"Childish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... John in wishing for the grapes, but she was equally willing to give them up when it seemed childish to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... ready for the meeting. She also took her turn with Mrs. White in making taffy, for they had learned that when temperance sentiment waned, taffy, with nuts in it, had a wonderful power to bind and hold the wavering childish heart. ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... n't care about it, father." "I do, my dear:" And Mr. Shaw put out the other hand to Fanny, who gave him a daughterly kiss, quite forgetting everything but the tender feeling that sprung up in her heart at the renewal of the childish custom which we ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... of his Grandmother's Courage. His Childish Roguery. His Contest with British Soldiers. His Violent Temper. Conscientiousness in Boyhood. Tricks at School. Going to Mill. Going to Market. Anecdote of General Washington. Pelting the Swallows. Anecdote of the Squirrel and her young ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... not wonder that the son has turned out such a wretch. Abandoned by his own father, thrust out like a beggar into the world, cast on the compassion of strangers, deceived and robbed by the one on whom his childish trust was placed, branded in his earliest youth as the son of a rogue, is it surprising if he was forced to become ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... have we our desire; The proud corrupters of the light-brain'd king Have done their homage to the lofty gallows, And he himself lies in captivity. Be rul'd by me, and we will rule the realm: In any case take heed of childish fear, For now we hold an old wolf by the ears, That, if he slip, will seize upon us both, And gripe the sorer, being grip'd himself. Think therefore, madam, that imports us much To erect your son with all the speed we may, And that I be protector over ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... can submit so patiently to the pettiness and multiplicity of his written ones. He vaguely feels the pressure and criticism of your indefinite code of manners; you think his elaborate system of titles, introductions, and celebrations rather childish and extremely troublesome. If you have what the English call manners you will take the greatest care not to let him find this out, and in course of time, however much you like him on the whole, you will lose your patience a little with the individual you are bound to meet, the individual ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... neither extreme is right. There is such a thing, I say once more, as Home Education, involving all necessary training and true constraint; and yet not oppressively felt as such, because it is free, informal, and respects the spontaneity of the childish nature. But, whether our Home Education be formal or informal, direct or indirect, there is one kind of education which we are sure to impart. It is the education of example, silent, effective, stronger and more easily apprehended ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... think of her now in but one setting—a great empty church at the end of springtime, crowds passing outside, a desolate man behind a closed door, and a little child, with the face of an angel, sitting alone in a carven pew. He could hear her answer him in her childish prattle, could feel her cool little hand slip into his as she asked about the lonely man within. Then he remembered the kiss. The floods dried up. Mark's sorrow was beyond the consolation ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... was astonished when he saw the ancient road through the forest, and, at the sight of walls and buildings of stone, he exhibited a childish delight. "This is an island worthy of being the home of a great chief," he declared. "In the big wigwam of stone (the fort) the Little Tiger will rest in peace when not on the hunt, and the squaws shall make of this dirt of black, great fields of yams and waving corn. It is good, that ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... bare room, there are—why, I cannot explain—two framed views of Vesuvius, wretched water-colors which seem to shiver and to be entirely expatriated there. Through an open door behind me, from a small room in which the sun shines brightly, I hear the chattering of sisters and children, childish joys, pretty little bursts of laughter, all sorts of fresh, clear vocal notes: a sound as from a dovecote bathed in the sun. Sisters in white with black caps pass and repass; one stops in front of my chair. She is short, badly developed, with an ugly, sweet face, a poor face by the grace of ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... I believe, naturally a lighthearted, sociable, high-spirited little creature; and her gay and childish nature pined in the isolation and gloom of her lot. At all events she died young, and the children were left to the sole care of their melancholy and embittered father. In process of time the girls grew up, tradition says, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Monsieur was much mortified. The very next day he summoned his old bootmaker, Lambertin, and ordered him to put extra heels two inches high to his shoes. Madame having told this piece of childish folly to the King, he was greatly amused, and with a view to perplex his brother, he had his own shoe-heels heightened, so that, beside his Majesty, Monsieur still looked ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... He had flown into childish rages sometimes and had hurt her with his undisciplined strength. Where was Mart? Tobey had seen him. Perhaps they had fought. Her mind refused to go further. But little subtle undercurrents pressed in on her. Tobey hated and feared his father. And Mart was always enraged at the sight of his half-witted ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... feeling like the icy breath of persecution. How charming was her greeting, "Here you are, little rogue!" when curiosity had taught me how to glide with stealthy snake-like movements to her room. She felt that I loved her, and this childish affection was welcome as a ray of sunshine in the ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... have no words to tell of its bitterness. She went to her missionary life, and we learned at last to live without her, though it was many a month before the little ones could forget to call on "Sister Ellen" in any impulse of joy, grief, or childish want. Then the start and the sigh, "Oh, dear, she's gone—sister is gone!" And fresh tears ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... she thought that she would not answer the letter at all. What was it to her? Let them fight their own lovers' battles out after their own childish fashion. If the man meant at last to be honest, there could be no doubt, Mrs Hurtle thought, that the girl would go to him. It would require no interference of hers. But after a while she thought that ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Nur Jahan, the "Light of the World," wife of the dissolute Jahangir. Never forgetful, it would seem, of a childish adventure when the little Nur Jahan in temper and pride set free his two pet doves, twenty years later the Mughal Emperor won her from her soldier husband by those same swift methods that David employed to gain the wife of ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... by another sign thy offspring know; The several trees you gave me long ago, While yet a child, these fields I loved to trace, And trod thy footsteps with unequal pace; To every plant in order as we came, Well-pleased, you told its nature and its name, Whate'er my childish fancy ask'd, bestow'd: Twelve pear-trees, bowing with their pendent load, And ten, that red with blushing apples glow'd; Full fifty purple figs; and many a row Of various vines that then began to blow, A future vintage! when the Hours produce Their latent ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... afternoon, many of the West End stores were shuttered; but as the bus went farther west, and into suburban areas, there was great marketing activity. Sally watched all the people and observed all the shops with an absorbed childish interest that was almost passionate in its intensity. She took no notice of Toby for a quarter of an hour. He might not have been there. This was his punishment for being outspoken and suspicious. She ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... Where will my lines be two hundred years from now? Forgotten words of unimmediate things. But suppose my heart spoke to me, and knowing I could do but one work well, I put all childish ambition aside to become the mother of men, that centuries from now thousands of my children may be fighting for the right of present issues and hastening that Divine Outcome for which God ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... in her hands, and stood in the doorway, hesitating, like a child who does not know whether or not it will be welcomed, and yet would like to enter and find out what was going on. In her pose there was a quaint and tender dignity, in odd contrast with her rumpled hair and the childish plaything in her hands. Eudemius looked at her; and for a single instant the veil of prejudice was lifted from his eyes, and he saw that, in spite of all, this child of his was fair,—as fair as the dear dead woman who had given her to him and lived to know what she had done. For that ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... therefore perfectly understand his inflicting whatever pain he might consider necessary in order to prevent so bad an example from spreading further and lowering the Erewhonian standard; but it seemed almost childish to tell the prisoner that he could have been in good health, if he had been more fortunate in his constitution, and been exposed to less hardships when ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... she know there was, she could have hesitated, one moment, to refuse his hand, preferring even the misery of so grieving him, to the continued agony of deceit? It was this perfect confidence, this almost childish trust, so beautiful in one tried, as he had been, in the ordeal of the world, that wrung Marie's heart with deepest torture. He believed her other than she was;—but it was too ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... I was busily wooing Mistress Dolly; but she, little minx, would give me no satisfaction. I see her standing among the strawberries, her black hair waving in the wind, and her red lips redder still from the stain. And the sound of her childish voice comes back to me now after all these years. And this ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... had risen, just as we had finished dinner and were sitting round the fire listening to thrilling stories of sport and adventure, a terrific noise suddenly disturbed our peaceful circle—a noise which proceeded from a dark mass of thick bush not 200 yards away, and recalled one's childish recollections of "feeding-time" at the Zoo. Not one, but five or six lions, might have been thus near to us from the volume of growls and snarls, varied by short deep grunts, which broke the intense stillness of the night in this weird fashion. Each man rushed for his rifle, but it was too dark ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... feeling so safe, stroking and kissing the feet that had been weary and wounded for him, till, in the growing delight of the thought that he actually held those feet, he came awake and remembered it all. Truly it was a childish dream, but not without its own significance. For surely the only refuge from heathenish representations of God under Christian forms, the only refuge from man's blinding and paralysing theories, from the dead wooden shapes substituted for the living forms of human love and ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... snapped, though pulled on by many decades! Though when the little child expired the parents may not have been more than twenty-five years of age, and now they are seventy-five, yet the vision of the cradle, and the childish face, and the first utterances of the infantile lips are fresh to-day, in spite of the passage of a half century. Joseph was as fresh in Jacob's memory as ever, though at seventeen years of age the boy had disappeared from the old homestead. ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... he announced in his childish treble. "Uncle Arthur says I've got a chance to prove I'm a soldier's son and a Thorndyke, and I'm going to do it. The enemy's encamped over in the hospital, and I'm going to move on his works to-day. I'm going over with my staff. This is Corporal Thorndyke, and ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... eyes and let his voice gradually die away, morendo. When he had finished, Lisa praised the motive, Marya Dmitrievna cried, "Charming!" but Gedeonovsky went so far as to exclaim, "Ravishing poetry, and music equally ravishing!" Lenotchka looked with childish reverence at the singer. In short, every one present was delighted with the young dilettante's composition; but at the door leading into the drawing-room from the hall stood an old man, who had only just come in, and who, to judge by the expression of his downcast face and the ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... accept this flag from your fair hands in behalf of my men and myself. Mere words fail to express our thanks, but in deeds most glorious will we attest our love for you, and the Stars and Stripes!'—or something like that—all very childish and grandiloquent, but we kept our word, didn't we? And again—picture it to yourselves, now—Bob Hardee's barn; your captain in the chair; Private Ryland rises, and offers the following: "Be it Resolved, that Miss Katherine Burke McDermott be, and hereby is, elected an honorary member for life in ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... fastened by its sleeves to the pole. Holding it aloft as the ship drew near, with all his strength he waved it to and fro, shouting out in his anxiety, and not aware how low and hollow his voice sounded. Charley shouted too, with his childish treble, though their united voices could not have reached by a long way as far as the ship was from them. It seemed to Dick that she would pass at some distance: his heart sank. Presently his ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... more than half an hour by bad weather or other contrarieties, I would pace backwards and forwards, like the restless cavia in his den, with a fretful, unmeaning pertinacity. I felt an insatiable longing for something new, and a childish love of locomotion. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... of youth, his mind full of responsibility, his heart of courage, but his tongue letting fall, every now and then, simple half-foolish sayings which betrayed the approach of dotage. He is very short, and exhibits a childish vanity in constantly referring to his shortness. 'As short my body, short shall be my stay.' 'My mind's a giant, though my bulk be small.' By such quaint speeches does he excite our smiles. And yet, by a very human ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... clear-sightedness. I laughed at him, sometimes, standing beside his knee. And yet, considering that my native propensities were towards Fairy Land, and also how much yeast is generally mixed up with the mental sustenance of a New-Englander, it may not have been altogether amiss, in those childish and boyish days, to keep pace with this heavy-footed traveller and feed on the gross diet that he carried in his knapsack. It is wholesome food even now. And, then, how English! Many of the latent sympathies that enabled me to enjoy the Old Country so well, and that so readily amalgamated ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mingled with the passengers. Cautious not to enter the main cabin, they remained, supperless, on the upper deck, until near midnight. That social prejudice which acts like a crushing weight upon the slave's mind was no longer to deaden her faculties; no, she seemed like a new being, as, with childish simplicity, her soul bounded forth in rhapsody of praise and thankfulness. Holding Franconia by the hand, she would kiss her, fondle her head on her bosom, and continue to recount the pleasure she anticipated ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... to make a tomb of Carrara marble, which was the most beautiful work that Mino ever made; for in it there are some boys, upholding the arms of that Count, who are standing in very spirited attitudes, with a childish grace; and besides the figure of the dead Count, with his likeness, which he made on the sarcophagus, in the middle of the wall above the bier there is a figure of Charity, with certain children, wrought with much ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... looked at her as though he could not trust his ears; then he said, in a tremulous voice that broke into a childish sob, "It is all wonder! You are the Fairy ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... son of Parvataka, is a prince whose confidence and distrust are alike misplaced, who is thoughtless, suspicious, wanting in dignity, and almost child-like, not to say childish. He leads an army against Chandragupta but without success. He is so rash and inconsiderate as to resolve most hastily to undertake war against five kings ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... petty fault, or "chivied" you, as the boys say. If you asked him a question, or asked him to stroll or walk, you always felt that he was delighted, that it was the one thing he enjoyed. He liked to have childish secrets. He and I had several little caches in the holes of trees, or the chinks of buildings, where we concealed small coins or curious stones on our walks, and at a later date revisited them. We were frankly silly ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... trace, in childish prattlings and lore of the nursery, the far-off beginnings of mythology, philosophy, religion. Beside the stories told to children in explanation of the birth of a sister or a brother, and the children's own imaginings concerning the little new-comer, he may place the speculations of ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... were alike. Jean chafed under the smart of that, a taunt every decent man hated. Naturally every happy and healthy young man would want to kiss such red, sweet lips. But if those lips had been for others—never for him! Jean reflected that not since childish games had he kissed a girl—until this brown-faced Ellen Jorth came his way. He wondered at it. Moreover, he wondered at the significance he placed upon it. After all, was it not merely an accident? ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... must wear it to show who won. Miss Celia wouldn't like it. I don't mind not getting it; I did better than all the rest, and I guess I shouldn't like to beat you," answered Bab, unconsciously putting into childish words the sweet generosity which makes so many sisters glad to see their brothers carry off the prizes of life, while they are content to know that they have earned them and can do without ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... of horses had been left huddled by a squad of the enemy who had gone in with the charge on post and for these the Fire Eater made. No one seemed to notice the lone runner until a small herds-boy spied him, and though he raised his childish treble it made no impression. The Fire Eater picked up a dropped pony-whip and leading two ponies out of the bunch, mounted and lashed away. He passed the screaming boy within killing distance, but it was an ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... of the Batavian Society Volumes 1 and 3 is to be found a History of these Dewas of the Javans, translated from an original manuscript. The mythology is childish and incoherent. The Dutch commentator supposes them to have been a race of men held sacred, forming a species of Hierarchy, like the government of the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... lost man, and would not know his own mind. The people are changeable as the weather; to-morrow they crush under their feet what to-day they bore aloft, and praise one day what they stone the next. Do not talk to me about the people! I know this childish, foolish mass, and he is lost who counts upon their favor. It is all the same to me whether they like or hate me. I shall always do my duty to my subjects according to the best of my knowledge and ability, as it becomes an honorable and faithful officer. As the ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... anyone, being all the more glad of a companion, while Mme. de Franquetot, who, on the contrary, was extremely popular, thought it effective and original to shew all her fine friends that she preferred to their company that of an obscure country cousin with whom she had childish memories in common. Filled with ironical melancholy, Swann watched them as they listened to the pianoforte inter, mezzo (Liszt's 'Saint Francis preaching to the birds') which came after the flute, and followed the virtuoso in his dizzy flight; Mme. de Franquetot anxiously, her eyes starting from ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... never climbed these steep ladder-like stairs up to this eyrie, which all her life had been dear to Gertrude. In her childhood it had been her playroom. As she grew older, she had gradually gathered about her in this place numbers of childish and girlish treasures. Her father bestowed gifts upon her at various times. She had clever fingers of her own, and specimens of her needlework and her painting adorned the walls. At such times as the fastidious mistress of the house condemned various articles of furniture ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... could not christen it morbid sensibility; but as she had a childish fashion of tracing things to commonplace causes, whenever she felt her face grow hot easily, or her throat choke up as men's do when they swear, she concluded that her liver was inactive, and her soul was tired of sitting at her Master's feet, like Mary. So she used to take longer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... The objective side of it ceased to interest for having made up one's mind that it was true there was an end of the matter. The religious side of it was clearly of infinitely greater importance. The telephone bell is in itself a very childish affair, but it may be the signal for a very vital message. It seemed that all these phenomena, large and small, had been the telephone bells which, senseless in themselves, had signalled to the human race: "Rouse yourselves! Stand by! Be at attention! Here are signs for you. ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... help me with the love That casteth out my fear; Teach me to lean on Thee, and feel That Thou art very near: That no temptation is unseen, No childish grief too small, Since Thou, with patience infinite, Doth ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... all;—those, for instance, which we derive from our home, our friends, and our prospects, are the first and natural food of our mind. But as children are weaned from their first nourishment, so must our souls put away childish things, and be turned from the pleasures of earth to those of heaven; we must learn to compose and quiet ourselves as a weaned child, to put up with the loss of what is dear to us, nay, voluntarily to give it ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... of their various commodities their dealings with us were fair and upright, though latterly they were by no means backward or inexpert in driving a bargain. The absurd and childish exchanges which they at first made with our people induced them subsequently to complain that the Kabloonas had stolen their things, though the profit had been eventually a hundredfold in their favour. Many ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... a childish defiance. It speaks well for your courage, but ill for your intelligence," the animal ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... a slippery mountain and the River Sangarius. Five years after this expedition, Harun ascended the throne of his father and his elder brother; the most powerful and vigorous monarch of his race, illustrious in the West, as the ally of Charlemagne, and familiar to the most childish readers, as the perpetual hero of the Arabian tales. His title to the name of Al Rashid (the Just) is sullied by the extirpation of the generous, perhaps the innocent, Barmecides; yet he could listen to the complaint of a poor widow who had been ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... firmament; it is like a painted toy, like that map or system of the world, held, as a great target or shield, in the hands of the creative Logos, by whom the Father made all things, in one of the earlier frescoes of the Campo Santo at Pisa. How different from this childish dream is our own conception of nature, with its unlimited space, its innumerable suns, and the earth but a mote in the beam; how different the strange new awe, or superstition, with which it fills ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... try you a little in order to see whether you are still the same dear old childish coward," exclaimed Gualtieri, laughing. "The same great child with the strong, manly soul, and the gentle, weak, and easily moved child's heart. Now, let me know quickly what you wanted of the minister of finance, and I shall reward you then by telling you some good news. ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... and surprised, first grieved from disappointed affection, and then lost that affection in angry contempt. But her fondness for Mrs Charlton had never known abatement, as the kindness which had excited it had never known allay. She had loved her first from childish gratitude; but that love, strengthened and confirmed by confidential intercourse, was now as sincere and affectionate as if it had originated from sympathetic admiration. Her loss, therefore, was felt with the utmost severity, and neither ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... nothing is farther from our thoughts than the carrying of blood and fire among those whom we still consider our brethren of South Carolina. These civilized communities of ours have interests too serious to be risked on a childish wager of courage,—a quality that can always be bought cheaper than day-labor on a railway-embankment. We wish to see the Government strong enough for the maintenance of law, and for the protection, if need be, of the unfortunate Governor ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Tylor illustrates this theory of early man by the little child's idea that 'chairs, sticks, and wooden horses are actuated by the same sort of personal will as nurses and children and kittens.... In such matters the savage mind well represents the childish stage.'[17] ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... scarcely a responsible being," said John Effingham, "for a childish vanity supplies the place of principles, self-respect, and duty. With a sister scorned on account of his crimes, conviction beyond denial, and a dread punishment staring him in the face, his thoughts still ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... it has given a new energy to our troops, because the battery to which we owe this success did not have a single man wounded. The Germans seem to be forty years behind the times. They go on just as in 1870. With childish and barbarous imagination they see francs-tireurs everywhere and can't yet believe that we have a regular army quite close to ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... incredible, miraculous, and yet of a childish simplicity! How is it that no one has ever solved ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... said he, 'of the many years—many in thy short life—that thou has lived with me; of my monotonous existence, knowing no companions of thy own age nor any childish pleasures; of the solitude in which thou has grown to be what thou art, and in which thou hast lived apart from nearly all thy kind but one old man; I sometimes fear I have dealt hardly by ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... unconsciousness I should very soon return to share. Or, perhaps, while I was asleep I had returned without the least effort to an earlier stage in my life, now for ever outgrown; and had come under the thrall of one of my childish terrors, such as that old terror of my great-uncle's pulling my curls, which was effectually dispelled on the day—the dawn of a new era to me—on which they were finally cropped from my head. I had forgotten that event during ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... teacher and companion of Maurice, until the exigencies of military life removed the latter from his control. He was also the man of business of Madame Dupin, and, at a later day, the preceptor of George herself, who, with childish petulance, bestowed on him the sobriquet of grand homme, in consequence, she tells us, of his omnicompetence and his air of importance. "My grandmother," she says, "had no presentiment, that, in confiding to him the education of her son, she was securing the tyrant, the saviour, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... words of a wise man, but silence, that is the great counsellor. In silence wisdom enters the heart and understanding puts forth her voice. In the hush of that night ride I grew to manhood; I put away childish things. I saw, or thought I saw, the two great powers of good and evil. One was love, with the power of God in it to lift up, to ennoble; the other, love's counterfeit, a cunning device of the devil, with all his power to wreck and destroy, deceiving him that has taken it until he finds at last he ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... between us. Long ago we had fallen out of each other's confidence, and ever since she had seemed to shun me. It was the trip in the sledgehouse that' years after, came up between us and broke our childish intimacy. Uncle Be had told, before company, how she had kissed me that day and bespoke me for a husband, and while the others laughed loudly she had gone out of the room crying. She would have little to say to me then. I began to play with ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... don't," he went on, and there was no anger in his voice, only good-natured tolerance that made Judy's temper seem very childish. "You are angry now. But you are not that kind ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... occasion. The question that now confronted him and challenged his ingenuity was, What was the matter with Archibald? Why had the boy suddenly gone back to the primitive source of nourishment, not from mere childish whim, but from actual ignorance—as it seemed—that nourishment was obtainable in any other way? An obvious reply would be that the boy had become wholly, idiotic; but the more Dr. Rollinson revolved this rough and ready explanation, ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... the Tuscan sea, and by which he sought to mislead his rider, and to cause him to end his journey beneath the deep.—The sense of the verses is not very perspicuous, but they are remarkable for reading forwards and backwards the same; and though to you they may appear a childish waste of intellect, you will, I am sure, admit them to be ingenious, and they may amuse some of the younger members of ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... of, who required a good deal of being taken care of, as it was. Rose superintended their removal. Rose, very earnestly and gravely, took Laura's housekeeping in hand. To Rose, Laura's housekeeping was a childish thing. She enlightened its innocence and controlled its ardours and its indiscretions. Spring chicken on a Tuesday and a Wednesday, and all Thursday nothing but such stuff as rice and macaroni was, said Rose, a flyin' outrageous to extremes. ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... in the garret, and out of "best books" taken down from the secretary in the "settin'-room," and put into their hands, with charges, of a Sunday, to keep them still, they had got these things, jumbled into strange far-off and near fantasies in their childish minds. "Lake Ontario" ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... gazed with a childish interest and curiosity on the houses she was passing; then the sense of strangeness gave place presently to the exigent necessity of reaching Oliver as soon as possible. But the driver appeared indifferent to her timid taps on the glass at his back, while the ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... on waste is an industrial necessity. I recall very well indeed how, in the early days of forest fires, they were considered simply and solely as acts of God, against which any opposition was hopeless and any attempt to control them not merely hopeless but childish. It was assumed that they came in the natural order of things, as inevitably as the seasons or the rising and setting of the sun. To-day we understand that forest fires are wholly within the control of men. So we are coming in like manner to ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... slap in the face, and bear it patiently, because I can't help myself. I get the same slap in the face in circumstances where I can help myself, and I resent it fiercely. Humble when I must be so; fierce when I've got the power. Is not this unmanly—childish—humbug? There is no principle here. Principle! I do believe I never had any principle in me worthy of the name. I have been drifting, up to this time, before the winds of caprice and selfish inclination. (A long pause here.) Well, it just comes to this, that ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... most of his materials from ancient authors, particularly from Pliny, and describing Mesopotamia, Chaldea, Albania, Hircania, Bactria, Iberia, and others, as if such had actually existed in the geography of the fourteenth century. Where any thing like modern appears, it is some childish fable, as that the ark of Noah was still visible on mount Ararat. He even gives the ancient fable of the Amazons, whom he represents as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... came directly, and it seemed so childish in its simplicity that he smiled and was ready to give it up; but it grew in strength and possibility as he looked round and took from a table, where lay quite a little heap that had been thrust into ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... oculists see only the eyes, and, to cure them, quite calmly poison the body. With their pilocarpine they have ruined the health of how many people for ever! Others treat cutaneous affections. They drive an eczema inward on an old man who as soon as he is 'cured' becomes childish or dangerous. There is no more solidarity. Allegiance to one party means hostility to all others. Its a mess. Now my honourable confreres are stumbling around, taking a fancy to medicaments which they don't even know how to use. Take antipyrine, for example. It is one of the very few really ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... nettled her, his attitude seemed to her priggish and dictatorial, and as the sun disappearing behind a sudden cloud, so her childish merriment quickly gave place to ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the doctor shakes it at a moving-picture deathbed to show that all is over. He was in a pitch-black cavern miles underground, with one tiny candle beam from a possible rescuer faintly showing from afar, which was the childish certainty of this oldest living debutante that it was perfectly simple for a woman to do something impossible. ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... xiii. 11.—When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... opening lengthwise in the middle in two parts which swing on hinges like doors. The window seat serves as a table, to hold the basket and scissors. The doll is thrust into the corner; our little girl has "put away childish things"—at least for the moment,—and takes ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... wardrobe mistress, I guess. Except that to anyone in show business that suggests a crotchety old dame with lots of authority and scissors hanging around her neck on a string. Although I got my crochets, all right, I'm not that old. Kind of childish, in fact. As for authority, everybody ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... but with promise of bodily vigour, she was singled at a glance as no member of the Madden family. Her immaturity (but fifteen, she looked two years older) appeared in nervous restlessness, and in her manner of speaking, childish at times in the hustling of inconsequent thoughts, yet striving to imitate the talk of her seniors. She had a good head, in both senses of the phrase; might or might not develop a certain beauty, but would assuredly ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... of these requirements has not been the childish diversion it may have seemed. Splendid team work, however, has ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... them to stay there, that he might judge of her, and wrote to Sir Guy that she was a little, gentle, childish thing, capable of being moulded to anything, and representing the mischief of leaving them to such society as that of her brother, who was actually maintaining them. That letter was never answered, but about ten days or a ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... or curiosity to be better acquainted with it, I had, till that age, preserved a perfect innocence, even of thought: whilst my fears of I did not now well know what, made me no more desirous of marrying than of dying. My aunt, good woman, favoured my timorousness, which she loooked on as childish affection, that her own experience might probably assure her would wear off in time, and gave my suitors proper answers ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... and taking her on his knee, gazed long and eagerly into the bright young face uplifted to his own in childish curiosity. Then he kissed her eagerly three or four times, stroked her curly head tenderly with his great brown hand, ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... oval face, the eyes dancing with merriment at something her brother had directed her attention to, sent his thoughts flying to Bailey Harbor. As though consciously aiding his memory, she fell into the relaxed pose so happily caught by the photograph, with the same childish ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... through a ponderous circumlocution. Precisely in the same circumstances of idle and absurd sequestration stands the term polemic. At present, according to the popular usage, this word has some fantastic inalienable connection with controversial theology. There cannot be a more childish chimera. No doubt there is a polemic side or aspect of theology; but so there is of all knowledge; so there is of every science. The radical and characteristic idea concerned in this term polemic is found in our own parliamentary distinction of ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... and sending me the sharp sense of life there is in dashed-up fountains of silvery salt-spray, would have quickened my blood sooner but for this hot-bed of fruitless adventure, tricksy precepts, and wisdom turned imp, in which my father had again planted me. To pity him seemed a childish affectation. His praise of my good looks pleased me, for on that point he was fitted to be a judge, and I was still fancying I had lost them on the heath. Troops of the satellites of his grand parade surrounded ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... still in a sad way. He is childish beyond belief, and talks about you as if you were a lad again, and then speaks of foreign matters of which we know nothing, so long past are they, as if they were still proceeding. In bodily health, he seems now somewhat stronger. I knitted him some woollen stockings, but he ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... I answered after a moment's deliberation, "that you kept—compromising documents which might be of interest to the organization you and I have talked about. Now I think differently. I think you kept a lock of my childish hair, or my ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... hoarsely, and into his hard eyes came the same look of childish terror that the old minister had seen in Benjamin Wright's face when he sat in the hot sunshine ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... she had said, and ran upstairs. In the sachet where she sought for it—an old sachet of very faded silk—there were two compartments: one held handkerchiefs; the other was buttoned, and contained something flat and hard. By some childish impulse Fleur unbuttoned it. There was a frame and in it a photograph of herself as a little girl. She gazed at it, fascinated, as one is by one's own presentment. It slipped under her fidgeting thumb, and she saw that another photograph was behind. She pressed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... time, at least, a matter which he treated with the coolest indifference. After that he got a pound of small shot, and amused himself with throwing a few at a time at the kitchen window from the little court at the back of our house, where the well is. It seemed a strangely childish amusement for ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... hear them speak of "Allie and Marjorie and the other boys," and neither Mrs. Burnam nor Mrs. Fisher felt any desire to have it otherwise. They were too sensible mothers to force their little daughters towards womanhood, and much preferred the tone of free-and-easy companionship to the childish flirtations so commonly indulged in. They could trust to their influence over their children to keep them gentle and womanly, and the boys were all gentlemen, largely sons of Eastern men whom business had brought to the town. So the girls walked ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... Randall's most serious fault arises from his desire to be thought a fine writer. Without making long extracts, it is impossible to give any conception of the absurdities into which this childish ambition has led him. The tropes and metaphors, the tawdry tinsel, the common tricks of feeble rhetoricians are reproduced here as if they were the highest results of rhetorical art. The display is often amusing. Thus, in describing Mrs. John Adams, Mr. Randall ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... again, with a childish persistence, the farmer told how he had sold his farm, how he had come up with every penny he owned, how, little by little, it had all oozed away, and how in disgust he had decided to sell his boat, which would give him just enough money ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... daring and heroic as any that the knights of old were ever prompted to perform. To those who looked upon him thus, the dust and rags that covered him were blotted out, the marks of pain and poverty and all his childish weaknesses had disappeared, and it seemed to them almost as though a messenger from God were ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... you will never love again as you have loved, as you love me now; no, I shall never have a rival, it is impossible. There will be no bitterness in my memories of our love, and I shall think of nothing else. It is out of your power to enchant any woman henceforth by the childish provocations, the charming ways of a young heart, the soul's winning charm, the body's grace, the swift communion of rapture, the whole divine cortege of young ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... secret chamber at Chad, which had sheltered many a fugitive in the hour of peril. Lying out in the soft night air, I recalled bit by bit all that I had been told—the very drawings the old man had made to amuse me in a childish sickness, how the door opened, and how access was had to the chamber. I knew that the country round would be hunted for days, and that I could never escape the malice of the Lord of Mortimer if I pursued my way ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... African scenery, north and south, is the simplicity of it; so very few forms are employed, and they are employed over and over again. The constant recurrence of these few grave and simple features gives to the country a singularly childish look. Egyptian art, with its mechanical repetitions, unchanged and unvaried, has just the same ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... stricture is not worthy of Mill. The soil and manure do not constitute the whole cause of the plants and animals. We must trace these and many other con-causes (conditions) back and back till we come to 'whatsoever is first of all things': it is merely childish to choose some few of the conditions, and arbitrarily to regard them ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... bar,—should thus write to a Secretary of State, was to him disgusting. To his thinking, a great lawyer, even a good lawyer, would be incapable of enthusiasm as to any case in which he was employed. The ignorant childish world outside would indulge in zeal and hot feelings,—but for an advocate to do so was to show that he was no lawyer,—that he was no better than the outside world. Even spoken eloquence was, in his mind, almost beneath a lawyer,—studied eloquence certainly was so. ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... and can't live without them," she insisted. And it was to show him that he could not atone in such childish ways that she lived out of doors or ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the Step-Ladder from under some Honest Workingman, causing him to break his Leg, or hit a Stout Lady in the Eye with a Brick, please remember that I am bringing Sunshine into thousands of Homes. As I go on my way, committing Arson, Mayhem, and Assault, with Intent to Kill, I am greeted by Peals of Childish Laughter. When you put me out of Business, you will be handing the Circulation an awful Wallop. I am not a Criminal; I am ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... me," said he, "of some old fairy story that my childish ears received, in which the fountains of the sweet and bitter waters of life were said to stand very near each other, and to mingle their streams but a little way from their source. Your tears and smiles seem to be brothers and sisters; whenever we see one ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... departure. She gazed about her very contentedly for a while, and then prepared to help herself to a drink of water. She hollowed her two hands into a cup, and waited for it to fill, stooping below the rock, her lifted skirt held against her side by one elbow, while she watched with a childish eagerness the water trickle into her pink palms. Miss Frances Newell had never looked prettier in her life. A pretty girl is always prettier in the open air, with her head uncovered. Her cheeks were red; the sun just touched ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... to Smyrna, and with me it was no childish pleasure to be able to tread another quarter of the globe. I felt a devotion in it, like that which I felt as a child when I entered the old church at Odense. I thought on Christ, who bled on this earth; I thought on Homer, whose song eternally ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... the fashion twenty years before. I was looking with dread at the fearful havoc of old age upon a face which, before merciless time had blighted it, had evidently been handsome, but what amazed me was the childish effrontery with which this time-withered specimen of womankind was still waging war with the help of her ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... in these childish words to cause Hermione's eyes to droop so suddenly as she took the bottle from Ravenslee's hand, or her rounded cheek to flush so painfully as she stooped to meet the child's eager kiss, or, when she turned away to measure a dose ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... languid state of mind with which every one enters on a long day of sight-seeing purely for the sake of gratifying a child, or some dear childish friend. The day was certainly an epoch in carnival-keeping; but this phase of reform had not touched her enthusiasm: and she did not know that it was an epoch in her own life when another lot would begin to be no longer secretly but ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... feminine women he had ever known—in her tastes, her small vanities, her quick and comprehensive sympathies; while her appreciation of all that was fine and good, whether in human conduct, the arts, or dress, was a constant marvel. Her childish enjoyment of the most ordinary pleasures was a constant delight and he found his greatest happiness in planning some new entertainment, receiving his reward in ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... and for the Edda, we shall find there also at least as deep a sense of the awfulness and mystery of life, and we shall find a moral element which the Pagans never had. The lives of the saints are always simple, often childish, seldom beautiful; yet, as Goethe observed, if without beauty, they ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... lay down on the ground, himself, to move his arms in semaphore positions. But even as he lay back, he became conscious that he, too, could hardly care less. With a detached interest that amounted to amusement at such childish, primitive things, he watched his arms spell out one ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... houses are wreathed with leaves and boughs, and the friends and clients of both families proceed in festal array to the house of the bride. If Marcia is very young she has taken her playthings—dolls and the like—and has dedicated them to the household gods as a sign that she now puts away childish things and devotes herself to the serious tasks of life. She has then been carefully dressed for the occasion. Her hair, however she may have worn it before or may wear it afterwards, is for to-day made up into six plaits ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... rare exceptions. In general the house was perhaps the best ordered in England. The hospitality was well sustained, the charities were profuse, and whatever we may think of the intellect which could busy itself with fancies seemingly so childish, the monks were true to their vows, and true to their duty as far as they comprehended what duty meant. Among many good, the prior John Haughton was the best. He was of an old English family, and had been educated at Cambridge, where he must have been the contemporary of Latimer. ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... capable," he cried; "of course they can learn and strive and achieve—" and "Of course," added the temptation softly, "they do nothing of the sort." Of all the three temptations, this one struck the deepest. Hate? He had outgrown so childish a thing. Despair? He had steeled his right arm against it, and fought it with the vigor of determination. But to doubt the worth of his life-work,—to doubt the destiny and capability of the race his ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... event and its consequences enables me to bring to feeble recollection many of the scenes which transpired in this city at that time: the popular excitement and bustle; the liberty cap; the entree of Citizen Genet; the red cockade; the song of the Carmagnole, in which with childish ambition I united; the rencontre with the Boston frigate, and the commotion arising from Jay's treaty. Though I can not speak earnestly from actual knowledge, we must all concede that these were the times when political ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... spot where the little house once stood a railroad has drawn its erasing lines, and the house itself was long since taken down and built up brick by brick in quite another place; but the blooming peach-tree glows before his childish eyes untouched by time or change. The tender, pathetic pink of its flowers repeated itself many long years afterward in the paler tints of the almond blossoms in Italy, but always with a reminiscence ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... her from other people, and perhaps brought her nearer to me. During those fits of despondency she was sure to follow me if I happened to leave the room and go outside. She would join me and spend hour after hour in childish prattle with me, and her merriment and wildness knew no limits. Little by little I got used to her, and fell, in turn, a longing for her company during ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... of the clearing, three woodsmen were swinging their axes and burying their keen edges in the hearts of the monarchs of the wood. Deerfoot looked at them several minutes, noticing as he had done before, with childish wonder, how long it took the sound caused by the blows to reach him. When one of the choppers stopped to breathe and leaned on his axe, the sound of two blows came to the listener, and when he resumed work, the youth saw him in the act ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... observed—were thinner than paper from constant sitting down in offices, yet otherwise they looked first-rate and would last for years. It was all appearance. "It was," he said, "bloomin' easy to be a gentleman when you had a clean job for life." They disputed endlessly, obstinate and childish; they repeated in shouts and with inflamed faces their amazing arguments; while the soft breeze, eddying down the enormous cavity of the foresail, distended above their bare heads, stirred the tumbled hair with a touch passing and light like an ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... I was a little boy of five or six; I was in the full tide of building and growth from the first; the second railway with its station at Bromstead North and the drainage followed when I was ten or eleven, and all my childish memories are of digging and wheeling, of woods invaded by building, roads gashed open and littered with iron pipes amidst a fearful smell of gas, of men peeped at and seen toiling away deep down in excavations, of hedges broken down and replaced by planks, of wheelbarrows and ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... I had been laid in my little couch to sleep the sleep of childish innocence. Father and mother, sometimes the one, sometimes the other, had told me as they bent lovingly over me night after night, what that bell said as it tolled. Many good words has that bell spoken to me through their translations. No wrong thing did I do through the day which ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... my first tooth was drawn, I was in an agony of fright as we went to the dentist; but outwardly I was brave enough, and tried to seem as indifferent as possible. On another occasion my childish courage and also my father's firmness were put to a more serious test. He had hired a house called the Villa Billi, which stands about half a mile from San Domenico di Fiesole, on the right winding up toward ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... lodgings, and at the half-term he moved. Bathilde was right; for since her black mantle sketched her beautiful shoulders—since her mittens showed the prettiest fingers in the world—since of the Bathilde of former times there was nothing left but her childish feet, every one began to remark that Buvat was young—that the tutor and the pupil were living under the same roof. In fact, the gossips who, when Bathilde was six years old, worshiped Buvat's footsteps, now began to cry out about his criminality because she was fifteen. Poor Buvat! If ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... you some more," said Amyas; whom the childish bathos of the last sentence moved rather to sighs ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... feed the locusts of Egypt on a loaf of bread. But it is hard to refuse children, especially to a mother who has left five or six at home, and who fancies she sees, in some of these little eager, childish faces, something now and then that reminds her of her own. For my part, I got schooled so that I could stand them all, except the little toddling three-year olds—they fairly overcame me. So I supplied my pocket with a quantity of sugar ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... pleasant quality as his voice. He had never smiled at Peter before. Peter lay and looked at him, the blue lamps very bright in his pale face, and thought what a jolly voice and face Urquhart had. Urquhart stood by the bed, his hands in his pockets, and looked rather pleasantly down at the thin, childish figure in pink striped pyjamas. Peter was fourteen, and looked less, being delicate to frailness. Urquhart had been rather shocked by his extreme lightness. He had also been pleased by his pluck; hence the pleasant expression of his eyes. He was a little touched, ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... on duty, the week, in spite of discomfort and deprivations, would have been full of glory and excitement. As it was, the dulness and monotony of the jingling of the cow-bell made even his stupid childish mind dismal. All the pleasant exhilaration of youth seemed to have deserted the boy, and life to him became as inane and bovine as to the original ringer of that bell grazing all the season in her own ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... stately patience, the heroic strength, that lay dormant in the hearts of this impulsive, mercurial people? It was always capable of magnanimity. Who suspected its sublime self-poise? Rioting in a reckless, childish freedom, who would have dared to prophesy that calm, clear foresight by which it voluntarily assumed the yoke, voiced all its strong individual wills in one central controlling will, and bent with haughty humility to every restraint ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... again a fitful gleam of light across the rugged lines of his face, the girl would get quietly down from the moss-grown coral boulder on which she rested by his side, and stepping down to the short, steep beach, play with childish solemnity with such pebbles and light shells as lay within the reach of her little hands. Perhaps, if the tide was heavy and at its flood, and a breaker heavier than the rest breached shorewards in ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... some useful piece of needlework, in doing which her mother enforced the most dainty neatness of stitches. Thus every hour in its circle brought a duty to be fulfilled; but duties fulfilled are as pleasures to the memory, and little Maggie always thought those early childish days most happy, and remembered them only as ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... coming seemed to have been at a chosen time—at one of those periods of weariness which a man must feel whose sympathy with and desire for life leads him into many and devious forms of distraction, only to find in time the same dregs at the bottom of the cup. The joy of her fresh childish beauty, her pure sweet trustfulness, at all times a delicate flattery to any man, just the more so to me, a little inclined towards self-distrust, was like a fragrant, a heart-stirring memory even now. I looked back upon these years ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... started shooting the thought that the Arabs could be hostile had not crossed her mind. She imagined that they were merely showing off with the childish love of display which she knew was characteristic. The French authorities had been right after all. Diana's first feeling was one of contempt for an administration that made possible such an attempt so near civilisation. ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... history; but in his character he was earnest and reflective, and very eager for knowledge. Sumichrast took pleasure in the boy's intelligence, and often amused himself by arguing with him. From the flashes of childish humor which he would display on such occasions, my friend sometimes gave him ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... youth, in those beautiful years that rolled so swiftly, I was full of joy, charmed when I arrived for the first time in an unknown place; it might be a farm, a poor little district town, a large village, a small settlement: my eager, childish eyes always found there many interesting objects. Every building, everything that showed an individual touch, enchanted my mind, and left a vivid impression. . . . To-day I travel through all the obscure villages with profound indifference, and I gaze coldly at their sad and wretched appearance: ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... affair with the writer, put the matter in a nutshell. Striking the table he exclaimed: "After all we are not made of wood like this, we too are flesh and blood and must defend our own people. A dozen times I have said, 'Let them come and take Manchuria openly if they dare, but let them cease their childish intrigues.' Why do they not do so? Because they are not sure they can swallow us—not at all sure. Do you understand? We are weak, we are stupid, we are divided, but we are innumerable, and in the end, if they persist, China will burst the ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... of resignation, with a childish, half-hearted protest, that he counted out the desired amount into Lewis's hand, salving his conscience with the statement: "I'm doing this to help Adolfo out of his trouble, understand? I hope it'll enable you ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... fortune in money and unentailed estates, rendered any objection to the match on the part of her kinsman a most improbable occurrence. As a first step towards the accomplishment of this scheme, the count resolved to put an end at once to what he considered the childish attachment existing between Rita and Luis. Within a week after the death of his sons, he had a conversation with young Herrera, in which he informed him of his intentions with regard to his daughter, and pointed out to him the necessity of forgetting her. In vain did Luis ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... entertain a just idea of the nature of civil government, and are upon their guard against the daring encroachments of arbitrary, despotic power. The people were inclin'd to disperse, and did disperse, in the beginning of this childish dispute; as appeared by the evidence of Mr. Parker: And notwithstanding the mutual animosity, if the reader pleases, which afterwards arose between the centry and them, they would have finally dispers'd, in the ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... laughing side, and thou must bear with all our points of wit. We will deal leniently; will not let an arrow fly when thy counterpart is near. No, we will be demure, as if we never spoke to thee of such a childish thing as love. Let us change the subject, Chios. Thou hast heard my dearest has left his home once more ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... told him of her childish journeys along this path until it reached the wooded and pebbly height of land beyond, which is one of the vertebrae in ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... down at her hand, with its new ring, and a shy sort of pride thrilled her. She was his wife! She was a married woman! The tears that had welled to her eyes dried by magic as she walked on, her head held high with childish dignity. She longed for someone in whom to confide, and a sudden thought came to her. It was Saturday, and the girls left Heeler's at twelve. It was still quite early. She would go ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... you understand what I mean. It isn't the andirons, but the sight of your aggressively vigorous legs that moves me to childish wrath. To be tied down here like a trussed pigeon! Better leave me to my solitaire. I'll be more civilized after luncheon." Whereupon I smiled and ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... absence the boy managed to get upon a box near one of the furnace doors, and, rolling against the blistering iron, was horribly burned; yet unaccountably he did not die, but grew bent into a scarred, shapeless body, though his face was a sweet, childish one, innocent of fire. Nobby, as Adam called him after that, was a silent preacher to the stoker. When a clergyman asked him once if he was a Christian, he ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... "Monsieur, kindly remove that childish travesty with which you are trying to impose on justice. We know all about you. Your name is Devereux Bayne. You are a German agent and intriguer; you have smuggled papers; you have murdered a man and concealed his body. Unless you ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... the interpreter, than the sultan commanded me instantly to fill the balloon; and when I replied that it could not be done instantly, and that I was not prepared to exhibit it on this day, Tippoo gave signs of the most childish impatience. He signified to me, that since I could not show him what he wanted to see, the sultan would not see what I wanted to show. I replied, through his interpreter, in the most respectful but firm manner, that no one would be so presumptuous as to ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... clock, falling sometimes into an uneasy slumber which lasted only a few minutes, and then waking at the sound of his own voice calling aloud in his sleep. He tried every plan and contrivance, however childish, by which men have ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan |
