection which the young girl had given him. And yet she no longer loved him! It was her own mother who said so. After that ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... not to speak of the shrine which overlooks the patients' quarters. As the number of blind people in Japan is appalling,[207] it was interesting to hear the opinion that the chief causes were gonorrhoea, inadequate attention at birth, insufficient nourishment in childhood and nervous disease—all more or less preventible. Nearly a quarter of my host's patients had had their eyes wounded by rice-stem points while stooping in the paddies. As the people are hurt in the busy season they often put off coming for help until ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... has happened—what is this? Tell me, Marchdale! Robert Marchdale, you whom I have known even from my childhood, you will not deceive me. Tell me the meaning ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... call'd me back to many a glade, My childhood's haunt of play, Where brightly 'mid the birchen shade Their waters glanced away: They call'd me with their thousand waves Back to my fathers' ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... inclining toward the sea conceal St. Jean d'Acre, but permit the Gulf of Khaifa to be distinguished. Such was the horizon of Jesus. This enchanted circle, cradle of the kingdom of God, was for years his world. Even in his later life he departed but little beyond the familial limits of his childhood. For yonder, northward, a glimpse is caught, almost on the flank of Hermon, of Caesarea-Philippi, his furthest point of advance into the Gentile world; and here southward, the more sombre aspect of these Samaritan hills foreshadows the ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... any secrets between them. From their very childhood, Nan had shared Phillis's every thought. But once or twice when she had tried to approach the subject in the gentlest manner, Phillis had started away like a restive colt, and had answered her almost ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... sister became his housekeeper. I had but one brother a year older than myself. How well I remember him, a fine noble-hearted boy full of love and affection. We were neglected by our father and aunt, and left to get through our childhood's days as best we could. We would wander together hand in hand by the river side or in the woods, and often cry ourselves to sleep in each other's arms at our father's want of affection for us. We enjoyed none of the gayeties, none of the sports of youth. ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival

... naturally characterises the kiss of an infant five minutes of age. Wieland had great nursery experience. 'My sweetest hours,' says he, in a letter quoted in the Survey,' are those in which I see about me, in all their glee of childhood, my whole posse of little half-way ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... car, and walked down the street, lost in the midst of the crowds hurrying about me. It was all over, gone like one of those old dreams of my childhood. I could never forget it—never forget Selda—but it was gone. It had never existed. It had been cruel of Melbourne, cruel and ironic, to put Selda in the dream. But perhaps he had never realized that it would last ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker

... hope so!" came the smiling reply. And we set to work. It all recalled the days of my childhood when I used to play at housekeeping and would measure out on the scales of my dolls' house so much rice, so much flour, so much macaroni, etc. I could hardly ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard

... of whose life this book is a brief, authentic sketch, had a natural inheritance that seemed calculated to shut her forever out of a place in the history of the world or of the church. Born with a body that from her earliest childhood was racked with pain, deprived by ill health of education, she seemed naturally unfitted to fill any place in the world and doomed to be only a burden to herself and her friends. How God took her, healed her, and fitted her for his service, and how he used her as an instrument ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole

... with his father, (p. 795, B.) and afterwards when he lived alone, (p. 797, C.) which we cannot naturally understand of his hearing others read, especially when he was alone; therefore, when St. Athanasius says, (p. 795, A.) that in his childhood he never applied himself to the study of letters, [Greek: grammata mathein], fearing the danger of falling into had company at school, he seems to mean only Greek letters, then the language of all the learned; for he must have learned at home ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... Europe we meet with men both taller and shorter. They are, generally speaking, more forward and quick in growth than the natives of cold climates. Indeed we may say, there are no boys or girls in the province, for from childhood they are introduced into company, and assume the air and behaviour of men and women. Many of them have an happy and natural quickness of apprehension, especially in the common affairs of life, and manage business with ease and discretion; but want that steadiness, application and perseverance ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt

... influences of the chamber of my childhood crowding upon me, I kept repenting the travestied rhyme to ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald

... head-man with interest. The slightest sigh escaped her. Perhaps she thought of the day—not so far distant—when that friend of her childhood had met her by her father's arrangement in this same town, warm with hope, though diffident, and trusting in a promise rather implied than given. Or she might have thought of days earlier yet—days of childhood—when ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... when a vessel, after much tossing at sea, finds itself in harbour. It was such as to throw him back in memory on his earliest years, as if he were really beginning life again. But there was more than the happiness of childhood in his heart; he seemed to feel a rock under his feet; it was the soliditas Cathedrae Petri. He went on kneeling, as if he were already in heaven, with the throne of God before him, and angels around; and as if to move were to lose ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... smith was opposite, but he was not a man of ponderous strength, nor were there those wondrous flights and scintillations of sparks which were the joy of our childhood in the Tattenhall forge. A fire of powdered charcoal on the floor, always being trimmed and replenished by a lean and grimy satellite, a man still leaner and grimier, clothed in goggles and a girdle, always sitting in front of it, heating and hammering iron bars with his hands, with a clink ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... the images and incidents of an imperfectly remembered dream, and then more clearly, until it had all come back to me in the fulness of its hideous reality. I recollected everything, my memories beginning, strangely enough, as I think, with the incidents of my earliest childhood, and gradually extending through the years until I arrived at the incident of the burning Indiaman, the boat-voyage, the pursuit of the strange ship, the gale, and our subsequent sufferings from thirst and starvation. And, as the remembrance of the final horrors of that awful ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood

... said, I will; and do you, Menexenus, answer. But first I must tell you that I am one who from my childhood upward have set my heart upon a certain thing. All people have their fancies; some desire horses, and others dogs; and some are fond of gold, and others of honour. Now, I have no violent desire of any ...
— Lysis • Plato

