"Childlike" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... variety of topics, style, and treatment as the novel. As diverse in talent and quality as the story-teller himself,—now harlequin, now gossip, now threnodist,—with weird ghostliness, moping melancholy, uncouth laughter, or gentle serious smile,—now relating the story, with childlike interest in it, now with a good heart and now with a bad heart ridiculing mankind, now allegorical with rich meanings, now freighting the little story-cricket that creeps along from page to page with immense loads of science, history, politics, ethics, religion, criticism, and prophecy,—always ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... perfected. The bloated look of self-indulgence passes away like the leprosy of Naaman, the cheek grows pure, the lips return to the smile of hope instead of the grin of greed, and the eyes that made innocence shrink and shudder with their yellow leer grow childlike and sweet and faithful. The mammon-eyes, hitherto fixed on the earth, are lifted to meet their kind; the lips that mumbled over figures and sums of gold learn to say words of grace and tenderness. ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... International Justice established by the second Hague Conference would be able to pronounce definite and binding decisions by virtue of the pressure brought to bear by public opinion. The present leaders of the American peace movement seem to share this idea. With a childlike self-consciousness, they appear to believe that public opinion must represent the view which the American plutocrats think most profitable to themselves. They have no notion that the widening development of mankind has ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... I endeavoured not to be unworthy of his liberality and confidence; and the daughter, who perceived the conflict in his breast, redoubled her attention, and made more evident her unimpaired and childlike love. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... that Deadwood had recently chosen a sheriff. He did not look much like a sheriff, for he was small and weak and bald, and most childlike as to expression of countenance. But when I tell you that his name was Alfred, you will know that it was all right. To him the community looked for initiative. It expected him to organise a posse, which would, of course, consist of every man in the place ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... It was a little world in itself, and had only the vaguest interest in any other world, save perhaps the world to come, which was indeed a very real prospect to most of the villagers, their inherited tendency being towards a quaint and simple piety that was as childlike as it was sincere. The small congregation to which John Walden preached twice every Sunday was composed of as honest men and clean-minded women as could be found in all England,—men and women with straight ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... that dread shadow of Death upon Dolly, who had saved her! Her heart seemed crushed. If Aimee had been there; but Aimee was not, so she stretched out her hands to the man she had so innocently loved. And as she so knelt before him,—so fair, in the childlike abandon of her grief, so guileless and trusting in her sudden, sweet appeal, so helpless against the world, even against herself,—his man's heart was touched and stirred as it had never been before,—as even Dolly herself had ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... rather as a daughter than as a servant. Her moccasined feet fell as silently as those of spirits as she glided about their lodge. She never sang at her work, and rarely spoke, but she smiled often with a smile so childlike as to be almost silly in expression. Father Ignatius loved the silent smile, and a word from him was always sure to bring it; but it angered Father Francis Xavier more than many a more repulsive thing would have done. It seemed so utterly imbecile and babyish to him, he had got so far away from ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... expression, which was, however, softened by the beaming smile which so often lighted it up. Although only a faint color tinged her cheek, yet the clear, brunette complexion glowed with fresh, warm, young life, and the slender, lithe form that leaned with such childlike abandon against the old tree ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... little white figure there looked so slight, the attitude of the bended head was so childlike and pitiful, that the mulatto woman's face twinkled and twitched in a way most unwonted to its usual stony lines. She never stirred till Daisy rose up and submissively allowed herself to be put to bed; and then waited on her with ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Gillette in the artless and childlike attitude of some timid and innocent Georgian, carried off by brigands, and confronted with a slave merchant. A shamefaced red flushed her face, her eyes drooped, her hands hung by her side, her strength seemed to have failed her, her tears protested ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... attention to it, and that little was devoted to transforming it into something absolutely opposed to his whole spirit and method; in place of it they developed the Physiologus and the Bestiaries, mingling scriptural statements, legends of the saints, and fanciful inventions with pious intent and childlike simplicity. In place of research came authority—the authority of the Scriptures as interpreted by the Physio Cogus and the Bestiaries—and these remained the principal source of thought on animated Nature for ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... two reasons, of which one is hardly capable of further analysis. It is the obvious reality of his own delight in 'Petrarchising.' He is perpetually in love with making; he disports himself with a childlike enthusiasm in his art. There are moments when he seems hardly to have passed beyond the stage of naive wonder that words exist and ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... in its early history is like all other sciences, an infant. It was not a Hercules at its birth. On the contrary, it was childlike and rather crooked in many of its ways; but chastisement and criticism have brought it very far toward real manhood. Its early nurses were standing continually on the dark line separating the comprehensible from the incomprehensible, without any guides. They were out upon an ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... to occupy their thoughts and energies. For a century the people lived self-concentrated, introspective, their minds filled only with thoughts of themselves. If foreign affairs were discussed at all it was in curiously childlike and impracticable terms. The nation grew up a nation of provincials (there is no other word for it), with a provincialism which was somewhat modified, but still provincial, in the cities of the Atlantic coast, and which, after all, had a dignity of its own from ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... fixed on more important things, had not perceived when it was taken out for her wear to-day that it was crushed and rumpled. Aurora believed it had been recovered from the ash-can, and her breast was filled with awe. It was with unqualified and childlike admiration that she gazed at the two women whose soaring superiority she ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... victim—of opium is the lamentable fact; that he was morbidly shy and shunned intercourse with all except a few intimate, congenial friends; that he was comically indifferent to the fashion of his dress; that he was the most unpractical and childlike of men; that he was often betrayed, because of these peculiarities, into many ridiculous embarrassments, such as are described by Mr. Findlay, Mr. Hogg, and Mr. Burton,—of all this there can be no doubt; but these idiosyncrasies are, after all, of minor importance, the accidents, ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... guide-books, we might imagine that Cornish folk were still a gay, childlike, merry-making people, carrying on the customs of their forefathers, cherishing the old traditions, nursing the old myths and superstitions, dreaming dreams and seeing visions. Even writers who might know better try to present them as a ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... in all the attitudinizing, quarrelling, alluring, and cajoling of her business; and she gave to those actions a savor of their own by playing childlike innocence, and slipping in among her artless speeches philosophical malignities. Apparently ignorant and giddy, she was very strong on money-matters and commercial law,—for the reason that she had gone through so much misery ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... steadiness of the leather market. There is a primitive freshness in the life of the mountaineers and lumbermen of the Alleghanies like that of the mining regions of the far West. There is a sprinkling of Canadians among the lumbermen, and as a whole they are the most honest, good-natured, childlike set of men in existence. They are the true priests of those high and dim-green temple-aisles—priests of Nature one might call them. The cabins of the bark-peelers are made of rough, sweet-smelling hemlock planks. The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... don't go," she cried in tones of childlike entreaty. "Why should you go? I like you, and I meant no harm. I've had the beastliest day, and meeting you was a let-up. You did me good somehow. Cappadocia was quite right in taking to you. I only wanted to know about you because—well, you are different. Pshaw, don't tell me. I know what I am ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... brother, though we would not forget what he had done for us, we prefer to think of what, by the grace of God, he was, than of what by God's good Providence he was permitted to accomplish. We delight to cherish the memory of his penitent and childlike faith in Christ—the sinner's only Saviour and hope—and of those graces of the Holy Spirit which gave so much beauty and sweetness to his character, and which were more and more ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... using his straw hat as a fan. With an unexpected and almost childlike gesture he suddenly threw the hat up on to the rack above his ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... people of low birth and little education, who had come into an enormous fortune. Trimalchio, a figure drawn with extraordinary life, is constantly making himself ridiculous by his blunders and affectations, while he almost wins our liking by his childlike simplicity and good nature. The dinner itself, and the conversation on literature and art that goes on at the dinner-table, are conceived in a spirit of the wildest humour. Trimalchio, who has two libraries, besides everything else handsome about him, is anxious to air ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... an unexpected laugh; it was loud, merry, and childlike; and there was almost rapture in ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... love for the strange and picturesque. He will come back, I hope, as I did, with some glimpses into the primitive customs of the long-forgotten ancestors of the white race, a deeper wonder at the mysteries of the world, and a memory of sun-steeped days on white beaches, of palms and orchids and the childlike savage peoples who live in the bread-fruit groves of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... well! do not let me interfere with any innocent and childlike pastime you may propose for your evening hours. I will attend to your funeral in ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... like a racket. The crabs, frightened by this operation, which they do not understand, come hastily to the surface, and in their flurry rush into the net the fisher has laid for them at a little distance. Flore Brazier held her "rabouilloir" in her hand with the natural grace of childlike innocence. ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... He added after a moment, with the childlike innocence a sick person has upon first coming back to sanity: "There couldn't be two girls as pretty as you in this end ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... appetite for his breakfast, but now he let his coffee stand long un-tasted. There were several things about this note that touched him—the childlike simplicity and directness, the generous courage, even the imperfection and crudity of the literature. However he saw it afterward, he saw it then in its true intention. He respected that intention; through all the sophistications ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... forgave her petulance and want of consideration for Mollie. It was difficult to find fault with Mrs. Blake; she was so gay and good-humoured, she so soon forgot anything that had ruffled her, she was so childlike and irresponsible, that one seemed to judge her by ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... time I rang the bell and the fish was taken away. The cat went too, circling round the maid with trusting and childlike glances, and I heard her saying in the ...
— The Five Jars • Montague Rhodes James
... at Severndale with Peggy, and it was during one of these visits that Mrs. Harold figured in one of the domestic episodes of Severndale. They were not new to Peggy for she was Southern-born and used to the vagaries and childlike outbreaks of the colored people. But even though Mrs. Harold had lived among them a great deal, and thought she understood them pretty thoroughly, she had yet to learn some of the ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... he personally saw Tavender off at Waterloo station by the steamer-train, en route for Southampton and New York. The old man was in childlike good spirits, looking more ecclesiastical than ever in the new clothes he had been enabled to buy. He visibly purred with content whenever his dim eyes caught sight of the new valise and steamer trunk, which belonged to ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... sometimes aware that deep down in him hid some nameless, indefinable quality that proclaimed him fitted to live in conditions that had never known the restraints of modern conventions—a very different thing to doing without them once known. A kind of childlike, transcendental innocence he certainly possessed, naif, most engaging, and—utterly impossible. It showed itself indirectly, I think, in this distress under modern conditions. The multifarious apparatus of the spirit of Today oppressed ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... the childlike superstitions and lively imagination of his country. He loves the fairies, the dreams of eternal youth, the symbolizing of things of the spirit by lovely things of earth. His plays are poetical, fanciful, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... "It's preposterous, childlike!"—he brought the frail trifle down to the table with an emphasis which was all but its destruction—"imbecile! I tell ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... de Vandeuvres had to interfere in order to assure him that Foucarmont was a great joker. Indeed, everybody was laughing. This did for the already flurried young man, who was very glad to resume his seat and to begin eating with childlike submissiveness when in a loud voice his cousin ordered him to feed. Gaga had taken him back to her ample side; only from time to time he cast sly and anxious glances at the guests, for he ceased not to search ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... perfectly well that he, too, was fully as incompetent: had he not proved to be so with poor Father Francis, and scores of others who had clutched at him in their agony during the last ten years? Even the Archbishop, holy man as he was, with all his childlike faith—was that the man to lead English Catholics and confound their enemies? There seemed no giants on the earth in these days. What in the world was to be done? He buried his ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... worn out almost to the point of collapse, utterly indifferent to his own danger, and taking a huge, childlike delight in my care for my personal safety, the picture of him as he stood and laughed all alone in the bare road amid the bursting shells seems to me curiously typical of the whole ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... art, German sentiment. They had been abandoned by God, by the protecting hand of the altes gutes Deutsches Gottes to whom many had prayed for comfort and help in those years of war, in Protestant churches and Catholic churches, with deep piety and childlike faith. What sins had they done that they should be abandoned by God? The invasion of Belgium? That, they argued, was a tragic necessity. Atrocities? Those were (they believed) the inventions of their enemies. There had been stern things done, terrible things, but according to the laws ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... to me to fight tigers. I could do it today if necessary." He gave a childlike laugh. "You look upon tigers as tigers; ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... home some time in the morning. When we went on long tramps she always dressed in a blue blouse and the apparel of a man, saying that skirts were not made for bushes. She walked before me in the sand with a firm step and such a charming mingling of feminine delicacy and childlike innocence, that I stopped every few moments to look at her. It seemed that, once started, she had to accomplish a difficult but sacred task; she walked in front like a soldier, her arms swinging, her voice ringing through the woods in song; suddenly ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... show that natural strength is above all art. This Sinnis had a daughter of remarkable beauty and stature, called Perigune, who, when her father was killed, fled, and was sought after everywhere by Theseus; and coming into a place overgrown with brushwood shrubs, and asparagus- thorn, there, in a childlike, innocent manner, prayed and begged them, as if they understood her, to give her shelter, with vows that if she escaped she would never cut them down nor burn them. But Theseus calling upon her, and giving her his promise that he would use her with respect, and offer ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... this man, who so far was using, and through long years had always used, only the tone of mentor, now suddenly began to try to justify himself with almost childlike timidity. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... their wives: "But if any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house (or kindred), he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel." 1 Tim. v. 8. It is, however, concerning this verse, only needful, in childlike simplicity to read the connexion from verse 3 to 5, and it will be obvious that the meaning is this, that whilst the poor widows of the church are to be cared for by the church, yet if any such needy believing widow had children or grandchildren ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... thought that one was certainly speeding homewards; and experience was no longer a blind conflict of forces, but a joyful nearing of the central sum of things. At all events, what a blitheness, what a zest it gave to the genius of Plato himself! With what eager inquisitiveness, in a sort of childlike gaiety, he hurried hither and thither, catching at every point some bright indication of the delightful mystery. Plato seemed to differ from the serious and preoccupied philosophers in this, that while they were lost in a grave and anxious scrutiny of phenomena, he was rather penetrated ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... half minute the old man's frame shook with silent childlike laughter behind Paul's chair. "Well, Marse Hathaway, yo's an ole frien' o' my massa, and a gemman yo'self, sah, and a senetah, and I do'an mind tellin' yo'—dat's jess what I bin gone done! It makes ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... possibility of interpretation. This air of remoteness, baffling the impertinent crowd not less effectually than the dust which has gathered for centuries about the heads of Sphinxes, is due partly to the deeply sunken eyes beneath the wrinkled, overarching forehead; partly it arises from that childlike simplicity and sweetness which lurk in gentle undulations of the features,—undulations as of happy wavelets set in motion ages since, and that cannot cease forever; but chiefly it is born of a dream-like, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... possess sweet peace within; Let childlike patience keep my heart; Then shall I feel my heaven begin, ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... Then Davie went to his sap-gathering, and after that the talk fell upon graver matters; and though all took part, it was grannie who had most to say, and Elizabeth liked to think afterward of the eager, childlike way in which her father had listened and responded to ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... strange melancholy began to show itself in his letters—it may be that already his overwrought brain was conscious that the end was not far distant. Such lines as these, pathetic and sad in their simple and almost childlike expression, occur in a letter he wrote during a short absence from his wife, at Frankfort, in 1790: "I am as happy as a child at the thought of returning to you. If people could see into my heart I should almost feel ashamed—all there is cold, cold as ice. Were ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... accepted the responsibility, though it painted olive hollows under her eyes and forced her to her oldest dresses. Mrs. Bent clung to her with more than childlike faith. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... for a shell which he was not going to leave for some time, his cabin presented a very comfortable appearance; the doctor took a scientific or childlike pleasure in arranging his scientific paraphernalia. His books, his specimens, his cases, his instruments, his physical apparatus, his thermometers, barometers, field-glasses, compasses, sextants, charts, drawings, phials, powder, and medicine-bottles, all were classified in a way which ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... it proceeded from her lips. What!—"struggle for life" with those little delicate, soft, childlike hands? How absurd! She laughed at the idea now, and all those who heard her laughed with her; Marien laughed more than any one. He, who had befriended her in her days of adversity, seemed to retain for the ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... she said, in a clear childlike voice. "It dot besser wenn da regnet?" enquired the housekeeper, looking round the room. She began vigorously wiping her face and neck with the skirt of the short cotton jacket she wore ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... to that peculiar race immortalized by Bret Harte. He was a heathen Chinee! His face was smooth and bland, and wore an expression of childlike innocence which was well calculated to deceive. Ah Sin possessed the usual craft of his countrymen, and understood very well how to advance his worldly fortunes. He belonged to the advance guard of immigrants from the Central Flowery Kingdom, and with a companion, ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... and heroic self-esteem—the sort of eddy or back-water—was undoubtedly a childlike fondness for praise and for seeing his name in print. In his relaxed moments, when the stress of his task was not upon him, he was indeed in many respects a child. He had a child's delight in his own picture. ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... and stoic as he was, he was really fond of sympathy, and threw himself heartily and childlike into the company of young people whom he loved, and whom he delighted to entertain, as he only could, with the varied and endless anecdotes of his experiences by field and river. And he was always ready to lead a huckleberry-party or a search for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... she was wrong, quite wrong about his poor old face. There was nothing in it, nothing but that grave and unadventurous benignity. His mood had been, she judged, purely paternal. Paternal and childlike, too; pathetic, if you came to think of it, in his clinging to her presence, her companionship. "It must have been my little evil ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... lonely night. My heart was hard as granite. I could not have prayed, had I known that Peggy's life would be given in answer to my prayer. I could not say, "Our Father, who art in heaven," as I had so often done at my mother's knee, in the sweet, childlike spirit of filial love and submission. My Father's face was hidden, and behind the thick clouds of darkness I saw a stern, vindictive Being, to whom the smoke of human suffering was more acceptable than frankincense ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... With childlike incredulity we cry, It cannot be that great career is run, It cannot be but in the eastern sky Again will blaze that mighty world-watch'd sun! Ah! fond deceit, the east is dark and dun, Death's black, ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... Rose's intercourse with other children, and the feeling that she might associate with them on equal terms, perhaps, was the most complete assurance of Edward's restoration. She was glad that companionship should render the little maiden more active and childlike, for Edward's abstraction had made her believe that there might be danger in indulging the dreaminess ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that knowledge. For To Know—to Understand—means to give to each its rights! And, in this matter, have we to concede so much to our higher animals? The simplest form of thought contents them; the childlike adapting itself to animal uses; and, from such "small beginnings" has not our own primeval soul—the best that is within us—risen to higher glory, to become a moulder and organizer of thought—even of creative ideas? Therefore, ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... studies the aesthetical anatomy of Greek Art has a melancholy pleasure, like a surgeon, in watching its slow, but inevitable atrophy under the incubus of Rome. The wise, but childlike serenity and cheerfulness of soul, so tenderly pictured in the white stones from the quarries of Pentelicus, had, it is true, a certain sickly, exoteric life in Magna Graecia, as Pompeii and Herculaneum have proved to us. But the brutal manhood of Rome ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... in the presence of man produces that kind of shyness which was Borrow’s characteristic left him at once when he was with Nature alone or in the company of an intimate friend. At her, no man’s gaze was more frank and childlike than his. Hence the charm of his books. No man’s writing can take you into the country as Borrow’s can: it makes you feel the sunshine, see the meadows, smell the flowers, hear the skylark sing and the grasshopper chirrup. Who else can do it? I know of none. And as to personal ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... accompany them. Fame, wealth, position seemed the shadows then, and something else it's hard to name announced itself as the substance.... I wanted to clear out and live with Nature, to know simplicity, unselfish purposes, a golden state of childlike existence close to dawns and dew and running water, cared for by woods and blessed by all the winds...." He paused ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... under such unnatural circumstances, would of course interest Dickens. He seemed to take a profound pleasure in wandering about the place, which was evidently filled with the associations of former visits in his own mind. He was usually possessed by a childlike eagerness to go to any spot which he had made up his mind it was best to visit, and quick to come away, but he lingered long about this leafy old ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... those marvellous, innocent eyes of hers and smiles;—why does Lady Winsleigh shrink from that frank and childlike openness of regard? Why does she, for one brief moment, hate herself?—why does she so suddenly feel herself to be vile and beneath contempt? God only knows!—but the first genuine blush that has tinged her ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... whole epoch. Exaggeration of kindness no doubt; but even so I hug it still to my breast, because in truth that is exactly what I was trying to capture in my small net: the Spirit of the Epoch—never purely militarist in the long clash of arms, youthful, almost childlike in its exaltation of sentiment—naively ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... beginning of this letter, I was very early impressed with the contradictions of life in word and deed—in fact, almost as soon as I was conscious of anything, living as a lonely child in a very narrowed and narrowing circle. A spirit of contemplation, of simplicity, and of childlike faith; a stern, sometimes cruel, self-repression; a carefully-fostered inward yearning after knowledge by causes and effects, together with an open-air life amidst Nature, especially amidst the world ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... of the row of seats trying to attract his brother's attention. Gorman was so much occupied with Mrs. Ascher that for some time he did not notice Tim. I had time to observe the boy. He had fair hair, and large, childlike blue eyes. He was evidently nervous, for he shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He kept pulling at his tie, and occasionally patting his hair. He was quite right to be uncomfortable about his hair. It was ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... and Mander stood near him. These old friends had not yet finished talking about what had happened in the days since they had seen each other. Mrs. Mander sat, not far away, still making clothes, and the little Lena was helping her in her childlike way. Lucilla and Dickory were still talking about Barbadoes. There never was a girl who wanted to know so much about an island as that girl wanted to know ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... her time than out of any sarcasm. She set a hand against the jamb of the door, and even so barely sustained her trifling weight. Her knees shook, her childlike face grew white as paper, a great ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... currents of practical thought left to his mind an unspoiled and delightful simplicity which has perhaps never been matched in English poetry." Simplicity— the perfect simplicity of a child— beautiful simplicity— simple and childlike beauty,— such is the chief note of the poetry of Blake. "Where he is successful, his work has the fresh perfume and perfect grace of a flower." The most remarkable point about Blake is that, while living in an age ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... subdivisions of this class are much less childlike and more dignified than those we have been describing, and it is from these sections that the entities who have sometimes been reverenced under the name of wood-gods, or local village-gods, have been drawn. Such entities would be quite ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... handful of rupees from his belt, and gave them five each. The woodmen stared in astonishment at so much wealth, fingering the big silver coins with childlike wonder and delight. Then they bent before Jack, and made him at least a score of deep obeisances, and poured forth floods of thanks. Jack did not understand their words, but their movements told all they wished ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... beauty of it, the beauty of it! That questing, childlike starry gaze, seeking so purely to the stars themselves! That flower face, those drooping, half parted lips! That inexpressible, unseizable something they had meant! Thorpe searched humbly—eagerly—then with agony through ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... the properties of excellence which belong to a Primer for a childlike people, as well as ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... voice and the young one, the first quavering and thin, the other tremulous and childlike, and floated out on the still warm summer air. Mrs. Dawson, reluctant to disturb them, waited in the kitchen with the tea-tray until they had ended, and the tears stood in her ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... A shimmering moth its pinions furls, Grey in the moonshine of his curls; 'Neath the faint stars the night-airs stray, Scattering the fragrance of the may; And with each stirring of the bough Shadow beclouds his childlike brow. ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... were, like my father's, singularly genial, and his appearance very prepossessing. He had as yet no doubt concerning the soundness of any fundamental Christian doctrine, but his mind was already too active to allow of his being contented with my mother's childlike faith. There were points on which he did not indeed doubt, but which it would none the less be interesting to consider; such for example as the perfectibility of the regenerate Christian, and the meaning of the mysterious central chapters of the Epistle to the Romans. He was engaged ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... nothing happened: Joe came in the evenings and sat on the steps with Sidney, his honest heart, in his eyes. She could not bring herself at first to tell him about the hospital. She put it off from day to day. Anna, no longer sulky, accepted wit the childlike faith Sidney's statement that "they'd get along; she had a splendid scheme," and took to helping Harriet in her preparations for leaving. Tillie, afraid of her rebellious spirit, went to prayer meeting. ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sensuous extravagances, were in perfect keeping with the genius of an age when, for instance, a transfer of land was not held binding without the delivery of a clod. And so, what Mr. John Stuart Mill describes as "the childlike character of the religious sentiment of a rude people, who know terror, but not awe, and are often on the most intimate terms of familiarity with the objects of their adoration," makes it conceivable how that which seems to us the most ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... for its consolation; and simple words are the best clothing for the largest truths. These eleven poor men were crushed and desolate at the thought of Christ's going; they fancied that if He left them they lost Him. And so, in simple, childlike words, which the weakest could grasp, and in which the most troubled could find peace, He said to them, after having encouraged their trust in Him, 'There is plenty of room for you as well as for Me where I am going; and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... buoyancy. Many men of thirty were less fresh in mind and body than he. He was one of those beings who die, as they have lived, children: even the privations of the hardest kind of an existence can not take away from them that purity and childlike trust which seem to be an integral part of themselves, and which, although they may be betrayed, deceived and treated harshly by life, they never wholly lose; very manly and heroic in time of need ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants. In a single letter Henarez has outstripped volumes from Lovelace or Saint-Preux. Here is true love, no beating about the bush. Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... There was a childlike appeal in Grace's voice that grated so on Miriam's nerves, at that moment that she deliberately turned and walked away, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... Passion' are all the more impressive because every sentiment of joy in its various shades is wholly excluded; they are all based on the emotion of sorrow. The most fervent sympathy with the sufferings of the Son of Man, rising to the utmost anguish, childlike trustfulness, manly earnestness, and tenderly longing devotion to the Redeemer; repentance for the personal sins that his suffering must atone for, and passionate entreaties for mercy; an absorbed contemplation of the example offered by the sufferings of Jesus, and solemn ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... Hazlitt, and Moore—gives a detailed exposition of Hunt's connection with the Examiner, and his imprisonment for libel—his residence in Italy—his return to England—and his various literary projects—and describes with the most childlike frankness the present state of his opinions and feelings on the manifold questions which have given a direction to his intellectual activity through life. Whatever impressions it may leave as to the character of the author, there can be but one opinion as ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... miserable vermin, thought of him as I had often watched thus his dying agonies, when a cruel urchin of eight or ten. Boys are horribly cruel, sir; boys, women, and savages. All childlike things are cruel; cruel from a want of thought and from perverse ingenuity, although by instinct each of these is so tender. You may not have observed it, but a savage is as tender to his own young as a boy is to a favorite puppy-the same boy that ...
— The Man In The Reservoir • Charles Fenno Hoffman
... nothing of the childlike in himself, and consequently never saw the mind of the child whose person he was assailing with a battery of excruciating blows. A man ought to be able to endure grief suffering wrongfully, and ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... glad. In such sensitive purity had she grown up, so completely had he succeeded in holding aloof from her whatever could disturb her childlike innocence, that her soul was like a shining pearl to ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... came to primitive man by injuries, accidents, bites of beasts and serpents, perhaps for long ages not appreciated by his childlike mind, but, little by little, such experiences crystallized into useful knowledge. The experiments of nature made clear to him the relation of cause and effect, but it is not likely, as Pliny suggests, that he picked up his earliest knowledge ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... then have been his frolicsome enthusiasm that nothing could dispirit; his inveterate oddities of thought, speech, and action, which made all his friends laugh at him and bless him in the same breath; his affections, so manly in their firmness, so womanly in their tenderness, so childlike in their frank, fearless confidence that dreaded neither ridicule on the one side, nor deception on the other? Where, and how, would all these characteristics have vanished, but for his art—but for the abiding spirit, ever present to ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... declared I had an engineering office in Belgium. As the use of telegraph and telephone was suddenly stopped there remained nothing but to close the office. I therefore paid off my employes, among whom was a young office boy, a Belgian, about 16 years old, frail stature, small build, almost childlike appearance, ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... eyes, the silken touch of their delicate fingers, sent the blood rushing through my veins like a stream of lava; but in their gentle accents, the simple ingenuousness of their expressions, the childlike innocence of their faces, I regarded them only as two beautiful children kneeling ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... of studying a mythology is to collect and collate its phenomena simply as it is stated and understood by the people to whom it belongs. In tracing back the threads of its historical development the student should expect to find it more simple and childlike in every ...
— On Limitations To The Use Of Some Anthropologic Data - (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (pages 73-86)) • J. W. Powell
... Norman ancestry is responsible for many of the absurdities in the pedigrees of even our most exalted families. Thus it is that we find such statements as this widely circulated, and accepted with a quite childlike credence: ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... 'environment' to fling into relief against that background his service, and to prepare the way for the narrative of the beginning of an epoch of divine speech. When priests are faithless and people careless, God's voice will often sound from lowly childlike lips. The man who is to be His instrument in carrying on His work will often come from the very centre of the old order, into which he is to breathe new life, and on which he is to impress a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of great energy, and he very soon offered to become pecuniarily interested in the invention. Morse was, unfortunately, not a keen judge of men. Scrupulously honest and honorable himself, he had an almost childlike faith in the integrity of others, and all through his life he fell an easy victim to the schemes of self-seekers. In this case a man of more acute intuition would have hesitated, and would have made some enquiries before allying himself with one whose ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... no reply ... but this time he seemed to me such a good-natured soul, his face expressed such childlike ingenuousness ... a light suddenly seemed to dawn upon me, and there came a prick ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... were up, and found Bertie's Nellie behind the black boys' humpy shyly peeping round a corner. With childlike impetuosity she had scampered along the four miles from the Warlochs, only to be ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... emperor of Austria, in the late Queen Regent of Spain, and in the present King of Spain, Alfonso. All the artists who made miniatures or paintings of Marie Louise softened down this racial mark so that no likeness of her shows it as it really was. But take her all in all, she was a simple, childlike, German madchen who knew nothing of the outside world except what she had heard from her discreet and watchful governess, and what had been told her of Napoleon by her uncles, the archdukes whom he had ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... position and found them a trifle mixed. Undeniably the girl's unexpected personality influenced him considerably. She did not strike him, even remotely, as the sort who would deliberately do anything dishonest. And though Buck knew there were women who might be able to assume that air of almost childlike innocence, he did not believe, somehow, that in her case it was assumed. At any rate a little delay would do no harm. By accepting the proffered job he would be able to study the lady and the situation at his leisure. Also—and this he told himself was even more important—he would have a chance ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... strangers." My husband was greatly tickled, and rather encouraged this flow of impressions; he thought it extremely interesting in a cultivated and intelligent man who was far from untravelled, for he had been in Spain, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Algeria, and who still evinced a childlike wonder at every unfamiliar object. For instance, he would say: "Now, Mr. Hamerton, I am sure you can't justify this queer custom in English hotels, of putting on the table a roast of eight pounds' weight, at least, or a whole cheese. ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... death could not long be postponed. They who attempted to read the prophecy with accuracy were of opinion that the prophet had intimated that had the nation, even in this its crisis, consented to take him, the prophet, as its sole physician and to obey his prescription with childlike docility, health might not only have been re-established, but a new juvenescence absolutely created. The nature of the medicine that should have been taken was even supposed to have been indicated in some very vague terms. Had he been allowed to operate he would have cut the tap-roots ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... Malcom Douglas of his mother and "little Madge," as he calls her, who, petite and slender, with sunny, flowing curls, the sweetest of blue eyes, and a pure, childlike face, stands, with parted lips, flushed with animation, by her mother's side. Margery is, as she looks, gentle and lovable. Not yet has she ever known the weight of the slightest burden of care, but has been as free and happy as the birds, as she has lived in her beautiful ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... used to get the drinking water for the workmen from the springs that seeped out everywhere along near where my father worked. Once he sent me to get water quickly. I had a little dog with me and we unthinkingly stepped in the spring making the water roily. Childlike, I never thought of going to another but played around waiting for it to settle, then as usual took it on top of the sluiceways. It seemed father thought I had been gone an hour and acted accordingly. I shall always ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... productive of effect; but an alarmingly painful effect, equally repugnant to humanity, philosophy, and religious feeling. The Mahomet of Voltaire makes two innocent young persons, a brother and sister, who, with a childlike reverence, adore him as a messenger from God, unconsciously murder their own father, and this from the motives of an incestuous love in which, by his allowance, they had also become unknowingly entangled; the brother, after he has blindly executed his horrible mission, he rewards with poison, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... All the time he passed with his mother he employed in admiring her arms, in giving his opinion upon her cosmetics, and receipts for compounding essences, in which she was very particular; and then, too, he kissed her hands and cheeks in the most childlike and endearing manner, and had always some sweetmeats to offer her, or some new style of dress to recommend. Anne of Austria loved the king, or rather the regal power in her eldest son; Louis XIV. represented legitimacy by right divine. With the king, her character was that of the queen-mother, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... felt a desire to talk and to argue the case on its merits, but refrained as the black holes in Mr. Connors' guns hinted at eruption. "Every time yu opens yore mouths yu gets closer to th' Great Divide," enlightened that person, and they were childlike in their belief. ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... of blood and race. But Miriam was not of their order; she was their guest, no more, to whom they stood in the place of parents, and who would go from them out into the great world. Therefore, notwithstanding their childlike simplicity, being, many of them, men experienced in life, they did not think it right that she should mix ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... later on in the evening, Micky was almost rude to him. The American looked so unfeignedly happy that it got on Micky's nerves; but George P. Rochester was difficult to snub; he looked on at the packing with childlike amazement. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... that thereafter for a time John Fulton's attitude toward Lucy was now dignified and manly, and now almost childlike in its despair. Having made her love him once, he must have felt at first that he could make her love him again. I imagine him making love to her with all the chivalry and poetry that was in him, and then breaking off short to rail against fate, against the ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... name of Balzac capable of adding an interest even to this venerable sanctuary. Those who have read the terrible little story of "Le Cure de Tours" will perhaps remember that, as I have already mentioned, the simple and childlike old Abbe Birotteau, victim of the infernal machinations of the Abbe Troubert and Mademoiselle Gamard, had his quarters in the house of that lady (she had a speciality of letting lodgings to priests), which stood on the ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... appreciation and the power from which appreciation derives, the power to project ourselves into the world external to us, I spoke of the joy of living peculiar to the child and to the childlike in heart. But that is not quite the whole of the story. A child by force of his imagination and capacity of feeling is able to pass beyond the limits of material, and he lives in a world of exhaustless play and happiness; for him objects are but means and not an end. To transcend ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... by the spell which he had intrusted to his treacherous mistress. The friendly arts of Merlin are succeeded by the machinations of the malicious fairy Morgana, and the watchful care of the the Lady of the Lake. To excite the childlike wonder of his readers, the romancer turns knights to stone, or makes them invisible; he introduces enchanted castles, vessels that steer themselves, and the miraculous properties of the Saint Greal, Arthur and Tristram fight with dragons and giants. The loves of Tristram and Isoud ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... testimony. The grace and beauty of this little work supply the only, and perhaps a sufficient, proof of its genuineness. The plan is simple; the dramatic interest consists entirely in the contrast between the irony of Socrates and the transparent vanity and childlike enthusiasm of the rhapsode Ion. The theme of the Dialogue may possibly have been suggested by the passage of Xenophon's Memorabilia in which the rhapsodists are described by Euthydemus as 'very precise about the exact words of Homer, but very ...
— Ion • Plato
... and power, to one object—the glory of God. If so, then God, as the centre and magnet of consecration, must be all vitally apprehended. He must fill the horizon of the soul. He must be the delight of men, to draw them out of themselves into childlike selflessness, so that as children they ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... small game, And Ah Sin took a hand; It was euchre: the same He did not understand; But he smiled as he sat by the table With a smile that was childlike ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... conditions might never have come to it. In American literature as in American life we find all the phenomena of a transition period—all the symptoms that might be expected from the extraordinary mixture of the old and the new, the childlike and the knowing, the past and the present, in this Land of Contrasts. The startling difference between the best and the worst writers is often reflected in different works by the same author; or a real and strong natural talent for writing will be ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... sun, shining on the great area of Oriental gentleness, casts a softening influence toward the sterner north, imparting to the people amiable and genial dispositions. It takes but comparatively small deeds to win the admiration and applause of the natives of the Lower Danube, with their childlike manners; and, by slowly meandering along the roadways of Southern Hungary occasionally with his bicycle, Igali has become the pride and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... carried through in the wavering treble of the women and the straggling bass of the few men: then the kindly-faced man, whom the preacher addressed as "Brother Hodges," knelt and offered prayer. The supplication was very tender and childlike. Even by the light of faith he did not seek to penetrate the veil of divine intention, nor did he throw his javelin of prayer straight against the Deity's armour of eternal reserve. He left all to God, as a child lays its burden at its ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... for another Madonna of marble, which was of full length and by the hand of the same Nino; in the attitude of which Madonna the mother is seen handing a rose with much grace to her Son, who is taking it in a childlike manner, so beautiful that it may be said that Nino was beginning to rob the stone of its hardness and to reduce it to the softness of flesh, giving it lustre by means of the highest polish. This figure is between a S. John and a S. Peter in marble, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... memorable passages in English speech: 'Trust thyself. Accept the place which the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, confiding themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying a perception which was stirring in their hearts, working through their hands, dominating their whole being.' Arnold speaks of Carlyle's grim insistence upon labour and righteousness but of his scorn of happiness, and then says: 'But ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... greater his love." We should not set the genius on a pedestal to be first gaped at and then ridiculed. He needs before all else our love and our sympathy; for his nature is essentially that of a child, and, childlike, he craves for human love as the first necessity of his life. To those who set up an idol of their own fancy and worship that as his image, he will be cold and repellent, but to those who know him as he really ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... grow old as silence became massive betwixt his wife and him. The moon rose, piercing the cannon embrasure, and showed Marguerite weeping against the wall. The mass of silence drove him resistless before her will. That soft and childlike shape did not propose treason to him. He understood that she thought only of herself and him. It was her method of bringing profit out of the times. He heard his relief stumble at the foot of the turret ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... in childlike wonder, and then her face lit up with a heavy smile. "Oh, my! there's no fear of him!" ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... my heart that erst did go Most like a tired child at a show, That sees through tears the mummers leap, Would now its wearied vision close, Would childlike on His love repose, Who ...
— 'He Giveth His Beloved Sleep' • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... cabin with Lady Southminster, bent curiously over the prostrate form, Lady Southminster exclaimed with an air of childlike admiration: ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... the guileless heart, And seeing all with only childlike eyes, Untouched of evil, nor discerning sin, Asked laughingly: "And are you really flowers? I do not know. You are ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... rent the Tuscarora House tallyho and go with some eclat," the lady lamented at the eleventh hour, "but the way people have disappointed me is positively harrowing. There was Bernard Graves—I pinned my childlike faith on him; but he sent regrets. And Mr. and Mrs. Bowers. Wouldn't you think that they, of all people, would wish to go? But no; Mrs. Bowers said it did her rheumatic shoulder no good to traipse around nights,—that was her expression,—and Mr. Bowers actually told me that he was too busy ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... Luis conquered, holding his voluntary promise that he would make her his wife, and believing herself, with justice, to be loved, nay, worshiped by him whom she too loved and worshiped, she danced and laughed, and gave way to other manifestations of joy that had in them, after all, something childlike and innocent. ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... the primitive joys of wonder and childlike delight in simple things. His ideal is the real, not the merely impossible. Unlike most would-be saviours of the race, he seeks not to merge a new humanity into a brand new glittering civilization. He would have us awaken once more to the ancient mysteries and eternal ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... divides into that same majority and minority. The world has an instinct for recognizing its own, and recoils from certain qualities when exemplified in books, with the same disgust or defective sympathy as would have governed it in real life. From qualities for instance of childlike simplicity, of shy profundity, or of inspired self-communion, the world does and must turn away its face towards grosser, bolder, more determined, or more intelligible expressions of character and intellect; and not otherwise in literature, nor at all less in literature, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... the character of Eugene Field is seen, genius—rare and quaint presents itself is childlike simplicity. That he was a poet of keen perception, of rare discrimination, all will admit. He was a humorist as delicate and fanciful as Artemus Ward, Mark Twain, Bill Nye, James Whitcomb Riley, Opie ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... one of the snowy blossoms, and, with childlike coquetry, fastened it in the trimming of ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... of whom the doctor had said "that she fretted if he did not come to see her once in a while." And with Doc she was a different being. Her voice softened, her eyes became childlike, and thin tinkles of laughter broke from her as she clung to him, and received certain presents of medicines and picture-books which he had brought for her in a ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... he entered the little chamber where the old lady lay asleep in her tester bed. Her fine white hair was brushed over the pillow, and her drawn and yellowed face wore a placid and childlike look. As he paused beside her a faint smile flickered about her mouth and her delicate hand trembled slightly upon the counterpane. Her dreams had evidently brought her happiness, and as he stood looking down upon her the wish entered his heart that ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... here, my dear children," he replied in a tone of childlike blandness. "You like it here, and are afraid to go elsewhere. Why, my dear children, just think ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... to describe the rapid, varying, indefinable emotions that passed through the inexperienced heart of the youthful listener as Harley thus spoke. He so moved all the springs of amaze, compassion, tender respect, sympathy, childlike gratitude, that when he paused and gently took her hand, she remained bewildered, speechless, overpowered. Harley smiled as he gazed upon her blushing, downcast, expressive face. He conjectured at once that the idea of such proposals ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... hilltop. As he glanced about him, the completed work loomed large and seemed like a monument to the indomitable will and prowess of this young fellow who seemed to him so simple and credulous—almost childlike in some ways. He wondered how Tom could ever have raised those upper logs into their places. It seemed to him that the trifling instance of thoughtlessness which was the cause of all this striving, was nothing at ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... And with tender meaning smiled: "Ere your childlike, loving spirit, Sin and the hard world defiled, God has given me leave to seek you— I was once ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... compassion. Her rival had lost Gustave. To Julie the loss of Gustave was the loss of all that makes life worth having. On her part, Isaura was moved not only by the beauty of Julie's countenance, but still more by the childlike ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 'I would now ask another favor of you. You are a Christian, send me a priest, that he may baptize me, if he does not think me unworthy, for I am burdened with sins so heavily as no other woman can be.' Her large, sweet, childlike eyes filled again with big silent tears, and I spoke to her from my heart, and showed her as well as I could the grace of the Redeemer. Shortly after, Ammonius secretly baptized her, and she begged to be given the name of Magdalen, and so it was, and after ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of twelve and was attracted by the shining face, the pleasant manners. Dutiful and loving; ready to help; patient to bear and forbear; eager to excel; faithful to the smallest task, yet full of high ambitions; and, better still, possessing the childlike piety that can trust and believe, wait and hope. Good and happy—the two things we all long for and so few of us truly are. This he was, and this single fact was the best eulogy his pastor could pronounce over the beloved youth gone to a nobler manhood whose ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... our own. And let us never be afraid of changing our opinions. The unwillingness to go back from once declared opinion is a form of pride which haunts some powerful minds: but it is not found in great childlike geniuses. Fools may hold fast to their scanty stock through life, and we must be very cautious in drawing them from it—for where ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... Within one cup pour vinegar and oil, And look! unblent, unreconciled, they war. So in the twofold issue of the strife Mingle the victor's shout, the captives' moan. For all the conquered whom the sword has spared Cling weeping—some unto a brother slain, Some childlike to a nursing father's form, And wail the loved and lost, the while their neck Bows down already 'neath the captive's chain. And lo! the victors, now the fight is done, Goaded by restless hunger, far and wide Range all disordered ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... Priestly Code, or a little later still, lies probably the composition of three religious works full, respectively, of exultant thanksgiving, of the noblest insight into the fruitfulness of suffering, and of the deepest questionings issuing in childlike trust in God. For an anonymous writer composes (say, in 550 B.C.) the great bulk of the magnificent chapters forty to fifty-five of our Book of Isaiah—a paean of spiritual exultation over the Jews' proximate deliverance from exile ...
— Progress and History • Various
... without loving him, being ambitious of his name and honours, when his future had seemed brilliant in the days of good King Henry. She had borne him an only son, who worshipped her with a chivalric devotion that was almost childlike in its blindness; but the most that she could feel, in return, was a sort of motherly vanity in his outward being; and this he accepted as love, though it was as far from that as devotion to self is from devotion ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford |
