"Childish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Giles knew nothing of legal procedure, but he did know that for him to step up to Grace as a lover before the bond which bound her was actually dissolved was simply an extravagant dream of her father's overstrained mind. He pitied Melbury for his almost childish enthusiasm, and saw that the aging man must have suffered acutely to be weakened ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... is the most complete department of its kind in existence. We print all the letters we possibly can, and would be glad to print every one if our space allowed, for each contains some pretty bit of childish life which we are sure would be delightful to other little folks. Our letters come to us from all parts of the globe—from every corner of the United States and Canada; from England, Germany, France, and Italy; from the West Indies and South ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... childish voices and laughter afar up the lane which led to William Spencer's place just above the woods. William Spencer's front lane ran out to the main road in a different direction, but this "back lane" furnished a short cut and his children always went ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... bag of golf clubs; that even my evenings would be spent, not on the beach, but on a bicycle riding to the nearest town for a paper. Yet it is useless for you to say that I do not love the sea with my old love, that I am no longer pleased with the old childish things. I shall maintain that it is the sea which is not what it was, and that I am very happy in Fleet Street thinking of it as it ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... deepened in the weeks in the sunshine and fresh air, her cheeks were more rose colored, her wide eyes with their half mature, half childish expression were slightly ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... almost a childish one of glee and appreciation, and then she stopped short. What would her godmother think of such an outburst! She must return to the contained self-repression of the time before her visit to the Sphinx—surely in this ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... a lot of preparation for a mighty small result, I thought, and Tommy smiled at the childish gentleman, murmuring sweetly: ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... since leaving Gerstein. There Fritzing had removed her beyond the range of the mother's eyes, grown at last extremely cold and piercing; Annalise, all meek anxiety to please, had put her to bed in the sleeping-car of the Brussels express; and in the morning her joy had been childish at having a little tray with bad coffee on it thrust in by a busy attendant, who slammed it down on the table and hurried out without so much as glancing at her. How delicious that was. The Princess laughed with delight and drank the coffee, grits and all. Oh, ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... had never gone by sea anywhere, and all my sailing had been in wherries on the Thames; so I was not free from some childish fear when we came beside the Marie-Royale, and saw her black sides rising high and steep above us; but joy sat on every other face in our little company; and Harry's voice was gay once more as he shouted an answer to Captain ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... the girl spoken of as "Mamie Brady." Her words were flippant, even impudent, but her tone was both dejected and childish. She continued to work without a glance at either of them. Her fingers flew, tying ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... appreciated too well the fury of her mother wrath, the swiftness and deadliness of the stroke of her knife-edged forehooves. They were not going to let their curiosity obscure their discretion, you may be sure, like some of the childish deer ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... little closer, and began a voluble, confidential account of their life in the mountains. Her voice was thin and childish, but sweet; and every now and then she gave a half-frightened, half-excited laugh. Melrose watched her frowning; but he did not stop her. Her bright eyes and brows, with their touches of velvet black, the quick movement of her pink lips, ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... there was a great collection of mechanical toys. Sidi Boubikir explained that the French Commercial Attache had brought a large number to the Sultan's palace, and that my Lord Abd-el-Aziz had rejected the ones before us. With the curious childish simplicity that is found so often among the Moors of high position, Boubikir insisted upon winding up the clock-work apparatus of nearly all the toys. Then one doll danced, another played a drum, a third ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... thousand—but he never even thought of saving the precious moments by driving the distance between instead of walking it. Montague Nevitt's personality still weighed down half his brain, and rendered his mind almost childish or imbecile. ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... those elks (ah! what offence to science to reject the animal food which our first medical men agree in recommending to the gastric juices of mankind!) one would certainly pass a more exhilarating hour of repast. Then, too, instead of those antiquated dramas performed by childish amateurs, certainly, when I am king, I will introduce our modern opera and a 'corps de ballet,' for which one might find, among the nations I shall conquer, young females of less formidable height and thews than the Gy-ei—not armed with vril, and not insisting ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... as in the popish Church false and unscriptural words are rendered in sweet music, so learned men have too often spoiled the good meaning of a Bible story, which contains a useful lesson of faith, by their childish allegories. ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... take one too," he said aloud; and then to his companion as they went out: "Makes one look so ridiculous and childish before the servants. They'll go chattering about ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... broad, melancholy forehead lay under it! The man wanted something to believe in,—a God in life: you could see that in his face. She was to bring it to him: she could not keep the tears back to think that this was so. The next minute she laughed in her childish fashion, as she put the brandy to his lips, and the color came to his face. He had been physician before; now it was her turn to master and rule. He looked up at last, into her eyes, bewildered,—his face struggling to gather sense, distinctness. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... everything would not have conspired thus to have crossed them. Since He has decreed it otherwise (at least as far as we are able to judge by events), we must submit, and not by striving make an innocent passion a sin, and show a childish stubbornness. ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... related only to common and profane swearing, not to swearing before a magistrate. I heard them, and saw the weakness of their arguing, but did not return them any answer; for I found my present business was not to dispute, but to suffer; and that it was not safe for me, in this my weak and childish state especially, to enter into reasonings with sharp, quick, witty, and learned men, lest I might thereby hurt both the cause of truth, which I was to bear witness to, and myself; therefore I chose rather ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... memory of the conversation that followed. She stood with her back to the wall, storing at him, and every now and again taking up a corner of her pinafore and biting it. He remembered that action of hers especially as being absurdly childish. But the overwhelming impression that he had of her was of her terror—terror of everything and of everybody, of everybody apparently except himself. (She told him afterwards that he was the only person in the world who could have rescued ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... stopped near her somewhat pale lips. Her entire small head was very charming; even her somewhat thick and round nose did not spoil it. I liked especially the expression of her face; it was so simple and gentle, so sad and so full of childish perplexity before her own sadness. She was apparently waiting for some one. Something cracked faintly in the forest. Immediately she raised her head and looked around; her eyes flashed quickly before me in the transparent shade—they were large, bright, and shy like a deer's. She listened for ...
— The Rendezvous - 1907 • Ivan Turgenev
... of this labour, of a too exacting labour? I know not. But at times (it is his one melancholy!) he expresses a strange apprehension of poverty, of penury and mean surroundings in old age; reminding me of that childish disposition to hoard, which I noticed in him of old. And then—inglorious Watteau, as he is!—at times that steadiness, in which he is so great a contrast to Antony, as it were accumulates, changes, into a ray of genius, ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... in the meadows was very pleasant—'Quite enchanting,' Frances declared. 'Awfully jolly,' said Cecil, who was not so choice in his vocabulary. Percy looked on it as rather a childish entertainment, and said more than once that he wished 'they' hadn't forgotten that he always took pepper with everything; but he never blamed either of his sisters, only this mysterious 'they,' and made an excellent dinner, spite of the absence of the pepper-box. He was very kind ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... thinking about many things. It was true that at such a moment I could not use my parental authority to send Jack out of the island. To such an extent had the childish amusements of youth been carried, as to give to them all the importance of politics and social science. What I had heard about this cricket-match had gone in at one ear and come out at the other; but now that it was brought home to me, I was aware that all my authority would not serve to banish ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... considering our age; not in order that we might spend it, but, as he said, to accustom us to possess money without spending it. The result was, that it led me and my brother into many sins. For I repeatedly spent a part of the money in a childish way, and afterwards, when my father looked over my little treasure, I sought to deceive him in making up the accounts, either by not putting down all the money which he had given me, or by professing to have more money in hand than was the case, and counting it out accordingly before him. Now, ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... and how far off it all seemed! Those ambitions were hardly more futile and childish than the earlier ones which had centred about the possession of a French jointed doll with real hair. Was it only ten years since she had wavered in imagination between the English earl and the Italian prince? Relentlessly her mind ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... truthful and does not dissemble, is perhaps an impossibility. In a court of justice women are more often found guilty of perjury than men.... Women are directly adapted to act as the nurses and educators of our early childhood, for the simple reason that they themselves are childish, foolish, and shortsighted.... Women are and remain, taken altogether, the most thorough and incurable Philistines; and because of the extremely absurd arrangement which allows them to share the position and title of their husbands they are a constant stimulus to his ignoble ambitions.... ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... and much more serious and apparently thoughtful since he has been in this institution," Eugenia replied, with something of cheerfulness in her tone. "He does not greet my coming, as he did at first, with childish pleasure, but looks at me gravely, yet with tenderness, when I enter; and, when I go away, he always asks if I will 'come again to-morrow.' He did not do ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... occurred to him before; he asked himself a queer question, What was money? The idea of it seemed to go to pieces, as a printed word does when you look steadily at it, and to have no meaning. It affected him as droll, fantastic, like a piece of childish make-believe, when the woman took some more money from him for his meals and lodging. But that was the way the world was worked. You could get anything done for money; it was the question of demand and supply; nothing more. He tried to think where money came in when he went out to see Elbridge's ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... The childish bandying of words in Truc. 858 ff. is egregiously tiresome in the reading, but in action could have been made to produce a modicum of amusement if presented in the broad burlesque spirit that we believe was almost ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... British admirals, to do things with a certain air. He observed himself, I used to think, as he observed others, and "saw himself" in every part he played. There was nothing of the cabotin in this self-consciousness; it was the unextinguished childish passion for "playing at things" which remained with him. I have a theory that all children possess genius, and that it dies out in the generality of mortals, abiding only with people whose genius the world is forced to recognise. Mr. Stevenson illustrates, and perhaps partly suggested, this private ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... another is far too common in childhood to make it possible to lay very great emphasis on "traumatic lesions" of this character, and he has also realized that an outcrop of fantasies may somewhat later develop on these childish activities, intervening between them and the subsequent morbid symptoms. He is thus led to emphasize anew the significance of heredity, not, however, in Charcot's sense, as general neuropathic disposition but as "sexual constitution." ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... seeks to trace, in childish prattlings and lore of the nursery, the far-off beginnings of mythology, philosophy, religion. Beside the stories told to children in explanation of the birth of a sister or a brother, and the children's own imaginings concerning the little new-comer, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... lips calls both her mother and her companions,[48] but more frequently her mother;[49] and as she has torn her garment from the upper edge, the collected flowers fall from her loosened robes. So great, too, is the innocence of her childish years, this loss excites the maiden's grief as well. The ravisher drives on his chariot, and encourages his horses, called, each by his name, along whose necks and manes he shakes the reins, dyed with swarthy rust. He is ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... try and please her at any cost. But the child, who was as beautiful as a little fairy, did not respond at all to his advances of friendship, while to Charles she was all tenderness and confiding in everything, kissing him with childish fervor and truth whenever they parted, a familiarity she never permitted to ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... lights seemed to take form and move, making him feel that he could lie there no longer, that he must spring out of bed to face bravely these weird and shadowy forms, and convince himself that he really was alone, and merely a prey to a childish superstitious dread brought about by ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... have parents or relatives—mostly engaged in the same business—to whose support they contribute; but there are both men and women in the city—and most heartless, worthless wretches they are—who import orphan children from Naples and Tuscany, for the purpose of turning their childish talents, both as musicians and beggars, to practical account. Indeed, a number of years ago, there was a villain, living in Baxter street, who employed at one time fourteen children, mostly girls, in this ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... turn'd mine eyes, and nothing saw; Then turn'd them back, directed on the light Of my sweet guide, who smiling shot forth beams From her celestial eyes. "Wonder not thou," She cry'd, "at this my smiling, when I see Thy childish judgment; since not yet on truth It rests the foot, but, as it still is wont, Makes thee fall back in unsound vacancy. True substances are these, which thou behold'st, Hither through failure of their vow exil'd. But speak thou with them; listen, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... and he had become unaccustomed to such treatment of late. How different this lodging-house was to the quiet peaceful home where Dolly knelt down every evening at her grandfather's knee, and prayed for him; for now she always put Tony's name into her childish prayers! He should never, never hear her again, nor see old Oliver seated in his arm-chair, smoking his long pipe, while he talked with that strange friend and master of his. Ah! he would never hear or know any more of that unseen Christ, who was so willing to ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... perfected, I shall be a great honor to His name, for surely worse material for building up a temple of the Holy Ghost was never gathered together before. The time may come when those who know me now, crude, childish, incomplete, will look upon me with amazement, saying, "What hath God wrought!" If I knew such a time would never come, I should want to flee into the holes ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... this childish nonsense must cease; it has already endangered the life of your mother, nor can I answer for her safety, if you lose a moment ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... speaking thus, the highly-energetic Vyasa, cognisant of the duties of life, soothing him, spoke these excellent words, My child, thy mind is not yet calmed; and therefore thou art again stupefied by a childish sentiment. And wherefore, O child, do we over and over again scatter our speech to the winds? Thou knowest duties of the Kshatriyas, who live by warfare. A king that hath performed his proper part should not suffer himself to be overwhelmed by sorrow. Thou hast faithfully ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... astuteness in refraining from leaving his son-in-law a free hand. Lady Anstruthers' fortune was her own and not her husband's. Mr. Townlinson, paying a visit to Stornham and finding the bride a gentle, childish-looking girl, whose most marked expression was one of growing timorousness, had returned with a grave face. He foresaw the result, if her family did not stand by her with firmness, which he also foresaw her husband would prevent if possible. It became apparent that the family did not stand by ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... know more about it," she sighed, a quaint little air of