... begin at the middle of page 16, with the picture of the Castle Goito and the maple-panelled room. Here the boy Sordello comes every eve, to visit the marble standing in the midst, to watch the mute penance of the Caryatides, who flush with the dawn of his imagination. Read the description of his childhood, from page 25, and the delights of his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... or mercenary creature, No one more cordially detested the life of dependence than he. He always thought that his father had discharged all the duties of that relation in nourishing his childhood and giving him a good education. Whatever has been since bestowed, he considered as voluntary and unrequited bounty; has received it with irksomeness and compunction; and, whatever you may think of the horrors of indigence, it was impossible to have placed him in a more painful ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... first time on our journey he believed we should really reach the Sound at last. The cheering and not-to-be-mistaken view before him had dissipated all his doubts. Once more he gazed upon objects that were familiar to him; the home of his childhood was before him, and already almost in fancy he was there, and amongst his friends; he could think, or talk of nothing else, and actually complimented me upon the successful way in which I had conducted him ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... one could afford it, till Ronald let go his own hold of the rope, and swam towards him. Of course to regain the hawser was hopeless, and it was equally difficult to swim back to the "Thisbe." Ronald had practised swimming from his childhood, and was as much at home in the water as on shore. He struck out with one hand while he supported the young midshipman with the other. His first fear was that the French ship would run them down, but a few strokes carried him and his charge clear of that ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... board. In appearance he was on the short side, and thin. He was in the Sixth, and a conscientious worker. Indeed, he was only saved from being considered a swot, to use the vernacular, by the fact that from childhood's earliest hour he had been in the habit of keeping wicket like an angel. To a good ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse

... xxxiii. xxxiv, with his German editor, Michaelis, Epimetron iv.) Yet Michaelis (p. 671-673) has detected many Egyptian images, the elephantiasis, papyrus, Nile, crocodile, &c. The language is ambiguously styled Arabico-Hebraea. The resemblance of the sister dialects was much more visible in their childhood, than in their mature age, (Michaelis, p. 682. Schultens, in Praefat. Job.) * Note: The age of the book of Job is still and probably will still be disputed. Rosenmuller thus states his own opinion: "Certe serioribus reipublicae temporibus assignandum esse librum, suadere videtur ad Chaldaismum ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... influences which, according to Mr. Grant Allen, did in reality surround Mr. Darwin's youth, and certainly they are more what we should have expected than those suggested rather than expressly stated by Mr. Darwin. "Everywhere around him," says Mr. Allen, {174a} "in his childhood and youth these great but formless" (why "formless"?) "evolutionary ideas were brewing and fermenting. The scientific society of his elders and of the contemporaries among whom he grew up was permeated with the leaven of Laplace and Lamarck, of Hutton ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... both were large and stout and cheerful and noisy. To anybody as young as Sally noise goes a long way towards cheeriness, because it deadens thought. So when old Perce came and took his place at the table she suddenly threw off her despair with the volatility of childhood, and laughed aloud and ate and drank, and made sly remarks, until she became an altogether different Sally from the one who had taken an earlier tea with her mother. She was now in high spirits. All sorts ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton

... character the Afridi has obtained an evil name for ferocity, craft and treachery, but Colonel Sir Robert Warburton, who lived eighteen years in charge of the Khyber Pass and knew the Afridi better than any other Englishman, says:—"The Afridi lad from his earliest childhood is taught by the circumstances of his existence and life to distrust all mankind, and very often his near relations, heirs to his small plot of land by right of inheritance, are his deadliest enemies. Distrust of all mankind, and readiness to strike ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... are about to undertake, the entire sum of money, the interest of which you receive annually, becomes your own. Five millions of francs deserve some sacrifice. With this sum you can become an independent woman, and your daughter will never be reproached with having been, in her childhood, a ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai

... to her, and that when either should die that she might be called first; that life without him would be barren and terrible! and above all, she pleaded that He would keep her little heart loyal always to her childhood hero, and that no other should ever supplant her father in her love ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners

... withered hopes Thou knowest, The baffled yearnings of his heart to snatch From paths unhallowed childhood's tottering feet, And lay a rosy smile on little lips With homeless hunger pale, to curses trained, Whereon no kiss hath left ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... to him while he lay there trying to take in the change that had come to him. The thought of his childhood companions, the little waifs like himself who came from the offscourings of the earth. They had loved him he knew. He recalled slowly, laboriously, little incidents from his early history. They were dim and uncertain, many of them, but little kindnesses stood ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill

... feelings, and habits, and modes of familiar conversation. He can say of the south as Cowper said of England, 'With all thy faults I love thee still, my country.' And nothing but the abominations of slavery could have induced him willingly to forsake a land endeared to him by all the associations of childhood and youth. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... happens to make her realize this, and the new piece of work is hurriedly left—suspended in mid-air, as it were—and is not referred to again until an accident recalls it to her mind. Such teaching certainly has the charm of novelty to a class, but we must remember that one of the faults of childhood is an undue readiness to pass on quickly to learn 'something new' before the ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home

... your pleasure in tumbling around on the floor, playing with a bright-colored marble or two as you did when a child? The world was in its childhood when God taught the people in this way. He has given them just as wonderful lessons since, but lessons more suited to men and women who have learned to think and reason. We don't like to be ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden

... is a good hill in itself, conical in shape, as a hill should be according to the exacting ideas of childhood, with a sweeping view of the coast and the Channel; but its fame as a resort of holiday makers comes less from its position and height than from the circumstance that John Oliver is buried upon it. John Oliver was the miller of Highdown Hill. When not ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... began to grasp the situation, and I realised that this great man, whose name was honourably known wherever the ills of childhood are combated, was Robin's uncle, the "doctor" to whom my secretary had casually referred, and whom he occasionally went to visit on Sunday afternoons. I had pictured an overdriven G.P., living in Bloomsbury or Balham, with a black bag, and a bulge in his hat where ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay

... crowd in the quiet house of prayer; but she had felt no disapproval at that fierce vindication of truth. Her father had taught her of course that the purest worship was that which was only spiritual; and while since childhood she had seen Sunday by Sunday the Great Rood overhead, she had never paid it any but artistic attention. The men had the ropes round it now, and it was swaying violently to and fro; and then, even as the children watched, a tie had given, and the great cross with its pathetic ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... appetite which begs so hard for the poison, is formed in childhood. If you eat wine-jelly, or wine-sauce, you may learn to like the taste of alcohol and thus easily begin to drink ...
— Child's Health Primer For Primary Classes • Jane Andrews

... humanity. They were tied carefully in bunches, and hung in the garret of the farm-house to dry. The odor of dried herbs comes to me now as I think of a dear old garrets—a favorite play-place of early childhood. ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... having finished her education, she returned to her mother, at Norfolk. Soon afterward, those religious elements which had existed from early childhood—grown with her growth and strengthened with her strength—became dominant by the grace of God, and asserted their power ...
— Mary S. Peake - The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe • Lewis C. Lockwood

... peasant would rank him as one, and which are inseparable from all who really deserve the title. He never spoke to me of his family—never alluded to the events of his past life, or the scenes in which his childhood had been spent. He talked of sorrow and sickness—of chastisements in the school of adversity, in general terms; but he never revealed the cause of these trials, or why a young man of his attainments was reduced to a situation so far below ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... and made the broadaxe blade, to the skill of which I had been born, whistle through the air. For a mightily strange thing it is that, though I had ever a rooted horror at the thought of my father's office itself, and from my childhood never for a moment intended to exercise it, nevertheless I had always the most notable facility in cutting things. Never to this day have I a stick in hand, when I walk abroad among the ragweed waving yellow on the grassy pastures below the Wolfsberg, but I must need make wagers with myself ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... shocked had any one expressed a doubt of her sincere respect for the Bible. Her respect was hereditary. Not one day in her childhood or womanhood had passed in which she had not heard or read some portion of the Holy Book. Nothing could have induced her to part with one of the several Bibles that had been in her possession for years. One had been hers when a girl at school, ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson

... they were a prolific race—swore that their distinguished relative was a pattern of artlessness and innocence. That she was remarkable from early childhood for a charming frankness and transparent candor. That when this bright ornament of the Jigbee stock was sought in marriage by the defendant, the whole family, with one mind and voice, opposed the match. They had felt that a being of her exalted intellectual tastes was too good ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... his childhood they have filled his eyes. And to-day more especially they stand as a sign and a symbol. For not only are they the first great hills which the Londoner sees, but they offer the nearest relief and repose from the modern torture and noise of that enormous place ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton

... manifested itself in history, and prevails today throughout the world; that is to say, institutions having fixed dogmas and "revelations", creeds and rituals, with an administering caste claiming supernatural sanction. By such institutions the moral strivings of the race, the affections of childhood and the aspirations of youth are made the prerogatives and stock in trade of ecclesiastical hierarchies. It is the thesis of this book that "Religion" in this sense is a source of income to parasites, and the natural ally of every form of oppression ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... present war shows that the Japanese women, who were only yesterday altogether Oriental in habits and ideals, have produced a race of strong men, so far as physical daring and hardihood is concerned. The influence of women on these men ceased with childhood—even then it was ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... called bagontaos, [327] and girls of marriageable age, dalagas. Both classes are people of little restraint, and from early childhood they have communication with one another, and mingle with facility and little secrecy, and without this being regarded among the natives as a cause for anger. Neither do the parents, brothers, or ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... the result of an accident in 1839, leaving the widow with five children, the eldest thirteen years of age, to support. Henry and a sister were adopted by an uncle, Lewis Handerson, a druggist, of Cleveland. In spite of a sickly childhood the boy went to school a part of the time and at the age of fourteen was sent to a boarding school, Sanger Hall, at New-Hartford, Oneida county, New York. Henry's poor health compelled him to withdraw from school. No one at that time would ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson

... the cypress growing near the entrance of the house. Lygia leaned against his breast, and Vinicius began to entreat again with a trembling voice,—"Tell Ursus to go to the house of Aulus for thy furniture and playthings of childhood." ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... almost a century ago, he urges the same general principles on which I have all along been insisting: hence it will be seen that mine are no new-fangled notions. His remarks refer to the young of every age, but chiefly to early infancy and childhood. It will be found necessary, in some instances, to abridge, but I shall endeavor not to misrepresent ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott

... the childhood of Martin Luther, and his further growth and mental development, at Mansfeld and elsewhere, we have absolutely no information from others to enlighten us. For this portion of his life we can only avail ourselves of occasional and ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... sold this marquisate had retired two years previously to the island of Martinique, where she, at the present moment, owned the residence of Constant d'Aubigne, the same house where the new Marquise de Maintenon had spent her childhood with her parents, so that while one of these ladies had quitted the Chateau de Maintenon in order to live in Martinique, the other had come from Martinique in order to reside at the Chateau de Maintenon. Truly, the destinies of some are ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... the scene, while a fine orchestra discoursed melodiously from some green-embowered nook, the place seemed like an enchanted realm where one might almost expect to discern, flitting among the playful shadows, those weird forms that people the elf land of childhood's fancy— ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... a sort of wild fairy interest in them [the Tales] which makes me think them fully better adapted to awaken the imagination and soften the heart of childhood, than the good-boy stories which have been in later years composed for them. In the latter case, their minds are, as it were, put into the stocks, like their feet at the dancing-school, and the moral always ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various

... still in the roadway for a few minutes reflecting upon what he should do. It was, he knew, only a few miles further to Minstead, where his brother dwelt. On the other hand, he had never seen this brother since childhood, and the reports which had come to his ears concerning him were seldom to his advantage. By all accounts he was a ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... it up when they reached here and got busy on their boat. Now it seems they've quarrelled worse than ever. Romulus is telling Remus his real name and vice-versa. They're raking up old grievances of their childhood days, and the end of it is they've once more decided to halve tip the outfit. They're mad enough to kill each other. They've even decided to cut ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... Wilson suffered from being shaken up in the lariat were counterbalanced by Y.D.'s branding. His face was burning painfully, and his vision was not the best. But he had not followed the herds since childhood without learning to use his fists. He steadied himself on his knee to bring his mind into tune with this unusual warfare. ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead

... and thought that they had been children long enough. He was a mighty workman, with the whole world for a workshop; and little by little he taught men knowledge that is wonderful to know, so that they grew out of their childhood, and began to take thought for themselves. Some people even say that he knew how to make men,—as we make shapes out of clay,—and set their five wits going. However that may be, he was certainly a cunning workman. He taught men first to build huts out of clay, and to thatch roofs ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody

... aspect of the belfry with its stays. This is taken from an engraving published in 1844 by Mr. De Gregori, who, during his childhood, was a witness of the operation, and who endeavored to render the information given by the official account completer without being able to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various

... Parker Maxwell. Miss Wallace's father is president of the local First National Bank and lives at 1814 Prospect Drive. Mr. Maxwell, 31, is cashier of the First National. Mr. Maxwell and Miss Wallace have known each other from childhood. ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... my child readers to know that the steep street and the farthing wares are real remembrances out of my own childhood. Though whether in these days of "advanced prices," the flat irons, the gridirons with the three fish upon them, and all those other valuable accessories to doll's housekeeping, which I once delighted to purchase, can still be obtained for a farthing each, I have lived too ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... not a spot in this wide-peopled earth So dear to the heart as the Land of our Birth; 'Tis the home of our childhood, the beautiful spot Which Memory retains when all else is forgot. May the blessing of God ever hallow the sod, And its valleys and hills ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr

... general reader. E. B. Tyler's Primitive Culture and Anthropology; Lord Avebury's Prehistoric Times, The Origin of Civilization, and The Primitive Condition of Man; W. Boyd Dawkin's Cave-Hunting and Early Man in Britain; and Edward Clodd's Childhood of the World and Story of Primitive Man are deservedly popular. Paul Topinard's Elements d'Anthropologie Generale is one of the best-known and most comprehensive French works on the technical phases of anthropology; but Mortillet's Le ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... My childhood perhaps seems happier to me than it really was, by contrast with all the after-years. For then the curtain of the future was as impenetrable to me as to other children: I had all their delight in the present hour, their sweet indefinite hopes for the morrow; and I had a tender ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot

... old woman who died in it three weeks ago was a pauper whom I took out of a workhouse, for in her childhood she had been known to some of my family, and had once been in such good circumstances that she had rented that house of my uncle. She was a woman of superior education and strong mind, and was the only person I could ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... by Marcia. The girl, a slight figure in white, mounted unwillingly. The big, gloomy house oppressed her as she passed through it. The classical staircase with its stone-colored paint and its niches holding bronze urns had always appeared to her since her childhood as the very top of dreariness; and she particularly disliked the equestrian portrait of her great-grandfather by an early Victorian artist, which fronted her as she ascended, in the gallery at the top of the staircase, ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... touched of soul, could only nod her assent. But because Childhood sometimes has no answer to make to the confidences of Age is no reason that they are not taken to heart and stowed away there for the years to build upon. In the unbroken silence with which they rowed back to shore, Georgina might have claimed three ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... I, we had long been estranged. Not even in my earliest childhood have I the memory of a gentle word, a fatherly pressure of the hand. So I grew to young manhood with no knowledge of a mother's or father's love—for my mother," here his voice lowered, reverently, "died when I was born. My childhood was of the utmost loneliness, for my father thought the children ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... stilly night Ere slumber's chain hath bound me Fond memory brings the light Of other days around me. The smiles, the tears, of childhood's years, The words of love then spoken— The eyes that shone, now dimmed and gone, The cheerful hearts ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory

... it, can call Goodness its Playfellow; and dares make sport of time and infirmity, while, in the person of a thousand-foldly endeared partner, we feel for aged Virtue the caressing fondness that belongs to the Innocence of childhood, and repeat the same attentions and tender courtesies which had been dictated by the same affection to the same object when attired in feminine loveliness or in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... right, Miss Huntington," Mr. Lawrence said, bestowing a glance of approbation upon her, and secretly well pleased with this evidence of her decision of character, "and it would have been far better if Bertha had had a firm rule like this from early childhood. All her other governesses have yielded to her, and I fear I have not carried as steady a hand with her as I should have done. Keep on as you have begun, Miss Huntington, and you will secure my unbounded gratitude, if you can conquer ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... must give some space to my visit to Melrose, my childhood's home. My father's half-sister Janet Reid was alive and though her two sons were, one at St. Kitts and the other at Grand Canary, she lived with an old husband and her only daughter in Melrose still.. I can never forget the look of ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... habits of her own rude childhood, she learned to spin the wools, white and grey, to clothe and cover him pleasantly. The spectacle of his unsuspicious happiness, though at present a matter of purely physical conditions, awoke a strange sense of poetry, a kind of artistic sense ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... nobility of a right-minded child, and how loyalty wins the way to noble deeds and life. This is another beautiful literary creation of Hector Malot which every one can recommend as an ennobling book, of interest not only to childhood, page by page to the thrilling conclusion, but to every person who loves romance ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot

... his humanity in the ordinary rank with that of other men. It seems to us that life could not have meant the same to him that it means to us. It is difficult for us to conceive of him as learning in childhood as other children have to learn. We find ourselves fancying that he must always have known how to read and write and speak. We think of the experiences of his youth and young manhood as altogether unlike those of any other boy or young man in ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... tragic power. Dealing with the beginnings of imagination in the minds of children, they record, with the reality which a very delicate touch preserves from anything lugubrious, not those merely preventible miseries of childhood over which some writers have been apt to gloat, but the contact of childhood with the great and inevitable sorrows of life, into which children can enter with depth, with dignity, and sometimes with a kind ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater

... He didn't see any relationship between a perfectly baked apple pie and a neatly kept cash book. He had expected his wife to fall down on the mechanical aspects of typewriting, but he forgot that she had been running a sewing machine since she was fifteen years old. And even in his wife's early childhood people were still using lamps for soft effects and intensive reading. Any woman who knew the art of keeping a kerosene lamp in shape must of necessity find the oiling and cleaning of a typewriting machine mere child's play. He didn't realize the affinities ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... founded upon argument would soon be a community no longer. It would dissolve into its constituent elements. Think of the thousand ties most subtly woven out of common sentiments, common tastes, common beliefs, nay, common prejudices, by which from our very earliest childhood we are all bound unconsciously but indissolubly together into a compacted whole. Imagine these to be suddenly loosed and their places taken by some judicious piece of reasoning on the balance of advantage, which, after taking all proper deductions, still remains to the credit of social ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... unfortunate as the beginning. I was born in London some fifty and more years ago, in a Whitechapel slum, of drunken and profligate parents, so it is little to be wondered at that my career has been anything but virtuous or respectable. In my early childhood—if it may be called so—I was beaten and starved, set to beg, forced to thieve, and never had a kind word said to me or a kind deed done to me. No wonder I grew up a callous, hardened ruffian. As the twig is bent, so will ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume

... figure on which to exhibit the latest fashions. She never has beautiful hands, and she would not have a beautiful face if a utilitarian society could "apply" her face to anything but the pleasure of the eye. Her hands lose their shape and softness after childhood, and domestic drudgery destroys her beauty of form and softness and bloom of complexion after marriage. To correct, or rather to break up, this despotism of household cares, or of work, over woman, American society must be taught ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... we proceeded, until it chanced, one August afternoon, that we left railways and their regions at a way-side station, and let our lingering feet march us along the Valley of the Upper Connecticut. This lovely river, baptizer of Iglesias's childhood, was here shallow and musical, half river, half brook; it had passed the tinkling period, and plashed and rumbled voicefully ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... Talmud, under the direction of a Polish teacher, for the Polish Rabbis had attained to a position of great esteem as early as Luzzatto's day. He lost little time in initiating his pupil into the mysteries of the Kabbalah, and so the early childhood years of our poet were a sad time spent in the stifling atmosphere of the ghetto. Happily for him, it was an Italian ghetto, whence secular learning had not been ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... from starving." As to the small proprietor, the villager who plows his land himself, his condition is but little better. "Agriculture,[5137] as our peasants practice it, is a veritable drudgery; they die by thousands in childhood, and in maturity they seek places everywhere but where ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... enlightened Hugh far more than they did, had he been sufficiently advanced to receive them. But their very simplicity was often far beyond the grasp of his thoughts; for the higher we rise, the simpler we become; and David was one of those of whom is the kingdom of Heaven. There is a childhood into which we have to grow, just as there is a childhood which we must leave behind; a childlikeness which is the highest gain of humanity, and a childishness from which but few of those who are counted the wisest among men, have freed ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... mind of Abraham Lincoln was filled with a high and noble purpose. In his earliest childhood his mother had taught him to love truth and justice, to be honest and upright among men, and to reverence God. ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin

... little dinner proved an unqualified success. With sole and chicken saute, with trifle and savoury, he mutely pleaded his cause; feeling vaguely guilty, the while, of belittling his childhood's idol, whom he increasingly admired and loved. But this India business was tremendously important, and the dear old boy would ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... family of the Turtle Tribe, and his father had come with his clan to Ohio from their home in Florida, about the middle of the last century. Tecumseh was born, as nearly as can be reckoned, in the year 1768, and from his earliest childhood he showed the passion for war which ruled him through life. He led his playmates in their mimic fights, and at seventeen he went on his first war party against the Kentuckians. The Indians attacked some boats on the Ohio River, and killed all the boatmen but ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... favoured people one moment only to cast them off the next. You were admitted to an audience with her for instance, you pleased her in some manner, and forthwith she unbosomed herself to you as though you had known her from childhood. At the second audience you found her dry, laconic, cold. You racked your brains to discover the cause of this change. Mere loss of time!—Flightiness was the sole ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... his late youth and early manhood than either of his childhood or of his later life. His letters—those invaluable and unparalleled sources of biographical information—do not begin till 1792, the year of his majority, when (on July 11) he was called to the Bar. But it is a universal tradition that, in these years of apprenticeship, in more ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... any further opportunities of resort to rural scenery than the vicinity of London could afford; but if the city is his native element, natural beauty never appeals to him in vain. Yet the influences which moulded his childhood must have been rather moral and intellectual than ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... the earliest recorded emotion of the soul. It comes earliest to us and stays longest. In childhood, very often, instinct and desire rule wisely, and matches formed in heaven are recognized in life's morning on earth far oftener than we are accustomed to think. This longing never ceases. The child wants companionship, and old age, shattered and broken, feels the need of this loving ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton

... case. It was strange enough, after four years of marriage, to find himself again in his old brown room in Washington Square. It was hardly there that he had expected Pegasus to land him; and, like a man returning to the scenes of his childhood, he found everything on a much smaller scale than he had imagined. Had the Dagonet boundaries really narrowed, or had the breach in the walls of his own life ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... the years of my childhood and girlhood, our family passed from wealth to poverty. My father and only brother were killed in battle during the Civil War; our slaves were freed; our plantations melted from my mother's white hands during the Reconstruction ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... stupefied curiosity. This woman was his mother! All those features, seen daily from childhood, from the time when his eye could first distinguish things, that smile, that voice—so well known, so familiar, abruptly struck him as new, different from what they had always been to him hitherto. He understood now that, loving ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... a wonderfully happy childhood," replied Selma. "Until I was old enough to understand and to suffer. I've lived in tenements all my life—among very poor people. I'd not feel at ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... playing with little Virginia, teasing her about her "new Papa." The little girl smiled rather dubiously. She had the animal-like loyalty of childhood, and glanced suspiciously at the "New Papa." However, she had already learned from the constant mutations of her brief life to accept the New and the Unexpected without complaint. At last perceiving Ernestine, who was hurrying breathlessly down the long platform ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... one excepted, which have hitherto appeared in the world, have been unable to hold the balance between the intellect and the conscience beyond a certain stage; and therefore, all kingdoms which have arisen hitherto have been unable to exist beyond a certain term. So long as a nation is in its childhood, a false religion affords room enough for the free play of its intellect. Its religion being regarded as true and authoritative, the conscience of the nation is controlled by it. So long as conscience is upheld, law ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... with old-fashioned tastes and ideas as to how such establishments should be conducted would have been disappointed at the omission. In my case it was particularly unfortunate. From my childhood I had been an earnest student of the supernatural, and a firm believer in it. I have revelled in ghostly literature until there is hardly a tale bearing upon the subject which I have not perused. I learned the German language for the sole purpose of mastering ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... very simple to suppose that if they do desire it they will all say so. Their position is like that of the tenants and laborers who vote against their own political interests to please their landlords or employers, with the unique admission that submission is inculcated in them from childhood, as the peculiar attraction and grace of their character. They are taught to think that to repel actively even an admitted injustice, done to themselves, is somewhat unfeminine, and had better be left to some male friend or protector. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... governed by a virtuous and wise ruler. But, noble Harold, I grieve that you should thus note the sore point in my realm. I grant that the condition of the peasants and the culture of the land need reform. But in my childhood, there was a fierce outbreak of rebellion among the villeins, needing bloody example to check, and the memories of wrath between lord and villein must sleep before we can do justice between them, as please St. Peter, and by Lanfranc's aid, we hope to ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... The childhood of the poet had been one of gloom and privation; surrounded by anxieties and by tears, by sordid cares, and that constant lack of money which imbitters the lives of so many of us, he had never laughed nor played like other children. A scholarship that was obtained for him enabled ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... young women had in it something peculiarly touching, not only in the ardent manner in which their feelings were expressed, but from the real interest of their situation. They had been companions in childhood, in the war with the Minnetarees they had both been taken prisoners in the same battle, they had shared and softened the rigours of their captivity, till one of them had escaped from the Minnetarees, with scarce a ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... time been comparatively small, for the major himself personally supervised the whole working of the estate, and was greatly liked by the slaves, whose chief affections were, however, naturally bestowed upon their mistress, who had from childhood been brought up in their midst. Major Wingfield had not liked his overseer, but he had never any ground to justify him making a change. Jonas, who was a Northern man, was always active and energetic; all Major Wingfield's orders were strictly and punctually carried out, and although ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... on, and the scenery became more familiar as he approached nearer to Montfield, Maurice naturally fell to thinking, in an irregular, detached fashion, of his youth. Both Wynne's parents had died in his childhood, and there had been little to keep firm the bonds of family. Alice Singleton he had known, however, both as a girl and as the wife of his half brother, but he had known only to dislike and avoid her. He began now to wonder ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... teachably and undoubtingly listens to the instructions of his elders is likely to improve rapidly. But the man who should receive with childlike docility every assertion and dogma uttered by another man no wiser than himself would become contemptible. It is the same with communities. The childhood of the European nations was passed under the tutelage of the clergy. The ascendancy of the sacerdotal order was long the ascendancy which naturally and properly belongs to intellectual superiority. The ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... last—I don't remember which—upon the scene. He was the discoverer, I suppose, now I come to think of it, else the place would have been already named. Maybe the scene reminded the old cannibal of the home of his childhood. ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... in England: she had lived the whole of her life in a small provincial town in this country. But she had been brought up by her aunt, the Duchesse douairiere d'Agen, and through that upbringing she had been made to imbibe from her earliest childhood all the principles of the old regime. These principles consisted chiefly of implicit obedience by the children to the parents' decrees anent marriage, of blind worship of the dignity of station, and of duty to name and caste, ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... are the friends of your childhood, and urge that they shall be brought back to you. As far as I am able to learn, those of your friends who are not in jail are still right there in your native village. You point out that they were ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... he is scarcely to be blamed. I grew unaccountably nervous and lost control. All savage animals are like that." And, seeing that I was about to protest vehemently, she smiled again. "Remember, I'm a lion-tamer's daughter, and brought up from childhood to regard these things as part of the show. There must always come a second's failure of concentration. Lots of tamers meet their deaths sooner or later for the same reason—just a sudden loss of magnetism. The ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... this daughter of mine would make it appear that I am to blame, but indeed I have done my duty, and have carefully prepared her for that profession for which, by birth, she was intended. From earliest childhood I have bestowed the greatest care upon her, doing everything in my power to promote her health and beauty. As soon as she was old enough, I had her carefully instructed in the arts of dancing, acting, playing on musical instruments, singing, painting, preparing ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob

... miserable. If you will not believe me, hear a brief of it, as it was not many years since publicly preached at Paul's cross, [2029]by a grave minister then, and now a reverend bishop of this land: "We that are bred up in learning, and destinated by our parents to this end, we suffer our childhood in the grammar-school, which Austin calls magnam tyrannidem, et grave malum, and compares it to the torments of martyrdom; when we come to the university, if we live of the college allowance, as Phalaris objected to the Leontines, [Greek: pan ton endeis plaen ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... and the coolies for three days, by which time we hoped to arrive in Chitral. A good deal of the grain brought in consisted of unhusked rice and millet, what canary birds are fed on in England,—good enough for the coolies, at any rate, most of them having been used to it from childhood. We tried to get the village water-mills going, but all the ironwork had been carried away, and we had no means of quickly refitting them, so the unthreshed rice and millet seed was issued as it was, ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon

... fourteen, he left his Mexican home, it was to go to the Hackley School at Tarrytown, N.Y., an institution placed on a high hill overlooking that noblest of rivers, the Hudson, and surrounded by a domain of its own, extending to many acres of meadow and woodland. An attack of scarlet fever in his childhood had left his health far from robust, and it was thought that the altitude of Mexico City was too great for him. He therefore spent one of his vacations among the hills of New Hampshire, and was afterwards given a year out of school, with the family of his former tutor, in Southern California—again ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... together on her breast, and murmured the single prayer which she had been taught to say in her childhood...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... returned you see, to die. You were spawned on the shores of one of the bays of the Highlands of Scotland. Wouldn't you like to return and lay your bones there, eh? From earth you came, to earth you shall return. Wouldn't you like to go back and breathe the air of childhood once more before you die? Love of home, Peter, is strong; it is an instinct of nature; but, alas! the world is a Scotchman's home—anywhere that he can make money. Don't the mountains with their misty summits appear before you sometimes in your sleep? Don't you dream ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... he began to think of the future, not in terms of years to come but in terms of generations to come. Someday one of the young ones would succeed him as leader but the young ones would have only childhood memories of Earth. He was the last leader who had known Earth and the civilization of Earth as a grown man. What he did while he was leader would incline the destiny ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin

... before mentioned, it was no uncommon thing to hear about hidden treasures along our coast. Indeed, from earliest childhood I have heard of gangs of pirates burying treasures in many of our secret hiding-places; so common were such stories that we had ceased to pay attention to them. Consequently I had given but little attention to the conversation ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking

... was by then far from young, in fact it was well into its second childhood. But Sarah Brown and the Dog David sought and tried on land ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson

... 28, line 21—36). There is every reason to believe that susceptibility to beauty can be gained through proper training in childhood by almost everyone. ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... the Pope has blessed it; it was put upon my finger in childhood by a beautiful lady who took care of me, and who told me never ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac

... entertained noble travellers before, who had been attracted by his extensive and artistic works; but no words can describe the satisfaction of his wife. In part there was the heartfelt pleasure of receiving the cousin who had been like one of her brothers in the home of her childhood; but to this was added the glory of knowing that this same cousin was a marquis, and that the society of San Remo, nay of all the Riviera and the Italian papers to boot, would know that she was a good deal more than the quarry- ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the short, convulsive sighs, which he vainly strove to repress, showed the real anxiety of his fast-beating heart. He thrust back his rising tears, for the little prince teas too proud to crave sympathy; and he had already learned how to hide emotion by a cold and haughty bearing. From his childhood he had borne a secret sorrow in his heart—the sorrow of seeing his young brother Carl preferred to himself. Not only was Carl the darling of his parents, but he was the pet and plaything of the whole palace. True, the poor little archduke was not ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... these was Mr Talbot Hayes, whose ineffable air of being in the confidence of the Almighty—not to mention the whole Hindu Pantheon—was balm to Mrs Elton at this terrifying juncture. For her mountain of flesh hid a mouse of a soul, and her childhood had been shadowed by tales of Mutiny horrors. With her it was almost an obsession. The least unusual uproar at a railway station, or holiday excitement in the bazaar, sufficed to convince her that the hour had struck for which, subconsciously, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... loved her, and had meant honestly by her. Did the matter rest with him, she might reckon on being the future Countess of —-, but, unfortunately for her, the person to be considered was not Lord C—-, but the present Countess of —-. From childhood, through boyhood, into manhood it had never once occurred to Lord C—- to dispute a single command of his mother's, and his was not the type of brain to readily receive new ideas. If she was to win in ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... up early in the morning to go fishing with each other. And later, when each began, unconsciously, to choose the path he would follow in already beginning to settle into an established fact. He could see now, by looking back on trifles of their childhood, that his cousin had been badly handicapped in his fight with himself against the evil in him. He had inherited depraved instincts and tastes, and with them somewhere in him a strand of weakness that prevented him from slaying the ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine

... ages. In the contemplation of these august teachers of mankind, we are filled with conflicting emotions. They are the early voice of the world, better remembered and more cherished still than all the intermediate words that have been uttered, as the lessons of childhood still haunt us when the impressions of later years have been effaced from the mind. But they show with most unwelcome frequency the tokens of the world's childhood, before passion had yielded to the sway of reason and the affections. They want the highest ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... just where the ability to believe in Christ and commence a Christian life comes in, there responsibility comes in, whether that be at eight, ten, or any other year in the child's history. We can not conceive of a sinner in youth without a Savior provided, nor of a sinner in childhood without the gospel privilege of becoming a member ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various

... it have been for New Amsterdam could it always have existed in this state of blissful ignorance and lowly simplicity; but, alas! the days of childhood are too sweet to last. Cities, like men, grow out of them in time, and are doomed alike to grow into the bustle, the cares, and miseries of the world. Let no man congratulate himself when he beholds the child of his bosom, or the city of his birth, increasing ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... argument and—I can not help saying it—bribed with favors. But the boy has been steadfast. He has kept his frankness and honesty. I saw in this a prophecy of trouble. I left home and went down into the very shadow of death. It may be that we have been saved for each other by the wisdom of childhood. I must not see you now. Nor shall I see him until I have found my way. Even your call can not make me forget that I am under a solemn promise. I must keep it without much more delay unless something happens to ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... tale from which the book borrows its name has for its heroine a little French girl brought up in an old chateau in Normandy, by an aunt who is a recluse and devote. A child of this type, transplanted suddenly while still in childhood to the realistic atmosphere of prosperous New York, must inevitably have much to suffer. She is puzzled; she is lonely; she has no one to direct her conscience. The quaint little figure, blindly trying to guess the riddle of duty under these unfamiliar ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... the second place, and constantly more so as we grow older, by our reasoning powers. Even the most intentionally dry of philosophers has his prejudices, perhaps against competitive sports or against efficiency as a chief test of good citizenship; and after childhood the most wayward of artists has some general principles to guide him along his primrose path. The actions of all men are the resultant of these two forces of feeling and reason. Since in most cases where we are arguing we have an eye to influencing action, we must keep both the ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner

... and has been, hitherto; none of us dare say that it will be. I shall have to show you hereafter that the greater part of the technic energy of men, as yet, has indicated a kind of childhood; and that the race becomes, if not more wise, at least more manly,[11] with every gained century. I can fancy that all this sculpturing and painting of ours may be looked back upon, in some distant time, as a kind of doll-making, and that the words of ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... her reply; but there was a sad expression in her eyes. "Certainly childhood is the happiest time in one's life. If it ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... sponge rubs a slate clean, so some power unknown to Spurstow had wiped out of Hummil's face all that stamped it for the face of a man, and he stood at the doorway in the expression of his lost innocence. He had slept back into terrified childhood. ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... of him before King Caesar her spouse. Now she had a Castrato who had come with her from the court of her uncle King Sulayman Shah, and he was intelligent, quick-witted, right-reded. So she took him apart one day and said to him, shedding tears the while, "Thou hast been my Eunuch from my childhood to this day; canst thou not therefore get me tidings of my son, seeing that I cannot speak of his matter?" He replied, "O my lady, this is an affair which thou hast concealed from the commencement, and were thy son here, 'twould not be possible for thee to entertain him, lest[FN243] ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... Involuntarily he began to struggle, throwing out his arms and legs instinctively in a powerful effort to return to the surface. Then, in a moment, he lost all consciousness of his dreadful situation and found himself once more back among the scenes of his childhood, a multitude of trivial and long-forgotten incidents recurring to his memory with inconceivable rapidity. He was a dying man; the agony of drowning was over, and he had entered upon that curious phase of retrospection that most drowning people experience, ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... young man, not yet of age, when I delivered my first platform lecture. The Civil War of 1861-65 drew on with all its passions, patriotism, horrors, and fears, and I was studying law at Yale University. I had from childhood felt that I was "called to the ministry." The earliest event of memory is the prayer of my father at family prayers in the little old cottage in the Hampshire highlands of the Berkshire Hills, calling on God with a sobbing voice to lead me into some ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell

... unexpected quarter, but applying marvellously well to the besetting difficulty of the moment. The reader who has followed me so far will remember the instant effect the word "Shelley" had upon me in childhood, and how it called into existence a train of feeling that illuminated the vicissitudes and passions of many years, until it was finally assimilated and became part of my being; the reader will also remember how the mere mention, at a certain moment, of the word "France" awoke a vital impulse, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... long ago in the course of years? Two hundred or more in number are now vanished away—I know not the sum of 635 them, and I cannot declare the event. Many of wisdom, of virtue, and of learning, who were before our time, are told among the dead. In days long after was I born, and in my childhood, and in my youth. I may not discover in my heart that which 640 I know not, and which came to ...
— The Elene of Cynewulf • Cynewulf

... Bedford, to demand justice upon himself as a felon. No one had accused him, but God's judgment was not to be escaped, and he was forced to accuse himself. 'My lord,' said Old Tod to the judge, 'I have been a thief from my childhood. I have been a thief ever since. There has not been a robbery committed these many years, within so many miles of this town, but I have been privy to it.' The judge, after a conference, agreed to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... "The Tonsure" or shaving of the crown, became by fashion and mendicity a feature of priesthood and monastic piety, so has the slaughter of the Tonsils come to be regarded by fashion and mendacity as a feature of childhood ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... had a daughter, and this daughter had not died like her two sons. She lived, she throve in the freshness of childhood, and Elizabeth ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... The exile in a foreign land can sow his corn seed, and gather the same food as in the fields of home. The same exile can find beneath other skies the same holy teachings, the same blessed Sacraments, the same prayers, as in the Church of his childhood. The bread of earth and the Bread of Heaven are God's two universal gifts to man. The penitent sinner can kneel at the Feet of Jesus, and find the grace of pardon beneath the skies of England, and India, and New Zealand, alike. The faithful Churchman can come ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton

... evidence or shadow of evidence produced of Perkin's identity with Richard Plantagenet. Richard had disappeared when near nine years of age, and Perkin did not appear till he was a man. Could any one from his aspect pretend then to be sure of the identity? He had got some stories concerning Richard's childhood, and the court of England; but all that it was necessary for a boy of nine to remark or remember, was easily suggested to him by the duchess of Burgundy, or Frion, Henry's secretary, or by any body that had ever lived at court. It is true, many persons of note were at first ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... that he wanted. His charitable kindness had been rearing a prime comfort for himself. His liberality had a rich repayment, and the general goodness of his intentions by her deserved it. He might have made her childhood happier; but it had been an error of judgment only which had given him the appearance of harshness, and deprived him of her early love; and now, on really knowing each other, their mutual attachment became very strong. After settling her at Thornton Lacey with every kind ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... have solved a riddle, and made me the happiest man in the Lone Star State. Miss Brayton and I have known each other almost since childhood. When ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin

... quickly over the grass, which was cropped short by sheep feeding on it, and they could manage to see somewhat better than they had done on the road. Presently Jack, whose eyesight was even keener than Bill's, having been well practised at night from his childhood, caught his companion's arm, exclaiming, "Hold back; it seems to me that we have got to the edge ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston

... we see to what high calling Thomas Jefferson's mother purposed devoting him while yet he was a helpless monad in pinning-blankets; to what end she had striven with many prayers and groanings that could not be uttered, from year to year of his childhood. ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... and clenched his fist as he thought of them; but he could not speak of them, or mention their name before his mother. What must her thoughts be, as she remembered that elder man and looked back to her early childhood! ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope



Words linked to "Childhood" :   anal stage, immaturity, anal phase, immatureness, girlhood, second childhood, latency phase, maidenhood, latency period, phallic phase, prepuberty



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