"Babbling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not' You have been used, too, to babbling and tattling,' said his patron with perfect coolness. 'Beware of that here, or you're a lost rascal,' and he smiled again, and again cautioned ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... oak of lordly look, The willow shadowing the babbling brook, The hedges blooming with the sweets of May, With double ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... held a smouldering spark of the divine fire, and when, in a cataleptic state, his faint intelligence fluttered back into some dim depths of personality, and he moaned and muttered, using awful names with babbling freedom, Brother Nathan and the rest listened with pathetic eagerness for a "thus saith the Lord," which should enflame the gray embers of Shakerism and give light to the whole world! When Nathan talked of these things he would add, with a sigh, that he hoped some day ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... railroad stations nearest, saying that he needed no more labor. The tide of applicants ceased, but Mrs. Rawling was nervous. Pete declared his intention of running away, and riding home in the late afternoon, Margot was stopped by a drunken, babbling man, who seized her pony's bridle, with unknown words. She galloped free, but next day Rawling sent his wife and children to the seaside and sat waiting Sanford's coming to cheer his desolate house, the new ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... silent; even if they broke In thunder, silent; yet remember all He spoke among you, and the Man who spoke; Who never sold the truth to serve the hour, Nor palter'd with Eternal God for power; Who let the turbid streams of rumour flow Thro' either babbling world of high and low; Whose life was work, whose language rife With rugged maxims hewn from life; Who never spoke against a foe: Whose eighty winters freeze with one rebuke All great self-seekers trampling on the right: Truth-teller was our England's Alfred named; Truth-lover was ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... blackened above his candle-flame To watch that orange ember in the sky Wane into smouldering ash. He whispered there, "So it is true. By searching in the heavens, Men can foretell the future." In the street Below him, throngs were babbling of the plague That might or might not follow. He resolved To make himself the master of that deep art And know what might be known. He bought the books Of Stadius, with his tables of the stars. Night after night, among the ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... said he, "that one can live all your years and not find that the illusions of life are its best part. If you leave me the illusions, I'll give you all the realities. But how can we stay babbling and quibbling here all this delicious afternoon? I must go out and see green things and beasts. Come with me, Lefevre, to the Zoological Gardens; it will ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... "protocol, protocol and protocol. I am fed up with that, anyway. Can you imagine me a be-ribboned Excellency, worked by wires from London, babbling platitudes over teacups to other old Excellencies, and giving out a lot of gas for the F.O. every morning. No, in the old days there was charm and power and splendour, when an Ambassador was really plenipotentiary, and peace and war turned upon a ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... talking earnestly. It was the slackest, blackest hour in an all-night dive; the nocturnal habitues had slunk away, and the day's trade had not yet begun. Higgins, drawn and haggard beneath his drunken flush, was babbling incessantly; Locke, as usual, sat facing the entrance, his eyes watchful, his countenance alert. In spite of the fact that he had constantly plied his companion with liquor in the hope of stilling his tongue, Higgins seemed incapable of silence, and kept breaking forth ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... have set people thinking on the divisions of races and nations. Such thoughts should arise with particular congruity and force to inhabitants of that United Kingdom, peopled from so many different stocks, babbling so many different dialects, and offering in its extent such singular contrasts, from the busiest over-population to the unkindliest desert, from the Black Country to the Moor of Rannoch. It is not only when ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... capable of; if we did not have the adult achievements we should be without assurance as to the significance of the drawing, reproducing, modeling, coloring activities of childhood. So if it were not for adult language, we should not be able to see the import of the babbling impulses of infancy. But it is one thing to use adult accomplishments as a context in which to place and survey the doings of childhood and youth; it is quite another to set them up as a fixed aim without regard to the concrete activities of ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... legends entitled "A Winter Night's Vision," and a long eulogy upon Queen Elizabeth, "England's Eliza." He would have been more than human, if he had not considered all this far more valuable than the old prose babbling in black letter. This copy of mine is of the greatest rarity, for it contains two dedicatory sonnets by Richard Niccols, one addressed to Lady Elizabeth Clere and the other to the Earl of Nottingham, which seem to have been instantly suppressed, and are only known to exist in this and, ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... began to unravel the tangle of the day's events. He could remember voices which had circled around him, babbling endlessly; two negroes who had taken off his wet clothes, put him in dry things and wrapped him in blankets; and Matty, the cook, who had soothed him and given him hot drinks. Then Marjorie had come. Twice he had ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... frown the errant earth in winter seems Prostrate to lie, and petulant of mood; Restrained in icy fetters all the babbling streams, Like naughty babes who're learning to ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... Wunden (O Head, all bleeding wounded); a Dirge his Majesty had liked, who knew music, and had a love for it, after his sort. Good Son of Nature: a dumb Poet, as I say always; most dumb, but real; the value of him great, and unknown in these babbling times. It was on this same Friday night that Cochius was first sent for; Cochius, and Oesfeld with ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... Thereafter, instead of babbling blasphemies, the convalescent became silent for the most part, yet cheerful and beautifully rational when he did speak, so that fear came gradually to leave the old man's heart for longer and longer intervals. Indeed, one day when Bernal had long lain silent, ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... masterpiece. Muller came down late, though, and regarded it doubtfully. "There's something funny," he said as he settled down beside me. Jenny had been surrounded by Napier and Pietro. "Bullard came up babbling a few minutes ago. I don't like it. Something about eating hearty, because he'd saved us all, forever and ever. He told me the angels were on our side, because a beautiful angel with two halos came to him in his sleep and told ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... for five minutes, feeling like a bill-collector. Into the room vaulted a medium-sized, medium-looking, amiable man, Eugene Gilson, babbling, "Oh, I say, so sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Daggett. Rotten shame, do come have a bun or something, frightfully informal ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... the tall lads run to clutch at stars, above the brink of a drab quagmire, and presently time trips them—Oh, Sesphra, wicked Sesphra of the Dreams, you have laid upon me a magic so strong that, horrified, I hear the truth come babbling from long-guarded lips which no longer obey me, because of ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... painful sensation in the eyes which comes from resolutely repressed tears. Was her life to be always like this,—always bringing some new source of inward strife? She heard confusedly the busy, indifferent voices around her, and wished her mind could flow into that easy babbling current. It was at this moment that Dr. Kenn, who had quite lately come into the hall, and was now walking down the middle with his hands behind him, taking a general view, fixed his eyes on Maggie for the first time, and was struck with the expression of ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... lurched as it swung, and every joint in my body went limber as a rag. I caught at El Mahdi's mane, then I felt Jud's arm go round me, and heard Ump talking at my ear. But they were a long distance away. I heard instead the bees droning, and Ward's merry laugh, as he carried me on his shoulder a babbling youngster in a little white kilt. It was only an instant, but in it all the good days when I was little and Ward was father and mother and Providence, ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... the camp which he had left, and in the vast multitude on the plains of Tara, there was stir and revelry, and babbling speculation as to the contest of to-morrow—the contest which was to decide whether the chief bard of Erin was to hold his own against all comers, or yield the palm. For rumor said that a great Skald had come from the northern lands ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... a reception of his not very striking remarks put the young man at his ease, and he became composed enough to observe delicately the face of his new acquaintance. He had but little time, for of course he could not stand for long babbling stupidities with a country girl. The face was strong and dark, with composed, full lips, and a dusky glow in the cheeks. The eyes which had at first put him to such confusion looked liquid and strangely attractive when the light of laughter was ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... later he shivered violently, beads of sweat burst out on his forehead, and the color swept from his face. He started up, staring wildly about him; he tried to speak, but his words stumbled into incoherent babbling. It was all so sudden, his rising, then falling back into his chair, then slipping sidewise and crumpling up upon the floor, all the while stammering unmeaning words—that Henry Roberts sat looking at him in dumb amazement. It was Philippa who cried out and ran forward to help him, then ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... could stop for a minute so some one might admire me," said the silly little drop, for it thought it could still be seen and was making all the babbling it heard as the ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... But in the olden time These fires were counted as the harbingers Of life-essential storms, since out of smoke And heat there came across the midnight ways Abundant comfort, with upgathered clouds And runnels babbling ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... heard the catch of the clock before it strikes the hour of doom; and for ten seconds he forgot himself. This shall atone for many sins. He plucked a bearer by the sleeve. 'Bid the Princess flee. All is lost,' he whispered. And the next moment he was babbling for his ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... saying that I knew nothing. "Tell that to others! Ho, ho!" replied he. When he had resumed his seat, M. le Duc d'Orleans said something, I don't know what, M. de Troyes still standing, I also. In passing La Vrilliere, I asked him to go to the door every time anything was wanted, for fear of the babbling of M. de Troyes; adding, that distant as I was from the door, going there looked too peculiar. La Vrilliere did as I begged him all ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... not weep! The Princess Sarah cannot chide us now. We're free! I love the wilderness! I love The earth and sky! Look at those birds, Far as the fleecy clouds! And here Are flowers with which to wreathe my bow. With it I'll bring thee deer and fowl to dress, When by and by we reach a babbling stream Where we may ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass
... was, he was not quite free from the literary weakness of his time. He relapses sometimes into the babbling style of the old chroniclers and legend writers; cites "auctours" and gives long catalogues of names and objects with a naive display of learning; and introduces vulgar details in his most exquisite passages. There is something childish about almost all the thought ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Here babbling "Insight" shouts in Nature's ears His last conundrum on the orbs and spheres; There Self-inspection sucks its little thumb, With "Whence am I?" and "Wherefore did I come?" Deluded infants! will they ever know Some doubts must darken o'er the world below, Though ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Government to pass into the traitors' hands of the black Republican party. It has already declared war against you and your institutions. It every day commits acts of war against you; it has already compelled you to arm for your defense. Listen to no vain babbling; to no treacherous jargon about 'overt acts'; they have already been committed. Defend yourselves! The enemy is at your door; wait not to meet him at your hearthstone; meet him at the door-sill, and drive him from ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... a half doze; still I heard the brook babbling under the beeches and the humming of forest flies overhead. Presently even these ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... were rising slowly; but they dropped again; and there came a little faint babbling from the writhing lips; but no words were intelligible. Then they ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... louder, till you burst your airy forms!— Rest on my hand. Thus, armed with innocence, I'll face these babbling daemons of the air; In spite of ghosts, I'll on. Though round my bed the furies plant their charms, I'll break them, with Jocasta in my arms; Clasped in the folds of love, I'll wait my doom; And act my joys, though thunder ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... knew that they had been straining at his lips—to wreck his self-respect forever, and hopelessly defeat even the crazy purpose that had almost possessed him, by drowning her wretchedness in disgust, by babbling with the tongue of infatuation to a woman with a husband not yet buried, to a woman who ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... cannot write in it, in the language which has the word zhid.[1] Of course, logic was on my side, but on his side there was some dark truth—truth is not always lucid—and I felt, that my ardent arguments began, little by little, to sound like false and cheap babbling. So that I have not succeeded in convincing him, and when we parted I had not the courage to kiss him: how many unexpected meanings could be disclosed in this plain, everyday token of ...
— The Shield • Various
... cure." The sprightly young clergyman started on his mission full of bright expectations. He returned anon, looking prematurely aged. Nobody could get a word out of him at first; he seemed top have become afflicted with a partial paralysis of the tongue. After babbling childishly for an hour or so he fell silent altogether, and it was not till next morning that he recovered full powers of speech. Wild horses, he then announced, would not drag form his lips what had passed at ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... had plenty of beaux Bowing around her beautiful toes, Praising her feet, and eyes, and nose In rapturous verse and elegant prose! She had lots of lovers, old and young: There was lofty Long, and babbling Lung, Opulent Tin, and eloquent Tung, Musical Sing, and, the rest among, Great Hang-Yu ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... timber-line, In straggling patches strewn, Surcharge the breeze with melodies, The forests' plaintive tune; As they descend, the waters blend In babbling harmony, And soothe to rest my tranquil breast, ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... of the boys in the boat on the day of the accident had at last reached her ears, for, with such excitement prevailing and Jerry-Jo reduced to periods of nervous babbling as he repeated again and again the story, Mary was certain of overhearing the details. As far as possible she verified every word. That her sons had disobeyed her about the sail there could be no doubt, and when she went ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... down and—Did you speak, Mr Dale?" said Saxe, after starting up and babbling excitedly for a moment or two, ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... well-nigh impossible for a man to make an offer of marriage with a child of three years old clinging to her mother's skirts and incessantly babbling in her mother's ear; so the child with her nurse was sent into the interior of the plantation, in search of the lovely primroses said to flourish there, while the two elders wandered with slow steps and down-bent eyes upon the ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... raw whiskey, meanwhile babbling at the barkeeper and trying to induce him to indulge in potations. "Come on. Have a drink. Come on. What—no? Well, have a little one, then. By gawd, I've whipped a man to-night, and I want to celebrate. I whipped him good, too. Gentlemen," the Swede cried to the men at the table, ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... began, Coeval with the birth and breath of man; Who that could view thee in that Asian clime, God-born, soul-nursed, the infant heir of time— Who that could see thee in that Asian court, Flit with the sparrow, with the lion sport, Talk with the murmur of the babbling rill And sing thy summer song upon the hill— Who that could know thee as thou wast inwrought The all in all of nature's primal thought, And see thee given by Omniscient mind, A native boon to lord, and brute, and wind, Could e'er have dreamed with fate's prophetic sleep, The darker lines thy horoscope ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... lace ruffs at his wrists, a light steel rapier at his thigh, smilingly offering his arm to a lady in a powdered wig and a gay chintz.... Strange, pale faces.... I tried to look into them.... But already everything had vanished, and as before there was nothing but the babbling water. ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... time he had stood very still and looked at her, but his face had changed slowly as she spoke. I knew then that what she had said had not pleased him. She went on in her babbling, ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... her favours to Edward if she had admitted that she was Edward's mistress. That could not be done. At the same time Florence had such a pressing desire to talk about something. There would have been nothing else to talk about but a rapprochement between that estranged pair. So Florence would go on babbling and Leonora would go on brushing her hair. And then Leonora ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... journey next day in summer weather—almost too hot, in the middle of the day, to be pleasant. Sheepskin and bourka are dispensed with, as we ride lazily along under a blazing sun through pleasant green plains of maize and barley, irrigated by babbling brooks of crystal-clear water. A few miles from Abadeh is a cave-village built into the side of a hill. From this issue a number of repulsive-looking, half-naked wretches, men and women, with dark scowling faces, and dirty masses of coarse black hair. Most ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... way; the stream then took a sudden turn at the lower end, charging direct upon a long line of smooth, lofty, round-headed rocks, sloping considerably more than the roof of an ordinary house. They would be of an average of 30 ft. above the water. The river, after babbling over its expanse of shallows, swerved sharply and coursed along at their feet in a kind of gut, which was said to give the best low water holding ground in that part of ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... himself, will not seek occasions from abroad to do it. Such a man as will keep far from an evil matter will not company with a person that pollutes and defiles, nor will he come near the door of the adulteress's house; he will shun profane and vain babbling, for fear of the ungodliness that attends it; he will walk with wise men that he may be wise, knowing that 'a companion of fools shall be ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... either side. The officer went on to reconnoitre, and then, to the great discomfiture of the forty fellows huddled together in the clay watercourse, a hundred or so Turks put in an appearance on the brink of the steep cliff on the left. Babbling excitedly they looked curiously down on the silent crouching troopers. Trapped, and entirely at the Turks' mercy, Mac momentarily expected annihilation, and wondered vaguely why it did not come. Retreat was hopeless, and he counselled scrambling ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... Marfa Timofeevna:—"I suppose she imparted to you, as a secret, what a fine suitor has turned up. She might do her whispering with her priest's son; but no, that is not enough for her. But there's nothing in it, as yet, and thank God for that! but she's babbling already." ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... pastures, beside babbling brooks that sparkled and played in the sunshine, the fairy led. At last they came to the Palace of Time. The fairy led the way up the long hall to the throne on which Time sat, and told ...
— Fireside Stories for Girls in Their Teens • Margaret White Eggleston
... gentlemen pay for one dish of fish to feed three or four friends who have given them very little entertainment in return, whereas my new friend has afforded me interest for days and weeks afterwards. But I must not go on babbling in this way. Call your good dog. ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... 25 minutes, longitude 4 degrees 6 minutes—a hot, breathless day. The "Harnessed Mule" glides swiftly over the unruffled blue. The crew loll about, listening to the babbling of the boiling ocean, and now and then lazily extinguishing the flames which break up from the tropically heated planks. It is ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... in light; and dreaming less and less Of him who droops in gloom beyond the wall, Your mother-soul will fill with happiness When first you hear your grandchild's babbling call, Beneath the braided bloom of flower and leaf That We has wrought ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... Glencardine Castle, a subject in which its blind owner took the keenest possible interest. But, tragedy of it all, he had never seen the lovely old domain he had acquired! Only by Gabrielle's descriptions of it, as she led him so often across the woods, down by the babbling burn, or over the great ivy-covered ruins, did he know ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... with marshy plants, and canopied by a cloudless sky, which rests everywhere on a distant flat horizon. An absolute monotony surrounds him. No alternation of plain and highland, meadow and forest, no slopes of hills, or hanging woods, or dells, or gorges, or cascades, or rushing streams, or babbling rills, meet his gaze on any side; look which way he will, all is sameness, one vast smooth expanse of rich alluvial soil, varying only in being cultivated or else allowed to lie waste. Turning his back with something of weariness on the dull uniformity of this featureless plain, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... places it on a little hill over-looking the Licenza, and his theory has a great deal to recommend it. The plough still turns up on the spot the bricks and tiles of an old Roman villa; a spring of clear water, like that of which the poet so often sang, 'breaks babbling from the hollow rock,' and is still called by the peasants Fonte dell' Oratini, some faint echo possibly of the singer's name; the view from the hill is just what is described in the epistles, 'Continui montes nisi dissocientur ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... closely penned By careful hands, lest they should gain Sweet water from the babbling stream Or wandering crop the dewy plain; And bleating sheep and lowing kine Within their ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... his pistol butt.] Take that, thou babbling fool! this is no fitting time to preach. Ho! Jepherson. Bring up ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... so dead for sleep by this time that she was merely babbling. She'd probably of fallen over in her clothes if I hadn't been there. Anyway, I got her undressed and into bed. She said Clyde's goodnight song always rung in her ears till she slept. It didn't ring long this night. She was off before ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... Pantomime became so numerous, that every dramatic subject was easily furnished with the necessary personages of comedy. That loquacious pedant, the Dottore, was taken from the lawyers and the physicians, babbling false Latin in the dialect of learned Bologna. Scapin was a livery servant, who spoke the dialect of Bergamo, a province proverbially abounding with rank intriguing knaves, who, like the slaves in ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... effort to break some malign spell that bound his faculties to silence and inaction, he shouted with the full strength of his lungs! His voice broken, it seemed, into an infinite multitude of unfamiliar sounds, went babbling and stammering away into the distant reaches of the forest, died into silence, and all was as before. But he had made a beginning at resistance and was encouraged. ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... the black bugs that scuttled out from the moist earth beneath. He desisted from this unexciting pastime as they drew near, and eyed them with the sullenness that comes of long isolation when the person's nature forbids that other extreme of babbling garrulity, for no man can live long months alone and remain perfectly normal. Nature, that stern mistress, always exacts a penalty from us foolish mortals who would ignore the instincts she has wisely implanted ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... after triumph,—he triumphed so far. There was an eye to see in this man, a soul to dare and do. He rose naturally to be the King. All men saw that he was such. The common soldiers used to say on the march: "These babbling Avocats, up at Paris; all talk and no work! What wonder it runs all wrong? We shall have to go and put our Petit Caporal there!" They went, and put him there; they and France at large. Chief-consulship, Emperorship, victory over Europe;—till the poor ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... nun cried, running in, and instantly the babbling of voices ceased, and four girls hastened to the pianos placed on either side of the stage, two left-hands struck a series of chords in the bass, the treble notes replied, and, to the gallant measure of a French polka, a stately prelate entered, smiling benediction as he advanced, ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... explorers. It lay due north, so that if we travelled by the way of the North Star we should be certain to find it. Wheeling the Man before us, we made a North Star track for ourselves through the underwood and over last year's rustling beech-leaves, till Guy ceased babbling and crooning, and dropped into a slumber, as he soon does in the fresh of the morning. Then we had to go slowly for fear he should be wakened by the noise of the dead wood underfoot, for, as we passed over it with wheels and boots, it snapped and crackled like ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... said he, writing to a friend, "the oppressed find double gain; first, what is written may be submitted to the judgment of others; and second, one has a better chance of working on the fears, if not on the conscience, of an arrogant and babbling despot, who would otherwise overpower ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... babbling of his visions and his dreams. Yes, the Lady Angelica. 'Very charming,' my uncle granted, 'but very poor; less of the angel and more of the heiress was desirable,' he said,—'less heaven and more land. A decayed family was only a little worse ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... hills stood an ancient house, many-gabled, mossy-roofed, and quaintly built, but picturesque and pleasant to the eye; for a brook ran babbling through the orchard that encompassed it about, a garden-plot stretched upward to the whispering birches on the slope, and patriarchal elms stood sentinel upon the lawn, as they had stood almost a century ago, when the Revolution rolled that way and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... barking, 'mid the glittering rocks, 185 Hunts, where his master points, the intercepted flocks. [55] Where oaks o'erhang the road the radiance shoots On tawny earth, wild weeds, and twisted roots; The druid-stones a brightened ring unfold; [56] And all the babbling brooks are liquid gold; 190 Sunk to a curve, the day-star lessens still, Gives one bright glance, and drops [57] behind the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... usual to the pleasant little household chronicle, always wonderful and always new, which it was his custom to ask for and have, night after night, when he came home,—saying it was to him, after his day's toil, like a "babbling o' ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... with a jerk and scanned the smoking peak, from which a new trickle of white-hot lava had broken forth in a threadlike waterfall. He watched its graceful play as if hypnotized, and began babbling to himself in an incoherent prattle. All his faculties seemed suddenly awake, but riveted solely upon the heavy laboring of the mountain. He was chiding it in Malay as if it were a fractious child. When I ventured to urge him back to shore he made no protest, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... night comes on, Cordelia's old nurse appears. A scandal is averted. Whereupon Kent marries Cordelia, and they reign happily ever afterward. As for Lear, he advances into a gentle convalescence. Before the week is out he will be sunning himself on the bench beneath his pear tree and babbling of his early days. ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... babbling still passeth for "wisdom"; because it is old, however, and smelleth mustily, THEREFORE is it the more honoured. ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... with Filelfo, before Landino had taken upon him to expound the same opinion, embodied the deepest lessons of philosophy in a graceful and well-knit fable. And I cannot but regard the multiplication of these babbling, lawless productions, albeit countenanced by the patronage, and in some degree the example of Lorenzo himself, otherwise a friend to true learning, as a sign that the glorious hopes of this century are to be quenched ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... a stamp," she explained, and demanded one for five centimes. She leaned over the counter babbling aimlessly to the proprietor, postponing the great moment. Madame Valiere lost the clue to her movements, felt her suddenly as a stranger. But finally Madame Depine drew herself together and led the way into the coiffeurs. The proprietor, who had ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... said Bevis; "you are babbling, Brook. My mamma says you babble—it is because you are so old. I am sure ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... following them cautiously like a snake, had bewitched all the springs and streams in the forest. The pleasant trickling of a brook over the pebbles was heard by the children as they reached it, and the boy was just stooping to drink, when the sister heard in the babbling of the brook: ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... hues of earth and heaven in their souls. Our ice-eyed brain-women are really admirable, if we only ask of them just what they can give, and no more. Only compare them, talking or writing, with one of those babbling, chattering dolls, of warmer latitudes, who do not know enough even to keep out of print, and who are interesting to us only as specimens of arrest of development for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... as you suppose I grew weary of that talk which flowed from the lips of the White Witch like the music that comes from a little stream babbling over stones when the sun is hot, and being weary, I fell asleep and dreamed. What I dreamed does not much matter. It is enough to say that I felt as though I were thrown through the air like a stone ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... Rosa was alone in the vast hospital, save for the presence of her maid Linda, who had come through the lines with her and was, of course, under the Northern laws, free. Worse than all, she was poorly provided with money, and this need, rather than Vincent's love-lorn babbling about Olympia, reminded Rosa to call upon the Spragues for help. She wrote at once to Olympia, telling the distressing story, and then ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... weeks after the two girls met, Emily went one evening to their favorite trysting-place,—Becky's bower among the laurels. It was a pretty nook in the shadow of a great gray bowlder near the head of the green valley which ran down to spread into the wide intervale below. A brook went babbling among the stones and grass and sweet-ferns, while all the slope was rosy with laurel-flowers in their times, as the sturdy bushes grew thickly on the hill-side, down the valley, and among the woods that ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... it is and the Union as it was." Its practical effect was to give the Confederates and foreign powers a broad hint that the North was no longer a unit. The coincidence of the meeting with the Federal reverses before Richmond made its professed object all the more ridiculous. The babbling and bawling of the speakers about "the rights of the South," and "the infamous Abolitionists who disgraced Congress," were but faint echoes of the Confederate cannon which had just ceased to carry death into the Union ranks. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... neighbouring hillock. Sent forward at an early hour, under the chaperonage of a guide, he had arrived about two hours before us, and seizing with a general's eye the key of the position, at once turned an idle babbling little Geysir into a camp-kettle, dug a bake-house in the hot soft clay, and improvising a kitchen-range at a neighbouring vent, had made himself completely master of the situation. It was about one o'clock in the morning when we sat down to dinner, and ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... hear,—the birds singing and the bees humming; and so many beautiful things to see,—the flowers and butterflies and green grass! And after a while he came to a wood, where every tree wore a green dress; and through the wood, under the shade of the trees, flowed a babbling creek. ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... reconcile the better class of the disaffected.[717] This view was particularly urged by Cranmer, always gentle, hoping, and illogical.[718] But, in fact, secresy was impossible. If More's discretion could have been relied upon, Fisher's babbling tongue would have trumpeted his victory to all the winds. Nor would the government consent to pass censure on its own conduct by evading the question whether the act was or was not just. If it was not just, it ought not to be: maintained at all; if it was just, there ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... less practised in her ways, and less gifted with patience, the eternal babbling of Aunt Grizzy as a travelling companion would have occasioned considerable ennui, if not spleen. There are perhaps few greater trials of temper than that of travelling with a person who thinks it necessary to be actively pleasant, without a moment's intermission, from the rising till ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... hang by their ears because they listened to empty and vain speech, and turned their ear away from hearing the Torah. These hang by their tongues, because they talked slander, and accustomed their tongue to foolish babbling. These hang by their feet, because they walked with them in order to spy upon their fellow-men, but they walked not to the synagogue, to offer prayer unto their Creator. These hang by their hands, because with them they robbed their neighbors ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... where snow-capt mountains rise, Like marble shafts beneath Heaven's stooping dome, And sunset's dreamy curtain drapes the skies, As if enchantment there would build her home— O'er wood and wave, from haunts of men away— From out the glen, all trembling like a child, A babbling streamlet comes as if to play— Albeit the scene is savage, lone and wild. Here at the mountain's foot, that infant wave 'Mid bowering leaves doth hide its rustic birth— Here learns the rock and precipice to brave— And ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... words. The whole story, the New Year's crowd, his hunger for her, his arrival, the other man and his babbling, the woman and how she looked, his feelings, his transfigured passions, and the deaths. He told the story again and ...
— Life Sentence • James McConnell
... said.—Doubtless, I think, he will see and suffer much in Parliament, and inure himself to several things;—he will, with what eyes he has, gradually see Parliament itself, for one thing; what a high-soaring, helplessly floundering, ever-babbling yet inarticulate dark dumb Entity it is (certainly one of the strangest under the sun just now): which doubtless, if he have in view to get measures voted there one day, will be an important acquisition for him. But as to breeding himself ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... one!" cried she. "I saw them passing it round, and then They said it was fit for only men! What woman would know How to make the thing go? There was not a man so foolish to dream That any woman could sew up a seam!" Oh, then there was babbling and scrabbling, my dears! "At least they might let us do that!" cried they. "Let them shout and fight And kill bears all night; We'll leave them their spears and hatchets of stone If they'll give us this thing for our very own. It will be like a joy above all we could scheme, To sit up all night ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... life. Sometimes he swore savagely; again he made quiet deadly threats; but always his talk was crisp and clean and vigorous. Nothing foul or slimy came to the surface in those hours of unconscious babbling. ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... but one fear—she never goes near the brook; perhaps its babbling waters could reveal a strange ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... in his arms. Colonel Quinnox stood before them, keeping the babbling, leering beldame from thrusting her face close to that of the terrified boy. Young Vos Engo glowered at Truxton King from the opposite side of the room. Mr. Hobbs had safely ensconced himself in the rear of the six guardsmen, who stood near the door, ready to dash forth if by any chance the ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... preference was dictated more by fear than love. But I spin out a long record for this last evening at home. O, budding vines and flowers! who will train your rich luxuriance into fairy, fantastic clusterings, or watch your opening petals in the summer which is to come? Who listen to the babbling fountains, or roam the cedar-walks that border the dancing river? And O, the far, far-stretching forest, from whose mysterious depths, in a bright year passed away, I saw him emerge, and hurried down the gravelled path to meet him at the garden-gate, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... now. And, O defender of our house! attend My secret utterance. No friendly ear Is that which hearkens for my voice. My thought Must not be blazoned with her standing by, Lest through her envious and wide-babbling tongue She fill the city full of wild surmise. List, then, as I shall speak: and grant the dreams Whose two-fold apparition I to-night Have seen, if good their bodement, be fulfilled: If hostile, turn their influence on my foes. And yield not them their wish that would by guile Thrust ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... thy soothing shell, Stretch'd remote in hermit cell, Where the brook runs babbling by, For ever I could listening lie; And catching all the muses' fire, Hold ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... had long since been incapable of doubts or compunctions. She tolerated Aun' Sheba's outspokenness as she would that of a child or a slave babbling of matters ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... Bull that bought me," said Mowgli, who was trying to get at the shoulder, "must I stay babbling to an old ape all noon? Here, ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... ever thus that love is taught By his divinest teacher; He silent adoration seeks, But shuns the prosy preacher. Now read me right, ye gentle anes, Nor deem my lesson hollow; The deepest river silent rins, The babbling brook ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... suffered a bad noise for the sound of your voice. It seemed but a minute until we found ourselves almost alone with the solid women at the ices. One swift phrase from you, and we had slipped back through the meaningless years till we stood there in the parlor at Grant Street, mere boy and girl. The babbling room vanished for a few golden moments. Then you rustled off, and I believe I told Mrs. Goodrich that musicales were very nice, for they gave you a chance to talk. And I went to the dressing-room, wondering what rare chance had brought me again within the ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... up this bluff just before us and we shall have a first-rate view of things. Skip across this little temporary bridge over this babbling brook and now—climb! Whew! that takes your breath, doesn't it? But it is worth the trouble. Now you see we are standing on an embankment perhaps thirty feet high. We are in the midst, too, of a lot of tents. It is here that the soldier boys are encamped. Off to one side you see the freight ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... its regal head into the clouds, throwing no downward glances; in the sublimity of its aspirations ignoring the wretches who may flounder at its feet. The roar of the city in his ear was to him the confusion of strange tongues, babbling heedlessly; it was the clink of coin, the voice if the city's hopes which ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... the babbling volubility of one whose manners have been corrupted by occasional sojourns in the city. "Oh, 'Niram!" I cried protestingly, as I opened the package and took out an exquisitely wrought old-fashioned collar. "Oh, 'Niram! How could your stepmother ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... ultimate retribution, had constrained them to surrender at discretion. Emboldened by this, the Captain reiterated his demand to the rest, but Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific hint to stop his babbling and betake himself where he belonged. On the fifth morning three others of the mutineers bolted up into the air from the desperate arms below that sought to restrain them. Only three were left. "Better turn to, now?" said the Captain with a heartless jeer. "Shut ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... revelling at their banquet, which gave me no small pleasure.' Bodley was not one of those who like libraries to be open to all comers. 'A grant of such scope,' said his statute, 'would but minister an occasion of pestering all the room with their gazing; and the babbling and trampling up and down may disturb out of measure the endeavours of those that are studious. Admission, from the first, was granted only to graduates, and every one on his entrance had to take the oath against 'razing, defacing, cutting, ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... merriment into half a dozen hours. Yet their victory is brief and fallacious, for if hours spin too fast by night they will move grindingly on the axle the next morning. None of us can beat you in the end. Even the hat-check boy grows old, becomes gray and dies at last babbling ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... shrunk back in the circle, as a hound that has been rebuked by the huntsman for babbling—and the Princess Anna Comnena, who had indicated by her fair features a certain degree of impatience, at length spoke—"Will it then please you, my imperial and much-beloved father, to inform those blessed with admission to the Muses' temple, for what ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... don't,' he stopped her. 'I wish you did. Now you must just listen. I know exactly what sort of an idiot I was that night as well as you do. But I couldn't help it. I was a fool to tell you. Still, I thought I was dying. I simply had a babbling fit. People are like that. You thought I ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... transcendental good sense in her remarks, and her unfathomable good nature moved me to admiration and envy. The liking was returned; she enjoyed my presence half-unconsciously, as a man in deep meditation may enjoy the babbling of a brook. I can scarce say she brightened when I came, for satisfaction was written on her face eternally, as on some foolish statue's; but I was made conscious of her pleasure by some more intimate communication than the sight. And one day, as I set within reach of her on the marble ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... drove Their herds afield, where Pan's similitude Dripped down with milk beneath an ilex tall, And Pales' image rude Hewn out by pruning-hook, for worship stood. The shepherd hung upon the bough His babbling pipes in payment of a vow,— The pipe of reeds in lessening order placed, Knit well with wax from longest unto last. Where proud Velabrum lies, A little skiff across the shallows plies; And oft, to meet her shepherd lover, The ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... bucket, brings memories, to some of us, of refreshing droughts of pure water, and of delicious cream and butter rolls, which the moss-covered stone shelves far down the well held securely from possible taint. Back of the house ran the babbling brook and emptied into "the ditch," which was often broad and deep enough to merit a more comely name, and was the favorite resort of the young in winter for skating and sledding. But this ancestral ...
— Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain • Harriet Manning Whitcomb |