childish petulance graving two lines between her eyebrows. "Do you know, Harry, you are a singularly uncommunicative sort of being. I have to guess that your life is interesting and picturesque,—that is," she amended, "I should have to do so if Wallace Carpenter had not told me a little something about ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... millionaires. Therefore do I protest against the boast Of independence in this mighty land. Call no chain strong which holds one rusted link, Call no land free that holds one fettered slave. Until the manacled, slim wrists of babes Are loosed to toss in childish sport and glee; Until the Mother bears no burden save The precious one beneath her heart; until God's soil is rescued from the clutch of greed And given back to labour, let no man Call this the ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... home on Spezia Bay; "An enthusiast for humanity generally," says Professor Saintsbury, "and towards individuals a man of infinite generosity and kindliness, he yet did some of the cruellest and some of not the least disgraceful things from mere childish want of realising the pacta conventa of the world;" Shelley is pre-eminently the poet of lyric emotion, the subtle and most musical interpreter of vague spiritual longing and intellectual desire; his poems form together "the most sensitive," ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... his happy eyes grow big, Big and innocent and soulful, Wistful, halting little notes Rise, unutterably doleful, Telling of all childish griefs— Baffled babies sob forsaken, Birds fly off and bubbles burst, Kittens sleep and will ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... one or more sons, handsome, large-eyed, sedate little Mohammedans, who were being trained by Turkish mothers in all sorts of gentle ways and manners—in thought and care for others, in courtesy and kindness; and who were very different in their childish work and play from the brawling, selfish, cruel little monsters that European children of the same age mostly are. But Dilama was not yet Ahmed's wife; she loved him most truly and deeply as an affectionate daughter. For who ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... broke to her consciousness. She had sat down at her window a calm, weary-hearted girl, placid, and with even a dull sort of content upon her; so she had sat and dreamed awhile; and then June and moonlight, and her honeysuckle, and the roses, and the memory of her free childish days, and the image of her lost lover, and the thought of where she was standing, by degrees—how gently they did it, too—roused her and pricked her up to the consciousness of what she going to do. What was she going to do? Marry a man who had no real place in her heart. ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... sullen yet? it must not be— Oh! gentle Selim, this from thee!" She saw in curious order set The fairest flowers of Eastern land— 280 "He loved them once; may touch them yet, If offered by Zuleika's hand." The childish thought was hardly breathed Before the rose was plucked and wreathed; The next fond moment saw her seat Her fairy form at Selim's feet: "This rose to calm my brother's cares A message from the Bulbul[146] bears; It says to-night he will prolong For Selim's ear his sweetest ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... link in the chain, and your father was aware of it and had taken what measures he could to guard against the danger; but Fate, circumstances, were too much for him. A silly squabble, so silly as to be almost childish, between some squatters on the border and the discontented natives, upset all his carefully laid plans, and turned a gigantic success, at its very zenith, into a ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... upon a lady's finger; now to catch only maya of coloured sand, pounded fragments and pebbles, that, as soon as they were dry, became as dull and homely as the flints upon a garden path. I have toiled at this childish pleasure for hours in the strong sun, conscious of my incurable ignorance; but too keenly pleased to be ashamed. Meanwhile, the blackbird (or his tropical understudy) would be fluting ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time we sat and tried to communicate with each other. My words seemed almost as unintelligible to her as hers to me, except that occasionally she would divine my meaning, clapping her hands in childish delight. I made out that she lived at a considerable distance, and that her name was Lylda. Finally she pulled me by the hand and led me away with a proprietary air that amused and, I must ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... twenty-four, had Miss Honey, and she knew that this was no ordinary occasion. She did not know she was listening to one of the greatest voices her country had ever produced—perhaps in time to be known for the head of them all—but the sensitive little soul swelled in her and her childish jealousy was drowned deep in that river ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... neighbours and that of the blacks, until they sank to the lowest level. Their voices were hushed and forgotten; their former estate blotted out in their present degradation, and just then Sandy Morley and Cynthia Walden were born and some high and just God seemed to strengthen their childish voices; vouchsafe to them a vision and give their Inheritance charge ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... pain, and nights of delirious, dreary murmuring about home and all of us, more especially Ellen Fordyce. Clarence had no time for letters, and Martyn's became a call for mamma, with the old childish trust in her healing and comforting powers, declaring that he would meet her at Cologne, and steer her through ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... child, do you think you need to tell an old stager that?" He was kicking the creases out of his trousers. This time, she could not mistake the signal, and felt her womanish idealism of mining for the hidden vein of heroism both childish and cheapening. She rose and placed the flower back ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... transparency in close proximity to Charvet's fist, she made her appearance at Monsieur Lebigre's in a breathless condition. To gain more time, she made Rose rinse out her little bottle for her; however, she was about to return to her room when she heard the pork butcher exclaim with a sort of childish candour: ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... understand his general trend of thought. I specially want to make it clear that the ritual use of water for animating the corpse or the statue was merely a specific application of the general principles of biology which were then current. It was no mere childish make-believe or priestly subterfuge to regard the pouring out of water as a means of animating a block of stone. It was a conviction for which the Proto-Egyptians considered there was a substantial scientific basis; and their faith in ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... a quick stroke of a camel's-hair brush, she had a glowing face, half childish imp, half woman, she had honest hazel eyes, a voice all music, a manifest decision of character. And he must have this bite seen to at once. She lived not five minutes away. He must come ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... I that I've rung you here. I prized you then not slightingly; In grub and chrysalis appear The future brilliant butterfly. A childish pleasure then you drew From collar, lace, and curls.—A queue You probably have never worn?— Now to a crop I see you shorn. All resolute and bold your air— But ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... feet in the shining water. But every eye was turned to the mountains. Forgotten now were the Chilcats and missions while the word of God was being read in these majestic hieroglyphics blazoned along the sky. The earnest, childish wonderment with which this glorious page of Nature's Bible was contemplated was delightful to see. All evinced eager desire ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... whooping down a thornier and rosier lane than any Buddha ever knew. Besides I am thinking a few worldly vanities have crept in and set him hack an eon or so. He wears purple socks, pink ties and a dainty watch strapped around his childish wrist. ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... faculty called into play in conning over and repeating lessons by rote in grammar, in languages, in geography, arithmetic, etc., so that he who has the most of this technical memory, with the least turn for other things, which have a stronger and more natural claim upon his childish attention, will make the most forward school-boy. The jargon containing the definitions of the parts of speech, the rules for casting up an account, or the inflections of a Greek verb, can have no attraction to the tyro of ten years old, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... small crosses and lines in geometrical combination; all these patterns being in white when the ground is red, or in reddish brown when the ground is yellow or whitish. Now and then we find figures of men and animals interspersed among the geometrical combinations. The drawing is rude, almost childish; and it is difficult to tell whether the subjects represent herds of antelopes or scenes of gazelle-hunting. The craftsmen who produced these rude attempts were nevertheless contemporary with the ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... me something before my discovery seems valuable. David, you are a close student of human nature. Is it possible for men of phenomenal cunning to make careless mistakes? Do the most clever criminals ever make childish blunders?" ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... come and reproved me, because I did not think proper to bestow my niece upon him,—and then have persisted in troubling the Signor, because he did not think proper to enter into any dispute about so childish an affair. His behaviour throughout has been extremely presumptuous and impertinent, and I desire, that I may never hear his name repeated, and that you will get the better of those foolish sorrows and whims, and look ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... the little house once stood a railroad has drawn its erasing lines, and the house itself was long since taken down and built up brick by brick in quite another place; but the blooming peach-tree glows before his childish eyes untouched by time or change. The tender, pathetic pink of its flowers repeated itself many long years afterward in the paler tints of the almond blossoms in Italy, but always with a reminiscence of ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... said that Pascal at the age of twelve wrote a dissertation on acoustics suggested by his childish discovery that when a metal dish was struck by a knife the resulting sound could be stopped by touching the vibrating dish with ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... with himself and with God; short of that you will never bring him to the point.'—'Is this a dream?' said she, pushing her hair from her forehead, fifteen years before Malibran, with the gesture which Malibran has made so famous.—'Come, do not be childish, my angel,' said I, trying to take her hands; but she folded them before her with a little prudish and indignant mein.—'Marry him, you have my permission,' said I, replying to this gesture by using the formal vous instead of tu. 'Nay, better, I beg you to do so.'—'But,' cried she, ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... she said, as they hurried toward the lift. Then she added in a sort of childish delight: "We'll be poor, won't we? Like people in books. And I'll be an orphan and utterly free. Free and poor! What fun!" She stopped and raised her lips to him in a ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... on the hill-side—a fitting illustration of the fact that the course of true love never did run smooth, especially if there were big rocks to knock one's toes against. And now, in Canto IV, I am about to portray childish innocence in the pursuit ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... dreams of science, we seek to actualise the conditions imposed by them, we find ourselves face to face with a dead wall. For the doorway of nature's court is barred with iron, and through it can penetrate no mere cry of childish petulance. It is only by the gathered force of many years of concentration, that the gate can be opened, and the seeker enter to explore the secrets that have baffled ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... seen her face grow younger, more childish, even timid. She said in a voice smooth, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... have made a bit of an impression on the Germans who have fled, and it has given a new energy to our troops, because the battery to which we owe this success did not have a single man wounded. The Germans seem to be forty years behind the times. They go on just as in 1870. With childish and barbarous imagination they see francs-tireurs everywhere and can't yet believe that we have a regular army quite close to ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... the childish impressions which come crowding out of the pigeon-holes in my brain, in which they have lain almost undisturbed for forty years. I prize them as an evidence that a child of five or six years old, left to his own devices, ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... toys; and, looking round, you may see how the little tired, flushed cheek has toppled over half the brute creation on its way into the ark; or how one little dimpled arm has mowed down (as I saw myself) the whole tin soldiery of Europe. On the walls of these rooms are graceful, pleasant, bright, childish pictures. At the bed's heads, are pictures of the figure which is the universal embodiment of all mercy and compassion, the figure of Him who was once a child himself, and a poor one. Besides these little ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... after owner for generations; so that groups of water-lilies grew here, and swans arched their proud white necks and spread out their feathered plumes. Little Agnes had never seen anything so lovely before, and when she bent forward and saw her own reflection in the water she gave a scream of childish pleasure. ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... a bright, cheery tale with the scenes laid in Indiana. The story is told by Little Sister, the youngest member of a large family, but it is concerned not so much with childish doings as with the love affairs of older members of the family. Chief among them is that of Laddie and the Princess, an English girl who has come to live in the neighborhood and about whose family ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... should thereby become somewhat greater, or at least better; and as I was informed that she sought for a clever and experienced steward for her sorely decayed estate, I offered myself as such, in all modesty, or rather without any; and when accepted, I felt an almost childish joy, and set off immediately to her estate, that I might make myself at home there, and have everything ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... often their prows were unexpectedly turned by some new current into mid-stream; sometimes saved by an assortment of missiles breathlessly thrown to the far side, to bring them, wave-washed, back to us; sometimes, alas, swept mercilessly out to depths where only the eye and childish grief could follow them over the big dam to certain wreckage in the whirlpools below, but even then not abandoned until the shore had been patrolled for salvage as far as courage ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright
... in silence, walked softly round—her little childish feet scarcely sounded on the thick grass—and came out of the bushes near the old man. She was not a child of seven, as I had fancied at first, from her diminutive stature, but a girl of thirteen or fourteen. ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... penetrates everywhere in that lost corner of garrulous Gascony. The news that Paul had taken up his residence at Saint-Graal could scarcely fail to reach the Queen. Would she remember their childish intimacy? Would she make him a sign? Would she let him see her, for old sake's sake? Oh, in all probability, no. Most certainly, no. And yet—and yet, he couldn't forbid a little furtive hope ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... the ignored young clerk tapping at the table, turned towards him, and in his deliberate, judicial, disdainful, childish voice said ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... is very amiable, but rather grave beyond his years. He shows great affection for his father, and is as playful and as happy as the ordinary child. He sleeps soundly, has a good childish appetite, and appears to be in perfect health. His motions are quick but not nervous, and are as well coordinated as in a child of ten. In fact, he impresses one as having the intelligence of a much older ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... very disheartening if we are so constituted that with our deepest, sincerest study we grope and dwell in error through our threescore and ten, and after those allotted years find all we believed fact to be mere hallucination. It is—it must be—simply the waning intellect returning to childish teachings. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... to try you a little in order to see whether you are still the same dear old childish coward," exclaimed Gualtieri, laughing. "The same great child with the strong, manly soul, and the gentle, weak, and easily moved child's heart. Now, let me know quickly what you wanted of the minister of finance, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... and obliged to live together because neither was willing to forego the advantage of her possible maternity, they lived the life of irreconcilable enemies who can never lay their weapons aside.... I grew up in the midst of this hatred and had it instilled into me by both of them. When my childish heart, hungering for affection, inclined me to one of them, the other would seek to inspire me with loathing and contempt for her. In this manor-house, which they bought on the old doctor's death and to which they added the two wings, I was the involuntary torturer and their daily victim. Tormented ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... Peace from your childish talk. The game is done. Quite well you knew that, came I victor forth, I would not, for all treasure in the world, Have such an one as servant, who can serve No ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... so very young," he said, "and the brother and sister seem both to have been specious, cunning and clever; they evidently played upon your weakness and childish love of romance. Therefore, my darling, I look very indulgently upon that girlish error, if I may call it by so grave a name. Shall I tell you frankly, Marion, ...
— Marion Arleigh's Penance - Everyday Life Library No. 5 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... There is a touch of the sour-grapes philosophy in the rationalist attitude on this matter which Mr. Wells attributes to his Invisible King. Because we can't have any miracles, we say we don't want them. Also, no doubt, we see that the alleged miracles of the past were childish futilities, doing at most a little temporary good to individuals, never rendering any permanent service to a city or a nation, and much less to mankind at large. They were a sort of niggardly alms from omnipotence, not a generous endowment or a liberal ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... feeling!—so strong may it be in every British maiden!) the lovely girl kept her promise. "My former engagements," she said, packing up Romane's letters and presents, (which, as the good knight was mortal poor, were in sooth of no great price)—"my former engagements I look upon as childish follies;—my affections are fixed where my dear parents graft them—on the noble, the princely, the polite Barbazure. 'Tis true he is not comely in feature, but the chaste and well-bred female knows how to ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Bev's body in his arms. Bev wears the little blue uniform Fair made in Act I. There is a great blood stain over his heart. He is strangely young and childish looking—a faint smile on his lips. One of the soldiers is carrying a Confederate battle-flag, torn from its staff, very ...
— The Southern Cross - A Play in Four Acts • Foxhall Daingerfield, Jr.
... small face peeped over the top of the wall which divided the garden from that of the next house, and a childish voice asked: ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... in a nutshell. My Mary was tokened in a sort of childish way to a man called Nathan Coaker—a horse-stealer or little better, and a devil of a rogue, anyway. But it seems you looked in your bit of glass and pretended ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... from the balcony of the patio, a light cloud of cigarette-smoke made the dark corridors the more obscure, and mingled with the forgotten incense. Bare-headed pretty women, with roses starring their dark hair, wandered with childish curiosity along the broad veranda and in and out of the French windows that opened upon the grand saloon. Scrupulously shaved men with olive complexion, stout men with accurately curving whiskers meeting at their dimpled chins, lounged about with a certain unconscious dignity that made them contentedly ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... Heavens. I frequently inquired of some of them what became of the sun during the night, and whether we should see the same sun, or a different one, in the morning? but I found that they considered the question as very childish. The subject appeared to them as placed beyond the reach of human investigation. They had never indulged a conjecture, nor formed any hypothesis about the matter. The moon, by varying her form, has more attracted their attention. ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... this same hated class, provoked beyond self-control, was allowing childish and unreasoning fury to outstrip the usual calm irony of ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... preconception came. Noon, and still no one; then, cast down and disappointed, Uel went home, ate something, held the usual childish dialogue with his little girl, and about mid afternoon crossed the street to the new residence. Great was his astonishment at finding a pyramid of coals glowing in the silver brazier, and the chill already driven from the sitting-room. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... Maude taste the sweetmeats, insisted upon the child's lisping out that she loved mamma best; and before the little Charles was permitted to carry the bumper of wine to his lips, he was compelled to say he loved papa best. In all their childish quarrels, Maude ran roaring to her mamma, and Charles sneaked up ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... have to pay thirty per cent. of the value of the whole set, in duty, the moment he took the books into the house. He realized that he had been silly to bring the whole heavy set home at one time. He realized that he had been positively childish when he thought of hiding himself behind this miserable little tree, with this heavy box in his arms and six suburban stores staring him full in the face. He wondered what the proprietors of the six stores would think of him if they happened to see him hiding there ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler
... for their cheat, except that, upon this point, the good man was really childish; and, as he did not eat the fruit himself, or sell it, or do any thing with it, but give to the pigs what was not eaten in the family, no one was wronged by the trick. It was, in ...
— The Talkative Wig • Eliza Lee Follen
... caught the sound of small claws on wood. The sound came apparently from within the trunk of a huge maple, close at hand. Leaning his head to one side, he listened intently, his ears cocked, eager as a child listening to a watch. There was, indeed, something half childish in the attitude of the huge figure, strangely belying the ferocity in his heart. Yes, the sound came, unmistakably, from within the trunk. He nosed the bark warily. There was no opening; and the bark was firm. He stole ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of golden dreams, Romance! Auspicious queen of childish joys, Who lead'st along, in airy dance, Thy votive train of girls and boys. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... so firmly do our clergy adhere to the resolution of living in an atmosphere of their own. This only added fuel to the fire. Her love became a worship, a pure adoration, and so she gained comparative peace of mind. Her imagination took quite a childish turn, and she wanted to be able to fancy that she was employed in doing things for him. She had got to dream while awake, and, like a somnambulist, to perform acts in a semi-unconscious state. Day and night, one thought haunted her: ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... but one of the happy visions, with which her excited fancy had often deceived her, in the solitude of the desert or in prison. But when she felt his hand warm within her own, and heard his little eloquence of childish love, she began to know that she ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... mindful of his horse's needs; good-humored by nature, but quick in quarrel; independent of circumstance, yet shy and sensitive of opinion; abstemious by education and general habit, yet intemperate in amusement; self-centred, yet possessed of a childish vanity,—taken altogether, a characteristic product of the Western plains, which he never ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... Shann drew his knees up close under his chin. The hood of his woodsman's jacket was pushed back in spite of the chill of the morning, and he wiped the back of his hand across his lips and chin in an oddly childish gesture. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... Sorrowful they that they could not wait, But they were good darlings 'tis right to state, Duty was ever prevailing! And so they embarked in their paper boat, And soon on the sea were again afloat, A merry cheer rang from each childish throat, Tho' tears down their cheeks were trailing! The bright little Fairy cried, waving her hand, "Come soon ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... summer of the war.... It must be," said the little man with large brown eyes and a childish, chubby brown face, who sat ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... less abbreviate even now and in the future I fear, for the full narrative would entail too much expense in printing, and prolong the time of completion. Yet what pleasure I had in the wordy veracities as I wrote them, childish, fantastic, ludicrous, as some of the doings and sayings now seem! How unlike the doings of the couples in erotic books which I since have read, books written with no other object but to stimulate the passions,—no object that of mine ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... the days, The time, when, in our childish plays, My sister Emmeline and I Together chased the butterfly! A very hunter did I rush Upon the prey: with leaps and springs I followed on from brake to bush; But she, God love her, feared to brush The dust from ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... temperament by his superstitions, too careless indeed to store water even for a voyage, plucky but not courageous, reckless only from ignorance or from inappreciation of danger, selfish but not without generosity, chivalry or a sense of honour, petulant, hasty of temper, entirely irresponsible and childish in action in his wrath, and equally quick to forget, affectionate, lively in his movements, and exceedingly taking in his moments of good temper. At these times the Andamanese are gentle and pleasant to each other, considerate to the aged, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... all one Father," she reminded him, gently. "But, really, I do not do half that I would. I am not a St. Elizabeth and no miracles are wrought for me," and she smiled a little at her childish admiration of the generous lady. "So I am half afraid to read what you have brought me," indicating the volume, "for I know I shall be found wanting when I am cast in the scale with ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... raising the royal power; for Henry completely overshadowed Louis, whose only resource was in feeble endeavours to take part against him in his many family quarrels. The whole reign of Louis the Young, the title that adhered to him on account of his simple, childish nature, is only a record of weakness and disaster, till he died in 1180. What life went on in France, went on principally in the south. The lands of Aquitaine and Provence had never dropped the old classical love ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge |
