"Babble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my son, take my advice. Avoid The places where thou seest much drapery, Colours, and gold, and plumes, and heraldries, And such new-fanglements. But, above all, Take care how evil chance or youthful wandering Bring thee upon the house of Idle Babble." "What place is that?" said I; and he resumed;— "Enchantresses dwell there, who make one see Things as they are not, ay and hear them too. That which shall seem pure diamond and fine gold Is glass and brass; and coffers that look silver, Heavy with wealth, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... above the earth that all men everywhere could see to which spot on the surface it pointed. Or, had they been devout men, they would have listened for heavenly voices—it is always your devout man who tries to hear other things than the babble of the Babel in which he lives—they, too, could have heard the angelic chorus like the shepherds in the fields and on the ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... he had laid his hand on the arm of the man with the woman. Both spun quickly about. A babble ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... leaning for support against the jamb, kept her piercing eyes on his face, though his would not meet their gaze; while Morton rolled great frightened orbs from one to the other, as from within came unconscious Molly's gleeful babble, and the baby's sweet little ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... as well as of sight, and one must have some idea of the size of a noise before one can judge of its distance. A mosquito's horn in a dark room may seem like a trumpet on the battlements; and the tumult of a mighty stream heard through an unknown stretch of woods may appear like the babble of a mountain brook ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... the shepherd, who knew only the pastoral pipe that gathered his sheep, refers to with contempt. He uses a very rare word of uncertain meaning, which is probably best rendered in some such way as the Revised Version does: 'They sing idle songs.' To him their elaborate performances seemed like empty babble. Worse than that, they 'devise musical instruments like David.' But how unlike him in the use they make of art! What a descent from the praises of God to the 'idle songs' fit for the hot dining-halls and the guests ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... The memorandum-book alluded to—on the first leaf of which he had written in his neatest hand (as if to encourage himself to begin) "Affectation"— contains, besides the names of three of the intended personages, Sir Babble Bore, Sir Peregrine Paradox, and Feignwit, nothing but unembodied sketches of character, and scattered particles of wit, which seem waiting, like the imperfect forms and seeds in chaos, for the brooding of genius to nurse them into system ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... to you whether she has a soul or not," says the voice, "provided she can babble pleasantly at dinner and play cribbage with ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... There was a wild babble of questions and answers, and it was a long time before all had calmed down enough ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... "were made to mourn." If they conceive a joke, their sad, sharp voices and angular gesticulations make it miscarry. Now and then they rebel against their constitutions, poor fellows, and try to imitate the jovial ancestors they have read of; babble shrilly of noctes coenaeque Deum, petits soupers, and what not. It is mostly idle talk. They know too well that digestion does not wait upon appetite in the evening,—and that they will feel better for the next week, if they restrict their debauch to dandelion coffee and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... he to do with rabble? Froth is better than their babble; Let him toss them flakes of froth, To pronounce his ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... to his tent and stretched himself on a blanket by the side of the snoring tall soldier. In the darkness he saw visions of a thousand-tongued fear that would babble at his back and cause him to flee, while others were going coolly about their country's business. He admitted that he would not be able to cope with this monster. He felt that every nerve in his body would ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... Celia. I didn't care for her at first, but she is so deliciously blind! Anything more exquisitely unserviceable as a chaperon I can't imagine. Absorbed in antiquity, she ignores the babble of contemporaneous lovers. That any man could look at Kitty when he could look at a cathedral passes her comprehension. I do not presume too greatly on her absent-mindedness, however, lest she should turn unexpectedly and rend ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... man babble those excuses? It was because he scented danger. He was not by nature suspicious, but—what possible motive, except murder, could this man have for enticing him to that cave? Acquaintance in the open valley was all ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... of prostrating the most vigorous frame, of clouding the most splendid intellect, of benumbing the most delicate moral feelings, of palsying the most eloquent tongue, of teaching those on whose lips listening senates hung, to mutter and babble with the drunkard, and of entombing the most brilliant talents and hopes of youth, wherever man can be induced to drink. The establishment of every distillery, and every dram-shop, and every grocery where it is sold, secures the certainty that many a man will thereby become a drunkard, and ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... might apply that description to Browne's poetry; he might urge that the breezes which blew down these leafy alleys and over those trim parterres were not more grateful than the fragrance exhaled from the 'Pastorals'; that the brooks and birds babble and twitter in the printed page not less blithely than in that western Paradise. What so pleasant as to read of May-games, true-love knots, and shepherds piping in the shade? of pixies and fairy-circles? of rustic ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the Courts of Justice (Chancery and King's Bench) were held here, and as the hall was also lined with shops, and the babble and walking to and fro were incessant, it is not wonderful that justice was sometimes left undone. It would be difficult—nay, impossible—to tell in detail all the strange historic scenes enacted in Westminster ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... up-stream with a heavier note, and was distinguishable at much greater distances, and the boats in passing through some of the heavier rapids did so in the midst of a din quite different from the gentle babble of the shallow stream far toward its source. The boom of the bad water far below ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... his oats behind the girth. Not so much in the way of shoulders," and so on. And so her eyes asked: "Is this man trustworthy in money matters; is he likely to try to play the lover; is he likely to let his women be troublesome? Is he, above all, likely to babble ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... process to a knot of merchants, who, with bent brows and eager eyes, were already forming a Company for its adoption. Here floated the latest anecdote of Bolivar; and there a murmur of some new movement of Cochrane's. And then the perpetual babble about 'rising states,' and 'new loans,' and 'enlightened views,' and 'juncture of the two oceans,' and 'liberal principles,' and 'steamboats to Mexico,' and the earnest look which every one had in the room. How different to the vacant gaze that we have ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... The River, jaded and forlorn, Welters and wanders wearily—wretchedly—on; Yet in and out among the ribs Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles Of some dead lake-built city, fall of skulls, Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories, Lingers to babble, to a broken tune (Once, O the unvoiced music of my heart!) So melancholy a soliloquy It sounds as it might tell The secret of the unending grief-in-grain, The terror of Time and Change and Death, That ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... in company, two lights of altogether a different nature; but the party get into a rattling conversation, in which the noisy babble of the College Cubs ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... pleasant afternoon musing over these papers. Their variety is endless, and the dispositions of mind displayed by these librarians are wide as the poles asunder. Some of them babble like babies, others are evidently austere scholars; some are gravely bent on the best methods of classifying catalogues, economizing space, and sorting borrowers' cards; others, scorning such mechanical details, bid us regard libraries, and consequently librarians, as the primary ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... babble of passengers who were herded in the cabin with brigands guarding them. George Prince, bareheaded, but shrouded in his cloak, showed in a patch of light behind Moa. He looked my way and then ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... desired them, would not come. His arm went to her neck and settled there. His hand caressed her hair, her cheek. He kissed her eyes, her lips, her languid hands; and the words that came were only an infantile babble of regrets and apologies, assurances that he did love her, that he had never loved any one before, and never would love any ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... King: "Have hope, O friend! Yea, Death disgraced is hard; Much honour shall be thine"; and called the Captain of the Guard, Yar Khan, a bastard of the Blood, so city-babble saith, And he was honoured of the King — the which is salt to Death; And he was son of Daoud Shah, the Reiver of the Plains, And blood of old Durani Lords ran fire in his veins; And 'twas to tame an Afghan pride nor Hell nor Heaven ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... exclaimed Nevill. "I don't think De Mora can have got home yet from the palace. I saw him having supper. Suppose I dart back, flutter gracefully round him, babble 'tile talk' a bit—he's a tile expert after my own heart—then casually ask what Arabs he's got staying with him. If Maieddine's in his house it can't be a secret—incidentally I may find out where the fellow comes from ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... slitherings of the wheels the grinding and squeaking of the brake, had made them all enemies. She had sat tense and averted, seeing the general greenery, feeling that the cool flowing air might be great happiness, conscious of each form and each voice, of the insincerity of the exclamations and the babble of conversation that struggled above the noise of their going, half seeing Pastor Lahmann opposite to her, a little insincerely smiling man in an alpaca suit and a soft felt hat. She got down the steps without his assistance. With whom should she take refuge?... ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... matter for these! But Giotto, you, Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it— Oh, never! it shall not be counted true— 235 That a certain precious little tablet Which Buonarroti eyed like a lover— Was buried so long in oblivion's womb And, left for another than I to discover, Turns up at last! ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... the Pomoerium is holy ground: others talk of the grandeur of Rome; you make me realize its grandeur: others prate of their love for Rome: you, saying little, make me tingle with a subtly communicated sense of how you love Rome: others babble of how life away from Rome is not life, but merely existence; of how any dwelling out of Rome is exile, of how they long for Rome; you, by some sorcery, make me not only feel how you long for Rome, but have ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... babble of voices, some shrieks, and more confusion, and the guests ran pell-mell down the great stairs and out the castle door. To Peter's dismay, Aunt Jane was not among them. So into the castle he rushed again, calling at the top of his voice, "Aunt ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... and there was a sound as if his companion had given his mouth a pat, for from pretty close at hand there was the low babble of voices. ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... discussing these matters, trying to find out the truth about them, writing books and building churches—our civilization is going to drift just precisely as those other civilizations which have been guided by the same dreadful fatalism have drifted—towards the Turkish goal. "Kismet. Man is a fool to babble of these things; what he may do is of no avail; all things will happen as they were pre-ordained." And the English Turk—the man who prefers to fight things out instead of thinking ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... fell still again, save for the babble of the brook, and there I lay, bound, and heard only the stream in the silence of ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... Babble of comment and argument! It was a picked fight—anybody could see that. Why should Lapierre come north in the Flagg interests? Lapierre had never worked in a Flagg crew. It was begun so suddenly and was ended so soon! A minute's flash of drama ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... carefulness on the littered settee, and Rabeira started up with a wild scream of fright and a babble of oaths. Kettle shut ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... vibrates, and thus produce the human bleat. We narrow or widen or check or stop the flow of this sound by the lips, the tongue, the teeth, and thus articulate, or break into joints, the even current of sound. The sound varies with the degree and kind of interruption, as the "babble" of the brook with the shape and size of its impediments,—pebbles, or rocks, or dams. To whisper is to articulate without bleating, or vocalizing; to coo as babies do is to bleat or vocalize without articulating. Machines are easily made that bleat not unlike human beings. A bit of India-rubber ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... had been supplied with his monastic drink, and the waiter had retired, Trent looked across the table with significance. 'In this babble of many conversations,' he said, 'we can speak as freely as if we were on a bare hillside. The waiter is whispering soft nothings into the ear of the young woman at the pay-desk. We are alone. What do you think of that interview ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... seen there, and said they would bet he never had enough money to buy that one. Maybe he could buy a medium-sized one, but not that. All of them kept a repellent manner for any passing boy who might be selfishly moved to join them. The spendthrift let them babble, preserving a rather grim silence. The whale of a melon was indeed a noble growth, and its price was thirty-five cents. The announcement of this caused a solemn hush to fall upon the sycophants; a hush broken by the cool, masterful tones ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... them, or find someone on the spot to do what is necessary. When there are no mineral waters or sea baths to give a place importance, Germans say they have come there to do a Luftkur. A delightful Frenchwoman who has written about England lately is amused by our everlasting babble about a "change." This one needs a change, she says, and that one is away for a change, and the other means to have a change next week. So the Germans amuse us by their eternal "cures." One tries air, and the ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... evinced that my friend was in the melancholy condition of those in whom the principle of animal life has unfortunately survived that of mental intelligence. He gazed a moment at me, but then seemed insensible of my presence, and went on—he, once the most courteous and well-bred—to babble unintelligible but violent reproaches against his niece and servant, because he himself had dropped a teacup in attempting to place it on a table at his elbow. His eyes caught a momentary fire from his irritation; but he struggled in vain for words to express himself adequately, as, looking ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... has swung away from the idea of the dream as a warning or a prophecy, he has accepted the even more untrue conception of dreaming as the mere sport of sleep,—the "babble of the mind," the fantastic and insignificant freak-play of undirected mental processes, or the result of physical sensations without relation to the rest of mental life. No wonder, then, that Freud's startling ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... Argument seemed child's babble indeed under the smile of Night. And the face of the woman, left alone at her window, was a little like the face of this warm, sweet night. It was sensitive, harmonious; and its harmony was not, as in some faces, cold—but seemed to tremble and glow and flutter, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... listening to the babble of some children who lay on the grass near by, I resumed my walk, and, meeting a Welshman in the village street, I asked him my nearest way back to Rhyl. "Dim Sassenach," said he, after a pause. How odd that an hour ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... artistic temperament,' as Mrs. Hand calls it. It must be awfully trying, though, not to be able to babble when you're pleased. It's such a relief to get it out of your system. I'd simply burst if I tried to keep quiet ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... pray is not for thee to down on thy knees, and say over a many Scripture words only; for that thou mayest do, and yet do nothing but babble. But if thou from a sense of thy baseness canst groan out thy heart's desire before the Lord, He will hear thee, and grant thy desire; for He can tell what is the meaning of the groanings of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... efface all traces and memory of my degradation. Was not I struck by two vile slaves, who will babble through the city? Was not I held down by an executioner? These arms, which have wound round the master of the world, and no other, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... library and shut the door. The room rested him, after the babble across. He lighted a cigar, and stood for a moment before Natalie's portrait. It had been painted while he was abroad at, he suspected, Rodney's instigation. It left him quite cold, ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... salary and we live in a poky house and I do the cooking. I'd think it awfully funny if it was happening to any of my friends—but this is terrible! Well, goat-tending tells, doesn't it? And after all we have done for him—to babble on about honesty and earning and all those socialistic ideas. He is a dangerous man, papa; really. ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... share, The talk flies fast, and scandal fills the air; It makes a sober person's head go round, At these assemblies, just to hear the sound Of so much gab, with not a word to say; And as a learned man remarked one day Most aptly, 'tis the Tower of Babylon, Where all, beyond all limit, babble on. And just to tell you how this point came ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... companies, to report his sermon to all the birds in the universe. A grasshopper remained a week with St. Francis during the absence of the Virgin Mary, and pittered on his head. He grew so companionable with a nightingale, that when a nest of swallows began to babble, he hushed them by desiring them not to tittle-tattle of their sister, the nightingale. Attacked by a wolf, with only the sign-manual of the cross, he held a long dialogue with his rabid assailant, till the wolf, meek as a lap-dog, stretched ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... soul in torment, listening to music in heaven. I stood, stiff and numb in horror, staring into the gulf. The roar of the cataract was smothered to a babble. The rainbow vibrated tremulously to the dropping harmonies. I saw the familiar shadow as it gided to my feet. A soft hand thrilled me with its touch, and the old ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... Then a babble of inquiry and speculation broke out Where was the thing going? What was it doing? What did its sudden swift voyage mean? For the rest of the day the camp was less sleepy than usual. Men everywhere discussed the ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... the way I came through. One morning I was just getting out of bed, "this gibberish, this jargon" as the enemy likes to call it, began to come. The Lord said, "Let it babble!" I let. The babble increased, and by night I was up to my neck. I let. I still let. That's all. Someone else does the work, and it does not ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... in a way which offended people with mental blinders. He declares that the war quite completely knocked humbug on the head and bashed shams irreparably. "Rebels," says he, meaning those who speak their mind and write of things as they see them, "must be drowned in a babble ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... you have just heard? I can explain it in a few words. There are two kinds of music: one, petty, poor, second-rate, always the same, based on a hundred or so of phrases which every musician has at his command, a more or less agreeable form of babble which most composers live in. We listen to their strains, their would-be melodies, with more or less satisfaction, but absolutely nothing is left in our mind; by the end of the century they are forgotten. But the nations, from the ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... remittance was reduced to $100 a month. I can't get drunk like a gentlemen on that—you couldn't yourself—and it's an inhuman outrage. It may drive me to reform—I've thought of it. You're such a sympathetic listener, Doc. It makes me babble." His hand was on the door-knob. "Since you've nothing to say I suppose you mean to stick to your story, but you must admit, Doc, I've at least been as much of a gentleman as a rattlesnake. I'm rattling before ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... The babble on this announcement was tremendous. Gatty and Felix shook hands on the spot, and congratulated each other on the probable fulfilment of their secret wishes. Madame turned deadly pale, and sunk into a seat. My cousin tossed up her head, and said "anything is better than this confounded ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... little restaurants and cafes around us were wide open, with customers drinking coffee and chatting merrily at the small tables outside. The sound of a guitar strumming softly in the distance mingled with the clatter of chinaware and the babble of voices. ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... John, "I guessed by thy insolent babble thou wert no true lover of the long-bow, and I see thou darest not adventure thy skill among such merry-men as ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... has become accustomed to his new food (whether he likes it or not) or begins to babble a word or two, he is given a name that usually recalls the place where he was born, some particular event of the moment or the way he may have of making use of a word often, ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... young chap said sunthin' here, but it was entirely unbeknown to me; though I thought I heard the murmur of his voice makin' a sort of a tinklin' accompinment to my thoughts, sunthin' like the babble of a brook a runnin' along under forest boughs, when the wind with its mighty melody is sweepin' through 'em. Great emotions was sweepin' along with power, and couldn't be stayed. And I went right on, not sensin' a ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... quarter, and so close that one might almost have hove a biscuit on board, all was confusion with him; the hands being busy taking in their canvas in a slipshod, lubberly way that would have disgraced a collier; while the babble of tongues must have been deafening, judging from what we ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... morality, conduct, life are Surveyed from every point of the compass, but from an eminence always. Austerity holds no place in his philosophy; he finds room even "for the hours that babble aloud in their wantonness." But all those who follow him are led by smiling wisdom to the heights where happiness sits enthroned between goodness and love, where virtue rewards itself in the "silence that is the walled garden ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... and mine; and Fate grudges that even these few poor hours, which make the sum of it, should be spent together. Think how long a man and woman can live side by side at best. Yet every Sunday of your life you go to church and babble about a ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... said. "She is truly 'Manlia,' though called, against custom, for my dead Marcius. When Claudians change the toga for the paludamentum, and Ogulnians cease to babble of Greek philosophy, then shall a Manlian be lacking in the spirit of our order—ay, and in ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... the Castle, with a panegyric on her dead nephew, and an astonished dissertation on the strange fact that Olivia had not had a woman with her during this sad time. She ascribed her abstinence from this stimulant to her desire to be alone with her grief. Olivia encouraged her harmless babble by a vague murmur at the right points, and continued to look pathetic. It was all her aunt by marriage needed, and it left Olivia free to think her own thoughts. She gave but few of them to her dead husband; the living claimed ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... hullabaloo came up from below. A roar of laughter and the babble of male voices was mixed with the rumble of wheels and the pistol-like crack ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... up, too, staring out at her husband; and a quick babble of talk and exclamations from behind made itself audible in spite of the ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... his voice above the excited babble. "Please be calm, everyone! We'll have the lights ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... gaping monotony of this jargon, full of the vowel a, is admirably suited to the mouth of the vast, half-stupid speaker. It is like a babble of the gigantic infancy ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... burning with regret, and vanity, and love of pleasure; his head without habits of activity or principles of judgment, a whirlpool where fantasies and hallucinations and 'fragments of science' were chaotically jumbled to and fro. But he could babble college-latin; and talk with a trenchant tone about the 'revolutions of Philosophy.' Such accomplishments procured him pardon from his parents: the precentorial spirit of his father was more than reconciled on discovering that Daniel could also preach and play upon the organ. The good old ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... babble to Anna. "You know, I just thought I never would get this old thing on." She was speaking of her dress. "Aileen wouldn't ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... the doings of the day from the four corners of the world, the tales of love and death, of fire and flood, of strife and pestilence, and under eight thousand miles of shivering sea, whispers the babble ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... babble of talk and exchange of explanations almost before they were aware, and then Mrs. Gray suddenly realized that Bob ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... desk before her departure, a proceeding which provoked indignant sniffs from the witnesses; but, sublimely indifferent to public opinion, she put the key in her pocket, and stalked from the room. The girls gave her a few moments' grace to get out of earshot, then broke into a babble ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... any more of either. I remember that His Majesty consulted with the chancellor as to the form of the oath, and that he spoke for a long time in an undertone to the cardinal: after which the last-born child was given into the charge of the midwife, and as they were always afraid she would babble about his birth, she has told me that they often threatened her with death should she ever mention it: we were also forbidden to speak, even to each other, of the child whose birth we ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of conifers, and in two places tall cascades. The nearer ground was strewn with glaciated boulders and supported nothing but a stunted Alpine vegetation of compact clustering stems and stalkless flowers. No river was visible, but the air was full of the rush and babble of a torrent close at hand. A bleak and biting wind was blowing. Ever and again a snowflake drifted past. The springless frozen earth under Bert's feet felt strangely dead and heavy after ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... the cheap trip to Edinboro, juist to hae a bit look round the metrolopis, as Sandy ca'd it to the fowk i' the train. He garred me start twa-three times sayin't; I thocht he'd swallowed his pipe-shank, he gae sic a babble. ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... Mac-o-chee: Through a lilied memory Plays the wayward little creek Round thy home at hide-and-seek— As I see and hear it, still Romping round the wooded hill, Till its laugh-and-babble blends With the silence while it sends Glances back to kiss the sight, In its babyish delight, Ere it strays amid the gloom Of the glens that burst in bloom Of the rarest rhyme for ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... soft touch now and then to support her voice, has warbled some sweet, sad melody intertwined with the longings or regrets of some tender-hearted poet, it has seemed to me that so to hush the rustling of the silks and silence the babble of the buds, as they call the chicks of a new season, and light up the flame of romance in cold hearts, in desolate ones, in old burnt-out ones,—like mine, I was going to say, but I won't, for it isn't so, and you may laugh to hear me say it isn't so, if you ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... me see. What a curious sensation! To caress the figures of my madness! Then there is no longer any sanity in me. For my fingers are aware of hair. Ah, dear child, Mallare is completely mad since at last his senses betray him. But they betray him sweetly. For though I babble to myself you have no existence, though I smile at the thought of caressing a phantom, my senses derive a mysterious pleasure from this contact with nothingness. Curious ... curious ... come closer, Rita. Now smile at me. Yes, your lips move. You are an automaton born of ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... brook, or, as they say in Indiana, the "branch[26]," that something happened which brought him to a sudden decision. Ralph never afterward could forget that brook. It was a swift-running little stream, that did not babble blatantly over the stones. It ran through a thicket of willows, through the sugar-camp, and out into Means's pasture. Ralph had just passed through the thicket, had just crossed the brook on the half-decayed log that spanned it, when, ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... watching the crowd. Besides the universal tension, there were laughter and hope and exhilaration in the faces. The enthusiasm of this boyish multitude warmed one. The girl wished to get into this spirit—to be one of them. Then suddenly from the babble at their elbows came a discordant note, not long nor loud, only a few words, penetrating and harsh with the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... need? If they had consulted him a little on this matter, it appears to me that he might have addressed them pretty nearly thus: 'Gentlemen, it is not the arguers who do harm; philosophy can gang its ain gait without risk;' the people either do not hear it at all or let it babble on, and pay it back all the disdain it feels for them. I do not argue myself, but others argue, and what harm comes of it? We have arranged that my great influence in the court and my pretended omnipotence should serve you as a pretext for allowing a free, peaceful course to the sportive ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... one's last hour. And, I don't know how it is, but I still want to go on living. Only, my little sir, don't you repeat my words; we must respect the clergy—it's only fools that don't respect them; and I'm to blame to babble nonsense in my ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... buried, and the song of hope is hushed for ever, then revenge mounts the chariot and gathers the reins in her hands of steel; and beyond the writhing hearts whose blood dyes her rushing wheels sees only the goal. Some wise anatomists of that frail yet invincible sphinx—woman's nature, babble of one weighty fact, one conquering law,—that only the mother-joy, the mother-love, fully unseals the slumbering sweetness and latent tenderness of her being; for me, maternity opened the sluices of a sea of hate and gall. Had I never felt the velvet touch of tiny fingers ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... was beginning to ramble and babble incoherently, her memories of her own and the experiences of others all confused in her mind. When she had about finished a story about how one of the slave women, "bust de skull" of the head of her marster,'" 'cause she was nussin a sick baby an' he tell her she got to git ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... inartistic when a poor woman at the Adelphi says, "Do you think I will sell my own child?" But poor women in the Battersea High Road do say, "Do you think I will sell my own child?" They say it on every available occasion; you can hear a sort of murmur or babble of it all the way down the street. It is very stale and weak dramatic art (if that is all) when the workman confronts his master and says, "I'm a man." But a workman does say "I'm a man" two or three times every day. In fact, it is tedious, possibly, to hear ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... amusing study—in moderation, and for boys. But protracted too long, it becomes a perfect plague. Your philosopher is a complete novice in the life comme il faut.... I like very well to see a child babble and stammer; there is even a grace about it when it becomes his age. But to see a man continue the prattle of the child, is absurd. Just so with your philosophy." The consequence of this prevalent spirit of universal skepticism was a general laxity of morals. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... muttered the hermit; "but what do I care for the world's babble? Yes, she was of the highest and grandest type. Then," he continued, "then I thought the world could never contain another equal to her. So I forsook it and repaired to this mountain fastness to spend the remainder of my life alone—to ...
— Options • O. Henry
... dexterity. He had a large, but not, I think, very remunerative practice amongst the poaching, deer-stealing, smuggling community of those parts, to whom it was of vital importance that the hurts received in their desperate pursuits should be tended by some one not inclined to babble of the number, circumstances, or whereabouts of his patients. This essential condition Lee, hypocrite and knave as he was, strictly fulfilled; and no inducement could, I think, have prevailed upon him to betray ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... way to the door, and Roddy, frowning gravely, sank back into his chair, the long silence was broken by a babble of whispered questions and rapid answers. Even to those who understood no English the pantomime had been sufficiently enlightening. Unobtrusively the secret agents of Alvarez rose from the tables and stole into the night. A half-hour ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... quietly into the vestibule and the company burst into an incongruous babble. Dorn listened to their voices, again firm and self-sufficient, chattering formalities. He watched Rachel adjusting her hat with over-eager gestures. Her eyes were avoiding him. She seemed breathless, her head squirming under the necessity of having to remain for another ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... Germany. My political ideal is the United States of the World, a union of states whose state boundaries are determined by what I have defined as the natural map of mankind. I cannot understand those pacifists who talk about the German right to "expansion," and babble about a return of her justly lost colonies. That seems to me not pacificism but patriotic inversion. This large disposition to hand over our fellow-creatures to a Teutonic educational system, with "frightfulness" in reserve, to "efficiency" on Wittenberg lines, leaves me—hot. The ghosts ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... sit down in a corner with him, pour punch into every hollow of his poor head until his secrets jump out like wet mice. Make him chatter, especially about the elections. Go, little man, and take good care not to get overheated yourself and babble. ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... storm-strewn path; it talks beneath tall precipices and high banks,—a voice that has been the same for innumerable ages; and yet, if you listen, you will perceive a continual change and variety in its babble, and sometimes it seems to swell louder upon the ear than at others,—in the same spot, I mean. By and by man makes a dam for it, and it pours over it, still making its voice heard, while it labors. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... said Athos, with his usual careless generosity, giving him his own, "and be a good lad. Remember, if you talk, if you babble, if you get drunk, you risk your master's head, who has so much confidence in your fidelity, and who answers for you. But remember, also, that if by your fault any evil happens to d'Artagnan, I will find you, wherever you may be, for the purpose of ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... half. The men are fishers, for there is no other occupation to be followed on the sterile rock. Every day also the level sweep of sands is wandered over by the women and children, who seek for cockles in the little pools; the babble of whose voices echoes far through the quiet air, and whose shadows fall long and unbroken on the brown wilderness. Now and then the black-robed figure of a priest, or of one of the brothers dwelling in the monument on the top ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... vent to a low, gurgling sound, and made up his mind to babble a few words about the caverns; but his throat was dry, and his tongue refused ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... by the river?" I heard him babble to his cabman, with wilful breadth of speech. "Then drive there, mon, ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... sneer. As well tell reasonable Irishmen that the world is flat, or that a straight line between two given points is the longest, or that the sun moves round the moon, or any other inane absurdity contrary to the evidence of science and their senses. The English Gladstonians who babble about brotherly love and conciliation should move about Dublin in disguise. Disguise would in their case be necessary to get at the truth, for Paddy is a shrewd trickster, and delights in humbugging this species of visitor, whom he calls "the slobbering Saxon." Then if they would return ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... of his glory and his name, Forgetful of his princedom and its cares. And this forgetfulness was hateful to her. And by and by the people, when they met In twos and threes, or fuller companies, Began to scoff and jeer and babble of him As of a prince whose manhood was all gone, And molten down in mere uxoriousness. And this she gathered from the people's eyes: This too the women who attired her head, To please her, dwelling on his boundless love, Told Enid, and they saddened her the more: And day by day she thought ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... were. But my father's unlike her; he's fond of outward appearance. Gentle maiden, deem me not cold and void of all feeling, If I disclose my father's nature to you, who're a stranger. Yes, such words have never before escaped, I assure von Out of my mouth, which is little accustom'd to babble and chatter; But you have managed to worm all my secrets from out of my bosom. Well, my worthy father the graces of life holds in honour, Wishes for outward signs of love, as well as of rev'rence, And would doubtless ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... and worn and twisted with years, and women aged to all appearance as the Fates themselves. They sat together in knots and talked—God only knows what they found to discuss—in low equable tones, curiously in contrast to the strident babble with which natives are accustomed to make day hideous. Now and then an access of that sudden fury which had possessed me in the morning would lay hold on a man or woman; and with yells and imprecations the sufferer would attack the steep ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... conscious; nor, indeed, have I found words since. I ran sideways, shouting; I dug glad heels into the squelching soil; I splashed diamond showers from puddles with a stick; I hurled clods skywards at random, and presently I somehow found myself singing. The words were mere nonsense,—irresponsible babble; the tune was an improvisation, a weary, unrhythmic thing of rise and fall: and yet it seemed to me a genuine utterance, and just at that moment the one thing fitting and right and perfect. Humanity would have rejected it with scorn, ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... clothed, move through the meadows, splash in the river, and rest beneath the palm-trees, which meet in graceful clusters here and there, as if striving to get beneath one another's shadow. Dirty villages swarm and babble on the river's brink. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... bounteous year of fruit. The smell of peaches and grapes piled in barrows and barrels scented the air, as it scents the memory still. The odour of a peach brings back to me all the magic-lantern impressions of a stranger—memories of dazzling, dancing, tropical light, bustle, babble, and gayety; they made me feel that I had never been alive before, and the people of the old seaport, active as I had thought them, became in a bewildered retrospect as slow and quiet as snails. But far sweeter to me than the fragrance ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... maketh light of Thee, And sets at naught Thy holy word, For tongues that babble blasphemy, And impious hands that hold the sword— Grant vengeance, ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... veranda the group of figures in the field were partly visible. We saw ghostly wraiths now among them—apparitions three or four feet above the ground. They solidified and dropped to earth, with their comrades gathering over them. The babble of voices in a strange tongue reached us. New ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... boats. They had never seen the princess go down before. Half the men were under water in a moment; but they had all, one after another, come up to the surface again for breath, when—tinkle, tinkle, babble, and gush! came the princess's laugh over the water from far away. There she was, swimming like a swan. Nor would she come out for king or queen, chancellor or daughter. She ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... own ill nature," said Ellen stoutly. "But let us cease this moral babble, as Milton says. I wish you'd tell me why you're surprised that I should be clever, though you were quite cairtain that he would have chosen a ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... simple contrivances; but no smile crossed the face of Angelo. He ate and drank to sustain his strength, as a weapon is sharpened; and having done, he gathered up what was left, and lay at her feet with his eyes fixed upon an old grey stone. She, too, sat brooding. The endless babble and noise of the water had hardened the sense of its being a life in that solitude. The floating of a hawk overhead scarce had the character of an animated thing. Angelo turned round to look at her, and looking upward as he lay, his sight was smitten by spots ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wren is something that must be heard to be appreciated; words can no more describe it than they can paint the sky at evening, or translate the babble of the ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... enemies of all degrees, From sandlot orators and sandlot fleas To fallen gentlemen and rising louts Who babble slander at your drinking bouts, And, filled with unfamiliar wine, begin Lies drowned, ere born, in more congenial gin. But most attend, ye persons of the press Who live (though why, yourselves alone can guess) In hope deferred, ambitious still to shine By hating me at half a cent ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... the steady hissing of rain on the shrubs outside his window. But suddenly that silence was shattered and shredded into fragments by a scream from somewhere close at hand outside in the black garden, a scream of supreme and despairing terror. Again, and once again it shrilled up, and then a babble of awful words was interjected. A quivering sobbing voice that ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various |
