"Babbler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... yeoman's farmstead, in citizen's shop, in the cloistered walks of the monastery. Henry Knighton, writing in the time of Richard II., declares, with the exaggeration of impatience, that every second man you met was a Lollard, or "babbler," for such was the nickname given to these free-thinkers, of whom the most eminent was John Wyclif, professor at Oxford, and rector of Lutterworth, greatest scholar of the age. [Sidenote: ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... "Cease, babbler! 'tis enough! I know Thy proud, rebellious nature well. Ho! Captain of our lifeguards, ho! Take down this lad to dungeon-cell, And bid the executioner wait Our orders." All unmoved and calm, He went, as reckless of his fate, Erect and stately ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... where there are a many together,' Katharine answered; 'the magister is a notorious babbler and will ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... value here placed upon speech must not be transferred to mere talk. The babbler will always be justly regarded with contempt. Without ideas, opinions, information, talk becomes the most wasteful product in the world, wasteful not only of the time of the person who insists upon delivering it, but more woefully ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... the Greeks, he ran, To tell of that fair city with its gates Of gleaming pearl, and streets of shining gold, Built for the people of the gracious Lord. But to the Greeks his words were foolishness. The Stoics cried, "What doth this babbler say? He seems a setter forth of unknown gods!" And thus they closed their ears against his words Of beauty, and went on their ...
— Across the Sea and Other Poems. • Thomas S. Chard
... with the very vices they lay contiguous to and had sprung out of. That he was a wine-bibber and good liver, gluttonously fond of whatever would yield him a little solacement, were it only of a stomachic character, is undeniable enough. That he was vain, heedless, a babbler, had much of the sycophant, alternating with the braggadocio, curiously spiced, too, with an all-pervading dash of the coxcomb; that he gloried much when the tailor by a court suit had made a new ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... discourses, came uppermost in my mind: If these mariners were honest and conscientious slavers, would they overlook a labouring man with a large family, to pour their well-earned gold into the lap of a common babbler? I proclaimed to myself at once, sir, that they would not. I was bold to say the same in my own mind, and, thereupon, I openly put the question to all in hearing, If they are not slavers, what are they? A question which the King himself would, in his royal wisdom, allow ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... cause; and with such humility, such penitence, such throwing herself on my mercy (she the proudest devil, too, in the whole Court), that I must have had heart of steel to resist it all. In short, Chiffinch in a drunken fit had played the babbler, and let young Saville into our intrigue. Saville plays the rogue, and informs the Duchess by a messenger, who luckily came a little late into the market. She learned, too, being a very devil for intelligence, that there had been some jarring between the master and me about this new Phillis; and ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... will, informally, To humour you, on this recognizance, That you leave not the business in my hands, But clothe your project in official guise Through him to-morrow; so safeguarding me From foolish seeming, as the babbler forth Of a fantastic and unheard ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... the greatest indiscretion. For he took it for granted that even the strangers who heard him would hold his remarks as confidential. When, therefore, one of his hearers went outside and reported in public what the President had said, Roosevelt disavowed it, and put the babbler in the Ananias class. What a President wishes the public to know, he tells it himself. What he utters in private should, in honor, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... beg you to silence this insupportable babbler," said the chevalier to Chemerant, "you must see how painful this ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... by birth, a reckless babbler and trickster, introduced this heresy, which originated with Epigonus, and was adopted by Cleomenes, and has thus continued to this day among his successors. Noetus asserts that there is one Father and God of the universe, and that He who had made all things ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... night long the cry of one oppressed with care, Till softened was his heart, and sweet became his lips with prayer. Then near the subtle tempter stole, and spake: "Fond babbler, cease! For not one 'Here am I' has God e'er sent to give thee peace." With sorrow sank the suppliant's soul and all his senses fled. But lo! at midnight, the good angel, Chiser, came, and said: "What ails thee now, my child, and why art thou afraid to pray? And ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... upon a late careful revision of the work, I can with confidence say, that it is amazing how few of those words, for which it has been unjustly characterised, are actually to be found in it; I am sure, not the proportion of one to each paper. This idle charge has been echoed from one babbler to another, who have confounded Johnson's Essays with Johnson's Dictionary; and because he thought it right in a Lexicon of our language to collect many words which had fallen into disuse, but were supported by great authorities, it has been imagined that all ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... would be found to have informed herself exhaustively concerning the history of some neglected people, dear to her for some subtle reason of affinity or association. But in their table-talk appeared no pedantry; things merely human were as interesting to them as to the babbler of any drawing-room, and their inexhaustible kindliness sweetened every word ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... John Pope. Pope had served with Grant in the Mississippi campaign and had begun his career in the East by boasting of the great things he was about to accomplish, referring contemptuously to his opponents and otherwise advertising himself as a braggart and a babbler. He had come, so he told his soldiers in a flamboyant address, from an army which had seen only the backs of its enemies. He had come to lead them to victories. He wanted to hear no more of "lines ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... indicate, in the course of time, for what target we are aiming, and after an hour's talk, back and forward, to convey the purport of a single principle or a single thought. And yet while the curt, pithy speaker misses the point entirely, a wordy, prolegomenous babbler will often add three new offences in the process of excusing one. It is really a most delicate affair. The world was made before the English language, and seemingly upon a different design. Suppose we held our converse, not in words, but in music; those ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... this then was thy talk? While knave and coward, 40 Both strong within thee, wrestle for the uppermost, In slips the fool and takes the place of both. Babbler! Lord Casimir did, as thou and all men. He loved himself, loved honours, wealth, dominion. All these were set upon a father's head: 45 Good truth! a most unlucky accident! For he but wished to hit the prize; not graze The ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... with patience rare I listen, I have thoughts of Khipil's chair: His bath, his nosegay, and his fount I see,— Himself stretch'd out as a pomegranate-tree. And that I am not Shahpesh I regret, So to inmesh the babbler in his net. Well is that wisdom worthy to be sung, Which raised the Palace of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... abortion: faith and innocence Are met with but in babes, each taking leave Ere cheeks with down are sprinkled; he, that fasts, While yet a stammerer, with his tongue let loose Gluts every food alike in every moon. One yet a babbler, loves and listens to His mother; but no sooner hath free use Of speech, than he doth wish her in her grave. So suddenly doth the fair child of him, Whose welcome is the morn and eve his parting, To negro blackness change her virgin ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... sea or land, near and far, in the shape of door bells, ship bells, call bells, hand bells, railway bells, sleigh bells, sheep bells, fog bells, mounted on rockbound coasts to warn the weary mariner, or silver bells, bound with coral from other coasts, to soothe the toothless babbler. These, and scores of others, are ordered here every year by thousands; but the strangest of all orders must have been that one received by a local firm some fifteen years ago from a West African prince, who desired them to send him 10,000 house bells (each 3/4 lb. weight), wherewith to adorn his ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... keep all a-slumbering and in peace, in good fortune, in ease and in perfect carelessness; then shall ye see the honest poor become an untractable, arrogant knave, once he has quaffed of the alluring cup of Prosperity; ye shall behold the diligent laborer become a careless babbler and everything else that pleases you. For all seek and love happy Prosperity; she neither hearkens to advice nor fears censure; the good she knows not, the bad she nurtures. But this is the greatest mishap: the man that escapes her sweet charms must ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... thought worse of Tom Helmer than he yet deserved. He was a characterless fool, a trifler, a poetic babbler, a good-for-nothing good sort of fellow; that was the worst that as yet was true of him; and better things might with equal truth have been said of him, had there been any one that loved ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... thou vilely miscalled," quoth Don Quixote, "being an eternal babbler. Nevertheless, I would fain know these four proverbs that come so pat to the purpose; for I have been rummaging my own memory, which is no bad one, but for the soul of me, I can ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... much as a reference to his former way of life, in the presence of the Princess Helena. If her gentle, questioning eyes happened to rest on him at such times, something very like a blush rose into his face, and the babbler was silenced with a terribly significant look. It was enough for her to say, when he threatened an act of cruelty and injustice, "Father, is that right?" He confusedly retracted his orders, rather than bear the ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... me, no Babbler with a tale Of sunshine and of flowers, 10 Thou tellest, Cuckoo! in the ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth |
